Israel, the land, in the New Testament.

While the Old Testament has numerous references to the promise of the Land, the New Testament, in comparison, is somewhat sparse. Nevertheless, we do find passages that touch on this, even if indirectly.

For example, after the resurrection and just prior to His ascension to heaven, the disciples asked a loaded question:

Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6b)

If there was ever a golden time for Jesus to address the question of the land promise, now that the Messiah had come, it would have been then. Like most Jews of the day, these early Jewish followers of Jesus were probably expecting Jesus to establish His Kingship, boot the Romans and other pagans out of the Holy Land, and setup shop in Jerusalem at any moment. But Jesus appears to sidestep the question, before he disappears from the disciples’ presence.

He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:7-8)

He tells his disciples not to worry about the “when” question. Nevertheless, we are left with some questions that concerns us: What is meant by this restoration of the kingdom to Israel? Is the land promise, going back to the Old Testament, included, and is it still in effect? Will Jesus, someday physically rule over a restored national Israel?¹

Interestingly, Jesus redirects their focus. He tells them to be witnesses for Jesus in Israel, but not only in Israel. They are to be witnesses through the whole world. This is not about establishing a worldwide Jewish theocracy. It is about a spiritual kingdom. But does this rule out a physical, literal Jewish kingdom in the Holy Land? Not necessarily. But is Jesus confirming their expectations for a physical literal Jewish kingdom? Not necessarily either. Perhaps we need to look at another passage to find a clearer answer.
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Israel, the land, in the Old Testament.

Picking up from where we left off a few weeks ago….

When we read the Old Testament, it becomes quite clear that the ancient Jewish people, Israel, were given a promise of a homeland. An early figure in the Bible, Abram (or Abraham), was unilaterally called by God to leave his former home, back when he was still a moon worshipper, to settle in this patch of real estate in the Middle East, where he could worship the one true God. This God would give Abraham and his descendants a claim to this land.

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3 ESV)

And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. And he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” (Genesis 15:5-7 ESV)

Not only that, but many understand this claim to the land to be permanent:

And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God. (Genesis 17:7-8 ESV)

Some say that Joshua’s conquest of the land of Canaan fulfilled the promise in this covenant (Joshua 21:43-45). Throughout history, and to this day, there have always existed at least some Israelites who have inhabited the land.

Others say that Joshua’s conquest of Canaan only partially fulfilled the land promise. But however one understands the outcome of Joshua’s conquest, the unconditional character of the land promise stands out. However, the ability for Israel to actually stay in the land, paradoxically, did have conditions placed on it. This paradox has puzzled readers of the Bible for centuries.¹
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What is a the “church?”

As we discussed in the previous post in this series, the original word for church, the Greek ekklesia, had a secular meaning in first century, Mediterranean society. This sense of an “assembly” or “congregation” of people was given a more theological meaning by the writers of the Bible. But what did that mean?

Many people today assume that the church is essentially the New Testament description of the people of God, which is made of both Jews and Gentiles who worship Jesus. This is often set in contrast with the nation of Israel, which is the Old Testament people of God, who kept the Law of Moses. Others say that there has always been but one people of God, whereby Old Testament Israel was simply an early form of the one church. But a closer look at how the Bible uses ekklesia shows that such assumptions are rather complicated.

For example, while there are numerous examples of the church (Greek, ekklesia) in the New Testament (such as in Romans 16), as Jews and Gentiles worshipping Jesus together, there are exceptions. The first famous martyr of the Christian movement, Stephen, describes the gathering of the Israelites in the wilderness centuries earlier under Moses, as being “in the church in the wilderness,” as Acts 7:38 puts it in the King James Version (KJV). There were clearly no Gentiles in that church!

Again with the KJV, the New Testament writer of Hebrews says that Jesus will sing praise to God in Hebrews 2:12, recalling an Old Testament passage, Psalm 22:22:

“in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee”

The writer of Hebrews has in mind a description of Jews and Gentiles together, as the church. But in a slightly different way, going back to Psalm 22:22 itself, the same word ekklesia, from the first Greek translation of the Bible, namely, the Septuagint, is handled by the KJV differently to describe the worship of the Israelite community, despite it being the same word! No Gentiles here!

“in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee”

Also in the Old Testament, the Greek ekklesia, from the Septuagint translation, can be found to describe the gathering of the Israelite people to come and hear the Lord, in Deuteronomy 4:10. Notice that the KJV translation does not use the English word church, but the Greek ekklesia is the same, though in the verbal form of “gather”:

Specially the day that thou stoodest before the LORD thy God in Horeb, when the LORD said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.

So, is the ekklesia, or the church, strictly a New Testament concept, or both a New Testament and an Old Testament concept?

This trouble, with the word for church, has been the center of a debate for several centuries as to the relationship between Israel, the Old Testament people of God, and the church as the New Testament people of God, where the barrier between Jew and Gentile has been broken down (Ephesians 2:11-21). While it is difficult to establish such a distinction based on the literal interpretation of the words alone, there are two different schools of thought as to how we are to understand these theological concepts of the people of God in both Old and New Testaments:

• The dispensationalist school favors the idea that the nation of Israel and the New Testament community of Jews and Gentiles together worshipping Jesus, represent two different theological concepts. Some in this school put it like this: the ekklesia of the Israelite community is mainly ethnic in character, being the descendants of Abraham, but also bound together by the Law of Moses. In contrast, the ekklesia of the New Testament community is bound together only by faith in Christ, both Jew and Gentile together.

• The covenant theology, or covenantalist, school favors the idea that there is a progressive development of the one people of God in the Bible. The Old Testament introduces us to the people of God embodied in the ethnic community of Israel, Abraham and his descendants. But when we get to the New Testament, Jesus the Messiah fulfills the purposes of Israel, which leads then to the ultimate expression of the people of God through the ekklesia, rooted in faith, made up of Jew and Gentile. Israel was therefore also an ekklesia, foreshadowing the new ekklesia that was to come.

The debate is a crucial discussion as to how we as Christians are to understand the message of the Bible as a whole. There is a sense that both sides have something important to contribute.

Dispensationalists are concerned to honor the Biblical principle that God has set apart, or elected, the Jewish people, Israel, for a particular purpose, for the benefit of the whole world. This particular purpose for Israel, even to this day, is associated with a set of promises, that are not to be nullified or revoked by the arrival of the New Testament people of God, as Jew and Gentile together.

Covenantalists are concerned to honor the Biblical principle of the oneness of the people of God, whose purpose should not be obscured by ethnic considerations that would otherwise distract us from that fundamental, universal unity. Therefore, Israel, as founded in the Old Testament, finds its fulfillment through the establishment of the New Testament people of God, including both Jew and Gentile, united together by faith in Jesus Christ.

The debate can not be resolved here in this blog post, but an understanding of what church means in the Bible helps us to better appreciate the differences between these two schools of thought among Christians.