CHAPTER 26

(1491 B.C.)

NO IDOLATRY

¹You shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall you set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the LORD your God (of this terrible sin, which embraced all types of immorality, every other nation in the world was guilty).

²You shall keep My Sabbaths, and reverence My Sanctuary: I am the LORD. (If any other god is worshipped, there can be no Sabbatical rest. The rest we now have in Christ is based solely upon His Finished Work, and our Faith anchored in that Sacrifice.

If the Preacher is not preaching the Cross, thereby his hearers placing their faith in something else, whether they realize it or not, they are serving another Jesus, which, pure and simple, is idol worship of some sort. That is the great sin of the modern Church [II Cor. 11:4].)

BLESSINGS OF OBEDIENCE

³If you walk in My Statues, and keep My Commandments, and do them (following this condition, if, we find some of the most glorious Promises found anywhere in the Word of God. In truth, fallen man simply could not keep the Statutes and Commandments. Not even Israel, in the very best of circumstances, or the very best among them, could accomplish this task. But they were to try! The Sacrificial System, the very core of Mosaic Law, was the answer, and the only answer to failure);

⁴Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit (failure to obey the Word of the Lord, with most cases it being totally ignored, with other gods worshipped, presents the reason that most nations in the world cannot feed themselves).

⁵And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time: and you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely (Divine abundance, and Divine protection).

⁶And I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land (freedom from war).

⁷And you shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword (promised victory).

⁸And five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight: and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword (the Lord promised to give the best in Israel a 100-to-1 superiority in power, and the least among them 20-to-1).

⁹For I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, and establish My Covenant with you (promised fruitfulness).

¹⁰And you shall eat old store, and bring forth the old because of the new (will not have eaten all of the old before the new is ready, because of abundance).

¹¹And I will set My Tabernacle among you: and My Soul shall not abhor you (the secret of Israels prosperity was that the Lord was among them).

¹²And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be My People (under the New Covenant, it is even better, far better; the Holy Spirit now lives constantly in our hearts and lives [Jn. 14:17]).

¹³I am the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their bondmen; and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you go upright. (The Lord delivered Israel from Egyptian bondage by virtue of the slain Lamb, with the blood applied to the doorposts. Victory presently is found in the same manner, only in the Cross! Only in the Cross! [Rom. 6:3-14].)

PENALTIES FOR DISOBEDIENCE

¹⁴But if you will not hearken unto Me, and will not do all these Commandments;

¹⁵And if you shall despise My Statutes, or if your soul abhor My Judgments, so that you will not do all My Commandments, but that you break My Covenant (the glowing Promises of Blessings for obedience are now followed by a catalogue of calamities of the most appalling nature, which will overtake the Israelites if they disobey the Divine Commandments):

¹⁶I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague (fever), that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it (if the Lord be for us, who can be against us? [Rom. 8:31]; and if the Lord be against us, who can be for us?).

¹⁷And I will set My Face against you, and you shall be slain before your enemies: they who hate you shall reign over you; and you shall flee when none pursues you (instead of being victorious, their enemies would be victorious over them; fear would rule them, even as it rules all Believers who try to live for God outside of the Cross [Rom. 8:15; II Tim. 1:7]).

¹⁸And if you will not yet for all this hearken unto Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins (if all of these things do not have the desired effect, which is to bring Israel back to God, then the Judgment will be multiplied seven times).

¹⁹And I will break the pride of your power (the Lord promised to break the pride of their power, which means that their trust would ultimately come to rest in their own army, instead of God; their enemies would waste these armies that looked mighty in their sight; with God, no nation or group of nations in the world could even think of overrunning Israel; without God, the weakest nation could overcome them); and I will make your Heaven as iron, and your Earth as brass (instead of Heaven being opened to their prayers, it would be closed, as iron; instead of the Earth yielding its increase, it would be as brass):

²⁰And your strength shall be spent in vain (wasted effort): for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits (all blessings were dependent upon obedience to God; it is the same presently!).

PLAGUES

²¹And if you walk contrary unto Me, and will not hearken unto me; I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins (Judgment will at times bring people back to God; but, if it doesnt, God has promised to increase the pressure, even seven times more than had previously been rendered; all Believers should read these words very carefully).

²²I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be desolate (because of the fear of bandits).

²³And if you will not be reformed by Me by these things, but will walk contrary unto Me;

²⁴Then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins (to have the Lord contrary to us, which sin does, is the single worst thing that can ever happen to any individual).

²⁵And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel of My Covenant: and when you are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you; and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy (those who persist in rebellion are here told that they cannot escape the Lord; wherever they go, they will be found, and the results will not be pleasant).

²⁶And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and you shall eat, and not be satisfied (food would be in such short supply that ten families, represented by ten women, would have to exist or subsist on the amount that would normally be consumed by one family).

²⁷And if you will not for all this hearken unto Me, but walk contrary unto Me;

²⁸Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins (seven is Gods number for perfection, totality, and universality; it is that in blessing, and it will be the same in chastisement; in other words, the chastisement will be total).

²⁹And you shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall you eat (famine because of sin).

³⁰And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and My Soul shall abhor you. (As the Lord would use His Power for blessing upon obedience, He will use His Power here for judgment because of disobedience. The judgment declared here shows the helplessness of the gods worshipped. To prove the point, the enemies of Israel would slaughter tens of thousands of Israelites, even in the very presence of their idols, showing again their helplessness.)

³¹And I will make your cities waste, and bring your Sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours. (The great Temple in Jerusalem, which had once been the House of God, was destroyed by the Babylonian Monarch, Nebuchadnezzar. This meant the Sacrifices would now be stopped, which would signal the total doom of Israel, because these Sacrifices represented the Cross. That repudiated and taken away, there was nothing left! Let the modern Church read these words very carefully.)

³²And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it (what had once been such a verdant garden will now become a cesspool, even to the extent that Israels enemies would be astonished at it).

³³And I will scatter you among the heathen (which is exactly what happened), and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.

³⁴Then shall the land enjoy her Sabbaths, as long as it lies desolate, and you be in your enemies land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her Sabbaths. (The Sabbaths of both days and years were so very important, because of what they symbolized. In their totality, whether on the seventh day of the week, or the seventh year, or the fiftieth year, they all, and without exception, symbolized the rest which would come with Christ, and ones acceptance of Him. If we try to make less of the Sabbaths than this, we greatly misinterpret Scripture. If we try to make more, it is an impossible task, for there could be nothing greater than Christ, and what Christ would do at the Cross for Adams fallen race.)

³⁵As long as it lies desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your Sabbaths, when you dwelt upon it. (For about 490 years, Israel ignored the seventh year Sabbaths. This meant that 70 years of Sabbaths were owed to God. He collected those Sabbaths by forcing Israel into Babylonian bondage, where they stayed exactly 70 years.)

³⁶And upon them who are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursues (constant fear!).

³⁷And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when none pursues: and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies (the Cross alone provides such power [I Cor. 1:18]; all other efforts are fruitless).

³⁸And you shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.

³⁹And they who are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them. (Verses 36 through 39 predict the destruction of Israel by the Babylonians, and then by the Romans. They also predict these ancient people in great sorrow, scattered all over the world, which is exactly what has happened, because of their forsaking the Lord their God.)

⁴⁰If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against Me, and that also they have walked contrary unto Me (if they shall confess their iniquity; this is the one condition for personal and national restoration);

⁴¹And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity (this is basically the same as I John 1:9):

⁴²Then will I remember My Covenant with Jacob, and also My Covenant with Isaac, and also My Covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land (the moment the people, through confession of their sins, attempt to come back into the Covenant, they will be readily accepted).

⁴³The land also shall be left of them (should be translated, But the land shall be deserted by them), and shall enjoy her Sabbaths, while she lies desolate without them: and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because they despised My Judgments, and because their soul abhorred My Statutes (in essence, the Lord plainly predicted here that Israel would, in fact, ignore His Word).

⁴⁴And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break My Covenant with them: for I am the LORD their God. (Gods Covenants, at least on His part, cannot be broken. While men may break the Covenant, which Israel definitely did, and which many do as it regards the New Covenant, the Covenant stands. But, to be sure, those, whoever they might be, who register unbelief toward the Covenant will definitely be lost.)

⁴⁵But I will for their sakes remember the Covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be their God: I am the LORD. (In these Passages, plus many others given in the Word of God [Rom., Chpts. 9-11], we find the Lord promising that the Covenant He made with the Patriarchs will ultimately and in totality be fulfilled. This completely abrogates the foolish notion held by some in the modern Church, who claim that Israel is no longer of any spiritual significance. I find that as difficult to believe as I do the denial of the Cross.)

⁴⁶These are the Statutes and Judgments and Laws, which the LORD made between Him and the Children of Israel in Mount Sinai by the hand of Moses. (Every one of these Laws was instituted by God, which means that man had no part in their formation at all. Inasmuch as these were the Laws of God, they were perfect in every respect.)