Leviticus 25:1-7 Bible Study | Episode 716

July 8, 2024

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Leviticus 25:1-7    Bible Study | Episode #716

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to hope alive, applying God's word to your daily life. Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today, in Jesus name.

Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in Leviticus, chapter 25. We made it all the way, read 25, got three chapters left, and we are dealing with, well, some very important issues, especially when you view chapter 25 in light of Hebrews, which in all actuality, we're going through on Friday nights in the church. We're going four Friday nights in hebrews, and we're spending three chapters a night. Except for last week, we did four. But this week we'll finish up with three chapters. And it deals with entering God's rest or the Sabbath, and understanding that principle of entering God's rest or the Sabbath is a principle that has to be understood in its spiritual context. And what I mean by that, well, oftentimes we think of the Sabbath rest as something that that is, you know, kind of an optional thing. It's something that we could do or not do. We. We can walk in it. We cannot walk in it. And many times, many believers, that's what they do. They just kind of spend their lives doing Sunday as if it was just another activity during the week. And the truth is, is that the Sabbath rest goes all the way back to creation. On the 7th day, God rested. He rested from his work of creation. And in fact, there are some to believe this. And one of my favorite, I guess, scientists, philosophers, who is a believer, believes that the day of God's rest, as far as his rest of creation is ongoing. That day continues out of the seven days that are spoken of in God reforming the earth after the fall. His actual understanding is that God rested from his labor of creation. Now, he was not rested from his labor of redemption because he sent his son to redeem the earth, but he rested from his labor of creation because he is in dream, his creation. He's enjoying that which he made, and that's what God's rest is about. That's what entering into the promised land is about, is the enjoyment, the peace, the power that comes with entering into God's, to God's best. His very, very best. And so God desires for you not only to have his best, but he desires for you to experience it and enjoy it. It makes kind of sense, you know, why have a nice car if I'm never going to drive it? Why have, why have a nice suit if I'm never going to rent it? Why have children if I'm never going to really dig deep and experience what it means to have a close relationship with my children? Why do that? And that understanding is an important understanding from God. God. God loved us. We talked about Sunday. God loved. For God so loved the world. The world literally means the cosmos, the totality of his creation. For God so loved the totality of his creation that he sent his only begotten son. Well, when we consider that God led the totality of his creation, that he sent his only begotten son, that is the redemptive work that he does. But the reason he loves us because it's his. And the reason he loves us is because we're his. And he wanted to rest from creation so that he might experience, so that he might spend time that he might have and enjoy that which he made, which ultimately, the ultimate aspect of his creation is the making of humanity, the making of his image in such a way that it is very frail and very difficult to live, and yet so glorifying to him because he can sustain it by his grace. He sustains us by his grace. And so the Sabbath rest is an understanding of how to walk with God and how to experience God in his fullness. And when we, when we miss out on that, when we don't do that, when we don't walk with God in his fullness, when we don't experience him in his fullness, we, we miss out on really, in many ways. Why be a Christian? Why have all this if you're not going to enjoy it? And it says that God wanted not only the children of Israel when they went into the promised land to experience his rest, but he wanted, he wanted the land to rest. Now that's interesting. Remember, it's all of his creation. He wants to rest. He rested from all of the creating, it says, and the Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, speak to the children of Israel and say to them, when you come unto the land which I give you, then the land shall keep a Sabbath to the lower. Now he is giving them an instruction about how to deal with his promises. The promised land, he says. He says that the land shall keep the Sabbath. It shall also not work, not be forced to produce. It says, six years you shall sow your fields, and six years you shall put in your vineyards and gather its fruit. He's saying, I'm giving you six years of it, he says, but the 7th year, there shall be a sabbath, a solemn rest for the land. What he's saying is, we're going to not develop the land. We're not going to. We're not going to go out there and work the land. We're not going to. We're not going to do the things that a mermaid family will do when he is, when he's working his fields. We're going to. On the 7th year, we're going to give the land arrest. Now, if you're a farmer, if you know anything about horticulture and things like that, which, by the way, I'm not an expert on, by any means, I'm going to be understanding that you've got to leave a field. The road is fallow, which means, you know, you don't, you don't, you don't farm it. You don't turn the soil over. You don't, you don't plow it. You leave it fallow for a year and some, sometimes for some crops. I'm over there. Understand that you have to leave it fallow for more than a year, but for sure, you want to every few years, leave the land fallow. It gives the land an opportunity to regain the nutrients that are required for, for the growth of crops. If you don't, you can suck the nutrients out so bad that you cause the lead to become, well, become fruitless. It doesn't produce any fruit. And by the way, oftentimes in our lives, when we are not really seeing the hand of God at work, we're not seeing the fruit of God's work in our lives. Oftentimes, the reason that is taking place is because we're not resting. We're not resting in his creation. We're not resting in that which he provided for us. And so because we don't rest in it, we overlook what God is doing, we overlook what God has given us. And. And we do not allow the work of God to have its full benefit, its full way, because we won't meet with him. We don't do the things that, that are required and listen, that are required in order to experience his best. We don't mean those things. So we end up not experiencing his best, and we don't experience his best. Boy, we miss out on even life itself. We miss out on the whole purpose of everything. And so he told them, I don't want just you resting. I want the land to rest. And we know him to this day, scientifically, that's something that you should do. Even the blessings God gives you will crumble in your hands. And we gave them a land, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land that was going to be able to blossom and grow into a place where food was abundant and opportunities to live a full life were complete. He was giving them that land. And yet, he says, you got to, you gotta let the land rest, too. There needs to be a constant, continual weekly, and as far as the land's concerned, a week of years. There has to be a time where you. Where you don't. Where you don't farm it, you don't work it. He says, what grows on it of its own accord, of your harvest you shall not reap nor gather the grapes of your untended vines, for is the year of rest for the land. What he's saying is, you shouldn't go out there and reap the harvest. Well, what did I eat that year? Well, he's going to give you an abundance, an overflowing abundance. You're going to have more than you could ever imagine, and it's not going to be yours. It's going to be all of ours. It's. It's everyone's, he says. And the Sabbath produce of the land shall be food, filling you for you. Your male, your female servants, your hired men, the strangers who dwell with you for your livestock and the beasts that are in your land, all its produce shall be for food. Now, what's going on here? Well, there's a little bit of debate about it a lot of times, and most of the time we go to the jew, jewish scholars. But I'm going to give you what I understand this to mean. When I understand this to mean is that when you normally work your field and you have a harvest that is yours, it's all yours, and you don't have to give any of it to anybody or sell any of it to anybody. It's been given to you. And by the way, the spiritual gifts that God has given you are yours. And the callings that God has for your life, the things that God wants you to do with your life, they're yours. I want you to hear me. All of this is yours. It's been given to you. It's a gift to you. God. God intended it for you. He delivered it to you. And you, when you start walking in it, you receive it. So you have all the hallmarks of a gift. Intent, delivery, acceptance. God intends it for you. Well, he intends it for you in eternal time and space. He gives it to you right where you're at. And once you start walking in it, you receive it. Now, don't you hear me? The gifts and the call that God gives you are for his glorification and for his people, his kingdom. Okay? Now, they're yours, and they're yours to walk in and experience and enjoy whatever they are. However those gifts manifest themselves, whether it be the gift of works, whether it be the gift of helps, whether it be the gift of prophecy, whether it be the gift of healing, whether it be the gift of maybe teaching, like I'm doing right now, whatever those gifts are, they're given to you for your life, for you to walk and glorify God. Now, when I, when I use them, when I take them and I make them mine and I use them in my daily life and I make them a part of who I am, that, that's, that's wonderful. It's glorifying, pleasing to God. But there also needs to be a time where the church feeds off those gifts, where I'm actually a benefit to the body of Christ, where I'm actually being used, okay? And so the, and by the way, when they feed off those gifts, they, I can't really decide who gets them. You know what I'm talking about? I should just provide them to the church. And then the church use them for whatever purposes the Holy Spirit guides them to be used in. And so I just, I just go and I allow that to happen. By the way, most of the time that happens on Sambu when all the body comes together. And so they're there. And by the way, they're not for my benefit. They're for the kingdom's benefit. Make sense? They just, for everyone's benefit. Now, when I get to the, to the 7th day or the 7th year, as far as the land is concerned, it's not mine. It's not mine to hold on to. It's everyone's. And I get to enjoy the blessings from it, but everybody else gets to enjoy it too. And so they get to eat for my gift. They get to be sustained by my gift. And that's what goes on on Sunday morning so many times. There's gift of love and intercession and hope. There's words of encouragement. There are words of. Well, there's words of life and understanding that are given to people. People will speak words of hope to other people. And there's just so many good and powerful things that are going on in the kingdom of God. I want you to hear me. There's so many things that are going on in the kingdom of God on Sunday morning that are the outpouring of those gifts. And people are feeding off those things. And when the church is doing it the right way, you just experience it. It just feels like an overflowing of what the holy spirit is all about. There just feels so much encouragement in life. And by the way, if you're not, if that's not going on in your church, if you're not, you know, you're not in church and you're part of some other church, I would encourage you to be a source of the food. Okay. The only way you can begin to change that tide is for you to be source of the feeding. You bring. Bring your gifts to the table and you allow people to eat from your gifts. You allow people to. To do that. Now, if nobody else is ever going to do it, then I'm going to tell you that land is going to be dusty and it's going to be. It's going to get unproductive. And there's not a whole lot to do about that other than find a place to be productive for. For the gifts God's given you. Now, that being said, when you're, when you're producing in the land, everyone benefits from. Everyone gets to eat from it. And I believe that's what this picture is. I think this is a picture of on the 7th day or the 7th year. Sure. Do I get to eat? Yeah. Can I eat from the things I had stirred up from the past? Absolutely. If I'm producing a whole lot, I'm lied about a whole lot that I can live off of for that year. But I'm not going to starve and not have anything fresh that year. I'm going to have fresh. I'm just. It's not going to be all mine. It's going to be everybody else's. It's going to be given to everybody else. So when the field starts producing, because, you know, I plenty corn and there's still corn out there and the corn grows up the next year, it's not going to be as good as it was. It's going to be a little bit wild. I'm not going to be out there working in that field. The weeds out. I'm not going to be out there putting out fertilizer. Whatever I might do to produce, whatever, whatever it is supposed to be, I'm not going to be, I'm not going to be going out there and taking care of all the new lambs that came in. They're going to be for everyone there, for everyone. So the land, whatever the land produces, the servants, the people get to go and eat from it. They get to go and take it. They get to go and, and enjoy it. And it's a great year of celebration. It's a, it's a great year of God producing. I don't have to work for it, by the way. The cool thing is I don't have to work the field that year. I don't have to do anything. I just let one of the grows, grows up and I will get what I need and everybody else gets what they need. And during that year, it's a year of celebration. And I really believe that this is a picture of what it's supposed to be like for the jewish people when they were supposed to come in on the Sabbath and have that happen for them on Saturday. For us, as we worship risen lord on the day he rose from the grave. Sunday. I believe that that's for us too. I believe that we should spend our times, our time on that 7th day, in that 7th year. I believe we should spend our time fellowshiping with God and his people and not doing the work of life and experience the good that comes from it. And so I pray that that'll be the case for you. I pray that your lifestyle and the way you live your life would eventually come in line with the way God has given us to live it. And that your hope and all that comes from that will be summed up in his kingdom. And that you would actually know what it is to have the joy and the peace and the power that comes with entering his rest. I pray for that for you today. And I expect it for you when you trust God and back in.

As you go today. I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today. In Jesus name.