Return, return, ye captives!
Return unto your home!
The silver trumpet soundeth,
The jubilee has come!
AS THE SABBATH days went by, and as the sabbath years came around, each spoke to Israel of the rest that God had in view. He was ever looking on to that blessed day when “He will rest in His love” (Zeph. 3: 17), and He delights in the thought of His people sharing that rest with Him. Israel, restored, shall enter into and enjoy that rest on earth under Christ their Messiah in His millennial kingdom. As Christians, our rest is above when we shall share the glory with Christ.
Israel’s title to the land was one of absolute grace. God in His love had given them that land, but He would have His people ever to remember that the land was His. They were to hold it in relation to the Giver whose rights in grace He ever maintained.
In these chapters we have the conditions under which Israel could hold and enjoy the land. There must needs be a right attitude of heart toward so good and gracious a Giver. Otherwise, they could not appreciate the gift, nor could they rightly possess it. God has given us an inheritance in Christ, He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies, and we ought to enjoy our portion in the sense of the love that gave it. God has His own joy when He sees His people enjoying what His love has given them.
It ought to have been a cause for deep thankfulness to Israel to know that the land belonged to the Lord, for this guaranteed their undisputed title to it after all. They lost the land through their unfaithfulness and for centuries it was trodden down by the Gentiles. But the day is coming when the last of the Gentile empires shall have run its course; and God will give the land of Canaan back to Israel.
We now come to the year of jubilee. It speaks of the liberty and the joy of the millennium when all that Israel lost will be restored through sovereign grace. On the great day of atonement the trumpet was to be blown, after the scapegoat had carried away the people’s sins to the land of forgetfulness. So it will be on the ground of the atoning work of Christ on the cross that God will cause the trumpet of jubilee to sound, and Israel shall return to the land of their inheritance.
Liberty was to be proclaimed throughout all the land. “And ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.” It is not a question of how a man lost his possession and got into bondage. For the day of atonement tells of Christ’s blessed work that has blotted out all the sin and failure of the past, and the exiles return to their possession to bask in the sunshine and favor of Jehovah’s love.
This year of jubilee is for Israel and the land. We as Christians have a more immediate and more blessed expectation for we wait for another trumpet to sound — “the trump of God” that will wake the sleeping saints, when we with them shall be “caught up” to be forever with the Lord.
ML-10/29/1972