Today's discussion focuses on the essential gear needed for a good journey, emphasizing the importance of being at peace with God as the foundation for our spiritual walk. I explore the biblical passage from Ephesians 6, highlighting the significance of the gospel of peace and the helmet of salvation. Understanding these concepts is crucial, whether you're new to faith or revisiting familiar ideas. I unpack what it means to have peace with God and how this peace is accomplished through Jesus’s sacrifice, which restores our relationship with our Creator. Join me as we delve into these vital themes and prepare ourselves for the journey ahead.
Takeaways:
The essential gear for a good journey includes the gospel of peace and salvation.
To prepare for life's journey, we must first ensure we are at peace with God.
Understanding the gospel means recognizing it as the good news of peace with God.
Salvation is defined as being restored to a relationship with our Creator through Jesus.
Ephesians 6 emphasizes the importance of spiritual readiness for engaging with the world.
Jesus' final words signify the completion of the work of salvation, bringing us peace.
Welcome to the Hobo Soul podcast of Road Advice from the Bible and from me, Yvon Prehn, someone who's a little further down the road of life. I'll talk to you every Tuesday and Thursday for about 10 minutes.
And if you'd like more in depth information on walking with Jesus, you can find that at my www.bible805.com website.
For now, let's get started on our topic for today, which is this is an encore presentation for the Hobo Soul podcast while the Bible 805 offices are being redone.
And our topic for today is--
For a good journey. Get your gear in place.
Our Bible passage for today is from Ephesians 6, 15 and 17, where it says put on the full armor of God with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace and the helmet of salvation.
No matter what journey you're preparing for, whether it's for your daily tasks or running a marathon, one of the first things you do is put on shoes are appropriate for the day.
As I was thinking about this, I remembered the Bible passage in Ephesians 6 where the early Bible teacher Paul told Christians how to prepare to engage in a spiritually hostile world.
I'm not talking, I'm not going to be talking about his entire section of advice, but two things are important as we begin where he talks about in this whole context of spiritual warfare and putting on the full armor of God that he tells us to put on our feet the gospel of peace and to protect our heads with the helmet of salvation.
What I think he's saying is essential gear that we need to successfully travel through this life and into eternity is a gospel of peace which gives us salvation. In other words, we need peace with God. We need salvation for a good journey. That's the foundation of everything else. But what does that mean?
I want to take this podcast to define it, and then for the next few, I want to talk about the benefits of it. For some of you, the whole definition of salvation and the gospel and all that might be entirely new.
For others, it's a review, but I think it's one that I trust you'll find helpful. So what do we mean when we talk about the gospel?
The world gospel means, means good news, and in this case it's about the good news of being at peace with God, or again, as Paul labels it, the gospel of peace. It's this gospel of peace that brings about our salvation. But how does that happen?
I was studying Jesus last words from the cross, which you're going to hear from many sermons coming up in Easter.
And one of the things that you'll probably hear pastors mention is that in Jesus final words from the cross, just before he died, he cried out it is finished. Or the way many Bibles actually quote the Greek, which is the word tetelestai. Now it's kind of a fun word to say, and it does mean it is finished.
What was finished is Jesus work of salvation. His death on the cross healed the divide between humanity and God. Our eternal God created us to love us forever.
But somehow, in a way I don't understand, when our first parents turned their backs on God and decided they knew better than he did, how to live, what to choose, how to become wise, all of those sorts of things.
When they wanted something more than God and took it in defiance of his clear command not to, it brought about consequences more horrible than they could have imagined. It brought about death. Death in their close relationship with God and along with that, physical and eternal death.
Because they were now separated by their choice from the source of life. A do over wasn't possible. A breach was created that humanity couldn't cross.
And the immensity of that spilled over into all their children and down to each of us. Today, without God, we'll live a life without being truly alive.
And when we die, we'll be eternally in darkness, cut off from all that is life and joy. There are no do overs ever. I once heard hell described simply as a place of unending regret. I found that really horrifying. But God always.
But God never quit loving his wandering, unbelieving, spit in his face creatures. And instead of leaving them to the consequences of their decision.
Again, in a way I don't understand, God the Father sent Jesus to die on a cross to somehow heal the breach between us and our Creator and give us the eternal incredible purpose and joyful life we were created for. And when he did that, his final cry was tete. The last die. It is finished. Except, I mean, that's what you always hear.
But it just kind of kept bothering me and okay, you'll need to know this about me as we continue in this podcast.
I can be obsessive and picky when it comes to studying the Bible, but when I did a bit of research, I confirmed something that was kind of bothering me. Jesus didn't say tetelestai on the cross. Now hang in there with me. This might seem unimportant and a bit convoluted, but it's really significant.
To begin with, Jesus couldn't have said Tetelestai, because he didn't speak Greek. Tetelestai is a Greek word. He spoke Aramaic.
The Bible quotes another phrase he said in Aramaic on the cross, where Jesus cries out in a loud voice just before he dies, where he says, eli, eli lama sabachthani, which means my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why Bible translators quoted this in Aramaic and not the other phrase, who knows? So if he didn't say tetelestai, what did he say Now?
I did some research, quite a bit of research actually, on this. And without getting into the weeds too much, I found that many scholars believe the word he actually said was masalem.
The root of the word masalem, Salem, which comes from a word many of us are familiar with, shalom, which means peace. The meaning of the biblical concept of shalom is not merely the absence of conflict, but an all encompassing wholeness, restoration and tranquility.
It's a way of living totally at rest with and in God. It's a kind of peace Jesus promised when he said, I'm leaving you with a gift, peace of mind and heart.
And the peace I give is not fragile like the world gives. So do not be troubled or afraid.
When we add the Hebrew tense Jesus used from the cross to the root word ma's, the lamb could be translated the peace has been accomplished. From this we see that masala is a little more expansive in its meaning than tetelestai, as it tells us what is finished.
In this case, the conflict between humanity and our Creator. We're now at peace. That's why we can refer to our salvation as the gospel. The good news of peace.
That's our essential gear, what we need to put on before we can begin this Christian walk. We need to be at peace with God. That's the bottom line. That's what it means to be a Christian.
It doesn't mean you have it all figured out, or life is going well or prosperously, or all your dreams are coming true. But at the core of your soul, it's good with you and your God. If it isn't, and if you aren't sure you're at peace with him.
All you have to do is talk to him about it. Let him know you're finished with going your own way. That's what sin really is in both big and little ways. It's doing what you want to do.
Let him know that now you want to do things his way. You want to walk with him. You want the peace that only he can give by accepting what Jesus has done for you.
When you got peace with God, you've got your essential gear. We'll talk more about what it means to walk with Jesus in our upcoming podcasts.
We'll look at the question of will he ever walk away from us, what happens when we completely mess up, and how can we keep good communication in our relationship with him and lots more. That's all for this podcast, for transcripts, links to related material and much more to help you learn to know, trust, apply and teach the bible.
Go to www.bible805.com for now, let me end with this benediction and prayer.
May you walk each day surrounded by the gracious love of the Father, guided by the gentle wisdom of the Holy Spirit, and conscious of the astoundingly real presence of Jesus, who will walk with you until you're no more a hobo soul, no more a transient wandering heart, but at home in the kingdom prepared for you with your God forever. Amen.
