“A Friend—NOT!” – FBC Morning Light (5/22/2023)

A Terrible Friendship and Destructive Counsel

Well, a good Monday morning to you. Hope you had a good weekend and got together with God's people yesterday, worshiped the Lord together, and learned something from God's Word. I hope that was a good day for you in God's house yesterday.

Well, today, on this Monday morning, entering the third week of the month of May already, we're reading today in 2 Samuel, chapters 13 and 14, in Acts chapter 12, and 101st Psalm. I want to focus on chapters 13 and 14 in 2 Samuel, and especially notice in chapter 13, as the chapter begins, we're introduced to one of David's sons named Amnon.

Amnon was a half-brother of Absalom. Absalom had a full-blooded sister named Tamar. If you remember, David had multiple wives, and each of these wives had children, except for Michal, or Michael, she didn't have any children.

So Absalom and Tamar, full-blooded siblings, and then there's Amnon, who is a half-brother to Absalom. Amnon is also, therefore, a half-brother to Tamar, and Amnon has eyes for Tamar, thinks she's a beautiful woman, he'd love to have her.

So he's pining for her, and Amnon has a friend by the name of Jonadab, and Jonadab wants to know, why are you so upset, why are you so morose all the time? Amnon admits to his friend, Jonadab, that he loves Tamar, he wants Tamar.

Then Jonadab concocts this scheme whereby Amnon can then get a hold of Tamar. He says, pretend you're sick, when your dad comes to visit you, David, when he comes to visit you, tell him you're so sick, you just want Tamar to come and fix you a meal.

He'll do that, he'll do what you ask. That's exactly what Amnon did. Tamar comes, and then Amnon sends everybody else away, and he takes advantage of Tamar and rapes her. Then after he does that, he kicks her out, and the Bible says that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he loved her before he had taken advantage of her and defiled her.

That's a sordid story, but the thing I wanted to focus on is this so-called friend, Jonadab. A true friend will never encourage you to do evil, to take a course of action that is deceptive and selfish, harmful to somebody else, destructive of relationships, and ultimately ruinous to your own soul.

That was certainly the case with Jonadab and the counsel that he gave to Amnon. The Bible says that Jonadab was his friend, but in reality he wasn't a good friend. He was a terrible friend, he was a destructive friend, he was a friend that Amnon should have never had anything to do with and should have never listened to him.

Another interesting little tidbit here is that these two young men, Jonadab and Amnon, were not only friends, but they were cousins. Jonadab was the son of David's brother. You read that in verse 32 of chapter 13.

Anyway, what a terrible, destructive friendship this is. And yet, how many times do you find this in real life when a couple of friends get together and one's upset about something and he lets his friend know what it is, and the friend gives a piece of advice or counsel that is contrary to biblical wisdom and prudence and what God would say, and then the counseled friend ends up taking that advice and makes matters even worse.

Ruins a relationship, messes up a marriage, or whatever. Be careful of your friends, be careful whom you listen to for advice, and be careful what kind of friend you are as well. When your friend is upset or burdened down with something and he calls upon you, gives you the opportunity of providing some advice, be sure you counsel them in the direction of God's way and not in a way that is just simply going to gratify their flesh.

David's Deception and the Consequences of Sin

The other thing I wanted to point out, just by way of observation in chapters 13 and 14, is the occurrences of David's deception, that is, the occasions when David is deceived. He was deceived first by Amnon, who pretended to be sick and got David to send Tamar, his half-sister, to him.

He was deceived by Amnon. Then he was deceived by Absalom, and I'm not going to recount the details of all these, you just read through it and notice this. David's deceived by Amnon, and then he's deceived by Absalom, and then he's deceived by Joab, his own commander of his armed forces.

This deception is going on, and David is the victim of that deception. But remember that the one who in this couple of chapters is being so deceived is the one who tried to deceive everyone regarding Bathsheba's pregnancy and the death of Uriah.

He tried to deceive everyone, and now he himself is the victim of deception. Let's be careful to live honest lives, free of deception. Our Father and our God, what powerful lessons are found in these couple of chapters, and I pray that we would heed them today, and we would be attentive to your Word and eager to live accordingly.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well listen, you have a good rest of your Monday. Hope your week gets off to a great start. Good day. God bless.