Covenant Promise I: Evaluating Israel’s Inheritance

by Daniel S. Trout

The history of redemption might well be described as God’s progressive fulfillment of his promises made first in Gen. 3; and, given the intricate architectonics of His plan, every passing generation has had to patiently endure (by faith) the tension of attainment and expectation through the succession of what might by called the covenantal reditus of humanity’s communion with her Creator. In fact, in no other epoch such this interadvental period have God’s people had to steadfastly persevere in their belief of what has already been accomplished while clinging with a certain hope that all will one day be complete. Our age is indeed (as the Fathers described) not one of shadow but image–viz., sure tokens of Christ’s accomplishments. And yet a better understanding of the OT shadows might illumine the mysteries of what we now enjoy in our Lord and his Church. What does the ancient foreshadowing teach us about our common, albeit transformed inheritance, in and with Israel?

To begin, the key elements of the inheritance are three in number: not two–as is often the case in most “biblical theologies”, but three. Old Testament narrative is not simply defined by a Land and a Line, but also a Liturgy. This might seem to throw a wrench in a study generally identified with Protestant scholarship, but rather I would suggest this as a correction, a completion (without being too presumptuous) to an otherwise stellar, although characteristically inadequate, effort. With this in mind, I must propose that Israel’s inheritance of the covenant blessings are ultimately predicated on orthodoxy, which means, in its original and full sense, right worship. God’s elect were then, as they are today, principally restored through the revealed liturgy that unites them with the glory of the Divine life. I do not mean to say that the promises of dominion and dynasty (as Stephen Dempster describes) are not central; rather, I am recommending that they be recognized as the means to an even more fundamental end.

But, one might ask, wasn’t the Exodus chiefly about returning to Canaan? Isn’t the real content of the promise made to Abraham about inheriting the land? The problem here is that such an objection seems to oppose land and liturgy, which makes no sense in the larger context of the OT. Israel was not destined by God to just be a “great nation” or even, as my seminary professor Richard Pratt proposed, the staging ground (Eden, the center of the world) for global conquest. Instead, she was to be the “light to lighten the Gentiles,” the conduit for reconciliation with God that the prophets condemned apostate Israel for failing to realize. This light was the light of God’s presence that Israel uniquely encountered in the temple cult. The liturgy of the sacrifices was designed by God to transfigure the worshipers, viz., to make them a kingdom of priests fit to inherit the promises and draw the other nations through their righteous living. Without the worship, the provision of the land and the line appear inadequate, just imitations of what any other nation could boast. The liturgy takes these kingly motifs and gives them a doxological direction that points towards the real telos–communion even greater than that of Eden.

The centrality of the liturgy should help us make better sense of why Moses admonished Pharaoh to consent to the Exodus in the first place. Israel needed to go into the wilderness because she was commanded to worship. God was not going to bring her into Canaan until she learned to do what his intentions demanded. True Sabbath rest was not possible without the liturgical underpinnings necessary to covenant fidelity. Thus, we can understand the meticulous construction of the tabernacle, from its design to its liturgical articles to its symbolic seven-day construction: God was “starting over again” to ready his people–even the whole world–for the future: a future we now know to be the cosmic recapitulation enacted by the Incarnate Son of God. Israel, above all other things, was a “liturgical people,” since it was most especially in her worship that she engaged in covenant fellowship. Not surprisingly, it was her faithfulness to the rubrics of this worship that determined her experience of either the blessings or curses of this covenant.

For true Israel–the Church–as we look forward with greater enlightenment towards the promised Sabbath rest, our condition remains essentially the same. Although the shadows of the Temple and its rituals have been fulfilled in Christ, the centrality of the liturgy has not changed. Christ, as we learn from the NT, is the true temple, the priest and the sacrifice. Thus, it is our faithful participation in him: his glorious presence, his priestly intercession and his self-offering that will decide our destiny in the covenant. The Church cannot inherit God’s promises if she insists on worshiping according to her own imagination or desire for self-affirmation. Christianity is not an idea to be reinvented, it is not a theological enterprise to be systematically buttressed, rather it is the sacrifice of a chosen people offered to God for his glory. It is the fulfillment of the ultimately vain spilling of animal blood that Christ accomplished as the new covenant oblation. Thus, it is in the sacrifice of his blood that Christians are redeemed; without it, we cannot have new life. True Christian worship, as given by God for our justification, never departs from this sacrifice. The covenant is forever sealed in the sacrifice of the blood, otherwise the liturgy becomes an empty display or, worse yet, a tailored show. As the NT and the Fathers testify, only the Eucharist secures our salvation, for only the consecrated bread and chalice unite our sacrifice with Christ’s, and furthermore, bind the worshipers on both sides of Calvary together into one, true Israel. The ancient Jewish adumbrations still teach us that the hope of a promised land, an eternal reign, and an immortal life is most surely revealed in our worship. We will only inherit if we taste the first fruits of the covenant now.