When I moved to Liberia in 2008, I noticed no animals anywhere except in the ocean—no birds, squirrels, pets, or wildlife. Liberians had eaten everything they could find in desperation during the long civil war. U.N. Peacekeepers were everywhere. On an ordinary drive into town, we usually had to pass through at least two roadblocks where they checked our cars for our protection. It was an awakening to me about the vulnerability of life. But it wasn’t until I had been there for about six months that I realized how difficult it was for people who had owned land and couldn’t prove it. Most official records had been destroyed during the war, including land deeds. The problem was massive. I wasn’t affected because I lived on land purchased by an organization for missionary use after the war. I was, however, responsible for maintaining the new house after its construction. As a former realtor, I knew how important it was to keep the house in the best condition for a good start—not for myself only, but for others who would live there. My responsibility was to do my part as I depended upon the Lord’s provisions to our organization. I commiserated with those who had lost their land because others claimed a right to it based on the absence of a deed. So I tried to encourage those who lost their land to trust the Lord for their needs. Our spiritual security is more important than any earthly comfort. After all, none of us own anything—we’re all stewards of God’s good creation and provisions. God provided good laws for how Israel was to protect and respectfully manage their wilderness land, and if given over because of debts, return it to the ones whom God chose to remain there as they prepared to enter Canaan, the promised land. God gives us all we have here. As His stewards, we are to lovingly manage our possessions and trust God’s provision for all we need, looking forward to our promised land—heaven.
Faithfulness to God’s Covenant
“The covenant law has now been given, and the Israelites may march boldly into Canaan—provided, of course, that they maintain faith in their Redeemer and carry out his covenant mission of filling the earth with his righteous and holy kingdom…Observing the Sabbath principle was important not only because it protected the people and the land from overwork, but also because obedience to it was the fundamental sign of covenant loyalty…Letting the land rest would therefore be a bold proclamation of faith that the Lord would care for the needs of those who followed him.” (1) “The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, ‘Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord.’” (Leviticus 25:1-2) “Hundreds of years earlier, God had promised Abraham that He was going to bless him with many descendants, and He was going to give his descendants the land of Canaan. When God speaks with Moses here, He is about to keep that promise…God’s plan is that they obey, and He blesses…We do the same. We obey God and we trust Him to provide…Jesus told us to trust Him. When we are having difficulty trusting God to provide for us, we should read again what Jesus said [in Matthew 6:25-33]: ‘Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear…your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you’…God wasn’t telling His people how to relate to the land; He was telling them how to relate to Him. The importance of relating to God properly is crucial if we are going to understand Leviticus 25 and most of Old Testament history. Ultimately, the way we think about things and the way we spend money are not about dollars and cents; they are about who is our God.” (2) We are God’s stewards who handle our possessions lightly because we love and trust the Giver.
Sabbatical Year Instructions
“For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired worker and the sojourner who lives with you, and for your cattle and for the wild animals that are in your land: all its yield shall be for food.” (Leviticus 25:3-7) “The people lived from what they grew on the land…God said He was going to provide for them. In verses 20-21 God said, ‘If you wonder: What will we eat in the seventh year if we don’t sow or gather our produce?’ I will appoint My blessing for you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years’…God’s people were anticipating leaving the Sinai wilderness and entering the land of milk and honey. They were about to get a big pay raise.This was as close as they could get to winning the lottery. They were moving from slavery to prosperity. God was preparing them for that change by telling them to remember that a He is God. The land is not God; don’t worship the land. The harvest…[and] rain is not God; the real God gives the rain, the harvest, and the land. Worship Him. God knew that in Canaan His people were going to live next to the Canaanites, and the Canaanites worshipped prosperity,…fertility (Baal),…the grain harvest (‘Dagon’),…the river (‘Nahar’),…and the powerful sea (‘Yamm’). We who live in the enlightened, modern West think, ‘What a primitive religion!’ However, many people in our culture have the same religion…Our gods have different names—‘BMW’ and ‘Beachfront Property,’ ‘G.P.A.’ and ‘Popularity,’ ‘Lucrative Career’ and ‘Comfortable Retirement’…We have to choose which God we are going to worship—Jesus or money. We cannot worship both. The Israelites were surrounded by people who worshipped multiple gods. But the one true God told His people to be different. God tells His people to worship only Him. Therefore, we do not worship possessions.” (3)
Jubilee—The Year of Liberty and Fresh Starts
“And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you. You may eat the produce of the field…The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me.” (Lev. 25:10-12, 23) “The laws of redemption and Jubilee provided clearance or cancellation of debt, enabling people to go back to their own clans and to the property of their ancestors…Any failure on the Israelites’ part to follow these laws…does not mean that they were impractical. Rather, it indicates that the Israelites had little faith in the Lord’s provision, and their priorities were out of keeping with the Lord’s vision for the world. This should not surprise us; we disobey to this day for the same reasons…The divine King of Israel…set up a system of release at fixed intervals, which was not dependent on arbitrary human leadership. Release for his people was guaranteed…[The Israelites were not to] take advantage of each other, either by paying less than the land’s value or by charging more. It would be easy for sellers or purchasers to commit wrong here, and especially for purchasers to take advantage of desperate sellers. The command to fear God is appropriate: it is issued elsewhere to remind those with power that there is a far greater authority to whom they must give account…[they] will have enough to eat in the seventh year (year 49), in the eighth year, even until the harvest of the ninth (year 51)…The overall point is clear: the Israelites can obey the Lord’s commands boldly because they know he will provide for their needs. Harvested grain could last quite well for at least seven years.” (4) God, who owns all the land, provided good laws for how Israel was to protect, transfer, and return it to the ones whom God chose to manage and protect it lovingly, trusting in His provisions.
Wisdom for Today
God gives us all we have here; as His stewards, we are to lovingly manage our possessions and trust in God’s provision for all we need, looking forward to our promised land in heaven and the new world to come. “And in all the country you possess, you shall allow a redemption of the land. If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold. If a man has no one to redeem it and then himself becomes prosperous and finds sufficient means to redeem it, let him calculate the years since he sold it and pay back the balance to the man to whom he sold it, and then return to his property. But if he does not have sufficient means to recover it, then what he sold shall remain in the hand of the buyer until the year of Jubilee. In the Jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his property…For it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 25:24-28, 55) “Poverty could force Israelites to sell some of their property. When this happened, they had three options. Ideally, their ‘nearest redeemer’—such as a brother, uncle, or cousin—redeemed it immediately, releasing it from the ownership of the non-family member by buying out the lease…If this was not an option, those who had become poor might redeem it themselves if they acquired sufficient means…If neither option was possible, the Lord himself would act as their Redeemer by means of this law, and the land would return in the Jubilee. It is a characteristic of the Lord to redeem people: he had redeemed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to be his people, and now, by this law, he redeems them from their debts.” (5) We know Christ our spiritual Redeemer by looking back to the cross; God called Israel to see him as their Redeemer that looking back to their deliverance from Egypt and forward to their occupation of the Promised Land.
The Coming Day of the Lord
“The prophets speak of a day when all will be made right, a day when ‘everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig-tree’ (Micah 4:4a). The Year of Jubilee was to be a foretaste of that great day. All the Israelites would return to their own land, surrounded by their own families, having no debts, enjoying a year of Sabbath rest, looking forward to years of safety and prosperity in a land flowing with milk and honey, and living in soul-satisfying fellowship with their covenant Lord, the one they acknowledged as sovereign over the land and themselves. In short, the Year of Jubilee looks backwards to Eden and forwards to heaven.” (6) God’s intentions for Israel were never to worship the land—they were to worship Him. The gospel and God’s ultimate Redemption of the earth on the coming Day of Judgment isn’t about land. When we focus on national Israel’s right to land, we lose the focus the Lord intends for his people, the true Israel (Romans 11:25-27). He wants us to focus on his gospel covenant and worship Christ, our Redeemer. Jesus has promised his people, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John 14:3).
Related Scripture: Leviticus 26:34-35, 46; 27:21; Exodus 23:10-11; Numbers 36:1-4; Deuteronomy 6:10-12; 8:11-20; 28:8; 31:10-13; Ruth 2:20; 3:9; 4:4, 6; 2 Chronicles 36:20-21; Nehemiah 10:31; Psalm 85:1, 12; Isaiah 5:7-8; Hebrews 4:9-10.
Notes:
1. Sklar, Jay, Leviticus, An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament
2. Commentaries, Leviticus 25, IVP Academic, 2014.
3. Moseley, Allen, Exalting Jesus in Leviticus, Christ-Centered Exposition Series, Leviticus 25, B&H Publishing Group, 2015.
4. Mosley, Ibid.
5. Sklar, Ibid.
6. Sklar, Ibid.
7. Sklar, Ibid.
July 19, 2023
Divine Wisdom for Daily Living by Joanne Colvin 