Well, it's good to be with you this evening. As we read earlier, we'll be looking at the ending chapters of Leviticus. Before we get to the text before us, though, I was reading something last night that I just wanted to share with you. I've been rereading Marilynne Robinson's Gilead alongside my mother, who is currently reading it for the first time. This might be an encouragement for her to read it a little quicker. And I was looking last night at just the first few pages of the book and was struck by how Marilynne Robinson starts the book. For those of you who don't know, Gilead is essentially a novel in the form of letters from a terminally ill or by a terminally ill pastor to his young son. It's an older pastor in his mid-70s who had a son much later in life and so he has a boy of maybe seven or eight and he's writing all of these wonderful letters about a ministry and a life that he spent in this town called Gilead. He's been there for decades and the book beautifully and wonderfully brings out all of these themes of home and rootedness and rest and familiarity in just a wonderful way. But Robinson, what struck me last night was that Robinson doesn't start the book by bringing any of these things forward. Instead, Robinson starts the book actually in William Ames' youth, talking more about his father and his grandfather than anything else. And as I was reading it, I was struck that these themes of being in one place, of rootedness, this present moment in the good life that Robinson is wrestling with through this figure of Ames, all started for him and for her decades before they actually come to fruition in this man's older letters. This aspect of finding community and finding a home are a result of a process that happened for decades. And that struck me because as I've been here over the last few years, it's just been wonderful to see the elements of rootedness that have taken place over decades. Some of you have been here for a decade, two, three, four. And so it's so wonderful just to see how the fruit of that comes to play in the life of the church even today. The journey that the Lord has led this congregation on. Now, With that little aside, that being said, we've been on our own little journey of sorts, haven't we? We've been tackling Leviticus in relatively large chunks. Tonight I saved John. We only did two. scripture readings, I was gonna do 50, but Liam did 40 verses this morning, and I felt like that was the cap, so we stayed under 40 verses. But we've been taking Leviticus in large chunks, partially because for a lot of us, Leviticus is, this is probably our first engagement with and our first interaction with the book of Leviticus. And similarly, like when you meet a person for the first time or you're getting to know them, you don't actually get to understand all the features and the nuances of their interactions, the way that they express themselves, you get sort of just a rough overview of them. That's not to say that you don't know what they look like, that's not to say you don't know how to relate to them, but a first interaction with somebody, you know them far less well than you would after a long period of time. So too, if this is your first interaction, your first kind of pass-through of Leviticus, I'm not trying to nail down into the nitty-gritties of how each offering and each sacrifice works, but I want to give you the broad contours of the book so that whether you're thinking about service to the Lord in your own life, whether you're just wrestling with it in your daily scriptural readings, you know how it fits within the canon, you know how it fits within the gospel of Jesus Christ to us, and you have context for us. And so if you remember, months ago, Um, we started our look at Leviticus by actually looking all the way back at Genesis three. Um, we looked at these early chapters of Genesis and we looked at the garden and we said that God created the heavens and the earth, right? They were, they were good. And he put man in this garden temple of Eden, right? We talked about this idea that, that the garden of Eden is sort of this mountain top garden within Eden. that is separate from the rest of the world, and that there was this holy space within the garden, and that man was given this commission to be fruitful, to multiply, to work and keep, and spread that garden throughout the world. We then talked about how, while everything was great for a while, that in Genesis 3, we see the fall of mankind. We see Adam and Eve's sin, and we see curses for that. This work, this keeping that was once an act of worship in the garden is now toilsome, What was good had become a grind. Childbearing is painful, it's disruptive, it's hard. And so these curses and punishments, this promised death that will come in disobedience, plays itself out through the rest of Genesis, culminating in Exodus, right? These curses and punishments are persistently just in this eastward decline, down off the mountain, out of the garden, through the flood, and eventually into the pits of slavery in Egypt. out of darkness and this chaotic environment that through the plagues and the splitting of the Red Sea that Yahweh calls forth and recreates a new people, right? Out of, we see in Genesis one that God creates the world out of this chaos and darkness and that through sin people descend back into that chaos and darkness and by this miraculous recreative work In Exodus, God calls forth a new people, brings out a new people, and promises this new corporate Adam, right? Israel is this corporate Adam. He promises them a new garden. It's this land flowing with milk and honey, right? That he will walk and dwell with his people. And so we said that, but this wonderful place, this new garden with a new corporate Israel, or new corporate Adam, where God will work and walk and dwell with his people. So there's this great vision, but that this high drama of Exodus is actually an unfinished story. It ends on a cliffhanger. And Exodus ends with a cliffhanger and a problem, right? They've built the tabernacle, this place that's supposed to be a dwelling place and a meeting place for the people with God. And God's glory has descended on it. It's this great day of festivity and trumpets are blowing. People are shouting, God is dwelling with his people again, but they can't go in, right? It ends in Exodus and Moses, nor the people can actually enter into the tabernacle. It's supposed to be a dwelling place and a meeting place. And right now it's only a dwelling place and they can't get in there. And we said that in between this, this cliffhanger of Exodus and numbers, We have Leviticus. Leviticus then functions as this mountaintop experience itself within the Pentateuch, this fivefold book, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus at the high point, Numbers, Deuteronomy. And so through Leviticus, Leviticus is sort of this pathway that by the end, Numbers opens up and the Lord spoke to Moses in the tabernacle. Moses has been able to enter the tabernacle. The people are able to meet with God in the tabernacle. And so we've talked about it as sort of a chiasm or basically just a step up to this pinnacle in the center of Leviticus, right? Leviticus is sort of the center of the Pentateuch and within Leviticus, there's the stair up and down in Leviticus. So these giant sections we've been looking at are also one way for us to say that While we might see the Lord's word to us in a paragraph or a sentence, we can also see it in the way that books are structured, that chapters are structured. And so we looked first at sort of offerings and ordinances in the first six or so chapters of the book. And then we looked at laws for the priests and the different ways they were to offer the offerings within the tabernacle. Then at the people and the ways that they were redeemed and holy finally culminating and climaxing in this great day of the day of atonement. We looked at the Day of Atonement and what we said was so special about it, it was only on this day, this one day in the year, where the high priest and only the high priest was actually able to go into the Holy of Holies, was able to go into the center most part of the tabernacle. And that on this day, all of the sins of Israel were both offered in one ram that was given for an offering and one that was, I said ramp goat, and one goat that was an escape goat. And so in these two goats, we have all of the sins of Israel being atoned for and carried away. It's only on the day of atonement that the high priest enters the holy of holies and the scapegoat carries the sins of the people out of the tent, out of the camp of meeting, the camp of Israel. We said in such a wonderful, amazing, foreshadowing way, that it was on this day, and this day alone, that in Israel's liturgy and its history, that the cult of their worship, it actually anticipates the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. In the goat being sent into the wilderness, we see Jesus, we see an anticipation of Jesus' descent into the dead, his declaration of victory over the powers of hell. This goat that went into the wilderness, it's called an Azazel goat. It's this goat that's sent to a demon. It's not an offering to a demon. It's declaring to this demon, you don't have any power here anymore. You can't control us. These sins have been washed away. These sins have been atoned for by the goat. And that same day, right? Jesus's descent into the dead, the goat out into the wilderness. That same day, the high priest enters into the holy of holies. This anticipates Jesus's descent and his ascent to be seated at the right hand of God, the father. this high and holy day in Israel. It's this climax on this mountaintop that we see in Leviticus. It's then from there that we begin to descend, mirroring the order that we ascended, right? We hit that holy day and then we come and we look once again at the people and we see their ethics of how they're supposed to care for one another, the different ordinances that they have to practice with, bodily functions, and it's all about this keeping of holiness within the camp of Israel. Now, we then come to the priests and in chapters 21 and 22, we see the holiness of the priests. And again, this is really just an emphasis on a unique set of people being set aside within the camp of Israel, called to a higher level of holiness that they can mediate between the people and God. So you have the high priest who can enter the Holy of Holies once a year. You have the other priests who are regularly offering these offerings and sacrifices on behalf of the people. Tonight, we come back down the mountain, so it were. We have ascended the mountain. We have fellowship with God on the day of atonement. We've seen this great symbolic and cosmic geography that's laid out in the ordering of Israel's camp. We've seen God run and span that, and then we're coming back down. We've had fellowship with God, and now we're sent back out into the world, and we're told what to do and how to live. That brings us to our passages tonight. 12 minute intro, killing it. The Feasts of the Lord. Tonight we're going to be looking primarily at chapters 23 through 25 and then seeing how those get played out in Israel's history. These feasts, these celebrations were a liturgy that Israel was supposed to practice. They were supposed to celebrate them on a weekly, an annual, and some that even happen on a less frequent, because of their complexity, a seven year or 50 year basis. There's this regular liturgy that they're supposed to work through. And we're gonna look first at what the text says, we're gonna get an outline in our minds for what the different feasts are and when they happen and so on. And then we're gonna look roughly first at how they would have functioned in Israel, right? They have all these things, but what are they for? Why do they exist? So how they function in Israel, how they foretold the future of Israel, and how they should form and frame our Christian practice today. So function, how they foretold, and then how they frame our Christian lives today. So firstly, the calendar of feasts, right? We're gonna be starting in chapter 23 and working through. As mentioned, there's these holy days that happen on a weekly basis, an annual basis, these spring and winter feasts, and then seven years and 50 years. And the ones that we're gonna look at, there's others that are in the text, like the Feast of Firstfruits. A close reading will say that there's some of these that are holy convocations to the Lord and there's some that are feasts. These holy convocations are somehow set apart. I mean, for our purposes, it's just, it's good to know that they're different. So if I'm skipping feasts, it's because we're looking for that holy convocation word. So to start the first holy convocation that we see, in chapter 23 comes in verse three, and there's probably the one that we're most familiar with, right, it's the Sabbath, but there's not a ton of content here. There's more that we read in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, but its placement here at the beginning and its mention highlights this foundational place within the liturgy of Israel that the Sabbath would have played. It's the most basic convocation or gathering that happens on a weekly basis and with weekly repetition. Now, it might have become sort of trite. Sometimes this is an argument used against having the Lord's Supper every Sunday. That's somewhat silly, but they say by this weekly repetition, by this weekly activity, it would have been trite. The Israelites wouldn't have really understood it. It would have just become a day off that they hadn't really practiced. And so we'll see that, again, Placing it here, mentioning it first, gives a foundational role. It also then functions that the rest of the feasts build in support of the Sabbath day. They're all helping Israel to understand the principles that they would find on a normal, every week Sabbath day. So as one scholar puts it, the Sabbath is like a cathedral in time, right? All the symbolism that was carried by the tabernacle and the holy place is also in a unique way carried by the Sabbath. It's a holy time. The tabernacle—in the tabernacle, God invites people to worship him, and in things modeled off the heavenly realms, right? We read in Hebrews that this tabernacle is actually modeled off of the heavenly places. And in the Sabbath, there entering into holy time, right? Tabernacle, holy space, Sabbath, holy time, that's also modeled after the heavenly realms, right? We read in Genesis that God gets to the seventh day and takes a day of rest. So we start with the Sabbath, and that will frame and give a foundation for the rest of the feasts that come after. Next, we see the annual feasts, which would be Passover, Unleavened Bread, Feast of Weeks, Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, the Feast of Booths, and the Day After the Feast of Booths. Broken really into two sections, there are Spring Feasts and Fall Feasts. Now, if you're one that's tracking really closely, this is just an aside that we're not going to get into. The calendars on this are kind of weird. Their dates aren't the same as ours. So when it's saying the first month, it probably means March, not January. It has a lot more to do with the growing seasons rather than like what we would think of January through December. So as we're reading this, when it says the first month, think March-ish. And when it says the seventh month, think October-ish. It's more framing the growing seasons. So, quickly, looking at the spring feasts. The first one that we see in 23, verse four, is the Passover, right? It reads, these are the appointed feasts of the Lord, the holy convocations which shall proclaim at times appointed for them. And the first month, on the 14th day of the month at twilight, is the Lord's Passover. celebrates the Lord's deliverance out of Egypt that we see in Exodus 12, this reminder of the final plague when Israel was told to put blood over the doorposts and the angel of the Lord passed over the houses that had this blood, this atoning sacrifice for the people. And we see that this sacrifice happened on, or this feast happened on the first day of the month, roughly in March, occurring on the 14th day of the month or the second Sabbath, right? So it's the second seven of the month and function is this special commemoration of coming up out of Israel and the provision that the Lord made in the Passover. The second feast, the unleavened bread is lumped there in verses four to eight with Passover. It's tied with this idea of coming up out of Egypt, right, the Israelites were told in Exodus that they were not to leaven their bread like they normally would because they wouldn't have time to do it. And so they eat unleavened bread. And this feast of unleavened bread that we see in verses four to eight begins the day after the Passover and goes for seven days. The first day of the seven and the last day of the seven are also to be counted as days of rest. So in this, one of the unique things that they get is they get double Sabbaths on each end, right? So Sabbath on the seventh day starts the day after Sabbath, but they're supposed to rest that day too. They can work in between Sabbath and then another day of rest. So part of this day of unleavened bread is a celebration of the Lord bringing them out of Egypt in which they get extra rest for seven days. During the week they would work, they would make food offerings to the Lord, praise him for his deliverance. Next, as I mentioned, one that we're gonna kind of skip. Unfortunately, it could be its own sermon, but is the first of Feast of First Fruits. It's not a convocation, but it celebrates the beginning of the harvest cycle. Why this could be its own sermon is around this time is likely when Jesus was resurrected from the dead. And so this actually gives Paul the terminology in First Corinthians where he's able to say that the resurrection of Jesus is the first fruits. He's riffing off of this feast here, but The first fruits, the Feast of First Fruits, gives a framing for the ones that'll come after this. The last of the spring feasts, the ones that happen earlier in the year, is the Feast of Weeks. When the first fruits of the harvest come in, the next Sabbath, so they bring the first fruits in, and then the next Sabbath, that next week, starts the Feast of Weeks. And they would count seven weeks from that celebration, and on the 50th day, they would begin this Sabbath. After the Sabbath, they count seven sevens, and then they celebrate this. This is particularly practiced once they come into the land. It doesn't really make sense for them to have a celebration oriented around farming when they're wandering in the desert. So most of these are oriented to later on when they come into the land. And this celebrates the Lord's provision for another harvest. Many of these, you'll see a similar theme of them taking time to pause, adding extra days of rest into their life to celebrate the Lord's provision and to affirm their trust and their faith in the Lord. So those are the spring feasts. Now we move to the fall feasts, all of which would have likely happened in October. You'll see that all of these are pretty much all happening in the seventh month. There's some symbolic purpose to that that we'll get to in a little bit, but it also would have just been a very practical time for them to establish this. October is sort of the end of the harvest season. It's a time where things are sort of calming down from The summer, the grain is in, they can rest. And so the final four of the feasts are all in this seventh month. The first is the Feast of Trumpets. It happens on the first day of the seventh month and is a solemn day of rest. It celebrates the end of the growing season. Next, in the middle of the seventh month, the big one, the Day of Atonement. So we get to the seventh month and smack dab in the middle on the 10th day, you have the Day of Atonement. We talked a lot about this, and we looked at this in chapter 16, but this would have been the most important day in Israel. Atoning for their sins, the goats, the things that we've talked about there. Tenth day of the seventh month. Finally, we have the Feast of Booths, and the feast after the Day of Booths. They're technically two different feasts. They're both called Holy Convocations, but we're gonna put them together because they're mentioned together. Notice here, if we look at this, In chapter 23 at the end, there's a lot more information about these feasts than some of the other ones. There's four or five paragraphs compared to some that just have like one paragraph. This would have happened on the 15th day of the seventh month. Seventh month, two sets of seven begins these feasts. And it would have begun right after the second Sabbath, and they're sort of like the Feast of Unleavened Bread in that they last for seven days. And the text specifically tells us on this one what it's for. Verses 40, 42, yeah. Verse 42, you should dwell in booths for seven days. All native Israelites shall dwell in booths, that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. gives us an express purpose to help them remember that they lived in booths when they came out of Egypt. But many scholars will also note an interesting detail that comes out in verse 40. Just an emphasis on them living in booths seems to not actually be adequate to what's happening in the text and also why there's more information about this. Just them living in booths almost gives a humbling sort of sense that like, oh, remember this time that you kind of, yeah, you're in cities now, you've built up cities and all this, but remember this time that you were impoverished. Scholars will then point to verse 40 though, 2340, and it says, and you will take on the first day the fruits of splendid trees, branches of palm trees and boughs and leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days. Those booths don't sound like booze that you can make in the wilderness. Those don't sound reminiscent of the negative of Canaan. Splendid trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees and willows at the brook. It sounds a lot more like the garden than the wilderness. And so while the Lord was reminding them of his provision and coming out of Egypt, this creative or act of redemption, he was simultaneously coupling this new symbolism with this new Edenic life that they would be living in Canaan. As the last of the feasts in their annual calendar, right? There's this annual calendar. You have the Sabbath and you have seven feasts in the own calendar. The last of the feasts of the Feast of Booths was commemorative of the day after the Israelites were both looking back, they were looking back to when the Lord brought them out of Exodus and they were looking forward to this new Eden life that they were going to be able to experience in Canaan, this land flowing with milk and honey. We see here the end of their calendar that Leviticus is about undoing Genesis 3. Leviticus is this symbolic practice for God's people in undoing Genesis 3. Chapter 24 makes a narrative break. It gives more information about the workings of the tabernacle, talks about the lamps, the bread, and the tabernacle, and it's re-emphasizing a need for holiness. a need for the people to be set apart within the camp. It's also there that we get the teaching about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Again, another sermon that the Lord could have picked up or that the Lord picks up in his ministry and undoes. So then moving from the polyvalent symbolism of the Feast of Booths at the close of Israel's annual liturgical calendar, we move to the less frequent cultic events that happen in 25, right? So we start with the Sabbath every week. Then we look at the rest of 24 at the annual calendar. By the time we get to 25, we see things that happen every seven years and every 50 years. Look with me. at 25 verses one through seven. It says, 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 gave 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 vineyards 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. And you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. Stop there. In the seventh year, we notice, yeah, once every seven years, we notice a couple things. First in verse two, we notice that it's the land that receives a Sabbath in that year. During the annual feasts, the people would have received Sabbaths. They would have rest on the Sabbath day. They would have had rest in these different years. But on the seventh year, the land receives a Sabbath as well. Again, Leviticus is undoing Genesis 3. Work, which was once this worshipful and wonderful thing for the Lord, was cursed. Rebellion, the earth, the ground was rebelling against man. That's part of the curse. What was once worshipful becomes a grind. The dust is literally grinding us back to dust. as we toil against it. And in the Sabbath year, the right relationship of man and land is restored. Land is to be cultivated and kept, not raped and ruined by the people of God. This theme continues into the year of Jubilee, a sort of super Sabbath. And so we see in verses eight through 12 of chapter 25 that the people of Israel are supposed to count seven weeks of years, or seven times seven years, so 49 years. Then shall sound the loud trumpet on the 10th day of the seventh month. On the day of atonement, you shall sound the trumpet throughout the land and you shall consecrate the 50th year. So once every seven years, you have a Sabbath year. Once every 50 years, you have a year of Jubilee. And as an aside, that's also not an aside. I hope you're picking up the emphasis on sevens that are happening throughout this. There are times in scripture where we shouldn't make too much about numbers Some people get a little crazy with it. This isn't one of them. This is one of those times where you want to pay attention to the numbers, right? Just in chapter 23 and 25, let's look at what we got. The weekly Sabbath happens on the seventh day. There are seven annual feasts during the year. Passover happens on the 14th day of the month, the second seven. Unleavened bread happens on the 15th day of the month, which lasts for seven days. Feast of Weeks were seven sevens from the Sabbath after harvest and is presented with seven lambs. The Feast of Trumpets happens on the first day of the seventh month, Day of Atonement, also in the seventh month. Finally, the Feast of Booth celebrates for seven days in the seventh month after the second Sabbath. Now we've got a Sabbath year that happens once every seven years and the year of Jubilee, a super Sabbath, which happens on the 50 years, seven times seven years. It's a lot of sevens. It took a lot of work trying to figure out where all those fit together. All of this is working and building up towards this year of Jubilee, right? So we start Sabbath. It's the most simple one. It's the most often repeated and we said that That's sort of this foundation that all of the other ones are building to. Well, the year of Jubilee is this crescendo that then comes back around and resupports Sabbath. The year of Jubilee, once every 50 years, and it would have meant for two Sabbaths in a row, right? We see seven times seven years, and then the year of Jubilee starts. So that seven times seven years, that seventh year would have been a Sabbath year. And then the year of Jubilee comes. So again, similar to some of the annual feasts, there's double the amount of rest that's happening. In the year of Jubilee, not only does the Sabbath get rest, but actually all things are restored. A baseline is renewed. Lands that were sold off are returned to their original owners. The poor are cared for. Loans are forgiven without interest. Israelite slaves are set free and returned to their ancestral lands. The whole system, the principle behind it is laid out clearly in verses 23 and 24 when the Lord says, the land shall not be sold into perpetuity for the land is mine. You are strangers and sojourners with me and in all the country you possess, you shall allow redemption of the land. It's this restoration of right relationship with the land. They are tenants. The Lord owns the land. And the Lord owns the land and leases it to his people as firstborns. We read in Exodus, all of the people of Israel are firstborn sons. The year of Jubilee helps to maintain this proper inheritance for the people of God. Over time, an Israelite family, they might have become destitute. They might have had a bad crop. They might have had fire in their fields or made unwise business dealings. Any of these things resulting in their giving over their lands to another person. But these lands are their livelihood and their inheritance, right? When we read, when they come into the land, that the land is divided up between the tribes, they're set lines given. This land was an inheritance from the Lord. And so in a year of Jubilee, their inheritance is restored, their relationship with their brothers, it's a recognition of the image of God in all the Israelite people. There is no hierarchy, there is no inequality, it's set right so that they are brothers in the eyes of the Lord. And it's not a coincidence that verse nine tells us that this holiest year, this year of jubilee starts on the day of atonement, or the day after the atonement. Everything is set right on the Day of Atonement, right? This is the one day in the year where this cosmic symbolic geography of Israel's camp is spanned. Everything is set right. The people's sins are forgiven. The Holy of Holies is entered by the high priest. Everything is right. And it's after that, once every 50 years, that things are set right. The land has received a rest the year before. The people's sins are forgiven. Inheritance is a return, slaves and captives are set free. It was a year of totally new possibilities. It was a year where the garden of life and fellowship could have been restored. Right relationships with the ground, right relationships with one another, men and women as image bearers of God. How cool would that have been? Can you imagine that? Everything set right, a new Eden. Well, imagining it is really all you actually can do. The odds are that this amazing year, this year of symbolic freight that we just can't even understand, odds are it never actually happened. There's no evidence anywhere in scripture that Israel actually put this into place. There's no evidence in the archeological record that Israel ever actually practiced this. And so we see in the later prophets things like the kings and the leaders of Israel being called out for moving boundary lines. So one of the main reasons that Israel's leaders are called out is the boundary lines of the people are being moved. Their inheritance is being taken away from them. Think of great stories of Jezebel stealing land from a poor farmer. total rest and restoration. That's how these feasts should have functioned for Israel. But they didn't. So in chapter 26 we see an outline of blessings and curses that we read partially earlier. And in these blessings and curses we see how they foretold of Israel's future. In chapter 6 we see what would have been a common convention in the ancient world when ancient kings and countries were establishing a covenant with one another, they would have included, the more powerful party would have included a set of offerings, a set of blessings and curses. And it would have been normal that that set of curses would have probably been a lot larger than the set of blessings. Oftentimes it would have been slightly hyperbolic as well. We read some of the curses in here and it makes us slightly uncomfortable. That's not to say that the curses aren't real, that they're not an actual threat, that there's not actual danger. That's more to say that there's a rhetorical effect that's happening sometimes. One commentator mentions an example from an Assyrian treaty where one of the curses involved chickens plucking the eyes of the oxen out. The basic idea in the curses is if you break these covenant statues we've set out, pain. Lots of pain is what's coming. And so, that is what is laid out before us. Let's look a little bit more specifically at the blessings and the curses. I'm gonna just read some selections from the blessings. We read at the beginning, if you walk in my statutes and observe my commands, then I will give you your rains and their seasons and the land shall yield its increase and the trees of the field shall bear their fruit. Most importantly, we also see that in turn I will make you fruitful and multiply you and will confirm my covenant with you. You shall eat old store long kept and jumping at, I will make my dwelling among you. My soul shall not abhor you and I will walk among you and be your God and you shall be my people. You hear the echoes of Eden there? You'll be fruitful and multiply. The Lord will multiply them. The dwelling place of the Lord will be with his people. He will walk with them again in the cool of the day. Like we've been saying, Leviticus is about the undoing of Genesis three. And the blessings of Leviticus 26 tells us this is exactly what would have happened had the Israelites kept their covenant. They would have been planted in Canaan like well-watered gardens. They would have been set down, deep roots would have gone out, shot up like lovely vines. They would have been fruitful and multiplied. It would have flourished, but unfortunately they didn't keep those commands. And so we read in the curses of 26, 14 to 39 rings much more true. with what we know of their story. In the curses, we read Israel being ruled by her enemies, the land ceasing to bear fruit of any kind, pestilence, destruction, desolation, a persistent de-evolution to chaos, and even cannibalism. Throughout the curses, there's a refrain of a perfect or seven-fold punishment that amounts to the undoing of the Edenic idea. And this is, of course, exactly what happens. We know later that from the later books, that Israel persists in her disobedience, sent into exile, where prophets like Hosea see her as no longer the people of God, forgotten and flailing nation. Whereas Jubilee is pictured as a return to Eden, exile is pictured as an upside down Jubilee. It's a return to chaos. It's a chaos that later books of the Old Testament, like Chronicles, Isaiah, Ezekiel, will speak of as continuing even after the small remnants of Israel has returned to exile. We call the return under people like Nehemiah and Ezra and the rebuilding of the temple. The idea is that even then they're still in exile. And so we read, for example, from places like Nehemiah 9.36, it reads, behold, we ourselves slaves this day in the land that you gave our fathers to enjoy. It's roots in good gifts. Behold, we are slaves. The Nehemiah book that's usually seen about the return from exile is actually reemphasizing that they're still in exile. It's in this way that the feasts of Israel foretell of the future of Israel. But then what about us? We saw how they were supposed to function in their life. We saw how they foretold the future of Israel. How do they do anything for us? How do they frame our Christian life today? Well, especially when they were never practiced, especially when Israel didn't even put them into practice themselves. Well, if we jump forward, we look at this time, right? Israel's still in exile. Jesus is born and he begins his ministry in Luke chapter four. And it reads, and he came to Nazareth. This is Luke 4, 16. He came to Nazareth where he had been brought up and it was his custom. He went to the synagogue on a Sabbath day and he stood up to read and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found a place where it was written. The spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovering of the sight to the blind, has set liberty to those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. The year of Jubilee. So while Israel was still in exile, while the people of God were still in this cosmically upside down Jubilee, Jesus comes. Jesus' ministry, is a proclamation of the Jubilee year, the Jubilee feast. He does all the things that Jubilee was meant to do, right? He sets the captives free, he pays their debts, he forgives them, he ransoms them, he restores dignity to the image bearers of God. As one commentator writes, throughout his ministry, he gave evidence to justify his claim that he had brought jubilee. People were set free from a multitude of diseases and disabilities, demons, defilements, debts, and sins. Mercy and forgiveness flowed freely and justice was at work for the benefit of the poor. He did not inaugurate a national reconstruction of the economic life. He inaugurated a greater jubilee. in which people of all nations were and are set free from stronger forces than that enslaved them and their deeper debts that they owed. Jesus ushered in a greater jubilee, one that we're invited to partake in. Israel had this wonderful life of feasts that they were offered, that they were invited to partake in. The Sabbath, these annual feasts, the Sabbath year, the day of jubilee, this was supposed to be a life that returned them to Eden and they forsook it. and our Lord Jesus Christ took up that mantle and fulfilled it and lived it out. How then are we supposed to partake in this? How are we supposed to participate? Robert North and his magisterial account of the Jubilees lays out three ways that we can partake in that. I find them sort of hard to beat. He lists social justice, social worship, and personal virtue. Now, Can't tell you how many commentaries I looked at this week that said, title when they got to the year of jubilee, and the main way, the main title was radical economic overthrow. And there would be pages and pages on fascism and communism, and I think that that is part of it, right? North sets it forth and says social justice is one of those things. But I think it's so much more important for us today that we invert that list, that we focus on personal virtue, social worship, social justice. That's not to say that I think we should save social justice till last. That means to say that if we focus on personal virtue and social worship, we'll inevitably be doing social justice. We'll be practicing these things. Idealism, the sense of when we sit and read Leviticus, when we look at these feasts and say, how do we practice this? Will we perfect capitalism or we overthrow that and we pursue communism? It's a really great thought exercise that leaves you totally complacent. You don't do a thing about it. How do we participate in the great year of Jubilee? How do we actually do something as image bearers of God? How do we usher in this time where debts are forgiven? The earth is laid to rest and Eden is restored. We forgive our debtor as our debts have been forgiven. Focus on personal virtue. Focus on and participate in social worship. This new and corporate worship that we've partaken in Lord's Day worship, where we eat of and drink of the first fruits of the feast through the Lord's Supper. And we fellowship with the saints and the angels and praise the King who is among us. And by doing that, these ordinary means of grace, we partake in the year of Jubilee, this wonderful year of restoration that the Lord sets before his people. Something else I came across last night when I was reading Gilead was a wonderful quote from John Ames. It's later in the book, he's not thinking back to his childhood anymore, but instead he's meditating on years of life and ministry in the Christian church. And here's what he writes to his son. Sometimes I've loved the peacefulness of ordinary Sundays. It's like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life. Dear friends, this is your garden. It's here you've been planted. grow deep roots of fellowship and forgiveness and step with the miraculous work of the spirit, make this garden beautiful. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are glad to be in your house this evening. We're glad that you have called us out of this world and have brought us into newness of life. Lord, help us to make the most of that life. By your spirit, we may dwell in your house, dwell in your garden, and we may sing your praises. Lord, we ask that as we go from here tonight, that you would give us a quiet night and a perfect end in this new world that you've given us. Amen.