1 Kings 20:28

The Syrians had no concept of a sovereign God. They assumed that each nation had its own 'gods' of various kinds, and that all of them shared the weakness and failure seen in humans. Ben Hadad's servants came up with the notion that Israel's God was a God of the hills because Israel had triumphed in the hill country (v.23). So they thought they would win if they were to fight Israel in the plain. Such is the stupidity of unbelief!

They knew very well that Samaria was a hill, and Jerusalem was a hill, and they thought that the Jehovah God of Israel was only a god of the hills. So the next time they would go into the valleys, to see whether the God of Israel was able to meet them there. But the God of Israel was the God of the valleys as much as of the hills. There they are beaten far worse on the second occasion than on the first. They gave the challenge, God answers, and they are overwhelmed.

This time it is a matter of proving to the Syrians that Israel had not won the victory by their "gods of the mountains." Ben-Hadad changes the organization of his army and the place of battle, but it is no use. The Israelites, in number like two little flocks of goats, strike down one hundred thousand of the enemy's men in one day. The wall of Aphek falls on those who were left. So the Syrians had to learn who the Lord was, and so Israel could know Him.

For a whole week the two armies lay camped facing each other. Israel's poor little army was "like two little flocks of goats," but with God on its side. When they join battle on the seventh day, the "two little flocks of goats" destroy a host of a hundred thousand men… Means were nothing with Israel's God, Jehovah, who is called "the God of battles." He can save by many or by few. What a mere handful (a few thousand) does not destroy of a vast army, He can shake down a wall upon the rest.

The Lord again stepped in on behalf of Israel. He sent a man of God to Ahab with this message: because the Syrians had said that God is not a God of the valleys, God would deliver the multitude of the Syrians into the hand of the small Israelite army (v.28). Again the Lord clearly declares that He has an object in doing this, that Ahab might know that God is the Lord. How often did God bear witness to His grace and power for Ahab's benefit! Yet all this had little lasting effect on Ahab's attitude toward God.

As God brings home the saints, as the Lord Jesus leads home many sons to glory, we have to pass through an endless variety of circumstances. They are not always mountain-top experiences. There are valleys, sometimes very deep valleys… It is not the valleys so much I want to engage you with, but the God of the valleys. He is the God who is victorious in 1 Kings 20, the God who having begun a good work in us will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:6). He is the God who wants you and me to get the most out of those valley experiences that in His wisdom and His love He puts us through.