Lev 26:1-27:34
An ominous warning.
As the book of Leviticus comes to a close it outlines the judgments on those who fail to observe the law. Now if you had been reading along with the story and if you didn’t know how the story ends, I think you would be pretty worried. The whining in the desert and the whole golden calf incident doesn’t instill you with a heap of confidence. Judgment seems inevitable. Judgment does come.
A ray of hope though shines out of this passage:
40 ” ‘But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers—their treachery against me and their hostility toward me, 41 which made me hostile toward 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, 42 I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham Lev 26:40-42
This hope though relied on circumcised hearts, something Israel did not know. Something even the prophets longed for. Something that would come through Christ:
13When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature,[b] God made you[c] alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. 15And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.[d] Col 2:13-15
As Leviticus comes to a close a book of blood, sacrifice, law and circumcision.
It should send a warning to us, to never forget the cross.
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