[0:00] Leviticus chapter 26, Leviticus chapter 26, have your Bibles and turn with me there. We're just continuing to make our way through the book, which is still on our trek through the Old Testament.
[0:14] We are in the final few days of the year 2020, and for some of us, we're like, okay, that's great, maybe we'll move on and go into the next year, and each new year brings its new set of challenges and things like that.
[0:29] But there are a number of practices which we need to continually build into our lives, so I encourage you guys to have at least a systematic approach to your Bible reading throughout the year.
[0:42] And if you want to follow the one that I follow, my wife follows, and I've got copies of that. I meant to put it out this morning, but I will have them out. If you want one tonight, I can get you one tonight.
[0:53] That's Robert Murray McSheen's Bible reading plan. Or you can find any number of others. Some like to read it chronologically. I don't like that you move around through a lot of scripture like that.
[1:06] I move around a lot too, but it's a little bit more systematic reading. But either way, I encourage you to find a reading plan that you can start January 1 and make your way through and just continue to see the Word of God throughout the year.
[1:19] But if you want a copy of that one, I do have some copies in my office, and I can get it to you. You can find it online pretty easy. I actually think Miss Pat found a—it's on the app.
[1:31] It's on the Bible app. That reading plan is there as well. So you can follow it electronically if you want to. But that's the one. Robert Murray really is the only name you need to remember.
[1:41] He was a Scottish preacher many, many years ago. Lived a very young life. Had a very short ministry, but has an impact that still continues on to this day. But we are in Leviticus chapter 26 tonight as we just continue to make our way through scripture.
[1:57] I want to read the chapter in its entirety to you so that we can take it in its proper context. Most of the time when we get into these Old Testament passages, while there are a number of truths that we can glean from a verse here or there or a set of verses here and there, it seems to be most beneficial to see the big picture, at least in my own reading and in my own understanding of it, to see the big picture in large chunks of scripture.
[2:22] So I tend to stay towards those larger sections as we're looking at the Old Testament. So we'll read Leviticus chapter 26 together tonight, and then we'll pray, and then we'll get into it.
[2:34] Now Leviticus says, So I will turn toward you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will confirm my covenant with you.
[3:40] You will eat the old supply and clear out the old because of the new. Moreover, I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul will not reject you. I will also walk among you and be your God, and you shall be my people.
[3:52] I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you would not be their slaves, and I broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect. But if you do not obey me and do not carry out all these commandments, if instead you reject my statutes and if your soul abhors my ordinances so as not to carry out all my commandments and so break my covenant, I in turn will do this to you.
[4:17] I will appoint over you a sudden terror, consumption, and fever that will waste away the eyes and cause the soul to pine away. Also you will sow your seed uselessly, for your enemies will eat it up.
[4:28] I will set my face against you so that you will be struck down before your enemies, and those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee when no one is pursuing you. If also after these things you do not obey me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.
[4:43] I will also break down your pride of power, also make your sky like iron and your earth like bronze. Your strength will be spent uselessly, for your land will not yield its produce, and trees of the land will not yield their fruit.
[4:54] If then you act with hostility against me and are unwilling to obey me, I will increase the plague on you seven times according to your sins. I will let loose among you the beasts of the field, which will bereave you of your children and destroy your cattle and reduce your number so that your roads lie deserted.
[5:11] And if by these things you are not turned to me, but act with hostility against me, then I will act with hostility against you, and I, even I, will strike you seven times for your sins. I will also bring upon you a sword, which will execute vengeance for the covenant.
[5:26] And when you gather together in your cities, I will send pestilence among you, so that you shall be delivered into your enemy hands. When I break your staff of bread, ten women will bake your bread in one oven, and they will bring back your bread in rationed amounts, so that you will eat and not be satisfied.
[5:42] Yet if in spite of this you do not obey me, but act with hostility against me, then I will act with wrathful hostility against you, and I, even I, will punish you seven times for your sins.
[5:54] Further, you will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters, and you will eat. I then will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars, and heap your remains on the remains of your idols, for my soul shall abhor you.
[6:07] I will lay waste your cities as well, and make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your soothing aromas. I will make the land desolate, so that your enemies who settle in it will be appalled over it.
[6:19] You, however, I will scatter among the nations, and will draw out a sword after you, as your land becomes desolate and your cities become waste. Then the land will enjoy its Sabbaths, all the days of the desolation, while you are in your enemy's land.
[6:31] Then the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it will observe in the rest, which it did not observe on your Sabbaths while you are living in it. As for those of you who may be left, I will also bring weakness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies, and the sound of a driven leaf will chase them.
[6:47] And even when no one is pursuing, they will flee as though from the sword, and they will fall. They will therefore stumble over each other as if running from the sword, although no one is pursuing, and you will have no strength to stand up before your enemies.
[7:01] But you will perish among the nations, and your enemy's land will consume you. So those of you who may be left will rot away because of their iniquity in the lands of the enemies. And also because of the iniquity of their forefathers, they will rot away with them.
[7:15] Verse 40. But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their forefathers in their unfaithfulness which they committed against me, and also in their acting with hostility against me, I also was acting with hostility against them to bring them into the land of their enemies.
[7:32] Or if their uncircumcised heart becomes humbled so that they then make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember also my covenant with Isaac, and my covenant with Abraham as well, and I will remember the land.
[7:50] For the land will be abandoned by them and will make up for its Sabbaths while it is made desolate without them. They, meanwhile, will be making amends for their iniquity because they rejected my ordinances and their soul abhorred my statutes.
[8:03] Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I so abhor them as to destroy them, breaking my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God.
[8:14] But I will remember for them the covenant with 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 the Lord. These are the statutes and ordinances and the laws which the Lord established between himself and the sons of Israel through Moses at Mount Sinai.
[8:32] Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this day, and Lord, we rejoice in the opportunity we have of gathering together. We thank you for the chance to read your word in this portion of the Old Testament scripture, Lord, as we see the truth that it contains.
[8:47] We pray, O Lord, that you would speak to our hearts, and Lord, that you would let this truth be enlightened among us. Lord, that we would glean from it an application for our own daily life, that it would be so much more than just a gathering and collecting of information, but Lord, that it would be a life transformation as it draws us closer to you for your good and your glory, and we ask it all in Jesus' name.
[9:09] Amen. I want you to see tonight from Leviticus chapter 26, a very lengthy chapter. I do know, and I know it is kind of sometimes cumbersome to listen to, but it is something which we need to read in its entirety so that we can get it in its proper context.
[9:22] I want you to see the outcome of a choice, or the outcome of our choices as recorded for us in Leviticus 26. The book of Leviticus has this theme, Be holy as I am holy, says the Lord.
[9:35] The holiness of God is the theme throughout the entire book, and really Leviticus answers the question that we have, that we are confronted with at the end of the book of Exodus.
[9:47] At the end of the book of Exodus, the tabernacle has been completed, and the Shekinah glory, that is the manifested presence of God's glory, inhabits or fills the tabernacle in the holy of holies, and the problem is how do men approach the glory of God?
[10:05] Because if you remember, when Exodus is ending, or as it ends, the completion of the tabernacle and the presence of God, no one is inside the tabernacle because God is there.
[10:16] And Leviticus opens up for us how then men should approach this holy God, because God had manifested His holiness in His Shekinah glory, or in the radiance of His being.
[10:27] And Leviticus answers for us how then men should approach this holy God, and it is simply by living a holy life. Leviticus is divided into two very distinguishable sections, each of them being divided by Leviticus chapter 16.
[10:43] Leviticus chapter 16 is the great chapter that speaks of the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur. It speaks of that one day of the year in which the priest would walk in, the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies and make atonement for the sins of the nation.
[10:58] And if you remember, that was at the beginning of their year, not necessarily the beginning of the calendar year, but the beginning of the Jewish calendar year. And it was to be a beginning, a new beginning.
[11:09] It was to be made new at a new start, literally, physically, and also spiritually. And it was to be a day of rejoicing. But the chapters that precede that, Leviticus 1 through 15, tell us of the sacrifices which God has commanded, how we are to come before Him, or how the people were to come before Him in the sacrificial system.
[11:30] The joy we have in that is as we read these sacrifices, we see that each one of these sacrifices find their ultimate fulfillment in the work and person of Jesus Christ. He is our sacrifice.
[11:42] Leviticus 17 through 27 tells us how we should live our daily lives as a result of being in His presence. That is, it is the application of the truth, right?
[11:56] A salvation is not the end of the road. To be redeemed or to be forgiving is not the end of our walk. It is literally the beginning of our walk. That is why it's called the new birth.
[12:08] And once we have been born again, we are then called to live a life which is different from the life in which we used to live. So when we go into the book of Leviticus and we are told in the first half, this is how you should approach God.
[12:22] And then in Leviticus 16, we see the way in which God has made for the people to be forgiven before God. Then it only makes sense that from there on, we are told how people should live because they can now approach God and are forgiven by God.
[12:38] I hope that makes sense to you because the reality that we can approach Him and we have been forgiven and cleansed in His sight should therefore lead to a life lived differently.
[12:50] And that is what we see through the second half of Leviticus. How then shall we live? And when we're now drawing it into a close, Leviticus 27 will speak of vows and agreements which we make and we don't want to put ahead of that.
[13:03] But here we are kind of wrapping things up and we see that God is calling all things back to this attitude of choice because the truth is we have a choice as to whether or not we are going to live as we should or not live as we should.
[13:22] While salvation and forgiveness and grace and mercy is all of the Lord. Now, I really can't understand it. I like how D.L. Moody used to say it. D.L. Moody used to say the free will of man and the election of God are two wings on a dove.
[13:36] You have one, you fly in a circle. You have both, you fly in a straight line. And somehow or another you reconcile the two. That God is the God of salvation calling men to Himself and redeeming them and saving them and all these other glorious truths which Scripture tells us but man still bears responsibility because of his choice and his free will.
[13:55] And we don't try to explain it away but rather we accept it as the Bible presents it to us and we are all called while the opportunity to approach a holy God and while there is the opportunity to be seen as cleansed before the holy God we have to make a choice as to how we are going to live from that point on even as believers.
[14:16] When we are redeemed God does not instantaneously make us a robot that we would always do the right things. Even Paul himself says in Romans chapter 7 I am not yet what I should be right?
[14:30] That there is this war that is raging within him. So we see here the outcome of the choice and he lays it out for us in Leviticus 26 it would be a chapter of both blessings and curses and we will kind of flesh those out.
[14:44] But I want you to see first and foremost that there is the root of every decision that every individual makes. First we see the root of our choice or the root of our decisions.
[14:56] It starts with you shall not make for yourself idols nor shall you set up for yourself an image or a sacred pillar nor shall you place a figure stone in your land to bow down to it for I am the Lord your God.
[15:09] God starts here with where he should always start because when we are speaking with reference to our choices or the actions we take or the way we decide to or not to live in obedience it always has one root and that root is what are we worshiping.
[15:27] The root is that which we are bowing down to and God starts here at the root of the problem and the root of the problem is always worship. I don't mean our worship service I mean our worship life.
[15:40] That which we are submitting to bowing down to and paying honor to and here he is calling his people not to set up for themselves idols or to set up for yourselves an image or a sacred pillar literally a decorated statue that you could bow down and kiss.
[15:55] Why? Because he is the Lord your God. He says for I am the Lord your God. He is calling them to a practice and a truth. He is calling their worship to be directed to the right person because of the right relationship.
[16:09] He is calling his people to pay certain that they are worshiping him and him alone. He says in verse 2 you shall keep my Sabbath and reverence my sanctuary I am the Lord because our worship is really played out in how we respond to that which is rightfully his.
[16:32] Sabbath was created for man but they belong to him. Right? We are not living in a Sabbath keeping statute anymore. We don't. The only one of the few commandments or the only commandment not repeated in the New Testament is the commandment of the Sabbath.
[16:48] We are not called to keep the Sabbath even though Jesus highlights it and says that man was made man wasn't made for the Sabbath Sabbath was made for man but we are not issued a commandment to keep the Sabbath that's why I have no problem whatsoever with us worshiping together on the first day of the week rather than the seventh day of the week okay?
[17:05] Because we come together to worship as a celebration of the resurrection every Sunday is Easter Sunday to us. Whether or not we acknowledge it or not each and every week when we gather together on the first day of the week we are proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus Christ that's why believers began to meet on that day and it is a proclamation of that but we are not legalistic in that we have to do it at a certain time but what we see here is that God says that their reverence towards those things which belong to him are really a reflection of what they are worshiping.
[17:37] It is a reflection of their life of worship how they revere his sanctuary how they revere and honor his Sabbath would be a reflection of their worship regardless of what motions they were going through and every decision every choice every outcome has its root here it is rooted in worship because true worship leads to true choice or true obedience false worship will always lead to false living.
[18:12] The reason that we have so much struggle in our own personal walk is because of this thing called worship. Whatever it is we're bowing down to at that time now we live in a culture in America while in the rest of the world it is not necessarily uncommon to see people walking up to images or it's not necessarily uncommon to see people going to statues I can take you to places not very far from here where I can show you major statues that are built that people walk up to and they kiss those things and they worship and adore those things and you know this great golden Buddha that I can take you to on one of the back roads in Murfreesboro there and I can take you to all these places where statues are set up and people worship but it's not as prominent here as it would be around the rest of the world or in a number of places where a great pantheon of false gods are set up and people are worshiping and adoring them in America the struggle we have is not necessarily something we construct but something we imagine something that we are seeking to attain to either a status or a position or a prosperity or some of those things which we are putting above him and we know the saying whatever it is we're putting before God is the very thing we're worshiping over him but we need to understand this is that every choice we make every decision of our life really has its root in what it is we are worshiping what it is we are worshiping the root of every decision is the worship of the believer now we move from the root to the reward of our actions or the reward of the actions which God is laying out for his people here rewards are not necessarily good things reward is just something that is given in response to an action so in this chapter we have two sections of rewards we have the rewards of blessings and then we have the rewards of curses right it is the blessings and curses and the first one is laid out for us pretty clear he says in verse 3 if you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments so as to carry them out then I shall so here we begin the blessings the first one is if your worship your true worship leads you to true living if you are sincerely worshiping me and by that worship you are now making a decision to live in obedience to me then this is what you can expect someone has said that these blessings are grouped into three sections and we need to be careful because we don't want to preach a prosperity gospel because a lot of prosperity preachers have used this passage as a kind of a platform for that so we want to preface it with saying this
[20:44] God is speaking to the nation not to the individuals here right it is a national idea it is not necessarily an individual concern so when he gives these blessings he is speaking of his blessings that will rest upon the nation and we can't say that if you are faithful then you are not ever going to suffer any kind of loss because the chapter right before this speaks of the fact that if someone among you is suffering lost then others should come around beside them right so it is quite possible for people to be in a right relationship with God and still have struggles we can acknowledge that okay it is possible it is a false doctrine to say that if we are suffering or if we are dealing with a loss it is because we are not worshiping as we should that is a false doctrine because it is possible to be in a right relationship with God and still be suffering some type of loss be suffering some type of displeasure as a matter of fact in a lot of portions of the world that once someone truly begins to worship then they instantaneously begin to suffer right so we don't want to preach a prosperity gospel but the blessings that we see of this chapter speaking to the nation of Israel keeping it in context where God is calling this nation to be a light to the world we see they are grouped in three major groupings there is a blessing of prosperity he said I will send the rain prosperity is seen by the production of the cross right he said I will send the rain and you will be threshing until the harvest of the grapes and you will be harvesting grapes until the planting or the sowing of the seeds and what he is saying is you are not going to have a loyal time you are not going to run out of food you are going to be eating in abundance because the rains will come as they should in the nation of
[22:24] Israel in the land of Israel rather there are two rainy seasons there is the early and the latter rain seasons and if you have both of them then there is this great cycle of land production and crop production and God is saying that if you do what I have commanded you to do if you choose because of your true worship to live in obedience then I will prosper your land it is the blessing of prosperity he also says that one of the blessings that will come will be the blessing of protection he said I will keep you safe five of you will chase away a hundred a hundred of you will chase away ten thousand no one will come against you you will lay down and you will sleep in peace you won't have to worry about the animals you won't have to worry about any of those things you will be at peace because of the protecting hand of God upon you it is amazing to read the testimony that we have recorded for us in the Old Testament of when God's people were obedient to him the protection which they were given even though they may be few in number
[23:24] God was always there resting upon them God's hand was there and we see that God promises them prosperity God promises them protection but the greatest promise that he gives to them is the promise of his presence it says there that if you make the right choices that if you are obedient to me I love how he says it in verse 11 he says moreover I will make my dwelling among you here's the greatest blessing I will make my dwelling among you and my soul will not reject you I will also walk among you and be your God and you shall be my people I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you would not be their slaves and I broke the bars of your yoke to make you walk erect what is he saying he said you will not only prosper you will not only be protected but you will enjoy my presence I will be there and my friend this is the greatest blessing which God could give them this is the greatest reward of a life of obedience he said I will be among you as believers listen we understand when we make choices that are rooted in our worship and when we are making choices to live obedient the greatest blessing which God could ever give us is the blessing of his presence to know that he is there because in his presence we have prosperity right because if he is there we need nothing else this is why we don't need to name it and claim it gospel this is why we don't need the riches you know the prosperity gospel because if we have Christ with us then we have everything else even if we cannot handle it by our hands listen he who created it all and is over it all is with us then we do not need it if he has not given it to us then we rest assured that if he is with us that is all we need he is sufficient but he is still our provider he is still the
[25:15] Jehovah Jireh but he is there we also have the greatest amount of protection we could ever have if his presence is there we are blessed with his protective hand and therefore we realize that nothing comes against us which has not first come before him so we understand this reward of blessings what a great reward it is but then he shifts and said but there is another reward and this is the reward of curses because he says in verse 14 if you do not obey me and do not carry out all these commandments if instead look at what they do you reject my statutes as if your soul abhors my ordinances so as not to carry out all my commandments and so break my covenant I in turn will do this to you and here begins a series of curses in which God pronounces upon them and the greatest of these curses we will kind of get into them in just a minute but the greatest of these curses as it finally cycles down is the curse of being separated from his presence the greatest reward that he can offer is a blessing is the blessing of his presence with them and the greatest curse that he could give to them because of their disobedience is there is his absence from them he said you will not be in the land
[26:29] I will remove you from the land you will no longer be near me you will no longer be around me because I am you know where he is they will not be now we know ultimately they are always in his presence but we see here the separation from the land which to them the land always signified the manifest presence of God so here we see that our choices the outcome of our choices are the rewards that our choices deserve it is a reward of a blessing or it is the reward of a cursing and those choices are rooted in our worship third I want you to notice from this passage the repeated opportunity which God gives because when he speaks of the curses it is very unique when he speaks of the curses he speaks here in curses as a cycle there are five cycles of curses if you will he starts very soon he says in verse 16 I in turn will do this to you I will appoint over you a sudden terror consumption and a fever that it will waste away the eye and cause the soul to pine away also you will sow your seed uselessly for your enemies will eat it up
[27:37] I will set my face against you so that you will be struck down before your enemies and those who hate you will rule over you and you will flee when no one is pursuing you now look here here's the pause if also after these things you do not obey me then I will punish you seven times more for your sins five times we read of this cycle here's the curse and then here's the pause if these things do not call you back to me then this will happen and he lays out what happens next and then he says and if these things do not call you back to me then this will happen and then he lays out for the third time this is what's going to happen after that third time he says if these things do not call you back to me then this will happen and there's fourth set of circumstances and then he says that last time and if these things do not call you back to me then this will happen that's when they get to cannibalism separation from the land the land enjoying its sabbath because the people of God have been removed from the land of God.
[28:33] But all I want you to see here is that God is giving this repeated opportunity to return. Each one of these curses have a purpose. And the curse is to call his people back to himself.
[28:46] See, God is not just some big mean God. God is not just some God who's out to get the people. People ask the question, and I understand it on the surface level, but we need to dig a little bit deeper.
[28:57] How could a loving God send people to hell? And the reality is that he doesn't send anyone there. He allows them to go there because of their choices, okay? But we also understand this. God is holy, and he is righteous, and he is true.
[29:08] And in his holiness, the greater question I read somewhere is, how could a holy God ever allow any sinful man into heaven is really the greater question. It is not how could God send people to hell.
[29:20] The greater question is really, how in the world could a holy God ever allow any sinful individual into heaven? And the answer to that is because Jesus Christ has become our sin bearer, right?
[29:31] He is our sin. He took our sin upon himself. But what we see here is the patience of God. He here in his chastisement of them for their rejection, their rejection was rooted in this.
[29:45] They abhorred his ordinances. They counted his covenants as something to be easily broken. They disregarded his commandments and saw no need to live in obedience to them.
[29:57] And in spite of that, this cycle of five curses, God is giving them a repeated opportunity. The first curse has come, he says, and then if that doesn't get your attention, then the second one, a little bit worse will come.
[30:09] And if that doesn't get your attention, then the third, a little bit worse than the prior two will come. And so on and so on because God is longing to draw his people back to himself. We must stand amazed in the Old Testament at the patience of God and the loving hand of God.
[30:25] I know I've highlighted it before, but we find that scripture and passage where it says that he strikes yet heals. He strikes and causes pain for the purpose of calling people back to himself.
[30:36] And this is exactly what we see him doing in Leviticus 26. He says, if your false worship leads you to false practice, then I will try to call you back to myself through the series of curses.
[30:48] Now we read this now, understanding that this is exactly what happened to the nation of Israel. We read Leviticus 26 and say it happened just like this. Because when we read the rest of the Old Testament, we see this is exactly what they did.
[31:03] Their worship was tainted. They started worshiping false gods. And after worshiping false gods, their practices became false practices. And because of false practices, they began to experience these curses until they got all the way down to the end.
[31:16] They were scattered among the nations. We call that the Babylonian captivity. And where God says the land will enjoy its Sabbath. We know that they were in Babylonian captivity for 70 years. Seven Sabbaths.
[31:27] Because they had failed to keep the Sabbath for over 490 years, right? There was to be this repeated theme. So they enjoyed every one of the Sabbaths. The land enjoyed the 70 Sabbaths that it was needed.
[31:40] And this is exactly what God did. But it took him that long to do it because he was calling his people back to himself. God is a gracious God. But the reality is, is his grace should not be taken lightly because God also will not be mocked.
[31:55] In the end, his righteous standard will be upheld. And this is why he finally gets to this opportunity where he says, and then I will separate you from my presence. God's people must not stand in this assurance that God is always going to call us back to himself and neglect the situations or the circumstances that he is putting in our lives to call us back to himself.
[32:15] Rather, we are to respond to that repeated opportunity he gives us. Fourth and finally, we do not want to lose hope. And fourth and finally, in this passage, what we see is that the repentant heart is always accepted.
[32:28] The repentant heart is always accepted. You would think after a cycle of five curses and after God giving so many opportunities for his people to return and live lives of obedient truthfulness before him, that he would finally be done with them.
[32:44] But it doesn't say that. As a matter of fact, it says in verse 40, Here we are introduced to this gracious theme of the repentant heart being accepted.
[33:15] And repentance finds its root or finds its cause really, first of all, in a confession. It is if they confess their iniquity, an acknowledgement of their own shortcomings.
[33:26] A repentant heart is the one who acknowledges its own fault and confesses its own sin. And God says, if that happens and if they humble themselves, their uncircumcised heart, and make amends for their iniquity, that is to come back before him, then he will remember the covenant.
[33:43] God says, though they be cast out of their land, if their heart is broken, and they live lives of repentance, then I will call them back. I want you to understand that that repentant heart finds its acceptance based upon the covenant of God, not necessarily the actions of man.
[34:00] And this is important, because God says, though I had called them back to me, though I had tried a number of times, and through circumstances tried to get their attention, and they would not respond. Even after that, if the heart is humbled, and they confess and acknowledge their own sin, then I will remember my covenant which I had made, my covenant with Jacob.
[34:22] And so I'll also remember my covenant with Isaac, my covenant with Abraham as well, and I will remember the land. For the land will be abandoned by them, and will make up for the Sabbaths, which it was made desolate without them.
[34:33] They, meanwhile, will be making amends for their iniquity, because they rejected my ordinances, and they're so abhorred my statutes. Look at verse 44. Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I so abhor them as to destroy them, breaking my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God.
[34:53] But I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors, which I brought out of the land of Egypt and the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the Lord. The opportunity to be accepted with a repentant heart is based upon a covenant, which God had agreed upon.
[35:09] It is based upon a covenantal promise. Friend, listen to me. The reason the repentant heart is accepted today is because of a covenantal promise, and that covenant is the covenant of the blood of the Lamb.
[35:19] It is the covenant of Jesus Christ. We are under the blood of the new covenant, which is the shed blood of Christ on the cross of Calvary. And the hope of Calvary is this. We, at some time or another, will definitely make wrong choices and therefore have wrong outcomes, and God will graciously call us back to himself.
[35:37] But while we are still in the land of the living, there is always the opportunity for the repentant heart to find acceptance because of the covenant on the cross of Calvary. And it is the call of God for the people of God to acknowledge their shortcomings, their iniquities, their failures, and their faults.
[35:53] And God responds with love because of the covenant which he has made. And we stand amazed at that reality that though people fail and though people make choices and though people's worship becomes tainted, God in his gracious nature is always accepting of the repentant heart.
[36:08] And repentance is possible not because of the work of man, but because of the covenant which God has offered man. And it is a covenant to be their God and they would be his people. And friend, the greatest of those covenants which has ever been offered was not the covenant made with Isaac, Jacob, or Abraham.
[36:24] It was the covenant that God made with man on the cross of Calvary. That whoever would look upon that cross would be forgiven and their sins would be washed away and they would be made white as snow.
[36:36] And based upon that covenant, we understand that though we may fail and though we may falter, when the heart is broken, the sin is acknowledged and the life is repentant, then God in his grace and mercy calls that individual back to himself.
[36:49] And God remembers that covenant. And God accepts that individual based on the covenant, not on their work. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for all you've done.
[37:03] We thank you for your word and we thank you for the encouragement of your word. Lord, I pray that our lives will be lived in obedience to it. May our worship be sincere. God, may our lives be obedient.
[37:14] May it be for your glory. And we ask it all in Christ's name. Amen. Amen.