The first wave of consequence, verses sixteen through seventeen. Judgments upon the nation of covenant breakers. And that's critical to all that's happening here. This is not for individuals.
Some of it certainly applies, spills over to individuals. Those nations are made up of individuals. But it's with the nation of Israel in mind. The significance of that is seen to this day. You can have a nation, and not that they are, but the majority of Jewish people in Israel do not believe Jesus is their Messiah.
This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Leviticus. Please stay tuned. Stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio.
specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick will conclude his study called Consequences, Not Coincidences in Leviticus 26. I will break the pride of your power 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 produce, nor shall the trees of the land yield their fruit.
Well, their prayers would not Get out of Earth's atmosphere, would not reach heaven. If they were Hostile towards him. Remember, the word translated in the New King James in this chapter, and only in this chapter does it show up. Is combative. If you're combative against hostile towards me, The rains will stop, the crops will fail.
They were not allowed To be affiliated with God. and sin without judgment. They were not allowed to use his name. And not be held accountable in public. That's what this chapter is about.
There's a consequence. It is not a coincidence. It is a consequence to their sin. In the third wave begins in verse 21 of Leviticus 26. Then, if you walk contrary, and there's that word again only shows up in this chapter in all the Bible, then all the Hebrew.
Part of the Bible. Uh if you walk Contrary to me and are not willing to obey me, I will bring on you seven times more plagues. According to your sins. He's going to repeat the seven times. The intensity remains.
Now this word Contrary, meaning combative. Does it show up? Does it have a parallel in the New Testament? Because that's what we're interested in. The Old Testament to us is not a history book.
I mean, that has history, sure. There's that element. But it's much more than that, it's God's word. And it's God's character. It's what God wants and what He does.
The nature of God and his relationship to people, to sinners. That's what the Old Testament begins to help us with. And that's why the New Testament saints are always quoting it. But they're giving it to us. in the light of the Messiah.
Paul, we've already quoted one where he talks about the body being a temple of the Lord.
Now he addresses this combative spirit towards God. Romans 8. Because the carnal mind is at war with God or enmity. against God. For it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.
It's at war, it's contrary, it's hostile. It's an enemy combatant. And it has to be dealt with on site, ideally. But it just doesn't cooperate. That's why we're at war, spiritual war.
Verse 22: I will also send wild beasts among you. Which shall rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, make You few in number. and your highways shall be desolate.
Well, these are the consequences. There's no way to put them in a bubble on one hand and then judge them on the other hand. They're getting judged. This is what it looks like when God is mocked and He withdraws His care. He retaliates against the wicked.
but not without leaving a door of hope. And that phrase comes out of Hosea the prophet, right from the prophet, the door of hope. In the book of Judges also, In the days of Shamgah, now Deborah, the judge of Israel, she writes about. This moment in time in Israel. When they could not even take the main road anywhere because of the enemy in the land.
So they go, you know, the byways, the back streets. And she writes about this. She says, in the days of Shamgar. The highways were deserted. And the travelers walked along the byways.
Yeah, but Shamgar, the man with the superhero name. He freed those roads up. Because before we get to Deborah's Song about Shamgar, we read this about him, and all we really have are these two verses about this particular judge. I think he must not have been very spiritual, but he was not a man to mess with. It says in Judges 3, verse 31, Shamgar, who killed 600 men of the Philistines with an ox goad.
And he delivered Israel. He opened those roads up.
So it wasn't until Samson came along to break his record. There's an example of the consequence of sin shutting down the roadways. which meant commerce was greatly affected, among other things. And then God opening up the roadways by raising up A judge when the people called out to the Lord.
Now, the fourth wave, beginning in verse 23, and if by these things you are not reformed by me, but walk contrary to me, verse 24, then I will. Walk contrary to you, and I will punish you yet seven times for your sins. Verse 25, and I will bring a sword against you. That will execute the vengeance. of the covenant When you are gathered together within your cities, I will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into the hand.
of the enemy. And yet Israel had kings. The kings were supposed to write the scriptures down themselves.
So that they would know it and recognize. The seasons of their life and their kingdom. And while these things were happening under the reign of King Zedekiah, And Jehoiakim And the last four kings of Judah They never looked at the scriptures. They just did things their ways. What this is saying here, he says, When you are gathered together in your cities, when the refugees from the country run to the walled cities for protection.
They're only going to run into judgment. There's no getting away from it. long seizures, they ended with the spread of disease and famine. And that's what happened, just as God said the judgment would come. Verse 26, when I have cut off your supply of bread, Ten women shall bake your bread in one oven?
and they shall bring back your bread by weight, And you shall eat and not be satisfied.
Well, there's going to be food shortages.
Now this is a battle. Thousand years before The fall of Samaria and Judah, not exact, but almost. And so you can see that it's prophetic. That if you provoke God, you lose. Who has hardened their heart against the Lord and prospered?
No one, not a single one. When The Jews come back from their Babylonian captivity. They start to rebuild their temple. But then they are faced with some opposition. and they quit.
Well, does that happen to Christians? Do you get a Christian and say, I'm going to serve the Lord? And they go and get involved in a church ministry, and they find that, oh, it's not as glorious as what they thought. There's problems, there's things to overcome. What are you going to do?
You're going to quit and stop working, or are you going to build a temple?
Well, God raises up Zechariah and Haggai, the prophets, to deal with this. Haggai, the older prophet. He calls them out. He says, You have sown much and bring in little. You eat, but you do not have enough.
You drink, but you are not filled with drink. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages Earns wages to be put in a bag with holes. He says, You can't get satisfied because God is not primary in your life. You're primary.
You're self-centered, not God-centered. And the consequence of that Is you can't find satisfaction.
Well, he's not even talking about the severity of judgment that Moses is talking about, but I just took the time to point out: verse 26 is about food shortages and the inability to be satisfied as a consequence of turning on God.
Well, Haggai comes along and says, there's another consequence. You don't have to turn on God, you just have to do nothing for Him. And there's a consequence that comes with that. And that's what Haggai chapter 1, verse 6, points out. Two short chapters, Haggai will clean your clock if you are self-centered.
Well, we're all self-centered to some point. We all have something. But their tolerances, God knows that. You say, yeah, well, when I'm in private, you know, I just think and do things that I know I shouldn't do. Yeah, but what do you do when you get around people?
Well, I get my act together because I want to be right with God.
Well, God counts that as good. It's you know, there's just there's many facets to Sin and forgiveness. We can't figure it all out. God has. And he ultimately says true.
Trust me. And God knows the heart. He knows that it is deceitful above all wickedness, but he also knows. The heart that he can say to Today you will be with me in Paradise. What kind of heart did that guy have?
What kind of heart do you have to get nailed on a cross?
Well, you can have a pure heart like Christ, you can have a dirty heart like the outlaws. In the end, God will sort it out, and we should not Be terrorized by that. If we love the Lord. We want to do all we can do to please him in spite of ourselves. Versus 27 Through 35, the fifth wave of consequence, and after all this, if you do not obey me.
Which again implies you had a chance to obey me, if you still don't. He says, but walk hostile to me, verse 28: then I also will walk hostile to you in fury, and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins. Verse 29, you shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters. Yeah. God does not reward idolatry.
He does not reward corruption. He largely lets things run their course, which is a consequence. Just to leave it untouched by God is a curse. On at least two occasions that we know of, the Jews turned to cannibalism. The first one was when Samaria was besieged by the Syrians in 2 Kings chapter 6.
And the second one was in the days of Jeremiah at the siege of Jerusalem. Lamentations chapter two. Lamentations is too late. That's why he's lamenting. That's why he's crying in the cave of Jeremiah.
It's done. Jerusalem, how lonely sits the city. Yeah, because it's been destroyed. Everything is gone. We can't imagine this.
We have been shielded from so much that the Jews, as a people, have not been shielded from. And thus God talks about how He's going to bless them. Verse 30, I will destroy your high places.
Well, you're not talking about that at the moment, but millennial prophecies do. I will destroy your high places, verse 30, cut down your incense altars, and cast your carcasses on the lifeless forms of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you. Literally, where he says, Cast your carcasses on the lifeless forms of your idols, the Hebrew actually is, Cast your corpses on the corpses of your dung pellets. or your dung gods. Unambiguous utter contempt for idols That's what we're facing.
Ezekiel was fond of that. Hebrew word For idols, which means dung gods. And Of the 45 times that word is used to refer to idols in the Old Testament, Ezekiel uses it 39 times. He only leaves six for everybody else in the Bible. He hated idolatry.
He saw what it did to his people. He saw them come to his service. Oh, we got to hear this guy preach. And God said there. Full of baloney.
Now the vulgarity in the use of the language, it's in the action that people took. God is the victim. Not the people. They chose to follow these idols. The depiction would be received in an agricultural society.
So you get a picture and you see you know no man Having set his hands to the plow, looking back as fit, and you see a guy in the ancient world pushing a plow and back of an oxen.
Well, when the oxen has to go, he's not going to say, can I have a break? I gotta run to the bathroom. No, he's just going to do what he does. And the guy plowing better watch his step. Or with sandals on, he's going to regret it.
That's the picture when he says they're dung gods, they are useless. They're nothing. They are the waste out of hell. Your fake gods are the same as those cow chips in the field. They're not even as useful.
That's the idea. Because for us to hear this kind of language, we think this is, you know, again, this is vulgar. No, it's not, it's accurate. Uh I remember In the military, we had to get up at like 3:30 and we got on these helicopters. We left the ship on these helicopters.
It was dark, of course, 3:30 in the morning. And we flew forever, how long we finally land. And it's still dark, and getting off the helicopter, I'm walking, and I'm saying, boy, this is squishy. This is not like it's a bog, it's just squishy.
Well, when the lights came on, the sun rose. We're in a pasture. And those animals must have had a hundred years. Uh Because There was not a space. You could don't even try to watch your step.
It was useless. There were cow chips the size of Volkswagens. Uh That was my first experience with, and we knew they were bulls and cows because we saw them. I think we actually blew some of them up by mistake, but. I didn't have to worry about that.
Anyhow. My point is There's a city boy coming in touch with An agrarian culture. And Well though you might Say, well, that's disgusting.
Well, when you're stuck there, you just have to, you know, still had to go to sleep there. You still had to function like it wasn't there.
So, anyway, they would have gotten that.
Well, coming now back to this verse 31, he says, I will lay your cities waste and bring your sanctuaries to desolation, and I will not smell the fragrance of your sweet aromas.
Well, twice God allowed his temple. to be destroyed. Verse 32: I will bring the land to desolation, and your enemies who dwell in it shall be astonished at it. That happened. Twice.
Verse 33: I will scatter you among the nations and draw out a sword after you. Your land shall be desolate and your cities waste. That has happened. The wrath of God is not a theory. That's the point.
This anticipates the religious apostasy. Verse 34. Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbath as long as it lies desolate. And you are in your enemies land. Then the land shall rest and enjoy its Sabbath, verse 35.
As long as it lies desolate, it shall rest. for the time it did not rest on your Sabbaths when you dwelt in it.
So we covered this in Leviticus twenty five, in verse seven in particular, the four hundred and ninety years Of missed sabbatical years divided by seven gives you 70, which is the amount of time they were in captivity in Babylon. You can cross-reference 2 Chronicles 36, 21. Jeremiah 29, 10. and Daniel 9.2.
Well, I'm here, I might as well make it. The comment, so you know, we love the verse, Jeremiah 29:11. I know the thoughts that I think towards you, thoughts of peace.
Well, that's true. But when God said that to the Jews, He was telling them, take Take your punishment like a man. That's basically what he was saying. You're in Babylon, you're not getting out. Make houses, learn to live there, be a light in a dark place.
I'll see you in 70 years. And that's, I just like pointing those. Raining on little parades. I don't want to hurt anybody, but if it's inaccurate, it needs to be. addressed.
36 now is the sixth wave and the most intense. As for those who are left, I will send faintness into their hearts. in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a shaken leaf Shall cause them to flee. They shall flee as though fleeing from a sword.
and they shall fall when no one pursues. They shall stumble over one another as if it were before a sword when no one pursues. and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies. You would think, you would think that the Jews would read this and heed. Why not?
Well, one reason is they don't read it. Cherry pick the sections that they want and leave the rest to go. Professed Christians have been guilty of very similar things. Yeah, I tell you they're Christians and go, you know, Read the horoscope. Is that sin?
Verses 36 to 38 portray a beaten, pathetic people.
So paranoid and skittish. That natural noises. panic them. And God is saying, this is not how it should be. You made us dead.
Verse thirty eight, you shall perish among the nations and the land of your enemies. shall eat you up. In verse 39. And those of you who are left shall waste away. In Their iniquity In your enemies' lands.
also in their fathers' iniquities. which are with them They shall waste away.
So God said, What a mess you've made. I wanted to bless you, I wanted to give you so much. But you insisted on making me your enemy.
So I'm treating you like an enemy. Ultimately he does return his people. But this is a consequence. It's not a curse. You can avoid a curse, but you can avoid a consequence.
Ezekiel Prophesied to these types of people who were in the enemy's land. and they were still thick-headed. After they had seen all the prophecies of Jeremiah come to pass, Well, verse 40 now, to the end, we have the provisions for repentance. He says, But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers with their unfaithfulness, in which They were unfaithful to me. and that they also have walked Contrary to me, verse 41, and that I also have walked contrary to them and have brought them into the land of their enemies.
If their uncircumcised hearts We're humbled. and they accept their guilt. Then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, my covenant with Isaac, my covenant with Abraham. I will remember the land. This is the broken heart of God.
There's a sob, there's a note of a sob in this. If you just admit you're guilty, I cannot let you into heaven. And when you're pretending. To love me, but you hate me. God honors true repentance.
He always does. A contrite spirit, a broken heart. Isaiah ends his prophecies. He begins the end, the last chapter of his prophecies with just that thing: on this I will look, a contrite spirit. Ezra in the ninth chapter.
Goes to God with this contrite spirit on behalf of the people. Nehemiah chapter 9, he does the same thing. Daniel chapter 9, the same thing, because these great men of God understood that God would receive them. If they owned up To their sin.
Now, verse 41: the circumcision, a symbol of Jehovah's covenant with his people. He wanted their thoughts and actions to uphold and reflect The confession of their faith, which the circumcision was. It was a confession of their faith. We're into the covenant, we agree, you are. Jehovah God.
We agree. And then they went out to disagree and that What brings the uncircumcised? Moniker on them. Anyway, he mentions the patriarchs Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham. In reverse order.
It's sort of like he's looking backwards And it's not a sequence of their birth, but a reverse sequence. You know, my covenant with Jacob. You should respond to that. My covenant with Isaac. That should mean something to you.
My covenant with Abraham. It should mean something to you. Verse 43, this wasn't weakness. This was not a people that were sinning because they were weak, they were sinning because they chose. to go against Their scripture.
They chose not to believe it. I don't buy it. I like the gods, I like Baal, I like Ashtareth, they let you have fun. It was deliberate. Whereas many times you see people trapped in sin.
They may have been delivered initially, but now they're stuck. But God has not given up on them. It's not the same thing. Verse 43, the land also shall be left empty by them, and will enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate without them. They will accept their guilt because they despise my judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes.
Yet for all that, verse 44, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, nor shall I abhor them to utterly destroy them and break my covenant with them, for I am Jehovah their God. But for their sake, verse 45, I will remember the covenant. of their ancestors. Whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am Jehovah.
Well, Israel's never going to fail ultimately. You're never going to push him into the sea. They are Invisible. In that sense. And this is why Satan knows he's got to get rid of America and he has to do it from the inside.
He can't do it from the outside. Too many country boys with guns wouldn't let, okay, that's funny to me. But anyway, back to this.
Sorry, I'm trying to not make this finish this up. This protection will last that we see on Israel. Until the church is raptured. And that will ultimately bring America down. That's my view.
My view is America will continue to support Israel, even though we've got. Many um demonic people in high places in elected office. offices, God will protect Israel and he will use America to do it. But already, the erosion has started, and that will set the stage for Antichrist who needs a one world government. He cannot get that so long as America remains.
The America that we are trying to fight to hold on to right now. Uh verse forty six. These are the statutes and judgments and the laws which Jehovah made between himself and the children of Israel. on Mount Sinai by the hand of Moses.
Well, Leviticus was given to Moses during those two 40-day trips up Mount Sinai. And this is what he brings back. This is God's Word. to his people. Let's pray.
Our Father in Heaven, Sometimes your word just renders us. speechless. It's so well put together. It is so true. It is so visible that once you see it, You cannot unsee it.
We thank you. We thank you very much. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thanks for tuning in to today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio.
Pastor Rick Gaston is currently going through the book of Leviticus. We're glad you joined us. We trust that you're gaining some valuable insights into God's Word as we go through this Old Testament book. Cross-reference radio comes to you from Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville, in Virginia. If you'd like to subscribe to our podcast, you can do so by going to your favorite app store and downloading from there.
For any additional information about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, Crossreference Radio.com. Make sure to come back again for the upcoming edition in the book of Leviticus, as Pastor Rick has much more to share. We thank you for being with us right here on Cross Reference Radio.
