The Devil's Tinder-Box
L. A. Banks, D. D. 2 Kings 8:13 And Hazael said, But what, is your servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? And Elisha answered… I. THE FACT THAT A MAN HAS A NATURAL ABHORRENCE OF A CERTAIN SIN IS NO GUARANTEE THAT HE WILL NOT COMMIT THAT VERY SIN. Hazael is true to human nature. Sin is insidious, and one sin is evolved out of another sin. Sin sometimes is like a snowball that is rolled down hill where the snow is deep. It grows very fast. Beware of the beginnings of sin, for there is no tropical growth that can develop so rapidly as a sin which springs up in the hot-bed of a heart that is untrue to God. II. A GOOD DISPOSITION AND A GENERAL DESIRE TO DO RIGHT IS NO GUARANTEE THAT ONE WILL NOT END HIS CAREER IN OUTBREAKING SIN. Hazael was undoubtedly a suave, pleasant-humoured, amiable man. Ben-hadad had been a great king, and a very good judge of men, and Hazael's conduct had been such that his master put implicit trust in him. Hazael was politic and amiable and all things to all men, but no one suspected him of definite purpose to do an evil thing, and it is not probable that he had such purposes. III. DEFINITE PRINCIPLES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS ARE THE ONLY GUARANTEE THAT ONE WILL MAINTAIN A GOOD CAREER TO THE END. Lacking these, Hazael was overthrown. Lacking these, you will be overthrown. You are like a ship that has had an accident at sea and, uncontrolled, has been drifting about at the mercy of wind and wave; but some skilled engineer has gone down among the chaos of broken machinery and mended it, and the captain, with the wheel in his hands again, and with all the force of the great engines in the heart of the vessel answering his command, goes bravely forward in the teeth of the gale. The man or the woman with a genuine desire to be good, but with no definite committal, drifts about at the mercy of circumstances. But on the day when you give your heart to Christ, permit Him to come into your heart and take command, you begin a career that is steadily onward, doing right whatever the circumstances or the conditions that may surround you. IV. WE SHOULD BEWARE OF THE CHARACTER OF OUR SECRET MEDITATIONS. Beware of the things you think about when you are alone, when you are day-dreaming; the things you allow to come back into the mind and sun themselves in the warmth of your imagination and desire. Why should you be so careful as to the character of these things? Now that is a most important question, for I am sure it is a very insidious temptation to people who have many good desires and good impulses, people who would shrink from any open proposition to do evil, to assume that there is no harm in allowing the imagination and musing-room of the soul to harbour unlawful guests. Yet see what it did for Hazael. That prophecy was like a flash of lightning into the devil's tinder-box that was in Hazael's mind and heart. If his mind and heart had been pure and good he would never have dreamed of not waiting until God opened the way for him to be king. But his imagination and heart were all primed, and the devilish fuse was laid, and it needed only the lighted match to transform this man Hazael, whom everybody supposed, and who thought himself to be, an amiable good kind of a man, into a liar and a murderer. V. EXTERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES OVER WHICH WE HAVE NO CONTROL ARE OFTEN A POTENT FACTOR IN OUR LIVES. The coming of Elisha to Damascus and his prophecy concerning Ben-hadad and Hazael, were factors which brought Hazael's career to a focus. Something may happen to-morrow which you know nothing about now, which may cause you to commit a sin which you would not to-night believe to be possible. (L. A. Banks, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Hazael said, But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? And Elisha answered, The LORD hath shewed me that thou shalt be king over Syria. WEB: Hazael said, "But what is your servant, who is but a dog, that he should do this great thing?" Elisha answered, "Yahweh has shown me that you will be king over Syria."