Welcome to another week, and another powerful message. This message talks about the high places of the enemy that God wants to destroy, if we only prepare our hearts. Be blessed family!
II Chron. 20:1-33
1 “It came to pass after this also, [that] the children of Moab, and the children of Ammon, and with them [other] beside the Ammonites, came against Jehoshaphat to battle.
2 “Then there came some that told Jehoshaphat, saying, There cometh a great multitude against thee from beyond the sea on this side Syria; and, behold, they [be] in Hazazon-tamar, which [is] Engedi.
3 “And Jehoshaphat feared, and set himself to seek the LORD, and proclaimed a
fast throughout all Judah.
4 “And Judah gathered themselves together, to ask [help] of the LORD: even out of all the cities of Judah they came to seek the LORD.
5 “And Jehoshaphat stood in the congregation of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the LORD, before the new court,
6 “And said, O LORD God of our fathers, [art] not thou God in heaven? and rulest [not] thou over all the kingdoms of the heathen? and in thine hand [is there not] power and might, so that none is able to withstand thee?
7 “[Art] not thou our God, [who] didst drive out the inhabitants of this land before thy people Israel, and gavest it to the seed of Abraham thy friend forever?
8 “And they dwelt therein, and have built thee a sanctuary therein for thy name, saying,
9 “If, [when] evil cometh upon us, [as] the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we stand before this house, and in thy presence, (for thy name [is] in this house,) and cry unto thee in our affliction, then thou wilt hear and help.
10 “And now, behold, the children of Ammon and Moab and mount Seir, whom thou wouldest not let Israel invade, when they came out of the land of Egypt, but they turned from them, and destroyed them not;
11 “Behold, [I say, how] they reward us, to come to cast us out of thy possession, which thou hast given us to inherit.
12 “O our God, wilt thou not judge them? for we have no might against this great
company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes [are] upon thee.
13 “And all Judah stood before the LORD, with their little ones, their wives, and their children.
14 “Then upon Jahaziel the son of Zechariah, the son of Benaiah, the son of Jeiel, the son of Mattaniah, a Levite of the sons of Asaph, came the Spirit of the LORD in the midst of the congregation;
15 “And he said, Hearken ye, all Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou king Jehoshaphat, Thus saith the LORD unto you, Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle [is] not yours, but God’s.
16 “To morrow go ye down against them: behold, they come up by the cliff of Ziz; and ye shall find them at the end of the brook, before the wilderness of Jeruel.
17 “Ye shall not [need] to fight in this [battle]: set yourselves, stand ye [still], and
see the salvation of the LORD with you, O Judah and Jerusalem: fear not, nor be
dismayed; to morrow go out against them: for the LORD [will be] with you.
18 “And Jehoshaphat bowed his head with [his] face to the ground: and all Judah
and the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell before the LORD, worshipping the LORD.
19 “And the Levites, of the children of the Kohathites, and of the children of the
Korhites, stood up to praise the LORD God of Israel with a loud voice on high.
20 “And they rose early in the morning, and went forth into the wilderness of Tekoa: and as they went forth, Jehoshaphat stood and said, Hear me, O Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem; Believe in the LORD your God, so shall ye be established; believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper.
21 “And when he had consulted with the people, he appointed singers unto the LORD, and that should praise the beauty of holiness, as they went out before the army, and to say, Praise the LORD; for his mercy [endureth] for ever.
22 “And when they began to sing and to praise, the LORD set ambushments
against the children of Ammon, Moab, and mount Seir, which were come against
Judah; and they were smitten.
23 “For the children of Ammon and Moab stood up against the inhabitants of mount Seir, utterly to slay and destroy [them]: and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, every one helped to destroy another.
24 “And when Judah came toward the watch tower in the wilderness, they looked unto the multitude, and, behold, they [were] dead bodies fallen to the earth, and none escaped. 25 “And when Jehoshaphat and his people came to take away the spoil of them, they found among them in abundance both riches with the dead bodies, and precious jewels, which they stripped off for themselves, more than they could carry away: and they were three days in gathering of the spoil, it was so much.
26 “And on the fourth day they assembled themselves in the valley of Berachah; for there they blessed the LORD: therefore the name of the same place was called, The valley of Berachah, unto this day.
27 “Then they returned, every man of Judah and Jerusalem, and Jehoshaphat in the forefront of them, to go again to Jerusalem with joy; for the LORD had made them to rejoice over their enemies.
28 “And they came to Jerusalem with psalteries and harps and trumpets unto the house of the LORD.
29 “And the fear of God was on all the kingdoms of [those] countries, when they had heard that the LORD fought against the enemies of Israel.
30 “So the realm of Jehoshaphat was quiet: for his God gave him rest round about.
31 “And Jehoshaphat reigned over Judah: [he was] thirty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty and five years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name [was] Azubah the daughter of Shilhi.
32 “And he walked in the way of Asa his father, and departed not from it, doing [that which was] right in the sight of the LORD.
33 “Howbeit the high places were not taken away: for as yet the people had not
prepared their hearts unto the God of their fathers.”
This was a great victory only because they sought the Lord, for our victory is in the Lord. But let’s look again at this.
33, “Howbeit the high places were not taken away: for as yet the people had not prepared their hearts unto the God of their fathers.”
Jehoshaphat prepared for it and he called the people. It says they came with all their families and they fasted and prayed; but the high places were not taken away. The people had not prepared their hearts. They did what Jehoshaphat said but they did not prepare their own hearts. Therefore God could not pull down all the things of the enemy from them. He said, “This battle is not yours; it’s God’s.”
Here at Sommer Haven God has blessed us and blessed us and blessed us with every provision and we give Him glory for it. We’ve had lots of enemies down through the years because I wasn’t doing what the enemies wanted me to do, I was obeying God. But there’s one thing that is necessary with a group of people: they have to be in one accord.
All the children of Judah obeyed Jehoshaphat. They all went to the temple to pray and they fasted but some of their hearts weren’t right. God didn’t hold it against them in this battle for He defeated the enemy. All of them were destroyed! Their army didn’t destroy them, God did. God did it because they were obedient to His word.
9 “If, [when] evil cometh upon us, [as] the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine,
we stand before this house, and in thy presence, (for thy name [is] in this house,) and cry unto thee in our affliction, then thou wilt hear and help.”
He is saying, “God, when we came out of Egypt you wouldn’t let us kill these three groups of people, now they’re going to kill us. God didn’t let them do it then for they would have gotten the glory. God would now destroy these enemies before them without them fighting a battle and man didn’t get the glory, God did. If they had done it coming out of Egypt they’d had to fight a battle out of their own flesh and they probably would have lost because they were doing it themselves.
God chose to let them come against the children of Judah in a force that Jehoshaphat couldn’t do anything about except to cry unto the Lord. Jehoshaphat cried unto God for he loved Him. God did this mighty miracle for Judah and He did it for Jerusalem. All the countries around about were afraid of them because they knew God fought their battle.
We better let God fight our battles instead of us trying to fight them ourselves. If we see things that we know are not right, we need to pray. Now I can tell you something I know full well in this place. If many things were brought before us the enemy would not get the place he has; because the Lord is with us to destroy the works of Satan. We have to do it God’s way, we cannot do it man’s way.
There was a time in my life when the Lord said to me, “The enemy’s going to come against you as an angel of light, but don’t you be afraid, for I’m going to teach you the ways of the enemy and I’m going to teach you my ways.” He gave me this chapter in II Chronicles. It was very true what He said to me because of what happened. I took this word and I plead this word and I stood upon this word and the enemy came. But I was ready for him; because I believed what God said to me. Had I not believed what He said the enemy would have overthrown and destroyed me; but because I believed God, that He was going to fight my battle for me. He was going to show me the position of the enemy and what he was planning and what God was going to do about it. This is true today. I went one year and six months under fierce attacks of the enemy and I remember every word the Lord told me.
The battle is not yours, it’s God’s. Now we have a lot of battles here and a lot of the flesh rises up and doesn’t want to die. But God is saying that He wants to fight your battles if you will let Him. You might not agree how I handle things and some of you won’t agree to come and tell me the truth. If I knew the truth about things I would handle it differently. Since you don’t tell me the truth I don’t know. Unless the high places come down God can’t do everything He wants at Sommer Haven. He’s blessed us and He’s fought our battles for us; but there’s one place that each and every one of us has to come to. We must come to that place where, with all our hearts, we take away the high places.
However, the high places were not taken away from Israel for as yet the people had not prepared their hearts to the God of their Fathers. Now I can talk and I can speak and I can see what the Lord’s doing and I know that He’s doing it because we’re obedient unto him. There are a lot of people that live here and God requires of them that they let Him fight their battles and not give place to the devil.
People will come to me a long time after something happens and say, “I didn’t tell you this…” Now maybe it was very important that I know this; but you didn’t think it was important so you didn’t tell it then. It’s important that we take care of things in a timely fashion.
Jehoshaphat won the victory, because Jehoshaphat did exactly what God told him to do. He did it the why God said it. “But howbeit the high places were not taken away for as yet the people have not prepared their hearts unto the God of their Fathers.” When we take it into our own hands to fight the battles we’ll lose them. When we give it into God’s hands and we give Him the right to fight the battle for us, then He will win that battle for us. If we decide we are going to do it our way, we’ll fail and God will not be gloried. It’s too bad that the people did not seek the Lord with their whole hearts and because they did not, God could not take the high places down.
There are high places of the enemy that God wants to take away and destroy, but He can’t do if we don’t prepare our hearts for God to do it. We have to prepare our hearts to let God to take away these things out of our life and we can know the Lord is one that is doing it and not ourselves.
We have before us a very fast work of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. We cannot grow unless we flow. We cannot accomplish what God has for us to do except we are united. We cannot do it except we allow God to do it His way and not the way we would choose. With all of our wisdom and all of our knowledge that we think we have and religious training, it’s no good to us if we don’t let God do it His way. We can think we know it all, but it’s better for Him to know it all and for Him to teach and guide us in the way that He wants us to go.
You’re here tonight because God has you here and therefore you are able to hear what He’s saying. You have to do what He says to do. We run into slight problems, because there are times we’d rather sleep than work; we’d rather do our own thing instead of realizing that we have to prepare our hearts to do it God’s way. You might be ever so brilliant and you might have such a mighty plan that you want to perform, but what if God says, “That is not my plan.” What do we do about it then?
We have before us a task given by God and the battle is not ours, it’s His. Get wise! When we have something bad happening just start praising the Lord. In the bible the worshipers went out before the army and God had the battle won before they got to the top of the hill for they believed God and did as He said. God sent the enemy against each other. The word says that when they began the Lord sent the ambush against the enemy and they killed one another.
When the army came up the hill they looked into the multitude and they were all dead, none escaped. Amazingly after all of this they just collected the spoil of that huge multitude and guess what they got. They found among the dead bodies riches and precious jewelry which they stripped off for themselves and carried it away. They were three days gathering the spoil it was so much. God not only gives us a victory over the enemy, He lets us collect the spoil too. Remember the battle is not ours; it’s His, if we’ll let Him do it.
We can praise Him while God is doing it. We need to remember the battle is the Lord’s and not be afraid. “Be not afraid or dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle [is] not yours, but God’s.” He will tell you the position of the enemy and how to pray.
When I was going through that year and half God gave me the position of the enemy every time. They thought I had a private detective on the trail; but I didn’t. The Holy Spirit is the greatest one that ever was. You don’t need to fight the battle; just stand still and worship.
What happens with us is that we forget to stand still. Remember in Ephesians 6 where it says when you’ve done all, stand. Get that whole armor on and stand there. “Ye shall not [need] to fight in this [battle]: set yourselves, stand ye [still], and see the salvation of the LORD with you, O Judah and Jerusalem: fear not, nor be dismayed; tomorrow go out against them: for the LORD [will be] with you.” When they went out the next day the singers went ahead of the army and when they got up the hill the enemy was dead.
One thing you have to do, you have to believe what God says. “Hear me, O Judah, and you inhabitants of Jerusalem; Believe in the LORD your God, so shall you be established.” Some of you have a time being established. You need to believe in the Lord your God. We’re going to set ourselves and prepare our hearts so that God can take down all the high places of the enemy and remove them. We can’t have victory and keep victory unless we become watchmen.
We have a choice to make tonight! Choose to believe Him and believe His prophets and prosper. For if we do anything else it’s not going to happen. If Jehoshaphat had not turned to the Lord the enemy would have destroyed them. If we don’t turn our whole heart to God we cannot fit in that place that God has for us so that all of the strongholds of the enemy will come down.
God is giving you an opportunity in this place to prepare your hearts and allow the Lord to totally have charge of our life so that He can bring down the strongholds of the enemy and we can walk in victory. The battles that we face He will win for us; but if we try to do it ourselves we will fail. If we don’t believe in the Lord He can’t do anything for us. If we don’t believe His prophets we cannot prosper. So God is saying tonight, if you want to collect the spoil of the enemy then it’s time to allow God to fight the battle for you and let Him defeat the enemy in your lives. Stand still before God and do not be afraid, because God is the God battles and He’ll take them and He’ll destroy them. We have to believe in the Lord and believe that it is the Lord that’s going to do it. We have battles; but where there is no battle there is no victory and God wants us to have the victory all the time.
Rev. Agnes I. Numer
March 12, 1996
