I. Jehoshaphat secured the great companionship by following true example. “Because he walked in the first ways of David his father.” Beautiful those first ways of David. Turn to the eighteenth Psalm, which David sang in the day that the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. These first ways of David were ways of love to God (2Ch_17:1) of trust in God (2Ch_17:2); of prayer to God (2Ch_17:3); of strength in God (verse 29) of thanks to God (verses 49, 50). But the later ways of David--the ways concerning Bathsheba, etc., Jehoshaphat would not walk in. This matter of true example for the ways of life is a great thing. Such following will surely lead us into the great companionship of God.
II. The Lord was with Jehoshaphat; he secured the great companionship by standing out against the evil spirit of his time. “And sought not unto the Baalim.” The Baalim represented the popular religious tendency.
III. And the Lord was with Jehoshaphat; he secured the great companionship by right affection. “But sought to the God of his father.” Do not imagine the set of the supreme affection a light matter And when our heart supremely sets towards God, God answers with companionship.
IV. And the Lord was with Jehoshaphat; he secured the great companionship by right practice. “And walked in His commandments, and not after the doings of Israel.” Jehoshaphat did not mean about it, and dream about it, and think about it; he vigorously did it. Do not imagine that inward and sentimental intention which never finds expression in corresponding action amounts to anything. What vigorous volition and right practise sound in that “walked”! Man is three things--intellect, affection, will. Jehoshaphat turned these three toward God. Intellectually, he recognised Jehovah as God, not the Baalim; affectionately, he sought to God; volitionally, he practised for God. What wonder he was wrapped about with the great companionship? (Homiletic Review.)
Because he walked in the first ways of his father David.--
The first ways of David
1.We have here a pattern and a warning. It is an eulogy heightened by a limitation. The merit of the copy is advanced at the expense of the pattern. It is intimated that David’s first ways were his best ways. This is in contradiction of the true order of the spiritual life. A retrograde motion in it is a violation of its nature and a frustration of its intent. Deterioration in goodness is a disease and an anomaly.
2. Notice the impartiality and candour which characterise the accounts of good men in Scripture. The Bible has no human idols. Fault and virtue it sets forth with equal distinctness and prominence. Herein it shows itself Divine. The Bible in its way of dealing with the lives and characters of men, almost as much as in anything, bespeaks itself the voice of God.
3. The change in David’s spiritual course was connected with an equally marked change in his outward condition.
4. See here the danger of prosperity.
5. We infer that men are not to be our patterns, but only “the man Christ Jesus.” Him alone we can look up to with unqualified admiration.
6. Let us always be looking out for the symptoms and beginnings of spiritual decline.(R. A. Hallam, D.D.)
