So Lord, may you graciously help
me. I would turn your prayerful attention to Leviticus chapter
25 and verse 10. Leviticus chapter 25 and verse
10. And ye shall hallow the 50th year and proclaim liberty throughout
all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof. It shall be a jubilee
unto you, and ye shall return every man unto his possession,
and ye shall return every man unto his family. It's Leviticus chapter 25 and
verse 10. The gospel is so many, in the Old Testament
there were so many pictures of restoration and restitution. And I think it was this time
last year I was speaking to you here regarding Ruth, that precious
book of Ruth. and how Boaz was that kinsman
redeemer for Ruth and restored all those things that had gone
so wrong in her life and in Naomi's life. And in this chapter of
Leviticus, we have another picture which was all part of the ceremonial
law given to Israel to keep. We do not have to keep this as
it were in our day today, but we can learn much from it and
there's so much gospel in it. And may the Lord help us as we
look at this jubilee theme to realise something of the blessings
that flowed from it. As I mentioned this morning,
the great day of atonement was the day, I guess, after the atonement
had been performed, was then this trumpet was to be sounded
on the 50th year, so every 50th year. And on that day then, it was
to be this day of liberty. And the word jubilee comes from
really liberation, although we think jubilation and celebration,
that sort of idea. But its roots, I understand,
is more in the idea of setting free, setting captives free,
setting those that are in bondage free from their bondage. Liberation. And you see, so we have this
theme of liberation. so that God had given Israel
this land. He'd given in Joshua's day, Joshua
had divided out the land in his lifetime so that all the tribes
had land to live in, in Israel. They all had their area partitioned
to them to cultivate and so on and to live in. But every 50th year, the intention
was, you see, that it would go back to the original owners.
It would not, as it were, be accumulated by rich people, as
it were, just getting more and more and then ending up owning
the whole of Israel. Because the point was, as we
read, the whole land belongs to me. But you might think, how did
this work? And you may have noticed some
things which seem, perhaps at first reading, contradictory
in what we read. The point being that if you take
in verse 6, and the Sabbath of the land shall be meat for you,
for thee, and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy
hired servant, and for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee. But
you might have read earlier, well you did read earlier, that
you shouldn't reap it. So how could it be for me? Well,
I think the idea here is that when it talks about reaping a
field, it talks about going there, commercially as it were, to take
all that grain away and then to sell it. And they weren't
to do that on this Sabbath year, this Jubilee year, or the Sabbaths
every seventh year. They were to leave it and they
were able to go and glean themselves, for themselves, to eat out of
the field, as it's called, not to sell it commercially. And
others were also able to go and do the same. They were able to
go into the rich people's fields, like Boaz perhaps you could say,
and go and glean in his field. And he wouldn't be harvesting
it for himself. He wouldn't say, now this is
mine, get out of it, this is my property and I'm harvesting
it and then I'm going to sell the grain for my own profit.
There was, as it were, a check that it was every seven years,
and then on the Jubilee year as well, they were to leave it
fallow and let it just bring that forth of its own. Now, we
don't actually read particularly of Israel keeping this. I'm not
aware of anywhere that it actually records Israel keeping this Jubilee
year. I stand to be corrected on that,
but I don't think it does. We do read that when they went
into captivity, then shall the land enjoy her Sabbaths. In other words, then there would
be a true rest for the land, which they had denied giving
the land this rest and denied doing this. You see, this was,
they had to work their life round God's commands. God set the rules
and they were to work around those rules and they were to
work with them rather than do their own thing. And they might
say, but surely we can get more commercial benefit. We can do
better by just harvesting it every year, not just every six
years and then stop. And as for this jubilee year,
well, you see, I'm not going to be such a rich farmer or so
on if I do this. But you see, this question was
answered in verse 20. And if you shall say, what shall
we eat the seventh year? Behold, we shall not sow and
nor gather in our inquiries. What are we going to eat? You
know what's going to happen? Then I will command my blessing
upon you in the sixth year. You see, they had to trust the
Lord. They had to walk by faith. They
had to organise their lives around the Word of God and what God
wanted them to do. And of course we have in our
lives the Sabbath day still, we have, that's part of the moral
law, part of the Ten Commandments, and we're to organise our lives
around it as much as possible so that we can keep the Sabbath
day holy. We're to put that first. And
we might say, but all my other colleagues, they're all studying
for their exams on the Lord's Day. And I'm going to do worse
than they are now because they've got Sunday and I haven't. Then I will command my blessing
upon you in the sixth year. You see, man ignores God's blessing. and thinks that it's all by his
own labour, all by the sweat of his brow, all by what he does. But we're to learn, you see,
we're to put God first in our lives. We're to do what he wants
us to do. We're to build our lives around
what he has said in his word. And we're to realise that God
is able to bless far more exceedingly abundantly than what we can gain
by getting that extra bit of income, by working when we shouldn't
be. So it took Israel, trust, you
see, and faith to believe that God would provide for them. And
it meant that there was a curbing, you see, of their pride, of their
covetousness. They couldn't, as it were, just
get bigger and bigger and bigger, because after 50 years, then
they had to give back the land. If land had been sold, they had
to give it back to those who originally it belonged to. So
it curbed their, as it were, covetousness in that sense. But
think of it from the person who had grown poor. Perhaps, maybe
through a fault of their own, maybe not through a fault of
their own. Sometimes these things happen. become ill and unable
to work the land, for example, or deaths in the family and so
on. And as it was with Ruth and Naomi
to a point, they became poor. They became in negative equity.
Well, in the book of Ruth, we had those laws enacted, which
meant that Boaz, the kinsman redeemer, was able to buy back
all that was lost. But if he hadn't have done, we
read in verse 25 of the chapter we read, If, when it came to
the year of jubilee, all that possession, all the negative
equity that Naomi was in would have gone back and she would
have been, it would have been cleared. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth
year and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants
thereof. It shall be a jubilee unto you
and ye shall return every man unto his possession. and ye shall
return every man unto his family. So there was a returning, you
see, of the possessions to the original owner. And you see, we think about it
in the things of Gaunt. What did Adam lose in the Garden
of Eden? He lost his relationship with
God. He lost that fellowship in the
cool of the day. He lost that relationship with
his God. And therefore man now is away
from God, banished from God because of his sin, because of his far-offness. And you see here we have another
picture, you see. of restoration. Every man shall
return unto his possession, the lost inheritance. There was to
be a restoration. And you'll notice, if you read
carefully on through, that it was only for the Israelites.
It wasn't actually for those who were not part of Israel.
It was for his people. For the children of Israel was
restoration. So that which was lost, he saw
me lost and ruined in the fall. Is there restitution when it's
lost and ruined? Surely we look at some cases
and we think they're hopeless cases. It's too bad. They've
gone too far. It's beyond redemption. But you see, there was this 50th
year when all that could be reversed. And there was a reversing of
those things which were so against them. and ye shall return every
man unto his possession.' And what a precious time that was.
But we noted, you see, that it all happened, it all commenced
on the great day of atonement. And we spoke this morning of
how the atonement was the satisfaction of the debt with God, that the
sins of the whole of Israel was laid, as it were, ceremonially
on those two goats, which together formed the sin offering. And
they were on behalf of Israel. And that is from whence the liberty
flowed. It was on that day. It was liberty. And there was then this great
sound of of preciousness and rejoicing. Would it not be if
you were a slave? You see, some people had been
sold to be slaves to their brethren. Well, we think always of the
name slave as being completely cruelly treated, and with the
slave trade, the ideas that we have from that and the cruelty
that went on, and we get an impression that it was completely barbaric.
But in the Bible times, when you were too poor, and you'd
sold your land and you still had nothing to eat, you could
sell yourself to be a slave and then you could continue to live.
Somebody could look after you and you could work for them.
You wouldn't get any money, but you would live. And then wouldn't
you be looking forward to this year of jubilee when you could
be set free? Perhaps you had no redeemer close
to you, no family friend that was able or willing to set you
free. But there was, you see, this
inbuilt in the ceremonial law. There was a coming time when
that jubilee trumpet would sound on the great day of atonement.
And then there was liberty. You were free from your slavery,
your lands that had been lost, perhaps by your profligate dealing,
perhaps you had dealt wrongly or in a wrong way with it. But you see, we read in one place,
I will restore that which the canker worm hath eaten. God is
able, you see, to restore. This is so much that the presentation,
isn't it, of the gospel, that there is hope, you see, there
is forgiveness with God, that he may be feared. And this was
so built into the ceremonial laws that God is ready to forgive,
return unto me. and ye shall hallow the fiftieth
year and proclaim liberty throughout all the land and all the inhabitants
thereof and it shall be a jubilee unto you and no doubt it was
a very precious time for those that were in slavery, those which
were disunited as families because of being sold into slavery, those
who couldn't live on their land because for reasons perhaps beyond
their control, perhaps it was reasons for their bad management,
they'd lost that ability to control their land. This was a time,
you see, of great rejoicing in the land of Israel, but also,
as I said, a time of checking the the covetousness of those that
were rich. They couldn't just get bigger and bigger, as it
were. They had to, at the year of jubilee, they had to give
it all away, or give it back, which they had hired, or so on,
from the others. And you'll notice, when we were
reading, perhaps, how that everything was ordered and everything was
valued towards that year of jubilee. In other words, if you had a
field to sell, If there was 25 years before the jubilee, then
it was worth 25 years of crops. But if it was 10 years to the
jubilee, it was only worth much less than that, and so on. And
each year, and if there was five, it would be half again, and so
on. And as you came towards the year of jubilee, you see, in
a sense, if you sold yourself, the other people weren't going
to keep it for very long, because they knew soon it would come
back. it would go back to you. So the
value of everything was in respect to this year of Jubilee. So as
they looked at the Jubilee, the things around them all, as it
were, grew less and less in value as the approach of that Jubilee
year. And if we think of this spiritually,
you see, as we're looking for that blessed hope, and that glorious
appearing of the great God. How the things of time grow strangely
dim in the light of his glory and grace. As you see, they look
forward to this jubilee time. Then the things had less value
here below in their estimation. Everything was with respect to
this jubilee day, this precious time of liberation for Israel. And this time, as I said, which
was in a sense an equaler The one who owned the land could
go and glean in his own land, but somebody else who was a stranger
or a neighbour, they could equally glean in your land and could
not be stopped. So it was a leveller in that
sense. And so many things in the things
of God, you see, there was one that laboured all day and there
was another that just came, did the last shift, and they both
got their penny. So many things that God is able
to grant, you see, He is the sovereign ruler of the skies,
ever gracious and ever wise. But as I go through this, I want
to speak then of these jubilee times in our experience. And really, I want to look at
it in three ways. We have the jubilee, of one coming
to be liberated from a state of being a slave in Satan's army,
a slave to sin, a slave to his dictates. And you see, as we
read in Isaiah 61, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because
the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings. unto the
meek. He hath sent me to bind up the
brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives." Perhaps, you
see, you have to be in bondage to understand what liberty means.
You have to be locked up, as it were, to understand what it
would be like to come out. But, you see, if you know what
it is to be in bondage and unable to extract yourself from the
power of these things, then the thought of being set free is
very precious. So firstly thinking of it in
terms of coming to a knowledge of the truth, turning from death
unto life, the new birth. Then I want to think of it in
terms of for the Lord's people. Something that we've just been
singing really in the last hymn. What a polluted world this is,
a veil of sin and woe. The sons of earth complain of
this, but Zion feels it so. Although we've come to a knowledge
of the truth and know we've walked in the things of God, And we
know the Lord, yet there is a groaning in this life because we still
have this body of sin and death. We still, as it were, sin and
we still come short of the glory of God. And there is then in
this picture, this beautiful picture in Leviticus, a looking
for that day that is coming of liberation. The death that puts
an end to life. will put an end to sin. And that's a wonderful thought
to a child of God sometimes, to think of what it must be to
worship God with an unsinning heart. We've never done that. We've never worshipped God yet
with an unsinning heart, but we shall do. Those who are in
glory worship him with an unsinning heart. That means they're not
sinning while they're worshipping. Here, sin is mixed with everything,
and we notice that. They're needed cleansing in their
most holy things, but they won't be in glory. You see, there's
a looking for that liberation of the state of sin that is here
below. But then lastly, to think also
of that liberation of our friend Frank Kelly. Soon his bodily remains will
be placed in the grave. Some people say the last resting
place. I disagree. It's not the last
resting place. For the child of God It's waiting
a glorious resurrection. A day of jubilee. Well then,
to come to the first point in our soul's experience. Well,
we've already read in Isaiah 61, to liberate the captives,
the opening of the prison to them that are bound. So Satan,
you see, binds us. Satan captivates us. Satan wants
us to give him his all. He wants us to spend our lives
chasing the vanities of this life. And Satan's pretty accommodating,
really. Vanity fair is pretty wide. He's
not much fussed, what tickles your fancy. He's not much fussed
what you spend your life doing. That's not much of a concern
to him, provided you're not travelling through Vanity Fair on your way
to the Celestial City. Provided you're spending your
time in Vanity Fair He'll leave you alone. He's satisfied with
you wasting your time, spending your time on that which will
do you finally no eternal good. He's pretty easy in that way.
But he hates those that are heading to the celestial city. You think
of the picture in Pilgrim's Progress of Pilgrim. Christian and faithful in the
Vanity Fair, and what treatment they got. Because they said,
buy the truth and sell it not. They wanted something substantial.
They didn't want to waste their time buying the things that this
world calls good or great. They didn't want to spend their
lives thinking about what the world think is great and what
the world pumps up to be something worth spending our brain power
thinking about. They didn't want that. They wanted
the truth. They wanted things which are
eternal. They were travelling home to God. They wanted to have
fellowship with their beloved. And there was nothing in Vanity
Fair that could satisfy them. Yeah, there was everything to
satisfy their natural carnal minds, but there was nothing
that was substantial. And you see all those lined up
against them to condemn them. And, of course, Faithful lost
his life. faithful unto death. So in the new birth we are to
be amongst those who come to see a preciousness in the things
of God, who come to be liberated from the power of sin. John Bunyan's
other writing book of the Holy War, he speaks of this, how man's
soul is totally under the power and the rule and the reign of
Diabolus, picturing Satan, and how it insulates himself and
shuts off the doors and the gates so that the gracious King of
Heaven cannot, as it were, penetrate its affections. In Ephesians it says, and you
hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and in sins, wherein
in time past you walked according to the course of this world,
according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit
that now worketh in the children of disobedience. This is what
it does. It's working. It's working in vanity fair.
And it's working very well. And many people are happy. And
provided they stay there and spend their life wasting their
time, Satan is happy. He matters not whether they're
immoral or whether they're moral. Provided they're not seeking
to glorify God, provided they're not seeking to lay hold upon
the hope set before them in the gospel, he's content. among whom also we all had our
conversation at different stalls. There'd be different stalls in
Vanity Fair. You may not like the stall that I would like,
and I may not like the stall that you would like in Vanity
Fair, but we'll all like one of two of them. In the lusts
of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the
mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. What terrible bondage. Oh, Satan says it's liberty.
You do what you want. You enjoy the pleasures of sin
for a season. What a cruel master is Satan. He knows you follow his dictates. You go where he goes. The lake
burning with fire and brimstone forever. in Ephesians 2 verse 4, but God
who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved
us, even when we were dead in sins, have quickened us together
with Christ. By grace are you saved and has
raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places
in Christ Jesus. You see what liberation. And you see the soul, this picture
that we have in in Leviticus of that trumpet sounding. It
was a day of rejoicing, a day of great rejoicing that now they
were liberated, now the slaves could go free, now the possessions
could be returned, now they can sit together in heavenly places
in Christ Jesus. What a blessed exchange for the
trivia of this world. the empty, passing, fleeting
things of this world. Just think of it on a natural
level. I mean, if you think of, you go around today and you buy
things, and if something has a 10-year guarantee, you think
that's quite long, and maybe 20, 30, you don't get many of
those guarantees. But you see that with the things
of God, to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not
away, they're just completely incompatible to compare. The things of God are eternal.
The pleasures of sin are but for a season. Well, what a blessing
then if we hear that gospel trumpet, we hear that liberation, all
focusing on that day of atonement, that our souls have been made
right with God, that we have liberty. There is therefore now
no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk
not after the flesh, but after the spirit. What a jubilee day
is that. And what a jubilee day to the
whole church of God as they see the lambs from Christ's fold
coming, the bleating of the lambs that we prayed of, that they
come and they may declare that he hath done this. He hath done it, not we, not
the preacher. He, God. God, Jesus, the author
is of true and living faith. Well, that's a liberation that
we pray that each one of us may know, that each may be liberated
from a life of following the dictates of Satan, and that they
may know what it is to walk in newness of life with the Lord. But the second liberation that
I want to speak of is that of remaining sin, which is an ongoing
problem for a child of God. Paul, that godly man Paul, spoke
of it in Romans 7. He says in Romans 7 verse 18,
For I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good
thing. For to will is present with me. In other words, I have an inward
desire after God and godliness. I have these true desires. I
have the new man of grace in my heart that hungers and thirsts
after righteousness. For to will is present with me.
But how to perform that which is good? I find not. For the good that I would, I
do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that
which I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth
in me. I find then a law that when I would do good, evil is
present with me. For I delight in the law of God
after the inward man. This is a child of God speaking,
and he's speaking in the present. He's speaking, I delight. And
he's also speaking in the present that he finds a law that when
he would do good, evil is present with him. It's not just in the
past, I used to and now I do this. No, it's present, present
tense, a present fight, the good fight of faith, lay hold upon
the hope of eternal life. And then he finally says in verse
24 of Romans 7, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver
me from the body of this death? So, our text. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth
year and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants
thereof. It shall be a jubilee unto you. And ye shall return every man
unto his possession. And ye shall return every man
to his family. Well, you see, the Lord has done
that, you see. I want to just read a few words
from the 2nd Corinthians, chapter 4, and verse 17. For our light affliction, which
is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and
eternal weight of glory. While we look not at the things
which are seen, you see, as you got closer and closer to the
Jubilee Day, The things of your fields, the number of fields
you had, got diminishingly less important as you got to the jubilee
day because you were going to hand them all back to their original
owner. If you like, the lease was out.
So you didn't really buy the land at all, you leased it off
those who originally possessed it. And of course there's another
beautiful picture here you see. I go to prepare a place. for
you. You see there's an individuality
in it, isn't it? If there's a place in heaven
for me, it won't be as it were the same place as for you. There
will be an individuality. There is a place assigned. Just
as there was a place for each in the type of Israel there was
a place for each family to live in the land. Judah was not to
live where Reuben lived and so forth. There was a place that
they were to live, a destined place by God for them to live
there. And you see that is also in Christ.
I go to prepare a place for you. It's for each individual that
they may be with him. while we look not at the things
which are seen. The things which are seen, for
the things which are seen are temporal, they're passing away.
But the things which are not seen are eternal. Well, this jubilee time for Israel,
it was a time when they would be set free, every man to his
possession. Every man would realize his possession. Every man, as it were, would
return to his own family. And we think of the family of
God, whose father fills the throne. They would return, those which
were prodigals, those which had gone and wandered far away. They
were to return and to come and to be in that family, united
with that family. They were to be one family and
one fold. They were to be together, you
see, this jubilee time, this time of restitution, which I
see so much in the Word of God. It's so much, it just comes over
me again and again. It's restitution. And if there's
one thing that really saddens me, It is when there's, as it
were, divisions and there's no bringing together of those things
again because the Bible is so full of restitution. When there
is sin and when there is this person falling out with that
person, the Bible is to bring those together and to say sorry
to one another and then to move on as brothers together. It's
so biblical. There's so much of restitution.
It's what Christ came to do. He saw them ruined in the fall. yet loved them, notwithstanding
all, he brought them back to himself. He brought them back
to God by the Red Sea of his own blood. So those you see that
are in, those that are looking. Now I
want to also look in the second epistle of Paul to Timothy. Paul is writing this, I believe,
from Rome as a prisoner. He realises that his end is near.
Timothy has been a great blessing to him, he's been a son in the
faith to him, and he's written to Timothy to encourage him in
the ways of God. But Paul realises for him his
time is nearly over. second epistle of Timothy in
chapter 4 and verse 6. And this is what he says, For
I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure
is at hand. I have fought a good fight. Remember
he's writing this from prison. Remember he's writing this with
execution ahead of him from the Nero that was in control. It's tremendous faith, isn't
it? He didn't write to Timothy and
says, go and get another job. You probably won't end up in
a prison cell like me if you get another job somewhere else.
No, he says, I am now ready to be offered. And
the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight. Aren't these beautiful words
to be able to say as your last parting words when you know you're
about to pass from time into eternity? I have fought a good
fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for
me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous
judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only, but
unto all them also that love his appearing. What a jubilee
day that was that Paul looked forward to. He looked forward
to that time. You see, nothing here below can
make somebody see things like that, can they? The tinsel glory
of this world does not make people say that. If you have somebody
that's had a good night out, as they would claim, and told
them that they were ready to be executed the next day, they
would not see life. Their joy would be gone. But
you see, for Paul, he was waiting execution, but he saw it as waiting,
as it were, this liberation. He was going to be free from
a body of sin and death. He was going to be free from,
as it were, that struggle that he was constantly fighting against,
that the flesh lusting against the spirit and the spirit against
the flesh. Can you have any idea of these
things? I must move on to the last. This last case that I mention
is in 1 Thessalonians 4. 1 Thessalonians 4. and verse 14. 1 Thessalonians
4 and verse 14. And thinking of this last point, our bodies in the grave awaiting
that glorious resurrection. For if we believe that Jesus
died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus
will God bring with him. For this we say unto you, by
the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto
the coming of the Lord shall not prevent, or that means go
before, them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend
from heaven with a shout, and the voice of the archangel, and
with the trump of God. and the dead in Christ shall
rise first. You see, this jubilee occasion,
the dead, those bodies that lay corrupting for perhaps many years,
for decades, for centuries, for millennia, that have laid in
the dust, rotting, and to all intents and purposes gone to
our understanding. But God is going to raise them
up. then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together
with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. So shall
we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another
with these words. You see, the people of God are
looking forward to a glorious resurrection. a reuniting of
their body and their spirit, so shall they be forever with
the Lord. These things in Leviticus, these
physical laws that were given in the ceremonial law, you see
they were pointing to the coming of the Saviour, the coming of
the Liberator, that liberated his people from their sins, all
at that day of atonement, pointing as the day of atonement pointed
to that time when he would come. He has come, but he needs to
come in your life, and he needs to come in my life, to the redemption
accomplished at Calvary needs to become a redemption applied
to our hearts. You see, it needs to be applied.
We weren't there at Calvary. We didn't appreciate it. We didn't
know about it. We weren't even born. But that
what was purchased at Calvary needs to be applied to us as
the Holy Spirit makes himself precious. It makes Christ precious. And there we're liberated from
a life of serving Satan. And then as we go on, we look
forward to that hope that is for the children of God, that
they shall be with Christ, which is far better, another liberation.
but then a further liberation. Their bodies in the grave then
be liberated from the claustrophobic, you think of it, it's a horrible
thought really, the body in the ground and the claustrophobia,
I often used to think of it when I was younger, how awful it would
be to just be in a box deep in the ground. But liberated from
that and have a resurrected body and to use
that body to glorify God forever and forever and forever. No more sin, no more sadness. The liberation of the jubilee
trumpet, what Christ accomplished in all his As I quoted in prayer,
in every office he sustains, in every victory he gains, in
every counsel of his will, he's precious to his people still. And that won't stop at death.
It will go on forever and forever. Jesus is precious. Amen.