Abraham’s God.

A Pastor one Sunday morning was doing a study on Genesis 22 where God commanded Abraham to take Isaac up Mount Moriah (modern day Jerusalem) and offer him as a sacrifice. The group read the passage and noted the historical background and its place in salvation history including the prevalence of child sacrifice among the Canaanites. The group listened in awkward silence.

Then the Pastor said, “But what does the story mean to us?” A middle-aged man then spoke, “I’ll tell you what it means to me. I’ve decided our family need a new church!”

The Pastor was astonished, “What? Why” he asked.

“Because when I look at that God, the God of Abraham I feel like I am near a real God, not the sort of dignified, business like, Rotary club God that we chatter about here on Sunday mornings. Abrahams God could blow a man to bits. Give then take a child, He could ask for everything from a person and then ask for more. I want to know that God.”

The real child of God knows that the grace filed life is not an easy life. God calls us to live on the cold windy mountain or in the dark valley of trials, not on the flattened plain of reasonable, middle of the road religion.

You know why? Because at the heart of the gospel of grace, the sky darkens, the wind howls and a young man walks up Mt Moriah in obedience to the God who demands everything and stops at nothing. Unlike Abraham whose son Isaac was carrying the wood on his back for the fire, He carries a cross on His back to consume the fire of God’s wrath.

Like Abraham He was listening to the wild and restless God who would have His way with us no matter what the cost. This is the God of the gospel of grace. A God who out of love for us sent His only son wrapped in our skin. He cried for milk, He learnt how to walk, He stumbled and fell, he sweat blood in the night, He was lashed, whipped, and showered with spit, and then He was fixed to a cross where He died whispering forgiveness on us all.

The God of the legalistic Christian on the other hand is often unpredictable, erratic and capable of all manner of prejudices. When we view God this way, we are compelled to engage in some sort of ‘magic’ to appease Him. Church worship becomes some sort of superstitious insurance policy against His whims. This God expects people to be in perpetual control of their thoughts and feelings. When they fall (as is inevitable), they usually expect punishment. So, they persevere in religious practices as they struggle to maintain the hollow image of the perfect self. The struggle itself is exhausting because the legalist can never live up to the expectations they project on God.

This is not the God of grace who “desires all men and women to be saved” (1 Tim2:4).

In essence the only thing God asks of us is that we be men and women of faith, people who live close to Him. People to whom He is everything and for whom He is enough. That is the foundation of peace.

I have not always lived there and neither have you, but God accepts our stumblings as long as we are stumbling in the right direction. Having the peace of God that passes understanding is when the Gracious God is all we seek. When we start seeking other things beside Him, we lose our peace.

I know that after 50years of being a Christian, since my conversion aged 20, that during the struggles of life I have sometimes lost sight of all this. Christian living can become hollow, shallow and empty. There have been mountains and valleys. “The peace of God that passes understanding” comes from knowing this God of the gospel of grace. In his prayer to the Father Jesus said, “This is life eternal that they might know You, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” John 17:3

Knowing that salvation is not based on performance, that it is not based on my works, but Christ’s. This is the source of peace in the Chrisian life.

Knowing that there is life in the Son if the Son is in the life, but there is death in the life if we do not accept his life and death as ours.