SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON 13 - Lev. 26:3-16, 40-45 - SET FUTURE
INTRODUCTION: Last week, in Lev. 16:3-10, 29-30, we learned about the purpose and the significance of the Day of Atonement. It was one day of the year when the High Priest (Aaron) entered the Holy of Holies and made sacrifices that atoned for the sins of the entire nation of Israel. But before Aaron did any of this, we saw him very carefully prepare himself before entering into God's presence. As personal application, we learned that, as NT Christians, we should likewise be careful to prepare ourselves to enter God's presence. The lesson showed us that God is not primarily concerned with our outward actions but with the inward condition of our hearts, and because of this, we must always approach God with the correct understanding that He is holy and we are not. God wants a lot more from us than our time, money and talents; He wants everything deep inside of us! We also learned that the Israelites' Day of Atonement pointed forward to the atonement of Jesus Christ on the cross: Jesus' crucifixion was the definitive Day of Atonement. On the cross, Jesus fulfilled God's requirement for justice, with His love providing the atonement for sin. With the finished work of Christ, there is no more need for sacrifice-Christ made atonement once and for all.
We conclude our Leviticus study today and will start a new quarter next week in 1 & 2 Thessalonians. The final major section of Leviticus deals with God's requirements for holy living and is the longest section of the book (11 chapters). Today, in Lev. 26:3-16, 40-45, we will study the chapter on blessings and curses that would be conditioned upon the peoples' obedience or disobedience to God's commands.
Read Lev. 26:3-6 - IF YOU WALK IN MY STATUTES AND KEEP MY COMMANDMENTS.
3 If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments so as to carry them out, 4 then I shall give you rains in their season, so that the land will yield its produce and the trees of the field will bear their fruit. 5 Indeed, your threshing season will last for you until grape gathering, and grape gathering will last until sowing time. So you will eat your food to the full and live securely in your land. 6 I shall also grant peace in the land, so that you may lie down, with no one to make you afraid. I shall also eliminate harmful animals from the land, and no sword will pass through your land.
v. 3: "If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments so as to carry them out" - According to this and the verses that follow it, the promises of abundance are tied directly to Israel's obedience to the Word of God. While to "walk in" and "keep" doesn't necessarily imply absolute perfection, it does mean striving to live a purposeful, daily life according to God's statutes and commandments.
vv. 4-5: "then I shall give you rains in their season, so that the land will yield its produce and the trees of the field will bear their fruit. 5 Indeed, your threshing season will last for you until grape gathering, and grape gathering will last until sowing time. So you will eat your food to the full and live securely in your land." - The adverb "then" conditions these blessings-i.e., ideal growing and harvesting conditions, i.e., abundant provision-on obedience.
v. 6: "I shall also grant peace in the land, so that you may lie down, with no one to make you afraid. I shall also eliminate harmful animals from the land, and no sword will pass through your land." - God's promise of protection from "harmful animals" and "no sword" (i.e., human armies or outlaws) was a sign of His favor in return for the people's trust and obedience to His Word. In making these promises, God is pledging to help the people to overcome the curses caused by the Fall of Man (Gen. 3:17-10) and restore the harmony between man and beast (Gen. 2:20).
OBSERVATION: The big picture here is that God desired to reveal Himself to the world through Israel, either by making them so blessed that the world would know that only by the hand of God could they have been blessed in this manner, or, on the other hand, making them so cursed, that only God could have cursed them while still allowing them to survive. The choice was up to Israel.
Read Lev. 26:7-13 - I WILL WALK AMONG YOU AND BE YOUR GOD
7 Instead, you will chase your enemies, and they will fall before you by the sword; 8 five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand; and your enemies will fall before you by the sword. 9 So I will turn toward you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will confirm My covenant with you. 10 And you will eat the old supply, and clear out the old because of the new. 11 Moreover, I will make My dwelling among you, and My soul will not reject you. 12 I will also walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people. 13 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you would not be their slaves, and I broke your yoke and made you walk erect.
vv. 7-8: "Instead, you will chase your enemies, and they will fall before you by the sword; 8 five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand; and your enemies will fall before you by the sword." - Here, God promises that the Israelites will benefit from divine protection and be victorious over their enemies if they keep His commands. This is supernatural protection and the principle behind this blessing is remarkable: the ratio of five to one hundred is one man defeating twenty and one hundred to ten thousand is one man defeating one hundred. We're all familiar with Bible stories where God did in fact make this happen: Like the example where Gideon, with only 300 men, defeated a Midianite army of 135,000 in Judges 7 (that was one man defeating 450).
vv. 9-10: "So I will turn toward you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will confirm My covenant with you. 10 And you will eat the old supply, and clear out the old because of the new." - God not only promised to protect the Israelites from potential enemies, but would allow them to be "fruitful and multiply." The language God uses is reminiscent of the command given to Adam and Eve in Gen. 1:28, then again to Noah and his family in Gen. 9:7. This is both a blessing and a responsibility-to populate the earth with millions of more Israelites. Then verse 10 tells them that their harvests will be so bountiful that they will be pressed to eat-up their stored food in order to make room for storage of the new harvest. They will produce food faster than they can eat it.
vv. 11-12: "Moreover, I will make My dwelling among you, and My soul will not reject you. 12 I will also walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people." - All of the blessings described vv. 3-10 were visible reminders of God's presence among His people. To state it another way, when the people of Israel lived according to God's statutes and commandments, they would enjoy the special privileges and benefits that were the end result of being made the people of God. In this, they would distinctive, unlike any other people in this world.
v. 13: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you would not be their slaves, and I broke your yoke and made you walk erect" - Here, God reminds them how their special and privileged relationship with Him came to be. It wasn't something that they earned but something that God did out of His grace when His people cried out to Him (Ex. 3:7). All of God's blessings are symbolic of His grace and are representative of His divine character.
OBSERVATION: One of the realities that becomes clear through story of Israel-one that can be readily attested in our own lives as NT Christians-is that the people of God can't live according to God's laws perfectly. The seemingly endless cycle of God giving the law, the people responding to it, then disobeying it, then finally being brought to repentance, all attests to our need of a Savior. Do you see this reality? Well, all we can say it that praise be to God that Jesus Christ lived a perfect sinless life in accordance with God's laws. Amen? The good news of the gospel is that, in Christ, we receive the blessings He deserved because He took on the punishment for sin that we deserve. Therefore, the promise of vv. 11-12, above-"Moreover, I will make My dwelling among you, and My soul will not reject you. I will also walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people"-finds its ultimate meaning in the person of Jesus Christ and will be experienced at the end of the age (Rev. 21:1-17). In this lesson, God promised to sustain life and give peace to those who "walk in My statutes and keep My commandments" (v. 3). And His greatest promise was His presence (vv. 11-12). God offers a future and peace to those who follow Him out of obedient love, and thankfully, we find that peace in Christ and find the power we need for obedience in His Spirit. So, the question for you and me today is how does the future promised by God motivate us to pursue obedience and personal holiness in the here and now?
Read Lev. 26:14-16 - IF, INSTEAD, YOU REJECT MY STATUTES
14 'But if you do not obey Me and do not carry out all these commandments, 15 if, instead, you reject My statutes, and if your soul loathes My ordinances so as not to carry out all My commandments, but rather to break My covenant, 16 I, in turn, will do this to you: I will summon a sudden terror against you, consumption and fever that will make the eyes fail and the soul languish; also, you will sow your seed uselessly, for your enemies will eat it.
vv. 14-16: The opposite of blessing is cursing. God explicitly (yes?) warned the Israelites that if they disobeyed His commands, they would face His discipline. On a national level, it would be defeat in the face of enemies; on a personal level, it would include, disease, heartache, and economic tribulations. The OT historical books all attest to this cycle, ultimately resulting in a divided kingdom that became a vassal state of other nations-Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, and the Roman Empire. Even today in our own nation, we can see the downward cycle of disobedience and the curses that follow. Yes? In the same way, NT Christians should expect God's discipline when they choose (see that?) to disobey His commands. Persistent and willful disobedience to God ultimately results in eternal condemnation-hell. But thankfully, in Jesus Christ, sin does not have the last word while there is still time to repent and accept Him as Lord and Savior. The reality of the curse points to Jesus as our only hope. Amen? And it is because He became a curse for us (Gal. 3:13-14).
Read Lev. 26:40-45 - IF THEY CONFESS THEIR WRONGDOING
40 'But if they confess their wrongdoing and the wrongdoing of their forefathers, in their unfaithfulness which they committed against Me, and also in their acting with hostility against Me- 41 I also was acting with hostility against them, to bring them into the land of their enemies-or if their uncircumcised heart is humbled so that they then make amends for their wrongdoing, 42 then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and I will remember also My covenant with Isaac, and My covenant with Abraham as well, and I will remember the land. 43 For the land will be abandoned by them, and will restore its Sabbaths while it is made desolate without them. They, meanwhile, will be making amends for their wrongdoing, because they rejected My ordinances and their soul loathed My statutes.
vv. 40-43: God's rejection of Israel wasn't final; if the people confessed their sin and returned to Him in faith, He would restore them. The problem that Israel faced-one that we all face-is the condition of our hearts, our inner self. The term, "uncircumcised heart" in v. 41 tells us they were outwardly keeping the Law while they were inwardly (morally and spiritually) unfaithful. God desires obedience from the heart-that His people will be faithful inwardly. But this isn't something that we can manufacture by sheer human willpower, can we? No, we're imperfect. But as NT Christians, we've received the promise of Ezek. 35:26 that states, "I will give you a new heart and put a new Spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh."
Read Lev. 26:44-45 - I WILL NOT REJECT THEM
44 Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I so loathe them as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with them; for I am the LORD their God. 45 But I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, so that I might be their God. I am the LORD.'"
vv. 44-45: These last two verses tell us that even the worst of God's discipline wasn't intended as a final judgment but as a way of turning God's people back to Him. God is faithful even when His people are not, and ultimately, all of God's promises all the way back to those made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will ultimately find their fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ. In Christ, God provided a way for us to enter into the blessing of His perfect obedience (Gal. 3:8-14).
APPLICATION-Blessings and Curses Today:
PRAYER: God, our Father in heaven, we come before your throne this morning with thankful hearts, praising You for the love, mercy, and grace You constantly show toward us as individual Christian believers and as a Church. We thank You also for allowing us the freedom and opportunity to come together as a class to learn and apply the fundamental truths of Your holy Word to the way we live. I pray, Father, that like Moses, when we encounter all of the various trials and tribulations of life, that we will follow Moses' example and trust Your power and Your timing for the outcome. I pray, too, that you will guide all of our steps in the coming weeks and months as we follow the leading of Pastor Mike and become a church that truly reaches out and ministers to the community around us. And I ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ, our precious Lord and Redeemer, AMEN.
