PLEASE READ THIS FIRST: Leviticus 25-27
What do you sense the Lord saying to you in this passage?
“Count off seven sabbath years — seven times seven years — so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years.” (Leviticus 25:8)
God’s original and ultimate desire for creation is sabbath rest.
Not sitting around doing nothing, but living in harmony with God, people and creation.
Built into the Moses Law was a reminder that God’s future included restoration.
The sabbath days and years were scheduled reminders that the best was yet to come.
The laws about redemption (buying back) also hint at this: God’s dream for freedom.
Freedom from misery, poverty, slavery, bondage, sickness, injustice, despair, death.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18?-?19)
Jesus fulfills the sabbath/jubilee dream; He brings us sabbath rest (Matthew 11:28).
Sorrow is replaced with joy, sickness with healing, bondage with freedom, death with life!
The day is coming when all creation, and all people, will share in God’s jubilee!
Will we receive this blessing, or will we remain hostile towards God (Leviticus 26:21)?
PRAYER
Lord, You are offering me so much more than this current life, or this world, can offer. Keep this dream before me, in such a way that I live towards it, and not against it!
God set up the pattern of rest, of Jubilee. God set up a different pattern from the people around them – that provides for care for His people – promising abundant harvests in the year before the year of Jubilee – so that the people could again experience His hand of blessing. It requires us to trust and submit to Him – and that’s what this is all about – every regulation and law was set to provide justice and mercy – so that those who are well off are gracious to those who are not: returning property and freedom in the Jubilee. I have been shown grace – I’m forgiven and now I too am enabled and blessed to forgive – to bring Jubilee. I know Jesus is coming back and there will really be Jubilee – but even now I need to practice sabbath – a pattern of rest – of Jubilee.
Lev 26:40-42 ‘But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors—their unfaithfulness and their hostility toward me, which made me hostile toward them so that I sent them into the land of their enemies—then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.”
What a beautiful verse!