It's God's fight

Last week we looked at king Jehoshaphat of Judah and his alliance with the king of Israel. Now on the surface this seemed to be a good idea. After all, they were both Jews who had the same ancestors and worshiped the same God allying against a pagan king. Of course, as Paul Harvey knew there is always “ the rest of the story”. In this case the rest of the story was that Jehoshaphat was a good and Godly king and the king of Israel was not.

At the end of that battle Jehoshaphat was alive and well and the kings of Israel was dead, despite hiding and disguising himself he was struck by an arrow fired at random.

Shortly after that battle Jehoshaphat was again in a battle. Three armies hand banded together to attack Judah and he was vastly outnumbered. He knew there was no way he could beat the army coming against him and his only ally was now dead. So he prayed.

2 Chronicles 20:5–13 NASB95

Then Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the Lord before the new court, and he said, “O Lord, the God of our fathers, are You not God in the heavens? And are You not ruler over all the kingdoms of the nations? Power and might are in Your hand so that no one can stand against You. “Did You not, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before Your people Israel and give it to the descendants of Abraham Your friend forever? “They have lived in it, and have built You a sanctuary there for Your name, saying, ‘Should evil come upon us, the sword, or judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house and before You (for Your name is in this house) and cry to You in our distress, and You will hear and deliver us.’ “Now behold, the sons of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, whom You did not let Israel invade when they came out of the land of Egypt (they turned aside from them and did not destroy them), see how they are rewarding us by coming to drive us out from Your possession which You have given us as an inheritance. “O our God, will You not judge them? For we are powerless before this great multitude who are coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on You.” All Judah was standing before the Lord, with their infants, their wives and their children.

Have you ever been faced with a fight that you knew you could not win. It happens all the time. In the last month I have watched a marriage struggle to survive knowing that I could not cause it to grow stronger or fall apart. Maybe I can offer some advice and maybe I can help someone go in the right direction but I can’t fix the problems and i can’t forgive the wrongs. In many ways I am helpless by myself. I have watched a family struggle financially knowing that I did not have the money to bail them out and if I had had access to unlimited funds and given it all to them it would not have fixed all the underlying problems in their lives. I have sat in a hospital after praying for a surgery knowing that I am not a doctor or a surgeon and I cannot by my own power cause anyone to be healed or not to be healed.

As a pastor most of the issues that I face, most of the issues that members of my congregation face are beyond both my own abilities to fix and the abilities of my congregation to fix. It only makes sense. If they could fix it then it would probably never have become an issue. If I could fix it then they could probably have fixed it themselves, otherwise once I know about it I can just take care of it and then there is no more issue.

No, most of the things that people come to me about are beyond me, beyond my power to fix or even to influence, but that’s okay. In fact it is to be expected. You see they are not really my congregation, I am not the head of the church. They don’t come to me because I am such a wonderful person or because I am so wise or have so many talents and abilities. They come to me because of my connections. You see I have been placed in this church to serve God and to serve his people and his church. If it were my church and my people I would be responsible for making sure everything worked out and controlling everything but I am not.

My responsibility is simply this, to bring the battle to the Lord and trust him to fight it. If you have been in one of those situations or some other stressful situation where I have been there to pray, you might have noticed that one of the things I pray for the most is peace and comfort. I learned to pray this way because I don’t usually know what God has planned. In my own life God often surprises me and works things out differently than I expected. As the old saying goes sometimes he calms the storm and sometimes he calms his child. It is not my job to know how God will choose to fight the battle, what weapons he will use and who he will call into service. It is not my job to pick the way God will win the battle or even the timing of when he will act. It is my job to trust him and turn to him and wait for him to do what he does. In fact my job would be as simple as can be except for one thing. The very thing Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah did.

2 Chronicles 20:14–19 NASB95

Then in the midst of the assembly the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel the son of Zechariah, the son of Benaiah, the son of Jeiel, the son of Mattaniah, the Levite of the sons of Asaph; and he said, “Listen, all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat: thus says the Lord to you, ‘Do not fear or be dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours but God’s. ‘Tomorrow go down against them. Behold, they will come up by the ascent of Ziz, and you will find them at the end of the valley in front of the wilderness of Jeruel. ‘You need not fight in this battle; station yourselves, stand and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not fear or be dismayed; tomorrow go out to face them, for the Lord is with you.” Jehoshaphat bowed his head with his face to the ground, and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell down before the Lord, worshiping the Lord. The Levites, from the sons of the Kohathites and of the sons of the Korahites, stood up to praise the Lord God of Israel, with a very loud voice.

Did you notice it, right there at the end. Did you see what they did. They praised God and thanked God for the victory. Sounds logical enough doesn’t it, except for one little bitty detail that might have escaped you on a first reading. The battle had not happened yet.

2 Chronicles 20:20–25 NASB95

They rose early in the morning and went out to the wilderness of Tekoa; and when they went out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, “Listen to me, O Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, put your trust in the Lord your God and you will be established. Put your trust in His prophets and succeed.” When he had consulted with the people, he appointed those who sang to the Lord and those who praised Him in holy attire, as they went out before the army and said, “Give thanks to the Lord, for His lovingkindness is everlasting.” When they began singing and praising, the Lord set ambushes against the sons of Ammon, Moab and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah; so they were routed. For the sons of Ammon and Moab rose up against the inhabitants of Mount Seir destroying them completely; and when they had finished with the inhabitants of Seir, they helped to destroy one another. When Judah came to the lookout of the wilderness, they looked toward the multitude, and behold, they were corpses lying on the ground, and no one had escaped. When Jehoshaphat and his people came to take their spoil, they found much among them, including goods, garments and valuable things which they took for themselves, more than they could carry. And they were three days taking the spoil because there was so much.

Jehoshaphat and his people began praising God for winning the battle for them the night before the battle was fought. The morning of the battle they began to praise God and to sing songs and celebrate. They thanked God for the victory before the fight ever started. How can you do that? How can you thank someone for something they haven’t done yet? I guess you could pretend to be thankful, you could say the words and go through the motions but God would see through that easy.

No, I guess there is just one way to truly thank God and worship God for something he has not yet done and that you have not yet seen. You would have to absolutely believe that God will do what he says he will do. You would need to have an unshakeable trust in God’s power that he is able to do all that he says he will do and an unwavering belief in God’s integrity that if God said it then it is just the same as if it was already done. You would have to trust God. Not just believe that God is generally good or that he is usually right or that he can do most things but to know in your heart that God is goodness itself, that he is all powerful and that is always true to his word, you would have to believe that God is perfect.

Now we have been taught that God is all of these things and more, but do we live like we believe it. Jehoshaphat marched his people out to stand in front of an army he had no chance against. He knew he couldn’t win, he had already admitted it and accepted it but he marched his people out anyway. Not because he was willing to die or to make one last grand gesture of defiance, that is not what he did, he didn’t even have them prepare fortifications or sharpen their weapons, they were not lined up for battle or prepared for war he brought them out singing songs and praising God.

Jehoshaphat was not preparing to fight he was preparing for the victory celebration. He did not call his generals but his praise band. He did not use the military strategy he had learned or his skill in using a sword, after all he had been in battles before, he had led men to fight before, he was no stranger to tactics and to swordplay but this time it was different. This time he put all his trust in God. If God was wrong he was dead, if God did not keep his promise the entire army would be destroyed and the country conquered, yet he had no back up plan and he held nothing in reserve. He was sold out to the promise he had from God, and it worked. God was as good as his word, just as God had always been and will always be.

All Jehoshaphat had to do was trust that God was true, let God fight the battle and be ready to pick up the spoils of war. By the way it took Jehoshaphat and his men three days to collect all the goodies after the battle was over. All he had asked for was for God to keep them from wiping him out and he got so much more. His enemies were wiped out and he got to go in and collect all of their stuff without ever firing a shot and without ever striking a blow.

Jehoshaphat knew that he was outclassed and outgunned but he also knew that it was not up to him, the battle was the lord’s. I find it to be the same in ministry, I am often asked to help with things I cannot fix, to answer questions I cannot know and to solve problems that are far beyond me. But I am not alone, the battle is the Lord’s, his job is to fight the overwhelming odds and my job is to trust him to do it, to praise and celebrate him before i see it, to trust him completely. It’s the hardest part of my job. You see sometimes I see the overwhelming size of the forces against me and I start to doubt. Sometimes I forget how faithful God is and how true he is, I have to be reminded. And when God proves himself, when he reminds me how faithful he is it is my job to remind you, as I am doing right now.

Everything God does works this way. Even our very salvation is like that. We praise God and thank God for eternity in heaven even though we have never set foot there. We pray to him for rest and rescue not knowing when or how it will come, we trust him for the future because he has been faithful in the past. Our greatest victories come not from our own abilities, which come from God themselves, but from trusting God to fight for us.

It all begins with a single act of trust, an act of faith. The most important act of trust in God that we will ever see. We trust God to save us, trust that Jesus died for us and that sin and death have been conquered for us in a battle we never even saw. We trust that God loves us and wants us to be with him, we trust that Jesus has already worked out our salvation and we praise him for what he has done. We don’t have to conquer sin, we don’t have to defeat death, that battle belongs to Jesus Christ and he has already fought and won, right now we are like Jehoshaphat trusting God to do all that he says he will do, all that he has already done. And one day we will be like Jehoshaphat, looking down on the battlefield and seeing it for ourselves. Standing with Jesus who fought the fight, who won the battle, sharing in all the spoils, reaping all the rewards of the battle that God fought on our behalf. Trust him now, if you have never trusted him before the battle is already won, his word is already given, all you have to do is accept it, believe it, trust in God. It’s so simple it seems too good to be true, but it is.