Real Jubilee

When we lived in SC, Dawn and I would often watch a local Christian broadcasting channel.  The channel throughout the day would have various worship hours or preachers from across the country that had bought time on the channel.  However, every night they had a two hour singing, preaching, and talking show.  It was mainly local preachers, local singing groups, or representatives of community events that were coming up.  It was always entertaining to watch amateur anchors try to come up with enough questions to fill up the time  during the talk show segment of the program.  It was not odd for the 'real spill' to last about five minutes but the programming require about 30 minutes of conversation.   Fun to watch them try to fill the time up. 
At certain times in the year (seems like it was quite often) they would have their fundraising telethon.  They would get the "big" preachers for that.  All kinds of promises were made about the hundredfold blessing that would come if you gave, and it was fascinating to watch them take various scriptures from various places to back up whatever their points were.  One favorite each and every year was Jubilee.  The first time I saw it, I was amazed.  Jubilee only comes around once in 50 years and I was fortunate enough to see the 50th year celebration.  The following year, the same dude came back and said it was Jubilee again.  It was based on some type of prophetic math that only the "big" preacher could understand.  He would use a white board to explain it, but it was always too spiritual for the rest of us to be able to grab on to.  Whenever Jubilee came, it was the year to get all your stuff back.  I heard one time that if you played a country song backwards, you would get your wife back, your truck back, and your dog would come back to life.  That sounds something like the way that preacher described the year of Jubilee, and he talked about it every year.   I don't think that is quite what was meant by it.
Leviticus 25:11-12 summarizes well- That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. ¹² For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you. You may eat the produce of the field.   (www.lifejournal.cc) In the days of the Old Testament, Jubilee did not come every year based on diffferent math every time.   Instead, Jubilee came every 50 years.  The thought behind it is something like this:  With the celebration of the Sabbath day each and every week to allow the body to rest and worship, the ground needed a Sabbath as well. Every seven years the ground was to rest from planting.  People practiced crop rotation.   It is good for the health of the soil.  However, every 50th year, there was a great celebration of the Sabbath based on seven sets of seven years.  7 x 7 is 49 and they were to celebrate the following year (50th) with the ultimate Sabbath.    It would be the year of rest or freedom and remembering all that God does for you year in and year out and celebrating that with freedom for others. It was a beautiful year and time.  It was not manipulated with goofy math.  It was a once in a lifetime experience (for most). 
Now the Sabbath is not in a day as much as it is in a person.  In Christ we find our Sabbath rest.  With that rest comes freedom.  Freedom in Christ is much greater than anything that the folks of  Jubilee could fully grasp.  I believe Jubilee was really a prophetic event that pointed to all that we can have in Christ now. It was a foreshadowing of the real freedom and the real rest that was to come in Christ.   Knowing that, we ought to live for Christ, celebrate our freedom in Christ, and live like folks that have been changed by His Sacrificial Death.   If we have been forgiven and have surrendered our lives to Him, we are free to live for Him.   That is something to celebrate each and every year...not by goofy math....but by a glorious Savior.