Faith for Sabbath
“Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘When you come into the land which I give you, then the land shall keep a sabbath to the Lord.” Leviticus 25:2
To give the promise land a sabbath rest every 50 years required great faith and trust in Yahweh. It was to show the absolute sovereignty of the Lord over His land in whom the Israelites were tenants. ‘"The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me." Lev 25:23 In the natural, the Sabbath year would have profound economic and social consequences. Crops would not be sold for income, farm laborers would not earn a wage, contracts to sell crops could not be fulfilled, the priest would receive no tithe, and the king no tax. The nation could become vulnerable to enemies because of economic weakness. It takes faith to follow God in this full stop. The Lord's commands are impossible to accomplish in our flesh. Many times God's commands don't make sense to us until much later. Sometimes we never understand the reasons for God's commands. It's easy to forget that the Lord promises to help us to obey, to make the impossible possible.
During the time of the Babylonian exile, the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed the exile would last 70 years. (Jeremiah 25:11-12) The seventy years was meant as discipline corresponding to the number of times that the tribes of Judah and Benjamin had neglected to obey the "Sabbath year”. This commandment had apparently gone unobserved for 490 years (from the time of Israel's occupancy of Canaan following the exodus from Egypt, to the beginning of the Babylonian exile), so the Lord sovereignly gave the land seventy years of rest during the exile. (2 Chronicles 36:20-21) Even the good kings (David, the early years of Solomon, Uzziah, Josiah, Hezekiah, Jotham…) as well as the evil kings disobeyed the sabbath year command. The pressure must have been incredible to ignore this very clear and detailed command by the predominantly agricultural kingdom of Judah. 490 years is a long time and it's easy to think that the Lord wasn't serious about this particularly onerous command. It appeared as if it didn't matter - until judgment fell. We live in a time where in our society we see the effects of long term disobedience at every level.
The world has reached the tipping point and judgment is falling. The false prophets are proclaiming all is well; "just keep being patriotic, just keep supporting the right political candidates, just keep being compliant church goers. They tell us that God is merciful and will overlook the generations of rampant rebellion. 'They have also healed the hurt of My people slightly, Saying, ‘Peace, peace!’ When there is no peace. ' (Jeremiah 6:14) May the Elect arise by faith today to obey the Lord even when it doesn't make sense and when it is not popular.