God Is NOT Mocked - Leviticus 25-27

 Leviticus 25:18-22 (ESV)

“Therefore you shall do my statutes and keep my rules and perform them, and then you will dwell in the land securely. The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and dwell in it securely. And if you say, ‘What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?’ I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years. When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating some of the old crop; you shall eat the old until the ninth year, when its crop arrives.

These verses are found in the section concerning the Sabbath Year and the Year of the Jubilee.   The entire section is based upon God resting the seventh day and God commanding that the nation keep the Sabbath.  

Genesis 2:1-3 (ESV)

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

Exodus 20:8 (ESV)

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

The nation was told that they were to work their land for six years. On the seventh year they were to NOT work the land.  God would give them enough crops in the sixth year to last both the seventh and eighth year, until the crops came back in on the ninth year.  Imagine the faith this required.   Imagine that today we tried the same thing.  We worked for six and then took off the entire seventh year.   The year of Jubilee required even more trust of God’s care.   You took off both the 49th year (that would have been a typical Sabbath Year), but you also took off the 50th.   That would be two years, back-to-back that you would give the land rest.   It would not be until the third year that you had crops.   This is an amazing act of faithfulness on God’s part to provide enough in the year proceeding the Sabbath rest for the land.   The nation of Israel, of course, did not keep these years of rest.  They worked the land like it was a wicked slave.  In fact we know that they missed 70 of these Sabbath rest years.  That was the exact number of years they served in captivity.   God would get rest for the land.  He even put His people in captivity to give them that rest.   

2 Chronicles 36:20-21 (ESV)

He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.

We can think we can disobey God’s Word and get away with it.  But God will not be mocked! 

Galatians 6:7 (ESV)

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.