As you get older, as most of
you know now, you begin to look back on the past, and oftentimes
with a good bit of regret. And you think to yourself, it
sure would be wonderful if I could just start over. I'd do things
different. Wouldn't it be good to just start
over? But then, You realize that's
just not possible. You can't go back and undo what's
done. Once the milk is spilt, you can't
get it back in the bottle. You just can't start over. But that's not quite true. Turn with me to Leviticus chapter
25. Leviticus chapter 25. In ancient Israel, The Lord God
established a law, a law of new beginnings, a law that required
a new beginning for everyone in Israel every 50 years. It's called the year of Jubilee. Our text will be verses 8 through
17. Have you found it? Leviticus
25 verses 8 through 17. Thou shalt number seven sabbaths
of years unto thee. Seven times seven years, and
the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty
and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet
of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month. In the day of atonement shall
you make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. and you shall
hallow or sanctify or declare holy the 50th year and proclaim
liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.
It shall be a jubilee unto you and you shall return every man
unto his possession and you shall return every man unto his family. A jubilee shall that 50th year
be unto you. You shall not sow, neither reap
that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather grapes of it
in thy vine undressed. For it is the Jubilee. It shall
be holy unto you. You shall eat the increase thereof
out of the field. In the year of this Jubilee,
you shall return every man unto his possession. And if thou sell
alt unto thy neighbor, or buyest alt of thy neighbor's hand, ye
shall not oppress one another. According to the number of years
after the jubilee, thou shalt buy of thy neighbor, and according
unto the number of years of the fruit, he shall sell unto thee. According to the multitude of
years, thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according
to the fewness of years, thou shalt diminish the price of it.
for according to the number of the years of the fruits doth
he sell unto thee. Ye shall not therefore oppress
one another, but thou shalt fear thy God, for I am the Lord your
God. As you read the laws of the Old
Testament, why do you suppose in the giving of all laws When
you're talking about this law of jubilee, Sabbath day observance,
the tabernacle sacrifices, the temple sacrifices, the garments
of the priesthood, the food of the priest, those who are allowed
to serve as priest and those who are not. Why was everything
given such intricate detail, such strict rules, such strict
regulations, regulations that must be kept upon penalty of
death? Not because God is interested
in us knowing all the details in the tabernacle furniture and
what it looked like and how men acted and what everyone's clothes
looked like and what everyone looked like. Oh, no, no, no,
no, no, no. God's purpose in all the law
and in all the details of the law was to show us the necessity
of redemption by Jesus Christ, God's Son. and all that is required
for God to save sinners like you and me by the sacrifice of
his son. The title of my message this
morning is Let's Start Over. I want to show you what was done
in celebration of the great year of Jubilee according to God's
law given to Moses on Mount Sinai. In doing so, I want you to see
this great ordinance of God in the Old Testament scripture as
it shows its fulfillment, as we're shown its fulfillment in
the New Testament in the blessed, blessed gospel doctrine of God's
free salvation in, by, and with Christ Jesus. May God the Spirit,
whose word we have before us, be our teacher. Of all solemn,
typical ordinances in the Old Testament, held before the eye
of faith, which foreshadowed good things to come in Christ
Jesus, none is more blessed to behold, none more delightful
to contemplate, none more wondrous, in my opinion, than the year
of Jubilee as it's set before us here in Leviticus 25. The
year of Jubilee was ordained by God to be a time of restoration,
rest, and rejoicing. But it was a year of Jubilee
that applied only to the children of Israel for whom atonement
had been made. Later on in this chapter, we
read about God's law concerning slavery. I was once of the opinion
and long of the opinion that God just allowed Israel to buy
and sell slavery because that was a common practice in history. And that was the common practice
in history. But you see in this chapter,
specific commands given. God told the Israelites they
could buy slaves of their neighbors and sell their neighbors into
slavery. And if they bought a slave, it
was their property. But the year of Jubilee did not affect that
slave. Neither the man, nor his wife,
nor his daughter, who were bought from among the heathen. The heathen
had nothing to do with God's laws given to Israel. This was
a law given to Israel alone. Those Israelites who sold themselves
into bondage, those Israelites who were brought into bondage
by one circumstance or another, this law applies to them, but
only to them for whom atonement was made by God's high priest
in Israel. The Jubilee Sabbath was designed
to be the highest, most glorious, most anticipated of all Old Testament
Sabbaths. In the year of Jubilee, all the
woes of the previous 49 years were canceled. All the debts
were undone. Property was restored. Families
were reunited. There was a complete reversal
and a complete renewal of life when the Jubilee came. A complete
reversal, a complete renewal of life in the year of Jubilee.
There was a complete commandment given in this regard, so that
all in Israel who had by any cause, by any circumstance, for
any reason, come into debt, had lost their inheritance, or had
been themselves subject to bondage, everything is reversed and brought
back to complete renewal. In these things, the year of
Jubilee was a picture of our salvation. You don't need to
turn there, you can quote it, but it'll do you good to turn
there. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 17. 2 Corinthians
chapter 5 and verse 17. Salvation is described in the
book of God as a new creation. The creation of a new heavens
and a new earth at last in its consummation. new creation begun
in the first resurrection, in the new birth. 2nd Corinthians
5 and verse 17. Therefore if any man be in Christ,
he is a new creature. He is a new creature. He's a new creature. What a word. What a word. Old things are passed
away. Somebody said, not all old things.
Yes, all old things have passed away. Old things have passed
away. Behold, all things are become
new. Now here are three questions
I want to raise and answer in this message. You will see the
answers plainly given in Holy Scripture. May God graciously
write the message on your heart. Here's my first question. What
was the significance of the Jubilee trumpet? We read it in verses
8 and 9. Thou shalt number seven Sabbaths
of years unto thee, seven times seven years, and the space of
seven Sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet
of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month. In the day of atonement shall
you make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. Now turn if you
will, I'll get there in just a minute to Luke chapter 4, Luke
the fourth chapter. There's much talk and debate
about this jubilee trumpet among commentators and folks who discuss
these things. Does it refer to the preaching
of the gospel, the liberty of grace in Christ Jesus, or is
it talking about the glorious trumpet of the second advent
of our Lord Jesus Christ? Well, the answer is yes. It refers
to both. Clearly, it refers to both. Redemption
by Christ's precious blood, regeneration by his spirit, resurrection glory,
all are three aspects of one and the same salvation. Without
question, the Jubilee Trumpet was typical of preaching the
gospel. Our Lord Jesus makes this plain here in Luke chapter
four, when he quotes from Isaiah 61, Luke chapter four, verse
16. Our Savior came to Nazareth,
where he had been brought up, And as his custom was, he went
into the synagogue on the Sabbath day. Every Saturday he went to
church and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto
him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book,
he found the place where it was written, Isaiah chapter 61. The
spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to
preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight
to the blind, to set at naught them that are bruised. The Lord
God, our Savior says, sent me to preach the gospel to the poor,
the poor in spirits, to heal the brokenhearted, to preach
deliverance to the captives, the recovering of sight to the
blind, liberty to the bruised. He sent me to make lost sinners
whole. When John the Baptist sent his
disciples to the Lord Jesus when he was in prison and said, you
go ask him, art thou the Christ or look we for another? John
didn't have any question who he was. He wanted those disciples
to hear it from the master's own lips. And the master said,
you go tell John. that the blind see, and the deaf
hear, and the lame walk, and the dumb speak, and women receive
their dead back to them again alive. In other words, I am he
of whom the prophet spoke. I have come to make lost sinners
whole. That's what God's salvation is.
It is Christ making sinners whole. whole by his grace. In the sin
and fall of our father Adam, we died spiritually. Man created
body, soul, and spirit, died spiritually. And man, since the
days of Adam's fall, has lived body and soul. Body and soul
dead in trespasses and in sins. When the Lord Jesus comes and
pours his life into us by his spirit, he makes us body, soul,
and spirit again, makes us whole spiritually. Read on. To preach
the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, verse
20, and gave it again to the minister and sat down. And the
eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on
him. And he began to say unto them,
this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. Shelby and I were
talking about this very subject on the way home yesterday evening.
And I referred it to Psalm 89 verse 15. Blessed is the people
that know the joyful sound. Oh, blessed are those people
who know the joyful sound of gospel liberty, gospel grace,
gospel freedom in Jesus Christ the Lord. And of course, the
Jubilee trumpet refers to this last trump, the trump of God
that shall sound in the last day when Christ comes again.
If you wanna look at it, 1 Corinthians 15, verse 51. We know so little about what
awaits us. We know so little about life
after death. We know so very little about
the resurrection glory. This week I was talking to someone
who was trying to explain to me the kind of bodies we'll have
in the resurrection. I said, I'd like for you to give
that a better shot. This body's gonna be sown a natural
body, gonna be raised a spiritual body. Have you ever seen a spiritual
body? It's sown a corruptible body,
gonna be raised an incorruptible body. But our Lord had the nail
prints in his hands, he did, and he also walked through a
wall. It's a spiritual body, a glorious body, unlike anything
we've seen in the resurrection day. We'll know Moses and Elijah,
and Elijah and Moses will know us. They said, well, we won't
be old then. I said, I don't know. I don't
have any idea. We won't feel any pain, but Moses
knew who Elijah was, and Elijah knew who Moses was, and they'd
never seen each other. They recognized each other. The
resurrection body is something else, but it comes to pass with
the trump of God. Look at verse 51, 1 Corinthians
15. Behold, I show you a mystery.
We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment. in the twinkling of an eye, at
the last trump, for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall
be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. Just like
that, just like that, just like that. For this corruptible must
put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
So when this corruptible shall be put on incorruption, and this
mortal shall be put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass
the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh,
death, where is thy sting? Oh, grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin. The
strength of sin is the law. But thanks be unto God, which
giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. The Jubilee
Trumpet then refers to the preaching of the gospel. And it refers
to that glorious trump of God when our Savior shall come again
and put an end to sin in this world and make all things new
in their finality. Now, here's the second question,
back in Leviticus 25. In verse 9, we're told the jubilee
trumpet was to be sounded every 50th year on the Day of Atonement. Why? Why did God require that the
Jubilee trumpet be sounded specifically on the Day of Atonement every
50th year? Because that trumpet could not
be sounded proclaiming liberty until the year-long Jubilee Sabbath
was announced by this sounding of the trumpet of freedom on
the Day of Atonement. Israel was taught by this requirement. And we are taught by this requirement.
No blessing comes from God but by blood. No blessing comes from God but
by blood. And all blessings come from God
to all his people by the sin-atoning precious blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now understand the meaning of
that. Anything God gives to sinners on this earth, we look at things
and say, oh, how God has blessed him. Look at the job he's got.
Look at the house she has. Look how well she married. Look
how well he married. Look at the education they got.
Oh, how God has blessed them. Not unless the blessing comes
by blood. If it doesn't come by blood, it's a curse. And it'll
make hell harder for you than it otherwise would be. Every
blessing of God comes through blood atonement. The precious
blood of God's darling son, the Lord Jesus Christ. almighty must
satisfy his own justice, he must fulfill his own righteousness,
he must fulfill his own law for you, if he would give life and
mercy and grace and peace to you. Turn over to Ephesians chapter
1. Christ's precious blood must
be poured out on the cursed tree. His blood must be sprinkled upon
the mercy seat. His blood must be accepted in
the holy place. He must come forth out of the
tomb without sin into salvation. He must ascend to the throne
of God and sit down before the grace of God can ever be given
to sinners. Salvation is God's free gift,
yes, but it is a gift that comes by blood. without shedding of
blood is no forgiveness of sin, no remission of sin. Does that
mean there was no grace before Christ died? No blessing before
Christ died at Calvary? Of course not. He's the Lamb
slain from the foundation of the world. The work was executed
in time by the wisdom and providence of God, by the grace of God,
exactly according to God's purpose. So precise, so detailed is divine
predestination that all things in the solar system, every event
of every moment of every day works to this one day when God
would sacrifice his son in the status centers at Calvary. So
that according to the Jews own calculation, the Lord Jesus Christ
was crucified at Calvary. on the day of atonement, on the
day when Israel should have been celebrating the 50th year jubilee
atonement. That makes Acts 2.23 a little
more precious, doesn't it? Him being delivered by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by wicked
hands and have crucified and slain. Our Lord Jesus Christ
accomplished redemption by the sacrifice of himself. And by
the sacrifice of himself, he brought to us all the blessings
of his free grace. Boundless free grace given us
in Christ before the world was. Are you at Ephesians 1 verse
3? Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual
blessings, in heavenly places in Christ. That's where they're
found. According as he had chosen us
in him before the foundation of the world that we should be
holy and without blame before him in love having predestinated
us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according
to the good pleasure of his will to the praise of the glory of
his grace wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved in
whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of
sins. Now, let me wrap this message
up by showing you what was to be done in the year of Jubilee. Verses 10 through 13 in Leviticus
25 tell us that there were eight specific things that were to
be done during this year of Jubilee. Let's read it together. You shall
hallow the 50th year and proclaim liberty throughout all the land
and to all the inhabitants thereof. It shall be a jubilee unto you,
and you shall return every man unto his possession, and you
shall return every man unto his family. A jubilee shall that
50th year be unto you, You shall not sow, neither reap that which
groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes of it in thine
undressed. For it is the jubilee, it shall
be holy unto you. You shall eat the increase thereof
out of the field. In the year of this jubilee,
you shall return every man unto his possession. First, jubilee
was the year in which liberty was to be proclaimed throughout
all the land. That's our business. That's my
business as a preacher. That's your business as a believer. That's our business as a congregation. Our business is to proclaim liberty
for sinners in Jesus Christ. Proclaim to sinners freedom from
the curse of the law, freedom from the death we incurred by
Adam's fall, freedom from the consequences of sin, freedom
from sin, freedom, everlasting freedom in Jesus Christ the Lord. Oh, for prisoners, there's nothing
so sweet as freedom. For those who have been in captivity,
nothing so sweet as freedom. for those who've been in a place
where they were brought into danger, held in captivity. You've all seen the pictures
on television of those miners trapped in the mines in West
Virginia. We lived there for nine years. I can identify a
little better than some of you perhaps can what went on, just
gut-wrenching hour after hour after hour after hour, wondering
if they're gonna get those miners out, knowing some aren't gonna
come out. And when fellows finally come out and breathe that fresh
air, that cold dust all over them, the smile and the tears
run down their cheeks, make them white again, freedom, freedom. Oh, but that's nothing. Nothing
compared to the freedom of grace, the freedom of pardon, the freedom
of forgiveness, freedom in Christ the Lord. Here's the second thing. In the year of Jubilee, the exiles
were returned. Not the aliens, the exiles. The
exiles, folks who had been pushed aside. They'd been pushed out
of their inheritance, pushed out of their house, pushed out
of their land, pushed out of their tribe into another tribe,
from one part of the land to another part of the land. But
as soon as the Jubilee trumpet sounded, the exiles came home. and the captives were emancipated. If the sun therefore shall make
you free, you shall be free indeed. Those who were in exile were
brought home and the captives were set free and debtors. Debtors had all their debt canceled. All their debt canceled. How can I be clear? Look at me,
Jesse. I owe God a debt for sin, and
I can't pay it. I owe God perfect righteousness,
and I can't pay it. I owe God the debt of perfection,
holiness as a man, and I can't pay it. but the debt is owed
until Christ comes and he pays the debt. And he sounds the year
of jubilee trumpet in my ear and says, Don, your debt is canceled. You don't owe God anything anymore. I owe him nothing. I owe him
nothing. The debt is canceled. Christ
paid the debt. He satisfied justice. He bore
the wrath of God for my sin until wrath is gone. He brought in
everlasting righteousness. He made me perfect. He perfected
forever them that are sanctified. He made me holy. And each family
in the year of Jubilee opened its bosom to once more receive
the long lost members who'd been gone for whatever reason. I reckon it was the Jubilee when
the prodigal came to himself and he came home. And when he
came home his father ran when it saw him a great way off and
ran to him. It fell on his neck and kissed
him and welcomed him home. In the Jubilee year, every man
received again the inheritance he had forfeited. You don't need
to turn there, but back in Ephesians chapter one, in Christ, we have
also obtained an inheritance. We have obtained that inheritance. being predestinated according
to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel
of his own will. That we should be to the praise
of his glory who first trusted in Christ. Now wait a minute.
We're not there yet. Well, yeah we are. We're there
in the representative, but more than that. We had the earnest
of our inheritance, the pledge, the down payment, the earnest
money. It's called the spirit of life.
Faith in Christ declares to us the inheritance is ours and soon
we shall come into the possession of the everlasting glory awaiting
us. Seventh, everybody in God's Israel
enjoyed a time of rest. blessed, blessed rest, feasting
upon the provisions of grace. The sound of the trumpet was
the welcome soul-stirring signal for the captive to escape his
prison, the slave to cast off his chains, for the manslayer
to return home, for the ruined poverty-stricken one to rise
to the possession of his forfeited inheritance. But no sooner was
the trumpet sounded Then the mighty tide of blessings arose
majestically. The trumpet sound sent out a
refreshing noise of joy to the far corners of Canaan, declaring
liberty, liberty, liberty, freedom, freedom, freedom. And there's
one more thing. Everyone in Israel, was required
during the year of Jubilee. Hang on to this, listen to it.
To measure the value of all things in prospect of the sound of that
trumpet on the day of atonement in the year of Jubilee. Everyone. Houses that were on the wall were considered things
that could be traded, no bother, because they weren't part of
the land. But houses that were out in the
field, those houses, they could not be sold. And if they were
taken possession of during the year of Jubilee, they must be
returned to the one who had them. And anything bought and sold
in connection with those houses, or in connection with the vineyards,
had to be measured, whether it's the land, property, the house,
anything, it had to be measured according to its nearness to
the time of Jubilee freedom. The price couldn't go up and
it couldn't go down except as it's measured in the light of
the year of Jubilee when the trumpet would sound. The year
of Jubilee reminded the buyer and the seller that the land
belonged to God. wasn't to be sold. So the first
fruits, they might be sold, but not the land. All belong to God,
and they were just temporary tenants. So it is with you and
me. You and I are strangers, sojourners,
pilgrims in this world. God teaches us over and over
and over again to hold everything here with a loose hand. Hold everything here with a loose
hand. Don't make anything more precious
today to you than it will be when you have to let it go. That ought to make everything
seem pretty light. Pretty insignificant. We ought to value everything
in the light of eternity. Let's look at this very familiar
passage in 2 Corinthians 4. 2 Corinthians 4, and I'll be
done. My God, my Father, teach me to
live every moment in the immediate prospect of eternity. Teach me to live every moment
in the immediate prospect of eternity. 2 Corinthians 4.18. We look not at the things which
are seen, We don't set our hearts, we don't set our minds, we don't
set our eyes on the things which are seen, but at the things which
are not seen. For the things which are seen
are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. We raise our sons and daughters
to be responsible citizens. And that's right. That's only
right. Molly and Jay Lee were at the
house the other night and we talked a little bit about her future
and what she wanted to do in the future. And we talked a good
bit to our granddaughter sitting right here this morning. Our
daughter wanted to be prepared for the future and be a good
mother, good housewife, good citizen. Your daughter just signed
to college, your granddaughter right there. That's right, that's
what you want, but somehow, don't set your heart on that. Oh honey,
don't set your heart on that. Everything here is just temporary. It's just a puff of smoke. For
we know that if our earthly house and this tabernacle were dissolved,
We have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal
in the heavens. Set your affection on things
above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God, not on
things on the earth. If we can but live in the immediate
prospect of eternity, valuing all things in the light of eternity,
we won't oppress our brethren, We won't use what we've got to
get more from them. We won't oppress our brethren,
but rather we'll serve them and use what the Lord puts in our
hands for their benefit. Staying right here in 2 Corinthians
5, I began my message here, verse 17. Therefore, if any man be
in Christ, he's a new creature. Old things have passed away.
Behold, all things have become new. 53 years ago, I experienced the meaning of
that text of scripture. And I experience it more now
than I did 53 years ago. Would you know what it is to
have old things gone and all things new? What would you give,
you could start all over, start all over, with clean record,
spotless, white, righteous, pure, perfect, that you can never mess
up? Something you can never mess
it up. I've messed up everything I've ever touched in my life.
Not this. Not this. It's called the righteousness
of God in Christ Jesus the Lord. It's called the forgiveness of
sin. It's called the blotting out
of the handwriting of ordinances against you. It's called free
justification. It's called holiness. It's called
perfection. It's called new life. It's called
perfect, perpetual acceptance with God. It's called living
constantly under the smile of the Holy Lord
God as your Heavenly Father. And let me tell you how it can
be yours. Believe on the Son of God and go home new. Believe on the Son of God and
go home clean in your conscience. Believe on the Son of God and
go home righteous before God. Righteous, never to be made unrighteous. Holy, never to be made unholy. Perfect, never to be made less
than perfect. With his spotless garments on,
as holy as God's own Son. Amen.