Welcome to the Lansdale Life Church Podcast.
If you're seeking a closer relationship with Jesus Christ, this podcast is for you.
Thank you for joining us today.
Let's open up with a word of prayer and then we'll just dig right in.
Lord, we just slow down our lives tonight. Lord, we slow down our weak God to
to come before you, God, to come amongst each other, Lord, in just fellowship and to
learn God in your Scripture, in your Word, Lord, more of you, God. And as we continue to study
our way through Leviticus, Lord, we just pray that you open up our hearts and our minds, God,
to reveal new revelation to us, God, and new and deeper understanding God of you through your Word,
God. We pray that you just continue to reveal Jesus to us through Leviticus and through the old
prophetic words, God, that you just continue to open that up and reveal that to us layer by layer.
Lord, we surrender to you tonight, Lord, and we just pray, God, that your spirit would be here
among us in Jesus' name. Amen. So as a quick overview, Leviticus 25 gets into instructions
about the Sabbath year, which would be every seven years, as well as the year of Jubilee,
which would be roughly every fifth, fiftieth year, talks about rest for the land and allowing, allowing
the land to kind of regenerate, talks about debt forgiveness and freedom and restoration of
property gets into a lot of this stuff. You know, I think, you know, for me, some of the key
points that I drew out of this, this chapter was, and I too often forget this is that God owns it all.
We are, we are just stewards of what he has given to us and learning to trust and rest
in him and really embrace that freedom. So a lot of good meat in this, in this chapter. So let's
start out with verses one through seven talks about the Sabbath year. The Lord spoke to Moses at Mount
Sinai, speak to the Israelites and tell them, when you enter the land that I am giving you,
the land must observe a Sabbath to the Lord. Six years you may sow your field and six years
you may prune your vineyards and gather the produce, but in the seventh year the land must
have a Sabbath of complete rest, a Sabbath to the Lord. You must not sow your field or prune
your vineyard. You must not gather in the aftergrowth of your harvest and you must not pick
the grapes of your unpruned vines. The land must have a year of complete rest.
You may have the Sabbath produce of the, of the land to eat. You, your male servant,
your female servant, your hired worker, your resident, the resident foreigner who stays with
you, your cattle, and your wild animals that are in your land. All its produce will be for
you to eat. So what, what God is talking about here is the Sabbath for, for the land. So,
you know, the people, the people are used to observing the Sabbath for, you know, for God,
but this is a new, something new that God is introducing to them so that people can eat
whatever grows naturally, but farming and harvesting and selling is, is forbidden here.
So there, there, there's a lot of things here to kind of, kind of unpack in this.
The first thing that came to me was, oh, I'm a, I'm a gardener and I love doing gardening and
things like that. And the soil naturally needs rest. Even early farmers figured out, you know,
crop rotation and how, you know, the soil is a very fragile thing. You know, it's not just dirt.
There's got to be the right nutrients in there. There's got to be things in there to really
help get a good, good crop. So the soil needed to, needed that time to recover and naturally
regenerate, you know, and there's a pest control element that goes, goes along with that. But
this idea of Sabbath, this is a, this is a kingdom principle. There are things that you can pick
up on all through the Bible that, that I call as kingdom principles that you can see all the way
from the book of Genesis all the way through to Revelation. And this, this idea of Sabbath and
rest is a kingdom principle. And we'll talk a little bit, little bit about that. The other
thing that I wanted to, to notate before we get into, into that is numbers mean things.
Right Ken? Numbers mean things. And, you know, God is intentional about, you know, about numbers.
You know, God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, you know, in, in
generation, in, in Genesis. There, there are all types of, of, of things around the seventh.
There's seven, the seventh day is the weekly Sabbath. Seven is, is the number of completion
and perfection. Seven times seven is ultimate completeness or, or fullness. So there, there's
a lot to be said around this, this, this kingdom principle of Sabbath and rest. And it's something
that, you know, that, that, that God instituted even, even for ourselves. I mean, we're not here to talk
about, about, about the Sabbath as the day of rest for, for God's people. But when you think about
the practical application of that, just like the practical application of resting for the
land, there's, there's spiritual things about this, which we'll talk, gonna talk about in a
second here. But there's, there's also this, this functionality to it. And the same is true of us.
You know, it's God, you know, you can say, Hey, look, I'm free to do what I want on Sundays.
And that's absolutely true. But there, there's something to be said about, let's just set aside
a day to chill. Right. And that's, that's one of the things here. So the other components of
this that I look and there's, there's this idea of, of, of trust and, and provision. So think about
this from an ancient perspective. When we're hungry, we go out and get some food or go out to a
restaurant or go out to the supermarket and get food. Most of us have enough food in our
house to probably last two months. When we get, when we get down to it, not the case with ancient
people like the Israelites, they were growing all of their own food, animals, all of this thing was
they were providing food for themselves and their family was work, hard work. And it wasn't
something that was instantaneous. Like, Hey, you know, heat me up some soup mom. It just didn't,
didn't happen like that. So there's an element of trust and provision that goes along with this.
When God says, Hey, this year is going to be a year of rest. Don't do all of this stuff.
Imagine the alarms going off in their heads. Well, how am I going to eat? What are we going
to, I mean, how am I going to provide, provide for my family? You know, God is saying, trust me
on the provider. But it creates a completely different way of thinking about that
when you realize how they provided for their food. So allowing the land to rest and not sowing
had this element of trusting God so that you take all of this aspect off of our, you know,
as humans, we, you know, we're always thinking, Hey, you know, we're doing this, we're working for
this. I'm the guy out providing, I'm doing all of this, takes all that effort out and says,
we're going to trust in God to do this. And there's, there's rest in that security
that can only be found in God. And there's so many lessons that God wants to teach us through that
builds our faith and helps us realize that it's not of our own workmanship or labor
that God is the great, great provider. I won't read it here for the sake of time,
but Matthew 6, 25 through 34, Jesus goes into this whole mile log about, don't worry about,
he's God is going to provide for you, look around you, how he's done all of this,
he's going to provide for you. So the next section is 8 through 22.
And talking about the year of Jubilee.
You must count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, and the days of the seven weeks
of years will amount to 49 years. You must sound loud horn blasts in the seventh month,
on the 10th day of the month, on the day of atonement, you must sound the horn in the entire land.
So you must consecrate the 50th year and you must proclaim a release in the land
for all its inhabitants. That year will be your Jubilee. Each one of you must return
to his return to his property and each one of you must return to his clan.
The 50th year will be your Jubilee and you must not sow the land, harvest its aftergrowth,
or pick the grapes of its unparooned vines. Because the year is a Jubilee,
it will be holy to you, you may eat its produce from the field.
In this year of Jubilee, you must each return to your property. If you make a sale to your
fellow citizen or buy from your fellow citizen, no one is too wrong his brother. You may buy it
from your fellow citizen according to the number of years since the land last Jubilee,
you may sell it, he may sell it to you according to the years of produce that are left.
The more years there are, the more you may make its purchase price. And the fewer years there
are, the less you may make its purchase price because he is only selling to you
a number of years to produce. No one is to oppress his fellow citizen,
but you must fear your God because I see the Lord your God. You must obey my statutes
and my regulations and must be sure to keep them so that you may live securely in your land.
The land will give its fruit and you may eat until you are satisfied and you may live securely
in the land. If you say, what will we eat in the seventh year if we do not sow and gather
produce? I will command my blessing for you in the sixth year so that it may yield
the produce for three years and you may sow the eighth year and eat from the sixth year's produce,
old produce. Until you bring the ninth year's produce, you may eat old produce.
So every 50 years, there is a major reset.
Property returns to its original family owner. Slaves are freed, debts are forgiven,
everyone rests, trusting in God's provision. Jubilee resets debt, restores families and homes
and a full restoration of dignity and provision. This is some wild stuff.
This is some wild, wild stuff if you think about it. Again, just imagine in your mind trying to apply
this to our western mentality here in the United States where you're not taking my property,
you're not taking my house or my land, you're not taking my stuff, you're not taking my guns,
you're not taking any of this stuff. Our mindset has so radically, radically shifted
from what God was trying to instill in the Israelites of how to look at these things.
We've just gone really far. I'm saying it about myself too. If I would have,
I'd have a real hard time. I'm not sure where it would all end.
But this was a radical, radical restoration and forgiveness as well.
So it wasn't just, it's easy to read through these things and think about, okay,
these are the cycles that they went through, but it wasn't just a cyclical thing. It was a new
beginning that was designed to lead to a higher level of fullness.
So it breaks a cycle, resets and pushes Israelites through to
more higher level. It's a supernatural gift of grace that came from God.
To me, this just points so clearly to Jesus and how when he was teaching amongst the Jews,
he was just preaching something that was just so radically different than how they
understood Scripture and this idea of forgiveness of sin and spiritual freedom
and reclaiming lost inheritance and kingdom living here on earth. The Jews are like,
what? They just weren't getting because it was so rough. And then his ultimate
giving of grace from his work on the cross. In Luke 4, 18 through 19, Jesus is quoting
Isaiah where he talks about the year of the Lord's favor. And this, to me, this goes from Jesus to
Isaiah all the way back to Leviticus, which is a clear, clear pointing to that year of Jubilee,
the year of the Lord's favor as it came down. So if you look at it in reverse like that,
or if you look at it from a forward perception, that God instilled this year of Jubilee,
this concept of Jubilee. Isaiah talked about it and prophesied it even forward
to where Jesus was and then Jesus saying, this year is now. This is now what he was proclaiming.
And when he made that statement, the religious leaders are like, is he saying what we think
he's saying? Not good. So it was a radical, radical thing. This freedom from slavery.
Slaves are set free. This freeing of slaves in the year of Jubilee just is this idea of
God wants liberation for people. He doesn't want people in perpetual bondage. Jesus said
in Gospel of John, if the sun sets you free, you are free indeed. And that freedom applies
across the land. The next set goes from 23 to 55 and it's about redemption of property and the
poor. And I'm not going to read through that because it's just too long. It gets into a lot
of different scenarios of okay, if you needed money and you sold this land to this person,
here's what's happened or if you did this. So it talks about a lot of different ways things
could have transacted is the basic principle of it. But what I extracted from that entire set
of scriptures is according to God, I don't know if this applies right now,
land cannot be owned permanently because it belongs to God. I mean, do we really believe?
I know I've said that many times in teaching and in life and even just in conversation
with people. I don't believe that this is mine. I don't believe my business is mine. I believe
that I'm a steward of this and I have to steward this in the way God has. But do I really believe
that when it comes down to it? I mean, do I really, really embrace that idea? God was instilling
that the Israelites must help each other rather than oppress them, rather than take advantage of them
in business transactions and land transactions. Slavery, God, this was always such a tricky
subject for me, this idea of slavery and all this. But when you really dig into scripture
and really try to understand it from how God was designing it, God was not a fan
of slavery, most certainly not. I mean, it was discouraged. He freed the Israelites from Egypt
and he's compelling them to mirror that mercy that he had on them to their slaves.
So this idea of ownership and stewardship. In verse 23, God basically just says the land is mine,
you know, the Israelites and us. We're stewards, not owners. And I think again
that this is a foreshadowing of Jesus and, you know, and how we're supposed to live that
our lives are not our own. So we don't own this.
Jesus bought and paid for this. And he owns it. And, you know, along with it everything else. So,
you know, we don't belong to ourselves. And, you know, I think a modern day perspective,
especially in the United States is, you know, we earned it, we own it, and it's ours.
And don't try to take it, take it from me. And I'm wrestling with that myself, even as we speak,
just to kind of really truly understand what God means here. First,
Corinthians 619 through 20 says, you are not your own, you were bought with a price.
So I thought this was a really, really interesting chapter. I think it goes much deeper than,
then, you know, God's economic plan for the Israelites. You know, there's a lot about freedom
and trust and restoration here and belonging. It points directly to Jesus and what he did for us
and his ultimate claim of jubilee, you know, over our souls. You know, I thought about this for,
you know, for a little while. And I thought, what are some practical applications of this,
you know, for me is, you know, for me, you know, practicing trust more, you know, trusting God
for things. My type of personality is kind of personality is like, okay, I'm going to go out
and make it happen. And it's easy to fall back on that a lot harder to say I'm going to trust
in God to do that. So practicing trust and resting in that spiritual discipline to trust in God enough
to stop striving. Because we worry sometimes about things, right? It's like, you know,
you know, I'm kind of at that age now where I'm there, retirement, you know, I should be
thinking about this and this and I have all my ducks and lined up in a row for retirement.
What are we going to do with this? What am I going to do that? And that kind of creates this,
well, I have to do something. And what God is proclaiming here is stop striving
and trust in me, have that freedom. Another thing that really was just so practical for
for me was extending grace to people, you know, looking for ways to reset relationships,
forgive debts, boast emotionally and and literally. I'll tell you, I'll tell you a story.
You know, we had Tammy and I had had these good friends one time they still are good friends.
And one guy went, they went into business and we were doing work for them as an agency.
You know, he wanted me to do work for them and their business, you know, after a few years,
their business was really tanking and going, you know, going downhill and having real problems.
And, you know, the money was getting further and further and further out. And, you know,
you know, I, you know, he started not returning calls and things like that, you know, and I just
finally left this real nasty message saying, look, you need to get this settled.
You know, and I put a few or ifs in there because I was miffed because that
that idea of my ownership of things was kind of consuming me, you know, at this, at this point.
And, you know, over, over time, you know, we, we, you know, we just healed it and I just kind
of let that go. And I literally said to God, just take it out of my, I don't even want,
I don't even want to remember it. And there was one time where she was really,
she had really, you could tell it was just kind of weighing on her and she had said something to me
about it. And I literally didn't even realize what she was talking about.
I said, I said, I had literally completely forgotten about that until you just brought it
up. I mean, I literally, you know, God just took it out of my mind, which was an awesome thing.
And, you know, I didn't even, it just, it literally was not, you know, when I was around
him, it wasn't like, I mean, I had literally, literally forgotten about it until she brought
it up. And I said, well, I forgot about that. And it was like, I forgot about it. So
you're applying that grace to people and it doesn't have to be about money. Sometimes it can be about
someone who may have hurt you or may have had done you wrong or you've got just kind of this
little bit of a grudge kind of hanging back here. It's not impacting you spiritually,
but it's just kind of there, right? Releasing that and extending that grace to people
that God is talking about here. Because this is, this is just, this is just powerful, powerful
grace that God is laying down here. The third thing is remembering stewardship,
the idea of stewardship. Hang on to things loosely, right? Loosely. Hang on to possessions
loosely. You know, they are a blessing from God, but they're not important.
They're not important. And lastly is celebrate freedom. This is something that I think,
you know, we as Americans, we just take so for granted this idea of freedom and
celebrate the freedom that Christ brought us, the spiritual freedom that He set us.
He set us free. So those are four kind of key takeaways for me.
I put some questions, thought provoking, I hope, questions down as we can kind of,
kind of go through this as, as groups and let's do that. Let's break into our groups.
Thanks for joining us at Lansdale Life Church as we praise God and discuss His Word.
Don't forget to join us for worship live Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. Eastern on YouTube.
Be blessed and have a great day.