Ever wondered what peace really means? Well, we've got you covered! Join us as we, Tyler and Rachel, accompanied by our guests, Chris and Matthew, unveil the profound layers of 'shalom' - the Hebrew word for peace. We also explore the intriguing duality of the kingdom's state - already present but not fully realized, a beacon of hope amidst our chaotic world.
Ever wondered what peace really means? Well, we've got you covered! Join us as we, Tyler and Rachel, accompanied by our guests, Chris and Matthew, unveil the profound layers of 'shalom' - the Hebrew word for peace. We also explore the intriguing duality of the kingdom's state - already present but not fully realized, a beacon of hope amidst our chaotic world.
Hello everybody, welcome to the Real Friends podcast with Tyler and my wife Rachel. How you doing today, rachel?
Speaker 2:Good, that's good. Wait, wait, wait, wait. This is supposed to be Chris and Matthew. Where'd you guys come from?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're the pastor and the deacon. I don't know what's going on here. But we're not totally surprised because no, because they're right in front of us.
Speaker 2:True, we're at my house tonight. We had a small group and we thought, hey, why not bring some other people on the podcast? And, yeah, this ought to be fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it'll be nice to get some different voices and some different opinions. We talk to each other a lot, so this will be a lot more fun. So this is episode nine, overall episode number two here in our second week of the Colin Advent series. I always like to get a punctuation in there. Last week we talked about hope and this week we are talking about PCs. So before we get too deep into the topic, let's revisit a couple of definitions of things we've been talking about. It's important to know. Last week or last episode, we talked about shalom. Go ahead and unpack that for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So our English word peace? It simply means being free from war and violence. Positively, it means tranquility, yeah, calmness of some kind, yeah. But the Hebrew word for peace is shalom. You guys have heard that many times, probably, right? Oh yeah. So our word peace just doesn't convey the full weight of what shalom means. We talked about the summary of the word. You could summarize it by the word wholeness. It means to be whole, complete, but it has connotations of, yes, not being in war, those kinds of things. It does include this idea of tranquility and calmness, but it also includes health and prosperity and probably the biggest part of that word is to have peace with God. It's probably the weightiest, I should say, part of the word.
Speaker 3:Yes, we want to have a spiritual wholeness.
Speaker 2:There's an unbrokenness or a repairiness in that definition and yes, so when someone greets you or says goodbye and they say shalom, they're wishing you that well that you would have.
Speaker 3:In every possible way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that you would be healthy and prosperous.
Speaker 1:So is it like the y'all take care?
Speaker 2:That is yeah, take care, y'all Appreciate you. And as they anign this prophecy about this Messiah who would be born, you know, the prophet gives these titles, and one of those titles is Prince of Peace, and it's actually Prince of Shalom. It's like, ok, jesus came, so peace has come into the world. Yet we still have a lot of chaos in the world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a thing or two out there. That's still a little wonky.
Speaker 2:Well, you think about this. It's like, well, ok, shalom means prosperity, it means health. Yeah, we still have.
Speaker 3:We have natural disasters, we have. We have war, we have famine, we have everything.
Speaker 2:There's poverty. Talked about a revelation basically. So it's like well, ok, peace has come, but yet we on some level don't experience, you know, the fullness of Shalom peace, and the reason that is something, the concept we talked about a lot. The state of the kingdom is this it's already, but not yet.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we have had one of two Advents in history to and either you two remember what Advent means, the one word synonym Pastors talked about before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a rival. Oh, great job.
Speaker 2:We didn't prompt him at all, just by the way. So so in Advent we actually we look back to the first arrival of Jesus, but we look ahead to his second coming, or second Advent, second arrival when Jesus came the first time, he inaugurated the kingdom of God. He inaugurated peace and hope and all these things broke into the world. But it's only when he comes back that we're going to experience the fullness of those things. And so there's a future level to peace. Let me say it like this Right now we have peace in spite of circumstances.
Speaker 2:So weren't we just talking about this? Like we have friends? Right, we mentioned two different people who are going through horrible tragedies right now. Like both friends have cancer. So my friend, who's younger than me, who was just diagnosed with stage four cancer you know it's not a great prognosis and we're praying for healing and believing for that, but nonetheless, you know he has said whether God heals him or not, it's like man, he is at perfect peace. Like I was on a phone with him and I'm like crying and so hurt and sorrowful for him and he just, I mean just has a stillness, a calmness about him because in the midst of circumstances he has peace. So one day, when Christ returns, we're going to have perfect peace in the absence of bad circumstances, because there will be no evil and sin and natural disasters and sickness and all of these.
Speaker 3:What is broken will have become unbroken, which is one of the things that I had read that Shalom refers to Sure.
Speaker 2:But right now, yeah, we do go through tragedies, but in the midst of them, if we're in Jesus, we get to have that peace.
Speaker 3:An underlying peace, even if it's natural to worry about or think about things like you were saying, Rachel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:In the Bible calls it Peace that surpasses all understanding with you know, it's also different because, like during Sunday school, how children perceive peace and how we perceive peace. So, like asking a kid this morning, I said what's something that's happened recently that you felt peace about? And his response was you know, we've been away for a while and we just got home and I got to see my family and my animals and I felt peace and I said that's, that's perfect, you know and I said let me give you an example of my peace.
Speaker 4:I said you know, if I have anything troubling going on or stuff I need to pray about, and I take it to the altar. I said when I leave church that day, I feel peace, like a way is lifted off you.
Speaker 2:One of the ways that is, christians that peace is appropriated to us or that we get to actually experience the peace available to us, is through prayers. The primary way that we experience the peace of God is through prayer. So what we're going to do for the next couple, maybe even three episodes, we're going to talk about present facets of the peace, the peace that's available to us right now and what that looks like. And so the first one that we, the first facet of peace that we want to focus on, is the most important, and that is the fact that we, through Jesus, have peace with God.
Speaker 3:So, our greatest need being peace with God. That sounds you, we're making that sound, you know, very, very normal and natural, but it's not necessarily as easy. As you know, people on earth, believers, are not to think about things we perceive as needs outside of spiritual needs. Tyler, what are some of the things we kind of all think about as things we need?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean even, even as a Christian. I mean everybody sees having their bank account full so they can make their bill payments and, you know, buy what their kids need and stuff like that money. Having that money brings peace of mind, I guess.
Speaker 2:Health, health, you know, our greatest problem is. It's not financial, it's not health related, it's not even relationships with one another are. Our greatest problem is the problem of sin that separated, separated us from God, and so what we need more than anything is we need a peace with God, and so, matthew, you're gonna be for us. Romans five, I believe. So why don't we start with just versus one and two, please?
Speaker 3:Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him, we also have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Speaker 2:What's the word justified me? That's important.
Speaker 3:Made to have rights standing with, to be okey-dokey with.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:There's a spiritual word for you, kids.
Speaker 1:Okey-dokey so having air cleared.
Speaker 2:Augustine said this. He said that our hearts do not rest until they rest in God. And so you see the world. You know we talked yesterday this Google search idea. I don't know if you caught this this morning, but I typed in how to have peace and it came up with 2.85 billion results. Because people were on this quest for peace, but they're they're not getting. They're they're looking all these different places because they've not found it yet. So they're, they're coming up with new ideas and new ways to to get peace, but their hearts are never at peace.
Speaker 3:It's a stunning number. This like one. What one website you know for every what three, three or four people on the planet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's pretty unbelievable.
Speaker 4:Well, you even see those apps now that they create for people to go online and try to calm themselves.
Speaker 2:Let me say this A lot of people know they're not right with God, but the world's way, every other religion says this you want to be made right with God. What do you do? You want peace with God. Well, you do. Xyz ABC one, two, three.
Speaker 3:But it's on you. Yeah, but you've got it, you. You were the executor of your own salvation, which is not, as we know, how it works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Bible makes it clear, though, that the chasm is so great between us and God that we could, we could, never we're. We move further and further from God every day, I feel like, apart from Jesus, because we sin pervasively every day.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and even if we were Job like and invert, you know almost never sinning, nothing short of you know perfection, can you know, have us in God's presence anyway?
Speaker 2:So so the great news is this, though that, in this level, is the playing field, because if you think about other religions, it's like okay, if this is on your shoulders, if you have to do this, then it's only the most moral, ethical, disciplined and capable people who could actually get to God. But yet people accuse us of being this kind of exclusive religion. But it's like no, christianity is the most inclusive religion in the world, because it actually says none of us can get to God ourselves and so. But the good news is that Jesus has done for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Speaker 3:Yes, we all get there the exact same way.
Speaker 1:And I want to add something. I think, as far as being a Christian goes, salvation is kind of gives you an unpeace if you are taught it wrong. Yeah, you know, like say by faith say by grace, through faith, yes. You know, I never really learned that. So, depending on where you come from, it's scary because you think you do one thing wrong and then in the instant you us to die, you're on the hill. You know right, there's no, there's no peace. That is very true.
Speaker 3:We have had so much, you can seem so fragile yeah.
Speaker 2:So we I've had so many people that in our church that have come out of that teaching and it's like here, christ is his. You know they're believers and they're in Christ and Christ has bridged that chasm between them and God. And yet every they can't sleep because they're like man. Maybe I said something or did something today, I'm not even aware of it. If I die in my sleep, I'm going to hell If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, and that's just not the way salvation works. Now we don't save ourselves and we don't keep ourselves. Now good works are important, but they're the evidence of salvation, not the means of it, so that the way that we get peace with God is by coming to Jesus. And that's the hope of Christmas, because Christ came in his first advent not to bring some kind of military defeat. You know he didn't come to wipe out, you know, israel's enemies in Rome, but he came to save his people from their sins.
Speaker 3:Yeah, deal with them, the much larger problem than any, you know, roman ruler.
Speaker 2:This Christmas. Let's just remember that, that through Jesus we have peace with God, and let's just revel in that fact. Thanks for listening. Join us tomorrow as we talk about the inner peace that we have in Jesus. Now here's some bonus content.
Speaker 3:If we are not at peace with God, then we are under God's wrath.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's judgment, yeah we studied that tonight through the book of Revelation and that's what we talked about. What horse size locust with? Yeah?
Speaker 3:horse size locust with breast plates and they sting like scorpions and for some reason, they have Fabio's hair. I think Fabio gets actually mentioned. It's long flowing female ox, which is what Fabio has right. Yeah, it's gorgeous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's pretty interesting that Fabio came up into of our conversations today, despite.
Speaker 3:Fabio's hair being involved. It was true, nightmare fuel, which is the whole point of that particular section.
Speaker 2:Rachel, were you a Fabio fan years?
Speaker 4:ago. No, do you know who?
Speaker 2:Fabio is.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I know who Fabio is. I was more of a lumberjack.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's why I married Tal. That's because that makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 3:You wanted the beard instead of the long flowing hair on top Exactly. That's fine. So if you see locusts with human faces and the size of horses, it's not all that that's going to scare you. It's going to be the fact that it's got the long flowing locust.
Speaker 4:Exactly.
Speaker 3:That's a big, healthy beard.