Who is your finger pointed
at? Our country is in a mess. How do we get out of the mess? Many
say that there is absolutely no way to recover. I want to read you
a passage that will help us to see that hopeless situations are not
hopeless.
2Kings 6:24-7:20
24Some time later, however, King
Ben-hadad of Aram mustered his entire army and besieged Samaria.
25As a result, there was a great famine in the city. The siege
lasted so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty pieces of
silver, and a cup of dove’s dung sold for five pieces#
Hebrew sold for 80 shekels
[2 pounds, or 0.9 kilograms] of silver, and 1/4 of
a cab [0.3 liters] of dove’s dung sold for 5 shekels
[2 ounces, or 57 grams]. Dove’s dung may be a variety
of wild vegetable.
of silver.
26One day as the king of Israel was
walking along the wall of the city, a woman called to him,
“Please help me, my lord the king!”
27He answered, “If the Lord
doesn’t help you, what can I do? I have neither food from the
threshing floor nor wine from the press to give you.” 28But
then the king asked, “What is the matter?”
She replied, “This woman said to
me: ‘Come on, let’s eat your son today, then we will eat my
son tomorrow.’ 29So we cooked my son and ate him. Then the next
day I said to her, ‘Kill your son so we can eat him,’ but she
has hidden her son.”
30When the king heard this, he tore
his clothes in despair. And as the king walked along the wall,
the people could see that he was wearing burlap under his robe
next to his skin. 31“May God strike me and even kill me if I
don’t separate Elisha’s head from his shoulders this very
day,” the king vowed.
32Elisha was sitting in his house
with the elders of Israel when the king sent a messenger to
summon him. But before the messenger arrived, Elisha said to the
elders, “A murderer has sent a man to cut off my head. When he
arrives, shut the door and keep him out. We will soon hear his
master’s steps following him.”
33While Elisha was still saying
this, the messenger arrived. And the king#
Hebrew he.
said, “All this misery is from
the Lord! Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?”
1Elisha replied, “Listen to this message from the Lord! This is what the Lord says: By this time tomorrow in the markets of Samaria, five quarts of choice flour will cost only one piece of silver,#
Hebrew 1 seah [6 liters]
of choice flour will cost 1 shekel [0.4 ounces, or
11 grams];
and ten quarts of barley grain will
cost only one piece of silver.#
Hebrew 2 seahs
[12 liters] of barley grain will cost 1 shekel
[0.4 ounces, or 11 grams]; .
”
2The officer assisting the king
said to the man of God, “That couldn’t happen even if the
Lord opened the windows of heaven!”
But Elisha replied, “You will see
it happen with your own eyes, but you won’t be able to eat any
of it!”
Lepers Visit the Enemy Camp
3Now there were four men with
leprosy#
Or with a contagious skin
disease. The Hebrew word used here and throughout this passage
can describe various skin diseases.
sitting at the entrance of the city
gates. “Why should we sit here waiting to die?” they asked
each other. 4“We will starve if we stay here, but with the
famine in the city, we will starve if we go back there. So we
might as well go out and surrender to the Aramean army. If they
let us live, so much the better. But if they kill us, we would
have died anyway.”
5So at twilight they set out for
the camp of the Arameans. But when they came to the edge of the
camp, no one was there! 6For the Lord had caused the Aramean army
to hear the clatter of speeding chariots and the galloping of
horses and the sounds of a great army approaching. “The king of
Israel has hired the Hittites and Egyptians#
Possibly and the people of
Muzur, a district near Cilicia.
to attack us!” they cried to one
another. 7So they panicked and ran into the night, abandoning
their tents, horses, donkeys, and everything else, as they fled
for their lives.
8When the lepers arrived at the
edge of the camp, they went into one tent after another, eating
and drinking wine; and they carried off silver and gold and
clothing and hid it. 9Finally, they said to each other, “This
is not right. This is a day of good news, and we aren’t sharing
it with anyone! If we wait until morning, some calamity will
certainly fall upon us. Come on, let’s go back and tell the
people at the palace.”
10So they went back to the city and
told the gatekeepers what had happened. “We went out to the
Aramean camp,” they said, “and no one was there! The horses
and donkeys were tethered and the tents were all in order, but
there wasn’t a single person around!” 11Then the gatekeepers
shouted the news to the people in the palace.
Israel Plunders the Camp
12The king got out of bed in the
middle of the night and told his officers, “I know what has
happened. The Arameans know we are starving, so they have left
their camp and have hidden in the fields. They are expecting us
to leave the city, and then they will take us alive and capture
the city.”
13One of his officers replied, “We
had better send out scouts to check into this. Let them take five
of the remaining horses. If something happens to them, it will be
no worse than if they stay here and die with the rest of us.”
14So two chariots with horses were
prepared, and the king sent scouts to see what had happened to
the Aramean army. 15They went all the way to the Jordan River,
following a trail of clothing and equipment that the Arameans had
thrown away in their mad rush to escape. The scouts returned and
told the king about it. 16Then the people of Samaria rushed out
and plundered the Aramean camp. So it was true that five quarts
of choice flour were sold that day for one piece of silver, and
ten quarts of barley grain were sold for one piece of silver,
just as the Lord had promised. 17The king appointed his officer
to control the traffic at the gate, but he was knocked down and
trampled to death as the people rushed out.
So everything happened exactly as
the man of God had predicted when the king came to his house.
18The man of God had said to the king, “By this time tomorrow
in the markets of Samaria, five quarts of choice flour will cost
one piece of silver, and ten quarts of barley grain will cost one
piece of silver.”
19The king’s officer had replied,
“That couldn’t happen even if the Lord opened the windows of
heaven!” And the man of God had said, “You will see it happen
with your own eyes, but you won’t be able to eat any of it!”
20And so it was, for the people trampled him to death at the
gate!
THIS WAS A HOPELESS IMPOSSIBLE SITUATION, HOWEVER GOD 'S PROPHET SPOKE THAT IT WOULD TURN AROUND. ONE PERSON SAID IT COULD NOT HAPPEN EVEN IF GOD OPEND UP WINDOWS IN HEAVEN. THAT PERSON DID NOT GET TO PARTAKE OF THE DELIVERANCE.
2 Chronicles 7:14
THIS WAS A HOPELESS IMPOSSIBLE SITUATION, HOWEVER GOD 'S PROPHET SPOKE THAT IT WOULD TURN AROUND. ONE PERSON SAID IT COULD NOT HAPPEN EVEN IF GOD OPEND UP WINDOWS IN HEAVEN. THAT PERSON DID NOT GET TO PARTAKE OF THE DELIVERANCE.
2 Chronicles 7:14
14Then
if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and
pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will
hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their
land.
LOOKS LIKE THE MAIN FINGER POINTING IS AT THE CHRISTIANS. GOD'S PEOPLE HOLD THE KEY TO GETTING THIS NATION (USA) BACK ON TRACK. AS WE TURN FROM OUR WICKED WAYS AND PRAY GOD WILL HEAL OUR LAND.
Wicked: hurtful, bad, naughty,
opposite of God's ways
Heal: restoring to normal, cure,
stitching as a physician
Exodus 15: 22-25
22Then Moses led the people of
Israel away from the Red Sea, and they moved out into the desert
of Shur. They traveled in this desert for three days without
finding any water. 23When they came to the oasis of Marah, the
water was too bitter to drink. So they called the place Marah
(which means “bitter”).
24Then the people complained and
turned against Moses. “What are we going to drink?” they
demanded. 25So Moses cried out to the Lord for help, and the Lord
showed him a piece of wood. Moses threw it into the water, and
this made the water good to drink.
It was there at Marah that the Lord
set before them the following decree as a standard to test their
faithfulness to him.
MA-RAH : BITTER
USA we have great untapped resources. Our president has made some decisions that are bad and some that look bad when it comes to natural resources. He has stopped a lot of oil drilling and regulated coal production to the point it has shut down much coal production. This causes a loss of jobs and higher energy prices, which causes all prices to go up. This is hard on all of us in the short run, but it can be a blessing in the long run.
Those resources will be
there later when we really need them just as the water was there for
the children of Israel at Ma-Rah