Friendship Baptist Church Of Christ Jesus
 
The Word of God is Truth and Life! Food For our Souls that sustains us everyday. As it’s freedom, God’s living Word, with its power to transform, penetrates to the depth in our being. Dare we open ourselves to that kind of intimacy? It is a Living Word, a word vibrant with life, a word that carries the power of life, and the power of transformation, a persistent word – a word that is active in us until our very spirit and soul, joints and marrow are divided or parted; that is, until death.
Enjoy this short reminder that Gods Word is necessary for us to live:
 
 
 
  
                                                   Monthly Manna
   “Jubilee For God”

A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be to you; in it you shall neither sow, not reap what grows of itself, nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you shall eat what it yields out of the field (Leviticus 25, 11-12).) Jubilee is unique among the holy days because it is the only annual feast determined by counting. All the other festivals God commands us to keep on certain dates on the Hebrew calendar, but we must count for Jubilee.
 
Biblically, the number fifty has its closest association with two things: the Tabernacle/Temple (in some of its measurements) and the Jubilee. The apostles describe God's church as a temple, and Christians are individual "living stones" within it (I Corinthians 3:9, 16-17; Ephesians 2:19-22; I Peter 2:5). Every fiftieth year in
ancient Israel, the Jubilee was decreed on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 25:8-9), which, among other things, represents unity, being at one, with God. The Jubilee was a year of liberty, when all debts were cancelled and inheritances reverted to their original families (verse 10), foreshadowing "the restoration of all things" (Acts 3:21). It was also a year of rest (Leviticus 25:11), when no crops were sown or reaped, a foretaste of God's rest (Hebrews 4:4-10). Under this type, the fiftieth day of the count, Pentecost,
represents the harvest of Christians into God's Kingdom by the resurrection.
 
Overall, then, we count to Jubilee for two major reasons:
1.  God commands it, and
2. It teaches us to realize and use carefully the ever-shrinking time we have to come "to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13).
 
In His wisdom, God has us annually take stock of our procession through time so that we will devote ourselves to making the most of it. In doing so, we can gauge our progress toward God's Kingdom. David writes in Psalm 39:4, "LORD, make me to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know how
frail I am."  If we understand just how short our time is, we also realize how weak and insignificant we are next to God and eternity. It forces us to rely upon Him and strive to improve. This is the kind of attitude that God desires in us and will enhance our growth in character.
 
The term “JUBILEE”
The word “Jubilee” is derived from the Hebrew term yôbēl which means “ram”. This is because the “ram’s horn was used for trumpets and the year of jubilee was announced by the blowing of the trumpet” (cf. Josh 6,4-8.13). Isaiah speaks the language of the Jubilee year when he prophesies of the coming prophet who would be filled with the Spirit of Yahweh and who would bring good
tidings to the afflicted, bind the broken hearted, comfort mourners and declare liberty to captives. He would proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and God’s year of vengeance (Isa 61,1-3). In the NT, Jesus strongly identified himself with the messianic prophet of Isa. 61,1-3, when he read in the synagogue of Nazareth. This episode (cf. Luke 4,16-30), thus, becomes programmatic for the entire ministry of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke – as He becomes the one through whom God would accomplish all those prophetic details of Isaiah (cf. Luke4,21).
     
 
 
Humbly Submitted Minister Nina Amos