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This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Gary Hashley, Tim Hebbert and Brad Kilthau.
Tim Hebbert
And so a question we want to sit and visit a little bit about today, we had to do a little digger-thinking on this one. "How about this sabbatical year and the year of the Jubilee found in Leviticus 25? Can you explain those things to us?" So I thought I would just start off by reading that first part of the 25th chapter of Leviticus, and I'm gonna start with verse two. "And when you have entered the land I am giving you, the land itself must observe a Sabbath rest before the Lord every seventh year. For the six years, you may plant your fields and prune your vineyards and harvest your crops. But during the seventh year, the land must have a Sabbath year of complete rest. It is the Lord's Sabbath, do not plant your fields or prune your vineyards during that time. And don't store away the crops that grow on their own, or gather the grapes from your unpruned vine. The land must have a year of complete rest, but you may eat whatever land produces on its own during the Sabbath. This applies to you, your male and female servants, your hired workers, and the temporary residents who live with you. Your livestock and the wild animals in your land will also be allowed to eat what the land produces." Then verse eight goes on to say this, "In addition, you must count off seven Sabbath years. Seven sets of seven years adding up to 49 years in all. Then on the day of Atonement in the 50th year, blow the Rams horn loud and long throughout the land. Set this year apart as holy, a time to proclaim freedom throughout the land for all who live there. It will be a Jubilee year for you, for each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors. And return to your own clan, this 50th year will be a Jubilee for you. During that year, you must not plant your fields or store away any of the crops that grow on their own. And don't gather the grapes from your unpruned vines. It will be a Jubilee year for you and you must keep it holy. You may eat whatever the land produces on its own, and in the year of Jubilee, each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors." And I guess to define the difference there guys, is it goes along with God's plan. Our seven days of creation, He does all the work that He's going to do, to establish the universe and the world that we live in. Everything that's on it in six days, and He rests on the seventh day. So on a sabbatical year he's saying, "Okay, let's take every seventh year, let's shut everything down and let our land rest and replenish itself. Which is just really pretty good advice for a farmer, right? I mean, now they rotate crops, but you can probably go back through the history of time. Smart farmers would let fields rest, they just wouldn't let them all rest at one time, but they were letting the land rest or replenish itself. The Jubilee year, I think God takes that and He said, "Okay, see how we're resting the land on that 50th year? We're not only gonna rest the land, but I'm calling all of you into a Sabbath year, where you rest, you depend on the land." It's a time to reclaim, like maybe, reset yourself, hit a restart button, reclaim the land that you've come from. We're gonna settle all the debts, forgive all the debts that are left unsettled. And one of the things, you know, we see the word slave used a lot in scripture, but it didn't mean the same thing as what we've come to know from our history here in America. But it was all those that you would call slave, people that are indentured to you; you're gonna free them from that. It's also time where you're gonna go back and reclaim the land that you came from. And maybe what you're also going to do is settle some hard feelings and unforgiven debts that you have within your family, so that your families are restored. It's all part of God's plan to get us in a rhythm of work and then rest and depend on Him. So in that Sabbath year, then we would trust Him. They would trust Him for the provision of the food and the livelihood they needed. In the 50th year they would trust Him even deeper to restore to them, everything that He'd given them to begin with. And so I'm gonna turn this over to Gary. What did they do for the people of Israel?
Gary Hashley
I have to smile a little bit, cause there's a little farm boy that's grown up in me all these years. And that is, as you read this, it makes everybody wanna be a farmer, because if your storekeeper who doesn't say anything about shutting your store down every seventh year, you know? If you were a basket weaver, it doesn't say anything about shutting down your basket weaving business or your rug weaving business for a year. But it does say that, you know, those who are in agriculture, that every seventh year they were to not farm that year. And so I just kind of smile and I think more people would be signing up to be farmers if we were living according this instruction God gave to Israel. And that's one thing to keep in mind, this was specifically given to the people of Israel. A specific people, in a specific place, at a specific time. But what did it do for the people? Well, it gave them a rest. Farming's hard. We have equipment today that seems to make it easier, but it's still very time consuming and very long days for some. And here, you basically would get a one year vacation from your planting and harvesting of your crops or pruning of your crops. If it was at like, the vineyard or the olive grove. So there was rest for the people, and you know, we do need rest. Jesus told the disciples one time, "Come apart and rest awhile." Because we weren't designed to work 365 days a year all of our lives without a break. So rest for the people, rest for the land. I mean agriculture does take, growing crops does take nutrients from the soil. This would give the land a chance to recoup from having things drawn out of it and the chance to have it back. But I think one of the biggest things that I see in this is, not just rest for people and rest for the land, but trust for the people. Because in essence, God is saying, "Don't farm for a year and trust me that you won't starve to death. Trust Me that you won't starve to death." God basically told them, "On the sixth year I'll give you enough, to not only live that year, but the following year. And then into the next year when you plant until you harvest," which is partway through the year. Would the people trust God enough to say, "Okay, I will set the land aside, I won't harvest my grapes, I won't harvest my olives, I won't plant my wheat, I won't plant my barley," whatever it might be? It also was a lesson in selflessness, because they were to release any servants, as Tim said, and they were to release any debts they were owed. So that, you know, this idea of selfishness couldn't stand because it's not all about me. In fact, I'm gonna have to let go of this when that year comes. They say a Jubilee which followed a Sabbath year, which meant on the 48th year, God said, "I'll give you enough that you'll eat the 49th. You'll eat the 50th on until the harvest comes in the 51st year." So it was really a challenge to their faith. So Brad, is there any significance for us today in all of this?
Brad Kilthau
Yeah, I think so Gary as you know, those same principles are something we can always adhere to in our day and time. And it's kind of amazing when you look at the Old Testament and you see how many things that God used with the Jewish people; that actually gave us a symbol or a type of what we can learn from and see actually happening on this side of the cross and the work of Christ. You think about the Passover and how important the Passover was for the Jewish people and how that is so significant when it comes to the Lord's supper. The Passover was always a picture of the sacrificed lamb of Jesus Christ who would come. You see in the Old Testament, the story of Noah and the Ark, and of course Noah and the Ark is, as I was just sharing with our congregation a week or so ago. You know, when you're in 1 Peter 3 and Peter actually uses Noah and the Ark as an antitype to describe baptism. And that is to, you know, be free or away from the sinful world, put that behind you. And I think the same thing is true of the sabbatical year and also of the year of Jubilee, because the Jubilee when you get to the heart of it, it gives us a picture of looking forward to the kingdom age. It's a picture of that, of when Christ is going to come and reign on His throne there in the city of Jerusalem for that thousand year reign. And He's gonna fulfill all the promises that He'd made to the Jewish people.
You can read about that spiritual deliverance in Isaiah 61 about the tremendous joy and the freedom that the people of Israel, and basically all people on the face of this earth, when Jesus reigns on His throne there in the city of Jerusalem. And so the year of Jubilee points us forward and gives us a picture of that kingdom age, but it also gives us, as Christians, a picture of our Christian life. Because when you think about when Jesus, in Luke 4, was standing in the synagogue in the city of Nazareth, He was preaching. And He was actually reading from one of the scrolls of Isaiah, Isaiah 61. And He was reading as it shares there in Luke, through the first two verses of Isaiah 61, but Jesus stops short of reading about the day of the vengeance of God in verse two. And so why is that? Why? Because the day of judgment is gonna come, but it's not gonna come until after the Lord has finished this present work that He's doing of bringing all these people to Himself. And so it's actually a picture of the church age that we live in right now, and how the Lord is going to bring that freedom and that ability to come to Him. And of course, it's gonna be in the literal sense during the kingdom age. So it's, again, a picture of things that we are now seeing happen and what we're also gonna see in the future. So it's beautiful how the Lord puts those things together in the Old Testament. And when we study, we can see that that was a type or picture of what is really to come in the fulfillment in the fullest, in our time of the age of grace and looking forward. And then of course, Gary, as you shared also, we can learn always the principle of the year of Jubilee as it forced the Jewish people to say that God is their provider. They didn't have a choice. They went for three years as it came to that, 48th, 49th and 50th year, that through those three years they had no harvest. And of course they had to see that God was ultimately their provider. So maybe we ought to back up, look at that and say, "Yeah, that's true because that is our God for us. He is our ultimate provider."
Gary Hashley
And, you know, I've heard different preachers say, "We have no indication Israel ever did this."
Brad Kilthau
That's right, I've seen that too.
Gary Hashley
That they ever actually set aside the seventh year and then the 14th year and so on to the 49th and the 50th. And I guess the challenge to my heart, Brad, is even when it comes to tithing, when it comes to other things God asks of me, am I willing to trust Him in it? Because to my knowledge, they never let God show Himself powerful by actually doing it.
Brad Kilthau
That's right, because they were so greedy that they couldn't trust God. They had to hold onto their money and their power.