LEVITICUS 26
Chapter 25 is a wonderful unfolding of grace which restores to the people of God’s election all that has been forfeited or unworthily surrendered. God had the first word with them, and He will have the last. But chapter 26 comes in also, and it sets before us God’s ways in government. It is a continual exercise to hold these two great principles of the divine ways in their full weight and power without allowing the one to enfeeble the other. We shall see that both combine to reach the same end. For God’s governmental ways issue in His people accepting the punishment of their iniquity, and confessing their unfaithfulness. Then He remembers His covenant and His land (verses 40 - 45). Both His grace and His government will result in His people enjoying all that His heart delights to give them, and being suitable to enjoy it.
It is a great thing to be brought consciously to God as revealed in grace in His beloved Son. God began with us in grace, and grace begun will end in glory. But He would have us to be kept in sobriety and godly fear as knowing also that we are the subjects of His government. God would have this ever to be a happy thought to us, because if we keep His commandments His government ensures that we shall be recompensed in the fullest way. See verses 3 - 13. It pays well, if we may be allowed to use such an expression, to walk in obedience and faithfulness. God has set “glory and honour and incorruptibility” before us in our Lord Jesus Christ, a living Man out of death; and if, “in patient continuance of good works”, we seek for those things He will render to us life eternal. There is “glory and honour and peace to every one that works good” (Romans 2: 6 - 11). “If, by the Spirit, ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Romans 8: 13). “Whatever a man shall sow, that also shall he reap ... he that sows to the Spirit, from the Spirit shall reap eternal life” (Galatians 6: 7, 8). This is the good news of the government of God. We are apt to think of the government of God as always operating against what is wrong, and not to think sufficiently of how it operates to bring in spiritual gain when we move according to the Spirit. It is our privilege to reach God’s end in a happy way, and to have continual prosperity because our course is such that God’s government is always in our favour. Part of the blessedness that we have come to is “God the judge of all”. He is taking account of every bit of response to His love, of desire to follow Christ, of purpose to walk in the Spirit, every manifestation of love to His people, every wish to contribute to their edification. He will in His government seal to us the fruit of every spiritual movement of this kind.
God is concerned most about the state of our hearts with reference to Him. Hebrews 12 tells us that He is “the Father of spirits”; He is concerned about our spirits. What He looked for in Israel was that they should have no idols, and that they should observe His sabbaths, and reverence His sanctuary (verses 1, 2). These things tested the people as to the place Jehovah had in their hearts, and they still test us individually and collectively. Is God the supreme Object to us, as revealed in Christ, or have we other objects which practically control us and displace Him? I would not like to impoverish my soul by falling under the power of an idol. Do we [p. 291] love to answer to the thoughts of God’s heart, and value the opportunity of being restful with Him? And do we reverence His sanctuary? God would have the whole divine system which was set forth in the tabernacle reverenced in our affections. If people go into a religious building they take off their hats; they reverence the material structure. But God would have us to reverence His sanctuary in a spiritual sense. The sanctuary is the whole order of things which takes character from the holiest, and from God dwelling there; it is “the abode of his holiness”.
There are infinitely great blessings which come in according to this chapter, on the line of God’s government. “Rain in the season thereof, and the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, etc”. There is peace, victory, God’s face is towards His people, He sets His habitation among them. “I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be to me a people”. This scripture is quoted in 2 Corinthians 6: 16 to induce the Corinthians to come out and be separate from the idolatrous and unbelieving. God loves to set His tabernacle among His people, and to dwell there restfully, but this demands holy and spiritual conditions. Then “I will walk among you”, indicates that divine movements are found among the people of God. The assembly is “the assembly of the living God”; it is the place where His movements and activities are known. He overrules and controls the affairs of nations in the world, but what we see there are the movements of men. It is only amongst His separate and obedient people that the movements of God are known; it is there He walks.
[p. 292] But if His people do not hearken to Him, or do His commandments, His government becomes adverse to them. See verses 14 - 39. There is a solemn contrast between the sabbatic sevens in chapter 25 and the four-times repeated “sevenfold” in chapter 26. Yet even in this we see the patience and persistence of God. He moves deliberately from one stage of corrective discipline to another until He reaches His end. There are five distinct stages of correction in these verses. He will have the last word in His government as well as in His grace, and a refusal to hearken on the part of His people only prolongs and intensifies His correction. All that He so faithfully forewarned Israel of in this chapter has come to pass. They have now perished among the nations, and the land of their enemies has eaten them up (verse 38). But He will yet reach the end of His ways in government with them. They will yet confess their iniquity, and their uncircumcised heart will be humbled, and Jehovah will remember His covenant with Jacob (verses 40 - 42). Jacob is put first here because in Jacob we see God’s disciplinary ways and their result. The book of Job is typical of how God will reach His end with His people Israel through prolonged and painful discipline. They will be brought in the end to abhor themselves, and to glory in the fact that they know God, and that His covenant is the security of all blessing for them.
If we “walk contrary” to God we shall find that His government is contrary to us, and the longer we persist in self-will the more severe will the operation of that government become. But we may be sure that God will overcome in a conflict between our wills and His; He will reach His end, though it may be [p. 293] through much suffering to us which might have been avoided. The sooner we submit, and humble our uncircumcised hearts, the better it will be for us. Confession, the acceptance of God’s ways in righteous government, and turning to Him, lead to recovery. God remembers the covenant, and can righteously bestow on a repentant and humbled people its wealth of blessing.
The spiritual famine in a great part of the christian profession today, the way the world has dominion, the superstition and infidelity which threaten to sweep away the last remnants of faith, so that Christendom is well-nigh ready to open its doors to the strong delusion and to utterly apostatise, are solemn evidences of how men have walked contrary to God in the christian dispensation, even as Israel did in hers, and of how they suffer now under His government. That government is going on, as yet, in view of repentance and recovery. Whenever and wherever an uncircumcised heart is humbled, and confession is made, there is nothing on God’s part to hinder a return to the original ground of all blessing. Christ is the Covenant, and He is the God-given Title to blessing. God never forgets Christ, and where there is self-judgment, and turning to Him, He delights to bless according to all that Christ is. He is available for every one in the christian profession today, even as He will be for Israel in the day when they will be brought under God’s government, and by His gracious working in them, to say, “Blessed is he that comes in the name of Jehovah”!