Jehoshaphat – An Imperfect Reformer

Transcript

all right so a couple months ago um I was on to give the experation

um you know it's for me getting started is often the hardest part finding a topic and then kind of choosing an angle to how to how to approach things um and and then once that's kind of settled you know progress happens quickly but I can spend a lot of time sort of agonizing about what we're going to talk about and so a couple of months ago I Was preparing for this this exhortation which happened to be on the topic of Jehosaphat and his uh great Deliverance by the Lord um when he was being invaded by Ammon and Moab and Edom and um you have this awesome message to uh stand still and see the salvation of the Lord and brother Jims referenced that a couple times in his Sunday school as well um at the Red Sea Moses said the same thing stand still and see the salvation of the Lord and it's just a really powerful kind of idea that sometimes we get in our own way we worry about how we'll affect deliverance we just need to step back you know God's got this under control uh this situation is not mine to control but his um I just need to stand still and and trust in him wait for his salvation um so so that was the the topic that I eventually landed on but to get there I I looked at the daily Bible readings and many of us uh who prepare exhortations will will look at that as as a starting place um and the daily Bible Rings had this proverb which is pretty well known um I I was hoping somebody in the room would would read it and I even uh tried to push Jacob to to do it and he was too wise he didn't fall for my trap um because I had it in the Whitecliff translation of the Bible does anybody recognize that

verse okay so if I ever complain about the old Eng in the King James version sounding

archaic not being able to follow the KJV uh it's a good thing we're not using the White Cliff translation of the Bible this was actually I believe the first English translation of the Bible and it wasn't from the texus receptus um or any of the other texts that the the King James version in later more modern translations were based off of it was actually a direct translation from the Latin Vulgate

um so it's it's a translation of a translation uh not from original sources but it apparently was if you call this English I'll try it f eaten a beer grape and the teeth of son an something like that is probably how it sounded does that is that ringing any bells yep

Chris yeah the two key words are there right the grape and the the teeth right so that's from Ezekiel 18 it's also from the book of Jeremiah um the reading for the day a couple months ago when I was doing the X was was Ezekiel 18 uh so let's see it there in plain English the fathers have eaten sour graps grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge my parents had a grape vine when I was growing up and the grapes we got were never very good but sometimes they were awful and if you had unripe grapes they they kind of look like these ones on the right and when I saw that picture my mouth just started to pucker because a sour grape is a is a miserable thing to consume

um but but the idea of this proverb here is that in some way the children were bearing the consequences of their parents sins that something that the parents had done is now impacting the lives of the children um and you remember Ezekiel and Jeremiah in this time uh Judah was going through captivity the Babylonians had come in they'd uh demolish the temple and taking people back to to Babylon with them a really upsetting time in the National History of God's

people and they understood that this was judgment from God coming as a consequence of their sins uh but not just theirs the sins of the fathers so you get the idea that there was this this proverb reflected their National psyche that they had the sort of victim mentality that that they you know for generations and generations Generations God withheld judgment but now it's coming and they're the ones that children's teeth are set on edge they're the ones that are bearing the consequences um for the sins of their previous ancestors and

generations so so this chapter Ezekiel 18 was really interesting I I'm not sure it was exhortation material maybe somebody else could could translate into an exert but it has all sorts of interesting sort of philosophical questions about um you know individual accountability and Collective punishment and um you know really this question about how parents and children one generation and the next are responsible accountable to one another bear each other the resp you know can bear the punishment of the parents these sorts of things and of course in our experience we know that there's tons of ways in which you know the actions of our parents are enormously consequential on the people that we become uh this is something that of course I I'm thinking about now that I have a daughter I'm thinking well I got to make sure that I'm making the right choices and and and helping her I have to set her up for success in all these ways uh you know before this I I only thought about myself or or maybe Hannah I had some responsibility now that's that sphere of influence is growing right um so just to name a number of ways in which parents can affect their children um about emotional development um making healthy lifestyle choices uh attitudes towards education um you know whether you're a good student or a bad student you know your parents help you with your homework that kind of thing uh do they encourage you to to to to be on top of it um you know Financial choices you know parents often thinking about like do I give the kids an allowance teach them some fiscal responsibility teach them how to make good money decisions um

things like substance abuse dealing with conflict in relationships uh work ethic in a very general way a lot of these things we learn from our parents

um and if the parents aren't on the ball right the children's learn the wrong thing from the parents um I think the remarkable thing that we see in scripture is that God gives us the grace to break out of Cycles um of you know in some cases there's there's abuse uh gener ational trauma you often hear about uh trauma that parents experience then kind of you know it's it's mindboggling but it gets passed on to the next Generation Um but God gives us a way to kind of break these destructive generational patterns um by clinging to him and calling him father you know you know I don't my my old father my father at the flesh I'm not speaking for myself but you might say he was a bad man I came to know the Lord God and his son Jesus and I've been adopted into a new family where we have different behavioral standards and things so I think the Bible allows us to break this cycle even though from common observation we do see parents affecting children and vice versa then yeah yeah yeah if I might just share a personal story that kind of please do uh is an example of what you're speaking of so uh As I Grew Older I have a lot of trouble to my feet and speaking with the podiatrist he said well those problems are created from pronating and uh and He suggests okay I'm not sure if this has been proven but that children that pronate is actually from watching their parents walk that if their parents pronate that perhaps that's where you learned it to see how a child is so closely watching every movement of the uh adults around them or particular their parents you know so uh you know to think that no one ever really taught you how to walk okay all of a sudden the child just starts walking but they are mimicking what they they see around them yeah that's a great

point I see it with Clara all the time even the way she started saying you know how tdd there's dude stting to say no right she says it like Hannah no she has this Rising thing at the end yes and I was like oh she why is she saying it so odd and then I heard Hannah saying it I was like she's she's just mimicking what she's heard from her mom um you know so even like walking that's that's fasinating you would think that something like that would just come naturally but there's some mimic in excellent thank you

Chris um so I I think there's a really positive angle the Bible gives us about breaking free from you know the influence of an evil generation to precede us um but by the same right you know you have um children who are free to choose or reject god um we're not necessarily Bound by the decisions of our faithful parents either uh here's a couple examples you've got David and hezek um they weren't perfect men but in general we would say that they were they were good men they held examples of of being righteous

um let's see

um yeah so they were they were right that that would be an example of of righteous men despite having lousy parents um on the flip side you've got absam you've got manasse um who had very faithful uh parents and yet they kind of went sideways um and what scripture teaches us and as I went through Ezekiel 18 I was saying oh well each person is accountable for their own sins right you know those the people around us previous generations can influence us but they don't Define us right we're defined in God's eyes based on um our own behavior so Ezekiel

18:5 if a man is righteous and does what is just and right if he fathers a son who is V violent a shedder of blood who does any of these things he goes on to list some things and verse 13 the son shall surely die his blood shall be upon himself so the man is righteous he has a violent son it's the son who dies uh God's clear that each person is accountable for their own sins um verse 20 the soul who sins shall die um we often go to this in sort of our apologetics this is like a proof verse that you know how can a Immortal Soul die right um but this is really talking about a person the person who sins shall die the son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son right so that's really interesting to me because yeah we do have accountability for those within our responsibility but ultimately our children make their own decisions um you know for now maybe I am responsible for Claire's decisions because she's just a little one I have to watch over her at some point she's going to have to make her own call um and that does ultimately reflect on on the parents so we have this expression right the Apple doesn't fall far from the tree but I think scripture tells us all the time that that it can't like the children do go in a different direction either For Better or For Worse all the time in scripture

um so we've looked at a few examples of that um I wanted to explore a case study where there was a little more ambiguity involved um where the parents actions likely did have consequences on their children uh despite that ultimate moral accountability resting on the children the individuals themselves um and that's ultimately what brought me to King Jehosaphat and uh for the exhortation we gone off in a totally different direction different part of josette's life but jash is a very complicated individual um he's clearly upheld in scripture as being a righteous King he was a great king of Judah he had fantastic reforms he did wonderful things for his people and he followed god um that was his import he's always asking you know is there a Prophet of the lord we can inquire upon right he he does that with um with King Ahab and then he does it later with Ahab ahab's son

jehoram

um but but you know he he made some questionable decisions as well so that's what I want to look at a little bit so that brings me back to sort of my title slide uh the main characters um anybody who familiar with the story of Carro Adventure who these characters might be on the screen I got jeos at there in the center because he's sort of the one that they kind of all revolve

around may want to take a

guess all right so I reckon the main characters in the story of Jehosaphat are himself in the center then you got actually I think I got on the slide

I reckon that's

jehoram who jehoshaphat's

son you got Ahab and Jezebel Jezebel who are who are the leaders of the Northern Kingdom of Israel You' got their daughter

athalia athalia ultimately is married to

jehoram um so in this picture you know that maybe they're not married yet I don't know what they're all doing posing for a photo together or how I got this but um lastly you may wonder who who the other guys are so so Ahab had two other sons who were who were Kings of Israel after Ahab died uh ahaziah who only ruled for about a year and then you've got joram um so so joram was brother-in-law to jehoram joram and aalah are brother and sister you know both the children of Ahab and Jezebel athah marries jehoram jehoshaphat's son so jam and jehoram they do they you know just like Jehosaphat and Ahab were were kind of contemporary rulers of Judah and Israel respectively their sons became contemporary rulers of Judah and Israel um and they had this close link through ahab's daughter aalia so you can see at that point of the history of the two Nations uh things are getting really cozy between Israel and Judah this this marriage relationship really really brings everybody a little bit closer together um and ultimately that's not for the better um so this is going to be kind of like one of those movies where they show you how things end at the very beginning and then you go through and you see all the details that led to that ultimate conclusion we're going to look at the lives of each of these people um actually we're going to look at their deaths we'll see that each one of these people except for Jehosaphat uh had a really poor and untimely death

um so it's going to be a little Grizzly but we'll get through it

um so ahab's the first to

die after con you remember he he went to Jehosaphat and he convinced Jehoshaphat to go with him to battle against the syrians in ramoth Gilead and jehoshaphat's out there dressed like a king you know clearly a Target and Ahab decides to go undercover he's wearing kind of ordinary clothing and The Archers shoot at random and and let's just read it a certain man drew his bow at random and struck the king of Israel between the scale armor and his breastplate there he said to the driver of his Chariot turn around and Carry Me Out of the battle for I am wounded and the battle continued that day and the King was propped up in his Chariot facing the syrians until at evening he died and the blood of the wound flowed into the bottom of the Chariot and the mention of the blood is is actually significant because it later states that they washed the Chariot in the the pool of Samaria um and that was a fulfillment of Elijah's prophecy that in the place where dogs licked up the blood of naboth shall dogs lick your own blood remember that terrible story where Ahab and Jezebel conspired to take naboth's inheritance from him um he's got that nice Vineyard or garden that's close to the palace and Ahab says I want it I'm going to get it Jezebel gets it for him Neo dies um at Jezebel's hand and and Elijah comes to him and says you know this they're going to the dogss are going to lick your blood in the same place um so a very meaningful death from that

perspective so ahab's the first one to go ahaziah his his son is a a minor character uh he only Reigns for that one year um and he's really only notable for his faithlessness after he falls through this um I forget what they call it a a lattice work I think you know he experiences a fall he's injured he's sort of languishing in bed and he goes to uh the prophets of ba Eon so he these were I believe a Philistine Pagan deity that he goes to um to to see whether he's going to get better or not and Elijah comes to him and says you should have inquired from the Lord why why are you going to Baal to ask these questions because you didn't go to the Lord you're going to die uh so ahaziah does not get better uh this is ahab's son number one uh perishes

the next one is jehoram so this is ahab's next son uh excuse me this is not this is uh jehosaphats this story gets particularly confusing because there's uh jehoram is sometimes called joram right

so Ahab and jehos vat both have sons named joram essentially um although the one is referred to as jehoram from time to time um so I'm going to call the king of Judah jehoram and the king of Israel jham try to to break that

ambiguity we're not we're going to explore how we got to this point but jehoshaphat's son did not do well um he had a very sad story indeed there's a lot to learn about the character of this person um and we'll get into that in due time but ultimately God uh strikes him with his sickness he has an incurable disease it says in the course of time at the end of two years uh his bowels came out because of the disease he died in great Agony um his people made no fire in his honor uh he was 32 years old 32 when he began to Reign he reigned eight years at Jerusalem he departed with no one's regret nobody was sorry to see him go you know he just very poor Legacy um yeah despicable King they buried him in the city of David but not in the tombs of the Kings so that was that was jehoram

his peer his brother-in-law joram in the northern kingdom uh lived quite a bit longer um but also met an untimely dead

death

um this would be around the time where jiu was anointed to be so so jiu we remember he was the commander of joram's army um he was basically one of the

generals

and Elisha goes in ji who tells them you're going to be in command now it's your job to clean up the mess in Israel you've got all these these baale followers I want to end ahab's Dynasty it's Ahab and joram and ahaziah and before Ahab it was omry and he was a wicked King as well and you've got this multi-generational dynasty of of wicked rulers in Israel and Elisha um sends a prophet to anoint jiu he's just captain of of jorm's army at this time but he he basically instigates a coup he goes out and he finds joram um and he shoots him you know between the shoulder blades from The Chariot um it's a very dramatic story I'm not going to read all of it here um but he he goes after him one after another jorm Falls Jezebel Falls you know after he finishes with jorm he keeps riding to Samaria and uh says that when ji who came to jezrael sorry j is not Samaria uh Jezebel heard of it and she painted her eyes and adorned her head and looked out of the window and as J who entered the gate she said is it peace you zimy murderer of your master I think this is very dramatic like she's she knows the end is coming I think she knows that that this is not going to end well for her and so she gets she gets all doled up she she you know probably puts on her magnificent robe looks the best she can because she knows it's the end and this is how she wants to be remembered I'm kind of embellishing but this is sort of how I imagine it in my mind's eye

um and she says says these bold words right why does she say uz Zim um that's a reference to zimy king of Israel he only reigned for seven days but he overthrew Ela who was the previous King now we take for granted in Judah right it was a con a continuous line of Kings from David all the way down um to zedekiah I think it was the last king of Judah can I get a fact check but but it was unbroken line right they were all king after King son father all the way through in in the in the Northern Kingdom of Israel they were constantly like overthrowing the ruling family so zimy was one of those those guys who was a um he was a general in ela's Army and he saw the advantage when Ela was I think he had been drinking or something and he killed Eli and he took power for himself

so Jezebel's invoking that story he's saying you remember this man who took power from his master it's exactly what J had just done with jehoram right by putting him down he was a captain in jorm's Army and now he's taking control he's instigating this coup and he's killing everybody related to jorm so there's no claim to the throne including Jezebel and she's saying you know it didn't end well for Z he only reigned for seven days before um omry who was ahab's father took control um from zimy so I know it's a lot of details it's a lot of characters and and um it's it's a lot of drama you know things did not go very smoothly for this this Northern Kingdom of Israel um certainly not for Jezebel she gets tossed out of the window and um it says her blood spattered on the and the horses they trampled on her so not a get end um and then the last one we'll just cover briefly here is is

aalia so athalia was ahab's daughter she was married to jehoshaphat's son joram that was that alliance between Israel and Judah

um we'll look into her story in due course but basically she became queen of Judah after uh joram and joram's son who was also called ahaziah doesn't make anything more clear um they both die ath BEC the queen of Judah so you have this this daughter of Ahab king of Israel who's now the Regent of Judah that's the extent to which Israel's influence uh came to bear in Judah um and it was really a bad situation she killed all of um jehoshaphat's grandchildren she made sure that there was no other claims to the throne so that she could consolidate power so it's almost like Israel this person from Israel is now kind of taking over in Judah but you have jeho the priest and um I can't remember the name of his wife but they rescued joash who was the great grandson of Jehosaphat and he's just a baby at the the time they rescue him so he's not part of this this purge of the palace uh he he grows up to be I think 8 years old when they coronate him in the temple of the Lord and you've got AIA which she realizes what's happening and there's a rightful air to the throne athalia comes in she says treason treason and jeho

says well we let's not kill her in the in the court of the Lord's House take her outside and so this is a call this an illuminated manuscript uh sometimes in like the Middle Ages they would create uh text of scripture and they would put some some images in there or some very ornate kind of big letter decorated letter at the beginning of the chapter and so this is one of those um Graphics from an illuminated manuscript depicting AA getting pulled out of the temple um into the into the outside Court where where she was

slain so that's uh the whole mle

crew doesn't end well and so I got thinking about this

we read these these stories these accounts of the Kings and some ways they're not really relatable because we don't live in a ancient Bronze Age monarchy um you know we try to follow God's precepts as laid out in his book but these historical what what is the lesson for us I mean it's really these stories are brutal

um I you know I I struggle with this a lot kind of think well how do I how do you make a relatable kind of lesson from this I think what we'll see with Jehosaphat is that despite all the good things that he did for his country his weak spot was this alliance with Ahab and Ahab

represents say sin at large sin running rampant um a man who has no control I mean Ahab repents from time to time I think he knows that what he's doing is not right but he's under the influence of his wife and he he's totally powerless so it's it it's almost like us when we don't have God's spirit influencing us in a positive way when we're not reading the word and we have our our spiritual strength our loins GED so to speak Ahab is just this man who's sort of blown about by every wind of Doctrine you know he's got his wife in his ear telling him one thing he's got a li and the other telling him another thing and he never seems to really listen to the right thing um and as a consequence of that like it we see how all his family died like things went very poorly ultimately for

him so why would josu fat want to get involved with that uh that was kind of my my key question and uh we got 15 minutes here so we'll get a little bit into I think the early days of jehos his Good Start um um but but before we go on any any thoughts or comments or

questions one of the lessons I always take from thiso these stories is that sometimes blood really is not thicker than water you know Jehoshaphat kept turning back to his family and his family was no good uh where as you know if had he stayed with his uh religious Faith he wouldn't have been turning to his family so like you say Jehoshaphat was a great king but he he kept thinking blood was thicker than water right right he kept showing up for for Ahab then he showed up for ahab's son you know I got this problem with the syrians can you come help me yeah and he kept saying you know we are skin of skin or however it is that Jehosaphat puts it he keeps going back to their their natural heritage but there as you point out there's no spiritual Heritage at all excellent anybody

else all right let's take a look at Jehosaphat

then so Jehoshaphat was the son of Asa ASA was kind of a mixed bag he did some good things but uhu also some questionable things uh he sold Treasure of the house of the Lord to induce the syrians to attack Israel um stuff like that it says God struck him with a disease in his feet you know he had some problems um but he had a good son Jehoshaphat Jehoshaphat reigned for 25 years um the record of jehoshaphat's Reign is primarily in 2 Chronicles although you do have 2 Kings 3 which is a story uh that does not occur in the book of 2 Chronicles gives us a little extra insight to the end of jehoshaphat's Reign we'll talk about that later

um it's interesting he begins his Reign by preparing for war with Israel uh in 2 Chronicles 17 verse one we read J Jehosaphat asa's son reigned in his place and stren strengthened himself against Israel um so he's just talking about military strengthening himself he he placed forces in all the Fortified cities of Judah he set up garrisons in the land of Judah in the cities of Ephraim that ASA his father had captured uh so there's a little reference here suggestion of some hostility between Judah and Israel um so just very quickly I don't want to spend a lot of time on this but uh still these slides from another deck um basically if you look at the two kingdoms after Solomon we have the divided Kingdom of Israel and Juda judah's on the bottom with rabom Israel's on the top with jbam um we read of constant war between these two um these two Nations war between rabom and Jobo continually we have war between abijam and jobal there's war between ASA and Basha all their days um during aso's Reign there was was some peace where where you know they weren't actively in war

um there was more war there was no more war until the 35th year of of of this was excuse

me Aces Kingdom um

okay so that I G skip through

this but you know you got Hannah I The Seer saying to ASA that he's going to have War for the rest of his Reign

um there was war between ASA and Basia king of Israel all their days there's a civil war in Israel we referenced

um uh zimy and TIY and omry um so after that quick seven day rule of of Zim after he overthrew Ela you've got civil war between timney and omry uh omry comes out on top um and then Ahab his son becomes the

king um so really this this alliance between Ahab and Jehosaphat you know this was breaking the pattern of all the kings that preceded them from the time of the United Kingdom until their time there hadn't been a real peace between Israel and Judah and I think this get might give us a little bit of insight into how Jehosaphat saw himself as somebody who could maybe bring those kingdoms back together create an alliance and restore Unity between Israel and Judah uh such as there was during the time of David and Soloman um I think that it never quite says that but that seems to be the idea um at least Jehoshaphat saw as a possibility where it wouldn't have been possible in previous Kings

so that's one thought on Jehosaphat um ultimately he leaves this Legacy as a righteous King uh if you're still in 2 Chronicles 17 I've got it up on the on the slide here

but 2 Chronicles 17:3 the Lord was with Jehosaphat because he walked in the first ways of of his father David and sought not unto the balum he sought to the Lord God of his fathers and walked in his Commandments and not after the doings of

Israel so the text goes on to say that God established the kingdom in his hand he receives riches and honor in verse five

um in verse six it says that he took away the high places of the asham out of Judah took out the Groves verse 7-9 Jehosaphat dispatches the prophets to go throughout all the cities of Judah and teach the people so there's actually like an educational campaign that takes place um it says they they taught in Judah and had the book of The Law of the Lord with them and went throughout all the cities of Judah and taught the

people

um yeah so that's that's really interesting he his reforms are

definitely um right we talked about him like making fortifying the defense cities

um but he's also he's experiencing riches he's getting great honor and glory and abundance but he's also educating people in the ways of the Lord so there's like kind of a monetary Improvement in the the nation but there's also this the spiritual Improvement that he's

working so I couldn't help but think of Solomon and kind of the the prosperity of the United Kingdom under under Solomon in that time of extended peace that he had and kind of this IDE of of Jehosaphat maybe seeing himself as like a modern day Solomon right you know many generations later he's sort of a new Solomon for the the kingdom of of

Judah

um you know during the son the son of David's rule Solomon's wisdom was was widely known um we've got ham here in the top left the king of Ty uh who said blessed be the Lord this day who's given David a wise son to be over this great people you have the Queen of Sheba a few chapters later saying happy are your servants who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom blessed be the Lord your God who has delighted in you and set you on the Thrones of Israel you've got at least these two Gentile rulers who recognize the wisdom of God in

Solomon and I I think Jehosaphat was sort of modeling himself as a modern day Solomon somebody who could uh be recognized for his wisdom and his dealings and maybe maybe bring the kingdoms together again

um so I I wonder if that might have been behind his friendship with with Ahab because I don't see what Jehosaphat had to gain otherwise it's Ahab who needs jehos fat Jehosaphat doesn't need Ahab everything's going great in Judah until they get involved with Ahab um so the the families are united by marriage and 2 Chronicles 18 um so in verse one josah had riches and honor and abundance and joined Affinity with Ahab and after certain years he went down to Ahab to Samaria and Ahab killed sheep and oxen for him in abundance and for the people that he had with him and persuaded him to go up with him to ramoth Gilead

um so so I I'm reading from the King James it says he joined Affinity with Ahab does does anybody have a modern translation I don't actually have it in my

notes uh 2 Chronicles 18 ver1

all

himself

okay he Allied

himself yeah yes V has made a marriage

Alliance I wonder if this is one of those situations where the ESV is uh interpreting a little bit like telling us what this Affinity

means you know does the original language actually tell us that there was a marriage involved here or is that just kind of implied I mean that's the facts of the matter right

um he gave his son jehoram to be married to athalia um and that seems to be what's being referred to in in chapter 18 this this marriage Alliance um

and then in 18:3 you know after killing all these sheep and oxen in abundance he has a great big party maybe this is the wedding reception I don't know they're together in Samaria feasting having a party having a good time and Ahab gets in jehoshaphat's year in verse three and

says why don't why don't you come down to ramoth Gilead you know we're going to be fighting the syrians you know it'd be really great if you were there I I could use your help and and and josa answers I am as you are and my people as your people we will be with you in the war I think maybe this is what brother Jim was talking about just this you know I'm with you brother I I'll help you out you know the families are united you know there's a common cause here they they all hate the syrians um they want to take back ramoth

Gilead um so jeash Fett joins him in b battle and that's just the beginning of this this terrible situation that ends up happening

um yeah I I think my suggestion that this was the marriage Feast is probably not on solid standing uh I I think because Ahab died many years later right there's a long time um between jorm's marriage to Ai and this this event where they go up to ramoth Gilead and Ahab is slain in his Chariot that we already talked about but um you you can sense that that that the two men are grow growing closer they have family together now when when family get connected right things change relationships change um it's a big deal

um I think this was jehoshaphat's major mistake he never should have gotten involved in this with this notorious idolator did he not know what Ahab had done with with naboth do you not know about the idolatry everything Elijah was trying to do to kind of keep the Bale worshippers at Bay um H how was josah ignorant of that or willing to you unite himself with that that family uh just a a massive blunder and you read everything he did in in chapter 17 and again in chapter 19 and um he does wonderful things for his own country but this was a a blunder brother

Chris we need to roll it back even a little further and uh Jehoshaphat should have questioned the marriage of AAR to uh I believe it was jehoram uh because it seems that that marriage is where this began to you know this Alliance began to take hold and that uh sometimes I think in our modern day thinking we can't appreciate how significant that was down Through the Ages where wherever there were kingdoms uh the intermarriage I mean that often stopped Wars and or created Wars and so forth so it was very significant when families intermarried from Kings to Kings you know perhaps more than we appreciate even reading it but anyways it seems like that that's where this should have been nipped maybe even in you know in the marriage itself to say not to allow the daughter of Ahab to marry your son

yep

100% any other

comments I think we can probably stop around here

um next week we'll go into uh 2 Chronicles 18 a little bit more more and look at this this battle at ramoth Gilead

um I agree with brother Chris I think it was the marriage between jehoshaphat's son and ahab's daughter aalia that brought the families together and enabled Ahab to be able to make a request like this to Jehosaphat if he hadn't been linked to Ahab through marriage you know jeash fat might have been feeling like he could say no but he didn't feel like he could say no because of this connection that they had so he goes to war with him at ramoth Gilead and later after Ahab dies and ahab's other son joram not to be confused with jehoram josua son joram king of Israel goes to war with the syrians again many years later and he asked Jehoshaphat the same thing and once again Jehosaphat goes with the king of Israel ahab's son this time and they go to war with the syrians um actually I think this time it's the the moabites and the the um so I'll fact my check myself right there um but it's the same sort of situation asking for military aid from Judah and jahash fat feels like he can't say

no uh so there's some really interesting parallels between uh the request from military support from Ahab and the request from ahab's son both of which Jehosaphat fills both of which Jehosaphat says is there not a prophet of the Lord that we can go to um and so we'll we'll spend a little bit bit of time looking at those parallels uh next week

Transcript

so we started looking at Jehosaphat last week and um very interesting Bible character lot to say about Jehosaphat um I think when I find myself kind of first delving into these historical books it can be very overwhelming to sort of get oriented again and remember who who are all the characters and what happened to lead us to this situation that we're we're describing the context is a little bit foggy sometimes I apologize if we sort of rushed into things last week without all that background um going to try to do a little bit of a better job of that this week um so you hold me to it and interrupt if I'm not clear on a connection that maybe I'm taking for granted um it's great when you're presenting these classes because I spent Monday Tuesday night and you know part of Saturday preparing the class right so I've been you know many hours on end looking at the word trying to read reread the accounts I actually I didn't I won't say I read all the first and 2 Chronicles but I skimmed through both books just to kind of get the framework and I'll I'll get into that a little bit what I got from that activity but i' I've been spend a lot of time on this and you haven't necessarily so um I want to make sure I I provide good background here

um but just as a bit of a refresher from last week so we started looking at these characters

um I'll put the names up here too so these were the I would say six people six key people in jahash Fat's sphere of influence and um I dug up the the family tree there on the left just as a visual aid here you can see the the family of Ahab the family of Jehosaphat um ahab's wife Jezebel is a key character jehoshaphat's wife isn't mentioned we don't know much about her she's not part of the story um so we're not going to talk about it um you have Ahab and Jezebel's three children two of the sons who would become Kings and the daughter which would become a queen of Judah through marriage to jehoshaphat's son

jehoram um did I miss anybody talked about Jezebel yeah so these are sort of the key characters when it comes to the story of Jehosaphat we looked at the uh sort of the untimely deaths of of six of these people Jehoshaphat you know lives to a good old age by all accounts he's buried in the tombs of the Kings of Israel you know as befitting his legacy um you know we don't read of him dying in battle or suffering a disease or you know suffering at the Assassin's hand as many of the Kings of Israel did um you know he seems to have a pretty normal end of life the other six on the slide here did not and so we looked at that briefly last week and I I don't know if Chris you want to take a stab at recounting uh how they all

TI would say one maybe I so from left to right the first guy there okay uh jorum I believe died in battle all right jorum I believe fell through the lattice work if I got that

correct and uh that was a fell through the L all right I'm sorry Jezebel of course Jezebel had a famous uh or inFAMOUS death y

uh got pushed out the window yeah Ahab also I believe died in battle and uh so it leaves jorum and aaliar that I'll leave for Steve Davis to

answer so so the yeah so I think you got at least three or maybe four of them um ahab's first son ahaziah was the one who fell through the lattice he only reigned for two years he's the one that inquired of the prophets of Baal erron you know am I going to get better or not and uh the prophet of the Lord says because you went to the prophets of Baal and you didn't consult with Yahweh you're not going to get better so he dies of his injuries right um that's credit to chat GPT on the bottom left there that's ahaziah fallen through the the L work that's Ahab dying in battle versus the

syrians this is jehoshaphat's son uh

jehoram

um jehoram and jorum are confusing because they basically use the names interchangeably so jehos has a son named jehoram he's the one that's married athalia God smites him with some kind of bowel disease it says his guts fell out at the end you know he suffered immensely uh he did not die well um um and says nobody missed him nobody regretted that he was he wasn't buried with the kings of his with his fathers um you know he's just a terrible King he loses to Edom he loses to the Philistines he loses libna

um yeah so like politically internally domestically like everything is just a mess for him and so he's not beloved by the people at all he dies of uh terrible disease uh the other jehoram who's ahab's son uh he takes over after ahaziah dies from falling through the last work he gets killed by juu right so uh ju kills him then we've got this is athalia um no that's Jezebel Jezebel falls through the window like Chris said and then aalia Jezebel's daughter um many years later after she's queen of Judah she takes over when her husband dies she becomes the queen and that's where you have the story of joash who is jehoshaphat's great grandson joash uh escapes when all of his brothers die they're assassinated by Queen aalia because they're heirs to the throne she wants to consolidate power for herself um so only joish remains and he's taken as a as a little baby he's raised in the household of jeho you know this is many generations after the period that we're talking about um but when JEA finally produces the air to the throne joash

uh a cries treason treason they say you know don't kill her in the house of the Lord take her outside do it there and that's that's her end so so you know kind of saying this is like um one of those movies where you find the the the end of the story at the very beginning and then the rest of the movie is just like what did it take to get us to that situation um so that's how we started last week and uh today we're going to talk a little bit more about um jehoshaphat's partnership with Israel

and that's really what led to um all of these events so any questions so

far all right so if you have your Bibles let's turn to 1 Chronicles chapter

17 where am I

going I's see 1 Chronicles I meant 2 Chronicles

okay so we spent a little bit of time talking about the the I I'll call it the narrative framework like the characters the events the things that happen um we'll spend a moment talking about the historical and scriptural

framework

so apologize it's kind of small I wanted to get the whole timeline of the kingdom of Judah from left to right on the screen um so you can see Jehosaphat and his son jehoram they're the fourth and fifth Kings of Judah they rule from approximately 872 BC to

841 um and there's a little couple years of co- Regency they call it um I didn't figure this all out for myself I owe a lot of the credit to this book this author you'll you'll see him referenced uh Edwin thely mysterious numbers of the Hebrew Kings this is very often reference when people are kind of diving into these topics he did the math he figured it all out there a lot of pages of research um and whenever he does a great job of kind of dealing with supposed con contradictions when you know it says that this King a reigned from the 11th year of King B and then you look at King B and how long he reigned and you you start doing the math and all things don't seem like they're working out he works it all out and there's a number of uh I'm not going to call them tricks but sort of keys to unlocking why you occasionally get contradictions uh things like sometimes they I'm not even going to try to explain it here um but they have

um well the first thing is the co- regencies which I allude to sometimes the Son and the father have overlapping Reigns um so when it lists the total time that the the father is raining that doesn't mean that the the son is then raining at the end of that many years so there's a few things like that he points out that give us a little more flexibility for working out the dates anyway this isn't going to be about dates we're not going to spend a lot of time on that kind of topic because I cheated and I pull it all from this book um it's research excuse me I did my

research and thanks Phil for blowing it up there yeah so so I think Phil was just illustrating the Cod Regency between jash vorum you see there's a little bit of an over overlap there all right so so I I looked

into um okay here's the second chronicles

record so just as a refresher 1 Chronicles is all about David 2 Chronicles 1-9 focuses on the reign of Solomon so you have the United Kingdom of Judah and Israel together all 12 tribes um after Solomon we know that RAB

uh and jeroboam uh divide they go to war with each other rabo takes over the the 10 tribes and the I'm sorry rabom is the two tribes Judah and Benjamin in the South you've got Jobo who made Israel to sin with the 10 tribes in the north right he institutes the false Worship in uh Dan and bethl and um it's it's bad news from there there on out so the Chronicles account from 2 Chronicles 10 to 2 Chronicles 36 FOC is on the kings of Judah um and this is the text that we'll primarily be going to to look at the life of

Jehosaphat um now if you compare the timeline in

scripture uh to the timeline of events right you've got jahash and jehoram reigning for about 9% of the total time of the kingdom of Judah if you look at the scripture account and this is where I say like I I skim through all second I Les each of the um if you just want to leave on the the main slide there Phil I want to kind of make the point that we've got um so the the timeline at the bottom what this represents is the text of scripture from 2 Chronicles 10 to 2 Chronicles 36 the number of verses that are allocated to the reign of each of the Kings so you've got

um I'm not going to attempt to name all the kings but starting at the left you would have this first dark blue box representing the verses that correspond to the reign of rabone and then you've got his son abijah in the light blue just a few verses about him and then you have ASA uh in the the next dark blue box from the left to right I think you can kind of see how how this is supposed to be oriented the remarkable thing here is like the the three really good Kings of of Israel Jehosaphat Hezekiah and Josiah there's so much written about their reign um in fact it's sort of a disproportionate when you compare it to the actual number of years that they spent ruling um like I just have manasse here called out as an example U Manasseh is Josiah's

grandfather um so manasse reigned for over 50 years I think it says like 55 years um but there's not a whole lot written about him because he is mostly allous a king you know it says he was evil he made Israel to sin you have um the account of his repentance at the end um and that's about all that scripture really records about the life of Manasseh uh but he he reigned for many many many years undoubtedly he had a lot of influence or many things that happened during his life but it's just not recorded for us um I think that's really

interesting um any thoughts or your questions about how this was

done okay so I did the same thing for Israel um and I kept the time scale the same so

the the kingdom of Judah was approximately 344 years so after Solomon and the split with rabom and jbam the two kingdoms separate Israel goes on for um 200 7 years they go into captivity into Assyria um Judah goes for a total 344 years so you can see when we bring up Israel that their timeline is comparatively shorter um because of they're terminated early by the Assyrians

um now what I have on the bottom this time it's First Kings 12 to 2 Kings 17 so again I've excluded the period of the United monarchy David and Solomon starting with jeroboam and rabo now the interesting thing with first and second Kings is they include the accounts of both the northern kingdom of Israel and Southern Kingdom of Judah um it's really trying to capture

both whereas the 2 Chronicles is really focused from the southern Kingdom of judah's perspective 2 Chronicles talks about what's happening in the northern kingdom but it it's really from the perspective of the kings of Judah um the the king's account is much different in that and then includes both uh so in this case you can see you got the the blue and the red so the Red Kings are uh Kings of Israel the blue kings are the kings of Judah um the accounts are interspersed the point I want to make on this slide is really when you look at the kings of account it it's all about this period that we're going to be talking about um with aab and Jo for um and part of that part of the reason why there's so much text of scripture allocated to the Reigns of those kings is because you have the prophets Elijah and Elisha who are working at that time so even though you've got you know whole chapters that occurred during the Reigns of Ahab or joram um in a lot of cases those kings aren't even mentioned in those chapters they might be you know you know Elisha and the the account of name in the Syrian right or the account of the the Widow of zapad um The Showdown on Mount Carmel which does involve Ahab and Jezebel to a greater extent but the point is you got these huge narrative sections that are all about what's happening with Elisha and Elijah and not so much uh necessarily just focing on you know this King took the took the Reigns when he was this age and he reigned for however many years and whatever he did

um it's not just that kind of

chronicl okay

so again the point here is um although these Kings Ahab and joram only reigned for let's say 16% of the entire period of the Kingdom of Israel um there's a disproportionate amount of scripture that's uh pertaining to the time of their rule um so so all that's very interesting to me because it it shows that this is a period where God is intervening where God is is working and also documenting his work for our benefit in Holy Scripture

uh so worth worth looking

into any comments so

far yeah reminds the book of the judges right where you've got uh you know so many years of apostasy you know so many chapters of the apostasy but when you look at the time period it's really a relatively small period of time yeah

yeah when you raised your hand I was I was just going to comment to something that's been

to our readings is

thats uh you know from uh starting with from Isaiah all the way through your Minor Prophets always seem to be focused around the

and a lot of the

prophets

Israel that's right

yeah you know perhaps the message of what Elijah and

elishah more directed the need of what Israel was about that because they were soting anyways yeah I just found it doing the readings this year that all the prophets will always seem to be right about the time of Hezekiah and uh and the kings that followed Hezekiah for that short period of time that's a great

Point yeah I I think I'm I'm trying to think about how that sort of relates to us and we live in a period of time where we may say that God is is bit more behind the scenes he's not directly intervening in miraculous ways the way we read about often times in scripture

um he's not speaking through His prophets there's no new scripture being produced in our time um I think it's important to realize that they were extended periods of time in the biblical period where God wasn't speaking as openly either um and so we we read about all the miraculous things that happened during the time of Elijah and Elisha and it it sounds amazing and know if I was there if I saw those sorts of things of course I'd be a believer you know I wouldn't be a baale worshipper um yeah we we live in a different time but there were also periods intermittently uh when God wasn't speaking as openly as he did through these prophets

um so it's important to remember it wasn't there was no it wasn't I think sometimes I think about the the biblical period and think oh God was working openly all the time there were Miracles happening all the time it it wasn't like that so

um anyway that's an aside any other comments appreciate that

yeah get the

mic what do you got Jason yeah I think that's a good point Ben um because in our day and age we could say the amount of things that God's showing us whether whether it be the reestablishment of the nation of Israel um through science you know proving that it's impossible for it's a mathematical impossibility that man could arrive here from nothing so we have all these conclusive things that drive us to believe in a Creator um and you know the heavens the the Earth life itself how nature works all of these things and I think it's um Paul says you know you're without excuse God's created all these things but you've turned to the imaginations of your heart and you've made your own Idols um so if we're looking in our day and age there's there's quite a bit there where God is revealing himself uh if we're paying attention yeah that's true that's true even if we're not seeing um the more miraculous splashy sort of Miracles right life itself that's a great

Point yeah okay okay great so I I wanted to do this for myself personally um it's edifying for me to look at the text of scripture and what's there and I I found that before doing the study of Jehosaphat and I had done a study of Elijah and Elisha a couple years ago I think that's really when I first had this dawning appreciation for the books of kings and Chronicles um it's easy to say oh they the historical books um it's it's hard to describe some what's in each one of them for me it was very enlightening and I'd never heard in Sunday school or any other class hey the books of Kings it covers both Israel and Judah the books of Chronicles it's really about Judah and the Kings bit is incidental to that

um so just a really high level kind of takeaway there

um next slide here I want to to share was

um the table of contents for the Old Testament um we're probably pretty familiar with the contents of the the Old Testament and and even Brother Rich Denine in his Bible class uh just this past week I think he was talking about the Tanakh the Hebrew scriptures and the uh it's organized in in three main sections the law the prophets and the the sacred writings

um and so

so I guess in our Old Testament Bibles how many books do we have in the Old Testament anybody know off

hand 66 in the Bible there's 39 in the Old Testament Joel you were going to say that

yes and 39 in the Old Testament and 27 the new so if you add up the number of books here you don't get 39 anybody have any ideas why that might be you're only getting 22 in the Hebrew

scriptures y so uh it's on the slide here so like first and 2 Chronicles are combined Jeremiah includes Lamentations the Book of Judges included the book of

ruthi Ezra Nehemiah yeah

um and then the the big one is the book of 12 prophets which is actually all right so there's the math 22 + 17 gets you to

39 um and so the list that I'm working off and there are different lists

um but this was this was actually in the prologue of Jerome's translation of the Vulgate The Vulgate was the I believe it was the first Latin translation of the Bible so you had um both the Old and the New Testament the original Hebrew and then the Greek books were translated into Latin I don't remember exactly when this was in the first couple of centuries uh maybe third or fourth Century actually uh for Jerome um so so it's very very early right um and so this is important because when we think about our Bibles and you know which ancient texts were selected to be in our Bibles um there's very early history of these books being uh collated um and presented together as a Hebrew Bible now that goes far be before Jerome you have the seent Greek translation of the Old Testament which was originally written in Hebrew of course that was in I think the 2 Century BC so you you have these various lists and translators who are putting together their versions of the Holy scriptures and they're always grappling with well which books do we include um and and a pretty consistent basis it's these 39 books in our Bible and sometimes they're combined right the the Chronicles or Hebrew and I'm sorry judges and Ruth being put together you know but the content is the same um I thought that was really interesting

now if you look at the history of Chronicles a lot of Scholars will tell you that Chronicles was compiled during the time of the Exiles I say compiled not written because the original writing comes from an earlier era um and we'll look at that in just a moment but the thought among a lot of Scholars is that this the first and 2 Chronicles have this focus on the righteous Kings of Judah because the people were in Babylon as Exiles and in Babylon they were thinking about right the sins of the fathers remember we kind of started last week's talk by talking about um that proverb the the CH the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge and as an exile in Bible on you're you're thinking well they did the bad things and I'm bearing the consequence I'm the one that actually went into captivity God in his Mercy you know forgave them and withheld judgment for years and years and now in this generation it's my family that has to go to Babylon and bear the consequences of the the unrighteous

fathers so that that whole mindset might have been pervading and influencing the compilers of the book ofr Chronicles to hey we're going to look at Jehosaphat we're going to look at Hezekiah and Josiah and these righteous kings and we're going to allocate most of the history that we record to their righteous Deeds so that you know the children our children may then benefit from their

example so I thought it was interesting when you look at the breakdown in the Hebrew Bible that you've got uh Samuel and Kings written in this book of the prophets and then you've got Chronicles which is there with Ezra and Esther and the Prophet Daniel and some of these later writings that were more kind of time appropriate for the period of the Exiles and the return of the

Exiles let's

see so as we think about jahash that most of our source materials in 2 Chronicles uh chapter 17 to 21 uh if we only had the books of the Kings uh we would be limited to First Kings

uh 22: 41-50 so let's go to let's go to there briefly First Kings

22 so as we mentioned earlier you know Kings has the accounts of both the Kings of Israel and the kings of Judah and it kind of goes back and forth between each of them

First Kings 22 picking up at verse

41 Jehosaphat the son of Asa began to Reign Over Judah in the fourth year of Ahab king of Israel so they're contemporaries josah ah Jehoshaphat was 35 years old when he began to Reign he reigned 25 years in Jerusalem his mother's name was isuba the daughter of sheli he walked in all the ways of Asa his father he turned not aside from it doing that which was right in the eyes of the Lord nevertheless the high places were not taken away for the people offered and burnt incense yet in the high places he's a great reformer he doesn't quite get it all the way the people are still um worshiping at the high places he made peace with the king of Israel that's notable and then verse 45 the rest of the acts of jehos his might that he showed and how he wared are they not written in the book of The Chronicles of the kings of Judah now it's possible that you know just briefly reading through that you would say oh he's talking about the 2 Chronicles account right the rest of the acts of the Kings I don't think that was the case actually I think both Kings and Chronicles refer to Source material that was older than the books themselves I'll tell you why I think that uh if you turn to 2 Chronicles 20 verse 34 actually before we get there let's go to 2 Chronicles chapter 19 so 2 Chronicles 18 WI a chapter earlier I'm sorry for jumping all over the place here 2 Chronicles 18 is all about jehoshaphat's alliance with Ahab Jehosaphat marries off his son to ahab's daughter Queen aaliah and jehoram get married at the very beginning of 2 Chronicles 18 a few later years later they get together and they're having a feast in Samaria ahab's invited jehos fat down to this great feast um it says well hey since you're here I've been mean to ask you about the syrians right they took ramoth Gilead from us why does Ben Hadad king of Syria get to hold on to to ramoth Gilead that's our land and jehoshua says my people are as your people I will go with you to battle and you have the whole account of jashad and Ahab going to war with Syria and jehoshaphat's wearing the uh the king's Garb and ahab's going undercover and all benh hadad's men go after jeash you whole the whole situation Ahab dies right and then we get to 2 Chronicles 19 so ahab's dead and it says jehos fat the king of Judah returned to his house in peace to

Jerusalem and juu verse two J who the son of hanani the Seer went out to meet him and said to King Jehosaphat should you help the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord therefore is wroth upon thee from before the Lord not to be confused with J the uh the king of Israel right this is juu the son of haniah the prophet and he rebukes josa he says what are you doing dealing with these guys in in Israel right you're supposed to be helping those that love the Lord not bail worshiping Ahab and Jezebel so he's rebuked by the prophet of the Lord um so I only I only really mention that at this point to introduce juu right there's this Prophet that was active and we don't really hear too much about J but if you turn the page over to 2 Chronicles

20 verse

34 now the rest of the acts of Jehosaphat first and last behold they are written in the book of juu the son of hanani who is mentioned in the book of The Kings of Israel

so this tells us that there is a contemporary chronicler to Jehosaphat somebody who's keeping the Records who lived at the same time as Jehosaphat who was the prophet of the Lord and he he wrote a book now we don't have his book in our Bible but it's very likely that the books we do have in our Bible were compiled based on his his writings but yeah occasionally in scripture you read about the these other books books these lost books like in in uh Joshua it references the book of jasher or something like that and it's like oh it would be interesting if we had those books but the Bible that we have likely was written um by people that were drawing on those Source texts um and for me that just you know that's that's an interesting thing to know it shows that there's some credibility to the words that we have that there there were Faithful Men Who who looked at the available text written by contemporaries this isn't something that you know speculating based on Word of Mouth tradition or or legends that were passed down to generations and eventually got written down and oh people will often accuse the Bible of just being a book of Legends right

um that's that's not actually the case there was attribution there was Source documents uh This was done in a very scholarly uh and and thoughtful

manner so just something to bear in mind we have a lot of reasons to be confident in the text of

scripture thoughts or comments before we go

on all

right

so let's move

on as I mentioned uh jahash Fett's Reign is primarily recorded in 2 Chronicles there is one account in 2 Kings 3 which which is not present in the book of Chronicles um and again this may be a little bit of bias shown for the the good things jehos fat did

um if we look at I'm just going to move through this fairly quickly um 2 Chronicles 17 you get the summary that the Lord was with jehos fad because he walked in the ways of his father David he didn't seek Baal uh but he sought the god of his father and walked in his Commandments not according to the practices of Israel

um so in verse five we read that the Lord established the kingdom in his hand and all Judah brought to Jehosaphat presence he was he had riches he had honor and abundance um in verse six we read that his heart was courageous in the ways of the Lord uh he took the high places in the asham out of Judah

um this is interesting in verse 10 the fear of the Lord fell upon all the kingdoms of the lands that were round about Judah so that they made no war with Jehosaphat so he has peace in his time as well God is fighting his

battles um we talked about 2 Chronicles 18 briefly that's sort of the the alliance that he makes with Ahab we'll skip over that for now let's go to 2 Chronicles

19 um so we read about the prophet J in the first couple vers versus juu concludes his rebuke to Jehosaphat by saying verse three nevertheless there are good things sound in you in that you have taken away the Groves out of the land the ashon out of the land and have prepared your heart to seek God

um so you know despite his alliance with Ahab and that gets called out right he shouldn't have been allied with the Northern Kingdom of Israel um there was still a lot of good that jahash

did and jash that dwelt at Jerusalem verse four and he went out again through the people from BBA to Mount Ephraim that's kind of the the furthest point south and the furthest Points North it says he goes out into all the people of the land and he teaches them about the Lord he brings them back to the Lord God of their fathers verse five he set judges in the land throughout all the fence cities of Judah City by City he said to the judges take heed what you do for you judge not for man but for the Lord who is with you in the Judgment wherefore now let the fear of the Lord be upon you take heed and do it for there's no iniquity with the Lord Our God no no respect of persons nor taking of gifts so they're saying well like you are being charged with a judge over God's people now in this position of authority to administer Justice you can't be taking bribes you can't be turning a blind eye you have to see the way that God does and and judge the way that God does you can't uh take gifts you can't respect persons um so this is a really strong position against sort of the corruption that we see in Justice systems all over the world right um we have a Justice problem as human beings uh our Justice and judgment is not perfect and um God's is this is jehoshua trying to uphold that same

standard uh verse 9 um actually I don't think we got to verse 9 verse 8 in Jerusalem did Jehoshaphat said of the Levites and of the priests and the chief of the fathers of Israel for the Judgment of the Lord for controversies when they return to Jerusalem and he charged them saying thus you will do in the fear of the Lord faithfully and with a perfect heart and what CA soever shall come to you of your brethren that dwell in their cities between blood and blood between law and Commandments statutes and judgments you shall not you shall even warn them that they tresp not against the Lord and so wrath come upon you upon your brethren this do and you shall not

trespass and behold old amariah the chief priest is over you in all the matters of the Lord and zebediah the son of Ishmael the ruler of the house of Judah for all the king's matters also the levite shall be officers before you deal courageously and the Lord will be with the good um so I think it's really remarkable that jehos fat went he he kind of mixed with the people and he was a preacher of righteousness himself he brought the people back to the Lord he appoints these judges uh it reminded me of of

Moses right is with Jethro I think Jethro is the one that comes to Moses and says Moses you you can't do this by yourself you need help and he points um I think the council that would later become the Sanhedrin um the 70 uh rulers in

Israel so jehos is doing the same thing he's sing up judges and the way it's written it kind of reminded me of um our judicial system so we have like the district court and then you have the Circuit Court of Appeals and then the final court is the Supreme Court so the most uh influential cases uh go to the Supreme Court if you have an appeal that is rejected by the the circuit courts I think you can petition the Supreme Court to to hear your case so a lot of the the kind of key decisions are made at the Supreme Court of the United States and all reads that way with he's got the City by city in verse five he's got uh judges at Jerusalem and then all else fails you've got the high priest who's like the ultimate Arbiter of cases um that we read about amariah the chief priest in verse 11 so I don't know if that's kind of how things worked out but he's put a lot of thought he's there's a lot of organization that goes into judicial reform in the time of

Jehosaphat um what else um we're not going to talk about today but kind of the the hital moment of jehoshaphat's Reign occurs in this time of crisis when it's him vers Ammon Moab and Edom these three enemies of of Israel a lie and they invade his land and um there's this

remarkable sort of situation where where uh it's the stand still and see the salvation of the Lord the Lord intervenes and jvat offers this this this wonderful prayer um asking for God to to help the people and he does um so we'll say that for maybe uh a future class

Transcript

okay so uh last Sunday in December um still making our way through jashia fat uh my goal was to to wrap things up today um but then I also heard I might have the opportunity to go for another week so if we get the bonus week we're going to be doing uh let's see jehoram and aalia I would say as sort of the next chapter of the story here uh we'll try to finish Jehosaphat today

uh let's see so turn your Bibles to 2 Chronicles chap 20 that's where we're going to be spending most of our time

today so so far we've looked at King Jehosaphat the time period that he lived in his marriage Alliance to the house of Ahab in the Northern Kingdom of Israel we looked at the textual account of his life kind of the focus in 2 Chronicles 7 through 20 um and then some incidentals that appear in the First Kings and second Kings accounts uh but primarily the focus being that Chronicles account um we kind of dived into some interesting stuff with uh the book of ji who the chronicler uh whose book was not recorded in our Canon of scripture but is alluded to a couple of times um we looked at jahash Fett's excellent domestic policies the reforms that he enacted Within the the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin that he reigned over he we looked at the way in which he traveled throughout Judah and he taught the people the word of God and he also appointed judges from City to City throughout Judah he taught them to uh to deal with equity and to have righteous judgment to see the way that God sees to not take bribes or withhold Justice or show

partiality um he really did wonderful things for the nation of Judah but where he got into trouble is with his alliances with the house of Ahab first Ahab then ahab's son ahaziah and after ahaziah ahab's other son jehoram or joram as he's also

known um but then he counterbalanced him look at what he did in his own country he got rid of the the baale worship and he got rid of the ashra um and a lot of these sort of Canaanite Pagan rights that were still part of the worship in Judah um so he did many good things for his people

um now you could see I I kind of thinking of for a name of the series I I was kind of struck on Jehosaphat the the imperfect reformer because he he was a reformer he wanted to change things he wanted to make things better but he didn't do it perfectly if you compare the Reformation that he was doing in Judah to the kind of reformation that was happening in Israel it's an altogether different scene so we'll spend a couple minutes thinking about um what was happening in Israel today

so this is uh Ahab and Jezebel

um so let's let's look at we've got this this marriage alliance between Jehosaphat and Ahab and his family jehoshaphat's son uh jehoram marries Ahab and Jezebel's daughter athaliah and so the two families were

connected I always the key question in my mind studying this is why would he do this why is he making this this alliance with with Israel with these notorious idolators in the northern kingdom um we'll just run through some of some of the ahab's greatest hits right so things kind of this is in roughly chronological order but in First Kings 16 uh he he marries Jezebel Jezebel was the daughter of a sidonian king a man named

ethbaal um and this this would have been

directly contrary to what the law stated in Deuteronomy 7 verse 3 and 4 do not intermar with them this was referring to the Canaanites when the children of Israel went into the land uh the law was advising against inter marriage with the Canaanites of course I think the broader principle is don't Forge alliances with the world that's what the law was really teaching uh Deuteronomy 7:3 says do not give your daughter daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods and the Lord's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you this is exactly what was happening Ahab mared Jezebel forges this alliance with the sidonian King Ethel which we actually don't really hear much about them or really what you know what was the benefit of that Alliance there wasn't War With The Phoenician king um but there's not a l said of it Beyond this what we do read about is Jezebel instituting bail Worship in Israel on a scale that had never been before been seen um she goes after the prophets of Yahweh um we remember that story about Obadiah hiding the prophets in the caves because they were being persecuted she would have killed them all if he hadn't hidden them um that's not today's story but this was the influence of Jezebel the consequence of marriage um to foreign ruler's

daughter uh let's see what else uh Ahab built an altar for Baal this is in First Kings 16:32 he erected an altar for baale in a temple he built in Samaria so there there was also a temple erected in Samaria uh just leading Israel deeper into Baal

worship we read about Ahab constructing an Ashera pole This was um a relic of Canaanite religion um he provoked God more than previous Kings the the Bible explicitly states that Ahab did more to provoke the Lord's anger than all the kings of Israel before that's including Jobo right the one who is consistently referred to as he who made Israel to sin right Jobo the son of nead the first king of Israel uh really sort of put those 10 tribes in the north down that bad path by creating sort of a hybridized

um kind of Yahweh wor but with a lot of AP paste kind of elements right the golden cows and den and berseba um a priesthood that wasn't the real priesthood that God had ordained so it kind of looked like the real article but it was different it wasn't what God intended um so he kind of put Israel on this path now in the time of Ahab you have like this next level like this isn't even Yahweh worship at all it's not even any semblance of Yahweh worship it's it's just straight up baale right that's what Jezebel brought in so we we often think about jeroboam as being sort of that notoriously Wicked King because he put Israel in that bad path but about Ahab it says he provoked God more than any previous King and so that's that's really saying something we talked touched on this already he allowed Jezebel to kill God's

prophets okay so here's a big one right naboth naboth's Vineyard this was his inheritance that was close to the temp the palace walls and Ahab wanted to expand his footprint a little bit he wanted to get that nice Garden that was next to the palace and kind of add it to his Holdings um nebo's not selling it's his inheritance is very important to him uh so Jezebel pulls some strings and she ends up having Neo executed right they they bring in the false Witnesses and they um they destroy his family uh it's not in the book of Kings but um elsewhere I don't know if I have the

reference I don't think I do oh Second Kings n so this is is much later we read about nebo's Sons had also been killed right and that's important because the inheritance would have gone to them so not only did Jezebel have to kill this righteous man she had to kill his sons too that's that's just awful a very very Wicked person um and so we we hear about ahab's character he's repeatedly referred to as being vexed and Sullen I think the King James version says like heavy and displeased like when he can't get the vineyard he's heavy and displeased he just gets into a mood and and the only thing that can make him feel happy is is getting what he wants through these sinful means of his his wife Jezebel uh so he has no Reign Over her he you know she she does what she thinks he wants and he benefits from it the way that he he would like to

benefit and and God says you know this is this this can't stand

um I think I'm a little bit out of order here uh but the next example I have is failing to destroy Ben Hadad benh Hadad was the king of Syria Syria and Israel were at War um but it gets a little bit confusing um if you're in First Kings 20 which you're probably not I'm going to flip

there we're just running through the laundry list of uh ahab's kind of miserable Reign um he has all kinds of problems right in First Kings 20 he's he's at war with the syrians

um verse two Ben Hadad sent Messengers to Ahab king of Israel and says thus says benad thy silver thy gold is mine your wives also your children even the goodliest you belong to me he just says all the stuff that you value I'm taking it it doesn't belong to you anymore right he's the bully on the schoolyard just kind of asserting his will he he's saying you don't know it yet but this is what's about to happen I'm going to take all your stuff everything you care about

um so that tells you about the the kind of guy Ben haad is right um and actually Ahab ends up beating him beats him twice beats him in the plains and in the valley right they say oh he's the god of the the plans we're going to fight in the valleys and vice versa right but God is God everywhere he's Sovereign

um so God actually wants Ahab to defeat benh Hadad but when the time comes Ahab calls benad my brother the guy that was taking his kids and his wives and his money is my brother love that

guy so so whereas God had marked Syria for Destruction um Ahab even foils that right even when it's in his interest to to be aligned with God uh he he messes that up

somehow uh he consults the false prophets for guidance uh before going into battle um you remember there's Mike the prophet he says I hate that guy he never prophesies anything good about me I got like 400 other guys here who who will tell me exactly what I want to hear um and those guys by the way they were they're supposedly prophets of of Yahweh but not the not the real ones right jehos could see past that uh but that's not what Ahab wanted to

hear uh he refused to repent fully he does Rend his garments he puts on sacko after this issue with naboth and Elijah calls him out about his sin um he does appear to uh repent but you know in the next chapter look we're just talk talking about he's just he's still surrounded by these these uh prophets are just telling him what he wants to hear it almost seems like one of those Sor I got caught not Sor I did it situations right he's he's not happy with the way the situation plays out with with Elijah rebuking him and everything

um but I I don't know if he really would have done things me differently so anyway we we've kind of worked the list pretty good here there was none Who Sold himself to do uh what was evil in the sight of the Lord like Ahab whom Jezebel his wife incited that's kind of the closing remarks on ahab's

life so again the the question that just kept coming back to me is why does jehos have anybody anything to do with this rotten character um and we don't really know I mean the Bible doesn't really give an answer to what jehoshaphat's motives were um you can only really speculate I got a few ideas I'll share and love to hear yours as well but I think it's noteworthy to to see that this wasn't a one time thing either kind of the the the key joining moment between Ahab and jehoshaphat's family was this marriage Alliance um in 2 Chronicles 18 ver1 um the King James version says that they were joined in

Affinity um and I had kind of speculated I think I think in the first class on the series that maybe the ESV is being a little bit interpretive here and saying that you know this making Affinity is a marriage

um I I looked into this a little more and it does seem like this this terminology that King James uses um the Hebrew is suggestive of of wedding of of joining in marriage you can see a couple examples there on the screen it's also translated in law as in like Jethro was Moses's father-in-law so you have sort of that Affinity like through marriage Through The Binding of of matrimony so I I think they're really is it's pretty clear that this is talking about ahaziah um I'm sorry not ahaziah uh jehoram bearing apala Ahab and Jezebel's

daughter um so you've got the marriage Alliance years later there's a military Alliance we read about the great feast that they have um and and uh Ahab suggests that they go up to war and take back ramoth Gilead ramoth Gilead was actually one of the Cities of Refuge in the tribe of GAD I believe had been taken by the syrians and ahab's like we got to we got to take it back this is our territory it belongs to us we need to take it back and Josh vet says I am as you are my people as your your people my horses as are as your your horses you know what I have belongs to you right so really the language of unity unified in purpose and desire to go after raymont

Gilead um josua is rebuked for this right and we have good reason why I mean Psalm 26 I hate the Assembly of evildoers I will not sit with the wicked here's jehos he's having a feast they're killing the fatted calf up in Samaria jehoshaphat's invited so he's he's up there partying with Ahab and Ahab uses that opportunity to draw him into uh this war against Syria um from 2 Chronicles 19 uh the prophet of the Lord comes to Joshua and says should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord because of this wrath has gone out against you from the Lord um and that one's worth looking at if you're in 2 Chronicles

19 we spent some time in 2 Chronicles 18 last week or two weeks ago uh just looking at that battle for Ramo Gilead and that's the one where the archers are shooting at random and they happen to strike Ahab even though he's not wearing his his kingly garments uh and they get him he dies he bleeds out in his Chariot right and they they wash it in the pool Sam area Joshua on the other hand is dressed up as the king and the syrians do Target him uh so The Archers are are going after Jehosaphat initially and somehow he escapes in 2 Chronicles 19 we read that the king of Judah returned to his house in peace to Jerusalem I think that's a reference to what just happened in the previous chapter in the previous chapter they were at War Ahab didn't survive it but Jehosaphat returns to his house in

peace

um so you have that kind of linking the two chapters together and immediately in verse two juu the son of hanani the Seer goes out to meet jehos and he delivers the this rebuke from the Lord so it's not really an ambiguous thing you know should Jehoshaphat have been allied with Israel or not um you know knowing what we know about Ahab probably wasn't a good idea no the prophet of the Lord actually says you know he was out of line by getting involved with

Ahab any comments or questions so far got the

microphone Chris I know you're good for

one whenever you're

ready if you like to we can

uh I under the law I think naboth would have been only able to sell that up to seven years anyhow right uh I I think when they sold The Possession It would revert after seven years in other words if you bought in the fourth year you'd pay less than if you bought in the third year or something like that as well right so yeah the Sabbath year of return perhaps you know Ahab wasn't worried about the law any longer at that point anyhow but uh I don't know if it was in nebo's power to sell it eternally or perpetually anyhow you know and maybe that's you know being a righteous man maybe that was his push back it's like it could never really belong to you anyway that's great

Point thanks

question all right so we have Jehosaphat and Ahab any anybody else before we move on

it's it's always so much to cover and I I don't like skimming over things but I want to make the point that there was basically three alliances here it's it's with Ahab it's with ahab's first son and ahab's Second Son um so you have this ship building Venture with ahab's first son who takes over after Ahab dies King ahaziah uh he he goes into this ship building Venture with Jehosaphat and that ends badly uh God judges them and then after ahaziah dies Jehosaphat Alles with with ahab's next son whose name was jehoram and they go to war against the moabites because the moabites have rebelled against Israel they used to pay Ahab tribute and sheep and they stop paying their tribute after Ahab dies jehoram is like what what's going on with this you know you guys have always paid my father it's time to pay up and so they go to war he says hey jash can you come with me to war um so he he keep this is a pattern of behavior on jehoshaphat's side he wants to be involved with the Northern Kingdom of

Israel all right so a couple thoughts on this um one that occurred to me was you know jhosua might have SE seen himself as as a uniter somebody who could bring back the the United monarchy um somehow he could pull together Israel and Judah into a single Kingdom once again we know that after the time of Solomon there was uh a series of Wars between Israel and Judah

um and maybe Jehoshaphat saw his place you know remember he's only the fourth king of Judah at this point it's still

relatively a relatively new situation this sort of division between the tribes maybe he thought he could Stitch things up again it's just speculation

um I I do wonder if he was also looking to kind of continue the moral reforms that he was doing in Judah and extend that to the 10 tribes in the north remember whenever he shows up he's asking for a prophet from the Lord he's trying to influence the people in Israel the king in Israel at least to listen to the prophets of the Lord uh we see that in SEC Second Kings um I'm sorry 2 Chronicles 18 Mike where he calls for Mike IIA we see it again in First Kings 3 that's that third alliance with now ahab's Second Son jorum and it's the same situation they're out in the field of battle he says isn't there a Prophet of the lord we can inquire about and it's it's actually Elisha that time Elisha Elijah's predecessor is there with him so we won't go to that passage quite yet but it does seem like maybe he's trying to introduce the teaching of the Lord and consultation from the Lord a little more um couple ideas I

had

um I wonder if this question has ever crossed other's minds people have ideas about this as well I'd be happy to hear

it so just uh feel free to interrupt me if you like um another possibility is he was just doing

what kind of came natural and what he saw Ahab doing um we know that uh Ahab had this alliance with Ben haad we just mentioned it a few minutes ago

um yeah I'm not going to repeat this but this whole situation where you know Ben haad is is going to take all of his stuff and um he doesn't have a problem with that Ahab defe beats him in battle he he asks if he if he still lives he says that Ben Hadad is is his brother uh which is remarkable after the Syrian King threatened his family

um yeah lots of interesting stuff happening in First Kings 20 and22 but this is sort of the same situation where you know Ahab makes an alliance with Ben haad even though he shouldn't have josva is doing the same thing with Ahab

um there's also the marriage alliance between Jehosaphat and Ahab that mimics the marriage between Ahab and Ethel the king of sidonians um you know the the man who raised Jezebel to be ahab's

wife

um so there's a little statue here of they think this was what Ethel looked like um a painted figurine that they found in um one of these TS one of these um excavation sites uh basically a big Mound where you know many centuries of many generations of people live in the same place and over time it kind of builds up and it's it's great because it's stratified into all these different layers and depending on which layer you're and you can kind of tell which period of History it belongs to so they found this this little statue I've got the image in the bottom right there of the eth Bale at least they think it's eth Bale it could also be Ahab or Ben haad according to the article I was reading they're not sure who exactly was I went with f Bale uh because it suited my purposes um but uh yeah so the golden headband he's suggests sort of the royal lineage um you know a few other things that they found interesting it was in this this um Tel called Abel Beth mayaka which is up there in Northern Israel uh it was at the crossroads of these three kingdoms of the sidonians the syrians and the Kingdom of Israel so they don't really know who it belonged to um and we don't know much about King eth bale of sidon um except that he was married at a marriage alliance with Ahab through his daughter Jezebel um so maybe jeash is just seeing this and he's saying this is what the the other nations are doing this is what I'm going to get involved in as well so he he marries his son to Jezebel's

daughter um and I one point I I can make sort of made the passing remark that it's difficult to know what the takeaway is uh when when we're reading this we read the Epistles we read the New Testament and the teaching is just so clear the application is so clear

and I I think it's clear here too but it's not really expounded upon quite the same way we just see this pattern of behavior where jehoshaphat's getting involved where he probably shouldn't be and it's having really bad consequences for his family in the first class we looked at all those people in the family photo and except for joset all six of them die untimely unnatural deaths um and it's through this association with with the Bale worshipping House of of Ahab excuse me um so I just thought of these these two passages from from 1 and 2 Corinthians

um do not be unequally yolked with unbelievers for what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness or what Fellowship has light with Darkness uh this is often cited in the context of of marriage I think like the marriage Union which is definitely appropriate for the story at hand here but it should also apply to like our friendships or our business ventures or anybody that we're getting involved with even if it's like the people that we we have enjoy Hobbies with right we have similar interests in what what what are those alliances and maybe Alliance is too strong of a word um or some of the more passing sort of acquaintances that we we inevitably do have right we're not cloistered away from the world

right so so what how are we supposed to think about those relationships um outside of the family of God um I I don't have any concern about my relationship with any of you uh because I know that you all are a positive influence on me that you have the right orientation headed to the kingdom and you know we all want to go there together right we're poting in the the same direction Ahab was not directed the same way that Jehoshaphat was the reforms he was enacting in Israel were very different from the reforms Jehoshaphat was doing in Judah so Jehosaphat if that was his intention was to persuade Ahab and his family in a better Direction um there was a lot of uh sort of

inertia in in a different direction that he was going to have to course correct and and obviously wasn't able

to that makes sense so it is thought-provoking for us um in our associations outside of the Ecclesia to think about you how much am I invest in

this what's realistic in terms of my ability to influence others for good and I don't want to under settle that short because I I'm all about I I think Bible's very clear about associating with people outside of uh the house of Christ to to bring them in a in the right direction so that that that's a good motive um but are we going after the Ahab of the world or people that actually are liable to be influenced by us um second passage uh First Corinthians 15 do not be deceived Bad Company ruins good morals and for me you know I morals that I have that are good are very susceptible to failing I I'm I'm self-aware enough to realize that um that I think of the the passage in job who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean it's it's not possible um to bring clean out of the unclean

um now a lot of things become possible through Christ and through the power of God in the in the New Testament but um the general principle is that you can't make a glass of dirty water clean by adding clean water to the dirty water water right it just creates more dirty water um and that's sort of that inertia I was referring to before that that bias towards contamination that's what the Old Testament is all about um SE making the difference between the clean and the unclean um and then we we learn in the New Testament about how we can become clean even though we we are by nature unin and so there's that kind of remarkable exception that we've all been uh granted the opport to enjoy uh but in general the principle is you can't do that there's there's clean and unclean so I I think this is the the lesson that the whole account of jehos and his life and challenges and triumphs and failures kind of brings us to this um kind of grappling with this this association with those outside of outside of the eclesia yeah any thoughts or comments on that

and in that um you know most of us have

um acquaintances neighbors people that we spend a lot of time with uh through work or through Hobbies as you said

and uh I know for

myself um I wish that I was better at sharing my faith or getting my friends to uh take an interest in my faith not sure how I can do that better you know I think sometimes I would uh I would try and do that simply by trying to be a good example right but I think it's more than just being a good guy you know I think that we need to speak of our faith and be that light in the Dark World

um yeah I don't know really where I'm going with it other than I know you know one example I could share and I'm sure everybody has got similar examples but you know I have a lot of acquaintances and friends who I do bike riding with cycling with and um you know there was a time where I was getting a lot of phone calls and texts you know on Friday and Saturday saying hey we got a Sunday morning group ride coming up you know can you come um and it would be easy for me to you know be swayed that way if I I if you know if I was susceptible to that I suppose right

um and now I think that that's given me one opportunity where I can say look you know my faith is really important to me and I have a commitment on Sunday mornings and um the phone calls don't come anymore the texts don't come anymore occasionally they do you know you're you're still doing that church thing Steve you know stuff like that I'm just curious if other folks have examples where they've been able to like share their faith more like I was impressed when we at Brother's class Ben and you were talking about how you had a Bible class at work um you I think those things we to try and do more you know bring people out more we've got a wonderful hope um and I think we're doing a disservice to our friendships with folks when we're not uh sharing the faith as much yeah was that uh was it pen and Teller one of those guys said like they don't respect Christians that don't evangelize because if they really believe what they say they believe you know wouldn't they be trying to save us all right interesting

yeah yeah thanks for sharing this anybody else have thoughts along those lines struggle with those kinds of questions I I think talking about your faith is is very challenging and um especially when you get the sense that people don't want to hear about it um aren't

interested Josh fat to his credit he he doesn't roll over for Ahab when he says hey I got all these I got 400 prophets telling me to go up to war and things are going to go great right you got that guy who brings out the horns he's like with these horns we're going to push the syrians he's he's even like uh he's doing object lessons and it must have been very convincing and compelling it's like all right let's go I got my horses Josh was very strong militarily um he was a great Ally to have I'm sure um so so why not just go for it he says no we got to consult the Lord we got to see what the Lord has said say about this um so I I do think he made that extra effort to to be Winsome and to to share with Ahab but

um hopefully we don't have friends like Ahab um I think that's another kind of it's not an apples and apples sort of comparison for us usually um we talk about the slippery path of Youth when you are coming up right you you have lots of opportunities to make friends with people like aab or Worse

um

yeah anybody

else all right

I'm trying to think about I don't want to get into anything I got another segment here I think I'll say for for next week

um so we'll probably stop right after this let's go quickly through 2 Chronicles 20 you know Ben just looking at that slide I can't help but notice the quote on the top left from 2 Chronicles 18 you know I'm as you are my people as your people it reminds me so much of the Book of

Ruth right yeah that's right

um

anyway so Ruth says that something along those lines that to Naomi right in that situation Ruth is the m she's sort of the outsider to Israel right she seeking to make an affinity with Naomi right your people will be my my people yeah yeah your God my God yeah and that's what we want our friends to do right yeah

exactly yeah it's interesting that quote you mentioned that Steve um in 2 Kings

3:7 Jehosaphat says almost identically the same thing to to ahab's son joram when they're going to war with Moab so it's an entirely different context it's many years later but it's I am as you are my people as your people you know will be with you my horses are are as your horses or something like that

um it's not making any

difference uh I think it's a nice

thought that we are among our people when we're here you know um

I remember being

um you know back to sort of the cycling theme that I was talking about I remember going down to the World Championships that were held in Richmond Virginia in 2015 and there were you know thousands and thousands of bike nerds like me there and a friend of mine said to me this is awesome where it's like these are our people and I thought to myself you know that's kind of funny but no my people are different yeah right you know my people are the people that are in this room you know yeah um

yeah that's

great everybody has their their thing right um for us it's it's the community that we have through Christ so it's wonderful to have that commonality and to be have the same direction