The One Year Bible - Day 60

Today is some real hardcore OT teaching, a few things that we would find hard to accept but which is a challenge that God is who He is and it is our job to find out about this and not to decide that God didn't say that or God doesn't do that any more!
Firstly something that is interesting with regards to property and this idea that Israel worked on a rolling Leasehold program. You buy property or land depending on how long it is until the next Jubilee which happened every 50 years and then when it got to that point, the land or property reverted to its original owner. This is something a lot of us would have an issue with since we like to consider things our property but this rule reminds us that it all belongs to God anyway. Not sure how it would work in the West today although I guess a fair number of people have 99 or 999 year leases.
Leviticus 24 and we see another example of God's holiness and standard for living. A man curses God and is arrested. God's punishment is to have the man stoned for doing what the Israelites were told not to i.e. to take the name of the Lord in vain. We often struggle with this idea that God in any way condones capital punishment because we believe He is loving and "He wouldn't do that" but for this view you either need to completely disregard the OT teaching, assume that God has changed - something that is un-Biblical or we have to decide that this was only for the Israelites, again, something I find hard to justify when we read of the way God dealt with non-Israelites. But it puts us in an awkward position since we are humanly uncomfortable with capital punishment, perhaps because we are afraid of death ourselves and project our fear onto our theology? Anyway, fear of punishment is part of the point of it.
If we consider that God's love is for the whole world, not for any particular person then we can see why God would want to dissuade people from committing certain sins which would infect the society and become common place if left un-checked. We are reminded of a Holy God who says that if people blaspheme God, they should be executed to show that this is not acceptable ever. Because God is insecure and vindictive? No because He knows that un-controlled blasphemy gives our ego too much power and ego is the enemy of the Spirit.
You can disagree but hopefully you will consider this issue and not simply ignore it because it is difficult.