What Did Jesus Say About the Land of Israel?

An argument that I come across a lot that is in opposition to the fact that the Jewish people continue to have a claim on the land that God gave to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the land of Israel, is that Jesus never talked about this. Jesus never mentioned the land. The land wasn’t important to him. Jesus was concerned with other things.

I was talking to a friend of mine recently who was having a bit of a difficult time theologically understanding the ongoing promises of God to the Jewish people, specifically about the land of Israel. And he was telling me, Jesus never said anything about the land. Land wasn’t that important to him, and he cited Matthew chapter five, verse five. We all know this verse, the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus said, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Now, my friend was saying, see, there you go. Jesus doesn’t have a care in the world about the land of Israel. This isn’t important to his ministry. He’s talking about redeeming the whole world and the whole earth.

Now, when you look at this specifically and you understand the Jewish context of what Jesus is saying, you realize a few things. One, who is he talking to? He’s talking to a Jewish audience. Two, what is he quoting? He is directly quoting Psalm 37, a Psalm of David. In that Psalm, five times David says, the meek will inherit the land. The word that Jesus is using is mistranslated as earth, but it largely means land. Jesus is affirming in Matthew chapter five, his hope of a future Messianic kingdom and his expectation of it in the land of Israel governed by himself as the Jewish Messiah in Matthew chapter five.

So the land is important to Jesus. The land is important to God, and it is important for us as followers of Jesus to continue to affirm the promises of God about that land.