Sermon on 2 Chronicles 18,1-19,3 Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, The passage of Scripture for this morning’s sermon, leaves us with all kinds of questions, I’m sure. Who are these kings Ahab and Jehoshaphat? Where do these prophets Micaiah and Zedekiah and Jehu come from? Why is it that we find 400 prophets at the same time at the king’s beck and call? What is the significance of this city Ramoth-gilead? What are we to make of the vision of Micaiah of some heavenly proceedings? What about this arrow that seemingly unintentionally kills king Ahab? I could list lots more questions. And the mere number of these questions can make you ask yourself why we should actually read and study these kind of stories in the first place. They seem to be simple historical accounts of the people of Israel of so long ago. What good are these stories to us now? It would be a lot easier to read a section from one of Paul’s letters or from the gospels. It is usually lot easier to apply a message like that to our daily lives. To make the point even stronger: some say that we should do away with the OT altogether. We are the people of God of the new covenant, so the OT, it is said, is in fact irrelevant to our faith and the church of Jesus Christ. Reading through this history of the alliance between Ahab and Jehoshaphat can reinforce such a view on the irrelevance of the OT. Yet, when we carefully study this passage, we find that it is a lot more than a random part of history. Admittedly, it provides only a brief glimpse, a snapshot of the history of the people of God. But if we study this text in the context of redemptive history, we find that it tells us a great deal about who God is and it also teaches us important lessons about our relationship with God. So then, what do we learn from 2 Chron 18? Well, since the Bible is God’s revelation of and about himself to us, we will first of all learn something about God. We find the king of Judah entering into an alliance with the king of Israel. This constituted a direct threat to the preservation of the Davidic line from which the Messiah was to be born. Yet God proves to be faithful to his promises. He does not allow his plan of salvation to be jeopardised by the ignorance or arrogance of man. In the process we are taught not to simply pass God’s Word by because we don’t like it, or because it doesn’t suit us. And we are also taught that those who do listen to God, will not be left without a shepherd, as it says in Micaiah’s prophecy. And this in turn directs our thoughts to the Good Shepherd, our Lord Jesus Christ. He takes care of us. He is the living Word of God. And in the obedience to this Word lies joy and life, indeed, eternal life. These things we will consider this morning with the following theme and points: God preserves his people in spite of the overconfidence of Judah’s king 1. Jehoshaphat allies with Ahab 2. Ahab ignores God 3. God saves Jehoshaphat 1. Jehoshaphat allies with Ahab To understand the significance of this history, we must take a look at the ‘bigger picture’. We must, so to speak, enlarge the snapshot so that we are presented with a panoramic view of the history of the people of God. Two kings play a role in this history: king Ahab of Israel and king Jehoshaphat of Judah. Ahab was the son of Omri, a former army commander who had taken control 1 of Israel by killing others who laid claim to the throne. In 1 Ki 16, 25 it reads: “Omri did what was evil in the sight of the LORD , and did more evil than all who were before him. For he walked in all the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat.” Jeroboam, you may remember, was the first king of the kingdom of Ten tribes of Israel. He instituted his own religious cult in Betel and Dan. Omri was just like him, worshipping idols and making the Israelites do the same. This is the line from which Ahab descended; he was of the house of Omri. He even managed to make things worse by marrying Jezebel of Sidon and making the worship of Baal and Asherah the official state religion beside the worship of JHWH . Jehoshaphat was the king of Judah, the kingdom of two tribes. He was of the house of David. He was the fourth king of Judah since the split with Israel. He was a good king. In 1 Ki 22,43 we find: “He walked in all the way of Asa his father. He did not turn aside from it, doing what was right in the sight of the LORD .” Now from a superficial historical point of view we see two kings, two leaders of a once united kingdom, who make an alliance with each other. But from a redemptive historical point of view we see an entirely different picture. The godless house of Omri, of which Ahab was a true representative, was the part of the people of God which had for the larger part abandoned God. The kingdom of Israel was a kingdom of idolaters. If this kingdom was allowed to, in a way, reunite with Judah just like that, then the worship of the only God of heaven and earth would be compromised. God had promised David by means of the prophet Nathan that his house would always reign until the coming of the Messiah (2 Sam 7). The Messiah was to be the lawful king of the people of God and therefore he had to be a son of David. But if the house of David turned away from God and worshipped idols, the covenant would be broken, and the line of David would not persist. The salvation of the world depended upon the existence of the house of David. Any threat to this Davidic line was a threat to the fulfilment of God’s promise of salvation in Jesus Christ. So this is the bigger picture: the mortal enemy of God, Satan, is trying to undermine God’s plan of salvation. And in Jehoshaphat’s case he appears to almost have succeeded. Why is that ? Let us see. In vs 1 of our text we read that Jehoshaphat was a rich king, a man who received great honour and praise. And this high position must have gone to his head because vs 1 continues with the mention of a marriage alliance between the house of David and the house of Omri. Indeed, in chapter 21 we find that his son Jehoram married a daughter of Ahab, Athaliah. In this way the royal house of David was connected to the house of Omri. Inadvertently the words of Paul spring to mind in 2 Cor 6,14-16: “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? What agreement has the temple of God with idols?” This NT text describes exactly what the fault was of king Jehoshaphat: he allied himself to the enemy of God’s people in a way that was bound to be detrimental, to say the least, to the fulfilment of God’s promises of salvation. In 19,2 the prophet Jehu says the same to Jehoshaphat: “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the LORD ?” Jehoshaphat crossed the line by seeking an alliance with Ahab. He crossed the line of the covenant that God had made with his people and the house of David. Within the covenant God had promised to care of his people. They were his people and he was their God. How could Jehoshaphat ever expect the covenant with God to remain intact when he also made a covenant with the enemy of God? It is impossible to give your love to two people. Like the Lord Jesus said in a different context (Lk 16,13): “No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” 2 Still, we must be more specific. We must read all the Scriptures carefully in this context, for this text may lead one to believe that, in our time as well, all and any association with unbelievers is wrong. Yet we find that the apostle Paul also says in 1 Cor 5,9-10: “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people – not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.” So, obviously, children of God are not forbidden all contact with unbelievers. It is rather the nature of such an association or friendship which determines if one is allowed to entertain it or not. And this is where Jehoshaphat went wrong. He was allowed to have contact Ahab, the apostate king. But not to make an alliance with him! Not to go into battle with him! God was the ally of Jehoshaphat, no one else! God demanded that he follow him and obey him and not be induced by Ahab to go with him (vs 2)! Jehoshaphat was in fact restoring the relationship between the two kingdoms, he was ignoring the gap that existed because of sin and idolatry.