What is the Relationship Between the New Covenant and the Land Covenant?

Dr. Couch, what is the relationship between the New Covenant and the Land Covenant? What are both covenants about? 

 

    The New Covenant was prophesied in Jeremiah 31:31-37. It is first and foremost with Israel though the church today shares in the benefits of it yet we do not fulfill it. It will be fulfilled in the kingdom in a specific manner with the Jews turning to the Lord. 

    The New Covenant is to be with "Israel and the house of Judah" (31:31). It contrasts and replaces the Mosaic Covenant, the Law (v. 32). God’s principles will be placed within and written on the heart of the Jews (v. 33). The New Covenant will bring about permanent forgiveness of sins (v. 34). The Jews will not be jettisoned from God’s program. There is no Replacement Theology (vv. 35-37). A remnant of the nation of Israel will be saved intact. The offspring of Israel will always be a nation before the Lord forever! (v. 36). 

    While the promise of a return to the Holy Land (the Land Covenant) has distinct features about it, still both the New Covenant and the Land Covenant, when discussing Israel, work in tandem together. (The land promises are never said to be for the church.) 

    In Ezekiel 11 God makes it clear He would scatter Israel "among the nations, and though I had scattered them among the countries, yet I was a sanctuary for them a little while in the countries where they had gone" (v. 16). Then the Lord promises, "I shall gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries among which you have been scattered, and I shall give you the land of Israel" (v. 17). As this is happening, the Lord promises to activate among the Jews the features of the New Covenant such as giving "them one heart, and putting a new spirit within them" (v. 19). This is exactly what is prophesied back in Jeremiah 31:33 concerning the New Covenant! 

    The Land promise (or Covenant) is directly connected to the "grand daddy" of the main biblical covenants, the Abrahamic Covenant! This is made clear in Psalm 105:8-11. There the Lord says He will

"remember His covenant forever, ... the covenant which He made with Abraham, and His oath to Isaac. Then He confirmed it to Jacob for a statute, to Israel as an everlasting covenant, saying, ‘To you I will give the land of Canaan as the portion of your inheritance’" (vv. 8-11).

    On Psalm 105 my godly Old Testament professor, Dr. Merrill F. Unger, writes in his commentary: "When Israel is regathered to the [Holy Land] she will be converted (Zech. 12:10-13:1), and established in Kingdom glory. God has made an unalterable law that Israel should be His elect people and should inherit Canaan (vv.11, 42). To ‘all generations’ of Jews the Abrahamic Covenant (Gen. 12:1-3) was confirmed by an oath to Isaac (26:3) and confirmed to Jacob. The Jewish people of course must accept the New Covenant by their trust in their Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He ratified the Covenant by His death, His blood shed on the cross (Luke 22:20).He is the One to whom the promises have been made and He must secure its benefits for Israel. 

    Luke records the angel Gabriel saying :

    "He [the Messiah] will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and

the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and His kingdom will have no end" (Luke 1:32- 33).

    Some of the covenant guys take these verses in a mushy "spiritualized" way rather than take them as Mary did, as prophecy concerning the nation of Israel. I write in my Luke Commentary:

Some argue that this reign of the Messiah is not really over Israel, but over the church that has replaced the Jewish people in the plan of God. In other words, these promises are spiritualized or allegorized. The question is, How did Mary receive these promises? If verse 31 is referring to the Messiah’s literal and actual birth, then His reign, as promised in a literal sense in the Old Testament, must also come to pass in a literal and historic way (vv. 32-33). One cannot change an interpretative horse in the middle of a stream! Both His first coming (His birth up to His ascension), and His second coming to reign later, must be seen in the same light: literal history! (p. 28)

Thanks for asking.

Dr. Mal Couch