God will always keep His promises.
Bible Study Ideas and Commentary for Leviticus 26
God offers some very simple if/then clauses in the law. If the Israelites obey, they will enjoy the closest thing to heaven on earth in their lifetimes. If they disobey, they will bring about hell on earth for generations. Neither of those are empty promises. Importantly, God lets them know that forgiveness will be available for when they inevitably disobey.
If you follow my statutes and faithfully observe my commands ... (26:3)
Getting Started: Things to Think About
Promises of “Utopia”.
(This topic is a work-in-progress. Maybe you’ll see something in here that you can use to get your group thinking.) Leaders throughout history have made unbelievable promises to their people—”vote for me/support me, and I will do X for you”. And people throughout history have fallen for those empty promises. In our passage this week, God makes even better promises than any made by a person (and He had proven to be able to keep them!), and yet the people turned their back on Him. Talk to your group about some of the promises people have fallen for, and then ask them why more people don’t take interest in God’s promises.
· Communism: “Peace, Land, and Bread”. Lenin conquered Russia by promising the commoners peace, land, and bread. Sounds good, right? What he didn’t tell them was he would use the peace to conquer all dissidents, reclaim the land for his government as soon as he had consolidated power, and that his price controls to make bread available would actually result in the starvation of the entire lower group.
· Islamic Jihad: “Dark-Eyed Virgins”. According to most Islamic scholars, their holy books encourage young men to violently spread Islam with the promises of keeping all spoils of their struggle, keeping the wives and daughters of the men they kill, getting a fast track to heavenly forgiveness, being promised beautiful heavenly gardens and beautiful dark-eyed virgins to enjoy them with. Nice promises? Here’s the insidious part: you have to die to find out they’re not true.
· Egypt: “You Are Welcome Here”. Another kind of broken promise is related to time. You remember that the Israelites were invited to stay in Egypt and live in peace and prosperity. But in time, a new pharaoh arose who forgot about those promises and enslaved the Israelites. That kind of a broken promise has happened all throughout history.
I recommend staying away from modern American politics if you try out this discussion topic. It’s a needless trap. Everybody makes campaign promises they can’t keep. Anyway, here’s the point that you would make: people want to believe promises like that. (Winning the lottery will change your life. / Wearing designer clothing will make you cool. / This investment will make you rich quick.) And yet when God makes a promise, people doubt. Why is that?
Watch Out for the Fine Print.
I’m sure you have group members who can tell stories about the fine print in a contract. It shows up when your cable bill increases, etc. It also shows up in catastrophic ways (just google “breach of contract”). Here’s where I would go with this idea: God offered a “great deal” to the Israelites, and He didn’t include any fine print—just really clear consequences and benefits.
When we watch the news long enough, we see examples of people who lost big on contracts because they violated some part of it or another, big or small. When someone makes an obvious error, we get upset. An example of that for me is Johnny Manziel, the quarterback from Texas A&M. He was given a huge NFL contract and the promise of more—all he had to do was control his party lifestyle. He couldn’t do it. He threw it all away because he had to party. There are lots of examples like that. Most of us know someone personally who lost a good job because he/she couldn’t follow the rules. Couldn’t show up on time. Couldn’t keep from fibbing or slandering. Couldn’t get the company dress code right. Couldn’t “stay off the weed” or whatever. Maddening.
Now . . . Take every example you know and multiply it by infinity. That’s where the Israelites were. We get mad when someone loses a good job because they couldn’t stop drinking. Well, the Israelites gave up heaven on earth only because they couldn’t put God first! And all of God’s rules that He gave them? They were in their best interest in the first place! Doubly maddening!
My transition into the lesson from this discussion starter would be something like, “And the ‘deal’ God has given Christians is even better than the one with the Jews! As we read about God’s covenant with the Jews, let’s be so grateful for Jesus. And let’s never take one New Covenant for granted. (And while you’re thinking about it, always remember to read the fine print before you sign something.)”
This Week's Big Idea: The Covenants
We generally think of 5 main covenants: with Adam, with Noah, with Abraham, with Israel, and with David (and then the “New Covenant” with Jesus). But here are two things to remember: (1) God has one plan for humanity, so we should think of these covenants as different aspects of that one plan. (2) God isn’t going to reveal His entire plan at once, so we should see these covenants as building on one another.
We always start with Adam because everything else ties back to Adam’s failure to keep this first covenant. This is where we most clearly realize that God works with representatives of humanity (either individuals or families/nations). This is how we know that Jesus can represent all of humanity in fulfilling the terms of the covenant. The early covenants also show us the humans have a range of responsibilities in this world—not just spiritual. When we think of the “Old Covenant” that we read about in our passage this week, we need to think of it in terms of Abraham; Israel is God’s representative to the world, chosen to bless all peoples. Though today Christians try to understand the old laws in terms of moral/ceremonial/civil laws (so we know what we still need to observe today), we should think of the Old Covenant as one “complete package”. The laws fit together into an intricate web that only makes sense in terms of the rest. Most importantly, we must realize that the purpose of this covenant was to point people to their tendency toward sin, their need for forgiveness, and God’s willingness to provide a solution to their inability to keep this covenant (i.e. Jesus). Your group will inevitably ask, “What are we supposed to do with these verses?” Well, it all points to Jesus; see the back page for more.
Part 1: Preparing to Sacrifice (26:3-13)
“If you follow my statutes and faithfully observe my commands, I will give you rain at the right time, and the land will yield its produce, and the trees of the field will bear their fruit. . . . I will give peace to the land, and you will lie down with nothing to frighten you. I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword will pass through your land. . . . I will turn to you, make you fruitful and multiply you, and confirm my covenant with you. . . . I will place my residence among you, and I will not reject you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, so that you would no longer be their slaves. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to live in freedom.”
When you read these verses, I could come back with this question: “Do we have covenants in our families?” My guess is that some of your members will say “no” because they’re thinking about these big formal covenants. But the truth is that every relationship is governed by a covenant, though sometimes informal. We make vows in our weddings; that might be a good place to start this discussion. What are those vows? What are the consequences of breaking them?
How about “rules” for your children? That would be a “living covenant”. Parents seem to get in the most trouble when they aren’t consistent in enforcing their rules, in punishing transgressions, or in making the rules clear in the first place. (Point out that God does not make such errors.) How about rules for being a citizen of the United States? Do we have rules to live here? Of course! We pay people to write new laws, to interpret those laws, and to enforce them.
Ask these two questions: would things be better in your family if the parents always wrote “good” rules and everybody followed them? Have them try to envision what their family would be like. And second, what would things be like in our country if we only had “necessary” laws and everybody followed them? Can you imagine all of the money being wasted in litigation, in remediation, in propaganda being put in the economy? People making safer products, being responsible with the environment, not taking advantage of others (exacerbating racism/sexism/classism)? Yes, our country would be a much better place to live in those conditions. So, how much of a stretch is it for God to tell His people that if they just follow His rules (which were right for that moment in history), that things will go very well for them? (And of course, He has the added power of climate control.)
Some things to point out when you go through these verses: (1) The verbs used here are all related to lifestyle. This covenant is not fundamentally about following certain rules; it’s about being a certain kind of person. (2) All of these promises are about necessities (food, water, safety), and at no point did God say they wouldn’t have to work hard to achieve it. This covenant nowhere promises luxuries or laziness. (3) God does include some supernatural help, namely in controlling the wild animal population and increasing the crop yield. But the Israelites still have to live smart and work hard. (4) The key to every covenant is God’s presence. God will be their God and they will be His people. What a promise!
Aside: Prosperity Gospel?
There are a number of “Christian” preachers who teach that God’s will for all believers is financial wealth and physical well-being (“Word of Faith” “Health and Wealth”). All they need to receive these blessings is enough faith (and contributions to their ministry). Preachers of this mindset you might have heard of include Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, and Kenneth Copeland. Copeland once said, “I am a billionaire because that is the assignment that the Lord has given me.” Dollar once tweeted, “Jesus bled and died for us so that we can lay claim to the promise of financial prosperity.” Additionally, they teach the power of speech to claim the divine healing available through Jesus’ substitutionary atonement (huh?).
Those teachings are incredibly popular because they feed our human desires (remember what David just preached from 1 John 2). People want to hear things like, “If you obey God by doing such-and-such, God will make you rich” etc. In other words they don’t really want God, they want a divine ATM.
Well, you might say, isn’t that what this Old Covenant sounds exactly like? “If you obey Me, I will give you crops and herds and peace.” Yes, that is true. So, what’s the problem with the prosperity gospel? It sounds straight out of the Bible! No, no, NO! There are significant biblical errors with the prosperity gospel. Let me give you two big ones:
(1) Confusion of the covenants. Though the covenants build on one another, they are not exactly the same. God’s covenant with Adam applies to all people, as does His covenant with Noah. But the covenants with Abraham, Israel, and David are unique to those people. Jesus specifically told His followers that He was instituting a New Covenant with them (us). The terms of God’s covenant with the Jews does not apply to Christians (see the back page). So why do we care about them at all? Well, mainly to see how they point us to Jesus and explain the power of this New Covenant. The prosperity gospel teachers would have to teach us all to become perfect Jews for those benefits to apply at all (note that some try to use New Testament teachings to support their positions, but it’s an awful stretch). But that’s impossible for the next reason.
(2) No one can be perfect enough to earn those benefits to the covenant anyway. First of all, there is no more sacrificial system because the Temple has been destroyed, so that’s a big problem for keeping the old covenant. But most importantly, thinking that one could keep enough of the covenant to earn the right to those benefits betrays an heretical view of self and sin. The primary purpose of the old covenant was to demonstrate to the Jews their inability to get anything right and their need for constant substitution and intervention. To think that we somehow deserve major blessings from God is such a distorted view of self as to be incomprehensible. Jesus had to die because we can’t get life right on our own. So, to demand/expect material blessings from God for our good behavior is laughable. Yes, God gives such blessings as He sees it, but they are not for us to demand; they are only for us to be grateful.
In summary, Christians shouldn’t look into these verses for potential “profit”. Salvation is the greatest blessing of all.
Part 2: Warning (26:14-16)
“But if you do not obey me and observe all these commands—if you reject my statutes and despise my ordinances, and do not observe all my commands—and break my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will bring terror on you—wasting disease and fever that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away. You will sow your seed in vain because your enemies will eat it.”
Like I said, God doesn’t resort to fine print. These warnings are as clear as can be. See the sidebar for the technical differences between command/statute/ordinance. Then, camp out on the scary-sounding consequences. And they are pretty scary-sounding! God does not sugarcoat. (And why is that? Because our eternal souls are nothing to make light of!) This is a dramatic shift in tone. The word for “terror” refers to a sudden and unexpected threat. The word for “consumption” could refer to any number of diseases; some have said pulmonary tuberculosis, and some have said malarial fever. Other translation just use “destruction” to avoid having to identify the specific disease. Whatever it is, it’s serious. The word for “life” is also used for “soul”, which means that the effects could be physical (as in a literal diminishing eyesight) or psychological (as in an anxiety that exhausts the brain).
Does that sound excessive? Well, just think about consequences today. What happens when children disobey their parents, or the family relationship gets so toxic that someone runs away from home? Or a person loses a job or commits a crime? Or doesn’t care about school and so does poorly? People can pay the consequences of those actions for their entire life. (Talk about what it’s like to be hungry or exposed or untreated for an illness or unqualified for a job—it sounds just in line with the consequences God speaks of here.) The next few verses just keep ramping up the disobedience.
Aside: Statue/Ordinance/Command?
What’s the difference? You can think in terms of American law when trying to explain this—we say law, rule, code, regulation. Technically, there are differences, but most people use them interchangeably. The Hebrew word for “statute” often describes “customs” or social rituals. However, this word also is used when speaking of a single command as opposed to a group of commands. So, right. “Command” always refers to laws received from God, and is often used for the collective. “Ordinance” seems to have to do with the consequences for lawbreaking. On other words, not just following the rules but following the punishments (sentencing guidelines). There is a separate Hebrew word that we often translate “law”. It often seems to be associated with what we would consider “promises” (and thus proverbs as well). They all relate back to God’s rules for regulating His relationship with His people—just emphasizing different aspects of that.
Part 3: Return (26:40-45)
“But when they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers—their unfaithfulness that they practiced against me, and how they acted with hostility toward me, and I acted with hostility toward them and brought them into the land of their enemies—and when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob. I will also remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. For the land abandoned by them will make up for its Sabbaths by lying desolate without the people, while they make amends for their iniquity, because they rejected my ordinances and abhorred my statutes. Yet in spite of this, while they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject or abhor them so as to destroy them and break my covenant with them, since I am the Lord their God. For their sake I will remember the covenant with their fathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God; I am the Lord.”
BUT. What a great word in this context! How hard is it to get a second chance in a family, a community, a job, or our country? Depending on who you are and what you did, it can be nigh impossible (unfairly). But that is not the case with God! God always leaves the door open for our return. There are two terms in the criminal justice system: punitive and rehabilitative. Even God’s punitive punishments are rehabilitative in design. What is the most important thing a person can do when in sin? Repent and return. Why does God “turn up the heat” on a sinner? To get that person’s attention before it’s too late. As John said, God is always faithful to forgive when we come to Him in humble repentance. Why? Because God promised He would do so—in this very covenant—and God always keeps His promises.
It’s important to see that though God acted with “hostility” toward the people, God never let anger drive His actions (unlike how parents can or any person in authority). All of the consequences—and God already knew what kind of trouble the people would get into—would be carefully weighed out, intentionally allowed, and graciously controlled. Even while they are in the land of their enemies, God would be working out their redemption. He would be letting the land recover (which implies that God knew the people would ignore God’s Sabbath laws for letting the land remain fallow every seven years). He would be bringing the whole community to repentance together. And all of that would make their unique place as God’s people even stronger when they returned.
You want to bring everything back to one basic statement: God promises to bless those who are faithful to Him and discipline those who are not. Though this covenant is not in effect for Christians, we can still see in it God’s pattern of relating to sinful humanity. In other words, Christians can expect God to discipline us when we disobey Him. But God’s discipline is intended for our best good. We have complete assurance that when we realize our sin and return to Him in humble repentance, not only will God forgive us and restore our relationship with Him, but we may even learn how God used that time for the greater good of either ourselves or the people we care about. God can do all of that. Here’s your challenge for our post-Thanksgiving lesson: encourage your group to share with someone they know (1) a time when God forgave you for a sin, (2) something you’ve learned about God’s character through this lesson, and (3) why you’re so grateful for our Savior Jesus. Be real about yourself with your acquaintance, and that might pique their interest in our God.
Closing Thoughts: The New Covenant
What do the old covenants have to do with Christians? Truth be told, not much. One of the great misunderstandings of the Bible results in people trying to apply bits of the law the Christians, resulting in very strange theologies. Jesus Christ, as humankind’s representative, fulfilled the requirements of all of the covenants God previously made with the Jews. They are complete. Christians, therefore, are no longer bound to any of those covenants as covenants. We are free in Christ. But . . . We are not to use that freedom as a license to run from God. Rather, we study those covenants to see God’s plan for human behavior, for human society, for proper worship, and for God’s view of sinfulness. As a result, we find in those laws valuable guides for living. But, as Paul said, they are not absolute. They point us to Jesus. In Jesus we have the final say in Gods covenant with humanity. In the New Covenant, we simply acknowledge that Jesus has done the work.
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