Day 48: Jesus is Our Jubilee

So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations; and from David until the exile to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the exile to Babylon until the Messiah, fourteen generations. MATTHEW 1:17, EMPHASIS MINE

ONE CHRISTMAS A VERY long time ago, when I was in my early twenties and working in youth ministry in Nashville, I barely had enough money for gas to drive home to Central Florida to spend the holidays with my family. So I didn’t have much to spend for gifts. It was easy to figure out something inexpensive and creative for Mom because we’ve always been close, and I knew what would make her feel celebrated and appreciated. But Dad’s gift took a little more time. I finally decided that I’d sneak into his house while he was at work and clean it from top to bottom since he was a bachelor by then and not the tidiest of housekeepers. Then, after everything was spick-and-span, I put a small Norfolk Island pine tree in the corner of his living room and decorated it with a strand of lights and twelve notes—all of which I’d written on parchment paper with a calligraphy pen and then rolled up and tied with a red ribbon, each describing a special memory we’d shared and/or something I loved about him.

It was kind of a risky gift because my dad was a gruff man who tended to get uncomfortable around emotion. Well, except in church; Dad loved the Pentecostal congregation he went to the last half of his life and most of the folks there were quite wiggly and emotive! But the bottom line is: it would’ve been a safer bet to just buy him slippers and a wallet like I’d done the year before. I don’t remember exactly how he responded when he got home that Christmas Eve and found his house cleaned and the little “Charlie Brown” tree, but thirty years later I found myself cleaning his house from top to bottom again after his funeral. And that’s when I knew how he really felt about my modest gift, because when I was wiping at least a decade’s worth of dust off his dresser, I found each scroll that he’d carefully saved all those years. They were all yellowed with age but still neatly tied with a faded, red satin ribbon. Sometimes it’s the smallest gifts that mean the most, isn’t it?

There’s one small verse in Matthew’s account of the genealogy of Jesus that surely meant a great deal to his original first-century audience, and it still holds huge meaning for us today. We just need to wipe off a couple of millennia’s layers worth of dust to find it! When Matthew frames the time leading up to our Savior’s birth in spans of fourteen generations, it’s all too easy to ignore it as numerological drivel. Given the fact that he was a tax collector before he became a disciple, perhaps he’d never lost the boring habit of using math as a metaphor, right? I mean it’s no wonder why Luke’s lovely birth narrative with the whole “away in a manger” scene is so much more popular at Christmastime.

“Any text without a context is a pretext for a proof text” (a well-known truism by Dr. D. A. Carson) is the rebar in my theological scaffolding because, if we want to really understand what God was communicating then and how to apply those redemptive truths now, it’s imperative for modern-day Christ-followers to know what was going on when the Bible was originally written/spoken. And boy howdy, does that apply to Matthew 1:17!

In order to unwrap this divine present, we’ve got to remember that numbers were hugely important in Hebraic culture, especially the number seven in light of the Genesis narrative. There are seven holy Jewish festivals; the Sabbath is the seventh day; a Shemiṭṭah (the Hebrew word for “sabbatical”) was to be observed in the seventh year; and their jubilee (which was a celebratory year when certain liberties and freedoms were proclaimed and practiced throughout Israel for both people and even the land) was sometimes referred to as the “Sabbath’s Sabbath” because it took place on the last year of seven sabbatical cycles, or the forty-ninth year, according to Leviticus:

“In addition, you must count off seven Sabbath years, seven sets of seven years, adding up to forty-nine years in all. Then on the Day of Atonement in the fiftieth year, blow the ram’s horn loud and long throughout the land. Set this year apart as holy, a time to proclaim freedom throughout the land for all who live there. It will be a jubilee year for you, when each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors and return to your own clan.” (Lev. 25:8–10 nlt, emphasis mine)

Therefore, when Matthew told his version of the Christmas story and said fourteen, fourteen, fourteen (and by the way, he was intentional in the way he broke their history down into three equivalent groupings), followed by the Messiah, he was highlighting Jesus as the seventh seven. What those precious Jewish people—who’d been bound both by literal captivity, as well as the weight of how their crooked spiritual leaders interpreted Mosaic Law—would’ve heard and understood is: Jesus is the Jubilee! Jesus is the One who brings freedom! Pretty amazing gift, huh?

• HOW IS JESUS your Jubilee? What has Jesus set you free from?
• WHAT—OR WHO—STILL MAKES you feel trapped?
• READ GALATIANS 5:1. Now read it again slowly and out loud if possible (obviously you can omit that part if you’re on a crowded plane, train, or automobile!). How does this verse resonate with the reality of where your heart is this season?