“Yet, in spite of all that, I will not reject them when they are in the lands of their enemies, nor will I loathe them to the point of utterly destroying them and thus break my covenant with them, because I am Adonai their God. Rather, for their sakes, I will remember the covenant of their ancestors whom I brought out of the land of Egypt — with the nations watching — so that I might be their God; I am Adonai.”-Leviticus 26:44-45
After being told all of the dreadful things Israel will have to go through due to their disobedience of God’s Torah, the end of Leviticus 26 concludes with a great promise of hope for God’s chosen people.
And this is the part of the Scriptures the gentile church needs to repent over.
Take a good look at verse 44.
God says that in spite of Israel’s rebellion, “I will NOT reject them, nor will I abhor them so as to destroy them”.
YHWH says for the sake of the covenants He entered into with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the covenants He made with Israel will stand forever no matter what.
So let’s get this FACT firmly embedded into the deepest recesses of our craniums.
God has NEVER permanently rejected His own people Israel.
And He has never replaced them with some law-breaking gentile church institution!
Dispersing Israel throughout the nations was a form of national discipline, NOT national destruction.
Got it?
The whole reason God sent Israel into exile was to bring them to a place where they would realize their sins and confess and repent.
God’s loving plan for His people is ultimately that they will AVOID eternal judgment and be restored to their own land.
The same principle applies to us as individual believers.
When we are disciplined and punished by the Lord, the reason is to get us off the path of destruction so that we will not be eternally destroyed.
However, notice the two steps necessary to avert judgment.
First, we must come to a realization that what is happening to us is God’s hand of judgment.
Second, we must confess and repent of our wrongdoings.
If we do not confess, then I pray that the Lord have mercy on you when He returns for the final judgment.
When we come to the Book of Revelations, understand that all the horrors depicted there are NOT about discipline.
The time for discipline is finished once we get into the Book of Revelations.
Revelations represents the final judgment of those who refused to accept YHWH’s discipline.
Oh, and by the way, I would also like to let you know that all of those horrific events depicted for us in the Book of Revelations, you know the ones that have been so popularized by the evangelical crowd, all of those events are contained right here in Leviticus 26 as the list of curses and appear again in Deuteronomy 28.
Oops!
So much for the teaching that the Old Testament is no longer valid or has been abolished.
NEXT TIME WE BEGIN LEVITICUS CHAPTER 27
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