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Great in the Kingdom – The Fourth Commandment

thousandhills — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 05:01:55 +0000

Great in the Kingdom

The Fourth Commandment

Leviticus 25:8-22

“You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years. Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you. You may eat the produce of the field.

“In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property. And if you make a sale to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. You shall pay your neighbor according to the number of years after the jubilee, and he shall sell to you according to the number of years for crops. If the years are many, you shall increase the price, and if the years are few, you shall reduce the price, for it is the number of the crops that he is selling to you. You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God, for I am the LORD your God.

“Therefore you shall do my statutes and keep my rules and perform them, and then you will dwell in the land securely. The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and dwell in it securely. And if you say, ‘What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?’ I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years. When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating some of the old crop; you shall eat the old until the ninth year, when its crop arrives.”

With the statutes regulating the year of release we come to an end of the first four commandments. Let us not suppose that these four are only intended to teach us how to love God. They do, of course; however, as we have seen in various places, loving God is intimately connected with loving our neighbors. How we love and fear God will work out, in part, in how we show love for our neighbors.

At the same time, as we prepare to begin the last six commandments, which deal more horizontally, we might say, love for neighbors is how we demonstrate fear of God, as we have seen even in this statute. The Law of God is all of a piece, which is why James said that if we break one law we break them all (Jas. 2:11). The more we work at loving God according to His Law, the more we will love our neighbor—just as Jesus insisted (Matt. 22:34-40).

No wonder they who do, keep, and perform this Law, and teach it to others, will be called great in the Kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:17-19).

In this series of In the Gates we present a detailed explanation of the Law of God, beginning with the Ten Commandments, and working through the statutes and rules that accompany each commandment. For a practical guide to the role of God’s Law in the practice of ethics, get The Ground for Christian Ethics by going to www.MyParuchia.com and click on our Book Store.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Do, Keep, Perform – The Fourth Commandment

thousandhills — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 05:01:04 +0000

Do, Keep, Perform

The Fourth Commandment

Leviticus 25:8-22

Do, keep, perform—how many different ways can the Lord impress on us His intention for us with respect to His Law? The neglect of the Law of God today is deplorable; to God, it is an abomination (Prov. 28.9). God connected Israel’s security and prosperity with obedience to His Law. He would cause the land to provide for them and their enemies to leave them alone. All they had to do was obey. But they didn’t have the heart for it (Deut. 5:29).

Do we?

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Incentives for Obedience – The Fourth Commandment

thousandhills — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 05:01:17 +0000

Incentives for Obedience

The Fourth Commandment

Leviticus 25:8-22

Notice the twin incentives for observing the year of release—the Jubilee: fear of God and love for neighbor. We may not always find aspects of God’s Law easy to understand or even agreeable. But fear of God should keep us seeking the best ways to fulfill them in our day. Love for our neighbor is hard to sustain without some meaningful guidelines. God provides these in His Law. The better we know the Law and the more consistent we are in keeping it, the more we will know the fear of God and show love to our neighbor.

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The Jubilee – The Fourth Commandment

thousandhills — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 05:01:22 +0000

The Jubilee

The Fourth Commandment

Leviticus 25:8-22

A whole year without working! What would that be like? In the year of Jubilee Israel was to celebrate the goodness of God and renew their covenant with Him by returning to their patriarchal lands, resting from working the soil, and treating the year as a holy Sabbath year to the Lord. The idea of a periodic renewal of our covenant relationship with God is a good one, I think. I don’t believe God intends for us to try to apply the economic principles He assigned to Israel to our modern day, but whatever principles there may be in these statutes—such as setting aside holy times for the Lord, keeping debt to a minimum, and not accumulating excessive wealth—are certainly worth reflecting on for how they might apply to us.

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Borrowers and Lenders – The Fourth Commandment

thousandhills — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 05:01:25 +0000

Borrowers and Lenders

The Fourth Commandment

Deuteronomy 15:1-6

“At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release. And this is the manner of the release: every creditor shall release what he has lent to his neighbor. He shall not exact it of his neighbor, his brother, because the LORD’s release has been proclaimed. Of a foreigner you may exact it, but whatever of yours is with your brother your hand shall release. But there will be no poor among you; for the LORD will bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess—if only you will strictly obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all this commandment that I command you today. For the LORD your God will bless you, as he promised you, and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow, and you shall rule over many nations, but they shall not rule over you.”

Can we conclude from this text that the blessing of God does not rest on that nation which is deeply in debt to other nations? God promised to enrich His people, but He did not want them to become dependent on other nations. In that way lies oppression. America’s national debt, trade deficits, and debt to nations such as China should suffice to show us the wisdom of God’s warning here.

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No Poor? – The Fourth Commandment

thousandhills — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 05:01:19 +0000

No Poor?

The Fourth Commandment

Deuteronomy 15:1-6

God promised that there would be no poor in Israel—that is, if they would keep His statutes. There would of course always be poor people in Israel—as Jesus noted—but their poverty would be relieved by the faithful obedience of the rest of the community to the rules and statutes of the Lord. So even though they were poor, they would not be oppressed by their poverty but, instead, would know the loving care of their neighbors through the seven-year release, the three-year tithe, and the laws about gleaning.

The economy God designed for Israel was an economy of love for God and neighbors. Self-love would be moderated so that neighbor-love could abound.

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The Year of Release – The Fourth Commandment

thousandhills — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 05:01:52 +0000

The Year of Release

The Fourth Commandment

Deuteronomy 15:1-6

Acts 4:34, 35

It’s not hard to see how this statute would give greed a rest. People would be reluctant grant large loans to others, knowing that every seven years the debts would all be cancelled. This “release” would remind the people that God is Lord of all possessions and that we must not hold so tightly to things that we allow them to become the most important things in our lives.

The believers in Acts 4 demonstrated the kind of heart attitude God was seeking among His people here. Their possessions were a trust from the Lord, for the needs of their families and of the Body of Christ. Not having such a heart—or Spirit—in the Old Testament, formal external constraints would have to do. We’re not surprised to know that Israel never kept them.

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A Rest for the Land – The Fourth Commandment

thousandhills — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 05:01:36 +0000

A Rest for the Land

The Fourth Commandment

By Sabbath and Jubilee years, God reminded the people of His sovereign ownership and provision, of their need to trust in Him, and of their duty to the creation and to one another.

Leviticus 25:1-7

The LORD spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying,“Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the LORD. For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the LORD. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired servant and the sojourner who lives with you, and for your cattle and for the wild animals that are in your land: all its yield shall be for food.”

Just as the people were expected to rest every seven days, so they were expected to let the land rest every seven years. The land itself was to have a Sabbath. This must have seemed a strange mandate to the people. We have no evidence they ever kept it. Indeed, it is precisely because that they did not—for 490 years—that they were taken into 70 years of captivity, so that the land could have its rest.

Farmers know the importance of resting arable land. This is why they rotate crops, allowing land to lie fallow and to gather its strength for another round. There is in this Sabbath rest for the land a principle of careful stewardship of arable soil which remains valid to this day. It is this principle which yet abides, not the specific injunction of seventh-year rest for the land.

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Recovering Pentecost – The Fourth Commandment

thousandhills — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 05:01:46 +0000

Recovering Pentecost

The Fourth Commandment

Leviticus 23:9-11

And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you and reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest, and he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, so that you may be accepted. On the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.”

Leviticus 23:15, 16

“You shall count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering. You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath. Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to the LORD.”

Pentecost (“fifty days”) was the celebration of the great harvest each year. It was preceded by offering a single sheaf (from each family) at the harvest of the firstfruits. Just as Jesus was the first to rise from the dead, so, at Pentecost—fifty days later—the resurrection and harvest of all the saints of God was guaranteed by the pouring out of God’s Spirit.

We really should make more of Pentecost than we do.

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A Promise of Wellbeing – The Fourth Commandment

thousandhills — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 05:01:22 +0000

A Promise of Wellbeing

The Fourth Commandment

Exodus 34:22-24

“You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s end. Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the LORD God, the God of Israel. For I will cast out nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land, when you go up to appear before the LORD your God three times in the year.”

How serious was the Lord about these feasts? Israel’s continued wellbeing in the land depended as much on her faithful observance of these feasts as on her obedience to the moral, civil, and spiritual aspects of the Law. Keeping these feast days holy—both in form and participation—was to be a high priority for the people of God.

If we are to have feasts and holy days as the followers of Christ—and I believe we should—then we must keep them holy just as we do the Lord’s Day.

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