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But it never occurred to any of these peoples that their own gods were any less real than Judah's, or that Judah's God could ever become theirs. 'Amasiah, the son of Zichri, who willingly offered himself unto the Lord. 1 CHRON. xvii, 16. This is a scrap from the catalogue of Jehoshaphat's 'mighty men of valour'; and is Amasiah's sole record.
Civic and political life ought to be as holy as that of cloister and cell. To judge righteously, to vote honestly, is as much worship as to pray. A politician may be 'a priest of the Most High God. And for us all the spirit of Jehoshaphat's charge is binding, and every trivial and secular task is to be discharged for God, with God, in the fear of God.
Under Jehoshaphat's influence and counsel, Ahab did penance for his crime, and the punishment God meted out to him was thereby mitigated to the extent that his dynasty was not cut off from the throne at this death.
We deal with it, rather than with the fragment of the narrative which we have taken as our text. I. We see here the confidence of despair. Jehoshaphat's prayer had stayed itself on God's self-revelation in history, and on His gift of the land to their fathers.
This literal unanimity aroused Jehoshaphat's suspicion, and caused him to ask for "a prophet of the Lord," for the rule is: "The same thought is revealed to many prophets, but no two prophets express it in the same words." Jehoshaphat's mistrust was justified by the issue of war. Ahab was slain in a miraculous way by Naaman, at the time only a common soldier of the rank and file.
'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you. But none the less, 'This is the victory that over-cometh the world, even our faith, and if we give heed to Jehoshaphat's commandment, and go out to battle as his people did, with the love and trust of God in our hearts, then we shall come back as they did, laden with spoil, and shall name the place which was the field of conflict 'the valley of blessing, and return to Jerusalem 'with psalteries, and harps, and trumpets, and 'God will give us rest from all our enemies round about us.
Begin with 'the fear of the Lord'; that will help us to 'faithfulness and a perfect heart'; and these again by taking away occasions of ignoble fear, and knitting together the else tremulous and distracted nature, will make the fearful brave and the weak strong. But another thought is suggested by Jehoshaphat's language. It was a board of conciliation rather than a penal tribunal.
We do not know whether the great secession had flung the simple old machinery somewhat out of gear, or whether Jehoshaphat's action was simply to systematise and make universal the existing arrangements. But what concerns us most is to note that all the charge which he gives to these peasant magistrates bears on the religious aspect of their duties.
By the marriage of Athalia, a daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, with Jehoshaphat's son, Baal-worship was introduced into Jerusalem. Joram succeeded Ahab. The prophet Elisha, who followed in the steps of Elijah, anointed Jehu "captain of the host of Joram." He undertook, with fierce and unsparing energy, to destroy Baal-worship, and to extirpate the house of Ahab, root and branch.
He appeared, full of audacity, riding his high horse, raising his flat-nosed, bull-dog face toward the "gallery gods," and, in his voice capable of making Jericho's wall fall or raising Jehoshaphat's dead, he dashed off in one effort, but with intelligence and heroic feeling, his comrade's poem. The effect was prodigious.
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