Solomon is trying to warn people and trying to help people realize that if they deviate
from where they're at, if they end up backsliding from the position that they're in currently,
what's the remedy so as to bring things back to the Lord?
And it says in verse number 13, if I shut up heaven, that there be no rain, or if I
command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people, if my
people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face
and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and I will forgive their
sin and will hear their land.
So the Lord is talking with Solomon.
We have it recorded in the Bible.
He's telling him, this is your recipe for success if you turn away.
When the children of Israel turn away, God says, I'm going to do certain things to you.
I'm going to afflict you so as to try and draw you back to me.
Notice in verse number 13, if I, who's the I there?
That's God.
That's the Lord saying, shut up heaven, that there be no rain.
What is no rain?
Basically, no rain is going to cause a crop failure.
It's going to cause famine.
It's going to cause them to go without.
They're not going to have food.
They're not going to have nourishment.
It's really a detriment to their economy.
I mean, basically, in a modern day vernacular, it would be just completely destroying their
economy, causing all kinds of issues in their economy.
And if you were to destroy a huge portion of their crops, you know what that would do?
It would raise the price of all the goods that do exist, all the food that does come
in, meaning you'd have hyperinflation, meaning that you'd have shortages, meaning that you
would go without, and in all kinds of different ways.
The Bible's saying that God would be the one that would do this.
He says, not only that, I will command the locusts to devour the land, meaning that a
pestilence or evil would come in and actually consume all the goods that you do have.
The money that you do have would be taken away.
The goods that you have would be destroyed.
There would be all kinds of evil coming upon them and ruining them.
He says, also, or I send a pestilence among my people, just literally disease, literally
some kind of an affliction.
If we were to examine the world that we live in today and ask this question, if God were
mad at his people, if God were mad at people on the earth today, how would he try to wake
them up?
What would he do to basically try and shake them and try to get them to start paying attention
to the Lord?
Well, he'd affect their economy.
Not only would he affect their economy, he'd bring in all kinds of evil that would destroy
their goods, affect the things that they possess, ruin the stuff that they have.
Not only that, bring in some kind of a disease or bring in health problems or bring in all
kinds of basically sickness upon the people.
Now, I wonder what that would look like today.
I don't know.
Maybe there's a country, maybe there's an area of the world that's being affected economically
or being affected with people having goods destroyed.
There's a way that God will destroy goods often is through hurricanes, is through earthquakes,
is through just fires being rampant throughout the land, all kinds of natural disasters.
You would think, well, why is this stuff happening?
Why would God allow evil and natural disasters and why would he let the economy fail and
why would he bring in sickness and disease and all this evil upon an area?
You know why?
Because he's trying to wake people up, because he's trying to tell people, hey, you've turned
away from me, you've turned away from God and you need to humble yourself and you need
to seek the Lord, you need to pray and seek and to turn away from your wicked ways.
And he says that's the remedy for getting back to success, prosperity, having the Lord,
notice as the Bible describes it, heal thy land.