The Promised Land

 The 

Promised Land

By Richard P. Joseph

Genesis 12:7  Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your [c]descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him

Somewhere around 4,000 years ago God made a covenant with a man named Abram (later changed to Abraham).  This was a unique covenant in that it set Abram apart from all other peoples on the earth.  In Genesis 10 God names 70 nations from the peoples of the earth.  None of these nations were in a covenant with God but ended up being pagan states.  Then in chapter 12 God makes a covenant with Abram, thus making the children of Abraham God’s covenant people.  This, in a sense, formed a comparison and contrast between the people of the one true God, YHWH, and all the pagan nations.  YHWH promised that His covenant would follow a certain pathway (through Isaac and Jacob) that would eventually create the nation of Israel.  The promise also included the land of Palestine as a homeland to the Jews.  As you read through Genesis you find that the chosen people ended up as slaves in Egypt.  God sent Moses to lead them out of slave bondage and into the Promised Land of Palestine.

This trip took 40 years to accomplish.  The reason it took 40 years is because the Jews, who were so accustomed to slavery, actually refused to enter the Promised land immediately and actually wanted to go back into bondage in Egypt.  God, therefore, cleansed the nation of its dissidents and they finally entered a physical promised land after 40 years of struggling in the desert.   While Abraham actually fathered many children, God’s covenant was promised only through the lineage of Isaac and Jacob.  The funny thing is, God ordered Abraham to circumcise all of the children of the promise and also any servant or foreigner that worked for Abraham must also be circumcised.  And during the time of the Exodus, Moses wrote and taught his people the law of God.  All of this history is actually what we call a “type”.  

The type is a physical manifestation of a spiritual truth.  This spiritual truth also has physical attributes.  In this case, the type is a foreshadowing of the coming anti-type.  In other words, the type is a physical picture of the messianic kingdom that was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.  All of the Old Testament laws and prophecies were really about the predicted messiah to come.  When Jesus finally did come, all of those types began manifesting themselves in the anti-type.  

The anti-type was Jesus Christ.  Jesus, himself, declared multiple times that all scripture was to culminate in him.  Here is just one example;  In Luke Chapter 24 we read the story of two of his disciples walking to a city near Jerusalem called Emmaus.  Jesus, after rising from the dead, joins them under surreptitious  conditions. 

Luke 24:27 And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He [g]expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.

Jesus then begins explaining scripture to them, asserting that all scripture was written about him.  Notice the word “Himself” in the passage above.  He was quoting out of the Old Testament things pertaining to Him.  This is the same thing about the promised land.  Here are some comparisons to consider:

It took the Israelites forty years to leave the bondage of slavery to enter into a land where they were finally free.

It took forty years for the true Israelites (those who believed in Jesus) to leave the bondage of sin to enter into the spiritual promised land of freedom in the New Jerusalem.  

Deuteronomy 7:6 “For you are a [b]holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. 

1 Peter 2:9  But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;

The Jews and others rejected Jesus at the beginning of the journey and therefore it took 40 years to enter into the spiritual promised land that we are in today.  The promised land of the anti-type is not a physical city but a spiritual one built on the cornerstone of Jesus Christ.  We are part of that new temple and land.  This is a kingdom where Christ is the everlasting king and we are his people.  The land of the type was finite but the land we are in is eternal.  It has no end.  And we are offered this eternal life with it which we can discuss at a later time.  Jesus established this new covenant at the last supper.  Abraham had to offer up animal sacrifices for his covenant with God but Jesus offered up himself, the lamb of God, as a sacrifice for this particular covenant.  The old covenant with Abraham is completed in Jesus and the new everlasting covenant is consummated by Jesus Christ.    Those called out of darkness and into the light of Christ are now the chosen people.  Not a race or an ethnic group but rather those that are born again into Jesus Christ.  There is no physical promised land today, just a spiritual landscape unbound by any obstacle.