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What would it take to make your life a lot better? Right now there are some things in your life that are causing you great stress, anxiety, unhappiness and frustration. If you could just get a hold of that 1 thing, then your life would be a lot better. In the book of Isaiah, chapter 61 God talked about people being poor – maybe your financial situation is stretched beyond comfort; God talked about people being brokenhearted – maybe your mind and soul ache; have you ever experienced those times when there are no words just emptiness, or tears; and God talked about people feeling imprisoned – maybe you feel that your marriage is a prison and you are caught and it feels continually like darkness without hope. What would it take to make your life better? Do you got it? Is it something to do with a job, your marriage, your children, your health, your education, your ministry? What we are saying is that our life and our happiness is limited right now because of this thing and our happiness would be greater IF something changed.

Did you know that a man named Jesus who lived over 2,000 years ago who claimed to be the Son of God attended church one morning walked up in front of everyone and had the audacity to say, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21) This man Jesus claimed not that he would make that change you asked for with your finances, and not that he would immediately remove the brokenheart you have, but Jesus claimed that HE was YOUR change. While that change you desire would be nice, it is not the root cause of your unhappiness. The root cause of why our life is not better is our failure to see Jesus as the source of all blessing. We think our life is not better and we are not happier because of that one or many things, but Jesus said that your life feels like a wreck and you feel hollow and you experience heart ache because you look for your specified blessings but you miss the source of blessing. Some of you are saying – no, no, no, I am not missing the source for I believe in Jesus but I need him to give us more money to eliminate that financial crisis, or I am looking to Jesus to end the cause of my heart ache or make my marriage great. Jesus says to you today, you are not getting it; there is something you don’t understand about me, something that will free you from that bondage of your one thing that needs to change.

Today, we come to our final sermon in our study of Leviticus and learning how an unholy people approach a holy God. Something is happening among our people, for I have never received so many reports of people receiving such challenging messages for a life of holiness with such great resolve to draw closer to God. In my opinion, these past 5 weeks have been our greatest time in the presence of God. You can listen to all of the sermons on line by going to the website and listening or downloading them on your iPod. Bringing it home today with one last sermon on the great book of Leviticus, we find the greatest antitype. An antitype is where something was foreshadowed by something earlier. For example, something from the NT is the antitype of something from the OT. Today, we will see the greatest antitype of the entire Bible – Jesus is the antitype of the Jubilee Year. The Jubilee Year is the thing in the OT that foreshadowed Jesus, and Jesus is the fulfillment of the Jubilee. Colossians 2:16-17 “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” Jesus is the ultimate antitype, the ultimate fulfillment of what? Today, we will see that Jesus is my Jubilee.

Don’t let anyone judge you when it comes to your Sabbath day, because the Sabbath is only a shadow of something that was to come; it is important but it pointed to someone more important. The Sabbath was the shadow, but the reality is found in Christ. If we can figure out the shadow, then we will more fully appreciate the reality.

As you might recall, God gave Moses the 10 commandments for the people. The 4th commandment was for everyone to take a Sabbath day; that is, 1 out of 7 days is to be a day of God-centered rest. Stop working and practice being in the presence of God in order to give him thanks for all he has provided. As we come to Leviticus 25, we find God ratcheting up his Sabbath by commanding the people to grant a Sabbath year of rest not only to them but also to the land. Leviticus 25:1-5 “The LORD said to Moses on Mount Sinai, Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'When you enter the land I am going to give you, the land itself must observe a sabbath to the LORD. For six years sow your fields…But in the seventh year the land is to have a sabbath of rest, a sabbath to the LORD. Do not sow your fields…Do not reap what grows…The land is to have a year of rest.” Israelites were to work the land for six years, then the law called for a Sabbath year of rest for the land and the worker. Do you notice how God personifies the Land; it says, “the land itself must observe a sabbath to the Lord.”

The Sabbath year was 1 in 7 years, but after 7 cycles or 49 years there came a special or super Sabbath year called Jubilee. Leviticus 25:8-10 “Count off seven sabbaths of years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbaths of years amount to a period of forty-nine years…Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you…”The Sabbath year was 1 year in every 7 year cycle. The Jubilee Year or the Super Sabbath was 1 year in every 50 years. Jubilee provided an overhaul of economic and social life to restore people and properties. All debts were cancelled. Any Israelite who had sold himself to another was released and the land which had been leased to another was to be restored to its original owner. Jubilee was meant to be a new beginning, a time when all who had failed to maintain their place in society were given a chance to start over. Jesus read Isaiah 61 to the synagogue, church attendees saying that the Father had sent the Son to tell those in financial crisis there is good news, to those who are brokenhearted there is hope and to those who feel like prisoners you will be released. This is Jubilee freedom; this is a Jubilee overhaul to our lives and social order. But, Jesus ended with one more verse that is most important, he said that he had come “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor…” (v.2a) I propose to you today, that this year of God’s favor is the Jubilee Year.

Here is the interesting thing - despite God’s commands and all God’s reasons for the Sabbath year and Jubilee year, it appears that the Israelites failed to obey the Sabbath and Super Sabbath Year; in fact, they never throughout all history had a Jubilee year
There is little evidence that the Sabbath Year was observed. 2 Chron. 36:21 says that the people were taken captive by foreigners and exiled to Babylon so that the land could enjoy its Sabbaths, seventy years of rest. “The land enjoyed its sabbath rests; all the time of its desolation it rested, until the seventy years were completed...” This suggests that the people had not been keeping the Sabbath Year, at least not often enough, and so God was exacting them. Further, there is no evidence that Jubilee was ever applied. This Super Sabbath appears to set out an ideal of freedom and delivery to the financially disadvantaged, the brokenhearted and the captives which was never realized.
Why would God command the Jubilee Year knowing that the people would never obey Him and practice that 1 in 50 years of exceptional freedom and delivery to the poor, brokenhearted and captive?

LIFE PRINCIPLE: Jesus is my Jubilee. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Jubilee Year. The Jubilee year was the shadow and Jesus is the reality. The people of the OT just like you had financial problems, and they looked to the hope of Jubilee as their answer to be financially restored. You look to changing that one thing to make your finances better. The people of the OT just like you were brokenhearted, and they looked to the hope of Jubilee as their answer for freedom and delivery. You look to changing that one thing to make your life better. Here is what God is teaching in commanding the shadow of Jubilee but never seeing his people obey it; here is what God is teaching when he brings his Son, Jesus, to the synagogue to read Isaiah 61 and saying that today it is fulfilled. It is not the change you want, and it was not the Jubilee year they wanted that matters, instead the only thing that matters is Jesus is my Jubilee. The poor, brokenhearted and captive receive their freedom and delivery in Jesus Christ not in changing the 1 thing. When Jesus is your Jubilee, you let go of requiring the changes you think are needed to make your life better and happier. And, your eyes are opened to see Jesus is not just the source of blessings but Jesus is the blessing. Here is how I see it relevant to our lives - You have a desire for something/anything - a happy marriage, better financial position, better job, better car and home – when the desire hits it comes with an specific hope and request for a change and blessing. All of the sudden our lives will only become better and happiness will only be restored when and if that specific blessing is met. Jesus squares off against this temptation and says you are wrong – your happiness is not dependent on that change, it is not conditional upon that specific blessing you call for. Instead, Jesus says that He is your blessing; Jesus is your Jubilee – your freedom and delivery.

Here is where my excitement in studying this passage spiked. God intervened in my life this past week to cause me to see things in the Bible that harmonize the OT and NT in a way I’d never seen. And, when I see Jesus as my Jubilee, I read the NT differently, almost with a new pair of eyes. Let’s see if God will do this for you too.

The OT believers looked to the land as the intermediary between them and God. A large part of God’s blessings consisted of the rain and the crops which God gave his people. To be a recipient of God’s blessing, you need to have your own land to receive God’s blessings. The land was everything to the OT believers, so blessings of rain, water, great harvests were evidence of God’s grace. In the Old Testament, God promised water for the land of promise:

The afflicted and needy are seeking water, but there is none, And their tongue is parched with thirst; I, the LORD, will answer them Myself, As the God of Israel I will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, And springs in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, And the dry land fountains of water Isa. 41:17-18.

Later on, God Himself was spoken of in terms of water:
As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for Thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God? Ps. 42:1-2

When God speaks in the OT in terms of water, I believe that He is referring to Himself in terms of those blessings (in the land) with which the godly Israelite was most familiar. And, in the NT, it is striking to observe that Jesus used much of the symbolism and terminology relating to the land to refer to himself and to the blessings he had come to bring. Jesus is saying that while the land of Israel was once the special place of god’s presence, and the mediating point between heaven and earth, then Jesus has now assumed this role. He is the place where God abides in a special way. Jesus replaces the land as the intermediary between people and God. So, you will see that many passages in the NT speaking of Jesus have land, farm, water blessings, harvests illusions.

“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water” (John 4:10).

Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37-38).

Jesus replaces the land as the intermediary between people and God. But, how does Jesus not only being the source of all blessing but that Jesus is the ultimate blessing help us to see our lives can be better and happier even without that 1 change; even without that financial crisis being removed or the aching heart fixed or continually feeling like a prisoner in a bad marriage?

Since the OT intermediary was the farmland and God blessed people through the land, consider how shocking it must have been to an Israelite, one who would scarcely consider giving up his farm, to hear these words of Jesus, which pronounce a blessing on those who give up farms: “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name’s sake, shall receive many times as much, and shall inherit eternal life” (Matt. 19:29).

Farms were the means by which God’s blessing was poured out on His people in the Old Testament. Farms were not to be given up, but were to be kept as in inheritance. Jesus pronounces a blessing on those who do give up farms, and speaks of one’s inheritance as “eternal life.” What has changed here? Why has the Old Testament emphasis on the land been so radically reversed? The reason is that the Lord Jesus Christ has come, and Jesus is my Jubilee. The special place of God’s dwelling is now Christ Himself, not a land.

It is therefore not the place—the land of Israel—which is so important in the New Testament, but the person of Christ. God dwells in Him, and it is in Him that we are saved, secure, and blessed. Thus, men can forsake their farms and follow Him without losing God’s blessing. In fact, not to follow Christ is to lose one’s blessing. If you are a child of our heavenly father, then you may and must say Jesus is my Jubilee. This means that your happiness and a better life are not dependent on changing those things in your life that frustrate you and depress you. Instead your freedom and deliverance already exist and are available in Jesus. The key to happiness and satisfaction is centering your life on Christ rather than all the things that must change.

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