Today's Scripture Reading (November 23, 2021): Leviticus 26
What is your foundational belief? You know, that one
belief that you will not violate no matter what the circumstances might be in
your life. For many in our
contemporary society, that foundational belief is in the power of our money. We
believe that if we have money, we can do anything and get through anything. Our addiction
to lottery tickets is a result of this foundational belief. And often, we rebel against anything that threatens our money. Or, maybe, your foundational belief is in
the importance of family.
Some of us hold family above everything, and we would never do anything against
the family. No matter what happens, family is sacred, and
we will never violate our fundamental belief in the importance of family. The
truth is that we all have a fundamental belief, or sometimes a set of
foundational beliefs,
and our behavior reveals whatever that belief might be because it is one thing
that we will maintain in good and hard times.
Leviticus 26 begins the conclusion to this section of
the Law, and it is an extraordinary chapter that promises blessings on Israel
for their obedience and curses for their disobedience. But it opens with the
foundational belief that Israel is to follow. Everything else will build around
this one idea. You are to worship God. Not a carved image, not a sacred stone,
not a ritual, but God. The passages differentiate between the things we like to set
up as our gods and the real God who demands our respect and worship. Do this, and everything that God desires
from you will follow. But fail in this foundational belief, and your life will
be nothing but a struggle.
Jesus understood this concept when he said that the
greatest commandment was that we should "Love the Lord your God with
all your heart and with all your soul and with
all your mind" (Matthew 22:37). His message, directed at his
audience, was that if you get this foundational belief right, then everything
good will follow. But the problem is that this broken world conspires against us
getting it right, making it easy to violate this fundamental idea.
And
that is precisely what Israel discovered over their history. Time and time
again, they got it wrong. A good example of Israel's temptation to the wrong
happened following the division of the nation after the reign of Solomon. At
that time, Israel became the Northern Kingdom under Jeroboam's rule, and King
David's grandson, Rehoboam, ruled the Kingdom of Judah in the south. Jeroboam's
foundational belief seemed to be that his portion of the country needed to be wholly
separated from the House of David. As a result, Jeroboam's foundational belief
seemed to be that his people needed to be wholly separated from the House of
David. What stood in the path of that foundational belief was that Judah possessed
the Temple, the center of religious life for the children of Israel. But, Jeroboam
didn't want his people traveling to Judah to fulfill their religious
expectations. And so, he set up two golden calves, one at Bethel and the other
at Dan. And he told the people, "Here are your gods, Israel, who brought
you up out of Egypt" (1 Kings 12:28b). Jeroboam's actions directly
violated the foundational belief of the nation stated at the beginning of
Leviticus 26. And as a result, the history of Israel was nothing but a struggle
from one king to the next until the nation completely disappeared in the last
portion of the eighth-century B.C.E.
But
it didn't have to be that way. If they had followed the foundational belief given
to them in the Mosaic Law, then the nation would have received the blessings
that God had promised to them. But they didn't, and the direct result was a
struggle.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Leviticus 27
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