The Promised Land Covenant
The Promised Land Covenant • Sermon • Submitted
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· 19 viewsThe Lord will keep all His promises to the Jewish people
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Introduction
There is a Covenant that God made with Israel, the Jewish people, through Moses toward the end of the wilderness wanderings just before Moses died and the Jewish people entered the Promised Land with Joshua. It is an unconditional Covenant and it is different from the Covenant of the Law also known as the Mosaic Covenant. It is important for all born again believers, Children of God, to know about this covenant.
1 These are the terms of the covenant the Lord commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb.
The LORD commanded Moses to make another covenant with the people of Israel, in Moab, in addition to the covenant the LORD made with them at Horeb, which is Mount Sinai, nearly 40 years earlier. This is not simply a restatement of the Mosaic Covenant which was made after the people first left Egypt. This covenant, variously referred to as the Deuteronomic Covenant, the Palestinian Covenant, the Land Covenant (courtesy of Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum), and the Promised Land Covenant (the best name for it in my opinion, a name given for it by Matthew Ervin Bryce in his book about the Millennial Kingdom, One Thousand Years With Jesus), has new and different things in it that are of great importance as we shall see. It not only reinforces the Land component of the Abrahamic Covenant but it reinforces other components of the Abrahamic Covenant as well, most importantly the salvation of the Jewish people. It is an important covenant and many believers, both Jew and Gentile, do not know about it. Another important aspect of it is that it refutes Replacement Theology. It comes after all the curses of Deuteronomy 28 proclaimed to the Jewish people. Yes, even after these curses which have not all come to pass yet, the LORD guarantees to the Jewish people that all His promises to them for good, the blessings, will yet come to pass.
14 I am making this covenant, with its oath, not only with you 15 who are standing here with us today in the presence of the Lord our God but also with those who are not here today.
Interestingly this verse, which is the first verse of chapter 29 in the Bibles that most of us read today is instead the final verse (verse 69) of chapter 28 in some Jewish or Hebrew Bibles such as The Jaffa Tanach published by ArtScroll (an orthodox Jewish publishing house). Is this an important distinction? I would say that it is. In support of this opinion, what is presented by Moses in chapters 29 and 30, which follows Deuteronomy 29:1, contains new information (as we shall see shortly) whereas that which comes before chapter 29, i.e., what is in chapter 28, is not new. It is important to see that especially what is in the first six verses of chapter 30 is new. I believe that God very much wants us to see that because in Deuteronomy 30:6 we have a striking foreshadowing of the new birth which comes to us through the saving work and ultimate sacrifice of our Messiah, i.e., Yeshua, the Lord Jesus. And while originally given to the Jewish people, this is for both Jews and Gentiles today. If you are a Jewish person reading or listening to this you probably think that the new birth, becoming born again, is only for Gentiles. Let me assure you that such is not the case! In fact the very first born again believers were all Jewish and they never stopped being Jews.
Let me read to you Deuteronomy 30:1-6. If you have a Bible please follow along with me. If you don’t have a Bible handy, please just listen.
1 When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come on you and you take them to heart wherever the Lord your God disperses you among the nations, 2 and when you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. 4 Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. 5 He will bring you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors. 6 The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.
Let’s now look at Deuteronomy 30:1 in more detail.
1 When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come on you and you take them to heart wherever the Lord your God disperses you among the nations,
Please pay attention to the word and in “and when you and your children return to the Lord your God”. This English word is what we call a conjunction, a coordinating conjunction. It refers to a relationship between two clauses in a sentence. And links two clauses together.
Now please look at the New Revised Standard Version and note the replacement of and with if.
1 When all these things have happened to you, the blessings and the curses that I have set before you, if you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you,
Notice that in the NRSV the word if is used instead of the word and. If is also a conjunction, but it is a subordinating conjunction, which introduces a conditional clause. Therefore if makes this covenant a conditional covenant which is not what God intended. The KJV, NKJV, RSV, NIV, NASB, ESV, the CSB, and the JPS Tanach (1985), all have and. Only the NRSV has if.
Could the NRSV be correct? Could the Promised Land Covenant be conditional? The NRSV is the only popular version that translates Deuteronomy 30:1 in a conditional manner.
How can we know if the NRSV is correct or if the other eight versions are correct? We certainly don’t want to conclude that the majority rules. Just because eight versions use and and only one version uses if does not necessarily mean that and is correct. Now certainly Eight to One is something that we don’t want to ignore. But is there something else that can show us which translation is correct?
There is something else that can help us and that something is what God says elsewhere in His word on this subject. Let’s look at some of those verses. Let’s begin by revisiting the covenant that undergirds all of the unconditional Jewish Covenants including the New Covenant (and please don’t forget that the New Covenant is for both Jews and Gentiles). Let’s revisit the part of the Abrahamic Covenant which is most relevant to our current discussion.
Abraham was upset because he did not have a male heir “from his own loins” and he told the Lord that his chief servant, Eliezer, would therefore be his heir. The Lord answered and said otherwise:
Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.” But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.” Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half.
Then the Lord, while Abraham was in a deep supernatural sleep, cut a covenant with him. Only the Lord ratified this covenant by moving between the pieces as was the custom in that day. Abraham was asleep.
When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates—the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”
Now after the Lord cut this covenant with Abraham, 400 hundred years later, He made another covenant with the Jewish people, the Mosaic Covent (the Covenant of the Law). This was a conditional covenant that contained 613 commandments. The Jewish people broke this covenant. They could not keep these laws. Nobody could. Consequently, a large number of curses were pronounced upon the Jewish people by the Lord. Just four verses are enough to show how bad it was going to be for the Jewish people.
Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart. You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life. In the morning you will say, “If only it were evening!” and in the evening, “If only it were morning!”—because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see.
But in spite of these curses God clearly stated that He would never cast away His people Israel.
Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I am the Lord their God. But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the Lord.’ ”
The covenant that the Lord said He would not break is the Abrahamic Covenant. And the Lord promised even more.
When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey him. For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors, which he confirmed to them by oath.
The Abrahamic Covenant was confirmed to Isaac, to Jacob, to Jacob’s 12 sons, and to the Nation of Israel as a whole:
“ ‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
Based on these passages, and others, there is no doubt that God is going to do all that He promised His people He would do in the Promised Land Covenant. The word and in Deuteronomy 30:1 is the correct word and The Promised Land Covenant is unconditional.
Why did the NRSV translators use if instead of and?
Surely these scholars knew that the normative translation is and. Perhaps these translators, or at least some of them, don’t believe that God has plans to restore Israel. Or perhaps some of these translators are angry at the Jews, in other words perhaps some are antisemites. It may be either or both. One thing I believe for sure: It was not an accident that if was chosen.
Why are some of these people against the Jews? We often hear that it’s because they haven’t been properly educated, so the answer is more education. If that were the case surely the problem would have been cured long ago at least in some locations. But that has not occurred. Antisemitism is found all over the world. No, the cause is much deeper than lack of education. My friends, it has to do with the Messiah. The Messiah, Jesus, is Jewish. He has a very strong connection to the Jewish people. If Jesus was not Jewish there would be no Jew hatred. If Jesus was Italian we’d be dealing with hatred of Italy and hatred of people descended from Italians both in Italy and in every other country where Italian people and their descendants dwell, instead of Jew hatred. Your response to me should be “Can you prove that Art? Because that sounds like utter nonsense to me”. My answer: I can prove it. And, if you believe my proof, what does that mean for you, my Jewish brothers and sisters? Is what I am about to tell you going to drive you toward Jesus, your Messiah, or is it going to drive you away? You see, what I am telling you is absolutely outrageous. I am telling you that anti-Semitism or Jew hatred is an indirect proof that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that He is equal to God the Father. And that also means that everything that He said in the New Testament is true. And the Old Testament is true too! Before you utterly reject what I’m saying, please let me give you the proof. And I hope you will see that this makes more sense than any other possible explanation.
Please stay tuned. We will talk about this in the next podcast.
Applications of today’s study:
Applications of today’s study:
The biggest one is that God loves Israel. He always has and He always will.