Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1311
“And there came a man of God, and spoke unto the king of Israel, and said, Thus says the Lord, Because the Syrians have said, The Lord is God of the hills, butHe is not God of the valleys, therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into your hand, and you shall know that I am the Lord.” 1 Kings 20:28.
THE Syrians had been defeated by the Israelites whom they despised. This victory had been achieved by so small a number of men over so vast a host that the Syrians were driven to the conclusion that there was something supernatural about it and they ascribed their defeat to the God of Israel. They were right in doing so. Brothers and Sisters, let not these heathen shame us! They knew to whom the crown of the victory belonged and, little as they understood Jehovah, yet they recognized that His right hand and His holy arm had gotten for His people the victory. Now, if the Lord has prospered you, if in your souls peace and joy are reigning, or if you have enjoyed success in Christian service, take heed that you do not lift up your horn on high and take honor to yourselves!
Render all the glory to God, to whom it is most justly due. Let that Psalm, “Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Your name give glory,” be always on your heart and often on your tongue. The tendency of the human heart towards pride is very strong and Satan, the great usurper, is always eager to stir us up to rob God of His Glory. Yet nothing is more fatal to peace, nothing more sure to provoke God, nothing more certain to bring upon us times of disaster and distress! “The Lord your God is a jealous God,” and He is jealous of this thing, among others—He will not give His Glory to another! He will not allow those whom He uses for His purposes to ascribe their victories unto themselves! The Lord, alone, must be exalted. Whatever has been done by us, the great Worker who used us must have the praise. We have been nothing more than the axe in the hand of God if we have felled the cedar! We have been nothing more than the net if we have brought the fish to shore. Unto Him, therefore, be praise forever!
So far let us learn from the heathen Syrians. While the Syrians thus ascribed their defeat unto Jehovah, they made a great mistake as to His Character, for they supposed Him to be a local God, like their own imaginary deities. They had gods for the mountains and gods for the lesser hills, gods for the rivers, gods for the fields, gods for their houses, gods for their gardens and these so-called gods were powerless out of their own sphere. They imagined the only living and true God to be a god like their idols. Let us abhor this dishonoring of God and avoid the sin by never daring to make unto ourselves a god after our own ideas.
The art of god-making is very common among men. Instead of going to Revelation to see what God is and humbly believing in Him as He reveals Himself, men sit down and consider what sort of God He ought to be and, in so doing, they are no wiser than the man who makes a god of mud or wood or stone! If we make a god in our own thoughts, after our own ideas, we have virtually made a similitude of Him to whom no creature can be compared. We have tried to comprehend the Incomprehensible and limit the Infinite—and in so doing we are idolaters, for we have made the likeness of something that is in our own mind and, consequently, in the earth beneath—and even though it is not a material image, we have broken in spirit the First and Second Commandments.
No man knows what God is, save only as He has revealed Himself—thoughts and imaginings apart from this are idolatrous. Believe what He reveals, but do not, after the fashion of the Syrians, begin to conceive of Him according to the darkness of your own feeble and foolish mind! Benhadad’s counselors were led in their error to utter a blasphemy. They said, “He is the God of the hills, but not the God of the valleys,” and I know not into what profanities our own proud thoughts may lead us, also! It is worthy of notice that because of this blasphemy of the Syrians, God was pleased to
deliver His people Israel. It is not the only time, but one of many, in which the blasphemies of the adversary have worked good for the people of God.
You might have supposed that God would have said, “It matters nothing what these ignorant heathens say. Who cares for their slanderous falsehoods?” But our God is jealous—He is ever represented in Scripture as being tender of His own Glory and, therefore, though Israel was guilty, and Ahab, their king, was detestable, yet God determines that Ahab and Israel shall smite Benhadad and Syria because of what Syria had said. I would invite all of you who tremble for the Ark of the Lord to draw courage from the evil language of the ungodly. When the infidel scoffs at God, you are sorry for his sin, but you may take heart and hope that, perhaps, God will now interpose. “It is time for You, Lord, to work, because they have made void your Law.”