THROUGH THE BIBLE - Leviticu..

Welcome to Cornerstone Reformed Baptist Church. Thank you for using and sharing our resources. What you're about to hear is God's Word from one of our teaching elders. We trust that God's Word will inspire, instruct, and bless you. For further teachings or information on our ministry, please visit us on our website at cornerstonerbc.

com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. You shall not make idols for yourselves or erect an image or pillar, and you shall not set up a figure stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am the Lord your God. You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary.

I am the Lord. If you walk in my statues and observe my commandments and do them, then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your threshing shall last to the time of the great harvest, and the great harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land securely. I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid.

And I will remove harmful beasts from the land, and the sword shall not go through your land. And you shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before by the word. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand, and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. I will turn to you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and will confirm my covenant with you. You shall eat all store long kept, and you shall clear out the old to make way for the new.

I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you, and I will walk Among you will be your God, and you shall be my people. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves. And I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect. But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes and if your soul abhor my rules so that you will not do all my commandments by breaking my covenant, then I will do this to you. I will visit you with panic.

with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down before your enemies. Those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you. And if in spite of these you will not listen to me, then I will discipline you against heavenfall for your sins, and I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze.

And your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall not yield its increase, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit. Then if you walk contrary to me and will not listen to me, I will continue striking you sevenfold for your sins, and I will let loose the wild beast against you. We shall bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock and make you few in number, so that your roads shall be deserted. And if by this discipline you are not turned to Me, but walk contrary to Me, then I also will walk contrary to you, and I Myself will strike you sevenfold for your sins. And I will bring a sword upon you that shall execute vengeance for the covenant.

And if you gather within your cities, I will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy. When I break your supply of bread, 10 women shall bake your bread in a single oven and shall dole out your bread again by weight, and you shall eat and not be satisfied. But if in spite of this you will not listen to me, but walk contrary to me, Then I will walk contrary to you, in fury, and I myself will discipline you sevenfold for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters. And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and cast your dead bodies upon the dead bodies of your idols, and my soul will abhor you.

And I will lay your cities waste, and will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your pleasing aromas. And I myself will devastate the land, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be appalled at it. And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you, and your land shall be desolation, and your city shall be a waste. Then the land shall enjoy its sabbaths as long as it lies desolate. While you are in your enemy's land, then the land shall rest and enjoy its sabbaths.

As long as it lies desolate, you shall have rest, the rest that it did not have on your sabbath when you were dwelling in it. And as for those of you who are left, I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight, and they shall flee as one flees from the sword, and they shall fall when none pursues. They shall stumble over one another as if to escape a sword. though none pursues.

And you shall have no power to stand before your enemies. And you shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. And those of you who are left shall rot away in your enemies' lands because of their inequity. And also because of the inequities of their fathers, they shall rot away like them. But if they confess their inequity and the inequity of their fathers in their treachery that they committed against me, and also in walking contrary to me, so that I walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies, if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their inequity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac, and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.

But the land shall be abandoned by them, and enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them. And they shall make amends for their iniquity, because they spurned My rules, and their souls abhorred My statutes. Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn them, neither will I abhor them, so as to destroy them utterly and break my covenant with them. For I am the Lord their God. But I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God.

I am the Lord. These are the statutes and rules and laws that the Lord made between himself and the people of Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai. Amen. This is the word of the Lord. Beloved of Christ, we are reaching the end of this glorious book, and pretty much we have covered most of the instructions that pertain to the practical holiness of the people of Israel.

All of those instructions given, as we are told here, from God to the people of Israel through Moses, Those rules or instructions that pertain to ceremonial activities or purity or Levitical code of practical holiness, pretty much we have covered them all up to chapter 25. sacrifices and the duties of the priest and the loss of purity and loss of the tabernacle and days and feasts and times, all of these things we have already covered. And in that sense, Chapter 26 and Chapter 27 are going to be quite special or interesting chapters here in this book of Leviticus, because these two chapters are going to have a language that is slightly different to the language that we have heard from Chapter 1 to Chapter 25. from chapter 1 to 25 of Seseries, primarily covering these ceremonial purity instructions for the practical holiness of the people of Israel. Then in chapter 26 and 27, we are going to have this language that is more closely related to what we heard or what we read in Exodus.

If you pay attention to the last verse of each one of the chapters, chapter 26 and 27, the section concludes saying to us in chapter 26, 46 verse 46 says, These are the statutes and rules and laws that the Lord made between himself and the people of Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai. And then if you go to the last verse of the book, which is also the last verse of Chapter 27, we're told a similar thing. These are the commandments that the Lord commended Moses for the people of Israel on Mount Sinai. Now, these two chapters here are going to summarize for us the nature of the Mosaic Covenant. Mosaic because it is through Moses that these commandments were given to the people of Israel.

One other name could be the Covenant at Sinai. So chapter 26 and 27 are going to summarize, in a sense, for two different perspectives, the substance of this covenant, that God enter with the people of Israel through Moses. In that sense, it's different to what we have covered so far. So chapter 26 is actually going to give us a very good perspective of the nature of that covenant with Moses or through Moses. So please, brothers and sisters, pay attention to this.

I think there is much blessing in us understanding the nature of this covenant with Moses. So if we were going to summarize the substance of this covenant of God with Israel through Moses in just one word, that word would be obedience. This Moses or this Mosaic covenant, it was substantially a covenant of obedience. In other words, and what we have read in chapter 26, do these things and you will be blessed. This is what we read.

Do these things and you will be blessed. And then the opposite also applies. If you don't do these things, then you will be cursed. That is the substance or that is the nature better of this mosaic covenant, one of obedience. Of course, it was given to the people of Israel out of the gracious disposition of God in saving them out of Egypt.

But the substance and the nature of the covenant is one of obedience. Do this and you will be blessed. And if you don't do it, you will be cursed. Obedience is the word. Now, I want us to meditate a little bit deeper in the concept of obedience when it pertains to the Mosaic Covenant.

Because you see, my beloved brothers and sisters, sometimes we can have a shallow understanding of the obedience that was required for the people of Israel under the Old Covenant. And sometimes we simplify that obedience to simply do particular things. and don't do certain things, and that is the whole covenant. I'm going to show you from this scripture here in chapter 26 that the nature of obedience, or better, the substance of this obedience, which is the nature of this Mosaic covenant, it is deeper than that, and it points us gloriously to the Lord Jesus Christ. The first thing that I want you to have in your mind, not only see in this chapter, but have in your mind as we meditate upon this obedience of the Mosaic Covenant, is that the substance of that obedience is not external, but it was meant to be internal.

Obedience under the Old Covenant was expected and meant to be obedience of the heart. Summarizing just with the words of the Apostle Paul, it was meant to be not a circumcision of the flesh, but it was to be a circumcision of the heart. That is actually one of the charges that the Lord will bring to the people of Israel in this chapter. So obedience in the first place was supposed to be internal, spiritual. And you can see that in verse 3 of this chapter.

Pay attention to what the author says in verse 3. It says, If you walk in my statues and observe my commandments and do them, then you will come the blessing. Chapter in verse four. Now, Sometimes we just simply read a scripture and we see the repetition of those words, and we just assume that they're just simple synonyms that describe a particular thing, just simply obedience. But every single word given in a scripture is very important and brings a connotation to what the Lord wants to communicate.

We're called to walk in the statues of the Lord. This walking in the statues of the Lord under the Old Covenant, beloved of Christ, meant to continually listen to the voice of the Lord and do what He required. That was a continuous, ongoing listening to the voice of the Lord and do what He required. That's why Enoch, or Enoch, I don't know why you pronounce it Enoch, in Genesis, he was a righteous man who walked with the Lord. He was a righteous man.

Noah was a righteous man who walked with the Lord. He was a continuous listening to the voice of the Lord and doing what he required. Also, we are told that we are to observe, in that verse, we have to observe the commandments. Or if you have another translation, to keep the commandments. Just as Adam was supposed to keep the garden in Genesis 1 and 2 and 3, so the people of Israel were to keep, observe, preserve the commandments of the Lord.

That it is that the people of Israel were not only supposed to continually, ongoingly walk in obedience, but they were supposed to treasure up the commandments of the Lord and protect them because they were holy commandments. And then we are also told that it was not only to walk in them and to keep them or to observe them, but also to do them, which was the external manifestation of all of those nuances that I have given you. Now, if you don't see that in verse 3, you can see there in the opposite when we're speaking about disobedience. In verse 14 and verse 15, we are given information about when the people disobeyed. So we are told, the contrary of walking, the contrary of observing, and the contrary of doing.

So it says, but the contrary of obedience, but if you will not listen to me, and will not do all these commandments. That is the opposite of walking in them. Verse 15, And if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules. That is, not that you simply don't do something, but if your soul despises my commandments, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant. This is important, beloved of Christ.

Now, the substance of this obedience under the old covenant was meant to be spiritual, was meant to be in the heart, was meant to be in the soul. They were supposed to walk in the commandments. They were supposed to observe, to keep them, to preserve them, to treasure them as valuable. And they were supposed to externally do them. The verse is a very important thing.

Now, because circumcision was meant to be not externally, but of the heart, this obedience was meant to be in the context of a genuine relationship with God. So they were also expected, beloved of Christ, to have a genuine spiritual relationship with the Lord, that it was rooted not in external obedience, but in internal obedience. And this is the second aspect that I want to show you of this obedience. Not only that was meant to be a spiritual and internal, but also that the blessing that will come from obeying was meant to be progressive. and continuous.

It was meant to be progressive and continuous. Why? Because if the heart has been circumcised, then the expectation is that the external obedience will be progressive and continuous. You see my point, right? If, if, If the substance of obedience was meant to be in the heart, spiritual, then the external expectation of God was that they will continually obey.

And therefore, the blessings that God will give to the people of Israel were also progressive in nature. I don't know if I'm being clear. I hope that I am. But brothers and sisters, the ultimate blessing of the Mosaic Covenant is given to us in verse 11. OK, pay attention.

The ultimate blessing of obedience, that is, if they obey, the ultimate blessing of the Mosaic Covenant is given to us in verse 11. It says, I will make my dwelling, right? Verse 4, it says, if you'll do all of these things then, and the ultimate blessing is given to us in verse 11. I will make my dwelling among you and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and I will be your God and you shall be my people.

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. All of these glorious things. So pay attention, beloved of Christ. The result of obedience for the people of Israel was meant to be ultimately that God was going to dwell among them, that He was going to be in an ongoing, constantly unbreakable relationship with them, that He was going to be in their midst. That is the consummation of that relationship.

But for that ultimate point to arrive or to happen, blessings were going to be progressive, just as obedience was meant to be progressive. The blessings of this covenant that are traveling or going on to the final destination, which is God dwelling with them, were basically for the land, in relation to the enemies, and in relation to the fruitfulness of the people. In simple words, If the people of Israel had a circumcised heart, not externally, but a circumcised heart, then the blessings of the covenant would have been manifested in what we read, first of all, in the fruitfulness of the land. You know, they will go and work the land and they will get the fruit and it will be rich. The land will be rich.

That's what we're told in verse four and verse five. After that, it was not only the land that was going to be fruitful, but if they continue to obey substantially the covenant, then they will rule over their enemies. They will have victory over their enemies. And not only that, but also they will have fruitfulness among them. They will multiply.

There will be many of them. They will be rich as a people. No enemies subdued the land rich and people being multiplying. And that will take to the ultimate blessing in which the Lord sees consummation of obedience and then He dwells with them. Beloved of Christ, this is very important.

This mosaic covenant at Sinai required, it was meant to have obedience in the heart, and the manifestation of that obedience will be continued and ongoing, moving, traveling, going into or towards having this relationship with the Lord. Now, this is very important. This word, this is the only way that I can describe it to you. Continuous. Ongoing.

You understand what I mean, right? Progressive. That is, that escalates and moves from one point to another. So that in the same sense how obedience was meant to be progressive, escalating towards fellowship, disobedience was also in the same sense. And this is the terrifying part of it, right?

This is the terrifying part of it, because just as we are given instructions and descriptions of the blessings that come from obedience for the land over the enemies and over, you know, fruitfulness for the people and ultimate dwelling. We are also told about the progressive execution of the judgments of God upon His people because of the contrary, disobedience. Now, this is relational at its core. I don't have any other word to express this, but because obedience was meant to be genuine in the heart, this is completely relational. So I want you to see and pay attention to the language of judgment that we're given from verses 14 onwards, that basically, if you step back and then you draw this, if you're good at drawing that you draw this whole chapter, you have just here the illustration of a husband that it is catching or I think that's the word, the wife in adultery, and that the wife that is in adultery, he is going to execute judgment upon her because she has been caught in an adultery.

So it says, verse 14 and 15, we are told, but if you will not listen to me and will not do all of these commandments, and you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules so that you will not do all my commandments by breaking my covenant, then, and it comes the judgments. And then we're told that this manifestation of these judgments will be, I will visit you with panic. Imagine this. So God comes to this unfaithful wife. to visit her with panic.

And the first judgment is what we're told in verse 17. I will set my face against you. That it is that my favor will not be with you anymore. This unfaithful wife that has been caught. Now, the Lord says, my favor will not be with you anymore.

That is, my face will be against you. And the manifestation of the face of the Lord being against Israel, his bride, is that all of those things, the land, the enemies, pestilence, will be opposite to the blessings. There will not be fruitfulness. The enemies will rule over them and there will be disease and problems among the people. But the Lord here is going to give us again this language of progressive, continuous relationship.

So then he says, after he says, my favor will not be for you or towards you or unto you, in verse 21, then he says, then, that is, if afterwards, then if you walk contrary to me and will not listen to me, I will continue striking you sevenfold for your sins. That it is the first time I came and my face was not for you, my favor was not for you. But if after that now you are rebelling and walking contrary to me, then I will going to strike you. I'm going to strike you with judgment. And then we are told that the beast will destroy your things and bereave you of your children and son and son.

But the language of relationship continues in verse 23. And if by this discipline you are not turned to me, but walk contrary to me, in the previous one said, contrary to me, I will strike you. In this one, the Lord adds a level of judgment. Then I also will walk contrary to you. So the first one is, my face will be against you.

My favor is not with you. And then if you walk contrary to me or away from me, then I will strike you. But if you continue, then I will be the one that walks contrary to you or will be against you. And I myself, now the Lord says, will strike you sevenfold for your sins. In the previous one was your enemies will come and rule over you.

Your land will not produce. But if you continue in that, the progressing fulfillment of my judgments will continue on you. So I will walk contrary to you and I will strike you. And the language continues in verse 27, they said, but in spite of this, you will not listen to me, but walk contrary to me. Same language.

Then he says, verse 28, then he will add a specific adjective to his walking contrary to them. Then I will walk contrary to you, which is exactly what he said. But in theory, And I myself will discipline you sevenfold for your sins." The judgment of God is progressively increasing because of the progressive disobedience of the people of Israel. They were expected to have a genuine obedience in the heart and progressively walk towards the blessing, communion with the Lord.

But if they do the opposite, also their judgments will be progressive. And then we were given a horrible picture from verse 29, that the consummation of the judgment of God when He comes contrary to them because of their adultery, in theory, will be that they will be given to things that are contrary to nature. That is that they will eat their sons, they will eat their children, their enemies will rule over them, they will do all type of horrible pagan things. And as final culmination of it, if that is a word, as the finishing point of that, then they will be taken captive by their enemies. They will be exiled.

The land which was the dwelling place of God where they were supposed to have a substantial, real obedience and relationship to the Lord, they will be removed from it and they will be taken to their enemies. Progressive culmination of the judgment of God. Now, beloved of Christ, the thing is that logically speaking, If obedience will progress to the blessing of God dwelling with the people, then logically speaking, disobedience will necessarily have to take to the breaking of the covenant, just as the husband who catches his wife in adultery, humanly speaking, is given permission to have divorce and to break the covenant, and then they depart ways. But the Lord, instead of breaking the fulfillment of the breaking of the covenant, he says, even though and this is why he says, I'm just going to summarize because I'm going too long. But he says, even though you have broken my covenant, I will remember the covenant that I made with Jacob and Isaac and Abraham, because I will not break that covenant.

And there will be a remnant among you, even in the foreign lands. And that remnant, if they confess If they repent, I will hear them, I will listen to them because of my covenant, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham, a covenant that was rooted not in obedience, but it was rooted in a promise. Beloved of Christ, this is the reality and the substance of the Mosaic covenant. This is why when we start with this chapter 26, we are brought to three important realities. This covenant or this relationship between God and Israel was meant to be exclusive.

Put your eyes in verse 1 and 2. It was meant to be exclusive covenant and exclusive relationship. So, the people of Israel should not have any idol. Right? Because it was meant to be genuine.

What husband or what wife is going to accept their spouse having another spouse? That is horrible and wicked. So the Lord said because of this relationship is meant to be genuine, then this is going to be an exclusive relationship between Israel and the Lord. But also the Lord was going to give them two things. One of them was going to be a reminder of the goal of the covenant, a reminder of the goal of the covenant.

And the second one's a reminder of the conditions of the parties of the covenant. The first one, please pay attention to this, the reminder of the goal of the covenant, the Sabbath. The Sabbath was a reminder of the goal of the covenant. They had been taken out of the land of Egypt in which they were in bondage. They were servants to Pharaoh and they were working, working, working, working, working, working without rest.

Now, pay attention to this. The rest or the importance of the rest is not physical. It's not physical rest like a slave or a worker who is tired, who needs to rest their body. It is a situation of goal, a point of arrival. That is, in Egypt, people in Israel, in Egypt, they did not have purpose, no goal, no destination.

They will wake up every day to work, work, work, work to be under Pharaoh. The only way that they could be free from the bondage to the Pharaoh and to Egypt was death. The wages of death, the wages of sin is death. Paul says in Romans 7 that the only way that we can be free from the bondage of the law is by death. The only way that people in Israel could escape Pharaoh was by death.

They did not have any type of freedom from the bondage that they have under Pharaoh. But when they were rescued by the Lord, they were put in bondage to the law or in servitude to the law, and they were given a Sabbath. And that Sabbath was not physical rest only, but it was a reminder of their goal. Six days they were supposed to do the works of the covenant, that is labor, labor, labor. But on the seventh day, they will have a taste of the goal of the covenant.

That is that on that day they will not be under the obligation to do the things of the law, but rather they will have the status of the one that is free from the law. In six days they were supposed to do righteousness that was derived from the law, but on the sixth, seventh day they were supposed to do righteousness out of their hearts. Because the Sabbath was for men, right? It was a picture of doing righteousness on the Sabbath, not because of the servitude to the law, but rather because of the freedom of it, a reminder of the goal. It was a reminder because they needed to repeat and repeat and repeat.

And second, beloved of Christ, a reminder of their condition. The sanctuary will remind them that because of their sinful condition, they needed to be continually purified to remain in their relationship with the Lord. Beloved of Christ, let me just summarize this and point your eyes to the person of Jesus Christ. Two important things why this covenant is given to us. First of all, to remind these people of Israel that it was impossible for them to keep First of all, to circumcise their hearts.

And then to covenantally and as a community continue on to the final destination of obedience and dwelling with the Lord in the sense that He meant it. It was impossible for them. So it was a reminder of their inability to accomplish full obedience for fellowship with the Lord. They will only have the Sabbath. Every time the Sabbath, the Sabbath resting from the works that gave them righteousness under the covenant.

But the second important thing was to make possible the arrival of the Messiah who was the fulfillment of the pictures of the old covenant. That it is that the Lord did not break the covenant with Israel. I made it so complicated. I'm really sorry. But the Lord, beloved of Christ, beloved of Christ, the Lord did not break the covenant with Israel.

not only because they're His grace and mercy towards Israel, but also because it was necessary that the Messiah will be born under that covenant, so that the Messiah will fulfill the requirements of this covenant on behalf of the people. And He will be not only the fulfillment of God's righteousness, but the fulfillment of all the shadows. So the Lord preserved this covenant, not only because he loved Israel and extended, but because the Messiah that was going to come. So he kept for himself a remnant of his people throughout the ages. And these people were preserving the covenant so that the Messiah will come, fulfill that, and he will be the tabernacle.

He will be the Sabbath, and he will be the one who will have an exclusive, perfect relationship with God the Father. So those who have faith in Him will receive the benefits of a better covenant. And the initial benefit of that better covenant is that circumcision is indeed not of the flesh, but circumcision of the heart. And because he's the one that circumcised the heart, then the righteousness is kept towards the end until we enter into the dwelling place of God. Jerusalem comes from above and the dwelling place of God is with his people.

No more sin, no more tears. And we are allowed entrance into the eternal rest of which we are already partakers if we are in the person of Jesus Christ. Amen.