“When they sin against you, and in consequence the sky is shut, so that there is no rain; then, if they pray toward this place, acknowledge your name and turn from their sin when you have brought them low; hear in heaven, forgive the sin of your servants and of your people Israel — since you keep teaching them the good way by which they should live — and send down rain on your land, which you have given your people as their inheritance.”– 1 Kings 8:35-36
Alrighty, verses 35 and 36 bring us to Solomon’s 3rd petition.
This is about the Lord withholding rain from the land, again due to Israel’s national sins.
This is the 2nd petition dealing with the Lord judging Israel as a nation.
Recall that the first national judgment came in the form of being conquered by a gentile power.
Here it is in the form of a drought.
Below are the Torah references:
“I will break the pride you have in your own power.
I will make your sky like iron, your soil like bronze .”
– Leviticus 26:19
“But be careful not to let yourselves be seduced,
so that you turn aside, serving other gods and worshipping them.
If you do, the anger of ADONAI will blaze up against you.
He will shut up the sky, so that there will be no rain.
The ground will not yield its produce, and you will quickly
pass away from the good land ADONAI is giving you.”
– Deuteronomy 11:16-17
The lesson here is that as painful as it is, punishment is one of the most useful tools the Lord has at His disposal to teach His people obedience.
On the other hand, when His people come to their senses and repent, the Lord will forgive them and welcome them back.
I remind you what true repentance is.
True repentance is changing direction.
It means getting off the path of evil you were walking on and putting yourself on the path of good.
And what is the path of good?
It is a lifestyle fully aligned with the Lord’s Torah.
That’s what it’s always been.
Again, the takeaway here is that nowhere in the Scriptures do we find this idea that the Lord no longer punishes his followers because “Christ has already paid for our sins,” nonsense that the Gentile church teaches.
In fact, quite the opposite is true.
It is a member of the family that gets disciplined most severely.
Heck, if anything, the severe tribulations the Hebrew people have experienced throughout their history are evidence that their Father in heaven has done anything but abandon them.
Ya feel me here?
A father disciplines his son, sometimes severely, because he loves him.
And no doubt about it.
Israel is the Lord’s firstborn son among the nations.
I’ll leave it at that for today.
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