Leviticus 26 is one of the most important chapters in the Old Testament. It is the chapter of blessings and curses, and in many ways, it summarizes the whole history of Israel—and also the spiritual pattern of every human life. The message is simple but deeply serious: obedience brings blessing, joy, and life; disobedience brings curses, sorrow, and ruin. God gave this warning to Israel before they left Sinai and moved toward Canaan. The first generation was destroyed in the wilderness because they would not obey. Later, before the second generation entered the land, Joshua dramatically placed the people between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim and made them hear the blessings and the curses all over again. Then he pressed the choice upon them: “Choose this day whom you will serve”—Jehovah or other gods. I showed you that everything in this chapter was exactly fulfilled in Israel’s history; when they obeyed, they prospered; when they disobeyed, they were cursed and perished. Leviticus 26 is not only a prophecy of Israel’s history; it is a prophecy of every generation’s history, and even of your own life.
I was thinking that when the formula is so simple, why do people not obey? Even with our children, the sooner you obey, the sooner you are blessed. But why do they not obey? Before there can be true obedience, there must first be faith in God. The reason you do not obey God is because you do not believe Him. You look at the world, you see all the wrong things happening, and the devil tries to brainwash you with covetousness, worldly success principles, and the idea that if needed, you should even cheat to be successful. He paints a false illusion of how things work in the world.
Consequently, you cannot understand how obeying God will ever result in getting blessings in every area of life. Children do not see the connection between obeying their parents and their future success in life. Husbands do not see the connection between God hearing their prayers and living discreetly with their wives, and wives do not see how submitting to their husbands brings God’s blessing upon their households. Therefore, they do not believe and do not obey.
It is faith that opens your eyes and makes you see how obedience is directly linked to all blessings in life. Because you lack faith and do not believe God will bless you, you try your own way to succeed in life. Sometimes you think that persisting in stubborn disobedience will somehow lead to blessings one day. You might achieve something by being stubborn with human parents, but if you are stubborn and fight against the Holy Sovereign God, you can never win. In fact, that stubbornness brings seven times more punishment upon you. This chapter says He will punish once, then seven times, and then more, until He brings either repentance or destruction. God will either break your heart and make you repent, or break your neck to send you to ruin. He never allows a lifestyle of disobedience to succeed. The Holy God never changes; it is you who must change in order to be blessed.
There are many who waste twenty, thirty, or forty years of their life in the stubbornness of a sinful path. Then, when they finally start believing and are saved, they realize too late, “Oh, if I had obeyed earlier, I would have been so blessed long ago; I wasted so many years.” That is why, young people, the sooner you believe, the sooner you will see how obedience alone brings blessings, and you will watch your life become increasingly blessed.
The chapter begins with three areas of obedience. First is the priority of God. How does that priority reveal itself in life? By protecting the Sabbath, and through piety and reverencing God’s house. If you obey, all blessings are grouped into three Ps: Plenty, Peace, and Presence.
Then we look at the curses—five levels of curses. First, in verses 14 through 18: If you hate and abhor My words (which is where disobedience starts), there will be terrible terror. I will appoint terror over you, bringing sudden and intense disease and fever that will consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart for you and your children. To intensify this further, it is not just sickness, but also a financial crisis. Verse 16 says that your enemies shall eat your harvest.
The second set of curses involves drought and famine, detailed in verses 18 through 20. We find this passage begins in verse 18: “And after these things, if you do not obey Me, I will punish you seven times more.” Look at verse 19: “I will break the pride of your power; the sky above your head will become like iron, and the earth beneath your feet will become like bronze.” What does that mean? In agricultural times, it means I will make you beg. Look at verse 17: “I will set My face against you.”
Today, we come to three more sets of curses.
Curse number three: Unexpected danger from wild beasts. Verse 21 states: “Then, if you walk contrary to Me, and are not willing to obey Me, I will bring on you seven times more plagues, according to your sins.” What happens after this kind of treatment from the living God—calamity in the family, famine—do they still continue? Who would still walk against God? Oh, we do not realize the power of sin; it blinds and hardens us to a staggering degree. In Revelation, even amidst great dangers—thunders, demons, earthquakes, and the heavens shouting to repent—people still continue in sin with a brazen face and go unfazed in their disobedience. Let us see what God will do.
God says, “I won’t relent. I will send you an increase of plagues seven times over.” Some fathers with weak, jello-like backbones may relent and give up, but not the Heavenly Father. He inflicts seven times more as He shoots another flurry of arrows at them from His quiver.
Verse 22 introduces the next curse: unexpected wild beasts. This brings a sudden, unnatural danger from an unexpected source. Genesis 9 says that God put the fear of humanity into animals so they would not harm us. But here, animals that should fear man suddenly and unnaturally attack you in an unprovoked way. Because of drought, famine, and a lack of sufficient food, wild animals come into the villages and cities and actually attack people right in the streets.
Imagine snakes, lions, wolves, and leopards coming to your house and breaking down your doors to enter. The leopard watches for its opportunity, the evening wolf ravages the flock, the bear tears what it finds within reach, and the lion springs upon its prey. What damage will they do? They will make you childless, destroy your livestock, and completely reduce you to nothing. You will watch with your own eyes as a lion or wolf bites, drags away, and eats your child, and you will be completely powerless to stop it. Look at verse 22b, which speaks of how your roads shall become deserted and desolate. Why? Much like during the days of COVID-19, nobody dares to travel in the land because of the wild beasts that God has unleashed upon His disobedient people.
We see this taking place periodically in Israel’s history. In 1 Kings 13, a prophet who was disobedient to the living God was met by a lion on the roadside; the lion killed him and stood right next to his body so others could see the fulfillment of God’s curse for disobedience. Remember in 2 Kings 2 when those youths mocked the prophet of God, shouting, “Go on up, you bald head!” Two mother bears came out of the woods and devoured forty-two dishonoring youths. Ultimately, when the northern kingdom was crushed by Assyria, a foreign race came in and established a mixed religion—a little bit of the religion of Jehovah connected with a little Baal and a little Ashtoreth. What did God do? He sent lions among them, and their paws claimed many lives in those days. God truly fulfilled His prophecy and His curses.
Well, let me bring you into the modern era to see the implications. Think of a brazen-faced young person defying their parents’ words, living a secret double life at school or work. What happens? While riding along a road they have always traveled, they suddenly meet with a terrible accident from an unexpected source—perhaps a lorry or a truck hits them. It might all look like a normal accident caused by an older driver, and everyone might think it was just a coincidence. Oh, was it really? Or was this a lion’s paw commissioned by the hand of the living God to punish this person? There they are in the hospital with a broken foot, bandages on their hands, and a leg in traction. It may look like a sad accident, but echoing in their conscience is the roar of a lion. They realize it was the sovereign hand of God that made the driver turn the wheel and strike them to punish their continued disobedience and sin. This is the providential rod calling them to repentance.
Now, come with me to the fourth curse: War. Verse 23 asks: “And if by these things you are not turned to Me, but act with hostility against Me…” My, what a foolish course sinners and even the children of God can sometimes pursue! How stubborn sin makes us—that is the horrible nature of sin, trying to make us stubborn until it destroys us. Matthew Henry writes, “There is nothing gained by striving with Almighty God, for He will break either the heart or the neck of those that contend with Him. And He will bring them either to repentance or to ruin.” The Lord says here again, “Seven times more shall I strike you.”
Not only calamity, famine, and wild beasts, but there will also be an invasion of the land. Verse 24 speaks of bringing the avenging sword upon you because you broke My covenant. Enemies will be permitted to come in and attack you with the sword. There will be war.
We know that in the history of Israel, there was much occasional and disorganized military hostility against them. From time to time, the Midianites would come down and devastate the fields for a few seasons. In a disorganized way, the Ammonites or the Philistines would come and plunder them. These were small, one-time attacks where they would plunder, take away the harvest, and leave the people poor. This was God’s rod warning them to repent.
When they refused to repent and continued in sin, instead of these small groups, God sent well-trained, overwhelming, and invincible nations against them—the Assyrians who marched against the northern kingdom, and the mighty Babylonians who came against the southern kingdom of Judah. Oh, what complete destruction they caused! This is the avenging sword.
When they faced such attacks, verse 25 says, “And when you gather together into your cities…” What is this telescopically foreshadowing? Sieges. When the enemy army is too big to fight and complete destruction is certain, the people close all the doors and remain behind the big walls of the city. The enemies cut off their food and water supply to see how long they can last inside. This is exactly what happened when Assyria attacked the north and Babylon attacked the south.
They were inside the walls, so they would be safe, right? No. The Lord punishes them inside as well. Outside the walls are lethal enemies cursing them, and inside the walls, closely packed together in tight quarters, God sends pestilence.
Waterborne and filth-related diseases arrive. With thousands of people trapped in close proximity without modern plumbing, human waste inevitably contaminates the limited internal water supply. With worsening hygiene and an inability to wash clothes or bodies, this triggers massive outbreaks of dysentery, cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis, bacterial and viral infections, body lice, severe rashes, skin infections, leprosy, smallpox, measles, and even the bubonic plague—killing far more people than the enemy’s swords. That city becomes like a boiling pot of fever within.
Look at verse 26: “When I break your staff of bread…” This is a strange phrase. Bread is likened to the crutches upon which human life hangs. We need to be supported by food, you know. What happens if you don’t have any food or bread? You collapse in the dust in starvation. And that was the promise: I will break your staff of bread; you are not going to have anything to eat.
Then what happens in verse 26? Ten women will bake your bread in one oven. What is that referring to? In the ancient world, a common sight in a prosperous nation and in Israel was sweet, rising loaves of bread swelling in the ovens of individual households. But now, grain and flour are going to become so sparse that a single oven will suffice to take care of the flour and grain of ten different women. You will eat, but you will not be satisfied.
We find this took place historically in the life of the Israelites. In the northern kingdom, 2 Kings 6 records that Aram surrounded Samaria, placing the city under siege because of their disobedience. Things became so dire inside the city that a donkey’s head was sold for 80 pieces of silver. Who would want to eat a donkey’s head? But because things had gotten so desperate, a donkey’s head became an expensive delicacy costing 80 pieces of silver.
Additionally, a small portion of dove’s dung cost five silver pieces. Who would want that? If you are hungry and starving, you will eat anything.
Even after enduring all this, if they still do not repent, notice verse 27: “And after all this, if you do not obey Me, but walk contrary to Me, then I also will walk contrary to you in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins.” Verse 29 adds: “You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.”
We already saw this exact fulfillment in 2 Kings, where the king was walking on the wall and a woman shouted up to him, saying, “O king, another woman and I made an agreement. We would boil my son and eat him one night, and then the next night we would boil and eat her son. We ate my son the first night, but the second night she hid her son.” How terrifying! These were not just empty threats; what a remarkable and horrifying prediction, and all of it was fulfilled in history. What a wicked curse that was fulfilled among the disobedient people of God.
Finally, the fifth curse is found in verses 27 through 39: total destruction and exile. In spite of all this, if they still remain beast-like in their defiance, responding to God not with contrition, heart-breaking confession, and amended ways, then comes final destruction. Verse 31 says, “I will lay waste your cities and make your sanctuaries desolate… I will make the land desolate.” Verse 34 adds, “I will scatter you among the nations… your land shall be desolate and your cities a wilderness.”
You can read in history books of the terrible destruction that came upon those people. Josephus gives a vivid account of this actual fulfillment. God did what He said He would do, marking the saddest story in the history of any nation. There are no words to fully explain the destruction that came upon them; they wept and wept for seventy years. Even their enemies, as mentioned in verse 32, would be appalled at them: “Your enemies shall be astonished at it.” Even enemies wondered why they were suffering so much. This nation used to be so glorious, standing at the head of all nations, but now it was completely gone. Your enemies will hiss at you and say, “How can it be that this glorious nation has become merely a pile of rubble?” Jeremiah 18:16 says, “I will make their land an object of perpetual hissing; everyone who passes by will be astonished and shake his head.”
What a colossal fall! What a colossal fall this nation has experienced. You know, that’s exactly what happened—thousands upon thousands, lakhs of them killed and destroyed by enemies. Most died.
But what about the survivors? There were some who survived. Verse 36 speaks about the paranoia of the survivors: “And as for those of you who are left, I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies.” After the Israelites were sent off to Babylon, and in the north they were dispersed to other nations, they lived in constant fear that more punishments from the living God were coming. Matthew Henry says, “Those that cast off the fear of God expose themselves to the fear of everything else.”
In Jeremiah 42 and 43, a group of people escaped destruction and went to hide among the large population of Egypt. They thought they would escape the avenging sword of Jehovah in that highly populated portion of the world. History tells us that Nebuchadnezzar came down, searched for all those Israelites who had fled for refuge, and killed them. They defied God, but they could not escape His curse and avenging sword wherever they fled.
The remaining people who were scattered met a sad ending, as verse 38 declares: “You shall perish among the nations.” Ten tribes were scattered, never returned, lost all hope, and lived and died there. Only Judah returned after seventy years. And God ultimately destroyed them. All of this stands written in history, confirmed by the acts of men following the decrees of God.
Wow, isn’t that a profound picture of hell and eternal judgment? Weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth in a land of alienation and darkness. Henry says this: “The design of the rod is to humble sinners, soften them, and bring them to repentance. But those who will not be reformed by the judgments of God must expect to be ruined by the judgments of God.”
So that is our exposition. I know it is not a pretty passage, but it is the Word of God.
Application
“Oh, Pastor, it is all Old Testament—famine, wild beasts, agriculture, war, siege. We are an upgraded generation. This is all ancient history; we live in smart cities, and nothing like that will happen.”
For your information, the Book of Revelation shows that our God is the most ultimate God; He will punish sin and disobedience even in the AI and high-tech era using precise means.
I realize this follows the exact same pattern we see in Revelation with the first seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls, each increasing in severity when people refuse to repent. Let me quickly show the pattern:
- First and second seals: Major wars, the sudden collapse of international peace treaties, turning neighbors against each other, and supply lines being cut off.
- Third seal: Supply chains completely disintegrate. A world where basic survival becomes a luxury, where a person works an entire day just to afford a single loaf of bread or a liter of milk.
- Fourth seal: A quarter of the earth’s population dies from war, starvation, and disease, accompanied by severe psychological breakdown and terrible destruction (preceding the fifth and sixth seals).
- First trumpet: One-third of the earth’s vegetation, trees, and all green grass are burned up, leading to immediate, inescapable global starvation.
- Second trumpet: War in the oceans, much like what we see today around vital shipping lanes, causing catastrophic supply chain failures.
- Third trumpet: Water supply poisoning. One-third of the world’s freshwater sources—rivers and springs—are ruined. Soon, clean water will become scarce, and millions will die from waterborne toxins.
- Fourth trumpet: Plunging global temperatures and a scorching sun. The sun is given power to scorch people with fierce, blinding heat.
- Fifth trumpet (Psychological Torment): Demonic entities are released to torture unrepentant humans for five months with pain so intense that people actively seek death but cannot find it, bringing global depression and immense tension.
- The seven bowls: Follow the exact same pattern of intensifying global judgment.
I see God doing the exact same thing on a global scale today. One commentator says this: “A godless life invites the ravages of the enemy. God withdraws His protection, and adversaries sweep down upon the sinner. The wild beasts of hell viciously bite and tear you inside; your conscience and soul wage war against you, tearing your family and children apart.” Those who repudiate the divine government are taken captive by the devil to do his will and serve their enemies. Sin is very cruel. It slays its victims, slaughtering their virtue, peace, happiness, hopes, and destroying precious souls. You see the curse of hostility in war.
Do you think God will not act on a personal level to bring repentance? Secondly, let me remind you, as I said last week: be sensitive to God’s rod in your life. If you face trials, financial crises, troubles in life, or family problems, do not assume these are mere accidents. They may be the Father’s rod designed to humble you and bring you to repentance. Repeated troubles one after another are a clear indication that God is speaking to a continual besetting sin you have harbored for days and years. He wants you to confess and repent of that sin. The best way to stop the rod of God is to confess and repent today, and you will see His blessings restored.
Now, child of God, there is a profound sense in which God deals with us in paternal chastisement. But we can never become so secure resting in the arms of our Heavenly Father that we think, “Because I am a child of God, because I have eternal security, I can somehow spit in my Father’s face continuously with disobedience and presume it is just harmless chastisement.” No. As Hebrews 10 says, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” That was written to Hebrew Christians, and we need to remember it. Our God is a consuming fire, as Hebrews chapter 12 reminds us.
Second, motivational negativism is not bad psychology. Modern teaching says we must always be positive and completely avoid the negative, claiming that warnings will demotivate and discourage people. If that were true, we would have to assume we are wiser than God. God does give positive encouragement in the first 13 verses with all those great blessings, but His infinite wisdom determined that was not enough. Because we are so deeply affected by sin, we need a long, sobering passage that fills us with a holy terror and fear of God’s curses against disobedience. Thirteen verses of blessings are followed by twice as many verses detailing the consequences.
Someone might foolishly say, “God is a poor psychologist.” Well, God is a wise psychologist. The living God, the Ancient of Days, knows man’s needs. He knows that mere positive appeals do not sink deep enough into the human heart. Man needs the sobering reality of negative warnings as a blessed means of grace. As we read the Word of God from Genesis through Revelation, we find that these stern warnings repeatedly appear, sometimes with fierce intensity. Even when humanity was in a state of pristine purity in Eden, God warned negatively: “If you eat of the fruit, you will surely die.”
So we should not listen to the devil’s lies in this generation—the lie that says we must always be positive and never talk about negative things or issue warnings. No! A godly, balanced, expositional ministry will boldly sound the trumpet of warning. It will not just be a user-friendly, entertaining, positive kind of ministry. Someone might ask, “Why would you go all the way through Leviticus, from chapter 1 through chapter 27?” Because it is God’s Word! We do not just pick and choose popular or favorite texts; we survey the entire territory of God’s spoken Word to His people. We maintain a ministry that echoes the full proportional counsel of Scripture.
We must understand that such a ministry is very rare these days. Pray that this ministry continues to sound the truth for many years to come. Pray that it speaks not only of pleasant slopes and fertile canyons, but that it also speaks faithful warnings about the grisly consequences of adventuring out onto sinful railroad trestles—the destruction that comes when you walk under the black bridge of disobedience to the living God.
The Levitical curses are a vivid type of eternal judgment. If we refuse to repent in spite of all curses and punishments, we demonstrate that we are truly not saved. That brings me to my final application.
Israel is not only a profound type of the child of God; Israel in a profound way is also a type of the stiff-necked sinner who refuses to repent. For some, the repeated and progressive calamities that visit life are God’s calls to repentance. When that happens, for some it is not paternal chastisement, but judicial retribution. There are some who will not repent, whose necks remain stiff, and God visits them with raw punishment. Even the descriptions of the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon and the horrific cannibalism within the city walls depict this.
Mr. Bonar speaks at length about how this internal cannibalism within the besieged city is a profound depiction of hell itself—nearest natural ties tormenting each other in despair, the teeth-gnashing hatred of one another in the lake of fire alongside the devil and his angels.
This is going to be an ugly place. It is going to be a boiling pot of judgment in the lake of fire. But I am not speaking to the Christian at this point; I am speaking to the sinner.
Sinner, God has delivered sweet overtures of the Gospel to you. And for some of you tonight, God has also brought smarting blows of His rod of providence against you. I plead with you: do not stiffen your neck. Do not stop up your ears to this warning.
You will gain nothing, I assure you, by striving against the living God. He will either break your heart or He will break your neck. I plead with you: bend your heart to the living God. Would to God, this night, that this picturesque passage—as ugly as it has been, flashing on the theater of our minds a grisly image of the sinner’s eternal fall—might arrest you.
May what you have seen with your eyes and heard as the Scriptures were opened before you cause you to realize that fall and say, “I don’t want to fall in such a way.” May you hear the rumble and the roar of the charging train in this passage. May you recognize your dangerous position upon an accursed and sinful bridge.
What you must do is cry out to your elder brother. Cry out to the Lord Jesus Christ. Ask Him to extend His wide-open arms, swoop down with you on eagle’s wings, pluck you off that dangerous bridge of destruction, and bring you to a safe place.
That is what you need to do this night, sinner. You need to be rescued by the Son of God from eternal destruction. Having found yourself on that midpoint of the bridge of sin, hearing the roaring of God’s judgment in your ears and feeling the vibration of the rails beneath your feet, cry out this very night to the living God.
Cry out to the Son of God that He would have mercy upon you so that you will not be destroyed. May God bless the expounding of His Word tonight.