Jehoshabeath - An Ordinary Christian

[0:00] and if we could this evening with the Lord's help and the Lord's guidance if we could turn back to that portion of scripture that we read the second book of chronicles chapter 22 second chronicles chapter 22 and if we read again at verse 10 now when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead she arose and destroyed all the royal family of the house of Judah but Jehoshabith the daughter of of the king took Joash the son of Ahaziah and stole him away from from among the king's sons who were about to be put to death and she put him and his nurse in a bedroom thus Jehoshabith the daughter of king Jehoram and wife of Jehudiah the priest because she was sister of Ahaziah hid him from Athaliah so that she did not put him to death and he remained with them six years hidden in the house of God while Athaliah reigned over the land and so this evening we're continuing our character study of some of the the women in the bible which we have titled as you know us the daughters of the king and as I said earlier we're coming to the end of our study we've traced God's plan of redemption through the old testament from the perspective of women and I'm sure that at some point in the future we'll look at the women of the new testament and we'll see how they were used by the lord but as I've told you before that the inspiration actually for for beginning this study on the daughters of the king was you you're the inspiration because you are daughters of the king and that's why I wanted to look at the daughters of the king there are so many women present here this evening and every Wednesday evening and so I thought it would be interesting to look at the women in the bible and I hope you've enjoyed looking at the women in the bible from the who were from different situations and different backgrounds I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have because there's a lot that we can glean from their experience whether female or male but now as we come to the the second last woman or the second last daughter of the king that I'd like us to consider God willing next week we'll look at Esther but this evening we find ourselves in the second book of chronicles meeting a woman who is probably unknown to most of us she's not a figure who would stand out on the pages of scripture nor is she someone whom we would immediately think of as being significant to the history of God's people because I suppose in the grand scheme of things there are books that have been written about the history of of Israel and there are many figures who have chapters all allocated to them because of their prominence and their influence and they were all types of people whether it was Moses who led the people or warriors like Joshua or kings like David or prophets like Elijah and Isaiah but unlike the prominent characters in the bible this seemingly insignificant woman called Jehoshabith she was only allocated one verse in the bible you could count two verses because the same thing is said about her in second kings 11 and in second king she's called

[3:51] Jehoshabah but even though Jehoshabith is only given one or two verses in the bible we'll see that she played a crucial role in the history of God's redemption now Jehoshabith was as we read she was a daughter of the king but not only in the spiritual sense she was a daughter of king Jehoram and the wife of Jehudiah the priest but that detail it doesn't make our understanding of this woman woman Jehoshabith any clearer because as we read in this passage it can be very confusing with all these different names and different relations and all that's going on and it's like we're bombarded with information and so in order to understand where Jehoshabith fits into the narrative of God's great work of salvation and where she appears on the stage of of history well we have to place her first of all in her context and it's only when we place Jehoshabith in her context that we understand her circumstances and then we discover that her circumstances portray to us her character and they're the three headings that I'd like us to use this evening in order for us to discover this daughter of the king Jehoshabith her context her circumstances and her character her context her circumstances and her character so we look firstly at her context her context now when we speak about history any history but in particular the history of redemption God's work of salvation when we speak about that history we always acknowledge that God is sovereign in every aspect of the history of redemption and it's often true that we say that history is his story history is his story it's God's story about man's ruin and God's remedy it's God's story about God's kingdom being built for God's people and so when we come to the book of chronicles it's a written account of his story it's a written account of his story because it retells the whole story of the history history of redemption it tells the story of man's ruin and God's remedy and it retells it in chronological order because the story of God's kingdom being built for

[6:31] God's people it begins with Adam in first chronicles chapter 1 verse 1 and then it the story ends in second chronicles chapter 36 with the children on the verge of being redeemed from exile in Babylon and that history from the fall of Adam to the redemption from exile it's what makes up 95 percent of the old testament and every part of that wonderful history it's claimed as his story it's his story and as you know we have followed that story as we've considered all the daughters of the king we followed the history of God's kingdom being built for God's people and we've followed it not from the perspective of Adam but starting from the perspective of Eve and if we follow the thread that we've been working on for the past few months and we've been weaving in and out throughout the redemption the history of redemption we can see how important Jehoshabit's context really is because right at the beginning of our study I mean if I could walk to the wall I would but right at the beginning of our study we met the first woman Eve she was the mother of all living and then from there we progressed into the history of the patriarchs the time of Abraham Isaac and Jacob and there we met Abraham's wife Sarah she was the mother of the covenant promise she gave birth to Isaac then we met Rebecca she was the willing wife of Isaac and she left everything to go and meet her husband Isaac but then as we continued into the history of the

[8:18] Exodus we encountered Jacob and Jacob was the faithful mother of Moses who hid Moses in all the rushes and we also met Miriam Miriam was the daughter of Jacob she was the sister of Moses and she protected Moses when he was hiding in the river Nile but after the Exodus from Egypt was complete and the children of Israel had encountered that 40 year period in the wilderness they crossed over the river Jordan into the promised land the land which had been promised to Abraham and all his descendants after him and on crossing the Jordan the first place that the the Israelites came to was the city of Jericho and the first woman that they encountered in Jericho as we met was Rahab Rahab the prostitute and we saw that Rahab she not only hid the Lord's spies but she also experienced the remarkable grace of God in her life but as the children of Israel then began to settle in the land of Israel they they settled down and they were being ruled by judges and in the period of the judges we looked at Deborah Deborah we met her and she was known by many as the wise mother in Israel because through all her military tactics Deborah protected the people of Israel but as we stepped over the page then out of judges and into the book of Ruth we had something of like an interlude it was like a breather to regain perspective of of the whole situation where the bitterness of Naomi we looked at her and we were reminded that mankind still has a problem of disobedience and death but in the redeeming love which Ruth discovered with Boaz it shows us that despite the mess of of man's sin

[10:15] God has a great plan of redemption a redemption that's going to come through a king and so we stepped onto the threshold of the new era the era of the kings and we met Hannah the prayerful mother of Samuel Samuel he was the last judge in Israel he would pass on the baton to the new king in Israel by anointing him and that king was to be the man after God's own heart King David and it was to King David that God would promise a royal heir to sit upon his throne forever but as it was with everything that belongs to God there was opposition there's always opposition and the opposition first of all came from King Saul but God had a plan and through the daughter of Saul David was protected because David's first wife Michal who we met she was the daughter of King Saul she was faithful to the king she was faithful to King David and then we met Abigail another of David's wives and she was blessed by the king and she was blessed by the king because she again protected the royal lineage that would ultimately lead to Christ but David's last wife often remembered for all the wrong reasons she was Bathsheba and even though she's remembered for her act of adultery with David and all the things that went on with him Bathsheba was helpful to the king and she was helpful to the king by ensuring that her son Solomon succeeded David to the throne and then as we were we saw last week that's where we picked up last week we had the history of God's kingdom being being built for his people it didn't end there with a glorious reign of Solomon because Solomon had two sons Rehoboam and Jeroboam and when Solomon died the eldest son Rehoboam succeeded his father to the throne in Israel but the people of Israel they didn't like their king because he oppressed them and they wanted to turn on him so they they turned on Rehoboam because Rehoboam he was trying to turn the people away from the Lord and away from walking in the ways of his father and his grandfather David and Rehoboam's actions had caused division division within that 12 tribe nation the 10 northern tribes of Israel they separated from the two southern tribes of Judah

[12:58] Israel was ruled by by Jeroboam and Rehoboam controlled the southern kingdom and so they called Rehoboam's younger brother he he he controlled the southern kingdom of Judah and in the end that's what happened there was this division of the nation of Israel and that division it weakened everything not only politically but also spiritually and it caused chaos and we saw that last week the division of the kingdom between north and south it was to begin be the beginning of a downward spiral of both kingdoms and every succeeding king after them in that period it was going to deteriorate further and further until the Lord executed his righteous judgment by exile where the northern kingdom would be exiled into Assyria and the southern kingdom of Judah would be exiled into Babylon but prior to the exile stay with me please stay with me prior to the exile we're still in the history prior to the exile the Lord sent prophets to warn the children of Israel about their spiritual condition and we saw that clear warning being given to them through the person of Gomer

[14:20] Gomer was the unfaithful wife of the prophet Hosea Gomer was the prostitute who sold herself to the lusts of men and the lusts of the world but Hosea the faithful husband he was commanded to go to Gomer and love her again and redeem her from all her slavery but in this action of Hosea it was all to illustrate what the Lord was going to do for his people because despite the disobedience and unwillingness of the people of Israel despite fulfilling the lusts of their flesh and worshipping all the idols and prostituting themselves to the things of the world and even after stripping them of everything and sending them into exile in Babylon the Lord still loved them and the Lord promised that he would redeem his Gomer from exile and that's the context it's a lot of information but that's where we find ourselves when we come to the book of Chronicles we find the children of Israel now in exile in Babylon under the rule of King Nebuchadnezzar but the reason the book of Chronicles follows this great thread of history from the time of Adam and Eve to the exile it's all because

[15:47] Chronicles was written whilst the children of Israel were in exile in Babylon and this chronological history of God's people it was written in order to remind the children of Israel that while they were in exile under a foreign king in a foreign land made to worship foreign gods it was to remind them that even though they are going through the darkness of exile just now the Lord has a plan and the Lord will remain faithful to his promise to redeem his people and you know my friend if the book of Chronicles has anything to teach us it's that our history is also his story it ought to remind us that every experience and every providence that we go through in our lives it's all part of his great plan in which he is working all things together for our good and for his glory and I'm sure that there have been times in your experience and when you maybe have looked at your own situation and you wondered well where is the Lord in all this and you wondered what is the Lord doing in all this and how can the Lord remain so silent when I feel like I'm going through this difficult experience why is he so distant from me when it's a trying and testing time someone once said that when the pupil is sitting the test the teacher is always silent and during that period of silence you may not have seen it at the time but when you look back when you look back over his story in your life it's then that you're enabled to see that the Lord was there the whole time the whole time it's when you look back and follow the thread of events all the way back to the beginnings through some of maybe the darkest of times it's then that you can trace the Lord's presence and the Lord's upholding hand and the Lord's goodness to you and the Lord's protection of you it's when you look back that you can see his grace and his mercy shining in the darkness you can see his help and his strength to you and it's always when you look back that you confess

[18:20] I could never have done it without him I could never have done it without him and even though you may not have been aware of it at the time it's when you look back that you're reminded of his plan and that his plan is perfect and that's you know that's what Jeremiah reminded the children of Israel when they were on the verge of going into exile in Babylon he promised he gave the promise through prophecy to the people of Israel he said I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord plans to prosper you and not to harm you plans to give you a hope and a future that's just before exile and it was only in exile looking back that the people of God could understand the preciousness of that promise and my friend the same is true for us too sometimes it's only when we look back at our own experience that we see that the plan of the Lord is perfect and that we're only left confessing with the psalmist we were just singing in Psalm 18 as for God perfect is his way perfect is his way the Lord his word is tried he is a buckler to all those who do in him confide and so as we come to the book of Chronicles we can place this woman

[19:47] Jehoshabith in her context that she is part of the beautiful history of God's redemption a history which was written in order to encourage the Lord's people and remind them that the Lord's ways are always perfect they're always perfect and that's why Jehoshabith is mentioned her context was part of this glorious history but her circumstances her personal circumstances were part of a history full of hostility and opposition towards the Lord and his people so in order to discover more about this daughter of the king let's consider her circumstances her circumstances look at verse 11 but Jehoshabith the daughter of the king took Joash the son of Ahaziah and stole him away from among the king's sons who were about to be put to death and she put him and his nurse in a bedroom thus Jehoshabith the daughter of king Jehoram the wife of Jehodiah the priest because she was sister of Ahaziah she hid him from Athaliah so that she did not put him to death and although the greater context of the book of Chronicles was written to encourage the Lord's people in exile and that the Lord still had a plan what we see here is that Jehoshabith's circumstances were reflective of the spiritual darkness and ungodliness of the Lord's people and it was those circumstances which ultimately led the kingdom of Judah to be exiled into Babylon in the first place and so what were

[21:36] Jehoshabith's circumstances well to be honest when we come to look at a passage like this one it can be very difficult to decipher who's who and what's going on because there are all these Hebrew names being used and it's quite confusing of course a Jew reading this in exile this was their history and the Jews knew their history but for us it can be very difficult to understand where it all fits together so let's go back a few generations from this point in time to Jeroboam and Rehoboam and as we know Jeroboam and Rehoboam they were the sons of Solomon and the division between them caused the division in the land of Israel with the northern kingdom being ruled by Jeroboam who was said to have not walked in the ways of his fathers and of David and the southern kingdom of Judah was ruled by

[22:37] Rehoboam who did walk in the ways of his fathers and of David and the Bible it's quick to point out that there were persistent wars between these two brothers and this continued with every single generation so just to fill in the history of the chapters before this one after Rehoboam southern kingdom after he died Abijah succeeded him then Asa succeeded Abijah then Jehoshaphat succeeded Asa you can read it for yourself but what was said of each of these kings in Judah is that they all followed the ways of their fathers and of David and Jehoshaphat he had six sons and as expected the eldest son Jehoram he succeeded his father but Jehoram was not like his godly ancestry because we're told just in the previous chapter chapter 21 at verse 4 it says when Jehoram had ascended the throne of his father and was established he killed all his brothers with a sword and also some of the princes of Israel

[23:50] Jehoram killed all his brothers and then we're told in verse 5 Jehoram was 32 years old when he became king and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem and he walked in the way of the kings of Israel as the house of Ahab had done for the daughter of Ahab was his wife and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord Jehoram walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and not like his ancestors who walked in the ways of the kings of Judah and of David and I want to pause at that point and see that there's application for us here because when you read through the history of the kings and also either in the books of chronicles or the books of kings when you read the history of the kings you'll see that every king that was either established in the northern kingdom or in the southern kingdom they were all compared to David and it was said of each of them that they either walked in the ways of their fathers and of David or they walked in the ways of their fathers and of

[24:55] Jeroboam in other words the kings in Israel and Judah either walked in the ways of the Lord or they walked in the ways of the world but what's important to note is that this perception of each king that's written down for us it's from what others saw of them it was an objective assessment from other people in which those looking on confirmed whether a king walked in the ways of the Lord or in the ways of the world and they confirmed it by what they witnessed of him my friend the witness of the king displayed to the onlooking world who it is they served and you know reading this that's the way it is for the Christian living in the world living in this world because what the world sees of us and what the world witnesses of us is what the world perceives of us and it causes them to make an assessment of us whether we walk in the ways of the world or in the ways of the

[26:06] Lord and for me it's a reminder that we have to take our witness as a Christian seriously because every day when we get up every day in our community and at work or in school or wherever we are and wherever we go we are being seen and read of men women boys and girls and each of them will make an objective assessment of us and by what they witness of us and by what we witness to them which means that we have to be careful how we walk and the apostle Paul he was the one who always stressed this he stressed this to many of the churches that he wrote to that we have to be careful how we walk he said to the Ephesians I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called and to do it with all humility and gentleness with patience bearing one another in love

[27:09] Paul then wrote to the Colossians and he said to them walk in a manner worthy of the Lord fully pleasing to him bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God and Paul also wrote to the Thessalonians and he stressed his witness to them when he said you are witnesses of how holy and righteous and blameless our conduct was before you because we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory my friend the emphasis of scripture is that we need to walk in the ways of the Lord and not in the ways of the world and it needs to affect our witness whether that is our conduct our speech our behaviour our attitudes or even our conversation we need to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord and I know the reality is we fail that's the reality we fail so often when we let the Lord down and our witness is so poor for the Lord that we wonder how can anyone ever see Christ in us but I love what is said about

[28:30] Jehoram and the fact that his witness was poor because he walked in the ways of the world because read in chapter 21 and verse 7 we're told all this about Jehoram that he was evil he walked in the ways of the world and then it says in verse 7 yet the Lord was not willing to destroy the house of David because of the covenant that he had made with David and since he had promised to give a lamp to him and to his sons forever the covenant the covenant with David was the only thing that was sure and steadfast our witness it's often the opposite uncertain and sometimes wavering but the covenant was permanent and everlasting and that's what would have been the encouragement to a reader who's reading the book of chronicles in exile in Babylon that despite their disobedience and their failure to love the Lord and their prostitution towards idols and all that's led them into

[29:33] Babylon the Lord's covenant still stood the Lord's love hadn't changed his unfailing love for his people remains constant but the circumstances which Jehoshaphat found herself in they were going to get worse before they got better because Jehoram was the first king in Judah the southern kingdom of Judah to lead the people into Adonatria the first king which resulted in the Lord acting in judgment against him says in verse 18 of chapter 21 verse 18 after all this the Lord struck him Jehoram in his bowels with an incurable disease in the course of time at the end of two years his bowels came out because of the disease and he died in great agony his people made no fire in his honour like the fires made for his fathers he was 32 years old when he began to reign and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem and he departed with no one's regret they buried him in the city of David but not in the tombs of the kings a sad ending nobody wanted to remember him but the problem

[30:49] Judah had was that Jehoram's son would follow exactly the same in the same footsteps as his father because then we're told in chapter 22 and verse 1 and the inhabitants of Jerusalem made Ahaziah his youngest son king in his place and the reason why he was the youngest son for the band of men that came with the Arabians to the camp had killed all the older sons so Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of Judah reigned Ahaziah was 22 years old when he began to reign and he reigned one year in Jerusalem his mother's name was Athaliah the granddaughter of Omri I hope I don't confuse you but I want us to understand the wickedness that's now creeping into Judah and in order to understand the wickedness we have to see that this person Omri the end of verse 2 he was the king in the northern kingdom of Israel the idolatrous kingdom he was the father of

[31:54] Ahab and so Athaliah was the daughter of wicked king Ahab and her mother would have been Jezebel who was the woman who wanted to kill the prophet Elijah but we're told about the spiritual condition of Ahaziah in verse 3 it says that Ahaziah also walked in the ways of the house of Ahab because his mother was his counsellor in doing wickedly he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord as the house of Ahab had done for after the death of his father they were his counsellor to his undoing but like his father but like Jehoram the Lord had to put a stock to Ahaziah and so we're told in verse 7 it was ordained by God that the downfall of Ahaziah should come about through his going to visit Joram for when he came there he went out with Jehoram to meet Jehu the son of Nemshi whom the Lord had anointed to destroy the house of Ahab now Jehu follow with me

[33:02] Jehu whom the Lord anointed the Lord had anointed him through the prophet Elijah because you remember when Elijah was at his wits end at his wits end with the spiritual state of the northern kingdom of Israel he had called down fire from heaven he had proved that the Lord is God but that wasn't enough because the wicked Queen Jezebel wanted to kill him and he runs off he runs to Mount Horeb expecting to be decommissioned from the Lord but that's not what happened the Lord recommissions Elijah in his service and he says to him go go anoint Hazael king over Syria anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi as king over Israel and anoint Elisha as prophet in your place and you know it makes me think that all this history and all these names they're all they all seem to get lost in our mind but when we stop and think about it it makes us see that the Lord was always trying to stop his people from going astray he was always trying to restrain them and keep them back always going to the extremes of trying to protect his people from falling away and this was because even in their sin even when they failed he still loved them he still loved them this was the people he had married into this was the people he had taken to be his wife you could say this was the people he was covenanted with and he was doing everything he could so that they would remain faithful to him to the point that he would use Jehu a king in the northern kingdom and Jehu was trying to reform everything from within up there he uses Jehu to stop

[34:58] Ahaziah in the southern kingdom because it says in verse 9 when Jehu was executing judgment in the house of Ahab he met the princes of Judah and the sons of Ahaziah's brothers who attended Ahaziah and he killed them he searched for Ahaziah and he was captured while hiding in Samaria and he was brought to Jehu and put to death they buried him for they said he is the grandson of Jehoshaphat who sought the Lord with all his heart and the house of Ahaziah had no one to rule the kingdom what an awful indictment to be said against you to have said at your death you were the grandson of godly Jehoshaphat who had sought the Lord with all his heart and yet you died clinging to the world and all its pleasures yet Ahaziah only lived for the world but we're also told that Ahaziah was killed and there was no one to rule the kingdom there was no king all his brothers had been killed and Ahaziah had now been killed and what happens next is almost unthinkable this is up us up to now present day verse 10 now when

[36:14] Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead she arose and destroyed all the family of the house of Judah Athaliah the daughter of Ahab and wicked queen Jezebel the granddaughter of Omri in order to prevent anyone else taking the throne of Judah she kills all of her grandchildren and assumes the throne herself Athaliah becomes queen in Judah which only goes to show the spiritual darkness that the nation was now falling into because there was never to be a queen to rule over Israel the covenant had been made with David and all his sons but when we consider Jehoshabit's circumstances her circumstances at that time had Athaliah's mother Jezebel she was on the throne in Israel that was

[37:20] Jehoshabit's granny in the southern kingdom of Judah was Jehoshabit's mother Athaliah she was the queen there were two queens ruling over the one nation of Israel I'm seeing the faces and I know you're getting confused but this is what I want to get to what's so beautiful about Jehoshabit's context and all her circumstances is that when evil was progressing and seeming to be getting the upper hand God intervenes God intervenes and God intervenes in the most unlikely way and he uses the most unlikely character and you know my friend we may only have one verse written about this woman in amongst hundreds of pages of scripture but it's in that one verse we are unable to see her beautiful character so let's look lastly at Jehoshabit's character we've considered her context in the larger book of chronicles we've considered her circumstances in the darkness of the period in the southern kingdom of Judah but now let's see her character her character verse 11 but Jehoshabit the daughter of the king took Joash the son of

[38:49] Ahaziah and stole him away from the king's sons who were about to be put to death and she put him and his nurse in a bedroom thus Jehoshabit the daughter of king Jehoram and wife of Jehodiah the priest because she was sister of Ahaziah hid him from Athaliah so that she did not put him to death and he remained with him six years hidden in the house of God while Athaliah reigned over the land so in Athaliah's fit of rage having known about the death of her son Ahaziah Ahaziah's sister Jehoshabit took his one year old son Joash and hid him in the temple of course Athaliah would never find Joash hidden in the temple because she worshipped idols and for six years

[39:50] Jehoshabit hid her nephew in the temple Athaliah ruled in the kingdom but Jehoshabit was being used to protect Joash but Jehoshabit didn't waste those six years because she and her husband Jehudiah they taught Joash about the Lord in the midst of all the hostile circumstances all this dark history all the chaos that's pouring into the land of Israel Jehoshabit taught the next generation the truth about the Bible people she would have taught Joash about the true king of God's people she would have taught Joash about the history the history of God's people she would have taught Joash about the promises that God had made to his people and Jehoshabit would have taught her future king about how to lead

[40:56] God's people and after six years when the time came for Joash to be revealed in the kingdom a kingdom which had now been destroyed by his grandmother Athaliah Athaliah was put to death and Joash was anointed king over Judah and you can read that account in chapter 23 when you go home we don't have time for it this evening but in chapter 24 at the very beginning we're told Joash was seven years old when he began to reign and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem his mother's name was Zibiah of Beersheba and Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the days of Jehudiah the priest Jehudiah got for him two wives and he had sons and daughters after this Joash decided to restore the house of the Lord Joash wanted to turn the kingdom of Judah back to the Lord he wanted to restore the temple and restore the worship of the Lord and tear down all the places of idol worship

[42:04] Joash wanted to serve the Lord who was the true king of God's people Joash wanted to walk in the ways of all his fathers and of David and the desire of this young king and the spiritual transformation of the kingdom was only because of the actions of this woman because Jehosh Abith trained the next generation to serve the Lord she trained her nephew to love the Lord and serve him with all his heart and you know as parents and as grandparents or aunties and uncles or cousins or friends that's what we should take from the character of Jehosh Jehosh she was a woman who trained the next generation to love and serve the Lord in a hostile world and you know this is what I think is so beautiful about her character that when evil was progressing and seeming to be getting the upper hand and take over the nation through

[43:07] Athaliah the Lord intervened but Jehosh but Jehosh through the most unlikely character he worked in the most unlikely way because with Jehosh the Lord didn't use powerful or prominent people to fulfil his purposes he didn't use a miracle to display all his glory he didn't use this extraordinary Christian who had lots of gifts and abilities which made them stand out from everyone else no the Lord used an ordinary Christian who was willing to serve an extraordinary God and my friend isn't that what makes the Lord all the more glorious that he uses ordinary Christians who are willing to faithfully serve their extraordinary God in order to fulfil his plan and his purposes Jehosh she may only appear on one verse in the whole

[44:11] Bible she may appear in this unfamiliar context and she's enduring an unfamiliar circumstances to us and she may have this unfamiliar character but Jehosh be she was part of the Lord's plan and the Lord's purposes and she was used mightily by the Lord we may forget what she did for the Lord we may just pass over her one verse without a second thought but the Lord didn't forget what she did we may forget what other people do for the Lord the Lord doesn't forget what they did Jehosh be she may not have stood out from the crowd of all these names and faces in the book of chronicles but she certainly stood out for the Lord and that was because Jehosh be she's actions of hiding Joash they not only provided the kingdom with a king her actions also provided the world with a saviour because in her protection of Joash in that one little action

[45:23] Jehosh be preserved the lineage of David a lineage that would end with the arrival of king Jesus and with a kingdom and a throne that would be established forever and you know when we consider Jehosh be and the fact that she was this ordinary Christian who loved and served an extraordinary God we ought to realize that that's all that's required of us too the Lord doesn't call us to be super Christians he doesn't call us to be super Christians simply because his plan is perfect and his purposes they will all come to pass and so as long as evil continues and progresses and tries to get the upper hand the Lord will continue to intervene in the most unlikely ways and he will continue to use the most unlikely characters for his own glory in other words he will use us he will use us that's the promise because we all live today within the context of his great story of redemption and we all have our own circumstances wherever the

[46:56] Lord has placed us in our homes our families our workplaces but whatever may be said of us after we are gone just like this woman Jehoshabit this daughter of the king I hope that it will be said of us that we were just an ordinary Christian who loved and served our extraordinary God may the Lord bless these thoughts to us let us pray O Lord our gracious God we give thanks to thee that the story of redemption alone belongs to thee and we thank thee that we can say with a psalmist that plenteous redemption is ever found in him O Lord we thank and praise thee that thou art the God who writes the story thou art the God who turns the pages in our lives and thou art the God who keeps us on every page we bless thee O

[48:01] Lord that it is a glorious story that thou art the one who is working all things together for good although we may not see it at the time although the story may seem confusing and the narrative difficult we bless thee O Lord for that thy finger is on every page thou art the one who is sovereign and the God who is working in us and for us for thine own glory and for thy purposes help us Lord we pray thee to be like Jehoshabit a woman hidden in history that we O Lord might be hidden amongst many names many faces but help us to do our part in loving the Lord and serving him in this part of thy vineyard that we would love the Lord and serve thee here and see O Lord thee working doing a mighty work doing exceedingly abundantly above all more than we could ask or even think O do us good Lord we pray thee bind us together go before us and cleanse us for Jesus sake

[49:04] Amen We shall conclude by singing in Psalm 17 Psalm 17 in the Scottish Psalter page 2 1 7 Psalm 17 we're singing from verse 5 down to the verse mark 9 Hold up my goings Lord may guide and those thy paths divine so that my footsteps may not slide out of those ways of thine I called have on thee O God because thou wilt me hear that thou mayst hearken to my speech and to me incline thine ear down to the verse marked 9 of Psalm 17 I stand to sing to God's praise Hold up my goings

[50:08] Lord may guide in most thy paths divine so that so that my footsteps may not slide and draw away from time I call and have on thee O God because thou thou wilt me hear that thou mayst hearken to my speech to me in kind thine ear thy wondrous love and kindness show thou that thou that thy right hand saves them but trust in thee from those that up against them stand of the upper

[51:36] Lord thee I me keep in thy wings shift me close from ludicrous search come I sing me round as deadly foes the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ the love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all now and forever more Amen