In Genesis, Abraham has a vision - Sort of. In the account, God is making a covenant of peace with Abraham. He has Abraham take some animals, and according to the custom of the day, He has Abraham do some really gory stuff, at least by 21st century standards.
Apparently, back in the day, and according to the cultural norms, when two parties were making a peace agreement they would take an animal, cut it down the middle from front to tail, separate the two halves and then both parties would walk down the middle of the bloody mess and in so doing say, “If I break our peace agreement then let what happened to this animal happen to me.”
After Abraham has killed and split the animals, he falls into a deep trance and his vision begins. In this vision however, Abraham is not asked to walk the walk. Instead, in a true act of pure grace that plays out right until the last chapter of Revelation, Creator God alone walks between the animals. God, in an act of pure grace says that even though He knows that Abraham and all the rest of us for that matter will repeatedly break the covenant with God, He, our Lord, our Saviour, our Creator will keep His end of the bargain.
In fact, God can’t imagine doing anything but keep His Word. God will bless Abraham. He will secure Abraham's children. He will make Abraham a great nation so that all the nations of the earth will be blessed through his race via Jesus.
As Father God did with Abraham, God the Son did with us. He took the first step in bringing the offering of eternal peace with us. He did the only thing possible to ensure that we need not suffer eternal separation from Him.
"Jesus did not come to the world to condemn the world but to bring us forgiveness and peace."
Ya, the vision is weird to our sensibilities, but think of the grace, the love, the mercy. It's a message of peace to all people of any time who are seeking a healed and forgiven relationship with Jesus.
What kind of person would reject that kind of love?
No comments:
Post a Comment