Incentives to obedience.
Religion has the first claim upon us as the supreme obligation of the soul. We are hound to worship and honour God because we owe far more to him than to all other beings in the universe. The first and all-sufficient reason why we should "worship and bow down" before him, is in the fact that "he is our God"?봳hat One from whom we come, in whom we live, from whom cometh down every good gift. But God condescends to urge us to obedience by presenting incentives to our minds. He wishes us to consider that he has made it infinitely remunerative for us to do so; that, by so doing, we become recipients of the largest blessings he can confer and we can receive. There is so much of contrast as well as comparison between the blessings of the old and the new dispensations, that we must divide our subject into two parts.
I. THE INCENTIVES WHICH GOD HELD OUT TO HIS ANCIENT PEOPLE. These were importantly spiritual, but prominently temporal. If they did but "walk in his statutes, and keep his commandments, and do them" (Leviticus 26:3), they might reckon on
II. THE PROMISES WHICH HE HAS MADE TO US. These are partly temporal, but principally spiritual. They include:
1. Sufficiency of worldly substance. God does not now say, "Serve me, and you shall be strong, wealthy, long-lived," but he does say, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God,??and all these things" (food, clothing, etc.) "shall be added unto you" (Matthew 6:33). "Godliness has promise of the life that now is" (1혻Timothy 4:8). Those who are his children in Christ Jesus may reckon upon all needful support from his bountiful hand.
2. Consciousness of spiritual integrity. As God made his people to be delivered from the yoke and to "go upright" (Leviticus 26:13), so he makes those who have returned to him, and who have escaped from the yoke of sin, to "walk in uprightness of heart." Instead of shrinking in fear, bowing down with a depressing sense of wrong-doing, we have a happy consciousness of integrity of soul. We say with the psalmist, "As for me," etc. (Psalms 41:12).
3. Sense of reconciliation with God. God promises peace and a sense of safety (Leviticus 26:5, Leviticus 26:6) to those who seek his favour in Christ Jesus. Being justified by faith in him, we have peace with God; and we know that, whatever may be our circumstances, we are secure behind the shield of his almighty love.
4. Victory in the battle of life. If it be not wholly true that "our life is but a battle and a march," yet it is true that there is so much of spiritual struggle in it, from its beginning to its close, that we all understand only too well what is meant by "the battle of life." There are many foes with which to wrestle (Ephesians 6:12), and we need the invigorating power which only the Spirit of the Strong One can impart. If we are his, he will help us in the strife. "Our enemies will fall before us" (Leviticus 26:7; see 2혻Corinthians 2:14 and Romans 8:37).
5. His presence with us and his pleasure in us. "God will set his tabernacle among us;" he "will walk among us" (Leviticus 26:11, Leviticus 26:12). He will be "with us always," and his sustaining presence will uphold us in the darkest hour, in the most trying scene. "His soul will not abhor us" (Leviticus 26:11); he will take Divine pleasure in us; we shall be his children, his guests, his friends, his heirs.
6. An everlasting heritage in him. He will be our God (Leviticus 26:12). The sacred page does not speak of any duration; but that which is adumbrated in the Old Testament is revealed in the New. Jesus Christ has brought life and immortality out into the light, and we know that "him that overcometh will the Son of man make a pillar in the temple of his God, and he shall go no more out," etc. (Revelation 3:12), and that "to him that overcometh will he grant to sit with him on his throne," etc. (Revelation 3:21). The present and the future, the best of the one and the whole of the other, are the heritage of those who "know the will of God and do it." Surely it is the choice of the wise to "make haste and delay not to keep his commandments."?봀.
Our God and ourselves.
The text suggests the question, How far does God's treatment of us depend on our attitude towards him? And the answer must be somewhat complex.
I. IN LARGE MEASURE, GOD'S TREATMENT OF US IS QUITE IRRESPECTIVE OF OUR CONDUCT TOWARD HIM. He has done much for us from the promptings of his own generous and beneficent nature. As the sun gives light because it is light, regardless of the objects on which it shines, so our God, who is a Sun (Psalms 84:11), is sending forth beams of truth, love, beauty, happiness, because in him is all fullness, and from that abundance there must flow blessing and bounty on every hand (see Psalms 103:10, Psalms 103:11; Matthew 5:45).
II. IN LARGE MEASURE, GOD'S TREATMENT OF US DEPENDS ON OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD HIM.
1. Right feeling on our part is reciprocated with kind feeling on his. If we love him, he will love us and come to us (John 14:23).
2. Rebellious conduct on our part brings down adverse action on his part. If we" will walk contrary to him, he will walk contrary to us, and punish us for our sins." The greater part of this chapter (Leviticus 26:14-39) is a terrible admonition that, if we provoke God by our willful disobedience, we must expect to find his hand against us in all the paths of life, our growing iniquity meeting with his multiplying wrath and darkening retribution.
3. Repentant action on our part is met by returning favour on his (Jeremiah 3:22; Joel 2:12-14; Isaiah 44:22; Isaiah 55:7). Let the prodigal son arise to return, and, "while yet a great way off," the heavenly Father will run to meet and to welcome him (Luke 15:1-32).
III. GOD'S GOODNESS TO US WILL SEEM TO US TO VARY ACCORDING TO THE RECTITUDE OF OUR SOULS TOWARD HIM. As men seem to us to be just or unjust, kind or unkind, according to the position we occupy toward them, so also does the Father of spirits. "All the paths of the Lord are" (and are seen to be) "mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies" (Psalms 25:10). But the ways of the Lord will seem "contrary" to the rebellious. With the merciful man God shows himself merciful; with the froward he shows himself froward (Psalms 18:26). The guilty will exclaim against the inequality of God's dealings (Ezekiel 33:17). He will seem unjust because they are unholy, because their spirit is false and wrong (Matthew 20:15). Those who fear God and love his Son their Saviour, join in the psalm of the Church on earth, "The Lord is righteous in all his ways,??his tender mercies are over all his works" (Psalms 145:1-21); they anticipate the strain of the Church in heaven, "Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints" (Revelation 15:3).?봀.