Proclaim Liberty
This Sunday we come to Leviticus 25, and I think this might be the chapter that feels the most distant to us. Not because of the blood or the altars, because there aren't any in this chapter. It's because of money. Leviticus 25 is about land, loans, interest, and what happens to a family that loses everything. And the way God handles all of that is so radically different from the way we see things. We have built so much on top of our capitalistic viewpoint that this passage feels distant not only in time but also in ideology.
Last week we took a look at the Sabbath, one day out of seven that belongs to the Lord. In Leviticus 25 that same pattern grows. Every seventh year the land itself gets a Sabbath. You don't sow your field and you don't prune your vineyard, and whatever grows on its own is food for everyone, for you, for your servants, for the sojourner who lives with you, and even for the animals (25:4-7). And then it grows again. You count seven of those Sabbath years, forty nine years, and the year after that is the Jubilee:
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" (25:10).
Think about what that means. If you lost your family's land, you got it back. If things got so bad that you sold yourself to work off what you owed, you walked out, you and your children with you, and you went home (25:41). Every fifty years, everything resets. No one stays trapped forever.
But how does that even work? How do you buy and sell anything in a system like that?
In Israel, nobody really bought land. They bought harvests. If the Jubilee was forty years away, the price was high, and if it was two years away, the price was low, because you were only paying for the crops you'd get before the land went back to its family (25:15-16). Every sale had an end date built into it. And God gives the reason: "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me" (25:23).
This is where everything starts. We assume that what we earn is ours, and what's ours is ours forever. God starts from the other end. It's His. The land is His, and the people are His too. Twice in this chapter He says it: "they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt" (25:42, 55). And so no one in Israel could own another Israelite for good, and no one could own the land for good, because God was the owner of both. Leviticus is laying out a truly grounded economic framework, and it begins with this: God is the owner, and He has a desire to restore all things unto Himself.
And again, the people of Israel had the same question you and I would have. God even writes it into the text: "What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?" (25:20).
I think that's a fair question. I really do. It's the question we ask as a church too. We don't have an unlimited budget. We don't have unlimited manpower. We don't have unlimited resources. And so asking how we'll make sure we have enough isn't faithless. It's honest. But look at how God answers. He doesn't scold them. He doesn't say, how dare you ask. He says, "I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years" (25:21). The question of resources is valid. But the response of faith is important. God was saying to His people, the field was never what fed you. I was.
Then the chapter does something I love. It follows a man as he falls. Four times it starts the same way: "If your brother becomes poor" (25:25, 35, 39, 47). First he sells part of his land. Then he has nothing left to sell. Then he sells himself to work off his debt. Then he sells himself to a foreigner. It's a man going down, rung by rung.
And here's what's so interesting, Leviticus never asks how he got there. It doesn't ask if he was lazy, or if he made a bad investment, or if somebody cheated him. It doesn't ask whose fault it was. It just keeps calling him "your brother." At the top, he's your brother. At the bottom, he's still your brother. And it tells you what you owe him: "you shall support him... Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you" (25:35-36).
That your brother may live beside you. That's the goal. Not that he gets what he deserves. That he lives, and that he lives next to you.
I think this is where the chapter hits closest to home for us as a church. God is our redeemer. But our job is to make sure that when a brother is in need, we support them. Not only with prayers. Prayers are good, and we should pray. But we meet their physical needs too.
Now here's the part I can't stop thinking about. When does the Jubilee start? You'd think it would start on New Year's, or at harvest time. No. Look at the date: "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" (25:9).
The Day of Atonement. If you were with us back in October, you remember that day. It's the one day of the year the high priest went behind the veil with blood, the day the goat carried the sins of the people away into the wilderness, the day God said, "You shall be clean before the LORD from all your sins" (16:30). And on that same day, in the fiftieth year, the trumpets started sounding across the whole land. Liberty. Go home. Your debt is gone.
You see, we tend to think of justice and forgiveness as opposites. Justice is when you get what you deserve, and forgiveness is when you don't. But in Leviticus they show up on the same day. Forgiveness is a foundational pillar of the justice of God. God's goodness and His holiness lead to the forgiveness of debts. It's built into the system. And that means our job, in perpetuity, is to display the justice of God, a justice that has forgiveness built into it.
And it doesn't stop with land and money. Hundreds of years later the prophet Isaiah took the words of this chapter, "proclaim liberty," and turned them into a promise. Someone was coming, anointed by the Spirit of the Lord, "to proclaim liberty to the captives" and "to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor" (Isaiah 61:1-2). And then one Sabbath, in a synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus stood up, opened the scroll to that very place, and read it. And He sat down and said, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 4:21).
forgiveness of debts in Leviticus becomes, through Christ, the forgiveness of sins. That's the beauty of it. The debt you and I could never pay, the one underneath every other debt, God releases.
There's more in this chapter that I'm saving for Sunday, including what the law says about who gets to buy a poor man back, and it's very specific about who that has to be. Read Leviticus 25 before you come, the whole thing. In the service we'll read 25:8-17, so read the rest on your own. As you do, count how many times you see the words "your brother." And ask yourself what you're holding on to as if it were yours forever.
Last week we took a look at the Sabbath, one day out of seven that belongs to the Lord. In Leviticus 25 that same pattern grows. Every seventh year the land itself gets a Sabbath. You don't sow your field and you don't prune your vineyard, and whatever grows on its own is food for everyone, for you, for your servants, for the sojourner who lives with you, and even for the animals (25:4-7). And then it grows again. You count seven of those Sabbath years, forty nine years, and the year after that is the Jubilee:
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" (25:10).
Think about what that means. If you lost your family's land, you got it back. If things got so bad that you sold yourself to work off what you owed, you walked out, you and your children with you, and you went home (25:41). Every fifty years, everything resets. No one stays trapped forever.
But how does that even work? How do you buy and sell anything in a system like that?
In Israel, nobody really bought land. They bought harvests. If the Jubilee was forty years away, the price was high, and if it was two years away, the price was low, because you were only paying for the crops you'd get before the land went back to its family (25:15-16). Every sale had an end date built into it. And God gives the reason: "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me" (25:23).
This is where everything starts. We assume that what we earn is ours, and what's ours is ours forever. God starts from the other end. It's His. The land is His, and the people are His too. Twice in this chapter He says it: "they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt" (25:42, 55). And so no one in Israel could own another Israelite for good, and no one could own the land for good, because God was the owner of both. Leviticus is laying out a truly grounded economic framework, and it begins with this: God is the owner, and He has a desire to restore all things unto Himself.
And again, the people of Israel had the same question you and I would have. God even writes it into the text: "What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?" (25:20).
I think that's a fair question. I really do. It's the question we ask as a church too. We don't have an unlimited budget. We don't have unlimited manpower. We don't have unlimited resources. And so asking how we'll make sure we have enough isn't faithless. It's honest. But look at how God answers. He doesn't scold them. He doesn't say, how dare you ask. He says, "I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years" (25:21). The question of resources is valid. But the response of faith is important. God was saying to His people, the field was never what fed you. I was.
Then the chapter does something I love. It follows a man as he falls. Four times it starts the same way: "If your brother becomes poor" (25:25, 35, 39, 47). First he sells part of his land. Then he has nothing left to sell. Then he sells himself to work off his debt. Then he sells himself to a foreigner. It's a man going down, rung by rung.
And here's what's so interesting, Leviticus never asks how he got there. It doesn't ask if he was lazy, or if he made a bad investment, or if somebody cheated him. It doesn't ask whose fault it was. It just keeps calling him "your brother." At the top, he's your brother. At the bottom, he's still your brother. And it tells you what you owe him: "you shall support him... Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you" (25:35-36).
That your brother may live beside you. That's the goal. Not that he gets what he deserves. That he lives, and that he lives next to you.
I think this is where the chapter hits closest to home for us as a church. God is our redeemer. But our job is to make sure that when a brother is in need, we support them. Not only with prayers. Prayers are good, and we should pray. But we meet their physical needs too.
Now here's the part I can't stop thinking about. When does the Jubilee start? You'd think it would start on New Year's, or at harvest time. No. Look at the date: "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" (25:9).
The Day of Atonement. If you were with us back in October, you remember that day. It's the one day of the year the high priest went behind the veil with blood, the day the goat carried the sins of the people away into the wilderness, the day God said, "You shall be clean before the LORD from all your sins" (16:30). And on that same day, in the fiftieth year, the trumpets started sounding across the whole land. Liberty. Go home. Your debt is gone.
You see, we tend to think of justice and forgiveness as opposites. Justice is when you get what you deserve, and forgiveness is when you don't. But in Leviticus they show up on the same day. Forgiveness is a foundational pillar of the justice of God. God's goodness and His holiness lead to the forgiveness of debts. It's built into the system. And that means our job, in perpetuity, is to display the justice of God, a justice that has forgiveness built into it.
And it doesn't stop with land and money. Hundreds of years later the prophet Isaiah took the words of this chapter, "proclaim liberty," and turned them into a promise. Someone was coming, anointed by the Spirit of the Lord, "to proclaim liberty to the captives" and "to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor" (Isaiah 61:1-2). And then one Sabbath, in a synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus stood up, opened the scroll to that very place, and read it. And He sat down and said, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 4:21).
forgiveness of debts in Leviticus becomes, through Christ, the forgiveness of sins. That's the beauty of it. The debt you and I could never pay, the one underneath every other debt, God releases.
There's more in this chapter that I'm saving for Sunday, including what the law says about who gets to buy a poor man back, and it's very specific about who that has to be. Read Leviticus 25 before you come, the whole thing. In the service we'll read 25:8-17, so read the rest on your own. As you do, count how many times you see the words "your brother." And ask yourself what you're holding on to as if it were yours forever.
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