Unique to the Israelite economy was a system of Sabbath Years and the complimentary Year of Jubilee. Leviticus 25 details how the land will observe a Sabbath to the LORD (25: 2). God’s people were to allow the land to rest after six years of planting, cultivation and harvest. It was a productive agricultural principle still observed today in a measure by rotating crops so as not to deplete the nutrients in the soil.
God further stated that Israel was to count seven sabbatic years…. [and] consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim freedom in the land for all its inhabitants (25: 8, 10). The land was to rest (25: 11), debts were to be forgiven (25: 28), property was to be returned to the rightful heirs (25: 13) and Hebrew slaves were to go free (25: 40). The Year of Jubilee presented Israel with a unique opportunity to give thanks to the Lord for His blessings over a generation and insured that mercy would be the driving force of their economy. Obviously the Year of Jubilee required no small measure of trust from God’s people. In the forty-ninth year there would be no cultivation of cropland, the fiftieth would be a year of celebration and they would have to wait until the harvest of the fifty-first year to reap the next crop. Perhaps that is part of the reason why Israel never observed the Year of Jubilee. Passages like 2 Chronicles 36: 20 – 21; Jeremiah 25: 8 – 11; 29: 10 demonstrate that one of the reasons for the Babylonian Exile was that Israel never practiced the Jubilee so God imposed an extended Year of Jubilee on the land of seventy years.
There are grave consequences to disregarding a direct command of God. What command are you ignoring? Is it financial? Is it perhaps relational? Maybe you are negligent in evangelism. It is dangerous to know God requires something and yet you do nothing. If you hear his voice today why not respond today? Obedience could initiate a Year of Jubilee for you.