The following message was recorded at Antioch Presbyterian Church, an historic and charter congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America, ministering to upstate South Carolina since 1843. Come and visit us at the crossroads of Greenville and Spartanburg counties. Experience our past and be a part of our future. For more information, visit antiochpca.com. It's a privilege for me to be here. I'm grateful to my good friend, Zach, for his willingness to let me loose on the congregation at Antioch PCA. It's a pleasure to be with you. And I do want to thank Zach for his willingness to trial that new hymn that we just sung. Three weeks ago, I preached at the funeral service of one of the ministers in my presbytery, Stephen Dancer. He was 62. Wonderful man. A Scot like me. He had labored faithfully in one of the suburbs of Birmingham, one of the great cities in England, for 17 years or so. He came into the ministry late. He had studied a doctorate in aeronautics at Glasgow University, worked for Rolls-Royce. And one day, I think in 2004, my phone rang, and this voice said, you don't know me, but I've been given your name. My name is Stephen Dancer. I'm an aeronautical engineer. I believe God has called me to the gospel ministry. I'm a Presbyterian, but there are no Presbyterian churches in England. What can I do?" And that began our friendship. He came eventually to study theology under the oversight of my presbytery. I was privileged to have some input into his teaching. He graduated wonderfully well. Then earlier this year he had a kidney transplant and his health deteriorated. I spoke to him in hospital the day he died, little knowing, little knowing, a few short hours later he would be with the Lord. I mention that because we sang that hymn at the funeral service. And I thought it a wonderful expression of the believer's hope in life and death as the Heidelberg Catechism begins. And I hope as we reflect on Jehoshaphat's prayer in 2 Chronicles 20 that we will Be conscious that all of us stand on the very edge of eternity. We're all of us a breath away from life ending, and we trust by the grace of God, life beginning. So as we ponder these words, may the Lord enable us to hear them as men and women, boys and girls, who stand on the threshold of eternity. As I said, we find ourselves here in the early years of the ninth century before Christ, round about the year 880 B.C. or so. Jehoshaphat came to the throne at the age of 35. He reigned for 25 years. And now we read about a critical moment in his life as the king of the southern kingdom of Judah. Rebel forces are amassing on his borders. so much so that they are described as a horde, a great multitude is coming against you from Edom. But what I want to notice with you as we begin to reflect on these verses this morning is that actually, although the location, the geographical location for this crisis is the southern kingdom of Judah and the surrounding nations that are seeking to throw off the yoke of Judah and assert their own sovereignty and independence. Actually, what we're encountering here is a cosmic conflict. Whenever you read the Bible, and wherever you read in the Bible, you're in the midst of conflict, cosmic conflict, kingdom against kingdom. We're not dealing here with a little localized event in the Near East, although, of course, in one sense we are. We're dealing here with a further eruption of that cosmic conflict that God himself initiated in the wake of Adam and Eve's rebellion against him in the garden, Genesis chapter 3. You remember how they listened to the serpent. And rather than heed the word of the Lord, they listened to the lie of the serpent. And the Lord comes, and He addresses the serpent, Satan behind the serpent, and says, from this moment on, I will put enmity between you and the woman. between your seed and her seed. You will strike at his heel. He will crush your head." God is instituting a cosmic conflict, kingdom against kingdom. And the whole Bible is really an unfolding, escalating exposition of that cosmic conflict of drama. No matter where you are in the Bible, you're in the midst of cosmic conflict. Now, it may not appear like that. There are passages in the Bible that are relatively tranquil. And you could almost be seduced into thinking, well, this is the life of faith. that the reality is that while the Lord may grant us punctuating seasons of tranquility, the deeper reality is that even that tranquility is embedded in a cosmic conflict which will come to its actual climax on Calvary's cross when the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. and spoil principalities and powers. And that reality will come to its eschatological fulfillment when he comes again and publicly not only declares but brings to nothing the powers of darkness. So while we're reading here about Jehoshaphat and the people of Edom and Moab and the Munites, whoever they were, We need to remember that this is a conflict that is vaster, wider, deeper, profounder than the little geographical context in which we find this situation. I think it's important that we understand that every time we open the Word of God, God is saying to us, behold your God. One of the great dangers we have as Christian believers, if we are Christian believers, is that we come to the Scriptures searching for help and hope. Now, there is help to be had and there is hope to be given. Don't misunderstand me. But the help that's to be had and the hope that's to be given is embedded in understanding who our God is. Behold your God. Wherever you are in Holy Scripture, as you're wrestling through the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles, name after name after name, and you're thinking, what's the point of all of this? God is saying, behold, you're God. And we have to apply ourselves and seek the help of others. And in the Lord's goodness, He's given us pastors and teachers to spend time reflecting on the Word of God so that we can begin to begin together to realize that on every page of Holy Scripture, God is saying, do you know me? Do you behold who I am? And this is something that Jehoshaphat has understood Imperfectly, indeed, he was a man who did much for the cause of God and godliness in his time, but there were things he left undone. But he understood, as we read in verse 12, which will be the essential, if not the exclusive, focus of our concern this morning. Lord, we do not know what to do. but our eyes are on you. Where are your eyes this morning? Where are the eyes of your heart? Where are your eyes looking to this morning? I want to notice first of all with you, and really very simply, that there are times when believers just don't know what to do. Jehoshaphat hears news, these opening verses, of a great multitude coming against him. And he's afraid, and he sets his face to seek the Lord. And in verse 12, he gathers up his thoughts, and he says, Lord, we don't know what to do. We don't know what to do. We don't have any clue as to what the right course of action should be. You see, God has not given us people a playbook. Now, I don't know much about American football, thankfully. It's the most dullest game I've ever encountered in my life. All these big men bashing into each other to get a few downs. Anyway, they all work to a playbook, don't they? Now, God's not given us a playbook. You know, when you're in this context, page 34, that's where you need to go. If you're not sure about whether to go here or go there, that's page 72. If you're wondering, is she the right one or is he the right one, oh, that's page two. God's not given us a playbook. And what we need to understand in the life of faith, that the life of faith can be complex. can be full of dread, can be punctuated with bewilderments that leave you stunned and speechless. I remember as a young Christian meeting other Christians who were saying to me, Ian, there's a second blessing that lifts you above the ordinary. There's another blessing that takes you out of the struggle and brings you into the higher life. that enables you to live above the conflicts and the struggles that so many other Christians have. Ian, there's a second blessing. And I was a young believer. I had no background in anything. And I remember going along to one or two of these house conferences, but I remember listening and thinking, I just don't find that in the Bible. This is foreign. Even to the life of my Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who knew unceasing conflict, the sinless One, the Holy One of God, and He experienced all through His life conflict, controversy, trial, trouble, even to the point where He cries out, My life has amounted to nothing. It's a waste and vanity! Did Jesus ever say that? Absolutely he did. And I hope you know where he said it. He even uses language that is stark, My life has amounted to tochu, a Hebrew word you first encountered at the beginning of Genesis 1. The earth was without form. My life is formless and hebel, vanity of vanities. The second servant's song in Isaiah chapter 49 verse 4, in his sinless holy humanity, the Lord knew the exigencies of the life of faith. He didn't cruise to glory. He lived an embattled life. It cost our Savior to be holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. There was no conduit from the deity into the humanity that would have dehumanized him and disqualified him from being our Redeemer. We needed not a superman to stand before God, but one like unto us who could represent us and substitute himself for us as our covenant head. I find it a great comfort to read in the Bible that the life of faith can be a life of bewilderment and confusion and uncertainty. I remember preaching through the book of Habakkuk a few years ago and being struck by that. You'll know, people don't know much about Habakkuk, but they know two verses in Habakkuk, the just will live by faith, chapter 2, verse 4, and they know the words. God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. But actually, those words, chapter 1, verse 13 in Habakkuk, God, you have purer eyes than to behold iniquity, are not a theological declaration as to the sinlessness and purity of God. They are a bewilderment of a prophet who cannot understand God. He's saying, Lord, you have purer eyes than to behold iniquity, but you've raised up the Babylonians to smash your people. We're wicked, yes, we've done wrong, we've turned far from you, but you've raised up the Babylonians, that vile, godless people, to deal with us, to grind us into the dust, and you have purer eyes than to behold iniquity. It's an expression of existential, theological, experiential, believing bewilderment with God. the God whose ways are not our ways. And there will be times in your life and mine when you will just say, Lord, I'm at my wit's end. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. But then secondly, and more significantly, Notice that when believers don't know what to do, they actually know what to do. Lord, we do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you. And I want to reflect with you on what Jehoshaphat does when he doesn't know what to do. What does he actually do? Notice four things. First of all, he sets his face to seek the Lord. Verse three. Then Jehoshaphat was afraid, and he set his face to seek the Lord. And he assembles all of Judah to seek help from the Lord. And they came from all the cities of Judah to seek the Lord. When you don't know what to do, you seek the Lord. It was John Bunyan, I think, who said, you can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed. And that's what he does. He recognizes in the exigency and in the bewilderment and in his utter sense of inadequacy, the one thing he can do is to go to God. I don't know your circumstances or your situations this morning, just as you don't know mine. But whatever your situation or circumstances, this is where you begin. You seek the Lord. You seek His face. Because God has not kept Himself hidden, as we'll see. He's not a faceless God. He's not an abstraction. He's the Father of mercies. He's the God of all comfort. He is the God who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. And so the first thing he does here is to seek the Lord. But then secondly, in verses 5 through 11, he reminds the Lord of his covenant commitment to his people. The prophets and many others in the Scriptures are exceedingly bold with God. If we were to lose the psalter sung, read, preached through—in the Lord's kindness, I preached through the 150 psalms over thirty-seven years in ministry—if you lose the psalter, and especially, I think, singing the psalter You lose the reality, the honest-to-goodness, honest-to-God reality of what it means to be a child of God. Forty percent of the Psalms are laments. Isn't that remarkable? Here's the songbook of the Lord Jesus Christ. And four times out of ten, he's singing a lament. And here they are, here is Jehoshaphat, and he boldly is saying to the Lord, O Lord God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? To my shame, I think so often I read the Bible flatly. I don't get into the landscape, the topography of the Scriptures. We don't differentiate active verbs and passive verbs. We need to learn to read the Scriptures within the emotive nature of the language of Scripture. Remember Paul's words to Timothy? give careful attention to the public reading of Scripture, literally be addicted to the public reading of Scripture. That's why we shouldn't just have anyone on some kind of rotation to read the Word of God. It needs to be read theologically, existentially, experientially, emotively. And Jehoshaphat is saying, O Lord God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. In your hand are power and might, so that none is able to withstand you. Now, the Lord knows that. Did you not, our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, give it forever to the descendants of Abraham, your friend? and they have lived in it, have built for you in it a sanctuary for your name." Do you see what he's saying? He's saying, Lord, Lord, waken up. You're thinking, well, does he? Psalm 44, four times the psalmist uses, if I remember, imperative verbs. He commands God. Have you ever commanded God? You say, I wouldn't dare to command God. The Word of God reveals to us men who were bold enough to say, Lord, awake! Are you sleeping? Awake, Lord, we're your people, called by your name. Four times, four imperative commands. We've built a sanctuary for your name. What's at issue, Lord, is not Jehoshaphat. It's your name, the public honor of your name that is at the issue here. And so he reminds the Lord of his covenant commitment to his people. He's saying, Lord, we're your people. Stand by us. Come to our aid. Support us. And that's something that we greatly need to learn to do when we find ourselves in troubles and trials and difficulties and we don't know where to turn or what to do or what to say. We need to say, Lord, I am yours. You have made me Yours. You've covenanted Yourself to me. You have pledged Yourself to me. And we can take it beyond ourselves. We can bring to the Lord His promises, His covenant commitments to His people. Lord, have you not promised, I will build my church? Lord, You've promised it. Now do it. Be pleased to do it to the praise of Your glory. He's reminding the Lord. And you're thinking, well, but does God ever need reminding? Don't be silly. Of course not. But he loves to be reminded. He loves to be reminded. It's like little children coming to their father. And before they even come, the father knows what they're going to say. But the father doesn't say, OK, that's it. The father just says, come on. What's in your heart? The third thing he does, beginning of verse 12, is to acknowledge his helplessness and the people's helplessness. We do not know what to do. Beware of Christians, often well-meaning Christians, but beware of Christians who've got answers for everything, for whom the life of faith is straightforward, no dark valleys, who want to give slick answers, easy answers to complex, difficult problems. Lord, we don't know what to do. Acknowledgement of helplessness is A, one of the marks of authentic saving faith, and secondly, it's one of the marks of a life that God is pleased to bless. We never come to God ever with anything in our hands, nothing in my hands I bring. We come to him every day helpless. But there are times, particular times, when that helplessness is accentuated and it's brought home to us and we feel the weight of it. And we acknowledge it, Lord, we don't know what to do. But then fourthly, and all of that really is the introduction. So fourthly, he confesses his faith. We don't know what to do, but. Don't you love these buts in the Bible? But. Our eyes are upon you. When we don't know what to do, we know what to do. Our eyes are upon our God. I want to notice two things in particular that we can see from Jehoshaphat's prayer, what he means by our eyes are upon you. Verse 7, he's saying, our eyes are upon you, our gracious God and Savior. Notice what he says in verse 7. Did you not, our God, our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land? How did God become their God? Was it because they were better than the rest? Was it because God looked upon them and said, well, you're a cut above the rest? Remember Deuteronomy 7, isn't it, where God says, don't think that I chose you because you were superior to the nations, that you were greater than the nations, better than the nations. He became their God by the sovereign, loving kindness, good pleasure, and mercy of God. You see, we never graduate beyond that wonderful reality, I am what I am, by the grace of God. We are what we are by the grace of God. When you drift from that, you drift and cut yourself off from the blessing of God. That's why in ministry we need pastors who are always holding up to us the grace of God in the gospel. You know, there's much else that pastors are called to do. They're called to challenge the people of God, to exhort the people of God, but supremely they're called to say, behold your God. Remember Martin Lloyd-Jones saying he could forgive a preacher anything as long as he gave him big thoughts of God. And right in those two little words, our God, Jehoshaphat is saying, our eyes are upon you. You have made us your own. We did not ask to be yours. We would never have asked to be yours. But you have made us yours. And that's why when we come to the Word of God, and especially in times of trial and uncertainty and bewilderment, we need to fix our eyes on who the Lord God is. I find it very striking, and I think that's such a poor word to use, but I'm not sure I can use a better word, that when Jesus is teaching his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, right at the beginning of his public ministry, in Matthew chapter 6, He tells them on ten occasions that God is their Father. Now, He's the high and the holy one who inhabits eternity. He is the infinite, the eternal, the unchangeable God. He's from everlasting to everlasting. There is none like unto him in the heavens above or on the earth beneath. But the one thing Jesus wants to get into the minds and hearts of these men whom he has called to be with him is that God is their father. That's to be the default of their relationship with God. through their union with Christ, through their adoption into the family of God in Christ. God is now their Father. That's why in the believer's extremity, when all around their soul is giving way, the child of God does not cry, oh great, high, holy, ineffable one. He or she cries out, Father, Father. The highest blessing of the gospel is adoption into the family of God. John Calvin, John Owen in particular, those two, Calvin in book three of the Institutes, John Owen, volume two, speak of the wonder of our adoption. Our eyes are upon our gracious God, who is ours. It's glorious, profound. And we need to learn to train our minds and hearts to focus. on who our God is. But then secondly, verse six, our time is limited, he goes on and says, our eyes are upon you, and he has said in verse six, you rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. The God of Israel isn't some territorial deity. He is the sovereign Lord of the heavens and the earth. It's a great tragedy that people think that divine sovereignty is a Calvinistic or Reformed shibboleth, or distinctive as it isn't. It's a biblical truth, and it's revealed to us, not as a conundrum to solve, but as a comfort to rest our weary heads and hearts upon. Whenever we speak of the sovereignty of God, we should speak of it with tenderness, with wonder, that the God who oversees my life is the ruler of all the nations. He's the sovereign Lord and Jehoshaphat, isn't he saying, Lord, we know you're not tangential to this crisis. We know that you're not far off. We know that you are the Lord of all the nations, orchestrating, deliberating, purposing all that is to happen according to the counsel of your own will. Remember how the apostles, Acts chapter four, exemplified that? Peter and John have been arraigned before the Sanhedrin and then they're released with threats and they return. Remember how the prayer begins? Do you remember? I hope you do. Sovereign Lord. Two words that put everything in context. Sovereign Lord. What they have done, they have done only according to your plan and purpose. And then they take it down to the cross. Pontius Pilate, the Jews. the leadership, they did what your will decreed and determined." Those two words, sovereign Lord, cast a glorious shadow over their prayer. They're saying, Lord, our lives are never at the mercy of circumstance. All that we are is embedded in the eternal counsels of your holy, wise, good, and perfect, if often to us, unfathomable will. I remember the first time I read Calvin's comments on Romans 4 verse 20, against hope, Abraham believed in hope. If you've got time, read the whole passage. He says, if I remember rightly, I did memorize it once, but maybe I can't remember all of it. He said, what are we to do when all our circumstances are in opposition to the Word of God? He says that he accounts us just, but our sins cover us. He says that we are beloved of Him, and yet outward signs threaten His wrath. He says that we are bound for glory, but we feel the disintegration of our humanity. What are we to do? What are we to do, says Calvin? And he says beautifully, simply this, we are to close our eyes, shut our ears, and say this, I believe God." You think, well, is that burying your head in the sand? No, it's burying your heart in God. The most significant thing about you and about me, I don't know all of you, I know some of you, the most significant thing about you is what you think about God. what you think about God. What is the first thought that comes to you when you think about God? The most significant thing about you is what you think about God. Remember in John 14, Philip says to Jesus, Lord, show us the Father, and that'll be enough. And Jesus said, I've been with you so long, you still don't know me. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. So where do we who live this side of the cross and resurrection and ascension of our Savior, where do we look? We look to Jesus Christ. who is the revelation of God. He's the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, who has made him known, who has exegesitored him, who has exegeted him. There's no un-Christ-likeness in God. And so when, I almost always want to say the Apostle Paul, but when the writer to the Hebrews, I think it was Paul, tell it not to the experts. The narrator to the Hebrews begins to sum up what he calls a brief word of exhortation or encouragement to these Hebrew Christians who are being tempted to turn back from Christ. He says, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, Oh, right, right, we're to look to Abraham and Moses and Elijah and David and Daniel. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us look away to Jesus, the author and finisher of faith. Look away, the force of the verb is, look away from yourself and your circumstances. Look away to Him, the author and finisher of faith. So, what do you do when you don't know what to do? You look to Him. You look to Him. The Christian life can be very, very hard, but at its heart, it's very simple. Look to Him. Look to me, all the ends of the earth, and be saved. Look to me, be assured that because I'm your God, you can trust me. Even when you cannot fathom me, even when all around your soul gives way, even when all the lights go out, you can trust me." And that's what Jehoshaphat did. And if you want to know what happens thereafter, read the rest of the chapter. It's a glorious conclusion. We don't know what to do, but our eyes are upon you. Well, let us pray together, and please stand with me as we pray. Lord, You are great and glorious. But for us who believe, the greatest thing about You is that in our Lord Jesus Christ, You are our Father in heaven. the Father who loved us and who spared not his only Son for us, the Father who has pledged himself in blood to be for us unto all eternity. We pray, Lord, that your word will dwell richly within our hearts, that we will know the grace of it, the truth of it, the comfort of it, As we live out our days in a dark and dying world, Lord, enable us every day to look away to Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, in whose name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to this message from Antioch Presbyterian Church. For more information about Antioch, visit us at our website at antiochpca.com.