Sermon Tone Analysis

Greetings, my friends.

I’m Art Wolinsky and I’d like to welcome you to another edition of The Messianic Jewish Expositor.

I have a question for you today.

Do you believe that the One and Only God, the God of Israel promised a Land to His people, the Jewish people, a long time ago?

Well, He most definitely did and He did it more than 3,000 years ago.

He made a covenant with the Jewish people, in fact He made more than one covenant with the Jewish people promising them a Land that would always be theirs.

These covenants were unconditional, in other words unbreakable.

Yes, we serve a wonderful God who makes covenants and promises and always keeps them.

So let’s talk about these covenants and especially one that is called The Promised Land Covenant, a name given to it by Matthew Bryce Ervin in his wonderful book One Thousand Years With Jesus.

Now God made a number of covenants with the Jewish people.

The first covenant was made through Abraham and that one is referred to as the Abrahamic Covenant.

It is an unconditional covenant.

The second covenant God made with the Jewish people was through Moses.

That was the Covenant of The Law, a conditional covenant of 613 rules and regulations.

The third covenant is unconditional and although it is hard to believe, this covenant which is to be found in the closing chapters of Deuteronomy, is frequently missed or overlooked by rabbis, pastors, and Bible students.

The fourth and fifth covenants that God made with the Jewish people are the Davidic Covenant and the New Covenant.

The New Covenant was given by the Lord through the prophet Jeremiah.

These last two covenants are also unconditional.

But what about the third covenant that God made with the Jewish people?

You may have noticed that I didn’t say much about it.

This third covenant is an unconditional one, meaning that the promises made by God in this covenant will be fulfilled regardless of anything that the Jewish people - the Nation of Israel - do or don’t do.

It was also given by God through Moses toward the end of the wilderness wanderings just before Moses died which was just before the children of Israel entered the Promised Land with Joshua.

Again, this covenant is an unconditional covenant and so it is different from the Mosaic Covenant or Covenant of the Law, which is very much a conditional covenant.

This third covenant is important for all born again believers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, to know about.

Let’s read about this covenant now:

Deuteronomy 29:1 NIV

1 These are the terms of the covenant the Lord commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb.

So this covenant with the people of Israel, made in Moab just across the Jordan river to the East of the Promised Land was in addition to the covenant the LORD made with them at Horeb, which is Mount Sinai, nearly 40 years earlier.

This covenant is not simply a restatement of the conditional Mosaic Covenant which was made after the people first left Egypt.

This covenant, variously referred to as the Deuteronomic Covenant, the Palestinian Covenant, the Land Covenant (courtesy of Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum), and the Promised Land Covenant (the best name for it in my opinion), has new and different things in it that are of great importance as we shall see.

It reinforces the Land component of the Abrahamic Covenant, the first covenant made by God with the Jewish people.

It is an important covenant and many believers, both Jew and Gentile, do not know about it.

Another important aspect of it is that it refutes Replacement Theology (sometimes referred to as Theological Antisemitism) which is a teaching that Israel has been replaced by the Church and so the covenants that God made with Israel are no longer in effect and there is no Promised Land for the Jewish people.

This third covenant, The Promised Land Covenant, comes after all the curses of Deuteronomy 28 which were proclaimed to the Jewish people.

We’ll talk about that in a moment.

Yes, even after the long list of curses in the Mosaic Covenant, to be found in Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26, which have still not yet all come to pass, the LORD guarantees to the Jewish people that all His promises to them for good, the blessings, will yet come to pass.

Bear with me please and I’ll show this to you.

But let’s first reread the first verse of Deuteronomy 29:

Interestingly this verse, which is the first verse of chapter 29 in the Bibles that most of us read today is instead the final verse (verse 69) of chapter 28 in some Jewish or Hebrew Bibles such as The Jaffa Tanach published by ArtScroll (a well respected orthodox Jewish publishing house).

Is this an important distinction?

I would say that it is.

In support of this opinion, what is presented by Moses in chapters 29 and 30, contains new information (as we shall see shortly) whereas that which comes before chapter 29, i.e., what is in chapter 28, is not new.

It is especially important to see that what is in the first six verses of chapter 30 is new.

I believe that God very much wants us to see that, because in Deuteronomy 30:6 we have a striking foreshadowing of the new birth which comes to us through the saving work and ultimate sacrifice of our Messiah, i.e., Yeshua, the Lord Jesus.

And while originally given to the Jewish people, this applies to both Jews and Gentiles today.

It is for both.

If you are a Jewish person reading or listening to this you probably think that the new birth, becoming born again, is only for Gentiles, for the Goyim, because Jesus spelled it out so clearly in the gospel of John.

Let me assure you that such is not the case!

In fact the very first born again believers were all Jewish and they never stopped being Jews.

I mentioned a moment ago that the first six verses of Deuteronomy 30 are especially important because they make clear what is new in The Promised Land Covenant.

Let me read to you Deuteronomy 30:1-6.

If you have a Bible handy, why not follow along.

Deuteronomy 30:1–6 NIV

1 When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come on you (again, these are to be found in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28) and you take them to heart wherever the Lord your God disperses you among the nations, 2 and when you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. 4 Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. 5 He will bring you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will take possession of it.

He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors.

6 The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.

Now folks, having a circumcised heart so that or in order that a person can love God with all his heart and soul or her heart and soul and live - that means live forever - that’s a reversal of Genesis 2:17 when God said “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

A circumcised heart means salvation, being born again, and I want you all to know that.

And now let’s zero on on just the first three verses of Deuteronomy chapter 30 in the NASB version of the Bible:

Deuteronomy 30:1–3 (NASB95)

“So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind in all nations where the Lord your God has banished you, and you return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons, then the Lord your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you.

Please pay attention to the word and in “and when you and your children return to the Lord your God”.

This English word is what we call a conjunction, a coordinating conjunction.

It refers to a relationship between two clauses in a sentence.

It links two clauses together.

Now please look at the New Revised Standard Version and note the replacement of the word and with the word if.

Deuteronomy 30:1 NRSV

1 When all these things have happened to you, the blessings and the curses that I have set before you, if you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you,

Notice that in the NRSV the word if is used instead of the word and.

If is also a conjunction, but it is a subordinating conjunction, which introduces a conditional clause.

Therefore it makes this covenant a conditional covenant which is not what God intended.

The KJV, NKJV, RSV, NIV, NASB, ESV, the CSB, the Tree of Life version, and the Jewish Publication Society Tanach (1985), all have and.

Only the NRSV has if.

Could the NRSV be correct?

Could the Promised Land Covenant be conditional?

The NRSV is the only popular version that translates Deuteronomy 30:1 in a conditional manner.

How can we know if the NRSV is correct or if the other nine versions are correct?

We certainly don’t want to conclude that the majority rules.

Just because nine versions use and and only one version uses if does not necessarily mean that and is correct.

Now certainly nine to one is something that we don’t want to ignore.

But is there something else that can show us which translation is correct?

There is something else that can help us and that is what God says elsewhere in His word on this subject.

Remember: the Bible never contradicts itself.

So let’s look at what the Bible says elsewhere.

Let’s begin by revisiting the covenant that undergirds all of the unconditional Jewish Covenants including the New Covenant.

Let’s revisit the part of the Abrahamic Covenant which is most relevant to our current discussion.

Abraham was upset because he did not have a male heir “from his own loins” and he told the Lord that his chief servant, Eliezer, would therefore be his heir.

The Lord answered and said otherwise:

Genesis 15:4–10 NIV

Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.”

He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.”

Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.”

But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”

So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”

Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half.

Then the Lord, while Abram was in a deep supernatural sleep, cut a covenant with him.

Only the Lord ratified this covenant by moving between the pieces.

Abram was asleep.