Chapter3: The Continuity Of The Covenant
ANOTHER HISTORIC CONTINUITY was exhibited especially clearly at the time of Joshua—the continuity of the Abrahamic Covenant. God himself reminded Joshua of the promise God had made to the patriarchs: “Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give them” (Josh. 1:6). The promise had been made, and now it was going to be fulfilled.
At the golden calf, when God had said, “This people has revolted against me and deserves my judgment in a total way,” Moses pleaded the people’s cause: “Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it forever” (Ex. 32:13). Now as the people enter the land, Joshua, too, looks back to a covenant promise God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: The land was to belong to the Israelites.
THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT
Let us study in some detail the Abrahamic Covenant, which contained the promise of the land. This was its beginning: “Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee: and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:1-3).
Abraham was in Ur of the Chaldees when God spoke to him. First, God ordered him to leave one geographic location and travel to another, a place that was going to belong to him. Linked to this was a national blessing: A great nation would descend from him. Second, God told him that he would be a blessing beyond his own race to all the world. These were the terms of this special covenant God made with Abraham around the year 2,000 B.C.
In order to understand this covenant, however, we have to go back further still, all the way to an event we cannot date but that nevertheless occurred in history, in space and in time. God first spoke to man about a covenant of grace as soon as man had revolted against him. This revolt meant that man could no longer come to God on the basis of works. We may speak, therefore, of the covenant of works prior to the Fall and the covenant of grace after the Fall. That is, God introduced the covenant of grace because rebels could no longer come to him on the basis of their own works.
God first stated the covenant of grace when he cursed the serpent: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). At this point the person who would fulfill this statement—the “seed” who would come—is not specified beyond the fact that he would be a human being.
Soon, though, this covenant was limited in a special way: “And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew. And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD [or better, to call themselves by the name of the Lord]” (Gen. 4:25-26). A division of the human race occurred. The first son, Cain, killed his brother Abel, and another son, Seth, was born to take Abel’s place. The human race is united—it comes from one ancestor; yet it is divided into two branches, one having turned back to God and the other standing in the flow of the rebellion. The promised one would come from the former strand.
Later God limited the covenant of grace further, narrowing the lineage of the promised one from the whole human race down to the Semitic people. This occurred in the time of Noah (again an event of history, though one we cannot date). Noah prophesied to his three sons, “Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant” (Gen. 9:26-27). Usually it is considered, and probably quite correctly, that Shem is the ancestor of the Semitic people.
Finally around 2,000 B.C. (the first time we can bring the biblical narrative into a clear relationship with recorded secular history), the covenant of grace was brought down to a specific man, Abraham, and to a specific nation, Israel. Abraham came from the high Sumerian culture. He was called into a different land and became the first Jew.
As we have seen, the covenant God made with Abraham had two aspects. The more important was a spiritual promise: All the world would be blessed through Abraham. This blessing related to the promise that somebody was coming who would crush the serpent’s head. Christ, of course, eventually came from Abraham to the whole human race.
The second aspect of the Abrahamic Covenant was the national blessing. In addition to the spiritual blessing to the whole world, God promised Abraham, “I will make of thee a great nation” (Gen. 12:2). In relation to the national blessing came a corollary blessing—the promise of the land. If I were making an outline, I would put spiritual blessing as point 1, national blessing as point 2, and the land as point 2a.
In all its parts, this covenant was unconditional. Later God added conditional portions. If the Israelites as a nation were obedient, certain good things would happen (see, for example, Deuteronomy 27—28). If they were disobedient, they would be taken into captivity. We see the same interplay, by the way, in God’s dealings with David and Solomon. David was given an unconditional portion—from him would come the Messiah. But Solomon had a conditional portion—if Solomon and his descendants continued with God, the Messianic line would come through them. Since they did not fulfill the condition, the Messianic line through Mary did not descend through Solomon. Christ was born of David, but not Solomon. Mary came through another son of David and Bathsheba, Nathan (Luke 3:31). The Messiah had to be born of David and of Abraham, because this was God’s unconditional promise. So while God later added conditional portions, the Abrahamic Covenant as a whole could be called an eternal covenant.
Let us now study the two aspects of this covenant in more detail.
THE SPIRITUAL PORTION
Shortly after Christ had died, Peter stood in the temple area and preached to the Jews:
For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you. . . . Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel and those who follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days. Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed. Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities. (Acts 3:22, 24-26)
Peter was teaching that Moses had given a Messianic prophecy: The Christ would come as a prophet parallel to Moses. That is, Peter first turned the people’s minds toward Moses. The Jews, of course, were well instructed in all this; so Peter had only to say a few words, and they understood the flow. Peter then related Moses’ prophecy to the Abrahamic Covenant. Peter’s sermon has meaning only in relation to this covenant. Right away on Pentecost, Peter said that the Gentiles were going to have a part in the spiritual blessing, though he seems not to have understood its full import until his experience with Cornelius (Acts 10) and his confrontation with Paul (Gal. 2:14).
Then he addressed the people as Jews and said to them, in effect, “You have an opportunity now, individually, to enter into the spiritual part of the Abrahamic Covenant.” This was a clear indication that not every Jew is under the spiritual portion of the covenant merely because he a citizen of the nation. Each individual must make a personal decision with regard to the Messiah.
Paul emphasized to the Romans that non-Jews, too, can come under the spiritual portion of the Abrahamic Covenant: “Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law [that is, to those who are Jews], but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all” (Rom. 4:16). Paul was encompassing both the Jewish and Gentile believers of his day under the Abrahamic Covenant. He tied this up by quoting one of God’s statements to Abraham: “As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations” (Rom. 4:17).
Paul wrote to the Galatians, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed” (Gal. 3:68). This is the New Testament’s exegesis of what Genesis means when it says that the whole world is blessed in Abraham: The blessing is one of forgiveness of sins on the basis of the work of Christ. With this blessing comes the corollary that when we accept Christ as our Savior, we become spiritual Jews, Abraham’s children in faith. If we are Gentiles, we do not become national Jews. But whether we are Jew or Gentile, we have the blessing of being spiritual children of Abraham when we follow Abraham’s example—that is, when we stop calling God a liar and believe him. The first step in believing in Christ (the Messiah) as Savior is believing God.
Two other verses in Galatians reinforce this exegesis: “That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Gal. 3:14); and “If ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:29). What promise? The spiritual portion of the Abrahamic Covenant.
One major way Abraham showed his faith was his willingness to sacrifice his son. In this we have a forecast of the death of Christ and an indication of Abraham’s knowledge that more was involved here than the immediate situation, to such an extent that after Abraham had taken his long journey to the place where God had ordered him to go, “Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh” [“The Lord will see or provide”] (Gen. 22:14). The phrase definitely indicates the future: “As it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen” (Gen. 22:14).
It is intriguing that the place, Moriah, to which Abraham was taken over these many weary miles was exactly the site that later was to be Jerusalem (2 Chron. 3:1). We have to be careful about saying how much Abraham himself understood in all the details, but there was no blind “leap of faith.” Abraham had had much contact with God before this and much knowledge from God before this event. Here was a forecast that something was coming, a forecast that the Lord would especially provide in this place. The whole setting is a picture of the great sacrifice, when God the Father sent the Son, and the Son was willing to go.
In addition to the fact that when we believe the promises of God as Abraham did, we become Abraham’s spiritual children, Paul emphasized the personal act of faith through which Abraham entered into a relationship with God:
For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. . . . And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also: and the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised. . . . Therefore, it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all. (Rom. 4:3, 11-12, 16).
That people were not spiritual Jews just because they were natural Jews was true before Christ as well as after. There were two Israels: those who were born into the national line only, and those who believed God and his promises. In talking about the Old Testament Jews, Paul said it is “not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children” (Rom. 9:6-7). A person did not automatically fall under the spiritual promises to Abraham because he or she was a member of national Israel.
This will also be true in the future. Speaking of the Jews’ destiny as a nation, Paul wrote, “For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?” (Rom. 11:15). I will not exegete this entire verse, but I do want to point out that a time is coming when the nation will be a spiritual, believing Israel. Romans
11:25 adds, “Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.” The phrase “in part” is a happy one, for multitudes of individual Jews from the book of Acts onward have believed and become spiritual Jews as well as being natural Jews by birth. Looking to the future of the Jews as a nation, Romans 11:26 says, “And so all Israel shall be saved.” And it is in this setting that Romans 11:29 says, “For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” As there is a continuity of the book, the power, and the divine leader, so there is a continuity of spiritual blessings—in the past, present, and future—under the spiritual portion of the Abrahamic Covenant.
THE NATIONAL PORTION
The national portion of the Abrahamic Covenant had a strong relationship to the land. In his first promises to Abraham God used the phrases, “unto a land that I will show thee” and “unto thy seed will I give this land.” And this promise is referred to constantly throughout the Scriptures. David composed a song about it in approximately the year 1,000 B.C.: “Be ye mindful always of his covenant; the word which he commanded to a thousand generations; even of the covenant which he made with Abraham, and of his oath unto Isaac; and hath confirmed the same to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant, saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance” (1 Chron. 16:15-18). David used the term “everlasting covenant” in relation to the Jews as a nation and then quoted immediately the promise about the land. “The lot of your inheritance” could be translated “ the cord of your inheritance.” The picture is that the people of Israel have various blessings, like individual beads, but the string that ties the separate beads together is the land of Canaan.
Psalm 105 contains an exact parallel: “He hath remembered his covenant for ever, the word which he commanded to a thousand generations. Which covenant he made with Abraham, and his oath unto Isaac; and confirmed the same unto Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant, saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance” (Ps. 105:8-11). Again the terms “everlasting covenant” and “the lot [the cord] of your inheritance” are used. Again the land ties the promises together.
After Abraham had gone into Egypt and returned to Shechem, God repeated his promise to Abraham: “For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee” (Gen. 13:15-17). God began by mentioning the land, for this was the heart of his promise. To whom was he going to give it? To the nation forever. I think his seed being “as the dust of the earth”refers to both the national and spiritual seed; so Christians, too,fall in that number.
Later God repeated the promise, this time in a startling way:
And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness. And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it. And he said, Lord GOD, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it? And he said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon. And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not. And when the fowls came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away. And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him. And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates. (Gen. 15:5-18)
This incident turned upon God’s response to Abraham’s question, “Whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” In an important moment, God gave a tremendous answer. I would call this the cutting of the friendship covenant between God and Abraham.
The cutting of a friendship covenant was well known in almost every land of the ancient East. To cut a friendship covenant, one took a prescribed kind of animal and cut it in half. The two halves were placed a distance apart, and the two parties walked together between them. This action bound generations of families together forever. Because it was so binding, it was rarely done.
Cutting a friendship covenant was practiced in China as recently as the last century. There a cock was used. Either before walking between the pieces or afterwards, the parties would also take a beautiful piece of tapestry with a cock woven into it and tear it in two. Each family would keep a half. Generations later, when somebody brought to a member of a family a half of a tapestry that matched the half the family member had, that member was bound to provide friendship at any cost. This was both beautiful and profound.
God cut an everlasting covenant of friendship with Abraham. They did not walk between the pieces together because God is God, and Abraham was only Abraham. But God represented himself with a burning lamp of fire that went between the two pieces and thereby eternally established the covenant. Though I have no way to prove it, I am convinced that when the Bible speaks of Abraham being God’s friend (see 2 Chron. 20:7; Isa. 41:8; Jas. 2:23), it is referring to the cutting of the friendship covenant.
God reminded Abraham of this covenant when Abraham was ninety-nine years old:
And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying, As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations out of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. (Gen. 17:2-8)
First God mentioned the national promise, then the spiritual one. God again called the covenant “an everlasting covenant,” and the promise of the land to the Jews as the Jews once more had a part. Paul interpreted one of the statements to mean that others besides the Jews would fall under the spiritual blessing: “As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations.” (See Rom. 4:17.)
So over many years God made it abundantly clear to Abraham that a great nation would come from him and that God would give this nation the land of Canaan.
THE PROMISES REPEATED
After Abraham died, God reassured Abraham’s son Isaac that he would fulfill his promises. Not surprisingly, God began with the land: “Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father” (Gen. 26:3). He then went on to repeat the spiritual portion: “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 26:4). God spoke the promise to Isaac a second time, though this time the land was not mentioned (Gen. 26:23-24).
The covenant was also made twice with Jacob. Having come into conflict with his brother Esau, Jacob fled the land. At a certain place he stopped for the night. He dreamed that he saw a ladder reaching to heaven, and in the dream God spoke to him. As in his dealings with Abraham and Isaac, God began with the promise of the land: “And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham, thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed” (Gen. 28:13). And he also spoke of the spiritual promise: “In thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 28:14).
God repeated the covenant to Jacob when he was coming back to the land after his years abroad. Though Jacob’s name was changed, the covenant retained the same elements: the national blessing and the land.
And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came out of Padan-aram, and blessed him. And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel. And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins; 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. (Gen. 35:9-12)
Years later in Egypt, as Joseph, one of Jacob’s sons, lay dying, the promise about the land was on his mind: “And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence” (Gen. 50:24-25). Because these were the covenant promises of God and because God is not a liar, Joseph said to his people, “Don’t worry. The promise will be fulfilled. God will take you back in due time. I don’t want my bones left here in Egypt. Take them with you when you go.” This, incidentally, they did.
When the Passover, a new order of worship, was established, the promise of the land was again involved: “And it shall come to pass, when ye be come to the land which the LORD will give you, according as he hath promised, that ye shall keep this service” (Ex. 12:25). To whom did God make the promise that is mentioned? To Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When the people entered the land, however, their order of worship was to be the Passover celebration and all that God commanded Moses on Sinai concerning worship, rather than patriarchal worship.
At Mount Sinai, as we have seen, the race finally became a nation. For the first time the word nation could be used to describe an immediate historic reality: “Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation” (Ex. 19:5-6). At Sinai the people were given the law, and the nation was to be a holy nation.
As the people left Sinai, all but one piece was in place. They were now a nation, they had the law, they had been given the new order of worship, they had the book (Ex. 17:14). The last of the pieces, the promise of the land, was ready to be put in place. In only a year and two months after being slaves in Egypt, the people were ready to complete the full complex of the promise of God! Then the spies were sent out, and they came back with the majority report that led the people into real rebellion. There was no need to stay in the wilderness thirty-eight more years. The people had only to believe the promises that had been given; instead they rebelled.
At the end of the wilderness wandering, this unnecessary parenthesis in Jewish history, the Lord said to Moses, “This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither” (Deut. 34:4). Moses was able to look at the land, but he was not able to go into it.
As Joshua waited to enter Canaan, the promise concerning the nation and the land that had been repeated over and over again for all these years was a tremendous factor emotionally, theologically, and practically.
We can now more fully understand all that was involved as God spoke to Joshua, particularly as we pay attention to the matter of the land.
Now after the death of Moses the servant of the LORD it came to pass, that the LORD spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying, Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast. . . . Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shall thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give them. . . . Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying, Pass through the host, and command the people, saying, Prepare you victuals; for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, to go in to possess the land, which the LORD your God giveth you to possess it. (Josh. 1:1-4, 6, 10-11)
Can you imagine the impact Joshua’s words had upon the people as they stood looking across the Jordan? Within three days the great promises were going to be fulfilled!
THE GIFTS OF GOD ARE WITHOUT REPENTANCE
The continuity of the national portion of the covenant did not end with Joshua, or with Jews today, any more than the continuity of the spiritual portion ended with him. We have seen that the spiritual side of the covenant has something to say to the Jews in the Old Testament, to the Jews in the early church, to the Jews of today, and to the Jews of the future, and to the Gentiles also. The land, too, was tied with the everlastingness of the covenant: “And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God” (Gen. 17:7-8).
As we have seen, Paul, speaking about the future of the Jews, said that “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance [literally, are not repented of]” (Rom. 11:29). In other words, God is not done with the Jews. He has made promises that he himself has said are everlasting.
Jeremiah, one of the Old Testament prophets, dealt with the everlastingness of the covenant in relation to the land:
Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when its waves thereof roar; the LORD of hosts is his name: If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever. Thus saith the LORD; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the LORD. (Jer. 31:35-37)
Just as God made an everlasting covenant with nature at the time of Noah—that the order of nature will not be ended throughout this era—he made a covenant with the nation of Israel with as great a finality. If one cannot change, the other cannot change.
At a time when because of the Babylonian and Assyrian captivities people were saying, “God has cast off the Jews,” Jeremiah wrote,
Considerest thou not what this people have spoken, saying, The two families which the LORD hath chosen, he hath even cast them off? Thus they have despised my people, that they should be no more a nation before them. Thus saith the LORD; If my covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth, then will I cast away the seed of Jacob . . . for I will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them. (Jer. 33:24-26)
This prophecy should ram into our thinking the certainty that God’s promise regarding the nation is indeed without change.
In this Jeremiah passage the captivity mentioned cannot be just the Babylonian captivity because it is related to the covenant with nature, which continues throughout the whole era. Ezekiel, in a prophecy written at approximately the same time, related the covenant to that future day of which Paul spoke, a future in which Israel as Israel will be saved and will come into the same kind of situation as the individual Jews who believed at Pentecost and since: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them” (Ezek. 36:26-27). This statement relates to the promise of Joel (Joel 2:28—3:1), which was partially fulfilled at Pentecost and which partially remains to be fulfilled.
Clearly, the gifts and calling of God are without repentance in both halves of the Abrahamic Covenant—the spiritual and the national.
WAS GOD UNJUST?
We are left with one final question—for our century one that is gigantic. Was it unjust for Joshua to drive out the people who were in the land? It is quite clear, as we have seen, that God promised his people the land, but wasn’t this unjust to those who were living there already?
During the cutting of the friendship covenant, God said to Abraham, “But in the fourth generation they [Abraham’s descendants] shall come hither again” (Gen. 15:16). There was a reason not connected with anything the Israelites did: “The iniquity of the Amorites [was] not yet full” (Gen. 15:16). At the same time that God swore he would give the Jews the land, he informed Abraham that the Amorites’ iniquity had not yet come to that level of revolt that made it the proper time to deal with it.
Immediately before the time of Joshua, however, Moses said to the people,
Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the LORD thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the LORD hath brought me in to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD doth drive them out from before thee. Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (Deut. 9:4-5)
Moses was telling the people, “Don’t think you are getting the land because you are so good. Rather, it is because the iniquity of the people in the land has come to such a climax. The covenant promise is there, but God has waited hundreds of years for the Amorites’ cup of iniquity to flow over.”
I think of the cup of iniquity in a visual way. I imagine myself holding a cup that has water dripping into it. The water does not come quickly, but I keep holding the cup up. Gradually the water rises, and at a certain point it flows over the brim. This is the principle of the judgment of God: Man is in revolt against God, and God waits in longsuffering until every possibility of man’s turning back is exhausted. When the iniquity is full, when the cup overflows, God’s judgment comes.
This was true at the time of the flood: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). People were in total rebellion against God. Genesis 6:11-12 indicates that “the earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.” God waited, we do not know how long. Then came the judgment of the flood. When did it take place? When the cup was full.
In the story of Sodom the same principle is reiterated (Gen. 18:20-33). Because Abraham bargained with God on behalf of the city, it almost seems as though Abraham understood this principle with exactitude.
We might paraphrase the biblical account like this. God said to Abraham, “Sodom is utterly wicked! It is time to destroy this rotten city!”
Abraham responded, “Lord, if there are fifty righteous people there, will you refrain from destroying it?”
“Yes,” God replied. “If there are fifty righteous people there, the iniquity is not yet full.”
“What if there are forty-five?”
“All right, if there are forty-five, the iniquity is not yet full.”
“What about forty?”
“All right.”
“Thirty?”
“All right.”
“Twenty?”
“All right.”
“Ten?”
“Yes, even ten!”
But since not even ten righteous people could be found, Sodom was destroyed. The Sodomites’ cup had been filling, filling, filling; and when the iniquity at Sodom reached a certain level, judgment came.
When the Israelites stood on the east bank of the Jordan, the iniquity of the Amorites was full. The sword of Joshua was the sword of God in judgment—an exact parallel to the flood and to the destruction of Sodom.
Many of the Canaanite cities have been dug up, and one can see that the statuettes that were worshipped by the Canaanites at this period were overwhelmingly perverse. The worship was wrapped up not only with complete rebellion against God, but with all kinds of sexual sin. The statuettes were as pornographic as some of today’s worst pictures! And in its violence, their culture became equal to ours. So in Moses’ time God said, “All right, it is time for the judgment.” This reminds us that there is “death in the city” in our own culture.
We have here another continuity: the principle that when iniquity and rebellion come to the full, then God judges. The principle still is in operation. Jesus said, “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). Though the Gentile world has had the advantages of the Christian age, wickedness will come to the full before the coming of Christ. The book of Revelation indicates the same thing. Then the principle will be applied again, and the judgment related to the second coming of Christ will fall.
At that time “all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: for this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins” (Rom. 11:26-27). God has made a covenant, and all the Jews—all Israel—are going to come to this place of spiritual blessing when the Gentiles’ iniquity is full.
Jesus said the same thing: “And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled” (Luke 21:24). When the iniquity is full, the course of events will be reversed, and a blessing will come to Israel as Israel. When the disciples asked Jesus, “What’s it going to be like when you come back and judge?” Jesus replied, “It’s going to be like two periods, like the days of Noah and the days of Sodom. When it is like those days, I will come back and judge” (Luke 17:26-30).
The Scripture insists that in a time still future to the present ticking of the clock, when the iniquity of the Gentiles is full, a greater Joshua will come and function once more in judgment:
And I saw heaven opened and, behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS. (Rev. 19:11-16)
This is the greater Joshua, Jesus Christ. The one who died so that people can escape judgment will be the judge. And it is this Christ who stood before Joshua as the captain of the host of the Lord.
A cup filled with iniquity followed by God’s judgment—this is the negative side of the covenant of grace. Why did there have to be a covenant of grace? Because people rebelled and could not come to God in their own goodness. They were under the judgment of God with true moral guilt. So God had to give the covenant of grace at the terrible cost of Christ’s death because people were justly under God’s condemnation and judgment without it.
We have come now to the last of the continuities I wanted to look at before we examine the book of Joshua in detail. Out of the Pentateuch, through the book of Joshua, to the rest of the Bible, and to a time future to ourselves, there is a continuity of the patience of God and the judgment that comes when iniquity is full. The books are not balanced in this life. If we live only between birth and death, we must acknowledge that we do not live in a moral universe but in an amoral universe. But if a holy God exists, we live in a moral universe, and that is wonderful. Again this truth means that because the books are not balanced in this life, the judgment of God will come in the future.
So we come back to Joshua at Jericho. There he met the Christ of the cross, the Christ of the book of Revelation, who is the judge, who told Joshua that Jericho would fall. As we comprehend the continuities of the book—the supernatural power, the supernatural leader, and the covenant (including the principle of judgment)—we are ready to understand the taking of the land.