I'm glad of that. Let's see if
we can't learn a little something about him this morning from 2
Chronicles 20. King Jehoshaphat, my uncle, husband
to my mother's sister, who is the next one up from her, my
Aunt Glenna. My Uncle Leo used to call me
Jehoshaphat. And I guess that was just his
way. So I've been hearing the word
Jehoshaphat for a long, long time. What a name. But he was one of the better
kings of Judah. By this time in Jewish history,
the nation of Israel had split in two. This happened shortly
after Solomon died, and the ten northern tribes went their way,
and the two more southern tribes banded together as a nation that
went by the name of just one of those tribes, Judah, the kingdom
of Judah. Israel, the kingdom of Israel,
the northern 10 tribes, not one of their kings was any good.
As you read about them, it started with Jeroboam, son of Nebat or
Nebat or something like that. And he established other high
places in Israel so that the people wouldn't have to go to
Jerusalem to worship. And he formalized idolatry, because
even though they claimed that they were worshiping Jehovah,
the high places that he had established for them had these calves, like
the golden calf that was built at the foot of Mount Sinai. So
they were worshiping the true God in an idolatrous fashion. Every king afterward would pretty
much say, and such and such a king followed after the sins of Jeroboam,
son of Nebat, and did worse. It just kept getting worse. But among the kings who ruled
in the southern tribes, there were some bad ones, there were
some good ones, and some in the middle. Of course, that was all in God's
purpose, but if we look for some kind of proximate cause for that, it
would be the fact that Jerusalem was there. And the true worship
of God did exist there. That is, the
way God was worshiped in that day according to His law. And
that was good for the people and good for the kings. Jehoshaphat
was one of those good kings. He not only followed faithfully
in the way of the Lord, he sent out people to destroy all the
little shrines that had been built to other gods. You know,
we get the idea that the Jews were like all the same. But they were much like our nation
was in its early days. I know us baby boomers, anyway,
when we were raised, we've always thought that we were a single
nation and never understood how, in the early times, there were
13 colonies that agreed to get together, but they really didn't
like each other. you know, had their own ideas
about how things should be. And it's really an amazing thing
they could ever get together under a single constitution.
And that's kind of how Israel was. Every tribe had its own
way. Not only this, the Jews were
not a faithful people for the most part. And I'm not saying
this as an anti-Semitic statement. I'm just saying they're like
everybody else. They're like us. You look at the visible church
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and people, you know, someone might
say, those Christians are all the same. No, they're not. We
know they're not. In fact, our very presence here
at this little assembly is proof not all who profess to believe
Christ believe the same things. If they did, we wouldn't struggle
along like this little group, would we? There's easier ways
to do what we do if you're in a larger group. But we feel compelled
by conscience to pull away from other methods of approaching
God. But Jehoshaphat, he lived in a day and there was
more faithfulness than usual during his day. It is written,
concerning the good kings, in his reign the righteous shall
flourish. The righteous being those that
believe God. So this was a good time for Israel,
but Jehoshaphat, even though he may provide for us a symbol
of the Lord Jesus Christ, like all other symbols of the Lord
in here, that is, all human symbols, he wasn't perfect. Because while
he got rid of all the idols, the high places, the, as they
called it, the bales, that would have been the images designed
for the worship of Baal. He did all that, but there was
something he did that, shall we say, peeved the Lord. He went
up to visit. the king of Israel, whose name
was Ahab. You've heard of Ahab and Jezebel. Now all the kings of Israel were
bad. Ahab was among the worst of them. And he was a man who, while he
was king of those northern ten tribes, he wasn't king in his
own house. Because this woman Jezebel, who
wasn't even a Jew, this woman Jezebel, she brought all her
idols with him, and she insisted that they be given the same status
as God. In fact, she did all she could
to eliminate every one of the prophets of Jehovah. You remember the story of Elijah
on Mount Carmel? The 450 prophets of Baal that
danced around that altar all day, cutting themselves and crying
out, oh, Baal, hear us. And no fire would come. Those
prophets of Baal were Jezebel's prophets. Of course, Elijah came
in, and all by himself, he erected that altar. He had a ditch dug
around it. They poured water all over the
altar, all over the sacrifice, and it even filled up that ditch
around the altar. And then he prayed a very simple
prayer. No dancing, no cutting himself,
nothing like that. Very simple prayer. And God's
fire came down and consumed the sacrifice and the altar made
of stone. and all the water that had been
poured on it, all gone. I suppose after it was done,
there was just a black spot in the ground. That's all that was
left. And they put all those prophets to death. Well, that's
the Ahab that Jehoshaphat went to visit. Now, I'm sure what
Jehoshaphat was thinking was, you know, yes, we're split into
two countries, but we are all Israelites. We all trace our
ancestry back to Jacob. We may be divided right now,
but we're still brethren. It's just good of me, kind of
me, to reach out to him. And so he goes up there, and
Ahab's in trouble. There are people, there's an
army against him. And so he asks Jehoshaphat to
go out to battle with him. And the armies that were against
him, they were told by their commanders, all we want is King
Ahab. Chasing down and killing. That
was the order to all the opposing soldiers. And Ahab, and I can't
believe that Jehoshaphat went along with this. Ahab said, look,
I'm going to dress up like a common soldier so that they won't know
who I am. You go out in kingly robes. Jehoshaphat may have been someone
who followed the Lord, but he didn't exercise a lot of wisdom
at this point. You talk about having a target
on your back, put a crown on your head and go out to battle,
you got a target on your back. And sure enough, some of those
opposing soldiers chased after Jehoshaphat, but they discovered
it wasn't Ahab, so they quit. But it is written that one of
those opposing soldiers, an archer, just shot an arrow at random.
Now, he was aiming toward the enemy. But you know those archers
back then, they were the ones that would,
they fired their arrows before the rest of the army went out
there, otherwise they'd be just as likely to hit one of their
own soldiers as anybody else. But they would use those archers
to thin out the army before the infantry went in. And so they'd
be told to draw their bows and they'd all let them go together
and, you know, hundreds of arrows up in the sky at once. There was a battle between two
of the Greek city-states. Sparta was one of them, I can't
remember the other. And the name of the one king
escapes me, one general. But they were caught in a pass. And evidently there were just
a few hundred of them. They made a movie about it called
300. But the Greek, the guy from Sparta said to this, the leader
of this group caught in the past said, listen, if I had all my
archers shoot their arrows at once, it would blot out the sun.
And the general of the army, caught down in the pass with
no chance of survival, said, well, then we'll fight in the
shade. But that's how they conducted it. And so here's this one archer. And I doubt that he ever knew
that it was him. But he pulled back his bow, and
when he let it go, he just let it go toward that army. But that arrow was guided by
the Lord God. And it found a joint in the armor
of Ahab and killed him. He disguised himself. He had
armor on. But when the Lord's after you,
there's nothing you can do. and Ahab was killed. But you
know what the prophet said to Jehoshaphat? What are you doing
fighting with the Lord's enemies? And I read that and I thought
to myself, what a beautiful representation, an illustration why without any
spirit of pride, without any saying we're better, we nonetheless
do not join hands in worship with those who worship another
God, another Jesus, or worship Him in an inappropriate way. certainly if it's another God,
certainly if it's another Jesus, then they are enemies. And I
don't mean that they are our enemies on a human level. They
may be our friends, our neighbors, even our family. They might be
our parents or our children. And we love them on that level.
But in spiritual warfare, we do not join hands with them.
Why? Though they go around saying
the name of our God, they are enemies of the Lord. And Jehoshaphat
managed to escape death in that battle, but only because the
Lord protected him. But after that, Jehoshaphat, he is confronted
with a problem. He's been told that people from Ammon and Moab in the third place,
they were coming. Now, a little, my son likes to
say, fun fact, Moab and Ammon, or Ammon, those
countries, were the descendants of Lot. by the sons that were
born from his incestuous relationship with his daughters. Remember
that story, how after God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, Enlight and
his two daughters? Evidently, it was during the
time they were hiding in a cave. And one of them said, well, what's
the chance of us ever getting husbands? We'll lay with our father and
have children by him. And that's what happened. And
the two children that were born of that relationship went on
to establish their own clans, which grew into cities, which
grew into a nation, and now they're troubling Israel. Troubling,
or more correctly, Judah. And this was scary. So Jehoshaphat
prayed. And I can't take a lot of time
to go over his prayer, Oh, by itself it's worthy of a sermon,
but what a wonderful prayer. He just went there, you know,
to the temple, because they prayed toward the temple, and I'm sure
they understood, our God is in the heavens, he's done whatsoever
he please, but the Lord had told them that that temple was his
dwelling place, so that's where he went to pray. And he spread
out his hands toward God there at the temple. And he said, are you not God
in heaven? You know, these fellows were
bold in their prayers. They challenged God. They said, aren't you God in
heaven, meaning God over everything? And did you not drive out the
inhabitants of this land back in the days of Joshua and give
it forever to the descendants of Abraham, your friend? Did
you not do that? And is there not a sanctuary
here for your name? But here come some soldiers from
Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir. And you would not allow Israel
to invade those places when they first came. And God wouldn't. He wouldn't let them destroy
Moab, Ammon, Mount Seir. You leave them alone. He said,
so you left them there and here they come to destroy us. They
want to drive us out of the possession you gave us. Do you see how they
are appealing to God as God? Are you not God in heaven? Did you not give us this land?
Did you not tell us to leave these people alone? And here
they come trying to drive us out of your land. Will you not
judge them? We have no power. That should be our attitude whenever
we go before God. We have no power. The things
we pray about, Lord, are bigger than us. We have no power. In this last
line, we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you. Paul said sometimes we don't
know what to pray for, much less do we know what to do. But though we can't give words
to our prayers, we're not even certain what we ought to be praying
for. Our eyes are on Him, are they
not? Not all prayers have words. Some
prayers are nothing but a look, a dependence, simply a description of the problem,
not any attempt to advise God on how to handle it. And once they prayed like that,
This prophet spoke up, at least he was a prophet for that day.
The Spirit of the Lord came upon Jehaziel. I don't know if he'd ever prophesied
before or not. Maybe he was just there like
all the other guys that showed up there that day with their
wives and children in tow. But the Spirit of the Lord came
upon him. And let this be a lesson to us. Now, I've been pastor of this
congregation for 35 years, more. But as I've pointed out, I haven't
done anything. That is, I haven't accomplished anything. And God
could have just as well sent anybody else and enabled him
to do whatever it was he wanted done. And I remember when I came
here, I thought I knew what to do. I understand this, you know,
I've already been a pastor for three years, I ought to train
a guy, you know, and we're going to come in here and we're going
to set Sioux County on fire for God. More like I got burnt. But in all of that mess, and
understand that us being in a mess, us creating a mess, doesn't prevent
God from accomplishing His will. Sometimes I've thought, oh, what
would've happened if I'd adjust so and so? Don't worry about
those things. Yeah, try to do things as the
Lord has instructed us to do, but understand this, everything
he does, he's gonna do it in spite of us, not because of us. And a lot of my prayers are reduced
to this, Lord, I don't know what to do, but my eyes are on you. I don't know what we preach,
I'm gonna preach. You know how many times, only
one time did I ever enter the worship service that I can recall.
I actually didn't know what I was gonna preach about. I didn't
even know what text of scripture I was gonna use. And I remember
praying, Lord, I'm gonna open my mouth, you better put something
in it. I don't know what to do, but
my eyes are on you. And the Lord did. And sometimes I've come
up here, Thinking I know what to do, and the message went an
entirely different way. What I'm saying is, we are dependent
on God by His Spirit for anything good to happen. I should prepare, but it is not
my preparation that is going to accomplish anything in your
hearts. I should give myself in all earnestness
to preaching, but it will not be my earnestness that works
in it. Here was this guy standing there,
the Spirit of God came upon him, and he spoke wonderful words
to those people of God gathered there who were standing there,
just standing there before the Lord. That's all they could do.
Because they didn't know what to do. And sometimes when you
don't know what to do, the best thing to do is nothing. Our people
say, well, we've got to do something. No, we don't. In the preacher's
class that Henry Mahan had, one of the things he said was, the
only thing we have to do is worship Christ. That's all that we're required
to do. And they were doing that. They were standing before the
Lord. So they just stood there. This guy said, verse 15, listen,
King Jehoshaphat, and all who live in Judah and Jerusalem,
this is what the Lord says to you. Now, you remember that these people, and in particular,
the city of Jerusalem is a picture of the church of the Lord Jesus
Christ, God's new Jerusalem. And he said, this is what the
Lord says to you. Isn't it good to know that the scriptures,
or by the scriptures, God has things to say to us? Somebody put up a meme on Facebook,
and I really like it. It says, you say you want to
hear from God, read the Bible. Everybody would like to hear
a voice or something. No, you're not going to get that.
Here is the record of His Word. If you want to hear from Him,
read the Bible. Now, here was the Word. This is the Word to
you and me. As we behold enemies too great
for us, do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. Now
lay a hold of this if the Lord will let you. Because the battle
is not yours, but God's. Now I'm gonna mention a few of
the battles we might face. But whatever battle you're in
right now, it's not yours, it's God's. That enemy you face now,
God brought him. Now think of that for a minute.
God brought him. He brought that army against
you. But he did not bring that army
against you to destroy you. He brought that army against
you that he might demonstrate his power to deliver you. You know, just put that in your
pocket. If right now is a pretty good time for you, write it down,
put it in your pocket, because someday you'll need it. This
battle is not yours, it's not ours, it's not mine. It is the
Lord's. And one thing I know of, if the
battle is the Lord's, the Lord's going to win. And all who are
with him will win with him. Goliath saw David coming after
him, big Goliath, puny little shepherd boy. Goliath, armor,
shield, huge spear, armor bearer. And here comes this little punk.
Really, that's what he, he said, What are you, you send me a dog?
That's what he called him, a dog. And he began to curse David by
the names of his God. And David said, you come to me
with a sword and a shield, but I come to you in the name of
the Lord. David took that sling, not the
slingshot with the rubber band. It was, actually it was a common
weapon of the day. He was good with it. He pictures
our Lord Jesus Christ and he twirled that thing around his
head and he let go and that rock hit Goliath right there. And
it didn't matter how big Goliath was, didn't matter how much armor
he was wearing, didn't matter about his armor bearer there.
The rock hit him in the place that he was not protected. Because
in all the armor that the world has, there's a place they're
not protected. God knows where it is. He knew
where it was on Ahab's armor, didn't he? And directed a man
just to shoot an arrow. Not specifically at Ahab. Archer
wasn't thinking of that. God knew exactly where that arrow
had to go. And that's where it went. found
the chink in the armor, killed Ahab, and that stone found a
place on Goliath, not protected, brought him down. This battle
is the Lord's. And this prophet went on to tell
them, marched down against them, and told them where they'll be
coming. Now that's good. Talk about reconnaissance. You know, one of the biggest or what do you call it, most
useful tools the military has is its intelligence that they
gather from spies and from reconnaissance flights and anything they can
do to predict where the enemy will be or what their plans are.
Well, they've got the best reconnaissance of all. They've got the Lord
God himself whose eyes are on the whole earth. He sees everything.
And so he tells them, they're coming down by the pass of Ziz.
and you will find them." Imagine Jehoshaphat saying, well, I really
wasn't looking for them. I was trying to evade them. He
says, here's where you will find them. The end of the gorge in the desert
of Jeruel. You will not have to fight this
battle. think you talk about you know
the things that the Lord tells us through his prophets the flesh
cannot believe all right Lord this army it's too big for us
you got there's three peoples coming after us and there's a
lot more of them than there is us we wanted to escape but you
say we should go where they're going and we should be with an
eye to find them because you said here's where you will find
them And then we're not going to fight? We're not? No. Take up your positions. Stand
firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you, oh Judah
and Jerusalem. Take up your positions. What
is our position? We stand firmly upon the sovereign
grace of God in Christ Jesus. That is our position in this
world. It's what makes us an enemy to the rest of the religious
world. We leave no room for the strength of men. We leave no
room for the decisions of men. We leave no room for anything
that comes from a natural man. That's our position. And we could
easily make peace with these, our enemies, if we would simply
say, well, and just give in to them a little bit. Just allow
for something that a man can do which makes it so that God
saves him even as he passes his neighbor by. And it doesn't even have to be
the same thing that they do. As long as you leave something
in your so-called gospel message, something that a natural man
does, which brings salvation to him, that's all you've got
to do and you can be at peace with the religions of this world.
It says here, take up your positions. We don't want to hurt anybody.
We don't want to be mean. But there are things we believe
about the person we believe, and we cannot budge. We take
our positions. Stand firm, or stand still. Do you remember when Moses brought
the Israelites out of Egypt, and everybody's happy, ooh, we're
free, we're getting out of Egypt? And then they come up against
the Red Sea, and they don't know how to get across. Not only that,
Pharaoh's changed his mind. Here he comes with all his armies,
marching across and on the way to get them. They can see the
smoke, you know, the dust rising from that cloud. Oh, what are
we going to do? Right away, those who were just previously rejoicing
in the deliverance are running around. Oh, it would have been
better if we had just stayed up in Egypt. Look what you've
done to us, Moses. Now he's going to kill us all.
It wasn't good to be slaves, but at least we were alive. What
are we going to do? What are we going to do? And
Moses said, stand still. And I think included in that
was shut up. Just shut up and stand still.
Quit running around wringing your hands. Just stand here and
see. Behold with your eyes the salvation
of the Lord. The reason you're scared of these
Egyptians is because you can't think of a way to get away from
them. And you don't have a way to get away from them, the Lord
does. And he says, he put out a rod
over there and waters opened up. And he says, you cross over
there to the other side on dry ground and you turn back and
you look. And when they turned around and
looked, Stupid Pharaoh, and I can't imagine being any dumber than
this. But he tried to march his army through that passage that
the Lord had made for the deliverance of his people. And what was deliverance
to Israel was the destruction of Pharaoh and his army. And
he says, you look back and you'll see him, and that's the last
time you'll ever see him. And that's exactly what happened. See the deliverance the Lord
will give you. Praise be to God who gives us
the victory in Christ Jesus. And what is that victory, brethren?
It's faith. It's not a victory won by faith.
It is the faith that is the victory. Between now and the time you're
buried, The enemies of God will pursue you, both the spiritual
enemies and their agents in this world. They will do everything
they can to separate you from Christ, to cause you to look
to something other than Christ. And God will allow them to persecute
you. Some of it will come in the form
of actual persecutions maybe that you see. Some of it is things,
you know, it says the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking
whom he may devour. Now he can't do anything God
won't let him do, but evidently he has the power to make people
sick. He has the power to make people rich. He may tempt you with riches.
He may trouble you with illness. He may lay before you a path
that you can't imagine that you want to walk down. It looks like
a horrible path, a path from which there is no delivery, a
path that just keeps getting worse and worse. And you look
down there and say, what's going to become of me? Is the devil trying to make you
be a bad person? By these things is the devil
trying to get you to commit some transgression against the law
of God? He's simply trying to move your
faith from Christ to something else. That's all. Are you undergoing a great trial? Keep these things in mind. The devil may bring it to you,
but the Lord sent it. The devil may be the mailman,
but the Lord wrote the letter. And he who wrote the letter will deliver you from its contents.
He will. And he does it to glorify himself.
And if it's not a trial that ends in your death, He does it
that in this life you may see one more time the Lord delivers
His people in times of trouble. And this causes faith to strengthen
within us and to take more command of the way we think. So that
is where the next time trial comes, we're not so easily burdened. Do not be afraid, said the prophet.
Do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow,
and the Lord will be with you. Jehoshaphat, verse 18, bowed
with his face to the ground, and all the people of Judah and
Jerusalem fell down and worshiped before the Lord. I love this. Then some Levites from the Colophites
and the Korahites stood up and praised the Lord, the God of
Israel. with a very loud voice. They knew the danger, but they
had heard from God through this prophet. They'd heard from God
by the Holy Spirit, and because they believed it, even though
they knew tomorrow a confrontation with their enemies was coming
up, they praised God. with a loud voice. Oh, if we could learn when we
face trials, the Lord will deliver us and in the face of our trials
give praise to His name with a louder voice than we did before. Well, they went out the next
day as they're supposed to. I've got to move this along.
their military strategy. A little weird. He didn't say, all right, archers
out in the front, and once you have shot your arrows, move to
the side, and the infantry will come in behind you. And I want
this group to here and get their flank. No, listen. I just love
this when I read it. Jehoshaphat, and this is verse
21, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise
Him for the splendor of His holiness and they went out at the head
of the army saying, give thanks to the Lord for His love endures
forever. Now I want you to imagine you're
one of the guys on the other side. You're probably, you know, you
might be thinking, well, you know, the kings of these three
areas, they said we're going to be able to take the Jews,
and I hope we are, and I'll give it all I got, but you know, I've
heard some stories about them. They've had some pretty fierce
armies, and so you're coming down to that pass that the Lord
said the Jews were going to meet them at, and do they hear war
cries? Do they hear the rattling of
sabers? They hear a bunch of men singing. The men in front, they don't
even have weapons. And all they're doing is saying,
give thanks to the Lord, for His love, His mercy endures forever. Now, if you were one of the enemy,
that wouldn't mean anything to you at all, because you don't
believe the Lord anyway. But that would have been your
mistake. We go out into this world and
we face the troubles we have, all the attacks on our faith,
and our answer to them is simply this, give thanks to the Lord
for His mercy endures forever. That's our hope. That's what turns every trial
into a walk with the Lord. Verse 22, as they began to sing
and praise, the Lord sent ambushes against the men of Ammon and
Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were
defeated. Now notice this. It says the
Lord sent ambushes. I don't know what he sent. Honestly,
don't. It doesn't say. I know what happened,
those three armies turned on one another. I guess the Lord
somehow or another sent, you know, he can do anything, but
sent some of his agents, his angels, and attacked people from these
armies. And since they were looking at
the Jews, and all the Jews were doing were singing, And here
they're being attacked. The only thing they can make,
well, those Moabites are attacking us. And the Moabites are saying,
no, it's the Ammonites. They're attacking the people
from Mount Seir. Well, both of you are against us. And they
turned on each other. After they finished slaughtering
the men from Seir, they helped to destroy one another. When the men of duty came to
the place, verse 24, that overlooks the desert and toward the vast
army, they saw only dead bodies lying on the ground. No one had
escaped. Grab this if you can. You got
your enemies, I'm not denying it. I've got mine, you got yours.
Not one of them is gonna be left alive. You will outlive all of
them. You say, well, what if my trial
is a terminal illness? You'll outlive it. They call
it a terminal illness, but it's not. Remember, the grave is not
your terminus. It's not where you stop. This body of yours will die,
but you won't. They praise the Lord at the Valley
of Baraka, and that's why it's called the Valley of Baraka,
because Baraka means praise. Well, it says they spent three
days collecting the spoils. Three days it took them to grab
from all their enemies all that would profit them. I know we're going a little long,
but I got to make one more point. I'll try to make it short. What
are these enemies? Well, it could be any of the
troubles that you face, small or big. This life is difficult for everybody,
but even more so for a believer. because this world isn't his
home. But as I read that, I could not
help but think of all the enemies I have. Nothing terrifies me
more than my sin. Three armies worth of it. Vicious. Destructive. And I hear the voice of our enemy
say, you're going to die. God's people don't do that. The
Lord's forgiving, but not that forgiving. And you've done that so many
times. He's pretty well, he's done with you. He's had it. Oh, give thanks to the Lord. For His mercy endures forever. And the enemy falls down. That's our battle, folks. We
don't battle this world trying to change it, because it's not
going to change. Our battle is not in Washington. Our battle
is in our own hearts. We wrestle not against flesh
and blood. We have spiritual enemies. But the battle is the Lord's.
You don't have to fight. You just sing. You stand in front
like those Levites, and you sing. Oh, give thanks unto the Lord,
for he is good, and his mercy endures forever. And the battle's
won. Eric?