15: Peace & the Promise (Advent: Part 2)

(00:05) Stephanie: Season 4, episode 15. Hello, Father.

(00:10) Marcus: Hello, daughter. It’s good to be doing the Advent series with you. This is going to be fun.

(00:15) Stephanie: It is and it’s officially December. Very excited for this month and all we are holding. On that note, if you are a Monday listener today, December 1st is the deadline for applying to the School of Ministry for the January cohort that’s starting in the spring. So here you go. Go for it. It’s good stuff. Deeperwalk.com/school for more details on that. And again, it’s officially December, so we are in end of year giving season. And if end of year giving is something that you look forward to doing at the end of the year, we are inviting you to consider Deeper Walk. In your giving, father, anything you want to say about that?

(01:06) Marcus: Yeah, our main emphasis this year is expansion, right? And that is, God has opened up opportunities to expand globally through our partnership with TCM and to get into more churches than ever. We’re actively working with networks of churches and individual churches to help them implement heart-focused discipleship. And so your end of year gift is going to help us expand into some new territories.

(01:31) Stephanie: All right, so for Advent, well I guess I should also say deeperwalk.com/donate will take you to that page and you can find links in our description. So for Advent, we’ve been looking at the Abrahamic covenant of promise. Last week we introduced the covenant and looked at the hope of the promise, which hope would be the first week of Advent. And so this week on the Advent calendar is about peace. and we’re going to look more at the aspect specifically of the land in the promise. So Father, will you give us a quick recap? What is the covenant of promise? And then…

(02:09) Marcus: Yep, quick recap. Yeah, so in the letter to Galatians, the Apostle Paul tells us that the gospel was preached beforehand to Abraham, which is kind of a shocking statement in and of itself, right? The gospel was preached, but it was preached specifically by the promise that was given to Abraham. And just as we receive the gospel by faith, and it’s a promise of eternal life and a promise of all these blessings that we receive by faith, so the promise made to Abraham promised him blessings.

And so there are blessings to Abraham. And then there is one massive promise through Abraham that all nations on earth would be blessed. And that’s the gospel being preached ahead of time. It’s the promise that is the foundation for understanding Old and New Testament. It is pivotal. You can’t really understand either covenant without it. And so excited to dive into a better understanding of the promise.

I guess, but to set up this session specifically, we had said that there were three core things that were promised to Abraham. And the first was that he would have a seed. And then through this seed, you know, he would be the father of many nations. And then ultimately there would be one seed through whom all nations on earth would be blessed. Second was he was promised land. And that’s the land of Canaan. We’re going to unpack that a little bit today. And the third promise was the promise of relationship and belonging, that he would always belong to God.

(03:34) Stephanie: I love this all. The promise is so epic. Also the land. Wow, there are so many different angles we can tackle this from. I like that in pastoral fashion, you called out three P’s. So we’re going to walk through three P’s. There are more things, there are more significances, but these are fun significances. So what is the significance? Let’s see. Are we going to go with provision first as our first P? All right.

(03:57) Marcus: Sure, Yeah, when you look at the promise of land, land was first and foremost provision for Abraham and for his family. And that is, land gave you a place to live, but it also provided you with the opportunity to raise your own food and provided you with a means by which to take care of your family. So provision is intimately connected with land. As we see, when they [the Israelites] were in the wilderness, God provided for them by giving them manna, but when they got into the land, now the land itself was going to be providing for them the food that they would eat.

And so one of the first things anybody would do when they got land was to make sure they had a water source, because land and water, they work together to provide for what we need. Land by itself dries up, water by itself you can’t live on, so you need the two things working together. So land is an imagery for all of the ways in which God provides for us. And so just as he gave them land, it meant that they were going to be provided for. In our lives, the land promise reminds us of God’s provision that he is going to provide for what we need as well.

(05:14) Stephanie: I love, just as a note on it, that land specifically in provision is a partnership because if the land is going to be, you know, feeding you or you’re going to be, you know, sourcing life from the land like there’s just inherent life that God created, but then there’s also you have to actually till the soil or do the things to produce the fruit, or you know work the land to receive some of that provision. And so there’s a partnership there that I think is really interesting and significant.

(05:47) Marcus: Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, it’s a good point. And so the other thing about provision too is it reminds me of the kind of idea that God, from the very beginning when he created the world, right, he called forth land, and it was the very creation of land that made it possible for there to be life, at least human life. And so the idea of land also harkens back to creation and God’s provision for us in all things there.

(06:22) Stephanie: Mm-hmm. So, all right, I pulled a little quote from a commentary, Walter Brueggemann’s Genesis Commentary in the Interpretation Series. He says three issues together: A, believing a land will be given; B, believing an heir will be born; C, believing God can provide beyond testing … to the issue of faith. And we see in the New Testament, we see in Hebrews, lots of talk about Abraham and faith and this promise, and we also talk about rest, which we’ll get to in a little bit, but would you talk a little bit about this connection between faith and peace and land, like all of the implications here?

(07:10) Marcus: Yeah, so when we talk about the land, not only is it about God’s provision, but what it’s ultimately going to lead us is the idea that land is almost synonymous with peace, that when everything is right with the land, then I am at peace, which means an absence of war, but it means the presence of God’s blessing.

And when God is blessing that the land is being abundant and it is being prosperous, and not only do I have enough for me, but I have enough to share. And so there’s something inherently about this provision that says God not only wants to make sure that I have enough, wants to make sure that I have enough to share with people who don’t. And that’s part of God’s blessing.

So faith comes into this in that none of this existed when God promised it, right? Abraham didn’t own a thing. The first piece of land that Abraham owned for himself was a burial plot for his wife. And it’s interesting, look, you know, you can read a lot into that. Like the first piece of ground he owned was actually, you know, about the death. And it was not until later that the promises were actually fulfilled. And the first fulfillment of them came with Moses and Joshua and the generation that left Egypt and entered the land.

And so it took faith to believe that these things were really going to be true, because the land was controlled by other people. It wasn’t controlled by Abraham. And when he passed away, he still owned very, very little of it and was still a wanderer and a nomad in the land. So it took a tremendous amount of faith.

And then as if that wasn’t enough faith to believe in the land promised, the idea of a seed that there would be a child. His wife was 90 years old when she finally gave him a child. I mean, [what] it took to believe that was really going to happen is incredible faith. And the evidence of Abraham’s faith was that he obeyed everything God asked him to do. He obeyed when he was asked to be circumcised. He obeyed when he was asked to bind Isaac on the altar. He obeyed God and that obedience was the evidence of his faith.

(09:27) Stephanie: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I was just looking over Hebrews 11, which says, by faith he went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land. Right? He was looking forward to the city that has foundations whose designer and builder is God.

But these all died in faith, not having received things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar. Now we can see in the story there are things that were promised that they did receive within their lifetime and then there were things that they just had to have faith that, my offspring will continue and, you know, all of this.

(10:05) Marcus: Yeah, it’s because there’s something bigger going on in the promise than just Abraham. And God was making that clear. This was about the whole nation of Israel, and beyond that, it was about blessing for the whole, all of the nations and Jesus. And so there’s something massive going on in the promise and not just an individual thing between Abraham and God.

(10:26) Stephanie: Yes. Can you press more into this idea of peace and the land? This is the next P.

(10:33) Marcus: Sure, so the idea of peace, if you go back, land not only takes us back to creation, but the idea of land takes us back to Eden. And the idea that we were born for a purpose and God’s purpose was that we would be in a place where there was rest, where there was blessing, where there was peace, there was abundant provision, all of these things were there.

And Eden reminds us of a couple of things. One is that we’re not there anymore, that we’re in exile and because of that, life is often not full of abundant provision, often not full of peace, often not full of these things. In fact, one of my favorite ways of sharing the gospel with people is called the three circles and it’s the idea that the world is messed up.

And for us as Christians, we’re like, it’s messed up because the world isn’t the way God made it to be. That’s the second circle. God made the world to be Eden. He wanted us to take Eden and extend it throughout the rest of the globe, but instead we went into exile. So as Christians, we have a reason why we understand the world is messed up. But Christ came and he is restoring that.

And so he restores Eden first of all in our hearts, but then he’s restoring Eden in communities as the church, within church communities. And he is restoring Eden ultimately when he comes back a second time to bring it. So that’s the first thing when we think about peace is that there are echoes of Eden, right, in the promise of the land to Abraham.

Secondly, I would say that the peace reminds us, first of all, that when it came to the land, there was a blessing and a cursing side to it. the blessing was, you will literally be at peace. You will have rest from your enemies. This meant that there would be gaps between constant, you would not be in constant warfare. It didn’t mean there would never be a battle. It meant if there was a battle, God expected you to trust Him and obey Him and you would win that battle. But, in between those battles there would be peace and there would be gaps between the warfare. And they called that rest.

(12:46) Marcus: when God was cursing [the Israelites] because they were not obeying and they were doing what was evil in his eyes, then that’s when you had constant warfare and they didn’t have peace and they didn’t have rest. And so that’s the flip side of this. And in our own lives sometimes, we can see that oftentimes, if I’m coming in a family that has just generationally been opposed to the things of God, sometimes usually facing more battles than if I have grown up in a family where it’s generationally been committed to God and the things of God.

And then in my own life, if I am persistent in my rebellion, oftentimes I will find just a greater barrage of these things. So we have to be careful about this because some people can look at their lives and go, well, it’s so bad, I must be a horrible person. That’s not really the point. The point is that sometimes there are root issues that need to be broken off either ancestrally or in our own lives in order to experience fully the peace that God wants us to experience.

And part of this too, though, is just that sometimes it’s the… One of my all-time favorite movie quotes is, “There is a peace that comes only on the other side of battle.” And there are times when God’s asking us to fight the battle in front of us and that’s when the promise of peace will come. So land in peace, land and rest. And again in Hebrews 4 we have read about how God has said, “there yet awaits a promised rest for God’s people.” And we can enter into that now and that we will enter into it fully someday when Christ returns.

(14:24) Stephanie: As you were talking about the blessing and the cursing and the dichotomy there, what you say is so true in terms of, you know, if the land was already surrendered ground by somebody else, right? If the land is already, somebody else is occupying it and there’s a battle to be faced.

And then there’s also, there are times when it’s obedience and faith oriented where like throughout the Bible, you see this. the land is given such character where it says the land will vomit you out, right? Like this is literally, it uses that word which is not super characteristic elsewhere, but this idea of the land and us being in partnership with each other. And there’s something there, it’s tickling my brain, but…

(15:13) Marcus: Mm-hmm.

(15:19) Marcus: Yeah, no, there is a belonging that comes with land. And this brings us to that third P of permanence, right? That the idea that not only is the land promised to have an element of peace to it and provision, but this idea of permanence. And where I was thinking initially with that word is that it stayed in your family from generation to generation.

When Moses wrote the law and then when Joshua actually conquered the land and he divided up the land to the tribes. Every family got a designated piece of land that stayed in their family forever. And that was one of the ways that God provided for them. You know, as you grew up, you didn’t have to wonder where you were going to live and where you were going to find a house and all of it. It was like your clan was going to expand and live in a particular territory.

(16:16) Marcus: And your people were going to help you, you know, start to build your house and start your farm and get things going. And so there’s this community aspect to land the way that it was passed down, created community and it created first like a family and then a clan. And then your clan is connected to a tribe and then the tribe is connected to a nation and it all belongs to God and it’s all underneath God’s provision.

And that’s why I think historically there’s also always been this kind of deep bond between people and land, especially my land. This is my land that God has given to me. And so there is a permanence to it. But once again, this is where you see a blessing and a curse, right? So the curse comes when God says, no more, I’m ending the permanence and I am sending you into exile from the land. Now, usually when there’s exile, you don’t come back, but God said, no, I’m giving this land to Abraham and his chosen people forever. And so they may be exiled for a while, but eventually I will bring you back. And that’s…

(17:23) Stephanie: I mean that’s even built into the law structures where if people were in great debt or what have you, the land might leave their care for a while but it would always come back. You couldn’t just permanently sell your property or…

(17:37) Marcus: Right, it’s the idea of the Jubilee year, right? It was that if debt forced you to sell your land, it wasn’t permanent. You would get it back because that was a gift from God and it was to be generational. There’s a story, you know, where Jezebel kills a guy because he won’t sell his vineyard to the king.

And his reasoning is this vineyard is part of my inheritance from God, you know. I can’t just sell this, even if you’re the king. It was a gift from God to us, it’s our family’s. And Jezebel’s like, yeah, who cares about God? The king wants it. And so that gives context to why he was so reluctant to sell his property.

(18:22) Stephanie: Well, and then coming into the spiritual aspect, I’m coming back to Hebrews 11 here, Hebrews 11:16, but as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God for he has prepared for them a city. And so even in the very tangibleness of land, there’s also this spiritual permanence of, have a place, we have a homeland and our homeland is the kingdom of God. Would you talk about that a little?

(18:48) Marcus: Yeah, absolutely. Jesus said, you are from below, I’m from above. And then when he ascended into heaven, the angel said, the same way that you see me go, know, I’m going to come, he’s going to come again someday. And I, there is this very tangible idea that our home and where our permanent land is, is not the here and now. It is not this age. It is a coming age.

And I also take this moment to say that heaven isn’t our home either in that sense. Like we aren’t going to actually spend eternity floating on clouds playing harps. The promise of the scriptures is that we are going to spend eternity on the home God made for us, on the land in this planet, and that God is actually gonna make his home among us. And so heaven is where God is now and where we will join him temporarily.

But the eternal promise is of land, is a land promise, is of land and relationship and family. And so in some ways the promises to Abraham are a little picture or snapshot of the promise made to everybody in the gospel. And that is we’re going to have family forever, we’re going to have land forever, we’re going to have this unique relationship with God forever. And wow, won’t that be [amazing]? We call that paradise for a reason.

(20:14) Stephanie: Awesome. So, segueing nicely from that, how can we meditate on or put into practice this teaching of peace for Advent?

(20:24) Marcus: Yeah, so if you take these three P’s, I think you can actually make an equation out of that, right? That is that permanence plus provision equals peace. And the way I look at it is this, that permanence is meditating on what is eternal in our case. And that is that having an eternal perspective on things helps us to live with greater peace.

That we often get so caught up in the what’s happening today, what’s going to happen next week, what, you know. What if this happens next month? What if this happens? And we get so caught up in this age that as we meditate on the things that are eternal and the things that are permanent, and especially God’s promises that are permanent and eternal, that they become a foundation for greater peace.

The second is provision. As we recall God’s provision for us and we see his promises of provision and we meditate on his promise of provision in the present, and the permanence of his provision throughout eternity, that this is a good formula for meditation that brings us a greater sense of internal rest and a greater sense of peace.

(21:35) Stephanie: Mm-hmm. This is good. All right, before I get your final thoughts, I want to remind everyone today, December 1st, is the deadline for School of Ministry. So if you’ve been thinking or praying on it, here’s your signal. And I also want to just invite you to prayerfully consider partnering with us in your end of year giving. And you can find out more about our donation structures and what have you at deeperwalk.com/donate. Thank you. All right, father, final thoughts.

(22:13) Marcus: Yeah, I just love talking about the promise. love every time I dive into it, I learn something new. Something else pops out at you because the promise is the Old Testament gospel. And just as you dwell on the gospel, you meditate on the gospel and new things occur to you and new appreciation for the depth of God’s love, new appreciation for the majesty of what God is doing.

There are just so many elements because it gets involved in relationships. It gets involved in the current world and the ancient past and the age to come. And I just encourage, you know, as you read about the promise in Genesis 12 through 17 especially are the stories where you read about it. And on into Genesis 22 actually, all the way from the whole life of Abraham. What you’re going to find is our reasons to reflect on what is awesome about God. and why faith in him makes so much sense.

(23:15) Stephanie: See you back next week.