2 Chronicles 17:1-9 - Homiletics

The first chapter of Jehoshaphat's career.

Although to the end Jehoshaphat was neither an unfaithful king nor an unfaithful man, and certainly no apostate, yet the first chapter of his career reads the best. The mounting of the sun was fine, but clouds hung about the noonday sun, and the setting was not a sky of perfect western glory. The unfolding of the bud looked towards a perfect flower, but some blight seemed to visit it, and some worm was in the fruit. The three chief features of this beginning of Jehoshaphat's reign show most healthfully, as follows:—

I. HIS VARIED DETERMINED ATTENTION AND DEVOTION TO HOME . Policy would dictate it, kindness and love would urge it, in all the wide range of its analogies; wisdom would smile upon it; hut duty, with solemn, dignified voice, commands it. The Christian of youngest earliest faith is taught to provide for his own household; the apostles are to begin at Jerusalem; the man of business belies the name and forfeits his character, and brings himself to the ground, if he do not follow a similar rule; and certainly the king and the man in authority, be the nature of his rule what it may, can make himself no exception. We see with satisfaction King Jehoshaphat make his footing sure in this essential way. These all rehearse the principle that every man must rule first the domain of his own innermost kingdom, his own heart and life, where none may rule, nay, none can , except himself—or himself and God!

II. HIS LEGISLATION FOR THE REVIVAL OF THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE , AND HIS CARRYING OF THE SAME INTO EFFECT . Ignorance is no safety, though knowledge is responsibility. Mere knowledge, mental gift, mental activity, mental acquisition, mental store, and store of experience, even,—these are no reliable sources of real safety, neither guide nor refuge for the real life. For these, religious education is necessary. Religious education rests on religious knowledge. Religious knowledge rests on religious teaching and teachers, and these mean the teaching and the teachers of revelation. So the right principles of action get reached, and motive dormant or even unborn springs into life and action. Nor is it immaterial to observe—the very opposite, indeed, of immaterial—that, in so complex and multitudinous a life as that of a nation, it must be more than ever hopeless, that any principle can motive its life, any mechanism regulate it, any influence elevate and purify it, except such as work just as religion does, on every individual equally, on the innermost thought and feeling of every individual, and with no secondary force, but with sovereign authoritative command met by willingly conceded obedience from the heart. In nothing throughout all his reign was Jehoshaphat so right as in restoring and paying all attention to the restoring of religious education.

III. THE GREAT , MOST EXCEPTIONAL , AND MOST TO BE DESIRED HARVEST REAPED . The greatness of that harvest was seen in the fact that it was so general, so widespread. "All the lands round about Judah" and "Philistia" and "Arabia" swelled it. They who had silver, brought silver; and they who had flocks, flocks. The exceptional character of it lay in the fact that it was so largely due to moral sources. Jehoshaphat had not as yet waged a war nor fought a battle. But the fame of him round about was as of the coming man. And it may most justly be pronounced a harvest that was to be desired, in that it is more pointedly described, most precisely described as the result of this, that it was, behind and above all else, "the fear of the Lord" that "fell on all." There is no so honourable reward, title, "present," that can be conferred on mortal man, as that which comes to that man by virtue of" the fear of the Lord" falling on those around him, and yet somehow linking him with it. It looks as though he had been very right himself, unusually right; yet in nothing more right, nothing more happy, than in the impression which it would appear he has honestly and successfully given, that it is and has been as the servant and minister of the Lord, that he has been acting, under him, for him, and with the smile of his prospering blessing resting on him, and his seed-sowing and growing.