Two Kings
We do have an enemy, don't we? Our enemy is invisible, but he is real.
There
are basically two ways that people respond when they get attacked. The first way that people respond is
fear.
“This is
horrible, there is no hope, I can’t possibly fight this thing, I don’t know
what to do…”
But
there is another option, and that of course, is to rise up in our faith.
I want to look at two
kings today – both of these kings were being attacked by an enemy; one of them
responded in fear, and the other responded in faith.
Let’s look at the
fearful king first:
During the reign of Ahaz King of
Judah….
the news came to the royal court,
“Syria is allied with Israel against us!”…
and … the hearts of the king and his
people trembled with fear as the trees of a forest shake in a
storm… (Isaiah 7:1,2 TLB)
Then the Lord said to Isaiah, “Go
out to meet Ahaz... and say to him, ‘Be careful, keep calm and don’t
be afraid. Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering
stubs of firewood—because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and
of the son of Remaliah….
Aram, Ephraim and
Remaliah’s son have plotted your ruin, saying, “Let us invade Judah;
let us tear it apart and divide it among ourselves…”
…Yet this is what the
Sovereign Lord says: “‘It
will not take place, it will not happen… but ….
…If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at
all.’” (Isaiah 7:3-9 NIV)
So King Ahaz was in trouble. He had two armies marching against him, and he was scared. The Bible says that the hearts of the king and the people trembled with fear as the trees of a forest shake in a storm.
Apparently, everyone in the land of
Judah responded in fear. Everyone except for one man, and that was
Isaiah. Isaiah went to Ahaz with a message of encouragement from God. Basically,
God’s message was:
Calm down, Ahaz… do not
fear and be weak-hearted even though these 2 kings with fierce anger are coming
to fight you.
I won’t let them hurt
you. They’re big talkers, but I’m God. And I’m on
your side, Ahaz. Just have faith.
But then God added this warning ….
If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.
But Ahaz
rejected God’s offer. He was too afraid to believe. Isaiah couldn’t
make Ahaz believe that God would protect him.
God later told Isaiah that King Ahaz and all the people of Judah had
rejected the “gently flowing waters of Shiloah” and “rejoiced over Rezin, “one
of the enemy kings. (Isaiah 8:6 NIV)
That’s
an interesting way to phrase things, and we’ll come back to Ahaz, but I want to
switch gears just for a minute and look at that verse a little more
closely. God said the people had rejected the gently flowing waters of
Shiloah. The King James says, they
rejected “the waters of Shiloah that go softly.”
What is
this water of Shiloah that goes softly? In John 7:37, we read how Jesus
was attending the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem. This joyous feast is
held every fall, and it lasts for 7 or 8 days. On the last day of the
Feast of Tabernacles, a priest takes a golden pitcher to the Pool of Siloam,
which holds the gentle waters of Shiloah that Isaiah talks about.
So the
priest takes his pitcher to the pool, fills his pitcher with the gently flowing
waters of Shiloah, and carries it back to the temple. Crowds of people
follow the priest dancing and singing.
When the
priest reaches the altar, he dramatically pours out the water of Siloam over
the altar. This symbolizes how the Holy Spirit would be poured out on all
people.
And on
the day that Jesus was there, it was the last day of the Feast, so the priest
probably had just poured the water over the altar, and that’s when Jesus cried
out:
If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive… (John 7:37-39 NIV)
Jesus
was offering the people of His day the same water that Isaiah offered to king
Ahaz – the gently flowing waters of the Holy Spirit. But Ahaz rejected it. Instead, he “rejoiced in the enemy.”
How did
Ahaz rejoice in the threats of his enemy?
He
believed it, he feared it, it’s all he could think about, all he could talk
about. God called this rejoicing. And He said, “why?
It’s only Rezin- I could have destroyed him with a single word!”
It's
scary to think that we block our blessings by what we think and say. That we choose the outcome of a situation by
what we choose to think and say.
It
reminds me of Deuteronomy 28, where we read that if we rejoice in our blessings
all day long, our blessings will eventually find us and overtake us!!!
Now we
are seeing that this principal works for curses as well.
If we rejoice in our curses, our illnesses, our enemies, and our troubles all day long, then the curses will eventually find us and overtake us!!!
And this
was unfortunately the case with Ahaz. He
responded in fear. But, not King
Jehoshaphat.
Jehoshaphat
was a King of Judah, and he knew how to fight the enemy. He knew how to
rejoice!
We read
his story in 2 Chronicles chapter 20.
Some people came and told
Jehoshaphat, “A vast army is coming against you from Edom, from the other
side of the Dead Sea. (2 Chronicles 20:2 NIV)
I love
Jehoshaphat’s response.
Then Jehoshaphat was afraid and set himself to seek the Lord… (2 Chronicles 20:3 NIV)
Jehoshaphat was
afraid. It’s okay to feel afraid; it’s normal. The important thing is – what do we do next?
What did Jehoshaphat
do?
He set himself to seek
the Lord.
When the
enemy attacks, you will feel afraid. Then what do you do?
Set
yourself to seek the Lord. Say, “Lord, What do I do? Give me
perspective. Give me wisdom.”
That’s
what Jehoshaphat did.
He went
to God. All the people gathered around King Jehoshaphat and he prayed
this prayer:
“O Lord God of our fathers—the only God in all the heavens, the ruler of all the kingdoms of the earth—you are so powerful, so mighty. Who can stand against you? O our God, you drove out the heathen who lived in this land when your people arrived. And you gave this land forever to the descendants of your friend Abraham.
And your people settled here and built this Temple for you, and we truly believe that in a time like this—whenever we are faced with any calamity such as war, disease, or famine—we can stand here before this Temple and before you—for you are here in this Temple—and cry out to you to save us; and that you will hear us and rescue us.
And now see what the armies of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir are doing...they have come to throw us out of your land which you have given us.
O our God, won’t you stop
them? We have no way to protect ourselves against this mighty army. We don’t
know what to do, but we are looking to you.” (2 Chronicles 20:6-12
TLB)
It was a beautiful prayer.
And when he finished praying, The
Holy Spirit fell on one of the men in the crowd. And the man spoke up and
said:
…“Listen … This is what the Lord says
… ‘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. …
You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions; stand
firm and see the deliverance the Lord will
give you…
…. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them
tomorrow, and the Lord will
be with you.’” (2 Chronicles 20:15-17 NIV)
This was kind of the
same situation as King Ahaz. An enemy had come to attack, the King got
scared, God sent a message of encouragement, “don’t be afraid, I’ll
take care of everything.”
Very similar
situation.
Ahaz had rejected God’s
words, God’s promise.
But not
Jehoshaphat.
Jehoshaphat bowed down with his face to the ground, and all the
people of Judah and Jerusalem fell down in worship before the Lord. Then some Levites … stood up
and praised the Lord, the God
of Israel, with a very loud voice. (2 Chronicles 20:18,19 NIV)
Jehoshaphat –
and all the people – believed God’s word
They clung
to God’s word
They rejoiced
in God’s word
They started worshiping
and praising God right there with a very loud voice. And the next day,
Jehoshaphat sent out his army.
But he put singers in
the front of the army. And as
his army was singing and marching toward the enemy, Jehoshaphat yelled after
them:
Believe in the Lord your God and you shall have success! Believe his
prophets and everything will be all right!” (2 Chronicles 20:20 TLB)
Now that’s walking by
faith and not by sight!
Believe in the Lord and
you shall have success! Believe in the Lord and everything will be all
right!!
That’s 2 Chronicles
20:20 by the way- that’s like 20 20 vision!!
Perfect vision!!
Faith vision!!
And as
the singers and the army went marching out to fight the enemy they were
singing:
Give thanks to the Lord for His love endures
forever!!! (2 Chronicles 20:21 NIV)
And do
you know what happened?
As Jehoshaphat's army sang and marched, those three enemy kings and their armies suddenly became
confused. Really confused. They started to fight among themselves,
and these three armies started to kill each other.
And
meanwhile, the army of Judah, Jehoshaphat’s army, was still singing and
marching out to meet them. They hadn’t even reached the battlefield yet!
And when
the army of Judah finally reached the battlefield, when they finally saw the
enemy, guess what they saw?
Nothing
but dead bodies; no one had escaped.
So the
army of Judah began to pick up all the plunder!
It took
them three days to collect all the plunder from all those dead soldiers lying all
over the place:
King Jehoshaphat and his people
went out to plunder the bodies and came away loaded with money, garments, and
jewels stripped from the corpses—so much that it took them three days to cart
it all away!
On the fourth day they gathered in
the Valley of Blessing, as it is called today, and how they praised the Lord!
Then they returned to Jerusalem,
with Jehoshaphat leading them, full of joy that the Lord had given them this
marvelous rescue from their enemies. (2 Chronicles 25-27 TLB)
When the enemy attacked Jehoshaphat, he was afraid. But did he focus more on the enemy or did he focus more on God's promise to protect?
The next
time the devil attacks you, try to remember Kings Ahaz and Jehoshaphat.
Even
though you are afraid, try to think about King Jehoshaphat, standing up on
that hill, waving and yelling to his army,
Believe in the Lord and
you shall have success! Believe in the Lord and everything will be all
right!!
And
think about that army, marching right towards the enemy, singing and rejoicing
in the Lord.
And just
start to do what they did. Start to rejoice in the Lord.
And the
waters of Shiloah, that beautiful, gentle, powerful, River of God will begin to
flow. And He will do for you what He did
for the Jehoshaphat. He’ll throw the enemy into confusion!!
Exodus
23:27 says:
“I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into
confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn
their backs and run. (NIV)
And Deuteronomy 7:23-24
says:
… the Lord your
God will deliver (your enemies) over to you, throwing them into great confusion
until they are destroyed. He will give their kings into your
hand, and you will wipe out their names from under heaven. (NIV)
Halleluiah!!
That’s exciting!!
When our enemy, the
devil, attacks, we don’t need to give into fear!
We don’t need to cower
down to the devil.
On the contrary- we need
to rise up in our faith!!
References
Strong, James. Strongs Exhaustive Concordance: Showing Every Word of the
Text of the Common English Version of the Canonical Books, and Every Occurrence
of Each Word in Regular Order, Together with Dictionaries of the Hebrew and
Greek Words of the Original, with References to the English Words. Baker Book House, 1983.
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible,
New International Version, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by
Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved
worldwide.www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version”
are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by
Biblica, Inc.
Scripture quotations marked (TLB) are taken from The Living Bible
copyright © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol
Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
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