Our scripture reading for this evening is taken from Leviticus chapter 26, and it's found in the Pew Bible in front of you on page 94. As you turn there, let me remind you of the verse we just sang, Well, the Lord will guard the righteous, for their way to Him is known. But the way of evildoers shall by him be overthrown. That same message we find in our text this evening. The whole of Leviticus chapter 26. It's rather long, but we're going to be dealing with it in rather broad strokes. And since we're going to be reading the whole of it, I do want to give you a little bit of a feel for what we'll encounter there so that you can hang with me through it. because it's a striking text. What we find here, we might say, is a kind of summary of the Old Testament. A kind of summary of the Old Testament. Hopefully that itself might pique your interest here in one chapter. We find a summary of God's law in the first verses. And as part of this law, in verses 3 through 39, we have a two-fold promise. One, a promise that God will bless his people if they're obedient. And the second, that he will curse them. He will judge them if they are disobedient. And following upon these verses, in verses 40 to 35, we have the gospel. And so in the first section of our text, we'll look at the law of God. It's promise for obedience. It's promise for blessing for obedience. And it's promise for judgment for disobedience. And arising out of the darkness of that text, hopefully we'll have eyes to see the gospel. And before we read it, let us ask the Lord to bless it. Our Father in heaven, we do thank you for your word. And often when we read it, we find ourselves overwhelmed with the task of understanding it. We also find ourselves overwhelmed by the reality that there are many words, that there are many truths, there are many religions. And sometimes we find it difficult to discern the truth. And so, dear Lord, we ask that you might be pleased now as we read your word and hear it preached to drive away the shadows and the confusion and grant us greater clarity, greater understanding, strengthened faith for all that you have done for your people in Jesus Christ. It's in his name we pray. Amen. Listen now to this, the word of our God from Leviticus chapter 26. He says, Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves, and do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it. I am the Lord your God. Observe my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary. I am the Lord. If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commandments, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops, and the trees of the field their fruit. Your threshing will continue until grape harvest, and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land. I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down, and no one will make you afraid. I will remove savage beasts from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country. You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you. Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you. I will look on you with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers and I will keep my covenant with you. You will still be eating last year's harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. I will put my dwelling place among you and will not abhor 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 Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high. But, verse 14, if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands and if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commandments and so violate my covenant, then I will do this to you. I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and drain away your life. You will plant seed in vain because your enemies will eat it. I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you and you will flee even when no one is pursuing you. If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over. I will break down your stubborn pride and make the sky above you like iron and the ground beneath you like bronze, your strength will be spent in vain because your soil will not yield its crops nor will the trees or the land yield their fruit. If you remain hostile toward me and refuse to listen to me, I will multiply your afflictions seven times over and as your sins deserve, I will send wild animals against you and they will rob you of your children, destroy your cattle and make you so few in number that your roads will be deserted. If in spite of these things you do not accept my correction, but continue to be hostile toward me, I myself will be hostile toward you and will afflict you for your sins seven times over. And I will bring the sword upon you to avenge the breaking of the covenant. When you withdraw into your cities, I will send a plague among you and you will be given into enemy hands. When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will be able to break your bed in one heaven and they will dole out the bread by weight. You will eat, but you will not be satisfied. If in spite of this, you still do not listen to me, but continue to be hostile toward me, then in my anger, I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols and I will abhor you. I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries and I will take no delight in the pleasing aroma of your offerings. I will lay waste the land so that your enemies who live there will be appalled. I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste and your cities will lie in ruins. Then the land will enjoy its Sabbath years. All the time that it lies desolate and you are in the land, it will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths. All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the Sabbaths you lived in it. As for those of you who are left, I will make their hearts so fearful in the lands of their enemies that the sound of the wind-blown leaf will put them to flight. They will run as though fleeing from the sword and they will fall even though no one is pursuing them. They will stumble over one another as though fleeing from the sword even though no one is pursuing them. So you will not be able to stand before your enemies. You will perish among the nations. The land of your enemies will devour you. Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins. Also, because of their father's sins, they will waste away. But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers, their treachery against me and their hostility toward me, which made me hostile towards them so that I sent them into the land of their enemies, then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham. And I will remember the land for the land will be deserted by them and will enjoy its Sabbath while it lies desolate without them. They will pay for their sins because they rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees. Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely and break my covenant with them. I am the Lord their God. But for their sake, I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God, I am the Lord. Verse 46 ends by saying, These are the decrees, the laws, and regulations that the Lord established on Mount Sinai between Himself and the Israelites through Moses. When reading a text like Leviticus 26, we might find ourselves surprised. Not just at the length of it, but we might find our surprise coming from the judgment that's in the text. Are you surprised? As you read through it, is this something that you just took as something that's normal everyday language for you? And if you were surprised, why? What struck you? Was it the promise of blessing? Was it the promise that God would remember? Or was it the judgment we find in the text? I have a friend who was raised in a church, but long ago he left behind the teaching that he received, and he and I were studying the Bible together. When he came across Leviticus 26, he was surprised. He was very surprised. He read right through the blessings and he got to the statements of judgment and he stopped short right in his tracks. Never got to the good news in the gospel that we find in verses 40 and following. You see, he was surprised because he came to expect grace. He came to expect the goodness of God. And he said to me, I never knew that God spoke this way. But you see, if we come to expect grace, It's really no longer grace, is it? For an expectation of grace presumes that we deserve grace and then it's no longer grace. It's something we feel we deserve. And friends, we are tempted daily to follow right in the path of the world believing that we do deserve the goodness of our God. That we do deserve freedom, peace, prosperity. But this text, this text will not allow us to fall into such an error if we deal with the whole thing. Because if we are to understand the gospel that is preached here, we must first deal with the judgment that precedes it. We must appreciate God's patience. And through it, we must better understand and maybe even be surprised, not by the judgment, but by the gospel and good news that we find here. And so first this evening, we'll look at that. We'll look at God's judgment. Second, we'll look at God's patience. And third, at God's grace. First, God's judgment. Second, God's patience. And third, God's grace. Notice, first of all, that the judgment we find in the text is preceded and its contrast with promised blessing. Remember, I told you the first section of this text we might understand is God's law. That promises blessing for obedience and it promises judgment for disobedience. The first part is a promise of great blessing. We find in verses 3 through 4, for instance, the promise of a fruitful land. If he says, in verse 3, If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, if you would just do them, then I will give you your rains and their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your threshings shall last to the time of the grape harvest, And the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full. That last portion summarizes that first part of the blessing. You shall eat your bread. You'll sow it. It'll grow. You'll harvest it. You'll eat it. And you'll be satisfied if you'll obey. And the second promised blessing is a peaceful land. We have a fruitful land. We have a peaceful land. And verse 5b highlights that. When he says that you will dwell in your land securely. Verse 6. I will give peace in the land and you shall lie down and none shall make you afraid. The Lord will guard the land, it says, from wild beasts. He'll preserve his people and guard them from enemies who will come to try to steal their fruitful land. He promises them a fruitful land, a peaceful land. He promises them a prosperous land. Everything they might do in that land will prosper and they will be a great and mighty people. And we find in verse 11 through 12, the greatest blessing of all is that God himself will dwell with them. He'll walk with them. He will be their God and they will be his people if they but obey. See, what we find here is that it's kind of a principle in the Old Testament is that the people knew that God was with them when their land was fruitful and prosperous and peaceful. The peace and prosperity of the land, in other words, was a sign of God's pleasure and goodwill to them. In contrast to this picture, a blessing, however, is God's promise in verse 14 to bring judgment upon disobedience. And there's a direct corollary and contrast to how this picture of judgment unfolds relative to what we just have seen in terms of the blessing. Verse 6.14 says, But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes and if your soul abhors my rules so that you do not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, then I will do this to you, the Lord says. And he goes on to describe to them the terribleness of this judgment as he will give them sickness, famine, and war. And the verses that follow in verses 18 through 33, Moses, the inspired writer of this text, uses a technique in order to press upon the people the terribleness of the judgment which will follow their disobedience. He does it in four stages. Stage 1 we find in verse 18. Stage 2 is introduced in verse 21. Stage 3, 23. And stage 4, verses 27 through 33. Again, we have four stages, not necessarily in chronological order. First this will happen, then this will happen, then this will happen. But rather, what he's doing here is he is culminating the judgment that God will bring upon his people by highlighting different aspects of it in order to press them with the reality and the devastation that will come if they would persist in disobedience. And so what he does is he looks forward into the future and he says, If this happens, if you're disobedient, this is what God will do. Verse 18, we're highlighted that if in spite of this judgment you will not listen to me, then I will discipline you again sevenfold 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. What we see here is famine. in contrast to a fruitful land, God will bring famine upon the land. Verse 21, then, we have the second stage. If you still 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 beasts against you, which shall bereave you of your children, and destroy your livestock and make you few in number. Rather than a prosperous land and a peaceful land, the Lord will send into the land wild beasts. And stage three, it builds towards a climax. Rather, in addition to wild beasts, the Lord tells them that there will be enemies who will invade the land. Verse 23, Then I myself again will strike you sevenfold for your sins, then I will bring a sword upon you. And if you gather within your cities, I will send pestilence among you and you shall be delivered into the hand of your enemy. Famine, wild beasts, the attacks of God's people's enemies, of those who would seek to steal from them the blessings that have been given to them by their Lord. And in verses 27-33, the culmination of these stages of God's blessing reaches a climax as we see the people are struck with starvation. A starvation so intense, so deep, bringing them to such despair that we find in verse 29 they are led to cannibalism to just sustain themselves. Grasping unto life. In a word we find here in these unfolding four stages of judgment and devastation. Their land, their house, their families, their freedom, the whole of their lives devastated as their Lord and God turns against them, they say, because of their sin, because of their rebellion. and as we consider these things we might be able to understand the surprise of my friend as he read this text does God really speak this way is this the God who is in heaven is this the God of grace of goodness and mercy and indeed it is you see God is not merely gracious, is He? The attributes of God are many and so often in our day we boil them all down to one. That God is good. That God is loving. And indeed He is good. Indeed He is loving. And we see how good and generous He promises to be for His people if they would just but serve Him as their God. Not only does our God speak this way, dear friends, but we find that He actually carries out the very words that He promises. In 1 and 2 Kings, in 1 and 2 Chronicles, we read of Israel's history. We read of how this prophecy said so long ago at Mount Sinai was fulfilled as Israel's heart was hardened, As they did rebel against the Lord repeatedly over generations, over centuries. As they refused to follow their Lord and their God, their Redeemer, His judgment came upon them. And though we may be surprised by the horror of God's judgment, the greater surprise, I think, of this text is God's patience. God's patience to preserve His sinful people. Notice how this works in the text. We have four stages of judgment listed for us. And we might at first read, say, how terrible. And indeed, it is terrible. But we find here, repeated again and again and again, the Lord saying to them, repent. If you don't repent after stage one, maybe stage two. And if you don't repent after the wild beasts, maybe the enemies. And the Lord restrains His wrath. At the first sin, He doesn't destroy His people, does He? He is patient with them. And through the prophets, He pleads with them. Again and again, through generation after generation, the Lord calls His people to repent. His discipline and His judgment is not capricious. It's not just the outburst of anger. It's not just to make a point. God is aiming, as verse 40 says, to have His people confess their sins, repent of their evil ways, and follow Him. And yet Israel refuses. And as a nation, she remains hardened in heart. As this judgment comes, they hold tighter to their own independence and ways. As the second judgment comes, again, they become more firm. And then sometimes we read that they'll be broken for a short time and go right back to the wickedness of their ways. Famine came, wild animals, the land was invaded by enemies and still the people wouldn't repent. They were struck with disease, the death of their children. Still, we read, they wouldn't repent. And then the Lord calls them through Jeremiah. We can read of this in chapters 37 and 38. He calls them repeatedly as the armies of Babylon are pressing upon the holy city of Jerusalem. Their very gates are being attacked. There's no food within the city. There's complete starvation and devastation of the armies of God's people. And Jeremiah's calling to the people, would you repent? If you would but repent, the Lord would turn away His wrath. And the people throw him in jail. That's chapter 37. In chapter 38, they take him out again. And they say, what's the word of the Lord now? And Jeremiah says the same thing. if you don't repent you will fall and they throw him into a cistern get this guy away from us they wouldn't listen they wouldn't listen to the word of God in light of such rebellion the greater surprise of this text though we may be surprised by God's judgment. I think the greater surprise of this text is how hard man's heart can be. And yet, verse 39 tells us, in the midst of their hardness and rebellion, that those who are left in their captivity, as God takes them away by their enemies, they shall rot away there because of their iniquity. And also because of the iniquity of their fathers, they shall rot away like them. The greater surprise of this text seems to be the hardness of heart and God's tremendous patience to preserve his people century after century. But the greatest surprise, I think, is God's grace. We might be surprised by his judgment. The greater surprise might be his patience in the face of his people's sin. The greatest surprise, however, I believe, is God's grace and the good news of the gospel. We see that in verse 42 especially, where God says, If my people will repent, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac, And I will remember my covenant with Abraham. And I will remember the land. But you notice it says, if they repent. And so even in the face of this good news that God will remember Abraham and that God will remember his promises, we read that they need to repent. And the question I have is, what does it take? What does it take to bring a sinful heart to repent, if the judgment of God that came crashing down upon the people, if that doesn't break the heart of man, then what can? Isn't that a valid question of the text? What does it take to bring a sinner to repent? The answer is found in Jesus. The one who was perfectly obedient. The one who took himself upon himself the wrath and judgment of God to save us who are disobedient. In verse 42, when God remembers Abraham, he's looking forward to Christ. The one who fulfills the covenant that God made with Abraham. You see, Jesus tells us that very truth when he says in John chapter 8 that Abraham rejoiced to see my day. He saw it and he was glad. Looking back to Abraham was looking forward to the day when the fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham would come and it came in Christ. Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Christ because he knew that it would be in him that God's people would enjoy the true promised land. That through faith in Christ they would become citizens of a land that would never spoil, perish, or fade. That by faith in Christ we would become citizens of a land whose peace would never end and whose prosperity would be beyond imagination. Abraham rejoiced to see that day. And he rejoiced because he knew that that great blessing that God promised, that he promises through the gospel, does not depend upon our obedience as those blessings promised in Leviticus 26. Those blessings are great, they are desirable, but again and again they say, if you would but be obedient. The Gospel, friends, says Christ has been obedient. Promises of God offered to us in the Gospel, the glories of heaven to come, do not rest upon our obedience, but upon that obedience that Christ has performed for us. And therefore, for all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, as we read Leviticus 26, We need not fear if we have been good enough to secure those blessings. And we need not fear the threats of those judgments either. Another friend came up to me not long ago and said, do you mean that as a Christian, as I read the Old Testament, I need not fear the threats and the warning and the judgment that will come against sinners? I said, if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that wrath of God has fallen upon Him for you. The message of the New Testament labors to make that point, doesn't it? That Jesus Christ in His life and death became a propitiation for us to remove away from God's people that wrath we read of here in this text. And so there is for us, as we look to heaven, a throne of grace and a Savior who ever lives to intercede for us sinners who believe in Him. And that is why Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 1 that all of the promises of God are yes for us in Christ. For all who have been chosen by God to enjoy with Him the peace and prosperity of heaven. Does this grace surprise you? Or maybe we've just come to expect this grace. We've come to expect that it's ours. Week after week we hear of the good news. We sing praise to God for His glory and goodness to us in Christ. Let us never think that we deserve these things, friends. May we pray that God would ever work within us by His Holy Spirit to make the Gospel fresh and new for us, that it would indeed be good news, good news that we genuinely rejoice in and are glad to share with our friends, our families, and those around us, because good news is worth sharing. and I want to remind you of one more thing that for all of those who have been joined to Christ right now even as we stand before the throne of grace we enjoy the fruits of heaven the peace and prosperity of heaven is ours and through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit we also are enjoying the fruits of heaven and as we rejoice in the gospel let us also pray that we might be those who bear the fruits of the gospel. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and so forth. Because in those things, our God will be glorified in us as we go about living in the lives that he's called us to live. Amen. Our God and Father in heaven, we do thank you for your word and we pray that you might help us to better understand it even as we think upon it this coming week. We pray that you would guard us from the heirs of men and that we might more and more come to love the truths that you've revealed to us there, that we would be changed and that we would be more faithful children of you, followers of Christ, witnesses of your gospel. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.