Thank you, John. I'm sure that many of us would share that prayer tonight, that we might be drawn nearer to the Lord. The problem is, we don't often want to walk the way that's necessary, that we might be drawn nearer. Because often it means walking for the children of Israel in 2 Chronicles chapter 20. I want us to think together tonight about lessons in the Valley of Blessing. Jehoshaphat was the king of Judah, this time as we open our Bibles to 2 Chronicles 20.
You may recall that after the death of Solomon, the nation of Israel divided into two nations. There were those northern tribes called Israel, they retained that name. Sometimes they were called Samaria after the capital city. And then there was the southern kingdom, composed of Judah primarily. And it sometimes was called Judah, sometimes Jerusalem after its capital city. Of all the kings of the northern kingdom, there was not one decent one. They were all apostate.
None of them walked after the god of their fathers. Of the kings of Judah, the southern kingdom, there were some good, more bad. As we look at Jehoshaphat, we're looking at one that was a good king for the most part. He was the son also of a good king, Asa. Not too much is said ill about Jehoshaphat, but there is one thing that he did that was a terrible mistake. At one point in his life, he made a military alliance with King Ahab of the northern kingdom.
Ahab was probably the worst of the worst of the kings of Israel, that northern kingdom. Jehoshaphat almost lost his life over that deal. The thing that's commendable about him is that when he got back home, just being spared by the grace of God, and when he was confronted about his sin of compromise and alliance with the ungodly, he was willing to acknowledge that and confess it. The record of Jehoshaphat reminds us that God does not wait until we are perfect to bless us.
I'm glad for that, aren't you? There wouldn't be a lot of blessing in my life if I had to be perfect first. As we look at the record of 2 Chronicles 20, I want us to learn several lessons regarding the valley of blessing. Lesson number one is this. Blessing is in relation to pressures. It came about after this that the sons of Moab and the sons of Ammon, together with some of the Munites, came to make war against Jehoshaphat. Things had been going well since his escapade with Ahab.
He had done some notable things, good things, in Jerusalem and Judah. Now suddenly there is new pressure. There is an alliance of enemies to the east and to the south, where they were located. Suddenly these were to the east and south of the Dead Sea area. This alliance was marching against Jehoshaphat. Some came and reported to him saying, a great multitude is coming against you from beyond the sea, the Dead Sea, out of Aram. Behold, they are in Hazesan, Tamar, that is, in Getty.
That wasn't too far from Jerusalem. That was afraid and turned his attention to seek the Lord and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. So Judah gathered together to seek help from the Lord. They even came from all the cities of Judah to seek the Lord. Lesson number one is blessing is in relation to pressures. It would be nice if we could have all blessings in life without any stress, without any pressures, without any burdens.
But life simply is not that way, and God has designed it so it is not that way. There would be no mountaintops if there were not valleys, and there would be no blessings if there were not burdens. God allows pressures to come to our lives for good purposes, just as the potter must apply pressure to the clay in order to mold it and to shape it. Just as he uses his skill to produce the desired vessel, so God lovingly and tenderly puts pressure on our lives to mold us by his skillful hands.
Here the enemies had allied themselves against Judah, and that threat seems to have reminded Jehoshaphat of his need for the Lord. Are you ever like that? Things are going along great in your life, and suddenly something rises that you can't handle and you remember that you have need of the Lord. God allows burdens to remind us of our need of him, of our need to be moldable and yielded to his will. It's easy for us to grow careless and complacent when things are going easily.
Thus God allows some hard things to come along occasionally to wake us up spiritually. We must learn not to resist that pressure from God, not to rebel against it, but rather to thank God for it. Boy, that's hard to do, isn't it? How easy it is to thank God for the blessings, but to thank God for the burdens? Yes, James says, count it all joy when you fall into various kinds of trials, pressures, stressful situations.
We can thank God because he has a good purpose in it and will transform that burden to become a blessing. I am well reminded of a man by the name of George Hipshire who has been with the Lord I suppose fifteen years now. When I first moved to Kentucky I heard about this man. At that time he had already suffered from diabetes for a number of years. He had become, over the process of time, blind for the most part. He could barely make out your form if he got up close to his face.
He had lost one leg by that time. This man had so many things going wrong inside of his body. But George, instead of complaining about those burdens, turned them around and made them points of blessing. We thank God for this illness that he had. I never once remember hearing him complain, though I visited with him on a number of occasions. By the time that George went home to be with the Lord he had lost the other leg, he had had a stroke so that he could not speak, he was paralyzed on one side.
But he was a man through whom the radiance of God shone. Because he was willing to accept with joy the burdens that God gave to him, and he turned those burdens around, God transformed them, and they became blessings. The greater our extremity of burden, the greater our capacity for blessing. You remember that. The greater your extremity of burden, the greater your capacity for blessing. The second lesson that I want us to see in the text is this, that blessing is in response to prayer.
Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem in the house of the Lord before the new court. And he said, and he begins now to pray, he is not alone, many of the nations gathered there with him. God allows burdens to come to us to drive us to prayer. He wants us to see that there are many things in life that we cannot handle without him. We need to be reminded of that because we are by nature too independent. We are self-sufficient as proud human beings.
God wants us to see our dependence upon him. Notice how he prays. In verse 6, he appeals to God's supreme authority. O Lord, the God of our fathers, art thou not God in the heavens? And art thou not ruler over all the kingdoms of the nations? Power and might are in thy hand, so that no one can stand against thee. So he begins by worshiping God. Now did God need to be reminded of any of those things? Of course not.
But you see, by uttering them, by reflecting these truths back to God, he was worshiping the Lord. That is the way we worship. And so he appeals to God's supreme authority. Now in verse 7, he appeals to God's previous actions. Didst thou not, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before thy people Israel, and give it to the descendants of Abraham by friend forever? I believe this is the first time in scripture that Abraham is called the friend of God.
Of course, it occurs again in the New Testament. He looks back at history, the history of Israel, and he appeals to God's previous actions for them. Lord, aren't you the one who drove out the nations before us in the conquest of Canaan? Of course he was. Verses 8 and 9, he appeals to God's promises.
He says, And they lived in it, and have built thee a sanctuary there for thy name, saying, Should evil come upon us, the sword, or judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house and before thee, for thy name is in this house, and cry to thee in our distress. And thou wilt hear and deliver us. Jehoshaphat draws upon something that Solomon said on the day that the temple was dedicated. This is a few years before Jehoshaphat's time.
He looks back upon the statements that Solomon made, and he draws upon one of the promises. That is, if the people would stand before the temple and pray in a time of distress and burden, God would hear and answer them. And so he appeals to the promises of God. Now what is he doing? He is telling you and me how to pray when we are facing pressures and burdens. For like him, we ought to appeal to God's supreme authority. We ought to appeal to God's previous actions.
We ought to appeal to God's promises. Now in verses 10 and 11, he appeals to God's justice. Now behold, says Jehoshaphat. For the sons of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, whom thou didst not let Israel invade when they came out of the land of Egypt, they turned aside from them and did not destroy them. Behold how they are rewarding us by coming to drive us out from thy possession, which thou hast given us as inheritance.
You may or may not remember that when Israel was on its way to the promised land, they passed through the territory of the peoples now in alliance against them. They wanted to pass through them, I should say. They requested permission. And those people not only said no, but they sent a military force out to the border and they said, if you dare step foot in this land, we will fight against you. And so God told the people of Israel, rather than causing war and going through, go around their land.
And so they did. Now Jehoshaphat's point is, oh God, before you wouldn't let us deal with them, now they're coming against us to throw us out of the land you gave us. So he's appealing, you see, to God's justice. He's saying, Lord, before you wouldn't let us throw them out of their land. Now don't let them throw us out. So in verse 12, he brings his prayer to its consummation with a request and a confession. Oh our God, wilt thou not judge them? There's his request. God, judge these nations.
For we are powerless before this great multitude who are coming against us, nor do we know what to do. A confession. He was without power to turn them back and he was without wisdom as to what to do in this situation. Do you ever feel that way? Do the problems that confront you bring you to the point of near despair where you say, I don't have the ability to handle this and I don't know what to do? That is exactly where Jehoshaphat was.
And then he concludes with this marvelous statement of faith. He says, our eyes are on thee. That's what God wanted all along. The lesson that we're seeing here is that blessing is in response to prayer. My friend, when you are burdened, when you are under pressure, lay your case before God. What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. Oh, what peace we often forfeit.
Oh, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. When the burdens are on you and you're passing through that valley of pressure and stress, lay your case before God and follow the example of Jehoshaphat, you can do no better than that. Blessing is in response to prayer. Blessing is in relation to pressures. But there's a third lesson. It is this, that blessing is in respect to the promises. Blessing is in respect to the promises.
Some anonymous person has written, Terry at the promises till God meets you there. He always returns by way of His promises. Terry at the place of promises. The promises that are found in our text might be several, but I want to point out at least three of them. God did a very marvelous thing on that occasion. The nation was standing there, the children, the wives, the babies.
Then in the midst of the assembly, verse 14, the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jehaziah, the son of Zechariah and all the rest of these people. 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, oh Judah and Jerusalem. Do not fear or be dismayed. Tomorrow go out to face them for the Lord is with you. You see, God gave them some wonderful promises through His prophet, just as God gives us wonderful promises through this book, His holy word.
In the first place, He promises them that they don't have to be afraid. He says, do not fear. You and I do not have to fear the burdens and the pressures that are on us, because God you see is in control. We do not have to fear the possible results. We do not have to be afraid of the uncertainties that we face, because God is greater than all of them. The first promise is you don't have to be afraid. Are you afraid tonight?
Is a loved one of yours facing a disease that could take his or her life? I don't know if there is a greater burden that can come to a person than that. Are you facing the prospect of a divorce that you don't want? What a tremendous burden that is. What pressure. Are you facing the possibility of having to pick up your family and move because your job is being phased out here? That's a burden.
Whatever your burden may be, whatever the prospects, the unknowns, the uncertainties, you don't have to be afraid. That's the promise of God. The second promise that I see in this text that we read, quoting the prophet Jehaziel, is that the battle is God's, not yours. You and I can absolutely wear ourselves out in battles that God never intended for us to fight. The battle is not yours, he says. It's God's battle if you give it to him.
You may be very weary tonight because you have been fighting and struggling with pressures and problems that you can't handle. Please understand God knows you can't handle them. He's waiting for you to learn that. He wants you to let go and give that battle to him because it's his, not yours, to fight. That's a promise. Those first two promises rest upon the final one, and that is that the Lord is with us. The Lord is with Judah in that day. The Lord is with us today in facing our problems.
We should not run from them, but we should face them just as God told his people then to do. He said, you go out there and face them, I'll be with you. It's more human to run. It's more human to turn tail and take off in the other direction. You know when we do that, those problems have a way of tracing our trail, don't they? Have you ever noticed that in life? If you don't face a problem, it has a tendency to pop up again.
God wants us to understand that we should face our problems because he is with us. We don't have to face them by ourselves. The blessing that God wanted to give his people was in respect to the promises, and it still is today. The promises are ours if we will proclaim them by faith, and that's what the people did here. It says, they arose early in the morning, they went out to the wilderness of Tekoa.
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 loving kindness is everlasting.
So he led them out that next day, and they stationed themselves. They stood by to see what God was going to do. Blessing comes in respect to the promises. As we've read the text, we've come to the final lesson I want us to see, and that is that blessing should result in praise. And blessing should lead us to worship, as it did these people. Interesting, they put the musicians out there in front, those who would be singing praise to the Lord in their holy attire.
It even gives us the scripture song they were singing there at the end of verse 21. And when they began singing and praising, notice that, when they began singing and praising, do you understand the power of praise? Hell stops up its ears when the people of God begin to praise him. It cannot stand a praising, singing people. That's why we believe so strongly around here in singing, in praising God and worshiping him in music.
It says, when they began to do that, the Lord set ambushes against the sons of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judas, so they were routed. Now it's possible that there were marauders or inhabitants of that area that ambushed them. That's possible. But I think the better explanation is a supernatural one. I believe that God sent an army of angels that materialized and fought against these people who were coming against Judah.
And so overwhelming was this army of the Lord that these enemies were routed. It says 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. So you see they were ambushed, I believe, by an angelic army. And at the same time, God changed their hearts and they began to fight among themselves.
The two sides taking side against one, and when that side was done, then these two began to fight among themselves until they were wiped out. And it says, 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. Everybody was dead in that army. Here's the blessing. God delivered His people. And when Jehoshaphat and his people came to take their spoil, they found much among them.
And it says, they were three days taking the spoil because there was so much. On the fourth day, they assembled in the valley of Baraka, for they blessed the Lord. There they blessed the Lord. Therefore, they have named that place the Valley of Baraka until today. The Hebrew word Baraka means blessing. The lessons from the Valley of Blessing. They named this valley the Valley of Baraka because there God was blessed by His delivered people.
And it says, every man of Judah and Jerusalem returned with Jehoshaphat at their head, returning to Jerusalem with joy, for the Lord had made them to rejoice over their enemies. And they came to Jerusalem with harps, lyres, and trumpets to the house of the Lord. What a grand procession, being led by the musicians who were playing on their instruments, crying out, praising God. The point here is that blessing should result in praise.
Let us always be careful to give God praise when He pours out His blessing upon us. The blessing of the Lord, I should say the praise of the Lord, came even before the victory was there. But then it continued after the victory was theirs. And all of this that happened caused great fear to be upon the surrounding nations. It says the dread of God was on all the kingdoms of the lands when they heard that the Lord had fought against the enemies of Israel.
So the kingdom of Jehoshaphat was at peace, for His God gave Him rest on all sides. God knows when we need a burden, and God knows when we need a rest. God graciously gives us time of refreshment and rest after He has allowed pressures to come into our lives. Am I talking to someone tonight who is in the valley of pressure? Are you in the valley of burden?
Will you there in that valley apply these lessons from the example of Jehoshaphat so that that valley of burden will become a valley of blessing? Believe me that God wants to do much more for you than you desire Him to do. And as you pray in response to that burden, remember you are not overcoming God's reluctance, you are laying hold of God's willingness. As you pray, remember not only does prayer change things, but more true, prayer changes us.
Through our praying, God changes us so that God can do in and for us all that He wants to do. Blessing is in relation to pressures that God brings into your life. Blessing is in response to prayers. Blessing is in relation to God's promises, and blessing should result in praise from our lives. Let's pray together. I don't know where you are in the cycle of your walk with God right now. You are at a time of rest, a time of refreshment. Thank God for it, friend.
But there are some tonight who are in that valley of threat, and you are tempted to be fearful. Follow Jehoshaphat's example. Apply these lessons, won't you? Let God turn that valley to the valley of Baraka in your life. Father, thank you that you never allow our burdens to be so great that we are overwhelmed unless we forget you and allow ourselves to be overwhelmed. Teach us, I pray, to trust, to pray, to claim the promises. Prepare us to receive what you want to give us.
Rejoice and purify us so that we might be the channels of blessing that you want us to be. Forgive us if we have seen you as reluctant to help us, and show us afresh how willing you are to aid us. O God, may someone or some several tonight lay hold of that truth and find that valley of Baraka in their lives. In Jesus' name, amen.