2 Kings 3:6-12 - Homiletics

Faith and unfaith tested by danger and difficulty.

Jehoshaphat and Jehoram are associates, allies, brothers-in-arms. They are united in one cause, have one object, one aim. And they fall into one and the same danger and difficulty. A failure of water at the spot where they had fully expected to find it brings them and their armies into peril of almost instant destruction. But how differently are they affected under the same circumstances! Jehoram at once despairs, sees no way out of the difficulty, has no plan, no counsel, to suggest. Far from flying to God for succor, he only thinks of him to reproach him. Jehovah, he says, has called three kings together, only to deliver them into the hand of Moab. The reproach is as unfounded as it is useless. Jehovah had not called the three kings together. He had not been consulted on the subject of the expedition, and he had not spoken. The three kings had come together of their own free will, and of their own mere motion. And Jehovah was not about to deliver them into the hand of Moab, but was about to give them a great victory over Moab—a victory which would prevent Moab from causing any further trouble for half a century ( 2 Kings 13:20 ). But Jehoram, being the embodiment of unfaith, is blind, hopeless, and helpless. It is otherwise with Jehoshaphat, who all his life "has prepared his heart to seek God" ( 2 Chronicles 19:3 ). Danger and difficulty draw forth what is best in him, rouse him out of a sort of trance of religious indifference into which he had fallen, and cause him to fall back upon Jehovah as the only sure Refuge in time of trouble, and to ask, "Is there not here a prophet of the Lord, that we may inquire of the Lord by him?" Jehoshaphat's faith makes him both hopeful and helpful. He suggests a course which leads to a happy result. Bat for him, so far as appears, the danger might have terminated in disaster.