Abrahamic Covenant (Part 1)

What Are We to Make of Israel — Steve Gregg

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Abrahamic Covenant (Part 2)

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Abrahamic Covenant (Part 1)

What Are We to Make of IsraelSteve Gregg

Steve Gregg explores the Abrahamic Covenant, discussing its significance in relation to the land and the seed promised to Abraham. He challenges the common assumption that supporting Israel means unquestioningly supporting its claims to the land, suggesting that the covenant should be understood in a broader context. Gregg delves into the concept of covenants and their types and antitypes, drawing connections to Christ as the ultimate fulfillment. He also highlights how Israel, as a nation and as a chosen people, is typified and foreshadowed in the Old Testament, shedding light on its significance in the New Testament.

Transcript

This is our second installment in a series called What Are We to Make of Israel. Now, you have to make something of Israel because if for no other reason it's a very significant player in modern geopolitics. In fact, some would say that even World War 3, if it should erupt, would probably erupt with reference to Israel and her enemies and the allies of both sides.

And so Israel is significant at the very least. Now, whether Israel is biblically significant or not is, of course, one of those things that not everybody would have the same opinion about. Many Christians, probably most evangelicals, today seem to hold to a view which we call dispensationalism.

And on that view, Israel is very important biblically as well as geopolitically. They believe that Israel is today in their promised land that God gave them in the days of Joshua. That they were expelled in AD 70 because of disobedience, but for some reason, even though they're no less disobedient today, God has changed his mind and brought them back.

And now since 1948, they've been back in their land. And there they are to stay forever, according to dispensationalism. Now, one of the problems with that, of course, is there's other people who feel that they have legitimate claims on the land.

Some of them were there for centuries before Israel came back. And, you know, if they don't see the Bible prophecy the same way the dispensationalists do, these people whose ancestors have lived on the land for centuries might reasonably feel that it's their land. After all, the people we call the Palestinians have lived in Israel, in the land of Palestine, at least as long as our ancestors have been in this country.

We might understand the sentiments of the Native Americans would rise up and say, this is our land. We're taking it back. But while we might understand their sentiments, we would think they're kind of not in tune with the way history moves forward.

You know, people get conquered and the people that conquered them usually occupy their land. It's a sad thing. I'm not saying it's a good thing.

It's just just facts. That's how that's how modern nations have come to be what they are today, including the nation of Israel. But whether we think it's a good thing that the Jews have come back and taken control of Palestine and made it the state of Israel in 1948, or whether we think that is a bad thing or maybe just a mixed thing with some good and some bad things about it, is something that almost everybody has an opinion about, except for people who have no idea what's going on in the world, because everyone who knows what's going on in the world knows that there's you got to have an opinion of some kind about Israel.

So the dispensationalist evangelical Christians, they believe that the church should always be favorable toward Israel. They believe that Israel are God's chosen people. We read that to be the case in the Old Testament.

And they say nothing's going to change because God made certain covenants to their ancestors and that these covenants are eternal and that these covenants will never be revoked. And therefore, we have to recognize these covenants as still in force and defining of what Israel's status is with God and therefore with people who think like God does about things. And therefore, we need to be acquainted with what God thinks about Israel so that we can be on God's side in the matter.

And for many churches, probably most the ones we have visited or even pastors we've heard on the radio, the assumption is that, of course, we should always be supporting Israel in her claims to the land because God made an eternal promise to Abraham that his seed would have the land. And there they are. Lo and behold, they do have the land.

And we should say, that's good. God planned on that. God ordained that.

And we should uphold Israel's claims against all the claims of her adversaries to those things. That means, of course, that if we take the dispensational position, we must necessarily take a position which in our modern times is also a political position. Now, for most of the early church history, Jesus and the apostles and the early church didn't take political positions about things.

At least until the time of Constantine, the church didn't hold political offices. They didn't have they might have had opinions about politicians, but they didn't as a church take stands on political issues. And and yet if dispensationalism is true, we are now somewhat obligated to take a political stand about things in the Middle East.

And certainly dispensationalists do that on a regular basis. It's very common on Christian radio programs and in Christian pulpits to hear sermons that are very largely political about Israel and their claims and how the church should be supporting it. I served on an eldership in a dispensational church many years ago with a man who was working with an organization that was very supportive of Israel.

He went around and gave presentations at churches telling Christians they should buy Israeli products and that they should vote for politicians that are pro Israel and things like that. This is a very normal dispensational thing to do. And most of us are familiar with that kind of a way of reasoning.

In fact, as I think I mentioned last time, a growing number of evangelical churches have Israeli flags on the platform. Now, I've never really been sure why the church needs to have political flags at all. I don't even think we need American flags.

So we represent the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is not the same thing as America or Israel or any other political nation. As a matter of fact, the kingdom of God is well represented by citizens of all different nations since the gospel been preached.

So the church doesn't stand by one political entity. If there's any that we in America would stand by, it'd probably be our own. But why Israel's flag? Why would that be on a church platform? We don't have German flags or Chinese flags on our platforms or Japanese flags.

Why Israel's flag? Because there is this mentality among many Christians that Israel as a political nation, as an entity, is God's people. Yes, we Christians are God's people, too. But God has two people.

He has his eternal heavenly people, the church, and his eternal earthly people, Israel. At least that's how the older dispensation used to say it. I don't hear that phraseology so much anymore.

But two chosen peoples. It is certainly true that in the Old Testament there are amazing and unique promises that God makes to Israel or to Abraham. The question is, of course, what is the standing of Israel with reference to those promises today? What is the nature of those promises? So we need to look at that to answer our questions.

Now, people have often heard that Israel are God's chosen people. Chosen in what sense? Chosen for what? What did God choose Israel for? There's no question God chose Abraham and his offspring when he brought them out of Egypt and formed them into a nation, not Sinai. And their history that followed made it very clear that God dealt especially with Israel in ways he didn't deal with other nations.

They were chosen for something. But what? That's something we have to find out. The way we find that out is by looking at the covenants that God made that defined Israel's status.

Last time I was here, I read some quotes from some dispensational authors. David Hawking in particular was one who said very plainly that we need to understand the nature of the covenants. And that the reason that Christians are sometimes confused about the status of Israel is that they have not understood the covenants of God.

And I agreed that I think that many people are confused about Israel because they don't understand the covenants of God. Many times they think they do, and they can expound eloquently on what they think they know about them. But the question has got to be asked, are they right? Is it biblical? I was raised in a church that was dispensational.

I was raised with a certain idea of Bible prophecy and the end times. It was all centered around the importance of Israel. In fact, the final generation, we were told, about 40 years ago, began when Israel became a nation.

The prophetic clock started ticking in 1948, and that marked the beginning of the last generation. On the basis of that assumption, many prophecy teachers were saying Jesus must come within 40 years of that date. And therefore, there were actual predictions that Jesus would come back before 1948.

1988, excuse me, 40 years after 1948. And of course, 1988 is long since passed, and yet there are still some who feel that the coming of the Jews into their own land and being recognized as a nation again in 1948 was a very significant prophetic marker of the end times. So how do we understand this? If Israel is special, it must be because of some covenantal specialist.

Now, when we use the word covenant, you have to understand the word covenant is like a contract, only much more sacred. A business contract is something that two people make and they're bound to. Each of them have to meet certain agreed upon stipulations that they agree to in the contract.

However, they can break it if they want to. That is, if both of them decide they want to break it, they can do it and there's no harm done. It's just a man's contract.

But a covenant in the Bible is something that God makes between himself and people, and it cannot be rightly broken. It can be broken, but not rightly. Both parties can't just say, well, let's just put an end to this.

It's more like marriage. In fact, marriage in the Bible is likened to the relationship that God has with his people. It's a covenant relationship.

When people get married, they enter into a sacred relationship that they cannot break without great sin. Covenant relationships do break up, but not without heinous sin. Because the only way that a marriage can break up is by somebody cheating on the covenant.

You can't have both parties just get together and say, you know, we think it was a bad idea. We don't like each other. Why don't we just kind of dissolve our marriage and go our own ways? Now, people do that, but they're not allowed to.

That's a violation on both of their parts of the covenant. Not like a human contract that both people can let each other out of. God expects a covenant to be kept when it's a sacred covenant, and God had that kind of a covenant with his people.

But it was not an unbreakable one. Because just like marriage is not unbreakable, it can't be legitimately broken, but it can be broken illegitimately. If a husband or wife pursues a course of adultery with someone outside the marriage, the covenant is broken.

Not without sin, but it's broken nonetheless, and it's not binding anymore. That's why Jesus indicated that a man is sinning if he divorces his wife and marries another for any cause other than this sexual impurity. Implying that if there is that sexual unfaithfulness, then his divorce is justified if his wife has been unfaithful.

And so also is it with God and his covenants with Israel. God made covenants with Israel, but there were conditions. There were stipulations.

Israel was supposed to do something, and God was promising to do something. Now, God never failed his promises, but as we know from reading the Old Testament history, there were many failures on Israel's part. And how those failures may impact their present standing of their covenant with God is what really has to be investigated before we can know whether Christians are somehow obligated to give their 100% unconditional approval to Israel as a nation and as a people and to see them as an extremely significant thing in the end times.

So we want to talk about those covenants. The dispensations make it very clear. The reason Israel are still special is because God has these covenants.

Well, what covenants? There's actually more than one covenant that God made that have to do with Israel. One of them is the covenant he made with Abraham. That is the one we're going to look at tonight.

It is probably the most important one. It is a covenant that is stated by God in Genesis 12, verses 1 through 3, and it becomes the pivot of the entire Bible. Everything in the Bible after Genesis 12, 1 through 3, is nothing but commentary on Genesis 12, 1 through 3. The entire Old Testament and New Testament are the fulfillment of this communication that God made with Abraham.

Very central to understand the Bible. In addition to that, there are other covenants. God made a covenant with the children of Israel who came out of Egypt at Mount Sinai, forming them into a political entity.

What God promised Abraham had nothing to do necessarily with making his children a political entity, but they became a political entity at Mount Sinai in another covenant that God initiated there, which we sometimes call the Sinaitic covenant because it was made at Mount Sinai. The first covenant we call the Abrahamic covenant because God made it with Abraham. The second covenant is named after the location Sinai.

It's the Sinaitic covenant. We'll also have to talk about the Davidic covenant because God made a special covenant with David at a later time, and that covenant primarily was that the Messiah would come to the world through him, through his lineage, and that his seed, his Messiah, would sit forever on David's throne. And then there is what's called the New Covenant.

That was inaugurated when Jesus was here in the upper room with his disciples. He announced it when he gave out the communion elements. He said, this cup is the New Covenant in my blood.

The New Covenant was a term Jesus didn't make up, but he took it from the Old Testament. In Jeremiah, chapter 31, God promised he would make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the people of Judah, and others with Israel. So we need to understand how the Abrahamic covenant and the Sinaitic covenant and the Davidic covenant and the New Covenant define what the status of Israel is in this time that we live in, because some things have changed in the meantime, and we need to know whether those changes have changed everything or only some things.

So tonight we want to look at the Abrahamic covenant. I'd like you to turn with me to Genesis chapter 12, and I'd like to read those three verses that I mentioned and some others, because in addition to those initial promises God made to Abraham in those three verses, as time went on, God reaffirmed and added an addendum to the covenant. In Genesis 12, 1, it says, Now the Lord had said to Abram, he was first called Abram.

God later changed his name to Abraham. But the Lord had said to Abram, get out of your country, from your family and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you, and I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you. I will curse him who curses you, and in you all the families of the earth should be blessed. Now this is the initial covenant.

Keep your finger there, because we're going to look at some other passages where God adds to it. But notice what the specific stipulations were. What are the conditions for Abraham? What does he have to do in order to be part of this covenant? He has to leave his homeland.

He has to leave his father's house, his family connections. He has to relocate. He has to uproot, break off all his former attachments, and come alone into a land that he's never seen.

He may have heard of it before. We don't even know if he had. He was off in Babylon, and he had to make this long journey to what we now call the land of Israel.

It was the land of Canaan in Abraham's day. Now he had to leave his family and go there. He had to follow God to a new place, and that's all.

There's really nothing else at this point required of Abraham. Now God, in terms of his relationship, often asked Abraham for other things besides later on, like to sacrifice his son Isaac, but that was not part of the covenant specifically. All Abraham had to do was relocate and follow God to this new land, and he was in.

What was God going to do then? Well, in this passage it says, first of all, Abraham will be blessed in order that he will become the father of many nations. Now, to be a father of many nations, I guess it's not stated quite in those terms here, where he does state it in other terms, but the basic idea is I'll make you a great nation and bless you. I'll make your name great.

You'll be exalted, in other words. You'll be a blessing. Now, being a blessing is a major part of this, and notice at the end of it, verse 3, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

So this promise that God made to Abraham was not only that he'd have a good life, that he would experience blessing, but that he would be the conduit, or his family would be the conduit, of blessing to every family in the world, every nation in the world would be blessed through Abraham. Now, it doesn't state it in so many words, but I think Abraham probably understood. This meant through Abraham seen collectively as him and his family.

In those days, they weren't so individualistic as we are. A man and his family and his offspring were all considered to be one continuous stream of one entity, and when God promised these things would be done through Abraham, it's not likely he thought that in his lifetime, and he was then 75 years old when this promise was made, that within his lifetime, he would somehow get out to all the nations and give blessings to all the nations. He realized this is a long-term prophecy, and it would be fulfilled largely through his offspring, but he was the man who would have the honor of having it done through his family rather than some other.

The world would be blessed. Now, sometimes people will say, well, why did God choose the Jews and reject all the Gentiles? He didn't. He didn't reject all the Gentiles.

He called Abraham's family to be a blessing to all the Gentiles. It's because God wanted to reach all the nations and bless all the nations and bless every family on the earth, that he chose Abraham not for special salvation, but for special a mission, a special mission to bless the world, to bless the nations. And we sometimes think when someone's chosen by God, that means that they're going to heaven, and the people that weren't chosen are not going to heaven.

That's a misunderstanding of the expression being chosen in the Bible. Being chosen in the Bible does not refer to God choosing one person to be saved and other people that aren't chosen thus to be unsaved. After all, there were people besides Abraham who had a relation with God.

Job was not related to Abraham, but he certainly had a relationship with God. There were Edomites in later history that did and so forth. And even there were some Babylonians who turned to God and Persians.

And so you don't have to be related to Abraham to be saved. That's not what this is promised. He didn't say to Abraham, I'm choosing you and you're going to be saved.

The whole world's going to hell in a handbasket, but you're the one who's going to be saved, you and your family. And many times people have made that mistake. They think God chose the Jews to be the saved ones.

And why did he leave the Gentiles out? He didn't. He chose the Jews to be the evangelists to the Gentiles. God had the whole world as his target, every family, and Abraham was simply chosen to be the instruments through which this blessing would come.

And so if you look at some of the addendums to this covenant that are given in later passages, the same chapter, Genesis 12, 7. God said, it says, the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to your descendants. OK, now we've got his seed in here, his descendant, his offspring. They weren't mentioned specifically as the agents before, but it's now seemed to be the case.

To your descendants, I will give this land. OK, so this, there was nothing said about giving land in the first three verses, but now he's added that I'm going to give this land. He was in the land of Canaan.

To your seed as the term that is used in the Hebrew, it's translated descendants or something else in modern English many times. But it's to your seed I'm going to give this land. And if you look at another passage, just in the next chapter, chapter 13.

In verses 14 and following, the Lord said to Abraham after Lot had separated from him, lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are northward, southward, eastward, westward, for all the land which you see, I give to you and your seed forever. It's this kind of language that causes dispensationalists to tell us that the Jews still have a claim to the land because God said I'm giving this to your seed forever. Well, that should settle the question, right? He says, I will make your descendants or your seed as the dust of the earth.

That means numerous. It doesn't mean they'll be walked on. So that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants could be numbered.

Arise, walk in the land through its length and its width, for I will give it to you. And so this additional information is given besides the first communication in verses one through three of chapter 12. He says, I'm going to give you many descendants like the dust of the earth, that many, you know, uncountable descendants.

And I'm going to give them this land you're in. So the promise of the land and the promise of his seed. These are the most important things.

This is this is what we're going to have to study to determine what shall we make of Israel today? What is the promise of the seed and what is the promise of the land? That's the main things that are actually disputed today. OK, let's look at chapter 15 briefly. Another restatement of this chapter, 15, verse five.

Says, then God brought Abram out and said, look now toward the heaven and count the stars, if you're able to number them. And he said, so shall your seed be your offspring. So he had said your offspring will be like the dust of the earth.

Now he says, like the stars of the heavens. These two images simply mean uncountable, innumerable. You're going to have a huge, huge family.

And he told him earlier, many nations, too, will be blessed by him. And in the same chapter, 15 verses 18 and following, it says, on the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying to your seed. I have given this land from the River of Egypt to the Great River, the River Euphrates, the Canaanites, the Canaanites, the Cadmanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephiam, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Gerasites and the Jebusites.

So all this Canaanite territory, God said he's going to give to the seed of Abraham. One other passage we'll look at. That's chapter 17, verses five and six.

God at this time changed Abram's name to Abraham. And he said, no longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham. For I have made you a father of many nations.

There's where the many nations language comes in. And I will make you exceedingly fruitful. I'll make nations of you and kings shall come from you.

So the promise is Abram's going to be exalted father of a great multitude. Many nations will come from him. His seed will be innumerable.

There will even be kings of his offspring. I mean, if one of you knew that one of your grandchildren is going to be the president or something, you'd feel pretty important. But he said, well, there's going to be kings, plural, coming from you.

There were at least 39 Israeli kings that came from Abram. And then there were the Edomite kings, the Midianite kings. There were many kings, probably more kings than we could count have come from him.

But there's more to it than that, because that's just talking about the biological offspring of Abram. And when we come to the New Testament, we find out there's much more involved in this than simply a reference to his biological seed. All right.

So we can see this is the Abrahamic covenant. And you can see from the language of it why it is that there are many who say it's an open shut case. God gave Abraham's offspring that land where they are now.

He said it's forever. It's done deal. They get it.

We should support it. And we should support every effort they make to maintain it as their own against all rival claims. Well, if that's all we had, we might be required to simply reach that conclusion and consider it no further.

But that's simply the statements that are made when the covenant is made. What the covenant's fulfillment is and what the New Testament understands it to mean is a very interesting study. And it's a very and that's what we're going to be looking at in order to gain our insight into what a Christian's view should be about these promises God made to Abraham in the Abrahamic covenant.

Now, I'm hoping that most of you know what I mean when I use the word type in a biblical sense, a biblical type or shadow. If you don't know, I'll try to explain very quickly. The Greek word to pass.

We would spell it to POS to pass. It's the root. It's the word behind our English word type.

And to pass means a pattern or a mold, a shape that shapes other things. For example, a jello mold would be a perfect example of a two plus. It's like or if you're building a patio and you build a frame of two by fours and then you pour the wet concrete into it.

That's the mold. It can be taken away. Eventually, you don't need the mold forever.

Hardens when the jello hardens, you remove the mold and it stays the way it's supposed to be. The mold, in a sense, dictates the shape and the pattern of a thing. And many things in the Bible, in the Old Testament, are described as types or shadows or both of New Testament realities.

Now, the New Testament realities are spiritual. The Old Testament ones are ritual and physical realities, and many of them are identified for us. Some are not clearly, but there are many that are.

For example, certain examples in the Old Testament of types where they represent something that is a spiritual reality in the New Testament. I've made a list of them there in your notes. By the way, the type is the thing that comes first.

The thing it represents is called the antitype. That word is both words are used in the Bible in the Greek New Testament. The word type and antitype are both used in the New Testament.

The type is sort of like the thing, the original thing that is sort of the pattern of something that is to come. A foreshadowing, a symbolic foreshadowing of something that's going to come. The antitype is the thing itself that comes.

The thing that was anticipated. So just if I use that language freely, I want you to know what those words mean. Type and antitype.

It's like prophecy and fulfillment of prophecy. That kind of a relationship. You know what I say, you know, Jesus fulfilled prophecy.

Jesus is the fulfillment. You know that means there was a prophecy that predicted it and he was what was predicted. So if we say type and antitype, it's the same kind of relationship between those two words.

In the Bible, we read that the flood of Noah has an antitype in Christian baptism. It says that in 1 Peter 3, verses 20 and 21. It says after he talked about the flood of Noah, he says we have an antitype of that, which is baptism.

So us passing through the waters of baptism after conversion is like being is as an antitype of God saving eight people in the ark through water. They went through water, came out alive on the other side. Everyone else was dead.

They were saved through the water. So the flood was a type of baptism of water baptism. So says Peter in Luke 9 31.

We read that Moses and Elijah were talking to Jesus on the matter of transfiguration, but the Exodus that Jesus was going to accomplish in Jerusalem. Now, Moses is the guy who led the first Exodus and he's talking to Jesus about the Exodus. Jesus going to bring this hints and it's plainly stated later that the Exodus was a type of what Jesus would accomplish to particularly our salvation.

And this is confirmed in 1 Corinthians 10 verses one through six for Paul talks about how our fathers came out of Egypt as we pass through the sea. And we were back. They were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

And he says, and they ate the spiritual bread and drank the spiritual water. And he says in verse six, these things were a type of us. Now, in your Bible, it might say they were examples or something like that.

In the Greek, in 1 Corinthians 10, six, the word type is used to pass. He says, these things were a type of us. There's the Israelites coming out of Egypt was a type of us coming out of a lost condition into salvation.

So the flood was a type of baptism. The Exodus of the Jews was a type of our salvation. It was accomplished by Christ.

Unleavened bread, which the Jews had to eat for seven days after the Passover every year during their festival of Passover. That represents something spiritual, too, because it says in 1 Corinthians 10, four. I'm sorry, I'm not there.

It's 1 Corinthians 5, seven. No, earlier still. Where am I? I'm looking at the wrong notes here.

Okay, I found it. 1 Corinthians 5, eight. I knew those numbers were right.

In 1 Corinthians 5, eight, it says, let us therefore keep the feast, not with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Now, the Jews had to actually go seven days every year, eating only unleavened bread, avoiding all leaven. They couldn't have any leaven in the house.

And Paul says, now we take that feast somewhat differently. We keep it spiritually. We don't keep the ritual feast of unleavened bread, but we keep the feast in its antitype.

He doesn't use the word antitype, but he clearly is referring to that. We keep the feast by avoiding the leaven of malice and wickedness and live a life that's unleavened, a life of integrity, sincerity, and truth. In other words, he's seen the unleavened bread in that feast as representing a holy and honest and godly life.

So that the leaven in that case would be a type of sin and that eating unleavened bread for seven days is a representation of a spiritual phenomenon that is true in the New Testament, that we live a holy life, free from that leaven. The wandering of the Jews in the wilderness for 40 years, that's also a type of us. It says so in first Corinthians 10 verse 11, all the first 10 verses of chapter 10 of first Corinthians.

Our cataloging cataloging experiences, the Jews or Israel had as they wandered in the wilderness after they came out of Egypt and before they came into the promised land, those 40 years, they had various experiences, which Paul catalogs in first Corinthians 10 verses one through 10. Then verse 11, he says, all these things happened as types for us. Again, your English Bible won't say types, but the Greek says, two plus two point types.

All the experiences of the Israelites walking through the wilderness, their journey is a type of our life, of our saved life. As we have come out of Egypt, we're now walking with God, led by the spirit, as by the cloud, eating the spiritual food, which is Christ's body, the spiritual drink, which is the Holy Spirit and so forth. I mean, there's everything in the wilderness wandering of the Jews is identified by Paul as types of the Christian life.

The Christian life, of course, is spiritual, but their events were physical and historical occurrences. What else? Coming into Canaan as a rest is a type also. In the Old Testament, in both Deuteronomy and elsewhere, Joshua, I think, there's a reference to the Jews coming into their land, possessing the land and entering into rest.

That is a rest from their 40 years of wandering. They've been never resting. They've been camping, but they haven't been settled.

When they come into Canaan and they conquer the land, they come into a rest from their wanderings. It's referred to as the rest. In Psalm 95, God reminds Israel that they did not come into God's rest because of their lack of faith.

They provoke God in the wilderness, and the first generation that came out of Egypt did not enter God's rest. That is Canaan. But the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews chapter 4, after he mentions that, he says, there remains a rest for the people of God.

There is something that corresponds for us to them coming into Canaan and coming into their rest in the promised land. There's something that corresponds that for us. There remains a rest for the people of God, he says in Hebrews 4, 9, he says, for those who enter into God's rest have ceased from their own works as he did from his.

So this resting in the finished work of Christ is the promised land that is typified in the type of Israel coming into Canaan. Now, there's reasons I'm giving all these examples. I'm trying to show you how shot through with types and shadows the Old Testament is.

There's also, of course, the tabernacle. If you read Hebrews chapter 8 and the early verses of chapter 9, the writer there says he kind of explains what took place in the tabernacle with the priests and the altar and the holy of holies and all that. And he says, now he says, all those things were a shadow of spiritual things, of heavenly things.

God made the wilderness and most of its details have typical or typological significance to spiritual realities. Now, that's just a partial list of things in the Old Testament that are said to be types of spiritual new covenant realities. But there's specifically quite a few types of Christ himself.

None of the ones I gave you just now are specifically types of Christ. But there's a whole other list of types in the Old Testament that are said to be of Christ. The first was said to be a type of Christ is Adam.

It says in in Romans 5, 12, that Adam was a type of him who was to come in in Christ. Christ is the second Adam. He bears some resemblance to Adam in his significance as the founder of a race.

Adam's the founder of the human race. Christ, the founder of the redeemed human race. And so he's like a second Adam starting a new race.

The Passover lamb is a type of Christ. According to First Corinthians 5, 7, it says Christ, our Passover, has been slain for us. The manna in the wilderness that the children of Israel ate, that's a type also.

Jesus said that in Chapter six of John. Jesus said, Moses didn't give you bread from heaven. I'm the bread from heaven, which the father gives you.

I'm the true manna. The manna that the children of Israel ate that nourished them was a type in a shadow of Christ who is spiritually our spiritual food. Likewise, the water they drank from the rock.

Actually, the rock itself is a type of Christ. Or as Paul puts it, that rock was Christ. He says that in First Corinthians chapter 10.

Also in verse four, he says, they drank from the rock that followed them, which rock was Christ. Now that wording is interesting because it makes it sound like Paul thought that rock was literally Christ. He means typically.

Just like when Jesus gave the bread and says, this is my body. He didn't mean that my body has just lost a chunk of itself and now you're going to put it in your mouth. He's saying this is a picture of my body.

This is a shadow. This is a type of my body. It represents my body.

And when Paul said that rock from which the children of Israel drank, that rock was Christ. He means it represented Christ, of course. The type of Christ from whom the spirit of God, the living water flows out to nourish us and sustain us.

The ritual laws of diet and holy days and so forth. Paul says about them in Colossians 2, 16 and 17, says, let no one judge you concerning food or drink or whether you keep festivals or new moons or Sabbaths. These things were a shadow for the time being.

But the body is of Christ. Christ is the body. These things were shadows of him.

So, in other words, types of him. The high priesthood, of course, of Aaron is developed quite extensively in Hebrews chapters 5 through 7 as being a type of Christ's priesthood, which is after the order of Melchizedek. But many of the comparisons of the role of the priest in the Old Testament are made and showing how Christ fulfills them in his own behavior.

So there's all these types of Christ. The bronze serpent that Moses raised up on a pole when the children of Israel had been bitten by snakes and were dying. God said, put a bronze serpent on a pole.

If they look at it, they'll be healed. Jesus said to Nicodemus when he was talking with him in John 3, verses 14 and 15. Jesus said, as the serpent was raised up in the wilderness, so shall the son of man, meaning himself, be lifted up that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

Just as the Israelites were healed from their deadly illness by looking at that serpent on the pole. So we, by looking by faith at Jesus Christ, who's been raised up on a cross, we are healed of our deadly condition and brought into eternal life. These are types of Christ.

Joshua himself was a type of Christ. He even had the same name, Jesus, Joshua, the same name. And it says in Hebrews 4, 8, if Joshua had brought the people into the rest, then there wouldn't be any discussion in Psalm 95 later of there still being a rest for Jesus to bring us into.

Joshua brought them into a rest that was only a type and a shadow of the rest that Jesus brings us into. So Joshua, in doing so, is a type of Christ. So is David in another sense.

So is Solomon in yet another sense. I've given you scriptures, several, we won't take time to look at. But the Bible makes David and Solomon both, and especially David, to be out a type of Christ.

Now having said this, what I'm trying to get across to you before I talk about the Abrahamic covenant is how it is that almost everything and everyone in the Old Testament, though they were real people, real events, real rituals, real objects, they were ordained by God to be a foreshadowing and a type of something spiritual that would be inaugurated in the new covenant. Something that was a mere historical fact or ritual in the Old Testament becomes, it is exchanged for its antitype, which is something spiritual in the New Testament. Now, there's several types that are identified in the Bible that are specifically associated with the Abrahamic covenant.

And this I don't hear teachers point out quite as much as some of these others. But this is something that is really directly related to our concerns here tonight. There are some types identified in the Bible that are related to the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant.

First of all, the seed of Abraham. Yeah, we read passages where it said descendants, which in English is necessarily a plural word. But both in Hebrew and in Greek, the word for seed can be singular or plural.

And it's obvious in the context of some of the Old Testament passages that it is plural. Like when God said to Abraham, if you can count the stars, that's how your seed will be. Obviously, it means multiple.

He's talking about plural seed. And who are those seed? Obviously, the people of Israel, the Jewish people eventually were the offspring, the multiple offspring of Abraham. But when Paul discussed the promise and its significance in Galatians chapter 3, he wants us to know that really the seed is Christ, singular.

And that God, in using a word in the Hebrew that could be singular or plural, left open the possibility of seeing that the type is plural, but the antitype is singular. Christ is the antitype. Israel, the nation, is the type.

They were a type of Christ. We see this again and again. Now, Matthew chapter 1, the opening verse of the New Testament identifies Christ as the son of Abraham.

It says, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham. Now, being son of Abraham means something. It means there were promises made to Abraham and his sons or his son, depending on how you take it.

Seed can be singular or plural. In the Old Testament, much of this was fulfilled to his plural seed, but only as a type of the ultimate fulfillment that Paul identifies in Galatians 3. And I would like for you to look at Galatians with me. And even when we turn away from Galatians, keep your finger there, because we're going to be looking at Galatians on and off for the rest of this evening.

But we'll be looking at cross references as well. So you'll want to have a bookmark or something in Galatians. Galatians 3, verse 16.

Paul said, Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. Now, what promises? The Abrahamic promises. What are those? That he'd have a great seed, great nations be blessed through him.

The seed would possess the land. These are the promises that were made to Abraham and to his seed. Now, Paul says these promises were made to Abraham and to his seed.

Then Paul gives us some commentary. He says, Now, it says he does not say to seeds, plural, as of many, but as of one and to your seed, who is Christ. Now, actually, the offspring of Abraham, all the Israelites, they were the seed also.

They were the plural seed. But just like Paul said, that rock that followed Israel through the wilderness was Christ. What he says, the rock was a type and Christ is the antitype.

Christ is the reality that the Old Testament type anticipated. Israel, the seed of Abraham, plural, were a type of Christ, the seed of Abraham, singular. And what Paul is saying is that's who the promises apply to, not to seeds, plural, as of many, but to your seed, which Paul stresses as a singular here.

Now, when you get to the end of the same chapter, you might feel like Paul's contradicting himself because he says in verse 29, And if you are Christ's, that if you belong to him, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs, according to the promise. Now here he's obviously talking to multiple people, heirs, plural. And he says, if you belong to Christ, you are Abraham's seed.

Well, didn't he just say there's only one seed? What's he doing? Is he speaking at cross purposes to his point? No, not at all. What he's saying is this. If you are, if you belong to Christ, then you are that one seed, Christ.

You're the body of Christ. And he says it in the previous verse in case it wasn't caught. In verse, in chapter three of Galatians, verse 27, 28, says, 27 and 28.

It says, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Christ is singular, but he's corporate. He says, there is neither Jew nor Greek.

There's neither slave nor free. There's neither male or female. You are all one in Christ Jesus.

Not many seeds, one seed. Christ is the one seed and we are him. We are his flesh and his bones.

We are his body. We are not many. We are one.

So the Israelites, however, who are not in Christ, they are only many. There's this one and that one and that one. And there's millions of them around the world.

Israelites, they are seeds of Abraham, but they're not the seed to whom the promises are made. Christ is the seed to whom the promises are made. And those who are in Christ are him.

They're his body. They are the seed of Abraham. That singular seed.

And so Paul says in verse 29 there, if you are Christ, said, if you belong to him, you're part of his body, his fingers and his toes and his toe and his, you know, organs and his limbs. Then you are Abraham's seed, which is what Christ is. And you are heirs according to the promise.

What promise? The Abrahamic promises. That's what he's been talking about. The promises God made Abraham are to what heirs? Christians.

Not because we are better than Jews, but because we are one body in Christ and he is the seed. And he is the one that the Jewish nation typified or foreshadowed. The history of Israel was a type and a shadow of spiritual things.

And Christ, when he came, is the fulfillment of that type. And we who are in Christ are that seed, Paul says. If you belong to Christ, you're his seed, you're Abraham's seed, and you're the heirs of the promises God made Abraham.

That's not very ambiguous to me, though some Christians act as if that isn't even in the Bible. What's more, they have to act like Paul didn't ever say anything anywhere else on the subject either. Because every time Paul spoke in any of his books, he said the same thing.

So we see that the seed of Abraham is a type of Christ. He is the ultimate singular seed, but the plural seed were a type of him. But also, the expression in Christ, since we talked about being, it's a plurality body of Christ, many are one in him.

In the body of Christ, we have certain privileges. They are Christ's privileges. If you read the book of Ephesians, especially the first three chapters, Paul can hardly talk about anything else except what it means to be in Christ.

Everything is ours in Christ. In Christ, we are chosen by God. In Christ, we are redeemed by his blood.

In Christ, we have forgiveness of sins. In Christ, we're seated in heavenly places at the right hand of God. In Christ, we have all these things.

Because why? Because Christ has them, and we're in him. What is true of him is true of everything that's in him. I sometimes liken it to, and Paul's theology contrasted between being in Christ and being in Adam sometimes.

And becoming in Christ means that God has supernaturally extracted you from Adam and put you into Christ. Before that, you were part of the corporate body of Adam. The whole world of the unredeemed, or the body of Adam.

That's why the name Adam means humanity. Adam, in Hebrew, means man or mankind. All of mankind are in Adam.

But all those who are in the second Adam are now in Christ. But what's it mean? It's like if you have a man on death row, like Adam, sinner and condemned. And there's an organ of his body that is needed by the man who's the new president elect, or woman.

Let's hope man this time. I don't mind woman sometimes, but this time I'd like it to be man. That's me getting too political, though.

But there's a candidate who needs a spleen. And there's someone on death row who's got one. And that spleen is taken out of the condemned man and put into the future president.

Now that spleen has just had a change of destiny. Not because it's so special, but because it's in somebody special. It was in a body that was going to the electric chair.

Now it's in a body that's going to the highest office in the land. We have been in Adam, in his body. But in Christ, we're now out of Adam, and in Christ, we're now a part of the body of he who is going to rule the world forever.

That's why we're going to rule with him, because we are in him. And Paul has this idea, Paul's enamored with this idea. But you see, what is true in Christ for us is what was... If you wanted to be one of God's people in the Old Testament, you had to be in Israel.

Israel was the corporate chosen people. You could be in or out of Israel by choice. But if you were in Israel, you were in the chosen ones.

If you chose not to be in Israel, then you were out of the chosen ones. You were chosen or not, as you chose to be in Israel or not. He, Israel, corporately was chosen.

So Christ is corporately chosen now. He's the new Israel. You want to be in the chosen category? You got to be in Christ.

He's the chosen one. Paul says in Ephesians 4, we are chosen in Christ. In fact, there's all kinds of blessings that God said would come to those who are in Israel in the Old Testament.

We know that. You know, Genesis 22, 18 talks about the blessings that would come on those in Israel. In the New Testament, the blessings are on those who are in Christ.

Ephesians 1, 3 says that Christ has blessed us with every heavenly blessing in Christ Jesus. God has blessed us. In Christ is where the blessings are.

In the Old Testament, it's in Israel is where the blessings are. Christ is the new Israel. And the blessings of God are not in Abraham's physical descendants anymore or even Isaac and Jacob's physical descendants anymore.

It's in Christ, who is himself a physical descendant of them, but he is the one that has received all the focus of God's promises brought together in him. And those who are in him are blessed in him as if in a new Israel. Israel had many titles in the Old Testament that are now Christ's titles, which show us that Israel was a type of Christ.

For example, even the term that we're so familiar with for Christ, Son of God, that Christ is God's son is one of the most familiar facts of the New Testament. It's one of the things you have to profess in order to be saved. To be a son of God yourself, you have to believe that Jesus is the son of God, it says in 1 John.

And yet this term, son of God, originally referred to Israel. Israel collectively, remember Christ is collective too. Christ is a body with many members.

Israel was judged collectively as God's son in the Old Testament. In Exodus chapter 4, when God first called Abraham, called Moses, excuse me, and told him to go confront Pharaoh. In Exodus 4 and verse 22, God said, Then you shall say to Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord, Israel is my son, my firstborn.

Both of these terms are titles for Christ in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, Israel was God's son, God's firstborn. In the New Testament, Christ is God's son, God's firstborn.

And so we see, did you ever notice in Matthew chapter 2, when the birth narrative of Jesus is being told, and Jesus' family took Jesus away as a baby into Egypt in order to escape the destruction that Herod was going to bring on all the infants in Bethlehem. They stayed in Egypt until Herod died and then they came back to the Holy Land, Jesus and his family. And Matthew interjects, and this is in Matthew chapter 2, verse 15.

He says, That it might be fulfilled what was written in the prophets, I have called my son out of Egypt. Now with reference to Christ, it's quite interesting. Jesus, God's son, came out of Egypt in his childhood because he had been there for a little while.

He came, God called his son out of Egypt, back out. But what is the verse that Matthew is quoting? He's quoting Hosea 11.1. And if you would read Hosea 11.1 in its context, it says, When Israel was young, I loved him and called my son out of Egypt. Meaning the Exodus.

It's not even a prophecy, it's a recollection of a historical fact. When Israel was young, I loved him and I called him, my son, out of Egypt. My firstborn.

Israel, God's son, came out of Egypt in its infancy. Christ, God's son, came out of Egypt in his infancy. And Matthew saw that as type and antitype.

That's the only way he could have seen it. Because it couldn't be, it wasn't a prophecy. Hosea didn't say, Thus saith the Lord, the Son of God will come out of Egypt.

No, he doesn't predict anything. He just reminds his readers that God called his son Israel out of Egypt in the days of Moses. But when it happened to Jesus, Matthew's called that a fulfillment.

Certainly not a fulfillment of a prophecy, a fulfillment of a type. Israel, the type. Christ, the antitype.

Christ is the antitype and is the new Israel. Now, there's, we don't have time to go into this in the detail I'd like. But in Isaiah, there's a section in the latter part of Isaiah, which are sometimes called the Servant Songs.

Scholars call them Servant Songs. They are four poems, extended poems in Isaiah, that talk about someone who is called the servant of Jehovah, the servant of Yahweh, God's servant. And these songs, or these songs that are in Isaiah, I have given reference in my notes if you'd like to look them up sometime.

But they are talking about Jehovah's servant, whom he has called to be a blessing to the nations. Obviously to fulfill the Abrahamic covenant, to be a blessing to all nations. He's given him to be a light to the Gentiles, the servant of Yahweh.

Well, there are several times in these Servant Songs that specifically say, Israel, you are my servant. The servant of Yahweh in these songs is several times identified as Israel. But interestingly, these Servant Songs are quoted repeatedly in the New Testament and applied to Jesus, as if it's him that's the servant.

In fact, there's some ways, some of them you could not avoid doing that. For example, one of the Servant Songs is Isaiah 42. I've given you more references in this.

We'll just look at this and maybe one other one. Isaiah 42, verse 1. Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my elect one, in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him.

He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. That's the Abrahamic blessing to all nations. He will not cry out nor raise his voice nor cause his voice to be heard in the street.

A bruised reed he will not break, a smoking flax he will not quench. He'll bring forth justice for the earth. Justice for truth.

Now, this is one of the Servant Songs. Like I said, many of the Servant Songs identify Israel very plainly as the servant. This is Jesus.

This is actually quoted in Matthew chapter 12 as being about Jesus. As if Matthew's readers are expected to know that this servant of Yahweh who is Israel really is Christ. Christ is the Israel that this is about.

In fact, Isaiah 53, the most famous prophecy about Christ in the Bible. You know Isaiah 53, I would imagine. It's the most often quoted chapter of Isaiah in the New Testament.

It's quoted and alluded to lots and lots of times, this Isaiah 53. It's one of the Servant Songs. It's about the servant of Yahweh, Israel.

But as a type of Christ. And so the New Testament continually quote from that song. That Servant Song is the fourth of the four Servant Songs in Isaiah.

And they say Christ fulfilled it when he did this, when he did this, he fulfilled it. There's no question. The apostles, when they wrote and when they identified fulfillments of prophecy in Jesus' life.

They saw him as living out a life that was foreshadowed in type by Israel. The servant of Yahweh, which is Israel, is now the servant of Yahweh, Christ. The Son, God's firstborn, which was Israel, is now the Son, God's firstborn, Christ.

And so this type and anti-type thing exists. Israel was a type of Christ. In Isaiah 5, 7. This is the close of a song that Isaiah sings about something else.

This is not one of the Servant Songs. This is the Song of the Vineyard. And Isaiah says, My beloved, he's referring to God, planted a vineyard in a fruitful hill.

He looked for good fruit, but he didn't get good fruit. So he's going to tear down the hedge and let the wild beast come and tear it up. And he said, Now, just so you're not missing my point.

In verse 7, he says, The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is Israel. And the men of Judah are his vine, his present plant, a pleasant plant. The vine in the Old Testament that's supposed to bring forth fruit for God is Israel.

But in John 15, 1, Jesus said, I am the true vine. My Father is the husbandman and you are branches to me. If you remain to me, you'll bear fruit.

I'm like a body made up of many members. I'm a vine made up of many branches. And the vine is Christ.

The branches are the members of him through whom he brings forth fruit. But the point is there's predictions in the Old Testament that God is going to have a fruitful vine. But Israel didn't fulfill that in their history.

Christ does. He's the true vine. He's the antitype of the vine.

Israel was the type. Also the olive tree. Now, Israel is called the olive tree in Jeremiah 11 and verse 16.

And you may, if you're familiar with Romans, you know that Paul develops this concept. But Jeremiah 11, 16 says, The Lord called your name green olive tree, lovely and of good fruit. With the noise of great tumult, he has kindled a fire on it and its branches are broken.

This is addressed to Israel. Israel is told you are a green olive tree. However, your branches have been broken.

That imagery should sound very familiar to anyone who's read Romans. Because in Romans 11, Paul is trying to explain to us how God's plan for Israel has been fulfilled without it being fulfilled the way the Jews thought it would. And if you look at this section of Romans, one that we'll have to look at more carefully later when we talk about the Israel, the future promises to Israel.

But just a section of this, you'll see how Paul is understanding Israel, the olive tree now. In verse 16, Romans 11 and verse 16, Paul says, For if the first fruit is holy, the lump is also holy. And if the root is holy, so are the branches.

If some of the branches were broken off, as in Isaiah 11, 16, some of the Jewish branches broken off of Israel. These are the ones who are unbelievers who didn't come to Christ, the Jews. If some of the branches were broken off and you Gentiles being a wild olive tree were grafted in among them, and with them became a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree, do not boast against the branches.

But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root. The root supports you. You'll say then branches were broken off that I might be grafted in.

Well said because of unbelief, they were broken off. But you stand by faith. Do not be haughty, but fear.

For if God did not spare the natural branches, he might not spare you either. Therefore, consider the goodness and the severity of God on those who fell severity, but toward you goodness. If you continue in his goodness, otherwise you also will be cut off.

And they also, if they do not continue in unbelief, can be grafted, will be grafted in. For God is able to graft them in. So what is he saying? Here's this olive tree image from the Old Testament.

Israel's an olive tree with branches broken off. In Jeremiah's day, the branches were broken off where the Jews had been carried off into Babylon. Paul's making a different application.

Here's the olive tree, and yes, there are branches broken off today. Who? The unbelieving Jews. The Jews that did not receive Christ have been removed from the tree.

They're not part of Israel anymore. And in their place, branches from a wild olive tree, meaning foreign branches, Gentiles, have been grafted in to that olive tree. What's the olive tree? Israel.

So who are the branches of the olive tree? The Jews who did not get broken off for unbelief because they are believing Jews. The Jews who actually received Christ were not broken off. The ones who rejected Christ were broken off.

So the tree has these Jewish believing branches, and then these Gentile believing branches. And when you put Jewish believers and Gentile believers into one organism, what is that organism? It's the body of Christ. Israel, the olive tree, is now the body of Christ.

The natural branches that didn't believe in him, they've been broken off. They're not part of Israel anymore. They're not part of the tree, which is Israel.

The tree is Christ, corporate Christ, the body of Christ. He is the Israel of God. He's the true Israel.

So you see that these images from the Old Testament that applied to Israel, in the New Testament they're taken up as Christ. He's the Son. He's the firstborn.

He's the servant of Yahweh. He's the fruitful vine. He's the olive tree.

He's the seed, singular, to whom the promises apply. So Paul's understanding, and that of the New Testament writers, as we shall see besides Paul, is consistently this. That what was true of Israel in the Old Testament is now fulfilled in Christ.

He is Israel now. In the Old Testament, if you wanted to be one of God's chosen people, you had to be in Israel. Today, if you want to be one of God's chosen people, you have to be in Christ, the new Israel.

He's Israel today. Now, what is the typological value of the land itself? What about the land that was promised? We've talked about the seed of Abraham. The seed of Abraham is Christ.

What is the land that the promises made to Abraham applies to? Well, the New Testament takes this up in an interesting way, because it sees the land as being simply representative of what Christians will inherit. The land was the inheritance of Israel, the nation. God always spoke to it as their inheritance.

Interesting word. We who have been Christians a long time might be just acquainted with the word, think nothing of it. Why call that an inheritance? Usually you inherit something from your dad when he dies, or your ancestors when they die.

The Israels, they didn't inherit the land from any of their ancestors who had died, but it was their, it's God's land. And as God's son, Israel inherited what belonged to their dad. Israel was God's son, his firstborn.

And he left to his offspring a land. And that land was their inheritance. And so in the New Testament, this concept of the land is taken up as if it represents all the inheritance that is Christians.

And see how Paul, for example, uses this and the writer of Hebrews. If you look at Romans chapter four, this is actually very enlightening, very peculiar. Something that could be read over without noticing.

And yet to your detriment, if you don't notice what Paul says, because when he changes something, he does it on purpose. He doesn't do it by mistake. In Romans four, verse 13, Paul said, for the promise that he would be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

What? Did you catch that? God made promises to Abraham and his seed, not by the law, but by faith. That God made promises to Abraham and his seed, what? That he would be what? Heir of the world. The Greek word is cosmos, the universe.

All that God made, Abraham and his seed are going to inherit. Well, that's what Jesus is going to inherit, isn't it? And we're joint heirs with him. Joint heirs with Christ, the Bible says.

The whole of the created order, the new heavens, the new earth, when God has removed the curse, that is the inheritance of Christ and those who are the joint heirs with Christ. That's what the land represented, first of all. More than that, though, too, because we saw that in Hebrews chapter four, verses eight through 11, that the whole issue of the rest is discussed and that the Canaan acquisition by Israel said they came into their rest.

But it says very clearly in Hebrews four, that's not the ultimate rest that God had in mind. There remains a rest for the people of God. And that rest is a ceasing from our labors, from our own works.

And I believe now there's two ways people have looked at that. Some people have thought that that the writer of Hebrews is referring to the after death experience of the Christian ceasing from their works in their life. Others feel that's not about resting now in the finished work of Christ, which I think the wording actually would support better, because he goes on to say, for he who has entered into God's rest.

So there are some of us who have entered into God's rest. And he says it remains, therefore, that some must enter in. If you read that section of Hebrews four, there is a spiritual rest that is typified by the the Canaan rest that Israel came into.

So there's a spiritual rest that we inherit in Christ, along with the universe. And it is a city from heaven. Now, in Revelation 21, John sees the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God to the new earth.

It's an earthly venue that the new Jerusalem is on, but it comes from heaven. And if you look over at Hebrews chapter 11, there's a really interesting thing that the writer of Hebrews says about Abraham's expectation, which, again, if we hadn't been told, we probably wouldn't have any clue about this. The writer of Hebrews, an inspired writer, gives us what we would not otherwise have access to information on this point.

But Hebrews chapter 11, verses 14 through 16, says, for those who say such things, that is, who say they're strangers and pilgrims, which is how Abraham described himself to the men that he bought Machpelah the cave from. But I'm a stranger and a pilgrim in the earth. And so the writer of Hebrews mentions that Abraham and others said that those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland.

Now, Abraham was living in the promised land. Why was he seeking a homeland if he was already in the promised land? Says, and truly, if they had called to mind the country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country.

Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. Obviously, a heavenly one. It's a heavenly city.

It's a city from heaven. It's in heaven now. It's the heavenly Jerusalem.

It's the Jerusalem that is above. If you look at Hebrews 12, then, since we're in Hebrews 11, just look over a chapter further. It says in verse 22 to the Christians, But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.

Well, isn't that the city, the heavenly city that Abraham was looking for, the heavenly Jerusalem, the one that eventually comes down from heaven in Revelation? It says we have already, we're already citizens in that city. We're already in there. That's our inheritance.

And we have already come, in a sense, to it, the heavenly Jerusalem, to innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn. That's who the heavenly Jerusalem is, is the church. Paul says in Galatians 4 that the Jerusalem above is the mother of us all.

We've all been brought into God's family through the agency of the church that is Christ's body. And so it's the mother of all of us, the true church, not the institutional church per se, but the body of Christ, spiritual body of Christ. The reality is that which has brought the gospel to us and nurtured us as a mother does.

The heavenly Jerusalem is the mother of us all. So the land is a type also. Now, there's a lot of things that are type.

I mentioned some, but one thing I didn't mention, I believe that there's two things that Christians have misunderstood about the law, that God intended to have typological value and a lesson for the people. One of them is the tithe and the other is the Sabbath. God told Israel that when they harvested their crops, they should take a tenth of it and bring it and give it to the temple, to the Levites.

If they didn't do that, they were robbing God. According to Malachi 310, they're robbing God if they don't bring the tithe. Likewise, they were to take one day out of seven and give that wholly to the Lord.

They don't work. They don't do any of their own things. They just, you know, worship God and rest and don't do anything else.

As I understand it, these were types and shadows, because what God is trying to say is all your stuff and all your time is mine. And in the Old Testament, I'm going to make you give me part of your stuff and part of your time. I'm going to just claim it.

If I can just claim it, I can claim any part I want. I'm just going to claim 10 percent of your stuff and one seventh of your time. And that's my way of letting you know that all your stuff and all your time belongs to me.

Now, giving Israel one piece of real estate was also a type of giving Christ the whole world. He gave him the central piece, three continents connected at one spot. What a great location to start the world conquest of the gospel from.

I mean, what? And it was a wonderful land at the time. It's sort of a waste desert or it was until the Jews came back and, you know, irrigated and made it nice again, parts of it. But in the days of Abraham, it was lush.

It was like the garden of God, it says in Genesis 18 or Genesis 19, that the land of Canaan was like the garden of God. It was beautiful. It was a land flowing of milk and honey, even in the days of Moses.

Isn't that way now? It got defoliated. Part of it was when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. They cut down all the trees and Josephus describes that.

And so when you defoliate a land, it just becomes a desert. That's what it's become. But it was a great land, a beautiful land, the best of lands at the time.

You wouldn't know it by looking at it today, but it was a wonderful gift that God gave. And he said, this is a token. This is your inheritance, natural Israel, because my seed, Christ, is going to have real estate.

It's called the world and probably all the planets too. After all, someone asked me the other day, if everyone who's ever been a Christian is raised from the dead and is ruling with Christ, how are we going to fit them all on the planet? Well, there's lots of planets. We don't know.

We don't know what God's going to do. Maybe he'll make this one bigger. Maybe he'll expand it and blow it up like a balloon.

It gets bigger. So there's more room for more people. Or there's something those planets are out there for something.

I don't know what, but the thing is, the part is the type of the whole. The tithe is a part of your possessions. It's a type of the whole, which now belong to God.

Jesus said, unless a man forsakes all that he has, he cannot be my disciple. One day out of your week that was given to God under the law, that was a type of God owning it all. Every day, 24 seven belongs to God.

One little piece of real estate given to Israel in the Old Testament was a type of what Christ is to inherit. What is he going to inherit? Read Psalm 2. Psalm 2 quotes Jesus saying this. The Lord said to me, ask of me and I will give you the heathen for your inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession.

That's the promise God makes to Christ. And what does Christ make to us? Lesser than meek, they shall inherit the earth. You thought you're going to go to heaven forever.

Bible never says that anywhere. The earth is what God has given to man. Heaven, even the heavens are the Lord's, but the earth is given to the sons of men.

It says in Psalm 115 verse 16, and God has given us the earth. But if Adam and Eve had not sinned, they would have lived here forever. And that's exactly what God made them to do.

A perfect body, a perfect earth, a perfect existence. Sometimes people think, well, I don't know if I'm going to like heaven. Sitting around on a cloud with a harp that doesn't really, that could get old.

Even a few years, that could be old. How is eternity going to work out that way? It's not going to be like that. There's no clouds and harps and so forth.

We're going to have, we're going to be on a new renewed earth. It's a new paradise of God. It's referred to in Revelation.

It's the paradise of Eden expanded to be the whole planet. And maybe beyond that, who knows? We don't know. But one thing we do know is the land that God gave Israel in the Old Testament is simply a type.

And types are by definition temporary. Types are around until the antitype comes and then they're not needed anymore. The foreshadowing doesn't need to continue foreshadowing once the body has come.

These things were a shadow, but now the body has come. That's why we don't circumcise anymore. Circumcision was a type of circumcision of the heart.

We don't offer animal sacrifices. They were a type of Christ. That's come.

We don't do that anymore. You don't need the type. It ceases to be relevant once the fulfillment has come.

So has God withdrawn his promises to Abraham? No, he's fulfilled them. He hasn't replaced the seed of Abraham. He's fulfilled it in Christ.

Christ is the seed of Abraham. And we are the seed of Abraham in him. For more information, visit www.fema.org