Economic Principles from the Law of Moses

What I wanted to present today, I was thinking about looking ahead to the millennium, and we sometimes focus on certain things of what we know it'll be, and the Bible does show us some things, and some it gives us almost no idea of. And one of the things I've wondered is what the economy will be like. In our world today, for decades, we've had these two major competing systems, communism and capitalism. And I'm sure the communists think they're right and expect, you know, if they believed in a god, they'd believe god was on their side. I think a lot of them don't. And we tend to think, no, god is a capitalist. He'll want us to have the exact system we have today. I don't think either of those are quite right. You know, one thing I can say is, god pretty clearly shows I think that god is not a communist. But I would venture to say he's not really a capitalist, not in the way we tend to think. And probably I'm not going to introduce much new to you here today, but I thought it might be useful to look at some of the systems and principles that god gave to ancient Israel and consider that those might be applied, at least in some form, in the world tomorrow. Now, before we go further, I should identify some of my terms. So I'll mention, you know, when I say communism, and I could say to a degree it's watered-down cousin socialism is based on the premise that all the people in common own everything. And so individuals don't have property that they control. But the problem is, in the way it's been practiced in the world, is that it ends up the government and a few people in the government exercise complete control. And it ends up being a pretty tyrannical system. And so, I would say that certainly doesn't seem to be the way god would have things done. And I wondered, you know, because I've taught American history and we look at different systems, and I've told my students, you know, on paper communism looks pretty good. You know, to each gives according to his ability, each person receives what they need. That sounds good.

Just never works out that way. And I thought, you know, even if there weren't a tyrannical government, if you had the will of the majority of people, you know, people today don't, you know, a majority don't always make the wisest decisions. So, not, let me, so keep that in mind is what I mean by cap or communism. With capitalism, we see as individual ownership of property, and as purest sense, each person has absolute control over their property. Now, that's modified in practice today for us, too. The government puts restrictions on some of what we can do. You know, if you own a piece of property, there are probably zoning laws that say you can build some kind of buildings and not others. There are some substances you're not allowed to own or sell, like some types of drugs or explosives, and maybe that's for the good.

Well, where I said I'm pretty sure God is, we can show easily that God is not a communist. You know, we've got the law on the Ten Commandments that says thou shalt not steal.

In order to not be able to steal, people have to have their own things.

And there are various laws that God gave to ancient Israel where He institutes punishment. I'll mention, and don't worry about turning there, but in Exodus 22, verse 7, it says that, you know, if someone delivers something to their neighbor to keep it and it's stolen, that person's responsible to pay double. And for certain theft, you know, if you find the thief, he has to pay back and then sometimes fourfold more.

But I want to turn to a scripture in Micah, Micah chapter 4 and verse 4, partly because it's a beautiful millennial scripture, but it will also remind us that I think in the millennium people will own property. Of course, it begins where it says in the latter days, in the beginning of Micah 4, the mountain of the Lord's house will be established in the top of the mountains. Hills will be, it'll be exalted above the hills and people will flow to it. They'll say, come, let's go up to the mountain of the Lord. He'll teach us his ways.

We know this passage sounds familiar because the exact same wording can be found in Isaiah through chapter 3, but Micah adds something that Isaiah doesn't have. In verse 4, I said chapter, didn't I? Verse 4, it says, but everyone shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid. I find that intriguing. In the millennium, there'll be people own their own vines and their own fig trees. It doesn't say there'll be communal property and mutually owned vines and fig trees, but there's indication that people will have their own property.

Still, I'd say that doesn't mean strict capitalism, because I've been working my way around to get to the main principle that I think will govern in the world tomorrow and that did govern in ancient Israel. And for that, since we're in the Minor Prophets, if you turn towards the back of the Bible a little bit to the Haggai, Haggai chapter 2 and verse 8, which is just before Zechariah, I say that because it's easy to find Zechariah and hard to find Haggai sometimes, especially since I brought my travel Bible and I just can't turn to pages in it very well. There are a couple of scriptures that we often use when we talk about the principle of tithing to show that God has the right to tell us to give Him 10 percent. In Haggai 2, verse 8, he says, the silver is mine. God is saying it belongs to Him, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of Hosts. Excuse me.

And my wife and I were noting as we drove down from Wisconsin that we could feel the ragweed pollen in the air as we came into this region. So it was fairly clear up there as it came down, it was like, oh, I feel the gunk starting to build up.

I'll mention a scripture that I won't turn to. If you want, you could be turning to 1 Chronicles 29, 1 Chronicles 29 and verse 14. And I'll mention that in Psalm, Psalm 50, verse 10, is where God says, the beast of the forest, every beast of the forest is mine. The cattle on a thousand hills. He says, I know all the birds of the mountain, the beasts of the field are mine. And He says, if I were hungry, I wouldn't tell you, for the world is mine. So God establishes that property belongs to Him first and foremost. And we could say there seems almost to be a little bit of a contradiction. How could it be individual property, but it belongs to God? The solution, I would say, is what's found in 1 Chronicles 29 and verse 14. To give you some background without reading the whole context, this is where Israel finally built the temple to God. Remember, King David had stored materials and made preparations, and when his son Solomon became king, they built this beautiful, elaborate building, one of the wonders of the ancient world to honor God. And so they had a great ceremony to dedicate it. They had great sacrifices and feasting, and Solomon made a very eloquent prayer. And I want to just read part of this, because in verse 14 of 1 Chronicles 29, Solomon says, but who am I? Who are my people that we should be able to offer so willingly as this, for all things come from you, and of your own we have given you?

I think this describes something important about God's view of property.

You know, He owns it all, but He gives it to us to have control of, with the understanding that He's allowed to set rules and principles on how it's used. Certainly, that applied to ancient Israel, and I've got a feeling that's going to be the underlying principle in the millennium. You know, in the millennium we think of, of course, us as spirit beings, but there will be humankind living and working, developing societies, and there are going to be some rules that I think will be very different than we have today. Now, one of the things I thought before I go forward, we're going to be looking in Leviticus and Exodus a fair bit at some of the principles that God gave to ancient Israel, but we want to remember that there were different types of laws that God gave to Israel, and we sometimes just talk about the law of Moses, and we go from Exodus through Deuteronomy. Well, we know that the Ten Commandments God spoke. He thundered on the mountaintop, and then He stopped speaking. The people were scared to death. They went to Moses and said, please don't let God talk to us anymore. You go talk to Him. But after the Ten Commandments, which I believe are timeless spiritual principles, the Ten Commandments describe the laws that God meant for all people for all time in every situation. After that, He proceeded to give several chapters of what are called the judgments, beginning in Exodus 21. I certainly won't turn and read all of them because it would take some time.

But the judgments could be described as a civil law, a law for a political nation. One of the things that's interesting that distinguish when it's a law for that nation is often a punishment will be attached. And, you know, so the nation of Israel could say if, you know, for instance, kidnapping brought the death penalty. You kidnap someone when you're found out you could be executed, and the nation had the authority to do that. Now, the spiritual principle under that is we should never kidnap someone as Christians. But if a member of the church kidnapped somebody, the church wouldn't execute them. You know, in ancient Israel, there was no separation of church and state. They were one. The government and the church were the same. Now, of course, you know, as Americans, I'm guessing most of us here are Americans, you know, it's built into us from the time we're young of separation of church and state. You know, they're not the same. And so we are a church that's not a state.

I do believe that in the millennium that separation won't exist. Again, we'll be a kingdom of priests or we'll be the kings and priests. The law for the nation and the law for the church, there'll be no distinguishing factor.

But one, one, yeah, part of the reason I'm saying this is that helps us when we look at that law of Moses to say, well, is this what they did? What should we do as a church? And we look for principles that we can apply, but some things we can't do. And many of the laws that I'll look out today, we're unable to execute or put into practice now.

But I think in the world tomorrow, that'll be different.

I've been glancing in my notes and then ignoring them most of the time, so you'll have to forgive me if I back up. But I want to go to one big principle to begin with, and that's the Jubilee year. And if you're like me, you've heard sermons over the years. I talked to somebody in Wisconsin. They said, yeah, I have a minister. It's like at least once a year he gives a sermon on the Jubilee year. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. We want to go to Leviticus 25 to begin looking at that, because I think it emphasizes the idea that God owns the land, God owned the wealth, and He set some specific rules for the ownership of it and how it would be used.

Now, I will remind us, though, as I'm about to go forward, that what we're reading here was instructions God gave to Moses. And probably, you know, we speculate when God told Moses what is written in Leviticus, but my best guess is that it was while the Israelites were camped at the base of Mount Sinai. We tend to forget that after God gave the Ten Commandments, they stayed there for a whole year, and they gathered materials, and they built the tabernacle, and they organized the camp the way God wanted it, and time passed, but Moses met with God regularly during that time. So God is giving them instructions for what would happen after they entered the Promised Land.

After they entered the Promised Land, and Moses was no longer with them, his successor, Joshua, would lead the nation, and Aaron's son, Eleazar, would be the high priest. And in the book of Joshua, it describes them casting lots to divide the Promised Land. Each tribe was given an area, each except for Levi, and they were given villages scattered throughout. And although it doesn't describe it, it implies that within each tribal area, the leading families came together, and they drew lots and gave each family a piece of land. I think that matches what we read about each person sitting under his vine and under his fig tree. Families were given land, and the Jubilee system implies that it was meant to stay that way. Let's begin in verse 8. I've been doing a lot of talking and not much Scripture reading, but I've got a few here. Leviticus 25, verse 8 says, You shall count seven Sabbaths of years for yourself. Seven times seven. The time of the seven Sabbaths of years will be to you forty-nine years. Then you'll cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, the day of atonement. You'll sound the trumpet throughout your land, and you'll consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty to all its inhabitants. It'll be a Jubilee to you. Each of you shall return to his possession. Each of you shall return to his family. I'll pause there. So we see every fiftieth year was special. And I didn't read the first part, but it describes—and we'll talk about the land Sabbath a little bit later. I wanted to start with the overall Jubilee, but every seventh year would be a land Sabbath. But then, after seven of those, there was this once-in-a-lifetime event, once-in-a-lifetime for most people, a generational event.

Of course, it would be two land Sabbaths in a row, but moving on, it says, at the end of verse 10, each of you would return to his family. In verse 11, it says, the fiftieth year will be a Jubilee to you. You will neither sow nor reap what grows of its own, nor gather grapes of the untended vine. It's a Jubilee. It'll be holy to you. You'll eat the produce of the field. And in this year of Jubilee, each of you shall return to his possession.

And the return to possession is talking about the land. It says, if you sell anything to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor's hand, you shall not oppress one another. According to the number of years after the Jubilee, or however many years it's been since the last Jubilee, that sets the price as you buy from your neighbor. According to the number of years of crops he'll sell to you. According to the multitude of years, you'll increase its price. And according to the fewer number of years, you'll diminish its price.

For he sells it to you according to the number of years of the crops. So don't oppress one another. Fear the Lord your God. Observe my statutes. Keep my judgments. And you'll dwell in safety. In the Jubilee year, as I said, land ownership reverted to the original families. So if they sold the land, and say someone decided, I don't want to farm all this land, I'm going to sell it, really it amounted to more of a long-term lease. What they were selling was how many years of crops could be raised on that.

And you might wonder, why was that? You know, in our capitalist system, we think, if I want to sell the land, I want to sell it and be done with it. Or if I buy land, it's mine. I can do what I want. Well, in this system, God owned the land, and he wanted to make sure that no small number of people would accumulate a great amount of land, because that was the wealth. And we're, we've gotten away from that in America today, but some of you are probably old enough to remember when we had a lot more agriculture. I don't think we had more agriculture, but it was spread among more of the people of the nation.

More families were engaged in farming, and so that was the wealth of the land. I believe in many ways it is still our wealth. But throughout human history, we've seen in most societies a few people have gained control of and ownership of most of the land. That's the basis of the aristocratic system. And so most people have been peasants. They've had to rent land. They've lived as tenants. You know, if you're from the South, you're familiar with sharecropping, or at least have heard of it. It's a system that kept most people poor, and they couldn't get ahead. Some cases, they couldn't do much of anything.

God didn't want that. Now, that system is what feudalism was based on. It reminds me of a story I'll share as a history teacher. Now, I tell people I studied history because I'm terrible at math. I don't remember numbers very well, so there aren't a lot of dates that stick in my head, but one that I remember is 1066. Some of you are nodding. That was the year what's called the Battle of Hastings.

William the Conqueror sailed across the English Channel from northern France and conquered England. And I brought his aristocrats with him, and when he did, he did something that sort of stands out, or at least the record of it. He said, I conquered it, I own it. He basically said, all this land is mine. And he sort of delegated use of it to some of his aristocrats, and they would allow peasant farmers to live on it.

But the king had enormous power. He could just impose taxes at will because he said, it belongs to me. Now, I'm not saying he was just in doing that. Matter of fact, I think we can make the case he was doing the opposite of what God wanted.

But that's the way it's been through most of human history. To be honest, actually, I don't know if William the Conqueror studied his Bible much, but I see a strong parallel between that and what Joseph did for Pharaoh in Genesis. During those seven years of famine, the people spent all their money buying food, and then they're out of money, so they sold him his livestock.

And then finally they said, buy our land and our bodies. We'll be your servants forever. And Pharaoh had an enormous amount of power, which he could use to enslave the Israelites when the time came.

If we're still in chapter 25 of Leviticus, if we look at verse 23, here we see God's different plan. He says, here, the land shall not be sold permanently. And here's why. For the land is mine. It belongs to God. You're strangers and sojourners with me. And in all the land of your possession, you'll grant redemption of the land. Now, I want to skip over that and come back to it later. If we drop down to verse 29, no, actually, in verse 28, if he's not able to have it restored, then what was sold shall remain in the hand of him who bought it until the year of Jubilee. And in the Jubilee, it will be released and returned to his possession.

What this tells me, as God's intent for Israel, was that every generation of Israelites would get a chance to have a start where they owned land and could make use of it. It wouldn't be a matter of, you know, some people might go to parts of Kansas or whatever and say, my grandfather used to own all this land. Now I own a pair of shoes, you know, because many families have sold their land and it's accumulated, you know, these agribusinesses own it. In God's system, every 50 years, people would get a new start and own land and they could avoid that cycle, avoid falling into poverty.

One of the things that's really sad about this is if you study through the history of ancient Israel, although God gave them great laws that we see should work, and that's why I think there's a good chance they'll be used in the millennium, we don't see a record of them ever actually doing it.

There's no record of Israel keeping a Jubilee year. I'm not sure if they were, the mass of people were true to God long enough. The one time I can think of is during David's reign, which lasted 40 years, and then Solomon's was another 40, they could have done a Jubilee during that time.

Maybe they did, but it's not recorded that they did.

Again, I'm going on a limb, so please keep in mind this is speculation. Don't tell anybody I taught a new doctrine.

But my thought is, I think probably during the millennium we'll have the Jubilee system. We'll divide up the whole world and every family will have land, and they'll have the freedom to buy and sell and do those things. But, you know, the next generation won't suffer if the earlier generation makes mistakes. I want to come back to that a little bit later, but let's move on to another part of this system. Oh, yikes! Sorry, I do, I'm going to say, I've lost my watch, or the watch band broke before the feast, so the first time I spoke in Pewaukee, they didn't have a clock on the back of the wall like we do in the classroom at ABC, and I ended up going a bit over. So I said, I'm going to get a watch. I don't want to go over. I want to turn, we're going to come back to Leviticus 25 if we want to put a marker here, but I want to go to Exodus 21 to look at something that was in Israel's civil law. Because the Jubilee, in the Jubilee year, as I said, God gave Israel a once-in-a-generation event, but we already mentioned that the Jubilee cycle consisted of seven-year land sabbaths. So there was a cycle every seven years that most people would experience several times in their lifetime, and it seemed to have encompassed a number of things. Let's begin in verse 2 of chapter 21 in Exodus. It says, if you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh, he shall go out free and pay nothing. If he came in by himself, he'll go out by himself. If he comes in married, his wife will go out with him. Now, if his master has given him a wife or she born him sons and daughters, the wife and her children will be the masters, he'll go out by himself. Now, I want to comment more on this, but I think this is a way of saying, you know, in some ways that, okay, say you're not able to support yourself, you've become another man's servant, you know, should you be taking on the responsibility of a wife and children? If you do, they're not really yours. I'd say that's an encouragement from man to say, I'm going to wait until I can provide for myself. And I think of that for young adults today, and I remember being counseled this when I was a young man. He said, don't think about getting married if you can't even support yourself. How are you going to take on responsibility for others? Now, some people aren't good at taking care of themselves. Here it says, going on in verse five, the servant says, I love my master and my wife and children. I don't want to go out free. Well, they can bring him to the judges, bore a hole in his ear by the doorpost, and he'll serve forever. Although later, you know, there's a reference when we go back to Leviticus 25 that maybe forever means until the Jubilee, and it's not entirely clear. Now, some translations of this don't use the word servant. They do, the word could be translated slave, and that does seem just tasteful to Americans. You know, we have a bad, bad history and a bad taste in our mouth from slavery that existed in this country, but I don't think this was that type of slavery. This was what we would refer to as more of indentured servitude. You know, it was meant to be temporary, and a person had some control over it.

Without going through all the various scriptures, I'll describe that the Bible shows that a person could temporarily lose their freedom this way for three main reasons. One was just flat-out poverty. It's that I'm destitute. I can't even feed myself. I could go sell myself to someone who's able to feed me, and you know, I worked for him for these six years, and I gave a roof over my head and food to eat. Now, and that could have come about by various ways. Another way could be debt.

Now, a person ran into debt, and he becomes unable to pay. They go to the judges and say, you owe, you can't pay? Well, to pay off your debt, this person's going to buy you.

They might be—I see Dan Seifer, a friend here, say, I'm in extreme debt, and I can't pay. He might step up as a person who has money, say, I'll pay his debts. Now I own him for the next six years.

Now, that takes care of it. At least, I'm not starving, and my bills are paid. There's a similar instance with crime. The Bible describes penalties for crime that can involve, as I said, if you steal a sheep and you're caught, you have to give back the sheep and four more sheep. If I didn't have four sheep in the first place, I could be sold to pay that debt.

What I think, though, is this isn't just punishment. God could have punished in other ways. The system we have today has incarceration and has financial punishment and things like that.

But this system provided a way to rehabilit—let me say that again in English—a way to rehabilitate people who needed training and education. A man who couldn't manage his affairs very well, so he, and wound up poor and in debt, might find himself working closely with and for someone who could manage his affairs. Again, in my example, if I belonged to Mr. Seifert and he had enough money to buy my debt, he must know how to handle his money. So now that I'm working with him for six years, hopefully I'll learn how. His wisdom and good business sense could rub off on me.

I think that's a pretty good system. There's a little bit more to it that God doesn't describe here than he does in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy chapter 15, and we'll begin in verse 12, describes about the same thing.

But again, it adds something important to it. Deuteronomy 15, beginning in verse 12, says, to him, says, They probably didn't say it quite like that, but you could say they got some back wages for years of slavery.

But again, I think this supports the idea that this wasn't just to be a punishment, it was to teach someone how to work for a living and then set them up with what they needed.

You know, a stake. You know, maybe, you know, if I'm sold to a person who's a carpenter, I learned carpentry skills. When I'm set free, he's going to provide me a set of tools so I can actually go into business for myself. Or if it's farming, he'll give me some seed and maybe an animal or two and a plow. The idea is to give people a chance to become self-sufficient.

I think I see that in God's law. Rather than send them a welfare check once a month or have them draw Social Security. And I'm not saying there's not a place for that, but this is to help the poor to stop being poor and be able to take care of themselves.

I think we'll have, if not this exactly, something to accomplish that in the millennium. Now, I'm not going into a couple other parts of their economic system, but I will mention that not everyone was able to provide for themselves that way. God gave Israel a system where he said that those who are poor should be able to go to the fields and glean. And he commanded the people, don't go over your fields a second time and don't reap the corners. Don't go back if you left a sheath. So that what I would call the able-bodied poor, again, instead of getting government support, they could go out and work. And the story of Ruth describes that very well. But in addition to that, there was the third tithe system. And it shows God commanded the people as part of, we believe, their civil law in the every third year, or some people say the third year and sixth year of that seven-year cycle, an additional tenth was set aside for the poor. We would say maybe the non-able-bodied poor. So God made sure no one was going to starve and be absolutely destitute. I see that's a beauty of his system, that that's what he wanted, people to be able to work for a living but be taken care of if they were unable to.

And I'm glad in America we do have a system to help. You know, we don't want anybody starving to death or destitute. It's a shame sometimes people fall through the cracks, but it's not intended to be that way. And in God's system for ancient Israel, it was pretty thorough, I think. Let's go back to Leviticus 25 to add a little bit more to this. I told you to save your place, but I didn't. I've been going to this chapter enough lately, though. I'm finding it more easily. I want to begin in verse 35.

There's something that if I overlook this, it is not central to my point, but it does bring up a point. So Leviticus 25 verse 39, it says, So this is basically saying, again, the type of chattel slavery that existed in the United States before the Civil War was never intended by God. You treat your servants equitably and fairly, and the intention was for them to be free later. Verse 41 So God is saying, again, just like the land belonged to him, all us people belonged to him as well. Now, there's something that was different in ancient Israel that I don't think will exist in the millennium, and I'll explain why in a moment. But in verse 44, he says, Now, it goes on in verse 47 to say that this isn't just a one-sided thing. A sojourner or stranger in your land who becomes rich, he's able to do this. So it wasn't only Israelites that could hold indentured servants, but God makes a distinction here between Israelites and people of other nations. I'm speculating a little bit here, but I think the reason for that was, again, Israel was both church and state, and the other nations weren't part of that church. They didn't have God's law. They didn't have his system at all. And so there were different rules as far as things like the Jubilee and the servitude. That's something that I'm pretty confident will not exist in the millennium, because in the millennium, all the world will be God's kingdom. There won't be any nations that are not under it. There won't be any strangers and pilgrims. There won't be anybody that's not a citizen of the kingdom of God in that state. So I think the rules that we see here applying for Israel, I believe, will apply to all peoples. Now, notice I said, I believe that's not a doctrine of the church or something that I can strictly prove, but I do think it makes good sense.

So again, Israel was separate from the other nations, largely to be an example, I believe, just as we in the church should be alight in an example. But in the world tomorrow, where Israel will maybe start the way and be an example, that God's rule will spread everywhere. I'm trying to think, but there's a song that says, every hill and farm. So there won't be a different set of rules at that time. Boy, it gets awful quiet when I stop talking. I find that in the classroom, too. Of course, it's supposed to be that way. Okay, I want to go back to Exodus. And again, we'll be coming back to Leviticus 25, if you have something to put a marker in here. But in Exodus 23, God introduces something that I think is important. There's two things I want to address, and one of them we already mentioned, and that's the idea of the land Sabbath.

And here's where he first introduces it, and God mentions it a number of times.

Exodus 23 in verse 10, Six years you shall sow your land and gather its produce, but the seventh year let it rest and life follow, that the poor of your people may eat, and what they leave the beast of the field may eat, and like manner you'll do with your vineyard and your olive grove.

So this introduces the land Sabbath, and we could see back in Leviticus 25 that its attach, it builds up to the Jubilee year. The land Sabbath would do a couple of things. One is it would restore fertility to the land. Instead of relentlessly planting crops every year and then becoming dependent on artificial fertilizers, which we do today, the land would get to rest. And stuff would grow on its own, and the people were told don't bother to plow that, don't harvest it. Now the poor among you could come and eat. Now I speculate that perhaps the travelers also passing by could grab something and eat if there were travelers. The other thing it provided was a test of faith. Matter of fact, let's go to Leviticus 25 and see that addressed. God gives us opportunities to build faith. You know, He says in Malachi, when He talks about tithing, test me in this. Follow through and see if I won't open the windows of heaven. He introduces Leviticus 25 with the land Sabbath first. Let's begin in verse 2. Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land which I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. Six years you'll sow your field, six years you'll prune your vineyard and gather its fruit, but in the seventh year there'll be a Sabbath of solemn rest. Rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord.

Neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard. What grows of its own accord you'll not reap nor gather the grapes for untended vine. It's a year of rest. The Sabbath produce of the land shall be food for you and your male and female servants, hired man, stranger that dwells with you. Now, where's the...

I'm looking for... this is what happens when I don't write it down in my notes. Okay, I'm not seeing it, but there's a place where God says, and you're going to say, what are we going to eat? If we don't sow or plant, how are we going to eat? And God says, don't worry about it. I'll bring forth abundantly in the sixth year.

And He actually says that for the Jubilee in that 48th year, I'll bring enough for three whole years. And, you know, the Hebrew is a little awkward here where I just read it says you're not allowed to plant or harvest, but it'll be food for you. What the Hebrew implies is He's providing the food in advance. God promises, if you trust me in this, you're not going to go hungry.

You know, verse 20, thank you. And I looked right by there and didn't see it. Oh, yes, verse 20. If you say, what do we eat in the seventh year since we won't sow or gather our produce? And verse 21 says, I'll command my blessing on you in the sixth year. It'll bring forth produce enough for three years. So, you know, God says this is going to happen.

And one of the things that I'm intrigued of, and I'm curious, especially I see a few gray heads in the audience. How many of you have kept the land Sabbath with gardens or things like that? Fair number? More people haven't than I would have expected. And I say that my wife and I, we plant a garden sometimes, and we've done land Sabbath. And the way we calculate today is, you dig up the ground and plant a garden, that's year one.

And then you count six years and you let it rest. So the year I'm keeping the land Sabbath might be different than you, and that different from you. And so it's like, when's your land Sabbath? But that wasn't the case for ancient Israel. They all entered the land, they got their land at the same time. So it was kind of like, you know, for us, when we look at our little pocket calendar, we pull out of our wallet and say, when is Feast of Tabernacles next year?

They could look ahead and say, when is the land Sabbath? Not mine or yours or his, but for everyone it would be at the same time. And that seems to fit with, you know, that will relate that to the year of release. But I think it's also intriguing to see how would that affect society? If everybody is not planning at the same time, what could you do with that time? You know, I think, you know, as a farmer, it, God doesn't say it's a, it's a Sabbath for the people, that no work should be done for a whole year.

But if I'd been looking, saying, man, that barn needs painted and I'm just too busy. From what I understand of farming is there's always lots of work to be done. You know, and more work to be done than you have time for. But a year that you don't have to plant or weed or fertilize or harvest, you could work on fixing the fence. You could work on, you know, maybe trying a new manufacturing trade that you'd been wanting to work on.

You know, you could, as I said, build a new barn, paint. The whole community's keeping the land Sabbath together. Maybe the workmen come together and build a community building. Or work on improving, you know, the harbor by the river or something like that. It's it's an amazing to think, what can you do with that labor that's now available if people are willing to pool it and work together? On the other hand, maybe it's a year that you could travel.

Say you live here in Ohio and you've got relatives in California. I'd love to go visit, but I got a tend to the crops. Not in the land Sabbath. Maybe it'll be a year that people do travel. That's what makes me think maybe the crops that grow on their own, sort of like Jesus and the disciples when they got some some barley or wheat and blew it in the eight and they were told they were breaking the Sabbath, which they weren't. You know, maybe travelers could go and they could eat some of the volunteer plants that grow up. And you know, just it's it's a wonderful opportunity that God, I believe, gives as a gift for the people to have time on their hands because they're all doing this and all doing it together.

I think that's really pretty neat. And there's where I mentioned, I do want to go back to Deuteronomy 15. I apologize for jumping back and forth here, but God put it in the Bible this way, not me. One thing I tell the students when I teach Pentateuch class, I talk about the civil law and the ritual law and the moral timeless law, but God doesn't color code it or put a highlight saying which one it is. And it's interesting for us to try to figure out. But Deuteronomy 15, starting in verse 1, I think this might be tied to the land Sabbath, although it doesn't specifically say so, but it says, at the end of every seven years, you shall grant a release of debts.

This is the form of the release. Every creditor who has lent anything to his neighbor shall release it. He'll not require it of his neighbor or his brother because it's the Lord's release. Now of a foreigner you may require it, but you shall give up your claim to what's owned by your brother. And that relates again to the idea that there were nations that didn't have Israel's law. In the millennium that won't be the case. And in verse 4 it says, Except when there may be no poor among you, for the Lord will greatly bless you.

Now some scholars say that the Hebrew there should say that there be no poor among you, for the Lord will greatly bless you. And I know the Living Bible translation says, No one will become poor because of this. And they've got, there's some question, does it mean because we're doing this won't make you poor, or doing this will prevent people from becoming poor?

And I'm not certain, but I know in the world today, like down in verse 11, it says, Well, the poor will never cease from the land. That's why I command this.

But God is, you know, either way we know in the world today there is poverty, but God has a system to try to avoid that. I'm going back to here in chapter 15 and verse 5, If you carefully obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe with care all these commandments, which I command you today, for the Lord your God will bless you, just as He promised you, you will lend to many nations, but you won't borrow. You'll reign over nations, but they shall not reign over you. If there's a poorer man among the brethren in any of your gates, which the Lord your God is giving you, don't harden your heart. Don't shut your hand from your brother, but open your hand wide to him. Lend him sufficient for his need. Beware, lest there be a wicked thought, saying, hmm, the seventh year of release is coming up. And you say, I'm not going to loan this guy money. He won't have to pay me back. I just put that in my own words, but that's what it's saying.

You know, lest your eye be evil and you give him nothing, and he cry out to the Lord, and it becomes a sin. And verse 10, he says, you shall surely give to him. Your heart should not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the Lord your God will bless you in all your work.

And all you do, for the poor will never cease from the land.

So God is saying, yeah, there's a year of release. I do believe that a lot of this is, again, the idea of not putting people permanently in a hole.

It's the equivalent or accomplishes a similar thing to our modern bankruptcy laws. As you know, people can get so far in debt that they can't get out.

God wanted to provide a system where that wouldn't happen. Now he set it up on a schedule, you know, and so you could say, you know, if I'm going to loan, how much am I going to loan? You know, he says, well, be careful.

Don't look at whether or not they're going to pay you back.

And this is something I've sort of adopted as a policy that I think we could derive from this.

Again, as a Christian, I would say, what should I base my willingness to help someone, to loan someone money? It shouldn't be on whether or not they can pay me back if this is an indication.

And I thought, well, two things that I would consider. One is, what is the need? You know, my brother is poor in destitute. He has a strong need. The other factor would be, what ability do I have to help? You know, can I loan to... You know, God doesn't want me to be poor, so I give someone else, and, you know, he's... Now he's okay, and I'm poor. But... So the question is, can... Do I have the money to help?

And how bad is his need? Because one of the things I've thought is, if the factor of whether or not he'll be able to pay me back, I don't think he'll be able to, maybe I should just make it a gift. If God has blessed me, so I have that ability, that's something I could do.

But we see... God's intention is, nobody remains poor forever. People get a chance to get out from under debt. People get a chance to renew, to have a fresh start at owning land and working for a living. People can go into indentured servitude for a number of years, but then they get a fresh start.

Matter of fact, for the last point I want to make, oh, I might make it on time, I want to go back to Leviticus 25 one more time. But this is something I forgot. I usually mentioned sort of as an example with the land Sabbath, because we're...

the land Sabbath in the Jubilee, because that's a generational thing. And I thought, that's fair to the next generation. And I mentioned before, I could be totally inept with what I do with my property, you know, and I end up getting in debt and I have to sell it. What does that mean for my son, Connor? You know, I might have ruined his life because I made bad decisions, but in the Jubilee year, he gets that chance.

I'm not ruining things for him or his children. So I like that God does that. Of course, he didn't set it up on whether or not I'd like it, but... Let's add this in. In Leviticus 25 and verse 23, we touched on this before, but I want to make one last point derived from it. He says, the land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is mine.

God is saying the land is his. You're strangers and sojourners with me, and in all the land of your possession, you'll grant redemption of the land. If one of your brethren becomes poor and has sold some of his possession, and if his redeeming relative comes to redeem it, he may redeem what his brother has sold. Or if the man has no one to redeem it, but he becomes able to redeem it, let him count the years since its sale, restore the remainder to the man to whom he sold it, that he may redeem his possession.

And if he's not able to have it restored to himself what was sold, it'll remain in the hand of him who bought it until the year of the Jubilee, and then it'll be released. This is referring to the right of what we sometimes call a kinsman redeemer, and that subject comes up in a number of ways in God's law, that if someone sells the land, a close relative has the right to step in and say, I'll buy it back.

And the price has to be fair based on the value and the years to the Jubilee. And usually the kinsman redeemer would be the closest male relative, you know, would be a brother, and if not a brother, an uncle, if not an uncle, a cousin. We see that also brought out in the story of Ruth. As you know, in the story of Ruth, Boaz meets Ruth, and they seem to like each other. But Naomi, Ruth's mother-in-law, had sold their land.

Boaz, you know, is ready to redeem it, but there's a relative who's closer. So they follow the procedure. He offers that relative the chance, but he said, by the way, you're going to be the kinsman redeemer for the land, you also have to be for Ruth. And the fellow doesn't, he wants the land, but he doesn't want Ruth. So he passes on both, and Boaz steps up. But underlying this is the fact that there is a possibility of redemption. There is a way to undo a mistake, have the price paid.

Some scholars have pointed out that the entire Jubilee system can represent Christ's redemption of mankind. And I wouldn't be surprised if several of you in the back of your mind were thinking, oh yeah, because we're all sold. Romans 7, 14 says we're all sold under sin. I won't turn there, but you're familiar with that. We're all sold under sin because as Romans 6, 23 says we've all sinned, and Romans 6, 23 says the wages of sin is death. But Christ redeems us. Ephesians 1, 7 says we have redemption through His blood. With His blood, He bought us back.

We were sold under sin, but a kinsman-redeemer came and bought us back. And we have the forgiveness of sin. I'll reference also 1 Corinthians 6, verse 20, where the Apostle Paul said, you were bought with a price. That was 1 Corinthians 6, 20. Forgive me, I'm wanting to end on time, and you know these scriptures pretty well.

You know you were bought with a price. Each of us has earned our own death, but in the analogy of the Jubilee, we have a near-relative who redeems us, gives us a chance to start over, just as God intends families to have a chance to start over financially.

If we even spread that out, we could say the original man and woman, Adam and Eve, had an estate. They were put in the Garden of Eden, controlled over the earth, and they sinned, and they lost their estate. Paul refers to Christ in 1 Corinthians 15 as the second Adam, and the second Adam redeemed what was lost. You know, in Christ's rule, people get to go back to their inheritance. The earth will be restored, and we could even say, you know, as bad as the trumpet plagues will be on this planet, God is going to heal this world, I believe. I think He's going to heal the land, and that's a whole other subject we could go into. But mankind will get a chance, a chance to start over and do things right. I think it's good to keep in mind that when we look at even some of the seemingly specific and maybe archaic points of God's law, that there are spiritual principles in them that can be valuable for us today, and I think valuable looking ahead when we'll be helping to administer a government. You know, I think that the principles, the intent and motives under all of God's laws are timeless. So with that in mind, we can wonder, what's the economic system going to be like in the millennium? I think there may be similarities to what we see for ancient Israel. There may well be differences. Maybe there's things we can't even imagine. So, again, I'm looking at some of those principles, thinking I think they'll apply in certain ways. I think there are specific principles that we can be very confident will exist. You know, mankind will come to know that all physical things belong to God, and that He delegates the use to us. He lets us use them. And so He has the right to set rules of how we use wealth, how we use the blessings He gives us. And whether it's the system God gave Israel or something different, I think we can see that it's God's intent to prevent permanent debt or permanent poverty. God is going to institute a system that allows people to recover from mistakes, and the children do not suffer from the mistakes or sins of the parents or grandparents. The kingdom of God is going to be a time of prosperity. It's going to be a time of peace, of wealth, of great happiness. So how can we not look forward to that time coming? With that, I'm at the end of my notes.