What Does This Have To Do With Me?

When you read your Bible, do you ever find yourself wondering, “What does this have to do with me?” Deuteronomy 6:10-11 speaks of a land we will not enter and describes taking possession of cities, houses, cisterns, vineyards, and olive trees that we know we will never see. What do you do with those details when your annual reading plan has you in Deuteronomy 6?

I long struggled to understand details like these, so I largely ignored them. But I have become convinced that all of this is of immense significance to us as Christians, nearly 3500 years later. All of Israel’s hope and expectation in this passage becomes a pointer to the better hope and expectation we have in Jesus when we see how the New Testament portrays Jesus as a new and better Israel. Here’s what I mean.

In the opening chapters of Matthew, we see these important parallels between Jesus and Israel:

• Matthew 2:15 – Jesus was brought up out of Egypt, as Israel was (Exodus 1-15).

• Matthew 3:17 – Jesus was called the Son of God, as Israel was (Exodus 4:22).

• Matthew 4:2 – Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days, as Israel was for 40 years (Deuteronomy 8:2).

These parallels present the start of Jesus’s ministry as repeating Israel’s story. And when Jesus resists Satan’s temptation in Matthew 4, we see that the comparison is a contrast. And the way Jesus responds to Satan further punctuates the point. Jesus’s responses to temptation at the end of his 40 days in the wilderness are three quotations drawn from the context of the end of Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 6:13, 6:16, and 8:3). Jesus’s defeat of Satan paints a picture of Jesus as a new and better Israel: obedient and victorious where Israel had failed.

The entire message of Deuteronomy to the wilderness generation is summarized in the opening verses of Chapter 6:

“the LORD your God commanded me to teach you…that you may fear the LORD your God…that it may go well with you…in [the] land” (Deuteronomy 6:1-4).

The message to the Israelites is simple:

God has rescued you from slavery to make you his own and, by your obedience, you will have his blessing in the land that he has prepared for you.

God established a covenant that required Israel’s obedience to enjoy God’s blessing in the land. At this, Israel failed and was ultimately exiled from the land. God’s blessing still requires obedience, and this is the significance of Jesus as the New Israel: where Israel failed, Jesus was obedient and victorious – for us. By Jesus’s obedience, he has obtained the blessing that Israel could not, and this blessing is freely given to us by grace, received through faith.

The message to us in the new covenant is the same as the old covenant, but better:

In Jesus, God has rescued us from a deeper slavery to make us his own and, by Jesus’s obedience, we have a better blessing in a better land that he is preparing for us.

In Jesus, the hope of the old covenant is expanded beyond what Israel could have ever dreamed. Instead of long life, we have eternal life. Instead of temporal blessing, we have eternal blessing. Instead of God’s presence among the people in a tabernacle, we have God’s presence within us, as a seal of the hope that all things will be made new, and God will dwell with us for eternity.

Did you know, Christian, that there is a land (Revelation 21-22), and a home (John 14:2), and an inheritance (1 Peter 1:4) for you? Every detail listed in Deuteronomy 6:10-11 is a shadow of and a pointer to this reality that awaits us. And all of this is because of what Jesus has done on our behalf. Deuteronomy’s call of obedience remains for us, but the logic is flipped on its head. It is no longer in order to have God’s blessing in the land, but because Jesus has already obtained God’s blessing for us.

2 Peter 3:14 Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or

blemish, and at peace.

~ Andy Barker grew up in Boston, Ma. and relocated to Charlotte in 2008. He currently serves as an elder at LIFE Fellowship. He and his wife Melanie have five children and have attended LIFE Fellowship for ten years.