Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 535
1 Kings 20:31-34.
ALTHOUGH the manners and customs of warfare were exceedingly rough and cruel in those primitive ages, yet it appears that the kings of Israel gained a name for being merciful. I do not find recorded in Scripture any particularly merciful acts of theirs and I should conclude that the kings of other countries must have been very ferocious, if the kings of Israel were at all merciful. Ancient records and memorial slabs record tortures so horrible that you could not listen— if I were to describe them—although they were the common barbarities with which Assyrian and Babylonian victors concluded their wars.
It seems that the kings of the house of Israel did not go to the lengths of savage cruelty usual among their neighbors. Upon which we are led to remark that where the true worship of God does not make men what they should be, yet it betters them in some respects. The kings of Israel were all idolaters, but yet the presence of a little salt, a few of the godly in the land, had an effect upon the State. And the situation of the little kingdom of Judah, close at their elbow, with its Temple and its Prophets, influenced the manners and customs of the people, so that, “the kings of the house of Israel were merciful kings,” and this not because they feared God themselves, but because there were others who did and whose influence and example, perhaps, unconsciously, softened public sentiment and mitigated the ruthless ferocity of war.
Is this nothing? Is it not a high honor to the seven thousand who bowed not the knee to Baal, that in this respect they made Baal’s worshippers bow to them? Little do we know how much of the apparent morality of this country is due to the real religion which we have in our land. There are thousands of men in London who would open their shops tonight if it were not for the influence of those who fear the Lord. Their shops are closed, not because they take any interest in the Christian’s day of rest, but out of respect to custom. Sins, which now hide their heads under the veil of night, would stalk through our streets with barefaced impudence if once Christianity were withdrawn.
Bad as the customs of trade are, without the purifying power of the godly, they would be infinitely worse. The whole fabric of our commerce, politics and war, is manifestly affected for the better by our religion. Let those, then, who do not feel its power, yet at least think well of it for this fact—that it is a blessing to our country. And while other nations have been rent with civil war, while revolution has followed revolution and class has been set against class, the religion of Jesus Christ has made our land a happy land and a land, after all, in which there is more generous benevolence towards the needy and more mutual sympathy than in any other kingdom or even in any republic beneath the sky.
Thank God for true religion! Even if it does not convert a man, yet its presence in his neighborhood tends to sober him and to keep him from running into so great an excess of riot. This, however, is but by-the-by. I plunge now at once into the subject before me.
My soul tonight yearns, as it did last Thursday night, to induce some timid, seeking soul to make a venture of it and to come boldly to Christ. Last Thursday night, you remember, we spoke of Esther and how she said, “I will go in unto the king, which is not according to the law, and if I perish, I perish.” We tried to urge those of you who were then present to do the same. We reminded you that though it was contrary to law, yet it was not contrary to Gospel, and we therefore bade you come, just as you were, into the presence of the Great King—promising, on His behalf, that He would stretch out the golden scepter to you. Tonight our line of things is precisely the same. Our object is the same and we pray that we may have a greater blessing than we did then.
There are three things in the text—first, mercy’s report. Secondly, misery’s resolve. And thirdly, misery’s reception.
I. First, then, MERCY’S REPORT. Down there is a dark cellar. In an inner chamber, shut out from the light of day, with, perhaps, only a fire or a candle to light him—we see the fugitive King. He who came up from Syria with a hundred and fifty thousand men at his feet now returns with but a handful of men left. He had sworn in his audacity that he would take away Samaria by handfuls, that he would bring so many men that each one should require to take but a handful and the whole city of Samaria should be cast to the winds.
The king of Israel had simply replied, “Let not him that girds on his harness boast himself as he that puts it off.” There sits Ben-Hadad. He reminds me of Napoleon after the flight from Waterloo, sitting down by the fire in a peasant’s cot, his boots and his gray coat covered with mire and his face full of dark anxiety and gloomy fears—a man of iron, but a man of rusted iron and worn by adversities. There sits Ben-Hadad. But he is not like Napoleon, for his soul is cowed and broken and humbled and subdued.