The status of the Jewish people today is one of the most heated debates in contemporary theology. I am obviously not going to resolve all the disagreements just by blogging about it. Nevertheless, it is also one of the most important issues in biblical interpretation. In previous posts, I have done my best to show that the New Testament understands Jesus and the Church as the fulfillment of the Old Testament hope of Israel. Today, I will be dealing with the issue of the land of promise. Like the other points made in prior posts, this is a big topic and deserves a fuller treatment than I can give it here. My next post will tackle whether the Jewish people still have a place in the plan of God.
The land of promise is something that practically dominates the Old Testament. This is especially seen in the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob:
On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates - the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites."
(Genesis 15:18-20 NIV)
Now there was a famine in the land - besides the earlier famine of Abraham's time - and Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines in Gerar. The LORD appeared to Isaac and said, "Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your Father Abraham.
(Genesis 26:1-3)
Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. When he reached a certain place he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the LORD, and he said: "I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.
(Genesis 28:10-13)
The land of promise is reiterated in the book of Psalms:
Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name;
make known among the nations what he has done.
Sing to him, sing praise to him;
tell of all his wonderful acts.
Glory in his holy name;
let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice.
Look to the LORD and his strength;
seek his face always.
Remember the wonders he has done,
his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced,
O descendants of Abraham his servant,
O sons of Jacob, his chosen ones.
He is the LORD our God;
his judgments are in all the earth.
He remembers his covenant forever,
the word he commanded, for a thousand generations,
the covenant he made with Abraham,
the oath he swore to Isaac.
He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree,
to Israel as an everlasting covenant;
"To you I will give the land of Canaan
as the portion you will inherit."
(Psalm 105:1-11)
Likewise, the promise of restoration to the land of Israel after the exile is a staple of the Prophets:
You are saying about this city, "By the sword, famine, and plague it will be handed over to the king of Babylon; but this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'I will surely gather them from all the lands where I banish them in my furious anger and great wrath; I will bring them back to this place and let them live in safety. They will be my people, and I will be their God... I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.'"
(Jeremiah 32:36-38;41)
Therefore say; "This is what the Sovereign LORD says: 'I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you back the land of Israel again.'"
(Ezekiel 11:17)
Hopefully this small sample of passages illustrates the point that God had made an unbreakable promise that to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob he would forever give the land of Canaan.
But how should New Covenant believers understand this? Should we just leave it as is and assume that only the ethnic people of Israel - the Jewish nation - will eventually repossess that land at some point in the future? Does the New Testament offer up any words on the issue of the land? As a matter of fact it does.
Firstly, as I have demonstrated, then the land of promise is now the possession of the remnant of Israel and the gentiles who believe in Jesus, who together in perfect union form the Church, the Israel of God (Galatians 6:14-16).
Secondly, as a hermeneutical principle, we must interpret the Old Testament via the New Testament. Since Messiah has come and reconstituted the people of God as the Church, it is that newer revelation that must have interpretive priority. As we come to the book of Hebrews, the anonymous writer highlights how Old Covenant types and shadows find their fulfillment in Jesus. For example, commenting on the Sabbath, the writer makes a statement that shows us that the Old Testament land of promise was a shadow of something greater:
Therefore God again set a certain day, calling it Today, when a long time later he spoke through David, as was said before:
"Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts".
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day.
(Hebrews 4:7-8)
While drawing attention to Psalm 95 and its promise of a Sabbath rest for God's people, passing reference is made to Joshua and his conquest of the promised land in the book that bears his name. But the interesting thing to note there is that Joshua conquered the promised land and that Scripture records the fulfillment of the promise:
So the Lord gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give their ancestors, and they took possession of it and settled there. The Lord gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn to their ancestors. Not one of their enemies withstood them; the Lord gave all their enemies into their hands. Not one of all the Lord’s good promises to Israel failed; every one was fulfilled.
(Joshua 21:43-45)
So on the one hand, the land promise was fulfilled. But on the other hand, because of the Exile, Israel was expelled from the land and thus a regathering must take place. Why is this? Well, one answer is that because despite Israel's taking possession, they still had evil, uncircumcised hearts (Deuteronomy 9:6;13). They were sinners. They could not live with a holy God. They needed to be renewed in their hearts and have a new spirit placed in them (Ezekiel 36:25-27). This is why another day is spoken of, called by the psalmist, "today". Today is the day for sinners to receive the new heart and the new spirit that God had promised. Then they can enter into the rest that Joshua - great as he was - could never really give.
But more than this, the writer of Hebrews highlights Abraham and his faith and what he (along with Isaac and Jacob) knew about the land.
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God...
...All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
(Hebrews 11:8-10; 13-16)
Based on the above Scripture, it is clear that somehow, Abraham understood that the physical, earthly land he was standing on when God made that promise was actually a type and shadow of the real promise - eternal life in the New Heavens and New Earth! Baptist theologian John Reisinger writes this: "Abraham obviously realized, while his feet were actually standing in the land of promise itself, that the land was not the full or real promise, but only a pledge of something greater. Abraham's ultimate hope was "heavenly" (v 16) and not "earthly" (v 13). He was still looking for a heavenly city even while dwelling in the physical land of promise. It is clear to anyone without a total theological bias that Abraham's hope was not in the earthly city of Palestine but in the heavenly city itself."
(Reisinger, J. G. (1998). Abraham's Four Seeds: A Biblical Examination of the Presuppositions of Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism (p. 93). Frederick, MD: New Covenant Media.)
With that established, we must reject the Dispensational doctrine that the ethnic people of Israel must inherit the physical, earthly land in distinction from the Church whose inheritance is in heaven. As we have seen, the earthly land was just a picture of the true land, which is heavenly. So we should not look to Revelation 20 and the Millennium for the fulfillment of the land promise (as those of the Dispensational persuasion would have us believe). Rather, we should look to Revelation 21 and 22! As we read of the wonderful eternal state that awaits believers of all times, we find there the fulfillment of the land which God swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
