Sermon Title: Jesus Our Jubilee
Scripture
Reading: Luke 4:14-30
We are going to
turn to Leviticus and study together:
·
What is
Jubilee?
·
Why did the
Lord institute Jubilee?
·
What is the
point? Jesus is our Jubilee.
Introduction
Please turn with me to Leviticus 25. The fourth section of Luke’s Gospel is Luke 4:14-9:50. This section is
dominated by Jesus’ teachings and miracles. This is the first glimpse Luke gives into the formal ministry of Jesus.
This passage records a sermon Jesus preached in the synagogue of His home town
(Galilee) and the reaction of His audience. To begin this section (Luke 4:14-9:50), Luke summarizes all of Jesus’
teachings and miracles in his first two stories. In other words, the first
sermon Jesus preaches and the first three miracles He performed represented the
whole of all His messages and miracles.
Jubilee was designed to picture unmerited forgiveness and
spiritual freedom. The subject of our
message this morning is also the sermon title: Jesus our Jubilee.
Introduction
to Leviticus 25
The
Liberty Bell contains the words of Leviticus 25:10, “proclaim liberty
throughout the land.”
A.
Israel rested 1 day in 7 (Sabbath Day: Exodus 20:8-11)
B.
Israel and the land rested 1 year in 7 (Sabbath Year/Sabbatical: Exodus
23:10-11; Leviticus 25:1-7). Just as man needed a day of rest, land without
fertilizers needed to lie fallow for a time. See similar regulations in Exodus
23:10-11.2
C.
Israel and the land rested every 7x7 years – after seven sets of seven years,
making Jubilee the fiftieth year (Leviticus 25:8; cf. Daniel 9:24-27). What is
unique about Jubilee was the return of freedom and property.
D.
Israel’s economy was founded upon Redemption and the
Sabbath.
1.
A kinsman redeemer could redeem a relative who had become impoverished
(Leviticus 25:25, 47-55; see the book of Ruth). If your relative bought the property from you, he could work out a plan
with you. For example, you could work with your uncle for six months, five
years, or under whatever agreement established to earn back the land.
2.
If a person didn’t have a wealthy and loving relative to redeem them then they
would sell (lease) themselves and their land into slavery/servitude. This man
and his family would be sold as slaves. The
only hope of these people was that they would live to see Jubilee. God
instituted the Year of Jubilee in mercy. On the Year of Jubilee all Israelite
slaves were freed, all debts were forgiven and every Israelite returned back to
their land.
Why Jubilee?
Although
God gave Israel the land as one of His good gifts to them to be enjoyed
(Deuteronomy 6:10-12; 8:10-13), He still retained final ownership and so might
terminate the lease should the people provide undesirable tenants. They did not
possess the land as an inalienable right but within the structures of a
covenantal relationship with God. The land was not private property to be
bought and sold.2
Although
there are many reasons and implications regarding Jubilee, let me explain a few
of the most helpful.
1) The Year of Jubilee relativizes
land, monetary worth, and all personal possessions. When thinking
about Jubilee, stuff was always in its proper perspective.
Read
Leviticus 25:23
God
owns the land and the Year of Jubilee meant to communicate to Israel they were
not going to get the big prize in this life. Just like the NT calls us exiles
and aliens, if you have to give back all the land you accumulate once every
fifty years, you are not going to put all our eggs in one basket. Is our life
much different? We have to give it all back every 60-80 years.3
Jubilee helps us to trust God because He owns everything. Jubilee helps us
suffer well because our life is a vapor. Jubilee causes us to hold things
loosely. Jubilee creates an urgency
around evangelism, generous giving, selfless sacrifice, sure hope, mercy
towards others.
I
look at Hannah and Maggie when they play with their toys and think it is so
ridiculous that they would covet and scheme to get a toy they will fail to
recognize in three years.
2) During the Year of Jubilee
God asked the people to trust His promise of provision (Leviticus
25:20-22).
The
direct disobedience of Israel serves perhaps to explain why this feast of
feasts was never celebrated in the land during the Old Testament. Not once did
its trumpet ever sound.3
In
Isaiah 58, God is making a complaint against the nation of Israel for not
living out her calling. She failed to be a source of liberty to those who were
oppressed. Jesus is coming to do what Israel did not do.
When
Israel rebelled against God by refusing to observe their yearly Sabbaths for
many years, God then cast them off in exile, and thus took it upon himself to
give the land its yearly Sabbath rest, which he did for seventy years
consecutively, in lieu of the absence of the yearly Sabbaths for the four
hundred and ninety years in which Israel inhabited the land (Jeremiah 25:11-12;
2 Chronicles 36:21).
Now
turn to our text (Luke 4:14-30)
Who
are the poor?
Luke 4:16-21 is often very misunderstood.
Jesus read from two passages in Isaiah, 61:1-2,
58:6. Jesus is speaking primarily in spiritual terms here when using the word
“poor”. The poor are those who recognize that they have nothing by which to
commend themselves to God (Luke 6:20; Matthew 5:3). The
poor people Jesus is referring to here are those who acknowledge their moral
bankruptcy.4
Jesus is not speaking first about the economically
poor. The context of the Greek word for poor (ptochos) “TOHAS” can be interpreted as literal or figurative.
Ptochos is used by Luke ten times with seven to be taken literally (14:13; 21;
16:20, 22; 18:22; 19:8; 21:3), while three may be figurative (4:18; 6:20;
7:22). Another contextual observation is in Jesus’ story He gives two examples
of the type of person who experienced the Lord’s favor in the OT. One is the
widow of Zarephath. She was materially poor. But the other example is Naaman,
the wealthy Syrian general who humbled himself by dipping seven times in the
Jordan River.1
Jesus is prophet and Messiah. Jesus is saying “I am
Jubilee.” Jesus is our Jubilee (Isaiah 61:1-3; Luke
4:16-21. cf. Daniel 9:24-27; Luke 7:20-23 with Isaiah 35:5-7).
Israel
reduced their relationship with God to rules. Israel needed rest. Through
Christ, God did this in a much greater way when He exiled His only begotten
Son, which is His true Israel, hanging Him up as a curse on the cross, so that
He might bring in an eternal rest for His people.
Jesus
Christ, our Kinsman Redeemer, is restoring and mending what has been broken by
sin. Jesus removes the burden, slavery and consequences of sin (Matthew
11:28-30). He is making all things new.
Jesus
is not merely restoring all things to their original condition. God is not
restoring the marred; God is creating something new. To those who live in this
new world, God will be all the more glorious for we shall see Him as He is
(Adam and Eve did not know wrath, justice, mercy, compassion, etc. of God
before “The Fall”).
Already,
but not yet
There is significance in the “already/not
yet” dynamic of our existence. Before the foundation of the world mankind was
redeemed. But not yet. Yet, when Jesus said, “It is finished,” mankind was
redeemed. But not yet. Five years before your salvation, you were redeemed. But
not yet. You have a new desires, a new heart, a new ability, a new
understanding, a new worldview. Already, but not yet.
Like Israel, we also long for more. We
long for the fulfillment of the promise. We long for eternity. How can we be
sure? How can we be sure we are safe placing our trust in this promised day, a day
when the full power and presence of sin is broken? It is because this promised
day is actually Jesus, who indwells our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
“In whom ye also
trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation:
in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of
promise, which is the down payment of our inheritance until the redemption of
the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:13-14).
The Religious Response
The
religious were amazed at the words of Christ yet were completely unmoved and
unaffected.
What
changed their assessment of Jesus so radically? Religious people resented Jesus’
assertion that salvation is available only to those who acknowledge themselves
to be poor, prisoners, blind, and oppressed. They were not about to accept such
labels, since they viewed themselves as righteous.
The point Jesus is making in
Luke 4:24-30 is that it is those who seem closest to God are sometimes the most
blind.
The
blind and religious try to use Jesus to deliver them to a kingdom aligned with their
imaginations and preferences. This is why the blind and religious get so
hostile over doctrinal differences. You are not challenging first their
theology. When you propose a change in thinking regarding theology, you propose
a change in who God is and what His Kingdom looks like. Changes in theology
disrupt and crumble the imaginary kingdoms of man’s wicked heart. You might
just find Jesus isn’t quite who you thought, wished, or imagined. Would you
prefer to know Him or for Him to be as you imagine would be most likeable and
convenient to you?
The
Father offers salvation – but, as always, it is only for those who know they
are spiritually poor, prisoners, blind, and oppressed. Unless you are willing
to humble yourself like that outcast Gentile widow and that Syrian leper
terrorist did and admit their spiritual need, you cannot be saved.4
Land
was not only returned to those who had a proven record of being good farmers
and managers, but poor farmers too, those who couldn’t grow corn in Iowa in a
good year and whose crops were choked by weeds because they had been too lazy
to cultivate or irrigate received their
land back as well. And the principle applied to other property too: homes lost
for failure to pay the mortgage or solely to satisfy a bad debt were returned
to the original owner. In Jubilee, property would revert to the original owner
without payment of any kind (Leviticus 25:28-31).4
The
religious were not only unmoved and unaffected, but furious. Jesus told them
that the Father is no man’s debtor. Luke emphasizes this again in the story of
the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:33); A Samaritan happened to be one of ten healed
lepers to express gratitude in Luke 17:16.
"There
is no attribute of God more comforting to His children than the doctrine of
divine sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe
troubles, they believe that Sovereignty hath ordained their afflictions, that
Sovereignty overrules them, and that Sovereignty will sanctify them all. There
is nothing for which the children of God ought more earnestly to contend than
the dominion of their Master over all creation---the kingship of God over all
the works of His own hands---the throne of God, and His right to sit upon that
throne.
On the
other hand, there is no doctrine more hated by worldlings, no truth of which
they have made such a football, as the great, stupendous, but yet most certain
doctrine of the Sovereignty of the infinite Jehovah. Men will allow God to be
everywhere except on His throne. They will allow Him to be in His workshop to
fashion worlds and to make stars. They will allow Him to be in His almonry to
dispense His alms and bestow His bounties. They will allow Him to sustain the
earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps of heaven, or rule the
waves of the ever-moving ocean; but when God ascends His throne, His creatures
then gnash their teeth, and when we proclaim an enthroned God, and His right to
do as He wills with His own, to dispose of His creatures as He thinks well,
without consulting them in the matter, then it is that we are hissed and
execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us, for God on His throne
is not the God they love. They love Him anywhere better than they do when He
sits with His scepter in His hands and His crown upon His head. But it is God
upon the throne we love to preach. It is the God upon the throne whom we
trust."
-Spurgeon, delivered May 4, 1856 in a sermon titled
"Divine Sovereignty"
Anticipate
the Jubilee
To fully anticipate the Jubilee, you have to anticipate both a day
and a person.
The church is called the Body of Christ (Ephesians
1:22-23; Ephesians 4:15-16). Just as our bodies are what people see of us, so
the Church is what people see of Christ. As our bodies put our will into
visible action, so Christ puts His will into visible action through the Church.
Therefore, the mission which Christ once performed in his own physical body on
earth (proclamation of Good News), He now performs through His corporate body
the Church.5
Source:
1)
A sermon by Kevin DeYoung entitled
“With Liberty and Jubilee for All” preached on June 21, 2009 on Leviticus 25 at
University Reformed Chuch.
2)
Sproul, R.C. The Reformation Study
Bible. Lake Mary, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 2005.
3)
Sittema, John. Meeting Jesus at the
Feast: Israel’s Festivals and the Gospel. Grandville, MI, 2010.
4)
MacArthur, John. The MacArthur New Testament
Commentary: Luke 1-5. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2009.
5)
A sermon by John Piper entitled
“Christ in Combat: Offense by the Spirit” preached on March 25, 1884 on Luke
4:16-21 at Bethlehem Baptist Church.
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