God's Great Reset: Leviticus 25:8-22
Introduction: The War for Economic Sanity
We live in an age of dueling economic insanities. On one side, you have the Marxists and their various socialist children who believe the State is the ultimate owner of all things. For them, private property is theft, and the solution to every problem is another layer of bureaucratic control, which is itself a form of organized, legalized theft. On the other side, you have a brand of rapacious, godless capitalism that believes the autonomous individual or corporation is the ultimate owner of all things. For them, property is absolute, and the pursuit of profit is the highest good, even if it means grinding the poor into the dust and creating a permanent debtor class.
Both systems, when untethered from the fear of God, are idolatrous. One idol is the State, the other is Mammon. Both lead to slavery. One is the slavery of the commissar, the other is the slavery of the crushing mortgage and the 28 percent interest rate on your credit card. Both are rebellions against the one true Owner of everything that is. And into this false dichotomy, this worldly squabble between two thieves arguing over how to divide the loot, the Word of God speaks a radical and liberating alternative. God's law provides a framework for economics that is rooted not in envy or greed, but in worship, covenant, and grace.
The Jubilee is God's great economic reset button. It is a direct assault on the human tendency to accumulate and consolidate power and wealth indefinitely. It is a declaration that the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof. We are not owners; we are tenants. We are stewards, and our lease comes with terms and conditions set by the Landlord. The principles laid out here are not some quaint, irrelevant laws for ancient Israel. They reveal the very heart of God concerning justice, mercy, and economic freedom. If we want to understand how to build a truly free and prosperous society, we must begin here, with the law of the God who sets captives free.
The Text
‘You are also to count off seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the seven sabbaths of years, namely, forty-nine years. You shall then sound a ram’s horn abroad on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall sound a horn all through your land. You shall thus set apart as holy the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his own possession of land, and each of you shall return to his family. You shall have the fiftieth year as a jubilee; you shall not sow; you shall not reap what grows of its own accord; you shall not gather in from its untrimmed vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you. You shall eat its produce out of the field.
‘On this year of jubilee, each of you shall return to his own possession of land. If you make a sale, moreover, to your companion or buy from your friend’s hand, you shall not mistreat one another. Corresponding to the number of years after the jubilee, you shall buy from your companion; he is to sell to you according to the number of years of produce. In proportion to the extent of the years you shall increase its price, and in proportion to the fewness of the years you shall diminish its price, for it is the number of crops it produces that he is selling to you. So you shall not mistreat one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am Yahweh your God.
‘You shall thus observe My statutes and keep My judgments, so as to do them, that you may live securely on the land. Then the land will yield its fruit, so that you can eat your fill and live securely on it. But if you say, “What are we going to eat on the seventh year if we do not sow or gather in our produce?” then I will command My blessing for you in the sixth year that it will bring forth the produce for three years. So you shall sow the eighth year and eat old things from that produce, eating the old until the ninth year when its produce comes in.
(Leviticus 25:8-22 LSB)
Grace Built into the Calendar (vv. 8-12)
God's law builds grace right into the calendar. It is not an afterthought; it is part of the very structure of time for His people.
"You are also to count off seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years... You shall then sound a ram’s horn abroad on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall sound a horn all through your land. You shall thus set apart as holy the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants..." (Leviticus 25:8-10 LSB)
The timing here is everything. The great blast of the horn, the shofar, that announces the Jubilee happens on the Day of Atonement. This is not a coincidence. The Day of Atonement was when the sins of the nation were dealt with through sacrifice. The High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies and make atonement for the people. Only after the debt of sin was paid could the proclamation of economic liberty go forth. This is a profound theological point. True liberty, whether spiritual or economic, flows from the cross. You cannot have a just and free society apart from forgiveness and redemption. All the secular schemes for utopia fail because they try to proclaim Jubilee without a Day of Atonement. They want the release without the redemption. They want the clean slate without the cleansing blood.
The Jubilee had two central provisions. First, "each of you shall return to his own possession of land." This was God's built-in mechanism to prevent the permanent alienation of a family from its inheritance. A man might, through folly or misfortune, have to sell his land. But he wasn't selling it forever. He was only selling its use until the next Jubilee. This ensured that land, the primary means of production, remained widely distributed. It prevented the rise of a permanent aristocracy of the landed wealthy and a permanent underclass of the landless poor.
Second, "each of you shall return to his family." This dealt with indentured servitude. A man who fell into debt could sell his labor, but at the Jubilee, he was released and returned to his clan. This prevented debt from becoming a permanent state of slavery passed down through generations. The Jubilee was a periodic restoration of the ideal social and economic order that God had established for Israel.
And like the Sabbath day and the Sabbath year, the Jubilee year was a year of rest for the land. "You shall not sow; you shall not reap." This was a constant, tangible reminder that the land did not belong to them. It belonged to Yahweh. They were His guests, His tenants. This enforced humility and dependence upon God, the true owner.
Jubilee Real Estate (vv. 13-17)
These verses lay out the practical economic implications of the Jubilee. It creates a unique and just marketplace.
"Corresponding to the number of years after the jubilee, you shall buy from your companion; he is to sell to you according to the number of years of produce... So you shall not mistreat one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am Yahweh your God." (Leviticus 25:15, 17 LSB)
When an Israelite "sold" his land, what he was really selling was a calculated number of future harvests. The price was not for the land itself, but for its produce up to the next Jubilee. If the Jubilee was 40 years away, the price was high. If it was only five years away, the price was low. This is simple, honest math. The transaction was a lease, not a permanent sale.
This system is God's divine antitrust legislation. It strikes at the root of monopolies and the permanent consolidation of wealth. It ensures that capital, in the form of land, is regularly redistributed according to God's original pattern of inheritance. It is the opposite of both feudalism, where the lord owns everything, and crony capitalism, where the banks and corporations eventually own everything through foreclosure and debt.
And notice the moral foundation for this. Twice, God commands, "you shall not mistreat one another." The reason given is not that it's bad for the GDP or that it creates social unrest. The reason is, "you shall fear your God; for I am Yahweh your God." All just economics begins with the fear of the Lord. When men do not fear God, they will inevitably exploit their neighbors. Our modern economic systems are built on a foundation of godlessness, and so it is no surprise that they are characterized by systemic oppression, whether from the state or from the financial elites.
The Economics of Faith (vv. 18-22)
Here, God anticipates and answers the central objection of the faithless pragmatist.
"But if you say, 'What are we going to eat on the seventh year if we do not sow or gather in our produce?' then I will command My blessing for you in the sixth year that it will bring forth the produce for three years." (Leviticus 25:20-21 LSB)
The question "What are we going to eat?" is the question of a man who looks at his own resources instead of God's promises. It is the question of anxiety and unbelief. The Israelites faced a Sabbath year every seven years. But in the Jubilee cycle, they had the 49th year, which was a Sabbath year, followed immediately by the 50th year, which was the Jubilee year. That's two full years of not sowing or reaping. From a purely human standpoint, this is economic suicide.
God's answer is not a lesson in agricultural efficiency. His answer is a promise of a miracle. "I will command My blessing." He promises that the harvest in the sixth year will be a supernatural, triple-sized harvest, providing enough food for the sixth year, the seventh year, and the eighth year until the new harvest came in. This entire system was designed to force the people to trust God. It was a national, recurring test of faith.
This is the principle that undergirds all Christian obedience. Tithing, resting on the Sabbath, forgiving debts, all of it looks foolish to the world. It looks like you are losing out. But the man of faith knows that our provision does not ultimately come from our own sweat and cleverness. It comes from the commanded blessing of God. When we obey God, especially when it seems risky, we are putting ourselves in the place where His supernatural provision can flow. Security does not come from our barns; it comes from His blessing.
Jesus, Our Jubilee
This entire chapter is a giant, flashing arrow pointing to the person and work of Jesus Christ. The Jubilee is a magnificent type, and Christ is the glorious antitype. He is the fulfillment of all that the Jubilee promised.
In the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus unrolled the scroll to Isaiah and read, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:18-19). That "acceptable year of the Lord" is Jubilee language. And after reading it, He rolled up the scroll and declared, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."
Jesus is our Jubilee. The cross was the ultimate Day of Atonement, where the final, perfect sacrifice for sin was made once for all. And from the cross, the trumpet of the gospel sounds throughout all the land, proclaiming liberty to all the inhabitants of the earth.
In Christ, we are released from the insurmountable debt of our sin. That is the ultimate debt cancellation.
In Christ, we who have sold ourselves into the slavery of sin are set free and returned to our true family, the household of God. We are adopted as sons and daughters.
In Christ, we who have forfeited our inheritance are restored. We become co-heirs with Christ, and our possession is not a plot of dirt in the Middle East, but the entire new heavens and new earth.
The gospel is the final and everlasting Jubilee. It is God's great reset for all humanity. And this gospel is not just a ticket to heaven. It is the power of God to transform everything, including our families, our communities, and yes, even our economics. We are called to live as a Jubilee people, forgiving debts, showing mercy, dealing justly, and trusting our Father's supernatural provision, all because our Lord has proclaimed to us the acceptable year of the Lord.