“When you have entered the land I am giving you, the land itself must observe a Sabbath rest before the LORD every seventh year.”
Leviticus 25:2 (NLT)
Everybody likes freedom, and we resent it when someone takes our freedom away. Leviticus 25 has much to say about freedom. If you were a Hebrew slave, then you could sell yourself to another Hebrew to pay your debts. You could serve him for up to six years, but in the seventh year you would go free. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know that you were free, and your debt was completely canceled!
Likewise, the land was to be “set free” every seventh year. Six years they could sow, cultivate and harvest, but in the seventh year they were to let the land rest and not work it. God cared about the land. He also cared about their servants, hired workers and livestock. Everyone was to enjoy a year of rest. If they would do this, then God would give them a bumper crop in the sixth year and meet their needs in the seventh year. How would you like to take a year off work? Unfortunately, we have no biblical record that the Jews ever did it. And why not? Two reasons: 1) they wanted to make more money; 2) they thought they knew better than God.
Every fifty years was the year of Jubilee, and everyone would take another year off work since the year of Jubilee always followed the Sabbath year. All debts in the land were cancelled. If you had sold your family inheritance, then the property would revert to you in the year of Jubilee. What a great time of rejoicing that would be! But once again, we have no record that they ever did it.
“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul.”
Psalm 23:1–3 (NKJV)
Are we willing to rest when the LORD says rest? Do we even know how? Are we willing to let others rest so that they can be renewed in body, mind and spirit? Life without scheduled periods of rest isn’t freedom; it’s slavery. If we want a restored soul, if we want to experience real freedom, then we must obey our Good Shepherd.
“Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.”
Hebrews 4:11 (ESV)
Simply the Bible Blog 
Leave a comment