“If you obey me you will be blessed, and if you disobey me you will be cursed.” That sounds uncomfortably close to works righteousness, doesn’t it? Is God saying that we can earn our salvation by what we do?
Not if we take a closer look. At the end of all His promises of blessing, in Leviticus 26:13 God reminds His people that He has already saved them from slavery in Egypt. And we know that God brought the people out of Egypt in spite of their lack of faith in Him, and regardless of their continued rebellion against Him.
In the same way, at the end of all the promises of cursing, in Leviticus 26:44 God insists that the unfaithfulness of His people will not cause Him to break His covenant with them. And why not? “I am the Lord their God.”
In short, God is the One Who made a covenant with His people. God saved them in spite of themselves, and He made them His own. They were in a covenant relationship with Him whatever they did, and whether they liked it or not. The only question was what kind of a covenant relationship they would have – would it be a good one or a bad one?
And that’s where the blessings and curses come in. For if God’s people obeyed Him, they were promised all sorts of material blessings – peace, prosperity and lots of children. But if they disobeyed, God said He would send all sorts of curses on them to discipline them (Leviticus 26:18, 23, 28). And the idea of discipline helps us to understand what’s really going on, doesn’t it? After all, parents don’t disown their children when they misbehave – instead, they discipline their children so that they will do what is right.
Just so, if our obedience doesn’t make us God’s children, our disobedience doesn’t remove us from His covenant family either. Like any loving Father, God is determined to do whatever it takes to draw us closer to Him. So, He only gives us blessings when they’ll cause us to respond to Him with praise and thanksgiving. But if we are inclined to give credit for those blessings to anyone or anything else, if those blessings would thus draw us farther away from God, why should we expect Him to keep on giving us good things in spite of our sin? Thank God that He loves us too much to be an enabler of our rebellious behavior!
Leviticus 26:3-20 (NASB)
3 ‘If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments so as to carry them out,
4 then I shall give you rains in their season, so that the land will yield its produce and the trees of the field will bear their fruit.
5 ‘Indeed, your threshing will last for you until grape gathering, and grape gathering will last until sowing time. You will thus eat your food to the full and live securely in your land.
6 ‘I shall also grant peace in the land, so that you may lie down with no one making you tremble. I shall also eliminate harmful beasts from the land, and no sword will pass through your land.
7 ‘But you will chase your enemies, and they will fall before you by the sword;
8 five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall before you by the sword.
9 ‘So I will turn toward you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will confirm My covenant with you.
10 ‘And you will eat the old supply and clear out the old because of the new.
11 ‘Moreover, I will make My dwelling among you, and My soul will not reject you.
12 ‘I will also walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people.
13 ‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you should not be their slaves, and I broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.
14 ‘But if you do not obey Me and do not carry out all these commandments,
15 if, instead, you reject My statutes, and if your soul abhors My ordinances so as not to carry out all My commandments, and so break My covenant,
16 I, in turn, will do this to you: I will appoint over you a sudden terror, consumption and fever that shall waste away the eyes and cause the soul to pine away; also, you shall sow your seed uselessly, for your enemies shall eat it up.
17 ‘And I will set My face against you so that you shall be struck down before your enemies; and those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when no one is pursuing you.
18 ‘If also after these things, you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.
19 ‘And I will also break down your pride of power; I will also make your sky like iron and your earth like bronze.
20 ‘And your strength shall be spent uselessly, for your land shall not yield its produce and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.
