Leviticus 26:23-46 NKJV 23 ‘And if by these things you are not reformed by Me, but walk contrary to Me,
24 then I also will walk contrary to you, and I will punish you yet seven times for your sins.
25 And I will bring a sword against you that will execute the vengeance of the covenant;
when you are gathered together within your cities I will send pestilence among you;
and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.
26 When I have cut off your supply of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall bring back your bread by weight, and you shall eat and not be satisfied.
27 ‘And after all this, if you do not obey Me, but walk contrary to Me,
28 then I also will walk contrary to you in fury;
and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins.
29 You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.
30 I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars, and cast your carcasses on the lifeless forms of your idols;
and My soul shall abhor you.
31 I will lay your cities waste and bring your sanctuaries to desolation, and I will not smell the fragrance of your sweet aromas.
32 I will bring the land to desolation, and your enemies who dwell in it shall be astonished at it.
33 I will scatter you among the nations and draw out a sword after you;
your land shall be desolate and your cities waste.
34 Then the land shall enjoy its sabbaths as long as it lies desolate and you are in your enemies’ land;
then the land shall rest and enjoy its sabbaths.
35 As long as it lies desolate it shall rest—
for the time it did not rest on your sabbaths when you dwelt in it.
36 ‘And as for those of you who are left, I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies;
the sound of a shaken leaf shall cause them to flee;
they shall flee as though fleeing from a sword, and they shall fall when no one pursues.
37 They shall stumble over one another, as it were before a sword, when no one pursues;
and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies.
38 You shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
39 And those of you who are left shall waste away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands;
also in their fathers’ iniquities, which are with them, they shall waste away.
40 ‘But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, with their unfaithfulness in which they were unfaithful to Me, and that they also have walked contrary to Me,
41 and that I also have walked contrary to them and have brought them into the land of their enemies;
if their uncircumcised hearts are humbled, and they accept their guilt—
42 then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham I will remember;
I will remember the land.
43 The land also shall be left empty by them, and will enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them;
they will accept their guilt, because they despised My judgments and because their soul abhorred My statutes.
44 Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, nor shall I abhor them, to utterly destroy them and break My covenant with them;
for I am the Lord their God.
45 But for their sake I will remember the covenant of their ancestors, 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.’ ”
46 These are the statutes and judgments and laws which the Lord made between Himself and the children of Israel on Mount Sinai by the hand of Moses.
Throughout the history of the Old Testament, and here again in Leviticus 26, we read of God’s warnings to His people not to disobey lest terrible things befall them. As was mentioned in yesterday’s devotion, God’s discipline and threat are a demonstration of His love. He does not want His people to disobey. He knows what is best for them and it’s simply to their overwhelming benefit that they obey and not rebel.
Here God states clearly that He will walk contrary to His people if they walk contrary to them. If God walks against you, you cannot be saved, and you will suffer hardship, loss, pain, suffering, and quite possibly eternal damnation unless you repent and come back to God’s Word and ways.
But no matter how disobedient and rebellious God’s people were, their sins would not frustrate God’s gracious will for them and their land. Like a loving father, God disciplined his people to bring them back to the right worship of Him. But if they did not heed His acts of discipline, He turned against them in His wrath. His aim in all this was to humble their proud hearts, so that they would confess their sins and accept their punishment.
You, dear saint, are sinful by nature, stubborn, hard-headed, and hard-hearted. God’s Law is meant to bring you to repentance so that you do not continue in sin. Luther was right in 1517 in his first of the 95 Theses: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, said repent, He willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.” Repentance keeps you right with God; it admits that God is right, and you are wrong. Repent and receive God’s forgiveness through Holy Absolution and the Supper, those things through which God delivers His grace, forgiveness, and strength to you.
Let us pray: Dear God, thank You for sending Jesus to pay for my sins on the cross. Help me always to trust You and Your Word and not myself, and bring me at last to Your eternal Banquet in heaven, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.