Idolatry: The Love of God is not about Land

I, Yahweh, have spoken; I will surely do this to all this evil community who has banded together against me. In this desert they will come to an end, and there they will die.”

Numbers 14:35 (LEB)

After ancient Israel met God and heard His thunderous voice on Mount Horeb, outside of the land, they agreed to a covenant and became a people bound together by the Torah. They were frightened and told Moses they could not bare to hear God’s voice amidst the thunder and lightning. He consented and promised to send one of their brothers in the future to be like Moses, instructing that everyone must listen to what he says.

Deuteronomy 18:15–19 (LEB): ¹⁵ “Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst, from your countrymen, and to him you shall listen. ¹⁶ This is according to all that you asked from Yahweh your God at Horeb, on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘I do not want again to hear the voice of Yahweh my God, and I do not want to see again this great fire, so that I may not die!’ ¹⁷ And Yahweh said to me, ‘They are right in what they have said. ¹⁸ I will raise up a prophet for them from among their countrymen like you, and I will place my words into his mouth, and he shall speak to them everything that I command him. ¹⁹ And then the man that will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I will hold accountable.

When they finally reached the land that God had promised to give them they saw that it was full of mighty people and great walled cities. The Israelites became angry and started to rebel saying that God had brought them to the desert to die. All the while God had promised that those in this land would leave and the Israelites would inherit all of it. The rebellion and lack of trust made God very angry.

Numbers 14:11–12 (LEB): ¹¹ And Yahweh said to Moses, “How long until this people will despise me, and how long until they will not believe in me, and in all the signs that I have done in their midst? ¹² I will strike them with disease, and I will dispossess them; I will make you into a greater and stronger nation than them.”

Moses interceded for them and God decided that the punishment for the people was to be that they could not enter the land and would die in the desert. Only their children would be able to enter the land. Of course, the Israelites were very remorseful about this. They decided they they would still go into the land even though God told them they were no longer allowed to possess the land.

Numbers 14:39–45 (LEB): ³⁹ And Moses spoke words to all the Israelites, and the people mourned greatly. ⁴⁰ They rose early in the morning and went to the top of the mount, saying, “Here we are. We will go up to the place that Yahweh said, because we have sinned.” ⁴¹ But Moses said, “Why are you going against the command of Yahweh? It will not succeed. ⁴² You should not go up because Yahweh is not in your midst; do not let yourselves be defeated in the presence of your enemies, ⁴³ because the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and you will fall by the sword; because you have turned back from Yahweh, and Yahweh will not be with you.” ⁴⁴ But they dared to go to the top of the mountain, and the ark of the covenant of Yahweh and Moses did not depart from the midst of the camp. ⁴⁵ So the Amalekites and the Canaanites who were living on the mountain descended, and they beat them down, up to Hormah.

Eventually that generation died off and one of their children, Joshua, lead the people into the promised land. Therefore, God fulfilled the land promise to Israel.

Joshua 21:43–45 (LEB): ⁴³ And Yahweh gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their ancestors, and they took possession of it and settled in it. ⁴⁴ Yahweh gave them rest on every side, according to all that he had sworn to their ancestors, and nobody from all their enemies withstood them, for Yahweh had given all their enemies into their hand. ⁴⁵ And nothing failed from all the good things that Yahweh promised to the house of Israel; everything came to pass.

Joshua told the Israelites, who had received the land promised to Abraham, that they must obey God and not turn to idolatry. It took hundreds of years, but the Israelites rebelled against God so badly that some of the tribes were cut off and others were left in an unstable state of existence. God kept his promise and covenant with Israel, but they abandoned their end of the covenant.

Joshua 24:19–25 (LEB): ¹⁹ But Joshua said to the people, “You cannot serve Yahweh, for he is a holy and jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. ²⁰ If you forsake Yahweh and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster to you; he will destroy you after he has done good to you.” ²¹ And the people said to Joshua, “No, we will serve Yahweh.” ²² And Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen for yourselves to serve Yahweh.” And they said, “We are witnesses.” ²³ He said, “Remove the foreign gods that are in your midst, and incline your hearts to Yahweh the God of Israel.” ²⁴ And the people said to Joshua, “We will serve Yahweh our God, and we will listen to his voice.” ²⁵ So Joshua made a covenant with the people on that day, and he established for them a statute and a judgment at Shechem.

Fast forward approximately 1200 hundred years. Israel had been all but destroyed and scattered among the nations, and in the case of the northern kingdom, had lost their identity. There was still a functioning temple in Jerusalem with a remnant of people from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Even though the once great kingdom had been all but destroyed, God kept His promise to Judah. These verses in Genesis point to the Messiah, Jesus, or Yeshua in Hebrew.

Genesis 49:10 (LEB): ¹⁰ The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff between his feet, until Shiloh comes. And to him shall be the obedience of nations.

Yeshua is the Messiah, or “prophet like Moses” promised in Deuteronomy 18. He became a prominent teacher of the Torah and often butted heads with the Pharisees. These are the ones descended from the southern kingdom and remnant of God’s people. Paul states the advantage of being a Jew was that God had given them His oracles to pass down.

Romans 3:1–2 (LEB):3 Therefore, what is the advantage of the Jew, or what is the use of circumcision? ² Much in every way. For first, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God.

And also, what it means to be a Jew:

Romans 2:28–29 (LEB): ²⁸ For the Jew is not one outwardly, nor is circumcision outwardly, in the flesh. ²⁹ But the Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter, whose praise is not from people but from God.

Yeshua had come to renew the covenant. Talmudic Judaism had strayed from God. In one of the encounters with Yeshua he told the Pharisees some hard things.

Matthew 23:29–36 (LEB): ²⁹ “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees—hypocrites!—because you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, ³⁰ and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in the blood of the prophets!’ ³¹ Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets! ³² And you—fill up the measure of your fathers! ³³ Serpents! Offspring of vipers! How will you escape from the condemnation to hell? ³⁴ For this reason, behold, I am sending to you prophets and wise men and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will flog in your synagogues and will pursue from town to town, ³⁵ so that upon you will come all the righteous blood shed on the earth from the blood of righteous Abel up to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. ³⁶ Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation!

Yeshua also told them a parable that they were not happy about.

Luke 20:9–17 (LEB): ⁹ And he began to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, and leased it to tenant farmers, and went on a journey for a long time. ¹⁰ And at the proper time he sent a slave to the tenant farmers, so that they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenant farmers sent him away empty-handed after beating him. ¹¹ And he proceeded to send another slave, but they beat and dishonored that one also, and sent him away empty-handed. ¹² And he proceeded to send a third, but they wounded and threw out this one also. ¹³ So the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What should I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.’ ¹⁴ But when the tenant farmers saw him, they began to reason with one another, saying, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him so that the inheritance will become ours!’ ¹⁵ And they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? ¹⁶ He will come and destroy those tenant farmers and give the vineyard to others.” And when they heard this, they said, “May this never happen!” ¹⁷ But he looked intently at them and said, “What then is this that is written:

‘The stone which the builders rejected, this has become the cornerstone.’

What are we to make of this? Is this where replacement theology gets its ideas from? They believe the “church” (whatever that is) has replaced Israel. Yet the covenant Yeshua renewed or “made new” is specifically with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. The apostle Paul goes to great lengths to explain this. I have covered this topic in many blog posts. It is no longer about a piece of land in Western Asia. This is why at Passover Jews in Jerusalem say, “next year in Jerusalem”. It is not about the physical land that exists today or some country that calls itself Israel. It is about the return of the Messiah and the resurrection of his people that follow him and what he said to do. There are faithful people that, because of Israel’s rebellion, are able to come to God from the nations through Messiah Yeshua.

Romans 9:22–33 (LEB): ²² And what if God, wanting to demonstrate his wrath and to make known his power, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? ²³ And he did so in order that he could make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy that he prepared beforehand for glory, ²⁴ us whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? ²⁵ As he also says in Hosea, “I will call those who were not my people, ‘My people,’ and those who were not loved, ‘Loved.’ ²⁶ And it will be in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’ ” ²⁷ And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, “Even if the number of the sons of Israel is like the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved, ²⁸ for the Lord will execute his sentence thoroughly and decisively upon the earth.” ²⁹ And just as Isaiah foretold, If the Lord of hosts had not left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom and would have resembled Gomorrah.” ³⁰ What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness—even the righteousness that is by faith. ³¹ But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, did not attain to the law. ³² Why that? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if by works. They stumbled over the stone that causes people to stumble, ³³ just as it is written, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble, and a rock that causes them to fall, and the one who believes in him will not be put to shame.”

Peter spoke of this to the people witnessing the events on Pentecost, or the feast of weeks, Shavuot.

Acts 3:22–23 (LEB): ²² Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You will listen to him in everything that he says to you. ²³ And it will be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet will be destroyed utterly from the people.’

It is all about Messiah Yeshua and following him. There is no more land to think about. Whatever is to come next comes through Yeshua. The resurrection of His people and the New Jerusalem perhaps? “Next year in Jerusalem!”. What about those who reject the Messiah and do not do what he says, breaking all of the commandments of God such as stealing and murdering? ^” And it will be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet will be destroyed utterly from the people.“

1 John 2:18–26 (CJB): ¹⁸ Children, this is the Last Hour. You have heard that an Anti-Messiah is coming; and in fact, many anti-Messiahs have arisen now—which is how we know that this is the Last Hour. ¹⁹ They went out from us, but they weren’t part of us; for had they been part of us, they would have remained with us.

²⁰ But you have received the Messiah’s anointing from HaKadosh, and you know all this. ²¹ It is not because you don’t know the truth that I have written to you, but because you do know it, and because no lie has its origin in the truth. ²² Who is a liar at all, if not the person who denies that Yeshua is the Messiah? Such a person is an anti-Messiah—he is denying the Father and the Son. ²³ Everyone who denies the Son is also without the Father, but the person who acknowledges the Son has the Father as well. ²⁴ Let what you heard from the beginning remain in you. If what you heard from the beginning remains in you, you will also remain in union with both the Son and the Father. ²⁵ And this is what he has promised us: eternal life. ²⁶ I have written you these things about the people who are trying to deceive you.

Repent from idol worship and follow Yeshua the Messiah who saves all people.

Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash