One of the guests at my Sabbath table asked me why I decided to move to Israel and become a citizen in this country. I told him that it is a long story but that it all started with a conversation that I had with a certain young lady while I was living in Istanbul. I had explained to this young lady that I’m Jewish through my mother and that this is part of who I am both in identity and faith. She then began to ask me several questions which were related to the subject of Israel and the Jewish people. Her questions were neither light-hearted nor friendly, but rather political in nature and a bit anti-semitic. As a result of that conversation, our newly budding relationship came to an abrupt end.
I explained to the guest at my table that it was a result of this young woman’s theological and political perspective that I ended the relationship with her and started to think about Israel in a whole new way which eventually led to my immigration to Israel. I further explained that the young woman’s position spiritually coincided with Replacement Theology and that I could not overlook this theological position. I asked my guest if he understood what Replacement Theology is. He said yes, but when I asked him to explain it he could not.
Replacement Theology
I then explained to him that Replacement Theology, which is a tenet of faith for some Christians, is a belief that all promises regarding the Land of Israel and the Jewish in the Bible were finished and fulfilled at the instituting of the New Covenant and that the “Church” now replaces Israel. Therefore, any promises or blessings concerning Israel and the Jewish people in the Bible are now transferred to Christians and the Church. In other words, the Church now replaces Israel. After I finished explaining replacement theology to my guest, he said to me, “Well, that sounds quite accurate.” He was confirming that he also believes in Replacement Theology.
Unfortunately, there are many who identify with the Christian Church today who hold to this position of Replacement Theology; denying any future fulfillment of God’s promises regarding the Land of Israel and the Jewish people. I believe that God’s Word speaks for itself and that the Bible clearly reveals that God has not yet finished with the Land and people of Israel. As we examine this week’s Torah Portion, we will read a few reminders of how the LORD Himself views both the Land and people of Israel.
The Sabbatical Year
In last week’s article, I focused my teaching on the subject of the Sabbatical Year. If you have not yet read that article, I encourage you to start there and then continue with this article. You can read the previous article by clicking this link: Sabbatical Year. In the previous article I explained how the Sabbatical Year is a commandment of God that was to be fulfilled every seventh year in the Land of Israel. At the beginning of the seventh year all debts were to be forgiven, all Hebrew slaves were to be set free, and the Land was not to be sown, harvested, or worked during that entire year. The Land of Israel was to have a sabbath to the LORD for one full year.
This week’s Torah Portion continues in Leviticus chapter twenty-six and in this chapter we read about the outcome for the Israelites in accordance with how they would either keep or reject God’s laws and commandments. By keeping the commands and laws of the LORD the Israelites would reap an abundant harvest, they would have God’s protection from their enemies, and they could remain securely in the Land of Promise (Lev. 26:3-13). However, if they rejected the commands of the LORD and did not fulfill the law which He gave them, God in turn would strike the people with physical ailments, remove their protection, and give the enemy permission to subdue them (Lev. 26:14-26).
Consequences For Breaking The Law
God explained that He would incrementally discipline the people of Israel in accordance to their disobedience and not fulfilling His laws. The ultimate consequence of Israel’s rejection of the LORD by not keeping His law was that God would remove them from the Land of Israel and that the Land itself would remain desolate for a period of time. The following is part of what the LORD said would happen to Israel if they failed to keep their covenant with the LORD:
I will make the land desolate so that your enemies who settle in it will be appalled over it. You, however, I will scatter among the nations and will draw out a sword after you, as your land becomes desolate and your cities become waste. Then the land will enjoy its sabbaths all the days of the desolation, while you are in your enemies’ land; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it will observe the rest which it did not observe on your sabbaths, while you were living on it. – Lev. 26:32-35
God warned the people that they would be removed from the Land of Israel, they would be scattered among the nations, and the Land itself would remain desolate for a time so as to observe the sabbath rest that the people failed to give it. The sabbath rest for the Land is the Sabbatical Year which we studied in last week’s Torah Portion.
Sabbath Rest For The Land
We read a direct fulfillment of this consequence which God said would come upon the people and the Land of Israel for their disobedience when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed for the first time:
Those who had escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon; and they were servants to him and to his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept sabbath until seventy years were complete. – 2 Chronicles 36:20-21
The fulfillment of this destruction and desolation of the Land of Israel occurred in 586 BCE and continued for seventy years as prophesied by the prophet Jeremiah (Jer. 25:11).
The Land itself is said to have remained desolate for seventy years. We can surmise from the teaching of the Sabbatical Year that seventy Sabbatical Years, not necessarily in sequence, were previously not observed from the time that the Israelites entered the Land of Israel under Joshua, in approximately 1405 BCE, until the first exile in 586 BCE. There are 819 years in between these two time markers so apparently for more than half of that time in the Land, 490 years, the Israelites did not keep the Sabbatical Year which should have been observed every seventh year. Therefore, God took those seventy years at one time during the first exile and gave the Land its sabbath rest.
God Remembers His Covenant
The certainty and severity of God’s punishment towards the Israelites was based on His covenant with His people. Just as God was faithful to discipline His people by removing them from the Land to ensure its sabbath rest, the LORD also said that He would be faithful to remember His covenant and restore them again to the Land:
If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their forefathers, in their unfaithfulness which they committed against Me, and also in their acting with hostility against Me— I also was acting with hostility against them, to bring them into the land of their enemies—or if their uncircumcised heart becomes humbled so that they then make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and I will remember also My covenant with Isaac, and My covenant with Abraham as well, and I will remember the land. – Lev. 26:40-42
God promised that if His people would humble themselves, confess their iniquities, and seek Him then He would remember His covenant with His people and He would also remember the Land.
The covenant which God made with Abraham included both the Land and the people. We cannot separate these two entities from God’s promise. We first read God’s promise to Abraham when God called him to leave his home country and to go to the land that He would show him:
Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” – Gen. 12:1-3
From the very beginning of God’s relationship with Abraham (Abram), God promised to make a great nation from Abraham and to bring him to a new land. After Abraham arrived in the Land, we then read a more specific promise from God to Abraham about the Land:
And He said to him, “I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.” He said, “O Lord GOD, how may I know that I will possess it?” So He said to him, “Bring Me a three year old heifer, and a three year old female goat, and a three year old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” – Gen. 15:7-9
God promised to give the land of Canaan as a possession to Abraham and his descendants. He promised it and He fulfilled His promise.
The Abrahamic Covenant: The People & The Land
God validated His promise to give the land of Canaan to Abraham and his descendants by making a blood covenant with him. Abraham brought the animals and birds which God commanded him to bring, he cut them in half, and then waited for the LORD. The LORD then sealed the covenant with Abraham with the following promise:
It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates: the Kenite and the Kenizzite and the Kadmonite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Rephaim and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite.” – Gen. 15:17-21
The covenant which God made with Abraham, later being also confirmed to Isaac and Jacob, was centrally focused on God’s promise to give them the land of Canaan. We cannot separate the Land of Israel, formerly the land of Canaan, from the people of Israel. God’s covenant with Abraham stands firm.
The New Covenant
Some people confuse the Old Covenant which was given to Moses at Mount Sinai with the Abrahamic Covenant and believe that the New Covenant negates all former covenants. There is a clear distinction in the New Testament, however, between the Abrahamic Covenant and the Mosaic Covenant (the Law) which is explained in the Epistle to the Galatians:
Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as referring to many, but rather to one, “And to your seed,” that is, Messiah. What I am saying is this: the Law, which came four hundred and thirty years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise. For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise; but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise. – Galatians 3:16-18
The Old Covenant of the Law in no way invalidates the promise given to Abraham, which includes the promise of the Messiah. God said that all of the families of the earth would be blessed through Abraham (Gen. 12:3) and this was fulfilled in the life of the Messiah who came through the descendants of Abraham.
God’s Promise To The People
The promises of God are irrevocable. The promises that God gave to Abraham regarding the nation of Israel, the Land of Israel, and the gift of the Messiah are still valid. We know God still has future promises to be fulfilled for the people of Israel which are spoken of in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Chapters nine through eleven in the Epistle to the Romans specifically detail God’s salvation plan for Jew and Gentile alike with promises to the people of Israel yet to be fulfilled:
For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob. This is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins.” – Romans 11:25-27
The majority of the nation of Israel (the Jewish people) have rejected the Messiah and the forgiveness of sins through His sacrifice, however, a great day of salvation is yet to come for the people of Israel. This promise for the people of Israel still stands.
God’s Promise Regarding The Land Of Israel
We also know from other prophecies in the Scriptures that God is not finished with the Land of Israel with its capital at Jerusalem. The Land of Israel has been chosen by God in the past, given to the descendants of Abraham as an inheritance, and this Land still has a future. The prophet Zechariah provides the following prophecy yet to be fulfilled when the Messiah returns to this earth:
And the LORD will be king over all the earth; in that day the LORD will be the only one, and His name the only one. All the land will be changed into a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem; but Jerusalem will rise and remain on its site from Benjamin’s Gate as far as the place of the First Gate to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the king’s wine presses. People will live in it, and there will no longer be a curse, for Jerusalem will dwell in security. – Zech. 14:9-11
The Land of Israel, with Jerusalem at its center, is the chosen place of God to reign and rule through His Messiah.
When the Messiah returns, He will reign from Jerusalem and all of the nations of the world will come to this city to worship the LORD:
Then it will come about that any who are left of all the nations that went against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to celebrate the Feast of Booths. – Zech. 14:16
The Land and people of Israel are still on the heart of the LORD and He will fulfill every promise that He has spoken regarding them. Just as the LORD has been faithful in the past to exalt and discipline the Land and people of Israel, even so He will be faithful in the future to fulfill every word that He has spoken regarding both the Land and the people.
In this article I have only focused on the fulfillment of God’s plans for the Land and people of Israel as it relates to the great salvation of the people of Israel and the reign of the Messiah in the Land of Israel. There are also numerous Old Testament prophecies that are being fulfilled and will be fulfilled regarding the Land and people of Israel as recorded in Isaiah 2, Isaiah 35, Ezekiel 36, and many other Scriptures. Time and space do not allow me to go further in this article.
God Always Keeps His Promises
While we were sitting together at my table and I was explaining this misunderstanding of Replacement Theology according to God’s Word, I encouraged the man with whom I was speaking to read Romans chapters nine through eleven to see for himself that Replacement Theology is a lie. God is a covenant keeping God and He will fulfill each and every promise that He has made concerning the Land and people of Israel!
Shabbat Shalom!
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Torah Portion: Lev. 26:3 – Lev. 27:34
Haftara: Jeremiah 16:19 – Jeremiah 17:14
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