Schoolmaster to Christ
LEVITICUS CHAPTER 26
Schoolmaster to Christ
LEVITICUS CHAPTER 26
Scripture Reading: Leviticus 26 (KJV)
This chapter requires little in the way of exposition. It contains a solemn and affecting record of the blessings of obedience on one hand, and the terrible consequences of disobedience on the other. Had Israel walked in obedience, they would have been invincible.
"I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land. And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. and five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight: and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. For I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, and establish my covenant with you and ye shall eat old store, and bring forth the old because of the new. And I will set my tabernacle among you: and my soul shall not abhor yon. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and ye shall be my people. I am the Lord your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondsmen; and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you go upright" (vv. 6-13).
The presence of God should have been their shield and buckler. No weapon formed against them could prosper. But, the divine presence was to be enjoyed only by an obedient people. Jehovah's presence could not sanction disobedience or wickedness. The uncircumcised nations around might depend on their prowess and military resources. Israel had only the arm of Jehovah to depend on, but that arm could never be stretched forth to shield unholiness or disobedience. Their strength was to walk with God in a spirit of dependence and obedience. As long as they walked with God, there was a wall of fire around them that protected them from every enemy and every evil.
But Israel completely failed. Notwithstanding the solemn and appalling picture placed before their eyes in verses 14-33 of this chapter, they forsook the Lord and served other gods. As a result, they brought on themselves the sore judgments threatened in this section, the bare record of which is sufficient to make the ears tingle. They suffered under the heavy weight of these judgments and are examples of Jehovah's inflexible truth and justice. To all nations of the earth they are an impressive lesson on the subject of God's moral government – a lesson that would be profitable for all nations to deeply study; a lesson for our own hearts to ponder.
We are prone to confound two things that are clearly distinguished in the Word – God's government and God's grace. Various evils result from this confusion. It is sure to lead to an enfeebled sense of the dignity and solemnity of government, and of the purity, fullness, and elevation of grace. It is true that in government God reserves to Himself the sovereign right to act in patience, long-suffering, and mercy; but the exercise of these attributes in connection with His throne of government, must never be confounded with the unconditional actions of pure and absolute grace.
The chapter before us is a record of God’s divine government, and yet, in it we find such clauses as the following: "If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me; and that also they have walked contrary unto me, and that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity: then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land. The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her Sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them; and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because they despised my judgements, and because their soul abhorred my statutes. And yet, for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am the Lord their God. But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be their God: I am the Lord" (vv. 40-45).
Here, in long-suffering mercy, we find God in government meeting the earliest and faintest breathings of a broken and penitent spirit. The history of the judges and kings presents many instances of exercising this blessed attribute of God's government. Again and again, the soul of Jehovah was grieved for Israel (Judges 10:16), and He sent them one deliverer after another until there remained no hope, and the righteous claims of His throne demanded their expulsion from a land they were wholly incompetent of keeping.
All this is government. But, thinking of the promised land of Canaan as a type of the promised life eternal, the Israel of God, i.e., His children (true believers), will be brought into possession of the spiritual land of Canaan on the ground of unqualified and unchangeable grace – grace exercised in divine righteousness through the blood of the cross. It will not be by works of law; or by institutions of an evanescent economy, but by grace that "reigns through righteousness, by Jesus Christ our Lord." Praise God, we will never again be driven away – no enemy will ever molest us. We will forever enjoy undisturbed repose behind the shield of Jehovah's favor. Our tenure of this Promised Land will be according to the eternal stability of God's grace, and the efficacy of the blood of the everlasting covenant. "They shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation."
May the Spirit of God lead us into more enlarged apprehensions of God’s truth, endowing us with a greater capacity to try the things that differ, and rightly divide the Word of Truth.
