A Theology of Things

A Theology of Things

Leviticus 25:1-55

Main Idea: God is the sovereign Lord over all things and He provides for His people, so we trust Him to provide, we worship Him—not
possessions—and we obey His commands to care for the created order and to be generous to the poor.

I. God Wants to Provide for His People, So We Trust.

II. God Tells His People to Worship Only Him, So We Do Not Worship Possessions.

III. God Tells His People to Care for Creation, So We Protect It.

IV. God Tells His People to Give to the Poor, So We Give.

V. God Owns Everything, and He Allows Us to Manage It.

VI. God Will One Day Give Us Eternal Possessions.

In 1886 Leo Tolstoy wrote a story that James Joyce called, “the greatest story that the literature of the world knows” (Orwin, Cambridge Companion, 209). Tolstoy entitled the story, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” The main character is a Russian peasant named Pahom. As the story unfolds, he works hard and is able to obtain larger and larger pieces of property, but he is never satisfied. At last he hears of the Bashkirs, who own an enormous amount of land. They make him an unusual offer: for one thousand rubles he can have as much land as he is able to mark off in one day. If he fails to make it around to his starting point before sunset, he forfeits the money and acquires no property.

On the designated day, he starts off well. He makes the first line long before marking a corner, confident that he can complete a tract with that dimension. As he continues away from the starting point, he spots an attractive meadow, and he extends the line to include it in his property, increasing his pace after he marks his second corner. Late in the day he realizes he is still far from the starting point. He runs hard to make it before sunset, and makes it just in time. As the Bashkirs commend him for his impressive accomplishment, Pahom dies of exhaustion. His servant buries him in an ordinary grave, ironically answering the question that Tolstoy posed by his title. How much land does a man need? Six feet.

A surprising amount of the Old Testament is devoted to land—one specific land, the promised land of Canaan. Most of Leviticus 25 is devoted to God’s commands regarding how He wanted His people to relate to the land after they arrived there. God’s commands related to their management of the land. Those commands constitute what we are calling “a theology of things”—God’s way of thinking about possessions. What does God say in His Word about how we relate to material things?

God Wants to Provide for His People, So We Trust

In verse 2 God said, “When you enter the land I am giving you.” That was a promise from God. He was going to give the land of Canaan to them. It was a promise of blessing. Hundreds of years earlier, God had promised Abraham that He was going to bless him with many descendants, and He was going to give his descendants the land of Canaan. When God speaks with Moses here, He is about to keep that promise.

God also told Moses that if His people followed His commands He would provide for them from the produce of the land. In verses 18 and 19 God said, “You are to keep My statutes and ordinances and carefully observe them, so that you may live securely in the land. Then the land will yield its fruit, so that you can eat, be satisfied, and live securely in the land.” God said when His people obeyed His commands, He would provide for their needs.

Over the years several Christian friends have spoken to me about their management of their financial resources. Some of them have shared a similar story. They referred to past years during which they spent their money the way they wanted to spend it, disobeying what God says in His Word about tithes and offerings. They said they had been selfish and materialistic, and during that time they had had financial problems. However, when they began to obey God in their giving, it was amazing how He blessed them financially and in every other way. God’s plan is that we obey, and He blesses.

God said to the Israelites that every seventh year was to be a Sabbath year for the land, and during the Sabbath year God’s people were not to plant their crops (vv. 2-7). God told them to allow the land to rest. Life for the Israelites in Canaan was a subsistence, agrarian life. The people lived from what they grew on the land. If they obeyed God’s command and didn’t plant a crop, how would they get food to eat? How would they live? God said He was going to provide for them. In verses 20-21 God said, “If you wonder: ‘What will we eat in the seventh year if we don’t sow or gather our produce?’ I will appoint My blessing for you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years.”

God also said that every fiftieth year was a Jubilee year. God told His people not to plant their crops during that year either. In the case of the Jubilee year the land would not produce food during year 49, which would have been a Sabbath year, and it would not produce food during year 50, which was the Jubilee year. Still, God said in verse 19, “Then the land will yield its fruit, so that you can eat, be satisfied, and live securely in the land.”

God told the Israelites not to plant; He would take care of them. Their job was to obey God’s command and trust Him to provide. We do the same. We obey God and we trust Him to provide. An old hymn says, “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” Sometimes we do not obey God with our finances because we do not trust Him to provide. Do you trust God to take care of you? If we intend to obey Jesus we must trust God, because Jesus told us to trust Him. When we are having difficulty trusting God to provide for us, we should read again what Jesus said.

Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the sky: They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they? Can any of you add a single cubit to his height by worrying? And why do you worry about clothes? Learn how the wildflowers of the field grow: they don’t labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these! If that’s how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won’t He do much more for you—you of little faith? So don’t worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For the idolaters eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.
(Matt 6:25-33)

Jesus told us to seek God first, and He will take care of our needs. God knows we have needs, but He tells us not to put them first. He wants us to seek Him and to trust Him first, and He will take care of our needs. God wants to provide for His people, so we trust.

God Tells His People to Worship Only Him, So We Do Not Worship Possessions

In Leviticus 25:2 God says, “Observe a Sabbath to the Lord”—the Sabbath was to be kept “to the Lord.” The Sabbath was about Him; it was dedicated to Him. In verse 17 God says, “Fear your God, for I am Yahweh your God.” Fear God, reverence God, and worship God. Verse 36 says again, “Fear your God,” and in verse 38 God says, “I am Yahweh your God.” Again, verse 43 says, “Fear your God,” and in verse 55 God says, “I am Yahweh your God.”

God wasn’t just telling His people how to relate to the land; He was telling them how to relate to Him. The importance of relating to God properly is crucial if we are going to understand Leviticus 25 and most of Old Testament history. Ultimately, the way we think about things and the way we spend money are not about dollars and cents; they are about who is our God. God’s people were anticipating leaving the Sinai wilderness and entering the land of milk and honey. They were about to get a big pay raise. This was as close as they could get to winning the lottery. They were moving from slavery to prosperity. God was preparing them for that change by telling them to remember that He is God. The land is not God; don’t worship the land. The harvest is not God; don’t worship the harvest. The rain is not God; the real God gives the rain, the harvest, and the land. Worship Him.

God knew that in Canaan His people were going to live next to the Canaanites, and the Canaanites worshiped prosperity. They worshiped fertility and called it “Baal.” They worshiped the grain harvest and called it “Dagon.” Water sustains life, so they worshiped the river and called it “Nahar.” The sea is powerful, so they worshiped the sea and called it “Yamm.” We who live in the enlightened, modern West think, “What a primitive religion!” However, many people in our culture have the same religion, and some followers of Jesus try to worship Jesus and prosperity at the same time. Our gods have different names—“BMW” and “Beachfront Property,” “G.P.A.” and “Popularity,” “Lucrative Career” and “Comfortable Retirement.” Some followers of Jesus try to worship such gods and Jesus at the same time. It does not work. Jesus said,

No one can be a slave of two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot be slaves of God and of money. (Matt 6:24)

We have to choose which God we are going to worship—Jesus or money. We cannot worship both. The Israelites were surrounded by people who worshiped multiple gods. But the one true God told His people to be different. In Leviticus 25 God told them, “I am Yahweh your God,” “Fear your God.” God tells His people to worship only Him. Therefore, we do not worship possessions.

God Tells His People to Care for Creation, So We Protect It

When God created the first man and woman, He told them, “Fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth” (Gen 1:28). Genesis 2:15 says God placed the first man in the garden He created “to work it and watch over it.” God made humans the managers of the planet He created.

In Leviticus 25 God gave His people a specific way to care for a specific area of land. He told them to let the land and animals rest every seven years. God was teaching His people that the land was for their use but not their abuse. They were to respect the land, to be responsible with the land, and to care for the land under God’s direction.

We live in a time when people are elevating environmentalism to the status of a religion and worshiping Mother Earth. Such thinking is paganism. If we follow what the Bible teaches about our relationship to the environment, we will not deify nature or consider the environment of greater value than humans. However, we will take care of God’s creation. We will not allow greed to push us to exploit the land without considering things like replenishment and sustainability. In fact, replenishment and sustainability could be considered modern ways to implement God’s ancient command to give the land rest. God tells His people to care for creation, so we protect it.

God Tells His People to Give to the Poor, So We Give

Verses 1-34 address taking care of the land, and verses 35-55 address taking care of poor people. God’s directions to His people about taking care of the poor were very practical, since they were about to become farmers in Canaan. In such a subsistence, agrarian economy it was easy for people to become poor. Furthermore, becoming poor was not just tied to a job loss or a salary reduction. It came about by crops having too little rain or the death of an ox or a few goats. When tragedies like that happened to people a few years in a row, they would lose the ability to support themselves. That meant having no food. In Canaan virtually all the Israelites were poor farmers by our standards. So when God said in verse 35, “If your brother becomes destitute,” He was referring to desperate, life-threatening poverty.

What did God tell His people to do when people lost the ability to support themselves? In verses 35-38 God said to “support him . . . so that he can continue to live among you. Do not profit or take interest from him . . . or sell him your food for profit.” Then God addressed the situation of people selling themselves into servitude in order to live. In that context, the only assets people owned were their animals and their land. If they had sold both and still could not buy food, the only thing left to do was to hire themselves out for support. God told His people to take such a person in, allow him to work, and give him food. Verse 39 says, “If your brother among you becomes destitute and sells himself to you, you must not force him to do slave labor. Let him stay with you as a hired hand or temporary resident; he may work for you until the Year of Jubilee.” So this was not slavery; it was a way to allow poor people to work for food until they could be released in the Jubilee year, when their debts would be forgiven and their land would be returned to them.

Verses 44-46 address the servitude of non-Israelites. Rather than limit comments to these three verses, the list below consists of 12 facts about slavery in the Bible. The list, which includes a reference to Leviticus 25, is an attempt to put Leviticus 25 in the context of what the entire Bible says about the issue of slavery.

1. The Bible affirms that all people of all ethnicities are equally created in the image of God and have equal ability to experience salvation in Jesus (Gen 1:27; Acts 10:34; 11:1-18; Gal 3:28).
2. Practices such as the subjugation of a people group and treating people as commodities are wicked and reveal the depth of humanity’s depravity (1 Tim 1:9-10).
3. The Old Testament allows enslavement of non-Israelites, but it was limited to a specific time in history when God used it as His judgment on the people groups who had rejected Him and oppressed Israel (Lev 25:44-46; Isa 14:1-2). God also commanded Israelites to love their neighbors and to treat the weak compassionately, commands that would eventually undermine the institution of slavery (Lev 19:13-18).
4. Old Testament laws regulating slavery recognized the worth of persons and the inviolability of the family and required release in the case of harsh treatment (e.g., Exod 21:7-11).
5. The slavery of fellow Israelites described in the Old Testament was allowed by God only to provide relief from debt and included provisions for the release of slaves (Lev 25:26,29; Deut 15:12-15).
6. In the New Testament slaves are addressed directly, indicating that God sees them as persons who are responsible for their own behavior, not owned by someone else (Col 3:22-24).
7. The kind of slavery practiced in American history is condemned in 1 Timothy 1:9-10 (called “kidnappers,” “enslavers,” or “slave traders”) as “contrary to sound doctrine” along with murder, homosexuality, and lying.
8. The New Testament teaches that if a slave has the opportunity for freedom, he should take advantage of it (1 Cor 7:21-24).
9. The gospel of Jesus Christ equalizes people, since slaves are free in Christ and freemen are slaves to Christ (1 Cor 7:21-24; Philemon 16-17).
10. The New Testament emphasizes that no matter what our status (married, single, divorced, free, or enslaved) we are to use it as an opportunity to serve God and advance the gospel
    (1 Cor 7:18-24; Eph 6:5-9; Col 3:22-24).
11. The Bible does not advocate bloodshed or rebellion in overturning evil structures of society like slavery. Instead, Christians live with love and grace. As we share the gospel through example and words, people receive Jesus, their hearts are changed, and then societal structures change. Once the gospel is applied by enough people in a society, the elimination of slavery is inevitable.
12. The New Testament teaches that the workplace is a mission field, where both masters and servants live like Jesus and proclaim the gospel. Viewed from this spiritual and eternal perspective, the slave who knows Jesus always has an advantage over the master who does not (Titus 2:7-15).

Applying biblical texts about slavery to a contemporary context can be complicated. The slavery mentioned in the Bible is not the same as the phenomenon of slavery in the antebellum southern United States. The context of the slavery mentioned in the Old Testament was the ancient Near East, and the context of the slavery mentioned in the New Testament was the Roman Empire. The institution of slavery was different in each of those contexts, and different in turn from any contemporary context. However, the list above supplies clear principles that we can apply in any context. We should also remember that we are no better than the people who enslaved persons in different periods in history. The impulse to grab power and subjugate people is part of our fallen nature. Also, racism supports slavery, and followers of Jesus should be active in aggressively fighting racism as a virulent evil.

We can clearly see love and compassion in God’s words about relating to the poor. God told the people who had enough resources to share with the people who did not have enough. God calls His people to be generous to the poor. Some followers of Jesus minister to the poor regularly and in extraordinary ways. Are you one of those who help the poor? God tells His people to give to the poor, so we give.

God Owns Everything, and He Allows Us to Manage It

In verse 23 God said, “The land is not to be permanently sold because it is Mine, and you are only foreigners and temporary residents on My land.” “It is Mine.” When the Israelites conquered Canaan, they were taking possession of a land that did not belong to them. It belonged to God. That fact had significant consequences regarding the way the Israelites treated the land. They could sell land only according to God’s rules since He was the owner. Furthermore, when they sold land they were not really selling it. They were subleasing it, since they were not the owners in the first place—they were just leasing.

The land belonged to God. The people also belonged to God. In verse 55 God said, “For the Israelites are My slaves.” The land belonged to God and the people belonged to God. Psalm 24:1 says everything belongs to God: “The earth and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants, belong to the Lord.” We do not even own ourselves. Followers of Jesus belong to God. First Corinthians 6 says, “You are not your own, for you were bought at a price” (vv. 19-20).

If God owns everything and we own nothing, what do we do with the stuff we have? How do we relate to it? The stuff is not ours; it belongs to God. He allows us to use it for a while, and He tells us to use it for His glory. We drive the car He gives us for His glory, we eat the food He gives us for His glory, we spend the money He gives us for His glory, and we live in the house He gives us for His glory. He owns the houses; we just live in them, just like God owned Canaan and the Israelites were to live there for His glory.

People who rent an apartment or a house know what it’s like to live in a place that belongs to someone else. Living in someone else’s space is different from owning our own place. We can feel the owner or the landlord looking over our shoulder. The first two houses we lived in were parsonages; we lived in them, but they were owned by the church. Our older son turned two years old in our first parsonage. We have vivid memories of our heroic efforts to protect the parsonage from our two year old. At one point, my wife was pregnant with our second son and she had morning sickness regularly. During that time, in one week, our two year old did four memorable things. He took my wife’s lipstick and painted her purse with it. He found the Crisco and covered his entire body with it. He learned that he was able to reach the container of baby powder, and one day during his nap time he walked around his room squeezing that bottle, squirting baby powder into the air in big clouds. Every surface in the room was covered in a layer of white powder. The fourth memorable thing he did was to find a permanent black magic marker and draw on the kitchen cabinets. People who like abstract art might say that he produced a significant body of work all over the kitchen cabinets and walls—cabinets and walls that did not belong to us. So we scrubbed and scrubbed. One area never really came clean, but I kept scrubbing, and as I scrubbed I started thinking about difficult conversations with the parsonage committee and confrontations in deacons’ meetings. All sorts of apocalyptic scenarios were going through my mind, none of which actually came to pass. If they had been our cabinets and walls, I would have thought about the incident differently. I was panicking about the possibility of harming that parsonage because I had the responsibility to take care of it for the owners, and what they thought was important to me.

Just like the church owned that parsonage and allowed me to live in it, God owns everything we have and allows us to use it. Do we work hard to use it in a way that pleases Him? What we want and what other people think are probably too important to us, and what God thinks is probably not important enough. All of us who follow Jesus should be asking constantly, “This thing God allows me to have—am I using it for His glory? Am I caring for it in a way that pleases Him?” For the Israelites, God was their land Lord. He is ours too. He owns everything, and He allows us to manage it.

God Will One Day Give Us Eternal Possessions

We have no evidence that Israel ever observed the Sabbath years or the Jubilee years. In fact, the subsequent history of Israel and some statements in the Old Testament (e.g., 2 Chron 36:21) suggest that during most or all of Israel’s history they neglected God’s commands in Leviticus 25. If they had obeyed God, He would have blessed them, their economy would have functioned smoothly, the poor would have been cared for, and the land would have been fertile. However, they disobeyed, so God judged them and sent them off the land into exile.

Just as the people of Israel lived in Canaan, we too live in a fallen land, a land where our enjoyment of God’s blessings is affected by sin. However, the Bible says we are headed for a land where no sin is found, a land where “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will no longer exist; grief, crying, and pain will exist no longer” (Rev 21:4). God has a future without suffering in store for His redeemed people. Just as God kept His promise to give His people the land of Canaan, He will keep His promise to give us a land in heaven. In John 14:2-3 Jesus said,

In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if not, I would have told you. I am going away to prepare a place for you. If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come back and receive you to Myself, so that where I am you may be also.

Jesus has prepared a place for us. He is in that place, so it is without sin. The book of Revelation contains glorious descriptions of heaven. Such glory is in the future for all followers of Jesus. We will gather in heaven to sing praise to the One who “rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son He loves”(Col 1:13). The hymn “Victory in Jesus” refers to our home in heaven.

I heard about a mansion He has built for me in glory,

And I heard about the streets of gold beyond the crystal sea,

About the angels singing, and the old redemption story,

And some sweet day I’ll sing up there the song of victory. (Bartlett)

We are going to that land in heaven. The land of Canaan was subject to drought, famine, and invasion by enemies. As for our home in heaven, 1 Peter 1:4 says our inheritance is “imperishable, uncorrupted, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.”

God promised Abraham He would give the land to his descendants. But Abraham never possessed the promised land. He was a nomadic shepherd. Just before his wife Sarah died, he bought a plot of land so he could have a place to bury her. When she died, Abraham buried her there, and when he died he was buried next to her. That burial plot was the only land Abraham ever owned. In the end, Tolstoy was right. How much land does a man need? We need about six feet. Hebrews 11 says about Abraham living in Canaan,

By faith he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, coheirs of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. (vv. 9-10)

We are looking forward to that city too. God will one day give us eternal possessions, and that changes everything about our theology of things.

Reflect and Discuss

1. How does the way we manage our finances indicate whether we trust God or not?
2. According to God’s promise and provision, what would have happened if Israel had obeyed God and kept the Sabbath and Jubilee years?
3. How was Canaanite worship similar to our culture’s worship?
4. What was God teaching His people when He told them to let the land and the animals rest every seven years?
5. What attitude should we have concerning God’s creation?
6. When a person or a family lost the ability to support themselves, what did God tell His people to do?
7. How was the servitude of Israelites different from slavery?
8. How do we see God’s compassion toward the poor? How can we show compassion toward the poor?
9. To whom did the land of Canaan belong? Explain.
10. How does looking forward to a heavenly, eternal city change our theology of things?