Leviticus 25:8-10 'Count off seven sabbath years -- seven times seven years -- so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years. Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan.
Though the new cycle of Israel's feasts has concluded, I'd like to share one more observation about last week's high holy day, Yom Kippur. It is a day on which adults are afflicting themselves by fasting, abstaining from all pleasures, and repenting. But for the children, Yom Kippur is a very different holiday. This day is my son Obi's favorite holiday! Why? Because the kids are not fasting or recalling their sins or suffering at all – they are celebrating freedom!
On Yom Kippur in Israel, TV and radio stations are shut down and the children are playing jubilantly outdoors with absolutely no vehicles on any road. Everywhere you look kids are freewheeling on bikes, skateboards, rollerblades, scooters, and bare feet, with no restraint. The children are truly free on Yom Kippur. And unbeknownst to them, they are typifying a prophetic event that occurs only once every 50 years, on Yom Kippur.
Every 50th year, in this cycle, called the Yovel or Jubilee, freedom is proclaimed! All things are returned to their rightful owners – all debts are forgiven – and the entire year is a great celebration of freedom, restoration and joy. And the kids, without realizing it, are celebrating jubilee every year.
Prophetically, Yovel or Jubilee speaks of the Lord's return to establish His Millennial Kingdom, during which time the world will experience a peace and rest unknown since the fall of mankind. This will be the restoration of all things [Acts 3:21], a time of tremendous joy and true freedom during the reign of our Messiah King.
But take note that the atonement precedes the Jubilee, and without the atonement no one comes to the freedom, rest, and joy of the Yovel. The atonement provides our forgiveness of sins. Sin is slavery. Liberty and joy require forgiveness and restoration. Only through atonement can we truly celebrate liberty!
This day, every day, can be your jubilee if as a child of God you celebrate His forgiveness, walk in freedom and rest with your sins forgiven by the atoning sacrifice of Yeshua (Jesus) the Messiah. If and when you do, you are a living prophetic message to this world that the Lord's jubilee is coming!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]“Exhausted but still in pursuit…” Well, now we know why the angel of YHVH addressed Gideon the way he did. With his small three hundred man army he had just decimated the army of Midian — but the victory wasn’t complete, and so the Jewish general and his small, exhausted, hungry, band were determined to cross the Jordan and take care of 15,000 additional Midanite enemies and their leaders, Zebah and Zalmunna.
His nightmares began each day when he awoke. James Stegalls was nineteen. He was in Vietnam. Though he carried a small Gideon New Testament in his shirt pocket, he couldn’t bring himself to read it. His buddies were cut down around him, terror was building within him, and God seemed far away. His twentieth birthday passed, then his twenty-first. At last, he felt he couldn’t go on.
On January 1st 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation which proclaimed freedom for all slaves in the ten states which were in rebellion. At the time, when U.S. Secretary of State Seward took the document to the President to sign, Lincoln took a pen, and held it for a moment. He then removed his hand and dropped his pen. Lincoln turned to Seward and said, “I have been shaking hands since nine o’clock this morning and my right arm is almost paralyzed. If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.” He hesitated, then took the pen, and without wavering, took the document and boldly signed it!
For nearly 2000 years the Jewish people were scattered across the world without a homeland. In one day, according to the meticulous preparation of God, on May 14th 1948, the nation of Israel was restored. As millions of Jews were returning to their homeland they began rebuilding the ancient cities that were destroyed, restoring the desolations of many generations, and fulfilling Biblical prophecy…
As we celebrated Shavuot last night, we’re looking at the promise given 2000 years ago: that normal people will lead extraordinary lives; that disciples, who were terrified on the night of Yeshua’s (Jesus) death, were transformed into bold saints of God; and that fishermen, tax collectors, and housewives – normal everyday people – became empowered, and turned the Roman Empire inside out and upside down!
The disciples worried — we only have five small loaves and two fishes! What ever will we do?? Five loaves and two fishes could never feed the multitudes in the natural realm! But we have a God who is in the multiplication business! He works on an entirely different mathematical equation than we are accustomed to — He takes the little we offer and turns it into more than we could fathom!
Have you ever heard how the Karen people of Burma were prepared for the gospel? This unique people’s history reveals how the Lord had sovereignly preserved, in their traditions, their yearning for the one true God.