'The God of Abraham, Isaac,and Jacob'

The writer to the Hebrews says that in the past, God chose to reveal Himself in many and various ways, and that in these latter days, He has chosen to ‘speak’ to us through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the ‘great I am.’

The author knows Hebrew history and that God first revealed His Name to Moses through the burning bush that was not consumed, in the backside of the desert at Mt. Sinai. It was there God chose to reveal his name (character) to Moses as I AM THAT I AM, (I am, always have been, and always will be what I am) and ‘The God of our Fathers’, or more specifically, ‘the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’

In Exodus 3:14, we see the ‘law of first mention’ at work, as God revealed Himself to Moses as the ‘Eternal One,’ who is self-existent – He has always been, and always will be. He relies upon and needs no one else for His existence. He is the ‘first cause’ of all that exists.

God chooses to name Himself after three great patriarchs to show how he can take and use those who are in a relationship of ‘covenant kindness’ with Him. He chooses to use Abraham, the son of an idolater and idol worshiping family, so that we may see God is ‘the Originator.’ He chose to reveal Himself through Isaac through the latter’s ability to ‘receive’ all that he had as if it came from the hand of God; he chose Jacob as an illustration that we do not need to ‘struggle’ or ‘wrestle’ with God. The only striving we need to do as believers under the ‘kindness covenant,’ is to ‘enter into His Sabbath rest,’ since Christ has ‘performed the work’ of Salvation on the Cross of Calvary. Jesus said it was the Father’s good pleasure to ‘give us the Kingdom.’ Even though the Scripture also says the Kingdom is ‘taken by force’ and that violent men seek to take it by violence, it is Christ who has won the battle – through the violence of the Cross -- to give us the Kingdom as children of the King,  as a gift.

We see through the ‘God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,’ that it was always the Father’s intention to ‘give us an inheritance’ which is stored up in Heaven for those who believe. God is always the initiator and always makes the first move toward Man. By choosing Abraham, we see that not only did God start the process of entering into a covenant with Man, but that he completes everything He sets out to do – ‘I will perform it’. In Isaac, we see a man who learned over time to receive all that God had for him – especially an inheritance (which is a picture of what we followers of Christ have [viz. Paul, ‘the Inheritance of the Saints’]) through the Blood of the Cross – as a Son of the King. In Jacob, we see a man who learned that he didn’t need to wrestle with the Angel of the Lord in order to get a blessing – the Inheritance – but came to realize that the blessing came through brokenness – in his case a dislocated hip. However, in the process God gave him a new name, Israel, which foreshadowed the nation through whom all the peoples of the Earth would be blessed. This ties in with the promise of God to his grandfather, Abraham, that he would be ‘the father many nations,’ through his Seed (note singular) pointing to the Promised One – the Messiah, the Saviour of the world through whom all blessings come, in this world and the next.

We also see through one Old Testament story and one New Testament story that Mephibosheth and the Prodigal Son were ‘recipients of grace’. The Prodigal already had an inheritance waiting for him and, after frittering away his share of the fortune, realized that the inheritance was always waiting for him at the home of his father. When he came to his senses and returned home to his Father, he realized that the inheritance was not through works, but by grace. Mephibosheth, on the other hand, was an unexpected recipient of the grace of God through the ‘covenant of kindness’ shown to him by King David. He was a nobody, but God, through David, made him somebody in the King’s palace.

We also see in the New Testament how Nicodemus learned the inheritance was through the New Birth, and that this is spiritual and supernatural in basis and operation, and not by effort or of natural means. “With God, ALL things are possible!”

Paul takes up the thought that God will complete all that He has started in Phil.1:6. He also remonstrates with the Galatians about expecting to receive the gift through human effort. “What then, do you expect that what you began in the Spirit you can accomplish in the Flesh? You did not so learn Christ!!”

In conclusion, we see that God takes ordinary men and reveals Himself as the self-existent, unchanging, Eternal One, teaching us that His ‘covenant of kindness’ is not obtained by works of the flesh, but by grace through the Spirit.

By way of application, we need to see ourselves as God sees us, that He has adopted us into His family, that we are heirs, and co-heirs with Christ – and that everything that is His is also ours, that he has created good works from before the foundation of the world for us to walk in, and that He has already said to us ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ All this is ‘obtained by grace through faith’, and is not of our own doing lest any man should boast.

Peace Making as a Way of Life

In the introduction to ‘The Peace Making Pastor’ by Alfred Poirier (Baker Books, 2006), the author states that to be a pastor is to be a peacemaker (p.13).

Poirier says that too often pastors view peacemaking as only a tool of ministry, rather than a habit of being. “Instead of being ministers or reconciliation (2 Cor.5:19-20), we confine peacemaking to special crisis situations within the church.”

Poirier actually goes further than to say that just pastors are peacemakers or in the ‘ministry of reconciliation.’

Poirier says: “Since God reconciled all things in heaven and on earth to himself through the death of his Son on the cross (Col.1:19-20), then we who are children of God are redeemed to be reconcilers.”

Poirier develops this theme in Chapter 5, ‘Peacemaking in the Family of God,’ specifically on p.92, under the heading ‘Theology of Sonship.’ Here he says that Jesus’ connection between “peacemakers” and being called “sons of God” is not an arbitrary one. “Peacemaking is the defining characteristic of sonship. And of all Christian virtues and actions, peacemaking reflects most the meaning of being a son or daughter of God.”

This is my favorite chapter in the book because here the author lays out the biblical basis and foundation for our role as 24/7/365 Christians to be peacemakers and reconcilers in a broken and hurting world.

Poirier goes on to say that if this claim is true (that Scripture proclaims and endorses this view of us as believers), “we must not relegate our individual identity as sons and daughters and our corporate identity as family to a minor place in our theology, as if our sonship were one image among many that Scripture uses to describe God’s relationship with the church.”

Poirier states three reasons why this ‘sonship reconciliation theology’ is true.

First, he says that the significance of sonship is proved by its dominant presence in several key ‘programmatic’ passages of Scripture (Rom.8:15-32; Gal.3:15-4:7; Eph.1:3-6; Heb.2:1-18;12:1-14;1 John 3:1-3). [By programmatic he means those texts that give the sweep and order of God’s redemptive purposes].

Second, Poirier says sonship is the distinctive mark of the new covenant. He says that in Galatians 3:26-4:7, Paul likens the radical shift in the status of God’s people in redemptive history to the transition from being slaves to being sons.

The third line of evidence showing the significance of sonship in God’s redemptive purposes is that sonship is a key characteristic of our sanctification, most overtly seen in Hebrews 12.

Poirier says (p.95) that to be “Like father, like son,” is not only a common proverb, but is inherently biblical in nature. “In Scripture, sonship is about likeness.”

Elsewhere in Scripture, Paul says that we are ‘heirs and joint heirs (co-heirs) with Christ’ and that one day we shall be like Him. But there is a very real sense in that we are called to be like Him NOW. Jesus said ‘the Kingdom is within you, and NOW is’ – the Kingdom of God has come near, is with us, and within us NOW by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Therefore, if we are heirs, and joint heirs with Christ NOW, we are to be like Him NOW, and to exercise the role of peacemakers and reconcilers NOW.

From reading Poirier, I conclude that not only pastors, but all Bible-believing Christians, are to be “reconciling peacemakers,” as Paul says, “as if God were making His appeal to you though us.”

This being the case, I believe it is incumbent upon us as Christ followers, in the words of Paul, to “as much as it is within your power, live at peace with all men,” and “to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

For me, this means to live a Spirit-filled, Spirit-directed life, seeking to bring the message of ‘the peace with God’ and ‘the peace of God’ to all men, everywhere.