King Jehoshaphat: Right Priorities (2 Chron.17-20)
We have begun a new series which will take us up to June. We will be examining the lives of
six or seven Kings of Judah most of whom were generally good kings, but like us, they were
not perfect and they were capable, like us of doing some things which were not only good
but also bad and sometimes even ugly.
From time to time it is good to delve into parts of scripture that are not often read, parts of
the Biblical landscape that are not often trodden and because the word of God in its entirety
is worth reading and learning from we should not be surprised to find that there are always
lessons for us in how to live, no matter in what time we live. The word of God is eternal, it
transcends time and yet it speaks into time. And so we find with the kingdom of Judah in the
period from 900-500 BC that although it was a very different culture from 21 st century N
Ireland there are many aspects which are the same. At root the most common aspect was a
culture and a people that was mixed up and messed up and which had drifted very far away
from its Biblical moorings. Like our own culture Judea’s laws had been built around Biblical
principles and a godly ethos but the part of mankind which always thinks that it knows best
meant that God was relegated to the margins of life and a process of secularisation had
taken place. What goes around comes around and we see that happening very much in our
time as the Christian building blocks of society are dismantled one by one. And that is why
God’s word is relevant at all times because it always addresses human nature and human
nature does not really change.
In this series we will be constantly looking at two perspectives –the leaders and the led, the
kings and the people. Sometimes the kings influenced the people sometimes the people
influenced the kings.
In the OT system of government God had given the people three kinds of leaders. These
leaders were not divided into spiritual and secular, into religious and physical because all of
life was meant to be spiritual – it was a theocracy and religion and state were meant to be
one and the same thing.
God gave three kinds of leaders to his people – kings, priests and prophets. Each had a
different nuance of leadership but they were all intertwined and interrelated. The Kings
governed and administered and ensured the overall direction was right of travel; the priests
taught the law and looked after the worship and acted as mediators between God and men,
and the prophets were God’s SAS troops who would speak into emergency situations and
apply God’s word to the issues and problems of the day. Each acted as a counterbalance to
the other and were meant to give godly leadership together, corporately.
From time to time each of these leaders could go astray because they were not perfect,
they were human after all like us. Each had influence but the kings by virtue of their position
had a lot of influence. As it went with the king so it went with the people in general. Some of
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the Kings of Judah were on the whole good kings, reforming kings who sought to bring
people back into line with God’s word. However even the reforming kings had trouble
stopping the slide into exile which would come.
Now all of this was fulfilled in Jesus – he was the perfect prophet, priest and king. He
perfectly obeyed his heavenly Father and he brought in a new kingdom, a new reign. When
we surrender our lives to Jesus we enter this kingdom which is an eternal kingdom. Here
today we live out that kingdom as part of Christ’s body the church. It again is not a perfect
body because it is made up of human beings. In the church God continues to give gifts of
leadership and in the church we will find people who are priests, kings and prophets. Priests
tend to be mediators and caring and intercessory; kings tend to see the big picture and live
systems and administration and targets and achievements; prophets tend to be slightly odd
people but they often see things the rest of us don’t and can speak God’s word powerfully
into situations. Each again can act as correctives to the other and keep us aligned with God’s
will. Putting all of this together I want us to see that what we are looking at here has bang
up to the date relevance to us today as both leaders and people.
Today we are going to look at King Jehoshaphat. The Chronicler spends quite a bit of time on
him as he sees this King as a good king and a great reformer, although again he had some
compromise in his life that was not right. I want us to see four things about this King that we
need to learn for ourselves today in the culture of self and of individualism and godlessness
that is creeping all around us and threatens to engulf us. Three things which were good and
showed right priorities, and one which was bad, if not ugly.
1.Begin with true worship. (17:1-6) Jehoshaphat was a worshipper at heart and everything
would flow from this. He was determined to do what was right in the eyes of God, he was a
true worshipper and he sought to encourage others to be worshippers as well. Verse 4 tells
us that in a toxic atmosphere where many were running after the religion of the Baals he
sought the God of his father who was Asa and of his ancestor before him – David. Now that
does not seem like a big thing to us but it was. The culture of the nations had infiltrated
Israel and Judah’s worldview. All around people were worshipping false gods and the flow
was going in one direction. Even though he was the king it would have been easy for him to
go with the flow and adopt the values of the culture of the people but in his personal
devotional life he began to seek the Lord and focus on God’s commandments and that
would then start to impact his public life and pronouncements.
In the culture in which we live, which is going as far in a direction away from God as it was in
Jehoshaphat’s day if we don’t take time to seek God in worship both privately and
corporately we will not be able to make any impact on the world rather we will be sucked
into its values.
Throughout this period of the kings there is recurring mention of the high places ((v.6).
What were these high places? Basically they were places of false worship to Baal or Astarte.
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People would erect wooden pillars or standing stones and they would offer sacrifices upon
them to these false gods and the land was littered with them. From time to time a king
would send out a decree that these things were to be destroyed and people were
encouraged to follow the pattern of true worship as shown in Jerusalem.
However people are obstinate and prefer to worship in their own way and they will not be
told how to worship so inevitably these high places would creep back in again despite the
reforms (see 20:33). How are we doing with true worship privately and publically. Go wrong
here and everything goes wrong. Worship is important.
2. Be guided by God’s Word (17:7-10). The next stage was the king sent out teachers to
teach the people the word of God which they seemed to have forgotten. When revival is
happening there is a new respect for God’s word. When God’s Spirit is moving upon people
there is a wakening up to the scriptures and people start to take note of what God has said.
Worship and Word are so closely tied together. Now you would not expect the world to pay
much attention to the word of God but what is happening and was happening then was that
the people of God were ignoring the word. Today in our churches we find more and more
ignorance of basic teachings and doctrines of the Bible.
I don’t much mind which version of the Bible you have but I wish you would read it. Our
culture today is bamboozling us because we don’t know our Bibles. As the ethos of our
world changes and we find non-christian attitudes to life at the beginning and end of life,
attitudes to gender and sexual standards, attitudes to economics and giving all moving
farther and farther away from biblical values the great sadness is that many in our churches
are following that same drift because we are not reading our Bibles and we are not putting
what we find there into practice.
We have our own high places where we do our own thing and worship a god of our own
making. It takes courage to go against the flow but it needs to be an informed courage
informed by the values of the Book. We should not expect the world to listen to us, we are
always meant to be in a minority. We want to be relevant to the world and I know by that
we want to reach the world, but sometimes we can be so relevant that we are not
distinctively different enough to impact the world. We have lost our saltiness because of
fear of what people might say about us.
This leads to the third issue in Jehoshaphat’s life where he went wrong. In wanting to be a
people pleaser he allowed himself to be drawn into King Ahab’s net. Ahab was the king of
Israel and was very far from living a godly life.
3. Don’t compromise with the world (ch.18) Again Jehoshaphat was swayed by the culture
of the day by entering into a marriage alliance – his son was married off to Ahab’s daughter.
The kings grew more friendly but Ahab wanted to use Jehoshaphat’s power and military
might to help him recapture Ramoth-Gilead. All of Ahab’s prophets thought this was a good
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move and that Ramoth-Gilead would be easily captured. Jehoshaphat was not so sure and
felt uneasy and wanted to consult a different and more objective prophet. This prophet
called Micaiah foresaw defeat and “Israel scattered on the hills like sheep without a
shepherd” (18:16). In the event Micaiah was right and despite Ahab disguising himself in the
battle a “random” arrow pierced his armour and he was killed but Jehoshaphat was
preserved by God.
We are surrounded by traps and temptations today. It is easy to compromise ourselves
financially, sexually, ethically. None of us is above these temptations and we need to put
ourselves in the place to hear God’s word and then to do what it says. We can surround
ourselves with people who tell us what we want to hear rather than what we need to hear
because people don’t want to upset us. We who are sons and daughters of God are meant
to open ourselves to God’s Spirit and his leading but too often we listen more to the voices
and standards of the world and we follow those voices. Some of us may be in relationships
like Jehoshaphat where we are compromised, our faith is compromised, our distinctiveness
is compromised, our effectiveness for God is compromised and we are turning away from
God’s best for us. Like Jehoshaphat your conscience is troubled, there is a niggle there that
something is wrong but you keep going down that road and God says stop, turn around and
repent.
4. Be aware that we are engaged in spiritual warfare (ch 20) One of the best prayers in the
Bible is found in ch.20. The main themes here are dependence on God, drawing strength
from him, reminding God if what he has done for his people in the past and asking that
principles of justice would prevail. He was not quite sure what to do but he looked to the
right person and said “We do not know what to do but our eyes are on you”.
In the face of a vast opposing army Jehoshaphat turned to God and God answered
powerfully and said the battle is not yours it is mine. Again we see that Jehoshaphat led the
people in earnest humble worship (20:18) and all the people followed him; and then the
Levites began to sing and the people joined in. And when the army marched out the next
day the singers were at the front singing “Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures for
ever”.
We are back again to seeing the importance of worship, the central plank of worship in
warfare – Martin Luther once said “Music is a fair and lovely gift of God. Next after theology
I give to music the highest place and the greatest honour”. William Law said “There is
nothing that so clears a way for your prayers, nothing that so disperses dullness of heart,
nothing that so purifies the soul from poor and little passions, nothing that so opens heaven
and carries your heart so near it as these songs of praise”.
God advances against the enemy on the songs of his people. The devil hates the songs of
Christians. The bible says that when the people advanced singing and praising he set an
ambush against the men of Ammon and Moab and Sier and they ended up killing each
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other. Judah had to obey, they had to come out in force, they had to prepare for battle but
before they go within a javelin’s throw the Lord had worked a miracle.
In our world today we see many enemies of the gospel and of God, many who have no time
for God and we see nations one by one turning away from Biblical principles on many things
but especially on sexual ethics and we are tempted to be afraid and capitulate to the mood
of the day. Like Jehoshaphat we need to begin with worship, be guided by God’s word and
be aware that we are engaged in spiritual warfare and the Lord fights for us, we are just
called to be obedient and not to compromise for that leads to grief.
We serve the king of kings, the priest of priests and the prophet of prophets and he never
got it wrong. Today can we submit our lives afresh to his leadership, submit to his will for us
which is always good. Yes it can be difficult, but he never promised that it would be easy.
But he did promise joy and reward. Let’s get our priorities right and remove some of the
ugly stuff that is in our lives which dishonours God.
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