Year of Jubilee

When Jesus started His ministry, He went into a Jewish Synagogue and the leaders there asked Him to read the scriptures. So Jesus took the scroll and opened up to the book of Isaiah, and this is what He read:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”

And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.

And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. (Luke 4:18-21 KJV)

In other words, Jesus was saying, “I’m the guy Isaiah was talking about.”

I’m going to preach the gospel

I’m going to heal the brokenhearted

I’m going to deliver the captives

I’m going to heal the blind

I’m going to set free the ones who have been bruised

And I’m going to preach the acceptable year of the Lord!”

When Jesus said He was going to preach the “acceptable year of the Lord,” what was He talking about? He was referring to something the Israelites called the “Year of Jubilee.” In Leviticus 25, God gave Israel this year of Jubilee as a gift. The year of Jubilee was a very special time of celebration every 50^th year.

God set up the framework of government for the nation of Israel, and it’s very different from other governments.

When the Israelites came into the Promised Land, every family was given a share of the land. God divided the land among all the tribes of Israel, and then the tribes divided it into smaller sections for each family.

So if you were an Israelite, you were given your own piece of land to live on. And that land would stay in your family forever. It was passed down to your kids, and their kids, and so on.

If an Israelite ever went through a hard time, and became very poor, he could sell his land to someone outside the family.

But this was not God’s plan. God’s plan was that everyone should be blessed, that everyone would have land, and that everyone would have an abundance of food and clothing and everything else they needed.

Selling your land was a last resort, like a backup plan so that you wouldn’t starve if you went through hard times.

But here’s the fun part. God gave them the Year of Jubilee.

This is how it worked: every 50 years, all property would revert back to the original owner.

So if you had been forced to sell the family farm, you just had to wait until the next Year of Jubilee, and it was yours again!

Isn’t that a cool law?

When Jesus was preaching in the synagogue that Sabbath day in Luke, He was saying, “I’m here now, so this is the Year of Jubilee!” What was He talking about?

When God created humans and put them on earth, He gave us tremendous blessings! Friendship with God, ruling authority, health, success, favor, and blessing in everything they did.

But then Adam and Eve were tricked into giving our blessings to the devil. Humans lost everything good that day. We lost all of our blessings- and not only did we lose all our blessings, we became slaves to the devil.

Humans fell on hard times for a very long time.

But then Jesus came.

And that day in the temple, Jesus was saying, “No more! Happy times are here again because it’s the Year of Jubilee!” Halleluiah!

Whatever the devil stole from Adam and Eve and all of mankind, Jesus won it back for us. He says,

Are you brokenhearted? I’ve come to heal you!!

Are you being held captive? I’ve come to deliver you!!

Are you crushed and oppressed? I’ve come to set you free!!

Praise God! Jesus Christ stripped the devil of our blessings and He put them back into our hands!

When we turn to Jesus, it’s our year of Jubilee! We simply need to believe.

Now I want to look at a story that illustrates this. 1 Samuel 30:

… when David and his men arrived home at their city of Ziklag, they found that the Amalekites had raided the city and burned it to the ground,carrying off all the women and children.

As David and his men looked at the ruins and realized what had happened to their families,they wept until they could weep no more... But David took strength from the Lord…

… And the Lord told him, “…go after them; you will recover everything that was taken from you!”

So David and his six hundred men set out after the Amalekites…

Along the way they found an Egyptian youth in a field and brought him to David...

“Who are you and where do you come from?” David asked him.

“I am an Egyptian—the servant of an Amalekite,” he replied. “My master left me behind three days ago because I was sick. We were on our way back from raiding… and had burned Ziklag.”

“Can you tell me where they went?” David asked.

…So he led them to the Amalekite encampment. They were spread out across the fields, eating and drinking and dancing with joy because of the vast amount of loot they had taken…

David and his men rushed in among them and slaughtered them all that night and the entire next day until evening…

David got back everything they had taken. The men recovered their families and all of their belongings… (1 Samuel 30 1-19) (TLB)

Sometimes, maybe you feel like David felt when he lost it all. Maybe sometimes it feels like the devil has taken everything away. Well, there’s good news- Jesus is here now, and He’s your Year of Jubilee!!

We just need to go to the enemy’s camp and recover what was stolen from us!!

But how do we do that?

How do we fight our enemy? Our enemy is the devil and his army of demons and they are invisible- how in the world do we fight them?

We need to fight the good fight of faith!!

By faith we… receive the promise…(Galatians 3:14) (NIV)

The promise comes by faith… (Romans 4:16) (NIV)

According to your faith it will be done to you. (Matthew 9:29) (NIV)

It’s faith that gets us out of invisible prisons!!

Faith that sets us free!!

Faith that gives us back what the devil has stolen from us!!

Jesus said:

Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt… even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith. (Matthew 21:21-22) (NIV)

if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, nothing will be impossible for you. (Matthew 17:20) (NIV)

Hebrews 11 tells us that by faith people have…

conquered kingdoms, gained what was promised, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, escaped the edge of the sword, turned their weaknesses into strength, became powerful in battle, routed foreign armies, and raised their dead back to life again. (from Hebrews 11:29-35) (NIV)

So how do we fight the good fight of faith? How do we go to the enemy’s camp and take back what was stolen from us?

We use our faith! We start rejoicing in our promises, like this:

Thank You Jesus!!!

I am blessed in the city and blessed in the country

I am blessed when I come in and blessed when I go out

My children are blessed

My job is blessed

My food supply is blessed

Everything I touch is blessed

I am justified, sanctified, forgive

I am delivered from all my oppressors

I am freed from all captivity

I have been washed in the blood of Jesus

I am holy and dearly loved by God

I have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control flowing through me

I am filled with the Holy Spirit and Fire

You supply all my needs

You have opened my eyes

You have opened doors for me

You have given me a long life

You have given my kids a long life

You have saved my kids

Jesus is our Year of Jubilee, and so in Christ, everything the devil stole from us is ours again.

If we could see in the spiritual realm, maybe we would see those demons holding onto our peace, our joy, our success, our health. But we have the greatest weapon in the world. It’s our faith in Jesus Christ.

So we can just start using our faith, rejoicing in our promises.

And as we do, the demons will begin to weaken, they’ll begin to get confused and fearful, they’ll lose their grip on our blessings, and they’ll drop our blessings and run away!

Little by little, one by one, all those blessings will be ours once again, because in Christ, we live in the Year of Jubilee!

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

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Year of Jubilee

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