Leviticus 25:2-55 Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When you come into the land which I give you… The great year-sabbath carried with it many important advantages and benefits that belonged to no other period; and it is interesting to observe how accurately they all symbolised the blessings conferred by the redemptive work of our Emmanuel. I. ONE OF THESE WAS THE UNIVERSAL EXTINCTION OF DEBT. Here is a man who has inherited from his ancestors a narrow strip of land on the rocky slopes of Mount Ephraim. He cultivates a small vineyard on the hillside, sows a few patches of wheat and barley, and has a few cows and bullocks grazing in his little meadow. With health and good seasons he could supply the modest wants of his household, and escape the necessity of debt. But calamities have befallen him. Under the pressure of his needs he has been compelled to contract debts, hoping that more auspicious days would enable him to discharge them. But those days come not. His creditors grow stern and exacting, demand immediate payment, and threaten to eject him from his heritage, cast him into prison, and sell his children into slavery. Still he struggles on. Yet, toil as he may, he cannot master the difficulties that environ him. The encumbrance is too heavy, the danger too near and too pressing. But just as he is on the point of giving up all further effort and resigning himself to despair, the morning of the jubilee breaks over the land. The joyful acclamations that welcome its coming swell out on the air and reach him among the hills. Blessed sounds are they to him! They tell him that his trials are ended, his home secure; and that, by the benign decree of Israel's God, he may now go forth to his daily labour, safe from the peril that has menaced him so long. Go with me to the debtor's gaol in Jerusalem, and look at another on whom adversity has dealt blows still more terrible. Liable to claims which he could not meet, he was stripped of all that he possessed. There was no kinsman rich enough, or generous enough, to redeem his property or become surety for his person, and his creditors, having the power, shut him up in prison. Many years have passed since then. He has lost all reckoning of time — has forgotten to note the slow years, as they drag wearily by him — forgotten that the hour of deliverance is drawing nigh. The Day of Atonement dawns in the heavens, but he knows it not. He hears the loud trumpets proclaiming the year-sabbath without any thought of their meaning. The door of his cell is thrown open; he is told that the jubilee has come, and that he is free. Rising listlessly from his bed of straw, he looks round amazed and stupefied. The truth at last flashes upon him, and with a low, trembling cry of thanksgiving, he goes forth to tread the green earth once more, to feel the soft breath of spring, and exult in the bright sun and sky. Call to mind how many cases, analogous to those now supposed, there must have been in Israel at each recurrence of the year of release, and you will be able to form some conception of the blessings connected with that sacred season. Nor can you fail to perceive with what force and beauty the feature which we have considered illustrates the grace of the gospel. By our numerous and aggravated sins we have come under tremendous liabilities to the justice of God, and have incurred an amount of obligation which no human arithmetic can compute, and no human efforts can liquidate. Judgment has been entered against us in the court of heaven, execution issued; and the stern messenger, Death, only awaits the Divine signal to bear us away to the dungeons of hell. But in this fearful exigency the Saviour has interposed for our rescue. By faith in His atoning sacrifice our mighty debt is cancelled; the uttermost farthing is paid; the demands of the law are satisfied; and through the suretyship of Him who died for us, we stand exonerated before the tribunal of Infinite Holiness. II. IN THE YEAR-SABBATH THERE WAS AN END OF BONDAGE. See that slave delving and sweltering in the hot cane-fields of Jericho, condemned to toil through the long summer day under a burning summer sun, without rest, and without reward. His childhood was passed on the breezy heights of Carmel, among babbling brooks, the singing of birds, and the odour of flowers. There he grew up, a bold, free-hearted youth, erect and tall, with an eye keen as a falcon's and a foot fleet as the roe which he chased on the mountain-side. But misfortune, swifter still, overtook him. A ruthless claimant, to whom his parents were indebted, seized him, and doomed him to bondage. Look at him now. Slavery has bowed his strong frame, and stiffened his elastic limbs, and on the brow, once so joyous, sits hopeless gloom. As he bends to his task, what sad memories are busy within him! He thinks of the dear ones far away — of his happy boyhood — of all that he might have been — of the hard lot that has been his instead — and tears, bitter tears, are on his bronzed cheek. But while he thus muses and weeps his ear catches the distant note of a trumpet. Now it is nearer, louder. It comes rolling down the gorges of the wilderness in the way toward Jerusalem, bounding from cliff to cliff, and pouring its jocund waves upon the plain below. Others take up the strain, and send it from wall and housetop, from crag and valley, till the very air seems alive with it. For a moment he listens uncertain; then shouting, "The jubilee, the jubilee!" tears off the badge of his servitude — stands up a freeman — and with the stride of a giant, journeys back to the scenes where his heart has ever been. By nature we are all the subjects of a moral thraldom as grinding as it is criminal. We are the slaves of our own depravity, "sold under sin," and "led by the devil at his will." But the Cross of Christ touches our chains, and they are shivered into fragments; His grace rends the serf-livery from our spirits, and we walk forth in the joy of a blessed emancipation. III. THE JUBILEE BROUGHT WITH IT THE RESTORATION OF PROPERTY. Picture to yourselves an Israelite thrust out by adversity from the inheritance of his ancestors. He has struggled hard to keep the old home; but losses have fallen heavily upon him and he must depart. The roof beneath which he was born, the streams by which he has walked, the fields he has tilled, the trees in whose shade he has reclined, the graves where his fathers sleep, all must be left, and left, alas I in the keeping of strangers. He casts one long, farewell look on the scene which he loves so well, and then, with wife and little ones, goes forth an exile. Years pass on. Farther and farther he wanders, finding no resting-place, and "dragging at each remove a lengthening chain." But, hark I a trumpet-blast breaks upon the air. It is caught up and repeated from city and hamlet, from hill-top and glen, from highways and byways, till the whole land rings with the joyous echo. The wanderer hears it. His heart knows and feels it. It is the jubilee signal. Oh, with what rapture does he now hasten back to the home once more his own! Old friends greet his return; old familiar faces smile upon him; hands that he grasped in youth now grasp his in happy welcome. The days of his exile are over. He is among his kindred again. And what an image is there here of our own restoration by the gospel to the heritage which we have lost! Our condition, as fallen creatures, resembles that of the beggared Jew driven out from his birthright. Our sins have stripped us of cur all. The original holiness of our nature, the likeness and favour of God, our kindred with angels, our title to a blessed immortality, are gone, and gone beyond our power to recover. But the mercy of God has provided for us a jubilee. By believing in His only-begotten Son we receive back, aye, more than receive back, our alienated inheritance. We are again invested with a glorious property, and made rich with a wealth which empires could not bestow. IV. THE YEAR-SABBATH WAS INTENDED TO BE A SEASON OF HARMONY AND REPOSE. During its continuance the land was to rest, the implements of husbandry to be put away, and labour to cease, that social intercourse and kindly feeling might be cultivated without restraint. There was to be no strife, no oppression; all disputes were to be laid aside, all contentions abandoned; and society in every rank was to present one unbroken scene of brotherhood and peace. How beautifully does this feature of the sacred year prefigure the results which Christianity contemplates. Its design is to impart to all who truly embrace it a peace which comes from heaven, and is the earnest of heaven, and then to unite them to each other in one harmonious and holy fraternity. All its elements, all its tendencies, are those of union and love. Mankind shall become one great family. Public and private animosities, the jar of conflicting interests, the opposition of classes, the insolence of the rich, the overbearing of the strong, shall be remembered only to excite wonder that they could ever have been. Then will be the jubilee of the creation, the great Sabbath of the world. Over the face of humanity, long agitated by wrong, and struggle, and sin, shall come a holy calm; like the quiet of a still eventide after the turmoil of a tempestuous day, when the winds have gone down, and the clouds disappear, and the blue sky breaks forth, and the setting sun sprinkles gold over the smiling land and the sleeping waters. And this universal peace on earth will be the prelude of everlasting peace in heaven. V. One more evangelic analogy of the year-sabbath may be traced in THE EXTENT AND FULNESS GIVEN TO ITS PROCLAMATION. "Ye shall make the trumpet sound throughout all your land." The manner in which this was done was very interesting and suggestive. As the time for proclaiming the jubilee drew on a company of priests was stationed at the door of the Tabernacle or Temple, each with a silver trumpet in his hand. The Levites in the cities and towns, and every householder in the nation, were also furnished with silver trumpets. When the hour had arrived, the company of priests sounded the appointed signal. Those in their immediate neighbourhood repeated it. It was answered by the Levites and the inhabitants of the next town. And thus it was sent on from dwelling to dwelling, from city to city, from mountain to mountain, from tribe to tribe, till the farthest borders of the land echoed and re-echoed with the glad music. The sounding of the silver trumpets was unquestionably a symbol of the proclamation of the gospel. The ministers of Christ are commanded to publish redemption by His blood, and to invite the disinherited and the ruined to return to their Father's house. And in the work of spreading this message all the people of God are to bear part. The tidings of mercy announced by the priests and Levites are to be taken up by private Christians and carried out into all the walks of life. At the fireside, in the Sabbath-school class, in the social circle, in the resorts of business, the trumpet is to be sounded. Neighbour should sound it to neighbour, village to village, city to city, land to land, until the most distant and secluded spot on the globe has been penetrated by the joyful summons. And the hour is at hand when this blessed consummation shall be realised. Peal out, O trumpet of redemption l along our storm-swept skies, ringing over land and sea, proclaiming the end of sin, the end of travail, and heralding the birth of the new spiritual creation in which dwelleth righteousness. (Dr. Ide.) Parallel Verses KJV: Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD. |
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