The promise of the restoration of the nation of Israel is found in the old covenant:
Deuteronomy 30:1-5 When all these things come upon you—the blessings and curses I have set before you—and you call them to mind in all the nations to which the LORD your God has banished you, and when you and your children return to the LORD your God and obey His voice with all your heart and all your soul according to everything I am giving you today, then He will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you from all the nations to which the LORD your God has scattered you. Even if you have been banished to the ends of the earth, He will gather you and return you from there. And the LORD your God will bring you into the land your fathers possessed, and you will take possession of it. He will cause you to prosper and multiply more than your fathers. The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, and you will love Him with all your heart and all your soul, so that you may live.
The Old testament prophecies of the restoration of the land of Israel are rooted in the clause of Deuteronomy 30:1-5. Several examples include:
Jeremiah 29:10-14 For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
Ezekiel 39:25-28 Therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: Now I will restore the fortunes of Jacob and will have compassion on the whole house of Israel, and I will be jealous for My holy name. They will forget their disgrace and all the treachery they committed against Me, when they dwell securely in their land, with no one to frighten them. When I bring them back from the peoples and gather them out of the lands of their enemies, I will show My holiness in them in the sight of many nations. Then they will know that I am the LORD their God, when I regather them to their own land, after exiling them among the nations, not leaving any of them behind
Amos 9:14-15 I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant them on their land, and they shall never again be uprooted out of the land that I have given them,” says the Lord your God.
This was found fulfilled once under the old covenant, when those from the southern kingdom and northern kingdom returned to the land after the Babylonian exile.
Ezra 1:5 Then rose up the heads of the fathers’ houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, everyone whose spirit God had stirred to go up to rebuild the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem.
1 Chronicles 9:1-4 So all Israel was recorded in genealogies, and these are written in the Book of the Kings of Israel. And Judah was taken into exile in Babylon because of their breach of faith. Now the first to dwell again in their possessions in their cities were Israel, the priests, the Levites, and the temple servants. And some of the people of Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh lived in Jerusalem: Uthai the son of Ammihud, son of Omri, son of Imri, son of Bani, from the sons of Perez the son of Judah
However, the old covenant ended and was superseded by the new covenant through the blood of Christ.
Hebrews 10:9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second
Hebrews 9:13 In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
Additionally, the old covenant was only a shadow that was meant to point to Christ, and not the true reality.
Hebrews 10:1 For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities,
colossians 2:16-17 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
The old covenant is no longer in effect, as it was superseded by the new covenant. Thus, the promises of restoration to the land are no longer a valid.
an Earthly example to help understand:
I was single and created a will in which my best friend would inherit my estate in the event of my death. However, I later married and changed that will so that my wife, and not my friend, would inherit my estate in the event of my death. The new will cancels the old will, and thus my best friend would not inherit my estate.
So is the land restoration to the nation of Israel found in the new covenant?
Hi I am glad to answer your question or dispute your exegesis. The new covenant certainly is superior to the old covenant and it certainly did replace the old one. So what we need to do is identify which covenant is being replaced. Gog made a covenant with Abraham about his seed blessing all the nations and gave him the boundaries of the promised land as an unconditional covenant. When you get to Jer 31 The LORD promises a new covenant not according to the one He made with Israel when He took them out of Egypt. So this is the covenant that is being replaced which was the conditional covenant and the one which provided the day of atonement. There are no coincidences in the Bible so God who knows the history before it has happened also predicted that Israel would reject the Messiah. Dan 9 predicts the messiah being cut off and then the city and sanctuary being destroyed. Jesus wept for Jerusalem and knew its desolation was coming. So when Jesus at the last supper announced that this cup was the cup of the new covenant being made in His blood he knew he was ushering in Jer 31 at that time and also knew that Jerusalem would be toast in a few years. So we look at the verses immediately following the promise of the new covenant with God's foreknowledge of these events we see this bold statement.
35 Thus says the LORD,
Who gives the sun for a light by day,
The ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night,
Who disturbs the sea,
And its waves roar
(The LORD of hosts
is His name):
36 “If those ordinances depart
From before Me, says the LORD,
Then the seed of Israel shall also cease
From being a nation before Me forever.”
37 Thus says the LORD:
“If heaven above can be measured,
And the foundations of the earth searched out beneath,
I will also cast off all the seed of Israel
For all that they have done, says the LORD. Note God says they will not cease to be a nation and note for all that they have done.... When the LORD comes as described in Dan 7 and Zech 14 and the book of Revelation it is when Jerusalem is under attack and the LORD saves them. if you look at Luke 1 and see the promise by the Holy Spirit of what Jesus would do you see He delivers them from their enemies and keeps the covenants with the fathers. If you try to match the salvation of Israel at the 2nd coming with Dan 7 Zech 14 and Rev we see exactly this type of deliverance and all the promises of Israel getting the new heart are fulfilled at this time.
67 Now his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit, and prophesied, saying:
68 “Blessed
is the Lord God of Israel,
For He has visited and redeemed His people,
69 And has raised up a horn of salvation for us
In the house of His servant David,
70 As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets,
Who
have been since the world began,
71 That we should be saved from our enemies
And from the hand of all who hate us,
72 To perform the mercy
promised to our fathers
And to remember His holy covenant,
73 The oath which He swore to our father Abraham:
74 To grant us that we,
Being delivered from the hand of our enemies,
Might serve Him without fear,
75 In holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life.
Furthermore proof is that in Jer 31 it ends with a promise of specific gates being established in jeruslaem that will never be torn down again and this is at a time when the dead bodies are everywhere so cerainly it is not new Jerusalem.
38 “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, that the city shall be built for the LORD from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. 39 The surveyor’s line shall again extend straight forward over the hill Gareb; then it shall turn toward Goath. 40 And the whole valley of the dead bodies and of the ashes, and all the fields as far as the Brook Kidron, to the corner of the Horse Gate toward the east,
shall be holy to the LORD. It shall not be plucked up or thrown down anymore forever.”