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What we're going to look at is 2 Chronicles chapter 20. So I'd ask you to turn there, 2 Chronicles chapter 20.!
So if you'd follow along with me as I read 2 Chronicles chapter 20, 1 through 30. After this, the Moabites and the Ammonites with some of the Munites came to make war on Jehoshaphat.
Some men came and told Jehoshaphat, a vast army is coming against you from Eden, from the other side of the sea. It is already in Hazan Tamar, that is in Gedi.
Alarmed, Jehoshaphat resolved to inquire of the Lord, and he proclaimed a fast for all Judah. The people of Judah came together to seek help from the Lord. Indeed, they came from every town in Judah to seek him.
Then Jehoshaphat stood up in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem at the temple of the Lord in the front of the new courtyard and said, O Lord, God of our fathers, are you not the God who is in heaven?
You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. Power and might are in your hand, and no one can withstand you. O our God, did you not drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people, Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham, your friend?
They have lived in it and have built in it a sanctuary for your name, saying, If a calamity comes upon us, whether the sword of judgment or plague or famine, we will stand in your presence before this temple that bears your name and will cry out to you in our distress, and you will hear us and save us.
But now, here are the men from Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, whose territory you would not allow Israel to invade when they came from Egypt, so they turned away from them and did not destroy them.
See how they are repaying us by coming to drive us out of the possession you gave us as an inheritance. O our God, will you not judge them? For we have no power to face this vast enemy that is attacking us.
We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you. And all the men of Judah, with their wives and children and little ones, stood before the Lord.
Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jehaziel, son of Zechariah, the son of Benaiah, the son of Jeel, the son of Mataniah, a Levite and descendant of Asaph, as he stood in the assembly.
He said, Listen, King Jehoshaphat, and all who live in Judah and Jerusalem, this is what the Lord says to you. Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army, for the battle is not yours, but God's.
Tomorrow, march down against them. They will be climbing up the paths of Ziz, and you will find them at the end of the gorge in the desert of Jeruel. You will not have to fight this battle.
Take up your positions, stand firm, and see the deliverance the Lord will give you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the Lord will be with you.
Jehoshaphat bowed with his face to the ground, and all the people of Judah and Jerusalem fell down and worshipped before the Lord. Then some Levites and the Kohathites and the Korahites stood up and praised the Lord, the God of Israel, with a very loud voice.
Early in the morning, they left for the desert of Tekoa. As they set out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, Listen to me, Judah and people of Jerusalem. Have faith in the Lord your God, and you will be upheld.
Have faith in his prophets, and you will be successful. After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness.
As they went out at the head of the army, saying, Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever. And as they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.
The men of Ammon and Moab rose up against the men from Mount Seir to destroy and annihilate them. And after they finished slaughtering the men from Seir, they helped to destroy one another.
And when the men of Judah came to the place that overlooks the desert and looked toward the vast army, they saw only dead bodies lying on the ground.
No one had escaped. So Jehoshaphat and his men went to carry off their plunder, and they found among them a great amount of equipment and clothing and also articles of value, more than they could take away.
There was so much plunder that it took three days to collect it. On the fourth day, they assembled in the valley of Barakah, where they praised the Lord. This is why it is called the valley of Barakah to this day.
Then, led by Jehoshaphat, all the men of Judah and Jerusalem returned joyfully to Jerusalem, for the Lord had given them cause to rejoice over their enemies. They entered Jerusalem and went to the temple of the Lord with harps and lutes and trumpets.
And the fear of God came upon all the kingdoms of the countries when they heard how the Lord had fought against the enemies of Israel. And the kingdom of Jehoshaphat was at peace, for his God had given him rest on every side.
Well, when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is get a cup of coffee, and I wander back to my bed for my devotions.
And I guess I'm a little unstable at that hour of the day. But pretty often, I'd say three or four times a week, this is why this illustration came to my mind, pretty often I bump into something.
I run into the door. I run into a doorpost. I stumble onto my bed. And you know what happens is coffee sloshes out of my coffee cup.
And I have just a real hard question to ask you here at the beginning. Why does coffee slosh out of my coffee cup? I fill it too full.
That's a possibility. I don't watch out for what I'm doing. I'm not careful enough. That's probably true. But the basic reason that coffee comes out of my coffee cup is because coffee is what is in my coffee cup.
I would be shocked if water came out. I'd be shocked if Kool-Aid spilt out. When my coffee cup gets bumped, coffee comes out.
And that's true of coffee cups, and that's true of me as well, and true of you. When you get bumped, when you get surprised, what comes out of you is only what's in you.
Surprises are good like that. Surprises. Bad surprises. They can be pop quizzes from God to show us what's inside of us.
And so I wonder, has God given you a pop quiz lately where you weren't ready for it, and something bumped into you, and what came out of you?
I was just talking to a couple the other day with a baby, and their baby did what babies do, and the baby had this really bad explosion.
And if you've had children, you know that feeling. It's like the stress levels go through the roof, and you're feeling all tense. And, of course, they were saying how instantly they were at each other's throats, and it shows what's inside of you.
When you're put under a stressful, sudden situation, if they knew on the calendar this is what's going to happen at this day and this hour, get ready for it, their responses would have been totally different.
But they didn't know. And so they had a pop quiz. In the story this morning, King Jehoshaphat gets a pop quiz.
He gets his coffee cup bumped. His baby explodes. And all of a sudden, he's in a nasty spot, something he wasn't ready for, wasn't planning. And what comes out of Jehoshaphat wasn't bad.
It was actually good. What we got to see from Jehoshaphat was faith. Not every time that we have a bad surprise is it for God to say, see, look how much of a sinner you are, or look how far you failed.
And with King Jehoshaphat, we get a beautiful picture and a lesson on how to react when we have our pop quizzes, when we have our bad surprises.
And so there's a lesson here for us, an example. But there's also a lesson for the way God works and God's power for those who wait upon him.
And so this morning, I just have four lessons from 2 Chronicles 20. And the first is this one, that God will put us to the test.
God will put us to the test. And that's what we see in the first four verses. Jehoshaphat and Judah are at a time of peace right now.
They had been at war, but that time was over. The kingdom's enjoying a time of peace. Things are going good. King Jehoshaphat is being a good king. And that's when God puts Jehoshaphat to the test.
The nations, so what happens is the nations from the east, from the other side of the Jordan, from the other side of the Dead Sea, you have Moab and Ammon and these Munites, and then the people from Edom, the Edomites, that's what, they're from Mount Seir.
They march on Judah to make war on them. And it's not a slow thing that they saw coming. It wasn't like there was this cold war, there was these constant tensions, and you just knew at some point invasion was coming, and so you were always ready for it.
It wasn't a slow building problem. It was an all of a sudden on their doorstep kind of problem. Verse 2 says, A vast army is coming against you from Edom, and they're already at En Gedi.
Now we don't very much know our geography of Palestine, but that's about 50 miles from Jerusalem. In other words, they're going to be here in a few days.
The army is huge. There's not enough time to get ready. There's not enough time to call up the army, really. There's not enough time to prepare for it.
And it says Jehoshaphat is alarmed. So you can imagine, he wasn't expecting an invasion, and all of a sudden, a huge army is on his doorstep. He's alarmed.
It means he's shocked. He's surprised. He's terrified. He's not mildly concerned about this. So this isn't a bump on his coffee cup.
This is a tornado bearing down on his house. Now, we've all been there in situations in one way or the other. There's all kinds of doors for us to enter into this passage, for us to enter into, to get into Jehoshaphat's shoes.
You know, it's the sudden financial setback. You weren't ready for it. You weren't thinking this was going to happen, and all of a sudden, it happens. It was not part of your plan.
So what is God doing in those moments? Crushing you? Doing you in? He's against you? Well, in this case, he's putting you to the test.
He's putting you in the fire to see what comes out of you. Might be the sudden death. You expected to have years and years more with this person, but now they're gone.
It's that sudden diagnosis of cancer. You came into the doctor's office okay, and you left with him saying cancer.
It could be the big family falling out, or the explosion in the marriage, that terrible discovery, that thing that came out that you never hoped would happen to you.
It could even be a sudden, vicious, satanic attack, or sin rising up. Satan goes about like a roaring lion, and there are times when he bears down upon us, or you thought that sin was dead.
You thought it was dying. You thought there hadn't been temptations in so long. You had such success, and now all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it comes back, and it feels stronger than it has ever before.
And your world is rocked. You thought things were one way, but now all of a sudden, it doesn't seem that way at all. Maybe it's not you. Maybe it's the sin in others.
I've seen from a short distance, two pastors fall. And I remember, I just remember the look on one young lady's face.
You don't know her. This isn't part of our church or anything. But when her pastor fell, I think it was, to make things worse, it was her uncle as well. And all of a sudden, he's gone.
He's done. The thing that she trusted, loved, is just ripped out of her. Now, did God mean to destroy her?
Not at all. I actually know she's doing quite well now. That was years and years ago, but it strengthened her faith.
It was like the wind that shakes the tree, and the roots go deeper because of it. She's a mom with children, and a good church. She's walking with the Lord. But it was brutal for her.
It was hard. God put her to the test. But you can fill in your story. You can find the door in your life, that thing that happened to you that you weren't expecting.
Well, God put Jehoshaphat to the test, and he's going to put us to the test. That's his way. It's his gracious way with us.
That's our first lesson. Our second lesson is this. When God puts you to the test, rely on who God is and what he's promised. So, the first thing was just a truth that God is going to put you to the test.
Now, here's the indicative. Here's the thing that we should do in response to it. When God does put you to the test, rely on who he is and what he's promised.
Now, Jehoshaphat shows us in such a beautiful way this lesson. So, what do you do when you don't know what to do? What do you do when you're caught, when you're trapped, when something terrible happens?
Well, Jehoshaphat relied on who God is and what he's promised. So, he's alarmed. A huge army is coming. It's going to be here in a couple of days, and they're too big.
It's too much. They're too strong. And we don't have what it takes. And so, what do you do when you're thrown into the deep end and you can't swim in those waters? Well, alarmed, terrified, Jehoshaphat says there's only one place left for us.
There's only one thing to do. We're going to the Lord. We're going to pray to the Lord. Verse 4, the people of Judah came together to seek help from the Lord.
Indeed, they came from every town in Judah to seek him. So, here's the, it's a beautiful picture because in one sense, this is a low point for Judah. They're in big trouble.
This is the low point. But on the other hand, this is the high point. This is when their faith came out and was exercised in a wonderful way. And so, they pour into the temple and they fill the temple and you can imagine the temple surrounded with people and in the middle, Jehoshaphat gets up and he prays.
We don't have time to go through the whole prayer, but just look at some of the highlights. Look at how Jehoshaphat Jehoshaphat is praying. And this is such a lesson for us. Do we want to learn how to pray?
Well, take the prayers of God's saints and let them instruct us. He says, O Lord, God of our fathers. He's not praying to a distant, unrelated God.
He's praying, God, you're the God of our fathers. You're the father, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. You made promises to them.
You're attached to us. We've been yours for a long time. And then he says, God who is in heaven, you rule over all the kingdoms.
Now, he has a kingdom problem here, doesn't he? He has the kingdoms of Moab and Ammon and Edom coming against him, but he's saying, you're the God of Moab. You're the God of Ammon.
You're the God over Edom. You are our God, but you are also the king over all the nations. Now, we can always pray that because whatever problem we have, cancer, death, financial loss, we always have a God who is over all of those problems.
He's the God of those problems. So they're huge. They have a huge, vast army, but you are over the kingdoms. In other words, they're big. You're bigger.
They're strong. You're stronger. What's he doing? He's leaning. He's leaning on who God is. He's leaning into God.
And then it's also what God has promised and what he's done. You promised this land to Abraham. You promised that.
You drove out the nations before the descendants of Abraham, your friend. Now, think about that. They're saying, Jehoshaphat is saying, we're your friend's children.
You drove out the nations before us. That's who we are. You gave us this land. You did that. And you said when the temple is built, that we should come into this temple when we are in trouble and pray.
And you said when we did that, you would answer us. And so, you said it. You said this.
Now, look what is happening. A vast army is coming to take away our inheritance. A vast army is coming to take away what you promised. And so, what Jehoshaphat is doing is he's saying, it's you, God, versus them.
It's not really us versus them. It's you versus them. It's your will for us to have this land. But they don't want that to happen. It's your will versus their will.
It's your promise versus their plan. In other words, here we are. You said this. You did this. Now, we need you to keep your word.
God, we need you to keep your word. And so, there's this implicit question of, what are you going to do? That's the audacity of real faith.
Faith will hold God to his word. It's very humble. Jehoshaphat is completely humble. But it's also very bold. And it calls God to act.
Verse 11, see how they're repaying us by coming to drive us out of the possession you gave to us as an inheritance. They're trying to take away your children's inheritance. God, will you not judge them?
So, Jehoshaphat's mind is full of who God is. He's big. He's strong. He's the God of over all these kingdoms. And he, he's, his mind is full of what God has promised.
Now, that's the difference between standing and falling when you get shocked, when you get the pop quiz, when you get the bad surprise, when the tornado is coming to your house.
That's the difference between standing and falling when God puts you to the test. So, who is God? Who is God when you are suddenly laid off?
Who is God when the doctor says cancer? Who is God and what has he promised when it seems like sin and Satan are ruling the day?
Maybe in other people, maybe in yourself. God put Job to the test. Job passed it because he knew who his God was.
He knew it. And so, what do you do? You really rely, really lean on that.
That's the lesson here. When God puts you to the test, lean into who he is. count on who he is. Lean into what the Bible says and what is promised.
That's the second lesson. Here's the third lesson. You should come naked and empty. Come naked and empty.
And that's what you see in verse 12 and 13. you can see it there. Oh, our God, will you not judge them? For we have no power to face this enemy, this vast army that is attacking us.
We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you. And all the men of Judah with their wives and children and little ones stood there before the Lord.
So he's talked about who God is. He's talked about what God has promised. But here in verse 12, he's saying how it is with them.
This is who you are. You're big, strong, you're the God of the kingdoms. But what is, this is a question for you, what does he say about them?
What does he say about who they are? what does verse 12 say? We have no power. So if an enemy was attacking you, what would you want?
What would you hope that you had? Power. But what do they have? They have no power. And what else is true about them? They don't, no knowledge.
We don't know what to do. We don't know what to do. We don't have power. We don't have knowledge.
So what do they have then? What are they going to fight with? Is there anything? They can't trick them. They don't know what to do.
They're not stronger. They don't have any power. They're saying, we've got nothing. nothing. That's what I mean when I say come naked and empty. You just come with nothing.
In verse 13, about all the men of Judah with their wives and children and little ones, they stood there before the Lord. This verse might be easy to overlook, but it's not a verse talking about their posture.
Telling that they were standing, not sitting. it's not a verse talking about their location. It is saying something spiritual. They were there before the Lord.
They were standing there before the Lord with him looking upon them and with them looking at him. And they're standing naked and helpless.
They're standing exposed and needy. They're saying, here's how it is with us. We don't have what it takes.
We don't have anything. But what are they doing? What does it say? Our eyes are upon you.
Our eyes are upon you. So this is a total looking away from self. It's a total saying, okay, I'm not going to lean into any of my own resources.
And that's the first thing that we normally do when we're in a bad situation, isn't it? We first go to our own pile of resources, our own money, our own emotional, our own whatever.
We dig into ourselves, our own strength, our own knowledge. But here, they're just looking completely away from themselves, from human strength and wisdom. Our eyes are upon you.
I lift up my eyes to you, to you whose throne is in heaven. As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid look to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God till he shows us his mercy.
mercy. What do you do when God puts you to the test? When you're reeling in the storm, you look away from yourself, you look away from any human help, and you come naked and empty, and you wait on him.
You wait. waiting. It's not a passive waiting. You're looking. You're trusting. You're praying. You're seeking him, but you are waiting.
You're waiting for him to act, because you know that your actions aren't going to be enough. Your power, your knowledge isn't going to be enough, so you wait upon him. God will test us.
He will kick the props out from underneath us. I think a lot of times we don't know what we are leaning on, until he kicks them out from underneath us. And then we realize, oh, I was really trusting in that.
He will kick out the props until we have nothing, and nowhere to look, and nowhere else to turn, until it's him or doom. Until it's him or nothing.
It's him or we're done for. let me ask you, how do you feel when it's just him or nothing? How do you feel internally when he kicks out all the props?
You've been there, how does that feel? It's frightening, isn't it? It's frightening. it's a very scary place.
But, you know what's good about it? It's the place of salvation. It's the place of salvation. So, do you want to be saved?
Then, you come empty and naked, you come powerless, you come ignorant, you come just at a loss with nothing, you come like Jehoshaphat with no power, we don't know what to do.
That's faith. That's saving faith, and that's ongoing living faith. It seems like God is the last option.
Because our hearts are just so bent in and trusting other things and love with our idols that until God does kick out all those things, until he is the last option, we're not going to trust him.
And over time and over our life, he does that until he's the last resort. C.S. Lewis said this about God as the last resort. He said, it's a poor thing to strike our colors to God when the ship is going down.
In other words, you know, it's really pretty sad and pathetic when your ship is going down and then all of a sudden you're saying, God, I need you. it's a poor thing to come to him as a last resort, to offer up our own when it's no longer worth keeping.
If God were proud, he would hardly have us on such terms. But he is not proud. He stoops to conquer. And he will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to him.
that's how the Christian life really begins. And sadly, that's how the Christian life can be sometimes.
Instead of trusting him first, we only slowly learn to trust him, don't we? Well, would Jehoshaphat, would he pray, would he have prayed if he had a huge army at the ready?
I don't know. Would Jehoshaphat have prayed if he had time to put together a plan? I don't know that either. I mean, we can hope that he would have.
But if you know your own heart, you know that a lot of times when you have a plan, an army, prayer isn't the first thing on your agenda. Jehoshaphat prays when he has nothing else to do.
But what does God do? What does God do? Well, he saves. And that's really our fourth lesson. God saves those who rely upon him.
He delivers them. I don't need to go into the whole rest of the story because you know what happened. God saved them. And basically, remember Jehoshaphat's prayer. Jehoshaphat was pitting the Lord against the circumstances and against these armies.
God, this is what they have planned, but this is what you have promised. This is what you have said, and this is what they want to do. And so, God in response says, your prayer was right.
It really is me against them. You are sort of on the periphery right now. And so, he says, the battle isn't yours, it's mine. Wouldn't you love for God to say that about your problem?
And I think a lot of times he is saying that. The battle isn't yours, it's mine. So, it's not your problem anymore, it's my problem. So, don't worry about a thing, don't be discouraged, just do what I tell you to do, watch what's going to happen.
So, the prophet tells them, tomorrow, march down against them, but you're not going to go march to fight, you're just going to march to watch. march to see what I've done.
And God saved them. The army turned against itself, first one, two against one, and then the rest of them fought against each other, they killed each other to a man, and so Jehoshaphat, Judah, they walk into the valley, and the battle's already done.
The battle's won, and they carry off the plunder. Here's our last lesson, God saves those who rely on him. Now, I know you know that lesson.
I know you know that lesson, and I know that lesson too, but isn't it a lesson that we need to learn again and again and again? God saves those who rely upon him.
God will dash all of our hopes, and he'll strip us of everything, and he'll throw us into the fire, and he'll put us to the test. In one way, that's sort of the whole Christian life summed up.
That's how the Christian life begins. God takes away our righteousness. We, you know, Paul, he said, I had a righteousness, a righteousness that I was trusting in, a righteousness under the law.
I was a Pharisee. And we can be the very same thing. It might not be religious good deeds, it might be something else that we say, this is why I'm a good person.
But God will take away that righteousness. He'll take away that stick that we're leaning on, what we thought was so good. And our sins, they come up out of the desert, as it were.
They weren't there. We didn't see them. We were pretty good people. But all of a sudden, now we got an army, a vast army of sin, and it's not far away, it's right on our doorstep, it's right there.
And we say, what are we going to do? And usually what we do, what people do, is say, okay, I've got a problem, I've got a big sin problem, I need to fix it, I need to do something, and I'll take care of this, I'll do what needs done, I'll make the changes, I'll turn over the leaf, I'll do what needs to be done, and so we try to change our ways, and we set about doing what is right, we commit to it, but we find out that our sin is not so easily dealt with, is it?
Our little militia of good deeds isn't going to be enough to fight this vast army of sin, and so perhaps then we do a little repenting, and we start to pray, and maybe we pray, save me, but I've noticed something, that sometimes those prayers, though they have the words of faith, still have the heart of, this is what God wants, so I'll do it.
If he doesn't want good deeds and he wants prayer, if he wants me to say, I trust in him, I'll say it, I'll do it, and I'll take care of it this way, and so we turn faith and our repentance into another tool, another way to save ourselves.
Sounds like faith, but it's still faith in ourself. But you know what, that fails. True faith, true repentance will save us, but our own human versions of them don't, and so we're no better off than before our supposed faith.
And then, if God continues to deal with us, he still drives us lower until we realize we're powerless. I can't do anything to fix this problem, because I am the problem.
I'm the problem. I'm the sinner. And so what do we do? What do you do then? Well, that's when we turn to Jesus Christ.
He saves sinners. I'm a sinner. You count it. I'm not righteous. I'm a sinner. And that's who God says he's going to save. So Christ died to wash the dirty.
He didn't come to help us take a bath on our own. He came to take off the old man and put on the new man. He came to give us a new record and a new life and a new heart. Since we're talking about C.S.
Lewis and Chronicles of Narnia, Eustace is a little boy who because of his greed turns into a dragon. And while he was still a little boy, he put on a gold bracelet on his arm.
But when he became a dragon, that gold, instead of being beautiful and on his arm, it now begins to pinch him. His greed, the thing that he loves so much, is what gives him so much pain.
And then he realizes, I don't want to be a dragon. He thought it was kind of cool at first, but he realizes, I don't want to be a dragon. And so he starts scraping off his skin. And there's nothing, but when he scrapes it off, all he finds underneath it is more dragon skin, more scales.
And he goes deeper, but still, no matter how deep he goes, there's nothing he can do to change. And then finally, Aslan comes, and with his claws, with his paws, he goes deeper than Eustace could have gone, and deeper than Eustace would have ever wanted to go.
and he says it hurt so badly, and yet it felt so good. And he peels off thick, huge dragon skin and leaves a little boy in its place.
That's what Jesus can do. That's what Jesus does. That's how the Christian life begins, with us getting all of our props taken out from underneath us, and then us learning to trust the Lord, letting him be our savior.
And then the rest of our life is learning that lesson over and over again. Because it wasn't just our righteousness that we lean on, we have a lot of other things that we lean on, and God shows us day by day, week by week, year by year, you can trust me, I'll deliver you, you can save me, but it's a battle, it's a process.
So, it's time to wrap this up. What have we learned this morning? We learned three things, well, four things. One, God will put us to the test.
You can expect that. Two, when he does, rely on who he is and what he's promised. Three, when you do, come empty and naked, don't look at yourself, look to him.
And the fourth is, God saves those who trust in him, who rely upon him. That's the gospel, and that's how we continue to live this Christian life. Now, this week, you're either going to have a major bump or you're going to have a minor bump.
God is going to put you into some kind of situation where you need to trust and rely upon him. And I hope you, when you do, when he does, that you'll remember Jehoshaphat and his example for us.
Well, let's pray. Heavenly Father, I do pray that you would bless this lesson to us, that you would remind us this week and the weeks to come of Jehoshaphat and how he went to you when he was in trouble.
And in some ways, it is with hesitation that I would ask that you would teach us that lesson. But we know that that lesson is going to be learned in the fire and in the test.
And yet, despite that, we would ask the Lord that you would teach us to trust in you, that you would teach us again what it means to be one of your children.
Teach us what it means to trust and rely upon you. In Jesus' name, Amen.