Leviticus 26

v1-2: When God gives His people commands, He often repeats “those things which were most important,” and which we are “most in danger of neglecting.” For Israel, their obedience would be especially tested by the commands not worship idols, and to keep the Sabbath. These commands were important because “nothing leads more to corrupt religion than using idols in worship,” and “nothing contributes more to true religion than keeping the sabbaths.” Resisting idol worship and prioritising the worship of God on the Lord’s Day continue test God’s people today.

v3-13: Israel was encouraged “to live in constant obedience to all God’s commandments” by the promise of God’s blessing with plentiful fruit, divine protection, military success, increase in number, and His presence with them. “These great and precious promises… were types of the spiritual blessings” which we can be assured of, and enjoy, as we faithfully follow Christ.

v14-39: Disobedience to God’s commands will ultimately make us miserable, and where there is a refusal to repent, it will lead to our ruin. “God’s intention in disciplining his people is to reform them, by giving them a clear sense of the evil of sin and making them seek him for relief. But those who will not be reformed by the judgments of God must expect to be destroyed by them.” Wonderfully, “God does not begin with the most severe judgments to show that he is patient,” and “does not delight in the death of sinners.” Yet if true repentance does not come, God’s complete punishment will be fully carried out, “to show that he is righteous, and that he will not be mocked or defied.”

v40-46: True repentance includes “confession,” where “we must call sin sin”; “a broken, contrite heart and godly sorrow for sin,” which is a heart ready to receive “God’s rescue and true comfort”; and “submission to the justice of God in all his dealings,” where we patiently bear God’s humbling providences as something we “have deserved… accepting it as an act of kindness” to us to bring us back to the Lord.