The Battle Before the Battle: The Road Back After Failure

The recovery packet still has last month's we-already-returned sentence. After a named fall this church already finished explaining, one hallway said we already came back. The room received that sentence as if leftover indoor sorry were the only public news a restored name is allowed to keep.

A sponsor two seats over printed the battle is not yours on the folder. He also signed the first note that left the named wreck under a we-already-returned file. He has a sentence about coming back. He has not asked who still has to seek Yahweh while the multitude is still in En Gedi.

This is a sermon for a church that already knows how to survive a wreck and does not know how to come back without dressing the return in leftover indoor sorry. If you preach 2 Chronicles 20 as a map of anyone's private relapse, you will lie. If you preach it as Jehoshaphat of Judah after Ramoth, under a real multitude, with a real Jahaziel and a real wilderness of Tekoa, you give this church a God who hears a people who seek him and meets them in worship before the wilderness looks different. You also take away the cheap recovery move that treats a printed we-already-returned sentence as the seeking Judah still has to do.

Text

Hear the report as Holy Scripture tells it, from the World English Bible: "After this, the children of Moab, the children of Ammon, and with them some of the Meunites, came against Jehoshaphat to battle. Then some came who told Jehoshaphat, saying, “A great multitude is coming against you from beyond the sea from Syria. Behold, they are in Hazazon Tamar” (that is, En Gedi).

Jehoshaphat was alarmed, and set himself to seek Yahweh. He proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. Judah gathered themselves together to seek help from Yahweh. They came out of all the cities of Judah to seek Yahweh. Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in Yahweh’s house, before the new court; and he said, “Yahweh, the God of our fathers, aren’t you God in heaven? Aren’t you ruler over all the kingdoms of the nations? Power and might are in your hand, so that no one is able to withstand you.