BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

Thankfully, Jehoshaphat didn’t make that mistake. He gave God words of faith with which to work and then he put his dependence completely on God. He cast the care of the situation over on Him and said, “O our God…we have no power against this great multitude that is coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are upon You” (verse 12, "NKJV"). What happened then? The Spirit of The LORD came on Zechariah, one of the prophets in Judah, and gave Jehoshaphat and his people these very detailed instructions: "Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God's. To morrow go ye down against them…ye shall find them at the end of the brook, before the wilderness of Jeruel. Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the LORD with you, O Judah and Jerusalem: fear not, nor be dismayed; to morrow go out against them: for the LORD will be with you" (verses 15-17). Way To Go, Boys! How did the people of Judah respond to those instructions? They didn’t do what Christians today sometimes do. They didn’t wring their hands and wonder if God was really going to come through for them. No, they started “worshipping the LORD.” They “stood up to praise the LORD God of Israel with a loud voice on high” (verses 18-19). What’s more, the next morning as they marched into battle, they kept that praise going. They “appointed singers unto the LORD” to go “out before the army, and to say, Praise the LORD; for his mercy endureth for ever” (verse 21). For years, I thought Jehoshaphat came up with the idea of appointing those singers. But he didn’t. It was the people’s idea—and it was a good one! For as they began to sing and praise, “The LORD set ambushments against” their enemies. “And when Judah came…they looked unto the multitude, and, behold, they were dead bodies fallen to the earth, and none escaped” (verses 22, 24). Wow! Talk about a massive victory! Judah’s angels completely wiped their enemies out. Not one soldier was left alive. “But Brother Copeland,” you might say, “those verses don’t say anything about angels.” They don’t have to. The fact that the Israelites had been supplied by God with angelic protection had already been established. When the Israelites first came out of Egypt, The LORD said to them, “Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared” (Exodus 23:20). Just as our angels call for additional troops if they’re needed, in this fight against the Ammonites and Moabites, the angel assigned to Judah obviously deployed some more angelic warriors. They did their job so thoroughly that all the people of Judah had to do was watch and say, “Way to go, boys! Praise God!” BVOV : 7

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