The Messiah and the Covenants of Israel (Continued)

The Land Covenant (Continued)

Entering the Land

Warfare and Welfare

The land was to be ordered as a kingdom, where each inhabitant had a place, with security and benefits, and where they would be able to fulfill responsibilities and perform duties.  It is the book of Joshua that describes the entering, conquest and settling of the ‘promised land’. The book can be divided into two halves.  Chapters 1 to 12 deal with the conquest of the land, and describe Israel’s warfare.  Then chapters 13 to 24 deal with the division of the land, which is welfare.   The first half mainly concerns the strategy of warfare. It describes the three main campaigns of the army. The second half concerns the structure of welfare, which was the division of the inheritance and the placing of the cities of refuge.

The Strategy of Warfare

In the strategy of warfare, victory depended on purity. Disobedience in warfare is a capital offence.  In God’s army it is called ‘sin’ and was committed by Achan. The key issue here is the breaking of the very covenant into which they had so recently entered wholeheartedly. They had said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” (Exod.19.8; 24.7) But so soon on entering the land under a covenant relationship with the Lord, the covenant is under threat. Achan’s sin was first covetousness, (“you shall not covet” is the 10^th commandment of the Decalogue); theft; (“You shall not steal” is the eighth commandment); and his theft was of the worse kind because it was taking for personal use, something dedicated to the Lord. Added to that was concealment and lying, which was against the essence of the ninth commandment, “you shall not bear false witness”. The army was weakened and defeated as a direct result. The situation was only recovered when the ‘treason’ was discovered and punished. 

 In God’s army victory depends on unity as well as purity. An indirect result of Achan’s sin was that the army was divided for the only time. As a consequence of the trespass committed at Jericho, Joshua failed to realize that the presence of the Lord was not with them as before. He did not seek guidance, and relied on his army to accomplish victory. Sending only enough men as were needed for victory, or so he thought, his army was routed. It was only after they had purged the sin of Achan was the army able to resume their campaign. Never again, in the invasion of Canaan, did Joshua divide his army.

 Furthermore, victory also depends on recovery. After each campaign the army returned to Gilgal, there to rest, recover and restore their weapons to battle condition.  They did not go from campaign to campaign. Gilgal, of course, was where the ark was kept.

 The application of these truths is clear.  For those engaged in spiritual warfare the importance of individual obedience, corporate unity and universal communion cannot be over-emphasized.

 But even though their three pronged campaign was successful, the conquest was still only partial. This was not by chance but a part of God’s strategy in the education of the nation. When the Land Covenant was granted, Israel was still a pilgrim nation in the wilderness. They were instructed to possess the land by conquest, but it would only be achieved if they had faith in the Lord. The conquest would be progressive and not immediate. In other words, on their part it would not be one act of faith but a continuing life of faith that would obtain Canaan as their homeland. “I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased, and you inherit the land. And I will set your bounds from the Red Sea to the sea, Philistia, and from the desert to the River. For I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you." (Exod. 23:29-31)

 And since they had been given title to the land in the grace and gift of the Lord, then their conduct and actions needed to reflect His character - they were to act with justice and with mercy. “And if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. You shall do no injustice in judgment, in measurement of length, weight, or volume. You shall have honest scales, honest weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” (Lev. 19:33-36)

 Moreover, it was required that they not repeat the folly of the Canaanites. The culture of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, had been condemned by the Lord which was the reason for their expulsion from Canaan. “Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants. You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations, either any of your own nation or any stranger who dwells among you (for all these abominations the men of the land have done, who were before you, and thus the land is defiled)”. (Lev. 18:24-27) Indeed, the period of time that Israel spent in Egypt was partly dictated by the need to wait until the Canaanites were ripe for judgment, as indicated at the ‘cutting’ of the Abrahamic Covenant, the ceremony which provided entitlement of Canaan as a homeland for Israel. The promised territory remained a ‘pleasant land’; an ‘exceeding good land’; a land flowing with ‘milk and honey’, even though the inhabitants were evacuated because of their culture.

 But if possession of the land was conditional for Israel, so was blessing. The land, in which the ‘seed’ of Abraham was to be transplanted, would only remain fruitful and give of its strength if the occupants remained faithful to the Lord. “If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, and perform them, then I will give you rain in its season, the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.” (Lev. 26:3-4) If they apostatized, “you shall sow your seed in vain” and “your enemies shall eat it.” (Lev. 26:16) Furthermore, “your strength shall be spent in vain; for your land shall not yield its produce, nor shall the trees of the land yield their fruit.” (Lev. 26:20)

Next Time: The Structure of Welfare

The Messiah and the Covenants of Israel (Continued)

The Land Covenant

In the Abrahamic Covenant there is mention of a homeland for the posterity of Abraham. At the time when Abraham had confidence that his children, and his children’s children, would multiply into a large nation (he had believed God and it had been accounted to him for righteousness) he re-visited the issue of where they would live. Several times he had been promised the land bordering the Mediterranean as a homeland for them, but that seemed very improbable – it was already occupied, and the inhabitants were very well established. Abraham appealed to God for some assurance, and the Lord gave him that assurance under the ceremony of ‘cutting a covenant’, at the end of which He said, “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates— the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” (Gen. 15:18-21) Thus the promise of the land is a main feature of the covenant of God with Abraham. This is not the Land Covenant; this is the land aspect of the Abrahamic Covenant.

Title to the land of Canaan was renewed with Isaac. “Dwell in this land, and I will be with you and bless you; for to you and your descendants I give all these lands, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father”. (Gen.26:3) Hand in hand with the title of the land was the promise of the blessing of the Lord, which makes rich and adds no sorrow with it. “Then Isaac sowed in that land, and reaped in the same year a hundredfold; and the Lord blessed him”. (Gen. 26:12)

Isaac, in turn, conferred both blessing and title on Jacob, who would be renamed Israel. “Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him … and said to him … May God Almighty bless you, And make you fruitful and multiply you, That you may be an assembly of peoples; And give you the blessing of Abraham, To you and your descendants with you, That you may inherit the land In which you are a stranger, Which God gave to Abraham.” (Gen. 28:1-5)

And God confirmed it to Jacob at Bethel, saying, “I am the Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants.” (Gen. 28:13) Jacob returned to Bethel where God changed his name to Israel, and renewed entitlement to the land. It is to this experience that he returned when speaking to Joseph when Joseph was a ruler in Egypt. “Then Jacob said to Joseph: “God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me, and said to me, ‘Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will make of you a multitude of people, and give this land to your descendants after you as an everlasting possession.’” (Gen. 48:3-4) Joseph, clearly aware of the covenant and confident that it would mature in due time, gave instruction for his remains to be taken and buried in the land of promise when God led the nation of Israel out of Egypt.

The detail of the Abrahamic Covenant dictated that the grant of the land should not mature until more than four centuries after Israel had resided in Egypt. Accordingly, it is during the time of Moses that the promise of the land of Canaan to Israel comes to the fore. Moses, chosen by God to be deliverer, mediator and leader, had a message for Israel.  It was in two parts. The first related to the deliverance – God would bring them out. The second would relate to their inheritance – God would take them in to Canaan. The intelligence given at ‘the bush’ included this double purpose of the Lord. “I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites”. (Exod. 3:8) The provision of God was to be of the highest quality. The land is described as ‘good’, which to a nation whose economy was to be agricultural, meant ‘fertile’; it is ‘broad’ in contrast to the confinement of their Egyptian prison; and flowing with ‘milk and honey’, which are the choicest products of a land with abundant grass and flowers. This last epithet, ‘flowing with milk and honey’, is the descriptive phrase that is most frequently employed to summarize the fruitfulness of what was to be the new homeland of the Jewish nation.

The generation that was redeemed from Egypt did not receive this second part of the message in faith, and were excluded from Canaan (all except Caleb and Joshua). But even unbelief and disobedience cannot annul an unconditional covenant, (the Abrahamic Covenant held this status), and they did ultimately enter the land. But Moses, God’s prophet and spokesman, indicated that their occupation of the land would be conditional. This became evident when the land element of the Abrahamic Covenant was then redrafted as a covenant in its own right. Although mediated by Moses, it was separate from the Mosaic Covenant. “These are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which He made with them in Horeb”. (Deut. 29:1) And the terms were spelt out in great detail. 

In that part of his address recorded in chapters 28 through 30 of Deuteronomy, Moses had been at pains to warn the nation that they would lose occupation of the land if they disobeyed the Mosaic covenant. In fact, he prophesied that some time in the future they would turn away from the Lord, and be exiled from the land, but it would not invalidate either the Abrahamic Covenant or the Land Covenant, for God would, on their repentance, regather them and return them to the land, even if they had been scattered to the four corners of the earth.

So the Abrahamic covenant declared that title to the land was unconditional.

The Land Covenant declared that occupation of the land was conditioned on the obedience of the Jewish nation.

It appears from chapter 30 of Deuteronomy that the Land Covenant will only come into full fruition during the Messianic age, that period when Israel would have come to realize and accept that Jesus of Nazareth is their Messiah and Lord.

More Next Time

The Messiah and the Covenants of Israel (Continued)

The Law was limited in its ability to deal with sin

The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) was, and still is, the most important day in the religious calendar of Israel. It falls on the 10^th Tishri. The instructions for the Day are in Leviticus 23.26-32, with some repetition in Numbers 29.7-11 where the ritual offerings are listed. Leviticus 16.29-34 also refers to this Day where the emphasis there is on the priest who performs the ceremony in the Tabernacle. This day is at the heart of the Mosaic Covenant. Among the Jewish people it has long been considered that the first Yom Kippur took place after Moses had received the second set of stone tablets on which were the Ten Commandments. After the sin of the golden calf, the nation fasted and waited in repentance while Moses ascended the mountain to intercede for them. He returned on the 10^th Tishri to announce that God had forgiven the nation, in honor of which the 10^th Tishri would remain a day of atonement for all generations. The Day of Atonement was always significant in the national calendar, but after the Babylonian exile, it took on much greater importance in the culture of Israel. Since the exile was considered a judgment of God because the nation had failed to keep the Mosaic Law, then fulfilling the Law, especially as it applied to this key Temple service in which atonement was made for the sins of the people, became vital. Because the daily sacrifices were unable to deal with all sins, particularly secret sins, the sacrifices on the Day of Atonement became the major offerings of the religious year. The basic idea was a ‘covering’ for sin, the purpose of which was to accomplish reconciliation between God and man.

The Hebrew word whereby the doctrine of the atonement is usually set out in the Old Testament is ‘kaphar’, the original meaning of which was ‘to cover’ or ‘to shelter’. Strong’s Hebrew dictionary has ‘to cover’ as the initial meaning in all forms of the word. “1 to cover, purge, make an atonement, make reconciliation, cover over with pitch. 1a (Qal) to coat or cover with pitch. 1b (Piel). 1b1 to cover over, pacify, propitiate. 1b2 to cover over, atone for sin, make atonement for. 1b3 to cover over, atone for sin and persons by legal rites. 1c (Pual). 1c1 to be covered over. 1c2 to make atonement for. 1d (Hithpael) to be covered.” (Strongs No. 3722) The name of the mercyseat, ‘kapporeth’ is derived from ‘kaphar’, and is itself a covering, a lid to the ark of the covenant, in which was kept the two tablets of stone on which were engraved the Decalogue, the foundation of the Law of God.

What is suggested here is the truth that the sacrificial system as utilized by the Levitical priesthood could not cleanse sin, only cover it. This is a distinct weakness in the economy that prevailed during the dispensation of Law. The writer of the Hebrew letter remarks on this weakness. “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.” (Heb. 10:4)

Summary

 The Mosaic Law was initially designed:

a.       to bring order and discipline to the nation.

b.      to provide rules for righteous living and righteous behavior.

c.       to provide a way of repairing the relationship with God (for both individuals and the nation) when that relationship had fractured because of sin.

d.      to keep the nation free from the contamination of other idolatrous nations, whose idea of righteousness did not rise to the heights demanded by the God of the Hebrews.

e.       to educate and train the nation in such a way that it would be ready and prepared, in the fullness of time, to receive its Messiah, who would also be the Savior of the world.

What the Law was not designed to do was to provide a permanent rule for righteous living, nor a permanent answer to the problem of sin.

Next Time : The Land Covenant

The Messiah and the Covenants of Israel (Continued)

The Mosaic Covenant (Continued)

The Mosaic Covenant – Its Purpose and Effect

The Israelites, when they were redeemed from Egypt, were a disorganized group of tribes, with poor leadership and almost no government. There was very little commitment to their leaders. Decisions could be queried – sometimes even rejected. There was little coordinated action amongst them. But crisis had brought them together.  The Egyptians had increased their suffering as they themselves suffered under the barrage of plagues inflicted from heaven. Adversity had bound Israel closer together as a unit. When they left their homes, with their backs towards Egypt and their faces towards Canaan, there would be new challenges before them. The new spirit of unity required consolidating and the nation needed structure and government. Moreover, if they were to meet enemies, they would need an army with order and discipline.

God, of course, was always working to a plan. Israel would be constituted as a kingdom, which was intended to be a pattern of the kingdom which is yet to grace the earth, the millennial kingdom under Israel’s Messiah, the Son of God. The leadership of the kingdom of Israel would reside in three anointed offices. Since the government of the nation would be a theocracy, the king, chosen by the Lord, would be answerable to Him. In this situation, the king would require support in two areas. Obviously, he would need to know the mind of God; this would be the domain of the prophet. He would come with messages from the throne, prefacing his utterances with the phrase, “Thus says the Lord”. This would also allow the Lord to make progress with His plan to mould the nation into a receptacle that would suit the incarnation. The first great prophet for the nation was, of course, Moses. He brought the mind of God to Israel at the time of the birth of the nation. And, even as the Tabernacle was a shadow of good things to come, so also Moses was to be a foreshadowing of the Messiah who would come. The second line of support for the king would come from the priesthood – in particular, the High Priest - who would intercede for the king and the people. Aaron and the Aaronic priesthood would also foreshadow the priestly ministry of the Messiah, and because of that, would educate the nation to understand and embrace the doctrines of substitution and forgiveness which were necessary if a meaningful relationship between them and their God could prosper. The main authority would rest with the king, but he would be supported by the prophet and priest.

With the first part of the redemption of the nation from Egypt behind them, God began the process of establishing the three lines of leadership. The intimacy of Moses with God sanctified him in the eyes of the people. His position as prophet was beyond question. The selection of Aaron by God, and his interview on the mountain, established him as High Priest. Initially, God Himself assumed the third role, that of sovereign Lord.

Clearly, if these people, descendents of Abraham, were to fulfill the high ambition that the Lord had for them, and also to be a witness to the surrounding nations, then a moral, ethical and social code by which to live was a necessity. Their leaders would need instruction on how to provide an environment that would be safe and equitable for its nationals. This nation, now constituted ‘the people of God’, is to be the cradle into which the Son of God will be born, so its administration will need to provide the conditions in which He could be raised in accordance with holy principles to live a holy life. Moses and Aaron, together with the elders of Israel, could have gone into conclave and produced some kind of constitution that would have been the basis for their legal and sacerdotal regimes, but that did not happen. This people, now separated to the God of Abraham, were privileged to have the Law disclosed directly from Him, and since He personally promulgated the code, it owned an authority that no other code could possess. He issued it in its entirety, amid great spectacles of majesty and glory. There was no human involvement other than using a mediator to receive and pass on what was His will. Moses, at no time, entered the presence of the Lord with a list of suggestions or requests. The Mosaic Law was entirely God’s idea, and therefore had the backing of Omniscience.

The Law as a Wall of Separation

Sometimes it is said, ‘It is not so much that Israel keeps the Sabbath but the Sabbath keeps Israel’. What this suggests is that the Law of Moses was an instrument that was used to separate the Jewish race from all other nations. There is much in Scripture to support this. The benefits that are available to the people of God were only accessible by those who embraced the Law of Moses. The Temple itself was a physical example of the separation. While Gentiles were welcomed on the Temple Mount and indeed into the Temple itself, they could only enter the court of Gentiles, and as observers at that. This court, the most outer of all the courts, was separated from all other areas of the Temple by a four foot six inch wall. In the wall there were thirteen openings through which Jews were admitted but Gentiles were barred. The openings were guarded by Levites and inscriptions in Latin and Greek were posted at each of the openings. In 1871 a limestone notice was discovered in Jerusalem which read, ‘No stranger is to enter within the balustrade around the Temple and its enclosure. Whoever is caught will be responsible for his own death, which will ensue’.Paul alluded to this wall in his letter to the Ephesians, when he said, “For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation”. (Eph 2:14)

Paul taught that the Mosaic Law was intended to maintain the separation of the Jewish people to the God of Abraham. The blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant were not available to Gentiles unless they embraced fully all that it meant to be a Jew, including, for the men, being circumcised. He describes the condition of those that were not Jewish. “At that time you were … aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” (Eph 2:12-13)

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