The Faith Beyond Trauma Podcast

FBT Daily Devotional: Leviticus 26

• Pastor Reggie

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We trace the promises and warnings of Leviticus 26, moving from blessing for obedience to the hard mercy of exile, and end by asking where God might be calling us to a faithful rest. We connect sevenfold judgment to Jesus, and we invite honest reflection on idols, Sabbath, and trust.

• blessings for obedience: rain, harvest, peace, covenant presence
• warning against idols and call to Sabbath as protection
• exile as consequence and mercy shaping the heart
• sevenfold punishment viewed through Jesus’ redemptive work
• land and rest as faith tests, not productivity hacks
• partnership with God over self-reliant grind
• practical reflection on forced rest and areas to surrender

SPEAKER_00:

Chapter starts off um blessings for obedience. Um, so as um we covered on Friday, um we went over the um the year of um of the Sabbath, basically where the land was supposed to you know rest. And then um as we're jumping in, we're jumping here, um, we're talking about blessings for obedience. So I'm just gonna go ahead and um read off a couple verses and then we'll kind of jump into my spiel here. Um so starting off, it's a we're talking about blessings of obedience. Um, the Lord says, do not make idols or set up carved images or sacred pillars or sculptured stones in your land, so you may worship them. I am the Lord your God. You must keep my Sabbath days of rest and show reverence for my sanctuary. I am the Lord. If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you the seasonal rains. The land will yield its crops, and the trees of the field will produce their fruit. Your threshing season will overlap with your grape harvest, and your grape harvest will overlap with the season of planting grain. You will eat your fill and live securely in your own land. I will give you peace in the land, and you will be able to you'll be able to sleep with no cause for fear. I will will I will rid the land of wild animals and keep your enemies out of the land. In fact, you will chase down your enemies and slaughter them with swords. Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand. All of your enemies will fall beneath your sword. I will look favorably upon you, making you fertile and multiplying your people. And I will fulfill my covenant with you. You will have such a surplus of crops that you will need that you will need to clear out the old grain to make room for the new harvest. I will live among you and I will not despise you. I will walk among you, I will be your God, and you will be my people. I am the Lord your God, um, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, so you will no longer be their slaves. I broke the yoke of slavery from your neck, so you can walk with your heads held high. So he's describing some really great things to them. Um, he's describing that, um, and first off, the part that hit me the most out of all of this is as I was reading through one, it's prophetic because as we know, they did not hold their end of the bargain. But two, it kind of reminded me because they're not in the promised land yet. It kind of reminded me of like, um, we've all probably experienced this in one way, shape, or form, like when you're a child and your parents are taking you into the store, and they're like, before we get in here, don't act a certain way. He was warning them that, hey, like when y'all get in here, like, you know, he knows what they could be subject to be tempted to. Where all of us have either been around children, either in the form of being parents, nephew, you know, or whether it be your nieces, your nephews, etc., where we have an idea of what they're about to do, because one, we've been children before, two, we've been around them, and et cetera. So we know what to tell them not to do before they get in there. Sometimes they'll look at you like, well, why would I do that? Or why, and then you look and they're doing exactly what you told them not to do. So that was so the part of that was like, oh, that's kind of spoke to me. Um, like I said, spirit shared to me is like, you know, he's warning them because he knows what they're capable of doing. And the first thing here, I know the by, you know, we've, you know, we it's been broken up into chapters, or it's so you know, he to make it easier to digest. But he's telling them, like, hey, don't, you know, you, I know you may see all these other people around here, you know, all these other people's children doing things, but you know, don't make any idols, don't work, you know, don't worship anything that you're not supposed to be worshiping, uh, and keep my Sabbath days of rest. He's doing that as a form of protection. But he knows that you know there is a strong possibility that they are going to fall short of that. Um, so the warnings of Leviticus 26 began to be uh fulfilled when the people in the Israel community consistently disobeyed God, which eventually led to their exile. Um, and he described, and this this next starting at verse 14, he described what their exile would be like. Um, like he he described it to a T. So when it comes down to that, it's like he understood what they were capable of. And then when he had to fulfill these punishments, and I'll I'll read through some of them, uh, but when he had to fulfill this, it wasn't something that he was necessarily glad to do. He did this almost as like an attitude adjustment for the long haul. Because as we are, you know, as God deals with us, and there are things that we like that may be sinful, that may be, they may just generally be weights. But the Lord knows that, hey, for me, for me to get you where you need to go, for me to help you get to the point where you are building this kingdom and you are functioning and you are a reasonable part of the body, a part of the body that's you know, not just this there for no reason. Um, so you don't, you know, we don't have, you know, the Jesus speaks on, you know, you know, any any part of the body or any part of that vine that's not, you know, being used, being cut off and put in the fire. So he is telling us where he needs us to be. He's telling us what we we we need to do, but he's doing this out of love. So even though some terrible things happened to them, even though they were, you know, everything that he went through in regards to the punishments for disobedience, even though it it did come into fruition, uh, he did this for their greater good. Um, and then as I was doing a little bit of research into these, these um, you know, 26 and 27, um, I saw a different perspective on it that I didn't see necessarily in the text, but just genuinely bringing um how it fits directly. And we we've touched on this about how these particular uh chapters kind of directly um link to Jesus. Um so I want to share that bear with me one quick second here. So when he describes, when the Lord describes the punishment, um, he describes it as a sevenfold punishment. He describes, and as we know, God's number is is seven, and he describes it as a seven-fold punishment. But when Jesus came, he took on that sevenfold punishment. Only in his natural, he didn't get those same rewards. We ended up getting the rewards after his death. Um, so we are in a we're in a situation here where you know people God's people, they they were given a strict outline, just as we were when we were children, of what not to do. Unfortunately, they you know, they messed around and they found out and they had to go through that period of exile. The land had the rest. The gift was was one, the covenant, but also the land. But their conduct in the land made the land have to, you know, them have to be separated from the land. So that caused me to pause. And I was thinking about this really early this morning. I was like, well, it's a faith then. It's a faith thing that, you know, you don't, because he tells them specifically, you know, how much, I think it was what three years, how much um they would get in the years where they did not harvest. So for me, I was like, well, that's just a faith thing. That's a faith issue of, okay, well, I trust what I can do with my plow, I trust what I can do with my hands, I trust what I can do with my mind for um, you know, you know, for agriculture more than I trust what the Lord is saying. So I stopped and I thought, well, what areas in my life may I be in a force rest in? What areas of my life? And I I asked you guys to do the same. Obviously, I'm not expecting you to share it personally, but uh right now because of the time constraints, but what areas of your life may you have just not allowed the Lord into? Things that you that he wanted you to trust him with, things that he wanted you to walk in faith with. And it got to the point where something had to be taken away from you, or it had to be put on pause, or you had to be redirected, or maybe literally you had to be literally removed from a situation for that figurative land to be worked, for that figurative land to um just be just to rest. Because, you know, we're all talented people here, we're all smart people here. And, you know, when you're blessed in those, in whatever area you're blessed with, we can get to the point where we believe that our work in the natural, you know, we lose that partnership aspect. Uh I think I've been mentioning that a lot lately, that it's a partnership. It's not supposed to be all just you know us sitting on our bus because you know, faith without works is dead. But then it's also not supposed to be us just you know on a grind. I think it's uh Proverbs 120, no, sorry, Psalms 127, I believe, where we talk about, you know, if the Lord's not building that house, it's not gonna stand. Sorry to paraphrase there. But if the Lord, you know, if the Lord is not involved in that process, it's not gonna stand. It doesn't make sense for us to work day and night if we're not going to have that faith. So that's what you know the spirit kind of shared with me is like, what areas of my life have I just been, you know, what type of land have I just been trying to just you know uh harvest without involving the Lord? And where and had that led to a forced rest. But we are ready for breakout rooms. I thank you guys so much.