Message 56
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Scripture Reading: Lev. 25:1-22
In this message we come to Leviticus 25, a well-known chapter on the jubilee. However, this chapter begins not with the jubilee but with the sabbath year. We all are familiar with the sabbath day, but we may not know very much about the sabbath year.
Leviticus 25:2-7, 18-22 speak of the sabbath year. This sabbath was not a day of rest but a year of rest. The sabbath year was a rest not only for man but also for the land.
God is a God of rest. He worked, but after He worked He rested. In Genesis God rested not by Himself but with man. After His work, God enjoyed rest with man. Therefore, on the seventh day both God and man were at rest.
In order for there to be a jubilee, it was necessary for God’s people to have the practice of observing the sabbath year. Every seventh year was to be a sabbath, and that year was to be a rest for man and also for the land. It was a year of rest for God, for man, and for the land.
The sabbath day refers to Christ, and the sabbath year also refers to Christ. Christ is our sabbath not merely for one day but for a full year. Hence, the sabbath year denotes Christ in His fullness as our rest. We need to enjoy Him not only as our sabbath day but also as our sabbath year, that is, not only as our rest in part but as our rest in full. The sabbath year is for us to enjoy Christ in full as our rest with God. If we keep this in mind, we shall enjoy much more of Christ.
“When you enter into the land which I give you, the land shall keep a sabbath to Jehovah. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its produce; but in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of solemn rest, a sabbath to Jehovah” (vv. 2-4a). The sabbath day being for man, one day out of every week, and the sabbath year being for the land, one whole year out of every seven years, signify that Christ is the realm of the full rest that we may enjoy Him as our rest to the fullest.
“You shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard. That which grows of itself from your harvest you shall not reap, and the grapes of your untrimmed vine you shall not gather; it shall be a year of solemn rest for the land” (vv. 4b-5). This signifies that rest is purely and wholly of grace and that all human labor should cease absolutely. When the land rests, the laborers, the farmers working on the land, must also rest. It is good to have a long rest, but such a time of rest may be a test to us. We may become bored and be tempted to do something that is contrary to the divine thought. We all need to learn how to labor with God and also how to cease our work and rest with God as long as He desires to rest.
“The sabbath produce of the land shall be food for you, for your male and female slaves, for your hired servant, and for the sojourner who lives with you. For your cattle also and for the animals that are in your land, all its produce shall be for food” (vv. 6-7). This signifies that it is all a matter of grace toward anyone, regardless of his status.
In the seventh year the produce of the land became common. Although the land still belonged to its owners, what the land produced belonged to everyone, to every kind of person, and even to the cattle and all the animals. This means that the produce of the land was common. We may say that this is God’s communism, a communism that results from the grace of God and that makes us rich, not the human communism that is forced upon people and makes them poor. In this common enjoyment of the produce of the land, there is real freedom.
“If you should say, What shall we eat in the seventh year if we do not sow or gather in our crops? Then I will command My blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will yield a sufficient crop for three years. When you sow in the eighth year, you will eat of the old crop until the ninth year; until its produce comes in, you will eat the old” (vv. 20-22). This signifies that the sufficient grace of God surpasses our need threefold.
Forced communism is against God’s will. According to God’s will, we should have a proper enjoyment of all things that are in common. The possession of the land is not common, for the land still belongs to each owner. What is common is the produce of the land in the seventh year. In this year everything produced by the land becomes common for the purpose of enjoyment. For this purpose, God blesses the land to produce food threefold. This practice of keeping the sabbath year ushers us into the jubilee.
According to Young’s Concordance, the Hebrew word for jubilee means a time of shouting. This shouting is, of course, not of mourning but of rejoicing; it is a joyful shouting.
God realized that in ancient times there was, economically speaking, the need for natural resources to be balanced among the children of Israel. After the Israelites entered into the good land, the land was divided among them by lots. None of these lots was to be sold permanently. Rather, in the year of jubilee any lots that had been sold were to be returned to the original owners.
During the years before the jubilee, some of the people might not have been able to keep their property. Because of poverty or illness they might have been forced to sell their property in whole or in part. However, at the time of jubilee, at the time of shouting, the land reverted to its owner. This return of the land was God’s way of balancing the ownership of land among the people. Thus there could not be any landlords, for in God’s wisdom the divine regulation, the divine ordinance, was a balance of the natural resources. This ordinance was to be put into effect every fifty years. From this we see that thirty-five centuries ago, a long time before Marx invented communism, God made provision in the holy Word for the balance of the land. Every fifty years, without the original owners doing anything or paying anything, the land was returned to them and once again became their possession.
In type, the jubilee portrays our situation as poor sinners. Our situation was that the longer we lived, the more we lost of our divinely allotted portion. Because we lived in a sinful way, we lost the divine rights. The more we committed sin, the more of these rights we lost. Eventually, we sold all that we had inherited by birth. We even lost ourselves. We sold ourselves not to a proper buyer but to Satan and sin. This was the reason Paul could say, “I am fleshly, sold under sin” (Rom. 7:14b). Like Paul, we also were slaves sold to sin; we had lost to Satan our rights. We should not consider Satan and sin two separate things. These two are one. Therefore, when we sold ourselves to sin, we sold ourselves to Satan and thus fell into the hands of Satan under sin. As descendants of Adam, we all had sold the rights allotted to us by God and even sold ourselves to sin and Satan. Furthermore, we could do nothing about our situation; we did not have the means to redeem ourselves. We were hopeless. Then one day, jubilee came.
In Luke 4:18 and 19 the Lord Jesus proclaimed the jubilee with words of grace (see Life-study of Luke, Messages Twelve and Sixty-four through Sixty-nine). When He came, jubilee came with Him. Christ has accomplished the full redemption of God for sinners. Now when we preach the gospel, we make a proclamation of the New Testament jubilee.
The jubilee is not a Pentecostal day but a Pentecostal year. The principle is the same here as with the sabbath year. Elsewhere we read of the sabbath day, but in Leviticus 25 we have the sabbath year. Likewise, elsewhere Pentecost is a day, but here we have the Pentecostal year.
The fifty years that consummated in the jubilee comprising eight sabbath years, being sabbath upon sabbath to be an eightfold sabbath (cf. v. 8), signifies the superabundance of the fullness of God’s rest with satisfaction to us.
The first and last years of this fifty-year period were eighth years, and in between there were six eighth years. Hence, there was a total of eight eighth years. Since the number eight signifies resurrection, this indicates that the jubilee is something that is altogether from resurrection, to resurrection, in resurrection, and with resurrection.
The jubilee is a matter of sabbath upon sabbath, an eightfold sabbath signifying resurrection upon resurrection. This eightfold sabbath signifies a superabundance of the fullness of God’s rest with satisfaction to us. This is not simply rest but rest with satisfaction.
“Then you shall cause the blast of the trumpet to go forth on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of propitiation you shall cause the trumpet to go forth through all your land” (v. 9). This signifies that the jubilee is based on the propitiation for sin that the full freedom might be proclaimed to all the people. This type was fulfilled by the full redemption of Christ for the proclamation of the full freedom to all the human race.
Young’s Concordance shows us that there are two Hebrew words that are translated jubilee. The first of these words bears the denotation of a time of shouting; the second bears the denotation of trumpeting. This kind of trumpeting is actually a shouting. Jubilee is a matter of joy becoming a shout. The jubilee, therefore, was a time of excitement. Many of us experienced such joy and excitement when we got saved. We were happy and full of rejoicing. Our salvation was a real jubilee.
The preaching of the gospel is simply the proclamation of the jubilee. We need to go forth and sound the trumpet so that the people may shout. Today most people are silent. But if we proclaim the jubilee, sounding the trumpet, they will begin to shout. They will learn to say, “Amen! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!”
“You shall sanctify the fiftieth year and proclaim release throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee to you” (v. 10a). Verse 11a also speaks of the jubilee: “The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee to you.” This signifies that the full responsibility (typified by the number fifty) to meet all the requirements of God has been fulfilled so that man does not need to bear any responsibility.
Human life is hard. It is full of responsibility, and everyone bears a great deal of responsibility. But in the jubilee there is no labor and there is no responsibility — everyone is free. There is no need even to reap. We may simply go to the field and eat without any burden or responsibility. Instead of responsibility, we have rest, enjoyment, and shouting. Many of us had such an experience when we were saved. On the day of our salvation, we were released, fully freed from all our burdens. This is the experience and enjoyment of the jubilee.
“Each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family” (v. 10b). “In this year of the jubilee each of you shall return to his possession” (v. 13). This signifies that in the New Testament jubilee the believers have returned to their lost divine possession and to their divine family.
We all had lost the possession allotted to us by God. But in our salvation, the New Testament jubilee, we returned to our possession. Furthermore, we have returned to our family, to the divine family. We had sold ourselves as slaves and thus lost the right to be with our family. But the year of jubilee came, and we were released to return both to our possession and to our family. Now we are rich, and we are free in our divine family. Therefore, we need to shout joyfully, making a joyful noise to the Lord in the church meetings. This is the real jubilee.
In the present age the whole race of Israel has become poor and has lost the land of Canaan. At the Lord’s second coming, the coming millennium will be a jubilee to them, and they will return to their lost possession. They will have a long family reunion, a reunion that will last a thousand years.
Here I would like to point out that with the seven feasts in Leviticus 25 there are two consummations. The first group of feasts — Passover, unleavened bread, firstfruit, and Pentecost — consummates in the feast of Pentecost to have the Body of Christ. With the second group of feasts — the blowing of trumpets, propitiation, and tabernacles — the highlight is the millennium. These three feasts will consummate in the millennium. Therefore, the first consummation is Pentecost to produce, to bring in, the church life, and the second consummation is the millennium to bring in the full jubilee.
“The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee to you; you shall neither sow nor reap that which grows of itself, nor shall you gather the grapes of the untrimmed vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you. You shall eat its produce directly from the field” (vv. 11-12). This signifies that in God’s jubilee no human work is needed. It is altogether a rest to man, and God bears all the responsibility-
In buying or selling the land, the price was to be calculated according to the number of years after the jubilee (vv. 14-15). “According to the greater number of years you shall increase its price, and according to the fewness of years you shall reduce its price” (v. 16a). This signifies that our enjoyment of the divine possession in grace is within the limit of God’s grace. The measure of grace we receive is the measure of the jubilee we enjoy. Our enjoyment of the divine possession is measured by God’s grace.
