Joshua and Judges: Abrahamic Covenant and its fulfillment in the Millennium, part 4. Eze 20:32-44; Deu 5-7; Eze 16:6-34.

Title: Joshua and Judges: Abrahamic Covenant and its fulfillment in the Millennium, part 4. EZE 20:32-44; Deu 5-7; EZE 16:6-34.

 

Announcements / opening prayer:

 

 

EZE 20:32 "And what comes into your mind will not come about, when you say: 'We will be like the nations, like the tribes of the lands, serving wood and stone.'

 

EZE 20:33 "As I live," declares the Lord God, "surely with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out, I shall be king over you.

 

EZE 20:34 "And I shall bring you out from the peoples and gather you from the lands where you are scattered, with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out;

 

EZE 20:35 and I shall bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I shall enter into judgment with you face to face.

 

EZE 20:36 "As I entered into judgment with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so I will enter into judgment with you," declares the Lord God .

 

EZE 20:37 "And I shall make you pass under the rod, and I shall bring you into the bond of the covenant;

 

Under the rod - the method of the shepherd to identify and count his sheep. A shepherd lets his sheep pass through under his rod for the purpose of counting them, and seeing whether they are in good condition or not.

 

The figure is here applied to God. Like a shepherd, He will cause His flock, the Israelites, to pass through under His rod, i.e., take them into His special care, and bring them "into the bond of the covenant"

 

The symbolic element of the rod comes to expression in a description of the messianic rule.

 

EZE 20:38 and I shall purge from you the rebels and those who transgress against Me; I shall bring them out of the land where they sojourn, but they will not enter the land of Israel. Thus you will know that I am the Lord .

 

EZE 20:39 "As for you, O house of Israel," thus says the Lord God, "Go, serve everyone his idols; but later [after the fullness of the Gentiles], you will surely listen to Me, and My holy name you will profane no longer with your gifts and with your idols.

 

Their opposition will not frustrate God's plan of salvation for Israel. He is talking to them as a nation.

 

This does not imply that the same people who are worshipping idols at the time are going to repent and start listening to God. However, the nation will cease their idol worship and they will worship God, but that is after the rebels are purged by God's judgment in the wilderness.

 

EZE 20:40 "For on My holy mountain, on the high mountain of Israel," declares the Lord God, "there the whole house of Israel, all of them, will serve Me in the land; there I shall accept them, and there I shall seek your contributions and the choicest of your gifts, with all your holy things.

 

Though the Mosaic Law is not reinstituted, being fully abolished, certain offerings are instituted as a memorial to the work of Christ on their behalf.

 

There will be a temple in the Millennium of different dimensions and different architecture than the past two. There, sacrifices will be offered commemorative of accomplished salvation.

 

There is no ark or mercy seat in this temple; no veil, cherubim, or tables of stone. The only article of furniture described is the table or altar of wood.

 

The portion of prophecy devoted to the Millennial temple is in EZE 40:1-46:24.

 

The fact that a temple is constructed and an order is instituted that is similar to the old, but with some differences, is one of the strongest arguments that the Millennium is not now being fulfilled in the church.

 

Could it be, and this is my own conjecture, that God is showing us that He doesn't necessarily fit into our finite understanding of how things should be? We find it odd that He would re-institute certain rituals that are abolished in the church age, yet who are we to say to Him, "This is how things should be." These sacrifices cannot be pictures of a future atonement as they were in the OT so then why can't they be pictures of a past atonement, i.e. a memorial to the sacrifice of Christ?

 

The sacrifices in the Millennium have no relation to the question of atonement. They are memorial in character. They memorialize the death of Christ.

 

After all, the one ritual given to the church age is a small portion of the Passover. If the Passover celebration has been abolished for our age, and it has, then why take a small part of it as a ritual? Why not instruct us to do something that is not even remotely connected with it, in remembrance of Him?

 

There is a type of believer who makes God fit his scheme of things, as they seem right to him, and there is a type of believer who takes God at his word and believes Him and obeys Him as a humble servant. The later type of believer doesn't wait until he fully understands something to accept it, if it is clearly presented in the inspired word of God. Understanding may come later, or maybe not at all, but obedience is the right path regardless.

 

It should be noted that there are many differences between the Aaronic order of the Old Testament and the millennial system.

 

The temple is different, it is on a high hill, and it is not in Jerusalem. It doesn't contain the furniture or objects of the past temples.

 

Continuing on the gathering of Israel:

 

EZE 20:41 "As a soothing aroma I shall accept you, when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you from the lands where you are scattered; and I shall prove Myself holy among you in the sight of the nations.

 

EZE 20:42 "And you will know that I am the Lord, when I bring you into the land of Israel, into the land which I swore to give to your forefathers.

 

EZE 20:43 "And there you will remember your ways and all your deeds, with which you have defiled yourselves; and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the evil things that you have done.

 

Israel will recognize its God in true grace and she will remember the sins of her past, the past nation, and they will be ashamed of their ways and deeds that violated the grace of God.

 

It must be remembered that these people are the regathering of the scattered Jews, dispersed all over the earth, and they are not resurrected saints. They are yet alive, having survived the great tribulation and passed under the rod of judgment, having been found to believe, and now they are recipients of the great and unconditional covenant to Abraham.

 

EZE 20:44 "Then you will know that I am the Lord when I have dealt with you for My name's sake, not according to your evil ways or according to your corrupt deeds, O house of Israel," declares the Lord God.'"

 

ISA 11:12

And will gather the dispersed of Judah

From the four corners of the earth.

 

Israel then is rejoined to God in the symbol of marriage, being transformed from an unfaithful wife to one who reciprocates the love of Jehovah.

 

So then, we again to go the past so that we may more fully appreciate the future. Israel was married to Jehovah as the wife of Jehovah. She was His inheritance and wife. He set a marriage contract with her, which is the Mosaic covenant, the conditional covenant.

 

Israel is symbolically illustrated as God's inheritance because they are His people.

 

DEU 9:29 'Yet they are Thy people, even Thine inheritance, whom Thou hast brought out by Thy great power and Thine outstretched arm.'

 

That same outstretched arm is going to bring them back into the land of promise.

 

They are God's inheritance because they are God's people; this was part of the reason they were rescued from Egypt.

 

DEU 32:9 "For the Lord's portion is His people;

Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance.

 

This is a common motif in the Psalms.

 

PSA 28:9

Save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance;

Be their shepherd also, and carry them forever.

 

PSA 33:12

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,

The people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance.

 

PSA 78:71

From the care of the ewes with suckling lambs He brought him,

To shepherd Jacob His people,

And Israel His inheritance.

 

As we have been noting, a clear understanding of the Bible requires that proper distinctions be maintained, i.e. to rightly divide the word of truth. One of the key biblical distinctions is between Israel and the church. A failure to maintain this distinction will only result in a misrepresentation of what the scriptures teach.

 

We see this in the fact that the church is called the bride of Christ while Israel is called the wife of Jehovah. The relationship of Israel to God her Husband undergoes six distinct stages.

 

These two titles are different. The marriage contract God made with them is clearly abolished in the church age. We are no longer under the Law. The conditional nature of the plan for the church is connected to rewards and not to marriage.

 

Stage one: The Marriage Contract - Deuteronomy.

Moses took various facets of the three earlier books and presented them in the form of an ancient marriage contract.

 

To a casual and superficial reader, the book of Deuteronomy seems to be merely a repetition of what Moses had written earlier in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.

 

Deuteronomy means a "second law" or a repetition of the law. Almost everything in it can be found in the three preceding books.

 

What Moses did was to take the various facets of the prior three books and present them in the form of a marriage contract. In this book is found the marriage contract signed between Israel and God - where Israel became the wife of Jehovah. It is their vows to one another. It is certainly a torrid but beautiful love affair, which has such times of trouble but a great and wonderful happy ending.

 

Those who broke the marriage contract missed out on the blessings of the unconditional covenants. Israel will be blessed in the PL, but who will be there and of those resurrected ones, who enjoyed the blessings of the covenants in time?

 

DEU 5:1 Then Moses summoned all Israel, and said to them, "Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the ordinances which I am speaking today in your hearing, that you may learn them and observe them carefully.

 

DEU 5:2 The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb [Sinai].

 

DEU 5:3 The Lord did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us, with all those of us alive here today.

 

God entered into a covenant with His people Israel at Mt. Sinai [Horeb]. The Jewish prophets viewed this covenant relationship as a marriage contract.

 

DEU 6:10 "Then it shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land which He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you, great and splendid cities which you did not build,

 

DEU 6:11 and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you shall eat and be satisfied,

 

DEU 6:12 then watch yourself, lest you forget the Lord who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

 

DEU 6:13 You shall fear only the Lord your God; and you shall worship Him, and swear by His name.

 

DEU 6:14 You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who surround you,

 

DEU 6:15 for the Lord your God in the midst of you is a jealous God; otherwise the anger of the Lord your God will be kindled against you, and He will wipe you off the face of the earth.

 

In this passage God announced His jealousy over His wife, Israel. In it she is warned against adultery. Since she is wed to God adultery is the worship of other gods.

 

God warned Israel not to become and adulteress wife by playing around with other gods. The reason given is God's burning jealousy: lest it be kindled against her and eventually cause her expulsion out of the land which God has given her.

 

DEU 7:6 "For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

 

DEU 7:7 The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples,

 

DEU 7:8 but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

 

DEU 7:9 Know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments;

 

DEU 7:10 but repays those who hate Him to their faces, to destroy them; He will not delay with him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face.

 

DEU 7:11 Therefore, you shall keep the commandment and the statutes and the judgments which I am commanding you today, to do them.

 

Here, Israel is again described as one chosen by God. And God gives the reason.

 

He did not choose Israel as His wife due to her size, but because of His love for her.