Justice and mercy always sound beautiful in sermons until you are the parent sitting across from a police officer while your own child is being questioned for stealing.
At that moment, the tension stops being theoretical. The law is clear. The consequences are deserved. And yet every fiber of you recoils at the thought of your child suffering. You want justice because stealing is wrong. But at the same time, you want mercy because love cannot bear to watch destruction unfold.
That inner collision -- between justice and mercy, between what is right and what is compassionate -- is not a flaw in you. It is a reflection of God’s own heart. And the Torah’s rhythms of Shabbat, Shemittah, and Yovel (Jubilee) are Abba’s way of teaching us how justice and mercy live together in time. But we struggle with time.
When we are hurt, we want justice to come quickly. When we hurt someone else, though, we desperately crave a delay in that justice. Time seems to become infinite while we wait for others to repent, but moves at the speed of light when it’s our turn. It’s like the saying goes: I judge others based on their actions but want to be judged based on my intentions.
It’s exactly in this place that these prescribed times set us free. The key question is not simply: Should there be consequences? The deeper question is: What are the consequences for? And that’s where repentance and the cycles of sevens come in.
Consider this young child that’s been caught stealing. On one side stands justice. The child broke the law, someone was wronged, and trust was violated. The legal system has clear consequences and justice must be served.
On the other side, however, stands mercy. The child is clearly immature and impulsive, and they may not fully understand the cost of their crime. Now, the parent sees the whole story -- wounds, pressures, immaturity. Love hates to watch pain unfold, especially when the guilty one is your own child. But the judge must be impartial and the victim needs to be made complete.
So how do you navigate this razor’s edge? Well, it depends.
The pivot is repentance.
If the child is sincerely repentant -- broken over their sin, willing to make it right, open to change -- then mercy can move freely without undermining justice. The parent may still allow some consequences to stand, but they will advocate for mitigation, for restoration, for a path that heals rather than crushes. They may even offer themselves as collateral to set the judge’s mind at ease.
But…
If the child is unrepentant, mercy without consequences actually becomes cruelty. It teaches the child: “You can sin and suffer nothing.” That is not compassion; it is cooperation with their destruction. In that case, real love may actually require stepping back and letting them feel the weight of what they’ve done…which is very hard to do.
So even at the family level, we see three realities in tension:
Truth is not a static idea, but unfolds in time. And this is where Shabbat, the Sabbatical year, and the Yovel become crucial.
The Yovel doesn’t just “give people their stuff back.” It quietly asks: Why was it lost in the first place?
Land in Israel was not just real estate. It was inheritance, identity, and participation in God’s covenant. When a family sold its land, it usually wasn’t because they were bored with that parcel and wanted a new view. It was:
According to Deuteronomy 28, it was ultimately in violation of YHVH’s commands. So when the Yovel comes and returns land to its original family, Abba is not simply erasing history. He is doing at least three things at once:
He’s judging the system
Yovel exposes how quickly wealth can consolidate in the hands of a few. It says to the powerful: “You may be righteous in business, or you may be predatory -- either way, your control is temporary. The land is Mine.” Justice limits how far human greed or domination can go.
He’s rescuing the broken
Yovel lifts the poor, the indebted, the dispossessed. It says to the crushed: “Your failure is not your final identity. You get another chance.” Mercy refuses to let one generation’s disaster permanently define all who come after.
He’s teaching everyone
Yovel is a sermon in real time. It proclaims ownership is not absolute, power is not permanent, and loss is not final. Life is not a straight line of cause and effect; our God reserves the right to interrupt.
But again, why allow the loss in the first place?
Because human beings are not puppets. Abba allows our choices to have consequences. He allows systems to drift, people to fail, and injustice to accumulate. Not because He is indifferent, but because He is working with real moral agents, not pieces on a board.
That blasted free-will runs interference continually and He honors that. Not because He wants to but because that’s the only way to have true intimacy. Besides, if He constantly short-circuited the consequences, we would never learn wisdom, never practice repentance, never hunger for righteousness.
Justice requires that some losses are real. Mercy promises that no loss is beyond God’s power to restore.
The Yovel tells us: “Yes, you truly lost this. It really mattered. It was painful. But I am still Lord of the land, and I have written restoration into the calendar.”
Which means we need to understand this calendar.
Now zoom in closer: the pattern of six and seven runs all the way through Torah. Six days you work, the seventh you stop. Six years you sow and reap, the seventh you let the land rest. Seven cycles of seven years, and then the Yovel, the fiftieth year, a kind of mega-Shabbat for the land and the people.
Why this pattern? Why not just command, “Be fair” or “Be merciful” and be done with it? Because Abba isn’t just teaching ideas, He’s training desires. He is shaping how we inhabit time.
For six days, distinctions matter:
In those six days (or six years), we build, we plan, we make decisions. We hire, fire, assign tasks, set wages, correct mistakes. Justice lives here:
If a student refuses to study, grades reflect that. If a worker refuses to work, their paycheck reflects that. If a child steals, the law will respond.
This is not cruelty. This is how violations get addressed.
But then comes the seventh. On Shabbat, the Torah levels the field:
The message is not: “Roles don’t matter.” The message is: “Roles are not ultimate.”
For six days, we live in a structure of inequality -- of responsibility, authority, or skill. But on the seventh, we are reminded that:
Shabbat says to the powerful: “You are not God!”
Shabbat says to the powerless: “You are not forgotten!”
In that space, the grinding gears of justice pause, and mercy has room to breathe. Your worth is not measured in output. Your identity is not confined to your success or failure.
It’s just you, your God, and all of His creation sitting together -- in unity.
The Sabbatical year and Yovel scale this same pattern to an entire economy.
It’s in this time of abstaining that we reflect on exactly where we are.
Justice shows up and shows us our commitment and subsequent faithfulness. We had six whole years for planning, stewardship, diligence and now the time of accountability has come. And whether we like it or not, Mercy shows up in the seventh. Nobody gets to lock down the edges of their field. Abba ensures open-handedness.
Then, every fiftieth year, the pattern explodes into full restoration. Debts get canceled. Slaves are released. Land is returned.
It’s almost as if YHVH is saying: “Whatever your sixes have accumulated -- good or bad -- I reserve the right to reset the story.”
Think of it this way: The six days/years represent the space where human freedom and justice operate. We build. We choose. We sin. We repent. We suffer consequences. We grow or harden. The seventh then represents the space where Abba insists on interrupting our systems with His presence and His leveling mercy.
On the seventh, He does not erase justice, but He refuses to let justice be the only voice. He listens closely for your repentance so that His mercy can flood your life. Hearts are turned towards one another, us to Him and Him to us, and life breaks in as a result. This is life in full.
Let’s go back to the parent and the stealing child.
During the “six days,” so to speak, the parent has taught, warned, and disciplined. But then the child made choices. As a result, the legal system now has a say.
The parent must not lie and tell their child: “What you did is fine.” That would be betrayal. Justice demands that the wrong be named for what it is. But there must also be a “seventh” in the parent’s heart. A space where the child is not only “the thief,” but still “my child”. A space where discipline aims at restoration, not revenge. A space where repentance, if it appears, can actually change the outcome.
If the child is repentant, the parent’s “seventh-day heart” leads them to advocate on their behalf:
“Yes, they did wrong. Yes, consequences are appropriate. But they are remorseful. Can we shape the consequences toward restitution and transformation rather than mere punishment?”
This is proper intercession. As the parent places their own life on the line for the sake of the child, justice is withheld and mercy is extended.
If the child is unrepentant, the “seventh” still matters -- but in a different way. The parent may say:
“Because I love you, I will not shield you indefinitely from the results of your choices. I will be present. I will pray. I will keep the door open for repentance. But I will not dismantle justice for you.”
This is proper parenting. Besides, it would be foolish for a parent to offer up their own freedom for a child that has no interest in changing their ways.
Ok, enough of this theoretical child-parent exercise. What about us?
If you pay close attention, you will see that is the same pattern Abba uses with us. In fact, the Book of Hebrews goes on to warn us not to be like this unrepentant child or else we bring contempt upon the work of Yeshua:
Hebrews 6:4 For when people have once been enlightened, tasted the heavenly gift, become sharers in the Ruach HaKodesh, 5 and tasted the goodness of God’s Word and the powers of the ‘olam haba — 6 and then have fallen away — it is impossible to renew them so that they turn from their sin, as long as for themselves they keep executing the Son of God on the stake all over again and keep holding him up to public contempt. 7 For the land that soaks up frequent rains and then brings forth a crop useful to its owners receives a blessing from God; 8 but if it keeps producing thorns and thistles, it fails the test and is close to being cursed; in the end, it will be burned.
Grace is not a revolving door for rebellion. Yeshua’s sacrifice was not a cheap transaction but a costly covenant sealed in His own blood. To keep sinning willfully, while claiming His name, is to trample that covenant underfoot and treat the crucifixion as something to be repeated at our convenience. The cross was meant to end sin’s dominion, not excuse it. If we truly grasp the magnitude of His mercy, we will tremble at the thought of exploiting it, and instead let it transform us into the very image of the One who hung there.
All of this reaches its climax in Yeshua, who announces in the synagogue that the Spirit has anointed Him: “to proclaim Good News to the poor … to proclaim release for the captives and recovering of sight for the blind, to set oppressed people free, to proclaim the year of YHVH’s favor.” (Luke 4, echoing Isaiah 61)
He is declaring a kind of ultimate Yovel -- a Jubilee not just for land, but for hearts.
Yet notice He never cancels the seriousness of sin, He never trivializes justice, and He never says, “Your choices don’t matter anymore.” Instead, He does what the Yovel does. He exposes systems of oppression and self-righteousness. He invites the broken, the indebted, the guilty to repentance. He restores what was lost in ways human courts never could.
In Him, justice and mercy meet in their most intense form. Sin is so serious to YHVH that it requires blood in order for it to be covered -- not of an animal this time, but of the Son. This is justice. That same blood is then given freely, for the undeserving, ahead of our ability to “pay it back.” This is mercy.
We live our “six days” in this age, making real choices with real consequences. We taste “seventh-day” rest in Shabbat, in worship, in grace, where all stand equal at the foot of the cross. And we look toward an ultimate Yovel -- the resurrection, the renewal of all things -- when every loss that can be redeemed will be redeemed.
How do we live this out today?
By refusing to let our sense of justice grow cold or our mercy grow careless. We learn to forgive, but also to call sin what it is. We restore without erasing accountability. In our homes, our communities, and our workplaces, we can practice the rhythm of the seventh, pausing from judgment long enough to listen, extending mercy without losing truth, and creating spaces where repentance can take root. To walk this way is to live the calendar of heaven on earth -- a life patterned after Yeshua, where justice and mercy are not enemies, but partners in redemption.
We are now left with several deep and profound truths:
Loss is real, not an illusion
Land in Israel was truly lost. Children truly suffer for their sins. People truly get crushed by systems and by their own foolishness. Justice does not pretend otherwise.
God has written mercy into time itself
Shabbat, Shemittah, and Yovel are not spiritual ornaments. They are structural declarations that tell us no human hierarchy is ultimate, no economic arrangement is permanent, and no personal failure is beyond the possibility of restoration.
Repentance is the doorway where mercy and justice meet
Mercy doesn’t bypass justice; it comes through justice. It acknowledges the wrong, receives responsibility, and then appeals to a God who has already woven restoration into the story. All we have to do is truly repent.
On the seventh, we all stand equal
Teacher and student, employer and employee, parent and prodigal -- all are simply human before the face of our God. His presence levels us in a way that no court and no marketplace ever will.
The six days matter precisely because the seventh is coming
We work, build, decide, and discipline in light of the fact that there will be a day of rest, a year of release, a final Jubilee. That knowledge restrains cruelty and fuels hope.
Justice without mercy becomes crushing. Mercy without justice becomes enabling.
We all want a consequence-free God, but without consequences Yeshua’s blood means nothing.
It’s the very reality of consequence that gives mercy its depth. The cross only matters because sin does, and the blood only saves because guilt was real.
Without the cost, there is no covenant, and without the weight of justice, grace becomes sentiment instead of salvation. Consequence is not cruelty, it is the proof that redemption has substance. When justice and mercy hold hands through time they form something far greater than either alone: redemption.
The cycles of Shabbat, Shemittah, and Yovel remind us that Abba’s mercy does not cancel justice, and His justice never extinguishes mercy. Instead, both move together, pulsing like a heartbeat through time, teaching us to live within the tension until the final rest comes.
Just as a parent’s love refuses to choose between justice and mercy, so our Father’s love refuses to abandon either. Every Shabbat rehearses that truth -- that consequence and compassion share the same heartbeat. And when the final seventh arrives, it will not erase justice, but fulfill it in mercy.
And that is the story Shabbat, Shemittah, and Yovel keep insisting we rehearse -- the rhythm of consequence and compassion, of judgment and restoration -- until the day we enter the final seventh and enjoy His presence equally, face to face.
I hope to see you there.