Celebration

Intro

Leviticus 25:1-13

Today is special in that we are celebrating the longstanding heritage of our church here in Oakbank. 130 years in the community is no small feat, and it is a good thing to take time occasionally to celebrate. Now, I think we all acknowledge that 130 is a bit of a strange number to celebrate, and if it weren’t for the pandemic getting in the way of the 125th anniversary, things might be different today. Regardless, this has given me an opportunity to search the scriptures for examples of such celebrations and I can think of nothing better than celebrating the year of Jubilee.

But to get there, we need to walk through a clear understanding of what the Sabbath is all about, and so we start at creation, move on to the law, and then to celebration set at specific intervals.

Sabbath is an interesting topic that can be quite divisive within the church. To illustrate, I’ve found a couple of quotes from some rather famous Christian leaders. First, John Calvin’s opinion of the Sabbath seems to lean towards the negative. He says:

The external observance of the Sabbath rest is a Jewish ceremonial ordinance and no longer binding on Christians. Sabbatarians surpass the Jews three times over in a crass and carnal Sabbatarian superstition.

John Calvin (French Reformer)

Contrast this with D.L. Moody who seems to see more of a benefit in the practice.

You show me a nation that has given up the sabbath and I will show you a nation that has got the seed of decay.

Dwight Lyman Moody (Evangelist)

I believe the Sabbath to be beneficial for the believer, but shouldn’t be something to get bound up with legalism over. Jesus Himself said in Mark 2:27 “Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” This of course was in response to some of the Pharisees objections to Jesus allowing His disciples to pluck heads of grain on the Sabbath.

We need cycles of rest built into our schedules and God had this in mind from the start. But before I get too distracted by Sabbath, I need to remind myself that today’s message is about Jubilee and celebration.

Therefore, the main thought for today is that we ought to be intentional about remembering what God has done and take time to celebrate that with loved ones and fellow believers!

Sabbath

Genesis 2:1–3 “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”

Sabbath was instituted from the beginning as a pattern that God Himself set in place. Six days work is to be done, and the seventh is a day for rest. Why a seven day cycle? One day we’ll have to ask God that question when we all get to heaven. But that is how He did it and we are told clearly that God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. Therefore it is important for us to consider this as we remember what we do for Sabbath.

I want to touch very briefly on another topic, namely which day should we celebrate Sabbath on? Saturday, Sunday or some other day? The scope of the message today will not deal with this topic, but suffice it to say that it is important to consider how closely we walk to the wording of the scriptures. Again, we ought not be legalistic about it, but what is important here? Is it the regular cyclical rest of one out of seven days, or is the day itself important? Is it something we celebrate individually, or is it something we celebrate all together? It’s a bygone day when stores closed on Sundays so people could have that Sabbath day off, and I find myself appreciating more and more those stores that still do close their doors. But as a pastor, I find myself celebrating my sabbath rest on Fridays where I very intentionally avoid work and focus on personal interests and hobbies. The key is to be intentional about what you do. Study God’s Word to know what it says, and then put into practice what the Holy Spirit is revealing to you.

So important was this notion of resting on the seventh day that God saw fit to make sure it was codified into the Law… and not just a law buried in a list of “do’s” and “don’ts” regarding what kinds of fabrics to wear or what kinds of animals are clean. No, the Sabbath is so important that it is one of the Ten Commandments, arguably the most important of God’s Laws… next to the greatest and second greatest, which if you obeyed, you would obey all the rest any way.

Exodus 20:8–11 ““Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.”

This is the fourth command overall and comes with a set of instructions that makes it clear that the Sabbath is for everyone, not just God’s chosen people. Even the animals are to be given the day off from work. It is a blessed day dedicated to rest.

Sabbath Year

Leviticus 25:1–7 “The Lord then spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When you come into the land which I shall give you, then the land shall have a sabbath to the Lord. ‘Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop, but during the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath rest, a sabbath to the Lord; you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard. ‘Your harvest’s aftergrowth you shall not reap, and your grapes of untrimmed vines you shall not gather; the land shall have a sabbatical year. ‘All of you shall have the sabbath products of the land for food; yourself, and your male and female slaves, and your hired man and your foreign resident, those who live as aliens with you. ‘Even your cattle and the animals that are in your land shall have all its crops to eat.”

The land is to be given a Sabbath rest as well, once every seven years. It would require effort to keep track of this. Modern tools and toys can be set to remind us of impending appointments, but even in those tools, how many of us have reminders set for something so spread apart as a once every seven years appointment? And yet, once every seven years, the land was to rest as the people were to rest once every seven days.

This is a time of celebration and trust in God. Crops are not to be sown, but the people may harvest whatever grows of its own accord as God provides. So, here’s a question to the farmers and former farmers in our congregation… would you give the land a sabbath rest? Obedience requires trust and no one ever said it was easy.

2 Chronicles 36:21 “to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept sabbath until seventy years were complete.”

This passage, according to one commentary suggests that the nation was not so good at keeping the Sabbath year command and thus their seventy year exile was to make up for the times they missed it. This same commentary says: “Prophecies of a seventy-year exile assumed the understanding and existence of a sabbatical year.”

Mark F. Rooker, Leviticus, vol. 3A, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 302.

Jubilee

From the Sabbath day, to the Sabbath year, we continue walking down the path to the year of Jubilee...

Leviticus 25:8–13 “‘You are also to count off seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the seven sabbaths of years, namely, forty-nine years. ‘You shall then sound a ram’s horn abroad on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall sound a horn all through your land. ‘You shall thus consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family. ‘You shall have the fiftieth year as a jubilee; you shall not sow, nor reap its aftergrowth, nor gather in from its untrimmed vines. ‘For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you. You shall eat its crops out of the field. ‘On this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his own property.”

The year of Jubilee is a celebratory year in every sense of the word. It is the follow up to the seventh Sabbath year in a row and acts as an additional Sabbath year for the land with additional benefits and bonuses for the people.

First, a note to the farmers and those prone to worrying about things… the people had food and God made promises that He would provide. So very often, obedience to His commands requires trust and for farmers not to sow the land once every seven years required a great deal of it. But here at the end of the seventh seven, is an additional year where they could not sow anything. Peek down at verses 18-22.

Leviticus 25:18–22 “‘You shall thus observe My statutes and keep My judgments, so as to carry them out, that you may live securely on the land. ‘Then the land will yield its produce, so that you can eat your fill and live securely on it. ‘But if you say, “What are we going to eat on the seventh year if we do not sow or gather in our crops?” then I will so order My blessing for you in the sixth year that it will bring forth the crop for three years. ‘When you are sowing the eighth year, you can still eat old things from the crop, eating the old until the ninth year when its crop comes in.”

God promises abundance for those who obey His commands in this regard. You may recall that when God provided Manna in the wilderness, it required obedience in order to enjoy it properly… particularly concerning the Sabbath days. This almost acts as an extension of that test of faith stretched into the scale of years. Obedience is honored and God’s promises will be fulfilled.

Back to the year of Jubilee. The people were to count a Sabbath of Sabbath years… 49 years and then follow that up with a year of Jubilee, the 50th year. Not only was there a test of obedience with regards to the fields, but this was also a time of great celebration and joy for the people. Any property that was sold was to be returned to the ancestral owners. This means a radically different system of trade and bartering that is difficult to wrap the mind around. But basically sales of property were done, not as though the property would be permanently transferred to the new owner, but the price was set based on how many years until the Jubilee because the property would go back to the original owner (or their family) at that time. The more years until the Jubilee, the higher the price, the fewer years, the lower the price. I encourage the curious to read the following verses that spell this out in greater detail. But those who do would also discover that even the slaves were to be freed on this year. Slavery within the nation of Israel (as in Israelite slaves to Israelite masters) was more a matter of paying debts than it was a matter of a conquering group enslaving another people group. This means that there was always a light at the end of the tunnel for people who were in debt. This also needed to be factored into the prices that would be agreed upon as if the year of Jubilee was close, they could do less work than if it were a long ways off.

No matter which way you looked at it, Jubilee was a celebration of the people for a measure of freedom and grace. It was a time of trusting in the Lord’s provision for the future and celebrating what He has done in the past. In a way, you can even see hints at the gift of grace that would be offered through Jesus Christ as you consider the freedom from slavery and contrast that to how we receive freedom from slavery to sin.

Conclusion

As we begin to tie things together and consider what these ancient texts might mean for us, I want us to focus on the fact that God has emphasized the importance of special celebrations. I will admit that I am a child of the metric system. I like base ten cm, km and mL over the old imperial inches, ounces and miles (although I still prefer lbs to kg). But neither of those systems uses a base seven… And yet we’ve been keeping track of sevens for thousands of years because it was there from creation. Six days of creation and one day of rest. The notion of the Sabbath is intricately connected to this idea of a series of sevens repeating themselves. Seven days with the final day being a day of rest. Seven years with the final year being a year of rest… but then a set of seven sevens followed up by another celebratory year means that every 50 years the nation of Israel should have been celebrating!

Jubilee was very important according to the Law, and yet the people likely forgot all about it. After all, keeping track of things 50 years at a time is challenging. They didn’t have modern calendars like we do with numbers attached to them. As you read the Old Testament histories, you might pick up on the dual dating system of who else was king at the time a new king was crowned. Keeping track of time, particularly since this 50 year cycle goes beyond most kingly reigns means that there were plenty of opportunities to lose track.

And yet it is important to be intentional in what we do. Intentional worship requires preparation. Intentional celebration requires preparation as well. We need to plan ahead for these things. And that is at the core of what Sabbath is all about. It is about planning ahead. Plan ahead to be able to take the time off so you don’t need to work. Work hard the six days of the week that we ought to work, and then rest fully on the seventh. The land was to work hard six years in a row and then be granted a year of rest where nothing new would be planted and nothing would necessarily be harvested. Rather, food was gathered from what grew of itself.