Sermon: "When God Responds"

3rd in the "Prayer" series.
Delivered October 22, 2006 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

Theme: What do we expect when we pray? Push away all the religious talk and what people expect you to believe--when you pray what are you really looking for?

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Gracious God, we thank you for giving us your word. We thank you that you have revealed yourself and that in your word now we can learn what you want us to learn, we can be guided in our response to you so that our faith may grow and out of that faith might grow obedience and service and praise, all to the glory of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.

Today we are going to be reading from the book of 2nd Chronicles, Chapter 20. We are not going to read the whole chapter, which is a relief to those who have actually seen how long this chapter is. It's on page 320 I think of your pew Bible. I am going to read just Verses 5 to 19, but I am going to read them in two sections later as I speak, because I want us to look at them separately.

I hate getting run around on the telephone. I hate those little services where you have to hit the buttons and you know you call customer service and you hit the buttons, they get all this information about you, then you wait. You get put in to some kind of line. Finally you get to a person and that person asks you all the information you just entered. And then after you give all of that information again, you explain your difficulty and then they let you know that back when it was push 1 for that or push 2 for that, 3 for that, on one of those spots you made a mistake and you got the wrong person. So they kindly connect you with another line where you have to enter the information again, wait in a line, get to speak to another person, give the information again and then hopefully get your answer. I shared my frustration with this at the last service and Charles Bailey came up and said, "Well, just a few weeks ago my wife's car was hijacked and all of her credit cards were stolen." He found out about it immediately and immediately began to try to contact the credit card company. It took 45 minutes to get through the process and in that 45 minutes someone has used the card. It's definitely a frustrating experience. Sometime these experiences can be so bad that before we even pick up the phone we are angry. You know, I am angry just because I have to do it, because of my expectations.

Well what do you expect when you pray? What do you really expect? Let's put away all of the religious talk. Let's put aside all of the expectations what you think other people expect of you when we pray and really get down to the truth, what do you expect when you pray? What are you really looking for when God hears and when God responds?

There was an elder in a church where I served; a wonderful guy. But his honest expectation in prayer was one thing only, was that by praying God would make him willing to accept the difficulties and sufferings that were going to come anyway, that he had absolutely no power to affect any situation. The prayer was just to get him to accept it. That is what he really believed in. That is the way he prayed. If we were praying about some kind of difficulty, all he would be praying is God, help us to have the grace to accept your will. His prayer was shaped by his expectation. The last time you prayed about a problem, what did you expect? Did you expect that God would change you? Did you expect that God might actually change the situation? Or did you actually really not believe that God was going to do either, you are just calling to register a complaint? God, I don't like the way you are running the world and I just figured I would let you know in this prayer.

In today's passage, what we are going to read in 2nd Chronicles, we find someone who is looking for and expecting real answers. It begins when King Jehoshaphat gets some bad news. He gets news that there are three armies that are assembled and they are just south of Jerusalem near the Red Sea and when that bad news comes it says in Verse 3 and I would like to read that.

"Alarmed, Jehoshaphat resolved to inquire of the Lord, and he proclaimed a fast for all Judah. 4 The people of Judah came together to seek help from the Lord; indeed, they came from every town in Judah to seek him."

When Jehoshaphat heard this news the first thing that he did was the thing that all of us would do. He got worried about it. He got alarmed. He is not some mountain of faith that nothing can possibly shake him, worry him, alarm him. He gets alarmed by this but then he does something very wise, he resolves to inquire of the Lord about it. What's important is what he does with his alarm. He prays. I would like to read now his prayer.

"Then Jehoshaphat stood up in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem at the temple of the Lord in the front of the new courtyard and said:

"O Lord, God of our fathers, are you not the God who is in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. Power and might are in your hand, and no one can withstand you. O our God, did you not drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend? They have lived in it and have built in it a sanctuary for your Name, saying, 'If calamity comes upon us, whether the sword of judgment, or plague or famine, we will stand in your presence before this temple that bears your Name and will cry out to you in our distress, and you will hear us and save us.'

"But now here are men from Ammon, Moab and Mount Seir, whose territory you would not allow Israel to invade when they came from Egypt; so they turned away from them and did not destroy them. See how they are repaying us by coming to drive us out of the possession you gave us as an inheritance. O our God, will you not judge them? For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you."

When you read a chapter like this and you look at a man like Jehoshaphat, the first thing that you notice about him is that he's got an unfortunate name, Jehoshaphat. This is not a good chapter in scripture to look into when you are trying to name children. There are some interesting names. But if we get beyond that, we see that he is a godly king in many ways. He has worked to bring change in Israel, to destroy idolatry. He made a lot of mistakes as well. But here is one of his great moments, because he hears about this situation, he feels alarm and he resolves to inquire of the Lord. He prays. Many of our spiritual battles are lost on this level, because we hear about our problem and we panic and don't pray or we resolve to shift into our high gear of problem solving and we start setting out to solve the problem again without praying. Jehoshaphat doesn't do that. He resolves to inquire of the Lord.

The word here inquire is important, because it's a strong word that indicates that he expected a clear answer from God. He is not flailing around like a drowning man looking for any possible solution. This is a purposeful act that grows out of his relationship with God. He is in trouble, he is going to inquire from the Lord. He expected an answer, but he also doesn't presume that he already knows what to do, because its easy to think that oh we belong to God, this is clearly an evil situation, lets just jump in to it. God will give us the victory. He could have just gathered his army together and said, "Okay folks, these are our enemies. We belong to God. Let's go. God will give us the victory." He doesn't presume that. He resolves to inquire of the Lord. And Jehoshaphat has enough faith to believe that he will get an answer. And he has good enough sense to wait on God to get that answer. We can see his faith in the first paragraph of the prayer. The first half of his prayer he talks about the fact that God is great enough to answer this prayer. God has done this sort of thing before for Israel and God has promised to hear and save. Jehoshaphat is remembering the same promise that came out of the prayer that Solomon prayed years before. Solomon prayed about the future knowing that there would be times of difficulties, time of warfare, times of battle and danger and the people of God would approach God in prayer and God would hear and God would answer and Jehoshaphat remembers that promise in his prayer. God you are big enough. God you have done it before. God you have promised.

Then he presents his problem in the second half of his prayer. Now why does Jehoshaphat pray this way? It is certainly not for God's benefit. God already knows everything. But he prays it to remind himself and the people the bigger picture of what reality is, before he focuses in on the problem. And so, then they present their problem to God and they wait in expectancy. Take a look at Verse 13.

"All the men of Judah, with their wives and children and little ones, stood there before the Lord."

Now there is this massive assembly of people from all over Israel. They are standing there. The men are there. Their wives are there. The children are there and the babies are there. They are standing there. Jehoshaphat finishes his prayer. Oh God will you not judge them for we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you. And they just wait; with babies and children there, they just wait. And you know what would have been going through my mind at that point; after about 20 seconds of waiting, I would have started to think, God you know if you wait too long, John's going to speak up and you know that when John speaks us he is usually not talking about the topic at hand. Why are you giving an opportunity for something disastrous to happen? They wait. They are so expectant that this problem is such a dire consequence and that God is so real and their dependence is so real that they wait right there for an answer. Now believe me, that's partially because of its urgency. They are 48 to 72 hours away from certain disaster. There are times when we have to wait much longer than they are waiting here, but in this case, because of the urgency they actually were waiting for an answer right there and they wait silently for it.

Finally, Verse 14:

"Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jahaziel son of Zechariah, the son of Benaiah, the son of Jeiel, the son of Mattaniah, a Levite and descendant of Asaph, as he stood in the assembly."

Now, in all of the credentials for a Jahaziel, his big credential is that he is a descendant of Asaph who is a person who wrote 11 of the Psalms, Psalms 73 to Psalm 83, but there is no indication that Jahaziel is a known prophet. So all of a sudden someone who is a priest, who is descended from someone important stands up to give a word to the assembly. It's a very unusual event. Then Verse 15, this is what he says:

"He said: "Listen, King Jehoshaphat and all who live in Judah and Jerusalem! This is what the Lord says to you: 'Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God's. Tomorrow march down against them. They will be climbing up by the Pass of Ziz, and you will find them at the end of the gorge in the Desert of Jeruel. You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the Lord will be with you.'"

It's quite a statement. He not only says that they will have victory, he tells them not to be afraid, to be bold about this and go in to battle, because the battle does not belong to them. So he not only tells them that they will have victory, but he gives them a strategy and it's not the strategy that they would have expected. It's a strategy where they go and meet the battle only to discover that God has fought the battle for them. This is what they hear from this possibly untested prophet. What did they do with that? What did they expect?

Verses 18 and 19:

"Jehoshaphat bowed down with his face to the ground, and all the people of Judah and Jerusalem fell down in worship before the Lord. Then some Levites from the Kohathites and Korahites stood up and praised the Lord, the God of Israel, with very loud voice."

They responded with praise. When they heard this word they went on their faces and as they are there on their faces in humility before God, some people rise up and start to praise God for the answer and for God's power. Even more amazing is what happens the next day. In Verses 20 to 23 it talks about them going out the next day and they are so convinced that the battle was God that they put the worship, they put the choir out front. Now some people might put the choir out front for other reasons. I am not a part of that. But they put the choir out front because they believed they didn't need to have their soldiers out front, because the promise was that the battle was God's. What were they expecting when God answers; when God responds? They really expected an answer.

What do you expect when you pray? What do you really expect? I believe what we expect in prayer is shown by a lot of things, but I want to talk about four of the things that show what we expect in our prayer. The first thing is, what do we say in the first half of our prayer? You notice in this prayer the first half Jehoshaphat is talking about greatness of God, his power, his action in history, the promises that God has given. How often do we get a problem and we go to God? And we go this is the problem and so let's pray and we start to pray "God you know the problem that so and so is having, God please help them deal with this situation and give them wisdom." We immediately jump into the prayer.

You can almost tell if a prayer is going somewhere when people first remember that God is Ceator and Redeemer, when we remember what God did in the Bible, when we remember what God has done in our own lives and in our church, when we remember the specific promises that God has made and we are not doing this for God, we are doing this because we are starting to collect our own minds and our own faith as we hold our requests before God. By the time we get to our request, we really believe that God might do something about it, which sometimes isn't true when we immediately jump into prayer.

What do we do in the first half of our prayer? Do we always just jump into the request? Why don't we spend some time telling God about his greatness if we don't? Rehearsing what God has done. Is it because we are too lazy? Is it because we don't want to rehearse what God has done, because we don't recall any answers already in our lives, is that the problem? What is it that's keeping us from focusing the first half of our prayer? You will find this pattern again and again in the scripture where the believers begin with the greatness and magnitude of God and the promises of God before they go in to their requests. If we don't, why don't we?

Bobbye Byerly, a woman who has written a book called, "Miracles Happen" tell us this about prayer. We must remember that praying is not about getting God's attention. The purpose of prayer is to focus our attention on him. If we just jump into our problems what we are doing is we are trying to drag God's attention into our problems, but when we first begin by focusing in on the greatness of God and the promises he has made and the history that we have had with God that is raising our eyes to the greatness of God, its putting our attention on him because his attention is already on us.

The second thing: What do we actually ask for? What's in our prayer? Are we asking for blessing, healing, strength, courage, skill, insight, and guidance? What is it we are asking for? How do we frame that request? That also shows us what we are actually expecting from God. There are times that I am in prayer with people and someone asks something and I don't have the faith to believe it. Somebody will ask maybe that there will be a time of world peace you know that will come upon the whole world and before Jesus comes again I don't believe that will happen. I can't pray that and say amen. There are other times that God might do it and I just don't have the faith yet. And so, do we find ourselves being dishonest at times not really wrestling with what we really expect? Honesty is important, particularly in your personal prayer. Don't throw off these prayers that you don't even think about or praying flipidly that God would heal, that God would act, that God would provide this and provide that and we really don't believe it.

I think God can do something with our faith, but we've got to begin with honesty. So what we actually ask for; so what do we say in the first half of our prayer? What do we actually ask for and then, do we actually look for an answer? In this case, they needed an answer immediately, but often we have to wait, but while we are waiting are we looking for an answer? Do we look in to the scripture for guidance, for a word? If we are asking God which direction should be go, are we looking in to the Bible with expectancy, that God would guide us there? Are we reflecting inside of our hearts trying to listen to what the Holy Spirit might be doing to give us an impression, to shape our prayer? Maybe we are praying, but we are praying a little bit off and we kind of listen to see if God would bring that back on track and reshape that somehow to get it in to the center of his will. Do we look for events? If we are praying for a neighbor, that we would have some opportunity to share with them or something like that, do we actually kind of go outside expecting, looking for that opportunity to connect with them? So are we looking for answers?

The fourth one, do we obey? Almost always a real answer to a real problem is going to require some faith and a little bit of courage. Jehoshaphat didn't know for sure that God had answered their prayer. He didn't know for absolute certainty until he saw the dead bodies of his enemies. Until that point, as the worshipped after they heard the answer, as they sat out and put the singers in front of them, as they marched towards the other army, that entire way they were walking by faith and it was only when they got to the pass and saw the bodies that they were absolutely certain. Until that point they had to obey.

Sometimes our prayers require responses from us. Now I don't have any battles of that size to talk about, but I have a real estate story. I remember when I first came to Central and we were having problems with our real estate situation, you know selling our house. The Wednesday night prayer meeting said to tell us about your house situation and we will pray for it. We are very good in real estate prayers. But I had my own real estate experience in prayer five years earlier, because we had just come back from Japan and we were trying to buy a house in Baton Rouge and we found the house we wanted. We put our offer out. Somebody else was in front of us. God miraculously moved that person out of the way and we were the first person then in line and then all kinds of complications and problems came up. One of the first was I had to have W2's for the prior two years. Well, those W2's were on a boat somewhere between Japan and the United States in the middle of the Pacific Ocean when I needed them, and so we have to go through all of these mass of nations to get everything to happen. Then we also had to right in the middle of negotiations take a two-week trip as missionaries to speak at different conferences.

So I am in Pennsylvania and we are getting faxes every day, new complication, new problem, new this and new that, and so we were praying about it and finally one day I walked out on to the campus where the conference was being held and I prayed for it that morning and I reminded myself of the greatness of God. I reminded myself of all of the much bigger battles that God had won and the times that God had blessed me and blessed Debbie and I specifically, the promises that he has made to his disciples and finally as I prayed I got the confidence that there was a spiritual battle going on and God would win. And at that point, I took authority in the situation and declared in Jesus name that all the opposition had to cease and that we would get the house. I went back and told Debbie, "Debbie it's over. We are going to get the house. God is going to win this." It was true. And what our obedience was at that point, it wasn't that we were out to do anything heroic, I just stopped worrying. Very often our first step of obedience once we have prayed something through is to stop worrying about it. God can lead. God will answer.

Now, when we call customer service on the telephone sometimes we are expecting the worse. When we come to God in prayer, what are we expecting? Are we ready for an answer? If we are ready for an answer, how do our prayers show it? How does our obedience show it and how do our lives show it? We need to be people. We need to be a church that does more than simply spend time in prayer. We need to be a church that really expects something from God when we pray. We need to expect that God will hear, that God will lead, that God will respond, that God will triumph over Satan and evil. What about you? What do you expect from God? What I would like to do to end the sermon today is to spend just a few minutes of silence so that you can reflect for just a moment on what that issue is; it might be about a child, it might be about a family member, it might be about ourselves, it might be about our church or a world issue, but to hold that request silently before God and just reflect for a moment what do we really expect God to do. Let's hold these things in our hearts as we close.

Lord Jesus Christ, in so many areas of our lives we don't know what to do, our eyes are upon you. Amen.

© 2006, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org