Leviticus 25

What is heaven like? There is no better way for us to answer this question than to listen carefully to the One who came down from heaven in order to secure our eternal redemption. Yet even in the Old Testament Law God provided a vision for the way life should have been in an obedient Israel. We have regulations in that Law that capture our imagination even today and stretch our minds toward the land of our true citizenship. God's plan for Israel included the celebration of what He called the year of jubilee. This great year was to be a generous helping of heavenly food for the hearts of God's people.

The year of jubilee was to be celebrated every fifty years in Israel, but even before that great year arrived, the Lord's nation was to receive a taste of great liberty in the Sabbath year. The Lord gave His people one day of rest every seven days, but every seven years He granted them one year of rest. What a gift! In that year the land was to rest as well as the farmer. To enjoy that law, Israel needed to believe that God would provide for the people and their animals as He promised.

After seven weeks of years, after seven sabbath years of rest, the final sabbath year, the fiftieth year, would come. The coming of the jubilee was associated with the third cluster of annual festivals, Trumpets, Day of Atonement, and Tabernacles, all coming in the seventh month, September and October according to the Hebrew calendar. This was an appropriate time to celebrate the fullness of liberty that will come to the Lord's people when the final trumpet sounds, the dead in Christ are raised, and we will be with the Lord of the Sabbath forever.

In the year of jubilee, liberty would be proclaimed, and land would be restored to the family of the ancient owner. Everyone would return to their clan. Who will be our neighbors in the heavenly habitations that Jesus has gone ahead to prepare for us?

Jubilee was a picture of the end of God's curse. No more would thorns infest the ground or the farmer sow seed by the sweat of his brow. The fruit of the land would come forth as if by the command of God alone, and the people of God would eat the produce of His gracious bounty.

The curse was not actually stopped in Israel, so there might be some who would try to take advantage of the Lord's good plans. Because of this the Lord specified how sales of land should be priced based on the number of years remaining until the jubilee. Just as greedy transactions would mar the beauty of what the Lord was displaying before the eyes of His people, worrying about how people would eat would steal away the joy of this heavenly testimony. God would provide everything necessary so that His people might keep the jubilee.

The jubilee was not just an idea or a myth. It was to be a way of life in Israel. Therefore the laws had to consider the practical details of fair dealings. How would the land come back to the right family? What if a man could not buy back the family property? How could close relatives help out? Could the rightful owner ever get his property back? Would he have to wait for the jubilee? What if his property were inside a walled city? Would the rules be different? These kinds of questions needed to be answered in order to show forth the liberty of the sons of God in the Old Testament world while still remaining mindful of the Lord's determination that His people be both just and merciful.

Care for the poor was part of the law for the jubilee, but the poor could not always wait fifty years for aid. The people of Israel needed to help one another. A brother Israelite was not to be thought of as someone from whom you could gather interest, gaining riches in the day of his misfortune. Was he hungry? You needed to give him something to eat? The people of God had been redeemed from Egypt by God. They needed to care for the needy with that in mind.

If a man had to sell himself to his brother Israelite, it was not to be for the purpose of cruel bondage. It was a temporary arrangement for his survival only until the year of jubilee. The world might consider ruthless transactions with the poor as normal. God would not allow such things to take place in Israel.

There was a distinction between the Israelite and the people of other nations in these Old Covenant times, but this was appropriate for that era before the gospel went forth to every nation. The picture of jubilee was not given to instruct us about the best management of slavery. It was a proclamation of a coming day of resurrection liberty in Christ.

We who were slaves of sin and hell by our own moral condition have now received our liberty through the blood of our Redeemer. Long ago He had determined to be our close relation. He saw us in our desperate condition and gave His blood for our freedom. The necessary price took into account our serious offense against our eternal God.

Jubilee would never have arrived for us if it had to come by our merit. But Christ has paid the eternal price for us. Now we look for the unveiling of His promise of a new heavens and a new earth, a place of true liberty, bounty, community, and peace; a land of eternal jubilee.