The jubilee is only for captives Print E-mail
Sunday, 19 October 2008 06:44

Here's an excerpt from the Life-Study of Luke message 12 (page 98):

A person who has not lost anything would not look forward to the year of jubilee. In fact, to such a one, the jubilee might be a suffering. But the one who has lost everything, including his land and himself, would surely look forward to the year of jubilee. When the year of jubilee came, he would rejoice at being released and recovering the right to his portion of the land.

The experience of jubilee is only for those who realize that they are captives of sin, of the world and of Satan:

Every fallen human being has lost the right to enjoy God as the tree of life and the right to enjoy Christ as the good land. Furthermore, every fallen one has sold himself to sin, the world, and Satan. In Romans 7:14 Paul said of himself, “I am fleshly, sold under sin.” Even Paul had become a slave to sin.

Only this realization makes the New Testament jubilee, the age of grace, a real joy and jubilation to us. Lord, make me daily so conscious of the burden of my sin, that I might daily by so thankful and joyful in the release that You have proclaimed over me.

 Another point I enjoyed from our college meeting last night is that a brother pointed out that the jubilee is a Sabbath year. That means that even though the captives were returned to their land so that they could now labour on the land to produce fruit from it, in the year of their release they were forbidden to labour. God commanded blessing on the land so that it would produce freely from them. So, their only requirement was to return to the land to enjoy God's bountiful blessing to them. This is similar to how God created man on the sixth day, but on seventh day (man's first full day) God rested from His labour and brought man into His rest as the beginning of man's daily life on the earth. (Of course, I'm not quite sure with how this fits with the fact that on the day God created Adam He did give him the task of naming the animals, which was no small labour in zoological taxonomy.)
Last Updated on Sunday, 19 October 2008 07:00