Student
3 - PRACTICE EXERCISE
This study encompasses
the 2 great periods of God’s silence, each marked by a supernatural
deliverance. Lk.4:16-21
[context] "The Spirit of
the Lord is upon Me because He has appointed Me [ ]
to proclaim good news to the poor [ ]. He has sent Me to
proclaim liberty to the captives [ ] and recovery of sight
to the blind [
], to set at liberty those who are
oppressed [
], to proclaim the year of the Lord's
favor [
] Today this Scripture has been fulfilled [ ] in
your hearing." [see Introduction and Chap.1 of RPCD - Chapters]
THE CLOSE [FIRM, SOLID] CONNECTION OF THIS LANGUAGE WITH GOD’S PROGRAM OF REDEMPTION
getting
at what the Bible means for us to understand by looking at what it says
It won’t do to merely repeat Jesus’ words. They need to be filled with content to be
meaningful or they become empty like a slogan or a cliché. Jesus was about to make a way for men to be
forgiven and approach God, something portrayed but not available in the OT (Heb.9:8-12). Isa.61 refers to the liberation of
THE CONNECTION WITH GOD’S REST
After Joseph’s death, a
new pharaoh rose to power and set taskmasters over the Israelites
“to afflict them with heavy burdens.” “They
ruthlessly made the people work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard
service (Ex.1:8-14).” Some
400 years later, God sent Moses to lead them out, “I
have seen the affliction of My people…and have heard
their cry because of their taskmasters.
I know their sufferings and I have come down to deliver them…and to
bring them…to a good and broad land flowing with milk and honey… (Ex.3:7-10).” When
Moses approached pharaoh with God’s demand to release the people to sacrifice
to Him, pharaoh accused Moses of giving the people “rest
from their burdens” and
increased the workload even more, “let heavier work be
laid on the men (Ex.5:1-14).”
As Moses was leading the Israelites out of oppression and slavery in
The very next time the people were tested, God stood on a rock and had
Moses strike it with his rod, and water [ ] flowed out for the whole congregation and
their livestock (Ex.17).a God’s
rules governing the manna and the Sabbath were specific and detailed (Ex.16:14-36). The Sabbath was later included in the
covenant with
God
also established a Sabbath year. Every 7th
year the land was to be left alone [ ]. The Israelites were to store up food from the
6th year and leave the fields for the poor, the hired hands,
foreigners, servants, and animals. There
was to be no pressure for people in debt to repay personal loans. It was the year of release [ ] (Dt.15:1-2)
to allow the land to recover and people to recuperate from the ceaseless burden
of making payments on loans.c
After
a series of 7 such years, 49 years in all, God mandated a year of Jubilee (Lev.25:8-13). Ez.46:16-17
calls it “the year of liberty.” For those who had fallen on hard times
because of the circumstances of life, or because they made bad or foolish
decisions and were in debt or had sold their land or themselves into servitude,
God says FREEDOM for those who could not redeem themselves or find a relative
who would; CANCELLATION of the debts they could not pay; RESTORATION of their
inheritance in the land; God provided food for everyone and all the animals on
the fallow land. This is the language of
deliverance and meshes with Lk.4. So the
weary laborer looked forward to the Sabbath day when he could rest. The man struggling to keep up payments on his
debts and provide for his family anticipated the Sabbath year to relieve
the pressure and give him a chance to catch up.
Those who were hopelessly in debt, who had lost everything
waited and longed for the year of Jubilee [
]. Jesus gave new meaning to this by healing
people on the Sabbath that had all their lives been blind or cripple.
So we find our eternal rest in Christ our Sabbathd and wait for Him who restores
everything to the condition it ought to be in, to bring us into our
inheritance, the celebration of God with His people where the Jubilee will
never end. You might think that we are in a long period
of God’s silence similar to those two mentioned above. We are, but there is a difference. Christ who was the subject of those
revelations has come and everything God wants us to know He has already
said. The Holy Spirit has been given to
His people so we can look at what He has already said and done with new eyes
and to help us make our way through the perils of this life awaiting His return
and the summing up of all things in Him.
a This was a picture of
eternal life that comes to us through the judgment of Christ (1 Cor.10:1-5) [close connection].
b The Sabbath was to
c The length of
d Heb.3:7-4:11 [close connection], see Keeping the Sabbath in Christ http://pop.eradman.com/