Jubilee! by J. Preston Eby THE INHERITANCE (2)

Jubilee!         

by J. Preston Eby

THE INHERITANCE    (2)

"Verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled"(Mat. 5:18).

It is only when we recognize the typical character of God's dealings with Israel that we can rightly appreciate the wonderful history of that people, or understand why their history, in preference to that of all other nations, is so particularly recorded by the prophets and the New Testament writers. In them, as the New Testament writers show, God has given striking illustrations of His plans, both for the Church and the world. Their Tabernacle service, so minutely prescribed in the divinely given law, with its bleeding beasts and all its peculiar appointments, their festivals and holy days, their sabbaths and all their ceremonies, as types pointed forward to antitypes, larger, higher, and grander far than those shadows. And the apostle Paul assures us that those antitypes will be laden with blessings for mankind, when he says that the law foreshadowed "good things to come " (Heb. 10:1; 8:5; Col. 2:17); while our Lord, in the above expression, assures us that all good things thus foreshadowed are sure of fulfillment. 

When our Lord said that not one jot or tittle of the law should pass away until fulfilled, He referred not only to the fulfilling of its covenant obligations for all under that Law Covenant, finishing its hold upon them, by meeting its demands against them in full with His own life, but He meant more than this: He meant further, that all the blessings expressed in it typically would also be sure of fulfillment upon an antitypical scale - the plane of reality. In all the Israelitish ceremonies, God caused no type to be made which will prove meaningless, or pass unfulfilled; for the keeping of a type is not the fulfilling of it. The fulfilling is reached where the type ceases, being displaced by the reality, the antitype.

Thus, for instance, the slaying of the pascal lamb was fulfilled in the death of Christ, the "Lamb of God," and there began the special blessing upon the antitypical firstborn, the elect believers of the Church age. The blessing, foreshadowed in that type, is not yet completely fulfilled, though the fulfillment began with the death of Christ, our Passover Lamb. In like manner, every ceremony prescribed in the law of Moses proves to be of typical significance. And the particularity with which the observance of every detail of the types was enforced throughout the age of Law gives emphasis to our Lord's words quoted above - that every minute particular, every jot and tittle, every dotted "i" and crossed "t", must be as meticulously fulfilled spiritually as it was carefully enforced naturally in the ceremonies of the law.

Because of the tremendous importance of the time that you and I are living in, at the close of the age, it is my deep conviction that it is infinitely important for us to gain understanding concerning some of the patterns, symbols, types and shadows given to us in scripture. Whenever one receives a true revelation from God, he will find somewhere in the Word that which points to it, that which is a symbol of it, that which is a pattern to it. We are admonished by the apostle Paul that everything that was written aforetime was written for our learning, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. So I believe that as God's unfolding to us continues to bring us more and more into Himself, there are patterns that we can find which will help us to understand the wonderful purposes of God in His people.

What appears in the scripture on the surface, the letter of the Word, suddenly illumined by the Spirit of Truth, brings tremendous discovery. It has been said, and I believe it is true, that the letter of the Word or the letter of the law, could never be explained apart from the gospel of grace. But, on the other hand, the gospel of grace in its fullest measure, in its depth and width and height and breadth, could never be understood without comprehending the figures of the law.

There is an interesting passage in Matthew 5:17. "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." Many folk would like to do away with the law. Contrary to things He came to destroy - He came to destroy the works of the devil, He came to destroy death, He came to destroy the carnal mind - but contrary to the things He came to destroy, the Christ did not come to destroy the law, rather He came to bring the law to its highest fulfillment .

In this writing we propose to examine that typical feature of the Mosaic Law known as Jubilee, and to show that it was intended to foreshadow the great Restitution, the recovery of mankind from the fall, to be accomplished by the redemptive and reconstructive and restorative activities of God outlined in Acts 3:19-21: "Repent   therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; and He shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began." Jubilee, in its very character, was a clear and unmistakable illustration of that glorious time of the restitution of all things. Since the Jubilee was a part of the law, and since repeating it naturally does not fulfill it, and since our Lord declared that the type could not pass away without fulfillment; and moreover, since we know that no such restitution of all things as that foretold "by all the holy prophets since the world began," and prefigured in this type, has ever yet occurred, we know that it must be fulfilled in the future. True, there is a present partial fulfillment in a firstfruits company, as we shall consider in detail later, but the broadest and fullest measure of fulfillment awaits the total triumph of the Kingdom of God in all realms forevermore.

Under the law of inheritance in Israel every family received a tract of land as a perpetual inheritance. This land was a trust from the Lord. The land remained the Lord's, although He gave each family the right to produce food and clothing from it. The Israelites were to exercise stewardship of the land. The ancient landmarks showed the boundaries of each family's portion. If they rented or sold or lost the land to someone else, the property came back to the family in the Jubilee at the end of the fifty years. Thus, even if the inheritance were lost, it remained still, typically, an eternal inheritance.

On the spiritual plane the very thought of our "inheritance" immediately brings to mind so many things recorded in the scriptures. How that the "meek shall inherit the earth," how that we are to "inherit the kingdom," and to "inherit the life age-abiding," to "inherit the promises," "inherit the blessings," etc. and all of this thrills the heart with the gracious outflow of the Father's love to us. In Ephesians 1:5 & 11 the apostle wrote, "Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will ... in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His own will."

An inheritance is the result of another's gain, which is passed on to you. It comes to you for another's sake, it is not the result of personal accomplishment. We are learning what it means to be a son of God, realizing God's great plan and purposes involved. One of the important rights of sonship is that of inheritance. Heirship depends upon our relationship to God - our Father. If we have been born of God, if we have been born from above, we are children of God and consequently heirs of the Almighty. This is what the apostle speaks of in Hebrews when he teaches about the discipline that God applies to His sons, and he says, "Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection to the father of spirits, and live?" God is the Father of spirits. God is the Father of our spirits. Furthermore, God is the God of the spirits of all flesh (mankind; Num. 16:22; 27:16). 

When we were born of the flesh we became heirs of our fleshly parents; but when we were born of the Spirit of God we became heirs of our heavenly Father - God! He purposed to make the inheritance ours by way of relationship, having "begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fades not away" (1 Pet. 1:3-4). Begotten - to an inheritance! To be "heirs of God, and joint heirs with Jesus Christ" (Rom. 8:17). It is through Him, through Jesus Christ, that we have obtained and been made heirs of this wonderful inheritance. What we receive we share in him, in union with Him, for He is the "heir of all things" (Heb. 1:2). All that we have is through our Lord Jesus Christ, and by grace. "Giving thanks unto the Father, which has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light" (Col.1:12).

Inheritance is also concerned with nationality and law one inherits in the country of his parentage and according to the laws of that land. Jesus explained to Nicodemus in Jn. 3:5, that in order to enter the Kingdom of God human beings have to be born-again - of the SPIRIT. The Kingdom of God is the land or realm of our inheritance, and that great land is entered into by birth!

"Blessed be God the Father...who has begotten us again ... to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fades not away, reserved in heaven for you" (1 Pet. 1:3-4). This inheritance is "reserved in heaven for you," in the spiritual realm. Most saints subscribe to the crude notion that our inheritance is heaven - a mansion over the hill-top in some far away celestial Disney World. Not so! The apostle says that our inheritance is "reserved in the heavens." And from this spiritual realm of unlimitations we "draw down" our source of life and blessing and glory and when we are full it overflows to all about us. From the very first moment of our begettal unto this living hope, we begin to lay hold upon our inheritance. We begin by learning through the revelation of the Word and the dealings of the Spirit, which map out that inheritance, what God is like, and what He is prepared to be to us. Next we proceed to appropriate and make use of His attributes and properties in the crucible of daily experience and need. Then we become possessed of the indwelling life of God, who works His very nature into ours. And so we come to possess God just in proportion as He possesses us. We inherit Him as our portion up to the measure in which He possesses us. 

Arise! Oh sons of God, you are living on a vast estate! Around you on all hands are God's life and love and grace and wisdom and power and glory awaiting your appropriation. Do not be content to be circumscribed and limited, as was Israel in the wilderness. Be rather like Joshua and Caleb who march boldly into the land crying, "Give me this mountain!" taking in evermore of the rich territory allotted by God.

http://www.tentmaker.org/articles/savior-of-the-world/