Episode Details

Prayer

Gracious God in heaven, as we open your word again, we give all thanks and praise to you, our Maker and Creator, our Sustainer and our Redeemer. Lord, please renew our minds by your word. Sanctify us in the truth of your word. That your name may be exalted and glorified and that your kingdom may come. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Reading

Genesis 2:8.

“And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.”

Meditation

Location, location, location! I don’t know much about the real estate market, but I have heard that catch phrase before. As Christians, maybe we don’t think about location much, and perhaps we see it as a somewhat earthly concern. Physical places, perhaps, do not seem to have much spiritual significance. I think, though, that there is something important that we’re missing if we give no attention to the spiritual significance of physical places. God put the man in a garden – in Eden. The first two chapters of Genesis make it clear that God’s main purpose is to fill the earth with life, but there’s also a very close relationship between the man and the place where God put him. Location, location, location!

If God’s plan is to fill the earth with life, we have to realise that land is a condition of life. Without land there are no plants, no air, no food, no home, nothing. Without land, you’re just floating in an ocean of water. So God made a place for us to dwell, a place where life can flourish. But what do we learn about this dwelling place? In the big picture sense, we need to see that man was made to dwell with God. That’s the central purpose of the land. Let me explain this a little more!

When we read scripture, we must always remember the original audience. When it comes to Genesis 2, that audience was the people of Israel in Moses’ day. Specifically, the people of Israel as they waited on the verge of entering the promised land. That was the point at which these words were being finalised – as we know from a consideration of the end of the Book of Deuteronomy As Moses completed the Pentateuch and handed it to Joshua, it was given to that generation of Israelites. These words were written for a people about to enter the promised land.

Now here’s the thing about the promised land: as the Israelites learned about what God had in store for them in this new land, as they read the books that Moses had written, they would have understood that there was a parallel between Eden and the promised land. Let me explain why I say that. Adam and Eve had been exiled from the garden, they came under the curse. But, as Genesis 12 makes clear, God’s blessing was to be restored through Abraham and his descendants. That knowledge alone comes with an edenic expectation. Part of that blessing would also be tied to the possession of this promised land – the very land that they were about to enter. And if that were not enough, Moses even uses the imagery and blessing of Eden to describe what Israel’s life in the promised land would be like – we see this very clearly in Deuteronomy 8:7-10 and 11:8-17.The promised land was to be very much similar to Eden. We can be confident, then, that God’s intention through the promised land was to give Israel a shadow of how Eden could and would be restored. From a New Covenant perspective, that promised land shadow would be ultimately likewise fulfilled through Christ in the New Heavens and the New Earth (as we see in Revelation – more edenic imagery used to describe the new heavens and the new earth).

Now here’s the thing about both Eden and the promised land: both Eden and Canaan were designed in God’s purposes to be a place where he would dwell with his people. In Eden we see that God walked in the garden to commune with man (Gen 3:8), and likewise God designed the promised land to be a fruitful place where he and his pe