Either–Or

In verses 3-13 God gave a list of all the blessings He would pour out on His people. In verse 3 He introduced the list of blessings with the word “if.” God promised to bless His people, “If you follow My statutes and faithfully observe My commands.” God was promising to bless the faithfulness of His people. The blessings God promised were prosperity, protection, and His presence. God promised rain that would result in abundant harvest, He promised plenty to eat, and He promised no threats from wild beasts or invading enemies.

In Leviticus 27 God gave further laws to which His people were to be faithful. The central theme of chapter 27 is making vows to the Lord. People often vowed to give things to God. The book of 1 Samuel says that Hannah, Samuel’s mother, vowed to give Samuel to God. After Samuel was born, Hannah gave him to serve at the sanctuary at Shiloh. Usually plenty of priests and Levites were available to serve at the tabernacle, so instead of giving a person or animal to serve at the tabernacle, most people gave a monetary offering to represent the person. Leviticus 27 specifies how much God’s people were to give. God said to give varying amounts for men, women, and animals, not based on the intrinsic worth of men or women, but based on the amount of work they would be expected to do at the tabernacle. So chapter 27 has more laws God expected His people to obey, and in chapter 26 God said that when they obeyed, He would bless them with prosperity, protection, and His presence.

Unfortunately, some “health and wealth” preachers apply passages like Leviticus 26 by saying that when we are faithful, God will always make us financially prosperous. Instead, we should apply such promises in a way that is consistent with God’s entire revelation in the Bible. First, God made these promises to Israel as a whole, not to individuals. If His people were faithful to Him in the land, He would bless the land of Israel. In the last section we saw that in Leviticus 25 God spoke about individuals in Israel becoming poor and having to sell their possessions to be able to purchase food. God was not promising personal wealth; He was promising national blessing for God’s old covenant people of Israel based on national faithfulness.

Second, on the other hand, we should remember that throughout God’s Word He says that He will take care of His people. Philippians 4:19 says, “My God will supply all your needs.” Jesus said, “I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance” (John 10:10). Jesus also said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you” (Matt 6:33). God does bless our faithfulness, just not in the way the prosperity preachers claim. In some places in the world faithfulness to Jesus results in persecution, not prosperity. When some Muslim people leave Islam to follow Jesus, their families disown them and sometimes physically assault or kill them. Does God take care of them? He takes care of them for eternity! He blesses our faithfulness forever in heaven.

Third, God promised His people His presence. In Leviticus 26:11 He said, “I will place My residence among you.” God has also come to us in Jesus. John 1:14 says that Jesus “became flesh and took up residence among us.” In verse 12 of Leviticus 26 God said, “I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be My people.” When the German theologian Karl Barth preached on this passage, he said, “Just as the milkman, postman or meter inspector goes up and down our streets among our houses so too God . . . strolls around in our midst . . . saying: ‘I want to be your Good’” (cited in Elliott, Engaging Leviticus, 299). God walks right where we are, and He calls us into a relationship. The promise of His presence with His people is repeated in the New Testament. In Hebrews 13:5 God says to His people, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Jesus said, “I am with you always” (Matt 28:20). Having God with us is the jackpot! Why do prosperity preachers think they have to promise that if we come to Jesus we will get more stuff? We get God ! Getting Him is winning the lottery, and we get Him forever. God blesses our faithfulness in many ways, best of all with Himself.

God Judges Our Unfaithfulness

In Leviticus 26:14-39 God described for His people what would happen to them if they were unfaithful to Him, and it is a “comprehensive catalog of calamities” (Gane, Leviticus, Numbers, 452). The calamities start with disease and enemy invasion (v. 16). In verse 18 God says in effect that if that dose of medicine did not cure them of their unfaithfulness and they continued to break His covenant, then their harvest would fail. If they still continued to be unfaithful, wild beasts would attack them and their children (v. 22). The cycle of God’s dealings with His people includes the people’s sin, then God’s judgment, then another opportunity to turn to God. In these verses God repeated that cycle of judgment five times. He was stating that He would give His people opportunity after opportunity to turn from their sin, but if they continued to be unfaithful, more judgment would come. God’s judgment would grow more and more severe, and the fifth cycle was the worst. Their cities would be besieged by foreign armies until they ran out of food and resorted to cannibalism, their cities would be destroyed, and they would be carried into exile. In verse 33 God said, “I will scatter you among the nations.”

People who know the history of Israel recorded in the Old Testament can get an eerie feeling when reading these verses. They know all the discipline God promised came to pass (cf. Neh 9, which summarizes Israel’s history of unfaithfulness, also in five cycles). God called His people to faithfulness, but His people turned away from Him instead. As a result, they experienced hardship as God’s judgment. God gave them an opportunity to turn to Him, but they were unfaithful again. He gave them another opportunity to repent, but they rebelled repeatedly. Finally He sent them into exile.

God’s judgment of sin is not a popular subject today, but if we reject the idea of God’s judgment we have to reject the whole Bible because God’s judgment is on virtually every page. Jesus talked about “eternal punishment” (Matt 25:46), and the book of Revelation describes that punishment in vivid detail. When God promised His people that He would judge their sin, and when He kept His promise and judged them, He was acting in accord with His character. He is a just God, and only someone who is unjust would allow people to commit crimes and acquit them indefinitely. God’s wrath against sin arises from His goodness and holiness.

When followers of Jesus encounter people who have turned their backs on God, we should talk to them about His judgment of sin. We should want all people to know the truth of God’s judgment so they can put their faith in Jesus and escape His judgment. Some people think preachers should not try to scare people with hell. Hell should scare people. Eternal punishment in hell is real; why would anyone in his right mind not be afraid of it? However, we should also tell people they are not in hell yet, so they still have time to put their faith in Jesus.

Followers of Jesus also should remember God’s judgment daily. We should not make the mistake of thinking we will escape God’s judgment of our sin. When we know Jesus as Lord, we will be in heaven. God gives us eternal life by His grace through our faith in Jesus (Eph 2:8-9). Nevertheless, God says we will stand before Him and He will judge us according to our works. For example, Paul wrote to followers of Jesus in Corinth, “We must all appear before the tribunal of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or worthless” (2 Cor 5:10; see also Rom 14:10-12; 1 Cor 3:12-15).

God Invites Us to Return to Him

In Leviticus 26 God called His people to faithfulness. He said that if they were faithful He would bless them, but if they were unfaithful He would judge them. Over and over again they were unfaithful, so God judged them with increasing severity until finally He threw them out of the promised land and scattered them among the nations. At that point, it appears that the people of Israel have reached their end. However, just when it seems that Israel is shut out, God opens a door. Just when we expect the curtain to fall, God says His mercy is not finished. In verse 40 He says, “But if they will confess their sin”; verses 41-42, “if their uncircumcised hearts will be humbled, and if they will pay the penalty for their sin, then I will remember My covenant with Jacob”; and verse 44, “I will not reject or abhor them so as to destroy them and break My covenant with them, since I am Yahweh their God.”

Amazingly, after all the ways Israel had broken God’s covenant and rebelled against Him, God still offered His people another opportunity to come to Him. He said He would receive them, not reject them, even after they had abandoned His plan repeatedly and even after they were scattered among the nations. Why?

God Invites Us because of His Grace

God continued to invite His people to Himself because of His grace, and God’s grace reached further than Israel. God’s plan has always been to bless the nations through the descendants of Abraham. God’s plan was for Israel to relate to God in such a way that all the nations could see what it means to walk with God. Then the nations would be attracted to worship God too. When God first called Abraham, God promised him, “All the peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen 12:3). Blessing “all the peoples on earth” has always been God’s plan. Later in Israel’s history, God said to Israel, “I will also make you a light for the nations, to be My salvation to the ends of the earth” (Isa 49:6). God’s plan was to use Israel to reach the world—to show the world who He is and what a relationship with Him is like. God continues to invite people around the world to a relationship with Himself because of His grace.

God’s Grace Is Expressed Perfectly in Jesus

When Israel was unfaithful to God’s covenant and disobeyed God’s law, they experienced the curses described in Leviticus 26. They experienced God’s judgment for their sin. We too have disobeyed God’s law. We have sinned. We too are under the curse of the law and deserve God’s judgment. Galatians 3:10 says, “Everyone who does not continue doing everything written in the book of the law is cursed.” We are cursed because of our disobedience.

A common question asked today ask is, How could a loving God possibly send people to hell? People ask that because they do not know God’s perfect holiness and His righteous justice according to His holy law. They do not know that God has laid down the eternal and immutable fact that sin leads to death. God has built that fact into the structure of the universe. God is perfectly holy and cannot abide where there is sin, and sin leads to death. So the question of the Bible is not How could a loving God possibly send people to hell? but How could the holy God who always judges sin possibly allow guilty sinners in heaven?

Everyone who does not continue doing everything written in the book of the law is cursed. (Gal 3:10)

Praise God, Galatians 3 doesn’t end at that point! Paul went on to write,

Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written: Everyone who is hung on a tree is cursed. The purpose was that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles. (vv. 13-14)

God always intended to bless the Gentiles through the descendants of Abraham, and Jesus is the descendant of Abraham through whom God blesses the Gentiles and blesses them for eternity. We are guilty sinners and deserve the wrath of God, but Jesus took our sin and its curse on Himself when He died in our place on the cross. When we put our faith in Jesus, He takes away our sin and its penalty. When we put our faith in Him, He redeems us from “the curse of the law,” from the judgment our sin deserves.

Reflect and Discuss