Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2336
“Your love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women.” 2 Samuel 1:26.
DAVID was a poet and when he found that his best-beloved friend had fallen by the arrows of the Philistines, he wept greatly and then he cheered his heart by writing the very fine elegy which, in later years was called, “The Song of the Bow.” Even if David’s lamentation is judged according to the canons of literary taste, it must be placed among the first of poetical compositions. Thus David tried to keep his friend’s memory green—the song was meant to be a memorial of him. Such friends as Jonathan are not common and when we have had them, we must not forget them. It is sad that, in these days, friendship is proverbially a frail thing. Friends are like swallows that are with us in our summertime and gone when the damps of autumn begin to gather. When a man has a faithful friend, let him grapple him to his side with hooks of steel! And when he loses him, let him know that he has lost what will be very hard to replace and let him not forget his friend though he is buried beneath the sod. True friendship likes to fashion memorials of the departed. We keep mementos of the loved ones we have lost. We like to think of the happy days of communion we have had together and we will not allow the cherished name to be blotted out from the memory of men.
When I thought of this subject, I said to myself, “I shall see many, tonight, who are lovers of the Lord Jesus Christ. I shall be face to face with thousands who love Him as they love their own soul.” I believe that is my happiness now. Well then, beloved Friends, let us who love Christ keep Him always in memory. If you can speak of His name, be not silent. If you can make melody in honor of Jesus, in the great congregation, take down the minstrel’s harp and lay your fingers among the strings and bring out sweetest music to His dear name that thousands may hear! But if you have a feebler instrument, sing or play to the two or three and let those who love you know that you love your Lord best of all! Or if your tongue fails you, use your pen to let men know who Jesus is. Say, with the Psalmist, “My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the King.”
What shall we do to keep Christ’s name before the sons of men? Let us be inventive and often make the winds and waves to bear the story of His life and love to those who know it not. I would whisper in the ear of someone, “If you love Jesus, how is it that you are never at His Table?” If there is anyway of keeping Him in memory, which is better than every other, it is the one which He has, Himself, chosen—“This do in remembrance of Me.” How do you excuse yourselves, you lovers of Christ, who have never kept up this feast of love? This is one of His dying requests, “Meet and remember Me.” And yet, though you say that you love Him, and I will not challenge the truth of what you say, you have never yielded obedience to His loving request and come to eat the bread and drink of the cup which are the memorials of His broken body and His poured-out blood. David, you could sing of Jonathan, though there was no law that you should do so! What will you say of some who love the Christ of God better than you loved Jonathan and yet have never remembered Him in the way in which He asked to be remembered, but have cast behind their back the sweet forget-me-not of the Communion Table?
Let that stand as a preface. May the Lord put our hearts in tune, now, while we think upon two things! The first is the small type, Jonathan’s love to David. The second is the infinite anti-type, Christ’s love to men. Perhaps it will be sweetest, tonight, if we can, each one, say, “Christ’s love to me. He loved me and gave Himself for me.” That expression will be in harmony with the words of the text, “Your love to me was wonderful.”
I. First, then, we have to think a little about JONATHAN’S LOVE TO DAVID.
Jonathan’s was a singular love, because of thepureness of its origin. Jonathan loved David out of great admiration of him. When he saw him come back with the head of Goliath in his hand, he loved him as a soldier loves a soldier, as a brave man loves another brave man. He felt that there was the right kind of metal in that young man and though Jonathan was the king’s son, and heir-apparent to the throne, we find that he, “stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his belt.” He felt that such a hero, who could so trust his God, and so expose his life, and come off so victorious, deserved his utmost love. It did not begin in self-interest—it did not begin in relationship—but it began in the likeness that Jonathan saw between his own nature and that of David. It was one brave man loving another brave man.
Jonathan’s love proved, also, to be most intense. It is said that, “he loved him as his own soul.” He would at any moment have sacrificed his life to preserve the life of David. In fact, I do not doubt that Jonathan thought David’s life much more valuable than his own and that he was quite willing to expose himself to peril that David might be preserved. Jonathan’s was a very intense love. May we see more of this kind of love among Christian men! May they love each other for Christ’s sake and because of the love of God which they see in one another—and may they be intense in their affection!