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, and we're dealing with, well, something that is kind of in my wheelhouse. It is one of those things that I want to explain. It has great spiritual significance, but it also has great economic significance. It is really the definition of the economic system that God set up in Israel with the jews. And for me, like I said, it hits pretty close to home to me. Undergraduate degree is in economics from Princeton. And so even though I was probably one of the least of the economists who graduated that year, I did graduate. I say that loosely. I did graduate. I got a diploma. But so I'm not telling you that I know this subject inside and out. That being said, even since that time, it's been a hobby of mine. I've never used it as far as. As far as used it to make a living. But I have always studied and thought and read and considered the things that were going on in the economy and got involved in it. And so I love economics. That being said, God's setting up of this economic system, which is very unique. And when I say it's very unique, I mean there's not one like it. And because of the sinfulness of man, it was not. Levy's done exactly, perfectly. And so it did have flares, but the flares have to do with the human aspects of it. And not because it was a terrible system. In fact, it was a very neat and exciting system if it worked out the right way. And it's called Jubilee, or the system is based around a year of Jubilee that happens every 50 years. It says in verse eight, and you shall count seven sabbaths of years. Now, this is the first time in scripture we have God say, calling, calling long periods of time in weeks of years. But what you have here is seven sabbaths of years, which would be weeks of years for yourself. Seven times seven years, which is 49. And the time of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you 49 years. Then you shall cause the trumpet of Jubilee to sound. On the 10th day of the 7th month of the day of atonement, you shall make the trumpet to sound throughout all your land. Surround the 50th year at the end, after you've had all the festivals and feasts. Remember, the last feast is in the 7th month. He says, on the day of atonement, you shall make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And you shall consecrate the 50th year and proclaim liberty. Now, it's not all of them. You still have Pentecost. But you shall. You shall, uh. You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabits. So you're supposed to proclaim freedom. Now, notice that that has spiritual significance too. It says, it shall be jubilee for you. And each of you shall return to his possessions. And each of you shall return to his family. The 50th year shall be a jubilee to you. In it, you shall neither sow nor reap, grows or has grown its own accord. Nor gather the grapes of your unintended vines, for it is the jubilee. It's a Sabbath year too. Also, it shall be holy to you. You shall eat its produce from the field. And the year of Jubilee, each of you shall return to his possessions. And if you sell anything to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor's hands, you shall not oppress one another. According to the number of years after Jubilee, you shall buy from your neighbor. And according to the number of years of crops he shall sell to you. According to the multitude of years, you shall increase its price. And according to the fewer number of years, you shall diminish its price. For he sells to you according to the number of years of the crops. Therefore, you shall not oppress one another. But you shall fear your God, for I am the Lord your God. Now you go. I have no idea what this is talking about. Well, let me explain to you. This is how it works. Every 50th year, all the land that was given to your family, all the land that was given as a possession in the promised land is returned back to the people who owned it. Owned it at the start. And you go, well, where did it go? What happened to it? Well, in this economic system, everybody has something. And that which they have is permanent. Meaning it doesn't matter, right? It doesn't. It doesn't end. Whatever the gift God has given you in his promised land, you. You can. It doesn't go away. It's always given back to you. It's always, it's always returned back to you because it is for you. It was given by God to you. And so what you can do is after the year of Jubilee, you can sell your land. You can, you can sell your land, but it's not a sale in the way we think of a sale, because if I buy something from somebody today, tomorrow, I can't go back to them and give them a little bit less money and say, well, I used it. You allowed you use it for a day. So you have this value and, and I want it back. And they have to give it back to you. Why? Because actually the, the ownership or the deed to the, to the, or the title to the property has passed from you to them. Not so in Israel. In Israel, if I buy something from someone, I have to calculate how far away I am from Jubilee. And if I'm 25 years away from Jubilee, I know that the most I could have owned it was 50 years. But because Jubilee is in 25 years, that the time period that I'm going to have possession of that land is only going to be 25 years. So I need to price how much I spend on that land accordingly. In essence, in many ways, what it is, is it's a lease. I lease the land for 25 years and I give you a price for that. And I have control of that land. But at the end of the 25 years, I have to give it back. Now you go, well, that's kind of a weird system. It is really weird in that the land would have been the most important product or the most important capital. If you think about capitalism, it would have been the most important capital anybody had because it would be the thing that was in their family, and it would be the thing that they would get back, back every 50 years. It would never, ever leave the title of that family. It would always be in that family's name. And so it is the most important land, but it's fungible in that I can sell it. And fungible means how rare and how easy it is to sell it. I can sell my land, but I can't sell it forever. I can just sell it for a few years. And if the year of jubilees, in two years, well, obviously, a person is not going to spend a whole lot of money on land that they're only going to get for two years, but I might spend that money for land that I would have in my possession for 50 years, because then my family is going to benefit from that. If I work the land. Well, my family is going to greatly benefit from that because it is of great value to us for 50 years. And so the economic system that was set up in Israel had a lot of moving parts, a lot of functions to it that. That made it important. But when the land was released back to the family, it was a cry of freedom, meaning the land that was held by someone else, bound by someone else, was released and brought back to those who originally had it from the promises of God. Now also, he says a lot at the end, that you should not oppress each other, meaning that the price you pay for the land should not be too great according to the number of years, and it not, should not be too little. It should be exactly what the land is worth for those years. Now you go, what does this have to do with anything spiritual? Well, it is not, it's not an easy passage to understand in that, in that regard either. But that being said, you can't understand it all unless you understand exactly how it works. This was a festival. This was a festival that only lasted, only happened once every 50 years. It was a feast and a festival that brought everything back in line with God's original tent intent for his people. And it was a powerful remembrance of the gifting of God. And it was an understanding that God is the one who has given us the land. And that which God gives you and which you receive, meaning you take as your own, can't be taken from you. You might use it for your benefit, you might use it for your gain, but ultimately, it is always yours. It is always yours. The call of God, the blessing of God, the plan of God for your life is one without repentance. Or the word is, in the legal parlance, is irrevocable, meaning it can't be taken away from you. Once God has given it to you and you have walked in it, it is yours. And even if I use it for my own reign, or even if I use it in a put away and give it to someone else, it is always going to be come back to me. We see that in the book of the revelation. Even though Adam gave away the title deed to the book, and it was sealed up because of the sin of the world, and those seals, when they're open, is God's judgment on that sin. Even though Adam gave up title to the earth, his dominion over the earth, even though he gave it up when he ate of the fruit of that tree, the God man, Jesus is able to take it back, because what was given to humanity was always going to ultimately be humanity's. It was always going to be ours. And that which God has promised you or began to work in you or opened you up to you do not lose. Oftentimes we think about those things and we think we can never, ever go back to where God was the same as he was, you know, when we were young or when we were doing this or doing that. And the truth is, that's not true. You suffer less in that. You miss out on God's blessing and God's best when you don't walk in it each and every day. But remember, that's a temporal loss. That's a loss just for this time and just for this season, just where I'm at right now. But it's not an eternal loss. It's not a loss in that which has no beginning or end. It's not a loss in, in God's dimension, in his kingdom. It's not. It's just a missing out. It's a missing out on what God had for me. But I can always go back to it. It's always mine. It was always given through me. And God is greatly desirous. No matter what I've done with it, no matter how I've misused it, no matter how I've not done right by it, God is always, and I say this, always, he is always wanting me to return to his best, to his jubilee, to his kingdom, to his power. And so if you're out there thinking that you have ruined everything, well, for the moment, maybe, but nothing is totally ruined as long as you have God, and nothing is ever over as long as you're in his family. And especially nothing is over if God is giving us his very, very best each and every day, because we can learn to walk in it. And as we learn to walk in it by faith, we learn to hold onto it. We learn to hold down to what God has given us. We learn to use it for the kingdom's glory, but it also allures to our benefit. It also brings about godliness and holiness and righteousness and power and peace and purpose. It brings about those things in our own life. And so when we learn to walk in God's blessing, his giftings, when we learn to do that, we reap great in the Lord and the season of you learning that never ends until you pass on. So why would we not learn to walk in it today? Why would we not learn to experience it today? I see so many in their lives that are so beat down, they're under so much oppression they live in condemnation of the things that they did not do that they knew they should have. And they allow the mess ups of the past, they allow the failures of the past to have great control over the opportunities of the future. In fact, they allow them to foreclose them, to destroy them, to end them, because, well, they're just focused on what isn't rather than what clearly is. And when God gives you something, it's yours. You may do with it. You may wrap in it in your own will. Salvation is yours. Sanctification is yours. Gifts of the spirit are yours. But you shouldn't miss out on it in the future because what you failed to do in the past, you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't live that way. When you do, you oftentimes, you oftentimes pile failure upon failure. There's no need for that. The gifts God gave you when you were young and the opportunity that you saw through those youthful eyes are still there. And the gifts are without repentance. That means they can't be taken away. They're irrevocable. So you should grab onto them and learn how to use them today. Okay? You didn't use them yesterday. You didn't use them when you were young. Use them today. Begin to walk in them today. Be the kingdom today.
