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Showing posts with label release. Show all posts
Showing posts with label release. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 6, 2022

The Year of Jubilee - Nothing to Lose

Introduction
Today, I’m excited to start a new series of sermons about the Year of Jubilee in the Bible.  This series grew out of questions that came up in our Thursday morning Bible study as well as some of my own questions from my person study time in God’s Word.

What is the year of Jubilee?  I’m glad you asked!  In ancient Israel in the Bible, you probably know they had a Sabbath Day. Every seventh day, the people were supposed to rest and worship the Lord—no work.  Most people don’t realize, that is where we get our modern idea of the weekend—thank God! 

Most people know about the Sabbath Day.  Not a as many of people know in ancient Israel they also took a Sabbath Year.  Every seventh year, they were suppose to take a year off—no farming.  Even the livestock and wild animals in Israel got a year off.  It was a year of rest! (Wouldn't that be awesome!)

God took care of His people.  He provided enough harvest in the sixth year to feed them all the way through the seventh year and even until the harvest on the eighth year.  Pretty amazing!  You might say, “That’s impossible!”   But remember, the Bible also says, God fed the Israelites with manna for forty years while they wandered in the desert after they left Egypt. So, providing enough food to get the people through one year was no problem for the God of Israel. 

You might think having a whole year off every 7 years was crazy or impossible (or awesome).  But it gets even better.  And that’s what brings us to the Year of Jubilee we read about in Leviticus 25.

Leviticus 25:8-13
“In addition, you must count off seven Sabbath years, seven sets of seven years, adding up to forty-nine years in all. Then on the Day of Atonement in the fiftieth year, blow the ram’s horn loud and long throughout the land. 10 Set this year apart as holy, a time to proclaim freedom throughout the land for all who live there. It will be a jubilee year for you, when each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors and return to your own clan. 11 This fiftieth year will be a jubilee for you. During that year you must not plant your fields or store away any of the crops that grow on their own, and don’t gather the grapes from your unpruned vines. 12 It will be a jubilee year for you, and you must keep it holy. But you may eat whatever the land produces on its own. 13 In the Year of Jubilee each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors.

The Year of Jubilee
The Year of Jubilee happened every 50 years in ancient Israel.  The name “Jubilee” comes from the Hebrew word for “ram’s horn” because the 50th year was announced by the blowing of a shofar—a ram’s horn trumpet.  Why a ram’s horn?  The Jubilee begins on the Day of Atonement with a call to repentance.  Rams were sacrificial animals in the Old Testament.  Perhaps you remember the story of when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac.  Abraham obeyed and took Isaac up on Mount Moriah.  Just as he was poised to take his son's life, the Angel of the Lord stopped him and showed him ram with its horns caught in a thicket.  The ram became a substitutionary sacrifice for Isaac.  Rams were sacrificial animals to cover the people's sins.

So at the Jubilee, the ram's horn was blows to call people to repent and receive rest, release, and restoration.  The took a year off from work to rest and worship and celebrate the goodness of God with their friends and family.  They were released from all their debts and anyone who was a slave was released from slavery.  Everyone was restored to their original state of fortune.  Slaves were restored to freedom.  Anyone who had sole their family land had it returned to them.  It was as if "control, alt, delete" was performed on the Israelite society and everything was reset to normal again.

Well, what’s this got to do with us today?  I’m glad you asked!  According to the Gospel of Luke,
when Jesus started his ministry, he preached in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth and Jesus announced the greatest Jubilee of all times! 

Luke 4:17-19

17 The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:  18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, 19 and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”

Jesus is the Great Jubilee
Do you hear the Good News words of Jubilee? Rest! Release! Restoration!  Jesus is called the “Lamb of God”.  A male lamb is a ram.  So Jesus is the sacrificial ram.  He is the ram’s horn, the shofar, announcing the greatest year of Jubilee—the year of the Lord—when there will be rest. release, and restoration.

There will be rest.  Remember, Jesus said in Matthew 11:28, "COme to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest..." 

And Jesus came to release all who trust in Him from bondage to sin and to anything else that coptivates us, for no one can serve two masters.  Therefore, all who follow Jesus as Lord must be set free!  If Jesus sets you free, you are free indeed!

And Jesus came to restore us to a right relationship with God and our neighbors.  Those who follo Christ learn to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love their neighbor as themselves.  Our sins are washed away and we are made right with God and nothing stand in the way of our at-one-ment with God.

If you’ve not already done so, I beg you to repent of your sins and turn to Jesus today!  For then you will begin to experience the greatest Jubilee of all time where there is rest, release, and restoration.

Christians Have: Nothing to Lose
To become a Christian, you surrender to Jesus and die to your own selfish desires.  You proclaim:  “I am no longer my own, but yours, Jesus!”  And so, the Christian embodies Galatians 2:20 – “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”

If you’ve already died, what do you have left to lose?   What’s the worst that can happen?  If your life on earth ends, you go to be with Jesus in Heaven where there is no more sin or sickness or suffering or death!  We will gather around the throne of God and worship and experience the eternal harmony He promises the faithful who trust Christ as Lord.  

To live on earth is better for the Lord’s Kingdom because you can keep learning the lessons God wants you to learn as you glorify His name and serve Him here on earth.  To die is even better for you, because you go home to the eternal reward that awaits all His faithful.

What a freeing reality—if you think about it.  What have you got to lose?  Nothing! You’ve already won!  Jesus won the victory!  And we are set free!  Hallelujah!

Christians experience so much worry and anxiety in this life when we forget that we've already won.  There's nothing to worry about.  Jesus has already won the victory.  We are on HIs side, so we've won too!  It is only our worldly ways of thinking that make us feel we've something left to worry about.

My Freedom as a Pastor
I’ve served as pastor of Pleasant Grove Methodist in Dalton, GA for 12 years!  That’s amazing!  It's been a great 12 years.  The longer I serve, the more I realize I won’t be at my church forever.  I don't know how long I have left at Pleasant Grove.  I would like to stay on until my daughter graduates high school in 2025, but only if my church feels like I’m the right guy for the job.  

I believe I am the right guy for the job.  We have some important things to do over the next few years.  We are working through disaffiliation for the United Methodist denomination, which will take a year. Then, we will be working through either joining a new affiliation or getting setup as an independent congregation.  Either way, there will be a lot of work to do.  I believe my experience at Pleasant Grove gives me a unique ability to lead the congregation through these important years. 

In whatever time I have left at Pleasant Grove, I feel more and more like I have nothing to lose.  I'm not concerned with making everyone like me.  My number one commitment at Pleasant Grove always has been and always will be the Kingdom of God. Whatever I do, I do it for the Lord.  Why not go for broke?

It's not about me.  It never has been.  It never will be.  Ultimately, it's all about what's best for the Kingdom of God.   So that's always what I'm working for.  Everything else is expendable. Chief among the expendable things is me.  I take the Bible serious when it says in Galatians 2:20 – “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”

My faith says, even if I lose my very life for the sake of Christ, Jesus will raise me to new life.  Even if I wear myself out trying to lead my church, God can restore and revive me.  So, I have nothing to lose.

My role here at Pleasant Grove is to be a shepherd.  I try to lead my church in the right direction.  If I think there’s danger around the corner—some cliff they might fall off—I do my best to guide them along a safe path.  If wolves come in to attack , I’m not gonna run away.  I’ll do my best to protect.  All along the way, I’ll be my church's biggest cheerleader because I believe Pleasant Grove is the best church in this whole community and I want everyone to come join us.

So my thinking is, let’s go for broke together.  Let’s give it all we’ve got for the Kingdom of God!

What Do You Have To Lose?
It’s amazingly freeing when you feel like you have anything to lose!  The most powerful people in the world are those who know they have nothing to lose.  That's how Christians were able to transform their world against all odds.

What about you?  What do you have to lose?  Are you still trying to cling to your life?  Jesus said, “If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.”  (Luke 9:24)  

If you keep clinging to your life and the things in your life because you think they are yours and you’ve got to protect them, you’re gonna lose them.  If you cling to your relationships, to your children, to your possessions, your dreams, or anything else, you will lose them.  You will stress yourself out with worry and anxiety, you will sacrifice things you shouldn’t sacrifice, you will cause heartache and disappointment in yourself and others, and at the end of it all, you will lose them anyway.

The alternative is to give all to God through Christ--to die to yourself and trust in Jesus to raise you to a new kind of living.  It is to live in the Year of the Jubilee, where there is rest, release, and restoration.

Don’t you want that peace and freedom in your life where you don’ have anything to lose?  What's stopping you from turning to Jesus and accept His call to repent and believe and experience the rest, release, and restoration He wants to give you today?  Why don't you turn to him right now?