1 Kings 20:28
The Syrians, in their blindness, decided
that God was restricted in His capacity. He was
a “God of the hills” but not of the valleys. The
Syrian army has just been roundly defeated at
the siege of Samaria. Why did they fail? Samaria
was situated on a hill and, if they fought on the
plains, the people reasoned, their victory would
be assured.
The ancient world was accustomed to local
deities associated with some natural feature like
a mountain or a stream. This God of the Hebrews,
the Syrians concluded, was a hill god. After all,
had not God revealed Himself to Moses on Mount
Sinai, and was not God’s temple in Jerusalem
a city on a hill? Samaria was similarly located.
When the Syrians planned their next war, they
would fight on a plain rather than on a hill—and
this would assure their victory! A God of the hills
would be helpless in the valley, right? How mistaken
they were!
Many today subscribe to this Syrian misconception
of God. He is a God of the hills. After
all, does He not make Himself known in the
high places of spiritual experience? And there is
this persistent notion that somehow the valleys
are out of God’s domain. We are tempted to associate
the activity of Almighty God exclusively
with the striking and unusual occasions of life
and virtually banish Him from the realm of the
routine and ordinary. Therefore, we crave the
mountaintop and forget that the humdrum valley
also belongs to the Lord.
It may be that God is about to challenge us
through this Old Testament text. We need to be
taught that what is required of us is not “some
great thing” but obedience and faith in that which
seems small and unimportant. There are three
salient features of this verse.
I. THE LIMITATIONS OF UNBELIEF
The Syrians had a restricted view of God.
Being faithless pagans, their outlook was narrow
and incomplete. Yet modern unbelievers have a
different distinction between belief and unbelief.
They complain about the restraints imposed by
faith and claim that theirs is the broader viewpoint.
On the contrary, however, no life is so narrow
as one that is hemmed in by unbelief.
In his book Your God Is Too Small, J. B. Phillips
argues that those who discard the revelation
of Scripture and the fullness of Christianity live in
a shrunken world. They confine God to a “box” of
their own making or confine God to the pages of the Bible or to the four walls of a church. They are
so out of touch with spiritual truth that, to them,
God is no more than a vague benevolence with
about as much moral authority as Santa Claus!
Their world is a vast emptiness. They are left with
what H. G. Wells called a “God-shaped blank”
in the soul. But if they could see the “bigness”
of God in the Milky Way to remind them of the
vastness of His creation, or a bowl of flowers to
remind them of His love and beauty, or the structure
of the eye to remind them of His meticulous
accuracy as a designer, then they might be led
to abandon the inadequacy of their ideas. Blaise
Pascal declared, “If you say that man is too little
for God to speak to him, you may be very big to
be able to judge.” If we rush to the conclusion
that God is confined to the hills, we may discover,
to our cost, as the Syrians did, that He reigns in
the valleys also.
That leads us to the second feature of this
text.
II. THE EMANCIPATION OF FAITH
Not far from the place where the Syrians suffered
their setback, Jesus talked to a woman by
a well. He taught her that God is not of the hills
only. “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain
[Gerizim, the headquarters of the Samaritan cult];
and ye say [that is, as a Jew] that in Jerusalem
is the place where men ought to worship.” Note
the drift of the argument: God is the God of the
hills. In effect, she is saying, “but which hill is it
to be—Gerizim or Zion?” Jesus’ answer makes it
clear that He is the God of the valleys as well as
the hills. To borrow the terms used by the Bishop
of Woolwich in his controversial book Honest to
God, He is “down here” as well as “up there.”
If we are to know God at all, then we need to
see Him in a form we can understand. He must
“speak our language” and live with us. That is exactly
what He has done. In the Incarnation, God
becomes a man in the person of Jesus Christ.
The enfleshment of God! It takes your breath
away. But what does it mean? The incarnation
makes possible our emancipation from sin,
for upon Him “was laid the iniquity of us all”; it
makes it possible for us to be what He Himself is,
and because He is Emmanuel (“God with us”),
He will be with us in the valleys (see Hebrews
2:14-18).
Our Christianity must be lived out down here
on the plains of earth. But, on this journey, we
are never alone. Wherever we are or whatever our need, He is there—in the valley or on the mountain!
This truth will indeed “set you free.”
But there is a further and final feature of this
text.
III. THE DEMONSTRATION OF REALITY
The verse before us sets two sayings in opposition.
The Syrians claimed, “The Lord is the
God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys.”
But God declared, “Therefore will I deliver all this
great multitude into thine hand, and ye shall know
that I am the Lord.” What was the proof? God
demonstrated that He was as powerful in the valley
as on the hill. Down on the plain, 100,000
Syrian infantrymen were slain, and the 27,000
who fled to the heights of Samaria’s city of refuge
were crushed when a great wall collapsed
on them. God’s victory was in the valley as well
as on the hilltop
That is what God is waiting to do in your
life and mine. He knows what your particular
need is. It could be the valley of fear, depression,
temptation, or moral defeat. Whatever it is, God is
there and will enable you to conquer. No situation
is too big for Him. He is El Shaddai, the “Enough
God”—enough for all, enough for each, enough
forevermore.
CONCLUSION
So, what is your conception of God? Is He
the God who cannot or can? Is He only a God of
the hills who leaves you in the lurch down in the
valley when you need Him most? No, He is the
God of hills as well as the valleys because when
Christ is ours, this God is ours. This God, in the
words of Isaac Watts, is:
“That God that rules on high, that all the
earth surveys, / That rides upon the stormy sky,
and calms the roaring seas: / This awful God is
ours, our Father and our love: / He will send down
His heavenly powers, to carry us above.”
Rex D. Edwards is a former vice president for
religious studies at Griggs University.
