Leviticus 25:2-55 Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When you come into the land which I give you… I. DIVINE OWNERSHIP IN THE SOIL II. MAN'S HIGHEST INTERESTS ARE NOT MATERIAL AND EARTHLY. III. NEIGHBOURLINESS AND BENEVOLENCE SHOULD BE CULTIVATED. IV. RELIANCE ON GOD, IN IMPLICIT OBEDIENCE TO HIS WILL. To desist from effort to provide for their own maintenance would — 1. Elicit their faith in the fatherly care of God. 2. Summon them to a religious use of the time which God had set free from secular toils. 3. Incite them to grateful thoughts of God's dealings with them as His people, and win them to a renewed recognition that they were "not their own," but His, who had redeemed and still cared for them. V. SABBATIC REST: HEAVEN'S GRACIOUS LAW FOR EARTHLY TOILERS, Man needs the Sabbath pause, in order to realise — 1. That higher possibilities are opened to him by God's grace, than to be a servant of the soil on which he dwells. 2. That God desires of men the devotion of fixed seasons, and leisurely hours for sacred meditation and fellowship with the skies. (W. H. Jellie.) Parallel Verses KJV: Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD. |
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