Alright, brethren. Now, since
we've read the text, I won't read it again. I'll give you
a little background here. Jehoshaphat was a good king in
Judah. He had served the Lord, worshipped
the Lord in truth, and done some good things in Israel. He was
a really good king. But he was not exempt from trouble. He was a sinner. And Jehoshaphat
erred. He went down to the king of Israel,
to Ahab, and made a league with him. And even though the Lord
sent the prophet, Achaia, saying he was not in it, and it would
not turn out well, he did it anyway. Jehoshaphat did it anyway. And so the Lord sent Yehu to
him and rebuked him for what he had done. And Jehoshaphat
continued worshiping the Lord, serving Him. But we are not told
specifically. We are not told specifically.
that this was related to that, but it sure appears like it was. It says in 2 Chronicles 20 verse
1, ìIt came to pass after this also, that the children of Moab
and the children of Ammon, and with them other beside the Ammonites,
came against Jehoshaphat to battle.î God has left the believer in
this earth with many enemies. But everybody in this world who
are not God's are still under God's power. And God is using
the enemies, and they are called the rod in God's hand, to teach
His people, to teach us our need of Christ. To keep us coming
to the Lord, trusting the Lord. and showing us our need of Him.
This is why we saw in John 17, our Lord in His high priestly
prayer said, I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of
the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil." There
are some things we have to learn, be taught, and that's what the
Lord's doing. So God worked in Jehoshaphat.
He got word of this. And God worked in his heart and
the hearts of the people in Judah. And verse 3 says, And Jehoshaphat
feared, set himself to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout
all Judah. And Judah gathered themselves
together to ask help of the Lord. Even out of all the cities of
Judah, they came to seek the Lord. When a true fast is of
the Lord, a spiritual true fast is of the Lord, when He brings
us to the end of ourselves, He brings us to the point where
we see there's nothing we can do. Nothing we can do. And He does this to us in the
beginning, He does it over and over again. to teach us, to turn
us from self, to turn us from all earthly things to Him, and
draws us to the Lord's stone of grace. And that was the Lord's
purpose here. That's the purpose. He's drawing
them to Him. All of this was for the good
of His people. It was for them to speak out of their mouth in
prayer who God is, and so that God would remind them of who
He is. and then God show them who He
is and do for them what they could not do. You know, the Lord
is keeping His people. He is graciously keeping His
people. And He is going to show us our need of Christ. He had
reproved Jehoshaphat for this when Jehoshaphat was with Ahab.
Ahab made him a big feast and wooed him and wanted him to go
with him into battle. Jehoshaphat saw this wasn't going
to have a good ending, and he did it anyway. Now, this is just
so whatever weight, whatever sin that is besetting us, whatever
it is that would turn us from Christ, at the first reproof
of the Lord, let it go. Turn from it to Him. He will make us let it go. He
will strip us. You know, like we do our children. You tell them once, and if they
don't do it, then sometimes you have to go over and you take
it out of their hand. And He will. He will take it out of
our hand. And it'll be much more painful
that way. So it's always better to let it go. Let it go. Go to Him. Go to Him. But His
hand, when He does chasten us, though it causes sorrow, though
it causes much pain, it's for our profit. It's for our profit. It's the way He's going to keep
us partaking of His holiness. And whatever He's doing, if it
draws us to Christ and it teaches us more of Christ and it teaches
us more of God's glory, then it's always profitable for us.
It's for our good. And that's what we're going to
see happen here. That's what we're going to see
happen here. First of all, God shall graciously keep His children
coming to Christ for grace to help them. He's going to keep
us coming to Christ for grace to help. It says in verse 5,
Jehoshaphat stood in the congregation of Judah and Jerusalem in the
house of the Lord before the new court. Verse 8 says this
was the sanctuary that was for God's name, the holy place. Verse
9 says, they speak in here of God's promise to them. And they
go to God with His own promise to them. And they said, If when
evil cometh upon us as the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine,
we stand before this house and in thy presence, for thy name
is in this house, and we cry unto thee in our affliction,
then thou wilt hear and help. That was God's promise. That
was God's promise. Now brethren, this house that
He's showing us here, and as holy of holies, this sanctuary,
is a picture of Christ Himself, first and foremost. A picture
of Christ Himself. What has our Lord promised us?
He's promised us if we come to Him, in all our affliction, In
all our trouble, He will deliver His people. He will give us grace
to help in time of need. Christ is our true temple. He's
our true sanctuary. He's in the holiest of holies
now, in the presence of God. He told them, destroy this temple
and I'll raise it again in three days. And He did. When He accomplished
the redemption of His people, He arose. And He's seated there
now on His throne of grace as the great high priest of His
people. And God bids us come to Him. When any evil comes,
come to Him. Come to Him. Of the things which
we've spoken, this is the sum. We have such a high priest who
sat on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the
heavens, a minister of this sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which
the Lord pitched to not man. In that holy place is where the
ark is. And Christ is the believer's
ark. He's the believer's ark. That little box, it wasn't very
big at all. We're not talking about Noah's
ark. We're talking about the ark of the covenant. That little
box, overlaid in pure gold. It had the angels, the cherubims
looking at the mercy seat. It had the mercy seat on the
top. That typified our Lord Jesus. So them coming to this house
and praying before this house is a picture of us coming to
Christ for help. Coming to Christ to be saved.
How was the Ark a picture of Christ? Well, it's called the
Ark of the Covenant of the Lord our God. And in Christ are all
the promises of God. They're yes and amen in our Lord
Jesus. All of them. All of them. They're
sure in Christ by His blood and His righteousness and His power
and His grace. Inside the ark was the manna.
Our Lord said, I am the bread of life. He's the manna. He's the bread of life. He that
cometh to me. He that cometh to me. That's
the picture here. They're coming to Him. He said, He'll never
hunger. He'll never thirst. Inside the ark was the law. Not
the broken law. The unbroken law was in the ark. It was in the heart. Christ said
God's law was in His heart. He said, I came to do Thy will,
O God. And the Scripture says by His
will we're sanctified. He perfected us. He magnified. He made honorable the law. He
fulfilled it like none of us could have. In perfection. And
when He's revealed to us by the Holy Spirit, He makes us see
He's the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. And
He makes us bow and He makes us confess Him and come to Him
that we might be saved. Inside that ark was Aaron's rod
that budded. That typified the gospel of our
Lord Jesus Christ. Life that He gives us is through
the preaching of the gospel of Christ because it declares Him.
It declares His name. It declares who He is. And this
is the rod that He's going to make to bud. He's going to make
us have life through this gospel. And keep doing so. Keep doing
so. Over that ark and over the law
was the mercy seat. And that's where they took, after
they slew the lamb who died in the place of Israel, they took
its blood and they went into that Holy Sepholis and the high
priest by himself, once a year, he sprinkled that blood on the
mercy seat and ceremonially he made atonement. But our Lord
Jesus Christ is at mercy seat. He's the propitiation. By His
own blood He has accomplished redemption. He atoned for all
the sins of His people. And He's in that holiest of holies
now, having put away the sin of His people, having redeemed
us from the curse of the law. He's there in that holiest of
holies, and He is the propitiation for our sins. This is how God's
love manifests. Herein is love, not that we love
God. But that He loved us and sent
His Son, the propitiation for our sin. And so the Scripture
says, My little children, these things write unto you that you
sin not. So Josaphat went down and made
a league with the ungodly. This was a series of things he
did. And even ignored the Word of
the Lord. My little children, these things
write unto you that you sin not. And if any man sin, if any man
sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous. Jesus Christ our righteousness. And He is the propitiation for
our sins and He is the propitiation for His children all over this
world. He is the mercy seed. They stood there pleading God's
own promise to them. They pleaded what God had promised
them. Lord, You promised if an evil
comes upon us, if we come here and we pray before this house,
Your name is in this house. His name is in Christ. Your presence
is here. His presence is in Christ. It's
where Christ gathers His people together. That's the place God
said, I'll meet with you, in Christ, over the mercy seat. And they said, and you promised,
Lord, you'll hear us and you'll help us. So that's why they were
there. That's why they were there. Scripture
tells us there's salvation in no other name under heaven given
among men. Only Christ. We must be saved
by Christ. And because He's that high priest,
because He's touched with the feeling of our infirmities, because
He has thoroughly put away the sin of His people, He stands
there and says, come to Me. Come to Me. That's His promise.
Come to Me. You'll come to my throne of grace. Come boldly.
Come confidently. Come in faith. And he says, you'll
obtain mercy. Mercy. And you'll find grace
to help you in your time of need. Anybody need Him? Anybody need
Him? I need Him. I know something
about what Jehoshaphat did. I need Him. I need mercy and
I need grace. He says, come. Come. Let's see
a few things about this cry to God. Let's learn a few things
about this cry. Here's what I want us to see
in this cry. You know, people will say prayer
changes things. Prayer is not changing God. God
knew what He was doing here. God was doing what He was doing.
Everything they are going to say about God, God already is.
He is the great I AM. Everything they are going to
say about Him is true. But you see what God has done here is
He has put them in a possible situation and brought them to
cry to God from their dire need and as they are crying to Him,
They're speaking what they need to hear. They're speaking the
very word they themselves need to hear, and God's going to bless
that to them. That's what He's doing when He
brings us to call out to Him for mercy. Watch this. First
they pled his promise. And that's what we're going to
plead for. We're pleading his covenant promise. We looked at
that. Now look at this next thing. They began to praise God's glory
as their covenant God in heaven. Like we saw this morning. Verse
6. They said, O Lord God of our
fathers, art thou not God in heaven? When they said, O Lord
God of our fathers, they're talking about Him being a covenant God.
You're the covenant God. That's why we were called there,
saying, you're the God of our fathers. You're the eternal God.
You're the God that was from everlasting. And you're in heaven. You're sovereign over all. What
did He tell us when He said, when we go to the Father to pray,
He said, we pray, our Father which art in heaven, hallowed
be thy name. He's holy. And this, see, this
is what we always need when we're in trouble. This is why He has
done it this way and He calls us to come to Him praying to
Him. It's so that we are reminded
ourselves He's our Holy Sovereign God. He's our Covenant God who
saves everlastingly. And He's going to keep us knowing
that. He's going to keep us knowing we're the sinner and He's holy. He's our salvation. So that we
have the spirit that that publican had all the time. He wouldn't
even lift his eyes up to heaven. smote upon his breast and said,
Lord have mercy on me the sinner. Imagine if you are where they
are. There is like three different sets of enemies come against
them at one time. They have no ability to go out
against them. They have no ability to defeat
them. They are helpless entirely. That is where we have to be brought.
To see we are the sinner. We are the sinner. God is in
heaven. He is our Savior. He is our Covenant
God. And they magnify His sovereignty,
His rule. They said in verse 6, You rulest
thou over all the kingdoms of the heathen, and in thy hand
is power and might, so that none is able to withstand thee. Don't
you know that's what they needed to hear? They needed to hear
that. They're praying this to God.
What's God doing by prayer? He's making you remember who
He is. God's able to save. He sovereignly
worked this and brought them to that place. If He hadn't given
them this need, they wouldn't be on their face crying out to
God for this. You see who changes who? God's
bringing them where they need to be. And they magnify God's
glory as the victor who defeated their enemies in the past. They
said in verse 6, You rule over all the kingdoms of the heathen,
and in Thy hand is power and might, so that none is able to
withstand Thee. Are not Thou our God, who didst drive out
the inhabitants of this land before Thy people Israel, and
gave it to the seed of Abraham, Thy friend forever? God is going
to bring us to remember what He has already accomplished for
His people. What He already accomplished for us on the cross. And they magnify God's grace,
they're pleading their own inability at the same time. They said,
behold, I say, how they reward us. This is a people that God
didn't let them destroy when they went into Canaan on purpose. What was the purpose? Right here. Why didn't God destroy all the
enemies in your flesh? Why didn't He destroy all the
enemies in this world? Why has He left you where you
are with besetting sins and the troubles that you face every
day? Why has He left you there? Keep us on our face at His throne
of grace. They said, Behold how they reward
us to come to cast us out of thy possession. See, they are
glorifying God for giving them this. You gave us this. This
is your possession. which thou hast given us to inherit. O our God, wilt thou not judge
them? For we have no might against
this great company that cometh against us, neither know we what
to do, but our eyes are upon thee. God brought them there to pray
these things for their benefit. That's what God's doing. He's
reminding us who He is. He's bringing us to worship Him
alone. This is a cry God put in the heart. He brought them
there. They're broken and they're contrite. They're on their face.
They're pleading God's promises. They're pleading God's holiness.
They're pleading God's covenant, His sovereignty, His grace, His
glory. This is where the Lord brings
us. And as we do so, we're confessing to Him our total inability. They said, we don't have might
to do this. And we don't know what to do.
We don't have the ability, the power, and we don't have the
wisdom. We don't know. We don't have the might or the
knowledge of what to do. Well, let's see what the Lord
did. Will He answer that prayer? Yes, He will. Yes, He will. You come there praising Him, And like they were doing there,
confessing you utter nothingness and inability, God's going to
help you. God's going to help you. Because you can only really
do that from the heart if God brought you there. That's true. Stripped you and brought you
there. Now let's see what the Lord did. He sent the Holy Spirit
upon Jehaziel to give them the Word of the Lord. They are all
standing there with their children before the Lord. And verse 14
says, Then upon Jehaziel, the son of Zechariah, the son of
Benaiah, the son of Jael, the son of Matnai, a Levite of the
sons of Asaph, came the Spirit of the Lord in the midst of the
congregation. You know what Jehaziel means? It means beheld of God. Beheld of God. The good news
that God sends to His preacher and that God is going to have
His preacher declare to His people is that God beholds you. He has
beheld you before the foundation of the world when He chose His
people and His Son. He has beheld His people in His
Son and He beholds His people in His Son. He has beheld His
people. He sent the Spirit here for Him
to preach this message. And here's the message He preached.
This was the message the Holy Spirit gave Him to declare, right
here. Nobody knew what to do. They
didn't know what to do. They had no ability. The Spirit
of God gave Him this Word. This is the Word of the Lord.
And this is what He declared to them. Listen, verse 15. He
said, Hearken ye all Judah, and you inhabitants of Jerusalem,
and thou King Jehoshaphat. Thus saith the Lord unto you,
Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude,
for the battle is not yours, but God's. God sent this trial to remind
them what God had already taught them. He sent this trial to remind
them what He had taught them over and over and over and over. The battle is not yours, it's
God's. The battle is not yours, it's
God. God sets trials in our path that we cannot overcome. Why? Why? To remind us of the greater
enemies that we have that we could not overcome. We had a need of a perfect righteousness
we couldn't produce. We had a need of being justified
before God. We couldn't produce it. We had
a need of God coming and giving us spiritual life and giving
us the ability to even believe Him and trust Him and follow
Him, and we couldn't do it. We had need of Him delivering
us from the devil and from every enemy, from this body of death
continually. We have need of Him providing
provision for us just in our everyday lives and temporal things. Christ already conquered every
enemy of His people. And He sends you these little
trials that to us are monumental so that it's the worst thing
we ever faced at the time. It's worse than we ever faced
at the time. Remember when He brought them to Jordan? He brought
them to Jordan at the rainiest season when that Jordan River
was flooded out of its banks. Why? He let them sit there three
days. I can just hear them sitting
there for three days looking at that mighty river flowing
and thinking, what about this promised land? We're not going
to be able to get over this river. We're not going to be able to
get through this river. And he told them, he said, you separate
yourself from everything that's of you. You separate yourself
from everything fleshly, everything carnal, and you behold what the
Lord's going to do. You watch Him work wonders today
because you've not been this way before. And here's how he
delivered them. He said, you look at the ark.
He told the priest, picture of his preacher, he said, you just
hold the ark up. And y'all stand back and look
at the ark. And He dried that river up. Twenty-something miles. That's millions of people. Twenty-something
miles He dried that river up. And they went across it, dry
ground. Why did He bring them to this place He brought them
to right here? To show them they could not overcome these enemies.
Because we need to be constantly reminded of the greater enemies
that we couldn't overcome, but be reminded Christ already overcame
them. So He brings us again to the
end of ourselves. But then the Lord, when He's
brought us there, and He's brought us to confess with our mouths
who He is, that's what we're doing in prayer, is praising
Him as we're begging Him. We're speaking of who He is.
We're giving Him His promise. We're giving Him His glory. We're
giving Him His sovereignty. We're saying who He is and praising
Him and confessing that's who He is. And that we're nothing. And then the Lord makes you hear
the gospel in your heart. Thus saith the Lord, fear not,
do not be confounded over the great multitude of the enemy.
The battle is not yours, it's God's. If He does not keep us
remembering that, we will try to go in our own strength. That's what they're for. But,
now notice this, the Lord did give them something to do. He
gave them something to do. This is an impossibility to do
this unless the Lord gives us grace to do it. He said in verse
16, tomorrow go ye down against them. He told them right where
the enemy would be. He knows, the Lord knows, the
Lord sent them there. He knows. Verse 17, here's what
He told them to do. You shall not need to fight in
this battle. Set yourself, stand ye still,
and see the salvation of the Lord with you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Fear not, nor be dismayed. Tomorrow
go out against them, for the Lord will be with you. That's
what God gave them to do. Set yourselves. Stand ye still. See the salvation of the Lord.
Fear not. Don't be dismayed, confounded.
The Lord will be with you. Isn't that what He told us when
He saved us? Isn't that what He told us when
He brought you to see Christ and showed you what a wretched
sinner you are? Isn't that what He's shown you
in every Every gospel message you ever heard, isn't that what
he's shown you in every trial you've ever faced? Well, what happened? Well, this
Word came in power. It came to their hearts. What
did they do? Verse 18, Jehoshaphat bowed his head with his face
to the ground, and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem
fell before the Lord, worshiping the Lord. And the singers stood,
verse 19, they stood up to praise the Lord, the God of Israel,
with a loud voice on high. And then they went forth. They
went to the forefront of the battle. They went right where
He told them to go, where the enemy was. Verse 20, And Joseph
stood and said, Hear me, O Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established. Believe His prophets, so shall
ye prosper. God has to make us do that. We
can do anything else but that. It's that right there. This is
obedience to God. It's obedience to Christ that
a sinner can't do. As long as he's doing what Jehoshaphat
was doing when he went down there and made that league with Ahab. This is where God has to bring
us. So they went forth to the battle. Now look at this. They
didn't go with carnal weapons. They went forth to the battle
in faith in the Lord, singing and praising God. You just picture
these armies, three different sets of enemies, and they come
up against them. And there the children of Israel
sing, just singing to the Lord and praising the Lord. That's
what they're standing there doing. Look at verse 21. When he had
consulted with the people, he appointed singers unto the Lord,
that they should praise the beauty of holiness. That's Christ. You know when David said he wanted
to be in the house of the Lord and he wanted to behold the beauty
of the Lord? What was it he wanted to behold? It might have been all the garments
and everything that the Lord had provided, but I'll tell you
one thing where he saw the beauty of holiness. That was in that
lamb that died in his place. Listen to this, and it says,
And they went out before the army and to sing and praise the
Lord for His mercy endureth forever. And when they began to sing and
to praise, look at this now, the Lord set an ambushment against
the children of Ammon and Moab in Mount Seir which would come
against Judah, and they were smitten. Children of Ammon and
Moab stood up against the inhabitants of Mount Seir, utterly to slay
and destroy them. And when they had made an end
of the inhabitants of Seir, everyone helped to destroy another." Only
the Lord could do this. They ambushed each other. The
Lord used the enemy to ambush the enemy. And when they killed
them, then they went to fighting each other until they killed
each other. What does the Lord say? Let the
pot shards of the earth strive with the pot shards. You sing to the Lord. You rejoice
in His mercy to you. Let them fight. Let them do what
they want to do. Listen. It says, And when they
looked, verse 24, when Judah came to the watchtower in the
wilderness, they looked to the multitude, and behold, they were
dead bodies fallen to the earth, and none escaped. And then God
enriched them with His spoils. They went out, took them three
days to gather up the spoils. They called it the Valley of
Blessing. Now listen, we don't like to be brought through the
valley. We like the mountaintop, not the valley. Every single
valley He brings us into is the Valley of Blessing. Every one
of them is the valley of blessing. What did the Lord say? My strength is made perfect in
your weakness. They saw it that day, didn't
they? They saw it that day. Now let's see what we learned
here. I'm just going to briefly go over what we saw here. The
victory is of God. The victory is of our Lord Jesus.
He told them, don't be afraid, don't be dismayed of this multitude.
The battle is not yours, it's God's. We're killed all the day long,
we're counted as sheep for the slaughter. We're just like those
people right there. The enemies thought they were
fish in a barrel. They thought this was going to
be another piece of cake. We got them. We got them. And
as far as the children of Judah was concerned, they had them. But we're more than conquerors
through Christ that loved us. God's going to keep bringing
us to the end of ourselves, keep bringing us to His throne of
grace, to remind us of His promise, remind us of who He is, that
Christ has already won the victory, He already overcame the world,
and the only way we're going to overcome the world is by Him
keeping us believing Him. We're going to overcome by faith,
trusting Christ. That's what the trial in this
life is for. Our strength, then, is to sit
still and see the salvation of the Lord. He said, you shall
not need to fight in this battle. Set yourself, stand you still,
see the salvation of the Lord that's with you. Believe in the Lord your God,
so you shall be established. Believe His prophets, so shall
you prosper. That's what Jehoshaphat told
him. You know where Jehoshaphat, how he learned that? That ain't
what he did when the Lord sent the prophet to him to tell him.
But now he's learned it, hasn't he? And he says, believe His
prophets. Believe. That's the word of the Lord.
Believe Him. And believe in God. We're praising God. Through faith,
we're praising God. We're praising our Lord Jesus,
the beauty of holiness, just like those singers did. That's
separate and holy from anything this world's doing. Now, the
Egyptians shall help in vain. The Lord told Israel this at
another time. He said, it's going to be of
no purpose to go to Egypt. Therefore, I've cried concerning
this, their strength is too set still. He said, thus saith the
Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, in returning and rest shall you
be saved, in quietness and confidence shall be your strength. And they
wouldn't. So the Lord waited. But the Lord always is going
to bring enough enemy against us to bring us to His throne
of grace, to ask for help, and He's going to make us know this
about Himself. And it's not our battle. With our enemies is the
arm of the flesh, but with us is the Lord our God to help us
and to fight our battles. That's so all the time. Well,
the Scripture says we have to fight the fight of faith. It
is a fight to do what the Lord said to do right there. To trust
the Lord. It is a fight. Because that goes
against everything in our sin nature. Everything. Everything
the world tells you to do, everything you hear sung by the world, everything
about this cursed place, that's totally against it. Believe the
Lord. Cast all your care on Him. And
then here's the second thing. Though the Lord sends this trial
in providence, just like He did here, He's going to make the
Word effectually in the heart of His child by His Spirit through
the preaching of the Gospel. We're not going to learn just
by the providence. The providence is to bring us to the end of
ourselves. The Word is going to bring us completely to the
end of ourselves and teach us who Christ is. And that's where
we're going to be brought. Jehaliel, he wasn't preaching
anything but what the Lord told him to preach. That's what he
was preaching. That's what I'm trying to preach to you. Thus saith
the Lord. This is what the Lord said. It's
not by might nor by power. Not by your might, not by your
power, not by my might, not by my power, but by the Lord's Spirit,
saith the Lord of hosts. He's going to make the word effectual
in the heart and keep saving through the preaching of the
gospel. Preach Christ and Him crucified. Preach Christ and
Him crucified. Preach the message that declares
the victory is God's. He's winning the battle every
time. Preach that message. That's how He's going to do it.
And then three, through faith, God enriches us with spiritual
blessings, loads us down with spiritual blessings. That's typified
in God giving them those spoils. It took them three days, three
days to carry those spoils out. You reckon when they were shaking
like a leaf on a tree and they were bowed down and praying,
Lord, come to save us, you reckon that they thought that they were
going to end up with all those dead enemies in front of them
and spend three days carrying diamonds and jewels back with
them? Probably not. But it always ends up better.
Why? Because all those falls picture
God showing us more of Himself and showing us more of the spiritual
riches. And anytime you're brought to
see Him more so that you trust Him more and trust yourself less,
it's been a good, blessed, rich experience He brought you through.
Every time. That's how He grows us in grace
and knowledge of Christ. He's teaching us more and more
that all our confidence needs to be in Christ only and none
of it needs to be in ourselves. That's the lesson. And then look
at this. Through faith in Christ, now
when all this started, when Jehoshaphat went down there and he was trying
to do all that fussing, I mean, do all that conniving with Ahab,
he wasn't at rest. And then when he comes back and
God brings his enemies up, he wasn't at rest. He was still
trying to do something in the power of His own strength. And
He wasn't at rest. He had a burden on Him. A heavy
weight on Him. And this particularly, now the
Lord is so wise He can bless all His children through one
trial. And that's what He was doing
here. But this particularly was sent for Jehoshaphat. And look
what it said. Before, He trusted His own strength
and gave help to God's enemy. But this time, he believed on
the Lord, believed the Lord's prophet. And look, verse 30.
Their enemies heard about this, what the Lord did, and they didn't
come against Him. And so the ram of Jehoshaphat was quiet,
for his God gave him rest round about. The Word that Christ commands
us, brethren, is not a one-time thing. It's not a one-time thing. This Word is not just for unbelievers. This Word is for His believing
people, too. This is His Word to us throughout
our life of faith. This is it. Come unto me, all
you that labor. and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest." His God gave him rest. That's what God will
do. If He brings us to believe Him,
and confess Him, and confess our sin and other inability,
He'll give you rest. He'll give you rest when He shows
you Christ. Father, thank you for this word. Pray you bless
it now to our hearts. Do for us what you did here in
this, for Jehoshaphat and these children of Judah. Lord, we ask
it according to your promise, according to your sovereign ability.
You're the covenant God of our fathers. We ask it according
to your holy name. We ask it, Lord, that you would
honor and glorify our Lord Jesus. We ask you, Lord, that you might glorify the preaching
of the word, that you might glorify your mighty hand upon your people,
as you might give us rest. Lord, thank you. Thank you for
all your blessings. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.