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The True Basis of Social Concern

The True Basis of Social Concern. A Study of Leviticus Chapter 25. The True Basis of Social Concern. When God speaks of sacrifices, ceremonies, rituals and cleansings He speaks to Moses as he stood in the entry door of the tabernacle.

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The True Basis of Social Concern

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  1. The True Basis of Social Concern A Study of Leviticus Chapter 25

  2. The True Basis of Social Concern • When God speaks of sacrifices, ceremonies, rituals and cleansings He speaks to Moses as he stood in the entry door of the tabernacle. • When God speaks of Government He speaks from Sinai. The 10 commandments were given from Sinai and chapter 25 of Leviticus was given at the same time.

  3. The True Basis of Social Concern • Our Lord’s ministry fulfilled all 3 great, significant offices of Israel: • Prophet – He pierced the heart of the Jewish nation showing them what was needed, and turning them back to God. • Priest – He stood as the great high priest and offered himself as the Passover Lamb for the sins of the nation and of the world.

  4. The True Basis of Social Concern 3. King – On Palm Sunday our Lord entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey fulfilling the prediction of Zechariah the prophet: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass. Zech 9:9 RSV

  5. The True Basis of Social Concern • We will never understand fully why God selected this people to be His chosen people unless we recognize that they were to be a demonstration, a model nation, to teach the rest of the nations how God operates in the world, how he desires and intends to run every nation. • This is why what was said to Israel regarding government is so significant. • It is a representation of God’s relationship with the other nations of the world.

  6. The True Basis of Social Concern • In the first 7 verses of Lev. 25 you have the instructions concerning the sabbatical year. • Men are to operate out of rest. • Rest is dependence upon the activity of Another • God is prepared to work through us—not apart from us, not with folded hands on our part—but in our activity to be there, supplying what it takes to get done what is necessary. • That is the secret of rest.

  7. The True Basis of Social Concern • The sabbath is applicable beyond the life of the individual to society at large. • What He is trying to drive home here is that if there is a recognition of, and dependence upon, God’s ability to work in social life, in interpersonal relationships, in government, there will be fruitfulness in life.

  8. The True Basis of Social Concern • Lev. 25:8-12 • The year of jubilee, which came every 50th year, was the intensification of the sabbatical year. • The year of jubilee followed 7 times 7 (49) years. Seven times seven is perfection fully manifested. • God is saying that whatever the sabbath year stands for, if you allow it to run its full course, will manifest itself in a complete and open demonstration of something.

  9. The True Basis of Social Concern • What is that something? • It is stated in one word: LIBERTY! • This is the way you free people from social problems, injustices, and inequities. It all works out at last in a year of LIBERTY. • Take another look at verse 10. “And you shall hallow the 50th year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants”

  10. The True Basis of Social Concern • Where is this quote inscribed? • The Liberty Bell • This is a wonderful manifestation of how much our forebears knew about the great principle which God is seeking to get across to men here in this teaching of the sabbatical year and the year of jubilee.

  11. The True Basis of Social Concern • You see, rest must be at the heart not only of the individual but of society as well. • There must be dependence upon the working of Another, upon the fact that God can do something in human events, that he knows how to work out relationships among the people. • A recognition of that fact and an open door to allow him to do it will result finally in the working out of LIBERTY.

  12. The True Basis of Social Concern • God teaches us that all liberty arises out of redemption. • It arises out of the work of God in human affairs..cleansing and changing, forgiving and healing and restoring. • If liberty doesn’t come from that, it can never be achieved.

  13. The True Basis for Social Concern • We all tend to think that liberty is doing what you want to do whenever you want to do it. • But nothing could be worse. • There is no greater form of slavery. • “Destination Sickness” the malady of having everything that you want, but not wanting anything you have, and being sick and empty and lonely and miserable because you can do anything you want to do.

  14. The True Basis of Social Concern • No, that is not liberty. Liberty, God says, is being freed from inner bondage, inner shackles of guilt and fear and anxiety and hostility. • And it begins with redemption, with the atoning work of Jesus Christ.

  15. Liberty • Liberty, God says, is for each person to regain his lost inheritance, and to have his broken relationships restored. It is to get back what God intended you to have, to return to your property, to be able to be and act as God intended men to be and act when he made them in the beginning, to gain back all that was lost in the fall of Adam.

  16. Liberty • It is to have all the broken, fragmented relationships restored, have all the middle walls of partition which have separated men and kept them apart broken down, to have all the differences of skin color and culture and class evaporated, and return to your family.

  17. Liberty • Lev. 25:13-17 In this passage we find the meaning of the year of jubilee. • It was the center of all commercial enterprise. Everything looked toward this liberation, this freeing of individuals. • Lev. 25:18-22 God makes a beautiful three-fold promise:

  18. Three Fold Promise • Security – “Keep my ordinances and perform them, so you will dwell in the land securely. • Produce the crop without struggle-” the land will yield its fruit,” • Sufficiency of supply- “and you will eat your fill,”

  19. God’s Promise • You will have all you wan, because God is at work • Now, that is what God wants us to learn. • But how sadly we have forgotten it! • Once this American nation had strong glimpses of this truth. We even stamped it on our coins: “In God We Trust.” We wrote it on the Liberty Bell. • But then we forgot it. We thought it all depended upon us. We no longer made any allowance for God to work.

  20. The Solution to Social Problems • Governments must face up to the fact that they have the responsibility to grant the right to recover from a low economic state. Verse 25 “if you brother becomes poor” Verse 35 “and if your brother becomes poor, and cannot maintain himself” Verse 39 “and if your brother becomes poor beside you” Verse 47 “If a stranger or sojourner with you becomes rich, and your brother beside him becomes poor”

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