Loyal and Successful

When King Saul became jealous of David, Saul set out to murder him. Jonathan, the son of King Saul, found himself in a difficult situation. It was Jonathan who had delivered Israel from the Philistines before David came along to replace him. But Jonathan appreciated David's victory over Goliath, and recognizing that God was going to make David, not Jonathan, the next king, Jonathan helped David.

In the 1970's, a popular Christian seminar taught that authority is an umbrella of protection that God puts over Christians. But when the umbrella has holes in it, the Christians assigned to be under that umbrella have little that they can do. Thirty years later, I have seen that this is true. When Christian leadership goes bad, the followers are going to have problems.

Jonathan struggled to stay loyal to his father, King Saul. Neither a spineless "yes man" nor a rebel, Jonathan reasoned with Saul and sometimes succeeded in getting Saul and David temporarily reconciled. Eventually, Saul found out that Jonathan was lying, as Jonathan tried to be loyal to both Saul and David. Jonathan was pushed away from leadership, as Saul turned to less Godly "yes men" for help.

Still loyal, however, Jonathan was destroyed with King Saul in a battle with the Philistines. All that remained to Jonathan was his crippled son, who lost all his family's property. Later, after Jonathan was dead, King David (a picture of Christ the King) restored everything that Jonathan had lost, but that didn't change the fact that Jonathan had been destroyed.