Morning Light – Leviticus 26

[Leviticus 26] Expedited Blessing – Accelerated Favor: In this chapter of Leviticus, God reiterates to Moses the prohibitions against idolatry that will be in force not only in the wilderness but in the Promised Land as well. Ancient practices of idolatry were driven by fear. Pagan worship was carried out to stave off crop failure, pestilence, barrenness, and many other misfortunes. God stipulates that HE is our God and our dependence, and our expectations are to be UPON HIM and not any other thing. From that perspective of repentance and faith, He promises to keep every promise handed down to you and me in the covenant He made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

[Lev 26:1-46 KJV] 1 Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up [any] image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I [am] the LORD your God. 2 Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I [am] the LORD. 3 If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; 4 Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. 5 And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time: and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely. 6 And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make [you] afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land. 7 And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. 8 And five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight: and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. 9 For I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, and establish my covenant with you. 10 And ye shall eat old store, and bring forth the old because of the new. 11 And I will set my tabernacle among you: and my soul shall not abhor you. 12 And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people. 13 I [am] the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondmen; and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you go upright. 14 But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments; 15 And if ye shall despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all my commandments, [but] that ye break my covenant: 16 I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. 17 And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you. 18 And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. 19 And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass: 20 And your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits. 21 And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me; I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins. 22 I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your [high] ways shall be desolate. 23 And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary unto me; 24 Then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins. 25 And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel of [my] covenant: and when ye are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you; and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy. 26 [And] when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver [you] your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied. 27 And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me; 28 Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins. 29 And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat. 30 And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you. 31 And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours. 32 And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. 33 And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. 34 Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye [be] in your enemies’ land; [even] then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths. 35 As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it. 36 And upon them that are left [alive] of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth. 37 And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when none pursueth: and ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies. 38 And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. 39 And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them. 40 If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me; 41 And [that] I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity: 42 Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land. 43 The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them: and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because they despised my judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes. 44 And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I [am] the LORD their God. 45 But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be their God: I [am] the LORD. 46 These [are] the statutes and judgments and laws, which the LORD made between him and the children of Israel in mount Sinai by the hand of Moses.

As contemporary Christians, there is little danger of falling into worship of a pagan idol leering from a pedestal from a cave in our backyard. How do we apply what this passage tells us about idolatry? When you read about “graven images,” think “mental images.” Circumstances of life try to paint many pictures in our minds, pictures of poverty, sickness, relationship disasters, etc. Worry and fear are capable of bringing these troubles into your mind in living color. These are mental images demanding our attention just as the idols in ancient times demanded the attention of their practitioners. Ancient practices of idolatry were fear-driven. Sacrifices were made to idols to ward off disaster, crop failure, barrenness, and catastrophe. There are many pictures that present themselves to us of pending difficulty in the modern mind that as the ancient idols did in times past, they call upon us to do what they suggest rather than trust in God.

The Scripture says in another place to let God be your fear and put your expectations upon him and not upon man or potential looming circumstances. You are where your attention takes you. When your focus upon Him, then he will send rain in due season, the showers of his blessing, the rain of his purpose, and his favor. He will cause you to be fruitful, safe, productive, and blessed, while others looking to the troubles around them live in struggle and difficulty. They say the sky is falling and bow to circumstance, you say THE KINGDOM IS COMING and walk in the blessing.

Idolatry proposes the dwelling place of God to be somewhere other than the human heart. Idolatry is any external dependence on anything other than who God is inside your human heart. There are many stones in our land, false dependencies that require us and attempt to intimidate us into bowing down to them. Financial institutions represent false dependencies. Institutions and resources relating to health, employment, a job they can be an idol. The Scriptures teach us that God is our peace; anything whose disposition can rob us of our peace is a potential idol. Whenever you feel threatened or intimidated, the Lord wants your response to be that He is your God and not the banker, the lawyer, the doctor, or any other resource in the natural we will only bow down or extract our peace from what God says about us and not any other outward condition.

In v. 15, the Lord lets us know what the consequences of ignoring His counsel will be. God’s choice is never to exclude as from his blessing. However, we exclude ourselves through the choices that we make. When we focus on the problems and difficulties, we have set up an idol in our lives. Whatever you fear represents your object of worship. God is a jealous God. If you fear financial calamity or any other problem more than you fear the challenges involved in believing God, God will so work as to destroy your confidence in that false dependency. To do otherwise from God’s point of view would be to collude with you in unbelief.

When we look at the world around us, fear is everywhere. Fear of terrorist attack, fear of COVID breaking out within our borders, fear of financial collapse, fear of deportation, or loss of personal liberties. You cannot allow these intimidating circumstances to loom larger in your life than the promise of God and the favor of God and the love of God who has certified to us in his word that he will care for us and take care of us and keep us through all around us are falling and failing.

Verse 40 in the passage gives needed instruction: we must identify the idolatry of false outward dependency, intimidation, and fear. Revelations 21:8 tells us that the fearful and the abominable will have their place in the lake of fire. The fearful and the abominable lead whoremongers, idolaters, and murderers into punishment before all else. We tend to see fear and unbelief as an inevitable condition of intimidating circumstances over which we have no control. But God holds us accountable for our fear. Classifying fear as a transgression takes it from the perspective of God’s word and puts it in the category of something that we have control over. The Scripture says that the fear of the Lord is clean; Isaiah chapter 11 says that the spirit of the fear of the Lord is one of the seven spirits of God. If the fear of the Lord is a spirit and the fear of the Lord is clean, then every other fear is also a spirit and is, in fact an unclean spirit.

If you are bound by fear, worry, and unbelief, understand today that you are under attack by a demonic spirit that wants to rule and reign in your life. The answer is to repent of fear, ask God’s forgiveness for being fearful and intimidated despite the gift of his only begotten son upon the cross. In so doing, you cause the mercies of God that are renewed every morning to be renewed in your life and his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to be reinitialized in your life. Then he will remember the covenant and move your behalf to bring deliverance, healing, restoration, and renewal in your life on an expedited velocity of accelerated blessing.