How many times in our young adult years did we rebel against parental authority and guiding advice that was delivered often for our good because we really thought we were old enough to know best what we needed?  From age 12 through 20 something, we knew our parents’ advice was so out of date that surely it didn’t apply to our current situation.  At that age and stage of our lives; we couldn’t imagine them being the age we were then, much less understand us; so we went our own way, leaving the protection and safety net provided by our parents.  As we parted, we heard, “but it’s for your own good!” but that didn’t stop us, did it?

Sometimes, we got “lucky” and avoided the pitfalls of bad decisions while doing our own thing without the benefit of experience to guide us.  Or, maybe our “luck” was a result of our parents desperately praying for our safety as we embarked on our own in a world that did not care what would happen to us.

God is asserting his “holy authority” with specific, detailed ways of obedience so the Israelites will know what is for their own good as they declare His glory by trusting Him alone.  “I am the Lord your God” is proclaimed often because His people are not grasping God’s loving desire to deliver gracious intervention into their lives for the purpose of their protection and provision.  God is the parent we all desire to be for our kids—we want what is best for them so they will thrive!

God outlines His gameplan of trust and obedience while pointing out the consequences.  If His people obey; they will be rewarded.  If they do not trust and obey, His people will be on their own, fighting battles without God’s protection, as their own pride takes over which will lead to their fall.  “You’re either for me or against me,” says God here and throughout His Word.

Notice that God also references the consequences of the Israelites’ choice to disobey His command of allowing the land to remain fallow every seven years with redemption for His people on the fiftieth year—which, as far as we know, was ignored.  Go your own way, but suffer the consequences of stepping out from under the protective wings of God. 

Leviticus 26

Reward for Obedience

26 “‘Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves, and do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it. I am the Lord your God.

² “‘Observe my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary. I am the Lord.

³ “‘If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, ⁴ I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit. ⁵ Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land.

⁶ “‘I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid. I will remove wild beasts from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country. ⁷ You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you. ⁸ Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.

⁹ “‘I will look on you with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers, and I will keep my covenant with you. ¹⁰ You will still be eating last year’s harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. ¹¹ I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. ¹² I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. ¹³ I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high.

Punishment for Disobedience

¹⁴ “‘But if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands, ¹⁵ and if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant, ¹⁶ then I will do this to you: I will bring on you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and sap your strength. You will plant seed in vain, because your enemies will eat it. ¹⁷ I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies; those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even when no one is pursuing you.

¹⁸ “‘If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over. ¹⁹ I will break down your stubborn pride and make the sky above you like iron and the ground beneath you like bronze. ²⁰ Your strength will be spent in vain, because your soil will not yield its crops, nor will the trees of your land yield their fruit.

²¹ “‘If you remain hostile toward me and refuse to listen to me, I will multiply your afflictions seven times over, as your sins deserve. ²² I will send wild animals against you, and they will rob you of your children, destroy your cattle and make you so few in number that your roads will be deserted.

²³ “‘If in spite of these things you do not accept my correction but continue to be hostile toward me, ²⁴ I myself will be hostile toward you and will afflict you for your sins seven times over. ²⁵ And I will bring the sword on you to avenge the breaking of the covenant. When you withdraw into your cities, I will send a plague among you, and you will be given into enemy hands. ²⁶ When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will be able to bake your bread in one oven, and they will dole out the bread by weight. You will eat, but you will not be satisfied.

²⁷ “‘If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, ²⁸ then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. ²⁹ You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. ³⁰ I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you. ³¹ I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will take no delight in the pleasing aroma of your offerings. ³² I myself will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who live there will be appalled. ³³ I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins. ³⁴ Then the land will enjoy its sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. ³⁵ All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it.

³⁶ “‘As for those of you who are left, I will make their hearts so fearful in the lands of their enemies that the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. They will run as though fleeing from the sword, and they will fall, even though no one is pursuing them. ³⁷ They will stumble over one another as though fleeing from the sword, even though no one is pursuing them. So you will not be able to stand before your enemies. ³⁸ You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you. ³⁹ Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their ancestors’ sins they will waste away.

⁴⁰ “‘But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors—their unfaithfulness and their hostility toward me, ⁴¹ which made me hostile toward them so that I sent them into the land of their enemies—then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, ⁴² I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. ⁴³ For the land will be deserted by them and will enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them. They will pay for their sins because they rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees. ⁴⁴ Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I am the Lord their God. ⁴⁵ But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the Lord.’”

⁴⁶ These are the decrees, the laws and the regulations that the Lord established at Mount Sinai between himself and the Israelites through Moses.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

The presence of the Lord was the greatest blessing promised, because every other blessing depends on it. No other nation had God “walking among them”! 

To worship anyone or anything other than God led to the murder of their own children when they turned from God to the old idols of their past that demanded the sacrifice of their own flesh and blood to appease the gods!  We say we would never do that. But consider all the things in our lives that we crave that become our idols.  Without God, we are easy prey for the Enemy. Out from under God’s protection, we can fall for lives of abusive, self-destructive behaviors lived out in front of our children who are “sacrificed” to lack of care by us. 

When we lose the sense of the Lord’s presence and the privilege it is to serve Him, then we begin to despise His Word and disobey His commandments.  God doesn’t understand what I am going through, we think, as we suffer needlessly.  But there’s good news!  All have sinned but all can be forgiven by Jesus who died to redeem us from all sin and make us right with God!  God may punish His people, but He will never reject them or cast them away—read Romans 11 for proof! In fact, one reason for His chastening and discipline is to bring His erring people back into His arms of love, where He can enjoy them and bless them once again! Hebrews 12:1–13.

So, we learn there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that we have done that God will not forgive. God is not a rejecting God but a relational God! God wants us to love Him back!  Every passage we read from Genesis to Revelation shouts this truth about God!

It is not God’s desire that we perish because of our sins but that we live with Him forever with His help to guide us to all the is good and best for us.  God made a Way for us to come back to Him—Jesus!  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:16-17

Since the Word never changes and God’s character never changes, we have every encouragement to come to Him and make a new beginning. 

“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way…”

Lord,

Cleanse our hearts, renew our minds, refresh our souls, and restore the joy of your salvation at work in our hearts. To you be the glory!

In Jesus Name, Amen