Our Unchanging God

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Transcript:

Now, I hope you’ve had time to turn to 2 Chronicles chapter 20. We don’t have a lot of time to go through the passage tonight, but we’ll do the best we can. Are any of the rest of you troubled by the current events going on in Israel and the Middle East right now?

I’ve been troubled by it, and I love Israel, and I stand by Israel, but I’ve been fearful, not because I think they’re not going to be okay, but just knowing the bad things that can happen in the meantime and having a real fear that because people over there can’t get along, that eventually we’re going to get called into a war, or eventually my kids are going to be called. And that’s just me as a father being afraid of those things. But I worry so much about the nation of Israel.

And I really have no reason to because I know God’s in control and God calls the shots over there. But I just try to watch everything I can and find out everything I can because I feel like, I don’t know if any of y’all are like me, but I feel like if I know what’s going on, everything’s going to be okay, as if me knowing is going to change anything. As a matter of fact, at one point when they were having one of their conflicts, the news media over here was not reporting much about it, and so I went on Twitter.

Anybody else in here on Twitter? Anybody else know what Twitter is? I’m on it, and I still don’t know what it is.

But I got on there and started following the prime minister on Twitter and the defense minister and all these different things because they would send out these little messages about what’s going on in the conflict. I followed so many of those people that my wife accused me of being an Israeli spy. I said, what do I ever go to spy on that they would be interested in knowing about?

But I’ve got a deep concern and fear about the things that are going on over there. But nothing about what’s going on over there is anything new, and it’s nothing I can control. But fortunately, whether it comes to the things going on in Israel or even in the things in our own lives, we do know who is in control.

And we’re going to look at a few verses tonight. And I know I’ve never preached this passage before anywhere, and I don’t recall ever hearing anybody preach this passage, but I feel like the points are points that I’ve preached before. And that’s okay, because as much as I’ve tried to develop a different message for tonight, I keep coming back to this, And so it may be that the Lord wants somebody here to know these things tonight.

2 Chronicles 20, verse 1 says, It came to pass after this also that the children of Moab and the children of Ammon, and with them other besides the Ammonites, came against Jehoshaphat to battle. Jehoshaphat was the king of Judah, the southern kingdom. Then there came some that told Jehoshaphat, saying, There cometh a great multitude against thee from beyond the sea, on this side Syria, And behold, they be in Hazazon-tamar.

Excuse me, I had to practice that one this week. Hazazon-tamar, which is in Gedi. And Jehoshaphat feared and set himself to seek the Lord and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah.

And Judah gathered themselves together to ask help of the Lord. Even out of all the cities of Judah, they came to seek the Lord. And Jehoshaphat’s kind of an interesting character.

I really don’t have time to. . .

I wish I did, but I really don’t have time tonight to go into all the details and history about him. But Jehoshaphat was, I think, a king with good intentions but mixed results. And often when his country was threatened, he would try to make alliances as some of the other kings did, try to make alliances with the pagan countries around them or even the wicked kings of Israel, when God all the time was saying, just trust me, just trust me.

And so he would make these alliances, and it would end up getting him into even greater trouble. There’s a story later on of him trying to build a navy and succeeding, and God almost immediately destroys the navy because he had worked with the northern kingdom to build it. And the northern kingdom at that time was ruled by a very wicked king.

But this time Jehoshaphat got it right. Jehoshaphat feared and set himself to seek the Lord, and he proclaimed to fast, and as a result, all the people of Judah gathered together to ask the help of the Lord. See, as the leadership went, as the king went, so went the rest of the people.

Verse 5, And Jehoshaphat stood in the congregation of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the Lord and before the new court, and said, O Lord God of our fathers, art not thou the 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. So Jehoshaphat goes to the court of the temple and stands there and prays to God.

All these rhetorical questions that he asks, because he knows the answer, but he’s crying out an acknowledgement to who God is, that He’s the God of their fathers. And there was the temptation in that time in Israel and in Judah to pray to all sorts of gods. They were still dealing with Baal worship.

They were dealing with the worship of the Moabite deities and the Ammonite deities. That’s part of the reason why these countries were invading them. They hated the Israelites.

And there was the temptation to pray to all sorts of gods, but he points out that he’s praying, he’s addressing solely the God of His fathers, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and David. To Him only He addresses His prayer. It says, Art not thou the God in heaven?

I keep adding the word thee in there. Excuse me. It just says, Are not thou God in heaven?

And that, as a rhetorical question, is just an admission. He’s God in heaven. He rules over all the kingdoms of the heathen.

In his hand there is so much power and might that no one is able to withstand or oppose him. Verse 7, Art not thou our God, who didst drive out the inhabitants of this land before thy people Israel, and gavest it to the seed of Abraham thy friend forever. It’s an admission on his part.

You’re our God. Knowing full well the country had not always lived up to their end of that covenant, but the covenant had been made between God and his people that he would be their God, and they would walk with him, and they would be his people. And we see that God, even though the people of Israel were not faithful, God was still faithful.

Many times he had to punish them. Many times he had to chastise and discipline them. But God did not turn His back on His people.

And so even in the midst of their sin, even in the midst of their predicament now, they are still crying out to God because they realize that He’s faithful. He’s their God who did strive out the inhabitants of the land. He acknowledges that God, you know, for all Joshua’s military prowess, it was God who drove the pagan inhabitants out of the land.

It was God who gave this land to them for an inheritance and gave it to the seed of Abraham, his friend, forever. And they dwelt therein and have built the sanctuary therein thy name, saying, If when evil cometh upon us as the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we stand before this house, and in thy presence, for thy name is in this house, and cry unto thee in our affliction, then thou wilt hear and help. And he points out that they’ve come to live in this land that you’ve given them, and they’ve built a sanctuary here, they’ve built a temple here where your name dwells, and whenever there’s trouble, the people come and stand in your presence here, because they know that God will hear and help.

And now behold the children of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, whom thou wouldst not let Israel invade when they came out of the land of Egypt, but they turned from them and destroyed them not. Behold, I say, how they reward us to come to cast us out of thy possession, which thou hast given us to inherit. O our God, wilt thou not judge them?

For 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 it sounds at this point like he’s questioning God and saying, Are you really going to judge them?

Are you really going, is your justice going to prevail here or are you just going to let them get away with it? But in saying, our eyes are upon thee, he admits that he trusts God. And it tells me it’s another rhetorical question.

God, we know, can anybody really think your justice is not going to be done? Can anybody really think you’re not going to judge them? He understands and trusts that God’s way is right and God is going to do the right thing and God is going to care for his people.

Verse 13, And we could go on through the end of the chapter, and I would encourage you to do that at some point. But in the end of it, God does what only God could do. And these three countries are camped around them and ready to destroy them, and they turn and seek God.

I mean, the people of Judah turn and seek God, and God drives the enemy away. As a matter of fact, if I understand it correctly, God causes the other countries to start fighting amongst themselves. When they’d had this grand alliance together to destroy Israel, to destroy God’s people, they’d come together for that purpose, and yet they couldn’t even stay together long enough to do that.

And God did what only God could do. And the people rejoiced in God’s deliverance. And there are some things that we need to know tonight that we can learn from this passage, that these things apply not only, as I said, to the situation in the Middle East today, and I believe God will take care of His people.

I had somebody one time in the last year or so make a statement about giving Israel nuclear weapons and having them nuke the countries around them. I thought that was a bad idea, to be honest. Because as much as I support Israel, I understand that we have brothers and sisters in Christ among the Palestinians. I won’t say they’re the majority.

But there may be more Arab Christians than there are Jewish background Christians over there. And the thought of us supplying things to just wipe out entire groups of people didn’t sit well with me. And supposedly I was anti-Israel for that.

But the answer I gave was, you know, maybe my eschatology is showing here. Maybe my biblical view of the end times is showing here. But I really don’t think their security is as dependent on us as we seem to think it is.

I believe ultimately it’s dependent on Almighty God. But what we can learn from this passage not only applies to the situation in the Middle East that God is going to take care of His people over there, but also applies to the very even minor aspects of our daily lives. Because we serve a God who doesn’t change.

We serve a God who is today who He was in the Old Testament. And we serve a God who reveals certain things about Himself through His Word. And the first thing tonight that we need to see, and we’re going to go through these just very briefly in the time we have remaining, is that first of all, our God’s power is unchanging.

Our God’s power is unchanging. Jehoshaphat recognizes this when he calls God the God of his fathers and admits that he and he alone is God in heaven. He rules over all the kingdoms of the heathen, and in his hand there is so much power that they cannot resist or oppose him.

Even in the midst of a dark time, he admits that God, God who was powerful enough to take care of their fathers, to take care of David, to take care of the other people before them, was the same God who was in control of things then. that in His power, in His hands, stand all the nations of the world. And ladies and gentlemen, the countries that oppose Israel cannot go any further than God allows them to go.

The things that oppose us, the things that trouble us, cannot go any further than God allows them to go. As I said when we had the series on God’s will, that’s not to say that everything that happens to us is caused by God, but as part of a sinful, fallen world, sometimes the things that are in His permissive will are not seemingly good for us. And yet they only advance, things only oppose us as God allows them to.

As God says, you can go this far and no further. You know, it doesn’t matter what’s decided at the United Nations. God is in control of every single one of those countries.

It doesn’t matter what happens to us because God is in control. And I say this very seriously. I don’t mean to be flippant about it.

And I can’t say I always feel this way myself, but I know it’s the truth. That when it comes to being Christians, we can suffer in this world, we can have trouble in this world, but ladies and gentlemen, the worst thing they can do to us is kill us. And I don’t say that to make light of all the people that even today gave their lives for the cause of Christ. But even Paul made it clear, hey, that if you leave me alone, I get to stay here and preach the gospel some more.

If you kill me, I get to go be with Jesus. Everything that the world does and they think that they control us Moses and they work against God and hey, God clearly has no power here anymore. Look at what we can get away with.

Ladies and gentlemen, God is ultimately in control and God will have his way. God will have his way. And so when you’re troubled by the things in your life, I know we’ve got people sitting in the pews tonight that have trouble in life.

If not, if you don’t have any trouble, come tell me how you got to where you are. But we all have troubles and we all have trials and tribulations and it’s easy to think that we are just overwhelmed by them. And sometimes they feel overwhelming, but we serve a God who can handle all of it and has all of it right here in the palm of His hand.

And ultimately, you know, we may not be able to trust our circumstances, but we can trust the God who holds those circumstances and know that He’s in control. In verse 7, it says, Art not thou our God who didst drive out the inhabitants of this land before thy people Israel and gavest it to the seed of Abraham, thy friend forever. He admits that what they have is given to them by the promise of God because God had made the promise to Abraham and said that’s your land, that’s your habitation, that’s a gift from God to you and your posterity, to use a good word from the Constitution.

To give to the posterity, to give to future generations, that was promised to them. And he admits that they can’t come in and take this land away from us. They can’t ultimately drive us out of here because this land was given to us by God and it’s a promise.

And folks, I know there’s disagreement among theologians today, but I still believe God’s a God who keeps His promises. And I believe that’s still theirs. But it applies to our lives as well that God is a God who keeps His promises.

When we get to low points in life and we feel like we are absolutely utterly alone, we still have the promise of God that He will never leave us or forsake us. We still have the promise that Christ gave to His disciples that He would not leave us comfortless, that He would send a comforter. We still have the promise that His Word will not return to Him void.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bible is full of promises. Now, in disciple way training, I’ve cautioned us against reading every promise made in the Bible as a promise to us. Sometimes things that were promised in the Bible were promised to specific people.

And I don’t have a hard or fast rule I can tell you, say this is absolutely in every case how you figure out who it’s to. But reading the scriptures, using our best judgment to understand and with the help of the Holy Spirit, there are promises in there that are to us as well. Anytime He promises something to believers and doesn’t say this is for this particular church or this particular group of people, ladies and gentlemen, there are promises in the Bible that we can claim and God is a God who keeps His promises.

When He promises to never leave us or forsake us, it doesn’t matter how I feel when I get up in the morning. It matters what God’s promise is. It doesn’t matter if I feel alone or I feel defeated.

It matters what God’s promise is. It doesn’t matter when we look around ourselves sometimes and we think, you know, on a Wednesday night, there are only eight of us here. Lord, what’s happening?

It matters that God promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against His church. Folks, there are promises in the Bible. And sometimes we’re going to feel things that are not in line with those promises.

And as I said, it doesn’t matter what our feelings are. It matters what the promises of God are because we serve a God whose promises are unchanging. If He says it, He means it.

And when He means it, He brings it to pass. And third of all tonight in verse 9, if when evil cometh upon us as the sword or judgment or pestilence or famine, we stand before this house and in thy presence where thy name is in this house and cry unto thee in our affliction, then thou wilt hear and help. They knew that no matter how bad things got, That because He was their God, because He did keep His promises, that He was always there with them.

And they knew that they could go to the temple, they could go to the dwelling place of God, and they could stand in the very presence of God Almighty, and that He would hear and help. And ladies and gentlemen, we have a similar promise today. That’s promised numerous times in the Bible that He would be with us, that He would walk with us through the trials that we go through, and that He would hear us.

And we serve a God whose presence is unchanging. That in the midst of our deepest trials and tribulations, God is still with us. the Holy Spirit indwells His people.

The Father watches over everything we do and the Son sits at the right hand of God the Father, making intercession on our behalf. Ladies and gentlemen, we are never alone. We serve a God whose presence is unchanging.

He doesn’t wander away from us whenever the mood strikes Him. He’s not an idol of wood or stone that we have to carry around with us or He’s not there. He’s a God who promises His presence and His presence is unchanging.

And I know that this deals with a very specific event that happened in actual history under King Jehoshaphat and this invasion and all these things. But we can learn the principles from it and apply them to our lives today of what he recognized about God, that we serve a God who is unchanging. And I know I’ve told you these things before.

It’s probably nothing new to you, but it’s a good reminder because sometimes we get to points in our lives where we feel that God is distant or we feel all alone, and we need to be reminded that we serve an unchanging God. Our God still offers freely salvation to whosoever will come unto Him. We serve a God who still promises to sanctify and grow His people.

We serve a God who promises to be with us during difficult times. God’s arm is not shortened. His power is not gone.

The same God that parted the Red Sea, that created the universe in six days, the same God that brought down the walls of Jericho is the same God we serve today. And He’s able to do what He says He can do. And sometimes when our feelings conflict with that, we need to stop trusting our feelings, stop trusting our opinions, and trust the promises of God.