It’s time for a little update, not much, but I am no longer new to blogging. I have been at it a few years. Not that I have gained any particular stature. I simply can’t claim to be new at it. I still write as part of my profession, but blogging is more interesting. Blogging is my way of sharpening ideas and fleshing them out. It’s a journey, and I know I don’t always “get it right”, but I take it seriously.
I have been on a journey for truth since I emerged from the haze and confusion of adolescence, much of it self-induced. Stepping out of that myopic existence I began to get an inkling that a world of truth lay in front of me to encounter, and so I set off. I didn’t realize, then, how much faith is required to seek truth.
If you have followed my blog for any length of time, you know that I have written often on the theme of migration (aliens, foreigners, sojourners, and strangers) as it appears in the Bible. Now that I am aware of it, I am amazed at the amount of time devoted to it in God’s revelation to us. It is a rich and deep vein of gold with significant Gospel implications.
I began reading to determine how God views immigrants back in 2014 during the Syrian refugee crisis. I wrote Immigration: The Strangers Among Us in the fall of 2014 to share what I found.
Since then I have noticed how central this thread is to the Gospel and the whole biblical narrative from the beginning (the exile of Adam & Eve from the garden) to the end (the gathering of people from every nation, tribe and tongue before the throne of Jesus in Revelation 7:9). In my daily reading recently, I noticed another segment of that thread involving David before he was king. When you see it, it’s obvious.
David Was a Refugee
David rose quickly to prominence after killing Goliath. He was initially taken in by King Saul because of that success, but Saul became jealous of David as he had more and more success in battle andas a leader of men. God rejected Saul, though he remained King, and David was anointed as his successor.
Jealousy drove Saul to want to kill David. His first attempt is chronicled in 1 Samuel 18:10-11. Saul tried to pin David to the wall with his spear twice, David dodged him and escaped. Saul tried a different tactic – to send David into battle after battle, hoping he would be killed by enemy forces. (1 Samuel 18:17, 25) When those efforts failed, Saul ordered his son, Jonathan, and his attendants to kill David, but Jonathan would not do it. (1 Samuel 19:1-2)
With Jonathan’s help, David fled into the wilderness to preserve his life, but Saul pursued David with an army of men. David was on the run from Saul from 1 Samuel 19 through 1 Samuel 26 until Saul died in battle with the Philistines.
Today, we would call David a refugee because he was displaced due to violence. Over 123 million people have been displaced today because of war, armed conflict, persecution, human rights abuses, and generalized violence, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). About 60-70 million refugees are displaced inside their own countries. The other 40+ million refugees have crossed country borders to escape the violence that threatens them.
In 1 Samuel 21:10-15, David fled across the border to the Philistine city of Gath, which ironically was the hometown of Goliath, the giant that David killed. The Philistines were obviously enemies of the nation of Israel, but David was desperate.
Not surprisingly, the Philistines recognized David and were suspicious. David feigned insanity to save himself from potential hostility (1 Samuel 21:10-15), and he returned to hiding in the wilderness of Israel.
Being a refugee is a desperate circumstance. Like David, many people are caught up in local, regional, or national violence and do not have safe places to go in their home country. They face danger at home and abroad. People in David’s position are vulnerable. They look for safety, protection, and welcome wherever they can find it.
The things David experienced as a refugee and asylum seeker play out for millions of people in our world today. In fact, more people are displaced today because of violence than ever before, according to the UNHCR Global Trends Report published in 2024. That number doubled in the last decade, leaving 1 out of every 67 people in the world displaced today!
This is obviously a sad state of affairs, but I am more interested in what God has to say about these things. There was a time when I didn’t know. Since 2014, I have become increasingly aware of the way scripture views people in refugee status, and today I will trace what can be found in the life of David when he became a refugee and asylum seeker.
I just finished reading Judges 19-21, and I want to look away. I realize, though, that looking away is exactly the thing I should not do. This story is meant to offend modern and ancient sensibilities alike. We dare not look away and move on without understanding the poignance and significance of this passage in the Bible.
It’s a good time to state the obvious: not all passages in scripture are prescriptive. In fact, many of them are simply descriptive – a statement of what actually happened.
Further, we should recognize that Hebrew Scripture works by burying commentary subtly into the text in ways that require us to question, dig, and pull it out. Scripture is like the buried treasure and the pearl of great price that requires effort to obtain. We are not robots or data receivers. We are living beings contending with a living God and a loving revelation that requires interaction.
Scripture is also brutally candid about the human condition and the human heart. The often repeated phrase, “There is no one righteous, not even one,” is borne out over and over again to be true. All of the Bible testifies to that fact.
Hebrew scripture builds on itself. The patterns and themes we see early on are echoed in later passages. We need to pay attention to the repeated patterns, because that is where the text is signaling that we should dig.
Scripture often confronts us in ways that are highly uncomfortable. If we feel disoriented reading it, that is not a failure of interpretation. That is the point.
“The word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.“
Hebrews 4:12
The closing chapters of Judges are not merely recounting Israel’s past; they are exposing what happens when a covenant people slowly, perhaps inevitably, detach themselves from the living reality of God while continuing to operate within the forms of religion. The religious structures are maintained, but the substance evaporates through spiritual neglect, idolatry (love of things more than God), and a failure to love others.
The Horror Is the Message
The brutality of Judges 19 is intentional. The narrative is crafted to unsettle us.
A Levite—one who should embody spiritual leadership—sacrifices the vulnerable to preserve himself. A town within Israel reenacts and surpasses the wickedness of Sodom. A woman is used, abused, and discarded,. And the response of the nation, though clothed in the language of justice, spirals into something equally disordered, brutal, and ungodly.
If we are tempted to distance ourselves from this story, we are already missing the purpose of the text. Scripture is not merely documenting their failure. It is revealing the potential trajectory of our own failings: the inclinations of the human heart untethered from right relation to God and people – the sin that is always crouching at the door, waiting to creep in, and ready to take hold … if we let it
I am increasingly impressed by the importance of understanding the arc and sweep of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. Though the Bible is a collection of many writings by many authors compiled over many centuries, it is a single, finely woven tapestry rich and brilliant in its nuance and theme.
Of course, a tapestry makes no sense if we do not view it from the right perspective. From the back side of the tapestry it appears like a jumbled mess of tangled threads.
The full beauty and design of the tapestry remains a mystery until it is viewed from the right perspective. Only then can we understand and appreciate it.
We would have no sense of the beauty or theme of the tapestry if we only saw it from the back side. Because the tapestry of thole Bible is so grand, we can also miss the big picture if we study it only as through a microscope or a magnifying glass.
We need to step back often and consider the trajectory, arc, and sweep of Scripture – from beginning to end – to make sense of the individual threads that may not appear to make sense in isolation.
From the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob onward, the Bible seems to be all about these patriarchs and their descendants to whom God promised a land. For over 400 years Abraham’s descendants looked forward to taking possession of this land. That time was spent in captivity in Egypt, where the prospects of God’s promise grew dim and seemed unlikely until God sent Moses.
Led by Joshua, the people finally enter into the land after another 40 years of wandering in the wilderness with Moses. They drive out the inhabitants, settle in, and live there almost a millennia through cycles of judges and kings. It seems all about this land and its people. The theme of God’s covenant to give his people the promised land and the people’s covenant to keep God’s law dominates the portion of Scripture we call the Old Testament.
The land, the great leaders, the Law seem to define their destination. Again and again, however, those things prove to be provisional. The leaders fail. The Law fails because they seem wholly incapable of keeping it. The very land, itself, seems to fail them.
When we step back, we see that these things that seem to be the main point of the whole story actually point beyond themselves. They expose something deeper. They give way to something infinitely greater.
One of those themes that gets buried and lost in the jumble of threads is Jubilee. The Jubilee instructions are embedded in the middle of the Law in Leviticus 25. They are God’s specific instructions on how Israel was to live in the land into which God was leading them. That they never actually carried out the Jubilee instructions may account for us failing to recognize their importance in the tapestry of God’s Word.
The Radical Vision of Jubilee
In Leviticus 25, God established the Year of Jubilee—a societal reset unlike anything in the ancient world. The Year of Jubilee was to be observed after seven periods of seven years. In the 50th year, the Year of Jubilee, the land was to be returned to its original owners. Debts were to be released. Indentured servants were to be set free.
The Year of Jubilee was to be observed every 50 years. Every fifty years was to be a reset.These were God’s instructions and the reason for these instructions was clearly laid out:
“The land is mine” sayeth the LORD, “and you are strangers and sojourners in it.“
(Leviticus 25:23)
Let that sink in….. God never intended Israel to own the land.
Even today many people consider Israel to be the land God promised his people for eternity. Even today we think it is all about the land.
Jubilee appears to us to be an economic policy. A cringeworthy redistribution of wealth that might offend modern, conservative sensibilities. But underneath it lies a theological theme – God’s design – that reshapes everything when we see it:
God wanted them to live in the land, to work the land, to benefit from the land, but only and always as temporary dwellers – as foreigners. They were not to call the land home. They were never meant to treat the land as their own – as owners.
The write of Hebrews understood this, and commended Abraham for living in the land of promise “as in a foreign land, living in tents.” (Hebrews 11:9)
We can understand why, the writer of Hebrews commended the people of faith who “acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.” (Heb. 11:13) They were “seeking a homeland … a better country … a heavenly one.” (Hebrews 11:15-16) Why? Because they understood the promised land wasn’t their final destination!
Jubilee is not about fairness, or economics, or socialism—it is about something much more transcendent. It is about God’s eternal plan for the heavens and the earth and all the people in it. It is a reminder to Israel (and us) of who they (we) are in relation to God. It is a reminder that to them (and to us) this world is not all there is. God has bigger plans!
A People Shaped by identity
Though God promised His covenant people a land, their identity as God’s people was the most important thing. God’s vision for them extends beyond land into identity as His people. The Israelites were not meant to identify with the land, but with God.
They were to identity as God’s people living temporarily in a land God gave them, and they were to be a light to the nations. From the days of Abraham, God planned “to bless all the nations” through his descendants. (Gen. 12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; & 28:14) They were to be a people God called out from among the nations to covenant with Him. These people were intended to identify with God’s greater purpose in the world – which was for all the nations.
Israel is commanded to care for the stranger, the poor, and the landless in the land of God’s promise—not merely as an act of generosity, but as an expression of memory and identity:
“You were strangers in Egypt.”
God wanted them to remember who (and whose) they were. God rescued and redeemed them for Himself and for His purposes. Their story was always meant to shape their community and society into what God wanted them to be. God wanted to establish His people in His land to carry out His eternal plans for all the nations – for all people in the world.
They were not to be a people defined by power, dominance or possession, but by dependence, deliverance, provision, and protection of others – just as God delivered them, provided for them, and protected them. God’s instructions were structured to prevent them from becoming the kind of nation under which they once suffered – a nation like all the other nations around them. They were to be different, holy, and set apart for God’s greater purpose
In Luke four, Jesus announced his public ministry in his hometown synagogue with these words:
“The spirit is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Luke 4:18-19
Good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, and freedom for the oppressed echoes Isaiah 61. “[T]he year of the Lord’s favor” echoes Leviticus 25, where Moses passed on the jubilee instructions given by the LORD to the LORD’s people.
Jesus was saying that these things foretold by Isaiah and the Jubilee instructions from Moses were fulfilled in him. Most of us are familiar with the way that many of the prophecies in Isaiah were fulfilled in Jesus, but we may not appreciate how Leviticus 25 takes on special significance – and controversy – in the life and ministry of Jesus.
Jesus announced his public ministry in a dramatic way in his hometown synagogue when he asked for the Isaiah scroll, opened it, read the words quoted above, and sat down. The people in the synagogue were initially “amazed at the gracious words” Jesus spoke. (Luke 4:22) By the end of the short exchange that occurred after that, the people wanted to throw Jesus off a cliff. (Luke 4:28-29) What happened?
The words of Jesus that provoked his hometown people to anger were these:
“‘Truly I tell you,’ he continued, ‘No prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.'”
Luke 4:24-27
Why did these two stories provoke the people to anger? Maybe the better question (the one we might not want to ask) is whether we are much different than they were?
The tension that played out in that Galilean synagogue when Jesus announced his ministry presages our modern reality 2000 years later. We still have a difficult time with the instructions, intentions and long-term plans that God announced when He told Abram that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through his descendants.
Today, I want to review some relevant provisions in Isaiah 61 and Leviticus 25 to explore why that reference did not sit well with God’s people. It wasn’t the references so much as the stories of Elijah and Elisha that he connected to them. Those stories – and what they suggest – may still not resonate well.
For at least 7 years, I have been drawn to the passage in Luke 4 where Jesus gives perhaps the earliest description of his public ministry. Jesus introduced his intentions by reading a select passage from the Isaiah scroll, rolled it up, sat down, and announced, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21) These were the words that he read:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
Luke 4:18-19
Immediately after this announcement, Jesus began demonstrating in Galilee what he came to do – teaching with authority (Luke 4:31-32); setting people free from demonic spirits (Luke 4:33-35); and healing the sick (Luke 4:36-40). At the end of this flurry of divine action, Jesus said, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.” (Luke 4:43) In this statement, he clarified that the good news he came to proclaim is the coming of the “kingdom of God.”
This short passage from Isaiah 61 that recalls the Year of the Lord’s Favor (Jubilee) focuses our attention back on Leviticus 25, which is the framework for the communal life God desired His people to embrace when they settled into the land of God’s promise.
The context of these words in Isaiah 61 remind of us the significance of these words that defined the ministry of Jesus and the Jubilee principles that characterized his life and message. When Jesus quoted from Isaiah 61 in the synagogue, he was incorporating God’s great plan and purpose into the announcement of his ministry.
Isaiah 61 cannot be understood apart from Isaiah 59, which recalls the iniquities of the people that separated them from God and the blood that was on their hands. (Is. 59:1-2) They abandoned the way of peace and justice. (Is 59:8-9) They walked in darkness. (Is. 59:10) No one was available to intervene. (Is. 59:15-16), so God said He would step in (Is. 59:17) with a Redeemer for those who would repent. (Is. 59:20)
Isaiah 60 announces God’s plan of redemption: “arise, shine, for your light has come.” It presages that “nations will come to your light.” (Is 60:1:3) Isaiah 60:4-16 announces God’s intention that all the nations will come to Israel “bringing your [Israel’s] children from afar” (v.9), and “foreigners will rebuild your walls” (v.10) , and “you will drink the milk of nations and be nursed….” (v.16) Isaiah 60:17-22 promises peace, no more violence, everlasting light, and righteousness.
In that context, Jesus read the opening verses of Isaiah 61 – announcing that the time had come for proclaiming good news to the poor, binding up the brokenhearted, proclaiming freedom to captives and release from darkness for prisoners, and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.
Significantly, the Jesus left out the concluding words: “and the day of vengeance of our God….”
In doing that, Jesus signaled that he did not come for judgment. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:17) Jesus came to proclaim the good news of the coming of the kingdom of God predicted in Isaiah 61 – healing, freedom, release, and blessing – because God’s people had failed to live into and live up to the plan God had for them.
The words Jesus read culminate with a proclamation of the “year of the Lord’s favor” from Leviticus 25. This is where it gets interesting to me. I have not focused on this part of what Jesus said before, so let’s dive in.
Navigating by Faith 