Today, brothers and sisters, as we've been doing, we are working our way through the last major section of the book of Leviticus, which, as I've said before, is called by scholars the Holiness Code because of its emphasis on practical, inward holiness. Today, in particular, we are wrapping up a three-chapter subsection of the Holiness Code, namely chapters 23 through 25, which, as we've seen, deal in one way or another with the Sabbath division of time, the one in seven. Now before we get to our actual chapter today, just note that after today's sermon, there are only two chapters left in the book of Leviticus, 26 and 27, and then we are done. And Lord willing, I plan, I actually have a reason to stick to finishing that a chapter a week, because after that, Lord willing, we'll have joint services beginning in March with the brothers and sisters of faith community And so, in God's providence, we happen to be wrapping up just in time, and we will not be going through Leviticus when we meet with him. As we said, Jason and I, in those months, will be teaching on things more pertinent for the merge, like life and the body, loving one another, and things like that. But, in God's timing and His providence, we're wrapping up just before then. Well, for today, as I said, we're finishing up the three-chapter subsection that deals with Sabbath time as we look today at the Sabbath year and then the Jubilee year, which comes after seven Sabbath years. Now, I am pleased to report to you today that unlike the previous two chapters of this subsection, which inquired quite a bit of unpacking, they required connecting of some dots that I think were truly connected, but they were a little bit different from one another and kind of distant. After last week's sermon, I was driving home, and as I always do, I get my sermon evaluation from my wife. Well, actually, what I say is, what do you think of the sermon? And she said, I was kind of confused. And I thought, OK, great. It's probably what a lot of other people are thinking, right? We did connect some dots that were kind of far. I think they are connected, but that's kind of what the last two chapters were like in many ways. Well, I am pleased to report that unlike that, today's chapter is not only quite straightforward in and of itself, but also as it relates to the holiness code in general, and as it points us to Jesus Christ and salvation in Him. Part of the reason for this is because in many ways, as we'll see, with our passage today, it's one of those rare occasions when Jesus just said, this is what this means, okay? When Jesus says that, it kind of makes your job as an interpreter a whole lot easier, because you have the author of the book telling you what it means, and he does that with some of the elements of our passage today. Well, what I would like us to do today, we have quite a chunk of Scripture, 55 verses. I'd like us to go through it, and while it's not very mysterious, there is a lot to get through. There are several things that need to be explained. There's a lot of practical rules in this chapter. Especially as it pertains to the Sabbath year and the Jubilee. Whenever you have everybody's property reverting back to themselves every 50 years, it's going to affect a lot of things economically, like land prices and things like that. And so God gives a lot of practical advice that we want to look at, but all that to say there's a lot of things to consider. Furthermore, we want to understand this chapter as it compares with other similar passages in Exodus and Deuteronomy because there are some apparent differences at first, which some would say are a contradiction. They're not, but they are slightly different, or at least we have to work out how they work together with what is here in Leviticus. And while I don't wanna get bogged down in that, that was probably the biggest thing that I spent my time studying, was making sense of a couple things. We won't spend too much time, but we'll talk about it and then we'll move on, okay? So all that to say, we'll go through the passage, try to understand the basic what of it, and then at the end, we'll get to some application. And just be encouraged, we will have a wealth of application from this passage. In fact, I cut off a few things that we could have also said. Wealth of exhortations in terms of practical exhortations, especially as it pertains to the keeping of the Sabbath, but also just really seeing the precious work of Christ in this chapter. We see so much of that. Well, let's turn to our text now and begin to go through it. Beginning in verse 1. It says, "'The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, "'Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, "'When you come into the land that I give you, "'the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. "'For six years you shall sow your field, "'and for six years you shall prune your vineyard "'and gather in its fruits. "'But in the seventh year, "'there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, "'a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest or gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves, and for your hired worker and the sojourner who lives with you. And for your cattle and for the wild animals that are in your land, all its yield shall be for food." All right. Well, here we have what sounds like one of the most amazing ideas ever. Not a Sabbath day, a day of rest, but a Sabbath year, a year of rest. Just imagine, brothers and sisters, if every seventh year we all got a year of paid vacation for an entire year, okay? That's what's at view here. In fact, this, I think, is where we get the idea of a sabbatical from. A sabbatical is typically an extended time, not really vacation, but extended time off with paid leave. In seminary, one of my professors one semester had a sabbatical. One semester he had a sabbatical, and he took time to write and to research a book he was working on, right? Well, this is a sabbatical, but a whole year, and it's a Sabbath year, okay? Now technically, the Sabbath year is not a year of rest for the people per se, but really it's for the land. Verse 4 says, the seventh year shall be a solemn rest for the land. Then verse 5, it shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. Now as we'll see later, I think there is a typological meaning to some of this. I think it has to do with the fact that the ground was also cursed, and this is a picture of giving the land freedom from the curse when Christ comes in glory. But in terms of a practical purpose, This is very much something that is good in the land to do. It's kind of the same reason why we rotate crops. If you have especially the same kind of crop in one field, and you're doing that same one year after year, you deplete the soil of nutrients. So a very practical benefit is just not cultivating at all. The term they use is letting it lie fallow. Don't plow it, don't fertilize it, let whatever grows fall into the ground and kind of become nutrients again. And from a practical perspective, that's part of the reason for this. Now, although the Sabbath year is for the land to rest, Yet, because ancient Israelite society was overwhelmingly agrarian, the result was that the people did get a year of rest as well. They would not have to worry about food because God says the previous year, on this sixth year, He would give them an enormous crop. And the crop that He gives is like nothing I don't think that normal farmers would ever get in what you call a bumper crop. It's just twice, it's triple the size of what you would normally get. In fact, if you look ahead at verses 20 through 22, it explains this. It says, and if you say, what shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop, I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years. When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating some of the old crop. You shall eat the old until the ninth year when its crop arrives. Now those verses there are more directly related to the Jubilee, which, as we'll see, is basically a year of Sabbath rest for the land itself after a Sabbath rest of the land. So you kind of get two back-to-back with the Jubilee. That's why I think it's three there. I kind of wonder if in a normal Sabbath year that wasn't followed by a Jubilee, it would be two years' worth of crops. It may have been three. Either way, what we see, they don't have to worry about food at all because they had such a good crop the year before. Furthermore, I don't think that only farmers got to rest, but in many ways, all society did to some degree. There was probably some commerce going on during this time. It doesn't seem like that was forbidden. But I think that if you were a city dweller, let's say your occupation is a blacksmith, I think you still got a rest insofar as you didn't have to make money to buy food. You could just go into the fields and collect whatever you needed. The farmers were not allowed to do that, but those who didn't have land could do that. And in fact, this was part of the purpose of the Sabbath year. For example, Exodus 23 tells us, For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow that the poor of your people may eat." So the poor could gather and harvest. They couldn't store it up, but they could have whatever they wanted for their daily needs. One commentator says, they were not to bring the fruits of the seventh year into their house to lay them up, but rather to reap and thresh them as they did need them. So this was a year of particular blessed rich eating for poor folks in Israel. Normally, they were allowed to eat on the edges of the field. On a Sabbath year, they could get even more, right? They're not to hoard it and store it up, but they could go into the whole field and they would be eating very richly. And that's part of the blessing of what the Sabbath year is all about. Now, right there, We're hitting on a major theme, I would say in many ways one of, you could call it the major theme of this chapter. The major theme of the Sabbath year, of the Jubilee, and I would say the Sabbath in general, and that theme is mercy. Mercy, pity, compassion, especially on the poor, the burdened, the down and out, that is a big theme. It's part of the Sabbath year, it's part of the Jubilee, and I would say we should understand it as part of the Sabbath in general. For example, we see this in other references to the Sabbath year. In Leviticus 25, the emphasis is on the resting of the land. And in some ways, I kind of wondered if the Sabbath year is only mentioned in 25 to set us up for the Jubilee, because it's already been mentioned before in Exodus, right? However, when we look at the other books of the Pentateuch, we see another huge blessing of mercy on the Sabbath year, namely the cancellation of debts. For example, turn with me to Deuteronomy 15. Deuteronomy chapter 15, verses 1 through 3. It says, at the end of every seven years, you shall grant a release. And this is the manner of the release. Every creditor shall release what he has lent to his neighbor. He shall not exact it of his neighbor, his brother, because the Lord's release has been proclaimed. Of a foreigner you may exact it, but whatever of yours is with your brother, your hand shall release. Elsewhere, this Sabbath year is called the year of release, or a shmita, as Jews refer to it today. The term release itself doesn't apply to slavery so much as debt. And it literally means like a releasing. That's why it says, shall release from your hand, what is in your brother's hand. It's a canceling, a forgiving of debts. So every seven years, not only would you get a whole year off, but all of your debts would be canceled as well. They had to be, it was the Lord's release. Now this is only for the Israelites, as you can see. Foreigners, you still had to pay back. But for Hebrews, here we have a year of rest. The poor can eat very well that year. And also people who are typically in debt are also poor. So they were also released from their debts. And again, this is all from the sake of mercy. Now one question I wrestled with, and I don't want us to get bogged down too much, but just track with me here. I wrestled with the question and the answers get surprisingly complicated and way above my pay grade. But it's the question of when were Israelite slaves to be freed from slavery? Now, if you were a foreign slave in Israel, you could be freed. Either you paid for your own freedom, your master freed you, but you didn't have to be freed. That was not the case with Hebrew slaves. They could not remain in slavery perpetually unless they agreed to do it, as the one who agrees and his master puts an awl in his ear and that. Normally, they had to be freed. However, there is a question over when this emancipation happened. Did it happen after seven years on the Sabbath year, or did it happen after 49 on the Jubilee? As I said, the answers get surprisingly complicated. We could spend like two Sunday schools looking at the answer to that. You might be surprised that that would be that complicated. But we're not going to do that, because I don't want us to get bogged down. I'm just going to give you kind of the conclusions I've come to. And if you have questions, you can ask me about that later, OK? First of all, you also might be wondering, well, does it even matter? Like, why are we spending so much time? It does, it's kind of some of these things don't quite make sense. You could say, were they released on the Sabbath year and the Jubilee? Well, maybe, but if you were released on the Sabbath year and then slaves are released again the following year on the Jubilee, who's being released that year? Since presumably they were already released the first year. So it's a question that comes up a lot, okay? I think that the Sabbath year was a year of release from debts, and it was a year for letting the land rest, but I don't think that that's the year when Hebrew slaves were freed. Now that being said, Scripture is clear that Hebrew slaves could only be kept in servitude for six years, and then on the seventh year of their servitude, they had to be freed. But I don't think that necessarily means the freedom on the seventh year of their servitude is the same seventh year, the year of release, if that makes sense. In other words, I was going to draw this out like in the order of service. If there was a Sabbath year, and then two years later you got sold into slavery, it would be seven years from that time when you would be released. They don't necessarily occur, though they both have a seven-year time limit. I think some of the confusion comes from the fact that in Deuteronomy 15, the emancipation of Hebrews after six years is mentioned after the Sabbath year, the year of release. And so some take the seventh year of their release to be the same as the seventh year, but I don't think that must necessarily be the case. It may just be that the two are mentioned together there because they both have the element of Sabbath time in them, one out of every seven. But one is a land that is a fixed seventh year for the land of rest, and the other is for the emancipation, but I don't think they're necessarily the same thing. The only time when Hebrew slaves would be released before their six years were complete, I think, was on the Jubilee. That is explicitly mentioned as being something of the Jubilee. Before that, if they haven't fulfilled their six years, they have to wait or they have to be redeemed. Okay? So it's kind of, just wanted to clear that up. Let's continue now in verse 8 with the Jubilee. It says, you shall count seven weeks of years. Now a week there just means seven. The Hebrew word for a week is the word for seven, because there's seven days in it, okay? You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you 49 years. Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the 10th day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land and you shall consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan." Well, this is the jubilee year. The word Jubilee is a transliteration of the Hebrew Yovel, which essentially means a ram's horn, which is fitting because how is this all pronounced? With the blowing of a trumpet, or whenever you see trumpet in the Old Testament, it's most likely a ram's horn or a shofar. That's how it was announced. And so this is called a Yovel. As far as what the Jubilee consisted of, I would say it has three main elements to it, the first two of which were just mentioned in the verses above. Namely, first, you have a return to property with the implication that the property is also returned to you. That's why you can go back to it because your ownership is restored, okay? Secondly, you have the return to clan, implying you have been freed from slavery. Debts would have been forgiven on the seventh year, the Sabbath year that preceded the Jubilee. That was also a year of rest. Here you get a double year of rest and everyone's property goes back and people are freed from slavery. Now the third element of the Jubilee, as I said, is another year of letting the land rest, which we see picking up in verse 11. It says, that 50th year shall be a Jubilee for you. In it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of itself, nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you. You may eat the produce of the field." So if a normal Sabbath year was like a sabbatical, a sabbatical from work with a jubilee, you get two years off. Your debts are canceled. People come home from slavery. You get to go back to your farm and two years off paid leave, right? You can kind of just see how beautiful all of this is. Typically, the average Israelite would experience one jubilee in their lifetime, possibly two. I guess you could even say maybe three if they live to a really ripe old age, okay? Verse 13, we now switch to some practical implications and practical instructions that the Israelites would need. In this year of Jubilee, each of you shall return to his property. And if you make a sale to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. You shall pay your neighbor according to the number of years after the Jubilee, and he shall sell to you according to the number of years for crops. If the years are many, you shall increase the price, and if the years are few, you shall reduce the price, for it is the number of crops that he is selling to you." Basically, since all land eventually, every 50 years, has to revert to its original owners, if you bought land, what you're really paying for is its usage for a set period of time. You never really actually own it yourself. We'll see why in a moment. But you're basically paying for a number of harvests. So when you bought land, if the Jubilee is far away, you have a higher number of harvests that you're going to get, so you pay a higher price. If it's closer, fewer number of harvests, you pay a smaller price. Verse 17. You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God, for I am the Lord your God. Therefore you shall do my statutes and keep my rules and perform them, and then you will dwell in the land securely. The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and dwell in it securely. And if you say, what shall we eat in the seventh year if we may not sow or gather in our crop? I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years. When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating some of the old crop. You shall eat the old until the ninth when its crop arrives. We've already looked at that. They get a big crop the year before. Okay? Verse 23. The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me." This is the main reason why you could never actually sell land or buy it. You couldn't sell it because it really wasn't yours to actually sell in the first place. In fact, it's interesting, God calls the Israelites strangers and sojourners. That's interesting because normally that refers to non-Israelites who don't have an inheritance in the land. Here, God applies it to the Israelites themselves, implying that, yes, you do have an inheritance here, but you have it because I gave it to you, right? John Gill says, As the Gentiles that lived among them were strangers and sojourners with them, so they were with the Lord. He was the original proprietor. They were but tenants at His will, though it was both an honor and a happiness to be with Him." All right? Verse 24, "'In all the country you possess, you shall allow a redemption of the land. If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold. If a man has no one to redeem it and then himself becomes prosperous and finds sufficient means to redeem it, let him calculate the years since he sold it and pay back the balance to the man to whom he sold it and then return to his property. But if he does not have sufficient means to recover it, then what he sold shall remain in the hand of the buyer until the year of the jubilee. In the jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his property." Well, what this is talking about is that it wasn't just on the Jubilee when property could go back to the original owners. Really, at any time, if someone from that clan could pay for it, it could go back. In fact, it had to be given. It's called a right of redemption. If you bought it and then someone says, I have the money for it, you have to give it back. You can't hold it to yourself. The only stipulation is that you pay the buyer basically what was left in terms of the number of crops. So let's say he originally bought 20 years worth of crops, and then 10 years later, someone comes to redeem it, they have to pay him for 10 years, because that's the amount that he still paid that was kind of on his contract, so to speak. But if no one can pay for it, it only goes back during the Jubilee, okay? Verse 29. If a man sells a dwelling house in a walled city, he may redeem it within a year of its sale. For a full year, he shall have the right of redemption. If it is not redeemed within a full year, then the house in the walled city shall belong in perpetuity to the buyer throughout his generations. It shall not be released in the jubilee, but the houses of the villages that have no wall around them shall be classified with the fields of the land. They may be redeemed, and they shall be released in the jubilee." Here we see that if a house is in a walled city and it is purchased, there was only one year to redeem it. Afterwards, it was never released back. It didn't go back after the Jubilee, and before that, you didn't have to give it, even if someone could buy it from you. This was not the case with houses in unwalled villages, and the reason for this has to do with the distinguishing of clans and their inheritance, right? Basically, during the Jubilee, everyone goes back to their land and their inheritance. It keeps the tribes distinct and it makes sure everyone has their inheritance. But this inheritance is really more or less divided up along the lines of land and fields rather than in terms of houses per se. This is why houses in unwalled villages, it says they are classified with the fields of the land. Houses and cities could be lost, and nothing really of that clan's inheritance would be lost. The only exception to that was with the Levites, because all they got was cities, which is what we see in verse 32. It says, "...as for the cities of the Levites, the Levites may redeem at any time the houses in the cities they possess." And if one of the Levites exercises his right of redemption, then the house that was sold in a city they possess shall be released in the Jubilee. For the houses in the cities of the Levites are their possession among the people of Israel, but the fields of the pasture land belonging to their cities may not be sold, for that is their possession forever. So houses in cities of Levites did refer back to them. And again, that was their tribal allotment. The Levites were not given land, they were given 48 cities. And so if their land did not revert back, if their houses didn't, eventually they might find themselves without an inheritance at all in the land of Israel. All right, verse 35, wrapping up the whole section here. If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him nor give him your food for profit. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God. If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave. He shall be with you as a hired worker and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the Jubilee. Then He shall go out from you, He and His children with Him, and go back to His own clan and return to the possession of His fathers. For they are My servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. They shall not be sold as slaves. You shall not rule over him ruthlessly, but shall fear your God. As for your male and female slaves whom you have, you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. You may also buy from the strangers who sojourn with you and their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers, the people of Israel, you shall not rule one over another ruthlessly. If a stranger or sojourner with you becomes rich, and your brother beside him becomes poor and sells himself to the stranger or sojourner with you, or to a member of the stranger's clan, then after he is sold, he may be redeemed. One of his brothers may redeem him, or his uncle or his cousin may redeem him, or a close relative from his clan may redeem him. Or if he grows rich, he may redeem himself. He shall calculate with his buyer from the year when he sold himself to him until the year of jubilee, and the price of his sales shall vary with the number of years." The time he was with his owner shall be rated as the time of a hired worker. If there are still many years left, he shall pay proportionately for his redemption some of his sale price. If there remain but a few years until the year of jubilee, he shall calculate and pay for his redemption in proportion to his years of service. He shall treat him as a worker hired year by year. He shall not rule ruthlessly over him in your sight. And if he is not redeemed by these means, then he and his children with him shall be released in the year of Jubilee. For it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Okay. Huge chunk of scripture there. Here we have instructions for slaves. And in particular, Hebrew slaves. If a Hebrew's situation got so bad that not only did they sell the family farm, but then they were still in debt, they had to sell themselves, there were certain regulations. They were not to be demeaned. They were not to be treated like regular slaves. If perhaps there were slave quarters, that's not where you put your brother, a fellow Israelite, and you let him sleep with you, or perhaps where hired workers slept. You didn't demean them because, as it says, he is your brother. Just like the land, Hebrew slaves could also be redeemed. Again, the redeemer had to pay the person who bought them back for the years of service left for them, which normally would be time until their six-year servitude was complete. But if the jubilee was closer, then they would calculate to that time. Furthermore, just as you couldn't truly buy land permanently in Israel, so also you could never actually buy a Hebrew slave, and the reason was the same for both. Both the land and the people belonged to Yahweh. As God says in verse 55, "'For it is to me that the people of Israel are servants.'" All right? Well, that in a nutshell, as I said, is a lot, but that's the basic what of chapter 25. The Sabbath year is a year of rest, plenty for the poor, releasing from debts. The Jubilee is another year of paid rest, rich eating for the poor, plus the restoration of land and freedom. It doesn't take much imagination to be able to understand how beautiful How emotional, how amazing and such a highlight of your life a year like this would be. Families that had been apart, perhaps they had not seen one another in many years, would finally be reunited. If a family had become poor, they had to sell off their family land, maybe the house they grew up in. You get to go back to that now. You get it. Your debts are canceled. So much beautiful stuff here. At least it was supposed to be. The sad thing about this chapter and much of the laws of the Old Testament is that they were never really kept throughout Israel's history. For example, for much of the Old Testament, the Passover was largely neglected by Israel. And in fact, when King Josiah reinstitutes it, finally, we're told in 2 Kings 23, no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel and during all the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah. It just makes you think like, David, what were you doing? Apparently, they just let it go by the wayside. Similarly, none of the Sabbath years were ever kept, and if they were not kept, then surely the Jubilees were not kept either. In fact, this is why when Judah goes into captivity, it goes for 70 years into Babylon, because that's how many Sabbath years had been neglected. It says in 2 Chronicles 36, they were in captivity, quote, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate, it kept Sabbath to fulfill 70 years. So for 490 years, They never once obeyed the Lord. And this beautiful thing of what we're seeing here that never actually happened because they were too. Isn't this amazing what God is giving them here is such a precious, amazing thing. And yet in their sin, they didn't want that. They didn't want the rest. They didn't want the release and the beauty of all this. They disobeyed the Lord. Furthermore, it seems that they never really released their Hebrew slaves either. There was a half-hearted attempt by King Zedekiah before they were sent off into Babylon, but then shortly after they released their slaves, in probably one of the most wicked accounts of evil and sin in the Bible, they took those slaves that had been freed and took them back in to slavery. God says to them in Jeremiah 34, Thus says the Lord God, the God of Israel, I myself made a covenant with your fathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, saying, at the end of seven years, each of you must free his fellow slave, or his fellow Hebrew, who has been sold to you and has served you six years. You must set him free from your service. but your fathers did not listen to me or incline their ears to me, meaning they never kept it. No Hebrew slaves were ever actually freed as they were supposed to be according to God's design. Well, if they had inclined their ears to the Lord, what would they have learned from this passage? And if we now in this time of application incline our ears to the Lord, what will we learn about him by way of application? I think the first thing they would have learned is that God loves mercy. God loves mercy, and the Sabbath is all about mercy, brothers and sisters. I think that that's why this is in the holiness code. In a section about practical inward holiness, you have a chapter all about God showing mercy to the oppressed. Why? Because just as God has said, be holy as I am holy, he's essentially saying, be merciful as I am merciful because I love mercy. You know, we've seen in chapter 18 that the love of neighbor, the royal law, that essentially fulfills the law. And yet I would say that mercy is simply love, but perhaps to those who are the least lovable. perhaps the most forgettable, perhaps even your enemies. Mercy is love to them. Again and again in scripture, the mercy that you show to others, particularly to the down and out or to your enemies, that's actually the measure of your love. Do you want to know how loving you are as a person? Don't look at your family. That's what everyone does. Don't look at those who love you. Measure your love by the mercy you show to those who you have no connection to. Or perhaps the only connection you have is a bad one. They're your enemies. They slander you. Mercy to them, that's as high as your love and your holiness actually goes. As James says, religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to keep the Sabbath fastidiously and to not do any work or recreations. No, that's not what he says, even though, as you know, that's something you should do. To a religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to give huge sacrifices to the Lord and share the gospel with all kinds of people. He doesn't say that either. What does he say? To visit orphans and widows in their affliction. Essentially, to do mercy. Christ told the Pharisees, Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. Interestingly, later he quotes that verse again, but in a discussion about the Sabbath. You know, in one sense, the Pharisees were the Sabbath keepers par excellence. They were the strictest, right? In another sense, they entirely fundamentally misunderstood the Sabbath insofar as the Sabbath is all about mercy. Christ tells them, go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. It says afterwards, Matthew 12, he went on from there and entered their synagogue. And a man was there with a withered hand, and they asked him, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? They asked him this that they might accuse him. He said to them, which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep? So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. In other words, Christ is saying to them, you would show mercy to your animal, to a beast of burden, to something that does not have an eternal soul into it, and yet to a man, to what Leviticus 25 calls your brother, to that one, you would not show mercy. The Sabbath is all about mercy. From this, I would say we should take away two practical points of application. First, brothers and sisters, may we be a merciful people. This is how you reflect God's heart. In fact, I would say you will never be a greater picture of Jesus Christ to others around you than when you are doing an act of mercy. because the greatest picture of mercy ever seen is in Jesus Christ, and in acts of mercy, we are the most Christ-like we shall ever be. Be sure to show mercy, but remember that mercy is love to those that are especially easy not to love, to those that are forgettable, to those that perhaps it is even burdensome to love. to those that perhaps love is more service than fun. That's actual true mercy. Remember, just as God told the Israelites the land was ultimately His, so also everything you own is actually God's. As Gil says, God is the original proprietor. They are but tenants at His will. God is the proprietor of the whole earth. Your home, your job, your car, your clothes, God owns all that. He's just leasing it to you at His will. Remember that. It's not given for you to keep, but to show mercy to others. May you use those things that God has lent mercifully to you to show mercy and to show kindness to others. Remember also that as I got confused here. Remember also that just as all of the Israelites belong to the Lord, remember that your fellow brothers and sisters ultimately are servants of the Lord. Take that into consideration when your brother or sister in Christ frustrates you, when your heart is perhaps tempted to think, oh, that person is so difficult. Remember, you're speaking about a servant of the Lord. Paul says, who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls and he will be upheld for the Lord is able to make him stand. May we be a merciful people. I think also there is a very special practical application to the Sabbath day itself. It is to be a day of doing mercy. You know, our confession of faith, though it says we are to have no worldly employments, we are to abstain from recreations, the whole day is to be taken up in duties of worship, it makes two exceptions to that, works of necessity and works of mercy. The Sabbath day is a great day for mercy. I would encourage you, brothers and sisters, especially you who are heads of households, if you would grow in honoring the Lord's day and teaching your children to honor the Lord's day, do special acts of mercy on that day. Put it into your calendar. I have known churches that after their service, they would go visit a retirement home. They would sing hymns with them. They would read scripture. They would talk about Christ. That is an excellent Lord's Day activity. You know why? Because that's mercy. Those people, some of those folks, sometimes it can be hard to love folks that are in those homes. Maybe they're much older, right? Oftentimes, they're very neglected. That's an excellent way to spend the Lord's Day is showing mercy. It may be that on the Lord's Day, you invite someone over for food, for a meal with your family. You go to visit those who are sick, perhaps those who are homebound. Those are excellent things to do on the Lord's Day. As one person wrote, mercy takes time. The Lord's day is that time. I think that's very, very appropriate. We're all very busy. We're all very busy normally on the days of the week. We have one day off, show mercy to others on that day. The last thing we see in this chapter, brothers and sisters, is just a full, beautiful picture of redemption in Christ. Christ is our Sabbath year. He is our year of release. You know, it's interesting, the term for release from debt and the term for forgive are actually the same thing in Greek. And in fact, even in English, we talk this way. We speak about forgiving loans, forgiving debts, right? The reason for that is because the concepts are so similar. To be in sin, to need forgiveness, is to owe God something, just as you might owe someone with debt. Think of, for example, the common metaphors of this we see in Scripture. Think of the unjust servant who won't forgive another servant his debt. Christ used that to teach about unforgiveness. Or think even of the Lord's Prayer. Sometimes we say this without even thinking of it. In Matthew's Gospel, it's, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. It's a perfect metaphor for sin. Before Christ, brothers and sisters, all of us were massively in debt. Now there's some words that always try to go along with explaining a huge amount of debt, crushing debt, have you ever heard that? Debt up to your eyeballs. Debt can be a horrible thing. It can crush your soul. The sin debt that you and I had before Christ, brothers and sisters, was the most crushing of all. the most hopeless of all. So bad it was, we could not pay off one penny. You know, I've heard of times when people are in a lot of debt, sometimes they work two jobs, right? It's just they get no rest, they are trying to pay off that debt as much as possible. With our sin debt, not only could we not pay off the smallest penny, the harder we worked to pay it off, the more it accrued. the larger our debt became because we just added sin by sin by sin to it. And yet Christ comes. He proclaims a release from the sin debts that are owed to God. And he takes it all upon himself. Our crushing debt of sin was placed upon his shoulders. And not only does he declare us debt-free, but he imputes the great wealth and riches of his righteousness." Christ is our Sabbath year, brothers and sisters. In light of that, who are you and I to hold petty small grudges against others for these little nothing accounts, these little nothing debts that we are owed when we have been forgiven such a great debt by Christ? Furthermore, Christ is our jubilee. This is what I was referring to when I said Christ himself gives the interpretation. Turn with me to Luke chapter 4, Luke's gospel chapter 4, beginning in verse 16. It says, and he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him and he began to say to them, today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Now that quote, the passage that Christ read, is from Isaiah 61. And actually in the context, Isaiah the prophet is using the Jubilee as a picture of the exiles coming back from Babylon, being freed from their captivity and returning back to their ancestral lands, right? And yet Christ takes it and he says, yes, that happened, but I bring the truest Jubilee. I free the captives and the slaves, but those of Satan and sin. I bring back, but those who have been exiled from God, not just their ancestral homelands." You know, all of humanity after the Garden of Eden has been in exile. They were kicked out of God's presence. In Christ, we are brought back in. Furthermore, note how this was accomplished. How did Christ accomplish our Jubilee? Well, note when the day of the Jubilee was to be proclaimed on the Day of Atonement. The slaves were to be freed. The land was to be returned on the same day when the blood of the sin offering was sprinkled on the mercy seat and when the scapegoat was led into the wilderness. And brothers and sisters, Christ accomplished our freedom and return to God by shedding His blood and dying outside of the camp. That was the cost of your receiving mercy and my receiving mercy. We received mercy because Christ bore justice in our place. He bore our debt, he bore our captivity, and thereby he bought our redemption. Brothers and sisters, behold the great love and mercy of God for broken sinners, and in light of it, show mercy to others. For you children here, may this show you how on your own, You can never pay off the debt you owe to God. Your sin is a debt that is unimaginable. If you were to try to count how big of a sin debt you owe, you would spend all of eternity and never come to the end of it. And what's more, you can't pay off a single penny because you can't do good works. But Jesus comes and He says, if you believe in Me, just come and receive freely, I will forgive you of all your sin debt. And I will give you all My righteousness and you will receive an inheritance of eternal life. All you have to do is stop trying to pay it off and trust in Jesus Christ who already paid it. Amen? Amen. Let's pray. Father, what can we say? What can we say but praise you, Lord? The one who freed us. We have nothing to give you, Lord. Just as those who have been freed from slavery, they have no money, they have no gifts, they have no land or anything that they could give to repay the debt that was paid. Lord, we truly have nothing we could give you other than our praise and thankful hearts. Father, I pray that you would help us today to behold the fullness of mercy to sinners through Jesus Christ. Father, I pray for our children here. Lord, I pray for those especially who still do not see that they cannot pay their way to heaven. Oh God, may they see the true hopelessness of their situation that they might turn to Christ. Father, would you make us a merciful, Would you make us those who have a heart to love, to lift up our brother, not to rule over him ruthlessly, Lord, as it says. Give us a heart especially, Lord, to show mercy to those that Christ showed mercy to in his life on this earth, the outcasts, the poor, the sick. Would we show the mercy of Christ to those people and so honor you and honor the mercy that we have received? We pray this Lord in Christ's name, amen.