Leviticus 26:27-46 - Statutes and Judgments

Leviticus 26:27-46

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.

The statutes and judgments which the LORD God made with the people of His covenant began here with the consequences of disobedience and then contrasted those who confess and repent from their sins and turn to follow Him according to His Word.  His stated promise was to walk contrary to their contrary lives lived in opposition and rebellion against Him with even stronger opposition to them for their continued sin by destroying their cities and high places of idolatry where they worshipped dead gods of wood and stone in place of the living and Almighty in heaven above ruling (Psalm 103:19) over them.  He even went so far as to say He would throw their dead bodies on their idol altars to burn with them in destruction by the hands of their adversaries, reminding us of the lake of fire to come in the final judgment on those rejecting Him and His gospel of forgiveness and grace as a result of confession and repentance by faith.  Bit the hope is seen in the promise to forgive and restore if they would confess their sins and unfaithfulness to Him.  If they admitted that they were walking contrary to Him and His commandments and accept their guilt and consequences defined by God in humility without defending themselves, then He would restore and honor the conditional covenant of works made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob which they inherited.  We likewise come through repentance and confession by the conviction of our own sin and receive forgiveness in God’s Son as we face our rebellion against Him and our guilt incurred.  Then we also find ourselves in a new covenant of grace which we cannot earn and which no sin can deny us our salvation in His work of keeping the covenant of the Law perfectly in our stead as we cannot (James 2:10) to deliver us (Galatians 3:24) from its impossible requirements (Romans 3:23, 6:23) and our just judgment.  Like Israel then, we see the foreshadowing of grace in the gospel as they are promised not to be cast away as Je remembered and honored the covenant which He made with them and their forefathers through the faith (Romans 4:13, 16, Galatians 3:9, 14) of Abraham.  These are the statutes and judgments and laws of the LORD that God made with His chosen people and communicated in writing through Moses to them.  We now have the completed book of all the words of God given through the prophets and apostles that contain the fulfillment of all promises of grace through repentance and faith in His one and only own Son who died as a sacrifice of redemption and restoration for we the people chosen in Him before the foundation (Romans 8:28-29, Ephesians 1:4) of the world!  May we live accordingly in grace and the pursuit of holiness to conform to the image of Christ which we are destined for and not walk contrary to Him and His Word.