%20copy.jpg)
NewCity Orlando Sermons
NewCity Orlando is a gospel-centered church pursuing personal transformation, authentic community and cultural renewal. Our mission is whole-life gospel transformation for the glory of God and the good of our neighbor. Subscribe here to listen to our weekly sermons.
NewCity Orlando Sermons
Leviticus Is For Lovers | Leviticus 25
In this final sermon in our Leviticus Is For Lovers series, Pastor of Formation & Mission Benjamin Kandt preaches from Leviticus 25, exploring the transformative power of rest, economic fairness, and compassion for the poor. He reflects on Tim Keller's insights into early Christian generosity, where personal integrity met radical economic sharing, offering a model that challenges our modern values.
Pastor Ben also explains the essence of Jubilee, a time every 50 years when debts were forgiven, lands returned, and lives reset, providing a fresh start for those trapped in poverty. He unpacks how these ancient practices critique modern economic systems, urging a balance between ownership and communal generosity. He encourages us to embrace a spirit of 'Jubilee generosity,' recognizing the debts canceled by Christ's crucifixion and fostering a community rich in trust and gratitude. In doing so, we can reimagine a life where justice, generosity, and grace are woven into the very fabric of our being.
Hello everyone. This is Pastor Daniel. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, orlando. At New City we believe all of us need all of Jesus for all of life. For more resources, visit our website at newcityorlandocom. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:Please remain standing, if you're able, for this morning's scripture reading. It is from various verses in Leviticus, chapter 25. As we end our series this morning on the book of Leviticus, 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 land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. For six years you shall sow your the Lord. For six years you shall sow your field and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits. But in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you 49 years. Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the 10th day of the seventh month, on the day of atonement, you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land and you shall consecrate the 50th 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 In this year of jubilee.
Speaker 1:Each of you shall return to his property and if you make a sale to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. You shall pay your neighbor according to the number of years after the jubilee and he shall pay your neighbor according to the number of years after the Jubilee, and he shall sell to you according to the number of years for crops. If the years are many, you shall increase the price and if the years are few, you shall reduce the price, for it is the number of the crops that he is selling to you. You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God, for I am the Lord, your God. The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine, for you are strangers and sojourners with me.
Speaker 1:If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner and he shall live with you, take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit. I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God, for they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. They shall not be sold as slaves. You shall not rule over him ruthlessly, but shall fear your God, for it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord, your God. This is God's word, please be seated.
Speaker 2:Today we do something that many of us fail to do when we try to read through the Bible. In a year we finish Leviticus, and it's been a wild ride, right. We've gone through quite a bit over this fall and we end, hopefully, with a deep confidence that Leviticus really is for lovers. I'm hoping that that's the case. Some of you, who've been worshiping with us since July, are like man. This church talks about politics, religion, sex, what's next? Money Yep, that's what today's about. So here we go.
Speaker 2:You know you could summarize the last two weeks and this week with this phrase, quote we share our table with all, but we do not share our bed with all. It's a good summary of it. It actually comes from a letter from a first century Christian named Diogenes, and he described the difference between early Christians, the church early on, and their not yet Christian Roman neighbors. And this is what he said. This is how he described the difference between us and them. If you will, he said, quote we share our table with all. We're generous, we're lavish, we're accepting and welcoming, but we do not share our bed with all. We're lavish, we're accepting and welcoming, but we do not share our bed with all. We're chaste, we're sober-minded when it comes to sexuality. I think this is a good summary of the last two weeks, and this week Tim Keller, talking about this, quoted it like this he said in other words, pagans were promiscuous with their body but stingy with their money, whereas the early Christians were stingy with their body and promiscuous with their money. If you come away with nothing else but remembering that and living into that more, the last three weeks will have been a success that you are stingy with your body and promiscuous with your money. And so when we look at Leviticus 25, we hear about this thing called the Jubilee, the Jubilee. And if you have a Bible, go ahead and open it up to Leviticus 25 or turn on a device, because we're going to look at the Jubilee under three questions what is this thing called the Jubilee, what does it say about God and what does it say about us? What is it? What does it say about God and what does it say about us? What is it? What does it say about God and what does it say about us? Look with me at Leviticus 25, verse 1. It says this 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 land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. Okay, this word's important.
Speaker 2:Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was a Jewish rabbi who marched with MLK in the civil rights movement, wrote a book called Sabbath. It's excellent, it's worth reading, and in there he basically argues yeah, you know, if you just do a study of world religions, it's easy to sanctify space, temples and holy mountains. That's junior varsity. If you really want to do something impressive, try sanctifying time. That's what the God of the Bible did. The God of the Bible actually set apart one day out of seven and sanctified time called Sabbath. Okay, that's an important principle as we come to this text. The reason why is because you can. The way we mark our time is by looking up at the sky. You can mark the day or the year by looking at the sun. You can mark the month by looking at the moon. You cannot mark a week by looking anywhere else except the Bible. The Bible alone reveals to us that God worked six days and rested one, and that one day of rest is called Sabbath. That's foundational to everything we're going to hear about in our text this morning.
Speaker 2:Because then, what the author of Leviticus does in 25, moses, is he takes chapter 25, 25, verses 1 through 7, he gives us what's called a Sabbath year. So not only do we work six days and rest one, now we work six years and rest one whole year. That's the first part of Leviticus 25. Then it goes on and in Leviticus 25, 8 through 17, it gets dialed up again. So not only a Sabbath day or a Sabbath year, but what's called the year of Jubilee. And where this happens is when you work six sets of six years, you have a year of rest and release. That's called the Jubilee.
Speaker 2:Okay, let me unpack that a little bit. One year in every 50, three things happened First, debts were forgiven. Second, land was returned. And third, slaves were set free. Those are the three aspects of Jubilee Debts forgiven, land returned, slaves freed, and this was all, in a way, not only to sanctify time but to sanctify Israel's economy.
Speaker 2:And if you didn't know your economy or your finances needed to be sanctified, you should realize that Leviticus does make a distinction between sacred and common, but not sacred and secular. That's a modern distinction the Bible knows nothing of. There is nothing outside of the jurisdiction of God's word and what he has to speak to, including maybe even especially, your finances, slash, economy. It's a big deal we say around here. All of us need all of Jesus for all of life. One of the places we really need Jesus is with our pocketbooks and our wallets, and Leviticus 25 has something to say about that.
Speaker 2:But I want to kind of get inside the existential experience of this. The Jubilee was a once-in-a-lifetime fresh start. Can you touch that Like? Can you feel that Like? Have you ever found yourself in a position where you're just like man? I wish I could just get a do-over on that. I wish I could get a fresh start. Maybe it's your college years, maybe it's your career, maybe it's your life. Some of you play video games and you know that moment when you die in the video game, you regenerate back to where you last saved or whatever it is Like. You're just kind of like. I wish I could get one of those for me. This is actually, I think, one of the reasons why there's so much energy and excitement around the turn of the New Year is because it's the closest thing societally, culturally, that we have. Like a Jubilee, new year, new you. You get a reset right, and that's what I want you to feel that as we get into what the Jubilee is, because in biblical times, a man who incurred a great debt that he could not pay could sell his land or even his labor in order to pay that debt.
Speaker 2:And in similar in these situations, if that was left unchecked, what it would do is it would create this significant social division between the landowners and the debtors. If you will. And God knew this, he knew this was a danger. So Leviticus 25 actually prohibits anyone from selling their land or their labor indefinitely. In effect, you can only rent out your land or your labor for a maximum of 49 years. So every 49 years about once in a person's lifetime, the slate was wiped clean. All the things that you have stacked against you were dealt with, done away with.
Speaker 2:You can imagine a poor Israelite anticipating the year of Jubilee, their entire lives waiting, counting down the day. We don't have anything like this that builds that level of anticipation A year of release, a year of rest, a year of renewal. God built into the fabric of society when he sanctified time and his economy. Now I've learned enough from journalists to know there's a good question to ask, which is who benefits. The cynical way of asking that or stating that is to say, follow the money.
Speaker 2:When we get to Jubilee, it really is the people who benefit the most are those who would be caught in cycles of intergenerational poverty. That's who benefits most from the Jubilee, because these laws in here were to prevent anyone from coming to utter ruin as a result of their debt. It's a big deal, and so God knows that in every society, wealth always ends up in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Every society, that's true, including communist societies. There's just less wealth to go around, and so this is a significant thing. God knew this, and so the Jubilee is this built-in economic mercy. It's a fail-safe for the poor so they wouldn't die in their poverty, but also for the rich, so they wouldn't die in their wealth.
Speaker 2:You see, the year of Jubilee was a way for God to understand how he could have a just economic society among his people. But notice what he doesn't do. He doesn't hand out government stimulus checks. That's not what it says here. Nor does he reallocate private property to other people to try to get something called quote equity. It's not what he does. What he does is he actually creates a society with social structures and values that actually create a way for everyone to have access to meaningful work and productive lives. It's a big deal. Now.
Speaker 2:The Jubilee was meant, in God's missional intention, to create in Israel an economic and a social policy that actually set them apart from every other nation on planet earth. That was its intent, so that nations would look on and see the holiness of their economy and they would know the holiness of their god. Their god is different from every other god, the united states. One of our, one of our chief gods maybe zeus in our pantheon is money, the almighty dollar. If it's not money, it's individualism, it's that you and your autonomy as an individual and your freedom, you better believe there's ways in which the Jubilee can help us, can set us apart as a people, to not worship the gods of our nation but to worship the one true and living God.
Speaker 2:And so I want to take a little brief excursus and talk about that for a moment, because there's two errors people make when they try to apply the Bible from there and then to modern problems here and now. The first issue is that they just kind of do a thin application and analysis of the text and just go oh well, they did that, then Maybe we should do debt forgiveness for everybody. In America they do something like that. But second and worse is they go. Well, what does an ancient book have to say for modern people? And that's a worse problem.
Speaker 2:I'd rather you misapply, I think, the year of Jubilee than not even attempt to apply it at all. I think Don't quote me on that, I just said it though. So when we think about things like the year of Jubilee, most of our minds, I assume, go towards government and nonprofit. That's my assumption. We go to government or nonprofit. But here's the thing If we do that, we're leaving out the two most potent and resilient social institutions in every society the family and the church. Jubilee, I think, is better applied to the family and the church than it is applied to our government and NGOs. Now, I don't think it has zero application there, I just think it's better applied to the family and the church. In fact, I think that's how the New Testament applies the Jubilee principles. It's primarily to the family, the oikos, the household, and the church, the oikos, the household of God. I think that's the best place to apply the Jubilee, and one of the reasons for that is because the Jubilee won't work in any common economic models. So I'll just give you three that we might all know.
Speaker 2:Democratic capitalism Jubilee won't work. It challenges it in unique ways. That's important. Traditional, monarchical kind of feudalism a lot of middle-aged stuff won't work. State-centric socialism the Jubilee won't work. And here's why the Jubilee challenges all of them, affirms some things but challenges them. The Jubilee challenges socialism because private property really matters. The point of the Jubilee is that you get your land back your land, the people's land. That's the point of the Jubilee, is that you get your land back your land, the people's land. That's the point of the Jubilee. So socialism won't work.
Speaker 2:The Jubilee also challenges capitalism because wealth disparity really matters. You see, the basis of the Jubilee was land ownership, because material wealth can be a blessing to both the rich and the poor. But the purpose of the Jubilee was debt release, because wealth accumulation can be a blessing to both the rich and the poor. But the purpose of the Jubilee was debt release, because wealth accumulation can be a curse to both the rich and the poor. So said differently, the Jubilee critiques big government that destroys any meaningful sense of personal or family ownership. But the Jubilee also critiques rampant individualism that secures individual wealth at the expense of others. Wherever you find yourself, the Jubilee is gonna challenge you, because you are less biblical and more cultural in your economics unless you've been tutored by this book. And so how could the Jubilee help make Christian families and churches capable of offering real solutions to economic inequities and problems that we have in our day?
Speaker 2:Let me just say it this is my main point, and I'm going to unpack it a little bit we can give creatively and generously. That's it. That's the big takeaway Give creatively and generously, which we do Now. When I say that, I mean New City New City is one of our unstated values is we're a profoundly generous church. I love it. It's one of the things that I think is a crowning jewel of this congregation. You all are generous people. It's a big deal, but Americans who are religious are actually profoundly generous people too. Let me just give you some stats.
Speaker 2:Rodney Stark was a sociologist. He said this the American economy benefits to the tune of 2.6 trillion dollars per year thanks to its 344,000 religious congregations. Did you catch that? Those 300 plus thousand religious organizations, congregations across America, benefit the American country, the American nation, $2.4 trillion per year? Let me give you some perspective on that. That's about a sixth of our economic output. Let me give you a little bit more. A lower estimate than that had the giving, the generosity of religious Americans as more than the annual revenues of the top 10 tech companies, including Apple, amazon and Google combined. We are a generous people. God had something in mind in the Jubilee. If you give creatively and generously, you can change your nation powerfully.
Speaker 2:Now, evangelical Christians I've been saying religious people, because it's everybody in that category. Evangelical Christians. We only give about four percent of our income to the church. It's pretty low. It's way lower than the ten percent that was expected in the Old Testament and certainly lower than the radical generosity expected in the New Testament. But even with that, christian philanthropy accounted for 70% of all American philanthropy in 2022 at a $300 billion total. So we're not as generous as the Bible calls us to be or the gospel walking worthy of the gospel would make us. We are not. That we're actually significantly lower to the point of this is a problem, and yet we still give 70% of all the philanthropy in the United States of America Christians. We outgave the US government in addressing global poverty. In 2022 as well, we did the church in America, christians. This is a big deal. We are a jubilee people and it actually shows. The stats show it. That's why I'm reading these to you.
Speaker 2:So let me come back to a question here Taxes or tithes? No, yes, you could talk to him about that, taxes or tithes? Let's just use our kingdom imaginations for a moment on a present day issue. A headline that just ran yesterday was about student loan forgiveness. This is a big political issue in some ways. Let me just ask you, who am I more willing to trust with debt forgiveness? An organization that has racked up $35.97 trillion in debt called the US government, or those who have been forgiven much and therefore know how to love much? Who would I trust with that? So I'm not prescribing this. I'm saying let's stir up our kingdom imaginations. You all are the saints filled with the spirit of God for creative, imaginative kingdom applications of things like Leviticus 25. I'm just trying to stir that up a little bit.
Speaker 2:Consider what it would look like if every church in America pooled their money and paid the student loan debt of every one of their members. Some of y'all got student loan debt. You're like, yes, actually, can we make that policy? Can we get the elders back up here and do something about this. Just imagine, imagine. That's all I'm asking. I'm not saying we have to do that, I'm just saying what if? What would it look like if the United States of America thought, wow, the church in America has tackled the student loan debt. Now Democrats and Republicans don't have to argue about this anymore. If you think that's crazy, read books, period about history, and you'll see that this is how it's always gone Universities started by Christians, orphanages started by Christians, hospitals started by Christians, homeless shelters started by Christians. The church has always done this because we've always been a Jubilee people. And so here's the call. I'm just trying to stir up your imagination. What would be, what could be, if the church lived out the Jubilee? Why is this? Why are we historically so rich and creative in our generosity as a people?
Speaker 2:Well, my second point is what does the Jubilee say about God? Our God is a Jubilee, god. Look with me at the text again. Verse 17. Three times this phrase shows up. Verse 17 says you shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God. Why? For I am Yahweh, all caps, your God. Verse 38, he says it again I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God. Verse 55 closes the chapter, for it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am Yahweh, your God.
Speaker 2:You see the way the book is, the way the chapter, chapter 25, is stitched together. It's meant to draw your attention to who is this God that would have a command, a ritual, like this Jubilee year. What is this God like? And so I want to ask that question what does the Jubilee say about this God, our God, the only God, the true and living God. What does it say about this God? First, our God owns everything. Our God owns everything.
Speaker 2:Look at verse 23. It says this this is part of the reason for the Jubilee. Why would you let the land go back to its original owners? Why Verse 23,? The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine, because y'all are tenants on my land anyways. So it doesn't belong to you. Nothing belongs to you, everything belongs to God. That's actually a quote we use with our children all the time, when our kids go through that phase when everything's mine and they grab and we say nothing belongs to you, everything belongs to you, everything belongs to God. My five-year-old I think he was two at the time said what about my hair? I said, okay, you can have your hair Not even theologically accurate, but I was going to concede that in the moment, everything belongs to God.
Speaker 2:God says things like in the Psalms the earth and all of its fullness are mine. In Psalm 50, he says if I was hungry would I tell you the cattle on a thousand hills is mine. This is the God that we worship, not a tribal deity, not a nationalistic deity. The God who created all things, who's got copyright over everything. That's the God that the Jubilee reveals to us. What else does this say about God? Number two not only does our God own everything, our God oversees everything. That means actively engaged and involved in everything.
Speaker 2:Look with me at verse 20. Verse 20 says and if you say, what shall we eat in the seventh year if we may not sow or gather in our crop? I love this. I love that God predicts the concerns that his people would legitimately have. Listen, if you were told, for one year every seven, you were not allowed to work at all, wouldn't one of the first questions you'd be go hey, what am I supposed to eat? Mike Jones taught me if you don't grind, you don't shine. If you don't work, you don't eat. So what are we supposed to eat? That's a good question. God thinks so. He actually predicted it. And then he goes on in verse 21. I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years. When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating some of the old crop. You shall eat the old until the ninth year when its crop arrives.
Speaker 2:If everything belongs to our God by right, everything obeys our God by might. He controls it all, he oversees it all. He's actively involved with it all. Jesus says a sparrow doesn't fall from the heavens without your father knowing it. He numbers the hairs of your head, every lily he has clothed more beautifully than Solomon. When the sun rises, god says get up, son. When the rain falls, god says fall. This is the way the biblical imagination is supposed to work. Our God oversees everything. He's involved. So then when we go to? Okay, well, you know, life is just a zero-sum game. If I get 30%, that means you get 30%. That person gets 30%, and then there was 10%. That's not how it works. It's not this pie that gets cut up and distributed out. In fact, god can quote command his blessing.
Speaker 2:We do not live in a closed, materialistic universe. We live in God's created cosmos. That's a fundamental axiom that all Christians must believe in, or else it'll show up in your life. It'll show up in things like anxiety and selfishness and overly concerned with your own interests. And so in entrepreneurship this is called the zero to one principle. That's what Peter Thiel calls it. In business strategy, it's called the blue ocean strategy. I love this language of when you do business where there's no competitor, because it's about creating new land, not dividing up existing land. Sound like the Jubilee.
Speaker 2:Modern secular business authors are taking principles that are true in scripture, because they paid good attention to what works and what doesn't, and they saying oh wow, the world actually seems to be way more fruitful and abundant than we ever thought it was. Absolutely, it is because we live in a cosmos not of scarcity but of abundance. That's the God who can command his blessing. Third, our God operates everywhere, owns everything, oversees everything, operates everywhere. Look again with me at verse 23. The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine, for you are strangers and sojourners. Quote with me.
Speaker 2:Okay, god has promised his presence with his people, but it's important to lean in here and go. God has promised his presence with all of his people. And why do I say that? Well, because one of God's signature moves throughout the story of Scripture is that he shows up for what Bible scholars call the quartet of the vulnerable. The quartet of the vulnerable includes widows, orphans, immigrants and the poor, and so it's important God's saying here everyone, rich and poor, are strangers and sojourners with me. His presence has this ability to sanctify his people, all of his people, and that's significant because it's going to help us understand a little bit about what it means for us as his people, which is my third point. What does the jubilee say about us? Another way to question, answer that or ask that is how does the jubilee shape our anthropology? That's what I'm asking.
Speaker 2:What is the right response to the reality of who this god is? Well, three times in our text it says I am the lord your Well. Three times in our text it says I am the Lord, your God, and three times in this text it says fear your God. So what is the right response to the reality of who God is? Fear it's to live with a reverential awe, a sobering awareness that God is. Look at verse 17. You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God, for I am the Lord, your God. Verse 36. Take no interest from him or prophet, but fear your God that your brother may live beside you. Verse 43. You shall not rule over him ruthlessly, but shall fear your God.
Speaker 2:I can remember where I was. I was on a conversation with a friend named Matt, who I knew knew a lot about the fear of the Lord, and I asked him I was like Matt, how would you explain what this is? And he said this was a few years ago. He said this is the fear of God. God sees, god cares, god will act. So what does it mean to live in the fear of God? It means to live in such a way where you live, you really do believe and live out the realities that God sees everything, god cares about the things he said he cares about and God will act. If you do that, if you really do believe God sees, god cares, god acts. Guess what you'll do when there's no audience, you'll be aware that there's a God who is still in the audience.
Speaker 2:Jesus calls this the discipline of secrecy. Now somebody else, dallas Willard, calls what Jesus calls the discipline of secrecy. But this is what I mean. He says when you give, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, but do it in a way where your Father in heaven sees you and will reward you. This is what it means to fear God. So if we were to fear God, what would that mean? What would that look like? What does this say about us?
Speaker 2:Well, first, if God owns everything, we are simply his servants. Look at verse 55 with me, for it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am Yahweh, your God. It's important to know this.
Speaker 2:The Jubilee was not just for the poor, but for the rich, because God knows what Bob Dylan found out by reading his Bible You're gonna have to serve somebody. This is the way that Jesus says it in Matthew 6, 24. He says no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. The hard reset that is the Jubilee is for the rich and the poor, because God wants to remind us in this room right now who do you serve? Who do you serve? Do you serve God or do you serve mammon?
Speaker 2:There's a story in 1635, the first congregational church of Boston disciplined one of their businessmen named Robert Cain for selling his product at a 6% profit. He got church discipline. Remember what Damien said up here one of the things elders are responsible is discipline. Now you might think that that's messed up or whatever. The church had previously decided that Christians should only sell their goods at a 4% profit, and Robert Cain agreed to that when he became a member he said, yep, I agree to that. And then he lied and went and sold us at six percent profit.
Speaker 2:The church elders believed that Jesus spoke often enough about money, that they wanted to encourage their people to give their money away and not to hoard it for themselves. They also believed that greed is one of those sins that most of us don't confess. It's subtle, more subtle than some other sins that we confess with more frequency. So whether you want to debate that 6% profit was fair or not, what I don't think you can debate was they, as a church community, decided on something that was a threshold for greed and they held themselves to it. Why? Because they knew the temptation to serve mammon, to be devoted to mammon and despise King Jesus.
Speaker 2:And so the Jubilee is actually for us because we are his servants. We recognize that, but if God oversees everything, then we are also his stewards. I'm not gonna read it again, but going back to verses 20 through 22, when God talks about commanding his blessing, this really was a test in Israel's faith in the promises of God. God does this to his people. We sang it in one of those early songs about there's things that you can only know when you have to walk by faith, and God knows that. So he leads his people lovingly into seasons where they have to walk by faith. He rhythmically built every seventh year into their calendar to teach them to live by faith that God's going to provide. It's a big deal, and so they're asked by God to deliberately forego one year's harvest, trusting that he would supply enough in the previous years to tide them over. That's what the Jubilee says. Now I don't.
Speaker 2:You don't have to show your hands, but many of you are in Sermon on the Mount circles. You're memorizing the Sermon on the Mount in community with one another and working out what that looks like in your life. And if you are in a Sermon on the Mount circle, or have been, you know you're hearing the Jubilee all over in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Why? Because Jesus didn't skip Leviticus in his Bible reading plan, and so he's alluding to it regularly here. This is how Jesus says this. Remember Leviticus 25.20 says this what shall we eat in the seventh year if we may not sow or gather in our crop? Listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 6.31. Therefore, not sow or gather in our crop. Listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 6 31. Therefore, do not be anxious saying what shall we eat? Hear the Jubilee language, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear, for the Gentiles seek after all these things.
Speaker 2:People who don't know God are concerned about where they're going to get their food, their drink and their clothes Implied. People who do know God know enough of God to be careless in the care of God. That's the invitation of Jubilee. So let me ask you do you believe that God's creation is a world of abundance? Do you have enough confidence that God is generous towards you and your family and your church that he'll provide for you? One of the ways you can tell is you can tell somebody's values not by what they say, but by looking at two places their calendar and their bank account. Where do they spend their time? Where do they spend their money? If your circle looked at your calendar and your bank account, would they see somebody who believes in a God of Jubilee or somebody who lives in a closed system, secular universe of scarcity and merit? Which one would they see? And so, if God is everywhere and operates everywhere? Third and finally, then we are sojourners.
Speaker 2:I get that word from the text in verse 23. The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine, for you Now, this is important. I really I don't know what it's going to take. I really wish we had you plurals in our Bibles. I actually think it would change the world. Maybe revival would break out if we just put you plurals back into the ESV, because you'd stop thinking things through an individualistic frame. You'd read verse 23 and read this for y'all are strangers and sojourners with me. God says to you why does that matter? Well, think about this for a moment. This is being told. Verse 1 tells us that this is being told to Moses on Mount Sinai. They're not out of the wilderness yet. That doesn't happen. Actually, for a few more books in the Bible, this is preparing them for when they get into the promised land.
Speaker 2:Okay, think about Israel's story a little bit. When Israel first entered the promised land, there were no rich or poor. There's only one category of people former slaves. It's the only category. That's important. God freed them from slavery in Egypt and when they arrived in Canaan, they were all on equal footing. And the book of Joshua is this distribution of the land based on tribes. People are given land. Whose land? God's land, generously given to his people. And so then, at the time that they get to Sinai, where we are right now in the text, there were no slaves, there were no landowners, there would have been no wealthy and no one would have had any debt. Do you see that this is what God's liberation from Egypt did for them? One commentator says it like this quote this was a group of people who had not yet developed any real social stratification. Another way to say, that is, they were all sojourners, every one of them. Could you imagine a community like that where there's no social stratification? I can. It's called the church. No more Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free in Christ Jesus.
Speaker 2:There's a saying that the ground is level at the foot of the cross. Now, I'm not over-spiritualizing this. What I'm saying is that if we recognize our position before God in Christ, that means that God is our Father through Jesus, which means everyone in this room that knows Jesus is a brother or a sister of yours. Why does that matter? Because eight times in the text in Leviticus 25, it uses the word brother. When you look to your neighbor on the left or on the right and you realize they're worse off than I am, you recognize God owns everything. Everything I have is a gift. I just steward this. You go. Oh, I'm gonna give out of my heart, not compulsively, not coercively, willingly. Why? Because God loves a cheerful giver. He says I'm gonna give so that my brother or my sister could be lifted up. Why? Because there's no unequal ground at the foot of the cross, no social stratification. You see, this is a principle that would actually shape and change we this people here.
Speaker 2:Okay, I want to ask a question as we close here, which is did the book of Leviticus work? We're closing out this sermon series. Did it work? Yes and no, that's my response. Yes because if you look back at Leviticus 1.1, it says this the beginning of the book says the Lord called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting. Okay, so this is important. Yahweh is in the tent of meeting, moses is outside the tent of meeting. Okay, and all of Leviticus is about getting Moses inside the tent of meeting. Okay, and all of Leviticus is about getting Moses inside the tent of meeting.
Speaker 2:Numbers 1.1, the next book in the Bible, starts off like this the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the tent of meeting. It worked. Moses is with Yahweh in the tent of meeting. Now. All the rituals and atonements and burnt offerings. It worked the rituals and atonements and burnt offerings and it worked. God can dwell with sinful man again.
Speaker 2:But it also didn't work. Why didn't it work? It didn't work because there is zero evidence in any chronicle or book of the Bible or external historical sources that says that Israel ever actually obeyed the Jubilee, which is a warning to all of us. I hope you heard the genius, the brilliance, the mercy of God in Leviticus 25, and then I hope you hear the uh-oh.
Speaker 2:The hardness of human heart meant that Israel never obeyed the year of Jubilee, so much so that 2 Chronicles 36, 21 says this is the reason why Israel was kicked out of the land. It says this until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths all the days that it lay desolate. It kept Sabbath to fulfill 70 years. God counted all of the 70, or all of the years 49 years plus one. 49 years plus one. He counted up all of the times when they didn't actually obey the Jubilee, and he kicked Israel out of the land for the entirety of those years because the land deserved its Sabbath. Why? Because God owns everything, god oversees everything and God operates everywhere he can do that. Their exile was because of the refusal to obey Leviticus 25. Our exile is because of our refusal to obey God too, and so the prophets picked up Jubilee.
Speaker 2:It actually became a motif in the prophetic literature. If you really study Leviticus 25, which I'd encourage you to do really study this text, you'll see it all over the place in the rest of the Bible. The prophets are picking up on it, isaiah 61,. All these other places are. We just read Amos in the McShane reading plan. Amos is riffing on Jubilee often and it becomes such a theme of the hope of God's coming kingdom that Jesus used it as his role description.
Speaker 2:He's in the synagogue in Nazareth. He steps up in Luke 4, opens a scroll to Isaiah 61, and reads out loud this the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. Hear the Jubilee language he has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives. Hear the Jubilee language In recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed. You hear the Jubilee language If you don't wait for the last line To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Jesus is our Jubilee. According to Jesus, he rolled up the scroll. His intro to his sermon was today, this is fulfilled in your hearing. I'm the Jubilee. I'm here now. And then he started talking about how the Jubilee is not just for Israel but for everyone, and they tried to chase him and throw him off a cliff.
Speaker 2:The Jubilee has always been disruptive and radical, even in Jesus' day, as he walks around. Why are there all these Sabbath controversies in Jesus' ministry. The Jubilee is here. Why are there all these questions and challenges? Who are you to forgive sins? The Jubilee is here. Why are there all these questions and challenges? Who are you to forgive sins? The Jubilee is here. Why is Jesus opening the eyes of the blind and setting people free from demonic oppression and constantly subverting cultural norms of his moment? The Jubilee is here.
Speaker 2:You read just read Luke and Acts, together with Leviticus 25 in your mind and you'll be blown away. You could almost describe the people who respond positively to Jesus are those who are recognized and are excited about the Jubilee, and those who receive him negatively are those who don't want the Jubilee, the people who didn't obey it for all of Israel's history. But debts forgiven, slaves free, land returned it doesn't come for free. In fact, it's what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called a costly grace. Debts don't just get canceled, they have to be paid or else somebody incurs that debt. And so, as Jesus goes around proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor, he knew what that meant. Jesus knew that the Jubilee was actually a day when liberty and freedom and forgiveness are proclaimed at the cost of somebody.
Speaker 2:If you notice back in our text, leviticus 25.9, quote on the day of atonement, you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. You can go back a few weeks when we preach on Leviticus 16,. The day of atonement was a moment when two goats were used as images, confessing the debts of the people of Israel. On those goats, one was killed in the place of the people, the other was sent out into the wilderness to remove their debts from them. Why does this matter? Well, because I think Jesus knew that you cannot have the year of the Lord's favor, the Jubilee, without the day of the Lord, what's called the day of judgment, and you can't have the day of the Lord without what the Gospel of John calls the hour of the Lord, without what the gospel of John calls the hour of the Lord, jesus's crucifixion. You see, jesus came to give his riches to pay our debt. That's how he could be the Jubilee.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you a story that kind of unpacks that a little bit. There's a story of a young Russian soldier who was made paymaster. I had to look up what that word meant. It's the person who makes sure all the soldiers get paid for their wages. Okay, he was made paymaster in the military because his father was a friend of Tsar Nicholas. I okay, but this dude had a gambling problem and he gambled away all of his own money and a bunch of the government's money.
Speaker 2:And it got so bad that he had a representative come from Tsar Nicholas and basically say hey, we're coming to check the books just to make sure everything's okay down there. And so he panicked because he knew he was in trouble. He sat down, got out the books, totaled up all the funds that he owed and what his money was, and he saw this astronomical debt that he was in and his incredibly small amount of savings and he was overwhelmed and panicked and decided he was going to take his own life. And so the story goes he actually realized he could never pay this, and so he started drafting out a letter where he totaled up all that he had done, all of his debts, all of his failures, and he put this letter there and he put a revolver on the table and at the bottom of the letter he wrote this phrase, quote a great debt, who can pay? And he decided that at midnight he would use the revolver to take his own life.
Speaker 2:Well, he fell asleep before midnight came and, as was part of his custom, tsar Nicholas himself actually went around the barracks and when he got to this man's barracks he actually saw his light still on, and so he walked in and he saw the revolver and he saw the letter and he saw the man sleeping in his chair and he walked up and he read the letter in its entirety and he was about to wake the man up, to arrest him and have him thrown in prison and maybe executed. But then he saw the last line what great debt, who can pay? And Tsar Nicholas, in that moment, felt magnanimous, he felt some generosity overcome him and he wrote one word on the letter and he walked out. The young soldier woke up and, as he realized it was past midnight, he went to reach for the revolver and as he did, he looked at the paper and he saw what was written on the paper in the handwriting of the czar himself, and it simply said Nicholas, what a great debt, who can pay? Tsar Nicholas can pay Even so, much so that when the representative from the Tsar's government came, the representative recognized that the total debt was actually completely covered from the Tsar's financial bank accounts himself and he let him go free, despite the fact that he had an astronomical debt.
Speaker 2:So let me go back to where we started.
Speaker 2:How can you become stingy with your body and promiscuous with your money?
Speaker 2:Only when you come to the place where you can look at your life and say a great debt, who can pay?
Speaker 2:And then you look at Jesus and you see a man who steps forward and signs his name on your ledger Jesus Christ. This is where the Apostle Paul puts it in Colossians 2, and you, who were dead in your trespasses, and the uncircumcision of your flesh, god made alive, together with Jesus, having forgiven us all our trespasses. The uncircumcision of your flesh, god made alive, together with Jesus, having forgiven us all our trespasses. Here it is by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. Let's pray, jesus. We look to you and we look to you, conscious of our great debt who could pay? And we look to you a second time when we see you on the cross, for the joy that was set before you, paying our debt. Thank you, jesus. I pray, holy Spirit, that you would work in our midst to create a jubilee generosity in this congregation, knowing you, trusting you, knowing who you say you are and who you say we are. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.