Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction and Review

Talk about review and talk about anticipation, how the OT prophets were anticipating a coming savior who would redeem the world, a coming king who would reign over the world, and a messiah who would reconcile all things to himself.

Today we’re going to talk about the Promised Land, finishing up our study of Abraham and the promises given to him, as well as both the Psalms and the Prophets for more evidence that the Messiah would be a victorious king ruling over the world through the gospel, bringing a time of prosperity and peace in history, and not just in a distant eternal future.

The Promises of Israel

Genesis 13:14

Genesis 17:

As we looked at last week, we understand that these promises had a literal fulfillment in the history of Israel.

Abraham had many descendants, his descendants possessed the Land, and a promised messiah came through Abraham, a king.

But that’s not all that the promises accomplished.

Many Christians argue for continued future fulfillments of these promises, not just postmillenalists.

Dispensationalists argue that there must be a literal future fulfillment of these promises based on the fact that God will give Abraham the land “forever” and so they come up with this horribly bad and weird theology of a future literal and ethnic Israel that continues to sacrifice animals and practice OT worship and priesthood.

This is wrong on a lot of levels.

Ask them.

One of the problems with the view that Israel must have the Land in the future because of the word forever is that that word is not actually a word that should be translated as “forever” in a literal sense.

The Hebrew word here, olam, frequently applies to long-term temporal situations rather than eternal ones.

This word is used of the Passover

Is this literally forever?

Or the priesthood

Or offerings

The temple

Do slaves forever attach themselves to their masters?

We know these things have passed away, because of the NT’s witness of the Old Covenant being done away with.

Another reason why this can’t be literal is that last week we discovered that the promise rested on obedience.

This is still a bit of review, but we know because of last week that Israel failed to keep these covenant obligations and so forfeited the right to the land.

But does that mean that the promises are gone?

They were meant just for Israel and are now abandoned?

Historic premillenalists and amillenialists will often claim that these promises have no real future fulfillment, they were promises for Israel and nothing more, but we will see later as we go through Scripture that, just like most of the OT, the Promised Land, the promise of a messiah, and the promise of descendants are all typological, that is, they point to something else, they are an example of something to come, something bigger, a spiritual reality that was foreshadowed by a physical truth.

The Promised Land Belongs to God

What is the Promised Land?

First of all, we must understand that the Land is not Israel’s land.

It is God’s Land.

It was given to Israel as delegate authorities, regents that were supposed to keep it for the Lord.

Israel continuing in the Land was dependent upon their obedience to Him and His favor with them.

The Promised Land is a Type of the Whole Earth

What do I mean by this?

Well, the entire world is the Lord’s, because He is the sovereign ruler of the universe

Now, we’ve already talked about how Satan was given dominion over the earth after the Fall, and how Adam was supposed to have rulership over it before Satan tempted him and Eve, but the world is still ultimately the Lord’s.

He only delegates authority to those on earth to use it.

So why do I say The Promised Land is a tithe?

Even though Satan had power over it after Adam’s fall, the Lord still ruled over it ultimately.

But the Promised Land was special, because it typified, or foreshadowed, what it would be like for God to be intimately and presently king over the people.

It foreshadowed the day when every nation would be brought under the dominion of Christ, and what that would look like.

We could even say the Promised Land was a tithe of the whole earth.

Just like technically everything we own is the Lord’s, but we give back a percentage to him because he is the king.

Just like peasants would give back a portion of what the crops they produced on the king’s land, because he enabled them to use it, so we do a similar thing.

While the whole earth was the Lord’s, even during the time of Israel, Israel had a special place, it was an offering to the Lord, set aside for him.

Where the rest of the world was far from Him, Israel was his special possession.

Think about it this way.

The whole earth is the Lord’s, just like technically everything we own is the Lord’s.

The Israelites gave back ten percent of whatever they made back to God like peasants on a king’s land would give a portion of their crops.

They used the King’s Land to get it.

In a similar way

In the days of Israel, God overlooked the unrepentance of humanity because of the tithe that was given to him of the world.

But now he is coming to claim everything for himself, finally and completely.

Yet this is a slow process, as we will see.

Although Abraham received the physical land of Canaan, he was looking forward to the eternal city and Kingdom of God, which was brought when the Messiah, Jesus Christ, died, rose again, and ascended to be seated at the right hand of the father.

Now where the promised land of Israel only hinted at God’s plans, Jesus Christ, as the better Abraham, promises an even greater promised land—the whole Earth.

Why do I say this?

Let’s explore it.

This verse here is speaking of God’s promise to Israel—that if they will be meek before, humble themselves, they shall inherit the Land, and continue to inherit it, and delight themselves in abundant peace.

But Jesus takes this promise and he extends it over the entire earth in

This verse absolutely means what it says.

Those who are part of the kingdom of God, who follow the beautitudes, who are meek before the Lord, God’s chosen people, will inherit the earth.

Why inherit?

Why that word specifically?

It makes sense for the Jews, they would continue to inherit it from their forefathers.

But what about us?

How and why do we inherit the earth?

Christ is the heir of all things, why?

Because He is the firstborn of all creation, the begotten son of the Father, and when he lived, died, and rose again, he inherited all things, including a chosen people and the world itself.

We also are sons and daughters of God, though adopted ones:

So if Christ inherits all things (and this promise includes the whole earth, as we looked at before and will continue to look at), that means we also inherit all things through him.

The seed of Abraham was primarily designed to produce the savior; the Land promise was primarily designed to be typological, a foreshadowing, of this savior’s dominion over the whole earth.

Ephesians

Abraham also understood that the land promise was a down payment representing the inheritance of the entire world.

We see the progression of the Promised Land and what it means throughout Scripture.

First Adam is given a garden:

Abraham’s seed was given a country:

What does he promises us?

The church?

The world:

Redemptive, Not Political

Remember though: This inheritance, this dominion is more redemptive than it is political.

The seed of Abraham, the Messiah, Christ, would be a savior, and the whole earth would be blessed through him.

That which is most important in God’s plan is the spiritual relation, rather than the blood relation.

He makes this clear in Romans particularly.

The ultimate purpose of all of this, of the Abrahamic covenant, of the Promised Land, is nothing less than world conversion.

God wants the world, and He used Abraham to do it, bringing the incarnated Christ into the world, who then was given a people, a remnant, chosen by God, to carry out this mission on the earth.

We’ll discuss this more later.

Abraham is a Blessing to the Nations

To conclude our study of Abraham, let’s discuss a few more things about the promises and what they mean for us as Christians.

First off, we have

This promise is tremendous.

Not only will God bless Abraham, but through him all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

The Hebrew Word for families here is mispachah, which includes nations.

This is meant to include all nations, all groups of people, all ethnicities.

This is a grand scope.

Where the Abrahamic promise begins with Abraham and his physical descendants, it ends with nothing less but every family, every nation, blessed through the Savior that came through Abraham’s seed.

I want to make something clear—this does not just mean that because of Abraham’s blessing, some other people will be peripherally blessed, though this is certainly true about Abraham and his descendants.

Let’s look closely at what the covenant promises—it promises blessing.