Dear friends,
I wonder how people planning to celebrate Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee in June realize that the idea of Jubilee comes from the Old Testament? Leviticus 25, in fact.
The Israelites were to count off seven periods of seven years, a total of 49 years, and then the following year, the 50th, was to be a jubilee. It was to be heralded by a trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month, the Day of Atonement or, Yom Kippur. Lev. 25:10 says: “Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants”. In that fiftieth year everyone was to return to their family property and to their own clan. Furthermore, they were only to eat cultivated crops, not what was growing wild. People were to be free, and nature was to be free.
So what was all that about? Like so much of OT requirements, it was pointing to a fulfilment of something in God’s grander plan. But what was that? Isaiah, (chapter 61), spoke about the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord being upon his Servant to, among other things, “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour”. That was a reference to jubilee. Centuries later, Jesus, in the synagogue at Capernaum read from that same passage. He stopped right there at the mention of the “year of the Lord’s favour” and declared: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”!
Her Majesty’s 70 year reign has been a most remarkable achievement of selfless dedication and service to the nation and Commonwealth, and a great example of godly living and principles to us all. We thank God for her and her reign. But sound the trumpet for the Jubilee of King Jesus! By his sinless obedience to the Father’s will, culminating in his death, resurrection and glorious ascension to the Father’s throne where “he always lives to intercede for” those who come to God through him (Heb. 7:25), he has brought total and everlasting jubilee freedom. Nor is this something that has to be renewed every fifty years. “He sacrificed for (our) sins once for all when he offered himself” (Heb 7:27).
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” Luke 4:18-19
Let us rejoice in the glorious truth that “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
Your brother in Christ,
