OT Promise 23: Land

  1. Land

Genesis 35:12 And the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land.

Once again God repeats the promise of Land. The Lord had already promised the Land to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob. Now He reaffirms the promise to Jacob again. This promise must be very important to God since He repeats the promise over and over to the three patriarchs. The patriarchs themselves never actually received literal, physical land to own and control. Their descendants, to whom the land was also promised, did establish a nation in the Promised Land for several centuries, until the Lord took them out of it.

The Land must mean something else and something more than just physical ground on the earth. And the New Testament tells us what it means: it is the spiritual kingdom of God in the spiritual realm of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is what has been promised (and fulfilled) to the believers in Jesus Christ. These believers are the real seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They have the same faith in the same promise, which turns out to be Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He is the seed who brings the Land (kingdom) to all who will receive Him, and they become the seed inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven.

This is the goal, the purpose, the theme, and the end result of the story of God’s Salvation recorded for us in the Word. This was God’s purpose in the Creation of the universe, the inhabitable earth, and human beings to live on it: God will have a people who are His to live with Him in a loving relationship forever, without sin or death or evil of any kind. God the Father, through His Son become Man, and through the work of the Holy Spirit, is restoring for created and redeemed humanity the Land and the Paradise in which He placed them. Man had it once, but lost it. Now the Lord will re-place saved people in the New Recreated Land forever

Three times the word “give” is used. The Kingdom is a gift, given for free, earned by Jesus, personally placed in the heart by the Spirit through the Gospel. God does it all: He gives the kingdom. God Himself fulfills the promise. This is Grace.