Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] So 4th of July is coming up. That is a.
[00:00:06] That is like our, you know, nation's Day. We celebrate the freedom from the big bad Red Coats from Great Britain and the Declaration of Independence from.
[00:00:19] From those Brits.
[00:00:21] And it's a day that we shoot off fireworks and we eat a lot of meat out on the grill and we hang out with friends. We got these distinctives things that we do to celebrate the Fourth of July. There are things that you. There are some. There are some things you expect on the 4th of July.
[00:00:39] It's like this national thing that no matter where you are in the nation, there's, like, similar things that people do all over the place to celebrate this day, this day of independence, this day of freedom.
[00:00:52] Another way to think of that or another word that people could use for that is a Jubilee.
[00:01:00] That word Jubilee is used all over the world. Like, there's a Catholic Jubilee, there's a British Jubilee that are distinctive to their, like, to those groups. But that word Jubilee, I've always really enjoyed it. It feels like.
[00:01:18] It feels.
[00:01:19] The word feels like what it's explaining. Like, it is a. It's a day of celebration. It's like a. It's like a season of celebration. When I hear the word Jubilee, for some reason, that just feels like celebration to me.
[00:01:34] And I love the fact that that word carries with it, at least for me. I don't know about. For you, but whenever I hear that word, I just think, oh, this is going to be nice. Like, ooh, a Jubilee. That's going to be, like. That's going to. That's going to be something fun, you know, like, that word just feels like fun to me.
[00:01:52] But what's really interesting to me is that that word gets used. The first time that word gets used is in the Old Testament. And when I look at how it's applied, I kind of wonder, like, why, like, if I were thinking of a Jubilee, I would just think. If I just think of, like, carnivals, festivals, like, just frivolous good time, like, just fun things to do. Like, it's just a Jubilee.
[00:02:15] But the original Jubilee carried this massive, like, response, this massive reordering of society. It wasn't just like a day or two of celebration.
[00:02:26] It literally took all of their culture, all their society and twist and shifted it around and, like, reordered the entire thing. Instead of it being like a day where you just do nice things, it's like your whole life that was the day before is different now. Not just your life, but your entire town is different. On this side of the Jubilee. The distinctives in this original Jubilee were literally society altering. I want to look at this Jubilee, first of all. It's just interesting to understand how God imagined this new society, his kingdom, emerging out of this slave society.
[00:03:11] The Jews were slaves. They were slave people.
[00:03:15] They had got generation after generation beaten down by the Egyptians, made to be essentially nothing.
[00:03:23] They come out of Egypt rescued through Moses, through, like, through the wilderness. They come into the promised land and they're going to be made this new people. And when you're, when you're taking, you're taking people that have just been beaten down generation after generation, you have to establish what this culture is going to look like, what the, what the society. How is this society going to be different than the society that we left? How will we be different? What will be the, the distinctives, the laws that lay down the way our society looks?
[00:03:59] What do the people of God look like?
[00:04:02] When you're reading through those Old Testament law, if you ever take, if you read through Leviticus and you're like, oh my gosh, my brain is melting, reading all these laws, like over and over and over again, you have to understand there's like a tediousness to it because these laws, you have to lay out all the details of how an entire society is going to work from scratch, like from nothing, into this new kingdom.
[00:04:29] And for me, I read those laws and I might have all kinds of like, well, that seems harsh or this seems whatever, but for them, they're coming out of being total objects with, with no value, no rights at all.
[00:04:52] And they're now part of this brand new society where their lives matter. And the way that they understand these laws coming together, it's not just laws that are being imposed on them. This is a release for them. This is a freedom for them to live into, to be good citizens with other people having the responsibilities that they never enjoyed before, being actual citizens of this new kingdom.
[00:05:18] So as they are hearing these laws, all these laws that might to you sound oppressive, to them sound freeing, liberating. It gives them an opportunity to be, to be someone in this new society.
[00:05:34] So there are all these laws get established that are really, you know, detailed and helpful, and then it comes to you come to Leviticus, chapter 25, and Moses lays out the laws for what he calls a Jubilee year.
[00:05:52] And I think it's the craziest, I think it's the craziest idea that I've actually, that I read in the Old, in the Old Testament and I just want to start reading it for you. And looking at what this year of jubilee was to the Israelites, to this brand new kingdom, God says through Moses to the people, you must count off seven sabbatical years. Seven sets of seven years, adding up to 49 years at all. And then on the atonement day of the 50th year, blow the rams horn loudly, loud and long throughout the land.
[00:06:25] Set this year apart as holy a time to proclaim freedom throughout the land for all those who live there. It will be a jubilee year for you when each of you may return to your land that belongs to your ancestors and return to your own clan.
[00:06:40] Now, so far, so good. This sounds like this is going to be a year long celebration where whatever, like work that's been going on, whatever responsibilities you have, you get to like lay that back. You get to go back and be with your family again, back in your hometown.
[00:06:59] Now this is really important.
[00:07:03] They were rescued from slavery in Egypt into this new land.
[00:07:08] Their salvation is from this external power, this external force.
[00:07:13] And their salvation was rooted in the land itself. And when they, when they come into this land, in Joshua, you see them divvying up like, this tribe, you get this land, this tribe, you get this land, their inheritance, their whole, their whole gift from God. In this process, like what they're being saved into is an identity rooted in land. Into that space, like I matter. I have a place now, like I have a home.
[00:07:45] I have something that I am rooted in for the first time, a place that I belong.
[00:07:52] And so in this jubilee year, the first thing that we see is that whatever else has happened, wherever you've ended up, whatever's gone on, you have one year where you're expected to go back. And it's like a reset button. Go back to your original land, go back to your original people, go back to your tribe and be where you belong, in your land and the inheritance that God gave you.
[00:08:16] Reclaim the salvation that God gave you. You were saved from Egypt into this land. Reclaim that land back. Be my people in this place that I've given you.
[00:08:29] Okay, all that so far sounds great.
[00:08:33] This next part is where I'm like, okay, that's tricky.
[00:08:37] First of all, he said, count off seven Sabbath years.
[00:08:41] A Sabbath year every seven years. They were expected to not farm the land.
[00:08:47] Now let me tell you what this does.
[00:08:51] They were not in the history of the world up until recently.
[00:08:55] You didn't have, like, stuff, anything.
[00:09:01] Like you worked that day for your food that year. Like you were working to save up food for that year. And you hoped you had enough for that year to see you through the crops that winter. Like it was. That you had enough crops to see you through the next winter. Like, the entire world has always been subsistence. Like, you were just. Everyone in the entire world was just barely making it. Okay.
[00:09:26] It's hard to appreciate the poverty that was normative in the entire world up until just recently. Okay.
[00:09:35] They were expected to not work their land for one year because God would provide enough in the sixth year to see them through the seventh year.
[00:09:44] There was a faith that this land, this promised land, this land flowing with milk and honey, was going to be so productive with crops that you could go an entire year not producing any crops, letting it just go wild, and that God would provide enough for you to see you through for two years.
[00:10:05] That requires, like, if. If I'm looking at that, I'm thinking, like, probably that's a lot to. That's a lot that's going to. That's a lot of faith. It's going to take me a lot of faith to believe that that's going to happen. Okay? So already we have the Sabbath year built in every six years of productivity, one year where you don't produce. Now, it is true that laying. Letting your ground go fallow, like letting it not produce for a year, helps replenish the ground, and it produces better crops in future years.
[00:10:36] But that year that it's not producing, that's brutal, you know? Okay, so that's where they're starting at.
[00:10:45] So that's every seven years. And then after seven of those, on the 50th year, here's the first rule, the first of the three distinctives for this jubilee for this celebration. Now, remember, when we're describing this in their heads, the word that jubilee, this is a. What they're doing is celebrating.
[00:11:02] This is not like a burden. This is celebration, okay? This is. These are the distinctives of celebration. The way fireworks and.
[00:11:10] What are those things that make noises?
[00:11:13] Whatever the distinctives you have when you think of a celebration, here are their distinctives. 1.
[00:11:18] On the 50th year, it 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. On their own. And don't gather the grapes from your unpruned vines. It will be a jubilee. Jubilee year for you.
[00:11:33] You must keep it holy, but you may eat whatever the land happens to produce on its own.
[00:11:39] Okay? You remember on the. Every seventh year, it's not producing. That means on year 49, 7 times 7. 49. Year 49, you're letting it not.
[00:11:51] You're not farming the land.
[00:11:53] Also on year 50, you're not farming the land, which means on year 58, you gotta produce enough for year 59. 49, year 50, right. So now you got two years that you're not farming the land. Okay?
[00:12:10] That has got to be such a.
[00:12:14] Assuming you have enough food to carry you through for three years.
[00:12:19] Think about what it's like to live in a society where everyone farms. I mean, like, 95% of people farm. Like, that is the job almost every family has.
[00:12:30] And every 50 years, every seven years, no one's doing their primary job. Like, think about, think about 50% of the work you do during the day just doesn't exist that year.
[00:12:45] And every 50 years, that doesn't exist for two years. Imagine a society that every 50 years a massive responsibility that you have to produce you don't have.
[00:12:55] We think about, like, maybe. We think about, like, maybe I don't work one day a week, right? Like, maybe I don't. I don't work on Sunday and I should just rest one day a week. Like, oh, that's hard. That's hard to do. I got a lot. I have a lot that I have to get done. How am I supposed to rest for a whole day once a week?
[00:13:12] They're like, yeah, yeah, do that. But also rest one year out of seven years and then rest that extra year every 50 years.
[00:13:21] So I just kind of imagine what these people could be doing, what could happen to them, what would happen with their time, with their identity, if they were in a position where they didn't need to produce, where they could trust in, in God to provide for their needs, and they wouldn't need to struggle and fight to survive all the time.
[00:13:50] I think you would learn what you need and what you don't need.
[00:13:56] I think you would have to be able to distinguish between what you've earned and what you haven't earned. Like, if I'm struggling and getting by I've earned, I feel like I've earned it. And I feel like I have faith in myself to get things done.
[00:14:12] But if I'm dependent on God for two years straight for there to be enough to come up without my own work for it to happen. There must be something about following the law of God, that he is producing enough that I'm depending on him instead of myself. So it's going to change the way I think about who I trust.
[00:14:33] And it's also going to change something about the way I think of the people around me, it's not so. It says that land, you may eat what's produced in that land. But also other people were allowed to eat what was produced in that land, too. The servants, the slaves.
[00:14:49] You weren't directing the servants to produce. None of that work was happening. You and the servants collectively were all kind of in the same boat, eating whatever came off the land that year. There was a redistribution in terms of who I was to the people around me.
[00:15:11] Now, I want to say this.
[00:15:16] When I think about what it would take for this to happen, one of two things would have to occur.
[00:15:24] Either there is a lot of external force making me do this, making everyone do it, because, say, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna obey that law, and I'm not gonna produce any crops. But Fred over there, he's not obeying the law, and he's producing the crops, and he's getting rich. He's like, he's producing more stuff that doesn't seem right. Like, all of a sudden, if you're doing it and I'm not doing it, like, this isn't. Something's. Something's off here. You're working your slaves now, and I'm not working my slaves. Like, something's off, something's not going to happen. So either there has to be this external force making us all not do it, a lot of, like, pressure from the outside, or there has to be something from the inside that says, I want to do it.
[00:16:08] I want to be like this with the people around me.
[00:16:14] The only time that I can think that I am like that is when I care as much or more for the outcomes of the people around me as I do myself.
[00:16:31] So, for instance, in my family, it doesn't matter which of us is producing more. What matters is what we need.
[00:16:41] I would die for my daughters.
[00:16:45] It doesn't matter if, you know, if I'm earning this or Alison's earning that. It's what our family needs.
[00:16:53] In a loving family, you are constantly redistributing what you have based on need, not based on what you've earned.
[00:17:01] But as soon as you get outside of love, as soon as you get outside of caring, actually caring for somebody, then it becomes like, well, do you. I mean, do you really need that? Are you taking from me? Why do you. Why do you need to take what I've earned? You know, unless I know and love the other person.
[00:17:19] If I know and love the other person, it will be from this internal desire to share. If not Then it'll be external force to share. Those are my two options.
[00:17:30] These people that came out of Egypt were a family.
[00:17:35] We talk about Israel as a kingdom, sure, but these are tribes. Those tribes had tribal leaders, Those tribal leaders. These were family units. And when they thought of themselves as a nation, they didn't think of themselves as like, you're over there and I'm over here. They thought of themselves as one unit. We are one people. We have one God, and we are in this together.
[00:18:01] We are the family of God.
[00:18:05] And so when they started applying these laws that sound crazy, they only worked when the people operated as a family, like, truly cared for each other.
[00:18:19] Which is also why these laws didn't work a lot, because they often didn't think of each other as family.
[00:18:26] Next distinctive.
[00:18:31] Not only do you not work the land during that jubilee year, but the land must not be sold on a permanent basis.
[00:18:41] For the land belongs to me.
[00:18:45] The land doesn't belong to you. The land belongs to God.
[00:18:49] I put you in that land. You didn't earn it.
[00:18:53] When you marched around Jericho shouting really loud and beating on drums, and you won that war. Let's agree. You didn't earn that. I did.
[00:19:04] I gave you this land. It was mine.
[00:19:07] You were only foreigners and tenant farmers working for me.
[00:19:12] Now, this is really important.
[00:19:14] You don't own that. You're just a steward.
[00:19:17] That mindset shifts everything about the way I think about who gets to make the decision about what to do with this stuff.
[00:19:25] If this is my stuff, I get to make the decision about what to do with it. If this is God's stuff, he gets to decide what to do with it. And it's my responsibility to carry out whatever he says I should do with this stuff.
[00:19:40] God is laying it on thick right here.
[00:19:43] This is my land.
[00:19:45] You are only working for me on this land. He has to lay it on thick, because what comes next is tough.
[00:19:52] With every purchase of land, you must grant the seller the right to buy it back. But if the original owner cannot afford to buy the land back, it will remain with the new owner until the year of jubilee. In the year of jubilee, the land must be returned to the original owner so that he can return to the family land.
[00:20:10] Now, look, the reason that land got sold was because that guy made some.
[00:20:14] Maybe there was something bad happened to the crops. Maybe he got sick or something, or maybe he made some bad choices. Maybe he didn't work hard enough. Whatever. I don't know. Something bad happened.
[00:20:24] He didn't do something right. Something happened and he did not produce the crop he needed to. He became poor and he got in the position that he had to sell off that land. The other guy, man, he made great choices and he ended up. He was in a position that he was able to buy that land.
[00:20:40] Seems to me to be pretty fair that the guy that bought the land gets to keep the land.
[00:20:45] God's like, doesn't matter what you think is fair because it's not your land.
[00:20:52] This whole kingdom isn't about you getting land and you getting land. This is about the salvation that I have given you out of Egypt.
[00:21:01] I wanted my people to identify in this place, everyone to share in this place. And your identity is rooted in this space.
[00:21:13] And even when something goes wrong, something, somebody does something wrong, whatever, whatever the cause, it's going to go back to the original owners because it's not about you owning it. It's about me establishing my kingdom in this space.
[00:21:31] You will forever have this.
[00:21:35] I want you, generation after generation, to identify in this space as a people.
[00:21:41] So I want you to think about our situation. I want you to think about your situation. I want you to imagine, I don't know, you bought a house.
[00:21:51] Let's say you bought a house, right?
[00:21:54] 50 years. Or it might be like seven years from now, depending on how far we are from Jubilee. That house you bought reverts back to the original owner of the house or the kids of the original owner of the house.
[00:22:07] You don't get to keep that house because that wasn't originally your house. It goes back to whoever built it, whoever. Whoever's land that was in the first place. You've got to go back to wherever your ancestors came back from in the first place.
[00:22:22] Your whole getting ahead kind of thing isn't happening. After 50 years, you and your descendants are going back to your original spot.
[00:22:32] All of us are going to end up where we started.
[00:22:36] You're not going to get over on each other again.
[00:22:42] That works for me. In my family.
[00:22:46] I don't think about, like, getting ahead with Olivia or Rachel or Alison. You know, I don't. I don't think about getting ahead with you guys. Like, for me to be in a position where I, like, improved my allotted life at your expense would be dishonorable to me.
[00:23:10] You know, like, if I'm not in a position that my getting ahead doesn't also carry you ahead, that your life gets better. As my life gets better.
[00:23:24] That feels. That would be kind of embarrassing. Like if I was in a position that I needed to use you to make my Life better. That would be.
[00:23:33] I don't know. That wouldn't work for me. And this is kind of what. This is what they're thinking about here, that you are not going to be in a position where you're getting ahead at someone else's expense. All of this will end up right back where it started from.
[00:23:51] I don't see how that could be applied in our culture broadly.
[00:23:54] Again, can you imagine an economy where anything that you purchased had to revert back to its original owner after 50 years?
[00:24:05] How would that even work?
[00:24:09] Third, distinctive.
[00:24:12] If one of your fellow Israelites falls into poverty and is forced to sell himself to you, do not treat him like a slave.
[00:24:19] Treat him instead as a hired worker or a temporary resident who lives with you.
[00:24:23] And he will serve you only until the year of jubilee.
[00:24:27] At that time, he and his children will no longer be obliged to you, and they will return to their clan and go back to the original land allotted to their ancestors. The people of Israel are my servants. That land is my land. These people are my people.
[00:24:43] Do you hear a theme here?
[00:24:46] You're mine.
[00:24:49] The people of Israel are my servants, whom I'm not brought out of the land of Egypt. So they must never be sold as slaves. Show your fear of God by not treating them harshly.
[00:24:58] Now, it is interesting that they were allowed to take slaves outside of Israelites. They were allowed to have, say, the Canaanites. If there were Canaanites in the land, they could be slaves, not necessarily slaves.
[00:25:11] There are also laws about, if there were rich people in the land, how, what would happen if they took Israelites as slaves. So there was.
[00:25:20] There were rules for if there were people who were not of the tribe, how they could be enslaved. And what would happen if Israelites were enslaved to them as well. So there were. There were laws about all that. But I think one thing that's. Whenever we hear about slavery, we have this, like, one note. Like, this is what slavery is. Don't, don't, don't. Like, we just think that's that one thing.
[00:25:43] But they weren't allowed to abuse their slaves.
[00:25:47] Now, this is. This might sound like a minor distinction to you, but I promise you it is not.
[00:25:52] If you abused your slaves, say you, like, did something that, like, you damaged their eyesight or you even knocked out a tooth, that slave would go free. Like, if you did anything to abuse that other person, you lost that they got to go free. Even though they became your slave because of.
[00:26:10] Probably because of war, instead of killing them, you took them as a slave. Or if they sold themselves to you or something like that because they were poor, you took them as a slave. If you abused them, they got to go free. Now, I can't even begin to describe how drastically, how drastically that changes the relationship between master and slave compared to what the Israelites experienced in Egypt.
[00:26:35] That a slave was not allowed to be mistreated meant they had an entirely different place in society than the Israelites had when they were slaves. It's actually, I think it's unfair to use the same word like that. A person.
[00:26:53] The Israelites in Egypt were literally objects. Like they were things that the owner could do whatever they wanted to do with them.
[00:27:03] But that slave, that Canaanite slave, was a human being that you couldn't mistreat. You had to treat what you had to treat fairly.
[00:27:13] Very different thing. So there was. You don't mistreat them additionally on top. So you've got this like, drastically improved condition for slaves in Israel compared to Egypt.
[00:27:29] On top of that, Israelites weren't even allowed to be slaves. They were just servants. And you knew they were only going to be servants for a few years at most, 49 years, probably, you know, far less so if they were in a position where they.
[00:27:43] Again, where they lost their land. If you lost your land, you needed to become a slave.
[00:27:49] You needed to become a part of another person's household and let them work you, because you didn't have land to work anymore, you'd starve.
[00:27:55] You had to go work for someone else. They didn't have like tradesmen. The way we think of occupations didn't exist. This is basically like you had to go get a job for somebody else.
[00:28:06] So you were their slave, you were their man, not slave. He said not slave. You were their servant.
[00:28:14] You were working for them not more than 50 years. Then you got your land back and you got to establish and you got to have the means of your own production again. And you got to participate in society and as an equal being able to get, get going again. Now, these three distinctives, I started off by reminding you this is a jubilee.
[00:28:39] This was the. This was the most.
[00:28:43] This is like, this is intended to be the greatest celebration. Every seven years they have this great celebration where you're not. You're not. A great deal of your productivity isn't happening. You're trusting God for, for productivity also. Debts were forgiven every seven years.
[00:28:59] Massive liberty freedoms that take place every seven years. And then every 50 years it's like on steroids. The way that society is remade in this jubilee. Okay?
[00:29:11] They almost never did it coming out of Egypt.
[00:29:19] Given this law, they imagined what it would be like to perpetually be in this state where we're never going to stop viewing each other as family.
[00:29:30] We're always going to see each other as family. We're not slaves anymore. We're a family. And we're a family of God.
[00:29:36] We're people that are going to look out for each other. We're people that are going to identify with each other and take care of each other. And if one of us gets behind every seven years, we're going to help each other out. And every 50 years, we're going to totally reset everything, because we're a family, and we're not going to take advantage of each other. We're going to be like this one unit.
[00:29:55] We're not going to be anything like those Egyptians were. We are saved from that, and we're saved into this new way to be human, this new way of living outside of sin that separates us, and we can see each other as family again. We're going to live this way.
[00:30:13] And it's good when we describe it, when we imagine that world, the word we can think of is jubilee.
[00:30:21] That must be, like, the greatest celebration ever, that that's what life is like.
[00:30:28] And they almost never did it.
[00:30:31] We're not even sure that they did it after the first 50 years.
[00:30:39] Paul says that the law, the Old Testament law by his time, he says that it's like death. It causes death, and it does.
[00:30:54] When the law is externally applied.
[00:31:00] If I need you, if I need you to follow these laws, if I need you to do this, because I am forcing you to do it, you're gonna look at this law and you're gonna say, that stinks. I hate that.
[00:31:12] This feels like. This feels like I am being.
[00:31:16] I'm being enslaved again.
[00:31:19] Like, no matter what I do, stuff is being taken from, just like the Egyptians were taking from me. Now the law is taking from me, and I'm being forced to do these things.
[00:31:33] The only way that the law is beautiful and good, that any of it could be celebrated, it can't be something that is, like, written on the law outside. It has to be something written on your heart. It has to be something that you want to do.
[00:31:49] If it's written on your heart, if that law, if you look at that law and you say, yes, I want to live in this society where these people are my brothers and sisters, and no matter what happened, I'm looking for an opportunity for us to all forgive each other. And to come back to this bond that should always exist between us.
[00:32:10] And I'm grateful for the opportunity to give up any advantage I have over the other person, because I know that that advantage must mean that we're going to be separate. We're going to be. We're going to be. It's going to separate us out. And I don't.
[00:32:22] There's no material good worth separating me from you.
[00:32:29] More important than anything is that I have faith in God and that we are like a family together.
[00:32:36] With that in mind, this is a jubilee.
[00:32:41] But if that's not in mind, if that's not my highest priority, the greatest good I could imagine would be to love the Lord, my God, with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, and to love my neighbor like myself. If that's not my greatest possible good in mind, then this law is death.
[00:32:58] This is not celebration. This is not jubilee. This is oppression. And for the Israelites, throughout most of the time, this was so oppressive that they even ignored it. They didn't even try to initiate it.
[00:33:11] It's interesting. I think it's. Isaiah describes the whole time that the Israelites were in bondage, were away in bondage.
[00:33:21] They say that the number of years in bondage equals the number of years that they failed to initiate these Sabbath years. So, like, the number of years that they chose not to let the land go fallow. The land enjoyed those years while they were in captivity. Like God's laws were made whole. Like, those years happened. They just didn't get to enjoy the jubilee of those years because they didn't have faith in God to participate in his jubilee.
[00:33:51] But he initiated them.
[00:33:53] They happened.
[00:33:57] Why does all this matter in the next couple weeks? I want to look at where this applies in the New Testament. And I think it's. I think it's wild. Jesus in Luke chapter four. Luke chapter four is. First of all, I just really love the Gospel of Luke.
[00:34:13] Luke has a very.
[00:34:16] The way that Luke describes Jesus interaction, especially with the religious leaders, I think is a very distinct and powerful description. In Luke chapter four, Jesus is coming back to his hometown. He's been like, Jesus has been all over the place doing these miracles. He's got this great reputation. And he comes back to his hometown, which, like, they immediately are like, who's this kid? Like, who does he think he is? This is Jesus. Like, he's nobody.
[00:34:43] Like, who's that? Like, that's Christian. I remember him when he was, like, sucking his thumb and stuff. Like, who's he? Like, coming back and thinking he's some big soccer player. I remember him when he was nobody, right? It's like that. He gets that kind of treatment.
[00:34:57] So Jesus comes back.
[00:35:00] In Luke chapter four, it says, jesus comes back into his village in Nazareth, his boyhood home. And he went, as usual, to the synagogue on the Sabbath. And he stood up to read the scripture, the scroll of Isaiah. The prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll. Isaiah is a big. Is a big book. He unrolls it until he finds Isaiah. I think it was 61. And Isaiah is describing what the year of jubilee, or this jubilee, is for the Israelites as they're in this new captivity because they ignored the law that described who they were going to be coming out of their old captivity. So they come out of Egypt. They're given this law to explain what this new people are going to be like. And they're like, no, no, that's no good. I don't want to do that. So God's like, okay, you're going to go back to captivity. Let's try this again. They go to captivity in Babylon while the land enjoys its Sabbaths that they didn't give the land in the first place. Isaiah's like, this is really dumb of you. Like, you read through Isaiah. He explains all the times that they were really, really stupid. But then he's like, but God is faithful and things are going to work out well for you. And he says, he refers back to this idea of jubilee that's going to come. And that's the part that Jesus reads. He says, he unrolls this part and he says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
[00:36:20] He has sent me to proclaim the captives will be released, the blind will see, the oppressed will be set free.
[00:36:27] This says the time of the Lord's favor, but it's actually the year of the Lord's favor has come. The year of the Lord's favor.
[00:36:34] As Jesus is inaugurating his ministry, he opens up to this idea of the year of the Lord's favor, the year of jubilee.
[00:36:42] He says this of all of the scroll of Isaiah. What I want to refer you back to is what you know about the jubilee.
[00:36:51] This is going to carry a lot of sting for the Jews, because why they are now in captivity during Jesus time. They're in captivity to the Romans. They spent a lot of time captivity, so now they're in that captivity to the Romans. They're not enjoying the jubilee. But, man, it's a reminder of all the failures that we've done to do our part in being a part of God's kingdom in this land that he's giving us.
[00:37:15] That's the part he unrolls. And he says, like Isaiah said, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and the time of the Lord's favor has come. And then I love the way he does this. Says, he rolls up the scripture. He. He hands it back to the attendant, and then he sits down like, this is his sermon. This is his whole sermon.
[00:37:35] He read that part. He sits down, everyone's looking at him like, are you done?
[00:37:42] And then he says, the scripture you've just heard has been fulfilled this day.
[00:37:48] I am the jubilee. He says, that whole thing that you've been looking for, this entire new kingdom, that's gonna upend the way people think about debts and burdens in relationship and what it means to love God and to love each other.
[00:38:03] Everything that we have failed at, generation after generation, has led to captivity after captivity, bondage after bondage. Everything that we have been oppressed by that the year. The Lord's favor that we've been hoping that Lord's favor would come back on us, he says, it's here now. And that was his entire sermon.
[00:38:25] His entire sermon was, remember all your failures.
[00:38:29] Remember when Isaiah said those failures will come to an end.
[00:38:33] That end starts now, and it starts with me starting next week. I want to look at how Jesus reclaims this jubilee for us in a very different context. We are not oppressed by Egypt, he says. We're not even oppressed by anything external.
[00:38:52] Jesus points to an internal oppression. We are oppressed by sin, by our own sin, and our salvation is from our own sin. Which means that our distinctive. The distinctives of our jubilee aren't about land and crops and that kind of stuff.
[00:39:14] Our liberation is from what is separating us from God and what is separating us from each other.
[00:39:24] The Jews had things that were separating themselves from God.
[00:39:27] They failed to have faith in God to produce. They failed to love each other enough to think of each other like family.
[00:39:38] How is our sin infringing on our ability to participate in the jubilee?
[00:39:44] I've often heard said Jesus didn't just inaugurate a year of jubilee. Jesus, he initiated a perpetual jubilee. And that every time the church follows Christ, they aren't living in a day, a Fourth of July, they are living every single day a jubilee like the original jubilee. It will be insanely oppressive if it's something you feel like you need to do.
[00:40:11] And it will be deeply liberating if it's something you want to do.
[00:40:15] That's we're going to be looking at Jesus perpetual Jubilee over the next couple of weeks.
[00:40:20] Let's pray, Father God, we are grateful for your word, Lord, to stand so far deep in history now to be able to see the way you've worked generation after generation, showing yourself to people after people. Lord, we stand on the backs of so many people that have been honest in their dealings with you and their failures with you. And God, I pray that you give us the same honesty, integrity, to be truthful about our stance with you. But God, that in that we learn from all those mistakes and Lord, that we take them all and we no longer need to have the fear, the mistrust of you, the failure to love each other, Lord, that we take seriously that all of the law and all the prophets rest on these two commands, that we have faith in you and that we love each other.
[00:41:12] God, as we learn over these next few weeks what it means to live in your jubilee life, I thank you first of all, even before we look at it, for knowing that you've given us a life of celebration, a life worth celebrating.
[00:41:25] We love you, Lord. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
