One of the truly mighty battles of the Old Testament that I have seldom heard any mention of was one that occurred in the reign of the righteous king of Judah named Jehoshaphat. It is recorded in 2 Chronicles chapter 20, and took place in the region of Tekoa, in the wilderness adjacent to that town. Israel lost no soldiers at all in the conflict, and her men did not have to raise a hand in anger in order to bring about the marvelous result. Jehoshaphat made a speech to his troopers early in the morning as the day of battle arrived. He said to them:

Hear me, O Judah and you inhabitants of Jerusalem: Believe in the Lord your God, and you shall be established; believe His prophets, and you shall prosper (v. 20).

Having delivered this simple speech urging faith in God upon them, he did a most unexpected thing. He appointed “those who should sing to the Lord, and who should praise the beauty of holiness, as they went out before the army and were saying, ‘Praise the Lord, For his mercy endures forever’ (v. 21). In other words he gave them a song to sing as they marched forth into battle. It was not a song constructed to teach them to hate their enemies or to hunger to see their blood shed. It was not intended as a means to work them up into hysteria in order to make them brave in the face of the enemy. It was a hymn of adoration and worship. It was a song of praise to God and his mercy. He instructed them to focus on their Deliverer, not upon their enemies.

The Bible tells us that upon this action taking by a faithful king, God went immediately to work on their behalf. The Lord “set ambushes against the people of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir” (v. 22). In short order, they turned their weapons upon one another, and the feeble coalition fell apart. In the end, a great slaughter ensued, and all three armies were destroyed. “When Judah came to a place overlooking the wilderness, they looked toward the multitude; and there were dead bodies, fallen on the earth. No one had escaped” (v. 24). Israel had proven victorious on account of a song! And it was not that this song had inspired them to fight with such power or ferocity that they overcame their enemies. Instead, their song was aimed solely at the Lord, and so it had brought God to deliver a great victory for them that day “without them ever firing a shot”! When they trusted him, intoning his praises, the Lord gave them salvation. The battle was over before they even arrived at the fight.

Such stories as this are narrated in Scripture in order to deliver valuable lessons for us, as we live our lives today and fight our own battles for the Lord. They are written for our learning, so that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope (Romans 15:4). And this one certainly delivers a message of comfort and hope. As we praise God in song today, we must know that many great victories are fought and won as we do so. It may be quite beyond our capacity to perceive the nature of them through our material senses, but we need to be made aware of how truly important they are.

1. We win a victory over self-assurance and self-sufficiency. When God is praised in song we step outside of ourselves and our own paltry strength and pitiful abilities in order to tap into the mighty power of our Father who is in heaven. We praise Someone who is greater than ourselves. His greatness is manifest in the expanse of the heavens and all that is contained therein, the which he spoke into existence with the simple words, “Let there be … and there was…” All that exists is a physical testimony to his wisdom and power. We stand in awe of his magnificence. The creation itself is beyond our own understanding, and thus how much more so that One who brought it all into being! As the Psalmist said,

Oh come, let us sing to the Lord! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving: Let us shout joyfully to Him with Psalms. For the Lord is the great God. And the great King above all gods. In his hand are the deep places of the earth; the heights of the hills are His also. The sea is His, for He made it; and His hands formed the dry land… (Psalm 95:1-5).

2. We win a victory over human pride and egotistical arrogance. Men must ever fight the battle with pride. It is the greatest battle that we will fight in this world. We all have difficulty with this troubling characteristic of humanity. A song of praise takes our spirits heavenward and lifts our hearts toward the unseen reality of the throne-room of deity. There God sits enthroned.

When God commissioned his servant Isaiah to prophesy to his people the words of the Lord, he gave this young prophet at the temple of God a vision of the throne-room of heaven: “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up” (Isaiah 6:1). There he encountered some sense of the holiness and majesty of God. The result was predictable: he recognized his own sinfulness and lack of worth before the majesty of heaven, so he said, “Woe is me, for I am undone. Because I am a man of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (6:5). When we sing the praises of the Lord we also encounter the holiness and majesty of God. And thus we bring ourselves down from our own high places in our own minds.

3. We win a victory over self-indulgence and self-serving. When we serve God, in any way, we cease, for that time at least, to serve ourselves. Consider for a moment the fact that most of our time on earth is spent attending to needs and desires of our physical bodies. As material beings, it must be mostly so. But it must not be entirely thus, as very many people function. So, when we hymn the praises of our Maker, we worship Him and give Him the glory that He is due. The Psalmist wrote,

I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised (Psalm 18:3).

God is worthy of every word of praise that is given to his Name. Heaven itself, and the myriads of its inhabitants, praise His majesty. Heaven echoes with his praises:

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing (Revelation 5:12).

Blessing and honor and glory and power be to Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever (Revelation 5:13b).

Blessing and glory and wisdom, thanksgiving and honor and power and might, be to our God forever and ever. Amen. (Revelation 7:12).

Great and marvelous are your works, Lord God Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the saints! Who shall not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy, for all nations shall come and worship before you, for your judgments have been manifested (Revelation 15:3, 4).

Make no mistake about, heaven is a place where God is worshiped and served continually. These passages from the Revelation (and others besides) testify to that fact. When we sing the praises of our God we loose the bonds of this earth momentarily and experience a foretaste of heaven itself, for that is a place where God is praised world without end.

Too, great victories are won when God is worshiped and served here on earth. Unseen, unmarked, and unheralded by the muses of this world they may be, but victories of the sort that matter beyond our own humble abilities to measure them. King Jehoshaphat and his men learned that lesson when they went out to meet the Ammonites, Moabites and the men of Mount Seir long ago, singing the praises of the Almighty as they went.

We may not see results in kind and in the fashion that they saw that day, but victories that matter greatly are won before we even know that the battlefield is near or sense the approach of the enemy.

Oh, sing to the Lord a new song! For He has done marvelous things; His right hand and His holy arm have gained Him the victory (Psalm 98:1).