Leviticus 24

v1-9: Those who preach God’s Word are “like burning and shining lights in Christ’s church.” They are responsible for “opening up and preaching the word, to make its light clearer and to apply it more widely.” Every Lord’s day, they are to “provide new bread” for those who gather, which is “the product of their fresh studies of the Scriptures.” It is the “duty of people to provide resources for [them], as Israel provided for the lamps. If ministers are inadequately resourced, then the people have no right to complain about an inadequate ministry.”

v10-23: A law was established for blasphemers to be stoned. This was a law to restrain people “from speaking evil of the God of Israel.” Though this punishment for blasphemy has been set aside, by it we are taught that we “must not make light of such words… which come from hatred toward God and cause great guilt or great grief to those who hear them.”

Leviticus 25

v1-7: The law concerning the Sabbath year instructed the Israelites that they were “to live in constant dependence on divine Providence,” and that the reason why they “receive bread,” is “not only because of [their] own diligence, but also, according to God’s will, by the word of blessing from the mouth of God, without any human effort.”

v8-22: The Year of Jubilee was when “the release of personal debts and the legal restoration to every Israelite of all the property and all the freedom that had been sold by them since the last Jubilee” took place. By this the Israelites’ “genealogies would be carefully preserved, which would be useful to clearly show our Saviour’s ancestry,” and “the distinction between the various tribes would be kept” because “though the people might buy lands from another tribe, they could not retain them longer than till the Year of Jubilee” before it “would revert to their original owner.” In this law we see “a type of our redemption by Christ from the slavery of sin and Satan and our restoration to the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

v23-38: The land was a sign of the people’s fellowship with God, so to transfer their part of the land so that it belonged to someone else was in effect to cut themselves off from God. “Christ can redeem, and has redeemed, the inheritance which we had forfeited and given up by our sin, and has given it as a new inheritance to all who by faith are joined to him.”

v39-55: The laws concerning slavery are uncomfortable to modern ears. For Israel, they were “intended to preserve the honour of the Jewish nation as a free people, who were rescued by divine power from slavery.” Some see in the “authority which they had over the slaves whom they bought from the neighbouring nations,” a prefiguring of “the bringing in of the Gentiles to the service of Christ,” showing “that no one will receive the benefits of the gospel… except those who are true Israelites and the children of Abraham by faith.”