Joshua 4-6 | Luke 1:1-20

“Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan.” Leviticus 25:10

In the Torah, God challenged the Israelites and their generosity with the Year of Jubilee which is a once in a lifetime reset of the whole economy. Leviticus 25:13-17 tells us, “In this Year of Jubilee everyone is to return to their own property. If you sell land to any of your own people or buy land from them, do not take advantage of each other. You are to buy from your own people on the basis of the number of years since the Jubilee. And they are to sell to you on the basis of the number of years left for harvesting crops.…Do not take advantage of each other, but fear your God. I am the Lord your God.” In other words, if the Israelite fell on hard times, they got to restart over again as a family.  

But what made the Year of Jubilee truly amazing is that it came after a Sabbath year, where the seventh Sabbath year is 49 years and the Year of Jubilee happens in the fiftieth year. Since the Israelites were commanded not to work on the Sabbath year and the Year of Jubilee is considered another year of rest (Leviticus 25:11-12), the Israelites were not to work for two straight years, letting the land rest. Could we imagine not working for two years? How will we have sufficient means to live on?  

Yet, God promised the Israelites that if they were faithful to obey Him: “Follow My decrees and be careful to obey My laws, and you will live safely in the land. Then the land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live there in safety. You may ask, ‘What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?’ I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. While you plant during the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and will continue to eat from it until the harvest of the ninth year comes in” (Leviticus 25:18-22). What God was calling His people to do was something wild, extreme and counterintuitive. They were called to trust God and He will provide above and beyond what they could imagine.  

Through it all, God was reminding the Israelites that He was the One they were supposed to place their trust in for provision, not their own strength or ability, and to practice generosity towards their fellow Israelites as well as the foreigners.

PRAYER

Gracious God, I confess that I depended on my own efforts, strength and abilities to provide for myself when the reality is that it is all from You. Thank You for blessing me with everything that I have.