God of the Hills and God of the Valleys

A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, AUGUST 27, 1876,

BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"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."

When you see a skeptical philosophy growing, as it is at this day, more
and more daring and insulting towards the Truth of God, do not be
downhearted because of that, but rather say, "They will provoke the
Lord, and by-and-by He will pluck His right hand out of His bosom–He
will rend the heavens and come down and make the mountains to flow at
His feet–He will give to His Gospel great power, so that His Truth
shall be triumphant and His adversaries shall know that, verily, there
is a God in Israel." As choice flavors are by a happy chemistry
extracted from poisonous substances, so may we draw comfort from the
blasphemous letter of Rabshakeh and from the impious language of
Benhadad, for God will be provoked against them and will come forth to
the avenging of His chosen nation and the establishment of His own
cause.

Now, this morning I have one lesson to teach, which is this–As the
Syrians fell into a great and blasphemous sin by thinking that God was
a local God, a God of the hills and not of the valleys–we may fall
into much evil by the same surmising. The subject of this morning's
discourse will be a warning against imitating the Syrians by limiting
the Holy One of Israel under any circumstances whatever. We may do so
on several occasions and in several ways.

I. WE MAY LIMIT THE LORD BY MISTRUSTING THE SUCCESS OF HIS CAUSE. We
are very often tempted to tremble for the Ark of the Lord and to
stretch out a presumptuous hand to steady it as Uzzah did. Our fathers
tell us, and we are getting a little into their modes of thinking, that
we have fallen upon evil days and degenerate times. We have seen them
shake their heads and call the present age a day of blasphemy and
rebuke. And although we have not quite thought so, for there has been
enough of youth left in us, still, to look more hopefully upon things
and we have said, and we think we are not wrong in saying, that these
are good times and hopeful–and that there are many things which should
make the Christian wear a cheerful aspect and rejoice in the hope of
better times.

Yet we have, in a measure, shared in their fears. The temptation is at
times heavy upon us to think that the Gospel cannot conquer the world,
that the Truth of Jesus cannot spread in the midst of the thick
darkness which surrounds us, that the good old cause is falling into a
desperate condition and that, perhaps, the victory we have looked for
will not come, after all. Here let us convict ourselves of having
thought God to be the God of the hills and not the God of the valleys,
for we have generally based our fears upon our perception that the
front of the battle has changed! In the olden times the Church of God
was persecuted beyond measure–the furnace was heated seven times
hotter.

Destruction was the word–the emperors of Rome determined to stamp out
Christianity as though it were a dis-ease–and they vowed to put an end
to its very name. But the Church of God triumphed over all opposition.
Like a good ship in stormy waters, she mounted the waves which sought
to engulf her and made headway by the winds which howled around her. We
all perceive that God was with His Church in those tempestuous times,
and yet we are apt to fear that the petty persecutions suffered by our
village Churches and the cold contempt that is often poured upon
Christian men in polite society will prove too much for the faithful.
God, who could help Christians to play the man in the amphitheatre at
Rome and enable them to die at the stake, or on the gridiron, is yet
mistrusted!

And we dare to suspect that He will not gain the victory in the battle
which is waged by a few poor peasants in a village against a popish
priest and a persecuting squire? For shame! Do we really dream that He
is the God of the hills and not the God of the valleys? We have heard
good men argue mistrustfully from another point of view. They say that
persecution, after all, does not hurt the Church–it only winnows her
and drives away her chaff–and these are far worse days, for prosperity
undermines piety. They say Christians take things easy and there are so
many false professors, so much of a name to live while spiritual death
abounds–all of which is deadly to the Church of God. Depend upon it,

since Satan could not kill the Church by roaring at her like a lion, he
is now trying to crush her by hugging her like a bear, they say!

There is truth in this, but it is not all the truth. Do you really
think, my Brothers and Sisters, that God cannot preserve His Church in
the particular trial through which she is now passing? Is He the God of
the hills of persecution, but not the God of the valleys of prosperity?
Chase away the thought! Besides, you are in great fear, my Brother,
because a new heresy has sprung up, or an old one has revived. Dreadful
doctrine dismays you. You are saddened by teaching which assails the
vitality of Christianity and is so insidious that it is hard to meet
it, and you say, "Any other than this, the Church could have resisted,
but this will deaden her very soul–it eats as does a canker." What? My
Brethren, are you now afraid? Do you not remember when the Church was
full of Gnostic heresy and when, afterwards, Arianism afflicted

her?

Have you not read of the times when the Deity of Christ was almost
universally denied and yet the Gospel lived on? Every Truth of God was,
in its turn, assailed, and the professing Church, itself, for centuries
was almost universally apostate! And yet the Gospel is not dead, nor
its voice silenced! The Lord was the God of the hills and put these
heresies down and trod them under foot as straw is trod for the
dunghill! And let new heresies come, let men assail the Gospel with
fresh errors–God is God of the valleys as well as God of the
hills–and He will defeat them one by one as they arise! Ritualism,
Spiritualism and Materialism will go the way of all the other
adversaries of the Lord–into smoke shall they consume away.

"But," says one, "infidelity is now so rampant! It takes the form of
science and philosophy and calls into its aid the very thoughtfulness
of man which once seemed to be on the side of the Gospel! There is
cause for great alarm." Yet will we not fear, for many infidelities
have shone forth and have died out as meteors of the night. They come
like shadows and like shades they vanish! As successive summers have
brought forth new harvests of leaves upon the trees of the forest,
which in the following autumns have faded and gone, even so new
infidelities have flourished and decayed, but God's eternal Truths
shine on the same as ever, like the sun in the heavens, without
variableness or shadow of turning! Trust in the Lord forever! He who
shamed the first races of blasphemers against His holy cause and turned
their craftiness into folly and made the wise men mad can do the same,
again, yes, and will do it even unto the end.

If the Church is assailed in any novel method by new modes of Satanic
influence, or fresh inventions of human craft and philosophy, let us
never entertain a doubt concerning the cause whose banner Christ has
stained with His heart's blood, and whose honor the eternal power and
Godhead of the Almighty are sworn to maintain! Let the times shift and
change as they may, but God is master of the times! Circumstances alter
cases, but they do not alter God! New modes of attack may threaten us
with new fears, but they do not really involve any new dangers, for
God, who knows all things, can meet the new adversary and foil him as
He did His foes of old.

I have known this despondency of heart arise from another cause. "Ah,"
say some, "I do not know what is to become of the Church, because in
those olden times which you have mentioned, it is true she had great
enemies, but then she had great men in her midst. Look at the Fathers
and how they fought! Remember the Reformers and the men who took up
their descending mantles, the godly and learned Puritans! Consider the
great names of Church history and where do you find such men in these
days? Have we not fallen on an age of little men and nobodies?" Well,
suppose we have. I do not anticipate any ill results from that, since
great men are only men, and little men are still men! The God who used
those men whom we call great, first made them great! They were nothing
of themselves and He is just as able to use the men whom we call
little, and to make them so efficient that the next generation will
think them as great as those who went before!

The so-called greatness or littleness of men must, after all, depend on
the power of God which is shown in them. I dare to hope that if the
instruments grow less and less likely to claim the honor of success for
themselves, they are growing more and more fit to be used by the Lord
our God! For this reason I look for even greater displays of Divine
power in this time of supposed decline. He is the God of the hills and
truly, He is the God of Augustine and Luther, the God of Knox and
Whitfield! And He is the God of the valleys, also, and, therefore, our
God and our confidence! He can use the men of our own time to build up
His Church and convert the nations!

"Ah," says one, "I do not so much lament the lack of eminent men as the
absence of the grand old spirit of the early Church." What was that
spirit, do you think? There was a freshness, an enthusiasm, a heroism
about the first Christians

which we do not see now. I grant you there was–but if it were real
power, from where did it come but from the Holy Spirit? And has the
Holy Spirit ceased to illuminate, quicken and strengthen the minds of
men? Is the Spirit of the Lord straitened? Do the heavens no longer
drop with dew? Is the horn of anointing oil emptied? Is there no sacred
breath with which to fan the gracious flame in the Church? No, my
Brothers and Sisters, the Spirit of God has not ceased to work! If we
cannot manifest the enthusiasm of the Church's youth, we will cultivate
the undying perseverance of the Church's manhood and strive and
struggle on, God helping us, till our Lord appears!

The day must and shall come when the Truth of God shall prevail and the
God of Truth shall be exalted and to the moles and bats the demon gods
and their images shall be cast forever. Dishonor not your God by
unbelief, faint-hearted soldiers! Bring not defeat upon yourselves by
your cowardly fears! Believe in God and so shall you be established!
God waits till you believe in Him–and when His whole Church shall,
with brave confidence, be sure of victory–victory shall certainly come
to her! The Lord increase our faith and, from now on in this respect,
let us never dream that Jehovah, the God of the hills, is not the God
of the valleys!

II. WE MAY COMMIT THE SIN OF SYRIA BY DOUBTING THE HELP WHICH THE LORD
WILL RENDER

TO US. Sometimes we are brought into sore trouble and then we imagine
that the Lord will not help us as He helped the old saints of whom we
read in the Bible. We can believe all about Abraham and Moses and
David–but we question whether the Lord will help us. We look at those
men as the great hills and we regard ourselves as the valleys–and we
dare not hope that the Lord will deal with us as He did with His
servants in the days of yore. Now, don't you think this is making God
to be a local God? Ought we not have the same faith in God as Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob had?

And if we had such confidence, should we not see same wonders? Not
miracles, perhaps, but something quite as marvelous? God would perform
His purpose by ordinary Providences, but the purpose would be quite as
surely achieved as if miracles were worked! Let us never admit the
thought that the Divine promises are now fictions and that Divine aid
will not be given. The God of the Patriarchs and Prophets faints not,
neither is He weary–He is our God from generation to generation–and
is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Now that Jesus Christ has
come in the flesh, the Lord has not become less gracious! He still
shows Himself strong on behalf of those who trust Him and there is no
reason for doubt.

When we get into deep trouble we are apt not only to forget the days of
old, but even to overlook the Lord's former loving kindnesses to
ourselves, or to regard them as exceptional cases, the like of which we
cannot again look for. We unbelievingly think, "The Lord helped me when
I put my trust in Him at first, but I cannot expect Him to help me now.
In my young days I was full of vigor–the Lord was very gracious to me
and worked wonders. But now I am less vigorous, my youthful energy is
failing, I cannot cope with difficulties as I once did, and I cannot
expect the Lord to help me now." I am almost ashamed to mention such
fears! They are utterly unworthy of a Christian, and he who has
indulged them ought most heartily to repent of them! Has the Lord
changed? Because you are older and feebler is He weaker? Does He only
help us when we can help ourselves, and leave us in our extremity? God
forbid!

He said, "I am God. I change not. Even to gray hairs I am He. I have
made and I will bear, even I will carry." Yet so it is–we readily
imagine that the difference of time alters the hope of Divine
deliverance! Oh fools, and slow of heart, thus to mistrust Immutable
Love and Infallible Wisdom! In every time of need God will work our
deliverance, for having loved His own, He loves them to the end. The
circumstances of our troubles, also, form occasions for unbelief when
we are in that vein. "The Lord helped me when I was very poor," says
one, "and if I were poor, again, I could trust Him concerning it. But
now I am passing under slander and reproach which is far more bitter to
my soul." Your heart unbelievingly supposes that now you will fall by
the hand of the enemy, but, dear Brother, do you really think that God
can only help us in certain sets of troubles and that when we enter
upon new trials we shall find Him fail us?

"Oh, but the scene is so changed! I could trust Him if I had to suffer
as I did before, but this is so surprising to me." Is it also new to
God? You are perplexed–is He perplexed? You are now at a nonplus–is
He nonplussed? Think this over and do not imagine that He who could
help you yesterday will leave you today or tomorrow. If your condition
alters for the worse a thousand times, it will signify little if your
faith can but maintain its hold upon the unchanging God! I have even
known Christians to say, "I cannot go to God about my trials, they are
so ordinary and commonplace. I can pray about spiritual things, but may
I pray about temporals? I can take my sins and burdens of serious care
to Him, but may I pray about little domestic troubles?"

How can you ask that question? He tells you the hairs of your head are
all numbered– surely those are not spiritual things! You are told to
cast all your cares on Him. Is He the God of the hills of the higher
spiritual interests of His children and is He not the God of the
valleys of their hourly troubles? Does He not bid us ask Him to give
us, day by day, our daily bread? Has He not given His angels charge to
bear us up lest we dash our foot against a stone? Has He not said of
His people that they shall lack no good thing? Oh, what mistakes
unbelief makes about God and what questions it raises which ought never
to be raised at all!

Troubled One, you may go to your heavenly Father about anything, about
everything! He will help you in every trial wherever you may be! Though
the thing is little, yet remember everything is little to Him and the
difference between an archangel and a sparrow is not so very great with
God. The difference between the ruling of a kingdom and the guidance of
your Sunday school class may seem great to you, but it is almost
invisible to God, to whom the nations are as a drop in a bucket! As you
feel you could trust Him with great troubles, so be sure that you rely
upon Him as to the minor ones. Yes, tell Him all your griefs and cast
all your burdens upon Him. Truly He is the God of the hills, but He is
the God of the valleys, too.

Sometimes this fear that God will not help us arises from a change in
our inward experience. "Oh," said one, "I have been in deep waters of
soul-trouble before now and the Lord has helped me. I have fought with
dragons and done battle with the Prince of Darkness in the valley of
the shadow of death, and Jesus was with me. I do not wonder at it, for
the fight seemed worthy of a God! But now it is only a little thorn in
the flesh that worries me and I hardly dare beseech the Lord to remove
it, or help me to bear it. I have experiences of a different sort,
altogether, from that of former days. I grow cold, torpid, indifferent,
careless. I do not seem to live the grand struggling life I once lived
when I was familiar with gigantic spiritual difficulties and tasted
exalted delights!

"Can I expect God to help me now? Will He awake me from my lethargy?
Will He stir me to devotion when I feel that I cannot pray? Will He
bring back my spiritual feelings when I feel numbed and dead to all but
pain? Can the Lord revive Laodicea? Can He heat, again, the lukewarm?
Will He quicken such a dead lump, such a mass of lifeless flesh as I
am?" O my Brothers and Sisters, do not ask such questions! There is no
condition into which a Believer can fall but God can and will deliver
him out of it! There is no trial or temptation, though it is low,
degrading, base, but what the Lord can as much assist you when laboring
under it as in the more sublime struggles of the most noble life.
Commit yourself to God and entertain no fears as to His all-sufficiency
and faithfulness.

But you say, "I would not entertain any of these fears if I were like
eminent saints. But I am far inferior to the godly men of whom I read
and hear. I am obscure and insignificant. I have little talent and even
less Divine Grace. I am a nobody." Be it so, but is our God the God of
the hills and not the God of the valleys? Will God help Oliver Cromwell
and not help a private soldier who trusts in God and keeps his powder
dry? Will God aid a Whitfield and not help a poor local preacher
holding forth upon the green? Will He assist the earnest minister who
addresses thousands and desert the simple girl who teaches a dozen
little children the old, old story of the Cross? Is this after the
fashion of God, to patronize the eminent and neglect the lowly?

Does Jesus despise the day of small things? Surely you have misread the
Scriptures if you think so, for the Christ of the Gospels took note of
a widow's two mites and was pleased with the hosannas of boys and
girls! He rejoiced that His Father revealed His great things not to the
wise and prudent, but to babes! And He called to His work, not the high
priests and the philosophers, but the fishermen and the publicans! So
do not, because you see a difference between yourself and others, and a
change in the circumstances of your trials and all the rest of it,
begin to think that the Heavenly Father will desert you, or else I
shall again have to tell you that He is God of the valleys as well as
the hills!

III. IT IS VERY EASY TO FALL INTO THIS SIN BY COMPARING AND CONTRASTING
THE EXPERIENCES OF OURSELVES AND OTHERS. Some minds are rugged and
craggy, broken up and tossed about. In them you are astounded by seeing
great rifts of conflict and terrible chasms of unbelief. Their hearts
wear awful scars where the tempests of trial have swept all before them
and laid bare the roots of their being. And then, on the other hand,
they show such wonderful elevations of thought. Their soul mounts aloft
beyond the clouds into the blue serene sky where God dwells, among the
things unlawful for a man to utter. Everything about them is
stupendous, majestic, sublime, or amazing–and little men who have
heard of their awful experiences suspiciously enquire whether such
feelings and conflicts can be consistent with the Grace of God.

Yet who would say off the bleak and desolate mountains that the Lord is
not there? Was He not on Sinai? Did He not come from Paran? Is not the
strength of the hills the heritage of the Lord? Among the cloud-capped
Alps, Jehovah's voice is often heard and the rocks are split by His
flames of fire. The thoughtful soul may often hear the rustle of the
hem of Jehovah's garments in the stillness of those lone hills. God is
in rugged souls, in the ravines of a broken heart, and in the caves of
dread despair! He overrules the whirlwind of temptation and the
tempests of Satanic blasphemy, and soon He is seen in the bow of hope
and the sunshine of full assurance. The Lord is in every heroic
struggle against sin and in that eager clinging to His Word which is
seen in so many tempted souls. Yet men judge their fellows and say,
"The Lord cannot be there," even where He is most mightily!

On the other hand, I have known persons fashioned in this rough mold
look down on the gentle, quiet life of the useful, less thoughtful and
perhaps less intelligent Christian, who is like the valley, and they
have said, "Lord, what shall this man do? He does not sympathize with
my soul-troubles. He has had little or no law work. He does not
understand my grand conceptions of truth. He enters not into the deep
things of God." Remember that this may be true and yet the Brother may
be a far better man than you are! He may be one of the fields which the
Lord has blessed–a low lying valley–cultivated by God's Spirit till
it yields golden sheaves by which multitudes are fed! If He blesses
many by his quiet menial life, who are you that you should condemn him?

Brother from the valley, do not misjudge the dweller in the mountain
and inhabitant of the crag! Do not look down with contempt upon the
tenant of the plain, for God is in both your lives! God is in the
stormy life of the afflicted and God is in the restfulness of the
humble and contented. In the tried life and in the useful life God is
variously but equally manifested, and I beg you always to see God as
far as He can be seen in all His people. Recognize the virtues of your
Brothers and Sisters wherein you are deficient, and not the Graces
wherein they fail. Condemn not the man whom God has approved. He is God
of the hills and He is God of the valleys–take your delight in both.

Then about yourself, dear Friend, do not mournfully complain, "Alas, I
have never experienced what I perceive has been the lot of my Brother
in the Lord. He has had a deep, rugged, amazing experience of fights
with the devil and of contests with his own corruptions–I know very
little of these matters." Do not desire to know them, for if you know
Christ it will suffice! Or if, on the other hand, you are much buffeted
and tossed about, do not condemn yourself and say you are no child of
God because you have not the constant enjoyment, the sweetness and rest
of other Believers–it is enough for you, too, that Christ is yours!
You are a crag Christian, be satisfied to have your feet upheld upon
your high places! God is the God of the hills as surely as He is God of
the valleys.

Thus I have shown how, in a third way, we may fall into this error, but
time fails me and I cannot enlarge. May the Holy Spirit further
instruct you in all wisdom and prudence.

IV. A VERY COMMON SHAPE OF THIS SIN IS LIMITING THE POWER OF THE
GOSPEL. Listen to this, you

who would gladly be saved but fear you cannot be! I have known you to
limit the power of the Gospel by supposing that it will only save
certain sinners. You heard of a great drunk who was converted, of a
swearer who turned to God and you said to yourself, "I do not wish to
be a drunk or a swearer, but I have seen many of that sort of people
saved, and I, who have led a moral life, have not been renewed in
heart–it makes me envy them."

Dear Friend, why should you not, also, obtain salvation? Is Jesus the
Savior of open and gross sinners and not of the more secret offenders?
Is the very foulness of sin an aid to salvation? Impossible! There is
certainly no need of adaptation in the Gospel to meet the case of the
naturally moral and excellent–and you must not think there is! Jesus,
who saves publicans and harlots, also blesses the seeker of the Truth
of God and sows the honest and good ground. When you read of
such-and-such a person who has been a great offender being suddenly
struck down and turned to God, you do not wish that you were like he in
his sin, but you could endure that evil if there might but be in you as
manifest a change as can be seen in him. I know the feeling, but it is
based upon an error and tends to foster the idea that more of God's
Grace is displayed in one case than in another.

True conversion is in all cases the work of God and, consequently, a
display of Omnipotent power. The Lord presents the Gospel to every
creature and whoever believes in Jesus, whether he has been a gross
offender or only a common sinner, shall find salvation through the
blood of the Atonement! Jesus is not the Savior of a class, but His
power is unto all and upon all them that believe. To men of all sorts,
His Grace extends–He blesses both hills and valleys. "Ah," says
another, "I could believe in Jesus, whatever my sins had been or had
not been, if I had known the awful conviction and

painful sense of sin which some have known! I read of one that he was
ready to lay violent hands upon himself when tormented by conscience! I
have never felt like that. I know that sin is a dreadful thing, but I
do not feel driven to despair by it as I have heard others say, or else
I could believe."

Friend, do you think that Christ's ability to save depends upon your
fearful apprehensions of your guilt? O Soul, He is not the God of the
hills, only, but of the valleys, also! He saves a Saul of Tarsus, whom
He strikes down as a proud hill sinner, but He also saves Lydia, whose
heart He opens to His Truth, as one of the dwellers in the plain. Those
who are gently brought to Christ, if they do but rest in Him, are as
truly saved as those who are driven to Him by fierce terrors and
terrible forebodings of the wrath to come! Jesus is essential to every
saving experience, but no form of experience is essential to fit a man
for Jesus.

"Yet," cries another, "I am afraid that the Lord Jesus will never
conquer the kind of sin which has set up its dominion in my soul. I
believe He can drive out of men their great and crying sins, but my
tendencies are more subtle and injurious. I feel a dreadful
indifference stealing over my spirit–where shall I find awakening and
enlivening?" I answer, you will find help to overcome your sin just
where the blasphemer and the drunk find theirs, namely, in Christ Jesus
and the sanctifying power of His Holy Spirit. Jesus can overcome one
sin as well as another. There is no sin in the whole catalog but what
the blood of Christ can wash its guilt away–and the water which flowed
with the blood can take away its power over the soul! Jesus can give us
the double deliverance, both from the criminality and the bondage of
sin, whether the sin is of the mountain or of the valley! Only trust
Him, and the dominion of sin shall be broken.

Christian people, I shall now speak to you and remind you that too
frequently when you are about to tell of Jesus and His love, you feel a
desire to select your hearers. In your heart you dream that certain
persons are more conquerable by the power of God than others. "It is of
no use trying after the conversion of So-and-So," you say. You put
certain characters down on the black list and regard them as hopeless,
while for others you feel more hopeful and work among them with more
spirit. Have you not, in a measure, fallen into the sin of Syria?

Is not your Christ, evidently, the God of the hills and not the God of
the valleys? Your business is to tell the Gospel to every sort of
sinner, to every class of mind, and to every rank of persons. And when
you do so, believing that the Gospel in the hands of the Holy Spirit
has an Omnipotent power and works on all sides, and among all classes
of people, then shall you see the hand of God working mightily with
you!

V. Upon the last point we must only give a hint or two. WE CAN, AFTER
THE FASHION OF SYRIA, LIMIT

THE POWER OF GOD BY NOT EXPECTING HIS DIVINE AID TO BE GIVEN TO US IN
HIS SERVICE. When we

are urged to labor for the Lord we are tempted to excuse ourselves upon
various grounds. We speak as if we could not reckon upon Divine
assistance. Often the plea is that gifts and talents are scanty with
us. This may be quite true, but it does not prevent our being used of
the Lord for His gracious purposes! God is the God of the many-gifted
and gracious man, but He is also the God of the one-talented man who
seeks to glorify Him. We are accepted according to what we have–not
according to what we have not.

"But I have such peculiarity of disposition! I am so retiring that I
cannot hope for a blessing." Brothers and Sisters, is this an argument
which will hold water? Is God the God of the impudent and bold, but not
the God of the modest? Is Grace given to bronze faces, but not to those
who are meek and lowly? I am sure it is not so! Cease from such vain
excuses. "Ah, but my sphere of life is a very difficult one. I dwell
among such strange people. I find no sympathy and very few back me up
in what I attempt." Ah, you would like a sphere made on purpose for
you, would you not? And when you had it, there would be no necessity
for your entering upon it, because all the good would be done already!
Here is a lamp well lit! It objects to be placed where it is dark. It
would like to be hung up in the sunshine. But what is the good of a
lamp in the daylight? And what is the use of a Christian in a place
where everything is already as he desires it to be?

If the servant of the Lord is wise, he will look at the needs of the
people as a call for his labors! He will regard disadvantages as
advantages, and difficulties as things to be overcome. Indeed, to the
Believer, even impossibility is only another name for a matter in which
the power of God is more than ordinarily to be manifested in answer to
believing prayer! The man who knows his God is strong and performs
great exploits, judges all things to be alike easy with the Lord–he
knows nothing of a God of the hills who is not, also, God of the
valleys! "Ah," says one, "but I cannot expect God to bless me, for I
feel so unworthy." Do you suppose, then, that those whom God greatly
blesses are worthy? If you ever meet with a man who feels worthy to be
blessed, he is the very person whom God does not bless at all! The most
fa-

vored feel most their unworthiness of such favors. Your sense of
unworthiness must not be taken as a reason why God cannot bless you! It
may, rather, be regarded as, itself, a blessing.

"Still," you say, "I do not know how it is, but I feel such a trembling
about my work and the place in which I live, and the people among whom
I labor." Now, to be brief, this feeling is your great hindrance and
you must get rid of it! There is no reason for trembling if you look
the matter in the face. Has God sent you? Then God is with you and why
should you fear? If you give yourself up to God, entirely, desiring
that He should use every atom of you exactly as He pleases–and where
He pleases, then there can be no cause for fear. All things are equally
possible with God and every sphere is equally hopeful when God leads
the way! Every time, every age and every man are all in the hands of
the Omnipotent and eternal Lord! If God sends you to prophecy to dry
bones with Ezekiel, or to preach to Ninevites with Jonah, He will be
with you in either case! And you, Brother, will be quite as happy in
your preaching as if He sent you to expound the Scriptures to Bereans
or tell of Jesus to devout and honorable women.

Your surroundings should not be the cause of fear to you, for they are
of small weight in the scale. Is the Father with you? Is Jesus with
you? Is the Holy Spirit with you? Then though you are one man, like
Samson, the lone champion, and have no weapon to fight with except that
which your enemies compare to an ass's jawbone, yet lay hold of it,
Brother, and throw yourself upon the whole army of foes–and heaps upon
heaps shall they lie before you! Greater is He that is for you than all
they that are against you. "Who are you, O great mountain? Before
Zerubbabel you shall become a

plain."

Do I hear you sigh, "Would God I could get to this faith and stay
there." I pray the Lord to help you, for if you believe the utmost you
can concerning the Lord, it will not be one whit too much! If you trust
Him most implicitly, you will not trust Him too fully. You shall often
be ashamed of your unbelief, but never of your hope! You shall often
have to blush to think you doubted, but never because you trusted!
Nobody shall ever meet you, not even a devil, and say, "You fool, you
have relied on the Lord too much!" Time will prove otherwise–therefore
rest in the God of the valleys and in the God of the hills–and glory
in Him forever and ever!

It is possible for unconverted men to fall into the sin of which we are
speaking and I would like to give them this caution before dismissing
them. Do any of you unconverted ones hope to escape from the punishment
which God will bring upon the ungodly? If you do, your reasons are vain
and will turn out to be lies! God punished Pharaoh and others in this
life and He will punish all the ungodly in the life to come. As surely
as He smote sinners of old, He will smite you before long. You may say,
"I am not a thief or a drunk." Very well! But He who is the God of the
hills is the God of the valleys, and if you remain unregenerate, even
though you have never been an open offender, you shall be visited for
your heart sins!

God will smite the valley sinners as well as the hill sinners, and
though you say, "I have always attended the House of God and used the
outward means," yet assuredly, unless you believe in Jesus, God, who
smites the thoughtless heathen, will smite the yet more guilty hearer
of the Word who rejects the blood of Christ! God will deal out equal
justice to all mankind. He is the God both of the hills and of the
valleys, and no impenitent sinner shall escape the rod of His Justice!
If you believe not on Christ you shall be lost, whoever you may be! If
you will now trust Jesus you shall be saved, whether you dwell in the
hills or the valley! God grant you Grace to believe at once, for
Christ's sake. Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-1 Kings20:1-30. HYMNS FROM "OUR
OWN HYMN BOOK"–92, 212, 499.
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Good News for Seekers