Well hey, hello and happy giveaway winner announcement day! Yeah, that’s not an official federal day to celebrate I guess, but I’m going to announce the winners of the Celebrate 150 Episodes Giveaway. And we are on to the next book in the Bible, Leviticus, in this series where we are really just working our way through every single one of the 66 books of the Bible to deep dive into a promise from each book. Here we are in book number 3, Leviticus. This is a good one, really powerful faith-building stuff in tod...
Well hey, hello and happy giveaway winner announcement day! Yeah, that’s not an official federal day to celebrate I guess, but I’m going to announce the winners of the Celebrate 150 Episodes Giveaway. And we are on to the next book in the Bible, Leviticus, in this series where we are really just working our way through every single one of the 66 books of the Bible to deep dive into a promise from each book. Here we are in book number 3, Leviticus. This is a good one, really powerful faith-building stuff in today’s promise. I’m ready if you are! Let’s go…
Free Basic Pass to 2023 Homeschool Super Heroes Summit hosted by Kerry Beck
You’re listening to The Burt (Not Ernie) Show, part of the Spark Network, now playing in the Edifi app. Today’s episode is sponsored by Kerry Beck’s Homeschool Super Heroes Summit, an online summit for homeschool families that will bless, equip, and encourage those who have chosen the home education lifestyle. Grab your free ticket at the link in the show notes (and fun fact: I’m blessed to be the prayer coordinator for this event and I will be hosting a live prayer room each day of the summit at 12 noon Central time - and I’d love to be able to connect with you there and pray for you in real time, so feel free to sign up and share this with anyone you know who might be interested.) Big thanks to Kerry for hosting this event year after year. Now, on with the show! This is episode number 153.
Leviticus chapter 26 is a promise chapter. In the NLT, it is entitled “God’s Promises for Those Who Keep His Laws”. So God’s promises play pretty predominantly in Leviticus 26. Now, disclaimer: we are under the New Covenant, thank You Jesus, and I surely do mean that, thank You Jesus, so we aren’t like the religious leaders or legalists who are all about the law. We live by faith, we have a living hope, and we are under grace, recipients of tremendous mercy, not sinning wildly, not grace abusers, not bratty children of the Most High God, not at all. Just not legalists. I’m gonna let you in on something, and so many of you likely already know this…the devil is a legalist. If he can find a way to gain some sort of legal access, like he’s got permission, has been given access, to invade some part of your life, he will take full advantage (and it is an invasion…he won’t stay politely in the guest suite. Invaders just invade, and they aren’t usually super polite about it.) Anywhere he can start to build a stronghold, he’s gonna do it. He’s a destroyer, for sure, but he is a legalist so he wants a legal reason to get all up into your business. So, what does that actually look like for us? Well, if satan can get you to be a legalist, to be religious more than having a relationship with the Lord, that’s a good start for the devil. He would like for all of God’s children to have our own set of adaptations and additions to God’s Word…like the Pharisees and Sadducees had in Jesus’ day. The ten commandments grew into more than 600 rules and regulations. If satan can’t keep you out of the Kingdom, he’ll put some serious effort into turning you into a legalist. And then, as Jesus said, what happens is we end judging others, inside and outside of the Church, and some things in our own life we let slide, we leave wiggle room, because we’re really doing pretty good at following the rules, now the rules may be based on the Bible, but the grace dissipates and do’s versus don’ts spring up in the place where grace ought to be. And then it becomes really easy to judge judge judge everybody else by that set of rules. But it’s a sliding scale, isn’t it? We so easily see the little tiny splinter in someone else’s eye and we can’t see clearly because we have a two by four jutting out of our skull. Is it time to yell, “Timber!” regarding that hunk of wood obstructing our view, cut it down, rip it out, ask the Holy Spirit for grace in place of legalism, and kick the enemy out by revoking his legal access to our life? If he can get at you legally, he will. He is, after, the accuser of the brethren (that’s you and me, my friend) who stands accusing us before the Father day and night. But when you live and walk and exist by grace and stand by grace alone, knowing and even saying out loud at times that you are clean by because the blood of the Lamb has made you clean, you are telling the devil he has overstayed his welcome, time to go. Bye bye.
I hope that is encouraging to somebody listening today. Your freedom in Christ is a big deal. Don’t trade it in for legalism.
Leviticus 26:3-11 NLT
3 “This is what I will do if you will live by my laws and carefully obey my commands:
4 “I will give you rain at the right time. The land will produce its crops, and the trees in the field will produce their fruit. 5 Threshing [a] time will last until grape gathering, and grape gathering will last until planting. You will eat all you want and live securely in your land.
6 “I will bring peace to your land. You will lie down with no one to scare you. I will remove dangerous animals, and there will be no war in your land. 7 You will chase your enemies, and you will defeat them. 8 Five of you will chase a hundred of them, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand of them. You will defeat your enemies, 9 and I will be pleased with you. Your families will be large, and I will keep my promise [b] to you. 10 You will clear out old food supplies to make room for new ones.
11 “I will put my tent among you, and I will never look at you with disgust. 12 So I will live among you and be your God, and you will be my people. 13 I am the Lord your God. I brought you out of Egypt so that you are no longer slaves of the Egyptians. I have broken their power over you and made you live as a free people.
Yeah, this is awesome. And we can apply this to our lives as disciples of Jesus. Because the Old Testament, if we look and pay attention, it is always pointing toward Jesus. What can we learn about God’s promises for us under the New Covenant from this passage?
First, we see that God loves us enough to warn us of the evil that is after us. And He is so kind, He tells us about the opposite, too. He promises provision, and uses the words “at the right time” which should alleviate our stress. He is a good, faithful provider. Do you need to trust Him more and believe Him better in the area of provision? If so, you are for sure not alone.
God goes on here to promise peace and protection. He mentions wild and dangerous animals, and He mentions war in their land, they will chase their enemies and defeat them. Hey, let’s look at that spiritually. We know based on what Paul told us about who we fight, and who don’t fight - principalities and dark forces in the spiritual realm, that’s who we are really warring with. Can we believe, based on Leviticus 26, that God will allow us to defeat our enemies? The answer is a bold, strong YES! Can we believe that we won’t have war in our land? Well, that comes with a nationwide obedience to the Lord, and we don’t have that happening here in the USA…and as I’ve said before, it is so helpful to remember we are Christians above all else, I just happen to have been born in America but I’m not one to say I am an American Christian because I am a citizen of heaven, as it says in the New Testament. My love of Jesus is far above and beyond the place I live. In this current age, I don’t know that God is breaking a promise if war were to come to our nation, ya know what I mean? We don't fulfill the criteria, we have so much heartbreaking vile sin in the US, maybe our baseline prayer for our country should be for revival, that millions upon millions would have Christ revealed to them. And that would be so beautiful, wouldn’t it?
Here we also find a promised blessing on the family unit. You know it’s a good thing to believe God for His very best for your family, and when your kiddos are younger and still at home, pray boldly and live Biblically, parent Biblically. Expect God to keep His promises, and there are promises about the family in the Bible. A lot of encouragement for us in God’s word, so if you are raising young children, ask boldly for all God’s promises for the family to prove true for you. That’s a big prayer, but man, God is so good at keeping His promises, let’s be so good at believing Him for that.
In verse 10, we sort of touch on provision again, but it’s like combined with the family blessing promise. If God gives you a large family, He is telling You He will provide. You’re gonna have to clear out the old food supply, you won’t even be able to use it all, and the new supply will be at your doorstep and you’ll have to put that in your storehouse. I think you could pray this in a variety of ways for your own life. “Lord, we need some more coming in provision wise for our family. You blessed us with these children, and You have entrusted them to us for a time. Help us to teach them Your Word, to speak of Your miracles as it says in Psalm 78, and to lean fully on the power of Your Spirit in our parenting. Give us all the provision we need, financially, with food and with healthcare and with our home and our cars and clothing and celebrating special days like birthdays and give us amply all that we need to raise them to know You and to love You and to be set apart to live fully for You, even once they leave our home.” That is how I would pray Leviticus 26 verse 10 if my children were still young and living at home. Pray like God is hearing you, and pray like He is answering you. Pray and trust, two really solid spiritual disciplines for Christian living in times when the economy is rough and society is pushy pushy pushy with things that are the exact opposite of what God wants for the people He created. Pray and trust today, and do it again tomorrow.
Verse 11 - “I will put My tent among you, and I will never look at you with disgust.”
He really is God with us. He is Emmanuel. He sees us through the righteousness of Christ, our filthiness becomes wooly white. God does not have to put His tent among us. We have the Holy Spirit indwelling us. This is a gift of magnitude we cannot fully comprehend. We ought to be the most grateful, thankful, joyful people on this planet because God has put His tent among us. This is a big, big deal! How blessed are we? Boy, we are crazy blessed. It’s so much blessing we’d prolly fall over and faint if we caught even a glimpse of what it looks like in the spiritual realm to have the Lord right here…has God not made great promises and then kept them all to His people?
Verse 12 - “So I will live among you and be your God, and you will be My people.”
Do you know that you are a child of God?
Like, know that you know? And has that knowing changed your thinking and changed your living? Children of God should live knowing how loved they are. They should love others well because they are secure in who they are, due to the love of their Father. Are you numbered among His people? If so, you are so very loved and God’s love poured out on you is going to keep on pouring out on you, in never-ending measure. Live loved. I think if we could do that we could change the world around us, ya know?
Let’s skip down to verse 40 -
40 “But if they confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors—the treacherous things they did to oppose me— 41 I will oppose them and bring them into the lands of their enemies. Then, if they humble their uncircumcised hearts and accept their guilt, 42 I will remember my promise to Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham. I will also remember the land. 43 The land, abandoned by them, will enjoy its time to honor the Lord while it lies deserted without them. They must accept their guilt because they rejected my rules and looked at my laws with disgust. 44 Even when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or look at them with disgust. I will not reject or cancel my promise to them, because I am the Lord their God. 45 But for their sake, I will remember the promise to their ancestors. I brought them out of Egypt to be their God while nations looked on. I am the Lord.”
Now when we sin, He is faithful and just to cleanse us from all our sin and unrighteousness when we confess it, it says in 1 John 1:9. Be quick to confess when you need to. That saying, keep short accounts with God, that’s good counsel. As quickly as you can, confess. Repentance isn’t a shameful thing; the devil wants us to feel like it’s shameful, but it’s not. It’s a gift. It keeps us clean. Take a shower when you need to, and repent when you need to. And then get the promised blessing! God will not reject or cancel His promise to His people. Because He is the Lord our God.
For our sake, oh man how He loves us, for our sake He will remember the promises He’s made. He brought them out of Egypt, the nation of Israel. And has He not brought you out of something? Some place that was bondage? Where you felt beat down, low, lost, forgotten, weary…has He not brought you out? He is good at that, and He does it for each and every person who will turn to Him and receive Him as Savior.
He is your God today, and He has heaped up these promises in the Bible, piled them up high as can be, and they are but a drop in the bucket compared to His love for you. I hope today you can rest in that love, be at peace in His love, pray boldly with newfound faith because of God’s love, and go to sleep tonight with ease and wake up refreshed and renewed due to the love God has for you.
Thank you so much for listening today, and remember the link for the homeschool summit and also it’s time to announce the giveaway winners…here are the names (not sharing too much like don’t want to be unsafe or anything, but check your DM’s on Instagram or Messenger on Facebook if you hear your like first name). Okay, had several prizes and several winners so hang on with me while I go through them now.
(Names removed from show notes...) Please check your DMs and that will be on it’s way to you soon! Thank you so much for the support with the new podcast and the milestone of 150 episodes of this podcast. It was a good time to pause and reflect and thank God for allowing me to even do this at all, so thank for listening and being part of getting the promises of God into the people of God. I’m truly grateful!
Now, don’t you forget that God’s promises for you are true today, tomorrow, and always! I’ll see ya back here next time as we take a look at a promise from Numbers. Bye for now!
