January 10, 2016 Jehoshaphat Tries Again by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Gracious Father, we thank You for the fact that You have not only spoken, Lord, but spoken clearly.

And that You've given us Your Spirit, Lord. We pray that to Him who has ears, that You may hear today,

Lord. And that You would unstop and open the ears, Lord, of who can hear today,

Lord. We pray that You would strengthen Pastor today to deliver Your Word, Lord. And that even as the

Prophet Jeremiah spoke of the people committing two sins, Lord, forsaking the

Lord their God and building cisterns for themselves, Lord, broken cisterns which could not hold water.

Father, we know that ultimately You are our living water, Lord. And we pray that we would all worship

You as such today, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Jesus. Well, the text of our message this morning is 2

Kings 3. And Lord willing, we will cover this chapter as we continue this series in the prophetic ministry of the

Prophet Elisha. So soon after he succeeded the Prophet from whom he learned, his mentor,

Elijah. So here we are in 2 Kings 3. And I have to tell you that this affair, this history, this record we have in 2

Kings 3 records for us something that is just a mess from start to finish.

This thing is a disaster all the way. The apostate king of Israel, that's

Ahab's son Jehoram. Remember that Ahab did more evil than all the kings who came before him, and that was considerable.

This is that Ahab's son. That apostate king talks the godly but the misguided king of Judah, that's

Jehoshaphat, into joining him in this campaign against Moab. Moab, of course, trying to break

Israel's yoke by halting their tribute payments, these 100 ,000 lambs, the 100 ,000 goats.

And when Ahab was gone, they thought it was a good time. Israel would be weakened by having lost this fairly strong leader, at least on the horizontal plane.

Politically, militarily, Ahab was a pretty strong man. So it's a good time to break that tribute.

We'll no longer be your vassal. So these two kings, Jehoram, Jehoshaphat, they come together.

And along the way to attacking Edom and bringing them back to subjection, excuse me, going to Moab to bring them back to subjection, they pass through Edom, and they pick up Jehoshaphat's vassal, who's called the king of Edom.

And so it's these three armies, these three kings, guided by Jehoshaphat's strategy, marching to Moab to bring them back into line.

And I have to tell you, as we go through this, this whole thing is just a mess.

It's a mess, and I don't mean on the horizontal level, though you'll see some of it is that way too, but most particularly in God's view.

In the vertical perspective, with heaven looking down, this thing is just a disaster.

It begins as a mess. As Jehoshaphat joins this venture, and why does he do so?

Why does Jehoshaphat join this? Those of you who've been in this series with me for a while, you'll see the parallels to when he joined

Ahab, Jehoram's father. And you're looking, you almost want to scream into the scripture and say, what are you doing?

Haven't you learned your lesson? Well, why has he joined? Political gain?

Advancement? Different reasons. It begins in a mess as Jehoshaphat, the godly king of Judah, the southern kingdom, he joins with this apostate king.

And in the middle of everything that happens, it's a mess. A disaster looms over the army, finally driving them to seek the

Lord's help. And it ends a mess as Israel leaves

Moab, having had their goal in hand, and then losing it because of God's indignation.

Their goal had been to keep Moab's vassalage to Israel intact, but in the end, Moab had their independence.

Israel's territory was diminishing, you see. Israel is getting smaller and smaller as their appetite for idolatry and false worship gets bigger and bigger.

As the kings refuse to abandon the sin of Jeroboam, son of Nebat. Now we met him some weeks ago, but just as a quick summer reminder of who was

Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. Jeroboam was the first king of Israel in the north after Israel split into a northern and southern kingdom.

Jeroboam was the first of those kings, having no lineage connection to David, but appointed by God to be the first king of Israel.

And given pretty much the same promises David had been given. That if you follow my ways, if you obey my commandments,

I will bless you, and I'll multiply your territory, and I'll watch over you. And these sorts of promises.

Of course he did not. One of his first acts, if not his first act, was in order to keep his people in the north from going down to the south and seeing the temple and worshiping there as they're supposed to, according to God's word, in order to prevent that because of his fear that they wouldn't want to come back.

They'd see the beauty of the temple, they'd hear the Levites singing their worship songs, and they wouldn't want to go back north.

So he closed the border, in a manner of speaking. And he set a golden calf in a city called

Bethel in the south, and far up in the north, in Dan. And he said, these are your gods,

O Israel, who redeemed you out of Egypt. That's the sin of Nabat, which never abated in Israel.

As Israel's appetite for this sort of worship grew and grew, their territory gets smaller and smaller.

And in just the same way, don't we lose spiritual ground? Is not our spiritual victory diminished or lost altogether when

God is worshipped in any manner outside what his scripture demands of us? Or is treated as an afterthought?

Or is in any way demoted from his rightful place? Can we expect God to enlarge our hearts towards Jesus Christ when we in our spirit do what these kings are doing on the ground?

Jehoshaphat was a good king. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. He was not a great king, though.

He was a good king. He wasn't great like, for example, Hezekiah or Josiah. Now those two walked in the ways of the gold standard,

David. It says he walked in the ways, he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, walking in the ways of his father,

David. Now by the time of those kings, to call David their father, you have to put a lot of greats in front of the grandfather to get there.

But they had direct lineage to him both physically and spiritually. They walked in the ways of David.

Jehoshaphat, good as he was, and he's called a good king in the scripture, did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but good as he was, he walked in the ways of his father,

Asa. His alliance here with Ahab's son is very similar to the alliance, that short -lived partnership he had with Ahab himself.

And that adventure gained him this rebuke from the prophet Yehu, which is the reason many of us would look at this one in 2

Kings 3 and say, what are you doing? Did not God through a prophet tell you specifically, specific divine revelation, how

God viewed what you had done there? And now you're repeating your mistake. The prophet Yehu says to the king, should you help the wicked and love those who hate the

Lord, therefore the wrath of the Lord is upon you. This is that Jeroboam in this campaign.

We need to talk a little bit about Jehoram, the king of Israel. Jehoram was better than his father, wasn't he?

He did not follow in the sins of Ahab, it said in the beginning. So he's better than Ahab, but only ever so slightly.

You see, he didn't follow Ahab and Jezebel, his mother and father, in worshipping this god called Baal. B -double -A -L.

He didn't do that. Instead, he reached back to Jeroboam I described a moment ago and continued his practice of calling

Israel to worship these golden calves. Now that's fractionally better than his parents, is it not?

Just a teensy -weensy bit better to worship a golden calf who you call

Yahweh rather than Baal who has no connection at all with the true

God. But take note, we must take note, that his middle -of -the -road position did not save him from being described as one who did evil in the sight of the

Lord. He did evil in the sight of the Lord. God is not interested in what you call the golden calves.

He's only interested in that you have them and pretend that those are him. The God who cannot be represented as we learned just in the brief look we took in Isaiah 40.

To what then will you liken me? Oh goodness, not a cow. But that's the sin of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which

Jehoram, the king of Israel in our current text, returned to after he became king of Israel.

We need to look a moment at this king of Edom, this third king in this alliance against Moab.

Edom, the one who got Shanghai'd into all this because he was a vassal to Jehoshaphat.

He wasn't really a king in the way these other two were. 1 Kings 22, verse 47 says that during Jehoshaphat's reign there was no king in Edom, only a deputy of the king.

But Edom, this nation, is crucial to the success of this campaign. Now in your bulletin,

I tried to reproduce a little map so you could see this because you have to understand where these nations lie and where Israel and Judah have to go to get to Moab.

And because I didn't want you all clicking on your smartphones because some of you don't have smartphones and some of you are sensible enough not to use them while a preacher is preaching.

Yeah, that's a shot at some of you. That was for free. But seriously, just so you can look and see some of the, again, on the horizontal level, some of the logistics they were up against.

You'll see there that Israel and Judah lie on the west side of the

Dead Sea with Israel north and Judah to the south of each other. Moab is on the east side of the sea.

You see that there? It's over there to your right, to the east. Now to Moab's north are nations called

Ammon and Syria. I don't know if those are both on your map, but they're up there north of Moab. Now these are both enemies to Israel and Judah.

So these kings, once they have this alliance, they cannot go around there. They'd have to fight all the way to Moab and they'd be exhausted by the time they get there.

They'd be fighting probably through three kings who would ally themselves against them. So that's why

Jehoshaphat says let's go south, let's go through Edom. And as they go through Edom, they can pick up his deputy, who they call the king of Edom, and now they're three kings.

Now they have this alliance to go against Moab. So they'll circle down south, work their way east, and then turn north to Moab.

That's the only reason I put that map in there, so I wouldn't have to describe it too much to you. You could see what we're talking about.

Now another reason for going through Edom, just on a military level, is they had to be sure that Edom was with them because if they went through Edom and they hadn't secured their alliance, they'd be outflanked immediately.

They'd be in deep trouble. One other thing

I want you to see, on the other page on the inside of your bulletin there, there's a reference to something called the

Misha Stele, S -T -E -L -E. Well Misha is the name of this king that was read about to you, the king of Moab.

That stele actually has a record which confirms this biblical account.

Now we don't use that archaeological record to tell us that the Bible is true. The Bible is true. It's just encouraging and interesting when we see archaeological evidence so strongly corresponding to exactly what the

Bible says. So when we're done with service after the last amen, after the last amen, check on your smartphones, go on Google, look up that Misha Stele, and you'll actually see

Misha's record of this campaign. It's sort of interesting, but that's only interesting.

The scripture is true and infallible. And one last bit of background.

Remember that Moab is the nation that sprang from Lot and his eldest daughter. It is the nation whose king named

Balak hired Balaam to curse Israel during their wilderness wanderings. And failing to curse them, this is the nation that then seduced them into sexual immorality of such a depraved nature that Peter even wrote about it in 2

Peter 2 .15 when he speaks of the sin of Balaam and enticing Israel into that immorality.

Jesus himself hearkened back to it in his letter to the churches in Revelation, to Pergamos he spoke of it.

2 Samuel 8 tells us that the subjection which Moab is trying to end began actually under King David when he defeated them and put them under tribute.

The very tribute that in 2 Kings 3 the king of Moab wants to discontinue.

So that's your background there. That's where these nations lie next to each other. That's who is over whom, where the authority is, why they're going the direction they're going.

Why Jehoshaphat really got involved is anybody's guess. His family is tied to Ahab's by marriage, so that has something to do with it of course.

And more than almost any other king of Judah he seemed to want to reunify the north and the south. His way of accomplishing this though was what?

It was humanistic, fleshly ways. He tried to reunify them through marriage into Ahab's family.

He's trying to have political cooperation, military cooperation. There were other kings though who also wanted to reunify the nation.

And think of the two kings I mentioned a moment ago, two kings who were hearkened back to the gold standard, to King David.

Think of Hezekiah and Josiah. They wanted to bring the northern tribes back to the fold.

But how did they do it? With both of them. You can read about this in 2

Chronicles. With both of them it began with a return to God's law. When they heard

God's law read before them, Josiah, Hezekiah, they repented before God.

They led the people in repentance. They said here's God's law, here's why His wrath has been poured out upon us.

We need to repent before God and recommit to following His ways and being faithful to Him.

And both these men reinstituted the Passover, that great national celebration, and then to reunify, invited the north to come down to the temple to the proper place of worship and there celebrate the

Passover with them. Jehoshaphat's methods, by contrast, the way he wanted to bring the tribes together, north and south reunified, were humanistic, practical.

Within the bounds of human reasoning they were quite sensible, weren't they? Aren't these good ways to make this alliance happen again, to bring the nation into unity?

Practical, sensible, and, to God, detestable because they have nothing to do with God.

It's Jehoshaphat using his own strength, his own ways, his own plans.

Well, the army, of course, got into trouble very quickly. Jehoshaphat is the one who chose the course to go through Edom, and that's where they pick up his deputy.

I think they wanted to pick him up as much from fear of him joining Moab as for any military benefit.

I think they just wanted to really keep an eye on him. So they're together, these three, and after seven days on this roundabout route they run out of water and King Jehoram, Ahab's son, doesn't he know what to do right away?

He's the first one to speak. He says, Alas, for the Lord has called these three kings together to deliver them to the hand of Moab.

What is this? I mean, from confidence to crush in a moment. I think crushed is a good place for him to be because any confidence he ever had was misplaced.

The Lord did not call this army together. He did. It was Jehoram, not

God, who wanted this adventure. There's no divine impetus to any of this, but only the desire of a king to maintain his strength.

Now Jehoshaphat answered much the way he had when he helped Ahab. Do you recall that?

When Ahab says, Do you not know that Ramoth -Gilead is ours and yet we don't have it?

And Jehoshaphat said, I am as you are. My people as your people. My horses as your horses. This is word for word what he did here.

But Jehoshaphat with King Ahab, he wanted to know first what was God's idea.

He said, Is there no prophet of the Lord of whom we can inquire? Ahab says, Well, there is one, but I hate him. He never says anything good about me.

You remember this from several weeks ago. Micaiah the prophet comes and prophesies disaster and they go anyway.

Well, here they don't inquire first. They go headlong into disaster and then

Jehoshaphat said, Is there no prophet of the Lord here that we may inquire of him? Of course there is.

It's Elisha the son of Shaphat. And before we get to him and the prophecy he gave them and what happened next, there's a point to be made.

There's a point to be made and all of us who are lovers of Jesus Christ, whose faith is in God, need to take note of this.

They are treating God as an afterthought. All their plans are laid based on a horizontal view of the world.

Both kings are addressing the need of the moment. Jehoram to maintain the income stream from Moab.

Jehoshaphat to accomplish his political aspirations. And now they're in trouble.

They've been wandering around on this route for seven days. Now they're in trouble. They have no water, which is obviously crucial.

It's crucial for the men and of course it's crucial for the livestock. The livestock aren't just the baggage train carriers.

That's their food. That's their sustenance. Their southern march might have made military sense, but the logistical planning left a lot to be desired.

What we have here though, this army getting into trouble, they can't go any further, they have no water, and then

Jehoshaphat calls for the prophet. It's a classic case of Lord bless this mess.

How often do we forge ahead with our plans, we get into trouble, and then we go to God for rescue. I mean when

Jehoshaphat asked for a prophet, Elisha is immediately named, so it's clear that he knew of Elisha.

He'd heard of him. He says the word of the Lord is with him. So he knew Elisha was there and available before they started.

So why didn't he inquire before they marched? Why don't we inquire before we march?

And I think so often it's because we know what God's going to say. And really our plans are so much more important to us at that moment.

I don't want to say we don't care. We don't want to open that word and get rebuked. We don't want to hear what

God says because we've laid our plan and get in trouble and say

Lord help us. Now his reason for not going to God first is much the same as ours.

He'd already decided what he wanted to do. And God's word when we've already decided, when we've put our plans in place and somehow we've misplaced our

Bibles, we don't know where any friends are, we can call any brothers or sisters in the Lord, it's because we know that God's word might be awfully inconvenient for us.

It might be awfully inconvenient. It can get in our way. It's in the aftermath that we look at our plight and we see those who followed us, we see our resources parched and dying and then we say, well is there no prophet of the

Lord? Is there no chapter of the scripture that I can look to and find counsel?

Is there a brother or sister I can call now? Now that I've plunged ahead? The time to go to God is before we lay in our plans.

Is it not? Isn't that what the proverb teaches us? Well after Jehoshaphat confirms that Elisha's reputation as a true prophet has reached his ears, that he knows of him, they go to him.

Now sort of reverse from what happened with King Ahab and Jehoshaphat when they brought the prophet to them.

Now they go to the prophet. And so we have this meeting. These kings going to this man

Elisha. And he proves himself here to be a model of tact and diplomacy.

I wonder if we can take an example here on how to evangelize our friends. How to speak to them and bring them to the

Lord Jesus Christ and show them their need for repentance and salvation. These three kings come to him and Elisha immediately wants to win friends in high places, right?

He says, what have I to do with you? Speaking to Jehoram.

What have I to do with you? Go to the prophets of your father and the prophets of your mother.

In other words, you love Baal? Go to him. Oh, you don't love

Baal? Okay, that's right. You're better than Ahab. You're not doing that. Go to that golden calf. Do what the prophets of Baal had done on Mount Carmel.

Dance around him all day. Scream out to him for an answer. Cut yourself. Do whatever you will.

Why don't you go to him? The one that you worship. The one who has guided your life. The one whose precepts you follow.

The one you led your nation to worship. Go to him.

That's what Ahab had done with his prophets. Well, notice again, as we think about this idea of going to God's second, as we think of compromising the way we worship

God, notice this, that for Elisha, who has God's view of things, for Elisha, there's no difference between worshipping these molded images and calling them

Yahweh or worshipping Baal. Both are abominations.

To worship a false God, entirely false, or to worship the true God, wrongly.

The same in God's sight. And that's why Elisha says to him, go to those gods. How dare you come to the true and living

God. How dare you call a prophet who you know serves that God, who is not represented by this calf or a totem pole or anything else that you have.

How dare you come to him now just to suit your purposes, just to get yourself out of trouble. And here's where we are left when

God is so grossly misconstrued. When God is so corrupted from the clear teaching of the scripture, which would never allow for anything like this.

This is where we're left. This is God's view of it when he is so badly, intentionally,

I would say, misrepresented. Think about this. Oneness Pentecostals call themselves

Christians. Do they not? They argue that they are Christians, but they deny the Trinity. They deny that the one true living

God eternally exists in three persons, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Not three gods.

Three persons of the one God. They deny all that, and yet wish to be called

Christians. Jehovah's Witnesses call themselves Christians, but they deny the eternal deity of the

Lord Jesus Christ. That's not just sub -Christian. That's un -Christian.

That's detestable to God. They say Jesus Christ had a beginning. There was a time when the

Son was not, reaching all the way back to the heretic areas centuries and centuries ago. And then plead to be followers of Jesus Christ.

Roman Catholics call themselves Christians, but they deny justification by faith. They claim that the communion elements, the wine and the bread, become literally the body and blood of the

Lord Jesus Christ. And how does that occur? Because the priest blessed it. And so it is really

Jesus, again, physically in the elements, whom they sacrifice again and again and again, and reenacting the once -for -all -time sacrifice of the

Lord Jesus Christ. They are all Baalists. They are all worshiping a god of their own making.

Or they're worshiping the true God, but torn from the pages of the Scripture and made into whatever image suits them.

And I would tell you that their claim to the true faith is as thin as Jehoram's.

We need to be very careful. And I don't mean that we have to be mystical about how to worship

God and how to understand God, because He has clearly given His revelation to us in the

Scriptures. He's shown us what He's to be... I'm sorry.

He's shown us how He's to be considered, how He's to be worshiped, what His nature is, as none of these other things.

It's not the oneness. It's not the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons, even, I would say, the

Roman Catholics. Certainly not Jehoram's. Well, Jehoram objects when he says, really, what is

Elisha saying? I want nothing to do with you. You go and follow your faith such as it is.

He says, No, for the Lord has called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab. In other words, he's suddenly a

Calvinist. He's pleading God's sovereignty. He needs help in a matter that neither he nor the others with him can do anything.

The army needs water the way Israel needed rain during the drought in Elisha's time. There's nothing they can do to get it.

Well, Elisha regards the line of David as the true ruler in Israel. The descendant before him with all his problems,

Jehoshaphat is called by Scripture a good king. Because he is there, Elisha is willing to deliver

God's word to them. As the

Lord of hosts live before whom I stand, surely were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, I would not look at you nor see you.

But now bring me a musician. Then it happened when the musician played that the hand of the Lord came upon him.

I don't want to spend a lot of time on the musician. You know, we have a total of zero other incidences like this where somehow having a musician there playing brings forth the word of God and the prophet.

I think it's just as likely this is Elisha's way of tuning out the worldly distractions.

We just don't know. There just aren't enough incidents in the Bible of this for us to make much sense of it. So I don't want to draw a really firm conclusion on the purpose of that musician and how that relates to the prophecy he gave.

But we do know that he prophesied to them. He brought the word of the Lord to them. I want to read this again to you.

Thus says the Lord, Make this valley full of ditches. For thus says the Lord, You shall not see wind, nor shall you see rain.

Yet that valley shall be filled with water so that you, your cattle, and your animals may drink. And this is a simple matter in the sight of the

Lord. He will also deliver the Moabites into your hand. Also you shall attack every fortified city and every choice city, and shall cut down every good tree and stop up every spring of water and ruin every good piece of land with stones.

Language allows for some different ways of taking this. The question is, who is going to make the ditches?

Who's going to make the ditches? Now the ESV, the English Standard Version, which

I prefer here, says, I will make the ditches. I think this fits well.

This is God saying, I will make this valley full of ditches. And it fits because it's showing their total dependence on God's mercy and His power.

You see, if He doesn't act, they're lost. He's not telling me, you go ahead and make the ditches.

This is God is going to do it from start to finish. These men had struck out on their own. They'll only be rescued by abandoning their pride, abandoning self -sufficiency.

It's God who's going to make the ditches. I think this is as much to humble them as anything else.

To show them that not only does God not need help, but He's not even going to allow any help. That if they have any relief from the lack of water, any success on the battlefield, it must be all of God.

They won't even get to say that I dug a ditch big enough to hold a cup of water for me to drink.

They get to take nothing out of this. There's no boasting they'll be allowed. God made the ditches to collect the water.

And then He caused this great runoff from the mountains in Edom to the south to fill them. It was a storm of some sort that caused the runoff.

And the men, the animals, the whole army is saved. Moab's army had come down to meet them.

And when they looked east, the sun reflected the pools of water in a way that made them look like blood. Another one of those odd things we have in this scripture which

I'm not going to spend too much time on them. They looked over and they think they're seeing a sea of blood.

That these kings have somehow, for some reason, turned on each other, wiped themselves out and they're all done.

Well this is a day full of surprises for Moab, isn't it? I mean, first of all, when they saw this army, that had to have been a surprise.

I mean, they had been badly outmaneuvered and outflanked. And here they are on their eastern side. That's why they look towards the army.

The sun's rising when they see them. They're looking east. That's where that army had gotten on them. They had all advantage of ground.

They had all the advantage of position. And of course, the other surprise is what we just talked about.

That this army that has slipped in on them, surprised them on the eastern side, looks like it's just gotten into Moab a bit.

Well, they've all killed themselves. They've gotten into a fight of some kind and they've wiped each other out. So off they go to the plunder but instead of plunder, what do they find?

Another surprise. They find an army that's watered, fed, and ready to fight and Moab is routed.

Understand that at this point, Israel slash Judah, this three king army of Israel, Judah, and Edom, they've got the victory.

Moab is running. It's like, to your tents, O Israel. That sort of a call. God had kept his word.

God had delivered Moab back to the king of Israel. God had made the ditches. God had filled them with water.

God had tricked the Moabites into thinking the day was won. God in his grace overlooked the presumption of Jehoshaphat and Jehoram.

He forgave their insolence in not looking to him first and delivered Moab to them just as he delivered water to them to make them strong enough to fight and win the battle.

Now this gives us no cause to ever think that God blesses such rank disobedience. What he did here, he did for his own purposes.

He did for his own glory in ways which we might learn when we see him. But let us not look at this and say okay, so are we being taught by 2

Kings 3 that if we plunge ahead with our own plans and we get into a mess and then we look back and call on God that he will make it all right?

No. Never take that lesson away. That would be ungodly presumption that God rescues disobedient people is no cause for us to act presumptuously as though God's going to do it every time.

But what ought it do? It ought to fill us with wonder that he rescues disobedient people at all.

That he ever reaches down and saves anyone. Jehoshaphat and Jehoram should have stopped everything and given thanks to God when

Moab ran from them. Jehoshaphat had cause to thank him for looking past his unholy alliances with Ahab.

Jehoram had opportunity to give thanks by destroying those miserable calves and leading Israel back.

Not to Jehoshaphat but back to Jehovah. But none of that.

God does rescue disobedient sinners. I mean were this not the case no one could be saved because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

All of us are born by nature children of wrath. Not one of us can get away from Ephesians 2 which says and you who are dead in trespasses sin in which you once walked.

Dead before God because of iniquity. If he didn't rescue the disobedient he couldn't rescue anyone because there's not one who does not sin.

All are disobedient before God. God does rescue the disobedient.

It is by grace that he reversed events for these kings by giving them the water. It's by grace that he saves anyone.

Let no one presume upon that grace. The call of the Bible from beginning to end is to obey the

Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind with all your strength. Not to blatantly disregard him.

And then as these kings did later come back and say whoops. Help.

God is a gracious God but this is not normative. We need to take note of that as we order our own lives.

Well let's press on. In verse 26 the king of Moab tries to get to the king of Edom.

I think what he's trying to do here is to turn him against Jehoram and Jehoshaphat. In other words to join together with him.

I think he's going to say something like look you and I are the same. We're both related to these guys. I've been

Israel's vassal for a long time just like you've been under Judah's thumb. Now work with me here and we'll both be free.

I think he was trying to get this deputy of Edom to join him so they could turn against the other two kings to even the odds.

Whatever he wanted he was unsuccessful. The day belonged to those who God had promised it to.

Then they destroyed the cities. Verse 25 Each man threw a stone on every good piece of land and filled it and they stopped up all the springs of water and cut down all the good trees.

Now this comes after the Moabites broke rank Victory is theirs just as God had promised through Elisha.

But what do we see here? What do we see them doing? We see an army turned into brigands.

We see soldiers becoming vandals. There's no vestige of war waged on God's terms here.

It's men on a rampage. And so what happened?

Do you remember the reading that Jesus went through a little bit ago? Do you remember how this ended? The day ends in defeat not for Moab but for the

Judaic -Israelite alliance. It ends in their defeat. It says so they meaning

Jehoshaphat and Jehoram they departed from him meaning Misha the king of Moab and returned to their own land.

In the end Moab's rebellion was successful. Israel with their penchant for idolatry and false worship is made less and will continue to be made less and less.

But in the end it's Moab who is successful here. They had thrown off the yoke of Israel's domination.

Now think about this. They had victory in hand. How did it happen that they had to leave

Moab in defeat? I want you to look again at what it says in the middle of verse 27.

If you have your Bibles open there. Verse 27 At the end of 2 Kings 3 And there was great indignation against Israel.

And you go back just a little bit more and you see the cause of this. Then Misha took his eldest son and offered him as a burnt offering.

So the sequence is that Misha sacrifices his son to his God probably Himosh or somebody like that.

He literally sacrifices his son. That's not a metaphor or an allegory. This is what he did. His son is dead.

And there's great indignation against Israel as a result of that. And due to this indignation they leave

Moab defeated. The question is and I'll tell you if you work through this text it's a tough one to answer.

It really is. But the question is whose was the indignation?

There's one line of reasoning that says the indignation was Moab's against Israel. When they saw their future king the prince the son of their current king when they saw him sacrificed it sort of re -energized them.

They said okay we've got to try again. We've got to form ranks and go out against this enemy. And because of that indignation they were able to defeat and send home this

Judaic Israelite army. The other school of thought and this is where I land the indignation was

God's. It was God's indignation against Israel slash Judah.

His anger changed victory to defeat. And there's a couple of reasons for this.

The first is the warfare against the land. The stopping up the springs.

The ruining the land. The cutting down the good trees. Deuteronomy chapter 20 verse 19 and 20 say this.

When you besiege a city for a long time while making war against it to take it you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them.

If you can eat of them do not cut them down to use in the siege for the tree of the field is man's food.

Only the trees which you know are not trees for food you may destroy and cut down to build siege works against the city that makes war with you until it is subdued.

You see wanton destruction is not holy war. They were ruining the land even after the battle was won.

Just as God had promised they had won the battle. And as a result somehow they go on this rampage against the land.

What they did to the trees the fields, the springs that wasn't warfare. That was vandalism.

And I think this is what Elisha warned them about back in verse 19. When he said you shall cut down every good tree stop up every spring of water ruin every good piece of land he's not giving them a command to do so.

These are not in the imperative voice. He's warning them so that when the time comes they will remember what

Elisha warned them about and change course. Stop the men from the destruction. So as Jesus said see

I've told you in advance so then when it comes to pass you will believe. I think

Elisha is telling them in advance this is what you're going to do you've got to watch out this is where your men are going to go after God gives the victory.

Jehoram might have known this lesson after his first meeting with Elisha. What did he learn from his first talk with that prophet but that God is not a

God of compromise he doesn't take disobedience lightly. When he gives victory men must stop when their aims have been achieved when

God's aims have been achieved. And he gives victory so that men will see his power repent, give him the glory not so they'll act as if they had done something which is pretty much what they were doing here.

These kings had to have known that law. Even the apostate Israelite king knew that the law of God through Moses would have disallowed that kind of response to the victory.

Notice victory becomes defeat. Understand that God's blessings are not required of him.

They can be taken away they can be reversed. Deuteronomy chapter 28 all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you because you obey the voice of the

Lord. And then 28 .15 says but it shall come to pass if you do not obey the voice of the Lord to observe carefully all his commandments and his statutes that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you.

Just two examples of how this happens. 28 .3 in Deuteronomy says blessed shall you be in the city and blessed shall you be in the country.

And then speaking of disobedience it says cursed shall you be in the city and cursed shall you be in the country.

It was very much the pattern that happened to them here in Moab. Israel had her victory.

Moab had been delivered and was about to return to her former vassalage. But God's indignation reversed all that.

A final question is to ask why he was angry with them for what

Misha had done when he killed his son. Why was he angry at Israel about that? There's few things that are so abominable to the

God of life than human sacrifice. Few things that are more detestable to God than something like that.

I think the way we understand this is something Jesus said. Offenses must come but woe to him by whom they come.

We think of a guy on the road who gets road rage and does something wrong.

Well he's responsible for that, isn't he? Now imagine that you were driving down 680 and you saw him driving too fast.

You look in your mirror see a guy bombing up in the other lane going way too fast. You decide you're going to slow him down and we'll just see what happens when

I get in his way and you turn in front of him. Just to slow him down.

Just to show him who's really boss out here on highway 680. And so he goes into a rage and he commits some crime.

Well he's got to pay for that sin, does he not? But what did Jesus say?

Woe to him by whom the offense must come. Did we cause that offense? Are we the ones who incited another to sin?

Jehoram and Jehoshaphat had the victory in hand and then their armies go on this binge of destruction that was not war it was a rampage and it so devastated the land that Misha saw only one alternative which is to placate his

God his false God with the sacrifice of his son. And this is a terrible offense against God it is so terrible that his wrath extends to those who by their cruelty drove a man to such an extreme.

Who answers for the death of his son? Misha. Who answers for having incited a man to such a desperate level?

Disobedient Israel who did not follow the rules of warfare but made the king so desperate he saw no choice but to do that.

He stands before God for what he did. But take note of what

Jesus said Woe to him by whom the offense comes. The indignation here is the same as what

Christ is talking about. Woe to Israel who caused this offense. And God's indignation is against them.

But there is one other greater reason for God's indignation at this sacrifice that Israel incited.

Think back to Genesis 22 when God told Abraham take your son your only son Isaac whom you love and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which

I shall show you. See Abraham was so determined to obey that the angel of the

Lord had to call out twice we can almost see him reaching up and grabbing Abraham's knife hand because that knife was coming down and Abraham was ready to sacrifice

Isaac. And he says, Abraham, Abraham do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him for now

I know that you fear God since you have not withheld your son your only son from me. Human sacrifice is against God.

God stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac. There's a whole different reason for that. We're not going to go into Genesis 22.

Not now. Misha thought to placate whatever

God Moab at the time worshipped. But to do what he did to offer a life to a

God as though it could do some good. As though good could come of something like this.

Why would that bring about God's indignation? It's because it's such a gross parody of the one sacrifice of a man that could do good.

That did do good. Why did God stop Abraham from killing

Isaac? He commanded him to kill him and then he stopped him. Because only the sacrifice of the

Lord Jesus Christ was ordained by God. Only the sacrifice of the

Lord Jesus Christ can do good for men. Only that can reconcile men to God for their sin.

That one sacrifice can and did and does placate

God. And everything else is just a disgusting parody of the beauty and the eternal power to save of Jesus Christ's sacrifice.

When Israel's unholy rampage incited what Misha did, God was so outraged that he took Victor away and left them skulking back home.

And I will close just by telling you that Jesus Christ's sacrifice could not have been more different. As he hung on the cross,

God was indignant. Was he not? The skies darkened for about three hours as his indignation at sin was poured out.

Poured out on him, the only man who never sinned. On him, on Jesus.

And when it was done, so was God's indignation and his wrath. Misha's son died a senseless death to a false

God. And it mimicked the ordained death to Jehovah God of God the

Son. Jesus' death was made according to the will of God his Father. Jesus' death made atonement for his people.

Jesus' death was sufficient. His suffering was sufficient that when he said, it is finished.

We can all know that if we repent of our sins, if we repent of all the times that we put God in second place, that we forged ahead without opening our scripture, all the times we got ourselves into a mess because we followed our own plans and said,

Lord, help. Bless this mess I've gotten myself into because I ignored you. Christ's death is sufficient to cover even that because all

God's indignation, all his wrath was poured out and satisfied in him. Amen.

Lord God, we again thank you that you've given us your word. You've given us these lessons in the history that you've given us that are...

Lord, they are examples to us and we must attend to them. I pray, Father, that we would learn from this lesson all that you would have for us and most especially,

Father, that you are not an afterthought, that you are not one to be called upon when we get ourselves in trouble.

Lord, we need to go to you first and foremost. And Lord, also with this lesson we thank you that we can look back at something so horrible as how this chapter ends and we can look forward to the beauty of the

Lord Jesus Christ and his faithfulness to you, his obedience to the will of God the Father, gave himself willingly on the cross, the only sacrifice ever made that could eternally save sinners.