The Battle Is God’s

This passage records how the allied armies of northern Israel and southern Judah went to war against Moab, and how a victory that seemed certain, with water supplied and the enemy about to be defeated through God's help, ended in failure. Victory had been promised through the prophet Elisha, but at the last moment of the battle the king of Moab offered his son as a burnt offering, and great wrath came upon the army of Israel, and they left the battlefield. This event, which many Bible scholars regard as a difficult problem, is not simply a military failure; it shows the spiritual crisis that those who have received grace go through when they fail to face their own sin.

The sermon points out that God loved and helped Jehoshaphat to the end, even though he allied himself with wicked kings, but that they took that grace for granted and covered up their own sin. God governs the outcome of battles, but he brings judgment on those who fail to show his holiness along the way and who glorify their own sin. Even after experiencing God's miracles and receiving answers, we face the contradiction of still not being free from sin and not walking with God.

When we face moments of hardship and failure that we cannot bear, how should we discern whether it is simply fate or a punishment from God to set us upright? And in the very place where we seemed to have won by God's grace, we are led to look back on whether we truly repented of our sin and submitted completely to God, or whether we sat in the place of opposing God by displaying our own righteousness.