February 25
Leviticus 25:24-26:46
How blind and arrogant can we be as a nation? Do we really think we are exceptional? Do we honestly believe that we are somehow better than the nations and empires who came and went before us? When we visit cities and nations of old, we visit their ruins. They are ruins because these once thriving societies eventually failed. I don’t care which side of the political divide you stand on in our nation if you don’t see the moral depravity that our nation has become, I’m sorry, but you are blind. As a nation we have foolishly placed ourselves antagonistically in opposition to God in every area of morality. People stand in disillusionment at the dismantling of our nation. Why? God is patient, but God is just and cannot overlook sin. Anyone who wants to point their finger at nations they feel are inferior are missing the point. We don’t need to compare ourselves to other nations but to God’s standards, and with that in mind we are failing, and failing miserably.
God in His covenant with Israel promised blessings if they would only follow His commands, as we read in Leviticus 26:3-12, “If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, and perform them, then I will give you rain in its season,…I will give peace in the land…I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people.” But following this God gives them clear warnings of the consequences of disobedience, as we read in 26:14-16, “But if you do not obey Me, and do not observe all these commandments, and if you despise My statutes, or if your soul abhors My judgments, so that you do not perform all My commandments, but break My covenant, I also will do this to you:“. What follows is a list of terrible consequences, each and every one which indeed happened to the nation of Israel. But we also see that God does not abandon them as He offers mercy and grace if they simply return to Him in 26:40-42, “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,…if their uncircumcised hearts are humbled, and they accept their guilt— then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham I will remember; I will remember the land.“
How can anyone say that God is not fair? As we find our nation crumbling slowly from within in the cesspool that we have become, we are simply receiving what we deserve as a result of our own disobedience. Does anyone really think our hope rests with the next political election, or the newest policy? The only hope is wholehearted earnest repentance. Stop looking outside for the next revival. Start by reviving yourself by coming clean with God and seeking His mercy in your own life. Then spread this message of repentance to those around you. It’s time for all of us to stop complaining and start repenting and praying. Though written for the nation of Israel, meditate on this beautiful promise from God in 2 Chronicles 7:14, “if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” Now that’s something that we all can do if we purpose it in our heart.
Messages from Pastor Lloyd Pulley: