The land promises are dual. There was a physical reality of them but they pointed to the greater reality of the land of the kingdom of God in eternity. This is a proof positive text that God doesn’t just work with us in Words but attaches to them physical realities that condescend to our weakness, most prominently shown in God incarnate. Why didn’t God just speak immediately to everyone via the Spirit the truth, why use paper and ink, real physical circumcision, water, bread and wine?

God is showing, contra Gnostic dualism, that it is not bad physical good spirit, but that the physical is good originally, we are embodied souls not misty spirits only. Our ultimate hope lies not in a ethereal spiritual realm, but in a REAL resurrected body and earth. It is as before the fall, all that God created is very good, and it is washed with Christ’s real blood. The Christian hope, Abraham as well here, as Paul points out is in a very real resurrection some day, reunited with our loved ones in body and soul. For Christ’s real physical body has risen. We should not think this disjointedly, Christ risen and some day we to. Rather Christ the head has certainly risen, and we the body certainly ARE following. The resurrection is not only a certainty but an increasingly dawning reality.

We read in the NT commentary on the OT: Hebrews 11:9-10, "By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was LOOKING FORWARD to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God."

Blessings,

Ldh

__________________
Larry Hughes
Geologist
Tates Creek PCA
Lexington, KY
PCA

Galatians 4:29, "But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also."