The Year of Jubilee Across the Covenants

         We are working through the life of Abraham in our Wednesday Night Bible Study.  To date, we are almost to the middle of the book of Genesis.  And there are connections.  Always connections.  Several times God has taken Abraham through the covenant promises that are between God and Abraham and Abraham’s descendants after him.

            Abraham will be the Father of multitudes, as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore.  In other words, uncountable.  But there is also the promise of land.  But it was always God’s land, provided in the covenant.  Abraham is repeatedly listed as a sojourner in the land, until God gives the land to the people.  

            The land is indeed given to the people.  Continue through the Bible of Jesus, after the Torah-the Law of Moses-to the book of Joshua.  It begins with conquest but concludes with distribution of the land, tribe by tribe.  It is from that moment that have the Year of Jubilee.  In Joshua, God's gift of land is made real.  In the Jubilee, God’s gift of land is renewed.  Restored.  Reestablished.   

            Within the covenant promises made to Abraham, there is another to build on the promises of progeny and Promised Land.  It is that by Abraham, all the nations of the world will be blessed, will be restored to God.  This is the promise that is carried out in our Lord Jesus.  Jesus, who comes to us from the progeny and Promised Land of Abraham and as Son of God.   

            What was God's one select nation blows open to the whole world as Jesus fulfills the promises made to Abraham.  It is no longer the ‘line of Abraham’ but, in Jesus, all God's Children who are able to come back to Him.  It is no longer one little strip of land along the Mediterranean that is the ‘Promised Land’, but, in Jesus, the whole Earth, all of Creation, is God's gift to us.  

            So, the Year of Jubilee, which began as part of the covenant law of Moses, becomes something so much more.  Jubilee was for one people in one land.  But, in Jesus, Jubilee is for all people, living in all the land that is God's gift to us.  In this do we celebrate.    

Amen and thanks be to God.  We hope to see you Sunday.

Peace,

Pastor pete