The Great Sabbatical Year And Year Of Jubilee A Sermon On Lev Xxv 8 9

For pastors who take seriously the commitment to incorporate the entire Bible into their preaching, Sidney Greidanus’s books on preaching Christ from the major genres of the Old Testament have been a welcome gift. In his last such volume, Greidanus engages with the Old Testament genre of law and treats a book that is often seen as the most challenging of all: Leviticus. Preaching Christ from Leviticus reminds pastors and congregations that key christological themes—priesthood, sacrifice, atonement, holiness—first originated in Leviticus before they came to full flower in the New Testament with the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ and his call to holiness. Greidanus provides the basis for fully understanding these and other themes with an exacting analysis of Leviticus and then provides the foundations for ten sermons on Leviticus through topics such as the burnt offering, the ordained priesthood, the day of atonement, the sabbatical year, and the year of jubilee, as well as the commandments to be holy, to love your neighbor, and to love aliens and enemies.

Luke has often been understood to transmit a variety of Christological traditions without reflecting on them in relation to each other. In this study, Daniel Gustafsson challenges such positions and demonstrates that when the Gospel of Luke is approached as a narrative, a different picture emerges. Presentations of Jesus as "Messiah", "Son of God", "prophet", and "Son of Man" are shown to conform to Luke's overall plot and significantly overlap each other. The voices of characters with high authority, the use of Scripture, and Jesus's relationship to the Holy Spirit are examples of other factors that contribute to coherency in Luke's Christology.

The book of Leviticus has not been a popular subject of study in the modern church. Much like the book of Proverbs, any emphasis upon the practical applications of God's law is readily shunned in pursuit of more "spiritual" studies. Books like Leviticus are considered dull, overbearing, and irrelevant. To be spiritual, in the modern sense of the term, means to live on a "higher" level where today's Christian is governed more by the impressions of the heart than a carnal commandment. But man was created in God's image and is duty-bound to develop the implications of that image by obedience to God's law. In this volume, the author writes, "Man cannot develop his personhood except in terms of God and His law-word. Even as God separated man from the dust of the earth to make him a living soul (Gen. 2:7), so God summons covenant man in Leviticus to separate himself to the Covenant Lord and to become holy even as God Himself is holy. The law or justice of God is the way of holiness." The book of Leviticus contains over ninety references to the word holy. The purpose, therefore, of this third book of the Pentateuch is to demonstrate the legal foundation of holiness in the totality of our lives. In the book of Zechariah, the prophet proclaims a day when "there shall be upon the bells of the horses, HOLINESS TO THE LORD" (Zech. 14:20). This same inscription is borne upon the garments of the high priest, and pictures for us a day in which every area of life shall be made holy to the Lord. This present study is dedicated to equipping His church for that redemptive mission.