And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. A jubile shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed. For it is the jubile; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field. Leviticus 25:8-12
FREEDOM AND RESTORATION is the nature of what the year of Jubilee is all about.
I love the natural application but I realize that it is temporal while the spiritual application is eternal.
Freedom and Restoration on a spiritual level is to be celebrated also. I ran across a research paper where some one had calculated every 70 x 70 +1 year from the time of Adam in the Garden and found key events in the bible that correlated to God's plan to reconcile mankind to Him. Knowing that God is always working in our midst according to the calculation (70 x 70) that HE gave is noteworthy because it lends credence to the fact that He is always working behind the scenes to accomplish His will.
Satan perpetrated a wrong but God had a plan to right the wrong (AVENGE) that was done in the garden of Eden. That plan was to bridge the gap that was created by Satan. It was very interesting for me to note that every 70 x 70 years from Adam's fall, God did something that brought us closer to redemption. From the calling out of Abraham to a new land that God would show him to the great exodus of the children of Israel to the death and resurrection of Jesus - all these things were done by God at the 70 x 70th year from Adam so that we can have FREEDOM from the bondage of sin and the death that it brings and RESTORATION of our spiritual inheritance (eternity with God)!
Food for thought, in this Year of Jubilee, freedom and restoration is the reason to be jubilant. It is just our nature to get excited over the probability of good things coming our way. We see ourselves as the victors; coming out ahead. But do we, as Jesus did, consider the victims; the ones who are in bondage. Jesus read what the prophet Isaiah foretold:
And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias (Isaiah 61.1). And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to
- preach the gospel to the poor;
- he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
- to preach deliverance to the captives, and
- recovering of sight to the blind,
- to set at liberty them that are bruised,
- To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Luke 4:17-19
Just as Jesus walked this earth doing good and just as God is working behind the scenes on our behalf, as we are the image; the reflection of God, the question becomes:
In this year of Jubilee, what will you do to reach the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, the blinded and the bruised?
The Year of Jubilee calls for something more - it is the time of restoration, and release or freedom from something that you had lost or been bound by. In this day, we, as individuals, do not hold people physically captive nor do we take possession of peoples' property and yet we hold people emotionally captive, we know what the world needs to set them free from eternal death and bondage to sin, we know of the needs of the poor, the brokenhearted, and the wounded. So in this year of Jubilee should we not attend to the needs of others instead of just thinking how we will be released and/or restored. Jesus is our perfect example of how we should incorporate the needs of others particularly during the year of Jubilee.
