‘They shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given them for an inheritance unto your fathers.’ Was that fulfilled with the coming of the Messiah and the beginning of the church age? In a sense it is fulfilled. What is one of the great components of the gospel? One of the things that we preach about, one of the blessings that accompanies conversion, the things that buoy us up and are such a blessing to us? The heavenly hope, of course. The promise of the land: it was literally fulfilled when they entered into Canaan, but those land promises were just a type of the eternal land. When this beautified, rejuvenated, probably greatly enlarged earth will be amalgamated with heaven – a heavenly yet physical earth – it will be for the everlasting possession of the people of God. Canaan was only a poor symbol and type and prophecy of what was to come. We as good as have that inheritance now, because Christ has died to bring it about, to bring about a ransomed people who will occupy it eternally, and we have the hope of heaven; we have the land promise with us in the Christian age in that sense.
The ark of the covenant with the mercy seat: what happened to that? We don't know. But when Nebuchadnezzar finally destroyed the temple and Jerusalem, he either took it back to Babylon with the treasures from the house of the Lord, and it got lost there somewhere, and disappeared entirely from view. Or he took the gold off it and the coverings – or his people did – and it was destroyed and lost perhaps in the destruction of Jerusalem. We know it was there at the time of Josiah, King Josiah, because it is mentioned earlier on. And we know after that, they never had it; it disappeared. So there is a minor fulfilment, when they rebuilt the temple under Ezra, and the city wall under Nehemiah; there was no ark there, and they were worshipping without it. But this isn't the real fulfilment. This looks to a time when nobody is even interested in the ark of the Lord, because Christ has come and the symbols are now in the past. The new Zion, the Jewish Gentile international Christian church, which begins through the coming of Christ and formerly on the day of Pentecost. Now we have Christ, we don't need the foreshadowings – the ark and the mercy seat and all those things – nor any of the articles of worship in the old tabernacle and temples. So the complete fulfilment of this passage is the coming of Christ. People who return to God will be brought to Zion (verse 14), the Zion that will be brought to pass at the time of Christ, the new church.