This sermon is Pastor Patrick Ramsey’s conclusion to his mini-series on Israel and the Church. He began the series to help explain the current status of the modern state of Israel in terms of the Bible.
He explained in part one, that the very popular and diverse view of ‘Dispensationalism’ holds that Israel and the Church are two different peoples of God; and that the church is God’s plan B.
Protestant Reformation theology holds that God’s covenant with Abraham is completed in the New Covenant of Christ (see Romans 4 and Galatians; Pastor Ramsey worked through many questions in parts 1 and 2).
The Land [34 minutes]:
SERMON HIGHLIGHTS:
- ‘The land’ was a key promise of the Old Testament (OT), especially in Genesis through Deuteronomy
- In the prophets, promises of restoration / renewal are couched in promises of ‘the land’
- The NT doesn’t mention the land of Canaan much
- How are we then to understand promises of the land regarding the church and Israel?
- In parts 1 and 2, it was noted that dispensationalists believe there are two peoples of God, the church and Israel
- Dispensationalism holds that OT promises made to Israel pertain also to the modern state of Israel; that the modern state of Israel has a divine right to Canaan / Palestine forever
- What should we think?
- Why is the ‘land’ so important in the OT and seemingly unimportant in the NT?
- How are promises concerning the land fulfilled?
- In the OT, the promises began with Abraham, Genesis 12 – 22
- But in the beginning, God made the land and everything in it and gave a mandate to mankind about it
- God owns the universe, He gave the earth to Adam and Eve and their offspring
- Adam’s rebellion against God changed all; the earth was thereafter cursed; sin, misery and death would reign
- Note the following:
- One: The Hebrew word for land is the same word for earth
- God gifting the land to Abraham and his offspring is reminiscent of what God did with Adam and Eve; Adam lost it, but God promised to re-gift it to Abraham and his offspring
- Two: God doesn’t just promise to give the land to Abraham’s offspring but also to him
- Three: God promised to give the whole land to Abraham, not just part of it:
- Gen 13:15 for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever
- Gen 15:18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,
- Four: the gift of the land is forever
- The land is part of God’s covenant with Abraham
- Other promises included: God would be his God; to multiply and bless them…
- Because the above is part of God’s covenant with Abraham, conditions were placed on him by God: to leave his homeland; to follow him; walk blamelessly = keep His covenant
- That is, Abraham and his offspring would not possess the land forever if they did not keep the covenant God made with them
- The promises about the land were also given to Isaac and Jacob
- Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did NOT possess the land during their lifetimes
- Yet the promise was to them and their offspring
- That fact in itself should move us to think more carefully about the meaning of the promises of the land
- Why didn’t they possess the land if God promised to give it to them?
- Keep that in mind
- Fast forward to the exodus and consider the following points:
- One: the land is a place of rest and an inheritance
- They had been oppressed in Egypt, in the land they could be free of oppression
- Via the covenant, they were in a familial relationship with God; the land is part of their inheritance
- Two: the land was a place flowing with milk and honey; a good land; filled with good things; a place where God would multiply and bless them
- Like the Garden of Eden
- Like Israel is being given a new paradise; restoration to Eden
- Three: entering and possessing the land is part of the covenant; entering the land required following the Lord; embracing the covenant and it’s requirements
- Four: unlike the patriarchs and Moses; Israel does come to possess Canaan
- Joshua 21:43 Thus the LORD gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers. And they took possession of it, and they settled there. 44 And the LORD gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the LORD had given all their enemies into their hands. 45 Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.
- That is, they received their inheritance
- Fast forward to Psalm 37: the meek and those who wait for the Lord; those blessed by the Lord; and the righteous Will / Shall inherit the land
- The land was a future promise
- How could David speak of a future promise of the land when they already lived in the land?
- [David lived after Joshua]
- David: the righteous will dwell in the land forever
- How can that be when the righteous keep dying?
- One may live 50, 70, 100 years; that does not = forever
- Psalm 95:7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, 9 when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. 10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.” 11 Therefore I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.”
- The above was written centuries after Israel inherited the land
- How can the psalmist compare the generation who is in the land to the generation who had not entered into God’s rest?
- This should force us to think about the meaning of inheritance, the land and the rest
- Fast forward to the exile:
- Because Israel hardened their hearts in unbelief and rejected the Lord breaking the covenant, they were cast out of the land
- Yet God is determined to keep His covenant promises; destruction and the curse will never have the last word
- He made a new covenant and promised His people a new heart and His Spirit within that they might be careful to be faithful so they could dwell in the land forever
- Promises via the prophets were often expressed in terms of a renewed and rebuilt city of Jerusalem
- Jerusalem represents the land
- Such promises also included the Gentiles, see Ezekiel, Zachariah and Isaiah
- The Gentiles will also share in the inheritance God promised to Israel
- The land had already been divided among the 12 tribes of Israel, where are all the Gentile nations to live?
- In considering the OT promises about the land, we must think more deeply; there must be more than a brief life and a small piece of real estate in the middle east, especially since Abraham and Moses, e.g., did not even get that
- What does God need to do to give the land to Abraham as his everlasting possession?
- For Abraham to enjoy the land forever, he would have to live forever
- But Abraham was a sinner and died; he was in Adam in this sin-cursed world
- For Abraham to enjoy an everlasting inheritance, God would have to deliver him from sin, misery, death and Satan
- God would have to raise Abraham from death, give him immortal life and place him in the land that is immortal and incorruptible; in a land not cursed, where God might dwell with him
- Also the case with Abraham’s offspring: all the meek, the righteous…
- Considering all of history, the borders of the land would have to be extended
- The land that was lost by Adam would have to be remade for Abraham and his offspring to inherit for an everlasting possession
- In and through the offspring of Abraham, the Lord Jesus Christ does just that
- The NT depicts what Jesus came to do is a ‘new exodus’
- Jesus went and lived in Egypt to fulfill scripture: ‘out of Egypt have I called my son’ Hosea 11:1, in reference to the first exodus which pointed forward to a second and greater exodus
- On the mount of transfiguration, Moses and Elijah appeared and spoke with Jesus about His departure (exodus) which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem
- The great exodus, Israel from Egypt to the promised land
- Jesus exodus referred to His death and resurrection
- He was to depart from this present evil age to go to the Kingdom of God which He came to establish, to the new creation, the Jerusalem above, the heavenly Jerusalem
- The NT speaks of Jesus as our Passover; as the Rock in the desert that gave water; as the bread from heaven; as the glory cloud that led Israel from Egypt to the promised land; as the One who talked to Moses
- He is God incarnate, the Word made flesh, who gave Himself for our sin to deliver us from this present evil age (Galatians 1:4), and who is bringing many sons to glory (Hebrews 2:10) = this is a new exodus
- Just as Moses went to Egypt to lead the Israelites out from there to the Promised land; so the Son of God Himself came down from heaven into our fallen cursed world so He might rescue us from it and lead us to the new redeemed world
- This is why the NT universalized the promise of God made to Abraham:
- Rom 4:13 For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith
- Paul used the word for world, not earth; or it may have referred to Canaan
- Just as the exodus in the OT pointed to a greater exodus; so the ‘land’ pointed to something greater than itself, a redeemed world, flowing with milk and honey; a new paradise
- Abraham understood, per Hebrews 11:
- Hebrews 11:8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God
- City, country, homeland, land, all refer to the same thing
- This second city is better: new; heavenly; Jerusalem above; city built by God
- This better city referred to in the NT as the kingdom of God
- Just as the city is heavenly in that it comes down, so the kingdom comes down from heaven
- Heavenly does not a reference to ‘spiritual,’ but from heaven. The new Jerusalem, the kingdom of heaven, the new one of the new age, built, established and inhabited by God
- The new earth wherein righteousness dwells, contrasted to this present evil age
- Jesus came to establish this new age, creation; He came to build it in fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham all those years ago
- This is why in the OT, a future inheritance is spoken of even after they received the land of Canaan
- This is why people who were living in the land were exhorted to be faithful so they could enter into God’s future rest
- The concept of ‘the land’ is all over the NT via words about the nearness of the kingdom
- Jesus came to establish it by His death and resurrection
- All who believe in Jesus go on this exodus from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of heaven; the kingdom of God’s beloved Son
- Those are the co heirs with Christ, sharing with the inheritance of the saints in light
- Throughout the NT, Christians are said to have an inheritance and described as children of God
- In Matthew 5, His disciples were described as the meek who would inherit the earth
- Paul: the Jerusalem above is our mother [Galatians]
- As Christians, we are citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem; our citizenship is in heaven, the kingdom of heaven, the new age
- Hebrews 12:22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
- All of those ‘in Christ’ will inherit the above
- The land of Canaan itself was simply a token, a copy of the real thing; it looked forward to and pointed towards the city Abraham sought
- Now that the real thing has come and been built by Jesus Himself, the copy has been done away with, it has been set aside
- That means that land of Canaan, Palestine, in the middle east is no longer holy, no longer religiously significant at all
- Paul: what counts is that your mother is the Jerusalem above; not that you’re circumcised, a Jew, a member of Israel, religiously or ethnically
- What counts is that you’re a new creation in Christ Jesus, that you belong to the city that has been built by God
- You can be a citizen of the new Jerusalem wherever you are in the world because the promise to Abraham and his offspring did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith
- Anyone who believes in Jesus is a son of Abraham, an heir
- We are all sons of Abraham and stand to inherit the promises made to him and his offspring
- We have come to mount Zion, we await mount Zion coming down to earth… this age ending…
- He will establish a new heaven and earth wherein righteousness dwells, Hebrews 3 and 4
- Strive to enter God’s rest; Psalm 95 still applies to us
- We’re in the land but must run the race to the end to receive what is promised
- Those who trust in Jesus are Abraham’s offspring
The Land, by Pastor Ramsey:
The following link is to Pastor Ramsey’s sermons at Sermon Audio: