The Promised Land & Beyond: How God Reclaims His Whole Creation

In the end, God will make a new heaven and a new earth, the inheritance of his people.

But to understand Scripture’s end, we must return to its beginning. Leading up to that end lies the whole sweep of Scripture’s story in which God creates and restores a place for his people.

The garden of Eden as God’s original sacred space

In Genesis 1–2, we face the inescapable reality that God made all material things (Gen 1:1), including place. Place matters, because God made it (Gen 2:8). And place is good, because what God made is good (Gen 1:31).

God made the world, forming and filling a material creation (Gen 1:1–2:3). He divided waters (Gen 1:6–7), brought forth land (Gen 1:9–10), and in his climactic work of creation, he made image-bearers (Gen 1:26–27).

After reporting the acts of creation, the biblical author tells us that God rested on the seventh day (Gen 2:1–3). Lacking the “evening” and “morning” language used for the earlier six days, the report about the seventh day suggests that God has continued to rule over the creation he has made. He is the enthroned Maker who sustains all things, and he is guiding all things toward an appointed rest. God created his image-bearers so that they might enter into his rest, living under his joyful reign and his righteous dominion.

This grand purpose is glimpsed in the events of Genesis 2. The man and woman dwelled in the world God had made, and, more specifically, they lived in the garden God had planted: “The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Gen 2:8).¹ God put the man in the garden “to work it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). This pair of verbs is used later in the Pentateuch to describe the tasks of priests (e.g., Num 3:7–8), so it is plausible to see Adam as a proto-priest, a guardian of a special place, a sacred space. Eden was like a sanctuary, a place where God was present with his people (Gen 3:8).

While God had made all of the material world, not all places were alike. Imagine concentric circles: The garden was within Eden but did not encompass all of it, and Eden itself occupied only a portion of the earth. The man and woman were later exiled from Eden (Gen 3:24), confirming that the garden was a unique and sacred territory within the larger region of Eden, which itself was a special area distinct from the rest of the earth.

The Lord made Eve from Adam (Gen 2:21–23), and the two image-bearers were called to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the land (Gen 1:26–28). The fruitful couple corresponded to the fruitful land. The Lord blessed and nourished his people by providing them a place of abundant plants and trees (Gen 1:29–30; 2:9).

Looking at Genesis 1–2 as a whole, we conclude that God made people to dwell with him in a place. He made a habitable world, one that was—and is—remarkably fine-tuned for life to exist and thrive. God’s purpose of creating a place was to populate it with people.

The fall and the curse on the land

But after the events in Genesis 3, thriving in God’s world is no longer easy.

The problem of sin and death now permeates God’s creation and his image-bearers. Adam and Eve sinned in the sacred space. The man blamed the woman (Gen 3:12), and the woman blamed the serpent (Gen 3:13).

The Lord pronounced consequences that the man and woman—and their posterity—would experience (Gen 3:16–19). The ground would now resist being cultivated. The Lord told the man, “Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life” (Gen 3:17). Work itself is not a consequence of sin, but the toilsome nature of work certainly is. The image of resistance is evident in Genesis 3:18: “thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.” The thorns and thistles represent the curse upon the ground. They signal the opposite of flourishing and fruitfulness.

God told Adam, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19). God’s image-bearers were to exercise dominion over creation (Gen 1:28). But now their dominion wouldn’t last forever. In the end, the ground would prevail over them. The dust would receive their bodies. The dust was both their origin (Gen 2:7) and destiny (Gen 3:19).

No matter how much Adam worked, he would not live forever (Gen 5:5). And no matter how much we toil, we will not circumvent death either. There will always be more thorns and thistles. There will always be more work that needs to be done. The fall disrupts creation’s intended rest. Creation “was subjected to futility” by God (Rom 8:20). As we age and as we work, we face the unbending truth of toilsome labor, and we continue headlong down the path toward the grave. We know, deep down, that the dust awaits.

We cannot return to Eden and will certainly return to the dust.

Living outside of Eden was exile for Adam and Eve (Gen 3:24), and it’s exile for all of us, too. We have only known life outside of paradise. We have only known ground that is cursed. We have only known work that is threatened by the futilities and toilsomeness of life under the sun. As people who were made to dwell in a place with God, we cannot return to Eden but will certainly return to the dust.

But God spoke a hopeful word in the garden of Eden: One day, a son will be born who will accomplish a great victory, and this victory will impact the place God had made.

Genesis 3:15 and the curse’s promised reversal

God told the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen 3:15). According to that promise, a future victor would descend from Eve. The biblical author doesn’t specify when, yet the foundation of messianic hope is laid here. But what would this victor accomplish? In Genesis 3:15, the prophecy emphasizes the serpent’s defeat, which will be a defeat accomplished through the promised son’s suffering.

Generations after Adam, a man (Lamech) would call his son Noah, a name which means “rest.” The biblical author tells us the father’s reasoning: “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands” (Gen 5:29). Notice the connections between Genesis 5:29 and Genesis 3:15. Not only does Genesis 3:15 envision a future son who is victorious over the serpent, Lamech understands the future figure’s victory will impact the cursed ground, the place of painful toil.

The land is cursed, but the early chapters of Genesis promise a reversal of the curse. Since part of the curse involves the open mouth of the dust receiving the bodies of image-bearers, the reversal of the curse will impact the problem of death, as well. Though neither Genesis 3 nor Genesis 5 specify a resurrection from the dead, the reversal of the curse sets the trajectory for resurrection hope.

As Paul puts it, “Creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Rom 8:19). At the appointed time,

Creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. (Rom 8:21–22)

Creation groans for the reversal of the curse. Land and place are impacted by the corruption of a fallen world.

But this is a temporary problem. God’s creation has a bright future of liberation and glory, and the seeds of this hope were sown in the opening chapters of Genesis. Blessing will overcome the curse, through the promised son.

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The Abrahamic covenant and the promised land

The echoes of Eden reverberate in God’s calling of Abraham. The Lord tells the Mesopotamian man,

Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (Gen 12:1–3)

Here again we have the threat of curse and the promise of blessing, and the aim of God’s blessing is “all the families of the earth” (Gen 12:3).

Abraham had been given precious promises about a land that would belong to him and to his offspring (Gen 12:7) This “land that I will show you” (Gen 12:1) is the land of Canaan. Abraham traveled to the place and surveyed it as he journeyed through it (Gen 12:4–9). The Jordan River was its eastern border, and the Mediterranean Sea was its western border.

Though no longer in Eden, God’s people will now have a land that has been set apart for them. The promised land was an echo of Eden because God would place his people there to dwell with him through the tabernacle and eventually the temple. This gift of sacred space signaled that God had not trashed his plan to dwell with his covenant people in a special place. This land would be flowing with milk and honey (Exod 3:8)—a blessed land, a space brimming with vitality and fruitfulness.

Abraham’s descendants would not receive this land immediately, however. They would dwell in Egypt for generations, after which the Lord would eventually bring them to the promised land (Gen 15:13–16). For a period, they would be a people waiting for the promise to be kept. The covenant promises, first given to Abraham and then passed to his descendants, included this land promise, so the covenant people could count on Yahweh to fulfill what he had said.

According to the author of Hebrews, the patriarchs did not receive the promised land; they died looking for it by faith. In fact, the patriarchs knew that the promised land, while a part of God’s covenant promise, was not their final and ultimate inheritance. Speaking of Abraham,

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. (Heb 11:9–10)

Of the patriarchal family, the writer says,

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. (Heb 11:13–16)

The patriarchs saw—by faith—that the promised land was not the fullness of their inheritance. A greater land awaited them. A heavenly reality would be theirs, and they desired it, for it was “a better country,” a “city” God had prepared for them. Until that day of heavenly inheritance, the patriarchs would wait in faith.

The Exodus and its aim toward the promised land

When the book of Exodus opens, the people of Israel are captives in a foreign land. They are not a people at rest in God’s promised place. Instead, ruthless taskmasters subjugate them (Exod 1:8–14). The event of the exodus serves God’s larger goal of bringing his people to the appointed place he swore to their forefathers (Exod 3:7–8; 6:6–8).

Leaving unrest in Egypt for rest in the promised land, the people fled with dead lambs in their wake (Exod 12:12–13; 21–23). Deliverance and rest will be achieved through substitutionary sacrifice. Rest is tied to redemption, and redemption happens through blood.

After the exodus from Egypt, God led the Israelites to Sinai (Exod 19:1–2). To prepare his people for life in the promised land, God gave them the law and made with them a covenant (Exod 19–24). The Sinai covenant includes the Ten Commandments, which directed their lives to rest on the seventh (Sabbath) day (Exod 20:8–11). They will rest, remembering that the Creator made all things and that he is leading his people toward the ultimate rest which sin and death cannot spoil. In other words, covenant rest is a shadow of things to come.

In due time, Abraham’s descendants reached the promised land. The imminent problem, however, was that the promised land was occupied by the Canaanites.

The Canaanite conquest and possession of the land

The time of the land’s inheritance coincided with Yahweh’s exercise of dominion over his enemies. By Yahweh’s strength, and in light of his promises, the Israelites would overcome the Canaanites. Inheritance and rest would come by way of conquest (Josh 1:6, 13–14).

God’s law had instructed the Israelites to engage in the conquest of the promised land (Deut 7:1–2). They were to subdue Yahweh’s enemies, disrupting and destroying the idol worship in the land (Deut 20:16–18). False worship had defiled Canaan (Lev 18:24–25). The unclean practices of the Canaanites meant that the land was an unclean place (Lev 18:27–28). The conquest was purgation, purification.

Through Moses, the Lord said,

When you pass over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you and destroy all their figured stones and destroy all their metal images and demolish all their high places. And you shall take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given the land to you to possess it. (Num 33:51–53)

Destroying and driving out—these actions comprise the gist of the conquest commands. They represent what should have happened in Eden under Adam’s leadership. The creeping serpent should have been subdued and driven out of the sacred space (Gen 2:15). Instead, however, the woman heeded the serpent’s lies, and Adam followed suit (Gen 3:1–7). Centuries later, the Israelites were to go into the land of Canaan and drive out the seed of the serpent (Gen 3:15). The falsehood and abominable practices in the land of Canaan must not abide. The conquest was holy warfare that set apart the land for God’s glory and name.

Moses would not lead this warfare, however. He died on the border of the new sacred space (Deut 34). His successor, Joshua, readied and rallied the Israelites for battle (Josh 1). Despite being constantly outnumbered and outgunned, the Israelites experienced the delivering hand of Yahweh, the Divine Warrior. Through battles in the southern and northern parts of the land, the Israelites prevailed over their enemies (Josh 11–12). “And the land had rest from war” (Josh 11:23; emphasis added).

The Israelites were like a corporate Adam, subduing the threats in their sacred space. They were exercising dominion, unlike what the first Adam did to the serpent in the garden. The conquest was the corporate exercise of dominion over the God-dishonoring practices and inhabitants of the promised land.

Idolatry, exile, and Israel’s loss of the land

Although the Israelites inherited the land, they could not keep it. After the book of Joshua, the Bible traces their path that leads them into exile.

When Joshua died, the land was filled with cycles of idolatry, adversaries, judges, and deliverances (Judg 2:11–3:6). Though the Israelites had subdued the land overall, problems abounded within certain regions. Residual idolaters and idol-places became thorns and snares for the covenant people. And soon, the Israelites themselves defiled the very land they were supposed to purge and guard.

Not even the monarchy could save Israel. Solomon’s son Rehoboam provoked a rebellion, and the land divided into a Northern Kingdom and a Southern Kingdom (1 Kgs 12). Though some of the Southern Kingdom’s rulers were righteous, most were not. And all of the Northern Kingdom’s rulers were wicked. Corruption in the monarchy and priesthood continued to plunge the nation into ruin and mayhem.

Rather than a land flowing with milk and honey, the land was flowing with false worship and transgression. The Israelites shamelessly violated their covenant. They imitated the idolatry of the nations around them, becoming stiff-necked like the immovable idols they praised. The covenant community ignored Yahweh’s law and rejected the true prophets whom God raised up to warn and exhort them.

Just as the Lord exiled the first Adam in Genesis 3, the Lord exiled the corporate Adam in 2 Kings 25. The Southern Kingdom fell to Babylon, and the foreign army invaded and destroyed the sanctuary. If the promised land was meant to be an echo of Eden, then the exile of Israel into Babylonian captivity was like a replay of the fall. Adam went east of Eden (Gen 3:24), and the Israelites went east to Babylon.

If the promised land was meant to be an echo of Eden, then the exile of Israel into Babylonian captivity was like a replay of the fall.

This loss of land was not only distressing for the nation to experience, it was also confusing with regard to their covenant promises. In Genesis 12, God had promised the land of Canaan to Abraham’s offspring. The exile meant that Abraham’s offspring were displaced into a foreign land and under captivity. This was a reversal of the Exodus and its redemption (Hos 9:3), a new captivity in a new “Egypt” (Deut 28:68; Hos 9:3). From the outside, the scene looked like God’s revocation of his promise to the Abrahamic line. Did the exile from the promised land depict the failure of God’s covenant words?

The return from exile and its incomplete restoration

By no means! When we study Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, we find that exile to a foreign adversary was actually the outworking of covenant curses—curses which God himself promised and warned would happen to a covenant-rejecting and idol-loving people.

The exile from the promised land was only temporary, however. After approximately seventy years, the people returned (Jer 25, 29). Through the Prophet Ezekiel, God promised that he would raise Israel from the corporate grave of exile. Their restoration to the promised land would be like a resurrection from the dead. God told the prophet,

Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord. (Ezek 37:12–14)

Under the leadership of Cyrus the Persian (2 Chron 36:22–23; Ezra 1:1–4), the Israelites were permitted to return to the promised land (Ezra 2:1–2), and there they began to rebuild the temple (Ezra 3:8–13). Stalling for years (Hag 1:2–4), the covenant people eventually completed this second temple (see Ezra 1–6; Hag 1).

Despite the restoration of the right people to the right land, the covenant community did not maintain right worship. We know from the ministries of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Malachi that the postexilic state of the land was still characterized by disobedience. There was idolatry, waywardness, intermarriage with idolaters, laxity on sacrificial protocols, and many other sins.

The covenant community polluted the promised land with their many sins. They were the most important people living in the most important land, yet they seemed numb and complacent to their important vocation (Exod 19:5–6). Malachi warned that the Lord might “strike the land with a decree of utter destruction” (Mal 4:6). Given the history of the people, which included a devastating defeat and exile under a foreign adversary, Malachi’s words about future judgment—“utter destruction”—were terrifying and sobering.

Israel’s problems with the land were symptoms of a deeper and spiritual problem within the covenant people.

Jesus and the fulfillment of the land promise

The Lord Jesus’s ministry was the fulfillment of these earlier hopes and promises (2 Cor 1:20). Jesus is like a new Adam, except this Adam would succeed and be faithful (Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 15:45; Matt 4:1–11). Jesus was like a new Israel, except this Israel would be steadfast and obedient.

Nothing Jesus did would bring defilement or pollution. Rather, he came with the power to restore, cleanse, and transform. As the greater Joshua, Jesus ministered in the southern and northern parts of the land, engaging in a greater conquest. He exercised dominion and subdued: He combatted spiritual powers; he healed diseases; he performed miracles in nature; he pronounced forgiveness and delivered demoniacs; he taught with unprecedented authority; and he even overthrew death on multiple occasions. No matter what good things the promised land had experienced over the centuries, never had there been someone like Jesus upon its soil. He was a shining light on the land of Israel, and light shone wherever he went (Matt 4:13–16).

Some of the most well-known teachings of Jesus are the Beatitudes. And one of these Beatitudes evokes the notion of land. Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matt 5:5). As we’ve seen, inheritance is an Old Testament concept associated with the land, and here Jesus applies it to more than just the promised land. He didn’t say, “The meek shall inherit the promised land.” Rather, he identifies what the promised land was meant to typify and foreshadow. The promised land pointed to a new creation, a renewed and transformed world. The meek will inherit the earth, because that’s what the previous sacred spaces—like Eden and the promised land—had anticipated all along.

As in the first exodus, so in this greater exodus, deliverance unto rest is achieved by substitutionary sacrifice. Jesus dies on a cross for our sins and is raised from death, inaugurating the new creation. In this way, Jesus is the promised seed of Abraham through whom God brings blessing to the nations (Gal 3:16; cf. Gen 12:2–3). He takes Adam and Israel’s curse (Gal 3:13) so that we might receive God’s promised, covenant blessings (Gal 3:14). The New Testament describes this salvation in language that echoes the promised land: inheritance (Gal 3:18, 29; 4:7; cf. Acts 20:32; Eph 1:14, 18; Heb 11:8; 1 Pet 1:4). Jesus, thus, invites all people to come to him to find that long-awaited rest (Matt 11:28–30), and he guides us into that Rest which is to come (Heb 3:7–4:13).

New creation and the promised land’s consummation

The final destination of land promises and land shadows is the new creation. The meek will inherit the earth (Matt 5:5), and Abraham was “heir of the world” (Rom 4:13). Such a vast inheritance far exceeds what the covenant community enjoyed in the Old Testament.

The return of Christ will bring about the liberation of creation. This thorn-ridden world “will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom 8:21). The children of God will have the glory of their own resurrection, and this “revealing of the sons of God” (Rom 8:19) is the signal for creation’s own renewal and transformation.

In Revelation 21, John tells us what he saw:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” (Rev 21:1–3)

From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is a story of God’s dwelling with his people. From Eden to the New Jerusalem, God is seeking to establish a place of glory and peace and rest for his image-bearers. Through Christ, blessing triumphs over the cosmic curse. Christ is the greater Noah who will actually bring rest from the toil of our hands and will reverse the curse upon the ground. God will, at last, dwell with his people in a renewed and glorified state.

All things will become new (Rev 21:5; cf. Isa 65:17). Though the garden was only part of Eden, and though the promised land was only part of the territory in the ancient Near East, the new heaven and new earth have no such boundaries.

Conclusion

The topic of land is a lens through which you can see the whole storyline of Scripture. As the last Adam and true Israel, the Lord Jesus has come to lead us into perfect rest, a state of such blessing and grace that the end of all things is better than its initial sinless garden setting. As our new Moses and greater Joshua, Jesus leads us into a new creation flowing with milk and honey, as well as mercy and holiness. Because Christ is ours, the eternal and incorruptible new creation is ours.

This new creation is the “better country” that the patriarchs desired (Heb 11:16). It is our true and lasting home. Our final salvation is called our inheritance for good reason. For now, we see this fairer land from afar, by faith.

This new creation will abide under the joyful rule of the messianic king. His glory will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea (Num 14:21; Ps 72:19; Isa 11:9; Hab 2:14).

Resources for further study

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• What Is the New Heaven and the New Earth? 8 Metaphors to Know
• What Does It Mean That All of Creation Groans?
• Heaven Invades Earth: Understanding the Symbolism & Purpose of the Tabernacle
• How the Great Commission Echoes the Old Testament

1. All Bible quotations are taken from the ESV.