Leviticus 25, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

Max Lucado Daily: The With Us God - December 21, 2021

The babe of Bethlehem. Immanuel. Remember the promise of the angel? “‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,’ which is translated, ‘God with us’” (Matthew 1:23).

Immanuel. The name appears in the same Hebrew form as it did two thousand years ago. “Immanu” means “with us.” “El” refers to Elohim, or God. Not an “above us God” or a “somewhere in the neighborhood God.” He came as the “with us God.” God with us. Not “God with the rich” or “with the religious.” But God with us. All of us. Russians, Germans, Buddhists, Mormons, truck drivers and taxi drivers, librarians. God with us. Prophets weren’t enough. Apostles wouldn’t do. Angels won’t suffice. God sent more than miracles and messages. He sent himself; he sent his Son.

Leviticus 25

“The Land Will Observe a Sabbath to God”

God spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai: “Speak to the People of Israel. Tell them, When you enter the land which I am going to give you, the land will observe a Sabbath to God. Sow your fields, prune your vineyards, and take in your harvests for six years. But the seventh year the land will take a Sabbath of complete and total rest, a Sabbath to God; you will not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. Don’t reap what grows of itself; don’t harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land gets a year of complete and total rest. But you can eat from what the land volunteers during the Sabbath year—you and your men and women servants, your hired hands, and the foreigners who live in the country, and, of course, also your livestock and the wild animals in the land can eat from it. Whatever the land volunteers of itself can be eaten.
“The Fiftieth Year Is Your Jubilee Year”

8-12 “Count off seven Sabbaths of years—seven times seven years: Seven Sabbaths of years adds up to forty-nine years. Then sound loud blasts on the ram’s horn on the tenth day of the seventh month, the Day of Atonement. Sound the ram’s horn all over the land. Sanctify the fiftieth year; make it a holy year. Proclaim freedom all over the land to everyone who lives in it—a Jubilee for you: Each person will go back to his family’s property and reunite with his extended family. The fiftieth year is your Jubilee year: Don’t sow; don’t reap what volunteers itself in the fields; don’t harvest the untended vines because it’s the Jubilee and a holy year for you. You’re permitted to eat from whatever volunteers itself in the fields.

13 “In this year of Jubilee everyone returns home to his family property.

14-17 “If you sell or buy property from one of your countrymen, don’t cheat him. Calculate the purchase price on the basis of the number of years since the Jubilee. He is obliged to set the sale price on the basis of the number of harvests remaining until the next Jubilee. The more years left, the more money; you can raise the price. But the fewer years left, the less money; decrease the price. What you are buying and selling in fact is the number of crops you’re going to harvest. Don’t cheat each other. Fear your God. I am God, your God.

18-22 “Keep my decrees and observe my laws and you will live secure in the land. The land will yield its fruit; you will have all you can eat and will live safe and secure. Do I hear you ask, ‘What are we going to eat in the seventh year if we don’t plant or harvest?’ I assure you, I will send such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. While you plant in the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and continue until the harvest of the ninth year comes in.

23-24 “The land cannot be sold permanently because the land is mine and you are foreigners—you’re my tenants. You must provide for the right of redemption for any of the land that you own.

25-28 “If one of your brothers becomes poor and has to sell any of his land, his nearest relative is to come and buy back what his brother sold. If a man has no one to redeem it but he later prospers and earns enough for its redemption, he is to calculate the value since he sold it and refund the balance to the man to whom he sold it; he can then go back to his own land. If he doesn’t get together enough money to repay him, what he sold remains in the possession of the buyer until the year of Jubilee. In the Jubilee it will be returned and he can go back and live on his land.

29-31 “If a man sells a house in a walled city, he retains the right to buy it back for a full year after the sale. At any time during that year he can redeem it. But if it is not redeemed before the full year has passed, it becomes the permanent possession of the buyer and his descendants. It is not returned in the Jubilee. However, houses in unwalled villages are treated the same as fields. They can be redeemed and have to be returned at the Jubilee.

32-34 “As to the Levitical cities, houses in the cities owned by the Levites are always subject to redemption. Levitical property is always redeemable if it is sold in a town that they hold and reverts to them in the Jubilee, because the houses in the towns of the Levites are their property among the People of Israel. The pastures belonging to their cities may not be sold; they are their permanent possession.

35-38 “If one of your brothers becomes indigent and cannot support himself, help him, the same as you would a foreigner or a guest so that he can continue to live in your neighborhood. Don’t gouge him with interest charges; out of reverence for your God help your brother to continue to live with you in the neighborhood. Don’t take advantage of his plight by running up big interest charges on his loans, and don’t give him food for profit. I am your God who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.

39-43 “If one of your brothers becomes indigent and has to sell himself to you, don’t make him work as a slave. Treat him as a hired hand or a guest among you. He will work for you until the Jubilee, after which he and his children are set free to go back to his clan and his ancestral land. Because the People of Israel are my servants whom I brought out of Egypt, they must never be sold as slaves. Don’t tyrannize them; fear your God.

44-46 “The male and female slaves which you have are to come from the surrounding nations; you are permitted to buy slaves from them. You may also buy the children of foreign workers who are living among you temporarily and from their clans which are living among you and have been born in your land. They become your property. You may will them to your children as property and make them slaves for life. But you must not tyrannize your brother Israelites.

47-53 “If a foreigner or temporary resident among you becomes rich and one of your brothers becomes poor and sells himself to the foreigner who lives among you or to a member of the foreigner’s clan, he still has the right of redemption after he has sold himself. One of his relatives may buy him back. An uncle or cousin or any close relative of his extended family may redeem him. Or, if he gets the money together, he can redeem himself. What happens then is that he and his owner count out the time from the year he sold himself to the year of Jubilee; the buy-back price is set according to the wages of a hired hand for that number of years. If many years remain before the Jubilee, he must pay back a larger share of his purchase price, but if only a few years remain until the Jubilee, he is to calculate his redemption price accordingly. He is to be treated as a man hired from year to year. You must make sure that his owner does not tyrannize him.

54-55 “If he is not redeemed in any of these ways, he goes free in the year of Jubilee, he and his children, because the People of Israel are my servants, my servants whom I brought out of Egypt. I am God, your God.

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Our Daily Bread reading and devotion    
Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Today's Scripture
Psalm 119:105–112
(NIV)

Your word is a lampn for my feet,

a lighto on my path.

106 I have taken an oathp and confirmed it,

that I will follow your righteous laws.q

107 I have suffered much;

preserve my life,r Lord, according to your word.

108 Accept, Lord, the willing praise of my mouth,s

and teach me your laws.t

109 Though I constantly take my life in my hands,u

I will not forgetv your law.

110 The wicked have set a snarew for me,

but I have not strayedx from your precepts.

111 Your statutes are my heritage forever;

they are the joy of my heart.y

112 My heart is setz on keeping your decrees

to the very end.

Insight

Psalm 119 is an acrostic poem using the twenty-two successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Each of the lines in the first stanza (vv. 1–8) begin with the first letter Aleph; verses 9–16 begin with Beth, the second letter; and so on. This pattern is used as a device for memorizing the poem.

In our reading today (vv. 105–112), every line begins with Nun. Although the psalmist is scorned and threatened for trusting in God’s precepts, he doesn’t waver but resolves to remain fully committed to knowing and obeying God’s law. In the midst of life’s difficulties and dangers, he affirms that Scripture is his security—a lamp that illuminates God’s ways and a light that provides guidance on how to respond to the dark realities of life. The writer believes that God’s statutes will renew and strengthen him (v. 107). They’re his birthright and his joy (v. 111). By: K. T. Sim

God’s Compass

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.
Psalm 119:105

During World War II, Waldemar Semenov was serving as a junior engineer aboard the SS Alcoa Guide when—nearly three hundred miles off the coast of North Carolina—a German submarine surfaced and opened fire on the ship. The ship was hit, caught fire, and began to sink. Semenov and his crew lowered a lifeboat into the water and used the vessel’s compass to sail toward the shipping lanes. After three days, a patrol plane spotted their lifeboat and the USS Broome rescued the men the next day. Thanks to that compass, Semenov and twenty-six other crewmembers were saved.

The psalmist reminded God’s people that they were equipped with a compass for life—the Bible. He compared Scripture to “a lamp” (Psalm 119:105) that provides light to illuminate the path of life for those pursuing God. When the psalmist was adrift in the chaotic waters of life, he knew God could use Scripture to provide spiritual longitude and latitude and help him survive. Thus, he prayed that God would send out His light to direct him in life and bring him safely to the port of His holy presence (43:3).

As believers in Jesus, when we lose our way, God can guide us by the Holy Spirit and by the direction found in the Scriptures. May God transform our hearts and minds as we read the Bible, study it, and follow its wisdom. By:  Marvin Williams

Reflect & Pray

How have you experienced a particular verse or passage as a compass for your life in recent days? When are you tempted not to follow the directions the compass of Scripture gives?

Jesus, thank You that when I’m tempted to drift away, the wisdom of Scripture helps bring me back.

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Experience or God’s Revealed Truth?

We have received…the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. —1 Corinthians 2:12

My experience is not what makes redemption real— redemption is reality. Redemption has no real meaning for me until it is worked out through my conscious life. When I am born again, the Spirit of God takes me beyond myself and my experiences, and identifies me with Jesus Christ. If I am left only with my personal experiences, I am left with something not produced by redemption. But experiences produced by redemption prove themselves by leading me beyond myself, to the point of no longer paying any attention to experiences as the basis of reality. Instead, I see that only the reality itself produced the experiences. My experiences are not worth anything unless they keep me at the Source of truth— Jesus Christ.

If you try to hold back the Holy Spirit within you, with the desire of producing more inner spiritual experiences, you will find that He will break the hold and take you again to the historic Christ. Never support an experience which does not have God as its Source and faith in God as its result. If you do, your experience is anti-Christian, no matter what visions or insights you may have had. Is Jesus Christ Lord of your experiences, or do you place your experiences above Him? Is any experience dearer to you than your Lord? You must allow Him to be Lord over you, and pay no attention to any experience over which He is not Lord. Then there will come a time when God will make you impatient with your own experience, and you can truthfully say, “I do not care what I experience— I am sure of Him!”

Be relentless and hard on yourself if you are in the habit of talking about the experiences you have had. Faith based on experience is not faith; faith based on God’s revealed truth is the only faith there is.

Wisdom From Oswald Chambers

The Bible is the only Book that gives us any indication of the true nature of sin, and where it came from. The Philosophy of Sin, 1107 R

Bible in a Year: Micah 4-5; Revelation 12

A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Living Sheepishly - #9117

"It's time to get the old bathrobes out, boys. Yeah, for the church Christmas pageant." You've got to have some boys be shepherds. You know, when I think of shepherds, though, it's more than Christmas to me. It's potentially life changing. There's this picture that hangs on the wall in our living room. It's meant a lot to me in recent years. Just like an identical picture did when I was four years old. That's when my baby brother died suddenly. My grieving dad, who was not a churchgoer, decided he should take his surviving son to church somewhere.

So every Sunday he dropped me off at this one nearby church while he waited in the car, and smoked and read his Sunday paper. That church is where I first heard the name Jesus. And it's where I first saw the picture. It was my first impression of Jesus. It shows Jesus as a shepherd, leading a flock of sheep beside a stream. In His arms, there's this little lamb, looking up at the shepherd who looks lovingly at him. And I said, "That's me! I'm the lamb in Jesus' arms!" Not just then. But on the darkest day of my life.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Living Sheepishly."

Karen was the love of my life since I was 19. The only person I've done my whole adult life with. Then, on that May 16, she was suddenly gone. And I was suddenly lost. Oh, how I needed my Shepherd. And He was there. Again, I was the lamb in His arms. My one safe place. He wants to be that for you.

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from what many call "The Shepherd Psalm." It contains some of the most comforting, hope-filled words in the Bible. Psalm 23:1 and then verse 4 tell us: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want ... though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil..." Wait! If the surroundings are that dark and dangerous, why will I "fear no evil? Well, He says, "because you are with me."

Suddenly, on that heartbreaking day, I was in the valley of the shadow of death. And one day I'll be walking the valley of the shadow of my own death. And while that valley may be the darkest and most devastating, there are other dark valleys that shake us to our core. There's that bad news from the doctor. The marriage that was once a dream, and now it's collapsing into a nightmare. The disaster that destroyed a lifetime of treasures. Financial disaster. A job lost - or a child, a breakup, a betrayal. We all have lonely valleys to walk through.

But here's some of the best news you'll ever hear. You don't have to walk that valley alone. Ever. "I will fear no evil; for You are with me." And the Bible says of Jesus: "He will stand and shepherd His flock in the strength of the Lord...and they will live securely (Micah 5:4).

The vulnerable, frightened sheep is safe in the Shepherd's arms. And it just might be He's come looking for you today right where you are. Because the Bible says we're all lost sheep. It says, "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way" (Isaiah 53:6). Put another way, each of us has sinned, hijacked our life from the One who gave it to us. We are away from the Shepherd we were made for. So we'll always be lost in this life, and when we die, we'll be away from Him forever.

But the Shepherd loved you too much to leave you lost. He came to die on a cross, to pay for the sin you and I deserve to pay for. Then He walked out of His grave three days later - and He's waiting to walk into your life today. If you'll tell Him, "Jesus, I'm Yours."

I would love to help you get started with this life-changing relationship. Just head for our website as soon as you can. It's where a lot of people have found what they needed to begin their relationship with Jesus. It's ANewStory.com. That's the website.

Let this be the day when you make the Shepherd your shepherd, so you can say, "The Lord is my Shepherd." You'll discover what millions like me have discovered. However great the loss, Jesus is enough. And you are safe. The lamb in the loving Shepherd's arms.