Beloved
in Christ, the Old Testament makes up over three-fourths of the Bible and is
God’s holy Word, but it can be a bit puzzling to understand at times. It’s easy
enough to read various events that occurred in the Bible and reflect on them
from a Christian perspective. We read, for example, of how the Israelites
rebelled against Moses and murmured against God in the wilderness, and we are
warned by that example not to do the same or to repent when we see a spirit of
bitterness settling upon us. Or we look at the heroes of faith and are moved to
imitate their life of repentance and faith. With David, who repented after his
adulterous affair with Bathsheba, we too humble ourselves before God and
deplore our sins. With Abraham, who set out to a new land solely on the basis
of God’s promise, we trust in and rely upon the promises of God in Christ
Jesus.
Somewhat
harder but still easy enough are the direct prophecies of Christ in the Old
Testament. Often that is because we Christians have not been trained to look
for them and to contemplate their meaning, although they are there for people
to see if they will pay attention. In every book of the Bible there is
something that points forward to the coming of Christ. You see that, with each
new generation from Abraham through Jacob’s children, there was a repetition of
the promise that the world would be blessed by one of Abraham’s descendants. When
the Israelites left Egypt and were about to enter the Promised Land, when David
was established as king, when they were about to go into exile, there were
direct prophecies given about how the Christ would come. Meanwhile, every book
of the prophets not only chastised God’s people for their slowness to believe
and their eagerness to do evil, but also pointed out how the coming Messiah
would be the exact antidote to Israel’s waywardness. The more scathing the
prophecy against the Israelites, the sweeter and brighter the messianic
promises tended to be.
But
what is really difficult for us to make sense of are all the rules and
regulations God gave in the Old Testament. Some Christians assume that all the
rules and holidays are still in force. But this overlooks the repeated
testimony of the New Testament that the moral law is still in force, but the
rules about holidays, kosher foods, clean and unclean states, and the like are
not. They applied to the Israelites in the Old Testament, but they do not apply
to Christians in the New Testament.
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| James Tissot, Jesus Unrolls the Scroll in the Synagogue |
Now
this seems a bit bizarre to us. Why should God have given those rules if He was
going to abolish them anyway? And what benefit can we Christians get from
reading about these rules, when the ceremonies seem a bit strange to us and we
know that they no longer apply to us. We naturally are inclined to skip over
the entire book of Leviticus and huge chunks of Exodus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy, because they all talk about these sort of things that we find hard
to apply to us.
But
as always, it is Jesus who comes to our rescue. In today’s Gospel He preached
His first recorded sermon in his hometown. And He preached it on a topic that
we might find puzzling: the Jubilee Year that occurred once every 49 years. But
it might help us to understand that our Lord did not just talk about the
Jubilee Year as Moses had described it in Leviticus, but rather as the prophet
Isaiah had further explained and shown how the Messiah would bring about what
the Jubilee Year was pointing to. All Christ had to do was then point out that
He was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.
In
other words, already in the days of the Old Testament the prophets had reminded
God’s people that the rituals and ceremonies and holidays pointed to something
greater. So when we Christians say that our Lord fulfilled all the rituals and
holidays of the Old Testament, we are not inventing that interpretation. It is
an idea that goes back to the Old Testament days and was approved by the
prophets of old.
And
so with that in mind we consider what the Year of Jubilee might mean for us
Christians today. It would help to begin by looking at what that festival
actually consisted of. The Hebrew calendar not only observed the Sabbath every
Saturday and several other festivals such as Passover and the Day of Atonement
each year, but they also observed two other holidays that occurred only in some
years. Every seventh year was a Sabbath year. The people took a year off from
planting and harvesting their crops, although one could eat what grew
naturally.
Then
following every seventh Sabbath year—that is, every 49 years, there would be
the Year of Jubilee. It was like getting an extra year off. No crops were
planted, but one enjoyed the food stored up from previous years. All Israelite
slaves were freed. Now no Israelite could be enslaved for more than six years
and they were to be treated as indentured servants rather than slaves, but if
someone had only served a couple of years when the Year of Jubilee rolled
around, they were still to be set free. At the same time, land was returned to
the original owners. In this way nobody would amass all the land in an area and
nobody would be permanently bereft of land, which was the only way to gain
income in that kind of society. So this holiday helped the poor, but it brought
joy to all.
Well,
when Isaiah wrote his book, he reflected on what the Year of Jubilee might be
pointing toward. Yes, it was good that the poor, the afflicted, and the
enslaved were being set free. But was that all that God had in mind for people?
Did He just want everybody to enjoy a little time off? No, there was something
deeper. It pointed to the fact that the Messiah would come and set the whole
world aright, not just a corner of it. Not only would the poor receive good
news and the captives be set free, but the blind would be given sight. Now that
had never happened during a Jubilee Year in Old Testament days, but of course
Christ would heal several blind people during His earthly ministry.
But
Isaiah had more than mere earthly poverty and blindness in mind. Throughout his
book Isaiah had complained that God’s people had become blind by their constant
idolatry. They had eyes, but they could not see. And so when Isaiah talked
about the blind seeing, he was also including the idea that people would
finally come to see the truth about God and would worship Him alone rather than
the idols. And that is why Isaiah said that the coming of the Messiah and thus
the true Jubilee would be when God’s favor would finally rest upon His people.
And
then our Lord Jesus entered that synagogue in Nazareth and spoke those words
that still amaze us: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your
hearing.” Yes, already the Jubilee Year—the year of the Lord’s
favor—had begun and it would continue to last for all time. Of course, Christ
wasn’t referring to the year on the Jewish calendar, since He was speaking
these words around 30 AD and the next Jubilee Year wouldn’t come for another 30
years. But Christ was beginning the New Testament age that very moment, the age
in which those promises of Isaiah came true.
Christ
had good news for the poor. The word Isaiah had used to describe the poor
literally means “the bent-over ones.” They are the people so weighed down by
life that they stoop underneath the burden. Poverty remains a horrible burden.
How wonderful it is to hear that Christ cares for the poor in their misery. But
it isn’t just the penniless who are bent underneath a terrible burden. So is
every last human being, for we have squandered our eternal inheritance and
chosen instead the squalor of sin. We have been cheated out of our birthright
and face nothing but the grinding poverty of death and damnation. To us Christ
proclaims good news: He has come to free us from captivity to sin. He gives us
that freedom by our forgiving our sins—something He could do only because He
went to the cross and died for us and then rose again by God’s power. No wonder
Christ calls this era “the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And
so, beloved in Christ, consider all the treasures that Christ has given to you
that our Old Testament counterparts knew only in small measure. They knew only
about a rest that came from taking off a day every week. You have the permanent
rest that comes from knowing God and enjoying fellowship with Him. They knew
about the Passover that had set them free from slavery in Egypt. But you have
the true Passover that sets you free from slavery to sin, death, and hell. They
kept the Passover by scouring their homes and removing any yeast in them. But
you should keep the true Passover by letting God scour your hearts and remove
the taint of sin within them. They knew about a Day of Atonement where year
after year the blood of goats was sprinkled that the sin of Israel might be removed.
But you know of the true Day of Atonement, Good Friday, when once and for all
the blood of the Son of God was shed that we might have our guilt removed.
And
so, beloved in Christ, let us consider the joy and hope that the ancient
holidays of Israel brought to them. But then let us consider the greater joy
and hope that are ours through Christ Jesus. Amen.
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