k Eph. vi. 10—18. 1 2 Cor. xi. 3. 1 Pet. v. 8.
n» Mark xiv. 38. " 1 Cor. x. 12. « Rom. xi. 20.
P Prov. xxviii. 14. i 1 Cor. ix. 27. '" 2 John ver. 8.
ahab's sin in sparing benhadad.
1 Kings XX. 42. And he said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man whom I a^)- pointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people.
IN every page of the Holy Scriptures we are reminded, that the Lord disposeth of all events according to his sovereign will, whilst at the same time he suits his dispensations to the conduct of mankind. Between the parties spoken of in our text there was little difference with respect to their desert before God : Ahab was an idolatrous Israelite ; and Benhadad was a proud atheistical heathen. God appointed them, as his instruments, to punish each other : tils primary purpose indeed was to destroy the heathen prince, and to rescue from his tyranny the king of Israel. For this end, God left Benhadad to follow the dictates of his own proud spirit, and gave to Ahab the directions and encouragements that were necessary to ensure success. But Ahab neglected to execute the commands of God ; and then God reversed his sentence, and denounced against Ahab and his people, the destruction that had been designed for Benhadad and his people. This is told us in the words which we have read ; and which will serve to shew us,
I. The power which God will exercise towards us —
Great has been the temporal deliverance^ recently vouchsafed unto us —
[What has been done for our northern allies, has in reality been done for us. And, behold what a wonderful deliverance that is which the official reports announce to us! The re- semblance between it and the facts recorded in the chapter before us is so striking, that, notwithstanding we do not in ge- neral approve of minute statements of this kind in a public discourse, we cannot forbear to point it out to you.
Behold then the origin of the contest between Benhadad and the king of Israel ; the war was altogether unprovoked on the part of Ahab, and proceeded from the insufferable pride and tyranny of the Syrian monarch. Behold his boastings, whilst yet he was " only girding on his armour : " yet, notwithstanding his confederate armies were so numerous, he was vanquished by a little band of princes, whose efforts he utterly despised : and this proud boaster fled away on horseback from the field of
^ Preached a few days after Buonaparte's return to Paris, from his invasion of Russia (1812), after the destruction of his army, and just previous to its utter anrahilation.
351.] ahab's sin in sparing benhadad. 427
battle, whilst his army was defeated mth great slaughter. Mortified beyond measure, but not humbled, he determines to collect another army, numerous as the first, and to effect the destruction of his victorious enemy. At the return of the year he renews his attempts; but, notwithstanding the immense disproportion of the contending armies, he is again defeated with the loss of a hundred thousand men; and God com- pletes his destruction by causing the walls of Aphek to fall, and bury in their ruins twenty-seven thousand more of those who had escaped the edge of the sword. Thus was this tyran- nical oppressor constrained at last to hide himself in an inner chamber, and to become a suppliant for his own life.
Behold the parallel. The proudest and most tyrannical oppressor that has appeared in modern ages, invaded Russia for no other reason than because she would not be subservient to his will, and aid his ambitious designs. He went at the head of an immense army of confederate princes ; boasting that no power could withstand him : but through the merciful inter- vention of Providence he has been vanquished, and that too by men whom he had despised as incapable of standing before a single regiment of his warriors ; and he himself ^ec/ on horseback from the field of battle, and hastened back in disguise to his own country, leaving his whole army to be a prey to the sword of the avenger, and to the elements, which have left scarcely any re- maining to record the history of their disasters. This man how- ever is now boasting, like Benhadad, that he will with the returning spring replace his armies, and renew his assaults. He pours the same contempt on God that the Syrian monarch did. Benhadad indeed did acknowledge his defeat to have proceeded from a superior Being, though he Hmited his power to the hills, and thought to overcome him in the plains: but this atheistical ruler discards God entirely, and talks of nothing but " fate and fortune." What shall be the issue of his future attempts, God alone knows : but we think it highly probable, that he is working out his own destruction as Ben- hadad did.