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Scripture Reading: Lev. 25:10-12, 19-22; Matt. 11:28; Phil. 4:6-7, 9; Luke 15:23; 1 Cor. 5:8; Eph. 3:8; Phil. 1:19; 2 Cor. 12:9; 13:14
Let us continue to consider the living of the jubilee, that is, the kind of life that lives in the jubilee. We pointed out in the foregoing message that this is a life of resting in the good land and of enjoying the riches of the good land. Our Christian life should be a life full of liberty, freedom, and release, a life full of rest, satisfaction, and enjoyment.
Luke 15:23 indicates that the Christian life should be a life of enjoyment: “And bring the fattened calf; slaughter it, and let us eat and be merry.” The result of the prodigal son’s coming back to his father’s house was that he and all those in the house could eat, drink, and be merry. This indicates that we should eat Christ as the fattened calf, drink the life-giving Spirit, and be merry in the enjoyment of the Triune God and in the riches of the Father’s house.
As we go on to 1 Corinthians 5:8 we see that the Christian life is a feast: “Let us therefore keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with leaven of malice and evil, but with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” The feast here refers to the feast of unleavened bread as the continuation of the Passover (Exo. 12:15-20). This feast lasted for seven days, the period of a complete course, signifying the entire period of our Christian life, from the day of our conversion to the day of rapture. This is a long feast which we should keep with unleavened bread, which is Christ as our nourishment and enjoyment. Only He is the life supply of sincerity and truth, absolutely pure, without mixture, and full of reality. Such a feast is a time for enjoyment. The entire Christian life should be a feast and an enjoyment of Christ as the rich supply of life. Therefore, in 1 Corinthians 5:8 Paul charges us to keep the feast with Christ as unleavened bread.
A feast is not a time for working; rather, it is a time for eating, enjoyment, satisfaction, and rest. In the Christian life Christ should be our food, enjoyment, satisfaction, and rest.
In Eph. 3:8 Paul says, “To me, less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach to the nations the unsearchable riches of Christ as the gospel.” Paul preached not the doctrines but the riches of Christ. The riches of Christ are what He is to us, such as light, life, righteousness, and holiness, for our experience and enjoyment. These riches are unsearchable and untraceable. The Christian life is a life of enjoying the unsearchable riches of Christ.
In Phil. 1:19 Paul speaks of the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The Christian life is a life of enjoying this bountiful supply.
In 2 Cor. 12:9 we see that Paul experienced and enjoyed the grace of Christ: “And He has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.” Then in 2 Cor. 13:14 Paul goes on to say, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” To be sure, the grace of Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit are for our enjoyment. The grace of the Lord is the Lord Himself as life to us for our enjoyment, the love of God is God Himself as the source of the grace of the Lord, and the fellowship of the Spirit is the Spirit Himself as the transmission of the grace of the Lord with the love of God for our participation. The result of the enjoyment of the grace of the Lord, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Spirit is satisfaction, and the issue of this enjoyment and satisfaction is rest. All Christians should have this enjoyment, satisfaction, and rest.
However, only a small minority of Christians daily are enjoying the grace of Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Spirit. Where are we with respect to this enjoyment? Many of us are laboring and are full of anxiety and worry. Furthermore, we have many expectations or dreams. Eventually, because these dreams are not fulfilled, we are disappointed and have suffering. Many among us daily are laboring, worrying, dreaming, and suffering. Someone may dream of becoming rich, but this dream leads to disappointment and suffering. Human life is a life of laboring, worrying, dreaming, and suffering.
Some believers who are still laboring, worrying, dreaming, and suffering may say, “I thought that life would be better after I became a Christian, but it’s about the same. What, then, is the purpose of being a Christian?” Because of questions such as this, a number of Christians have been attracted to the teaching concerning prosperity, the teaching which claims that Christians can become rich and successful. Nevertheless, it is a fact that most Christians are laboring, worrying, dreaming, and suffering. Furthermore, most, whether they are a success or a failure, are going in a downward direction.
If we read the Bible carefully, we shall see that there are three kinds of labor in human life, not including working at a job to earn a living. The first kind of labor is the labor to be a good person, to have good behavior, and to improve one’s character. In this labor people struggle to be humble, patient, and loving. In the Bible, especially in the New Testament, to work means to do such things. But no one can be saved by works (Eph. 2:8-9). This means that no one can be saved by the works of trying to improve one’s behavior and character, to keep the law, and to be good, patient, kind, and honest. This kind of effort is a real labor, and in the New Testament this is called work.
According to the Bible, the second kind of labor is to worry, to be anxious. What a hard job it is to labor under anxiety! If you could do your job day by day without having any anxiety, you would be a healthy person. However, you may spend more hours each day worrying than you do working. Can you say that you have not had any anxiety, any worry, so far today? Day by day, everyone is anxious. You may be anxious about your health, your job, or a great many other things. I, of course, am not an exception. I have learned from experience that the only way to escape anxiety is to enjoy the Lord. Whenever I am not enjoying Christ, I have anxiety. Christ is versus anxiety. In the Life-study of Philippians we gave a number of messages entitled “A Life Full of Forbearance but without Anxiety.”
The third kind of labor revealed in the Bible is suffering. Suffering is a very hard labor. When we enjoy God in the jubilee, there should not be any suffering. Paul, for example, suffered from a “thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor. 12:7). Concerning this thorn, he entreated the Lord three times that it might depart from him (v. 8). However, instead of removing the thorn, the Lord said to him, “My grace is sufficient for you.” The Lord seemed to be telling Paul, “No, I shall not remove the thorn, for My grace is sufficient. If you enjoy Me, you will not have any suffering.”
To say that we shall not have suffering when we enjoy the Lord does not mean that our environment will improve. On the contrary, in many cases the environment changes for the worse. Consider the situation of Paul and Silas in Acts 16. Paul and Silas were cast into prison in Philippi. We would expect that this imprisonment would have been a great suffering for them. However, Paul and Silas were not suffering there in prison — they were enjoying the jubilee. They were singing and praising the Lord. Although they were in prison, they had enjoyment, satisfaction, and rest.
As believers, we should not have the concept that because we are saved, love the Lord Jesus, have given everything to Him, and want to do everything for Him, our environment will be prosperous. No Christian should have this thought. If this is our philosophy of the Christian life, we need to abandon it. Such a view is absolutely wrong.
Many of those who have served the Lord were martyred. For example, John the Baptist, the forerunner of the New Testament, was beheaded. When John sent two of his disciples to ask the Lord to do something for him, He indicated that He would not do anything (Matt. 11:2-5). The Lord went on to say, “Blessed is he who shall not be stumbled in Me” (Matt. 11:6). Here the Lord was indicating to John that He would not do anything to save him from martyrdom; rather, He would leave him in prison to be put to death. Likewise, Peter and Paul were martyred.
Do you think that being a martyr is a matter of suffering? Actually, anyone who is suffering is not qualified to be a martyr. Martyrdom is an experience of jubilee. One martyr, a British missionary killed in the 1930s in China, said as he was being put to death: “Every martyr’s face is like the face of an angel, and every martyr’s heart is like the heart of a lion.” Stephen was certainly not suffering when he was martyred. When he was about to be stoned, his face shone like that of an angel (Acts 6:15). Instead of suffering, Stephen was enjoying the Lord.
If we feel that in a particular environment we are suffering, this indicates that we still love certain things other than God. If we love God uniquely and wholly, we shall not be troubled by any kind of environment. This is the reason the Lord Jesus indicated that we must love Him more than we love our parents, brothers, sisters, wife or children (Matt. 10:37; Luke 14:26). If we feel that it would be a suffering to lose our parents, children, wife, or husband, this means that we do not love God solely. It means that we place our love on something or someone other than God. If we love God solely, giving our love entirely to Him, having nothing to divide our love, we shall not be bothered by whatever happens to us.
Suppose you lose your house. Would that be a suffering to you? Would you still be able to praise the Lord, praising Him even for the loss of your house? If losing your house is a suffering and if you would not praise the Lord for it, this indicates that you love your house as well as God, perhaps more than God. If you did not love your house, you would not suffer as a result of losing it. Rather, you would say, “Hallelujah! My house is gone, but my God is not gone. He is more to me now than before. When I had a good house, God was not so much to me. But now that I have lost my house, God has become much more to me.”
As a father of many children and a grandfather to many more grandchildren, I know that every parent wants his children to be successful. Perhaps you would like your children to be apostles, elders, deacons, or deaconesses, or you may want them to be doctors, lawyers, or computer scientists. But how would you feel if none of your children were an apostle, elder, deacon, or deaconess, or if none of them were in a respected profession? Would you be happy or disappointed? Recently I heard someone praising the Lord that his son had become a medical doctor. But I never heard a parent praising the Lord because his child received a failing grade.
The point of these illustrations is that even seeking Christians may not live a life of jubilee. On the contrary, because they love things other than God, they have suffering instead of enjoyment, satisfaction, and rest.
We all should do our job; however, we should not labor in the sense of struggling to be good, worrying, dreaming, and suffering. We should be able to say, “I only love my God. He is my portion. Nothing and no one apart from Him is my portion. A new car, a nice house, a good promotion, the top salary — all these are not a real portion to me.”
If we are living in the jubilee, we shall not have any anxiety. Concerning anxiety, the Lord Jesus says, “Do not be anxious about your life, what you should eat and what you should drink; nor for your body, what you should put on....Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?...Therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own evil” (Matt. 6:25, 27, 34). There is no need for us to borrow tomorrow’s anxiety and bear it today. Every day has its own evil. Nevertheless, some saints, young as well as old, borrow anxiety not only from tomorrow but from years to come. This means that some are anxious not only concerning tomorrow but concerning what will happen years from now. Some grandparents may even be anxious concerning their third generation. They actually borrow the anxiety of a future generation and labor under it today.
Do you know why we are anxious both about today and tomorrow? We are anxious because God does not have the full ground within us. We still give a “corner” of our being to other things, and that corner causes us trouble. However, if we give all the room in our heart to God, we shall not be anxious or troubled by whatever happens to us. If in our hearts there is no ground for anything or anyone other than God, He will always be our enjoyment, satisfaction, and rest. The environment may change, but He remains the same.
It is very difficult for us to give all the ground in our being to God because we are fallen and have a fallen nature. The very cells and fibers of our physical bodies and our entire soul, including our mind, will, and emotion, are fallen from God, from the enjoyment of God, and from rest in God. We have fallen into many things other than God. Anything, whether good or bad, that is not God Himself can be a source of anxiety. Only God is enjoyment; only God is satisfaction and rest. No matter how good something else may be, it cannot be our enjoyment, satisfaction, and rest.
The life of jubilee, that is, the life that lives in the jubilee, is a life that lives God. When some hear this, they may say, “Isn’t this the victorious life? Isn’t this a holy life, a life of the Spirit?” Yes, the life of jubilee is a victorious and holy life, and it is a life of the Spirit. But although we have heard many messages on living in the Spirit, we still do not live very much in the jubilee. Instead, we have the labor of struggling to improve ourselves, the labor of anxiety, the labor of dreaming, and the labor of suffering. What a hard labor it is to struggle to be good! It is an even harder labor to worry, to have anxiety. It is also a labor to dream, to have expectations. Every kind of expectation is a dream. Finally, there is the labor of suffering. When we have suffering, we cannot have enjoyment, satisfaction, and rest.
How can we be released from all this labor? The only way to be released is to take the Triune God as our portion. If we call on the name of the Lord Jesus, the all-inclusive Spirit will render us His bountiful supply. Then we shall enjoy God in Christ as the good land flowing with milk and honey, and we shall have enjoyment, satisfaction, and rest. We all need this jubilee.
The Gospel of Luke leads us into the life of the jubilee. The Man-Savior saves us from bondage into the jubilee. He saves us into the liberty, enjoyment, satisfaction, and rest of God’s jubilee.
The entire New Testament teaching concerning the Christian life involves the jubilee. When the kingdom comes, we shall enjoy a greater jubilee than we enjoy today. Then in eternity, in the New Jerusalem with the new heaven and new earth, we shall have the greatest jubilee. We shall enjoy God in full as our satisfaction and rest. Today we have a foretaste of this jubilee.
All day long we should enjoy God as our enjoyment, satisfaction, and rest. We should not struggle, worry, dream, or suffer. Even in the most difficult situation we can still enjoy the Lord. If we give all the ground in us to God and enjoy Him, not even martyrdom will be a suffering to us. Instead of struggle, anxiety, dreams, and suffering, we shall have the all-inclusive processed Triune God as our enjoyment, satisfaction, and rest. The grace of Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Spirit will be ours. This is the enjoyment of the jubilee.
