Cancel debts, free slaves: Radical teachings of Jubilee and Sabbatical Year for modern life (Leviticus 25; Isaiah 58; Matthew 6 and 18)

Hallel Fellowship

The celebration of Shavuot includes a remembrance of the giving of the 10 commandments at Mt. Sinai. Shavuot is 7 weeks + one day, culminating in a great harvest, not only for the literal wheat harvest but also the spiritual harvest of righteous souls. God has given us a way to deal with our sins, transgressions and iniquities.

This reading also dives into other cycles of seven, including

1. shemitah year, which is the seventh year of release

2. Yobel year, which is the year of jubilee

The provision of the return of the lands to the original owners in the shemitah year and the Yobel was not meant to absolve people of their obligations to pay their debts. The owner may give the land to someone else temporarily in a lease arrangement and during the time of the lease agreement, the one who is leasing the land from the owner has the right to the harvest of that land, but eventually the land will revert back to the owner.

The truth of the matter is that we are not the owners of the land we have established our homes upon. In China and some other countries that developed under Confucian principles, the people did not claim ownership of the land. ALl the land belong to the emperor or the king. The people can make contracts with the government to live on a piece of land in a 99 year lease, but they never own the land. The government owns it.

In the USA, you have to pay property taxes to the local government, and if you refuse to pay those taxes, they will take your house to cover the taxes that are owed. This is not much different from the medieval times when serfs were attached to the land and everything they did was subject to confiscation by the landowner.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you have the ability to take power, then greed and covetous can come in and take advantage.

When God brought them to the land, He gave them a contract that they were to adhere to so they would be allowed to live in the land. They were supposed to read that contract closely and live by its provisions but it’s obvious from Israelite history that they did not read it because they never gave the land its shabbat rests. They also did not return the land to the rightful owners or liberate their indentured servants. Because of this, God sent the people of Judah into exile for 70 years, for a big time out, while He sent the people of the 10 northern tribes to Israel into exile for millennia.

God also told the children of Israel that their children were not really theirs. The people of Canaan sacrificed their children to the demons in return for fertility of the land, to gain the favor of demons. God expressly forbid this practice but when the children of Israel did so anyway, God condemned for this. They did not escape judgement for killing the children that God gave them to the demons. Rather than acknowledging that it was God who provided the rain that would produce the harvest, and exercising faith in God that He would provide enough food to bring them through the shabbat years, the people chose to make a deal with Moloch and every year, they would sacrifice their children to him instead to ensure the fertility of their land without God’s blessing.

The Israelites thought the land was theirs to do with as they pleased and they thought they could use and abuse their fellow Israelites without consequences.

Even though Jeremiah prophesied that God would exile the people from the Land, He also bought a title to a property in the land, showing the people that although God was requiring them to give the land its rest, that He would allow them to return to the land at the end of the rest. The Israelites were not willing to open their hands to share the bounty that the Lord gave them for free, so God pried their fingers open took it out of their hands until they repented as Daniel did and acknowledged the source of their blessings. We do see that in 70 years, there was a return to the land, but only a remnant returned.

However, we see that after the 70 years, most of the people decided not to return to the Holy Land, they chose to remain in exile for many generations after. Only a remnant returned and there was less of a burden on the land.

If the people of Israel has truly read and obeyed the Torah, the exiles never would have happened. God would have not have to evicted them from their land lease.

The promise that Naomi and Ruth shared with each other is the promise that with Ruth’s assimilation that she was no longer a foreigner or a stranger but a beneficiary of the Abrahamic covenant. Everybody is going to be a part of the people of God, they’re all going to be a part of Abraham’s family over time. God did not want the people of Israel to think of themselves as just a little clique of descendants of Abraham who would keep all of God’s blessings to themselves and everyone else would just be looking in from the outside. No, it was Solomon’s prayer that the Temple would be an active house of prayer for all people, not a museum. The Temple was supposed to be a magnet to draw both Jews and Gentiles to God but the problem is that the Jews ended up repelling people away from God rather than helping God draw them into His Kingdom.

That’s part of the conversation the Apostles had during the Acts 15 council. They were trying to sort out how high the hurdles should be for those coming from the nations. In the example of Abraham, God set the bar pretty low. Why should they set the bar higher than God Himself did?

The people who founded the United States of America were students of the Torah and found great solace in Leviticus 25:10. It’s carved into the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. There were some who took that call literally and wanted to liberate the slaves, but the southern states ignored that lesson and all sorts of misery in our country happened as a consequence.

Whether it’s the story of Naaman’s slave girl, or the Patriarch Joseph or the Prophet Daniel, despite their sufferings and privations, they had the best interests of their gentile overlords at heart. They understood the assignment of the descendants of Abraham to be a blessing to the entire world, even when their slave masters didn’t deserve their kindness.

Messiah Yeshua taught HIs disciples to pray for Heavens mercy on everyone, even on their enemies.

This is why one of the titles of the Messiah was the “Leper Messiah.” He was the one who was willing to be a pariah for the sake of His people, yet He is the most treasured leader of the House of Israel. He takes away all the sins, transgressions and iniquities and they are no more.

“‘Give us this day our daily bread.

‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’]” (Matthew 6:11–13 NAS95)

“And He said to them, “When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come.

‘Give us each day our daily bread.

‘And forgive us our sins, For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.’”” (Luke 11:2–4 NAS95)

We are to err on the side of mercy for those who are done something wrong to us. The prayer Yeshua taught us incorporates the Golden Rule that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. We don’t hold grudges or seek vengeance. We are to seek the good of others and deal with others and correct others in the way that we would want others to deal with or correct us.

John Adams, one of the founders of the United States of America wrote that the bedrock of the US Constitution is self-governance, and it is the key to any government. “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Human nature does not encourage us to respect other people’s boundaries. This is why laws have to come in and restrict this human inclination. The more the evil inclination pushes on the boundaries of the culture, the harder and harsher the law has to be to push back to protect these boundaries.

If you want to put yourself as a judge of others, you have to be sure that the measure of your judgement errs on the side of mercy because if you are going after the splinter in your neighbors eye as you have a log in yours, God will apply that same standard in His dealings with you.

Matthew 18 is a key parallel passage to the Golden Rule. The Apostle Peter asked Yeshua if forgiving someone seven times qualified as perfect mercy but Yeshua told him that we are to forgive 70×7, which means we are called to extend forgiveness so often that we end up losing count of the number of times our neighbor offended against us.

““For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. “When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. “But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made. “So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.’ “And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. “But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ “So his fellow slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you.’ “But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. “So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their lord all that had happened. “Then summoning him, his lord *said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. ‘Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’ “And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. “My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.”” (Matthew 18:23–35 NAS95)

You don’t reprove your neighbor because you want to put the screws to him but because you want him to repent of his sin and reconcile with others and with God. You want that person to be in the Kingdom of Heaven, not living in an exile from God’s grace.

When Yeshua tells parables about merciful masters who forgive debts, he is presenting a model for how living the Torah with a new heart solves a myriad of social justice issues, such as predatory lending, employee exploitation, discrimination, etc.) Power corrupts when it’s unrestrained by the Torah.

The French Revolution started with good intentions, because the French monarchy was completely out of touch with the sufferings of the common people. But the revolutionaries turned out to be even worse than those they usurped. The leaders of the French Revolution terrorized the French monarchy, aristocracy and the clergy. Once those tyrants were gone, the French revolutionaries inflicted the Reign of Terror on each other and so much blood flowed through France that the people put their support behind General Napoleon Bonaparte, a new tyrant, who was able to restore some semblance of law and order, but he also reestablished a new monarchy. The abuse of power resulted in more power and more abuse of power because they did not have good Christian principles guiding their revolution. They worshipped their own reason and rather than liberating themselves, they destroyed themselves.

The exiles were placed on the people of Israel to teach them some lessons about extending mercy to the poor and those enslaved, but those who returned to the Holy Land to restore the nation did not take all the lessons God was trying to teach them to heart because when Yeshua came, the social justice ills that caused God to evict them from the Holy Land in exile were still an issue when Yeshua was on earth.

Yeshua called Israel to be a blessing to all the nations, to share their blessing, not to keep them completely to themselves. In Yeshua’s parable of the Good Samaritan, He told us that even the “half breeds” were worthy of the Kingdom. When He went to Samaria Himself, there were some there who were willing to accept His teachings, even though the people in charge of the temple in Jerusalem weren’t loving to them, the God of the Temple in Jerusalem did love them and wanted them to be in relationship with Him. Cornelius also heard the same call, proverbially holding onto the tzitzit of the Apostle Peter and following him into the faith of Yeshua.

Neither the Patriarch Joseph or the Prophet Daniel looked like the icons of stability on the surface, both of them were teenagers when they ended up in exile but they grew up and because of their steadfast faith in God, they served their gentile kings with wisdom that was easily recognized.