Blessings and Curses, part 1.

Leviticus 26:3

If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them;

Leviticus 26:14

But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments;

Leviticus 26: 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.

Part 1.

Leviticus 26:3

If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them;

       If you want to see good stuff in your lifetime, you must understand and apply Leviticus 26. I’m not saying that God is mean spirited and vengeful. Don’t get hung up on Leviticus 26’s curses. Remember that Scripture reveals God’s character to be merciful as well as holy and just.

       God proclaimed this about Himself in Exodus 34:5-8. And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped.

       In light of God’s mercy and amazing love for us, I recommend that believers look at the curses in a special light. It’s not an angry, grumpy, distant, human god pronouncing curses. It is a loving Father urging His children.

Jeremiah 31:9b for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.

       Don’t we warn our children to not touch the hot stove? We don’t want them to get burned. God doesn’t want us to get burned.

       My favorite Bible is over 20 years old. The cover is held together by every Vermonter’s, Mythbusters’ and Redd Greene’s favorite: duct tape. My mom, a former librarian, first fixed it with library tape. That wasn’t enough, so I moved to the big guns. But even the miracle tape is showing its age. The strings are permanent but the silver backing is rolling up and no stickier than the pages it protects.

       This Bible has one word underlined more than any other. What word?

         If.

       “If… then… else….” God was the original writer of computer logic.

       Leviticus 26:3 opens with if. In order to experience the phenomenal blessings of Leviticus 26, the believer is to follow three conditions.

1.    Walk in my statutes

2.   Keep my commandments

3.    Do them

       Is this really a contractual agreement between God and man? Was it only meant for the Israelites, or does the principle apply to us today? Do these principles also work for non-believers?

       As God is perfect in His love and wisdom and goodness, is it safe to assume that, if these blessings are contractual in nature, it’s not God’s fault when we don’t experience all of them? Before we get mad at God for reneging on His part of the deal, let’s look at the conditions of the deal.

1. Walk [Kly yalak] in my statutes [hqx chuqqah].

       Yalak means to go, walk, come, depart, proceed, move, etc. It also means to die, live, manner of life. Moving ahead to Judges 4, here is part of the conversation between Barak and Deborah. Deborah has just told Barak he is to war against the oppressive Sisera and King Jabin. (Warning! shameless self-promotion: My screenplay Deborah was the one that made quarterfinalist in the Blue Cat screenplay competition a few years ago.)

       Oops, back to Judges 4:8-9.

And Barak said unto her, If thou wilt go [yalak] with me, then I will go [yalak]: but if thou wilt not go [yalak] with me, then I will not go [yalak]. And she said, I will surely go [yalak] with thee: notwithstanding the journey that thou takest shall not be for thine honour; for the LORD shall sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. And Deborah arose, and went [yalak] with Barak to Kedesh.

       It’s quite possible that Barak and Deborah understood the second use of yalak, but admittedly, this is extrabiblical. I haven’t heard that many sermons about their conversation (actually, I’ve heard none). The point is, for illustration, that walking in God’s statutes is to be a way of life, a manner of living.

       Chuqqah means statute, ordinance, limit, enactment, something prescribed, custom, manners, rites. In other words, statutes means “statutes.” Ah.

2. Keep [rmv shamar] my commandments [hwum mitsvah].

       Shamar is a wonderful word. It means to keep, guard, observe, give heed, preserve, watch/watchman, watch for, wait for, keep oneself, keep, pay heed…. What a rich, thick word!

       We get bar/bat mitzvah from this word. Mitsvah means commandments, precepts, law, ordinances.

       To shamar mitsvah requires more than a surface obedience. Like walking in His statutes, this is a way of life. It seems the mitsvah is to be cherished and protected as a treasure, not just as a code of conduct.

3. Do [hse `asah] them.

       The Hebrew definitions for `asah are many. In English, we would say, “and do them.”

       To sum up, the blessings God wants to give are much less of a contract than a matter of the heart. May we, like the psalmist say,

Ps 119:97 O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.