03 Did God Lie to Israel?

Krisan Marotta: Good morning. This is Krisan Marotta, welcoming you to Wednesday in the Word, my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today we'll be listening to a talk given by Dr. Erica Moore titled, Did God Lie to Israel? Understanding Ezekiel's Vision of the Future in Light of Its Fulfillment in Christ. Dr. Moore is a professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Trinity School for Ministry. I first heard this talk in person at the October 2009 Women in the Word Workshop, which is a Ministry of World Reformed Fellowship. I'll put a link to their website in the lecture notes. I am grateful to republish Dr. Moore's talks here. She is one of my favorite teachers, especially on the Old Testament. I have links to more of her talks on my website, wednesdayintheword.com, and you can also find her work on tsm.edu. Thanks so much for listening. Speaker 1: The title of today's talk is Did God Lie to Israel? Now, I could have asked my son when he was two, and he knew the answer to this. Okay, of course not. But what we're trying to get at today is what do we do with, for example, the passage that Rosemary just read in Ezekiel 36, and we're gonna actually uh read a little more there in a few minutes. What do we do with the repeated promises in the Old Testament to Israel that they will come back and enjoy the land? What do we do with those? Okay, and you know, is this just a filler because I ran out of things to say for this last talk? No. Unfortunately, not having something to say is not a problem I have in the first place. And secondly, what I hope to show at the beginning here is this is quite important. Now, part of the answer that I want to formulate lies hidden in these pictures. So I'm gonna start in the back here and ask that you look at these, and then at the end we'll explain how this helps answer our question as to what do we do with all these promises to Israel. I want you to think for a moment and listen carefully to my question. I'm putting a little timeline here. And today is October 4th, 2009. Okay? If in this little timeline, the cross represents the all the complex of events surrounding Jesus' first coming, okay? His incarnation, his death, his resurrection, and ascension. And then here we are today in uh October 2009, and the blessed hope of all believers is that Jesus will come again. That is that's our hope. Jesus' second coming. Now, what I'd like you to think about and just shout out some answers. If you were to ask, it could be friends, family, your own ideas, what events need to attend the second coming of Christ? Okay, and I don't necessarily want what you think, but what are some of the things that folks you know would say? Uh if you know you gave them this outline in a Bible study or something and said, and I did this. Um my husband and I moved out to uh Pittsburgh in 1994 because he was a PCA pastor, and it was a very small rural church, and uh the ladies asked me if I would do a Bible study on the second coming. And one of the first, I think probably it was the yeah, it was the first meeting we got together, I actually put this timeline up and I asked the ladies, okay, well tell me when you think about the second coming, what things come to mind. Okay? And it was very interesting. The responses we got didn't necessarily jive with what I think are just some of the common understandings that you would expect among reformed people. So let me ask you, and you don't need to say, well, my mother believes this, but I don't. We don't need to just tell me. Okay, we don't need to do that. What if if you were to give this to friends, family, what sorts of things would people say need to happen between today and the second coming? Okay, the rebuilding of the temple. Of course, not after last night's talk, they wouldn't say that, but okay, uh, okay, progression in apostasy. Okay, an antichrist. Okay, Jews returning to Jerusalem to do what? Okay, uh restart the sacrifices, live in peace after a while. Okay, what else? Okay, a tribulation of some sort. And then there's going to be some who will talk about uh when that will take place. Okay, gospel preached to all. Okay, from Revelation, the witnesses. What about the church? Oh, okay. We get raptured out. Okay, yes. Uh uh the Romans, uh an interpretation of Romans 9 to 11, that there's a great revival among the Jews to Jesus. Okay? Okay. The what? Oh, yes, the millennial kingdom, right? Doesn't Revelation 20 talk about a thousand-year period? Okay. So these are some things that folks will will talk about. Well, I mentioned yesterday when in the first talk, when we talked about why it's important to study the prophets, one of the three reasons I gave was that what you conceive to be the necessary events attending the second coming of Christ has more to do with your interpretation of Ezekiel than it does Revelation. Okay? That that's and hopefully we'll unpack this a bit today, and if not, later on in our study time. I want to read to you, and my talk today relies quite heavily on old Palmer Robertson's book, The Israel of God. I want to read to you a quote from a U.S. president. And you can, if you've read this book before, don't shout it out, but if you haven't, I want you to try to guess who the president is that said this. And this is a U.S. president that spoke before the Israeli Knesset. And this is what one of our presidents said. Quote, if you abandon Israel, God will never forgive you. It is God's will that Israel, the biblical home of the people of Israel, continue forever and ever. Unquote. Now Robertson writes, so spoke the President of the United States in a speech delivered before the Israeli Knesset assembled in Jerusalem. He was recalling with apparent approval the words of his desperately ill pastor. He concluded the speech by saying, quote, this is our president now before the Israeli Knesset, your journey is our journey, and America will stand with you now and always. First of all, this president is expressing the view that for the U.S. to abandon Israel would be an unforgivable sin. A second assertion that this president is making is that the land of the Bible, according to God's will, should continue to be the possession of the nation of Israel forever. And thirdly, he committed the U.S. to support the nation of Israel without any qualification forever. This is a president. So again, is this just filler today? No, this is important. Okay, any guesses as to who the president was? Reagan? No. Carter? Bush? No. Clinton. Okay? This is President Clinton on October 27, 1994. Okay? So we have a president of the U.S. promising these sorts of things and formulating foreign policy based on this belief that the land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel, the Jews, forever and ever. Okay. Is that true? What do we do? And where does this idea come from? Well, we're going to zip around and read a few passages today, and they're on your outline there. Let's look at the Amos 9.11 passage first. Amos 9.11. And remember, as you look at the pictures that come around, I think they provide a clue for our answer. Okay, Amos 9.11. And again, context is king, and Amos, as we remember from yesterday, is an 8th-century prophet sent to the northern kingdom to warn them of impending judgment. Okay, and we know that shortly after Amos spoke, remember we talked yesterday in 722 BC, indeed, the northern kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrians. After the destruction, Amos, which is, and he's typical here among the prophets, my NIV at chapter 9 says Israel's to be destroyed. And then after that, many of the prophets then talk about a future restoration of Israel. And at verse 11 of Amos 9, in that day I will restore David's fallen tent. I will repair its broken places, restore its runes, and build it as it used to be, so that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name, declares the Lord, who will do these things. Okay? Let's look at Zephaniah. Got to keep going a little in the Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah. Zephaniah chapter 3. And Zephaniah is preaching before the fall of the southern kingdom. So he's in the early 600s B.C. And in Zephaniah 3, verses 14 and following. Again, he talks about, I call Zephaniah Mr. Sunshine. Okay, it's a real gloomy book. The day of the Lord is coming. The day of the Lord is coming. And yet after the judgment that he announces, this is what he says in Zephaniah 3, and I'm going to read 14 to 20. Sing, O daughter of Zion, shout aloud, O Israel, be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord has taken away your punishment. He has turned back your enemy. The Lord, the King of Israel, is with you. Never again will you fear any harm. On that day he will say, they will say to Jerusalem, Do not fear, O Zion, do not let your hands hang limp. The Lord your God is with you, he's mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love. He will rejoice over you with singing. The sorrows for the appointed feasts I will remove from you. They are a burden and a reproach to you. At that time I will deal with all who oppressed you. I will rescue the lame and gather those who've been scattered, the exile. I'll give them praise and honor in every land where they were put to shame. At that time I will gather you, I will bring you home. I will give you honor and praise among all the peoples of the earth when I restore your fortunes before your very eyes, says the Lord. You can look at the other passages on your own. For the sake of time, let's go back to the Ezekiel 36 passage that Rosemary just read. Now, the nice thing when you read the book of Ezekiel is that he dates a lot of his prophecy. So it's very it just helps in because Ezekiel preaches both before the fall of the Southern Kingdom in 586 BC. That's when a lot of his sermons are primarily, you know, God is going to destroy Jerusalem. After the fall, he starts talking about God will then restore the people. And in Ezekiel 36, I want to reread, starting at verse 24. I will take you out of the nations, I'll gather you from all the countries, and bring you back to your own land. I'll sprinkle clean water on you, and you'll be clean. I'll cleanse you from your impurities, from your idols, I'll give you a new heart, put a new spirit in you. Now look at verse 28. You will live in the land I gave your forefathers. You'll be my people, I'll be your God. I'll save you from your uncleanness, I will call for the grain and make it plentiful, I will increase the fruit of the trees, etc. Okay, so this promise, you're coming home. Turn over to Ezekiel 37, and this will be the last passage that we read, and because we could spend the entire hour reading passages that have these sorts of promises. And Ezekiel 37 is the second half of probably the one chapter that people know in Ezekiel, the Valley of Dry Bones. Okay? And at verse 15 of Ezekiel 37, the word comes to Ezekiel, Son of Man, take a stick of wood and write on it belonging to Judah and the Israelites associated with them. That would be the southern kingdom. Then take another stick of wood and write on it Ephraim's stick, belonging to Joseph and all the house of Israel associated with him. And sometimes in Scripture, the northern kingdom is referred to as Ephraim because it was one of the largest tribes. So he's to take these two sticks, write northern kingdom on one, southern kingdom on the other, and join them together into one stick so that they'll become one in your hand. When your countrymen ask you, won't you tell us what you mean by this? Say to them, This is what the sovereign Lord says. I'm going to take the stick of Joseph, which is in Eph which is in Ephraim's hand, and of the Israelite tribes associated with him, northern kingdom, and join it to Judah's stick, making them a single stick of wood, and they will become one in my hand. Okay, so this picture that, remember the northern tribes dispersed in 722 BC, the southern tribes dispersed in 586 BC, they're going to be one again. Hold between their eyes the sticks you've written on, and say to them, This is what the sovereign Lord says. I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they've gone, I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land. I will make them one nation in the land on the mountains of Israel. They'll be one king over all of them, and they will they will never again be two nations or be divided into two kingdoms. They will no longer defile themselves with their idols and vile images, or with any of their offenses, for I will save them from all their sinful backsliding, and I will cleanse them. They will be my people, and I will be their God. My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd. They'll follow my laws and be careful to keep my decrees. They will live in the land I gave to my servant Jacob, the land where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children's children will live there forever, and David my servant will be their prince forever. I'll make a covenant of peace with them. It will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary among them forever. My dwelling place will be with them, I will be their God, they will be my people. Then the nations will know that I, the Lord, make Israel holy when my sanctuary is among them forever. So here, Ezekiel, writing after the fall of Jerusalem, has this magnificent promise to the exiles. You can just picture maybe the elders are in front of his house again, like we saw last night in uh chapter 8, and he preaches this sermon. And if you're a Jew sitting there in uh, say 582 BC listening to Ezekiel, in your mind, what's going to happen in the future? First of all, what's going to happen? The two kingdoms will be reunited, and then what? Where are you going? You're going home. You're going home. For a couple years? Forever. Okay? It's that was repeated a couple times. You're hard to miss that. Okay. So, our question is when and how are these prophecies that are that prophesy this tremendous restoration of Israel, when are they fulfilled and how are they fulfilled? It's not like this is tucked away in Obadiah, okay? This is over and over again in the prophetic books. This this repeated promise that Israel's going home, they're going to have peace, etc., etc. Okay? So that's what we want to talk about today. Now, I get the impression here that at Women in the Word, we we spend a lot of time talking about redemptive history, okay, and especially about the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And what you've been learning is that when we think about the Old Testament, we think in categories of shadow, type, prophecy, in contrast to the New Testament, where we think about reality, substance, and fulfillment. And this redemptive historical approach that Women of the Word teaches every year has great significance when we apply it to the idea of land as experienced by Israel under the administration of the Old Covenant. Okay? So what we want to do is take a brief biblical theological overview of land in Scripture, and then come back and say, well, okay, what do we do with all this stuff? Okay? So land, let me give you a couple of facts. The Hebrew, there's a couple of different Hebrew words for land, and one is Eretz, and according to the Jenny Vesterman Theological Handbook, that word, that Hebrew word, Eretz, appears approximately 2,400 times in the Old Testament. Okay. Is that for the next time you play biblical trivial pursuit? No. That's important for when we get to the New Testament. Okay. It is the fourth most frequently used noun in the Old Testament. Okay? Sometimes it refers to earth in the more cosmological sense, and often it refers to the land of Israel. Okay, the fourth most common noun in the Old Testament, 24, about 2,400 times. There's another word, Adamada for land, that usually talks about the land in the garden, the arable uh soil. That's used about 224 times. Okay, so this is the fourth most commonly used noun in the Old Testament. Okay? Now, a question that we need to ask ourselves is when did land become theologically significant in the Bible? Okay, just think about that for a second. When did land become theologically significant in the Bible? And a lot of folks will think will answer, and I won't embarrass anyone here, but I do this with my students, and usually somebody gives the wrong answer, and I say, thank you, that's exactly the wrong answer I wanted. The wrong answer is Genesis 12, when God promises land to Abraham. That's a tempting answer, but it's not the right answer. Paradise is the answer. Okay? So land did not begin to become theologically significant with Abraham and the promises to him that begin in Genesis 12. The concept of a land that belongs to God's people originated in paradise. Okay? And this is this is significant. Okay, so any theology of the land, and we want to know what do we do with all these concrete promises to the Jews that they're gonna go home and have a land. How do we answer that? And you know, do we agree with Bill Clinton that we've got to be pro-Is-Israel in our politics? And my obviously this isn't a political forum. My only point today is you can be pro-Israel Israel in your politics. That's not my point, but don't blame it on Ezekiel. Okay, that's that's where we're gonna end up. Okay, you may do it for ethical reasons, for lots of reasons, but please don't do it because of Ezekiel chapter 36 and 37. Again, what this isn't a political discussion. So any theology of the land has to start with creation and paradise. And of course, the opening. Chapters of Genesis focus on land being lost as the result of Adam and Eve's disobedience. He trusts in God, and God says, I'm going to give you a land. Abraham's hope, and I'm quoting here from Robertson, Abraham's hope of possessing a land arose out of the concept of restoration to the original state from which man had fallen. The idea of paradise was renewed in the promise of land made by God and his covenant to redeem a people from his fallen condition. Okay, so as Adam and Eve had known God's blessing in Eden, so God would bless his people in a particular piece of real estate. So the idea of restoration to paradise provides the proper biblical context for understanding God's promise to give land to Abraham. The original idea of land as paradise significantly shaped the expectations associated with redemption as the place of blessedness arising from unbroken fellowship and communion with God. So how does the Old Testament unpack this idea of returning to paradise in this particular parcel of real estate over in the Middle East? Well, first of all, land in the Old Testament belongs to the Lord. Okay? We won't look at, for the sake of time, we're not going to look at a lot of these passages. We will look at Leviticus 25. That's an important one. So turn to Leviticus 25. And the book of Leviticus is uh recounts the the laws that will govern the spiritual life of, and not just the spiritual life, the civil and spiritual life of the newly formed nation of Israel. The book of Leviticus, the Israelites are still on Mount Sinai. They've been there since Exodus 19. They'll stay there till Numbers 20. And it tells them what life will be like when they get into the land. And Leviticus 25, verse 23. The land must not be sold permanently because the land is mine, and you are but aliens and my tenants. Okay? That's a very common theme in Scripture. The land belongs to the Lord. Okay? That's why it couldn't be sold. It was a gift that the Lord gave to his people. The whole earth belongs to the Lord, but it was this special parcel of land where he wanted to have a special relationship with his people, which would then result in blessings for all the nations. Okay, so everything belongs to the Lord. This land has a particular purpose. Because the land belongs to the Lord, another concept involved with land in the Old Testament is the idea of inheritance, when talking about God's gift of land to the people. And this is stressed especially in Deuteronomy. Turn over to Deuteronomy 26, verse 1. When you've entered the land, the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance and have taken possession of it and settled in it. And then it goes on, do X, Y, and Z. Okay? But the idea is that this language of inheritance that pervades the Old Testament, the idea is that God gives it to His children. So now, in addition to land belonging to the Lord, it's an inheritance that he gives as a gift. So that's why families couldn't sell it. That's why it had to go back every 50 years with the year of Jubilee. The land wasn't just about owning a particular piece of real estate, but it involved that filial, that sonship relationship with God and enjoying relationship with God. Okay? So the land, the gift of land was never meant to be an end in itself, but it was a means of developing this relationship between God and his people. And quoting Robertson here, relationship with Yahweh is at the heart of land theology in the Old Testament. So it's not about this parcel of land, it's about a context in which Israel can enjoy fellowship with God. Turn to Deuteronomy 11. And we also want to look at Deuteronomy 6. We said that we want to think of the land, it's a gift from the Lord, and it's this idea of returning to paradise. That's why this expression that's often used in the Old Testament, and I'm now at Deuteronomy 6.3, hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey, so that it may go well with you, and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you. This idea of the land being a land flowing with milk and honey, that is a theological point, not an agricultural point. That's important. Okay, the land is good, it's flowing with milk and honey, paradise language, because that is where the restoration of intimacy with God is to take place. The real condition of the land was quite different. There's this old Jewish fable that says that to describe what the land of Israel is really like. According to this fable, at creation, God commissioned two storks to scatter all the stones over the whole face of the earth. And you had two bags, one for each stork. The bag being scattered by one stork broke over Palestine. Therefore, half the stones of the world are located in Israel. Okay? It's a beautiful land. I've never been there. It's a beautiful land, there's great diversity, but there are a lot of other parts of the world that are much more fertile and lack all the stones that you have in Israel. So when we talk of, when the scriptures talk about the land being a land flowing with milk and honey, it's more a theological point than it is an agricultural point. Okay? And why? Well, turn to Deuteronomy 11. That way, all the blessings associated with the land, they're tied much more closely in the Israelites' mind to God's gracious provision. Okay? It's where God abundantly has to give give, doesn't have to, but gives material gifts of all kinds to his people. In Deuteronomy 11, and remember Moses' swan song here, he says in verse, we'll start in verse 10 of Deuteronomy 11. The land you're entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt from which you've come, where you planted your seed and irrigated by foot as in a vegetable garden. But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It's a land the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning to the end. Okay, no longer like the uh in Egypt where their crops were watered regularly by the Nile. In this land, God shows his special care for his people by giving them the reins and doing that in the various seasons. And apart from that particular blessing of God, the land would become a curse to the people. Okay? And why, again, and why Israel with all the rocks, again, why isn't the promised land in Greenland? Well, again, it's there at the bridge of three continents, okay, so that Israel could then be a blessing to all the nations. Another idea of land in the Old Testament is that it is a uniquely holy land because God dwelt there. And we talked about that last night. Okay, where's the glory of God? It's in the Holy of Holies above the ark in Jerusalem. Okay, it's a special, and that's why the Jews, oh yes, Jerusalem can't be destroyed. God lives here until we have Ezekiel's vision in 8 through 11 of the incremental departure of the glory of the Lord. But it's where God lives and it's where relationship with Yahweh is developed. And that helps us understand, when we understand the theological significance of the land, it helps us realize the enormous sense of national dislocation that the Jews had when they were exiled from the land. Okay? Look at a couple passages. 1 Samuel 26. In 1 Samuel 26, this is the part of Samuel where David spares Saul's life. And in 1 Samuel 26, verse 17, Saul recognized David's voice and said, Is that your voice, David, my son? David replied, Yes, it is my Lord the king, and he added, Why is my Lord pursuing his servant? What have I done, and what wrong am I guilty of? Now let my Lord the King listen to his servant's words. If the Lord has incited you against me, then may he accept an offering. If, however, men have done it, may they be cursed before the Lord. Now listen to what David, how he conceptualizes being driven out of the land of Israel. They have now driven me from my share in the Lord's inheritance, and have said, Go serve other gods. So for David to not be allowed to live in the land of Israel was as if to be doomed to worship other gods. That's how closely tied land is with relationship with Yahweh. Another passage, Psalm 137. This is a psalm that was written after the Jews had returned from exile, Psalm 137. By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy. They said, Sing us one of the songs of Sion. And look at their response in verse 4. How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? Okay, so relationship with Yahweh is at the core of what it meant to this land in the Old Testament. And of course, when the exile happened, again, that that tremendous sense of dislocation among the people. Now it's actually we see hints building up in the prophets, especially in the post-exilic period, we start seeing the people being prepared for a broadening of God's purposes to embrace the Gentiles in a way that Israel probably had never envisioned. And it's when the land is lost that we start seeing hints that something much bigger and better is going to go on. As Rosemary said when she read Ezekiel 36. There's some telescoping going there, but clean heart, sprinkle clean, there's something bigger than land going on. Let's look at a couple of passages. Isaiah 56, and we don't need to, we don't need to deal with the question of, you know, who wrote Isaiah 56? Was it first Isaiah? Was there a second? Was there a tenth? The issue is today. Whoever wrote Isaiah, what's going on here is, this is a passage about the after the exile. And in Isaiah 56, verse 37, excuse me, 56, verse 3, let no foreigner who has bound himself to the Lord say, The Lord will surely exclude me from his people, and let not any eunuch complain, I'm only a dry tree. For this is what the Lord says, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who chose what pleases me, and hold fast to my covenant, to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name, better than better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off, and foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it, and all those who hold fast to my covenant, I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. For my house that goes on will be called a house of prayer for all nations. And then verse 8, I will gather still others to them besides those already gathered. So we start seeing the boundaries of the old covenant being pressed out here. Okay? Better than sons and daughters? How can you be better than being a son or daughter of the living God? Okay? Another passage, Isaiah 19. I'm going to start at verse 19. In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the heart of Egypt. Wow, that's pretty amazing. And a monument to the Lord at its borders. It will be a sign and witness to the Lord Almighty in the land of Egypt. When they cry out to the Lord because of their oppressors, he will send them a Savior and defender, and he will rescue them. We're talking about Egypt, right? So the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the Lord. And it's there in caps, Yahweh. They will worship with sacrifices and grain offerings, they will make vows to the Lord and keep them. The Lord will strike Egypt with a plague, he'll strike them and heal them. They will turn to the Lord, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them. In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. Okay? So here we go. Here's Africa, here's Egypt, here's Israel, and here's Assyria. So there's going to be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. Okay? What happened to Israel in this prophecy? In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt. The Egyptians will go to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day, Israel will be third. Oh my. Along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, Blessed be Egypt, my people. Wow. I thought Israel was God's people. Assyria, my handiwork. Oh yeah, and Israel, my inheritance. Let me take it third place. Okay, so you see, already in the prophets we see something pressing out and expanding the borders of this concept of land in the Old Testament. And one more, Ezekiel 47. In Ezekiel 47, this is part of chapters 40 to 48, his fourth and final vision. And in Ezekiel 47, verses 21, you are to distribute this land among yourselves according to the tribes of Israel's. You are to allot it as an inheritance for yourselves. Okay, that's Leviticus 25, and for the aliens who have settled among you. So foreigners getting land in the land of Israel, you are to consider them as native-born Israelites. Along with you, they are to be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. In whatever tribe the alien settles, there you to give, you are to give him in his inheritance, declares the Lord the sovereign God. So do you see already as we now go into the New Testament, there's an open-endedness to a lot of these Old Testament promises. There's a built-in potential for more than this particular piece of real estate. So we get to the New Testament. Okay, you know what happens? Well, we know from last night that after the exiles, the Israelites go back. 50,000, remember, as for chapter 2. They go back, they build the foundation in 536, and then they just get busy with their own houses. Haggai has to come along and Zechariah in 520 BC and say, come on, folks, we've got to rebuild this temple. They rebuild the temple, and at the dedication, there's old people crying saying this is nothing compared to Solomon's temple, and other people are joyous. But the glory of the Lord doesn't return. And what about all this? You know, Israel's going to be the center of the nations, the northern and southern kingdom are going to be united. What happens to all these glorious promises? They're back in exile, they're back from exile, but they're simply a little province in the backwaters of the Persian Empire. And the Old Testament closes with this something more. We don't yet have the fulfillment of all these prophetic promises that we've looked at. So we get to the New Testament, and something very odd happens. And uh, you know, how do the New Testament authors handle the promises of land to Israel? Well, it's interesting. Remember, I said that land was the fourth most common noun in the Old Testament. The New Testament writers have it, they appear to have very little interest in discussing land as a theological category. And nowhere does Jesus or anybody tell us why this is so. But you would think the fourth most common noun in the Old Testament, you'd think there'd be another book like Hebrews that dealt with sacrifices and the cult and the temple. There's no Hebrews B to deal with land. Okay? It's just not there. Okay? We don't have that lengthy discussion that we have in Hebrews. We don't have anything like that in the New Testament for land. Instead, what the New Testament authors do is they just invest the idea of land with new meanings and broaden it out and universalize it to include the whole world. For example, Matthew will start with Matthew 5, the Beatitudes, and put one finger in Matthew 5 and one in Psalm 37. And in Psalm 37, there's this repeated phrase. It says it's a Psalm of David, and it's a psalm to encourage those who are discouraged by the apparent successfulness of evil men. And you look at example at verse 9. For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land. Verse 11, but the meek will inherit the land. Verse 18, the days of the blameless are known to the Lord, and their inheritance will endure forever. Verse 21, the wicked borrow and do not repay, but the righteous give generously. Those the Lord blessers will inherit the land. Verse 29, the righteous will inherit the land. Verse 34, wait for the Lord, keep his way, he will exalt you to inherit the land. Well, it's interesting, okay, what Jesus does in Matthew 5, 5. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Okay? That's what Jesus, it's right out of Psalm 37 there. Okay. Romans 4, verse 13. It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world. Okay, and the Greek word heir is the word cosmos. Okay? Not heir of the land, but it's expanded to this idea of the whole world. Because God, we said he's the Lord of the whole universe, he will fulfill his covenant promise by reconstituting the entire earth. Okay, when paradise will be restore it in all its glory. Another passage, Ephesians 2, 11. Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision, that done in the body by the hands of men, remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who are once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one, and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility. Verse 19, consequently, you're no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household. And we it we'll we'll just stop there. So again, you see that this in the New Covenant, loving fellowship, the dividing wall between Gentile and Jew, has been broken down, and that is what's replaced land tenure. It's not just this piece of land, it's now Christ's dominion and fulfillment throughout the whole world. Christ has made Jew and Gentile into one. They're now fellow citizens, fellow members of God's households, and fellow heirs of the promises. Whatever the promises of God's redemptor. May include, they're equally shared by Jews and Gentile believers. There's no second-rate citizenship in the kingdom of God. And then while we're in Ephesians, turn over to Ephesians 6. And of course, Ephesus was a city in Asia Minor. Okay, so it's mainly a Gentile church. And yet look at what Paul does in Ephesians 6.3. He is a put one hand in Ephesians 6.3 and then put one in Deuteronomy 5.16. Your Bibles will look like mine before the weekends up with all this. Okay. Deuteronomy 5.16. And in Deuteronomy 5.16, honor your father and your mother as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you. Paul takes that one of the Ten Commandments and applies it to this Gentile context in Ephesus and says in Ephesians 6, Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, that it may well go well with you, and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. So again, you see how this is all in there's a great shift taking place in redemptive history. Now, why is this? Well, first of all, is that Jesus, in him, in his life and ministry, we find the fulfillment of this promise of land in the Old Testament. Okay? And I believe this was talked about at the pre-conference seminar yesterday. When we think about Old Testament promise and New Testament fulfillment, we've got to broaden that out to include typology and correspondences, for example, between the life of Jesus and the history of Israel. It's not just simply you have Micah 5 says the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem, Matthew, Jesus is born in Bethlehem. You've got to broaden that out. Why? Because that's what the New Testament does. That fulfillment is far, far broader than just a little promise and a literal fulfillment. There's a typological fulfillment in the person and ministry of Christ. He is the representative of Israel. And he recapitulates Israel's history, but does so in a way of in full obedience to the commands of God. He goes over the same ground in order to conquer where Israel had failed. For example, right after his baptism, Jesus is led into the desert to be tempted, just like right out of right after Israel's baptism in the Red Sea, and that's what it's called in Corinthians, they were tested by God for 40 years. Jesus was tempted by Satan for 40 days. And when Jesus is tempted by Satan in his wilderness temptation, three times he quotes from one book of the Old Testament. What does he quote from? Deuteronomy. He quotes from Deuteronomy. You know, why? Well, I think what he's seeing is, remember, Deuteronomy is Moses' uh swan song. He saw in those chapters the reminders of Israel's failing in the desert, and he now, in the same experience, defeats Satan. Both times the Son of God is tested after a baptism, okay, and Jesus passes the test, whereas the Israelites failed. So Israel's mission, Israel's destiny finds its completion in Jesus. For example, turn to Matthew chapter 2. I put one hand in Matthew 2 and one in Hosea 11. Matthew 2 and Hosea 11. Now in Hosea 11, now Hosea, remember, 8th-century prophet to the northern kingdom, disasters coming. And he's recounting here in chapter 11 God's love for Israel. And Hosea writes, When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. It's just a historical recounting of the Exodus out of Egypt. And the more I called, the further they went from me. Now you go to Matthew in Matthew 2. In Matthew 2, we'll start at verse 13. It's the escape to Egypt. So Joseph got up, he took the child and his mother during the night, and they left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet, out of Egypt, I called my son. So was fulfilled. Well, Hosea wasn't making a prediction. He was just recounting Israel's history. So the point is that fulfillment in the New Testament is much, much broader than simple promise and then fulfillment. It includes Israel's complete history and ministry that is fulfilled and filled up in Christ. Okay? And Christ does it perfectly and expands it way out of the boundaries of the Old Testament. So the concept of fulfillment in the New Testament is broader and more profound than we usually think. Yes, part of it is direct prediction, explicit verification, but that's only one con only one part of what it means for Jesus to be the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises. A second way in which we need to understand land is that the New Testament interprets the image of Israel's life in the promised land as the church's eternal life by baptism into Christ. Remember, we talked about the land had a sacramental value. It's because God was there in a unique way. That's a pretty powerful point. We inherit everything that Jesus inherits. And according to Corinthians, all the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ. And everything that Jesus has secured, we inherit by virtue of our union with Him. That's why the constant and Christoi in Paul, in Christ, in Christ, in Christ, because he's trying to emphasize this idea. Now, this is all well and good. And so I let me just, before we get to uh answering our question, I think part of the problem with our brothers and sisters who want to see a literal fulfillment of Israel returning to the land is that they fail to appreciate what union with Christ brings to us as believers. Okay? We inherit what Jesus inherits. So this is all well and good. But what do we do with all those promises that we read about at the beginning of the hour? Okay? And where are my pictures? Are they have they made it around yet? Oh, they're not quite done yet, okay, because they're important, okay? And uh, what do we do with them? Okay, we say they've been fulfilled in Christ, and we say it's not that Jesus in the New Testament spiritualized away the land into nothing, like poof, but remember we talked last night about the prior heavenly realities, the land, the promise of land, the temple. They're simply shadows of a prior reality in heaven, Hebrews 8, verse 5. So then what about all these promises? There's a Jew sitting and listening to Ezekiel saying, You're gonna go home, you're gonna be united with the northern kingdom, you're gonna have peace. Okay. It doesn't it sound like they you know that that they were being misled to really want a solid piece of real estate to go home to be reunited? What's going on there? Well, a couple answers. Remember, yesterday we looked at a passage in Numbers 12, and we won't look there again today for the sake of time. But we said that in Numbers 12, that God told Moses that he would speak through the prophets using symbols, visions, and dreams. Okay? So there God was giving a hermeneutical lesson. Don't expect, when you hear the prophets, don't necessarily expect everything to be literal. I'm gonna speak through them, not face to face and clearly like I do Moses, I'm gonna speak to them in riddles and dreams. I'm gonna expect symbolism. Okay? So I think part of the answer to this question, well, what do we do with all these repetitive promises of a glorious restoration? We one number one, we need to be sensitive to genre, okay? It's in the prophetic portion of scripture, and the Lord has told us be sensitive to symbolism, to dreams, to visions, and things like that. The second part of the answer comes in uh the pictures that I have, okay? And did everybody get to look at them? Oh well, let me have one, okay, and then you can look at the rest. Did you look at it? Yes, I did. Oh, okay, yeah. I don't want you to miss the most exciting part of this weekend. Okay? I think the answer lies here, okay, and this is Twinkie. And Twinkie was my Valentine's present from my husband in uh 1998. And when I when I talk about this in class and a lot of the guys laugh, I say to them, if I asked your wife what you got her for a Valentine present in 1998, you wouldn't be laughing because she wouldn't remember, probably. And um, I had asked my husband for a goat, so like a good husband, he got me two. And um that's also that was shortly before we adopted our son Philip from Bulgaria. And we live out in a rural area, Philip's an only child. Well, you can see from these pictures that Philip developed this absolute love for Twinkie. Any kid who shares his little Tyques wagon with a goat, you know that's pure love, right? So Philip just absolutely loved Twinkie. I mean, just most of his baby pictures are Philip and the goats. Okay? It's just uh that's just the way it is. Now, as Philip and Twinkie are developing this lovely relationship that they have, we're trying to be conscientious parents, and we're trying to teach him the basic truths of the Christian faith. Okay, so you know, we talked to him about sin, his need for Jesus, uh, you know, his need to obey Jesus, his need to ask for forgiveness, you know, that someday when when we all die, we go to heaven, things like that. Okay. Well, one Labor Day, when Philip was about six, and I remember it was Labor Day because we had to pay holiday rates at the vet, Twinkie got really sick. Okay? And what we found out is there are you know a hundred weeds in western Pennsylvania, and two are fatal to goats. And and Twinkie ate one of the uh weeds that proved fatal. It was kind of it's kind of like the goat equivalent of mad cow's disease. So, you know, we we had Twinkie on the porch for three days, you know, just keeping her comfortable until she died. So, of course, what's the inevitable question that Philip asks us? Is Twinkie in heaven? Okay? It's Twinkie in heaven. Now, we have a couple of options. First option is no, go play with your Legos. Okay. Second option, which I like to pull this card often, but I didn't on this day, is I don't know, ask your father. The third option is to look at Philip and say, Philip, the very nature of your question betrays a total lack of eschatological understanding on your part that we need to address immediately. What your real need is, son, is not information about Twinkie's eternal state, but rather redemptive historical teaching on heaven. So let's listen to the great Reformed theologian Louis Burkhoff. And I could pull out my systematic theology, sit, fill it down, and read the final state of the righteous, the new creation. The final state of all believers will be preceded by the passing of the present world and the appearance of a new creation. Matthew 19, 28 speaks of the regeneration, and Acts 3.21 of the restoration of all things. In Hebrews 12.27 we read, and this word yet once more signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which are not shaken may remain. The question is often raised whether this will be an entirely new creation or a renewal of the present creation. Lutheran theologians strongly favor the former position with an appeal to 2 Peter 3, 7 to 13, while Reformed theologians prefer the latter and find support in such and such verses. Okay? So that could be a third option. Or the fourth option could be, yes, Philip, Twinkie's in heaven. Now, that's what my husband and I did. Okay. Now, is that because when I was at Westminster, I was given a well-thought-out theology of what happens to pets when they die? No, no. It's because we what we think we were doing is imitating what God was doing in the Old Testament when people like Ezekiel made these promises. Okay? I want to quote from Strymple, who teaches out at Westminster West. It is a necessary feature of effective communication, which we have all experienced and understand, that when we wish to describe to a friend something that he or she has not yet experienced, we do so by appeals to what our friend has already experienced. In order to communicate to God's people still living under the old covenant, the prophets, by the Spirit's inspiration, spoke of the blessings God would pour out under the new covenant in terms of the typological images so familiar to the old covenant saints. So when Philip asked us, is Twinkie in heaven, what we did was we used imagery and things he knew to talk about things that he's too young and can't possibly know. The scripture tells us that eyes haven't seen, nor have ears heard what's in store for us. So if we were faithful parents telling him that someday we'll be in heaven and there's no crying, well, to a boy who's just lost Twinkie, then Twinkie's in heaven. That's an appropriate way to talk about heaven. And I think what the Lord is doing when, through Ezekiel and the other prophets, he gives this glorious picture of future restoration, he's speaking in analogies and cultural idioms that they can understand to explain things that they couldn't yet understand. I think that's what the Lord does for us in Revelation too. I don't think heaven really has streets of gold. It's interesting that when you look at all the jewels used in Revelation, diamonds are not there because diamonds were not considered valuable till centuries later. I think what the Lord is doing in Revelation is the same thing he was doing in the prophets. He's speaking in cultural terms about things we know and understand to describe things that we can't yet understand. Another analogy, and then we'll we'll close. Second of all, when we look what the New Testament authors do with the Old Testament, this is the sort of interpreting that they do. Number three, I think this Twinkie analogy. Number four, we read these passages about this built-in potential for more. Way back in Isaiah 19. Egypt will have an altar, they'll go from Egypt to Assyria, and Israel will be third. There were clues there to the spiritual Israelite that something much bigger and greater was about to happen. And again, I'll close with this other analogy that uh that I often use. We'll start last year. My our son went to public school for the first time. I homeschooled him through third grade, and fourth grade he was in a Christian school, and last year, just because of some special needs he has, he was in public school. Well, about midway through last year, our our darling 11-year-old boy discovered girls. And he discovered one girl in particular named Shelby. And at some point in the future, we'll have a discussion about what type of girls he ought to be discovering, but that's not yet. But and of course, Shelby, and he sat right one in uh front of the other on the bus. Well, how does a typical 11-year-old boy seek to get the attention of a girl? Well, throwing his gloves in her face, screaming in her ears. And he did attract Shelby's attention. Unfortunately, he also attracted the attention of the bus driver. Okay, and and our angel, like Philip is just the sweetest kid in the world, was having to sit in the front of the bus because of bothering Shelby. So that's that's all true. Now, this part is just uh, for instance, let's say that we took Philip uh off the bus one day and we said, Philip, you know, we're gonna make a little chart and we're gonna try to help you learn to act appropriately on the bus. Now, Philip's favorite thing in the world, and this is true, is milkshakes. Okay, he'll do anything for a milkshake. So let's say we made a chart for a whole month and said, if you can go the whole month of October without having to move to the front of the bus because you've bothered Shelby and the bus driver, on the last day of October, you we will go and you can have two milkshakes for dinner, okay? So Philip, being a typical 11-year-old boy, learns that his love for milkshakes far outweighs his love for Shelby, and goes a whole month without having any problems. So October 31st comes, and my husband and I go to the local Dairy Queen and my husband whips out a key, unlocks the door, and says to Philip, It's all yours. The whole store. Is Philip gonna say, You lied, you promised me a milkshake. He gets the milkshake shake machine, he gets the soft ice cream machine, he gets the Jimmy's, he gets everything. Okay? Is that what the Lord's doing in the Old Testament? He promises land to Israel, and then in the New Testament, those Old Testament covenant boundaries are blown apart so that we get the whole deal. The whole earth is going to be filled with uh the glory of the Lord. Krisan Marotta: Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure that out. I hope this podcast has blessed you. If it's inspired you to learn more, I invite you to visit my website and explore the free, ad-free, spam-free Bible study resources. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates. You can find his fabulous music on heartfeltmusic. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the world.