Rest, Release, Redemption, and Return
Notes
Transcript
Rest, Release, Redemption, and Return
Jubilee sermon notes
I. Intro: Concerning Calendars
Did you know that there’s something wrong with your calendar? Its days are
numbered. Get it? You can mark this down on your calendars, though; on this
Mothers’ Day 2021, Pastor Justin, for only the second time in his ministry,
began a sermon with a joke!
We are going to talk about calendars this morning, however. Last week, we
looked at Daniel’s prayer of confession, which was prompted by his Bible
study, in which he learned that the time of the exile should’ve been almost up.
Jeremiah had indicated a 70-year period during which Babylon would be
supreme in that part of the world, a 70-year period during which the Jewish
people would be in exile, forbidden from returning to Judah and Jerusalem, a
70-year period during which the Jerusalem temple and its atonement sacrifices
were only a memory. So, Daniel confessed his own sin and the sins of God’s
people at large, seeking to be obedient to the prophet Jeremiah and the Mosaic
Law, both of which promised that God would return the Jewish people to the
land and enable them to rebuild the temple, if they confessed their sin and
repented. Daniel’s doing his part, and he’s seeking to represent the people.
Daniel then asked the Lord to fulfill his promises, to restore the people to the
land especially, to bring an end to their exile.
Famously, God quickly dispatches the angel Gabriel to answer Daniel. The
Lord’s answer has been the source of calendar-calculations, speculation, and
much debate among Jews and in the church for a very long time. The first
words of that answer are found in Daniel 9:24, where we read, “Seventy
weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city.” Before we explore
the rest of the answer over the next couple of weeks, I think it may be
clarifying to ask and attempt to answer a preliminary question: What would
Daniel have thought of when he heard these words? Most of our English
Bibles provide a footnote after the phrase “seventy weeks” to indicate that this
phrase could more literally be translated as “seventy sevens,” and pretty much
everyone agrees that this means “seventy seven-year periods.” Would Daniel
have understood it that way?
Yes, I think so. How would he know? From his Bible, of course! The concept
of a week in Scripture as a seven-day period is marked by the weekly
recurrence of the Sabbath. Thus, a “seven,” as a period of time, is lined up
with a Sabbath. But there is one place in the Bible where Sabbath doesn’t
merely mark the end of a week, but instead marks the end of a seven-year
period: Leviticus 25. In Leviticus 25, we are introduced to two linked laws,
one defining the Sabbath Year and one defining the Jubilee Year. I think it’s
likely that Daniel would’ve thought of this legislation as Gabriel unfolded
what would happen in the future. So, we should take a dive into the heart of
Israel’s calendar to make sure we understand the significance of this
background for the meaning and purpose of the “seventy weeks prophecy”
given by Gabriel to Daniel in answer to his prayer.
So, open your Bible to Leviticus 25. We’ll be looking at a lot of Scripture this
morning, and we’ll seek to draw out some implications for Christians today,
as we look at the Mosaic Law through the lens of Jesus and the gospel. First,
the overall structure of Leviticus 25 looks like the outline on this slide.
Heading (Lev. 25:1-2a)
A
The Sabbatical Year (Lev. 25:2b-7)
B
The Jubilee Year (Lev. 25:8-17)
A’ Concern about the Sabbatical Year and Yahweh’s promises (Lev. 25:1822)
B’ Details about the Jubilee Year (Lev. 25:23-55)
First, we’ll look at the “A” parts having to do with the Law of the Sabbath
Year, verses 1-7 and 18-22. We’ll see that verses 18-22 has relevance for the
Jubilee Year as well, which may be why the Jubilee Year is introduced before
considering the concerns of verses 18-22. The law of the Sabbath Year
focuses on providing rest for the land. Follow along as I read Leviticus 25:1-7,
and then verses 18-22.
II. The Law of the Sabbath Year: Rest for the Land (Lev. 25:1-7, 18-22)
Yahweh spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, 2 “Speak to the people of
Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land
shall keep a Sabbath to Yahweh. 3 For six years you shall sow your field, and
for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits, 4 but in the
1
seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to
Yahweh. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. 5 You shall not
reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the grapes of your
undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. 6 The Sabbath of
the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female
slaves and for your hired worker and the sojourner who lives with you, 7 and
for your cattle and for the wild animals that are in your land: all its yield shall
be for food.
18
“Therefore you shall do my statutes and keep my rules and perform them,
and then you will dwell in the land securely. 19 The land will yield its fruit,
and you will eat your fill and dwell in it securely. 20 And if you say, ‘What
shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?’ 21 I
will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a
crop sufficient for three years. 22 When you sow in the eighth year, you will be
eating some of the old crop; you shall eat the old until the ninth year, when its
crop arrives.
The land needs rest. This is not simply a practical, agricultural principle,
though agricultural experts have discovered certain benefits of letting a field
lie fallow for a prolonged period, and doing so is a practice known from other
cultures in the ancient world. But the rationale here is not pragmatic. Rather, it
is theological. The land belongs to Yahweh. Yahweh rested on the seventh
day, after completing his work of creation. As a reflection of that, he
commands his people to rest from their labors each week on the seventh day.
So also, in the seventh year, he commands the people to allow the land to rest
for a whole year, in the seventh year, following six years of sowing and
reaping, planting and harvesting, pruning and gathering. Yahweh owns the
land and he has the right to dictate how it is to be used.
In a society of farmers, like ancient Israel, one bad season for crops can lead
to devastation for a family. So, the question raised in verse 20 is certainly
reasonable. In response, Yahweh promises a miraculous triple-blessing on the
sowing of the sixth year, the year leading up to the Sabbath Year. This is akin
to his provision of manna for them in the wilderness, when he promised
double the manna on the sixth day, so that they could rest from gathering the
manna on the seventh day, the Sabbath day.
At this point, we should consider the calendar. You should find a special
insert in the bulletin this week, with a chart on the front and a chart on the
back. Look at the front, marked “page 1” at the bottom; the chart with the
yellow highlight is the back. The first column counts the years reflected in this
passage, the 6th through the 9th. The second column indicates how to continue
counting once the Sabbath Year arrives. What you can see in the gray shaded
area is that the Sabbath Year, though it’s called the seventh year, actually
overlaps what we would count as the 7th and 8th years. Thus, year 8 is year 1
of the next cycle. The third column is the names of the Jewish months, with
their numbers to help keep track, and then the fourth column is the modern
equivalents. Then, there’s a column which notes the activity, whether sowing
or reaping/harvesting. Finally, I’ve indicated the crops harvested.
So, the triple blessing promised is on the sowing that takes place in the
seventh through ninth months of year 6. They sow the same amount of seed as
they always would, but God promises to bless that seed so that the harvest is
triple what they expected. God would fulfill that promise, most likely, in the
form of massive amounts of rain in the winter months, as indicated in
Leviticus 26:3-5. The seventh month is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most holy
month of the year, given that most of the Jewish festivals are to be celebrated
during the seventh month. But it’s also the month that sowing begins. So, the
first part of allowing the land to lie fallow, to rest as a Sabbath to Yahweh, is
to refrain from sowing. Thus, the Sabbath year actually begins in the fall of
the seventh year.
So, to summarize, rest for the land means that the people will not plant seeds
in their fields and will not do the normal work of harvesting their fields.
Normally, for most Jews, the harvest would bring in not only food for the
family, but also crops that could be sold at the market for income, or stored
for later, in case of a shortfall. Yahweh is calling his people to trust him to
provide enough food, which they would harvest in the spring and summer of
the seventh year, for their families to eat the rest of the seventh year, through
the eighth year, when, in the fall, they would plant their fields once again, and
they’d continue eating on that sixth-year bumper crop until the springtime
harvest of the ninth year. What a miraculous provision! What faith the people
were being called to express!
Now, let’s consider the Law of the Jubilee Year. Since it’s such a large chunk
of text, let’s break up the reading of it. We’ll see three R’s for the Jubilee
Year: Return, Redemption, and Release. Let’s consider the beginning of the
legislation, the Return in verses 8-17.
III.
The Law of the Jubilee Year (Lev. 25:8-17, 23-55)
A. Return (Lev. 25:8-17)
8
“You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the
time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years. 9 Then you
shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the
Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land.
10
And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout
the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you
shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan. 11 That
fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what
grows of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. 12 For it is a
jubilee. It shall be holy to you. You may eat the produce of the field.
13
“In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property. 14 And if
you make a sale to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not
wrong one another. 15 You shall pay your neighbor according to the number of
years after the jubilee, and he shall sell to you according to the number of
years for crops. 16 If the years are many, you shall increase the price, and if the
years are few, you shall reduce the price, for it is the number of the crops that
he is selling to you. 17 You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear
your God, for I am Yahweh your God.
So, following from the Sabbath Year, every seven years, now we are to count
“seven weeks of years” or 49 years. However, this Jubilee Year doesn’t start
at the beginning of the normal year; rather, it begins on the Day of Atonement,
which is the tenth day of the seventh month. So, it coincides with the
beginning of the sowing season in the fall. But then it’s counted as the 50th
year in verse 10. How to count the Jubilee Year has been debated. The chart
on the back of your bulletin insert with the yellow highlighting shows how I
currently understand it. You count into the 49th year, and the 7th month then
becomes the beginning of the Jubilee Year, which will then overlap with the
50th year. So, as I see it, you can refer to it as the 49th year, if you think of it in
terms of the first half of the year, or you can refer to it as the 50th year, if you
think of it in terms of the second half of the year. And, to keep the counting of
the Sabbath Years synced up with the Jubilee Years, the 50th year is also
counted as the first year of the next cycle. This seems to account for both
verses 9 and 10. If that’s still confusing to you, feel free to put the chart away
and forget about it. It’s still confusing to me, but that’s my best attempt to
understand what the text seems to be saying.
The key activity is a return in terms of a proclamation of liberty. The
sacrifices of the Day of Atonement provide cleansing for the tabernacle and
everything associated with the tabernacle, as well as providing forgiveness for
all of the sins of all of the people from the previous year. The Day of
Atonement is the divine reset day. In the Jubilee Year, after the sacrifices have
been made, the ram’s horn would be blown throughout Israel to proclaim
liberty for the people. The word “Jubilee” is not actually related to the English
word “jubilation,” which means celebration. Instead, it’s just bringing over
into English the Hebrew letters from the word which refers to the ram’s horn.
It’s the Year of the Ram’s Horn, or the year when the blowing of the ram’s
horn proclaims liberty for the people.
The liberty highlighted here has to do with freedom to return home, to return
to one’s land. If you’re still thinking about Daniel, perhaps you can see the
relevance. But the Jubilee Year allowed all the Jews to return to their own
family land. Poverty could lead someone to sell himself into slavery or to sell
his land. The Jubilee legislation seeks to govern and put limits on the way this
works out. In verse 11, we see that the Jubilee Year seems to correspond with
the Sabbath Year, with instructions to leave the land fallow. This has led
many students of Scripture to suggest that the Jubilee Year would create a
situation of two consecutive fallow years. From the chart, you can see that I
lean toward seeing them as coinciding. The repeated instruction on leaving the
land fallow in this 49th and 50th year may be so that no one would assume that
the Jubilee Year would cancel out the Sabbath Year when it comes.
In any case, verses 13-17 seek to regulate the price of land according to how
long until the Jubilee Year. This is where we begin to see that real estate in
Israel was not actually bought or sold. Rather, the crops produced by a
particular plot of land may be sold; the land itself is merely leased. A Jewish
farmer might lease a portion or all of his land to be farmed by someone else,
in order to receive a lump-sum payment up front, which might enable him to
settle a debt. In the next verses, we’ll see that the farmer who has leased his
land always has the right to redeem and return to his land, if he or a family
member can come up with the funds. But it’s possible that the farmer might
never gain enough income to do that, and maybe no one in the family would
be willing to step up to help. Thus, the Jubilee Year provides a once-in-alifetime safety net to enable the farmer to return to his family property free of
charge. The purpose of this legislation seems to be to curb the impact of
poverty and to maintain the family inheritances within Israel through the
generations. Poverty need not ruin a family for multiple generations, as it so
often does.
In verses 23-28, we see laws for redemption of the land.
B. Redemption (Lev. 25:23-28)
“The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are
strangers and sojourners with me. 24 And in all the country you possess, you
shall allow a redemption of the land.
25
“If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his
nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold. 26 If a man
has no one to redeem it and then himself becomes prosperous and finds
sufficient means to redeem it, 27 let him calculate the years since he sold it and
pay back the balance to the man to whom he sold it, and then return to his
property. 28 But if he does not have sufficient means to recover it, then what he
sold shall remain in the hand of the buyer until the year of jubilee. In the
jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his property.
23
We’re going to bypass verses 29-34, which presents two exceptions to the
basic procedure laid out in verses 25-28. You can see that verse 35 picks up
the exact same language of verse 25, resuming the main thrust of the
legislation. This becomes stage one in a downward spiral. But notice, first of
all, the theological rationale for the legislation in verse 23. The land belongs
to Yahweh; the Jews must consider themselves merely as Yahweh’s guests.
So, the land must remain in the families and clans which Yahweh had allotted,
going all the way back to Joshua and the conquest of Canaan. The land is not
to permanently change hands, change families.
Verse 25 then introduces the first strategy a Jewish farmer struggling
financially might take to alleviate his troubles: sell a portion of his property.
Or, rather, he leases a section of his farmable land to another Jewish family.
Either the farmer or one of his family members can, at any time, pay money to
redeem his property, so that he might return to farming it himself. If the
Jubilee Year comes and he hasn’t been able to buy it back, then he is allowed
to return anyway, free of charge.
Now, let’s skip down to verse 35, and see how the release works in
relationship with the Jubilee Year.
C. Release (Lev. 25:35-43)
35
“If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you
shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall
live with you. 36 Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that
your brother may live beside you. 37 You shall not lend him your money at
interest, nor give him your food for profit. 38 I am Yahweh your God, who
brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, and to be
your God.
39
“If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you
shall not make him serve as a slave: 40 he shall be with you as a hired worker
and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee.
41
Then he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and go back to
his own clan and return to the possession of his fathers. 42 For they are my
servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as
slaves. 43 You shall not rule over him ruthlessly but shall fear your God.
We’re going to bypass verses 44-55, which presents a couple of exceptions
regarding foreign slaves and becoming a slave to a foreigner.
So, these verses contain stages 2 and 3 of what an impoverished Jewish farmer
might do to survive. First, he sold part of his fields. Second, in verse 35, he is
to seek out a loan. The legislation actually puts it the other way around; his
fellow Jews are to notice his plight and offer him an interest-free loan. Loan
him enough money to buy enough seed to plant for the next season; once the
harvest comes, hopefully he will reap enough that he can feed his family and
then pay back the loan. But the emphasis here is on the generosity of an
interest-free loan, and it, too, is motivated and grounded in the generosity of
Yahweh, who graciously rescued them from slavery in Egypt and gave them
the land of Canaan.
In verse 39, we get stage 3. The struggling farmer took the loan, but then he is
unable to repay the loan. What will he do next to preserve his family? He
might sell himself into slavery to the one who loaned him the money, or hire
himself out to work the man’s fields as a way of working off the debt. The
command here is that, in this situation, the one hiring him will not treat him
like a slave, but will seek to maintain his dignity, give him honest labor and
fair wages in order to help him get back on his feet. Moreover, if he hasn’t
paid off the debt when the Jubilee Year comes, then the man is to be set free
from his service, which surely implies that the remainder of the debt would be
forgiven.
Now, as we mentioned last week, a major reason given for the exile was
Israel’s failure to keep the law of the Sabbath Year. If they didn’t keep the
Sabbath Year, you can be sure they also didn’t keep the Jubilee Year, and both
of these are connected specifically with God’s judgment of exile.
IV.
The Breaking of the Sabbath and Jubilee Year Laws (Lev. 26:34-35; Jer.
34:8-22; 2 Chron. 36:20-21)
Consider again Leviticus 26:34-35: After the Lord had indicated that if they
refuse to obey his Word, he would devastate the land and exile the people, so
that the land would be laid waste, ruined, and desolate, then he says, “Then
the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in
your enemies’ land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its Sabbaths. 35 As long
as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest that it did not have on your
Sabbaths when you were dwelling in it.” The land hadn’t had its Sabbath rest,
prescribed by the Lord in Leviticus 25; therefore, God sent them out of the
land so that it could rest.
But there’s more. King Zedekiah appears to have attempted to reinstate the
Jubilee Year. Jeremiah indicates that the king had made a covenant with the
people “to make a proclamation of liberty to them,” which is that unique
phrase we saw in Leviticus 25, and so all the people set their Jewish slaves
free. Then we read these words in Jeremiah 34:11: “But afterward they turned
around and took back the male and female slaves they had set free, and
brought them into subjection as slaves.” To this, the Lord responds, through
Jeremiah, and he refers back to legislation from Deuteronomy 15, that Jewish
slaves should only be required to serve six years and then be set free.
At the end of Jeremiah 34:14, the Lord indicates that the Jews never obeyed
that law either. Then we read these words from the Lord in verses 15-17, “15
You recently repented and did what was right in my eyes by proclaiming
liberty, each to his neighbor, and you made a covenant before me in the house
that is called by my name, 16 but then you turned around and profaned my
name when each of you took back his male and female slaves, whom you had
set free according to their desire, and you brought them into subjection to be
your slaves. 17 Therefore, thus says Yahweh: You have not obeyed me by
proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother and to his neighbor; behold, I
proclaim to you liberty to the sword, to pestilence, and to famine, declares
Yahweh. I will make you a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.” Skipping
down to verses 21-22: “21 And Zedekiah king of Judah and his officials I will
give into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their
lives, into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon which has withdrawn
from you. 22 Behold, I will command, declares Yahweh, and will bring them
back to this city. And they will fight against it and take it and burn it with fire.
I will make the cities of Judah a desolation without inhabitant.” Thus, the
invasion of Babylon, the exile of Judah, the destruction of Jerusalem was
Yahweh’s judgment for the people’s failure to uphold the Jubilee Year. He is
the one truly in charge of the Babylonian army.
Finally, we revisit the verses we looked at last week, near the conclusion of 2
Chronicles. 2 Chronicles 36:20-21: “He took into exile in Babylon those who
had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons
until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, 21 to fulfill the word of
Yahweh by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths.
All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.” Thus,
our understanding of exile must be rooted in the backdrop of the Sabbath Year
and the Jubilee Year legislation. Should it surprise us if the restoration, the
rescue from exile, must be understood also with this background in mind?
We’ve considered the legislation itself, and we’ve considered how the people
failed to keep these commands. Now, let’s consider the fulfillment of the
Sabbath and Jubilee Year, according to Scripture. This is where we see further
the connection with the Seventy Weeks prophecy of Daniel 9. We begin in
Isaiah 61:1-2.
V.
The Fulfillment of the Sabbath and Jubilee Years (Isa. 61:1-2; Luke
4:16-30)
1
The Spirit of Lord Yahweh is upon me,
because Yahweh has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
2
to proclaim the year of Yahweh’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
Notice the language of “proclaiming liberty” in verse 1. I’ll keep my
comments here brief, but this passage is just amazing! The proclamation of
liberty is uniquely Jubilee language, from Leviticus 25, and here it is a central
feature in the mission of the Messiah, as laid out by the prophet Isaiah. The
“me” in verse 1 is the Servant of the Lord who appears frequently in the last
several chapters of Isaiah’s prophecy. Knowing that Jesus is that Servant, we
can see an Old Testament indication of the Trinity. The prophet Isaiah is
quoting the Messianic Servant, defining his own anticipated mission. The
mission of the Messiah is here being defined in terms of fulfilling the purpose
of the Jubilee Year, but in an ultimate, final, decisive way.
In Luke chapter 4, Jesus reads these words from Isaiah in the synagogue of
Nazareth and applies them to himself. The year of the Lord’s favor is the final
Jubilee, and Jesus is indicating that it is being fulfilled in his ministry. After
he quotes everything up to the first line of Isaiah 61:2, we read these words in
Luke 4:20-21: “And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant
and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And
he began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your
hearing.’” Jesus is “on mission” in Luke 4; he stops reading in the middle of
verse 2 because he has come to fulfill the positive aspects of the Jubilee Year,
while creating an unexpected delay in the Messiah’s role as final judge. The
year of the Lord’s favor would not coincide with the day of God’s vengeance
the way the Jews were expecting. The year of the Lord’s favor must stand
alone, first and foremost, so that God’s grace might extend to both rebellious
Jews and rebellious Gentiles across the world, as the true and final fulfillment
of everything the Jubilee Year was really about.
But, as I said, Jesus is “on mission” in Luke 4. The people of Nazareth
struggled to believe that Jesus was the Spirit-anointed Messiah Isaiah had
announced. They knew him as the carpenter’s son, but they had heard of him
doing miracles elsewhere. After vaguely identifying himself also as a prophet,
Jesus rebukes them for their unbelief and points to the Old Testament prophets
Elijah and Elisha. He reminded them that those old prophets did special
miracles for a couple of Gentiles, excluding many in Israel who were
suffering. The Jews of Nazareth seemed to have understood his point; the
fulfillment of the Jubilee Year, the year of the Lord’s favor, the mission of the
Messiah was not just for the Jews. And they tried to kill him.
Then, what do we see? After rebuking the Jews of Nazareth, he goes to
Capernaum and rebukes a demon living in a man, and the demon left, rebukes
a fever in Peter’s mother-in-law, and the fever left, and then rebukes a bunch
of demons living in a bunch of different people, so that the demons all left,
and heals a bunch of other people besides. Jesus is proclaiming liberty to the
captives, setting people free from oppression, and proclaiming the good news
that he was bringing in the kingdom of God, indeed, that he was the longawaited King. Instead of blowing a ram’s horn, he was proclaiming liberty
through his powerful speaking.
As Jesus hinted at in Nazareth, however, like most things in prophecy, there is
an already-but-not-yet fulfillment. The final and indeed eternal Jubilee Year
has begun, but the completion of all that the Jubilee Year stood for awaits his
return, his second coming. Instead of returning to a particular land, the Lord is
summoning all people everywhere to return to him, to repent, and those who
repent of their sin and trust in Jesus receive rest from trying to earn anything
from God, release from the debt of our sin, and release from our captivity to
sin, our enslavement to Satan. The Sabbath rest merely foreshadowed in the
Mosaic Law and the practice of a weekly non-work-day, merely
foreshadowed by allowing land to lie fallow, the true Sabbath rest of trusting
the Sovereign Lord of the universe to provide all your needs—Jesus, the
Sabbath-Lord, as he called himself, provides you with the true rest the
moment you begin trusting in him. We have already entered the true rest that
the Sabbath merely pointed toward. And yet we also look forward to the full
experience of rest in the future.
Nevertheless, in the “now,” the messy, overwhelming, frustrating, struggling
“now,” you can experience real rest and real freedom, everything the Sabbath
and the Jubilee intend to picture. Rest from trying to figure everything out;
rest from trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps; rest from trying to
earn anything from the Lord; rest from trying to pay for your own sin; rest
from carrying the weight of guilt for your failures; rest from trying to measure
up to some standard. Jesus is gentle, meek, lowly; his yoke is easy; his burden
is light. He is a good shepherd; he will lead you where you need to go.
Jesus has purchased us, redeemed us, by his death on the cross; he fulfills the
Day of Atonement sacrifices, once and for all! He owns every person who
trusts in him, and he claims every person who trusts him. We have been
redeemed; the penalty for all of our sin has been paid in full; the debt has been
cancelled, forever! And yet we also look forward to the redemption of our
bodies in the resurrection. But even now we can experience real freedom from
the bondage of sin. Some of the sweetest words in Scripture to me are found
in Romans 6:14: “Sin will have no dominion over you.” That promise puts the
wind back in my sails, when I feel deflated. That promise brightens my eyes
better than caffeine or honey or any other stimulant known to man. Jesus has
bought us out of slavery to sin and Satan.
Next week, we will return to Daniel 9, where I will suggest that the seventy
weeks prophecy, and the seventieth week in particular, has to do with what
we’ve been talking about today. The seventy weeks of years Gabriel explains
to Daniel is about the fulfillment of the Jubilee Year. Daniel thought he knew
from Jeremiah’s prophecy when the end of the exile would be, at the
culmination of seventy years. Gabriel informs Daniel that the return to the
land, which God would accomplish a very short time after Daniel prays, is
only the beginning of the end of the exile. To deal with the problem that
caused the exile in the first place would require a much longer time.
For now, as we conclude, how can we live out the principles of the Sabbath
and the Jubilee today? If Jesus has fulfilled the Sabbath Year and inaugurated
the Jubilee Year, if he has welcomed us into participating in the Jubilee, what
should our response as Christians be? Combining the Sabbath Year and the
Jubilee Year, let’s consider the 5 R’s.
VI.
Conclusion: Living Out Sabbath and the Jubilee Today
A. Rest
The Sabbath Year was intended to provide rest for the land. This has
relevance for God’s people today. The principle we need to follow here has to
do with acting as responsible stewards both of our time and of the earth. Now,
I’m not in any way commenting on problems related to the climate or the
politics surrounding that discussion. Rather, I’m suggesting that Leviticus 25
reaches back to Genesis 1 to reflect God’s granting to humans responsibility
to care for and manage this created world for good. As Christians, being
remade in the image of God, being restored as his rightful representatives in
this world, our new identity should influence how we treat the created world. I
am not knowledgeable enough to make positive suggestions in this area, but I
can say, generally: Don’t trash the place! Enjoy nature as the gift from God
that it is, but don’t treat the things of this world as simply garbage to be
burned.
The other implication of the rest offered to the land has to do with the faith of
the people who live on the land. Remember: if the land was to lie fallow for a
whole year, they had to trust God’s promise that he would provide enough in
the sixth year to last for three years. That’s what he said he would do! In order
to obey the command to let the land lie fallow, they had to believe God’s
Word, to trust his promise of provision. Matthew 6 comes to mind. Don’t be
anxious about the things you might provide yourself using money, things like
food, drink, and clothing. Why not? Because your life is more than food; your
body is more than clothing; because you are more valuable than the birds God
feeds every day, and he will feed you; because being anxious adds nothing to
your life; because you last longer than the flowers God clothes with such
beauty every day, and he will provide clothing for you, too; because pagans,
non-believers, people who don’t know Jesus as the gracious King that he is—
they are the ones who prioritize food, drink, and clothing; because God is now
your Father and he knows your needs; and, finally, Jesus says, don’t be
anxious about what’s going to happen tomorrow, because tomorrow is
tomorrow. I love how Jesus argues logically against our feelings of anxiety!
But do we believe his reasons? Do we believe what he says? We can. He is
utterly trustworthy.
B. Release
The Jubilee Year has to do with a release, genuine liberty. Our debt of sin has
been fully forgiven, and we have been set free to please God. In the prayer
Jesus taught his disciples when they asked him to teach them to pray, he used
the language of debt-release. Luke 11:4 begins, “and forgive us our sins, for
we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.” If we have been
released from our sin-debt, we must not hold onto the sin-debts others accrue
with us. In other words, let go of your grudges. Some of you in this building
are still holding on to old wounds. It’s time for release; it’s time for healing;
it’s time to extend forgiveness.
C. Redemption
The way the Jubilee Year regulated the prices of redemption, of redeeming the
land, has implications for us as well. Challenging ancient Jewish people to
think about their land and their crops not in terms of personal profit, so that
the wealthy wouldn’t just get wealthier while the poor just kept getting poorer
was very important, and the Lord surely intended to curb their materialism.
And so it should be for us. Jesus drew on Leviticus 25 when he said, in Luke
6:35, “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in
return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High,
for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.” The principles of the Jubilee are
behind the early church’s practices of sharing resources described in Acts 2
and Acts 4. There’s no support for Communism here; rather, there’s a
challenge for us to part with our resources voluntarily in order to help those
who are in need in our body. We’re not storing up treasures on earth.
D. Return
Finally, returning to the land in the Jubilee Year had the purpose of a great
reset. It preserved the line of family ownership of the land God had allotted,
and it would’ve preserved families from generational, cyclical poverty. God
cares about holding families together. Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day are
good to keep on our calendars. It’s good to remember and celebrate the role of
parents, as God designed it, but it’s important to remember also that life in a
fallen world has resulted in the breakdown of families, at times, and
brokenness can cause holidays like these to be painful for some. However,
restoration and wholeness can be experienced in the Jubilee Year, the year of
the Lord’s favor. Jesus promised in Mark 10:29-30, “Truly, I say to you, there
is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or
children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a
hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and
children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.”
While Jesus omits the word “fathers,” probably as a way of emphasizing the
uniqueness of God’s fatherhood, nevertheless the apostle Paul can call himself
a father of the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 4:15. Thus, the family restoration
envisioned in the ancient Jubilee can be a reality today among us. Jesus has
made us his family. We live out sibling relationships and mother-child
relationships and father-child relationships in the body of Christ. We all
together put our hope finally in the return of our Savior, who has begun the
eternal Jubilee with his Day-of-Atonement sacrifice on the cross, and, in the
meantime, we seek to live out the true liberty that he has given to us, freedom
in Christ.