Leviticus 26- God's way or my way

Leviticus 26

Hebrews 12:3-11

God’s way or my way?

Well, as we get to the end of Leviticus, you will see that the Israelites had come yet again to a folk in the road.

After God had led them by the hand out of Egypt and into the desert, fed them, sheltered them, led them: it was clear that his people still found it difficult to trust God and take Him at His word.

Hence God again presented his people with two options.

They could either trust, love and obey God, or they couldn’t.

It is the same folk in the road that Adam and Eve came to in the garden of Eden, where they had to choose to trust, love and obey God or not, and it is the same folk in the road that we come to each and every day, as we chose each and every day of whether we are going to trust, love and obey God or not.

Now as we look at Leviticus 26 it is clear that God told the Israelites that if they trusted, loved and obeyed God then all these good things would happen……

In other words God told his people, that if they did A, B, and C then D, E , F will happen.

If they trusted, loved and obeyed God then these things would happen…..

Rain would come at right time for their crops to grow

Trees would bear lots of fruit

The grape harvest would be plentiful

Peace would be in the land

Harmful beasts would be removed from the land

Enemies would be scared of them and so they wouldn’t attack them

They would increase in population

Food would be stored and eaten and then cleared for new food

And most importantly, God told the Israelites, that if they were to carry out A, B and C then ultimately verse 12 would happen…..

Look at verse 12

And I will walk among you and I will be your God, and you will be my people

Now, not only did God say if you do A,B,C then this will happen, but he also said, if you don’t do A,B,C then this would happen, if you don’t trust, love and obey God then these bad things would happen….

He would make them fear, so much that they will be sacred of a leaf

He would bring sickness upon them

He would allow their enemies to eat all their crop

He would set his face against them, he wouldn’t be for them

The trees would not bear fruit

Wild beasts would destroy them

And so if we took this chapter 26 of Leviticus out of context of the rest of the scriptures it appears that the bible teaches that, if you do good, if you love God, if you trust him, if you obey his commands, then only good stuff will happen to you, and if you do bad stuff, you don’t follow God’s commands, then only bad stuff will happen to you.

It appears from this chapter that God teaches some sort of Karma, do good and good stuff will happen to you, do bad and bad stuff will happen to you.

This simply isn’t true…..Biblically it isn’t true, theologically it isn’t true and we all know from life experience, that this isn’t true.

We see throughout the scriptures that when people did follow God’s laws, and trusted him and obeyed, still bad stuff happened to them.

The apostle Peter and the apostle Paul did good by preaching the gospel of Jesus and as a consequence they were beaten up and thrown in prison.

Jesus himself, loved, trusted and obeyed his father perfectly and yet he was nailed to a tree, he was beaten, he was rejected.

And on the flip side, we know, sometimes people do bad stuff and good things happen to them.

And so in this life, and that is key, in this life, Christianity is not a case of do this, this and this and this will happen………However……….ultimately, ultimately, in the life top come which lasts for eternity…..if we love, trust and obey God, we will be blessed to the full, and if we don’t love trust and obey God, ultimately we will suffer the really bad consequences in the eternal death to eternal separation from God to come.

Ultimately what God laid down for the Israelites in Leviticus 26 is true, God has given us two ways to live and ultimately there will be consequences for what we chose. If we trust, love and obey God, we will have eternal life, and if we don’t chose to love, trust and obey God, we will have eternal death.

Even in the context of Leviticus 26, we can see God’s eternal purposes coming through.

Just look at verse 12 again with me:

And I will walk among you and I will be your God, and you will be my people

This is the picture that is painted in creation when God created Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden. Sin had not entered the world and so God dwelt amongst Adam and Eve in the garden, He walked with them in the cool of the day.

This is the same picture that is painted in Revelation 21, which describes heaven, as a  place where God will dwell among his people.

And so ultimately God told the Israelites and he holds the same promise for us today, that if we love, trust and obey God then He will be with us, he will dwell amongst us, and that is to be prized more than anything else.

You may have noticed that the worst thing that God can do to us, is to remove his presence from us. Leave us to our own mess. Hand us over to our won evil desires.

This is what happened during the exile when God showed Ezekiel that he left the temple, he left the tabernacle, he left Jerusalem and their enemies destroyed them.

These other blessings that God promised were good things to hope for, like good rain, good crop, peace from enemies, these are all good things to desire, but ultimately their greatest blessing was that God was with him, He was their God and they were his people.

These other blessings were present at creation, in the garden of Eden, there was fruit galore, there was a top notch natural irrigation system of springs, there was good soil, rich in minerals, there was peace, it was all there, and God wants us to have these things, but he doesn’t want those things to replace him as God.

And so however great we may think these things are now in this life, and great they are, they will be like nothing compared to being with God for eternity.

So there is my point number 1,

God is not into karma…..However ultimately if we trust, love and obey God, we will blessed to the full, not necessarily in this life, but definitely in the next.

Point number 2 is this……trust, love and obedience are three chords of the same rope.

You cannot say you love and trust God, but then not obey his commands, because if you don’t do as he commands, you are actually showing you don’t love and trust him.

It would be like saying you really believe your car is safe to drive, but you never actually drive it anywhere.

Jesus said this in John 14:15, “if you love me, you will obey my commands”

I am not sure you cannot actually show you trust and love someone without actually doing anything. Your love and trust are shown by your actions.

It would be like the Israelite confessing their love for God and pledging to follow his laws, and trusting that God would provide for them each day, but then working on the sabbath in order to make money. Their actions would show that they didn’t trust God to provide for them.

Point number 3 is this……your salvation does not depend on your obedience…

The bible makes it clear again and again, that we have been saved by grace through faith in Christ and this is not by our works of obedience.

When God gave the Israelites these promises, these blessings and warnings, He had already saved them from the Egyptians, He had already brought them to worship Him in freedom in the desert.

And so these instructions were given to God’s saved people of how they should live now they had already been saved. He showed them his ways to walk in, ways which were good for them.

Friends, we as God’s people, the church, have been saved through the cross of Christ and we have been given instructions of how God wants us to live, for our benefit.

We follow God’s way as evidence that Jesus has already saved us, not to earn our salvation.

And this brings me to my final point which I am going to spend a little time on today…..

God is incredibly patient, gracious and kind to us, as we strive to live his way but often fail.

It is not like God is just waiting for us to slip us, so he can smite us, but God lovingly, and patiently and graciously continues to pick us up, get us back on our feet and gets us going in the right direction, even when we deliberately and stubbornly walk, no run away from Him.

God is so eager for us to walk in his ways, to give us life, to be with us, that even when we deliberately walk away from him, he is still willing to forgive us.

Look at verse 14- 15 with me:

But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments,  if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant,

God perhaps goes to the worst case scenario for the state of his people’s hearts here in these verses, a case where his people don’t just accidently go their own way, but deliberately don’t listen to him, they deliberately chose to ignore him, they hate his rules and deliberately break them.

Now God told his people that if they abhorred his rules, that he would bring judgment on them, he would bring sickness to them, he would allow their enemies to overthrow them, he would allow their crops to fail……. but why?

Well look at verse 19

And I will break the pride of your power

God’s purpose of his judgement was to break their pride. To break their stiff necks which constantly rejected and turned away from God. He wanted to break their false ideas of independence. Independence from God.

I am sure we all remember the story of Pharaoh.

Pharoah suffered with pride.

He thought he was God himself and so God sent plague after plague to humble him, to break his pride and after each plague, Pharoah’s pride was almost broken as he promised to let the people go…..but as soon as the plague was removed his pride was returned. His heart grew harder, the more he abhorred what God was telling him to do- Let his people go!

Interestingly the LBGTI community celebrate a pride month.

And during this pride month, people who celebrate this month, abhor God’s rules. They abhor God’s creation of male and female. They abhor God’s ordained marriage between a man and a woman.

You wonder what is will take for the pride of these people to be broken, as we have already started to witness the terrible consequences of their choices.

In Leviticus 26:23, God made it clear, that the reason he would bring judgement on his people, was to discipline them, so they would turn to him.

Friends, discipline is a good thing, yes it’s a hard thing, it may be painful, but it is a good thing, because the aim of God’s discipline is always to bring us back to God.

The aim of church discipline which many churches don’t practice today, is to bring the person who has fallen into sin back to God, back to restoration. Church discipline is never about exerting power, but is about restoration, healing and forgiveness- Just as God’s discipline to us, is.

You could read Leviticus chapter 26 as a chapter of God’s judgement and discipline, and it is, but you can also see God’s unwavering faithfulness to his people overarching all of it, his heart to forgive, his heart to restore, his heart to be their God.

Just look at verses 40-45 with me:

40 “But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery that they committed against me, and also in walking contrary to me, 41 so that I walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies—if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, 42 then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. 43 But the land shall be abandoned by them and enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate without them, and they shall make amends for their iniquity, because they spurned my rules and their soul abhorred my statutes.44 Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn them, neither will I abhor them so as to destroy them utterly and break my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God.45 But I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the Lord.”

We know that God punished and disciplined his people in 586BC when the nation of Babylon came and destroyed them. The land was left desolate for 70 years and God’s people lived in exile in Babylon. God punished them for their whoring after other gods, their constant failure to love, trust and obey Him, their wilful and deliberate disobedience, their complete disdain for his laws.

And yet God never completely wiped his hands of them, he always left the door open for them.  He never completely destroyed them, he always left a faithful remnant for Himself.

He always made a way for restoration, a way that could only be found through confession.

It says it right there in verse 40…..but, if they confessed their sins…..if they confessed their sins, there was hope of restoration, hope of a restored relationship, hope that God would dwell amongst them again.

Friends, while a person still has breath in their lungs and a heart-beat, there is always hope of restored relationship with God. There is always hope that a person will repent and turn to God, and if a person confesses their sin, we can be assured that God will be waiting with arms wide open.

How can we be so sure that God will forgive?

Because this is what God promised his people the Israelites and this is what God promises his people- the church- through His Son- Jesus.

And God, always, always keeps his promises, even when we fail to keep ours.

This is why the message of the church is always the same, it is the same message that Jesus first proclaimed: repent and believe for the kingdom of God is near.

The bible tells us, there will be a day when final judgement will come, when God will once and for all, sort out the sheep from the goats, a time when repentance will be too late, but until that time comes, it is never too late.

God is patient, God is kind, God is merciful, but his patience will one day come to an end.

Let us pray.