In an effort to further shine light on the Bible’s restoration message, I’m taking the time to explore different themes, threads, and patterns within the Bible that point to the restoration (not destruction) of God’s good world.
This post will explore the theme of promised land, exile and the restoration of promised land.
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God always intended for humans to have their own land. As a matter of fact, He pledged land to us before we even entered the frame.
If your experience as a Christian has been anything like mine, there’s a good chance that you’ve never been presented with the idea that Earth is our promised land. We tend to think about promised land as something that only came into the picture well down the line, having been promised to Abraham first, and then to his offspring. But the truth is the Earth is our promised land. God started our story in the land — in a garden meticulously curated and cultivated by Himself. And it was from this garden, that we were to multiply and fill the entire Earth with God’s glorious image.
The Bible is clear, from the very beginning God promised us a wonderful place to live, love, learn, grow, and exercise the authority He’d given us.
Now, I believe we don’t tend to think of the Earth as a promised land primarily for two reasons:
- It’s never explicitly called our “promised land”
- It wasn’t something set aside for the future, instead it was given upfront
But, make no mistake, this world has always been our promised land. When God made man, he never said “just do your thing down here for a while, and if you do a good job of following my rules, then you can go to a better place waiting for you in the ‘great beyond’.” No, He breathed life into the human that He’d just formed from the soil and said “here you go, enjoy what I’ve made for you…multiply and rule over all of it just like I’ll show you.”
Read the first couple chapters of Genesis — it doesn’t look anything like God creating humans to eventually leave for somewhere better. Instead, it’s God creating humans to live in and enjoy all of His goodness right where He put them.
We (humans) were made from this land and we were made for this land. We entered it and existed in it as our promise from the very beginning.
Promise (v): assure someone that one will definitely do, give, or arrange something
Similar words/phrases:
give one’s word, swear, pledge, guarantee, give an assurance, bind oneself, covenant
The land that God swore to us was a part of His covenant with us. Everything God did when creating us in the beginning communicates something like this: “Be with me, love me, enjoy me, learn from me, be my people in this land that I made for you. Be with me and this land will always be yours.”
God pledged to us a home — and all the good things in it — to experience, enjoy, and rule over. And we couldn’t give ourselves the right to rule, that right had to be given. The enormous, unearned, gifts of authority and rule (over the land and its creatures) were sworn to us since the beginning as a part of our solemn covenantal relationship with God (Genesis 1:26).
The fact is: the land that God gave us was (and still is) a part of our covenant with God — and it is good.
Covenant Land
The story begins with a covenanted people in a covenanted land living in close proximity and perfect intimacy with God.
And all too quickly, the beautiful harmony of this existence was shattered.
The covenant promise was broken by man, and as a result man was separated from the perfect garden existence they were created for.
This was the first exile.
Fast forward in the story and God called a man named Abram (later, Abraham) to leave his father’s land for a land that He would show him — a land of promise where his descendants would flourish and become immeasurable in number and glory (sound familiar?).
Fast forward some more and one night under the stars that very same promise was repeated in a vision to Abraham’s grandson, Jacob. And as a part of that promise God tells Jacob that his descendants will live in the very place where he (Jacob) was laying his head.
Fast forward again. Hundreds of years and many generations have passed, and Abraham’s descendants have finally taken ownership of the land promised to their forefathers which would allow them to flourish and establish themselves as God’s holy and chosen people. But, as we humans tend to do, the Israelites turned from God time and again, breaking their promise(s) to him and violating their covenant. And just like the initial covenant violation resulted in exile from the garden, Israel’s violations resulted in exile from their promised land of Canaan (several times, in fact).
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Foundational Truth:
Just like God doesn’t want us to be permanently separated from Him — because He is our blessing,
He likewise doesn’t want us to be permanently separated from our land, as He made it a blessing for us, as well.
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So, despite Israel’s repeated transgressions, God always (contingent on their repentance) brought them back to their land of promise. Because that’s where He wanted them to be, and He knew that’s where they needed to be. In their beautiful, safe, abundant land living in covenant with Him.
The Great Return
It’s here that I need to call out an important fact that we must remember: As far as a set apart people are concerned, Israel was never God’s ultimate goal. God’s intent was to use Israel as the vessel through which He would reach the entire world.
It was through Israel that God would re-establish His everlasting covenant with all people.
The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
“I will make you into a great nation,
Genesis 12: 1-3 (NIV) emphasis mine
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
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There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
Genesis 28: 13-15 (NIV) emphasis mine
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What does this mean? (And this is true as it relates to many topics, not just this one) It means that we should understand the larger story of the world through Israel, as Israel’s story is, and always has been, a microcosm of the broader human drama…God blesses people, the people wander — causing damage to themselves and the world around them, God punishes the people, the people return to God for a while, then the people wander again….wash, rinse, repeat.
The Israelites weren’t any better or any more faithful than any other group of humans, they were just the ones God decided to bring renewal through. When we observe the the Israelites, we’re really observing the story of God and humanity.
With this concept in mind, we can recognize the dynamic of Israel temporary separation from their land playing out on the human level, as well.
In the beginning humans broke their covenant with God and were exiled from their promised land — the garden, here on Earth. But the Bible is clear that in the end, God’s plan is to restore his people to their original covenanted land to for them to all exist in harmonious covenanted relationship again (Ezekiel 37: 21-28; Isaiah 65:17-25; 66:18-23; Matthew 5: 5; Revelation 5: 6-10; 21: 1-7).
And in so doing, the story comes wonderfully full circle — it doesn’t take a hard left turn where humans are stolen away to live a purely spiritual existence in a non-physical realm. Instead, the Bible tells of humanity returning to live in the holy and pure garden life like it had in the beginning (see: Revelation 21-22); with humans again living in full intimacy with God and ruling over creation in God’s power and love and wisdom.
At a high level, it looks something like this:
In Conclusion
The Bible tells the story of a people made in a land, from the land. Those people were then kicked out of their land because of their wrongdoing. But their [faithful] God works patiently to, in the end, bring them back to their land to be with Him again.
This story played out on a smaller scale with Israel, but their story is our (human) story.
This Earth is our land; And this land (in its perfected state) has been our destiny and our promise from the beginning.
And God is faithful to His promises.
Blessed are the meek,
Matthew 5:5 (NIV)
for they will inherit the earth.
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Your fellow landowner,
Alex
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Thoughts for the Road…
Exiled to Earth?
Acknowledging that promised land and exile and return from exile are legitimate recurring themes in the Bible story…if the common view of the end (that we’re going to live a purely spiritual existence in heaven after the return of Jesus) were true, this would mean that the real exile was not man being kicked out of the garden, but instead it would have to be earlier — man must have first been kicked out of heaven and exiled to Earth.
But there are a few issues with this take…
- It has no support in the Bible. The Bible tells us that God formed a human from the soil and breathed life into him, thus making him a living being (Genesis 2:7) — which is not the same as Him taking an already existing person (in spirit form) and placing him into a physical body.
- It’s not consistent with the exiles of God’s people that we see elsewhere in the Bible. As already mentioned, exiles were always a consequence of sin and rebellion. But there’s no evidence that we sinned in heaven and earned a demotion to Earth.
- It doesn’t reflect well on God. Related to the last point, the idea that God would send humans from a good place to a less than good place despite the fact they’d done nothing wrong does not reflect well on the character of God.
With these things in mind, it doesn’t make sense to think that humans were ever exiled from heaven to Earth. The Bible is clear, from the beginning Earth has always been our home, with no other destination in view.
Buried with Their People
One last thing to consider:
The insistence of the patriarchs — i.e. Abraham, Jacob, Joseph — to be buried in their homeland with their people (Genesis 25: 9-10; 49: 29-32; 50: 24-25).
Why did they care where their bodies were buried? If they believed — as we tend to — that when they die, they become their “true selves” and go to heaven to live free for eternity, then why would they care where their now-abandoned physical bodies were buried?
Answer: They cared because they understood that they would rise again to live on the restored physical Earth, and when they did they wanted to be with their loved ones in their homeland.