Victory In The Valley

Pastor James C. Ward

August 3, 2025

Sunday Morning

1^st Kings 20:28

And there came a man of God, and spake unto the king of Israel, and said, Thus saith the Lord, Because the Syrians have said, The Lord is God of the hills, but He is not God of the valleys, therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into thine hand, and ye shall know that I am the Lord.

Introduction

Israel was in battle with the Syrians. The Syrians started it because they wanted Israel’s stuff, their food and their land. Not only did the Syrians want their stuff, but they also wanted their families, their women and their children.

Let me digress, just for a moment, and remind you that there is a war going on right now. It is a spiritual war. No troops have been deployed to foreign soil because this war is between good and evil, between right and wrong. It is between construction and destruction. It is between darkness and light. This war has been going on ever since Satan decided to rebel against God. It started when he wanted to be more than the heavenly minister of music. It started when He attempted to take God’s place. No one can take God’s place, yet conversely, God can take everyone’s place. He can be a mother when mother is gone. He can be a father when father is gone.

Now back to our text. Ben-hadad, king of Syria, said, “I want the land that Israel has. I want their wheat fields. I want their fig trees, their olive trees, and their grape vines, and I will have my army to just go in and take it. We are much more powerful than Israel, so we will just invade them and take what we want.”

There are people and countries like that today who feel that they have the right to take anything they want. People will steal what you have worked so hard to acquire. They will hijack your car and burglarize your home. They will even try to steal your good name by spreading vicious lies and misimpressions.

To the Syrians’ surprise, the Israelites won a decisive victory in the first battle of the war. Ben-hadad’s troops were decimated. It was not just a defeat; it was an embarrassing defeat.

After the defeat, Ben-hadad met with his generals to evaluate the failed effort and also to find some excuse to save face. I give him credit for evaluating the poor results, but his explanation or reasoning to save face was dead wrong. His false logic was, “We lost because the battle was in the hill country. Their God has super power in the hills. Remember, He gave the commandments on Mount Sinai and the Ark landed on Mount Ararat. As great as He is in the hills and mountains, His power does not extend to the valleys. We could not beat them on the hills, but we can beat them in the valleys. So, we will wait until the Israelite troops go to the valleys to replenish supplies, and we will attack them there and win a final victory that cannot be reversed, and we will pay them back for our great loss in the hills.”

God sent a nameless discerning prophet to inform the Israelite army what their enemies were about to do and also what God was about to do in response. This nameless prophet told them the Syrian army would attack them in the valley, but just as the battle on the hill, God’s people would be victorious once again. It would be more decisive than the previous battle on the hill. It would demonstrate that God’s power is unlimited and would preserve His people and give Himself glory!

As you would expect, it happened just as the prophet had predicted. God’s people had a greater victory in the valley, and God was glorified beyond measure. Let’s examine three of the many thoughts that can be extracted from this narrative.

Exposition

1. Satan Is Persistent, But His Weapons Will Never Prosper.

(The Syrians Did Not Give Up After The First Defeat.)

(Satan Left Jesus Only For A Season.)

2. Satan Thinks He Has The Advantage When He Attacks You In A

Valley.

(We Have Many Metaphorical Valleys.)

(Health Valleys, Relationship Valleys, Financial Valleys.)

(Valleys Of Low Self-Esteem, Valleys Of Doubt.)

(Valleys Of Impatience And Frustration.)

3. Even In The Valley, God Is Good.

(We Have An All-Terrain God.)

(He Can Bless Us On The Mountain Top And In The Valley.)

(God Is With Us When We Are In The Valley – Psalm 23:4.)

Closing Thoughts

This narrative from the Old Testament should give us courage no matter what we are going through. Sometimes, we have to go through valleys to get to the next mountain top. Our foreparents had the right idea when they sang, “There’s a Lily in the valley shining bright as the morning star.” Without naming Him directly, everybody knew the Lily was and is Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Give God Glory! Give God All The Glory!

End Note

Here is a “nerd note.” The King James Version of the Bible is a great version. There are many other great translations of God’s Holy Word, but no translation of any writing from one language to another language will transmit the full connotation and denotation. We use The King James Version at Antioch-Lithonia, in public worship, for consistency and for its elegant Elizabethan style. Our text is a quotation within a quotation within another quotation. The writer is quoting the prophet who is quoting what God had told him what the King of Syria and his generals had said. So, in essence, it is a triple quotation or a quotation of the third degree. Quotation marks would have made it much clearer, but the quotation mark had not been invented when the King James Version was published in 1611. Quotation marks were invented about a century later. The original Hebrew from which it was translated did not have any symbols to function as a quotation mark either.