GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
2 CHRONICLES 18:1-4
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18:1 Jehoshaphat had much wealth and honor. He also made a marriage alliance with Ahab. 2 After some years passed, Jehoshaphat went down to visit Ahab in Samaria. Ahab sacrificed sheep and cattle in great numbers for him and for the troops with him. Then Ahab persuaded him to go up against Ramoth Gilead. 3 Ahab king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat king of Judah, “Will you go with me against Ramoth Gilead?” And Jehoshaphat said, “I am like you. My people are like your people. We will join you in the war.” 4 But Jehoshaphat also said to the king of Israel, “But seek the word of the LORD today.”
“Some years” passed before this first visit to Ahab. 1 Kings 18-21 shows that this meeting took place in or shortly after 854 BC, which places this meeting a few years after Elijah’s victory over the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel and flight to Mount Horeb. The king of Israel put on an impressive show. Sheep and cattle were slaughtered. Our author says that they were sacrificed, but there is no statement that they were sacrificed to the Lord. Ahab had married a pagan woman named Jezebel from Sidon in the northwest. She led her husband to worship and serve Baal and build a temple for Baal in his city of Samaria.
Eventually, the two kings would agree to work together in foreign trade (1 Kings 22:48-49). Here at this meeting, they agreed to deploy their armies together in a war. Ramoth Gilead was east of Israel on the edge of the desert. It was part of the ancestral allotment to the tribe of Gad, but it had been captured by the king of Aram (1 Kings 22:3).
Ahab was being shrewd. Jehoshaphat had undertaken many building projects and military projects. His fortresses were new and well-built. He was certainly envied by the nations around him. There is even evidence that some of his people were undertaking their own building projects, since at this time the city of Jericho was rebuilt by a man named Hiel of Bethel, although it cost Hiel the lives of two of his sons, just as Joshua has prophesied (1 Kings 16:34; Joshua 6:26). Ahab obviously thought that by at least seeming to join together with the stronger southern nation he could put forward a strong army and drive out the Aramean threat to the east. We know from the Book of Kings that he was also being attacked for his unbelief and wickedness by a prophet in the wilderness, a wild man called Elijah. The Lord sent three and a half years of drought at that man’s word, and still Ahab refused to reject his wife’s religion.
Jehoshaphat seemed willing to cooperate with Ahab. His words, however, are really a preamble and not an agreement. When he says, “I am like you” and “My people are like you,” he is also saying, “You should be like us.” Then he turns, and like the old detective Columbo, he says, “Just one more thing…” He insists: “Seek the word of the Lord today.” He would only continue if Ahab placed himself under the guidance and approval of God, the true God of Israel.
Jehoshaphat was not a perfect man nor a sinless one. We will see him make mistakes. But let’s take his actions here to heart for our lives and for our own struggles. It’s not easy to carry on a conversation with someone who is an unbeliever. That’s all the more true when they are a friend, or a family member. Our hearts go out to them, but they make the simplest discussion difficult or impossible because their words and intentions so often attack God. Jehoshaphat showed that it’s possible to leave a door open to communication and still preserve our devotion to the Lord. “I will do this with you, if we place ourselves under the will of God first.” The Lord our God will not desert you or turn away from you. “From the Lord comes deliverance. May his blessing be on his people” (Psalm 3:8).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – 2 Chronicles 18:1-4 “Just one more thing…”