Year 7, Day 115: Leviticus 26

Theological Commentary: Click Here

I love the formulaic approach to chapters like Leviticus 26.  First of all, notice how the list of woes far outweighs the list of blessings.  God is sending a clear message: it is far worse without God than with God.

Second, look at what God promises.  If we walk in His ways, things will go well for us.  The question that I am left to ponder is whether things will go well for us because God will supernaturally force it or if they go well because God’s ways are designed for our wellbeing in the first place.  Certainly the first choice is possible.  The truth in the second choice is undeniable, however.  god’s ways are designed for not just our benefit but for the establishment of a peaceable culture.  When we live according to God’s ways, things will go well because we will treat each other with grace, love, and mercy.

This offers us time to look at the flip-side of this discussion.  When we abandon God and He walks against us, will things go poorly for us because He will supernaturally stack the cards against us or because our self-centered choices will destroy the culture around us?  Again, we cannot deny the possibility of the first choice; God is supremely powerful.  The second choice has much possibility within it as well.  When we abandon the life of God and seek instead the passions of our own hearts, we will break relationships and fragment the culture around us.  It is only natural.  Every culture that has ever existed on the face of the earth has eventually fallen and broken because of its own inner self-centered choices.  This isn’t so much as a prophetic threat as it is a warning against our own nature.

However, we should not forget where this passage ends.  No matter how far we’ve fallen, no matter to whom or to what we’ve enslaved ourselves, no matter the ways that we’ve rejected God we are not too far from His grace.  If we turn and repent, He will embrace us and allow us to return to Him and His ways.  There is always a way back.  That is the grandness of God’s grace.

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