Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Good morning. 945. I was trying to figure out what time this is. 945.
[00:00:09] Good morning. Thank you. If you have a Bible, would you open up to the Book of Leviticus? We're going to be in chapter 25 this morning. And it's funny, this is one of those chapters I find greatly entertaining. And some of you are like, man, this is going to be interesting stuff. And, you know, there's this pastor who has this wonderful phrase. He says it takes the whole word of God to form the whole person of God. And so it doesn't matter what the word is, we want to dig into. What you're going to find, though, is, and I hope you've seen this in the book of Leviticus. So much of Jesus vocabulary is rooted in the book of Leviticus. Like, to understand the teachings of Jesus, to really amplify that, like, to get deep into the book of Leviticus, is to amplify your understanding of who Jesus is and what he is teaching. All right, so we, as we get near to the end of the book, three sermons away, we're in a series called Promised Land. And what's happening at the end of the book of Leviticus is it's giving some rules and laws to show what life is going to look like amongst the people of God, finally, when they get into the promised land. And there's a huge theme, a huge theme that you're going to find for the Israelites, for God's people. And it is the theme of rest. Now, this is a deeply personal theme for them, because for over 400 years, the Israelites were oppressed and worked to the bone by the nation of Egypt. They were slaves. And so when Yahweh intervenes and says, no, no, no, I'm not going to oppress you. I'm going to be a God who gives you freedom, who gives you rest. It was one of the most beautiful experiences for the nation of Israel. And so, throughout jewish history, this concept of rest is one of the most important principles for God's people. So what I want to do to kind of prep ourselves for Ludovicus 25 is I want to share with you three principles of rest from scripture. Number one, in a fallen world, everything and everyone needs regular rest. Your body needs daily rest. When you sleep, your body needs weekly rest. And by the way, we call this, what? Sabbath? Your soul needs rest continually through worship. Animals need daily and weekly rest. The land needs daily and weekly rest. I mean, I am mind boggled that God made the vast majority of mammal species so that they go totally unconscious for, like, a third or a half of a day and are vulnerable to whatever predator wants to go after them. To me, that is such insanity. But, hey, it's vbs week, so let's do some fun facts while we're at it. Did you know that koalas, they sleep for 18 to 22 hours per day? Praise God. I'll be a koala. That sounds amazing.
[00:02:52] Sloths, they sleep 15 to 20 hours a day. Opossums, 18 hours a day. Giant armadillos. Why? I don't know. 18 to 19 hours a day. And tigers and lions, 16 to 20 hours per day. God bless them.
[00:03:12] So here's a little interesting tidbit on sleep. Do you know how humanity slept before the invention of the light bulb? Like the vast majority of humanity all throughout human history, they did not sleep the way we sleep. So here's what would happen.
[00:03:27] People would go to sleep shortly after kind of full sundown darkness. And when they would go to sleep, they would sleep for roughly 4 hours. And this sleep is what they would call dead sleep or first sleep.
[00:03:42] What would happen is about after 4 hours, the kids would keep sleeping, but the adults would wake up. And so when the adults would wake up, they would stay up for anywhere between one and 3 hours. And so what would happen under candlelight in these one to 3 hours is they would write in their journals, they would read scripture. They would have their daily quiet times. They would pray. They would hang out with a husband and wife and get to know each other. They would do all these different kinds of things. So you always wonder, like, where things happen. And so, like, you read these old puritan writers, and they're like, I spend 3 hours a day in prayer. You're like, where do you find 3 hours a day? They found it in the middle of the night between, like, roughly twelve and 03:00 a.m. and so when you start reading people who were, like, writing before electricity, you start to hear about their quiet times, and you have to understand, they lived in a completely different structure of day than we did. And then after about one to 3 hours, depending on the person and the day and what would happen, they would go back to bed for what was called second sleep, and they would wake up with the sun. And so in the winter, it would not be unusual for people to get anywhere from twelve to 13 plus hours of sleep because nighttime was longer. And then in the summer, when they had to be working in the fields, the sleep was a little bit shorter. They would work harder. And so this is how humanity slept for the vast majority of history until, like, one or 200 years ago.
[00:05:06] So let's just take a moment on this first biblical principle of rest and self reflect.
[00:05:11] Do you sleep?
[00:05:13] Some of you are chuckling like, there's, like, basic 101 science that you can google any time of day on what not to do before you go to sleep. Like, don't look at your phone before you go to sleep because the blue light keeps you up. It's like basic 101 science. And we're all like, but I know better. I got it. Good.
[00:05:30] Do you take a day of physical rest for your body?
[00:05:35] Do you give your kids weekly rest? Can I get an amen for all the kids in the room?
[00:05:41] Are you committed to weekly soul rest through worship? As I study Old Testament Sabbath and rest, I get very grateful for one text, and I want to read it to you. Colossians 216.
[00:05:53] Therefore, Paul says, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival. Are you going to celebrate these jewish feast or festivals or not? Nobody gets to judge you or a new moon or a sabbath. Like, nobody gets to judge you on how you do Sabbath. God's given you protocols and parameters or things you need to do. As a pastor, I'm particularly grateful because Sundays aren't the most restful days for me. And so I have a different kind of Sabbath structure that my life works under. And you don't get to judge me because Paul says you can't. Ha.
[00:06:28] He says these, all of these things, including the Sabbath, they're not the point. They are a shadow. Don't get me wrong, shadows are important. We learn a lot about shadows, but they're not the point. There are shadows of things to come, but the substance that's casting the shadow is Christ.
[00:06:44] And the thing has never ultimately been about the thing. The Sabbath, the feast, the festivals, all this stuff. There are always shadows that were preparing us for the ultimate reality when Jesus came.
[00:06:54] The second principle is, in a fallen world, everything and everyone needs not just rest, but periodic refresh.
[00:07:03] So here's the way that God would do this with the nation of Israel. He had these feasts and festivals that would happen on an annual basis. And so during these feasts and festivals, it'd be a combination of extra rest, worship, and celebration, where the people of God would take time out periodically on holy days or holidays, and they would remember what God did. They would worship, and they would come together in community, and they would eat, and they would rest. They would worship. It was beautiful. And so in America, we have holidays, and we have these vacation rhythms and these time off rhythms that are supposed to be happening around this time. And really, this goes back to scriptural times, because we don't just need a weekly rest, we need a refresh regularly throughout the year. So let's do some more self reflection.
[00:07:49] Do you take time away from work with your family?
[00:07:54] For many people, vacation is not possible for multiple reasons. But do each of your family members have regular periods of extended rest without. Here's the word. Without judgment.
[00:08:08] Do you create spaces for celebration of God and life and connection?
[00:08:15] Do you do this intentionally?
[00:08:18] Now to our third principle. In a fallen world, everything and everyone needs periodic reset. Which brings us to Leviticus, chapter 25. So here's what happens. It's a long chapter. There's a lot here. But in chapter 25, what God does is he doesn't just create, but he commands two genius rhythms of genuine reset. This is deeper than a rest. It's deeper than a refresh. This is like a start over period of time.
[00:08:47] And so what we see here is that God has created land, animals, and people to work together. When one of them stops functioning, well, everything stops working. And so God is invested in making sure that land, animals, and people, they don't just get rest, they don't just get refreshed. They get reset on a consistent basis. So the first thing that God created is what's called the Sabbath. Not day, but the Sabbath year.
[00:09:17] Now, I'm going to share with you four principles from Leviticus 25 about the Sabbath year. And as I think you kind of get into this, you might say to yourself, man, how do we start a Sabbath year in America?
[00:09:29] Number one, God will give a reset to his land and all that support it.
[00:09:36] Verse one. The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, speak to the people of Israel. Say to them, when you come into the land that I give you the land, not just you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. And you're going to watch this unfold here. Whose land is it? It's the lord's. And the Lord is giving Israel by tribe, clan, and family this land and portions of allotted land. And he's like, this is my land, and I'm gonna tell you exactly what I want you to do with it. So don't go against my rules. This is how I want this land treated. Now, different cultures have different things that reflect you. So, for example, for some people, your lawn is a reflection of you. So if your lawn is, like, unkept, you're like, oh, I just feel like I'm not representing myself. Well, for some cultures, your car is a representation of you, not your house.
[00:10:29] For some cultures, people will never actually see you drive, they'll never actually go to your home. So the way you dress, this is like a reflection of you. And so people spend a lot of money in certain cultures on what they wear, because it's revealing who you really are. For God, the flourishing of the nation of Israel, its people, its land and its animals, is a reflection of God. So that when people come into the nation of Israel, they look at how well the nation is doing, they look at their families, they look at their traditions, they look at their laws, they look at their justice, they look at the lack of poor people and they say, there's something different and unique about this God because of his people. We see this principle that nothing in God's creation flourishes without regular rhythms of rest, refresh and reset, even, by the way, and especially you and I. Now let's get into the details of this, because this gets really interesting. Verse three.
[00:11:31] For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits. But in the 7th year, there shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyards. You can't touch it. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Isn't that amazing? If you are a farmer working in the agricultural world, you get every 7th year, an entire year off. Praise God. This is the vast majority of the nation, by the way, every 7th year. Now, you can imagine, like, well, what about, how are we going to get food? How are we going to do this? We'll get there.
[00:12:17] There are massive benefits, by the way. I mean, if you're going to be an israelite and you're going to apply this, there is a risk because you don't probably know all the details of how everything works on a cellular micro level, right? But here are just a few benefits. You have nutrient replenishment, organic matter accumulation, which grows and makes the soil richer, reduction of soil erosion, it breaks pest control cycles, disease control, improves soil microbial activity, which really just allows all these organisms to live inside of the soil, makes everything healthier. We could go on and on, but it's almost like, by the way, God knows how the land is supposed to work because he made it mind numbing.
[00:12:59] Wow.
[00:13:01] And it's like he knows how you're supposed to work because he made you and he designed you. And so as the people of God. We look at the rhythms that God's created and we say, okay, what can I do? What can I do to live within the rhythms that you have made me to work by now in your bibles? I want you to turn with me to the book of deuteronomy 15. Because what deuteronomy 15 does is it goes even deeper into the Sabbath year laws. And this is where it moves far beyond the land and to the people. And it gets just very, very, very beautiful and striking.
[00:13:35] On the Sabbath year, God will reset his people's debt. Deuteronomy 15 one. At the end of every seven years, you shall grant a release. And this is the manner of the release. Every creditor shall release what he has lent to his neighbor. He shall not exact it of his neighbor, his brother, because the Lord's release has been proclaimed. Can I get an amen? Village church? I mean, how sweet would that be? Doesn't matter what you borrowed, doesn't matter what you did. Every seven years amongst the people of God, no debt, no credit, no nothing. Everybody is released. And anybody with a mortgage is doubly saying, amen, praise God. Here we go. Verse three does give a caveat. Verse three says, of a foreigner, you may exact it, but whatever of yours is with your brother, meaning a fellow israelite, your hand shall release. And what you're going to notice is that there are multiple non sinful things that the people of God are allowed to do to non christians or not the people of God that they are not allowed to do to one another more to come on that on the Sabbath year. Number three, God will reset his people's poverty.
[00:14:51] Verse four, it gives us just an insight into the heart of God, he says, but there will be no poorer among you.
[00:15:00] There will be no poorer among you. And so poverty is the result of man. It is not the heart of God.
[00:15:10] And poverty can happen for a handful of reasons. Number one, devastating circumstances can come into your life that you did not foresee coming that can wreck you financially and even cause you to lose your home.
[00:15:24] Number two, some people make incredibly foolish decisions that compromise their finances, their home, their wealth. And in the moment, they probably know that what they're doing is stupid, but they're blinded by greed or something else. And so in the process of doing this, many people go broke because of their own foolish decisions. Some people go broke because they are being treated poorly by somebody who is oppressive, who is taking advantage of them. There are multiple reasons that poverty can exist. But amongst the people of God, Yahweh, is saying, let it not be so amongst us. When people come in and they actually see the people of God, may they not find poverty, because the people are a reflection of the character of Yahweh. Verse seven. It says this, if among you, one of your brothers should become poor in any of your towns within your land that the Lord God has given you, this is so important. This is to every single person in this room. If you're, if you're not broke and poor, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. If you have more than enough and you have a fellow brother, someone of the people of God, and you have the ability not to enable them, but to actually provide an environment for them to get out of poverty. We jump on moments like this.
[00:16:57] Verse nine. It's a warning to those with resources in Israel. He says, take care, lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart. And you say, the 7th year, the year of release is near, and your eye look grudgingly on your poor brother.
[00:17:20] And even though you have to let him go and let all of his debts go, you give him nothing. And he cry to the Lord against you, and you be guilty of sin.
[00:17:32] So what's interesting is that for the wealthy, you can begin to feel like, I did this. This is all of me. And get a little bit arrogant, and then you get judgmental, looking down on people. And we'll see here in a little bit, like, why the Lord is like, this is not just for the poor person. It's also for the person with much resources.
[00:17:52] Verse ten, he says, you shall give him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him. Listen to this. Because for this, the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and all that you undertake. Why did God or will God bless the wealthy?
[00:18:12] So that they can take care of people, so that they can build the kingdom of God and make sure that the people of God are cared for. Isn't that a crazy thought? And God's like, listen, you didn't get your wealth unless I gave it to you. And the whole reason I gave it to you was to make a difference. It is not to hoard it all for yourself and be stingy when you see your poor brother and you have the ability not just to meet a need, but to actually elevate somebody out of poverty, take the opportunity and figure out how to do it. If they're a brother and sister number four. On the Sabbath year, God will give a reset to his people who are slaves or servants. Deuteronomy 1512 says this, if your brother, a hebrew man or hebrew woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the 7th year, you shall let him go free from you. November 13, 2022, I preached a sermon on slavery in the Bible. I don't have time to revisit that, but I'll give you just the cliff notes version of it. 17th, 18th, 19th century chattel. Slavery has nothing in common with biblical slavery whatsoever. And just, I'm gonna throw you a bone here before you like, I don't know, go talk to your christian friends or say something dumb.
[00:19:24] When you say the Bible supports slavery, I know immediately one thing about you. You have not read the Bible whatsoever on slavery.
[00:19:34] And so you're just telling me that you're ignorant of. The second thing that I know most of the time is that when people say that, they typically don't want to know what the Bible says. They want to find reasons why the Bible isn't true. Because if the Bible is true, it is a huge demand on our life. And so the amount of people who are just trying to discredit the Bible, they won't even give it credence because they know deep in their bones, if this book is true. Everything about my life probably needs to take a radical, radical shift. Now, that being said, verse 13 highlights some of the differences beautifully. When you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty handed. You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress. As the Lord your God has blessed you, you shall give to him. So we'll talk in a moment about why somebody would be in slavery to another Hebrew. But if you have them on the Sabbath year, you let them go. And you don't just let them go and say, thanks. It was good being with you. Here's what you do. You bless them. You say, here's animals, here's some wine, here's some fruit, here's whatever aggregate, whatever you need, and I'm going to give it to you liberally, so that whatever you're going into next, I am going to give you every single opportunity to succeed. Because may it never be said amongst the people of God that there are poor people, when the people of God have more than enough resources to care for their own people.
[00:21:02] Verse 15 identifies that this practice is just as much for the benefit of the wealthy as it is for the poor. And verse 15, he says, you, wealthy, you shall remember once you were a slave in the land of Egypt. And the Lord God, he didn't look down on you begrudgingly. These needy people, these poor Israelites, they gotta just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get themselves out of poverty. He didn't say that. He didn't look down on the helpless state of these very rich people. He looked at them and said, the Lord God redeemed you.
[00:21:40] Therefore, because I did this for you. Now you, you go do it for your brothers.
[00:21:48] Let's summarize the Sabbath here. Every seven years, reset for the land animals and workers, reset of all debts, reset for the poor, reset of all slave servants. And this isn't even the craziest part of it. God created a second rhythm of reset for the nation of Israel that is actually even more insane than this. And it's called the year of Jubilee.
[00:22:17] Back to Leviticus 25. If you have your bibles open, we're going to look at verse eight.
[00:22:22] Here's what it says. You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years. I love how he, like, does the math. And he's like, in case you're not good at math, here's how we do it. Okay, good. So that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you 49 years. This is like common core. We got this. Okay. Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the 10th day of the 7th month. On the day of atonement, you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. So the word jubilee, it's the hebrew word yovel, which at its core just simply means a ram's horn or a trumpet. And it is associated with going into battle, it's associated with freedom, it's associated with celebration and joy. And so here's what would happen. Every 49 years, on the 49th year, that's going to be the Sabbath year. So are you going to do anything on the land other than eat the stuff that grows? The answer is no. You're not planting seed, you're not harvesting. All you do is you get up every day in the Sabbath year, and you go out to the fields. You can go to your neighbor's fields, you can go anywhere you want. You just eat whatever is available. And that's God's provision for you on the 49th year. But on the 50th year, you get the year of Jubilee.
[00:23:32] And you know what happens?
[00:23:34] It's another year off. Praise God. That would be hard to go back to work after two years, right? Of just dilly dallying. No, they did have stuff to do, but not a ton. All right. Verse ten.
[00:23:47] You shall consecrate the 50th year. And here's what I want you to do. Proclaim liberty throughout the land to all of its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you when each of you and I want you to pay attention here. Each of you shall return to his property, and each of you shall return to his clan. Not only was all debt canceled, every single person, for the most part, in the nation of Israel, had to go back to their ancestral land, to the land that God didn't just give their tribe or their clan, but to their family.
[00:24:25] Every 50 years was a national reset, so that everybody returned to the gift of land that God had given every single family. Verse eleven. That 50th 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, for it is jubilee, and it shall be holy or set apart to you. You may, though eat the produce of the field. You just can't sow or reap.
[00:24:58] So God gave very strict rules for what's called property reversion, meaning you own a piece of property, and in the 50th year, it goes back to the person who it was originally owned by. Now you can imagine that the people of God are all sinners. And whenever you own something, and then God says you need to give it back and it's something that values property, do you think that that's going to be rife with some potential problems? You better believe it. So the rest of chapter 25, it's actually very long. And there are four main rules for property reversion. I'm not going to spend time in the whole thing, but I'm going to give you the four rules so you can kind of see the level of protection that God is providing for the nation of Israel as this year of Jubilee happens, and as they kind of got to reallocate and re put their land back to its original place.
[00:25:45] Rule number one, all property must be sold back to the original family for a fair.
[00:25:50] In verse 17, he says, you shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God, for I am the Lord your God. Apparently there is a high enough propensity for people to wrong each other, take advantage of them, charge too much, extort them or exploit them. And God's like, nope, this is going to be just. Rule number two, all property is the Lord's and must be returned to his original will, verse 23. He says, the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, meaning you don't just keep selling this thing over and over and over and over again. That's not what I want. He says this, the land is mine for you are strangers and sojourners with me. So in America, what we do is we see land as an avenue to increase in wealth. Because you buy land, you can either rent it and make money, but your hope is that the cost or value of the land is going to go up because we have inflation. Yay.
[00:26:46] They didn't have inflation. They weren't functioning economically the way we function in America. And so here's this idea. You could gain wealth through land, but not in the way we think of it. And they were supposed to have in their very own system that if I am going to purchase land, yes, I can make money off of it, but you know in the back of your head that whatever I'm going to buy it for, I need to give it back within a certain period of time. And so this regulated pricing for property. And here's the point. When God, it's his land, when he gives property, he gives it to a family, to a clan, to a tribe, forever.
[00:27:25] It is God's gift for you, for your provision, for your generations. And so when all of the nation would go back in the year of Jubilee to their original clan and to their original property, they were revisiting coming back home to the gift God gave them. You have to understand that if someone in the ancient Near east or Israel was going to lose their home, it was almost always a devastating experience.
[00:27:55] And so if they lost their home, here are some circumstances that may have come up that would have brought them to this.
[00:28:01] It is possible that a mom or dad or a grandma or grandpa made some foolish decisions in their greed. It's possible that they strayed away from the Lord and did some really ridiculous things so that the people who were left had no choice. If they were going to survive, they had to sell the property to someone else.
[00:28:21] And for them, this is their inheritance. This is the thing that they are going to give generation to generation. It's not just land, but it's land that works, it's land that is flourishing, land that is thriving. What greater gift to give to generations of people with your last name than provision for the rest of their life? Talk about generational blessings. And so if you lost this, this was one of the most devastating experiences a family could go through. And the Lord is like, listen, we're not gonna punish generations for one generation sin. And this reset was supposed to be a cultural gift. Rule number three, not all land is the same.
[00:29:04] Have you noticed that, like, property on the west coast, is more valuable than, I don't know, property in the midwest by and large? Well, God also understands that not all value or not all property has the same inherent value or function. So here's what he says in verse 29. If a man sells a dwelling house in a walled city, this is different.
[00:29:21] He may redeem it within a year of its sale. Meaning, if the year of Jubilee comes up, you have one year for a full year. He shall have the right of redemption. I can go back in a walled city and I can get my land back, but I only have one year. If it's not redeemed within a full year, the house in the walled city shall belong in perpetuity to the buyer throughout his generations. It shall not be released in the year of Jubilee. There's a million reasons why I'm going to give you just a handful.
[00:29:45] Those who lived in walled cities did not rely on the land for generational wealth.
[00:29:51] They relied on actually storing up and accruing money for generational wealth. That's one. Number two, walled cities housed the military. Number three, walled cities is where all the people who actually made the produce came and sold it, and where they actually made money above and beyond the provision that they had for their family and clan and community. And so if you take this economic hub, which is the walled city, and you take all of its main players who know what they're doing, and they know how to do this, and then you kick them out and they all have to go back to their ancestral lands. You're basically going to take the entire economy of the nation of Israel and disrupt the entire thing. And he's like, listen, the year of Jubilee is supposed to be a blessing. I'm not looking to, like, reset your entire economy. Like, some things still do need to function, and that would be the buying and the selling of goods. Rule number four. There are different rules for how we treat our spiritual family. We talked about this earlier, but I'm gonna give you a highlight of a handful of them that come from the book of Leviticus, chapter 25. The New Testament has a few more, but there are some things that we are not permitted to do to another brother and sister. And here's a list.
[00:30:59] We don't allow the people of God to be homeless.
[00:31:03] We don't charge interest to the people of goddess. We don't keep the people of God poor. When they work for us, we actually seek to elevate them.
[00:31:15] We don't punish the children for the sins of the parents.
[00:31:20] We don't treat non Christians poorly so that they don't take it out on other christians. You ever gone to a job and they're like, oh, we had a Christian before you. And they were so annoying. And then they, like, they don't trust you. You know, that whole dynamic. We don't do that.
[00:31:31] We don't allow our brothers to be oppressed by non Christians. When you see your brother who is working for a total jerk, a boss, you don't put up for it, you intervene and you go out of your way to make sure you give them a job that can help them or find them or connect them to it. And why do we do this? We're not like the other nations. Our God is not like the other nations. The people are reflection of their God. Verse 38, the Lord says this, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God. The way you act in this land is a reflection of my character. Verse 55 in Leviticus 25, he says this, for it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
[00:32:15] Let's summarize your jubilee. You get everything from the Sabbath year, in the 49th year, plus extended rest, the jewish slave servant, emancipation, property reversion. The 49th and the 50th year were supposed to be a huge reset and party for the flourishing of everybody in the nation of Israel.
[00:32:39] A little bit different than the way we do things here, isn't it?
[00:32:43] I'm too. So what's for you, for those who listen to God?
[00:32:50] Have you noticed this? That things tend to work better for those who ignore God, things tend to fall apart.
[00:32:59] This is so unbelievably obvious, but it needs to be said.
[00:33:04] I cannot tell you how many times I watch christians and I almost just want to say worldly Christians or christians who are acting like the world, even temporarily, just ignore simple, clear commands of scripture and when you're doing it, you know it. Right? Okay. I'll be fine. I got my get out of hell for you card. Yeah. Jesus has to forgive me. He's never really punished me before. It's never caught a million excuses, but, like, you know it. Like, you know, you know, you know.
[00:33:34] And then all of a sudden things stop working.
[00:33:39] And they were fine, but now they're not fine. And then they slowly start to fall apart. And next week, Leviticus 26, it's, it's 2.0 of this sermon, because we're gonna talk, and there's just some amazingly frustrating things that happen in chapter 26 and in the nation of Israel, it's all next week. But, like, for now, you rebel, and then all of a sudden, life falls apart. And then you're like, God, where were you?
[00:34:10] And what you're saying is, it's your job to save me from me when I do ridiculous things. You can't let me bear the consequences of any of my sins or struggles or frustrations, when I willingly ignore you. You have to stop this and intervene. And then he doesn't.
[00:34:23] And then we start to disconnect.
[00:34:26] If God loved me, he wouldn't let this happen to me. And you all know it, because some of us, we've been there, and then most of us, we get to watch this and we're like, no, you did this.
[00:34:37] And God loves you enough to let you suffer the consequences. Imagine what the world would be like if God prevented consequences for everybody's stupidity all throughout the world. Then everybody would do anything they wanted without consequence, and the world would be an evil, terrible place.
[00:34:54] Now, let me tell you the most frustrating part of studying Leviticus 25, the most frustrating part of the Sabbath year, and the most frustrating part of the year of Jubilee. It's going to drive you insane.
[00:35:08] Did you know that the Israelites never, never once celebrated the year of Jubilee?
[00:35:19] Not even close.
[00:35:21] And did you know that the first time there was even an acknowledgement of the need to obey the Sabbath year was after 586 BC? The Babylonians come in, destroy Jerusalem, take over Israel, level everything, enslave the people of Israel, take them to Babylon. Then after they return to the land under Nehemiah for the first time, after they are enslaved again, like they didn't learn their lesson the first time, being enslaved by Egypt? Now they have to do this all again. And that is the first time under Nehemiah's leadership, when there is even an acknowledgement, let alone an application, that we should probably recommit to obeying the Sabbath year.
[00:36:07] Can you imagine how many blessings the nation of Israel threw in the trash because they ignored the simple basic commands of God?
[00:36:21] Reading the story of Israel is like watching so many worldly christians.
[00:36:27] You know better, you know what God's word says and you think you're above it. And then when it catches up to you, you're like, what happened, God? Where were you? I. How could you let this happen to me?
[00:36:36] For those who listen to God, things just tend to work better. And for those who ignore God, things tend to fall apart. And if this is the place you find yourself away from God, distant from God, reaping maybe even the consequences of your own decisions. What I love is I love the year of Jubilee, because it is a reminder for all of you who are in this place or who have been that Jubilee reset. You don't just need rest. You don't need a vacation. You need a whole life reset. Amen.
[00:37:06] And that is being offered to you not because you are good, but it's being offered to you through faith in Jesus Christ.
[00:37:12] And if you are a worldly Christian and you are there, I have great news for you. The mercies of God are new every single day. And if you want to take hold of the mercies of God and actually see them come alive in your life, start learning to obey the basic principles of God's word. Blessings are on the other side of that, and I'm not talking financial.
[00:37:30] So what? Number two, in the year, in the end years of Sabbath and Jubilee, they were always ultimately about Jesus. All of these shadows that God created in the nation of Israel, all these laws, the feast, the festivals, year of Sabbath, Jubilee, etcetera, sacrificial system, the list goes on and on and on. They were all real and important and valuable, but at the end of the day, they were all ultimately just shadows. So that when the substance who is Christ came, you realize, wait a minute, I've been staring at this shadow. I know that shape. I know that form. I know what this is, so that when you met Jesus, you could actually see, oh, all of this was preparation for deeper, eternal, spiritual things that God was going to do in our life. I want to close, and I want you to look with me. Luke, chapter four, verse 16. I'll have it on the screen. And it says, jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, written hundreds of years prior, was given to Jesus.
[00:38:32] Jesus unrolls the scroll. He found the place where it was written. And what I love is that this is a messianic prophecy about the messiah who will come in and not usher in the physical year of Jubilee, but an eternal spiritual year of Jubilee. Verse 18.
[00:38:47] Jesus reads, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
[00:38:57] He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives. And I just need to tell you this. Captives are not those who are in jail. Jews didn't have jails. They either beat you, killed you, or fined you.
[00:39:09] So they're not a jail culture.
[00:39:11] This is those. The captives are those who made terrible decisions. And because of their terrible decisions, they had to go to another jewish brother and say, I need to work for you for six years because I have no money, I've ruined my life. I need another chance. And God's law has given me the opportunity to come work for you for six years so that I could get a reset in my life. Those are the captives. The people who did really dumb things, lost everything in the process, and now need intervention and the grace and mercy of someone else.
[00:39:39] He sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty those who are oppressed. And I love this line. To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And do you guys know what the year of the Lord's favor is? It's the year of Jubilee, baby. The year of Jubilee to all the captives.
[00:40:01] If you are a Christian in this room and you found yourself captive to a season of utter stupidity and negligence of God's word, Jesus is offering new starts and resets.
[00:40:11] Amen. Praise God. And if you are here and you are not a believer, the year of Jubilee. By the way, for the Christian, every day is the year of Jubilee. Every day is new starts and resets and refresh and reset. Praise God. But if you are not a believer, the year of Jubilee finds its fulfillment in the moment you come to God and say, I am sorry for my sins.
[00:40:32] I am a captive to my sin. I've acted foolishly and stupidly, and I need your help. I need your intervention. I need your salvation. I can't get myself out of this. I have sinned against you. Will you forgive me? I believe in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Would you save me? And would you forgive me? And that is how the year of Jubilee gets celebrated in your life for the very first time. If you are here and you've never trusted in Christ, I have great news. You can say I'm sorry anywhere, anytime. And you can declare that I believe in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus for my sins in my place. Anytime. The best day to do that is here today, now.
[00:41:11] And if that is a decision that you want to make to, for the very first time, experience the beauty not of the physical year of Jubilee, but the actual fulfillment spiritually. The eternal year of Jubilee. I can't think of a better time to do this. And then later, you can be like, I trusted in Christ through the teaching of the Book of Leviticus. Who does that? That's like, nobody. So you get to be one in a billion. There we go. I want to take a moment. I want to pray for you. And may. May we be a people who are no longer captive to sin, the free in Christ.
[00:41:41] And when we mess up, which we do, may we receive the reset he gives us. Let's pray together. Father, we love you. We are thankful. Thankful for your word.
[00:41:51] Lord, may we never open up the book of Leviticus and our annual reading plans and be exhausted or skip it. But, Lord, it seems that even Jesus himself obsessed over this book, knew it, read it, studied it, and applied it. So, God, may you continually make your word come alive to us and give us the courage to obey your word, even when we can't even make sense of why you're telling us to do. Lord, may we just trust you that you know better, because you're the creator, you're the designer, and you love us. We pray all of this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
