2 Chronicles 20:12

For we have no might against this great company.

Embarrassment

I. There are embarrassments concerning our country.

II. Many good men and women are often greatly embarrassed about the divine inspiration of every sentence in the Bible.

III. Some of us are at times much embarrassed by the circumstances of life. Like a man who looks out of a railway carriage at night and sees nothing, so some of us often look towards to-morrow and see no light. This fear of to-morrow is the wet-blanket of the Christian’s life. Act rightly now; do your duty to-day, and never mind to-morrow. (W. Birch.)

Moral courage

I. There are often terrible crises in men’s lives when moral courage is required. Most men are brought at times to a crisis when they are ready to exclaim, “We know not what to do.”

1. In the course of secular work. A great company of worldly anxieties.

2. In the course of personal moral culture. Old habits, lusts, propensities.

3. In the process of philanthropic labour.

II. The only source of true moral courage is trust in God. To trust Him is to trust--

1. Love.

2. Wisdom equal to every emergency.

3. Power that can make the weakest mighty. (Homilist.)

The helpless Church and the mighty God

I want to take this as a text to preach the experience of the people of God.

I. An appropriation of God. “O our God.”

II. The enemy to be judged. “Wilt Thou not judge them?” The Christian has many enemies, internal, external, and infernal, but self is the greatest enemy the people of God have. Self must be brought under judgment.

III. The sinner’s powerlessness. “We have no might.” We are spiritual insolvents. Perfect poverty: all true disciples of Christ must be brought into this state. Like Mary, we have nothing to pay, according to Christ’s parable, and yet we are pardoned. That is the gospel.

IV. The church’s perplexity. “Neither know we what to do.” This is often the condition of the Church.

V. Faith’s invigorating look. “But our eyes are upon Thee.” (J. J. West, M.A.)

Jehoshaphat, face to face with one of life’s great emergencies, our model

Say we not well, that prayer is a model for presidents, princes, kings, and rulers for all time? But it has wider applications. The King of Judah is confronted by a great and startling peril;--what does he do?

I. Let us rather mark what he does not do.

1. He does not underestimate his danger. There are some men who think it wisdom to pooh-pooh a difficulty. Jehoshaphat is not one of them. He is at the farthest remove from foolhardiness or a rash contempt of the impending peril. The men who under-estimate risks are not the wise men or the safe men, morally, politically, or spiritually. There are many of this easy-going--if you please, buoyant--disposition who decline to look probable defeat or disaster in the face. They deprecate your fears, advise you to trust to luck, to go on and take the chances with a stout heart. They are willing to do it in politics, suffering the Ship of State to take her chances among the unknown shoals and rocks! They do it in religion. They discount heavily the Divine requirements, the Divine warnings, the Divine hatred of sin, the tremendous Divine penalties pronounced upon it; for them these all mean nothing or very little.

2. So neither did Jehoshaphat over-estimate them. His was no panic fright. Seen through the atmosphere of our fears, a man may become a monster. The King of Judah certainly discerned the danger and appreciated it to the full, but his brave and trustful spirit was as far as possible removed from panic, desperation, or despair. Jehoshaphat, confronted by a danger which seemed certainly to insure the ruin of his throne and kingdom, declines to regard the case as by any means hopeless, refuses to believe that the Lord’s arm is shortened that it cannot save, or His ear heavy that it cannot hear. Who says Moab and Ammon are stronger than God? Any peril is over-estimated of which men cry: “There is no help for him in his God!”

3. Again, if Jehoshaphat does not underestimate or over-estimate his dangers, so neither does he place any false reliance upon human power--his resources, his aids, or himself. Some men trust God when they are bereft of every other ground of confidence, but not till then. They brave it out till ruin stares them in the face, and then run to cover. Not so Jehoshaphat. The nation had scarcely known a more prosperous and potent reign than his. He had a great army at his command, and, it would appear from the record (2 Chronicles 17:12), could bring upward of a million of men into the field, a drilled and organised militia capable of effective service in emergency. Many a man in his position, and with such military and national resources behind him, would have given God altogether the go-by, and chosen, like Napoleon Bonaparte, to trust in the heaviest battalions.

II. Turning from this negative to a positive view, we ask, then what did he do? Where was his real confidence? If ever there was a man who offered effective and ample illustration of the Psalmist’s words--“Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God”--that man was Jehoshaphat of Judah. What then did he do? He turned to God! And observe how he did this.

1. It was publicly done. The King of Judah made no secret of his dependence on the King of kings. “He proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah”--“And out of all the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord”--“And all Judah stood before the Lord, with their little ones, and their wives, and their children.”--“And Jehoshaphat stood in the congregation of Judah and Jerusalem, and said.” What announcement of national and personal need and reliance upon Jehovah could be more distinctly open and unreserved than this?

2. And it was as humble and self-renouncing as it was public in its character. National grief is an affecting spectacle. You have it here: “All Judah, their little ones, their wives, their children, stood before the Lord.” While speaking in their name, Jehoshaphat exclaimed: “O our God we have no might against this great company, neither know we what to do.” Lowly-mindedness and self-abasement in a whole people, as certainly as in a man, goes far to secure--as truly as it solicits--the Divine favour.

3. Jehoshaphat’s plea for Judah was further marked by an unreserving trust in God. With Jehoshaphat Jehovah is all and enough. “Art not Thou God in heaven, and rulest not Thou over all the kingdoms of the heathen? and in Thine hand is there not power and might, so that none is able to withstand Thee?” Never a thought here of limitation, or weakness in Him; never a suspicion that He is unable or unwilling to rescue those that trust in Him to the uttermost. No association of His name with any other. He is not to be a helper, a partner, a contributor. He is to be all, to do all! The royal, the national reliance on Jehovah is entire.

4. This brings us to note finally that Jehoshaphat’s plea is marked by the fullest recognition of the Divine Sovereignty and Providence. A writer, quoted in one of our leading weeklies, says that, “No secular history would be read in our schools to-day or in the schools of any enlightened community in which the fortunes of nations were represented as controlled by special Divine intervention.” The man who wrote that sentence would, we fancy, have been treated with rather scant courtesy if he had chanced in the court of Jehoshaphat.

5. More than this, the King of Judah appeals to the Covenant. Now God loves to be plied with His own promises and reminded of the gracious relations He occupies to us. The Psalmist founded a claim to Divine help and mercy upon the ground of a godly parentage: “O Lord, I am the son of Thine handmaid.” Our best resource, our true “help,” is not in alliances, in circumstances, in capacities, in luck, in others, in ourselves, but ever and only “in the name of the Lord.” (W. T. Sabine, D.D.)

Leaving the vote with God

Sir Fowell Buxton, who shared with Wilberforce the labours which secured the emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies, ascribed their triumph directly to the power of prayer. Writing to his daughter when all was over, he said, “I firmly believe that prayer was the cause of that division” (vote in the House of Commons}. “You know how we waited upon God for guidance, with these words in our hearts, ‘O our God, we have no might against this great company that cometh against us, neither know we what to do; but our eyes are upon Thee’; and the answer, ‘Ye shall not need to fight in this battle; stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.’ You will find the whole story in 2 Chronicles 20:1. Turn to my Bible; it will open of itself to the place. We had no preconceived plan; the course we took appeared to be the right one, and we followed it blindly.”