Jubilee - Part 2 — G.W. North

Seeing God Clearly and Trusting Him

I'm going to do a new thing. God get tired of being reminded that He was their Redeemer? Oh God! Waken up the church. Teach them to look forward. Teach them to look up. Teach them to see God. Get their eyes cleared.

Teach them to understand. This is God. And in this year of Jubilee, I'm going to surprise you beyond everything. Because generally speaking, a man only gets one fifty years in his life. Not many people get two.

You don't know many people over a hundred, do you? One time in their life. Oh God! It's going to be wonderful. And they would see all their fears swallowed up. Now say, why ever did we doubt? Everything that God wants you to do, beloved, is bound up in this.

And if it hasn't brought you to this, He's failed with you. He hasn't, or you've failed to understand Him. It's to make you trust. It isn't just believing His Word. People don't believe His Word because they don't trust Him.

He said it, but. He said it, but. I put it in language. You may not put it in language like that, but it's what your life shows. What a thing. And He said, in the fiftieth year, if you go through with Me.

He didn't put these words in, but it's obviously there. You've got to come through the forty-ninth year. And when you sow in the forty-eighth year, you've got to know, no, I shan't sow seed. I shan't reap anything.

I shall not do anything that common sense tells me to do. I should do nothing that my history as a man or woman has taught me to do. I should do nothing about what my mother and my father said is the common sense thing to do.

I'm going to believe God. And that's the duty of mothers and fathers in this room. To train your children to trust God. Trust in God. Say to them, it will happen because God said so. How many of you have parents like that?

Or did have parents like that? And are you a parent of that sort? God will, in that year, everything that they've been doing, that is naturally in this area, is all reversed. Everybody had to go back to their original possession.

Returning to the Possession God Gave

And that's what I'm wanting to do to you tonight. Take you back to the original position. Everybody was to return to their own possessions. If they had fallen upon hard times and had gone wrong, this was the grace of God.

You think that the Old Testament was all law, but the law said you must show grace. That's what the law said. If you are employing somebody, you must send them back to their own possession. If I may put it this way, if you were born in Cyprus, you come to work in England, you've got to go back to Cyprus.

Got it clear? Or if you were born in Ireland, I don't know how many people were, you've got to go back to Ireland. This doesn't rub. It's not like that in the New Testament. The principle is, you go back to the possession that I gave you in the beginning.

Why you left it, I don't know. You may have had to leave it. I've left it. You may have had to do this and do this and so on, so on, so on, so on. But if I was your employer and I paid you money, you had to leave me and go back to the original possession.

Now that's the insistence of God. And that was the blessing that could come upon all Israel. Grace? Unbounded grace. Give me back the things I gave up. Give me back the things I left. Yes. And I want to say that to anybody in this room that's done that.

You may be tormented. There may be all kinds of things, but I want to say to you that it's God's will for you to go back to your possessions. Best thing that you can do, beloved, is to find out what your possessions were.

For they still are in the will of God. They still are. You may have left, but you're going back. Hallelujah. It doesn't matter what it is, where you've been, who's got you. It might have been a monetary transaction.

It might have been everything. But everything in Israel was determined by jubilee. Everything. Everything. You should read these chapters. How far is it till jubilee? How many more years? Oh God, I can go back home then.

What did I give up? You can go back to it, son. This was grace. This was grace abounding unto everybody. Oh, I didn't think this was in the Old Testament. No, that's right. It's there that came when you said, Goodbye.

Goodbye. I'm going home. I'm going back to where I belong. I'm going to have what God gave me originally. That's what's going to happen to me. And if anybody married anybody else, a man, woman and so on in different places, if their governor had given them a wife, and it did happen in those days, he took her with him.

The family went. Listen, you families, go back to the original position, will you? Parents, take them back. Take them back. I thought the way was forward. This was forward. You don't go forward one step more than in your original possessions.

Christ’s Teachings and the Call to Come Home

You may think you have what Jesus Christ established for you on this earth when He came down and took on an earth body and lived that glorious life. He taught it out in His teachings. That's why I said we might go to that prayer later on.

He taught it in His teachings. He lived it in His life. In His death, He made the way into it for you and for me. God might take the whole human family back in. If only they'd go. Army, I fear too many are getting away from their original moorings.

They've gone, taken on this, taken that, doing service to this, doing service to that. Go back to that original. One of the little books at the end of the Bible, there's this lovely phrase. Here it is.

You shall possess your possession. It's yours. And I want to tell you, son, daughter, man, woman, whoever you are, that it's yours. And you know, when one sister said of another why she left me to serve alone, tell her to help me.

He says Mary has chosen that better path. It should not be taken from her. She'd got it. She made the choice. You know, there were days when we used to sing such things. I said some of you were born too late.

We used to sing hymns like this. I can remember when I used to go with my old dad and sing in the lodging houses in London. They don't exist now anymore. But I can remember I used to go with him and we used to stand up and sing in front of a company of men, or men and women, whether they were a mixed lodging house or a man's or a woman's.

We used to sing, I've wandered far away from God. Now I'm coming home. And the chorus went, Coming home, coming home. Never more to roam. By thy grace I will be thine. Lord, I'm coming home. Don't sing it now.

Teach everybody to be happy and clap. Here's the big thing for us to see, beloved. The joy of the Lord needs nobody to teach you how to express it. Nobody. It's spontaneous. It's the living spring. It can't be repressed if you've got a genuine experience.

Hallelujah. Praise his wonderful name. And I suppose I determined I wasn't going to keep you long tonight. Because some of you must be tired and perhaps hungry. But don't come in the morning and go to sleep.

Jubilee, Freedom, and Restoration

Here's the thing, beloved, for us to get hold of. Everything is determined by Jubilee. Now have you got that clear? Whatever else you have forgotten or may forget, you lay hold of that. And the whole thing turns on this.

The passage of the years. All business transactions. Are you listening, you business people? All business transactions have got to be done with your eye on the year of Jubilee. You could not buy another person's possessions and have it for your own in the year of Jubilee.

If you'd have bought 10 ,000 acres, that would go back to the original owner. Everything. God didn't intend the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. I'm not a socialist and I'm not a conservative and I'm not on any of these other things either.

But I'm just telling you the truth. Here is the thing. Everything must go back. I suppose when they went back home, they might have found through their own neglect that the poor thing had got overgrown again.

They'd have to work. But it was theirs. They could go back home and they could say, this is mine. Thank you, God. Thank you for your leniency to me. Thank you you didn't cut me off. Thank you that you didn't take it away from me.

I fell on hard times, circumstances, this and I don't know what and there are a hundred things we could mention. But not you, Lord. Your Word shall stand sure. Hallelujah. I can come home free. Absolutely free.

That's what happened in the year of Jubilee. They had to go out free. Absolutely free. Owing nothing to anybody. Or owing no man anything, whichever way you want to phrase it. Now, head high, if I may say so.

Upright. I'm going back to what's mine. Now there is something which is yours, beloved. And if you're not in it, it's because you've not trusted God properly. It isn't because your inheritance was inferior to anybody else's.

Nothing. Something somewhere went wrong. May not all have been your fault. But isn't it wonderful? He doesn't inflict punishment upon you for it. You got the idea that the law said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and you're perfectly right, but you've carried it beyond what God intended.

He says, go back home. It's yours. Somebody else is possessing it. Go back home. They've got to go back to theirs. They can't have yours. You can't have theirs. It's yours. It is yours. Now tonight, why don't you get up and claim it?

Why don't you see it? I don't want to excite you into some statement of faith that's far beyond what you're capable of at the moment. But to see the truth and every step is a step nearer home. Jesus told a lovely parable about it.

The Prodigal Son and Returning to the Father

You know it in the far country. He went and joined himself to a keeper of pigs and would have eaten the pig's will. All the husks. He said, I'm going home. He realized who he was. He belonged to God the Father.

Here's the story. I'm going, he said. And he went. Hallelujah. There was a brother. What sort of a brother he was, I don't know. There was a brother. What did it matter? Father said, come on, son. Come on.

Hallelujah. I want to say to you, come on. Come on. And get in. It's yours. And when you get back to your possession, because it would happen on the year of Jubilee, I could take a few more minutes here, can't I?

When you get back, you will find fields standing thick with corn still. It's grown from the 49th year, the sabbatical year. It has just fallen into the ground and died. Nobody had planted it. It was there.

Perhaps you'll begin to look into this Jubilee a lot more. And you'll find it's waiting for you. Don't rush in and harvest it. Don't do that. Just take sufficient for today. That's all. Tomorrow you can gather again and take sufficient for the day.

Wonderful. We read in the New Testament sufficient unto the days there evil thereof. I want to tell you that sufficient unto the days the goodness thereof too. God's sold it for you. Just waiting for you.

Don't come and bring a sickle. No, you're not going to do any harvesting. Go out and be like the birds and learn the simplest lesson that the dumb creation can teach you. Just learn it. Now this is so marvellous.

The Day of Atonement and the Joyful Sound

And this all began, as you will know, on the Day of Atonement. It began when they heard, and I suppose if there was somebody there saying, it's the fiftieth year, I'm going to listen for that trumpet to blow.

There are so many trumpets in Israel, but this was the shofar, the ram's horn. It was the great thing. It had to come from something living, not bashed out of silver dug out of the earth. OK. And it blew the ram's horn.

And a man writes about it in the Psalms. You know who that man was. David said, Blessed are the people that know the joyful sound. Hallelujah. Blessed are the people that know the joyful sound. Somebody would say, listen for the sound.

Listen for the sound. Listen for the trumpet on the Day of Atonement and you can go. Because on the Day of Atonement, every sin that every single person that committed in Israel was forgiven. Gone. Every sin.

So that fellow could get up and he was sitting in his boss's house listening for that trumpet. I'm forgiven. It's all gone. I'm going. His heart had been cleared and his land had been planted up for him by God and he'd not done that much about it.

It was there. I want to tell you, it's all waiting for you. God hasn't been unfaithful, though you might have been. God hasn't forgotten, though you may have done. He loves you. It's yours. He saved it for you.

We've been forgotten like the Lord Jesus unto an inheritance. Incorruptible. Undefiled. The faith fell away. Reserved in heaven for you who are kept in the power of God unto salvation. Ready to be revealed in the last time.

Learning God Again in the Beginning

Fifty years you may have wandered. Five, ten, I don't know. There are plenty of wildernesses even in the promised land. I think you will agree, Arthur, tonight. Or we block out. In the wilderness, in the promised land, nobody ever reads the rules that govern it.

They've got the clichés. Why don't you come in your heart? I'm not going to make an appeal. It's all right. But I am appealing to you. In the name of God, you go back to what it was in the beginning. As it was in the beginning it is.

Come and be an Adam. Yes, a new Adam I'm talking about. Come and be a new Adam. And learn of God. Come and let God take all yours. Now, don't go the way you've been. Listen, just go out and get enough for today.

That's all right. You're going to have one whole year of learning the lesson that all Israel had to learn when they were in the wilderness. Simple, basic things. We are high flyers. We go after this. We go after the other.

And that, beloved, is all I want to say to you tonight. Or at least all I'm going to say. God gave it to me to give to you. Will you have it? I mean, it's so simple. I could keep saying that all night.

Learning God. Now let's pray, shall we? Father. Oh, Father. Who discredits Thee so much as man does? Not all the vilification of the devil can match what men do. For Lord, He is as nothing. He is but a serpent cast out.

Prayer for Restoration, Faith, and the Holy Spirit

And we, Lord, are Thy children. Father of heaven, whose love profound, a ransom for our souls has found. Before Thy throne we sinners bend. We love Thee, Lord. And thank You, Lord, that those sons may sin and wander away.

And though there have been circumstances which have led to it, we're not here tonight to talk about weak wills or yielding to temptation as vital as all this thing is, Father. We're here tonight at the beginning of this conference, Father.

We might learn again of the simplicity. This is Your feast. The first feast was Sabbath. This is Your day, for it's the day of Pentecost. Oh, Father. Please Thine own heart, Lord, and pour forth upon us all.

And cause those that have lost heart perhaps not yet all hope, knowing there must be a jubilee somewhere, sometime, trusting Thee, oh God, hoping where they cannot yet trust. Oh, Father. Be merciful upon us, Lord, and cause Thy blessed Spirit to move again over the surface of the deep.

Say unto them all, Lord, say unto each one of us, I have laid up my stores for Thee. I have kept my jubilee. And I have ordained it for Thee. And unto this I call Thee the day of Thy great release and the day of Thy great restoration.

For I will make Thee this day again in my own image. And nothing shall distort Thee again, nor turn Thee aside, nor cause Thee to wander as in a wilderness, talking all the time of being in the promised land.

Oh, God, our Father, plead with Thy people, Lord. Cause us all to know the greatness of Thy provision, vast stores laid up as yet untapped and unreached. Now, Father, let hearts rest in Thee. Let hopes rise.

Let faith come. Let trust of the eternal God wrap up every heart in peace. Cause everyone to know this Thy great, great love, wide as the ocean, deep as the deepest sea, high as the heavens above and beyond, O God.

Oh, Father, inexpressible for what man can express Thee. As for this Thou didst send Thy Son because only He could. We learn of Thee. We bless Thy name and cause, Lord. This that Thou hast begun among us shall increase in power in depth and length and breadth and height.

Till every heart is filled with the sound of jubilee and joy fill every corner of our mind. Bless Thy name. Hallelujah. And it shall come to pass in the latter days that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh.

And Your sons and Your daughters shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heavens above and in the earth beneath. And I will do as I have said when My people trust Me.