well over a year, probably more. Don't worry. I will not deprive you of your favorite controversial chapters in the book of 1 Corinthians. We are going to come back. But we are going to do a new series on prayer for a little while. In my own walk with the Lord, he's kind of brought me to see my own need to understand better the practice of prayer. And I've been enjoying a little book by Andrew Murray, who is an old South African preacher called With Christ in the School of Prayer. And it's a great little book. If you have a chance to pick it up and read it, I strongly encourage it. And it's really opened my eyes. The Lord's really been teaching me some great things on the practice of prayer. And I just want to encourage you a couple things. Number one, this is not going to be a series of messages browbeating you about coming out to the prayer meeting. That's not what this is about at all, okay? What it's about is about us as people of God, as a church of the living God, understanding better what it means to pray and how we should pray more carefully and more accurately. And so what I want to do this morning, the series is going to be taught in Lord Teach Us to Pray. And so we're going to get that door fixed one of these days and it won't slam like that, but that's okay. What we're going to do is we're going to look at a series called Lord Teach Us to Pray. And we're going to start somewhere totally different. We're going to start in the Old Testament in the book of 2 Chronicles. 2 Chronicles chapter 20. And you say, why on earth would you start a series called, Lord, Teach Us to Pray, in the book of 2 Chronicles and chapter 20? Why start with a man named Jehoshaphat? And Jehoshaphat has become, in this last week, one of my personal heroes, one of my Bible heroes. Everybody in the Bible has their favorite Bible characters. Ezra is one of my favorite Bible characters, because he taught the word of a living God. He opened up, opened the scriptures, and taught the people the word of God. I love Ezra. I love Daniel for his stand alone against all kinds of oppression and how he determined and sat in his heart that he wouldn't defile himself. Well, I've come to love Jehoshaphat, too, because he determined, he sat in his heart that he would seek the Lord in prayer. And it's a great story. I want to read, first of all, chapter 20, and we'll read from verse 1 all the way down to verse... Actually, we're going to read the whole story. Read 1 to verse 23, because it's a beautiful story. It says this, after this the Moabites and Ammonites with some of the Mianites came against Jehoshaphat for battle. Some men came and told Jehoshaphat, a great multitude is coming against you from Edom, from beyond the sea and beyond. Behold, they are in Hazazon Tamar, that is, in Gedi. Then Jehoshaphat was afraid and set his face to seek the Lord and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. And Judah assembled to seek help from the Lord. From the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord. And Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem in the house of the Lord before the new court and said, O Lord God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. In your hand are power and might so that none is able to withstand you. Did you not, our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel? and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham, your friend. And they have lived in it and have built for you in it a sanctuary for your name saying, if disaster comes upon us, the sword, the judgment or pestilence or famine, we will stand before this house and before you for your name is in this house and cry out to you in our affliction and you will hear and save. And now behold the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, whom you would not let Israel invade when they came up from the land of Egypt, and whom they avoided and did not destroy. Behold, they reward us by coming to drive us out of your possession, which you have given us to inherit. O our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you." Meanwhile, all Judah stood before the Lord with their little ones, their wives, and their children, and the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jehaziel, the son of Zechariah, son of Benaiah, son of Jehiel, son of Mattaniah, a Levi, the sons of Asaph, in the midst of the assembly. And he said, Listen, all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat, Thus says the Lord to you, do not be afraid, and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours, but God's. Tomorrow go down against them. Behold, they will come up by the ascent of Ziz, and you will find them at the end of the valley east of the wilderness of Jeruel. You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position and see the salvation of the Lord. And on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem, do not be afraid and do not be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them and the Lord will be with you. Then Jehoshaphat bowed his head with his face to the ground, and all Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell down before the Lord, worshiping the Lord. And the Levites and the Koathites and the Korahites stood up to praise the Lord, the God of Israel, with a very loud voice. And they rose early in the morning and went out into the wilderness of Tekoa. And when they went out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, Hear me, Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Believe in the Lord your God and you will be established. Believe his prophets and you will succeed. And when he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the Lord. and praise him in holy attire as they went before the army and say, give thanks to the Lord for his steadfast love endures forever. Notice this, and when they began to sing and praise the Lord, sorry, when they began to sing and praise, the Lord set an ambush against the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir who had come against Judas so that they were routed. For the men of Ammon and Moab rose against the inhabitants of Mount Seir devoting them to destruction. And when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, they all helped to destroy one another. Isn't that a great story? Think about that. There these guys are, all there waiting to fight, and they go out against the enemy, and they put on their holy attire, and they go out and they're singing. And as they're singing, the Lord brings about an ambush, and they start fighting each other, and in the end, they all turn around and they all help to destroy one another. And they just obliterate themselves, and there's the people of Judah and Jerusalem standing there in the holy attire, and they're all singing praises to God as God just defeats their enemies. It's a great story. But I love the story of Jehoshaphat because of his prayer. And what I want to do is I want to look at four things this morning. Number one, Jehoshaphat's beginnings, how he began, just a little briefly, give you an idea of who he was and what he was about. And also, Jehoshaphat's personal devotion to the Lord. Thirdly, Jehoshaphat's God to whom he prayed. And fourthly, Jehoshaphat's prayer itself. And we want to learn some great things about prayer to our great God this morning. So Jehoshaphat's beginnings. Take your Bible, flip over a couple pages backwards to chapter 17. I want to skim through 17 and touch on 18 just to give you an idea. You probably haven't heard much about Jehoshaphat in your life as a believer, but he's a great guy. Jehoshaphat had great beginnings. If you look in 17, the first couple verses there, you're going to see that Jehoshaphat was devoted to God. It says there in verse number 3, the Lord was with Jehoshaphat. He walked in the earlier ways of his father David. He did not seek the bales. Jehoshaphat walked in the ways that David walked when he was a young man. I think about the Goliath years of David's life, when he was on fire for the Lord, when he was serving the Lord with all his heart, when he was actively fighting for the Lord. And that's how to describe Jehoshaphat. He walked in the ways of David, in the earlier ways of David's life. He also sought his father's God. Look what it says there in verse number four. But he sought the God of his father and walked in his commandments. He was an obedient man. And in contrast to all these people, all these kings of his time, who were abandoning the ways of their fathers, abandoning the ways of the living God, and just living for themselves, Jehoshaphat walked in the ways of David, and Jehoshaphat walked in obedience to God. In verse 6, it described him as being courageous in the ways of the Lord. He wasn't just doing it in fear and trembling, he courageously, against all the public sway that would try and have him walk away the way that everybody else was walking, worshipping the gods of the Baals and the Asherahs and all those things, Jehoshaphat courageously walked in the ways of the Lord. There's someone to look up to, hey? Jehoshaphat was on fire for God. He loved the Lord, his God. God had given him incredible protection. In verse 3, it says he was with Jehoshaphat. And in verse 5, it says the Lord established his kingdom. Also in verse 10, the fear of the Lord fell on all the nations so that none around Jehoshaphat even dared to make war against Jehoshaphat. They all stayed away and kept their distance. They knew there's something different about this man. He was a godly man. The Bible says that when a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. Jehoshaphat had no trouble from surrounding nations. And then sadly, in verses 18, the next chapter, it says that Jehoshaphat had great riches and honor. And then he did a very strange thing. He made a marriage alliance with Ahab, the king of Israel. And you say, why is it so strange? The Bible describes Ahab like this. In 1 Kings 16 and verse 33, it says, Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel. to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. And for some strange reason, some marriage reason, Jehoshaphat makes a friendship, an alliance with this Ahab, this wicked king. And in the story, if you read verse 18, or chapter 18, it describes how the army goes out, and first of all they seek counsel from the prophets of the Lord, and one of them comes finally and says, Micaiah is his name, and he says, you know what's going to happen? Ahab is going to die today. And they go out to the battle, and Ahab is killed in the battle. He's shot with an arrow between his shoulder blades, I believe it is, and he dies. At the end of the battle, everybody kind of goes home. And then in chapter 19, Jehoshaphat is returning in safety to his house in Jerusalem. But Jehu the son of Hananiah, this is verse 2, went out to meet him and said to King Jehoshaphat, should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord? Because of this, wrath has gone out against you from the Lord. Nevertheless, some good is found in you, for you destroyed the Asherah out of the land and have set your heart to seek God." That's an incredible statement. You know what, you say, what kind of lessons can you learn from Jehoshaphat's early life? And lesson number one is this, great beginnings do not guarantee great endings. Beware, people of God. I call myself the same thing. Beware, Nelson, that you do not become a Demas who departed from the faith, having fallen in love with this present world. And that's exactly what Jehoshaphat did. He, for some reason, made this alliance with Ahab, and they went out to battle together. And he fell in love with the people of the world, and he departed for a time. And the reality is that great beginnings do not guarantee great endings. We need to be a people of God who are all the time, constantly, in our daily walk with the Lord, seeking the Lord that He may be found. Beware the little foxes that spoil the vines." That's a phrase out of Song of Solomon, I believe it is. It's an old little line. It means this, watch out for the little habits, watch out for the little things that creep into our lives, that turn our hearts away from the living God. And it often isn't the big things, often it's all the little small things, the little distractions, the little things that just tease and pull our hearts away from the Living God. They appeal maybe to our ego, or to our pride, or to our vanity, or something, and they draw us away. And for some reason, Jehoshaphat, for a time in his life, a brief time, allowed his heart to be drawn away from the Living God. But you know what else is also true? that great failure doesn't mean absolute or total failure. Just because for a time some leave the Lord and walk away from the Lord for a little while doesn't mean it has to end there. And this morning, I urge you, if that's where you are, if you fell in your heart, slipping away, you're being drawn away by something in your life, I'm calling you this morning, come back. It's never too late to return to the Lord. It's never too late to resolve and determine again afresh to seek the Lord our God with all of our hearts. God is gracious and God will restore. The beautiful thing about this story is, it's God that brings wrath against Jehoshaphat. And Jehoshaphat, in response, seeks the Lord his God. And you know what happens in the end? Even though it's God who brings wrath, and I believe that's the nations that are going to come down and fight against Jehoshaphat, it's God that goes out and stands between Jehoshaphat's people and destroys the enemy and reestablishes himself as king in the land. It's a beautiful thing. God brings discipline, but God also deals with it and gets us through it. Great failure does not mean absolute or total failure. The times of our deepest and darkest weaknesses are the times when God's strength shines through. And I don't know where you're at in your life. I don't know what you're facing. If you're facing some kind of overwhelming enemy or situation or difficulty in your life, I just want to encourage you with this simple fact, that when we are at our weakest moments, and when it seems like the enemy is overpowering and overwhelming, and we can't deal with the struggles and the problems, that's when God's strength shines through the brightest. Hang on to the Lord. I want to look secondly at Jehovah Shabbat's... Hey, Cam. Can I have a glass of water, man? Thanks. I want to look at Jehoshaphat's devotion to the Lord. Look in verse 3 of chapter 19. It says this. Then Jehoshaphat was afraid and set his face to seek the Lord, and he proclaimed to Phasra, all Judah. He had heard the voice of Jehu the seer. He had reason to believe that the army is coming with a rod of God's discipline against him. And I reckon they were. And Jehoshaphat's devotion was he turned around, and he set his face to seek the Lord. We said earlier, we look a little bit closer. What does it mean to set your face to seek the Lord? It means, first of all, to resolve, to set means to resolve or determine, to fasten, to establish so it cannot be moved. We use terms like this is not set in stone. set in concrete. We haven't written something down. When we were in carpentry, we'd often set things in concrete or emplace them so they could not be shaken and could not be moved. The idea of to set your heart here, to set your face, is to fasten it or fix it so it cannot be moved. It's a resolution. It's a determination before the living God that our hearts will follow the Lord for all we're worth. It means to set it in concrete or set it, fasten it. The heart is the center of the emotions and the will. And the Bible writers didn't always differentiate between the heart as an organ and the heart as the will or emotions. Jehoshaphat committed his will and his emotions and himself to seek the Lord. You say, why does he use a strange phrase? to seek, set his face to seek the Lord. You think, you know, why would that be? Everywhere else you kind of read about him setting his heart to seek the Lord. Why this one? Why does it say his face? And the only thing that comes to mind is this. It's the idea of looking and focusing the direction he was choosing to look. You can see the armies coming down. And the person who came and brought the news said, listen, they're at En Gedi. And he defines and identifies where the enemies of the Lord are. But Jehoshaphat has said he sets his face. He sets his focus to be entirely upon the Lord. He won't allow. anything else to get in the way. He won't allow something to sway himself away. He's already, early in his life, set his heart to seek the Lord, but now he sets his face. He focuses fully and firmly on the Lord. to seek the Lord. You know, I say, what does that mean? What does that mean to us? It's a euphemism for prayer. The contact is with fasting. If you notice there, it says in verse three, he also proclaims a fast. And the idea there is an added self-imposed restriction from eating and drinking so as to devote himself and the nation entirely to seeking the Lord in prayer. Notice also in his youth, he set his heart to seek the Lord, to pray. Jehoshaphat, a godly man, was a man of prayer. Notice also in the face of his enemies, he set his heart to pray. When the enemy came knocking, even though the contact seemed it was the hand of God against him and that they were still there, he set his face to seek the Lord. In regards to our series on prayer, I didn't even think about this until yesterday. I was working through my notes and reading through it, and all of a sudden, this just kind of hit me. The first lesson in our series on prayer has to do with a determination in the heart of man to seek the Lord, to seek God's face. You see, Bible Church, listen. Determine in your heart to seek the face of the living God in prayer. Remember Jesus' words? Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. I always thought it was just like three ways of saying the same thing. Ask, seek, and knock. In actual fact, it's not. It's actually a progression. And first of all, we ask for things that we need and we ask them and we receive them. But seeking has to do with the face and the presence of the living God. And Jehoshaphat determined to seek the Lord. He wanted to be in God's presence. He wanted to enjoy the relationship that he could have with God. And KC Bible Church, I'm calling all of us as a people of God to seek the Lord. to seek Him in prayer, to seek that intimate personal relationship. A couple of us were discussing tonight the Bible study about how when you get praying sometimes and you just kind of get in that, I don't want to use the wrong word, mode or mood or whatever you want to call it, you're in that groove, if you like, for lack of a better term. And you're just so enjoying the Lord's presence. And as you're praying, the Spirit of God is giving you another thing to pray for, and another thing to pray for, and another thing to pray for. And although it sometimes seems like we're so slow and so failing in beginning to pray. When we begin to pray and we get in the face of God, and we begin to enjoy that relationship, and we're enjoying the presence of God, we are so slow and so hard to leave praying, to stop praying. And listen, what we need to do is be a people who are seeking the Lord. You know, the Bible promises us Hebrews 11 verse six. What's it say? Without faith, it is impossible to please God. But the one who comes to God must believe that he is promised number one and number two. So cool. Must believe that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. I've had people come to me and say, listen, I'm praying and I just don't, I don't feel the Lord's presence. I'm praying. I just don't seem to have any answers. I don't know what to do. And I said, look, just keep at it. Diligently seek the Lord. We're going to look in a few weeks about Jesus teaching on prayer about the woman who banged on her neighbor's door and needed something from her neighbor. And she wouldn't stop banging until the neighbor finally gave her what she wanted. And there are times when we seek the Lord and we have to keep knocking and keep knocking and keep going back. And Jehoshaphat determined in his faith in his heart and in with his face to seek the living God. Casey Bible Church, listen to me, another lesson from life of Jehoshaphat is this. Your enemy is not the problem. Listen. If the problem was the enemy that you face and the promises of Romans 8, it wouldn't be true. Listen to what Paul says. Actually, better yet, take your Bible, stick your finger in 1 and 2 Chronicles 20, and flip over to Romans chapter 8. Unless you have a tablet or iPad, then you have to scroll and swipe and find. and come back to it. But I want to read Romans 8 verses 31 to 39. This is a great promise. Listen, if the enemy that we face was really our problem, these promises wouldn't make sense. But the reality is our problem is far beyond that. Our problem is our prayerlessness and the way we deal with the enemies that are in our life. It's very easy for the enemies... I was thinking the other day, you ever seen a little boy go, hey mommy, look my thumb is bigger than the sun. And they put their thumb up and they kind of pull back, and pull back, use the light, and they pull back, and pull back, and pull back, and right about here, my thumb is bigger than that light. Because your thumb, perspective-wise, just appears to be bigger. And the reality is sometimes our problems, sorry, our enemies, the things that we face and deal with seem overwhelming to us, and it's almost like, look, my problems, my enemies are bigger than God, because it seems like they crowd out everything else. But I want you to know that's not the case. Listen to what he says in Romans 8 verse 31 to 39. He says this. What shall we say then to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? Is that ever an incredible promise? Incredible pace of hope. If God is for us, who can be against us? The answer is obviously nothing. He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died. More than that was raised. Who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it's written, for your sake we're being killed all the day long, we're regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. And he answers back, no! Verse 37. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth. Don't miss this one. Nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Look at the enemies that Paul describes. Tribulation, distress, famine, naked, sword, anything in all creation. Your problem and my problem is not the enemy. It's not sickness or disease. It's not cancer. It cannot separate you from God. It's not the miserable work situation that you find yourself in. That cannot separate you from the love of God in Christ. It's not your marriage. Even if it tragically fails, it cannot separate you from God. It's not financial struggle or hardship or failure. Not even that can separate you from God. Your enemy is not the problem. Your problem is how we respond to those enemies in our life. And the answer is we resolve, we determine, we make up our minds to seek the Lord. When the doctor has bad news, set your heart to seek the Lord. When you get let go from your job, set your heart determined in your heart to seek the Lord. The enemy's not the problem, KC Bible Church. Responding in prayerlessness, that's a problem. Jehoshaphat responded to his enemies by resolving to seek the Lord. We must also respond by resolving to seek the Lord in everything. Thirdly, I want you to notice Jehoshaphat's God. Let's read again. verses 6 through verse 11. It says this. And Jehoshaphat says, O Lord God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations, and your hand are power and might, so that none is able to withstand you. Did you not, our God, drive out the inhabitants of a land before the people of Israel and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham, your friend? And they have lived in it, have built for you a sanctuary for your name, saying, if disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house and before you. for your name is in this house and cry out to you in affliction and you will hear and save. We'll leave it there. I'd like to go through and unpack all the ways it describes God, but I'm only gonna pick just a few of them. God was the one that Jehoshaphat sought in his early days. Wrath came out from the Lord against Jehoshaphat in discipline for his unwise and ungodly alliance with Ahab. God was the one who brought the enemy, but God was also the one, the only one able to deal with the enemy. I want you to notice that Jehoshaphat prayed to the Lord in verses 3 to 11 there. You can look at it like this. In verse 6, Jehoshaphat recounts the character of God. In verses 7 to 11, Jehoshaphat recounts the works of God. And in verse 12, Jehoshaphat makes his plea to God, and we'll look at that at the end. Notice how, first of all, Jehoshaphat describes the Lord his God as he addresses him in prayer. By the way, just a little side note, in your prayer life, make it a habit never to let familiarity with the living God who is your heavenly father. And we have a tremendous blessing in the fact that we call him and we address him and he is our heavenly father. But don't let that fact, that reality breed familiarity and contempt. When we go into his presence, step into the presence of the living God in fear and respect for who God is. Jehoshaphat begins, he describes him in a number of different ways. First of all, he describes him as a covenant God. Look in verse 6, he says this, and he said, O Lord God of our fathers. Look in verse 7, he says, the descendants of Abraham, your friend. And he also makes another point down in verse 12, O our God. And he uses those three different references there, and it's the way he's describing God. Especially, O Lord God of our fathers. The word Lord, in the old Hebrew, carries an incredible connotation of a covenant God. A God who is in an incredible relationship with his people. A covenant is an unbreakable relationship set or established in the blood of a sacrifice. Remember Psalm 11? The Lord is in His temple and how we have to go past the brazen altar and deal with the sacrifices required and then we're washed and then we can go in. The reality is the people of God in both testaments are covenant relationship people. Moses got all the people together, bottom of Mount Sinai, and he read the book of the covenant of the Lord their God. He took an animal and he killed that animal. He took the blood of that animal. He sprinkled the blood on the book and he went out amongst the people and he began to sprinkle and throw blood on the people. And it's a beautiful picture because in first Peter in the New Testament, what does it say about us? We are sprinkled with the blood of Christ, meaning what? We're under the same kind of covenant they were. We are in an unbreakable relationship, and when Jehoshaphat goes to praise, the first thing he says is, listen, oh Lord God, he recognizes him as the covenant partner with him together. They are in an unbreakable relationship. That's got some incredible hope for us, doesn't it? You ever have those moments you think, oh, I've blown it so bad. I've done so many foolish things. If I go before the Lord, I'm lucky if you'll even twitch an eyelid in my direction. The reality is. Our God is a covenant God. That relationship between you and him can never be broken. And the first thing that Jehoshaphat does is he remembers that he is in a covenant relationship with a living God. We are each, all of us as believers in Jesus Christ, in a covenant relationship through the blood of Christ, sharing a cross for us. When we pray, we always should pray, when you close your prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ, or in the name of the Lord Jesus, or in the name of Christ, however you want to use that, but you should always close up that way. You say, why is that? Because we're in a relationship that's established in Jesus' death. We're in a relationship that's established because of who Jesus is. We're in a new covenant with him that he made on our behalf. That's why we pray that way. Second, the way that Jehoshaphat recognizes God is this. He describes him as God exalted and transcendent. Look what he says in verse 6. He says, you are, are you not God in heaven? Unlike the bales of the land, where the people are going out to and bowing down to and burning all the stuff and sacrificing, it was a God that was nothing. But Jehoshaphat stands before all the people and says, are you not God in heaven? Meaning that you're so far above us, you're set apart from us, you're set above us, you're exalted above us. We come to worship an exalted living God. We come to pray to a God who is exalted above all. What an amazing God that we have. We're looking at this earlier at Psalm 11, how God is established in an unassailable place. His throne is in heaven, meaning what? That means that none of us can go up and pull God down from his throne. No enemy of God can prevail over God. He is unassailable. There is no greater court to which we can appeal. There's no higher authority to which we can appeal to, and there is no greater power to which we can appeal to answer our prayer. That's the God that we pray to. KC Bible Church, remember the greatness of God when you come to pray. Next Jehoshaphat describes him as the sovereign Lord. He says there, you rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. We saw in 17 and verse 10 how the fear of the Lord had gone out and all the other nations around them would not make war against him. Jehoshaphat recognized that God ruled over his kingdom. Jehoshaphat also recognized that God ruled over the nations coming to make war against him. Our God is a sovereign God. Jehoshaphat recognized God as sovereign over us. KC Bible Church, listen. Because God is sovereign over all our enemies, my enemies and your enemies, listen, that verse in Romans 8, listen to it again with a little bit of different context. We know that for those who love good, love God, sorry, cancer works together for those who are called according to his purposes. Economic difficulties work together. for those who are called according to God's purposes. Difficulties and struggles and all those things that we face that seem to be the enemies against us, God is working them all. for our good and for his glory. God was even working by bringing the nations down in discipline against Jehoshaphat. He was using them for his good and his glory and the good of Jehoshaphat. And when Jehoshaphat went out and began to sing and he followed God's directions, they saw an incredible salvation provided by God. The God that we pray to, beloved, is a sovereign God. You know you get those times when you phone up the government for something? miserable times that those are, you know, and you want something from the government, oh, I'm sorry, that's department 44BA slash C2, please phone this number and someone will help you there, and you phone that number, oh, I'm terribly sorry, but you need to phone the customer service department and they'll help you over there, and everybody just keeps passing you off. Oh, I don't deal with that problem. Oh, no, sorry, that's not my part of my portfolio, my brief. You know what, you never go before the living God, and God says, oh, I'm sorry, my sovereignty only extends to this far, and that's outside of my, you need to phone this other department over here in a different part of heaven. No, not for a moment. God and his sovereignty is the one that can deal, the only one that can deal with the enemies we face. Next. Jehoshaphat describes him as the omnipotent God. This is the last one we'll look at. Verse six, look at what he says there. He says, are you not, I can read the whole verse. In verse six he says, O Lord God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. And then he says, in your hand are power and might so that none is able to withstand you. What Jehoshaphat is doing is he's describing him as the omnipotent God. Omnipotence is his almightiness. It's the God who is more powerful, powerful beyond anything else. He is the one that has all and complete power. God's power and His might know no bounds. If you need somebody strong to deal with your enemy, there's none stronger than God. If you think your need is beyond reaching, if you think your situation is beyond rescuing, if you think your enemy is unstoppable, you're thinking about the wrong side of it, you're focusing on the wrong part. No enemy you face is bigger than God's power to crush it. No enemy you face is larger than the limits of God's strength. And no enemy you face can go beyond the reach of God's arm. I was thinking about Reverend Samuel M. Lockridge. Any of you ever heard of Samuel Lockridge? A little thing they did on YouTube called That's My King. And he has this great line, he says, no means of measure can define his limitless love. That's great. That's exactly who we're talking about. The God who is omnipotent, the God whose love is beyond everything, the God whose strength goes beyond everything. No matter what we face in this world, whether it's a work situation or a health situation or a financial situation or a relationship struggle or problem, it does not go beyond the limits of God's strength and God's power and ability to deal with those things. Jehoshaphat's God, to whom he prayed, is God to whom we pray. The Lord, our God, is our covenant God. We can never be removed from that relationship. The Lord our God is exalted and enthroned in heaven. None can remove him from his place of authority and power. He's always available to us in prayer. The Lord our God is our sovereign God. Everything is under his control. The Lord our God is our omnipotent God. Nothing is beyond the reach and the strength of the Lord our God. What an amazing God we have to pray to. I want to finish up, fourthly, with Jehoshaphat's prayer itself. In the last couple of verses there, verse 12. Jehoshaphat in verse 3, determined to seek the Lord in prayer. In verse 3, he also proclaimed a fast, calling all the people of Judah to afflict their souls. And he called them to abstain from food and drink in order to be wholly devoted to the Lord. In verses 5 through 11, he addresses God in prayer. And in verse 12, Jehoshaphat asked God to meet this current need, to judge your enemies. Look what he says in verse 12. Oh, our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great whore that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you. Jehoshaphat spelled out in black and white. He was very specific in his prayer, asking the Lord for these things. One of the questions Jesus occasionally asked people he was ministering to was this, what would you have me to do for you? And he was inviting them to tell him specifically, to spell it out, what is it you want? And one of the things that's been really challenging my own prayer life in the last couple of weeks, I've been reading and praying and reading through scripture about prayer, is simply this, we need to learn to pray specific things. We often pray in wide, broad generalities, but Jehoshaphat comes before God and he prays in specific things. Will you not execute judgment on them? He spells it out in black and white, the thing that he needs. And Jehoshaphat comes and he asks God, after he's finished addressing God for who he is, he asked him for the things he needed. You look at the next thing there. He admitted his total inability to do anything. Some of you know, I've been doing a course at uni on leadership. And I gotta admit, this one phrase here, this one little prayer here, doesn't make it into any course on leadership anywhere. Look at what Jehoshaphat does. Gets the whole nation, gathers them all together, puts them all in one place, stands up in front of all of them, and this is what he says. We're powerless, and we don't know what to do. Now you imagine, right? You're sitting there, you're part of the Judahites, and you're all gathered together, Jehoshaphat, and he's going to lead the people in prayer, and they're going to go out to battle against the enemy, and he stands up and says, we're powerless, and I don't know what to do. You're thinking, Jehoshaphat, this is not the time for that kind of approach. You imagine if, you know, Winston Churchill, on 1939, standing on the radio program saying, we don't know what to do with them, they're going to come across them, we're going to fight them, and we have no idea what to do. Well, good night. You know, it wouldn't have worked. And yet look at what Jehoshaphat does, and what he does actually is a beautiful description of exactly what God is looking for in the leadership of his people. It's exactly what God wants to look for, looks for in us when we pray. He comes and first of all admits his total inability to do anything. And here we see the kind of leadership God wants. He's standing in front of all these people, and he literally says, I don't have a clue what to do. And one of the things that we've got to learn is this. Prayer is not offered to fill up the holes in my armor. I got all this covered. Oh, there's a hole. OK, Lord, you fill that little bit over there. Oh, you know, I've got this great defense strategy. I've got all these plans to do all these great things. Oh, there's a hole over there. There's a problem. Lord, you just fix those two holes. I got everything else. That's not what he says. He says we're powerless. By the way, if you flip back over to chapter 17, I was going to mention it before, but I'll mention it now. If you read in chapter 17 from 14 all the way to verse 19 and look at the numbers that are used to describe Jehoshaphat's army, 300,000, 280,000, 200,000, 200,000, 180,000. I didn't do the math because I can't count that high, but that's a lot of men. And Jehoshaphat stands in front of all these people and says, we're powerless. We've got this major enemy. We've got a huge army, but we're still powerless. And what he's doing is saying, listen, I'm casting myself completely and fully on God's mercy and God's grace. I won't stand here and say, I can handle this, because God will say, well, OK, and step back. He says, no. He said, I'm completely and totally powerless to know what to do, and I don't have the strength to do anything. Josaphat admitted his own total inability. He also admitted his own total ignorance of what to do. Josaphat wasn't saying, I've got a great battle strategy to fight with, but we're powerless without an army, or we're powerless for this reason or that reason, or I have all these great ideas, but I don't know. No, he just said, listen, I don't got any strength. I don't have any knowledge of what to do. Jehoshaphat was literally throwing himself down on God's mercy and God's grace. He was throwing himself down saying, I need your help. I cannot do this on my own. And you know what? It forces me to be brutally honest for a minute. I'm convinced one of the reasons why God doesn't answer our prayers, my prayers, is that we tend to use them more like good luck charms, like heavenly pixie dust sprinkled on our plans and ideas. And all these great ideas, Lord, all these plans, now we're just going to ask God to bless. That's not what Jehoshaphat does. And I think that's one of the reasons why God doesn't answer our prayers is because we use prayer like a little pixie dust, looking for some blessing to add on. Does that mean we shouldn't make plans? No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying here is before we even start to make plans, before we even think about our strategy, before we think about shepherding and leading God's people, before the deacons They're going to think about how they're going to serve before the kids club thinks about how to reach the kids Or the youth group or the bible studies or all those things before they start barreling along with their own ideas and plans Come before god and throw yourself on god's mercy and god's grace and say we are powerless to do anything We don't know what to do. Help us. Oh our god because the last phrase of his prayer is so key. He says but Our eyes are on you We don't know what to do. We don't have any strength to do it, but we're focusing on you. Before we do those things, we cry out to God to show us, to show you and to show me the way. Cry out to God for wisdom, to know what to do. Cry out to God to give us the power to do his will. Listen, Casey Bible church, when you face an enemy in your life, and I guarantee you, everybody in this room has something in their life. They could say, yeah, that's the enemy that I'm facing. That's the enemy at my gates. That's crowding in on my life and threatening to push me away from my faith in Jesus. Listen, people of God determined to seek the Lord, cry out to him for deliverance, cry out to him for wisdom, to know what to do and the strength to enable you to do it. The problem is that we are far too independent. We're far too self-reliant, and we're far too impressed with our own abilities and strategies and theories and programs. Not Jehoshaphat. He had learned something. He had learned the greatness of God, and the last thing Jehoshaphat did was he confessed his or their total dependence on God. His eyes were on God, still seeking the Lord. It's exactly what it means. How do you describe that? That's faith, isn't it? It's focusing not on the enemy at the gates, but focusing our eyes and our prayer and our life entirely upon the living God. We will determine to seek the Lord our God. Listen to what Hebrews says. You probably recognize the verse as soon as I start. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. That's what we need to be doing. That's why just reading through that this week and studying through this and realizing how much our prayer life needs to grow. I'm not talking about prayer meetings, I'm talking about our individual and corporate, but our individual prayer lives. We have relegated prayer to the sort of like, well, when all else fails, we'll pray. And Joshua had said, no, all else has already failed, let's pray. Before everything else happens, we'll pray. We're powerless, we don't know what to do, but our eyes are on you. What's the message for us today? I'll give you four simple statements. This is a message for us. The enemy is not the problem. It's how we respond and responding without prayer, that's the problem. Number two, set your heart to seek the Lord your God in prayer. Set it in concrete, set it in granite, set it in red gum, the hardest timber you can find. Set it fast that you will seek the Lord your God in prayer. Make that prayer a priority in your life. Just a little side note, one of the comments that Andrew Murray made that kind of hit me because it's right where it counts for me, is Jesus did not teach his disciples to preach, but he did teach them over and over again how to pray. We are called to be a people of prayer. That's why we're going here. So number one, the enemy is not your problem. Number two, set your heart to seek the Lord your God in prayer. Number three, remember the greatness of the God to whom you pray. Go back through that list. and just soak up. Read to the Psalms. I've been sitting in my office the last couple of days and reading through the last 100, like around 99 to 105 in there, and reading the great expositions in prayer about the greatness of the God to whom we pray to. Read the Psalms. Learn who God is. Maybe one of the problems for us in prayer is that we don't yet fully appreciate the God who has saved us, the God whom we have a relationship with. Soak up from the scriptures who God is. Learn to read your Bible to know God and to learn about God and to respond to that God in prayer. And then when it comes time to pray, cry out to God in specific prayer, admit your weakness. We're all weak before the living God. But the cool thing is that when we admit our weakness, that's when His strength comes shining through. Number two, admit your ignorance of what to do. And finally, in faith, fasten your eyes on Christ. All right. I wanna put this into some immediate action. There's some of the guys here. I wanna ask you if maybe two or three of the guys could just rise where they are and lead the church in prayer for a time, and then I'll come back and we'll lead us in communion.