Let's open up our Bibles in 2 Chronicles 20, verses 1-30. It will be a big portion, but I think it's worth it to read. 2 Chronicles 20, verses 1-30. This says the Word of God. After this, the Moabites and Ammonites, and with them some of the Meonites, came against Jehoshaphat for a battle. Some men came and told Jehoshaphat, a great multitude is coming against you from Edom, from beyond the sea. And behold, they are in Hazazam Tamar, that is, Engeri. Then Jehoshaphat was afraid and set his face to seek the Lord. and proclaim a fast throughout all Judah. And Judah assembled to seek help from the Lord. From all the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord. And Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, and in the house of the Lord, before the new court, and said, 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. Did you not, O God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people, Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham, your friend? And they have lived in it and have built for you in a sanctuary for your name, saying, If disaster comes upon us, the sword, the judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house and before you, for your name is in this house, and cry out to you in your affliction, and you will hear and save. And now behold the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, whom you would not let Israel invade when they came from the land of Egypt. and whom they avoided, He did not destroy. Behold, they reward us by coming to drive us out of your possession, which you have given us to inherit. O our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you." Meanwhile, all Judah stood before the Lord with their little ones, their wives, and their children. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jehoshua, the son of Zechariah, son of Benaiah, son of Jael, son of Mithaniah, and the Levite of the sons of Asaph, in the midst of the assembly. And he said, Listen, all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, and King Jehoshaphat, thus says the Lord to you, Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours, but God's. Tomorrow go down against them. Behold, they will come up by the ascent of Zeus. You will find them at the end of the valley, east of the wilderness of Jerual. You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf. O Judah and Jerusalem." Do not be afraid, and do not be dismayed. Tomorrow, go out against them, and the Lord will be with you." Then 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. And the Levites of the Korahites stood up to praise the Lord, the God of Israel, with a very loud voice. And they rose early in the morning and went out into the wilderness of Tekoa. And when they went out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, Hear me, Judah, an inhabitant of Jerusalem. Believe in the Lord your God, and you will be established. Believe His prophets, and you will succeed. And when he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the Lord and praise Him in holy attire as they went before the army and say, Give thanks to the Lord, for His steadfast love endures forever. And when they began to sing and praise, the Lord set an ambush against the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah, so that they were routed. For the men of Ammon and Moab rose against the inhabitants of Mount Seir, devoting them to destruction. And when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, they all helped to destroy one another. When Judah came to the watch over of the wilderness, they looked toward the hoard, and behold, there were dead bodies lying on the ground. None had escaped. When Jehoshaphat and his people came to take their spoil, they found among them in great numbers goods, clothing, and precious things, which they took for themselves until they could carry no more. They were three days in taking the spoil. It was so much. On the fourth day, they assembled in the Valley of Berechah, for there they blessed the Lord. Therefore, the name of that place had been called the Valley of Berechah to this day. Then they returned, every man of Judah and Jerusalem and Jehoshaphat at their head, returning to Jerusalem with joy, for the Lord had made them rejoice over their enemies. They came to Jerusalem with harps and lyres and trumpets to the house of the Lord. And the fear of God came on all the kingdoms of the countries when they heard that the Lord had fought against the enemies of Israel. So the realm of Jehoshaphat was quiet, for his God gave him rest all around. Let's seek the face of the Lord in prayer and ask him for a blessing. Dear Holy Spirit, enlighten our minds and our hearts, open our ears to hear Your voice this morning, to be rebuked, to be confronted, to be comforted by Your Word. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. When we think about prayer or a motto for prayer, usually we think about the Lord's Prayer. Jesus Christ, in His time on earth, He taught us how to pray in a very simple and practical way. First, in this prayer, we praise God, we ask His kingdom to come. Then we pray for our daily bread, our daily and physical needs. We also pray for forgiveness, which are our spiritual needs. We also ask for deliverance from evil and from temptations. This is a compact way that Jesus taught us how to pray. It's not exhaustive, but it's foundational. So here we find, in the Lord's Prayer, we find basically every kind of petition that we can bring to our Lord in prayer, but in short sentences. But God does not leave us only with the Lord's prayer for us to learn how to pray. He also gives us many instances and many examples in the Bible of godly people, godly men and women praying in their time of need. And in our text this evening, 2 Chronicles 20, is an excellent example of this godly prayer from this godly king. I want us to see in the text how Jehoshaphat addresses God in his time of need and how God answers him and how God delivers him and his people. I'm going to look at this prayer of Jehoshaphat under three topics. First, Jehoshaphat's plea for help. Second, God's response. And third, God's deliverance. So first of all, the plea for help. King Jehoshaphat is one of the few kings in Israel and in Judah who was truly faithful to the Lord. In the midst of idolatry, pragmatism, and spiritual blindness, God raised him and sustained him to rule over his people and to lead him to God instead of other gods, instead of false gods. This is what we read in chapter 17 of this same book. Verse 3 of chapter 17 says that Jehoshaphat walked in the ways of David. He kept the commandments of God. Verse 6 of chapter 17 says that his heart was courageous in the ways of the Lord. He followed God fully in his life with boldness and with braveness. And because of that, God blessed him. God blessed his kingdom, establishing his kingdom among men. And this brought Jehoshaphat to be a rich king with many honors among the nations. And in chapter 19, we read about the reformation that he brought to Jerusalem, a spiritual reformation, where he destroyed all the altars of the false gods, and he established righteous judges to judge the people, and Levites to work in the worship of the true God. However, he was not free from God's providential trials in his life. In verse 1 of our chapter, chapter 20, we read that the Moabites and the Ammonites came against him for a battle. And by this we can draw our first application of this text. That God's trials, God's tribulations also come for those who are faithful to him. God's heavy hand sometimes falls upon his own people. Your faithfulness to God, dear believer, is not a free-of-trials ticket in this life. You cannot live your Christian life expecting that God will reward you with no trials in this life, with no difficulties. Remember that we live in a sinful world, in a fallen world, in a broken world. Everything that our hands touch is with sin, is cursed by sin, as well as our own hands. We ourselves are cursed by sin. So if you are going through a hard time, if you're going to trials right now, this is not necessarily because you're not being faithful enough, or because you're not being obedient enough, or because of your sins. Don't think your trials and your tribulations are always a consequence of your sins. Godly people also go through difficulty in life. It's not necessarily because God wants to punish them for anything that they did. This is not a one-to-one correlation. If it were, imagine how the world would be. Today will be chaotic a thousand more times than it is now. But we, on the other hand, we cannot also deny that this also can happen, even with Christians. And we need to be wise and humble enough to admit it in our lives. God also brings tribulations sometimes because of the hardness of our heart. For instance, if you're a believer and you're trying to find someone to get married, and you choose someone who is an unbeliever, of course you have trials in your marriage, in your life, and will be that because of your sin. So of course that this can happen. But either way, God sends those hard times for us. Even in the second example, in this example that I just gave, God sends those things, those trials, so we can come closer to Him. When we see ourselves helpless and needy, it's the time when we tend to go before our God more often and with more fervency. Probably you already experienced this in your life. If you had someone you love who were sick or died, no matter how consistent you were or your prayer life or your daily devotion were, if you go through those times, you cling even more to God in prayer. This is what God does to us through hard times. Even though we don't know exactly what God wants to teach us or why God sent those trials in our lives, one thing we can be sure, this is for us to be more like Jesus. Those challenges in our lives are nothing more than our loving Father transforming us into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. We find this truth throughout the Bible. I'm going to quote two Bible verses. 1st Romans 5, verses 3 to 5, it says, We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame. Trials in the life of the believers brings this blessed chain that the Apostle Paul brings here in Romans 5. or we can be sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Also in James 1, verses 2-4 brings the same truth. It says, "...count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you might be perfect and complete like nothing." The more trials of various kinds press us, the more we cling to Jesus, the more we cling to the cross, the more we become dependent on Him, and the more we grow in grace. And this was exactly what Jehoshaphat did in our text this evening. He was being pressed by his enemies all around. And verse 3 said that he was afraid. He was terrified. He was in a complete despair. But as soon as we read of his fear, we also read that he set his face to seek the Lord. He didn't even think about what to do next. The first thing that he did after being confronted with his enemies, with his anxiety, with his fear, was to seek the face of the Lord. The first thing that he did. And we are in similar situations. Sometimes we try everything before we go to the Lord. How many times have you turned to your medicine after times of anxiety before to go to the Lord? How many times you just close your eyes and deny the consequences that are coming against you before asking the blessing of the Lord to go through those times? How many times you fled from your fears and gone to any other thing or any other person or any other method instead of seeking the Lord first? Yehoshaphat did not excitate in this time of anxiety and fear. As soon as he saw himself in this circumstance, he called upon the name of the Lord. This should be our reaction in our trials too, dear church family. There should be no doubt about what to do with our fears and anxieties. It should be our first reaction, our first response to seek the face of the Lord. As Philippians 4.7 says, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, bring or present your request to God and the peace of God who transcends all understanding will guard your mind and heart in Christ Jesus. That's when we are in those situations and we seek the face of the Lord is that when God starts to work in us too. But notice how powerful Jehoshaphat's prayer is. And his prayer is not powerful because of how he pours himself or how beautiful those words are. His prayer was powerful because he clinged to three specific things that I want you to see. He reminds God, first, his attributes, second, his promises, and third, his covenant. And this is what makes this prayer so beautiful and so powerful. Jehoshaphat uses the attributes of God, his own promises, and his covenant in order to make himself heard by God. He uses those three things in his prayer almost as if he was pressing God against himself. As he was putting God on the spot, so to speak. Not in a demanding way, of course. But giving reasons for God to hear him. Out of his despair and necessity. And none of those reasons resides in Jehoshaphat himself. But in God himself. His wrestling with God in prayer. Not only himself, but also all the people of God in Judah. was taking hold of God's promises, His covenant, His attributes. This is why this prayer is so powerful. Look what He says in verse 6. He asks, It's almost as if He's challenging God to do something in this situation because of His power, because of who He is. Again, Jehoshaphat is not being demanding here, but acknowledging God's attributes and confessing that he is the only one who can help him in this circumstance. This appeal to God's attributes is a display of his faith in God's attributes. He clings to God's attributes because he believes that he is what he says he is. There's an aspect of faith here. But Jehoshaphat also takes hold of God's promises. In his prayer, he reminds God of his own promises concerning prayer and concerning his own people. God himself had promised to his people that he will hear their prayers. This we find in the famous chapter, 2 Chronicles 7, verse 14. If my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face, then I will hear from heaven. Verse 9 of our text is alluding, is quoting from Solomon's prayer of dedication when he had finished building God's temple in Jerusalem. And then God spoke to him and to the people and promised to hear his people's prayer and to save his people in times of distress. This is what Jehoshaphat is doing in this prayer. He's giving God reasons for Him to listen to His prayer. And those reasons are all God-centered. There's nothing about Him. It's all about God. And Jehoshaphat goes even further. He also resorts to God's covenant. And this is one of the most powerful things that we can do in our prayers, to appeal to God's covenant. When we do this, we are inciting God to act according to His own being, according to His own words, and even according to His own heart. Look at verse 7. The end of verse 7 talks about Abraham, your friend. Abraham, your friend. It could be also understood as, Abraham, your beloved, Abraham, the one you love. He's referring to Abraham as the one whom God voluntarily bound himself to in a covenant of grace. Jehoshaphat is appealing to God's own heart of compassion for sinners. He's appealing to God's covenant of grace in which God committed himself to love sinners. in which God chooses to show love for sinners because of His Word and His covenant. And if God shows love for Abraham and chooses him to love him and his descendants, so we, as his sons and daughters by faith, can also be heard and loved by him. This is how Jehoshaphat is thinking in his prayer. This is his rationale. And this should be ours too. Because the love of God for sinners is a covenantal love. This means that God loves sinners through the mediator of this covenant. The love of God for sinners is through Jesus Christ. It's a covenantal love. This means that as long as God loves Jesus, He will love sinners. And as long as Jesus remains faithful to Himself and to His Father, He will love sinners. When do you think God will stop loving His Son? When do you think God will stop loving His Father and being faithful to Him in this marvelous covenant between the Trinity? Never. As long as the Father loves His Son, His only begotten Son, we can come to God through Jesus and be sure that He will hear our prayers and be merciful to us. How many times do we come to the presence of the living God, remembering His covenant of grace? By the way, this is why we say at the end of the prayer, in Jesus' name we pray. This is not a magical formula. This is a way to say, God, hear our prayers because we are praying in union with Christ. We are united with Jesus. And because of this, hear our prayer because we know that you love your son. So please love us too. And why does Jehoshaphat cling to God's promises, God's attributes and God's covenant? Verse 12 is the answer. For we are powerless against this great horror that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you. Dear church family, prayer in and of itself is an evidence of our powerlessness. There are many times in our lives that we are just like Jehoshaphat. We simply don't know what to do. We don't know what to say or where to go. And in those situations, our faith is tested. Our trust in the Lord is challenged. In those times, we need to fix our eyes on Jesus. Because we are weak. We don't have the strength in ourselves to overcome any of our enemies. We need to fix our eyes on Him. And what does it mean to fix our eyes on Jesus? How do we do this in practice? Well, this is not so much something that you do with your hands, but it's something that you do with your heart. To fix your eyes upon the Lord is nothing more than to have faith in Him, true faith in Him, true faith in Jesus Christ, a firm faith in Him. When we fix our eyes upon Jesus, we decide not to let any of our troubles to disturb our minds. We don't let any of our circumstances take over our hearts because we rest in Jesus. Our eyes are on Him because He is the only one who is powerful enough and who does know what to do. When we fix our eyes on Jesus, we are trusting that He can take care of all our troubles. And we can wait for Him to resolve it all. Notice that Jehoshaphat had a very established kingdom, as we read before, as I talked before in chapter 17 and chapter 19. He had horses, he had chariots, he had mighty men. He was a powerful king, but he says, I am powerless. He went to the Lord first. He knew that it didn't matter how powerful he was on earth. He needed and he depended upon God for help and for salvation and for deliverance. He did not trust in His horses and His chariots and His mighty men. Is that your certainty also, dear believer? Whatever you might be going through, do you fix your eyes on God alone, on Jesus Christ, His Son? You have faith that He can deal with your troubles, that He will deal with your troubles. If you go to Him, He can take care of you. And even though He might not deliver you from your disease or from your financial troubles or whatever you are going through, He can use those things to strengthen your faith. In those situations, We cling to God even more. This is what God wants from us. We become more dependent upon Him. And consequently, we will become more satisfied in Him, complete in Him. This is what it means to fix our eyes upon Jesus, to rest in Him, to trust in Him. To rest in His sovereignty, knowing that our Heavenly Father knows what He does with us in our lives. And it is all for our good, our ultimate good. In verses 13 to 20, we find God's amazing answer to Jehoshaphat's prayer. This is our second point. Look at verse 15. Do not be afraid or do not be dismayed at this great horror, for the battle is not yours, but God's. In those few words, we have two great references, two amazing episodes of God's deliverance in the Old Covenant. First, Joshua. Joshua 1.9. Be strong and courageous. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God The covenant formula, your God, He's your personal God. The Lord, your God, will be with you wherever you go. In His answer to Jehoshaphat, God is reminding him that He will keep His covenant, that He will be with them wherever they might go, whatever happens. And what happened in the context of Joshua after God gave him this encouragement? He started to give victory to the people of Israel. Victory over their enemies. They started to conquer the land. So as God answers Jehoshaphat's prayer, He's bringing back to his memory the victorious journey of the people of Israel in the time of Joshua. And showing Jehoshaphat that this is what will happen with him, with them. Verse 15 of our text also brings another important episode to mind. If you go to 1 Samuel 17, verse 47, you'll find the account of David and Goliath. And in verse 47 of 1 Samuel 17, we see a similar construction that we have in our text this evening. It says, David talking to his fellow Israelites, The great deliverance from God he brought to his people through David, is also reminded here. In other words, God is saying to Jehoshaphat, you don't need to worry. This is not your business to worry about it. I am the God of David. I am the God of Joshua. I'm your God. And I will be with you and I will deliver you. With those two pictures, God is showing Jehoshaphat that the same way He gave victory to Joshua and David over their enemies, He will also give it to him. And why? Because this is not Jehoshaphat's battle. This is the Lord's battle. God is the person who has the most interest in this battle. And why? Because of the throne of David. It would be through the kingdom of Judah, through the kings of Judah, that God would bring Jesus Christ, the King of kings. So if Jehoshaphat would destroy in this day, there would be no Jesus Christ. There would be no salvation for sinners. This is why this is the Lord's battle. He will fight. He will take care of the enemies. God goes even further and He uses one more reference to His own power in the past. In verse 17, He says, God is reminding them about the episode of Exodus 14 as God delivers the people from Egypt, from Pharaoh. And in verse 13 of Exodus 14, Moses said to the people, while they are surrounded by the Egyptians behind them and by the Red Sea before them, and Moses said to the people, fear not, stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. Almost the same words. Your congregation are, although our text here this evening is talking about a real battle, an actual war, And the struggle that really happened with Jehoshaphat in his time, we can also apply those truths about God in our spiritual battles, in our warfare against our sins. And in this kind of war, in this spiritual warfare, all you have to do is to stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the Lord, fixing your eyes on Jesus. Our natural reality before our sins is the same as Jehoshaphat. We are helpless. We are helpless against our own sins, against our own enemies. We are totally dependent upon God, even in our sanctification. But notice that this is not a call for spiritual laziness, in which you just say, I trust that God will take care of my sins, I will let Him to be sovereign and do all His work. No. Sanctification is when human responsibility and sovereignty of God are intertwined in a mysterious way. And the Bible affirms both. As we read the famous passage of Philippians 2, Work your own salvation, do something, repent of your sins, but know that God is sovereign over all. The same thing is here in our text this evening. God does not say to the people to stay at home, just relax and see the salvation of the Lord. No, He says, stand firm, hold your position and see the salvation of the Lord. Do something, go to the battle, but fix your eyes on your captain, on Jesus Christ, and receive His grace. When we do not understand those two things, this is when our sins start to take over us. And this is many times why we cannot overcome our sins. Because we are not understanding rightly, correctly, those two imperatives. To know that God is sovereign, but to know that we have to fight against our sins. In our Reformed circles, it's very common to hear people say, or we say this every time, that we cannot overcome our sins with our own strength. But what does that mean? And how do we know whether we are relying on our own strength or not? One of the ways we do it, that we rely on our own strength to try to get over our sins, is when we despise prayer and the power of prayer. And we stop praying about our sins, or asking forgiveness, or asking victory over our sins in our daily prayer. And we stop relying on the power of prayer. is when we start to live our lives indulgently and we cannot overcome our sins. Another way in which we rely on our own strength to overcome our sins is when we keep our sins in secret. We are full of shame because of our sins that we don't want to share with our brothers and sisters, we don't want to share it with anyone. Most likely what happens is that we will not be able to overcome those sins because of the lack of accountability. This is one of the ways God has ordained in His Word for us to overcome sin, to confess sins to one another. And then God uses those brothers and sisters to minister to us, to help us, to strengthen us, to rebuke us. So don't keep your sins in secret. Most likely, if you do that, you won't be able to overcome your own sins. In our mortification, we are called to do something against our flesh. against our own sins and confessing them to one another is one of the ways of doing it. We need to stand firm, to hold our positions and to trust that God will perform a marvelous work on our behalf. This is the only way to thrive in sanctification. And finally, verses 22-30, we find how God delivered Judah and Jehoshaphat from destruction. This is our third and last point, God's deliverance. As Jehoshaphat and all the people of Judah sought the face of the Lord, they found him and God show his mercy by a miraculous deliverance. And the description here is in some certain sense very similar to what we have with Jericho with all the noise and the praise that they praise God in verses 21 and 22. And also the spoils and the destruction, all the bodies laying down is also very similar to what we have again in Acts 14 with the Egyptians and the people of God. But the point of this account is first of all to show that God answers the prayers of His saints. And He not only delivers His people, as Jehoshaphat asked, but He also gives a lot more. The text in verse 25 said that they spent three whole days taking all the spoils and they still couldn't get it all. But notice that the purpose of the victory It was not for the sake of Jehoshaphat himself, of course, but for his own namesake, for God's namesake. Verse 29 says, And the fear of God came to all kingdoms of the countries when they heard that the Lord had fought against the enemies of Israel. That was the purpose, to bring forth the glory of God to the world, to bring the fear of Yahweh to other nations. And this word fear here is not the same as we are used to hear about fear in God or that we have so much in Proverbs. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This word fear is more like a terror, a dread. So that the dread and terror of God might be brought forth to the whole world. The purpose of God answering Jehoshaphat's prayer That way is for us to make God known, and His wrath known, and His kingdom known in all the nations. And this is our purpose as a church too, to make God known among men, to make God fear among unbelievers. Because of His justice, because of His condemnation, and because of what He can do with His enemies. And it's very common people criticize the preaching of hell and condemnation because this is too dry and we need to get people to the Gospel by love only. But the message of the Gospel can only be good news if we understand first the bad news. That we are sinners and God is ready to condemn us. And how is God made known by us, by the Church today, in our days, in our world? How they can fear God is by the preaching of the Gospel, of course. Also by our lives, also by our good works. This is the teaching of Christ in the Sermon on the Mountain. Christians are the light of this world. And when our light shines in this world, the unbelievers glorify God. But the only way for the world to see this is when they see Christ in us clearly. Not only in our works, but also in our preaching. When we preach God's truth to our friends who are unbelieving friends. The work of God in our lives is not for ourselves, it's individualistic, it's not. It is for the whole world, for us to make disciples of every nation. When I look back to my own life, there were many people that I met, and I didn't witness Christ to them. This fills my heart with regret and shame, because on the last day, We will be all standing before God, and they will point at me, they will point at you, and they will say before God, why you never told me about this marvelous truth? Some probably will say it's his fault. I lived with him for so many years in school and in the workplace, and he never told me a word about Jesus. It would be terrible to see ourselves going to heaven, and some of our friends that went through so many things with us, that never heard the gospel from us, going to heaven, to hell in punishment. Our lives, our Christian lives would be a billboard for the world, that there is hell, that there is a God, that there has come the nation, that there is heaven, and there is a precious Savior who can save lost souls. Wretched people. A God who is gracious and compassionate. And He is also human like us, Jesus Christ. And can sympathize with our weaknesses. And this Jesus gave Himself on the cross for sinners. He fought the battle that we will never be able to win. Because we are helpless and powerless against our enemies. He is the God, dear brothers and sisters, who answers prayer. And He is the God who not only gives us His Son, but also will give us everything, as the Word says. He's able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think. I want to close by encouraging you to pray like Jehoshaphat, taking hold of God's promises, His covenant, His attributes, fixing your eyes upon Jesus, and to use all those things in your prayers to become more like Him, to be more satisfied in Him, to be transformed in the image of Jesus Christ. with the purpose of proclaiming His work, His glory, His gospel into this dark world so that others might fear Him and worship Him. Let us pray. O God, what a marvelous gospel that we have. What a marvelous message that we have, O Lord. Help us to not keep it to ourselves, but bring to the whole world that You are a covenant-keeping God, that loves sinners, that will receive every sinner, who fix our eyes on Jesus. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.