BLAME WHO IS YOUR FINGER POINTED AT?

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

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

STITCHES HOLD THE WOUNDS TOGETHER UNTIL THE HEAL.

  

 

Exodus 15: 22-25  

Bitter Water at Marah

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