Yesterday I composed a letter to the residents of our community to assist a staff member. Getting started is usually the most challenging part of any writing project. I opened the letter with the main point and repeated the theme in my closing paragraph. The text between the opening and closing supported specified reasons for the request, answering the “Why should we” question. One of my neighbors mentioned that I repeated myself at the end, and I explained my writing process. Bookends are very helpful when trying to get a main point across. The Lord often uses bookends to keep us focused on what is most important. Leviticus 26-27 serve as final bookends to all the instructions the Lord gave Israel in the wilderness, reminding them of their role in honoring him. “These are the statutes and rules and laws that the Lord made between himself and the people of Israel…the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses for the people of Israel on Mount Sinai.” (Leviticus 26:46; 27:34) Some years ago, I decided to begin and end my days journaling to the Lord—bookends for the day with Bible study and prayer in the mornings and praises and thanksgiving in the evenings. I believe these routines help me stay focused on God when I might otherwise be consumed with myself, my plans, or other less worthwhile things. Whether or not I’ve attended to the Lord the rest of the day is questionable, but there are many days when something happens that I think, “I need to add this to my praise journal tonight, as something only God could do.” God began to close his commandments to His people in the wilderness by reminding them they would be blessed for their faithful obedience and cursed for their unfaithful disobedience to him and his commands. Do we begin, live, and end our days remembering that God blesses our faithful obedience with peace and spiritual prosperity through Christ’s grace and presence?
God’s Covenantal Blessings
“I am the Lord. If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land securely. I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid…You shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword…I will turn to you and make you fruitful and multiply you and will confirm my covenant with you. You shall eat old store long kept, and you shall clear out the old to make way for the new. I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves. And I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.” (Leviticus 26:3-13) There are seventeen specific blessings in this passage. Most are physical, relating to the land, harvest, safety, and military victory. Towards the end are spiritual blessings, reminding the Israelites that God has liberated them from slavery in Egypt to enjoy him and their relationship with him. The blessings end with a reminder of this liberty, by God’s grace, to “walk erect.” “Egyptian slavery was oppressive, reducing people to the status of animals dragging heavy burdens attached to yokes around their necks. The Lord’s redemption was gracious, freeing the Israelites from these burdens and transferring them into his service. They could now walk with heads held high, as is fitting for servants of the King of kings…the Lord’s goal is walking among his people as their God (Gen. 3:8). This goal is evident from one end of the Bible to the other; from the exodus, to the vision of the prophets, to the coming of Jesus, to his presence with the church, to the future climax of history when God will walk among his people and ‘wipe away every tear from their eyes’ (Rev. 21:3-4). (1)
Spiritual Prosperity vs. Material Prosperity
“Obedience in the Old Testament is seen as a proper response to grace, and, in particular, to the gracious Lord who has already redeemed his people and entered into covenant relationship with them. Naturally, as in any relationship, faithfulness is necessary is the relationship is to continue, a point Jesus also emphasizes (John 15:1-10). But such faithfulness does not create the relationship. Only the Lord can do that, and it is the privilege of his people to respond with grateful obedience and enjoy the blessings of their redeeming King…These blessings fall under the two categories most necessary to us as human beings. The first is material provision and protection (vs. 4-10). The Lord has created us as physical creatures, and therefore his blessings manifest themselves in physical ways. While the ‘prosperity gospel’ errs by making the material blessings life’s ultimate goal and claiming they will come automatically and abundantly as long as we have enough faith, it would be equally wrong to go to the opposite extreme and say that the Lord only cares about the soul. Jesus teaches us to pray for our physical needs (‘Give us today our daily bread’) and promises that our Heavenly Father will provide for them (Matt. 6:11, 25-34)…But we are also spiritual creatures, and so the second category of blessing addresses the very thing the human soul needs most: relationship with the Lord himself. Indeed, this blessing comes last in the list because it is the climax of them all. To know the Lord is the greatest good we can ever experience.” (2)
God’s Blessed Spiritual Presence
In his book, “The Practice of the Presence of God,” Brother Lawrence writes, “A little remembrance of God, one act of inner worship, even though it is during a march with sword in hand, is sufficient. Such prayer, however brief, is very acceptable to God…Let [a person] think of God as often as he can. Let him gradually develop within himself this small but sacred practice. Nobody notices it, and nothing is easier than to repeat these little internal adorations often during the day…When God finds a soul penetrated with a living faith, He pours into it His grace and blessings plentifully. They flow like a torrent, finding a way around every obstacle, spreading out with extravagant and reckless abundance…Let us make a path for grace. Let us redeem the lost time, for we may have little time left…In spiritual life, not to advance is to retreat. Those who have the wind of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep.” (3) “God promised His people His presence. In Leviticus 26:11, He said, ‘I will place My residence among you.’ God has also come to us in Jesus. John 1:14 says that Jesus ‘became flesh and took up residence among us.’ In verse 12 of Leviticus 26, God said, ‘I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be My people’…The promise of His presence with His people is repeated in the New Testament. In Hebrews 13:5, God says to His people, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’ Jesus said, ‘I am with you always’ (Matt. 28:20). (4) Do we live as those blessed by Christ’s presence with us?
Warnings About Punishment for Rebellion
Or do we live like the Israelites in Canaan, who chose to conform to the nations around them, rejecting God’s blessings? God warned His people while they were still in the wilderness. “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, then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down before your enemies. Those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you.” (26:14-17) This passage represents the first of five stages of Israel’s rebellion and the specific consequences of Israel’s disobedience “Two things would bring ruin…a contempt of God’s commandments…[and a] contempt of his corrections. If they will not learn obedience by the things they suffer, God himself would be against them; and this is the root and cause of all their misery.” (5) Four more cycles of curses for disobedience follow in Leviticus 26:18-33. “Many of the curses are the exact opposite of the blessings. This makes the contrast between obedience and disobedience all the clearer. We are created to obey the Lord and enjoy the rich blessings that come from covenant fellowship with him, not to turn from him and experience his justice against our rebellion. If the Israelites…rejected God’s covenant by means of gross disobedience…they would be choosing to call down the covenant curses on themselves…like a parent who disciplines his or her child after fair warning.” (6) In addition, God says, “I will continue striking you, sevenfold for your sins…” (26:21) The warnings grow more and more intense with each cycle of rebellion. Finally, God says, “And you shall have no power to stand before your enemies. And you shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. And those of you who are left shall rot away in your enemies’ lands because of their iniquity, and also because of the iniquities of their fathers they shall rot away like them.” (26:38-39) “The harder the heart, the stronger the hammer used to break it…By removing [His] blessings through drought and famine, the Lord would remind the Israelites that they are completely dependent on him for abundant life.” (7)
The Hope of Mercy
“‘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, 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, then I will remember my covenant…with Abraham…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.” (Leviticus 26:40-43) “Amazingly, after all the ways Israel had broken God’s covenant and rebelled against Him, God still offered His people another opportunity to come to Him. He said He would receive them, not reject them, even after they had abandoned His plan repeatedly… God continued to invite His people to Himself because of His grace, and God’s grace reached further than Israel… God’s plan was for Israel to relate to God in such a way that all the nations could see what it means to walk with God. Then the nations would be attracted to worship God too…God said to Israel, ‘I will make you a light for the nations, to be my salvation to the ends of the earth’ (Isaiah 49:6). (8) “The very things the Israelites had done to the Lord’s laws [spur and abhor them], he would refuse to do to them…in this way underscoring: ‘My repentant people will indeed experience my covenant faithfulness and grace!’…In the new covenant, the blessings are for those who have faith in Jesus, the one who has taken on himself the curse that comes as a result of our own rebellion against the covenant. These blessings…are stated in terms of being rescued by Jesus from the justice our sins deserve and being given the Spirit of God himself as a sign that we have been adopted as God’s own children and will receive an eternal inheritance from him. In the land of that inheritance, God himself will dwell among his people, wiping every tear from our eyes and banishing all manner of death and mourning and crying and pain. The curses will be no more!” (9) “Blessed is the one who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.” (Psalm 1:1-4) We indeed prosper in God’s abundant grace and mercy through Christ, from the beginning one day to the next. Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. [30] For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30)
Related Scripture: Genesis 3:8-9; Exodus 29:45-46; Deuteronomy 8:5, 11-19;30:1-10; Psalm 94:12; Proverbs 3:11-12; Ezekiel 37:26-28; Hosea 5:15; Romans 14:10-12; Ephesians 5:5; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Titus 2:12-13; Hebrews 12:5-11; Revelation 21:3.
Notes:
1. Sklar, Jay, Leviticus, An Introduction and Commentary, Leviticus 26, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, IVP Academic, 2014.
2. Sklar, Ibid.
3. “The Practice of the Presence of God”, Brother Lawrence, Translated into Modern English by Marshall Davis, 2013.
4. Moseley, Allen, Exalting Jesus in Leviticus, Leviticus 26-27, Christ-Centered Exposition Series, B&H Publishing Group, 2015.
5. Henry, Matthew, Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary on the Bible, Leviticus 26:14-39, https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/mhn/leviticus-26.html.
6. Sklar, Ibid.
7. Sklar, Ibid.
8. Mosley, Ibid.
9. Sklar, Ibid.
August 17, 2023
Divine Wisdom for Daily Living by Joanne Colvin 