Courageous Faith

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Please enjoy the following sermon. If you were to, sometimes, you know, I like to take us into time machines, right? And we travel, and we go to different times and places. If you were to join me, and we were to go to the study of Martin Luther, or when I say his study, I mean his office, where he did his studies, his work.

If you were to visit the study of Martin Luther at the pinnacle of the Protestant Reformation, it would be interesting, you would find any number of artifacts throughout that room. As we would go, you would find the desk where he spent a great deal of time laboring over God's word, seeking to mine the depths of it, that he might bring it to God's people and advance the cause of the Reformation.

You might remember the slogan that he said, that he did nothing, that he and, I believe it was, was it Philip of Amsdorf, were drinking beer? Who is it? Maybe. One of those guys. As he and his friend were drinking beer, the word of God did it all.

That at the study, at his desk, he labored over God's word. That would be one of the artifacts that you would find. You'd find an inkpot and quill, likely, where he would take his notes, probably much like the one that, as he was translating the New Testament in the Wartburg Castle, feeling that he was being confronted by Satan, grabbed a hold up and cast against the wall, leaving a stain that's still there.

You would see, likely, a copy of his German Bible that, by God's grace, with the help of Philip Melanchthon and others, he translated from the Hebrew and Greek into the German language, that he might bring the knowledge of God to the German people.

And in that study, if we were to look around, not just at the desk and the things on the desk, but on the walls, you would see, on one wall adjacent to his desk, an inscription of Psalm 118, which reads, I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord.

And this text was inscribed by Martin Luther so that, whenever he was in his study, he could see it and be reminded of its truths. I shall not die, but I shall live, and I will recount the deeds of the Lord.

And he had very good reason to have that inscription of all the Psalms, of all the verses in the Psalms, on his wall. Rome's hatred for those who were advancing the Reformation has been well-documented.

History tells us that Rome was more than willing to shed innocent blood to halt the Reformation. If we go just a few years before Martin Luther, to 1415, we can learn of a man named Jan Hus, who took a stand against the Roman Catholic Church.

And as a result, he was summoned to the Council of Constance he was promised safe passage, but alas, as he was on his way to the Council, he was kidnapped by Rome, taken, and burned at the stake. A year later, one of his best friends and followers, a man named Jerome, was likewise arrested.

He was tortured and burned at the stake as well. Then, in subsequent years, tens of thousands of Hussites, followers of Jan Hus, who wanted to see Reformation in the church, were killed mercilessly. And then, in the decades that followed, even as Rome was not able to take the lives of those who protested their doctrine, their methodologies, what they were and what they were doing with the truth, when they couldn't kill people, they would do whatever they could to dishonor them.

So that in the decades after Jan Hus, leading up to the Protestant Reformation, we read stories like that of John Wycliffe, who was one of the earliest translators of the English Bible. Rome could not kill him, so they did the next best thing.

After he died, they dug up his bones, they burned them, they ground them up, and then they threw them in the River Swift in Lutterworth, England. And so, by Luther's day, Rome had a reputation for being cruel, bloodthirsty, and even maniacal in their efforts to stop the growing Reformation movement.

And so, that is why Martin Luther had Psalm 118 inscribed on his wall. I shall not die, I shall live, and I shall recount the deeds of the Lord. And in the words of one biographer, Luther then was cheered by the firm conviction that he was perfectly safe until his work was done.

The author writes, in this full assurance, he went bravely to meet his enemies. Indeed, he went courageously whenever duty called him. And so, Psalm 118 and verse 27, 17, excuse me, gave him then a calm assurance.

And that calm assurance allowed Luther's life to be characterized by what I might call a courageous faith. He knew the truth, he knew what he had to do to communicate the truth, he knew the cost of communicating the truth, but he also knew that God was with him.

And so, he could go with courage to fulfill the will of the Lord, the will that God had established for him in particular. Now, as we arrive at Genesis 14, how does this connect to the story? Well, in Genesis 14, what we find is another example of courageous faith, if I can call it that.

We're now in the second of three accounts that I introduced to you last week, what I referred to as the Abram Lot trilogy. And what this Abram Lot trilogy is, is it's three accounts that demonstrate the wisdom and the faithfulness of Abram in contrast to his nephew, his foolishness and his faithlessness of Lot.

In the second part of the trilogy now, we're going to see a number of things. We're gonna see the destructive effects of passivity and of sinful passivity. We're gonna see that contrasted with the virtue of courageous faithfulness, what it means to trust in the Lord and by faith to act and live with courage.

And then what we'll see is that in this story, as there is this dichotomy of sinful passivity and faithful courage, we will see that both of these accounts do not lead us to behold and stand in awe of a man like Abram or to stand in awe of Melchizedek, this king of righteousness who he has no place of birth or death, no genealogy.

But what we will see is as we look at these two accounts, we will see not the characters of the story, but the author of the story. And as we have traced all through the book of Genesis, that that seed of the woman who was to come, the Lord Jesus Christ himself, that he is the secret to courageous faithfulness or courageous faith.

So Genesis 14, not unlike every other chapter that we have been in thus far is a phenomenal chapter. And what I wanna do is take you like I have the last few weeks, maybe you've gleaned that I am just loving the book of Genesis.

I wanna take you into the story with me and look at this adventure together. And what we see is Genesis 14 neatly divided in more or less into four different parts. And so we'll look at these truths under four different headings.

And the first heading that I wanna take us to, we'll look at verses one through 12 is this, the consequences of sinful passivity. Sinful passivity and its consequences. And so we'll read verses one through 12, and then we'll look into it.

In the days of Amraphel, king of Shinar, Ariok, king of Elessar, Keterlaomer, king of Elam, and Tidal, king of Goim, these kings made war with Bera, king of Sodom, Bersha, king of Gomorrah, Shinab, king of Adma, Shemeber, king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela, that is Zoar.

And all these joined forces in the valley of Sedim, that is the Salt Sea. 12 years they had served Keterlaomer, but in the 13th year, they rebelled. In the 14th year, Keterlaomer and the kings who were with him came and defeated the Rephaim in Ashtaroth-Qarnaim, the Zuzim in Ham, the Amim in Shaveh-Qirithaim, and the Horites in the hill country of Sir as far as El-Paran on the border of the wilderness.

Then they turned back and came to En-Mishpat, that is Kadesh, and defeated all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites who were dwelling at Hazazon-Tamar. Then the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Adma, the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela, that is Zoar, went out and they joined battle in the valley of Sedim, when Keterlaomer, king of Elam, Tidal, king of Goim, Amraphel, king of Shinar, and Ariok, king of Elassar, four kings against five.

Now the valley of Sedim was full of bitumen pits, and as the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some fell into them, and the rest fled to the hill country. So the enemy took all the possessions of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their provisions and went their way.

They also took Lot, the son of Abram's brother, who was dwelling in Sodom, and his possessions, and went their way. Besides being a tongue twister, what are these first 12 verses about? Well, as we come to verse one, we're transported to a scene that I would suggest was all too common in the ancient Near East at the time of Abram and his contemporaries.

You see, as societies began to reorganize themselves after Noah's flood, the world powers that would eventually dominate the region began to exercise control over local leaders and cities and other places among and along the Fertile Crescent.

And early on, what we see is that this took the form of powerful kings, kingdoms that were growing out of the soil, the wet soil of the flood, the post-Diluvian soil. Powerful kings began to conquer their weaker civilizations around them and made them vassal states to serve their interests.

And so what you ended up with was a dynamic where you had a few growing powers in the world that were dominating all the others that were servile to them. In ancient Canaan, including Sodom and Gomorrah, where Abram and his family find themselves, there's no exception to this.

And so verse one then introduces us to the four powerful kings who held sway over this region that Abraham's lot nephew moved into. And it's really important. You know, we see the names of these kings repeated.

We need to ask ourselves, why is that? Structure conveys meaning. That's an important hermeneutical rule, an important rule in Bible interpretation. When we see structure like the chiasm that we saw last week, it is telling us something.

There is a message even in its structure, even in the repetition. And so what I wanna do is spend a couple of minutes looking at the first verse, those four kings that were introduced to in verse one, and then who are repeated in some length in verse five, and then who are repeated again in verse nine, and then who are mentioned throughout.

The first person that we see in verse one is this. Amraphel, king of Shinar, Shinar. Now, what's interesting is we don't know the identity of Amraphel. That's often the case with these kings, but we know a lot about the places where they come from.

I'm not sure if anyone here knows where Shinar is, but Shinar was just another name for a place called Babylonia. And Babylonia, if you know anything about the ancient Near East and Mesopotamia, Babylonia was located in Mesopotamia, literally between the two rivers, between Tigris and the Euphrates rivers.

And it was located roughly 900 kilometers northeast of Sodom and Gomorrah in what is now central Iraq. Babylonia, as you know, would become the great world-dominating power with its capital Babylon, which we see repeated again and again and again in Scripture, not only in our Old Testaments, but in our New Testaments.

The next king that we're introduced to, not only Amraphel, but Ariok, king of Elisar. Now, what's interesting about Ariok is that Ariok actually does appear at a few places in history. We find him in ancient archives that were in the 18th and 15th century.

And what's more interesting about Ariok is the place where he comes from, Elisar. What this is is likely the Hebrew equivalent of the Akkadian phrase, not Elisar, but Elashur, from which we get the modern word Assyria.

And now this located relative to Sodom and Gomorrah and then Babylon, Assyria was located just north of Babylon along the border of where we would find Iraq and Turkey today. One of the prominent kings that appears in this list is Keter Laomer, the third king of Elam.

And Keter Laomer, my kids and I were joking yesterday, I had them guessing the name of Lol and Lena's son. I said, what do you think his name is? What do you think his name could be? And I'd been studying, I said, maybe they should name him Melchizedek.

That would be a good name. I got to thinking, boy, what a joy it would be if today they had announced that their son's name was Keter Laomer. Now, Keter Laomer might sound like an odd name, but interestingly of the 40 kings that ruled over Elam, many of them have part of that or all of that included in their name.

And Keter Laomer roughly translated from the Akkadian means servant. And I think that that name servant probably serves a purpose because it tells us a little bit about what this man is going to do ultimately in the plan of God in the world.

And he was king of Elam. Now, Elam sounds not all that familiar except when we start to think about the Elamites. The Elamites appear several times in the Bible. One of the prominent places where we learn about the Elamites is on the day of Pentecost as the men were given the gift of tongues and began speaking the praises of God, we're told that the Elamites were there hearing the praises of God in their own language.

And then the last king in this list was Tidal, king of Goim. And we don't know who Tidal was, but we know that Goim was the Hebrew word for nation. So it might've been that the Tidal was either the leader of a group of nations who were all conglomerated together or a nation that we no longer have any record of.

And so what we see in verse one then is this alliance of four kings who are now forming the burgeoning powerhouse of the new world. And when we get to verse two, we see something even more interesting than this.

As we come to verse two, we were introduced to the names of the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. Their names are Barah and Bershah. And what's interesting is we can go back into history and look at Sodom and Gomorrah and the records that we do have about them.

And one of the things is we never find kings named Sodom and Gomorrah, but it's very likely that this is the case because Barah and Bershah were not in fact their actual names, but were a play on words.

Aaron, I think of you brother and your studies in Hebrew. When we look at Barah and Bershah, what we see is a remarkable similarity to two Hebrew words that are closely related to the character of this particular place.

The word Barah sounds remarkably similar to the Hebrew word Raah, which means evil. While Bershah can be very closely related to the Hebrew word Rasha, from which we get wicked. And we should not be surprised by this because if you look with me in Genesis chapter 13 and verse 13, we're told, now the men of Sodom were wicked.

And so what we end up having here is we have these world powers that are on the scene. They're approaching Sodom and Gomorrah. And as we're introduced to the kings, we have King Evil of Sodom and King Wicked of Gomorrah.

And it's gonna play an important role as we get further along in our story. And what ends up happening is this. King Barah and King Bershah, and some of the other countries that are in the Valley of Setim, near the Salt Sea, as it were, Shinnab, Shemeber, and the King of Bela, they all came under the punishing control of these superpowers.

And so they do what many would want to do. If you're a young child on the playground and there's some bullies in the playground, you don't wanna take it, you form an alliance, right? You gather your friends and you say, okay, I'll give you my cheese sandwich for protection on the playground.

I'll create my group. And certainly we see this in prison culture, if not in playground culture, though I think there are some similarities. But in verse three then, we see that they form an alliance.

They join forces. And they served Keterleomer for 12 years. But as they begin to grow strong in this alliance, they grow bold and they decide no more after the 12 years. And so the 13th year, they cast off their overlords and they say, we're gonna stand up for ourselves.

We're not going to serve you anymore. We're not gonna give you the profits of our labors. If you want it, you can come get it. And you'd almost think that maybe at this point, they truly believed that they had the military might that was needed to stand up to these superpowers.

But if there was any delusions of grandeur, they're quickly clarified in verse five. Because in verse five, we read, in the 14th year, Keterleomer and the kings who were with him came and defeated the Rephaim.

They've now entered in, okay, you're going to seek to buck our control. We're gonna come and we're gonna take you over. And there's an interesting detail in the story that if Keterleomer and his allies were truly afraid of Sodom and Gomorrah, it's very likely that they would have gone first to Sodom and Gomorrah, right?

The troops are fresh. We have everybody, we have no casualties whatsoever. We're gonna go and we're gonna defeat this mighty force. But that's not the sequence that we see in verse five. What we see is Keterleomer, gotta remember they're located northeast, if you're looking at me, northeast of Sodom and Gomorrah.

And the very first place they go is far southwest. And so they head down towards Egypt. And in verse five, we see that they first land in amongst the Rephaim, in Ashtoreth-Carnaeum. Now, what's interesting is I can take you down all of these little journeys to show you where these things are and what the significance is.

But the Rephaim had a reputation for being giants in the land. We actually see it sandwiched in verse five and verse seven. So they go to what they think is going to be the most formidable foe. And then as they make their way, they begin making their way northward, northward and southward and westward, not only from Rephaim in Ashtoreth-Carnaeum, but then as well to the Horites in verse six in the hill country.

And then in verse seven, to En-Mishpat, that is Kadesh, that's again southwest of Sodom and Gomorrah, to the country of the Amalekites. So again, if you're not familiar with the Rephaim, you're probably familiar with the Amalekites who were also known for being giants in the land as Moses was entering into the land with the people.

And you can picture it this way. As these four kings come down, they begin defeating all of the enemies or to the south. And then Sodom and Gomorrah are simply between them and home. And so their view of Sodom and Gomorrah was not one of fear and of trembling that these men had rebelled, but it's something akin to the husband being asked by the wife to bring home groceries on his way home from work, right?

On your way home, bring this. And so they do, they pass through these lands, they defeat these lands. And then it's kind of cute as we get to verse eight, that the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, and these other kings, they go out to join in battle in the valley of Sidim.

They've mustered their military might, as it were, to take on these other kings. But verse 10 and verse 11 tell us how the battle goes. In verse 10, we read that the valley was full of bitumen pits. And the king of Sodom and Gomorrah and their men, they fled.

It's interesting, this would have been the land that they were familiar with. And yet, nevertheless, in their haste to get away from the four kings, they fall into their own bitumen pits. If anyone works here in petroleum, you'll know what bitumen is.

Bitumen is a product that comes from the soil. It's a petroleum product that we make asphalt out of. And so it's that black, sticky, tarry stuff. And if you were to go to the Dead Sea today, you'd find those bitumen pits are still there.

And so here they are falling, as it were, into pits of wet asphalt. Some have even said, because they were familiar with the land, perhaps they would rather die by the bitumen pits than by the sword. And so they dove into the bitumen pits themselves.

But eventually what happens is these four kings overtake the five kings and all of their military fairly quickly. It's recounted all in a single verse in verse 10. And then in verse 11, the rest happens.

That the enemies take all the possessions of Sodom and Gomorrah, all of their provisions, and then went their way. So quite literally, going, picking up the groceries, and heading back to Babylon and to Syria and all of the other places northeast of Sodom and Gomorrah.

But as we get to verse 12, it's really interesting. The story would almost be over. Maybe we wouldn't have even heard the story if there was no verse 12. But alas, in verse 12, we find something that makes the story significant.

In verse 12, we read, they also took Lot, the son of Abram's brother, who was dwelling in Sodom and his possessions, and went their way. So as they go through the land, they not only pick up their groceries from Sodom and Gomorrah, but they pick up Abram's nephew, Lot.

And there's something that we might be keen to overlook in this whole passage if we read it quickly. But if we slow down just a moment, I wanna ask you, where was Lot? You might recall that in Genesis chapter 13, he moved into the valley adjacent to Sodom and Gomorrah.

But as we get into chapter 14, verse 13, verse 12, excuse me, we read this, that Lot, the son of Abram's brother, was dwelling in Sodom. This is interesting, that Lot had moved in. He had made friends with the wicked city and was now dwelling passively in it.

Now, what's interesting about the Abram-Lot trilogy as we go through, remember, these are found in chapter 13, chapter 14, and then chapters 18 and 19. Every time we encounter Lot, what we encounter about him is this, that he gets closer and closer and closer to Sodom.

In chapter 13, in verse 12, we read that he settled among the cities of the valley and moved his tent as far as Sodom. So moved his tent as it were to the border of Sodom. In here in chapter 13, in verse 12, we read that now, or chapter 14, verse 12, we read that he was dwelling in Sodom.

And then if you go with me to Genesis chapter 19, and verse one, where do we find Lot? Genesis 19, one, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, these are the men that were coming in, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth.

Now, what's interesting is where did the respected men of the city, the citizens of the city sit? They sat at the gate, right? Dealing with the affairs of the city. It's almost like town council, as it were.

And so what we see in Lot is this passive drift, not just from a dweller in the valley as far as Sodom, but a man living in Sodom, and then eventually a respected citizen of Sodom. A fixture in the city.

So that each time we find Lot in these situations, that the consequences or the drift into the association with sinful Sodom gets worse. And the consequences get more severe. Now eventually, we'll see that it not only leads to his kidnap, it not only leads to the plundering of his property, but the death of his wife, the despicable actions that he commits with his daughters, and then the shame that would be forever immortalized in God's word as a warning to any who would follow after him.

As we look at these first 12 verses of Genesis chapter 14, what do we find? What do we make of this? What is the so what of this passage? This long list of kings and a short account of military conquest.

Brothers and sisters, one of the things that I think we see, what's held in juxtaposition to what we will see in the life of Abram is this. It is a cautionary tale of the deceptiveness and of the destructiveness of sin.

Here is a man who passively tolerated sin near him, and then who passively tolerated sin around him, and then engaged in the sin himself until his life was destroyed. I think of a quote by the Puritan Thomas Manton that describes this well.

He says, it is Satan's custom by small sins to draw us to greater. It is the little sticks that set the great ones on fire. It is the wisp of straw that kindles a block of wood. And we need to see this, that one of the great, often unrecognized causes of sin, and the difficulty, the judgment, the challenges that come with that sin.

In this world, it's not just intentional acts, but it's passivity and it's cowardice. That here we have Lot, who should have known better. He should have seen what Sodom was like. He should have known not to live in the midst of Sodom.

He should have seen as the four kings began to approach Sodom, knowing what alliances were taking place, what vassals, vassal covenants had been broken. He should have seen this and he should have fled.

But alas, he grew comfortable in that sinful place. And we need to see this, that one of the greatest contributors to sin and to sinful actions and to sinful omissions in our life is the very thing that led to the fall in the garden.

That it was Adam who was with his wife Eve, who watched her take the fruit, who took of it himself. It's passivity. It is cowardice. But to resist sin is not something that can be done passively. It's not something that we can do simply by staying put.

As I've heard, or as I've said, as you have heard so many times before, we don't drift towards holiness. We drift towards sin. But to go to holiness requires action. That's why we see in places like 1 Corinthians 6 .18, flee from sexual sin.

Or James chapter four and verse seven, resist the devil and he will flee. Or Hebrews 3 .13, but exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Or places like 2 Corinthians 6 .17, therefore go out from their midst and be separated from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing, and then I will welcome you. That passivity and drifting and a lack of doing leads to sin.

And what we see, what's remarkably interesting about this is Genesis, as I've sought to point out over the last number of weeks, is biblical theological in everything that it does. So that every thread, that every highway, every redemptive historical highway that we see in scripture, every thread that we see drawn through the whole text of scripture, all of God's redemptive history begins in the book of Genesis.

That's why it's such a wonderful book, because we come place after place after place, as it were, to a brand new highway that's going to take us somewhere. And what we see here is this. Maybe I'll ask you this question.

Who are the nations that would eventually be used to discipline the northern kingdom in Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah? Does anyone recall? Assyria and Babylon. Then in Isaiah chapter 10 and verse five, God would say about Assyria, that Assyria was the rod, he says, the rod of my anger, that he would use them to discipline the nation.

Meanwhile, he spoke of Nebuchadnezzar in Jeremiah chapter 25 and verses eight and nine, calling Nebuchadnezzar his servant, much like the name Keter Laomer that we see in this chapter as well. That perhaps there is here a precursor of future judgment, not only for Sodom and Gomorrah, who they would meet their final end in Genesis chapter 19.

Here's a warning, I'm gonna send my messengers, but it's a messenger as it were as well to the nation of Israel, that this is the consequence of sin. I will send my rod, I will send my servant. If you do not address your sin, they will address your sin for you.

There are consequences for sinful passivity. But then we see a second truth here. And this is courageous faithfulness and its results. The results of courageous faithfulness. We read it in verses 13 through 16.

Then one who had escaped came and told Abram, the Hebrew, who was living by the oaks of Mamre, the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and of Anur, these were the allies of Abram. When Abram heard that his kinsmen had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in this house, 318 of them and went in pursuit as far as Dan.

And he divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants and defeated them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus. Then he brought back all the possessions and also brought back his kinsmen lot with his possessions and the women and the people.

Now what's really interesting about the story is that these four kings probably would have had a trouble-free exit from the region if not for that one passenger that they brought along. That they bring Lot in verse 12, off they go, and in God's good providence and God's kind providence, one man escapes.

And that man goes to, we read, Abram, the Hebrew. Now that word Hebrew, that's the first time we see the word Hebrew in all of the Bible here in Genesis chapter 14. It's the Hebrew word ivri, which likely refers to Abram being a descendant of Eber, from which we get Hebrew.

And we're told that Abram was living amongst his allies. These were people that he was living in, they were bound likely by a treaty as they lived together. And as Abram hears about his nephew Lot, he gathers together his 318 trained men and off they go.

Now there's some significance there. It's funny when you look at this text and various commentators, they will say that 318 has to do with numerology and we can trace the numerology of that number to various things.

I went down that rabbit trail this week and decided I'll just mention that there's something there, but I'm not sure that there's a whole lot there. But it is significant, the number 318, because on one hand, if we had a church of 318, we would say that's a fairly sizable church.

But if we had an army of 318, we'd say that is a very significant, insignificant army. And so Abram takes his insignificant army of 318 trained men and off they go in pursuit of the four kings who remember, starting in the south, defeated the regions of giants and then other regions in between and then another region of giants and then five cities with their alliance and off they go.

And here Abram with his 318 men are in hot pursuit. And as they go, we see the lengths to which Abram goes to rescue Lot. It was not an insignificant distance to go as far as Dan. Oftentimes when we see Israel measured, it speaks about Dan as the northernmost part of Israel.

And so to travel from Sodom and Gomorrah, that region there or where Abram was in Mamre, to up to Dan would have been about 180 kilometers from the southern reaches of Canaan all the way to the northern part of the land.

And something unique happens in this account that up until now, we've only heard of Abram, the man of faith. We've heard of Abram, the sojourner. We've heard of Abram and his many possessions, his animals and some of his people.

But we get a new picture of Abram and it is this, it is Abram, the warrior. And we see the exceptional military prowess of Abram in this passage. We see it in the language of verses 14 and 15. When he heard, he took his kinsmen.

And we read, he went in pursuit as far as Dan that about 180 kilometers or so. He divided his forces against them by night. So using the cover of darkness and the element of surprise. And we read these words, he defeated them.

And then again, that he pursued them. And so in an act of courageous faith, Abram leads his men. He uses this element of surprise, the cover of night, and he overtakes these four kings and their army.