Sermon Notes: The Acceptable Year of the Lord

Sermon Notes: The Acceptable Year of the Lord
by Ben Mauldin II

Luke, Chapter 4
The setting is the return of Jesus to Nazareth, his hometown.
He has been away for a period of time in the wilderness. During this time he fasted for 40 days and 40 nights and he was tempted by the Adversary.

When he returned to his hometown he was like a "Man on Fire" and he seem to have a keen sense of direction and understanding of this purpose. He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath, as his custom was, and he was handed and read from the book of Isaiah. He read from chapter 61 of the book of Isaiah.
The passage is somewhat of a mission statement, that now he clearly understood. That he was to preach the gospel to the poor, freedom to prisoners, give sight to the blind, freedom and liberty to the oppressed, and he ended it by saying to preach the "Acceptable Year of the Lord."

We see lots of examples in Jesus' life how he physically and spiritually restored sight to the blind, preached the gospel to the poor, set free, spiritually, those who were imprisoned, and gave hope and liberty to the  opressed, but what I would like to focus on today is the statement:

"Proclaim the Acceptable Year of the Lord!"

I believe that the "Acceptable Year of the Lord" is the Jubilee year.
You can read about the Jubilee in Leviticus 25 and other places throughout the Old Testament.
You will see that it begins on the Day of Atonement every 50th year.
I watch asked a well-known biblical scholar in the Church of God tradition if a year of Jubilee had ever, in history, actually been kept. His answer was that he thought not. It is possible that right after the nation of Israel entered into the promised land, perhaps they did keep one year of Jubilee, but it is doubtful. There is no record in the scripture of the Jubilee ever having been kept

Jubilee  is a time when all debts and all obligations are forgiven, and everyone returns to their original land. Slaves are freed, debts forgiven. (US Bankruptcy laws are based on Jubilee principles. Also notice "The Lord's Prayer" in Matthew 6, that the only provision of the prayer on which Jesus adds a comment is the willingness to forgive debt.)

 It is much like the promise that Jesus brings, forgiveness and a fresh start.
There have been people, groups of people, in our history who have tried to set up a "Biblical" government and tried to implement a Jubilee. I think that in our current society setting, it is impossible.
Can you imagine, if an entity such as the United States Congress wrote a Jubilee code? It would be a stack of books that would reach to the ceiling and every year certain exclusions would be added so that the Jubilee itself would be totally meaningless.
There would be lawyers whose sole purpose would be to create some sort of "trust" that could avoid the Jubilee.

For the Jubilee to be implemented it is going to require the return of the Righteous Judge!