Why Sit We Here Until We Die?

Now that I have chased this thought for a moment, let us get back to the famine in Samaria under the leadership of king Jehoram. Jehoram wasn’t much better than Ahab. He had learned his lessons well from Ahab and Jezebel. Just to make a quick point here – let us never forget that God said way back in Exodus 34:7 when Moses met with God on Mount Sinai, that He would allow the sins of the fathers to be, "… upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation." Let’s not bring the curse upon our children and grandchildren, should the Lord tarry in His coming, for future generations. Raise them to fear and serve the Lord.

The famine in Israel was more the result of sin in the camp than of the siege of the Syrian Army. Israel would not have been in this position had they continued to serve the Lord, because God had brought the Syrian army in an attempt to wake them up and bring them back to God.

The famine was so bad that the Jews of Samaria had resorted to cannibalism just to survive.

In 2 Kings 6:25-28 we read of the severity of the famine, "And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass’s head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove’s dung for five pieces of silver. And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, there cried a woman unto him, saying, Help, my lord, O king. And he said, If the LORD do not help thee, whence shall I help thee? out of the barn floor, or out of the winepress? And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow."

My friends let me tell you that the world that doesn’t know Christ today is in just such a famine. There are millions around this globe who fall asleep every night hungry. There are multitudes that would give their right arm just to have what you and I will throw into the garbage every day. I’ve seen some of this with my own eyes. People are starving in more places than you can name.

As bad as the hunger for food for this body is, that’s not the worst famine in the world today. There is a far greater famine – a Spiritual Famine for the Word and Presence of God! This famine knows no national boundaries, no cultural boundaries, no ethnic boundaries and no race boundaries. It affects every sinner on the face of the earth, young and old alike. In fact, it seems that the more affluent and satisfied a nation is in the flesh, the worse the Spiritual famine becomes. America today might be the richest nation on the face of the earth in materialistic ways but it’s fast becoming, and may already be, the single worst nation on earth that is caught in the grip of a Spiritual famine for the things of God. We are caught in idolatry, having been led down that slippery path for the past 200 or more years by those among us who refuse to bow their knee before Jesus Christ and confess Him as Lord.

Look around you, read your newspapers, watch your news on TV, listen to what’s being said over the airwaves, and you will hear the same effects of famine that Samaria saw in that day.