Israel's Land Promise

What happens to Israel's land promise?

"Jesus answered them, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.' The Jews then said, 'It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?' But he was speaking about the temple of his body." - John 2:19-21

You have seen the headlines over recent months. Many of you may have sincere, searching questions about Israel — about what is happening in the Middle East, and about what, if anything, the Bible has to say about it. That is a good instinct. The desire to run to Scripture when the world feels unstable is precisely the right move. But we must be careful. Current events make a poor lens through which to read Scripture. Scripture, however, makes an excellent lens through which to read current events.

So today, let us do the harder and more rewarding thing: let us allow the Word of God to orient us, rather than asking the Word of God to confirm what the news or politicians have already told us to believe. The question before us is not simply, "What does the Bible say about Israel?" but more precisely, "How does the whole Bible — Old and New Testaments together, interpreted through Christ — teach us to understand Israel's promises?" That is a question worth answering carefully, and with great love.

We begin with the book of Hebrews, which gives us our interpretive foundation in the very first two verses of the letter. "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world." Notice the structure carefully. The prophets spoke truly. There is no disparagement of the Old Testament here — none whatsoever. God spoke through them genuinely, faithfully, and authoritatively. But the writer immediately contrasts their word with something greater: the Son. The prophets spoke "at many times and in many ways" — which is to say, partially, progressively, in installments. The Son is the final and fullest word. He is the heir of all things. This means that if we want to understand what the prophets promised — including promises about land, temple, and a restored Israel — we are not permitted to stop short of Christ. He is the destination toward which every prophetic word was always traveling. The prophets spoke truly. Christ reveals the fullness to which their shadows pointed.

I have often described it this way. Imagine you were promised one hundred dollars. That is a real promise. It is not a false promise. It is not a promise to be despised or dismissed. But now imagine that when the day of fulfillment arrived, the one who made the promise handed you not one hundred dollars, but unlimited, inexhaustible wealth — riches beyond any figure you could write on a check. Would you complain that you never received the one hundred dollars? Of course not. The lesser promise has not been broken or ignored. It has been swallowed up by something infinitely greater. This is precisely how the New Testament presents Christ's fulfillment of Old Covenant promises. God is not in breach of contract. He has not forgotten His word to Abraham, to Moses, or to the prophets. He has exceeded it — gloriously, finally, and in the person of His Son. He does not need to return to fulfill the lesser when the greater has already come. The one hundred dollars was always a shadow. Christ is the substance. And here is the critical point: we do not honor the shadow by refusing to look at the substance. We honor it by following it faithfully all the way to the One to whom it always pointed.

This brings us to our main text. In John 2:19–21, Jesus has just cleansed the temple courts and the Jewish leaders demand a sign of His authority. His answer is startling: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jewish leaders, understandably, are baffled. "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?" They are reading literally. They are reading the lesser. They are looking at the shadow and missing the substance standing right in front of them. Then John, the inspired evangelist, inserts a comment that is one of the most important editorial notes in the entire New Testament: "But he was speaking about the temple of his body." John does not leave us to guess. He tells us explicitly: the temple to which Jesus referred was not the stones of Jerusalem. It was His own body — crucified, buried, and raised on the third day.

The physical temple in Jerusalem, for all its splendor and all its glory, was always a pointer. It was always a shadow. And now the shadow has given way to the substance: the incarnate Son of God, in whom the fullness of deity dwells bodily. Here is the hermeneutical principle John is modeling for us, and it matters enormously. If this statement about rebuilding the temple in three days had appeared in Isaiah or Ezekiel, many would expect a literal future fulfillment. But John's inspired commentary tells us plainly that the prophecy referred to His body alone. The same Christ-centered interpretive logic must govern how we read Ezekiel's vision of the restored temple, and every other Old Covenant symbol still awaiting its antitype in the minds of some interpreters – including Israel’s land promise.

This is not merely a hermeneutical preference. It is a theological necessity. Consider what a literal future fulfillment of Ezekiel's temple would actually require. Ezekiel 45:17 and 45:22 describe future sin offerings made "to make atonement" — including, remarkably, a sin offering for the prince himself. But Hebrews 10:16–18 declares that under the New Covenant, God remembers sins no more, and then draws the explicit conclusion: "where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin." A future system of atoning sacrifices does not simply create interpretive awkwardness — it stands in direct conflict with the finished work of Christ and the plain teaching of the New Testament.

Galatians 3 anchors it all. Paul declares that the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring — and then he makes a careful grammatical point: "It does not say, 'And to offsprings,' referring to many, but referring to one, 'And to your offspring,' who is Christ" (Gal. 3:16). The promises were always, ultimately, addressed to Christ. And all who are in Christ — Jew and Gentile alike — are Abraham's offspring and heirs according to the promise (Gal. 3:29).

Let me be direct about what we do and do not believe. We do not believe the Church replaces Israel. Rather, Christ is the fullness of Israel, and in Him, Gentiles are grafted into the one covenant family of God. We are not the replacement of Israel. We are, by sheer and undeserved mercy, fellow heirs with the faithful remnant of Israel in Christ — welcomed as strangers into a commonwealth we did not build and did not earn.
So what does this mean for us practically? Two things. First, read your Old Testament through Christ. When you encounter promises of land, temple, priesthood, or a restored nation, train yourself to ask: where does this find its fullness in Jesus? This is not a dismissal of the Old Testament — it is the deepest possible honor you can pay it. It is following the text all the way home, all the way to the One to whom it was always traveling. The prophets were not wrong. They were not writing filler. They were laying a foundation, and Christ is the cornerstone.

Second, love your Jewish neighbors well — and loving them well means not reducing God's faithfulness to a piece of geography or a rebuilt building. It means bearing witness to the One in whom every promise of God is Yes and Amen. We hold no contempt for the Jewish people. We hold deep love and reverence for the heritage into which we Gentiles have been graciously welcomed. A heritage built on the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob finding its fulness in Christ. And the most loving thing we can offer any person — Jewish or Gentile — is not a map of the Middle East with prophetic timelines drawn on it, but the face of Israel's Messiah.

And to those of you unsettled by what you are seeing in the headlines — I understand. The events surrounding Israel are painful, complex, and at times frightening. It is right to grieve. It is right to pray. But hear this: your peace does not rest on a political outcome or a territorial boundary. It rests on the One who said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." He has been raised! The promises of God are not in jeopardy. They are not delayed or in doubt. They are secure — secured forever in Him. We honor Israel best not by reading the newspaper back into the Bible, but by seeing, in every page of Israel's story, the face of her Messiah — and ours.

May God bless you in your week,

Pastor Chris