Saturday
But if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands, and if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and drain away your life. You will plant seed in vain, because your enemies will eat it. 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.
If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over. I will break down your stubborn pride and make the sky above you like iron and the ground beneath you like bronze. Your strength will be spent in vain, because your soil will not yield its crops, nor will the trees of the land yield their fruit.
(Leviticus 26:14-20, NIV)
Last week we read the earlier verses in this twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus and saw God’s promised blessings on his people, blessings promised to them as rewards for their obedience. Much less familiar are today’s verses, which clearly spell out what will happen to the twelve Hebrew tribes if they disobey God’s laws. Disobedience, which results from sin in the human heart, leads to great devastation and pain. Fear, illness, hard labor, even defeat in battle, are all identified as the results of sin.
The Lord lays down laws for creating a just, peaceful society, but he also warns of the consequences of not following his regulations. The same theme is graphically discussed by the Apostle Paul in Romans 1-2. Paul describes how the Lord gives wicked people over to their desires, which results in “sexual impurity” and “shameful lusts.” “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the creator” (Romans 1:25). Paul continues: “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are faithless, heartless, ruthless” (vv. 29-31).
What a pathetic, but accurate, picture of the human condition! We worship what we create rather than the Creator. We let ourselves be driven by our own desires. The sin in our hearts is the cause of it all.
Yet, praise be to God, that is not the end of the story. As the Apostle James boldly declares, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (4:7). Indeed, the Lord can purify our hearts and lift us up.
Prayer
Our Father, our hearts are full of the pain we see around us, the violence, the hatred, the brokenness. Save us from our sin. Purify our hearts through the blood of your son, our Savior. Amen.