Did you know that God, in the
Bible, actually provided a time when everyone should be able to
start over from scratch? A time when the mistakes of the
past could all be erased from your slate, and you could begin
again.
And we're not talking about
just a matter of forgiveness of sins and starting over
spiritually. We're talking about a time when everyone would
have the chance to start over financially and in the
business world. A time when all debts would be cancelled,
when slaves would go free, when the family farm would go back to
its original owner even if the family had been forced to sell it.
More about that time--called
the Jubilee Year--in a moment. Jubilee came only once every
50 years, but that wasn't the only time God wanted people to be
able to start over spiritually
New Years Day is not a modern
concept. In fact in biblical times there were two New Years
Days every year! One in the spring and another in the fall
of the year.
The spring New Year--part of
the religious calendar--corresponded with the time of Passover,
when the old leaven would be cleaned out of the houses, and life
would start anew with the harvesting of spring crops.
At Passover time, the people
would eat unleavened bread, because they had gone all through
their houses and disposed of any old leaven. Isn't that a
beautiful symbol? Leaven is the stuff that gets into the
bread dough and makes it bubble and ferment and rise. It's
symbolic of the kind of thing that stirs up trouble among the
people and keeps everything in a ferment--in a state of unrest
and agitation.
All of that sort of thing was
to be cleaned out and thrown away at the time of the religious
calendar's New Years Day.
But there was also New
Years Day six months later, as part of the civil calendar. This
New Years occurred in connection with another very important holy
day: the annual Day of Atonement, known today as Yom
Kippur.
The Day of Atonement is a very
solemn day in the Hebrew calendar. In biblical times, it
was the one day out of the whole year when the nation's high
priest would go into the most holy place of the sanctuary to make
atonement for the sins of the whole nation.
It was a day when all the sins
of the past year were to be confessed, forsaken, and atoned for.
A day for making the wrongs of the past right and starting over
with a clean spiritual slate.
The Day of Atonement occurred
on the tenth day of the first month of the civil calendar.
Ten days earlier, the new year began, in a festival known as Rosh Hashanah, or the Feast of Trumpets. And still today the Jewish people use this holiday as a time for dealing with the past--asking forgiveness, and resolving to live a better life in the future.
You know, that’s not such
a bad idea is it--to start the new year by getting rid of the
negative things from the old year--making sure you don’t
carry any “baggage” over into the new year, or new
millennium.
It’s a good start toward
improving things for your future.
And it’s based on a
biblical concept. It’s based on God’s
understanding of our needs as human beings. God’s goal
for us is that we would be perfect--that we would never do
anything that would offend or hurt others, or ourselves--that we
would live sin-free lives.
But He understands human
nature. He knows that we’ll make mistakes, that
we’ll fall into temptation. And so, in the Bible, He
provides for our needs. He provides times for putting the
past behind and getting on into the future, unencumbered by the
mistakes of the past.
The most amazing example of
God’s understanding of our needs is found in the Jubilee
Year that He gave to His people. It’s a wonderful time
of starting over and putting past mistakes behind.
The Jubilee Year came around
only twice per century. But what a special time it was.
Listen to this text from Leviticus 25:10:
'And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family.
Now, notice this: Once
each fifty years, God told His people to proclaim a Year of
Jubilee. You may have heard that Pope John Paul II has
proclaimed the year 2000 to be a Year of Jubilee, and that there
will be many festivals and celebrations to honor this special
year. But when God proclaimed a Year of Jubilee it provided
much more.
Notice this from Leviticus
25:10: and each of you shall return to his possession, and
each of you shall return to his family. What does that
mean? What was God’s intention for His people?
Does it mean that Mom and Dad
would load up the kids on the family donkey and all head to
Grandma and Grandpa’s place for a nice Jubilee Dinner?
Kind of like we do at Christmas time--all the family gathers
together for a celebration?
No, Jubilee provided something
even better. When God said “each of you shall
return to his possession,” He was talking about a lot
more than making a trip back to the old family homestead.
The Jubilee Year meant that
everyone was to go back home and take possession of the
land that God had given to their family.
Even if you had fallen on hard
times and had been forced to sell the family farm ten years ago,
when the Jubilee Year came, you could go back to the old
homestead and claim it for your own again!
No matter how bad things had
gotten in your life, you had a chance to start over again, just
as if nothing had ever gone wrong--just as if you’d never
squandered the family’s possessions in your youthful days of
foolishness!
Isn’t that fantastic?
Doesn’t it tell you something wonderful about our God?
He understands our need for times to start over again!
Twice each year there was a New
Years celebration in Israel--a time for putting the past behind
and starting fresh. And then twice each century
there was a Jubilee Year--a time to really start over again, as
if you had never made mistakes and fallen upon hard times.
Even if you had been forced to
sell your whole family into slavery, when Jubilee Year came, you
could go free!
Isn’t it marvelous to
realize that God understands our need for times to start over
again?
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*Adapted from Voice of Prophecy script 99-52 “Out the Old, In the New" written by Ken Wade.