From this incident we learn:
I. That God has many ways at His disposal of which we know nothing. God can touch the reason of men, God can touch the eyes of men, so that a man shall mistake his brother for an enemy.
II. In the training of our highest life we want principles as well as detailed laws. The principle here referred to is, "The battle is not ours, but God's." God is far more concerned about us than we can be about ourselves. We make all the noise, but He does all the work.
III. In the culture of our highest life we must regard extremity as one phase of Divine discipline. Jehoshaphat was driven into a corner. He said openly in the hearing of his people, "We have no might against this great host." The text addresses all who are trying to live in the fear and love of God under discouraging circumstances. "The battle is not yours, but God's."
IV. The text also addresses a word (1) to all who are bearing Christian protest against evil; (2) to all who are undergoing severe temptation; (3) to all who are labouring for the good of the world; (4) to all who are engaged in controversy on behalf of Christian doctrine. If we had to defend everything and to fight everything in our own strength, and for our own ends, the case would be perfectly different; but when God says to us, "Ye have this treasure in earthen vessels; the excellency of the power is of God, and not of man," when He teaches us that we are servants and not masters, creatures and not creators, with no grasp of eternity, it becomes us patiently to wait, to stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.
Parker, City Temple,1871, p. 15.
2 Chronicles 20:15 , 2 Chronicles 20:17
I. The history of the Church is full of instances of this law of Divine procedure. An old saying of the German Reformers was this: "One with God on His side is a majority." Every cause which God originates starts with only Gideon's three hundred.
II. From this law of God's working it is clear that in spiritual affairs the balance of power does not depend on numbers. Votes have very little to do with it. It depends on spiritual forces. It depends on insight into the spiritual wants of the world, on consecration to God's service, on the power of prayer, on spiritual discovery of the side on which God is, and specially on intensity of Christian character.
III. It is a great thought on this subject that the human race furnishes but a small part of the holy ministries of this world. The ministry of angels probably swells what we call minorities to secret majorities.
IV. Success in spiritual affairs often loses the character of a conflict, so overwhelming and so easy is the working of Divine auxiliaries.
V. Minorities of honest and earnest men, devoted to a great cause, should never be opposed heedlessly. Let us be on the look-out for such men. Let us greet them with a "Godspeed" when they make their Divine credentials clear.
VI. Within the Church of Christ itself is to be found a minority of believers whom God regards with peculiar complacency. As a spiritual power, they are the vanguard of the Church. They are the spiritual aristocracy of Christ's kingdom.
A. Phelps, The Old Testament a Living Book,p. 21.