What is the significance of the land of Canaan in the Bible?

Now to come back to Lev. 20:22-26. In verse 24 we read of "a land flowing with milk and honey." On the authority of God's word and promise it was set before Israel, "I have said unto you." They were the people of God's choice, "Ye shall inherit their land." The Lord of heaven and earth it was who bestowed it upon them, "I have given it unto you." And though enemies had to be dispossessed and there would be conflict, the mighty God guaranteed His intervention in their favour, "Ye shall possess it." Moreover, it was an inheritance well worth obtaining, whatever exercises were necessary to get the good of it, "a land flowing with milk and honey." A definite locality was set before them, the land of Canaan; and blessing full and overflowing in that locality. For the blessings in the Old Testament were of an earthly order and connected with an earthly centre. In the Gospels of the New Testament we read of Christ, their promised Messiah, presented to them to see if they were ready for Him to fulfil all God's promises on their behalf. But they were not ready. They disbelieved Him and would not credit His mission. They dubbed Him "that deceiver," took up stones to stone Him, mocked Him, condemned Him as a common malefactor, crucified Him, pierced His side, and His life-blood poured on the earth was the witness to His rejection here. But God raised Him from the dead; and alive now to die no more — He has been exalted to the highest glory and transferred from earth to heaven. God is detaining Him there for a certain period, this present dispensation, during which He is working out a secret plan that was in His mind from all eternity. He said nothing about it to the Old Testament prophets, so that it was a mystery until now. It is a very elementary lesson, but a most important lesson for us to learn, that we who believe in Christ as our Saviour, though enjoying His love here and now, are blessed with heavenly blessings, not earthly as the Jew. We are called with a calling that is centred in a heavenly Christ in the heavenly place.

As will be observed from these Scriptures, the culmination of all God's thoughts for His earthly people was the possession of the land of Canaan, which to them became Immanuel's land, secured to them by indefeasible right according to the unfailing promises of God to Abraham, to Isaac (Gen. 26:3), and also to Jacob (Gen. 28:13 and 14). They included a great deal besides the possession of the land of Canaan, though this was assured to them in the most explicit terms, with the boundaries most accurately defined.

Let us begin our citations upon this subject out of Genesis 12. The chapter is the call of Abraham, who was then in the midst of his idolatrous family. The terms of the promise are very general; but they contain earthly blessings as well as purely spiritual ones. The two kinds are found in the same verse equally without condition. The spiritual part of the promise is only once repeated (Gen. 22) and that to the seed; not so the temporal ones. In Genesis 15 we have the promise founded upon a covenant made with Abraham, also without condition; it is an absolute gift of the country. Here is also found that of a numerous posterity (v. 5, 18); and even the exact limits of the country given. (Verse 18; and following.) In Genesis 17:7-8, the promise of the earth is renewed. These are confirmed to Isaac (Gen. 26:3-4), and to Jacob (Gen. 35:10, 12). Here are "the promises made to the fathers," and to Israel, "beloved for the fathers' sakes": they are made to Abraham, whether spiritual or temporal, without any condition. If you say that the spiritual promises are without condition, by parity of reasoning the temporal ones are. There is as much certainty in the promise made to Abraham, "To thee will I give this land," as in those which have been made in favour of us Gentiles.

God had revealed Himself to Abraham as the Almighty, and as the God of resurrection, and had assured him that the land wherein he was a stranger — all the land of Canaan — was given to him for an everlasting possession (Gen. 17:8). All was his by promise, though not yet in possession. In the faith of God's promise he was careful to lay the body of Sarah to rest in the Promised Land. In the land of Canaan she had lived with Abraham as a stranger and a pilgrim; "in the land Of Canaan" she had died; and "in the land of Canaan" she was buried (vv. 2, 19). In the same faith, at a later date, the sons of Isaac bury their father at Hebron, in the land of Canaan (Gen. 35:27-29). So, too, in due time, Jacob, though he dies in Egypt, is buried in faith by his sons in the land of Canaan, in the cave of Machpelah (Gen. 50:13). In the like fine faith, Joseph when he came to die, takes an oath of the children of Israel that they shall carry his bones from Egypt to the land of Canaan (Gen. 50:25-26; Ex. 13:19).

On the other hand, Deut. 32:8 should be weighed: "when the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel." God might have justly claimed all the world, but He was pleased to claim only the land of Canaan for the seed of Abraham. This is no Jewish fable, but the revealed will of God; and from the very call of Abraham it was certain that a land was to be distinctly given him — a land soon understood to be Canaan, however long the chosen people might have to wait for it. (See Gen. 15) Scripture therefore is very far from being silent on God's resolve to take that land for Israel, though it was a part of His ways that their fathers should be pilgrims and strangers, while the Canaanite was then in the land.

But as we go on in the course of the divine dispensations, earthly and heavenly scenes and purposes still unfold themselves. Israel, in their turn, and after these scenes in the book of Genesis, become the witness of God, and an earthly people. A portion of the world is sanctified for God's possession and dwelling-place again. As the deluge had purified the whole of it for the divine power and presence in Noah's day, so the sword of Joshua now purifies a portion of it for the same divine power and presence in Israel. God has His sanctuary and His throne in the land of Canaan. He is worshipped in Jerusalem, and there His law is dispensed. The glory is again in the earth. As Lord of the earth, the God of Israel keeps court and rule on the earth again. But all is corrupted again. Canaan was defiled by the apostasy of Israel, as the Noah-earth had been defiled by the tower of Babel. Ezekiel, who was set as a watchman in the day of this apostasy, sees therefore the glory on its way from Jerusalem to heaven. It does not seek any other spot on earth, but, being disturbed at Jerusalem by the defilements there, it retreats to heaven. Ezekiel 11.

The earth, however, in due time, is again to tell of God, and His presence here. The children of Abraham, no longer a family merely, as in the generations of Isaac, and Jacob, but grown into a nation, numerous as the stars of heaven and many as the sands upon the sea-shore, shall have a land prepared for them, a clean land, where God Himself will dwell again. Accordingly, Canaan is got ready for Jehovah, the Lord, and Israel, His people. The sword of Joshua clears it, and ordinances of holiness sanctify all that is in it. It is but a narrow place, a spot like the Garden of Eden, in the midst of a surrounding creation. But it is chosen, and the Lord God can dwell there. The God of glory is not again calling from heaven as in the day of Abraham, but seats Himself in His sanctuary in the land of Israel. And there He sets His people in the midst of all that, out of which He had called Abraham. Family, national, human, earthly associations are all to be there, and enjoyed there; home, country, kindred, and father's house — the very scenes and relationships from which their fathers had been separated. The cloudy pillar, as I may say, where the glory dwelt, took them right back to all the old things from which the same glory had, of old, withdrawn the patriarchs; so strongly are the divers mysteries of strangership and citizenship, in their several seasons, marked under the pleasure and under the sealing of the will of God. But we have to go beyond this.

Such were among the great and suited characters engraved on the land now rescued from the uncircumcised and made the portion of the people of God. They constitute the full expression of a religious world, of the earth brought back to God. Canaan was now purified by judgments, given among the tribes of the Lord, made the scene of divine worship, the church and state united, and the ends of the holiness of God, and the ends likewise of justice as between man and man are secured. It was a little world, made God's — a sample of the earth restored, or brought back to Him — a shadow of good days to come, when the whole world, the earth in its length and breadth, taken up by the Lord, shall have the tokens of its sanctification, the knowledge of His glory covering it as the waters do the sea, the name of Jesus rising with every morning and evening sacrifice, and the sceptre of righteousness keeping all in holy order throughout all conditions and relationships of men.

We get, however, something of another kind in the actual condition of things. The land was not yet fully conquered, though it was fully divided; and this was so, because Israel was to be tested. They were put into possession of the land by the grace of the God of their fathers, but they were to keep it as a people bound to obedience, under the law which they themselves had challenged, or at least undertaken, at Mount Sinai. In one sense accordingly they were now in possession of their inheritance, in another they were not. And, therefore, in the progress of these chapters, we read such different language as the following. It may sound discordant and convey the sense of inconsistencies, but all is morally and beautifully correct, when we, in due way, acquaint ourselves with the conditions of the people now in the land.

The inheritance of Israel in Canaan is a type of our inheritance in Christ in the heavenly places; and as we are told in the epistle to the Ephesians that God hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ in the heavenly places, so in Joshua we are told that everything is ours; everything belongs to the people; God has given it to them; and it is now for them to take possession of their inheritance in the energy of faith.

The Lord has called His people now to a good land which is to believers what Canaan was to Israel. Canaan is not heaven by-and-by. In heaven there is rest, in Canaan there is fighting. Our Canaan is the knowledge and enjoyment of heaven's blessings while we are yet dwelling on earth. This enjoyment is inseparably bound up with practical separation from the world, and from the things of the world. The love of this world is incompatible with the love of the Father (1 John 2:15).