God's Promises to Israel

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints.

Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast. Thank you.

I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Durham. Chris Giesler. We are going to jump right into our question that we had sent to us back in 2023, but we wanted to revisit it, and we wanna start kind of systematically going through and seeing which ones are going to be most helpful and pertinent to all of you listeners out there.

So, question 74 reads, what land is Genesis 15, 18 referring to, modern day?

Has this happened yet, or is it a future land promised to Israel? If so, is this a belief of dispensationalists?

We'll go ahead and start by, can we start by reading the text first, Genesis 15, 18, Michael? What a great idea for our podcast,

Have You Not Read. That way they can say they have at least heard. They heard someone read it, yeah.

There we go. Okay, so Genesis chapter 15 records for us when

God makes a covenant with Abram, and when

God begins to detail promises to Abram, we do hear about land.

Certainly we hear about lineage, but we also hear about land. And in chapter 15 in verse seven, after that very famous verse where Abram believed in the

Lord and he accounted it to him for righteousness, verse seven, then the Lord said to Abram, I am the

Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to inherit it. So God says,

I'm going to give you this land to inherit it. Now, of course, we know that Abraham himself, the only bit of the land that he ever owned was the part he bought from,

I think it was Ephron the Hittite to bury his dead, but somehow he is going to inherit it.

How? Through his lineage, right? So Abram himself, as we read in Hebrews chapter 11, he was a man of faith, and even though he did not receive the promises himself, receive the fulfillment of the promises himself, he was a man of faith and he walked by faith knowing that God would keep those promises to his lineage or to his seed, that's how the fulfillment would come.

And so God says a little bit later on in verse 13, then God said to Abram, know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs and will serve them and they will afflict them 400 years.

And also the nation whom they serve, I will judge afterward, they will come out with great possessions. Ah, so prophecy of the enslavement and Exodus out of Egypt.

And in verse 15, God says, now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace, you shall be buried at a good old age, but in the fourth generation, they shall return here for the iniquity of the

Amorites is not yet complete, signifying that Abram's descendants would be used by God to bring judgment upon the

Amorites whose iniquity will be complete at that time. And verse 17, and it came to pass when the sun went down and it was dark, the behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.

On the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying, to your descendants, and in the Hebrew, it's to your seed, to your

Zerah, your seed, I have given this land from the river of Egypt, which is what, the

Nile, from the Nile to the great river, the river Euphrates. Now, if you ever look on a map, that's a big area, that's a big area, all the way from the

Nile to the Euphrates and who lives there currently? Well, the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kedmonites, the

Hittites, the Perizzites, the Raphaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Gershites, and the

Jebusites. They were all currently in possession of that territory.

And God is saying, I'm going to give this land to you. They occupy it now, they own it now, but your descendants will own it one day after I bring them up out of Egypt, after I bring them up out of bondage.

And obviously, all of these ites, all these different tribes, they are going to be slated for judgment.

And God's going to use Israel as his instrument of judgment to clear them out and give the land to the descendants of Abram.

Now, the question, of course, is does this land still belong to Israel?

Why, everything from the Nile to the Euphrates, a lot of controversy lately in the news.

You've been hearing people chanting and flying Palestinian flags and chanting that all the

Jews should be completely eradicated from that whole area. The modern state of Israel, in fact, their borders are quite smaller than what we read here.

But of course, we also are reading here about Canaanites, Canazites, Kedmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Raphaim, Amorites, Canaanites, Gershites, and Jebusites, none of which are living there currently, right?

So if somebody would read this passage and say, well, Israel should engage in military conquest and go take over all the land down to the

Nile River in Egypt, they should attack Egypt because that belongs to them.

God said so, it's a divine right to the land. Also, they should invade Jordan and Lebanon and Syria and start making their way up towards the

Euphrates River. They should take out Iraq, get up there to the Euphrates, come on. That's the divine right, that's their land.

Now, some people would read this passage and say, oh yeah, totally, that's definitely going to happen because God promised them this land.

Well, he also promised the land in the context of the Canaanite tribes that were to be judged.

And so, like, okay, so how are we going to interpret this passage? It's very important to think about how we're gonna interpret that passage. And before we move on, we're not saying that there aren't people that read that that way.

There are still people, both in the land of Israel and Christians here who are reading this text in that way, that this still belongs to Israel and this conquest should be proved, if you will.

Yes, there are many who rejoice when Israel goes to war against Arab nations and they want to see the modern state of Israel take over more and more territory and destroy everybody who lives in those areas and take them by force.

There are Christians today who think that that is what these verses are about and therefore Israel should be fulfilling the prophecies of God.

Now, did Israel possess this land, have rule and reign over this portion of land?

If so, when did they do that? And I think that's an important distinction because if we're looking to the

Bible, which contains prophecies and promises from God to Abraham and to his seed, understanding if those prophecies and promises have already taken place and what way they've taken place, if the

New Testament interprets them a certain way, we should bow the knee to the New Testament and the way that Jesus and the apostles interpret it.

But my mind went to Joshua in the Old Testament. So you have the promises there in Genesis about the land and then you get to Joshua.

Well, what did Joshua do? He's conquering the land. That's what he's doing. And so what they were told to do, to expand and hear through conquest.

And you get to Joshua 23 and this is verse 14. And behold, this day

I am going the way of all the earth and ye know in all ye hearts and all your souls that not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the

Lord your God spake concerning you. All are come to pass unto you and not one thing hath failed thereof.

So this is Joshua towards the end of his life and he's speaking and he's about to go the way of the earth and he's talking to the people and he says, you know in your hearts, this has been given to us.

You know that all of the promises that God spoke have come to pass, past tense.

This has happened. That prophecy that was given to Abraham has come to pass.

We have received that land. And through conquest and going through the land and doing what they were commanded to do.

People think of Jericho falling and they were obedient in the way that they conquered Jericho and they went throughout and conquered the other tribes.

And here it says that that specific promise was fulfilled. Yes, so we see that God keeps his promises and that is an affirmation that all believers would welcome.

Now the question comes, okay, so Israel did receive the land and of course they had a complete fulfillment of that under the leadership of Joshua and Joshua told them, hey, let's rejoice.

God has not failed to keep a single one of his promises towards you. And that's a great moment.

That's at the end of the book of Joshua and then you start reading the book of Judges and you watch generation after generation of failure and compromise and idolatry and morality and injustice and the people of Israel lose control of vast sections of their promised land until they are very diminished by the time we come to the last of the judges whose name is

Samuel. And Samuel anoints Israel's first king, which they wanted a king because they wanted to be like the other nations around them because they were so canonized by that point.

And this king Saul and his son Jonathan go to war against the

Philistines, the current oppressors of the people of Israel and they've got two swords amongst them.

Israel is so oppressed that they only have two swords. And so God works through Saul and begins to deliver the people of Israel from the

Philistines and we begin to see a comeback story. Now Saul of course fails and God's anointed

David takes his place. And under King David, all the enemies of Israel are once again put into subjection or eradicated and by the time

David is wrapping up his reign, all that territory that was under Joshua is again, and maybe even a little bit more, is being ruled over by David.

And he hands that off to Solomon who expands his influence and power even farther than David had.

And it was very, it's a glorious moment for the people of Israel. And so once again, we could say, hey, look, looking during the reigns of David and Solomon, we see

God keeping the promises that he made to Abram all the way back here in Genesis chapter 15. And again,

I think all believers agree there that the disagreement about the interpretation of the passage really comes into, well, what about today?

Right. What about today? And the reason why that's an important question is because of chapter 17 of Genesis, wherein we have an echo and an affirmation of the covenant that God makes with Abram in chapter 15.

So when we go to chapter 17, we read in verse eight, also

I give to you and your descendants your seed, okay, your seed after you.

Remember that there's a focus on the seed all throughout the book of Genesis, going all the way back to Genesis 3 .15,

the seed of the woman. And there was a concern about Lamech named his seed

Noah to give to have an interest of comfort and rest. And Noah's seed

Shem was the blessed son and tracking through. And then there's

Abram who's supposed to be a great father, but he has no seed, he has no heir.

And so there is a focus on who's going to be the promised seed. And of course, that is a theme that is picked up very strongly in the

New Testament. So what does God say in verse eight of Genesis 17? Also, I give to you and to your descendants or to your seed after you the land in which you are a stranger.

Remember, Abraham is just wandering around. He doesn't own it. He's traveling the length and the breadth of it.

He's building altars, but he is a stranger. He is a traveler, he's a nomad.

So God says, I'm gonna give to you and to your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession and I will be their

God. So it's the expression everlasting possession that comes into mind. Okay, so that is the concern.

If that's an everlasting possession and if the seed of Abraham are the Jews, then there can be no doubt about it.

For some folks, this must mean that the Jews have a divine right to that land. If they are the seed.

If they are the seed, that's correct. Now, how could they not be, right? Ooh, well.

In what sense could they not be? If they're descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Right, we have Abraham as our father. That's what they said to Jesus, right? To Jesus and Jesus says, no, you're of your father, the devil.

They didn't like that, did they? It made them hopping mad. Yes, it did. It made them upset. Well, and it does go back to that promise because they're holding on to that promise in their discussions with Jesus and Jesus says, no,

Abraham, look to my day. Well, why does he say that? Because in the very covenant with Abraham, it specifically says to you and your seed and Paul says seed singular,

Jesus. He says that in Galatians. So Paul's just picking up where Christ left off and saying there is a way in which to read the scriptures.

There's a proper way to interpret the scriptures and if we're going to say who the seed of Abraham is, if we were only to depend on, let's say, let's read the book of Genesis and just stop, okay?

If all we had was the book of Genesis, maybe we'll tack on Exodus. What are we going to say? Who is the seed of Abraham?

We would say, well, the descendants of Isaac and Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, he had many sons and these children of Israel became the tribes of Israel and they are obviously the seed of Abraham and if all we had was

Genesis and Exodus, I think that we could say that and be on safe ground in saying that but we have a whole lot more than Genesis and Exodus.

We have a whole Bible and especially we have the master teacher, the light of the world,

Jesus Christ himself and how he interprets the Bible, how he interprets the Old Testament and how he taught his apostles to interpret the

Old Testament and so what we discover is that the seed is Christ.

So God says, I'm giving this land to you and to your seed.

Paul says the promise was to the seed, the promise is in the seed, singular, to Christ.

So where should we look for the fulfillment of the promises or the fulfillment of the signs or the fulfillment of the prophecies?

We should look to Christ. All the promises of God are, yes, in Christ, 2 Corinthians 1 .20

says so but for some folks are like, okay, but this is very specific. This is the land of Canaan and in my translation, it says descendants, plural.

Well, gotta read the original and see what Paul does with it and we also see that there's something that was just said right before that and God says in verse seven of Genesis 17, and I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you and their generations for an everlasting covenant to be

God to you and to your descendants or your seed after you and then verse eight happens, we talk about the land being an everlasting possession and then verse nine and God said to Abraham, as for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout the generations.

Verse 10, this is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you. Every male child among you shall be circumcised.

God says this is an everlasting covenant. This is an eternal covenant. What does everlasting eternal mean? Forever. Forever and ever without end, right?

And so not only does God say that the possession of the land is everlasting, is eternal to your seed but also this covenant is and this is the covenant circumcision.

In other words, this is the epitome of the covenant is this sign of circumcision and so this is never ever to stop but what do we discover in the

New Testament? That sign stops. Circumcision isn't anything

Paul says. Circumcision, smircumcision is what he says. He says Christ is your circumcision.

Well, that's how it's eternal. You see, Christ is our circumcision and that's for Paul as a

Jew. That's for Barnabas as a Levite, as his brother as a Jew.

Peter, James, John, Bartholomew, all these Jews following Jesus, they had to look away from their physical circumcision to Christ as their spiritual circumcision through his death upon the cross and his removal of their sinful flesh away from them and his death upon the cross and his resurrection from the dead and so all of a sudden

Christ is their circumcision and they're not deposed in anything other than Christ. So there goes the physical circumcision out the window.

Is it what? I thought it was an eternal sign which is fulfilled in Christ. That's how it's eternal.

Well, and that pulls in so many other aspects, not only is it specific but expansive.

So the fulfillment of circumcision is in Christ. You see multiple places in the

Old Testament where there are conversations happening. Ask of me and I will give you the nations.

Who's supposed to ask for the nations? It's the anointed one. In Daniel, right, he approaches the ancient of days and is given a kingdom.

That's Old Testament, him saying that. He will receive lands and not just a small sliver of land in the

Middle East but he will receive all lands including that section.

Yeah, these things get really big. These promises that start off with kind of in small form, in seed form, they begin to grow and grow and grow as you go forward in the

Bible and long before you get to the New Testament. The covenants in their amalgamation in their amalgamation as the

Old Covenant, when you begin to see their promises, they begin to get bigger and bigger, especially with the latter prophets as they begin to proclaim what the faithful ought to anticipate, what they ought to be looking for.

Things get really big before the close of the Old Testament and Jesus comes and he fits the bill.

So just even in our passage, of course, Abram goes from Abram to Abraham, from a great father to a father of many nations and so there's an expansion even in that.

But if circumcision, and we know this to be very clear, if circumcision is not to be eternally forever applied as the sign of a covenant that has now passed, okay, we're to look to Christ as our circumcision, then what does that say about the land, right?

It's just a verse away and it also is everlasting possession. How are we to understand the land? Well, the

New Testament as well as the latter prophets have a lot to say about how to understand the inheritance and the allotment and the possession of this inheritance, especially in light of the king, right?

When these promises are given to Abraham are prior to the giving of the law and the covenant of Sinai, which adds to this and expands upon it and then you come to the covenant with David and everything is now consolidated to a single point, the king, the king whose performance is blessing or cursing to the land, the king who owns everything and runs it because he's the one who inherits the whole land.

I mean, from the Nile to the Euphrates, whose possession was it? Oh, it was the son of David's possession,

Solomon. He owned that and he did whatever he wanted with it and everybody out there had to give him whatever they had when he asked for it.

I mean, you read the first few chapters of 1 Kings, the son of David owned the entirety of that land.

There wasn't some sort of democratic distribution amongst the tribe. Solomon owned the whole thing and did whatever he wanted with it and of course, that was the nature of the king that Samuel told to the people what's gonna happen.

Well, the son of David is not only a shadow and a type, but he really is the seed of the promised one, right?

So he's coming down, there's the seed of promise and then David's son, Solomon, inherits all this in the glory.

The son of David builds the temple, the son of David inherits the entirety of the land, the son of David is full of glory, the nations are coming to the son of David.

I mean, we're supposed to see this and rejoice and then those pictures get picked up by the latter prophets and pointed forward towards the coming of the

Messiah and that's why when Jesus comes into Jerusalem, they're all saying, Hosanna to the son of David.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting and maybe you can weigh in on this. You start with Adam, one man and he was made in the image of God and he fell.

So now you live in a fallen world. Then it gets expansive and it starts expanding out to Abraham and his family and then you get a nation of people who are supposed to represent

God. The people were supposed to flock to Israel, but in all of the iterations, the judges, the kings, it just showed salvation is not there and it gets very broad.

Maybe the nation, the leaders of the nation or the nation will save us and then it narrows again, down again to a single individual in Jesus and it's salvation through that one individual who carries all of the signs of that nation.

Yeah, I would say that if you read it both ways, you could go, you could say you start off extremely broad and go extremely narrow or you could say it the opposite.

You start very narrow and come extremely broad. So you can read it both ways. I think it's intentional because Adam is one man, but he's also all of humanity.

Right. You know, and when God's dealing with Noah, you know, it's just Noah and his three sons, but it's also a covenant with all of creation.

Okay, there is some specificity, but then there is some broad nature to it.

It's almost like the Hedgehip. For all, we have fallen in Adam and then it's in Christ that mankind has salvation.

Yes, so there's a lot of beauty to be considered in the development of the covenants of promise, moving out of creation and the fallen image of God and the necessity for the covenants that are now fulfilled in Christ.

But when we get to the New Testament, what we're looking at is the proper interpretation of the old and they're not doing something different than the latter prophets.

Like when Isaiah reflects on the covenants of promise and writes about the comfort of Israel, he's not writing about a recapitulation of David and Solomon exact.

Like we're gonna go back to the age of Solomon and you know, we're gonna do a lot of gold stuff and we're gonna have treaties and allies and you know.

No, when he talks about comfort, he looks something even bigger than Solomon, right?

To the point where you come to the New Testament and Jesus is fond of saying someone greater than Solomon is here. Someone greater than Jonah is here.

Something greater than the temple is here. So when Jesus talks about it, it's not the old covenant remixed, it's something greater, something greater.

And so much so that when you think about the land promise in particular, and I know this is near and dear to a lot of people's hearts, you know,

Israel needs their land, right? But the promise was given to the seed and the seed is Christ. So it belongs to him and not just Canaan.

Everything does and that's how the promises of God go. You start very small and they get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

Yeah, which the question about the land is one specific thing, but they say the land because that's where the temple will be.

Okay, well, what about the temple? Well, then you look at the temple, the New Testament and the new covenant explains what that is.

It's not tied to the old, it's something new. Jesus says there's something greater than the temple, something greater than the land.

All of those promises he ties to himself rather than going back.

Yeah, he says, you know, and Jesus, of course, being the Messiah, knowing the prophecies, knowing them better than the experts who often tried to counter him, says to them, destroy this temple and in three days

I will raise it up, speaking of his own body. And his apostles remembered that he said that after he was raised from the dead and then because Christ had promised the gift of the

Holy Spirit to indwell his people, the apostles understood that we are

Christ's body, therefore we are temple. The new covenant temple are those who are in Christ indwelt by the

Holy Spirit and this is the focus over and over and over again. If you read the New Testament, there is no place in the

New Testament where the people of God are trying to rebuild the temple.

The physical temple, however, in the New Testament, the physical temple there in Jerusalem is constantly the source of jealous opposition against Christianity.

It's never. Like you went through an axe early on. Yes. I mean, the temple is never seen, the physical brick and mortar temple is never seen positively in the

New Testament. That's not what Jesus was looking forward to. Jesus, as King of Kings and Lord of Lords reigning at the right hand of the

Father today is not preparing to rebuild a physical brick and mortar temple. In fact, he says quite the opposite.

And I think of the woman at the well. Exactly. The Jews say this temple, but we say that. He says, one day, it's not what mountain you're at, it's not what temple.

Those that worship in spirit and in truth, which also makes me think of him saying it's too small a thing to save.

Isaiah 49. It's too small a thing that I have a physical temple in Jerusalem. No, I have a temple that is worldwide in all lands.

So what we have in the New Testament is an expansion of things, and yet it's truly a fulfillment of things.

So when we talk about the land, we're also talking about Jerusalem, we're also talking about the temple, we're talking about geography, we're talking about topography even.

We're talking about how are these things truly fulfilled. And how does the New Testament talk about the

Jerusalem that was promised? Well, the New Testament says it's a

Jerusalem above. Cannot be touched. That cannot be touched. A mountain that cannot be touched. A gathering in of the people.

The people of God are not only the temple, but they're also the city. A heavenly city. I will show you the bride of the lamb, and he showed me a city.

We know the bride are the people of Christ, but he says, now, look at this bride. Isn't she a great city?

Compared to the harlot that is clothed in all of the attire of the high priests. Yes, clothed in the attire of a high priest and in bed with Rome.

Right, so there's a stark contrast there. And you say, well, okay, so now it's a spiritual

Jerusalem and Acts, in Acts chapter two, Peter is preaching in the day of Pentecost.

He preaches the Old Testament prophecies about the son of David reigning on a throne in Jerusalem.

And then Peter says, this has been fulfilled in Christ, resurrected and ascended to the right hand of God.

So if people are thinking that Jesus is gonna come back down to an earthly Jerusalem, brick and mortar temple, and reign from Jerusalem, then they're not reading the

Bible the way that Jesus and the apostles read the Bible. Because Peter says, that's been fulfilled in Jesus sitting at the right hand of the

Father today. He said, he preached at Pentecost. Jesus reigning from Jerusalem is fulfilled in Christ raised up and ascended.

So we've gotta read the Bible the way that Jesus and the apostles did. And that's always been the challenge. And I think at the very heart of things,

I think Christians want to do that. What about the land? Well, in the Old Testament, there's more than one promise, obviously, about the people inheriting the land.

So in the Psalms, it says that the meek will inherit the land. Okay, well, what does Jesus say in the New Testament?

Inherit the earth. The meek will inherit the earth. We just read the promise in Genesis chapters 15 and 17.

Of course, it'll repeat itself. You get to read about other promises where God repeats that he's gonna give them the land.

So what was the promise? To Abraham and to his descendants, God promised the land between the

Nile and the Euphrates and that fertile crescent land bridge between north and south and east and west.

What a wonderful place right there on the coast of the Mediterranean, prime real estate. A land flowing with milk and honey.

And God promised that land, the land of Canaan specifically said there even the specific tribes, all the

Ites, all of that was promised to Abraham and to his seed. Okay, that was the promise in Genesis.

Now we come to Romans chapter four. Okay, and in Romans chapter four, we hear about this promise.

Verse 13 of Romans chapter four, for the promise that he or Abraham would be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed to the law, but to the righteousness of faith.

So now Paul is just offhandedly saying this promise to Abraham and to his seed to inherit

Canaan. Paul is saying just offhandedly, this was the promise that he would inherit the world. The promise to Abraham and to his seed was an inheritance of the world, not just Canaan.

How did Paul get there? By applying a hermeneutics in a way of interpreting the

Bible that has Christ as the inheritor of all things, as the fulfiller of all the promises of God.

That's the only way you get there. Yeah, now, I can hear people shouting at their phones or whatever they're listening to.

This is anti -Semitic. You're just against the Jews, to which

I would say Jesus, our king, was a Jew. And owns everything.

And owns everything. Jesus Christ is the son of Mary. He is as much man as man is man.

He's as much God as God as God. The dust of earth reigns at the right hand of God in heaven.

And it's Jewish dust, right? He was born of Mary. He, to this day, bears her

DNA. Okay, so he's our representative as our high priest.

Jesus of Nazareth, I'm saying that, Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the son of the living

God. And he reigns. Yeah. So I don't see how that's anti -Semitic.

And I know there's a lot of controversy. Christ is king. Indeed. And king over everything.

And he, specifically, on the sign above the cross that Pilate had made,

Jesus, king of the Jews, and he had it written in Greek and Hebrew, so those around could read it, king of the

Jews. And the Jews there said, no, don't write that he is king of the

Jews, only that he said he was king of the Jews. And Pilate's like, I wrote what I wrote. That's what it is.

And Christ, he asked Christ about that, and he says, you have said it is so. He affirms that he is king of the

Jews when he's being interrogated by Pilate as well. And when you read through the scriptures, the role that the king of the

Jews has, according to the way that God made Israel as a corporate entity in his image, patterned after what

Adam was supposed to do to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and the nature of Abram and his seed being a blessing to all the families of the earth, what is

Israel supposed to be doing? Well, whatever Israel's supposed to be doing as a light to the nations and so forth is entirely condensed in their king.

So the king of the Jews has a role to play, and that is to be king of the world.

So to say someone is king of the Jews is also to say, biblically, king of everybody, king of everything.

And so in Hebrews, in verse one and two, it says, God who at various times and in various ways spoken past time to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days, last days of the old covenant, in these last days spoken to us by his son, who was

Jesus of Nazareth, whom he has appointed heir of all things.

That sounds like the Great Commission. Go therefore because all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

In Psalm two, and I mean, so my question would be to those listening who hold the alternative view that we're putting forward here, that the questioner was asking is, what is the,

I'm trying to figure out the motivation for holding on to something that seems not just a shadow, but like almost a shadow of the shadow of what is promised in Christ.

The Jews that are in Christ inherit all things with him, and not just the land of Israel. They inherit the earth.

He talks about who inherits the earth, and those who are in Christ freely inherit all things with him.

What is it about holding on to inheriting a small sliver of land that we're holding on to, or why are we holding on to that when there's something so much greater to be understood and affirmed about his inheritance of the entire world?

Well, I think for believers who are, and it's not just dispensationalists, it's anybody who are futurists who have an idea that the

Old Covenant has not played out yet. There are Old Covenant promises yet to be realized in the national ethnic life of Israel involving territory and topography and architecture and so on.

So why hold on to that when the fulfillment in Christ is so much of greater blessing to the

Jews than if it were restricted to these Old Covenant parameters? Yes, infinitely so.

Yeah, so why is that? Well, I don't think it has to do with the Jews. I don't think it has to do with the Jews. I think that brothers and sisters in Christ who hold to those promises that they have to be fulfilled in an

Old Covenant way, not a New Covenant way, is more about holding fast to the scriptures.

I think that for them, I think it's more about saying, this is what the scriptures say, that's what's going to happen.

In fact, we see something like that happening today in our time, and to be able to look around the world today and see real life, present day, seeming fulfillment of the scriptures is of such, so faith building, so confidence imbibing for folks.

To deny that the modern state of Israel is a fulfillment of the scripture would be like to them denying the

Bible itself because look, this is, I can see with my eyes that God's word is true.

Look there on the map, okay? It's the same kind of excitement that comes when you have an eclipse, right?

And somebody says it's happening on 4 -8 and Exodus 4 -8 says or Ezekiel 4, whatever the people going nuts.

People going nuts about connecting numbers and scriptures, but why that, why that?

Because if they can see something happening in the sky or in the world around them that they feel like is a fulfillment of the scriptures, then that just, that is so confidence building in them that God's word is true.

And they're like, hey, look at what God is doing. It's like, it's the same kind of excitement that builds up when somebody's a part of a charismatic church, right?

And every week, it's like every sign of the early church in the whole

New Testament is crammed into one service every single Sunday. We had healings and prophecies and speaking in tongues and interpretations and person was healed of their leprosy and this person was raised from the dead every single week.

Then that's how they're affirmed that the Bible is true by those experiences. Yeah, so talking about that, there is a hurdle there because you have to, in one sense, assure them we're on the same team.

I'm not trying to deny scripture. I'm not trying to say it's not happening. The problem, I love the scriptures.

I love Christ. I love what God is doing in the world. We just differ on some of the things we see.

Well, it sounds like it's affirming a system or it's more of affirming a faith in a hermeneutic or a reading of the

Bible rather than considering a differing hermeneutic and maybe even just how we just talked about how the

New Testament interprets the Old Testament. Right. There's a system there that's not making a connection with how

Christ reads the Old Testament, how the apostles read the Old Testament and how we get that picture drawn out for us in the

New Testament. It's not, I mean, okay, you could say it's affirming their faith, but it almost seems to be affirming of a system that they hold to rather than the promises that we see in the

New Covenant. Does that make sense what I'm saying? Yeah, I think it makes sense. The challenge, of course, is if I have a brother or sister in Christ that goes to a church service and say, we have a full gospel

Baptist church and they have seeming signs and wonders every single week. And for them, this is faith affirming, the fact that 25 out of the 30 people this week spoke in tongues and it was 27 out of 30 the week before and this is affirming to them.

To me, I'm like, I wanna say at the same time, hey, what does the New Testament actually say about that?

And they're gonna say, you're trying to undercut my faith, you're trying to get me to not believe.

No, no, no, I'm trying to help you be more grounded in the scriptures and I think you want that too but I think they're kind of nervous.

If I let go of this faith building evidence that I believe proves that God is real, then

I might be cut adrift and what do I believe now? And that's the comfort of systems. That's the comfort of systems.

And so for a lot of people, the existence of the modern state of Israel is, for a lot of them, their closest connection to God.

That they say, because that exists, I know the Bible is true and when I read the

Bible, it says that Jesus died for my sins and I'm forgiven of my sins and God loves me and I know that that's not just a nice sentiment because I can see in the world today that the

Bible is true. But if you undercut about modern state of Israel, then they're going to feel like you're saying, ultimately, if the dominoes all fall for their system, then you're undercutting their assurance that God loves them and Jesus really lived and died for their sins.

So that's why I think it's a sensitive issue. We're not trying to say that God's word doesn't come true.

We're saying quite the opposite. We're trying to say, well, we all can agree and come to the same table and say, we believe

God's word is true. We think he keeps his promises. And what we're, I think, mostly interested in is what is the right interpretation?

And it's not just up for grabs. Anybody can just say what they want. So who knows?

But it's Jesus is the master. He's the Lord. He's the light. He gets the say. And he taught his apostles.

He opened their minds to understand the scriptures and the veil was taken away in Christ. So how he reads the scriptures is how we ought to read the scriptures, even if it goes against systems like dispensationalism or systems like covenantalism.

I mean, what we said about circumcision being completely fulfilled in Christ, in some sense, not only does away with dispensationalism, but it also does away with covenantalism at some level.

Right? Yeah. Okay. So we have to understand that what we read in the New Testament, how it interprets the

Old, is gonna be a challenge for us all, even if we have found comfort in certain systems moving forward.

And we're not against systematic theology, but. But where is our comfort? Yeah, so the comfort is not in the fact that Israel has land, right?

Our comfort is in that Jesus Christ, Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, that he lived, he died, he was raised the third day, he's at the right hand of the

Father, and he will come again in victory. Our comfort is in Christ, not in Israel.

Our comfort is in Christ, not in the covenant. Right? Where's our attention at? And I think that kind of goes with the, there's a follow -up question that kind of has already been answered in a way.

Right. We might as well. We'll go ahead and ask that though. So the follow -up question given to us more recently, but very tied to the issues that we've been speaking about here, it reads, what do you make of the argument that no distinction language used to describe the relationship between Jew and Gentile is about salvation rather than role?

The argument is that there are differences in role between Jew and Gentile in the age to come.

Okay, so this is built off of the idea that in the age to come is when all of the old covenant promises that God made to Israel that have not yet been fulfilled are gonna be fulfilled.

An idea that Israel needs to have its land back, needs to have its holy mountain back, needs to have a brick and mortar temple, and so on and so forth, that these things are not fulfilled in Christ, and that the only way that they can be fulfilled is in Israel.

And the idea is that Christ will bring these things about, but they're not about Christ. Okay, now, the no distinction language comes from passages like Ephesians 2.

So in Ephesians chapter 2 in verse 11, Paul is writing to Gentiles and describes them their status prior to coming to Christ and after.

So verse 11, he says, therefore, remember that you once Gentiles in the flesh who are called uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision made in the flesh by hands.

Okay, so it's like to this day, he says, now, you're believers in Christ, you're Gentiles, and so the people who are still putting their faith in the old covenant signs, circumcision, they're calling you the uncircumcision, right?

Because that's where their faith is. Their faith is in circumcision, in these signs of the old covenant. So verse 12, that at that time, okay, before when you were without Christ, that at that time, you were without Christ being aliens from the

Commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise. Now, when you were without Christ, you were strangers from the covenants of promise.

What does that mean when you have Christ? Are you still strangers to the covenants of promise? Nope. Are you in?

Oh, you're in. You have the covenants of promise now. Before when you were without Christ, he says, having no hope and without God in the world.

But now, verse 13, but now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

So it's not by the circumcision. It's not by the sign of a covenant. It's by the blood of Christ that you have been brought near.

You were once far off strangers to the covenant, but you've been brought in how? By the blood of Christ.

Now, those who are of the circumcision, and Paul says, you know, the ones who do it in the flesh, they're saying, you're still outsiders.

You're still uncircumcised. But what does God say? What does Jesus say? It's not about being in the circumcision or being in Israel.

It's being in Christ. And if you're in Christ, then you have the covenants of promise.

Now, those covenants of promise, what is Paul referring to? Those everlasting covenants. Oh, covenants of promise. Well, anybody think, oh, well, how about the covenants of promise with Abraham?

How about the covenants of promise with Israel? How about the covenants of promise with David? Those, that's what he's talking about. So prior, when you were outside of Christ, indeed, you were strangers to those covenants of promise.

You had no claim to them. You had no part in them. But now you do. You do.

So how is it that there can be any separation between salvation and role, right?

The role has been fulfilled in Christ. Whatever role Israel was called to play, whatever role

Abraham was called to play, whatever role Noah was called to play, whatever role

David and the son of David was called to play, Jesus is the one who picks all that up and does it in the new covenant.

Well, and it was the nation of Israel that was supposed to proclaim those promises to the

Gentiles, and they failed to do so. So Christ brings the gospel to the

Gentiles. Through his body. Through his body, and he's made them near. So that role, what

Israel, the nation was supposed to do, that distinction is gone. Think about it.

If the old covenant signs, if the old covenant parameters still have to be met, what does that mean?

That means that the seed of Abraham, the seed of Abraham needs to declare the word of God to the nations through the building of a temple as the true seed, needs to build the temple, and the word of God must spread from the temple in Jerusalem to all the nations.

Okay? That's what has to happen. Now, let's think about this. Who's already done that? And who is already doing that?

Jesus Christ is already doing that. Like Jesus Christ is the seed of Abraham. He is ruling and reigning now from new covenant

Jerusalem, and his word is going out to all the nations. There's no role for Israel left to play other than to bow the knee to the

Messiah. See, that sounds like good news. It is really, really good news. Well, and continuing on, so if someone wants to say that's talking about salvation, in Ephesians 2 at verse 14, "'For he is our peace, who hath made both one "'and hath broken down the middle wall "'of partition between us, "'having abolished in his flesh the enmity, "'even the law of the commandments, "'contained in ordinances, "'for to make in himself of twain one new man, "'so making peace.'"

So if you want to say, well, Jews have one way, the old covenant, and then the Gentiles have another way in the new.

No, he's abolished those law of commandments and ordinances.

Yeah, so I think that really comes down to is, I mean, I think all believers agree, all Christians agree that God keeps his promises.

Yeah, God keeps his promises, and we believe God's word is true. And then the only thing left to determine is, okay, how does

God keep his promises? Okay, well, we all would agree as well. God gets to say how he keeps his promises, and when he does, he'll let us know, and I think we could all agree about that.

So now what's left to do is to read the scriptures, and when we find

Jesus and the apostles in the New Covenant, in the New Testament, taking up Old Testament, Old Covenant promises, and waving them around through either quotations or textual allusions and so on and so forth, and referring to all these

Old Covenant materials and saying, this is now fulfilled, this is now fulfilled, something greater has happened, so on and so forth, then we just gotta run with it.

And I think when we do, we end up, the good news just keeps getting better and better.

I mean, Jesus, remember the language in the Book of Romans, that God is not the

God of the Jews only, but also the God of the Gentiles, and the Savior that he brings is a Savior not only for the

Jews, but also for the Gentiles, for the nations, and in every sense, in every sense of what

Israel needed to do and failed to do, in every way that Israel needs forgiveness, and in every way that the

Jews need the righteousness whereby they would be accepted before God, Jesus answers every part of it, every part of it.

And if there's anything amongst the nations, amongst the Gentiles, that they need to be brought into the covenants of promise,

Jesus performs all of that. He's our circumcision, he's our elder brother, everything we need to be a part of the covenants of promise,

Jesus supplies. Sacrificed, high priest, all of it. Yes, and so in his supremacy, we find our sufficiency.

That's the message of Colossians. I have thoughts, but we might talk about them off air, because I haven't got them fully formed out, but I'll ask follow -up questions later.

Do you guys think we've wrapped up that conversation as well as we can, or do you think we need to end?

I hope that folks, when they ask these questions, even if they disagree and they're not on board yet,

I understand, but just keep reading. Just follow your shepherd, Jesus. How does he handle it?

How does he talk about the temple? How does he talk about the land? How does he talk about the covenants of promise?

And just ride with your shepherd for a while. And remember that he taught his apostles, he opened the eyes of his apostles to understand the scriptures, so they're an extension, a special extension of his own teaching throughout the entire

New Testament. Just ride with that for a while, and I believe that it's gonna help you understand and be able to interpret these promises.

And keep asking the questions, because these are important things to ask. Yeah, I agree. As many questions as you have, send them in to us.

We're always glad to receive them and try to answer them as best we can. We'll go ahead and wrap that portion up and move on to what our recommendations are.

Michael, we'll start with you. So, it's related to questions that we've been talking about, but I would go back and make a few recommendations on books to read that might help.

According to Plan by Graham Goldsworthy is pretty good. It'll take you through, some of the chapters are fairly short, and he uses plain language, but it may slow you up a little bit, because there's a lot of thinking that you have to do as he talks about the way to read the

Bible. So, Him We Proclaim is good. I'm trying to remember the title of the book.

I think Walking With Jesus Through the Word, I think it is, by Dennis Johnson. He also has another book called

Him We Proclaim. Him We Proclaim by Dennis Johnson. That one was very helpful in walking through some of these things.

A children's book that I find that I really like in reading to my own children, and we've used it here in children's ministry, is the

Big Picture Bible Storybook. And that one is excellent about how to read all of scripture in the light of who

Christ is. And so that one would be great for family devotions, for reading to children. So I would highly recommend that one as well.

And there's probably a whole lot of other ones that I could think of, but I'll just leave it there. Chris? Recently, kind of apart, we've been having this discussion about the

New Covenant, and then the Covenants of Promise, so Old Covenant, New Covenant. And I would recommend going back and reading in the

Old Testament those covenants, specifically looking at what is promised, who is making the promises, and to who are they making the promises.

And then as you read through scripture, seeing how those promises are fulfilled, by getting more familiar with the

Old Testament, that'll always be a good thing. When you get into the New Testament, you'll better see how they pick those things up, they pick up those themes.

I thought, now that's something new, he's just teaching something new. It is a new thing that he's doing, but he's picking so many, he's bearing the weight of so many things that if you understand those things, and then you see the way that they talk about the

Old Covenants, it just brings so many things together. And to me, it just made me so grateful, like, look what you've done, and I get to be a part of that.

So I would recommend going back and reading those covenants that were made in the Old Testament. Amen. Again, I'm gonna throw a wrench in the recommendations, but that's how

I do things around here. I recommend an online short story magazine, fiction magazine, it's called

Silence and Starsong. It's relatively new, it's only been out for a couple years now, I think they've got four issues under their belt so far, but the guy who started it and is running it as editor,

Joseph Knowles, is a Reformed Christian man, and he does a very good job of sticking to principles and publishing quality work.

I recently had a honorable mention short story that he published, but all the other stuff that I've seen from all their other issues and short story competitions have been pretty top tier, especially when you're talking about a magazine just getting on their feet over the last couple of years.

He's brought the quality up in a short amount of time, and it's fun stuff to read, and I think all ages can participate.

They focus on fantasy and science fiction, but he's willing to publish quite a few things, so I do recommend

Silence and Starsong, it's an online publication. We'll move on to, what are we thankful for,

Michael? I'm thankful for a couple days of rest that I've had, been able to get out of town with my family, and even though my eldest wasn't able to come with us, and that was our first family trip without him, so that was kind of hard to do, but we did get good time together as husband and wife, parents and children, enjoyed it, enjoyed spending time with them, playing with my kids and talking with them, and it was just what

I needed, so thankful for the Lord's provision. I had originally planned to just take whoever out of the family wanted to drive down to Texas and back in a day, you know, because I love my own bed, but my wife had a better idea, hey, let's go spend the night with aunt and uncle, a couple of nights, and let's just take our time and do this and that, and it was a lot bigger than I had originally desired.

Your vision of the bed started to narrow and dissolve. Oh yes, yes, but ended up being a wonderful blessing, so thankful for my wife's suggestion in that, and thankful for the time the

Lord ordained and gave to us. Amen, Chris? Recently, we had the eclipse, and we went down and we camped, and it was a great experience, but we've got four little ones, and so parts of it were rather stressful, particularly with the younger, the little boy, but I'm grateful for moments that God gives us in the lives of our children.

I had one of those moments with the boy, and he was inconsolable, like nothing we did, so I laid down next to him in the tent, and we didn't have the tarp on yet, and we're just there, and I'm trying to calm him down, and I know that it's later than he usually goes to bed, and he's just been overstating, he's just frustrated, and he wants his blanket,

I'm like, you have your blanket. Well, he can't see it, because it's dark, so I turn a flashlight on on my phone, like, this is your blanket, he's trying to smell it, because he can't tell if it's his, and I'm just like, just trust me, man, it's your blanket, all these different things.

You promise him it's there, but he's not seeing how it's fulfilled. That's right, you have everything you need.

So, he lays down, and then, because he's on his back, just in a last -ditch effort to distract him,

I'm like, look, stars, and he's recently learned that word. We get out of the car at night, and he'll point up stars.

Look, the stars. Immediately, his temperament changed, and he's looking at the stars, but then he's looking over at me, and he's just staring at me, and smiling, and laughing, and just like that, it's gone, and he's asking me, those are stars?

Yes, those are the stars, and you can see a bunch of stars, and so, just those little moments where I get to be with him, and pray for him, and his future, and all the children, it just seems like life can be really busy, but God gives us these moments that we get to connect with our children, and then it's a reflection of connecting with God, our

Father, and I'm just grateful for that. The stars trick works on my sons, too, and I know it's not a trick, it's -

Look at this amazing thing. Yeah, and it's hardwired into us to be in awe when we look up, whether it's blue skies, or whether it's starry nights, awe is hardwired into us, and when we're able to point to what

God has done, even the littlest ones, all their selfishness just melts away.

I've seen it happen with my boys multiple times, so I know exactly what you're talking about. Well, I'm gonna kind of echo what you're saying, too.

I'm thankful to the Lord for my children, and spontaneous song that erupts from them.

We have tried to make it a priority to help them learn how to sing songs, to help them learn how to sing scripture and song, and many other songs, because I really enjoy music, and particular kinds of music, but recently, our eldest has started to come up with his own songs, and just compose off the cuff on his own.

They're not great and ordered works yet, but I just watch that, and I marvel at the fact that he knows song is, again, one of those hardwired things in us, and he's able to know that he can create it himself as well, and I think we do image our

Father when we do that. He has brought music to us in this world to hear, to see all around us, but we're able to re -image, and compose, and create things on our own, and I am so delighted to see it in him, and I know it's coming with all the other ones as well, but to see the first inklings of it is such a wonderful thing.

And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners, and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Having Not Read.