GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
2 CHRONICLES 20:20-23
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20 Early in the morning they went out into the wilderness of Tekoa. As they were setting out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, “Hear me, Judah and men of Jerusalem! Have faith in the LORD your God, and you will find him faithful. Believe his prophets, and you will succeed.” 21 And after he consulted with the people, he appointed singers to sing to the LORD and praise him for the glory of his holiness. They went ahead of the army, singing:
“Give thanks to the LORD, for his mercy endures for ever.” *
22 And when they began to sing and praise, the LORD set an ambush against the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah, so that they were routed. 23 For the men of Ammon and Moab rose against the men of Mount Seir, completely destroying them. And just as they had finished off the men of Seir, they all helped to destroy one another.
The wilderness of Tekoa was made up of dense forest and occasional grassland for grazing (Amos 1:1). There is a fold of mountains between the villages like Hebron, Bethlehem and Tekoa and the descent down to the Dead Sea. The route that the enemy forces were taking, “the ascent of Ziz,” was within this steep terrain. But the road from Jerusalem down to Tekoa was an easy walk, about an hour’s march from the city to the upper end of the defile.
Before a military action, a commander usually makes a short speech to his troops to encourage them or to give final orders. Jehoshaphat’s words are no pep talk. He encourages faith and nothing else: “Have faith in God; believe his prophets.” And with that, what does he do? Lookouts? Scouts? Cavalry? Special units on the wings of the army? No, nothing like that. He appoints the singers that form a choir, and they begin to sing and to praise God. And they sing a familiar refrain: “Give thanks to the Lord; his mercy endures forever.” In many editions of the Hebrew text, this Psalm quotation (106:1; 107:1 or 118:1) is given its own line in the text and is centered.
Our prophet goes on to say that as soon as the singing started, the Lord himself laid an ambush for the attackers. The Ammonites and Moabites suddenly attacked the third group, the Edomites from Mount Seir (also called Meunites). Did the rising sun get in their eyes? Did they mistake the Edomites for men of Judah? Let’s not discount or downplay the miracle by trying to explain it away. They were made by God to attack (the Hebrew verb is causative ) their allies. They wiped out the men of Edom, and then they turned on one another. And just as they “finished off” the Edomites, each man from Ammon and Moab helped in the destruction of one another (this is the sense of the sentence in Hebrew).
The song was in praise of God’s holiness. Holiness is an attribute of God that we often think of in negative terms, which is to say, that he lacks sin and is completely free from sin. (The “negative” term here means that there is something that God simply does not have at all, but which is commonly found throughout mankind and the world: sin). But God’s holiness can also be described this way: he loves what is good and he hates what is evil. There is nothing to do with evil at all in God or near him. Whoever approaches God without holiness will be destroyed, for “God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). Therefore he demands that we must be holy. And since his will alone is truly holy, he wants us to conform to his will.
And this is the way of salvation: On account of our sinfulness, inherited from our parents going back to Adam and Eve and passed on to our children, we cannot approach God. Because of this, and out of undeserved love for us (John 3:16), Christ came into the world to lead a holy, sinless life in our place, for our sakes. This was his active obedience. Having done this and having resisted every temptation that we are tempted with (Hebrews 4:15), he was handed over to be punished in our place, to make satisfaction for our sins. This was his passive obedience. The Scriptures make this clear, but let us explain clearly and simply:
1, Paul affirms that Christ gave himself as a ransom for all men in order to save them (1 Timothy 2:4-6).
2, The ransom that was made was not of earthly value, not money, silver, gold, or such things as made Abraham rich (Genesis 24:35), but instead his blood alone was offered (1 Peter 1:19), the blood of a lamb without blemish or defect.
3, He carried our sins as he did this, just as the prophet says he must (Isaiah 53:4-5).
4, This was also announced ahead of time clearly by the angel Gabriel: “to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, and to bring in everlasting righteousness” (Daniel 9:24)– and this was done by the Christ, the Anointed One, as the same angel says in the same prophecy (Daniel 9:25).
5, Our sins were removed by his death and buried in his burial (“assigned a grave with the wicked,” Isaiah 53:10).
6, This sacrifice brought about our justification. This means that we are declared not guilty of our sins, any and all of them, in the courtroom of God’s own judgment, for we now have, through faith, “righteousness, holiness and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30).
7, Our Lord Jesus Christ became the curse for us so that through him we could receive God’s blessing (Galatians 3:13-14).
8, We are not pardoned by God on account of our own merits or worthiness, but because of Christ’s merits, worthiness, and sacrifice to remove our guilt forever (1 John 3:5).
The teaching that Christ made satisfaction for the sins of mankind is the centerpiece of all Christian theology and doctrine. Without it, each Christian is left alone to fend for himself against the wrath of God. But with the treasury of our Savior Jesus, we are defended and rescued from that wrath, and more than that, our holy Father in heaven lifts us up, touching what was dead to make us alive, just as Jesus did at Nain (Luke 7:14). Faith is given, which is nothing else than complete trust in the work of Christ Jesus on our behalf. He made atonement for our sins with his own blood, and we are declared not guilty of our sins on his account. “This is why we must expect the devil to attack it in every generation.”
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
* Several witnesses to the text (Hebrew and Syriac) add “for he is good” to this verse. See 1 Chronicles 16:34; 2 Chronicles 7:3; Jeremiah 33:11; and Psalms 106:1; 107:1; 118:1; 118:29 and 136:1. Also, compare 2 Chronicles 5:13, and in the apocrypha, the Prayer of Azariah 1:67.
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – 2 Chronicles 20:20-23 A choir, an ambush, and holiness