13. “The Year of Jubilee” (Leviticus 25)

The Year of Jubilee

Leviticus 25

Next week will be the final week of our Leviticus series. It’s been quite the ride! I have to say, I’ve been very grateful for the words of encouragement many of you have expressed about it. 

One of the main ideas Leviticus keeps returning us to is the need to see the world, to see all of reality, differently. 

There is the way of seeing the world that comes naturally to us, and then, well, there’s the right way. There is on one hand what we might call a God-forgetting way of seeing things. By that I’m not meaning anything particularly sinister—I just mean how often, in the midst of the busyness and distractedness of our lives, it can be an easy thing to focus just on what’s before us. The places our kids need to go, the tasks we gotta get done, the food for us to eat—we can look at the very real things that surround us and feel like that’s basically all there is to life. It’s a God-forgetting way of relating to the world.

But there is a different way of seeing everything, what we might call a God-fearing vision. And this is what Leviticus is designed to develop in us. Leviticus takes the things that are very much of this world, things like food and animals and structures and feasts and creates practices and symbols with them to help people see beyond to something greater and more mysterious. Through construction of a tent and a series of veils, human imaginations are meant to turn their attentions to what it means to have a close connection to God. Through things as mundane as the meat people eat and even skin conditions, people’s eyes are meant to be opened to the deep problems of sin. And through dates placed on the calendar, the nation of Israel is being trained to think of their lives as part of a great story of God’s grace. Leviticus is designed to awaken people, including us, from a God-forgetting slumber and begin to see everything with God at the center.

Now there is one more piece to this symbolic puzzle of Leviticus; one more element provided by God to move our eyes from God-lessness to God fearing. Through establishing a sacred year, the Year of Jubilee, God is reorienting us to wealth. 

In the New Testament, Jesus rather bluntly states that you cannot serve both God and wealth. You have to pick one. In saying this, Jesus wasn’t telling us that it’s always wrong to seek wealth. Wealth is simply the word for all those things we find in creation that are good and necessary for us to live and enjoy life together. Food for the day, the table to eat it on with others, and the shelter over our heads that allows this all are part of “wealth.” Jesus was not saying that it’s wrong to work for or enjoy those things. He was warning against a specific way of relating to them. As with everything else, there is a god-forgetting way of seeing wealth, where wealth, and all that it offers, is primary, and God is at best in the background. It’s really easy, actually. 

Say you’re doing bills at the beginning of the month, and you find yourself with a few unexpected expenses that draw from your savings. What is your natural tendency in that moment: is it to give thanks to God that he provided enough to pay your bills and to ask God for continued provision? Or is your tendency, as it is for me, to stress out and try to figure out how you’ll fix it?  

Now what does that say about how we see things? It seems to me that there is a kind of fog with wealth that can just cloud our vision and invite us to forget God. That’s what Jesus is warning against: he is calling us to a way of relating to wealth with God as the center of all things, as the one who matters most, and see wealth in terms of our relationship to him. A God-fearing vision of wealth. 

And that fundamentally is what the Year of Jubilee encourages. In our passage, God commands after 49 years,  the Year of Jubilee is to be celebrated. Verses 9 and 10: “9 Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. 10 And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan.”

What is the Year of Jubilee? Well, it’s the ultimate reset. A few weeks ago you might remember how Nick helped us consider the Day of Atonement as an annual reset for Israel in their relationship to God. The priest would go into the Holy of Holies and through the blood of the sacrificed animal cleanse the relationship with God of all the sins that have accumulated, creating a fresh start. Well, on the 50th year, the year of Jubilee, the Day of Atonement initiated an even bigger reset. After the priest finished the atonement rituals and came out of the tabernacle, a special trumpet was to be sounded—not the normal silver trumpet but a special ram’s horn, which is actually what the word “Jubilee” comes from. And when that ram’s horn was sounded, basically everything that had gotten broken in society over the course of 50 years was to be restored.  

To understand what I mean, we need to back up for a moment and consider what it was like to live in the Ancient Near East. In an age without insurance or interest-earning savings accounts, your wealth and your livelihood were completely connected to your land, and that meant you were vulnerable. It didn’t take too much to move from being comfortable to experiencing great poverty.

Imagine an Israelite in his 40’s, we’ll call him Isaac, a proud, hard worker, who is the leader of his household. Say his ox died over the past winter, and so as spring comes, he invests all his family savings into a new ox because he needs one to help plow the fields. The planting season for the barley crop seems to go well: he and his brothers and his sons and nephews are hard workers and they work well together. But then, as the barley begins to spring up, the crop looks strangely colored and limp. By harvest time it’s clear they have some sort of disease, and they only yield a small portion of what Isaac had hoped to harvest. Which is a problem, because he’s already spent the family savings on that ox. Isaac does the numbers and realizes there simply won’t be enough from this harvest to make sure his whole household is fed. 

Thankfully, Isaac has a cousin, Joseph, who is doing fairly well, and Joseph agrees to purchase Isaac’s family’s land so that they have enough money for food. Isaac’s family can stay living on their land and give Joseph a reasonable cut. The plan is that over time Isaac’s family can save up and eventually buy their land back from Joseph. 

But rather than improving, the situation gets worse. For a couple of years, there’s been very little rain. Joseph himself is barely holding on, and he can’t support Isaac and his household. And so at a certain, awful moment, Isaac’s family realizes that their only hope is to split up. To find different families throughout the whole region that might take them in as indentured servants, willing to feed and provide shelter for them if they work. His family grieves as they separate, and Isaac feels ashamed, he has failed. 

This kind of thing was not uncommon then, and in some ways it’s a familiar story even today. We know about generational wealth and generational poverty. Over time those doing well are able to accumulate more, more power, more resources—why wouldn’t you if you can? Meanwhile, those who are poor and therefore more vulnerable lose out, they become disconnected from the community, and lose their sense of dignity.  

But God says it’s going to be different with HIS people. He commands here a great interruption, a loud trumpet to disrupt the natural processes. On the 50th year, there will be a great reset. Isaac and his family are released from their indentured servitude and the land they had previously sold is theirs again, with all the debts canceled. Verse 10 again: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan.” That’s the year of Jubilee: everything broken restored.

And this command did more than just provide a reset every 50 years. It provided a structure for the economy all the years in between. Verses 14 and 15 showed that any sales of land during the years between Jubilee must always be based on how many years left—both parties knew that sales could only be treated like a lease, because Jubilee was coming. In the same way, verse 39 says that if someone was forced to sell himself into indentured servitude to you, you must not treat him like a slave: he is a hired worker, an equal to you, for he is basically just on a contract that will expire at Jubilee. This was how God instructed Israel’s economy to be.

Sadly, it appears that Israel never actually practiced this; that’s one of the reasons, actually, that they went into exile. But this morning I want us to imagine what effect it would have had on Israel if they did—how it would have changed their relationship with wealth from a God-forgetting vision to God-fearing.

Divinely Directed

To begin with, and perhaps to state the obvious, this practice of Jubilee would have been an unmistakable reminder that people’s wealth wasn’t just something for them to use however they wanted—that financial interactions were always subject to God. You might want to accumulate land. Makes sense; it’s a great investment and a wonderful nest egg for future generations. But God set boundaries prohibiting that, so you can’t. You might be tempted to pay someone less than they maybe deserve, since they in their poverty will take whatever they can get—or maybe you would be tempted to hold on to him as your slave. But again, God makes it clear; this isn’t an option. Your wealth is not yours to do whatever you want; it’s subject to God’s instructions. Israel is being trained to think of economic relationships in a way that keeps God at the center of it. 

Did you see a repeated phrase in our passage? When it speaks of how they go about selling land, verse 17 says “You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God”. When it talks about how to treat someone who’s become vulnerable, it says “Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God.” (36). And if someone becomes your indentured servant, verse 43 “You shall not rule over him ruthlessly but shall fear your God.” The idea here is not one of terror but respect, recognizing God’s rightful place as the God, not just of your faith, but also your finances. He’s saying that you must carefully take into account how God wants your wealth to be used.

From God’s Hand

And the reason for this is simple, which brings us to the second truth about wealth chapter 25 is meant to show. That is that every aspect of wealth comes from the hand of God.

Verse 11 provides another detail regarding the Year of Jubilee. During it, “you shall neither sow, nor plant any crops nor reap what comes up naturally.” In Jubilee, and also every 7th year as well, Israel was to let the land rest. Which raises an obvious question. Verse 20: “What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?” Verse 21 answers: “I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years.”  

Israel would have immediately recognized that this was a continuation of the manna principle. 

During this time when they were in the wilderness, they were being fed nearly every morning by God, who sent a miracle, a strange flake-like substance called “manna” left on earth like dew on the ground. Imagine what it would be like for week after week, year after year only ever to have enough food just for that day; nothing to store in the cupboard. Just think of what that would teach you about wealth. Here’s how Deuteronomy 8 puts it :“God humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna…that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” By causing them to wait in this way, God was teaching Israel to understand that all that they had, including life itself, came from the hand of God.

Now why do I say that Israel would have thought of the manna principle here? Because the one exception to manna being given only for today was on Friday. God gave 2x as much on the 6th day so that on the 7th day Israel could rest. This too was part of his training, and we see the very same thing in Leviticus: 2x as much food in year 6 so that there can be rest in year 7. God is saying that even once they have land and they have mechanisms for harvesting and gathering, it’s still going to work the same way. Even though harvesting involves their work still, in the end, it all comes from the hand of God. 

And that truth underpins these other Jubilee instructions. Notice verse 23: “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity—that is, you can only lease it.” Why? For the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me.” God is saying, “Even once you enter, you don’t stop receiving from my hand. Because you are guests in my land, stewards of my wealth, and everything you gather comes from me. 

In verse 42, God says the reason Israelites cannot treat each other as slaves is because: “They are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt.” God is saying, “I redeemed them from Egypt, they are mine, which means you don’t have the right to treat them as your own servants.” In other words, not only does this land not belong to you, but even you don’t belong to you—you are mine. Your freedom comes from my hand. Everything you have is from me.

Consider how different this understanding is from how we naturally view wealth in our day. Perhaps some of you have attended high school class reunions in the past few years. It’s always an interesting thing to see what’s happened to all the different people you knew as a teenager. Imagine if you’ve just gotten out of your car in the parking lot, and you see two different old friends of yours drive up. One drives up in a new Mercedes SUV and steps out in designer jeans, a nice pair of loafers, and a finely tailored blazer. The other friend pulls up in a 20-year old rusty Dodge Caravan. He’s wearing old sneakers, his jeans are stained, and his button-down shirt doesn’t fit very well. Before you hear a word from either of them, before you even have a chance to think about it, which of the two of them are you more likely to feel impressed by?

It’s probably not a difficult question to answer, but it’s also odd, isn’t it? All we’re talking about there is money. And yet, when someone is a “self-made man” he gets the esteem of society; if someone has to “ask for handouts,” well, that’s something that often produces shame. Because with the human tendency to forget God, we tend to use wealth as a sign of greatness. 

But that makes no sense when we see things rightly. Paul, shaped by a God-fearing vision of wealth, asks the Corinthian church, “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” What a simple and obvious and yet really important couple of questions. What do we have that was not given to us? We didn’t create ourselves, our lives. We can’t take credit for whatever talents we might have. Those of us who are adults are alive today because of the parents God has given us. The very air we breathe, the food we eat—it all ultimately comes from God. So why in the world would we attach pride to our wealth when it’s all a gift? And, also, why would we think of it as something we should control, when it all comes from our God? Because it’s all from him, we are to use it, not just however we want, but according to what God wants.

What does God want? This brings us to the third and my favorite truth about wealth that we are meant to see in this passage. 

God Wants Shalom

One of the themes throughout Leviticus has been about our need to completely entrust ourselves to God. The ascension offering, the giving up of the entire animal is meant as a symbol of how we are to relate to God—complete surrender. This has been reinforced in passages that speak of how now that we are God’s we are to be holy like he is holy. He now defines us. And likewise we see it here: our financial decisions are guided by God. 

And that can sound a bit threatening, almost martyr-like, to surrender everything to God’s will and suffer—that is, until you recognize that God’s will is ultimately not for us to lose but to gain. What does God want for us? He wants to bless us; he wants our shalom.

A couple of weeks ago we spoke of the importance of 7: 7th day, 7th day, 7th week, 7th month, verses right before focus on the 7th year. As you might recall, this number is important because, as with the 7 days of creation, 7 symbolizes completion, destination. Every instruction about a 7th is meant as a picture about what God wants, where he’s taking everything. Our opening verse really wants to emphasize the 7 aspect. “You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years.” We’re meant to understand that this is the 7 of all 7s. This is the big one, the clearest OT picture of where God is taking this. 

And here’s what we see in it: God reweaving together all the relationships that this broken world has torn apart. Isaac and all his brothers and nephews coming back together so that they are part of a support structure. Their family returns to their land so that they once again can enjoy the dignity of working for their food and developing their home. And in all of this, connecting them back to him through rest. Shalom, often translated “peace” is the word for this harmony, this web of relationships, where everyone belongs, everyone has enough, and God is at the center. And it is what guides everyone of God’s commands in these verses. Don’t keep a person from his land forever; don’t treat people like slaves—allow them to return home. Why? Because I am the Lord, and this is what matters to me. This is what my holiness looks like—it looks like shalom.

While Israel never observed this, the Year of Jubilee was not forgotten. Isaiah longingly spoke of a day in the future, and Jesus read these verses out loud in one of his very first sermons. Opening the scroll of Isaiah he read, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted: and notice this to proclaim liberty—the very same word used in Leviticus 25, liberty to the captives…to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor—that is, the year of Jubilee.

When Jesus rolled up the scroll, he gave the simplest, most perfect sermon ever: “Today,” he said, “this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” I, he was saying, “am the bringer of the true Jubilee. The Day of Atonement will take place on the cross, and after that there will be a reset unlike any other. Sins will be forgiven, and all that is broken will begin to be restored. I will bring shalom.”

It is no accident that in Acts we are told that the early church, filled with the Spirit, was one in heart and soul knit together by Christ, and that “there was no needy person among them,” for all were given access to wealth. We are meant to understand that here in some small, beginning way, the reality of the Year of Jubilee was breaking through.

And it continues to do that today: in every church fellowship such as ours, wherever the Spirit of Christ is working, each of us are coming to understand that all that we have is from God, and our calling is to use what we have been given for his purposes. And if we pay attention, what we see God doing in our and many other communities, is bring shalom.