"Word for the overwhelmed"
-I would like to begin by telling a story about Pastor Craig (who is out of town today) that will help us open today’s topic.
-We were high up on boom lift working and he is terrified of heights. He will not let me drive because he is afraid that I will go too fast. Starts to sing to calm his nerves, but only heightened mine. I said, “You should be singing ‘Jesus take the wheel’ because I am sure that he would drive faster!”
-He was completely overwhelmed by heights. Overwhelmed is what we talk about today
-We have all been here right? Especially this time of year (Christmas)!
-Webster’s would define “overwhelmed” as: To submerge, to overcome by superior force; to overpower in thought or feeling”
-You would define it as your mortgage payment, your rent, your credit cards, busyness, or family.
-These are the things in our life that take a hold of us, trap our attention and leave us wondering what to do next.
-But I am sure that I do not need to explain that to you because you understand perfectly what it means to be overwhelmed.
-And you will relate to what a king of Judah (named Jehoshaphat) was feeling when he found his kingdom and life in danger
-And, I hope that we can find a way to cope with our own problems as we look to the word.
PRAY……………. Please turn to 2 Chronicles 20:1
-King Jehoshaphat was the king of Judah (870 to 848 BC)
Came from a good line of kings/ father Asa served God
-As a young man, he served God, he built up the defenses of the city and most importantly, he removed the high places. God established his reign
-But, he was not without fault. He made a poor decision in an alliance with Israel that was against God’s will.
Ultimately, we see a very human king, who was capable of mistakes. Maybe like all of us. We want to do the right thing, but sometimes we often make mistakes.
-As we catch up in our text, we see a good king, a faithful king, and a king who (although imperfect) has a heart that seeks after God.
Read 2 Chronicles 20:1-3 (THE FEAR)
-Have you ever had a moment that changed everything? (A phone call, a confession, a realization) Life goes on like normal, than in an instant, in a moment, life will never be the same.
-C.S. Lewis had a name for this. When his wife died and he was dealing with the an overwhelming sense of grief he wrote, “Nobody ever told me that this would feel so much like fear.”
-Fear, that is what you feel when you are overwhelmed isn’t it? That is what Jehoshaphat felt.
-He is told that an invading army is close, very close, knocking on the front door. There is no time to muster up an army. It is too late, so Jehoshaphat instantly realized that he was faced with a situation that was beyond his control.
-An amazing woman named Corrie Ten Boom was once faced with a situation that was beyond her control. She was a Christian that gave refuge to Jews trying to escape being sent to concentration camps. Later in the war, she was sent to these camps to witness unthinkable cruelty. She was afraid and overwhelmed, but it was the words that her father told her as a little girl that somehow carried her through. They were on a train, when Corrie asked a difficult question. She wanted to know what sex was. Her dad was quiet until they were leaving the train, he said “Corrie can you carry my bag for me?” She could not lift the bag, she said, “it is too heavy”/ “there are things in life that we cannot carry or are not ready to carry, we have to let our father carry them for us”
-Throughout her time in the camp, Corrie would say “father, this is too heavy, I cannot carry it”
-Jehoshaphat was told something that was too heavy for him. He was afraid, but his fear is what brought him closer to God.
READ 2 Chronicles 20:4-9 (THE PRAYER)
-Questions. How often we ask questions to God in our prayers.
-An old Hebrew saying goes like this “We draw closer to God by the questions we ask”.
-Our questions, our deep questions are an attempt to know God more
-Jehoshaphat asks the big questions/ “aren’t you God in heaven? Don’t you rule all nations? Isn’t their power in your hands? Didn’t you give us this land?”
-Jehoshaphat knew the answers to these questions, we all do. He didn’t say these things to remind God, but to remind himself.
-He begins by establishing who God is and what he has done.
-Like this, I have gone to the movies with Pastor Pete many times and each time he falls asleep. Whether it is a good movie or a bad movie, it doesn’t matter. I know that he will fall asleep because he always has done it in the past.
-Jehoshaphat knows that God will hear him 1) because of who He is 2) because of what he has done in the past
-Furthermore, he says “if disaster comes upon us” we will wait for you at this temple. No matter how bad things look, we know you will not abandon.
-Ultimately what he is saying here is, “I trust you God”
-Sometimes we have to remind ourselves of who God is and what he has done in our lives so that we can have confidence in our future.
READ 2 Chronicles 2:10-12 (THE LAST RESORT)
-Sometimes when I am asked to speak, I will read the scripture and something like this and something will stick out. It will get stuck in my head and I repeat it over and over. This is that scripture “We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are upon you”
-This is a desperate call. Judah finds themselves on the eve of destruction. They don’t know how they got to this point and they certainly don’t know what to do next, so they call out to God as there last resort.
-We do the same sometimes. Our most intense prayers are when we absolutely need him most.
-It reminds me of something a Christian author wrote. He said “I hate it when people refer to the bible as an instruction manual because that implies it is something that you look at when something is new and then only refer to it when there is a problem. On the other hand, maybe the bible is like an instruction manual for some people”.
-A lot of people are like that, but never think that just because you are a little delinquent that God will not hear you.
Another quote from C.S. Lewis:
I call this Divine humility because it is a poor thing to strike our colours to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up "our own" when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is "nothing better" now to be had.
-God will have us under any circumstance. In fact, it is possible that we are feeling overwhelmed in order for God to bring us to him.
-This, I believe is where Judah is at, God places them in a situation where He is there only hope and waits for them to call on Him.
READ Verse 13-17 (THE HAND OFF)
-“the battle is not yours but the Lord’s”
-Judah hands off the battle to the Lord like a quarterback hands off to a running back.
-It is like this, have you ever seen one of these magic eye pictures? I have never been able to do these. I have looked at them until my head hurts, but have never been able to see anything.
Looked it up on the internet and it said to “focus upon a central point in the picture and allow your eyes to adjust by themselves”
-Isn’t this what God is saying to Judah? They said “we do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you”. God’s answer is “Good, keep your eyes upon me and let me handle the rest”.
-God wants to take control of our problems, but we have to let him.
-You might be saying, “well yeah, that is easy to say and hard to do” and I would say “you are right”. It is hard to hand off our problems to God.
-But, maybe like this magic eye picture, it requires our complete focus
Verse 18-21 (WORSHIPPING WARRIORS)
-Judah lines up for battle with an army of choir boys. And, I think that it is worth mentioning that they worshipped God before the battle was won.
-They had such confidence that God would fight it for them, that they started praising before God struck the first blow.
-To me, worship comes in many forms. Just the other day I was at Starbucks doing a devotional. I felt God spoke to me. I noticed how beautiful the leaves were and thought to myself, why are they beautiful? It is because they are dying. I thought to myself, that is when I am the most beautiful to God, when I am dying to myself.
-And I look here in our text and see a nation that has died to itself. God said that He would take the battle and Judah has enough faith to trust him and all that is left to do is praise.
Verse 22-27 (VICTORY)
-God causes the enemy to self destruct right before the eyes of God’s people
-Jehoshaphat had his victory. It came through coming to God in intense heartfelt prayer.
-But, I know that there are many of us here this morning who have not had ours.
-Quite simply, we are overwhelmed.
-It is okay for us to come to God today with our worries.
-Peter said “Cast your cares upon him, for he cares for you”
-Jesus said “Come all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest”
-Can we take a moment to worship? And, as we worship, can we cry out to God as a church, what Judah cried out as a nation. “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you”
