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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Sebastien Braxton

God of the Hills and the Valleys

Heavenly Father, we just want to say thank you for the privilege of life.

God, we want to say thank you for leading us, for using us this week, but we also want to ask for your forgiveness for our un-Christlike ways.

Lord, we're eternally grateful for your love and mercy towards us.

We ask in a special way that you would use this man who is nothing before you.

God, that you would speak through me and that you would speak to me, and that Christ would be lifted up, that all men may be drawn unto him.

And Lord, we just pray that each message would speak to our hearts that we may be more prepared to meet that day.

We love you and we Thank you for hearing and answering this prayer, and we offer this prayer from our hearts.

If you have your Bibles, I want you to Turn with me to the book of 1 Kings.

I've entitled this weekend to be an emphasis on valleys, on valleys.

And today, we're going to kind of introduce that theme under a theme entitled the God of the hills and the valleys.

So we're gonna study the Bible, I hope that's okay.

I like to preach, but I also like to teach.

They both have a place in the ministry, in the pulpit, and today I'm going to do some teaching as well as some preaching.

So 1 Kings 20, beginning in verse 22, The Bible says, will come up against you.

And the servants of the king of Syria said unto him, their gods are gods of the hills.

But let us fight against them in the plain or in the valley and surely we shall be stronger than they and do this thing take the Kings away every man out of his place and put captains in their rooms and number you an army like the army that you have lost, horse for horse and chariot for chariot, and we will fight against them in the valley, and surely we shall be stronger than them.' And he listened unto their voice and did so.

And it came to pass at the return of the year that Ben-Hadad numbered the Syrians and went up to Aphek to fight against Israel.

And the children of Israel were numbered and were all present and went against them.

And the children of Israel pitched before them like 2 little flocks of kids, but the Syrians filled the country.

Verse 28, And there came a man of God, And he 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 you shall know that I am the Lord what is interesting in this passage is the beginnings of the origins of a concept of gods being limited in their domain and reign based on geography, based on a specific place.

If you go back to the idea of the Greek gods, that Ares, does anybody know what Ares was the god of?

And so if it came into conflict and you were fighting Ares you're going to lose because when it comes to war he is God.

So now if Ares wants to take his war onto the sea, well guess what?

Does anybody know what she's the goddess of?

So now again, you come and say, well, Ares, you may be the god of war but Aphrodite is the goddess of love She can change the heart of Ares and who he loves Because she's the goddess of love you can see how the gods would be fighting, right?

It's actually the word in Greek is in the book of Revelation.

Then it says Apollo who is the God of music and healing.

Then you go to Athena the goddess of wisdom, of war, and useful arts.

And then there's Zeus the God of the sky.

In each of these individuals, it was believed in pagan religion.

By the time you get to ancient Greece, a concept that existed in the lives of the Syrians, which is that when a God wins, they say we were fighting Israel and he has a war meeting with all his generals.

And they put up the PowerPoint presentation and they say, okay, can you tell us why we lost?

Oh yeah, yeah, see, I've done some research and I've done some digging and you know what I found?

But you see, if we attack them in the valley, no, see, they can't win there because their God is the God of the hills and not of the valleys.

So because they believed that the problem was location, and this is not the first time, if I had time to walk you through this through all of scripture, you would even see it in the time of Balaam, where Balak comes to him and says, okay, I want you to curse the people of Israel.

Look at Israel from this angle and then curse them.

And you know what Balaam's second message was?

God is not a man that he should lie, nor a human being that he should change his mind.

So whether you look at Israel from this mountain or that mountain or the other mountain, He's not gonna curse and I cannot curse what God has blessed, amen?

There is no enchantment or divination against Israel.

We're talking about Ahab, 1 of the most wicked kings in the history of Israel.

God is not defending this man because he is an honorable man.

He is not defending Ahab because Ahab repented or consecrated his life to God because he didn't.

He brought in all kinds of idolatry, but the man of God comes to the king who is now in the middle of a war and he says to him as we just read in verse 28 he says because the Syrians have said now he says thus say of the Lord because the Syrians have said the Lord is God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys, therefore I'm going to deliver them.

So that they know that I am the Lord, not a Lord, not a God, the God, to the exclusion of all others, to establish His sovereignty across all dominion because the belief that God is just the God of the hills and he's not a God of the valleys is to communicate that there are certain spaces in the world.

There are certain experiences in life in which God does not have authority.

There are certain spaces in life in which God has no jurisdiction.

When you leave the sea, Poseidon is nothing else than a mere mortal, but in the water, he is a God.

If you take Ares out of war and combat, you can defeat him.

You can win an argument, you can quench his heart with love and bribery and manipulation, but you will never defeat him in a battle.

But there's a point where his authority, his jurisdiction, his power leaves.

You know, the devil speaking through these people establishes an idea that God recorded in scripture, not just to speak to them at that time, but to recognize that many of us have a Syrian mindset.

We believe that God has certain jurisdictions over certain things.

We believe that he has authority over certain areas of life and certain experiences.

And what we are really saying is that he's the God of the hills, but he's not the God of the valleys.

He's the God of when you're doing Sabbath school, but he's not the god of the valleys.

He's the god of when you're doing Sabbath school, but he's not the god of marriage.

He's the god when you want to go do evangelism and mission trips overseas, but when you come back to Loma Linda, he's not the God of this city.

I could preach the same sermons that I preach in America and Africa, in South America, in Southeast Asia and baptize 10 times as many people.

And when I was a young preacher, I used to ask myself, is there more of the Holy Spirit here than here?

So because there's no new gospel, the power of God, has it decreased over time?

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God of the Hills and the Valleys

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