Leviticus 26:3 “If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them,
This is a dependent promise. What is promised for obedience?
4 then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.
He promised to control nature in a manner that would bless them.
Leviticus 26:14 “But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments,”
Dependent promises have promises for disobedience.
16 then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.
Disobedience becomes personal, not afflicting mankind by withholding the blessing of nature but by attacking mankind in a personal physical manner. There is one more implied punishment by invoking the enemy clause. Whatever shield of protection that was given would be removed.
These promises and declarations of punishments are repeated over and over again in the old testament. God kept promising and Israel kept disobeying. Obviously dependent promises were not enough to keep His children from sinning.
Romans 3:20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
Think of God’s laws as being a mirror in which we get to see what we are in relationship to a just and holy God. In the new testament the word justified is brought into context. Being justified in God’s sight is now what is paramount in this relationship. Obedience takes second place.
Obedience doesn’t change the face in the mirror.
So what does change the way we see ourselves?
Ezekiel 36:26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
Isaiah 43:19 Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.