Leviticus 23-27

Transcript

GRS 38
05/24/1987
Leviticus 23-27
Gil Rugh

The 23rd Chapter is a very helpful Chapter in the Book of Leviticus and really in the Old Testament generally because it pulls together the major feasts in Israel’s history. And if you want to have a little bit of a quick review of the major feasts in Israel’s national life, you come to Leviticus and the 23rd Chapter. Certain days were to be set aside for a national emphasis on worship. The nation as a nation joined together in worshiping God on these particular feast days. There were days when sacrifices were offered, when all normal activity ceased, and the attention of the nation was drawn to their God and what God had done for them in special and particular instances and occasions often.

You could jot down Numbers 28 and 29 at the top of Leviticus 23 because in those Chapters the details of the sacrifices that are to be offered are laid out. So we just really have little bit of a highlight and overview in Leviticus Chapter 23. The first 3 verses of Chapter 23 deal with the Sabbath. In verse 2 God says to Moses, speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, the Lord's appointed times which you shall proclaim as holy convocations, My appointed times are these. Holy convocations, an expression used 11 times in Chapter 23 and that is the title for these national worship occasions.

Verse 3, he begins with the weekly Sabbath, for six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a Sabbath of complete rest, a holy convocation. You shall not do any work; it is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwellings. A reminder, before we get into the annual feasts, I want to remind you that weekly you were to have a holy convocation where you cease all activities and stop and as a nation worship Me and this provides for the regular ongoing worship of the nation. The seventh day, Saturday in Israel’s life will be a day when all other activity stops and the nation’s attention focuses on worshiping their God.

Verses 4 and 5 deal with the Passover, the first major feasts that is presented for Israel’s consideration, these are the appointed times of the Lord, holy convocations, which you shall proclaim at the times appointed for them. In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight is the Lord's Passover. Now we have considered the matter of Passover in the Book of Exodus in Chapter 12. The first 28 verses of Exodus 12 give the details of the observance of Passover. So there are no details developed here, is to remind you that this is a major feast day, to be observed on this day, be the first of Nisan, which corresponds to our March and April, the first month for Israel the month of Nisan and it will be on the 14th day of the month, that’s Passover commemorating the redemption of the nation in Israel. You remember the death angel came through the land of Egypt, but when he saw the blood on the doorpost of the Israelites, he passed over them. So it’s an annual observance reminding them that God redeemed them from Egypt.

Immediately following Passover, you have the feast of unleavened bread in verses 6 to 8, it’s on the 15th day of the same month. So Passover is on the 14th, the 15th day, the next day begins a weeklong feast called the feast of unleavened bread. Last seven days called unleavened bread because no leavened bread could be eaten during that week. No leaven was to be found in their houses during that week commemorated the fact that Israel left Egypt in a hurry and they took no leaven with them. There wasn’t time to leaven the bread and that may have pictured the fact that there was a complete break with the pass as God removed Israel from Egypt.

The sourdough, the leaven would have continued on into the next lump and so on. Well, here there was no leaven taken. So there is a break with Egypt and its pass as God now removes the nation. The first day and the last day of the feast of unleavened bread are days of holy convocation. Note verse 7, on the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall not do any laborious work, but for seven days you shall present an offering by fire to the Lord. On the seventh day is a holy convocation; you shall not do any laborious work, so you have, the 14th will be Passover. That is a holy convocation. The 15th is the first day of the feast of unleavened bread, that’s a holy convocation observed as a Sabbath day, no work done. Then the seventh day of the feast of unleavened bread is a holy convocation. All regular work, farming activities, general business, and so on was not permitted on these particular days.

Verses 9 to 14 deal with the feast of first fruits and this third feast was probably celebrated on the 16th day of the month. So what you have Passover on the fourteenth, the first day of feast unleavened bread which is a holy day is on the 15th and the observance of first fruits it is on 16th. So you have three holy convocations, one right after another; the 14th, 15th, and 16th of Nisan and the month of Nisan or in March-April would be the months that Nisan fell on for us, holy convocations. It’s really part of the feast of unleavened bread from that standpoint, but is marked off as different.

Verse 10, speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, when you enter the land which I am going to give you and reap its harvest, then you shall bring in the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest. You shall wave the sheaf before the Lord for you to be accepted, on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it. And this would be a barley sheaf since were in March and April, the wheat harvest would not be ready yet, but the barley harvest would. And when they came and waved, presented this ear of grain of you will to the Lord. It was a reminder that God had provided for them and it anticipated the coming harvest. That aspect becomes important over end of the New Testament. The feast of first fruits anticipated the coming harvest. Here is the first ear of grain God has provided us for again and this speaks to the fact that there is going to be a coming harvest.

The New Testament writers draw on the feast of first fruits a number of times. I jot it down 1, 2, 3,4,5,6, 7 references in the New Testament to the feast of first fruits. For example in first Corinthians 15 verse 20, Christ is the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. In other words, He was raised from the dead, He is the first fruits. He anticipates a coming resurrection of all believers drawing from the picture of first fruits back in the Old Testament and you can trace through in your concordance some of the other references and see how it’s in the New Testament consistently used of anticipating a coming harvest or coming blessings.

In verses 15 to 22, you have the feast of Pentecost and we will probably familiar with the name Pentecost as any of the feast days because of its use in the New Testament. Pentecost occurs 50 days after the feast of first fruits. So you would count 50 days. Verse 15, you shall also count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day when you brought in the sheaf of the wave offering; there will be seven complete Sabbaths. You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath; then you shall present a new grain offering to the lord. Then he goes on to talk about the details of this feast. This feast marked the end of the grain harvest. So the first fruits marked the beginning of the harvest anticipating the harvest. This feast marks the end of the grain harvest. So it was the time for the nation to join together and thank God for providing the harvest again for them as a nation.

The name Pentecost comes from the New Testament in the Book of Acts Chapter 2 verse 1 on the day of Pentecost from the Greek word for fiftieth. So we just picked it up because it was the fiftieth day why it is called Pentecost, the fiftieth. It was then that the Holy Spirit came on the church. The Old Testament, it is also called the feasts of weeks in like Deuteronomy Chapter 16 and verse 10 because you count verse 15 seven complete Sabbath, so seven weeks, then you come to the fiftieth day. So it is also called the feast of weeks as well as what we are more familiar with the feast of Pentecost.

Interestingly in the feast of Pentecost verse 17, you shall bring in from your dwelling places two loaves of bread for a wave offering, made of two-tenths of an ephah; they shall be of a fine flour baked with leaven as first fruits to the Lord. This is the only time leavened bread was brought to the Lord. Now some would see the leaven as picturing sin here, but I think perhaps what leaven is doing when it was not included in the feast of unleavened bread, it pictured a break with Egypt, but here you use leavened bread because the feast of Pentecost to the feast of weeks is connected to the feast of first fruits. So you would have the leaven that came from the barley harvest and it would be used in the bread, that now is used in the feast of Pentecost and it ties these two feasts together. They are at the beginning and the ending of grain harvest. This would be held in May or June after the week would have been harvested.

Verses 23 to 25, you have the feast of trumpets. The Lord spoke to the Moses again saying speak to the sons of Israel, saying, in the seventh month on the first of the month you shall have a rest, a reminder by blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation. You shall not do any laborious work; you shall present an offering by fire to the Lord. These final three feasts all occur in the seventh month. It should be equivalent to our October-November. So there are really two groups of feasts; the one is we have talked about Passover, unleavened bread, first fruits, and Pentecost occur in the spring and early summer.

Then you have the break until you come to the fall October-November and you have the final three feasts joined together in that month. This will mark the end of the agriculture year for Israel. This will be followed by two rainy seasons and that will bring us to the spring and then will be ready for the cycle again. So these feasts in the seventh month are really drawing Israel’s year to a close, then will come into a rainy seasons and then will move into the planning season again. The blowing of the trumpets, we are not told any of the details here about the feast of trumpets that probably was anticipating the Day of Atonement which will be celebrated in this month and a time for Israel to prepare herself for this great feast.

Verses 26 to 32, you have the Day of Atonement and Leviticus 16 gave the details of the observance of this particular feast. Now in Leviticus 16 the material was presented from the standpoint of the priests and their responsibility. Now it presented from the standpoint of the lay people, the non-priesthood in Israel and their responsibility in these days, to humble themselves and so on. Verses 23 to 44, the feast of tabernacles, it is also called the feast of ingathering on a couple of occasions in the Old Testament because if you read verse 39, on exactly the fiftieth day of the seventh month when you have gathered in the crops of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the Lord for seven days and with a rest on first day and rest on the eighth day. So this celebrates the fall harvest and the completion of the fall harvest.

So it’s called the feast of ingathering or the feast of tabernacle or the feast of booths. Tabernacle or booths because the children of Israel constructed huts out of branches and leaves and they lived in these leaf huts during the week of the Feast of Tabernacles. Down in verse 40, now on the first day you shall take for yourselves the foliage of beautiful trees, palm branches, boughs of leafy trees, willows of the brook, you shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days. You shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord for seven days in the year. A perpetual statute throughout your generations; you shall celebrate it in the seventh month. You shall live in booths for seven days, all the native born in Israel shall live in booths so that your generation may know that I have the sons of Israel live in booths when I brought them out from the land of Egypt, I am the Lord your God.

This reminds Israel of God’s gracious provision for them during the forty years of wilderness wandering. Between the time they left Egypt and the time they entered into Cannon, they lived in temporary dwellings and this will be a reminder constantly. When they moved into the land of Cannon, they have settled down, they have nice homes to live in. The danger is they will forget God has graciously provided those for them. That it was God who provided for them through the wilderness when they didn’t have those nice homes. So it’s interesting. God is going to have them move out of their houses, move into these huts if you will and live there for a week to be reminded

Turn over to Deuteronomy Chapter 6. This might not be a good idea for us today, might not be a bad idea, wouldn’t be a good idea, but it might not be a bad one either. The point is when you have all of God’s blessing, there is always the danger you forget that God has graciously provided. In Deuteronomy Chapter 6 verse 10, then it shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land which He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give you great and splendid cities which you did not build. They came in and took over Cannon. They didn’t have to build the cities. Houses full of all good things which you did not fill, hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, you eat and be satisfied, then watch yourself, lest you forget the Lord who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And that tragedy afflicts us as believers today. Why is it that often it is in those parts of the world where believers are poverty stricken, that they seemed to have such a consciousness of God’s working, God’s providing, and God’s leading.

But somehow when we have grown and acquired the abundance, it’s easy to lose our perspective. Well the feast of Tabernacles was going to be yearly reminder to Israel of what God had done and all that they have is from God and it would be a way for them to teach their children every year. Why are leaving our nice house to go out and live in that hut of branches and leaves? Well back when God brought us out of Egypt and we had nothing, He took care of us in the wilderness for forty years. We came into Cannon and He graciously provided all of this for us. How often are of young people grow up in our Christian homes and they think we have so much because of the cleverness of their parents or the working of their father and it’s hard to appreciate that it is God who has provided it all. So the feast of tabernacles would be a constant reminder.

Let’s go to Leviticus 24. Some laws here concerning the holy place and concerning blasphemy The first nine verses deal with some laws about the holy place, the holy place that out of part in the tabernacle, divide the tabernacle into the holy place and the holy of holies and in the holy place where much of the activity of the priest would center. They only went into the holy of holies once a year. Well, Israel is going to be reminded here. It seems strange, why do we bring this in this point? What reminds Israel is that they are not to limit their worship of God to these major feast days, but they are to be worshiping him regularly and the tabernacle and the holy place makes possible that continual ongoing worship. The lampstand is mentioned in verses 2 to 4 and that was already dealt with in some detail in the Book of Exodus, but it was in the holy place. The seven branched candle stick is what we are talking about. Verses 5 to 9, you have the bread of the presence or it’s often called the showbread. The bread of the presence because it’s placed in the presence of the Lord.

Verse 5, take fine flour, bake twelve cakes. Then verse 6, You shall set them in two rows, six to a row on the pure gold table before the Lord. Verse 8, every Sabbath day he shall set it in order before the Lord continually and these twelve loaves represent Israel which is privileged to constantly be in God’s presence because of his eternal covenant. So a reminder their ongoing worship because their nation that lives in His presence, don’t just have feast days and you know what happens, as people deteriorate spiritually, the certain feast days become the focal point. For us, there are certain religious days through the year; Easter and Christmas and so on, which become major events for many people. That’s when they show up, for example at church. Well God didn’t want Israel to degenerate so that it was only the major feast days that had an emphasis of worship. But they are to be reminded, that’s an ongoing experience for Israel.

Verses 10 to 23 almost break-in in an abrupt way. Here you have a case of blasphemy, but it shows you that these laws are set in a historical setting and why these laws are necessary. Israel had to live day by day and confirm these kind of situations, what are they to do. Verses 10 to 12 present the offence and verse 10, the son of an Israelite woman, whose father was an Egyptian, went out among the sons of Israel. The Israelite woman's son and a man of Israel struggled with each other. The son of the Israelite woman blasphemed the name and cursed. Blasphemed God and he cursed using the name of God. This violates the command in Exodus Chapter 20, you are not to take the name of your Lord, the Lord your God in vain, cursing God’s forbidden in Exodus 22 and verse 28. So they arrest him, but no penalty has been specified to this point for the sin. The sin has been forbidden, but what do you do with the person who commits such a sin, so they detained him. And verse 12, they put him in custody until the God speaks to them about what they should do.

Verses 13 to 22, God gives his sentence and you not in verse 14, he says bring the one who has cursed outside the camp, let all who heard him lay their hands on his head as similar to what they did with the animal sacrifice; lay their hands on the head identifying with that animal. Well, here everyone who heard him cursed and blasphemed, had to lay their hands on his head because there had been a certain defilement and guilt that it come to them as they had heard their God blasphemed and cursed. And now lay their hands on this guilty man representing the fact that he is going to bear the penalty and the guilt and then he is to be stoned. The penalty is death by stoning. God takes this opportunity in verses 17 to 22 to set down the principle of punishment to be carried out by the nation.

Verse 17, if any man takes the life of a human being, he shall be put to death. The one who takes the life of an animal, shall make it good life for life. In other words, you will place that animal with another comparable animal. If a man injures his neighbor just as he has done, it shall be done to him, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; just as he has injured a man, so shall it be inflicted on him. The one who kills an animal shall make it good, but the one who kills a man shall be put to death. And here a clear distinction between man and the animals. This law of retaliation is mentioned in two other passages in the Old Testament. We won’t turn there, but you could jot it down if you like.

Exodus 21 verses 23 to 25 and Deuteronomy Chapter 19 verse 21, those two passages along with this passage in Leviticus are the lex talionis, the law of retaliation and you note the principle. The key idea is that punishment must be proportionate to the offence. So in one way you look at this and say oh boy, that seems severe, but you will note it controls the severity. Someone knocked your tooth out, you can’t cut his head off. It’s tooth for tooth. So there is an equity in the punishment that is meet it out and that is the principle established here. Now says fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. It may be that there was the allowance here for compensation and your could be financial compensation that would be met it out and these become ways of expressing the fact there must be an equity and the punishment to have kept the nation functioning orderly. These become the guiding laws that Israel will live under.

Then in verse 23, the execution of the guilty blasphemer takes place. They take him out, stone him with stones. The sons of Israel did that in obedience to the Lord. A clear indication here that capital punishment is not viewed as murder, but the commandment thou shall not kill means thou shall not murder. Those today they would try to take that and say see we shouldn’t have capital punishment because God said thou shall not kill, make a mockery of the Old Testament. Here God orders capital punishment to take place and reminds Israel that any time someone kills an other human being, capital punishment must be meet it out. Leviticus 25 is the year of jubilee, and keep in mind we are dealing with the nation Israel. Israel is an earthly nation, it is a theocracy. It has God as its king, but they need these laws to guide them and how they are to live as an earthly nation and in Chapter 25 on the year jubilee very interesting in God makes provision for those who would be the poor or the debtors in the nation. And what this Chapter does is provide that the debtor will not be completely ruined. There will be provision for him to get back on his feet, so to speak.

The Chapter has to deal with what we call Sabbatical years or Sabbath years. Every seventh year is a Sabbath year, every fiftieth year is a Sabbath year. What will happen particularly in the year of jubilee every fiftieth year all Hebrew slaves will be set free, all land will revert to its original owners. This kept any individual Israelites from building personal empires at the expense of other Israelites. You won’t have one Israelite who amasses large tracks of land or acquires many other Jews as his slaves because every fiftieth year all the land will go back to the original owner, all the Hebrew slaves will be set free. So you could not have a permanent sale of land in Israel, you could not have a Hebrew become a permanent slave in Israel, and these laws guaranteed that that will take place.

So really every 50 years everyone gets a fresh start and that would mean about once in a life time you get a chance to start over. Perhaps you made some bad business decisions, you got yourself heavily in debt, you had to sell the family farm. Well, if the year of jubilee is fourteen years away in fourteen years that land had to be given back to you. You didn’t have to pay anything for it. It was given back to you. Your are debt free. So there was that opportunity about once in a life time for a person to get a fresh start and that kept the debtors in Israel from being totally ruined and the developing of a upper class and a lower class, although obviously there would be he more well to do and the less well to do, but it kept that from being a widening gap in the nation.

The first 22 verses talk about the jubilee and Sabbath for the land. This all looks forward to the time when Israel be in the land, this is being given. Israel does not even have possession of the land yet. But God is preparing them for that time. Verse 2, speak to the sons of Israel, say to them, when you come into the land which I shall give you, then the land shall have a Sabbath to the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop, during the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath rest, a Sabbath to the Lord; you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard. Your harvest after growth, you shall not reap, your grapes of untrimmed vines you shall not gather; the land shall have a sabbatical year.

All of you shall have the sabbatical products of the land for food; yourself, and your male and female slaves, your hired man and your foreign residents, those who live as aliens with you. Even your cattle and the animals shall have all the crops. The point being made here is during the sabbatical year there could be no systematic harvesting and whatever was produced to carryover by doing nothing that sabbatical year, there would be some grapes that grow, but I wasn’t allow to say hey, there my grapes. They weren’t my grapes in the sabbatical year. They belong to anybody. I wasn’t allowed to have my workers go and harvest my vineyard. Even though I didn’t do anything for that seventh year, some of the crops would come up automatically, they carryover.

That’s what is he is talking about in verse 5, the harvest’s aftergrowth and so on. That was just like that was not my vineyard, any body could come into my fields and take whatever was growing, the slaves, the free people, it was all open in that seventh year and you couldn’t have planted anything. All normal agricultural activities stopped. And what this did was remind Israel God’s the provider. Every seventh year they were going to be driven to trust God that He will provide for us. And as we will see that is going to stretch their faith, stretch their faiths so much, Israel couldn’t do it, Israel didn’t do it and God had to chasten them for it. So every seventh year the land lay fallow until unused.

Now there is a jubilee year, beginning with verse 8, you shall also to count off seven Sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the seven Sabbaths of years, namely forty-nine years. You shall then sound a ram's horn and that’s probably where the name jubilee comes from very close in sound to the word for ram or ram’s horn. You shall sound the ram’s horn and abroad on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement you shall sound a horn all through your land. You shall thus consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, each of you shall return to his own property, each of you shall return to his family.

You shall have the fiftieth year as a jubilee; you shall not sow, nor reap its aftergrowth, nor gather in from its untrimmed vines. For you it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you. You shall eat its crops out of the field. On this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his own property. If you make a sale, moreover to your friend or buy from your friend's hand, you shall not wrong one another. And it goes on here, anytime you are going to buy some land. What you really do when you buy a piece of land in Israel in light of this low in these days as you figured how many crops there would be until the jubilee year, that told you how much that piece of land was worth. If there were 47 years left until the year of jubilee that land was worth a lot more than it would be if there were only four crops left to the jubilee year, because in the jubilee year the original owner got his land back.

So that’s what verses 15 and 16 tell you, how you figure out the worth of the land. You figure out on how many crops there are until the year of jubilee. So I am in debt. I say I can’t pay you. I will sell you my land. Well, we would sit down and figure out. There are 16 years to the year jubilee, your land is worth in light of the crops that will produce 16 years this much and that’s what I would be paid. May be that doesn’t bring enough to pay the debt, then I might have to say to you I will sell myself to you as a slave. I will be your slave until the year of jubilee. I couldn’t sell myself beyond that or my land beyond that, although there was a provision in the year jubilee. If after being your slave I said I like it so much, I want to stay, then you could pierce my ear and I would become your slave, but this provided for again the freeing of the land and freeing of the people.

Down in verses 13 to 17 that provision of the land you really leasing the land is told to purchase, but it is really a lease. You are into have the lease for 4 years, 14 years, and may be as long as 49 years. If you brought it at the end of the year jubilee, you would have it until the next jubilee, but that would be the maximum that could be there. This law maintained the original division of the land among the tribes. You see what happened, it would all we stay within the same tribe. Look over Numbers 36, in the Book of Numbers Chapter 36, you see how god provided in all these details for his people Israel and Numbers Chapter 36 and verse 9 God talking about the land.

He says in verse 9, thus no inheritance shall be transferred from one tribe to another tribe, for the tribes of the sons of Israel shall each hold to his own inheritance. God will set out the division of the land among the various tribes when they come into it and that division holds. The land given to the tribe of Dan belongs to the tribe of Dan in perpetuity and that’s true of each of the tribes. So members of the tribe of Dan couldn’t sell their land to another tribe. They could lease it for a time, but in the year jubilee, it would revert back. So over five hundred year period, there would be a stability that the land would have been leased often on, but it would always come back to the same tribe that God had designated it for.

Back in Leviticus Chapter 25 and verses 18 to 22, God gives an exhortation now to Israel to obey these laws that he has given and what is going to do is take the faith and stretch it. In the every seventh year, there is going to be a sabbatical year. Israel is going to have trust God to provide, but you know what? When you come up on the year of jubilee, you have back to back sabbatical years. So in the sixth year you are going to have to trust God that he will provide enough crop that will carry you through the seventh year, a sabbatical year through the eighth year, which will be jubilee year and through the ninth year because you can’t plant your crops in the seventh or eightieth year. So when you plant them in the ninth year, you are going to have almost a year to get the harvest in.

So you got three years there and right away your mind gets running and thinking, well look, even if we have enough on the sixth year, what if we have good years the seventh and eighth year, but we don’t plant and all of a sudden a drought hits. And we have 2 to 3 years of drought. We will be talking about 5 or 6 years here. My family will starve. This happens as soon as you get practical like that, you can’t obey god and live by faith. So that’s what verses 18 to 22 tell them. God says you trust Me, you obey Me, and I will see that you provided for in that sixth year so that you can live through seventh, eighth, and ninth year to get your crop again. Well, can I trust him. Well, Israel didn’t think they could and will pay the price very dearly.

Verses 23 to 28 talk about the jubilee and the redemption of property. Verse 23, the land moreover shall not be sold permanently, the reason is the land is Mine. You see what God says? This is why you can’t sell, it’s my land. You are just strangers and sojourners with Me. And I graciously allow you to work my land, but the land belongs to Me. So this law reminded Israel constantly, its God’s land. I am going to sell you my land, I can’t do that, why? It is not my land. I have it from the Lord. I can lease it to you, but in the year of jubilee, it has to come back because it’s God’s land and this is the way He wants it divided up.

Verse 25, if a fellow countryman of yours becomes so poor, he has to sell part of his property, then his nearest kinsman is to come and buy back what his relative has sold. In other words, if one of your relatives gets into financial problems and has to sell his land, you as a close relative aught to come and pay the price to redeem his land back for him. I mentioned this because this becomes an important issue in the Book of Ruth. Remember when Ruth and he only come back into the land and then the near kinsman will not redeem it. So he has to take off his sandal and gets spit in the face and then Boaz performs the service of the near kinsman. Comes back to this particular provision that Leviticus 25 is talking about.

Down to the verse 28, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and be your God. This comes with a section reminding Israel of its responsibility to take care of the poor. And how does he remind them, what do you have? You didn’t get from me. What did you have in Egypt? Your were slaves, everything you have you have because I being gracious to you, therefore you are to be gracious to others. Principle that has used in the New Testament as well for us as believers and sometimes we forget that as well and we begin to live like the world live. What is mine is mine, I worked for it, I earned it, I deserve it. And it’s not my problem that somebody else is having such great need. Now the concern here is within the family of God. Israelites are not responsible for the other nations and that principle carries over the New Testament, our prime responsibility is to fellow believers in the New Testament.

In verses 39 to 55, you have the laws regarding the year of jubilee and redemption as slaves. Last resort, if I have sold my land and I sold everything I have and I still can’t get out of debt, the only thing left to do is sell myself into slavery and my family. And that sounds harsh, but it was away for a man a work off his debt and he wasn’t to be treated unfairly or unkindly. Verse 40 says, he shall be with you as a hired man, so all that person did went to the man who owned him, but he is to treat him as a hired man, not as a slave. So there still is to be that respect, but this was a way that a debtor could work off his debt is what is really happening in Israel. The year jubilee, you will be set free. I am going to mention something here. I don’t have an answer to it, but I will mention it.

Exodus Chapter 21 and Deuteronomy Chapter 15 says Hebrews slaves should be freed in the Sabbath year, every seventh year. Here the indication would be it should be in the jubilee year. I don’t have a good solution to how that works out. So either one is a possibility for sure in the year of jubilee, but those other two passages do indicate that in the seven sabbatical year, Hebrew slaves were to be given their freedom.

In verses 44 to 46 of this Chapter, this law offering the slaves that it did not apply to foreigners, only to Hebrews. The reason being God had redeemed the nation Israel. Verse 42, they are My servants whom I brought out from the land of Egypt; they are not to be sold in a slave sale. Verse 55, the sons of Israel are My servants; they are My servants whom I brought out from the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. So you see it’s just like the land. The land belongs to the God, so I can’t sell it you permanently. So it’s Israelite belongs to God, God purchased them out of slavery in Egypt. So you don’t have the right to permanently enslave them. So in affect you hire them so they can work off their debt to you, but you cannot permanently enslave them because they are God’s people and God’s possession. It’s common in near eastern covenants and treaties that they conclude with the section of blessings and curses and that’s what Chapter 26 says, blessings and curses. Blessings on those who keep the law, cursing on those who do not.

The first 13 verses are the blessings, obedience to the provision of the covenant will result in blessings. Some of the specific blessings, we are not gong through the details. Verses 3 through 5 and verses 9 and 10 talk about material blessings and you aught to know this is promise to an earthly nation that is a theocracy in covenant relationship with God. You have to take these passages talking about material blessings for obedience and try to apply them to church today is to be dishonest with the Scriptures. And many do that today, many do it to try to get you to give the money and so on. That’s a distortion and a corruption of the Scriptures.

These were given to Israel an earthly nation, if they obey the provisions of the covenant and these people whether they are on the TV telling you and quoting these verses of how God would prosper you if you given so on and are obedient. They are put it in the line of obedience, it’s when is the last time they observed the day of Passover according to biblical instructions and the feast of first fruits. When the last time they carried out all the sacrifices, then Numbers 28 and 29 says half to be carried out in connection with being obedient to the provision of these laws. They just pick and chose because it is good for making money today. That’s not surprising, the surprising thing is some Christians believe it. So this promise of material prosperity is given to the nation Israel because they are an earthly nation and their physical prosperity is an evidence of God’s blessing them. That’s different than you and I. We are not in earthly nation.

There is also victory over their enemy in verses 6 through 8 where if they are obedient to the provisions of the covenant, their enemies are going to be running away from them. Verse 8, five of you will chase a hundred, a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, I like to see you try that. So go over to Iran sometime this week, take out your sword, give your charge and see how successful you are. It just wouldn’t work. It would work for Israel if they are obedient to the provisions of the covenant. God’s personal presence in verses 11 and 12, I will make My dwelling among you, My soul will not reject you. I will also walk among you, be your God, and you shall be My people. Israel was not willing to obey the provisions of the covenant.

So in the Book of Ezekiel, we see the presence of God departing from the nation Israel. If they were not obedient, his presence departs, but if they will be obedient, his presence would remain with the nation. Verses 14 through 39 are the curses and you know it’s characteristic of treaties of this period of time that the blessing sections were short and the cursing sections were long, and it’s true also of the provisions of this covenant. A series of five curses mentioned here; each one will begin with a conditional clause. If you don’t obey, then this will happen to you. Verses 14 to 17, we are not going into the details.

Verses 14 to 17, the first curse is general, illness, famine, defeat, that’s what will happen to Israel if they don’t obey. Verse 14, if you do not obey Me and do not carry out all these commandments, if instead, you reject My statutes, if your soul abhors My ordinances, so as not to carry out My commandments, so break My covenant, then I will do this to you, illness will overtake you, famine will come, defeat from your enemies. The second curse verses 18 to 20, drought and poor harvest. Verse 19, I break down your pride of power, the sky will be like iron, the earth like bronze. No rain from the sky and you can’t plant in earth that’s become like bronze. So there will be drought and famine.

Now you note verse 18, it says if after these things you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. You have to note the reason God punishes them is to get them to come back. So you have the curses in verses 14 through 17 then he says if after these things you do not obey, he punishes them because he loves them. He doesn’t seem to love them. Then He will punish them seven times more. I thought it is interesting, the Book Revelation. The final set of judgment for Israel is a set of three series of sevens. The seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven bold judgments, all finally drive Israel to its knees and be ready to submit an obedience to God and faith in the Messiah.

Verse 19, when he talks about their prosperity, I will break down your pride of power. Prosperity generates pride. We see that in our own nation. We are a prosperous nation and there is an emphasis on pride, on self-centeredness, on appreciating who you are what you have done and your accomplishments. That is not biblical attitude and response and God would punish Israel for that kind of pride. And you know what judgment does? It cuts a person down to size. It reminds us of who we depend on. You know if I lose my job tomorrow, if I lose my house, lose my health, lose my friends, all of a sudden I am driven back, who else do I have, but God. That reminds me Gil, you are not so great, are you? Gill you are not so important after all, are you. It’s God who has provided everything. So this chastening these judgments serve a good purpose for God’s people. It brings them back to reality. The third curse verses 21 and 22 wild animals that will be a plague on them in the land.

Verses 23 to 26, the fourth curse is war. The sword will come upon them. Verses 27 to 39, war and exile, God will remove them from the land. Look how specific this is in verse 34 Then the land will enjoy its Sabbath all the days of the desolation while you are in your enemies' land; then the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbath. All the days of its desolation it will observe the rest which it did not observe on your Sabbath while you were living on it. Well, God says here you don’t keep my Sabbath year. I will take you out of the land of Palestine so that the land lies at rest. I have to do that. Look over in second Chronicles Chapter 36, the Babylonian captivity takes place, the Syrians have already deported to northern kingdom from the land. Now the southern kingdom is deported to Babylonian.

Note what verse 21 of second Chronicles 36 says, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed it’s Sabbath, all the days of its desolation it kept Sabbath until seventy years were complete. You know why there was seventy year Babylonian captivity? Israel had skipped seventy Sabbath years. You think God doesn’t keep track. Imagine may be after skipping the first one, there were some people who were crunching saying oh, I wonder we are really going to get zapped, nothing happened. They missed the second Sabbath year. That wasn’t so bad. Nothing happened either. Why should we keep the Sabbath year? You make a lot more money if you harvest that seventh year, did you notice that? 490 years go by and now God knocks on the door and says you owe me 70, I take them all at once and he just removes the whole nation from the land. Thus now it is going to have seventy years of Sabbath, that’s what he told them. God always is exactly true and faithful to his word in the blessing and in the curses.

Back in Leviticus 25 verses 40 to 46 and we don’t have time to do the details of this, but it’s an exciting section, it’s a promise of restoration. All the curse doesn’t mean the God has rejected his people. Verse 44, Leviticus 26:44 and we get the right Chapter. Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I so abhor them as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God. You see that no matter how severe the judgment gets, God cannot break his covenant with Israel. That covenant with Israel is enforced today. The judgment severe is going to get more severe where the three series of seven judgments each in the Book of Revelation Chapters 5 through 16, that will ultimately drive Israel to its knees, then God will restore them to the land and the kingdom will be established. Important section Romans 11 develops it. The gifts and calling of God are without repentance. Is god rejected his people, Paul asks in that key section in Romans 10 and 11? Impossible he can’t reject his people. That is impossibility. That’s encouraging, that is eternal security for the nation because the God called the nation, now every individual in the nation as personally respond in faith and god is working them to that point.

Chapter 27 is a Chapter on vows and we are not going into any detail on this Chapter, but personal vows. A vow was a dedication made to the Lord, a commitment made to the Lord and that person or animal or thing dedicated to God in a vow was in a special consecrated relationship to God. And the warnings here keep Israel from foolish vows. You know the foxhole kinds of things, God if you get me out of this, I will give you my home. God, I will dedicate my son to serving you if you do this. God held Israel to the vows that it made to free themselves from the vows that have to pay redemption price. They effect if they vow that give themselves to serving God. To get out of that vow, they had to pay the price to be set free.

Now you know the price, verse 3 just note this example. If your valuation is of the male from twenty years old to sixty years old, then your valuation shall be fifty shekels of silver. So you promise to dedicate yourself to serving God. This would mean then you quit your job, quit working land, and you will become a worker perhaps with the priest. You couldn’t carry out the sanctuary functions, but you could assist them in non-ceremonial duties. You say, wait a minute that was rash. I shouldn’t have said that. You could get out of it with fifty shekels of silver, but keep in mind a working man made one shekel a month, that’s fifty month wages if you want out of that vow. So you before you make a vow, think about it. It will be easier to get it into it than out of it. You make a vow and wake up the next day and say what I have done, it was a mistake, I had my fingers crossed. It doesn’t count. Well if you are a man between 20 and 60, you can get out of it, that will cost you 50 months wages, it’s over 4 years pay. Well, I imagine that helped people realize be careful about your vows.

The first 8 verses talk about persons and individuals in the vows and you have to note in verse 6 a man could dedicate his family in a vow. Children, verse 6, they are from a month even to five years is their valuation. Evidently, these little ones would be used the women and so on in assisting again the priests in their non-ceremonial duties. Verses 9 and 10, clean animals could be vowed and then there were sacrificed. You couldn’t redeem a clean animal. Once it had been committed in a vow, it had to be sacrificed. You could vow unclean animals as well. We say what good were they to the priest? Well, they couldn’t be sacrificed, but they could be used for the priest’s personal use. And other way they could be sold and the priest could benefit from the money.

Verses 14 to 24, you could vow your land, home, and there is specific regulations that you can read for those particular things careful guidelines here that Israel takes responsibility for the vows they make before God, for those kind of commitments. Verse 26, you couldn’t vow a firstborn because the firstborn already belonged to God. So you can say well, do double duty here, he is the firstborn animal and I will use that in a vow. No, that already belongs to God. So you couldn’t vow the firstborn already belonged to the God.

Verses 28 and 29, there is banning or devoting something to destruction. This was a very serious matter, more serious than an ordinary vow and something devoted to destruction put under the ban, a vow that put it under a ban, that would be the ban devoted to destruction could not be revoked. You had to be destroyed. That was viewed as irrevocably committed to God and it seems that this was primarily used against Israel’s enemies ass they entered into Cannon. The people, the possessions would be put under the ban, that meant none of the Israelites could take it. It had to all be destroyed, as was viewed as God’s property.

Verses 32 and 33, you have a matter of the animals that are to be offered, the Thais come in here, it’s viewed as a form of a vow. There could be no haphazard or arbitrary selection in the animals. You just had to select them out and give those who had came up in a proper order. The conclusion of Leviticus, these are the commandments with the Lord commanded Moses for the sons of Israel at Mount Sinai. You know for us to go through these kind of laws today, it seems like boy, that’s a task and I am so glad, I am not a Jew, it’s been a job and keep in mind we carry all these laws around. You know you go home and open up the Book of Leviticus and you read that. The children of Israel didn’t all have their copy. They hadn’t listened to them read periodically. You wonder have they ever kept track of all this?

But you see God was concerned about all the details of how His people live. Holiness was His concern. That’s the theme of the Book of Leviticus. You aught to be holy for I am holy and that principle, we are not to loose sight of that. What’s the purpose of the Book of Leviticus for me? It reminds me of a holy character of God. It reminds me that God expects and requires and demands that His children live lives of holiness, that means I have to do exact what Israel did not. We are not an earthly nation, we don’t offer animal sacrifices and so on, but the principle of holiness must characterize me just as much and God’s serious about that. He is as just serious today as He was then. And we are not to lose sight of that.

Sin among God’s people is a serious thing. It’s dealt with firmly, not just because we don’t always see the immediate result and impact, it sometimes easy for us to become lax. Good for us to be reminded, God’s called us to holiness. He has provided for our holiness and He requires holiness of us. We are not to get the idea that he some kind of soft pillow, a kind of heavenly father and it really doesn’t make a lot of difference because there is a lot of latitude. He is very gracious and he very graciously provides so that I can live a life of holiness and there is no tolerance for anything else.

Let’s pray together. Thank you Lord for your love, for your love for the nation Israel, for your irrevocable commitment to them in covenant law. Lord, what an encouragement it is to know that even today in the midst of their rebellion and rejection, you have not rejected them. Lord, there is coming a day when you will call them back to yourself and you will work in judgment to drive them as a nation to their knees before the one who is their Messiah. Lord thank you for such great love for us, a love that provided for our redemption. Lord a love that is brought us in the covenant relationship with you as well. Lord, a relationship that is unending, that cannot be broken. Lord we rejoice in that security. Lord, we are discouraged and appalled as we look at the shortcomings in failures of the nation Israel. Lord, we had learned the lessons from them. We have learned that you are serious about the matter of holiness. Lord, we take that to heart today. Lord, may we have that commitment to live submissive to the spirit of God’s control in obedience to your word that in deed every spiritual blessing might be enjoyed to the fullness. We ask you in Christ’s name, amen.