Have you picked out your Christmas Eve outfit yet? If you need help, especially for dressing the little ones, last Tuesday’s Edmonton Journal has tips for dressing up for the holidays. Of course Christmas isn’t the only occasion that we dress up for is it? Whenever we celebrate a birthday or an anniversary we’ll dress up before hitting the town. We certainly wouldn’t go out dressed in the bib overalls we normally wear to change the oil. That wouldn’t be celebrating “in style.” Celebrating in style is wearing a black tux or an evening gown with all the requisite accessories.
Today the prophet Isaiah speaks to us about dressing up so we can celebrate the Jubilee in style. What’s the Jubilee? Once we’ve answered that question we will learn how to celebrate it in style.
The Jubilee is even better than Christmas. How can anything be better than Christmas?!? At Christmas we get all sorts of presents and it’s not even our birthday (for many of us anyway). Sure, you may receive presents at Christmas but you also give presents. If so, what’s your Christmas budget this year? I’d be willing to guess that families spend more money at this time of year than any other. Because of that, the excitement of Christmas is followed by the dread of the January credit card bill. Wouldn’t it be great if January could be declared a no-bill-month? Since we’re dreaming here, wouldn’t it be great if you received your credit card bill each January with the word “PAID” stamped on the statement? In Old Testament times, God commanded his people to do something just like that. Every seventh year was to be a Sabbath year where all debts from the previous seven years were to be cancelled. They did the same thing every fifty years and called that the Jubilee year after the Hebrew word “yobel” which means horn. At the beginning of the Jubilee year a ram’s horn was sounded to mark the beginning of one’s freedom from debt.
Wow! That would be an event worth celebrating, wouldn’t it? I think you would do a little dance if you knew that every January your credit card bill was to be paid by someone else. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem as if the Israelites ever observed the Jubilee. People were afraid that if they didn’t recoup the money owed them, they wouldn’t be able to survive the year. Their lack of trust in God’s promises to provide for them caused them to miss out on the tremendous blessing the year of Jubilee was supposed to be.
But God’s purpose for the year of Jubilee was not just to level the economic playing field. God wanted the year of Jubilee to serve as a picture for the kind of freedom from sin’s debt Jesus would bring. In fact at the beginning of his ministry Jesus preached on the opening verses of our text and made clear these verses were a prophecy about him. “1 The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, 2 to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn” (Isaiah 61:1, 2).
In these verses Isaiah alludes to the year of Jubilee by calling it “the year of the Lord’s favour.” In what way has Jesus brought us freedom from debt? Well I don’t think I’ll ever have enough money to own a private tropical island. That’s OK. I’ve come to terms with that. If I can just visit such a place from time to time, I’ll be happy. The same can’t be said of heaven, however. If we don’t have what it takes to purchase a spot in heaven, we will never be allowed to see it. We will never be allowed to bask in God’s unfiltered love. Instead we’ll be burning under the glare of God’s anger forever in hell. So what’s it cost to own a piece of heaven? The cost is this: no smart-aleck comments about your teacher’s clothes; no sassy remarks to your parents; no cursing under your breath; no ignoring another person’s pain but doing something to alleviate the suffering. In short the price tag for a piece of heaven is being unselfish every second of your life here. So if you’ve ever ripped crayons out of the hand of a sibling, if you’ve ever bent the truth when speaking to a customer, if you’ve ever groused about having to get on your hands and knees to clean up someone else’s mess, you don’t have what it takes to own a piece of heaven. Instead you’ve carved out a place for yourself in hell.
That’s why Jesus’ announcement is better than the credit card company calling you up in January to say that they have paid for all your December purchases. Jesus came to announce freedom from all our sin. On the cross he paid the debt of hell that we owe and gave us credit for his perfect life. In essence he’s telling us that all our future sins too have been paid for. Can you imagine life with a credit card company like that? Not only will they pay for the odd monthly bill, they have promised to pay for any future purchases you make! Would you ever again worry about not having enough money to pay the heating bill and put food on the table? Would you ever again stew about the cost of those car repairs? No! The credit card company will take care of those charges for you. That’s the kind of freedom from sin Jesus has won for us and Isaiah describes it like this: “10 I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels” (Isaiah 61:10).
Yes, we will celebrate the Jubilee in style dressed in Christ’s righteousness. You see this garment of salvation is no regular hand-me-down. Regular hand-me-downs may not cost anything but they’re often a bit scuffed up and don’t quite fit right. The garment of salvation that Jesus provides is not scuffed by sin and fits you and me perfectly meaning that not one of our sins is exposed to the heavenly Father’s scrutiny.
“If we have coverage like that,” some think, “then we can do whatever we want and still be guaranteed heaven. Let’s party!” But is that thought in keeping with the picture Isaiah provides? He compared us to a bride who is dressed for her wedding day. I have yet to see a bride who carelessly walks through a mud puddle on the way to her wedding. So no, Jesus hasn’t dressed us with his forgiveness so we can sin more. He has dressed us in his righteousness not only to be saved but also to serve. Isaiah put it this way: “They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor” (Isaiah 61:3b).
I don’t suppose many brides would like to be compared to a tree but the point God is making is that we believers aren’t puny shrubs that hardly make an impression to one passing by. God has saved us to be mighty oaks. He wants others to take notice of us because what they’ll see is God’s glory. Especially at this time of year we need to be reminded that God has saved us for service, not from service. The story is told about the little boy who tore through his presents on Christmas morning. He was just following the lead of everyone else in his house when his eye caught the manger scene in the family’s living room. He stared at baby Jesus lying in the manger for a couple of seconds and then looked at the wrapping paper strewn here and there and asked: “Whose birthday is it anyway?”
Yes, whose birthday is it we celebrate at Christmas? You’d think it was ours by the amounts of gifts we receive. But it’s Jesus’ birthday, isn’t it. Why not celebrate by giving the Christ-child a gift? That’s what our synod is encouraging this Christmas. With the theme of Jubilee we’re celebrating how Jesus paid for our debt of sin and how now in response we would like to retire our synod’s debt. Doing this would free up a couple million more dollars a year for missionaries to proclaim the Jubilee across the globe! Don’t think you have anything to contribute towards this special offering? Why not take some of the money you were planning on spending on gifts and giving it to the Lord out of thankfulness for the people who are on your Christmas list? Of course giving a special offering isn’t a way for us to “buy” God’s favor or to let us off the hook from serving him with our words and actions too. It is, however, a unique way to say thank you for the freedom from sin Jesus won for us.
It’s ironic isn’t it that we often go into debt over the Christmas season? Here we’re supposed to be celebrating the fact that the promised Messiah came to free us from the debt of sin and we go and wrack up huge bills that often take months to repay. Don’t get caught up in the buying frenzy. Instead use your time, your energy, and your treasures to say thank you to the one who has dressed you in style to celebrate the Jubilee, your freedom from sin’s debt. Amen.
