We all have toys that we love getting and owning. For some of us those toys are cars. For some the towns are Legos. For others the toys are Sea-Doos, or dogs, or horses, or real estate, or mutual funds, or cookware.
My toy of choice, if I have extra money lying around, is books. Books on various aspects of the Scripture. Books about the background for a particular Bible text. Books about the social and rhetorical contexts. Books on the mindset of a Jew or Greek. Books that cover the archaeological discoveries. Books that dig into the language. Lexicons. Commentaries. Atlases. Books by scholars who are Spirit-filled AND have some serious theological chops. Books. And I like my books to have serious academic value behind them. I am one of the few people that I know of in my tribe that likes to multiply books by teachers that are precisely academic in nature because I like well-executed excellence in handling the text of Scripture, because I hear enough nonsense in pulpits. Except for my current pastors and five other congregations, including one friend of mine who pastors in Spartanburg. She preaches extraordinarily well.
Anyway, I digress.
One of my favorite scholars is Allen Ross, who is an expert at Leviticus and Psalms.
I have been working through Leviticus, and I came across the passage in Chapter 25 where It was written,
The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me. And in all the country you possess, you shall allow a redemption of the land.
Lev. 25:23–28 ESVi
If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold. If a man has no one to redeem it and then himself becomes prosperous and finds sufficient means to redeem it, let him calculate the years since he sold it and pay back the balance to the man to whom he sold it, and then return to his property. But if he does not have sufficient means to recover it, then what he sold shall remain in the hand of the buyer until the year of jubilee. In the jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his property.
https://accordance.bible/link/read/ESVi#Lev._25:23
And the Jubilee and the Redeemer concepts got me thinking, “what does Ross have to say about these ideas?”.
Jubilee
So, I pulled my book, Holiness To the Lord, and read this:
The land could not be permanently alienated from its original proprietor because all rights of ownership belonged to the Lord.
Allen P. Ross, Holiness To The Lord: A Guide to the Exposition of the Book of Leviticus (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 457.
That quote right there is all about stewardship and violating that principle is how we build the structure called the stronghold of ownership. God wanted his children to walk in complete freedom from carrying the burden of owning land, and as a result, the leveraging of assets to handle debts was permitted, but only for a season, after which liberty and release was declared.
Permanent alienation was not permitted. The people of Israel had learned intimately what it meant to be alienated.
The next focus of the chapter is the transference of property. The foundational principles for this section, and indeed for all dealings with land, is recorded in 25:23-24: the land belongs to God! The people of God did not own the land—or anything else for that matter. They were given the use of the land by God’s goodness and mercy.
Allen P. Ross, Holiness To The Lord: A Guide to the Exposition of the Book of Leviticus (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 461. Italics mine
This is an explicit textual reference to the principle of stewardship.
Engaging in regular release helps the released to recognize the reality of stewardship so that they do not practice ownership.
Redeemer
The first case [in which redemption could be made] is the person who had to sell property because of debt. The provision is made for a well-off relative to buy the field in order to keep it in the family (see Ruth 4). If the seller was later able to buy it back, then the price was established in accordance with its years of use. If the person was not able to buy it back, then it was returned in the Jubilee year. In this way the Lord served as the kinsman who restored the land to the original owner so that he or she could go out and live freely in it.
Allen P. Ross, Holiness To The Lord: A Guide to the Exposition of the Book of Leviticus (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 461. Italics mine
In Stewardship and Management, God is picturing Himself as the a God of Redemption through the years of release. He is also working at teaching his people in the ways of release and forgiveness. In the Old Testament. In the Law.
People who say that the God on the right hand side of the book spends His time apologizing for the wrathful, angry God on the left hand side of the book, are not reading passages like this. They are missing out on the Mercy, and the Kindness, and the humility of the King. As a result, they are squandering over half of the deposit of love given them by The God Of Both Sides of the Book.
“God is angry,” they say.
But God is here preaching release and sojourn, and how His children are strangers and sojourners with Him (Lev. 25:23).
Just some thoughts to ponder, gang.