In my last post I argued that although Israel does not currently possess a divine right to Palestine, they will someday inherit the land promises that God made to Abraham.
This will ultimately happen someday in the future, when, to use Paul’s words in Romans 11, national Israel turns in faith to the Messiah and is once again grafted into the olive tree of God’s covenant people. At that time Israel will (under the New Covenant, not the Old) be given the inheritance promised to Abraham’s seed.
But that’s just one part of the picture. Another part of the picture is that Palestine/Canaan, was never the end goal of the land promises. In this second post I want to argue that the true, final fulfillment of the land promises that believing Israel will inherit is heaven—or, to be more, precise, the New Earth and New Creation. The land that Israel will inherit is nothing less than the earth.
Let me begin with a few observations that will help to set the stage for the point I want to make.
- The great blessing of creation was that man, created in God’s image, lived in God’s presence and enjoyed perfect fellowship with Him. In Eden Adam and Eve enjoyed the three essential elements of the kingdom of God: (1) God’s people, (2) living in God’s place, (3) under God’s loving and gracious rule. In the fall, Adam and Eve rebelled against God’s rule and kingdom, lost these benefits, and were expelled from God’s place and presence.
- God’s plan in redemption is to restore his kingdom through his appointed King, the Messiah. When we arrive at Revelation 21-22 we find that redemption has come full circle and Man is once again enjoying the kingdom that he lost in Eden: God’s people are living in God’s “place” under God’s loving and gracious rule. But now God’s “place” is no longer a single garden (Eden), or even a larger track of land (Palestine), but the whole earth–the new earth. This ideal is promised throughout the Scripture with the refrain, “I will be their God, they will be my people, and I will dwell among them.” This ideal was lost in Eden and will be restored in the New Creation.
- In the Old Testament God paves the way for this future restoration of his kingdom through national Israel. He chooses and calls Abraham, enters into covenant with him, promises to make of him a nation, and to give that nation a land inheritance. Through types and shadows, God was making promises concerning his future plans to restore his kingdom on earth. National Israel, as a typical representation (i.e., type) of God’s kingdom plan portrays the ideal kingdom of God: (1) God’s people, (2) living in God’s place, (3) under God’s loving and gracious rule.
- What’s vitally important when reading the OT is to understand that the external forms and structures of the Old Covenant program were simply meant to foreshadow God’s greater, fuller, perfect, kingdom program in the new creation, the new heaven and new earth.
- So, for example, the temple provided a shadowy foretaste of what it would be like in the eternal kingdom when God dwelt among his people. When you read the OT, you’d get the impression that the temple institution (structure, ritual, etc.) was to be eternal. However, when you read the New Testament and then, finally, arrive at Revelation 21-22, you find that the temple institution which in the OT was presented as an eternal institution, was really only a temporary foreshadowing of an eternal reality—a reality much greater and more perfect than the temple institution could ever portray.
- Similarly, Israel’s monarchy—that dynasty of kings descended from David that ruled over the kingdom of Israel—was really only an imperfect foreshadowing of the future, eternal, perfect, universal kingship of David’s Messianic Son, Jesus Christ.
So here’s the point I’m driving at. The land promises are similar. The promise that the seed of Abraham would inherit the land was really only an imperfect, temporary foreshadowing of God’s intention for his covenant people to inherit a greater, perfect, universal, eternal Rest.
I think the author of Hebrews makes this clear. As does the Old Testament, the author of Hebrews portrays the land promises as a future time of REST for God’s covenant people. He argues in chapter 4 that Joshua was not able to give Israel the promised rest and that God therefore spoke of another, future Sabbath rest for the people of God (vv. 8-9). So what is the future Sabbath rest that the OT land promises pointed to? Well, he makes it clear that it is something that his readers (not just Israel, but now the Church) should strive to enter and that they should be careful not to fail to enter it because of unbelief as OT Israel did. I think it’s clear from Hebrews 4 that the future rest of which he speaks is the future, heavenly rest that awaits all believers.
It seems ironic to me that while this is very unclear for modern dispensationalists, it was not at all unclear for the original recipient of the land promises, Abraham. Hebrews 11 makes it clear that even Abraham understood that the land of Palestine did not represent the final inheritance of God’s covenant promises. According to Hebrews 11:9-10, Abraham was heir to the land promises but, in reality, his hope was not placed upon the land itself but upon the future, heavenly inheritance: “He was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” The OT recipients of the land promises so clearly understood the true nature of God’s promises that they chose to live as “strangers and exiles on the earth” and by faith greeted the true, heavenly fulfillment of those promises from afar (v. 13). The homeland which they sought was not Canaan: “They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one,” and “Therefore,” says the author of Hebrews, “God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city” (v. 16).
Then, at the end of chapter 11, the author of Hebrews acknowledges again that none of the OT saints ever received their promised inheritance. The reason he gives is striking: “And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect” (vv. 39-40). From these two verses I conclude that the reason that the OT saints did not inherit the land was because God had something better in store (a heavenly inheritance), and that better inheritance would not be given until we, the Church, was drawn into God’s covenant program.
So when I say that Israel will inherit the land, what I really mean to say is that Israel will inherit the EARTH. That seems to be what Jesus has in mind when he takes the OT promise that the “meek will inherit the land (Heb. erets)” and converts it to “the meek will inherit the earth (Gr. ge)” (Matt 5:5). Likewise, Paul interprets God’s land promise to Abraham to mean that Abraham would be “heir of the world (Gr. kosmos)” (Rom 4:13). When was Abraham every promised to inherit the whole world? Clearly it was inherent in the land promises.
In other words, the land promises are simply a shadowy type of a greater reality–the earth and new creation. The land promises have not been annulled, but have been expanded to include all of creation.
In my next post I plan to argue, then, that God’s covenant promises concerning the land inheritance are not limited to national Israel. We, as Gentile members of the New Covenant community, are also heirs of the covenant promises—all of them. Or, as Paul puts it, “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal 3:29).
