Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 10, 2022 | Leviticus - Year of Jubilee

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April 10, 2022 | Leviticus - Year of Jubilee · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Glad you could be with us.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, today is uh a day of praise for all people because it's Palm Sunday, getting excited about Easter.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's praise for a smaller group of people who are very excited that this is the last message in Leviticus.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: We have had enough sacrifices to last a lifetime.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: So no, we are we are wrapping up Leviticus this morning.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've really enjoyed going through it with you.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and I'm also excited because um this is probably my favorite message in Leviticus that I've had the chance to go through.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's probably up there with blood and skin diseases, you know, um, as fun topics.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: But um, as we are walking through the book of Leviticus today, you're hopefully going to see that um another example of God's eternal plan and eternal truth presented sort of to the Israelites, but really for the purpose of displaying a portion of his character and his intention throughout all time.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that's kind of a weird concept, but uh if you've been with us as we've walked through the book of Leviticus, you know that this is something we've been looking at, that God would give his people a command, and it was a command for that time, in that context, in that place, but that there was sort of an eternal component to it.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what that's what we'll be looking at this morning.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what's so interesting about it is it starts at the very, very beginning of the Bible, or rather the second chapter of the Bible.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, Genesis, first book of the Bible, second chapter, God has just finished his creative work, ex nielo, out of nothing, and out of nothing the creator created.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that was created was time and the framework with which to understand that time.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And within the sort of scope that God created and he chose to work within, he created the entire world, including mankind, in six days and rested on the seventh.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is not like one of your home improvement projects that stretched from like three days into six days and 12 Home Depot trips, okay?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's not that's not what's going on here.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: God is, God could have, you know, done it instantly.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: But here we see the first glimmer of what hopefully I can show you in our time together this morning of God deliberately, intentionally uh showing his plan to his people through even the creative order.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: See, this is going to be actually the foundation of something we're going to be building upon because God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've been with us through Leviticus, you know that really any time something is holy, it is because God has intention behind it.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just something for people to do, but it's often a part of his character, or something that describes him, or something that at the very least shows other people how they can be and act more like God and be a part of his kingdom.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so in Genesis, we see that God rested, or literally the Hebrew word is he ceased.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: God ceased working, he chose to do it, and it develops and shows a pattern of work and of rest that we are going to pick up on a whole lot.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because this pattern of work and rest in creation ends up becoming the foundation.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: It is something that is referenced back upon many, many, many times as we're going to see, but we need to keep in mind its origin, God's intentional act in creation, before it even had the name that we're about to see, Sabbath.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a day that was holy, allowing humanity to rest from their work.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it was in creation that God sort of began this plan, sort of planted the seed for this idea.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then we go to Exodus 20 with the Israelites.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: They're in Egypt now, they've been rescued from slavery.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we've picked up a name now, right?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: It is the Sabbath day.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: That seventh day of rest, of ceasing, is something that God is doing.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: But why?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: What's the motivation?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's from creation.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: We're mimicking, as like part of God's creation, we're mimicking what he did in creation, in the created order.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: So from the Garden of Eden now to the deserts of Sinai, the Israelites are picking up on this idea of a weekly Sabbath.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're following the same pattern that God followed.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And just like other laws in Leviticus, this radically changed the culture of the Israelites.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it was laws and food or the sacrifices or things like that, you cannot overlook the weekly Sabbath as something that was done by God to continually remind his people of his holiness, of his provision for them.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: See, that's another component that we'll see here as we take the idea of work and rest and sort of build on top of that.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to see that each rung in this ladder basically adds a new component.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: God was reinforcing the old and bringing out something new.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: When it came to the weekly Sabbath, it was his provision for his people.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was no longer just resting from the six days of work.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: But now they were able to focus and understand that they could rest, they could have the freedom to rest and be comfortable doing it because God had taken care of them.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: See, when they were in the desert and they were collecting manna off the ground every single day for their food, they were given a double portion of manna on the sixth day, so that the seventh they wouldn't have to collect it.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Later on, when we get to the uh the promised land, right?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Israelites move into the land that was promised to Abraham, their forefathers.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: God brings them to a holy land, well, they were able to be provided for on, and I'm going to get to this in a second, but the sixth year of harvest, so that they could rest on the seventh.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: But before we get to that, though, the weekly Sabbath did become a part of the culture, absolutely endemic to the Israelite society.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is that, um, as we read in the New Testament, it seems that eventually it sort of took on a life of its own.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: This idea of honoring God and being holy and not working, they tacked on a whole lot of rules.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: So much so that God himself gets criticized for breaking the Sabbath.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: In Mark 2, verses 23 through 28, one Sabbath, this is Jesus, he was going through the grain fields, and as they made their ways, disciples began to pluck heads of grain.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the Pharisees were saying to him, Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, so the Son of Man himself is Lord even of the Sabbath.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So a couple things here.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, the Pharisees are just dogtailing Jesus to try and pick out things that he's doing that frustrates them.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: But what we see here, though, when, like the fact that they were picking grain, like individual heads of grain to chew on or whatever, while they were walking through the field, that had become a rule sort of since God instituted the weekly Sabbath.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And there were a whole bunch of these rules.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, for instance, um, if you uh you were not supposed to work, and and the question arose, well, how much weight can I lift and it not be considered work?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is apparently a dried fig.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you lift something more than the weight of a dried fig, then you have officially worked.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you uh if you are collecting water and you collect it from the sky, that's okay.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: But if you collect it as the runoff from a roof, it's not okay.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, so on and so forth.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can look up these kinds of rules and they're interesting.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: But the greater point is that this idea of work and rest and provision up to this point had been changed into something that was no longer as Jesus speaks of here, it was no longer something God gave to humanity, but something that humanity was sort of doing for God.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus reminds them as he's being criticized for breaking something that he made.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: He says, that's not the purpose of it.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's a holy day to remind you of God.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you might also be asking, and it would be a fair question, I thought this was the last Sunday in Leviticus.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: We have not gotten to Leviticus yet.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here's where we pick up in the book of Leviticus, in chapter 25, verses 1 through 4.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the promised land, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: But in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: See, we see God here extending his Sabbath command in two important ways.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is that we have now gone beyond a week.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: This Sabbath lasts an entire year.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so everyone who is working the land or involved with working the land, which is pretty much everybody, is going to take a break from specifically sowing and reaping.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: So in the land on the seventh year, if like you had a fruit tree that produced fruit, you could still collect some of that fruit because it was just, you know, brought about that way, but you could not intentionally labor.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so God, we see him extending this in sort of the scope of time, which is something he's going to pick up on later.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: But then also, this is now a Sabbath that has gone into the land.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you remember, we've talked about the promised land, how it's quite literally holy land.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: God had warned the Israelites against sinning and the holy land, how it might boot them out because of their sin.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: It could not stand it.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's God's sacred land.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: But here we see that all that the Sabbath extends to all of God's created order.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just humanity now, but the land itself is supposed to rest.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, for this weekly Sabbath, um, animals and such were supposed to rest, but now the land?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: You mean it's not just there for my unending use and sort of abuse?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, this was part of God's created order too.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And as we see later on in the New Testament, that all of creation is groaning because of sin.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so God is right, hopefully you can see that we are building here from creation, extended into this weekly idea of work and rest and provision.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And now that provision is extended to the Sabbath year.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mentioned this before, but people were worried.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: They say, well, how are we going to provide for our families in the seventh year if I'm a farmer?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, God is going to give you a harvest so large in the sixth year that you won't even need the seventh year.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: God would provide for his people so that they might be able to rest, to cease from work.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: But that was not the only thing that the Sabbath year did to sort of build upon the ideas presented.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: God starts to affect their entire economy and social structure.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: See what happens in Deuteronomy 15, verses 1 through 4, is we get instructions, more instructions about the Sabbath year.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release, and this is the manner of the release.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Every creditor shall release what he has lent to his neighbor.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: He shall not exact it of his neighbor, his brother, because the Lord's release has been proclaimed.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Of a foreigner you may exact it, but whatever of yours is with your brother, your hand shall release.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: But there will be no poor among you, for the Lord will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: So what's going on here is that we once more God is building upon this idea, he's extending it, and we can see that each new level sort of gets deeper into his plan for all of humanity.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And in this situation, what God is saying that within the Israelite culture, within God's chosen people, there is not supposed to be this wide gulf between rich and poor.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: We would be surprised, sort of, our modern eyes going back into Deuteronomy 15 or even Leviticus and seeing the ways in which God handles something that we might consider today social justice.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: At the very least, helping the poor and the needy.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is the same kind of command elsewhere in Deuteronomy 15, where if you know the book of Ruth, where Ruth and Naomi are able to glean from the edges of Boaz's field because he did not harvest to the very edges, it was a provision for the poor that was brought about because of God's command.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so we start to see here God's sort of social identity for Israel, that not only being a holy people amongst themselves, but supposed to be a light into the nations around them, God was already establishing them as separate and distinct because their practices were not about abusing people for personal gain, even though that's often ended up being what happened, but God's design for their society was that there would be no poor among them.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And there were many such rules like this.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: God was taking care of those who were hurting, and in this situation, even uh releasing those who were under debt.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: So people who had made whether poor decisions or necessary decisions to provide for their family and found themselves indebted to an individual Israelite were released from that bondage during the Sabbath year.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: So now we begin to really see a part of God's plan here.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: It is not just about work and rest, though that is still a part of it, that everybody should be able to enjoy the rest because they have ceased from working, they have ceased from their pain.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: But we see all of these elements of the Sabbath year, they get cranked up to eleven as we keep going on in Leviticus twenty-five.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: In verses eight through ten, you shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that at the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: On the day of atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land, and you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: 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.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, a couple things here.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you've been with us for Leviticus, there there are maybe a couple words in this that are sort of uh coming to the front of your mind.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, for instance, this seven times seven format for um judging time and sort of uh separating significant events.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about that with feasts, only that was seven weeks, right?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um days of seven that led to forty-nine days between the feast of first fruits and Pentecost, or 50.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, now we've got seven years, um uh seven years of seven, so that it becomes forty-nine years.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And on the 50th year, a most holy year is announced on the Day of Atonement, the most holy day in the entire Israelite calendar.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Day of Atonement is where the high priest goes into the like very back of the tabernacle or the temple, the place where he could only enter once a month, and he was going to sacrifice for and as a representative for the entire nation of Israel, two goats.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is a scapegoat that is released out into the desert, and one of them is sacrificed, bearing the sin of the entire nation upon its head.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so on this most holy day, when there was also trumpet blasts, right, another thing that we've sort of talked about, um, on this day of trumpet blasts, a day which is counted as Jubilee, and this word for Jubilee in Hebrew is the same word as the sound of a trumpet blast.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: So all of these things, right?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're just they're just coming together, and God, you can just see how so much intention and and plan was put into this.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Not surprising by the creator of the universe, but still significant to address.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, this was a very special year.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was the Jubilee year, and it shall be a Jubilee when each of you shall return to his property, and each of you shall return to his clan.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: See, the way that Jubilee year was different from the Sabbath year.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're both a year long, but the Jubilee year took everything that we've talked about and then added some things to it.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: This was not every seven years, but every 49 years, coming on the 50th year, is the the idea of liberty and freedom was sort of further pronounced.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas in the Sabbath year, people were released from debt and their sort of indebtedness to other Israelites, the poor were helped.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now we see that liberty was proclaimed.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: So much so that our founding fathers put a Leviticus 25 quote on the Liberty Bell.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this is the same uh sentence that is right here, and proclaiming liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants is what you can read on the Liberty Bell.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: The Liberty Bell being um a symbol of liberty for the founding of America out in Philadelphia, and then later on, and more significantly, and probably true to um the intention, or at least the words, it became a symbol for abolitionists.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so all of these things are going on here, and this idea of liberty and freedom, of setting the captives free, is something that God is going to hammer home to his people, because that is what he intends for his society, those who belong to him.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he wants it to look like.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: In Israelite culture, it almost goes without saying, compared to the nations around it, was unparalleled in its pursuit of social justice and helping those who had fallen by the wayside.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: I say unparalleled because compared to the other nations, there was nothing like it.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was a beacon, or at least supposed to be a beacon, if they would follow all of God's commands for love and provision for those who were looked down upon.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is, unparalleled doesn't really communicate the full truth.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is that even living in a fallen world, God's plan was not able to be fully realized by his people.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: See Leviticus twenty-five, verses thirty-nine through forty-three.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: He shall be with you as a hired worker and as a sojourner.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: He shall serve with you until the year of the Jubilee, what we're talking about.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Then he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and go back to his own clan and return to the possession of his fathers, for they are my servants who I brought out of the land of Egypt.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: They shall not be sold as slaves.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not rule over him ruthlessly, but shall fear your God.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, if you can for a second, sort of picture Israel as this island, not geographically but socially, amidst these warring nations, these pagan nations that hated God, and certainly did not reflect any of this attitude.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: The intention was that Israelites representing God's people would treat each other with respect and love and care.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's why Leviticus 19 is the first place where we hear the phrase, love your neighbor as yourself.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so in this system, God says, though, there is still sorrow, because there might be people who become so poor that they choose to sell themselves into slavery so that they might be able to provide for their family.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: And what God says is you should not treat them like all the other nations treat their slaves, but rather because you remember that you were once a slave, and I rescued you out of that, and because you fear me, you shall not treat them ruthlessly.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, they shall be with you as a hired worker and a sojourner.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: See, here we what's so hard is you see God's plan for the world running right up against the way the world loves to act.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the sin that is so apparent in our depraved world, these systems, God is speaking into them.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: He is radically changing the Israelite culture, but we see that even Even the Jubilee year is not the fullest fulfillment of God's plan.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Even the Jubilee year, where people not only were set free from bondage, literally, but those who had, whether because of, again, their foolishness or because of necessity, had to sell their land in order to provide for themselves and their families, right?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: The land that was descended from their ancestors, it was returned to them on the 50th year.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's like God was pressing a huge reset button on the Israelite culture.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, hey, in 49 years, this has gotten like way out of hand.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is not what my people should be doing.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is not what it should look like.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're supposed to be resting from our work.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to be loving and enjoying the provision that I have provided for you.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: You should be experiencing liberty.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: You should be experiencing freedom.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: But because we live in this fallen world, we sort of head down this path that so often doesn't look like that.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so God says the jubilee year will be something that basically every single Israelite at least once in their life can experience, where things are reset, where the slate is wiped clean, and they can move forward.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: So here we see the fourth, if you will, rung on our ladder.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Each one of these things like a nesting doll, building upon the one previously.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a problem, I've already mentioned it, it's that the Israelites, whether unwilling or unable, did not choose to continue to carry out this plan once they arrived in the Promised Land.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like so many of the things that God told them to do once they arrived in the Promised Land, they saw all the blessing that they had been given and decided to reject God, start worshiping false things.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: And they ended up fulfilling their own destiny.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: They fell into God's curses that he had outlined for them in Leviticus 26.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: I actually brought that up in the most last week's podcast, a sermon that had to get cut.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: But God lets them know about these blessings and curses that they'll walk into if they choose to rebel against him, and they continue to head absolutely in that direction.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: So much so that their exile is recognized as fulfilling the word of the Lord through Jeremiah, where the land could finally enjoy its Sabbath rest.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: All the days of the desolation until 70 years were fulfilled.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, the land was making up for lost time.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: They had chosen not to live in a way that recognized the rest that God had commanded, and so part of their exile, along with the sin that they had committed, was due to the fact that they had not been following God's plan for humanity.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: They had rejected him and they had rejected his Sabbath rest.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yet, yet, like all things that we have been unable to carry out under God's will, Jesus was the one who arrived on the scene.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: God himself being able to fulfill all of the promises that he had once talked about.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so we see in the New Testament, I love this part.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: When we get to the New Testament in Luke 4, we see Jesus on his hometown tour.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: He's going back to Nazareth, and he's uh uh he's faithful and he's basically going to church.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to the synagogue on the Sabbath.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so, as usual, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day and he stood up to read.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's uh sort of a daily reading there.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him, and unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is what he read.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: The Spirit of the Lord God is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Does that sound familiar?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, thank you.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: It does sound familiar.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is all the stuff we've been talking about.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is all the language of the Sabbath rest.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is like, you weren't able to do it, and I'm going to do it.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a change that's happening here, though, because Jesus himself, as he is sort of pronouncing the fact that he is the anointed one, is also revealing his mission.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that the people around him did not care for the mission.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: They cared about this first part.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: See, he then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: He began by saying to them, Today as you listen, this scripture has been fulfilled.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Why were they why were their eyes fixed on him?
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's not because they were concerned about the Sabbath, not because they were concerned about setting captives free, but because he had said that he was the one that Isaiah had been talking about.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: God had anointed him with this purpose.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they, let me tell you, they did not like that.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: So these people, they miss the message.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Probably as we would have missed the message if we were like them.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's very easy to look back and criticize, but recognizing that Jesus was showing his true purpose.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this purpose, though, once more, we could even put another rung on the ladder saying, calling it like the Sabbath of Christ, because the identity of Jesus was not so concerned about literally releasing captives from slavery, even though that is certainly a part of God's plan.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: But rather, his greater plan is something Paul picks up on later on, which is saying that we are all slaves, and Jesus is rescuing us from a spiritual slavery.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 6, 17 through 19.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: But thank God that, although you used to be slaves of sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching to which you were handed over, and having been set free from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, I am using a human analogy because of the weakness of your flesh.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: For just as you offered the parts of yourselves as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater lawlessness, so now offer them as slaves to righteousness, which results in sanctification.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we have here is once more God taking this truth and building upon it.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Yes, I rescued my people, my holy nation of Israel, literally out of 400 years of slavery.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: I rescued them out of that.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: But now I am going to rescue my people, my new people, those who have trusted in me out of a different kind of slavery, a spiritual slavery.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: And anybody who has ever experienced addiction or who knows somebody who has dealt with addiction can understand what Paul is saying here.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: That they're handing themselves over to impurity, to greater and greater lawlessness.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul is contrasting the two of these things.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a motif that he uses in a lot of his letters, that we actually have a master who is good, not a master who is evil.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we can be those who are obedient to God because he treats us with love and kindness.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: He rescues us and sets us free.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: He is provided for us, gives us rest, and lets us know that we can have and be comforted in his presence.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: That is the master that Paul wants us to follow.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: That is the master that Jesus is proclaiming.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul is also talking about the spiritual state of the world without Christ.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, I am using one of the basically darkest metaphors in all of humanity, that of bitter slavery, in order to describe to you the pain of those who don't know Jesus.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Whether they know it or not, they are bonded to sin.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: They are bonded to Satan.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: They have chosen to reject Jesus, and whether they know it or not, there is a ball and chain around their leg that is titled Sin and Depravity, holding them back from the freedom and rest that God designs.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you might not know this, but when Jesus was reading in the synagogue that day in Nazareth, he actually stopped partway through the passage.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't finish reading all of that section of Isaiah.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: He kept going.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what the rest of it says.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the day of our God's vengeance, to comfort all who mourn, to provide for those who mourn in Zion or Jerusalem, to give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, festive oil instead of mourning, and splendid clothes instead of despair.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: See, Jesus stopped.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: It says he rolled up the scroll at the part that he his basically his job description.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus came to set the world free, to heal the brokenhearted, to comfort those who are mourning, and to set the captives free from spiritual slavery.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he was doing.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the rest of Isaiah 61 here in verses 2 through 3, this is what is to come.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: This has not yet happened.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where we get the idea that God's Sabbath of final rest from work, from toil over this sort of depraved world, is something that is coming in the future.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: That he set up in Genesis and is going to reveal at a time that has not been given to us yet.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: That even though we can have sort of a rest, certainly a rest from spiritual slavery and the toil of all of those things through Jesus Christ, that there is a time coming in the future when we can have an eternal Sabbath and we can finally rest from this world that we live in, this fallen world filled with depravity, that you and I all contribute to in our own lovely ways.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: But this thing which has been so difficult, we'll finally get rest from.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so here's my encouragement to you is that there are many of you who probably feel very weary and tired.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: This life that we live in is not easy.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: And despite God's plan for the world, despite what he tells us should be happening, despite his designs for, I mean, the one who coined the term, let the first be last and the last be first, the society that he wants is not here.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so that weariness that extends sort of aches in our bones is something that we will have rest from.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: We will no longer work, but we will be able to be with God in his presence forever.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: And there are some of us who know individuals who have passed on, they've sort of exited this mortal coil, they have gone to be with the Lord, trusting in him as their savior, and we know how weary they were at the end of their lives, and we know that they are at peace and at rest with God.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: And for anybody who trusts in Christ, anybody who believes that he is their savior, that he died on the cross for their sins, as we'll talk about this Friday, and rose again, as we'll talk about next Sunday, anybody who trusts in him as their savior will be able to enter into that eternal rest.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's a wonderful, wonderful thing.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it also builds upon every single element we've discussed.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: That from creation to eternity future, we are going back to a time before sin.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're going back to a time before the world was fallen and creation was groaning out.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Where God had a plan for us for what humanity should look like, that it should be a part of our lives, our daily lives, that we consider that God has given us this plan, even though we are no longer as Christians called to follow a Sabbath, that we can still incorporate these things.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: But then also, especially as we speed up towards the future, we see that really God's plan behind all of these things was liberty and freedom.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: The liberty and freedom from toil and for the land and for people, even for oxen, but also and more deeply for those who were experiencing the hardest parts of this world.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: That uh Isaiah passage, the part that Jesus didn't read, said that God would give a crown of glory to those who had lived with ashes.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: That in the burning of this world at times, we can feel like that, those who are associated with mourning itself, sackcloth and ashes, who feel like their life has been so difficult.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: And whether because of foolishness or necessity, or feeling like they're on the bottom of the barrel, I know that God has said that He will raise you up.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: But there's one last thing I want to share with you, which is this that an eternal Sabbath of rest is coming, but we must work until it arrives.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: See, God set forth a plan, and this plan was supposed to extend for all of eternity.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: For the Israelites and the daily week, you worked for six days and you rested on the seventh.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: For the plan that God has for our eternity with him, we will be at rest.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: But while we still have breath in our lungs and are able to do so, we have been called to work.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: And there are some people who have abdicated that responsibility of work and work for God's kingdom, and have instead decided to enjoy the fruits of trusting in Christ and freedom with Him, but have not decided to live like God has intended us to live and be a light into the nations and to let them know about Jesus too.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got to tell you that unlike our world that we live in today, where basically your recognition is based upon success or wealth or popularity, God's kingdom is going to be based upon those who have trusted in Christ, surely, but then also those who have been faithful, or he's saying, Well done, good and faithful servant, for working so diligently for the kingdom.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: So this is my this is sort of my twofold message, is that on the one hand, that we know that there is rest coming.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: And because we know that there is rest coming, we can work even harder now, because as Jesus says, the laborers are few, but the harvest is plenty.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: We need people out in the fields working until God calls us home, where we all get to experience his rest.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's that's what we're heading towards.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, I feel like this is a great cap for all this entire series of Leviticus, because so much of that story was hey, there is a time and a place where these commands were true, but moreover, God has given us an eternal message, an eternal message that applies to us today.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: An eternal Sabbath of rest is coming, and we can look forward to it and hope in it and find strength from it and trust in the provision that God has for us now while we are working until it arrives.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go ahead and pray.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I I have two deep prayers this morning.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that those who are weary would be comforted.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: God, knowing that your rest is coming.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: Father, that they might feel even just a temporary rest here.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because you have not intended, Lord, for us.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: We are frail, for us to work incessantly.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Lord, I pray for those who are weary now that you would strengthen them and help them to have hope in the future and be encouraged about their mission that they're on now.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, I also pray for those of us who maybe have not understood the depth of your command to work while the harvest is out.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: And God, that by the power of your spirit you would convict us about the areas of our life where we might be more diligent in our work, where we might not focus so much on our lives, but Lord, the lives, rather, the souls of many who don't know you.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Father, these are my prayers.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: And as we head into this uh holy week, God, as we reflect on your Son Jesus Christ entering in on a fall, providing once more proof of prophecy that he is the Messiah and the King.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: God, we also know that he was heading towards death.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Father, as we reflect on those things, please help us, Lord, to have encouragement for the future and to trust in your promises for us.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks everyone, and I hope you have a great week.