Let's turn in our Bibles this
evening to 2 Samuel chapter 13. 2 Samuel chapter 13. We begin looking at this chapter
tonight by observing what the prophet Nathan had told David
in the previous chapter, in chapter 12 and verse 11. Thus saith the Lord, behold,
I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house. God speaking through the prophet
to David, behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine
own house. The Lord loved David. The Lord
loves all of his people, loves them with an everlasting love,
loves his people. God loves his people even as
he loves Christ. Lord loved David and the scripture
tells us, for whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth. We all are familiar
that David had committed the sin of adultery and then the
sin of murder. And in this chapter, chapter
13, we see how these two things came to pass in his house, in
his family. His daughter Tamar was raped
by her half-brother Amnon, who was then murdered by his half-brother
Absalom. I'm not going to read the whole
chapter of chapter 13. I think we're all familiar enough
with the chapter. But I do want to point out something
before I come to the words that I'll use as my text tonight. I want you to notice in chapter
11, you have your Bible in chapter, open to chapter 13, look back
to chapter 11 and verse 4. The word sent is what I want
us to think about here. And David sent messengers and
took her. That is Bathsheba. He sent messages
and took her. And she came in unto him and
he lay with her. Now look in our chapter tonight,
chapter 13 and verse 7, the word sent again. Then David sent home
to Tamar saying, go now to thy brother Amnon's house and dress
him meet. In the first verse, we see that
David sent his servants to take Bathsheba, who was not his wife,
another man's wife. And now in this chapter, we say
that David sends his daughter to the house of the man who will
violate her. Another verse in chapter 11 and
verse 14. And it came to pass in the morning
that David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand
of Uriah. Here we say that David sent Uriah
with the message to Joab to cause his death. And if you look back
in chapter 13, verse 27, we find that David
sent Ammon to his brother's place where he was shearing sheep.
He sent him to his death. Thought that was interesting.
The first place David sent to take Bathsheba, another man's
wife. And now in this chapter, he sends
his daughter to the place where she will be raped. And also in that chapter 11,
he sent Uriah with a message to facilitate his death in the
battle. And now he sends Amnon, his son,
to Absalom's place where he will meet his death. As I said, I believe that we're
familiar enough with this chapter without me reading it, but I
want to speak to us tonight from something we read, and it always
gets my attention every time I read through this chapter.
It's found in verse three. 2 Samuel chapter 13 and verse
3. But Amnon had a friend whose
name was Jonadab. Amnon, David's son, had a friend
whose name was Jonadab. Jonadab was not only Amnon's
friend, but he was Amnon's cousin, David's nephew. What is a friend? Well, I looked this definition
up in my dictionary, Noah Webster's dictionary. What is a friend? One who is attached to another
by affection. One who entertains for another
sentiments or feelings of esteem, respect, and affection. which lead him to desire his
company and to seek to promote his happiness and prosperity,
opposed to foe or enemy. In other words, a friend is just
the opposite of a foe or an enemy. A friend is one who is attached
to another by affection and has feelings of esteem, respect. for the other, which causes him
or leads him to desire his company and to seek to promote his happiness
and prosperity. Three things I want to say to
us tonight about a friend, the subject of a friend. First, bad
friends are to be avoided. Bad friends are to be avoided. Amnon had this friend, and he
was a bad friend. The definition that I read of
a friend is one who seeks to promote the happiness and the
prosperity of another. This friend, when he saw that
Amnon had feelings for his half-sister, he suggested to him a plan as
to how he could have his half-sister, how he could take her and eventually
he would violate her. And his plan, when you look at
it, it caused Amnon. Amnon was responsible, of course,
for his actions. I'm certainly not saying that.
But this friend put forth this plan to Amnon, which as you look
at it, will cause him to break three of the commandments of
God. He will break the commandment
which tells us, honor thy father and thy mother. He will break
the commandment which tells us not to lie or to tell an untruth. And he will break the commandment
which tells us not to commit adultery. And that commandment
It's not just adultery. I know adultery is between two
married persons. Fornication is between a single
person and maybe a married person. But that commandment, which forbids
adultery, it forbids all sexual immorality, all uncleanness. It's not just adultery. It's
all sexual sins and immorality. And this plan that Amnon suggested
to, or rather, Jonadab suggested to Amnon was to break all of
these commandments of God. And of course, he did that. He disobeyed his father, he didn't
honor his father because he feigned that he was sick. He wasn't sick,
but he feigned that he was sick. And then he lied to his father
because he told his father that the only way that he could possibly
be helped physically would be for his father to send Tamar,
his half-sister, to take care of him, to attend to his needs
on a bed of affliction. And then he would have his half-sister
Tamar to serve him. What does the scripture say about
Tamar? She's a victim here. It doesn't
say a whole lot about her, but everything that is said is good.
Everything that's said about her is good. Everything that's
said about Amnon and his friend, Jonadab, is bad. The first thing we read about
her, not only in verse one is she, called Absalom's sister,
but she was fair. In other words, she was a pretty
girl, young lady. You know, beauty has advantages
and disadvantages. And no doubt it was her beauty
here that caused her brother to have these feelings for her. Not only was she fair, but she
was privileged. She was a daughter of a king.
I would imagine the children of King David fared very well,
don't you? She was privileged. And she was
clothed in clothes, dresses that no other women in Israel wore. That is the king's daughter,
they were specially dressed with gold. gold wires woven through
the cloth that their dresses were made from so that they could
always be identified. No matter where they went, person
would see them and they would know that's one of the King's
daughters there. So and she was she was obedient. She was pretty. She was privileged. She was obedient. Her father
told her, now, Tamar, you go to your half-brother's house.
And she didn't go down there to play games or anything like
that. He sent her down there to work,
to serve. And that's what she did, isn't
it? She went down and she made his meal for him and fed it to
him. What kind of a friend was this
Jonadab? He was a bad friend. He was a
bad, he was the worst kind of friend that a person might have. You've all heard that saying,
and it's true many times, with friends like that, you don't
need any enemies. And that was certainly true in
this case. With this man as his friend,
Amnon, he didn't need any enemies. You know, we especially encourage
our children, our young people, to carefully choose their friends. That's very important, isn't
it? But it's not just important for children and for young people,
it's important for all of us, all of God's children. The Apostle
Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, he made this statement, evil companions
corrupt good manners. And so it's important that we
all be careful about our friends. We choose them. And any man or
woman who would in any way take us away from the word of God,
take us away from the services of worshiping the Lord, those
are not the kind of friends that we want. Those are not the kind
of friends that we need. We need friends who will encourage
us Encourage us in the things of the Lord. We certainly do
not need any that would in any way discourage us. So that's
my first thought. Bad friends are to be avoided. Good friends are to be prized. That's my second point. Good
friends are to be prized. Think of how things might have
been different. How things might have been different
in this case if Jonadab had been a good friend to Amnon. A good
friend, we read, will seek to promote his friend's prosperity
and his happiness. What would Jonadab have done
if he had been a good friend? What might he have done, I should
say? Well, first of all, When he understood Amnon's feelings,
his desires towards his half-sister, he would have rebuked him and
told him in no uncertain terms, what you are desiring is sinful,
it's wicked, and it's against the word of God. And maybe he
If he had known the word of God, he would have quoted to him one
of the passages where this kind of relationship between brother
and sister, not necessarily full brothers and sisters, but having
the same father or having the same mother, that it is strictly
forbidden by God. In Leviticus 20, for instance,
we have this. And if a man shall take his sister,
his father's daughter or his mother's daughter and see her
nakedness." Now, in Leviticus, when you read that terminology,
see her nakedness, what it's talking about is just a polite
way of speaking about fornication or adultery. See her nakedness. If a man shall take his sister,
his father's daughter, or his mother's daughter, and see her
nakedness, and she see his nakedness, it is a wicked thing. This is
what God said. It is a wicked thing. And they
shall be cut off in the sight of their people. He hath uncovered
his sister's nakedness. He shall bear his iniquity. If Jonadath had been a good friend,
He would have told Ammon, but he was a bad friend. A good friend
will tell you the truth even when it hurts. If he's a good friend or she's a
good friend and they see you desiring to do something or planning
to do something or wanting to do something that is wrong, is
sinful, they will tell you the truth. The scripture says faithful. Proverbs. There's a lot of Proverbs,
isn't there, about friends. That's one reason it's so good
to read through Proverbs 31 chapters. Read a chapter a day if you can.
And the wisdom that you find there in that book. But there's
many scriptures that speak about a friend in Proverbs. And one of them is faithful are
the wounds of a friend. Faithful. A good friend will tell you the
truth even when it hurts. In other words, if this man had
been a good friend, he would have told Amnon, the penalty
for what you are planning, what you're desiring, what you're
thinking about doing is death. It's going to lead to your death.
Now, if the law had been executed Amnon would have died by stoning
because that's what the law prescribed for this rape. That's what the law prescribed. You think about the prodigal
son in the parable that our Lord told. Remember when he had his
inheritance, he had a lot of friends, didn't he? As long as
he could pay for the wine and the music, he had a lot of friends. You know, there's a scripture,
one of the Proverbs, which says something, a man, every man is
a friend to him that give it gifts. If that man had been told, the
prodigal son had been told, hey, you've got a lot of friends here,
but the scripture is very clear. The reason you have friends is
because you're giving gifts. But once the money ran out, we
know his friends were gone also. They were gone when his money
was gone. One of the proverbs that that
we read concerning friends is, ointment and perfume rejoice
the heart, so doth the sweetness of a man's friend by hearty counsel. Hearty counsel. The word hearty
means heavy, strong counsel, doesn't it? A man's friend, sweetness
of a man's friend by hearty counsel, and that's what this man needed.
He didn't need some sugar-coated advice. He needed some strong,
some hearty advice that what he was seeking to do was wrong,
and it would end in shame. It would end in shame, and actually,
it would end in his death, and it should have ended in his death.
So bad friends are to be avoided. Good friends are to be prized.
And that should remind all of us to be a good friend. Those that we have as our friends,
we should be good friends. Seek to be good friends to them.
Sometimes it means telling a person what they may not want to hear.
But to be a good friend, to stand with your friend. My third point is there is a
friend like no other. There is a friend like no other. You say who is that? The Lord
Jesus Christ. He is a friend like no other
friend. He is the one described in Proverbs
17 in verse 17. It says a friend loveth at all
times. Isn't that Christ? A friend loveth
at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. When I read that scripture, a
friend loveth at all times, it makes us remember that our friend,
the Lord Jesus Christ, has always loved us, that his love is eternal,
and nothing shall separate us from the love of God, which is
in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Nothing. There never was a time from before
the foundation of the world, he loved his friends. And when
we had fallen into sin and depravity, his love didn't cease, his love
didn't change, but he continued to love. And that word adversity,
a brother is born for adversity. Adversity, a definition is a
state of unhappiness. The Lord Jesus Christ was born
our brother. You know, he's the kinsman redeemer,
isn't he? And in order for him to be a
kinsman redeemer, he had to be kin to us. He had to be our brother. He had to be bone of our bone
and flesh of our flesh. An angel could not redeem us. No, it had to be a brother, one
who was one with us. The Lord Jesus Christ told his
disciples in John chapter 15, greater love hath no man than
that a man lay down his life for his friends. And we hear
that when a policeman or a fireman is taken in the line of duty
They give their life trying to save others or protect society. And that's true, isn't it? It's very true that greater love
hath no man than a man laid down his life for his friends. But
the Lord Jesus Christ, he laid down his life for his enemies. He laid down his life for his
enemies that we might be made his friends. You say, he laid
down his life for his enemies? Yes, yes. Romans chapter five,
the scripture says, for if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled
to God by the death of his son, much more being reconciled, we
shall be saved by his life. Greater love hath no man than
that a man lay down his life for his friends, but he, our
friend, the friend that sticketh closer than a brother, the one
who is born for adversity, he laid down his life for his enemies,
for you and me, in order that we might become his friends. And he called his disciples his
friends. in that passage there in John
chapter 15. God called Abraham his friend. Can you imagine that? And God
Almighty refers to a man, a feeble man, a fallen man. Abraham was a man just like you
and me and everyone else. And God said, Abraham, my friend. What a blessing it is to know
tonight that by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that we have
him as our friend. We sing that hymn sometimes,
what a friend we have in Jesus. What a privilege to carry all
our griefs, all our burdens to him. He's a friend that sticketh
closer than a brother. Let me just go back over those
three points. Bad friends are to be avoided. We know that, don't we? Bad friends
are to be avoided. Good friends are to be prized. And thank God there's one friend
that is above every friend to be able to know him as our friend,
as our brother, the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray the Lord would
bless this word to all of us. It's a sad chapter. It's a sad
chapter because we see that David is reaping what he sowed. He
sowed adultery and murder, and now in his own family, these
things are taking place. as God had told him. God is faithful,
isn't he? He's faithful to his word. He's
faithful to chastise those of his children, discipline them.
And David, of course, had given, the scripture says, the enemies
of God caused a blaspheme. No doubt his chastisement was
greater than most of us will ever receive, but the Lord does
chasten those He loves. I pray the Lord would bless His
word to you tonight.