Genesis 17
The Sign of the Covenant


For 13 long years, nothing has happened in the life of Abram and his wife Sarai. For 13 years, there has been tension in the household between Sarai and her handmaiden Hagar, the mother of Abram’s son Ishmael. For 13 years Abram has cherished a hope he dare not share with his wife, that Ishmael his son (but not hers) would inherit the covenant and the promises of God. And for 13 years, this man and this woman upon whom the hope of the world has come to rest have grown hopelessly old. The next chapter in their lives begins when Sarai is 89 and her husband 99 years old. The promise of a seed is laughable. Some things are too hard even for God.  

  1. The Promise to Abram and Abram’s Response
    1. God’s First Speech
      1. I am Almighty God — I can do anything
      2. Walk before me and be blameless
        1. Walk before me = be like Enoch who walked with me and Noah who walked before me
          1. Do not forget me and pursue the things of this world
          2. Rather set all your hope and thought on me, as Enoch and Noah did and thus were righteous in my sight
        2. Thus you will be blameless (by faith)
      3. I will perform my covenant between me and you
        1. Not the result of Noah’s obedience (for God promised the covenant unilaterally)
        2. But the impetus for it. Walk blamelessly before me because I will surely perform my covenant.
      4. I will multiply you exceedingly — renews the same promise.
    2. Abram’s Response
      1. He fell on his face
      2. This is the first of 2 times Abram falls on his face in this story
        1. We are meant to note the contrast
        2. Here he does so out of worship and respect
        3. Later, when God says his 90 year old barren wife will bear a child to his 100 year old self, he falls on his face and laughs.
      3. Here, the response is one of faith; he believes God
        1. It is like in Gen 15 when God promises the seed.
          1. Abram asks "How may this be?"
          2. And God, rather than answering directly, simply repeats the assurance with added specifications "one born from your body" will be your heir
        2. And Abram believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness
          1. His righteousness did not come from anything he did or was capable of doing
          2. Rather, God said, I will bring the seed, and Abram said "Amen. So let it be, God"
        3. So here he says nothing, but falls on his face before God Almighty.
        4. His actions again say, "Amen, So let it be."
        5. His actions confess that he can do nothing to accomplish what God has promised but must rely wholly on God.
        6. If God says he is that powerful then he is that powerful.
        7. So Abram falls down in awe before such a God.
    3. God’s Second Speech
      1. As for me this is my covenant with you
        1. I.e. For my part, this is what I am prepared to do.
        2. What follows is in no sense Abram’s obligation
        3. God is preaching to Abram a gospel of pure grace
      2. So God renames Abram
        1. He will be a father of many nations
        2. Therefore, he will no longer be called Abram "exalted father" but Abraham "father of a multitude.
        3. When parents name a child in ancient culture, they express their hope in what the child will do or become
          1. So Lamech named Noah (which in Hebrew means "rest") because he said maybe this one will give us relief from the toil of our hands in the ground which the Lord has cursed.
          2. Yet Noah failed to be the true rest-giver, even though he did accomplish Lamech’s hope symbolically by bringing his family into a fresh new creation.
        4. But when God names someone, he is stating what the parents cannot — This one will fulfill the meaning of the name I have given.
        5. He is saying, this one belongs to me now; I have the right to name him and to use him for my purposes.
      3. Abraham will be fruitful and his descendants will have authority
        1. Language should ring a bell
        2. Adam and the woman were told to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it.
        3. Noah and sons were told to be fruitful and multiply and were given authority over the creation
        4. But what good is it to give such a command to a 99 year old man? How can he respond obediently to such a command? He has no power to be fruitful and multiply and subdue.
        5. So Abraham is given everything
        6. He is not told "be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it"
        7. He is told you will be fruitful and multiply, your descendants shall have authority. I, the Lord, have spoken. I will surely bring it to pass.
      4. God will establish his covenant with these descendants as well
      5. And he will give them the land as well
      6. The land is to be an "everlasting possession"
      7. But most amazing, God pledges himself personally to Abraham and his descendants
        1. I will be your God (v. 7)
        2. I will be their God (v. 8)
        3. This is beyond anything promised before.
        4. God is not now saying "Here are the things I will do for you," but "I will belong to you."
        5. Melchizedek called God "possessor of heaven and earth."
        6. Now God says I will be Abraham’s possession.
        7. I who exist for no one but myself will somehow exist for the purpose of caring for Abraham and his offspring.
        8. That sweet phrase "My God," so often used as a blasphemous expression of surprise, sums this up.
        9. Abraham and his descendants may not just call God "God," but "My God," the God who serves me by supplying all my needs.
      8. This has all been fulfilled in Christ Jesus
        1. Abraham, by his example of faith, has indeed become the father of a vast multitude that no one can count, singing praise to the Lamb who sits on the throne.
        2. For it is not the physical children who are counted as Abraham’s descendants, but those who like Abraham believe the promises of God and trust in Christ alone for their salvation.
        3. They are the ones who come into the true inheritance with Abraham, not a physical land of Canaan, but heaven itself.
        4. This is the everlasting possession of all who hear this amazing promise of God and respond with Abraham, saying Amen.
        5. In Christ, God has become fully our God. The one who merited all our service became our servant. He washed our feet. He served us even to death on the cross. He serves us now, interceding for us in heaven.
  2. The Sign of the Covenant
    1. The Sign of Circumcision
      1. As for you
        1. God has said "As for me" and described how he will completely fulfill the covenant he makes
        2. Now he says "As for you," this is your obligation.
      2. Is God suddenly adding conditions to his unconditional covenant?
        1. May it never be! He passed through the pieces alone.
        2. He’s saying, here is how I call you to express your faith in what I have just said.
        3. This is how you will remind yourself and me of the covenant I have sworn to fulfill.
      3. He describes circumcision as "the covenant which you shall keep"
        1. Circumcision is not the covenant itself but the sign and seal of that covenant, the expression of faith in God’s promise
        2. As such, it is so closely connected with the covenant that The sign may stand for what it signifies, much as Peter can say "Baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from the body but the appeal to God for a clean conscience."
      4. God gives this — the slicing off of the front flap of skin from the male organ — as a perpetual sign for all the children of Abraham to follow.
      5. Every male child must be circumcised as a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham
        1. At 8 days old every male child must be circumcised.
        2. Whether born to Abraham or not; All those over whom he has spiritual authority — his whole household — must be circumcised.
      6. If anyone refuses, he must be deemed a covenant breaker and be cut off from his kinsmen
        1. A deliberate pun — circumcision = "cutting off"
        2. If anyone will not be circumcised, let him be circumcised from among you
        3. If anyone will not cut off his foreskin, let him be cut off as though he is that filthy piece of flesh, and let him be cast aside.
    2. The Significance to Abraham
      1. A seal of the righteousness of faith (Rom 4:11)
        1. This is not a work by which Abraham merits God’s favor
        2. Rather it is an expression of faith that God will fulfill all his promises to Abraham.
        3. God does not save Abraham because he is circumcised; God says to Abraham, be circumcised as a sign of your faith that I have saved you.
      2. Specifically, it is an expression of faith in the promised Seed (Christ)
        1. God has promised to make Abraham fruitful, to multiply him
        2. Abraham cannot fulfill that promise
        3. As a reminder, the part of his body through which he must be fruitful is dedicated to God; If Abraham is to produce an heir from his own body, God must be the one to make Abraham fruitful. All Abraham can do is trust God’s promise and wait for God to fulfill it.
      3. It is a sign of Abraham’s sinfulness and need for cleansing
        1. the foreskin, the flap of skin that is cut off, is considered filthy
        2. God later calls his people to "circumcise the foreskin of their hearts," meaning get rid of your filthy inclinations and think and desire that which is pure.
        3. It is this circumcision that circumcision of the flesh points to.
        4. For what good is it to have circumcised flesh and a filthy heart?
      4. And how did Abraham become filthy?
        1. Through his father Adam
        2. The sin of Adam is passed on to his children
        3. symbolically, the removal of the filth from the organ that produces children, removes the passing on of that original sin.
        4. But it is not a magic trick or a biological procedure.
        5. It is, as we said, an expression of faith that God would take away sin and make Abraham and his offspring righteous.
      5. And it is a sign of God’s judgment on those who fail to believe the promise
        1. Those who refuse it must be cut off — from God’s promise and God’s people
        2. Those who receive it but fail to have faith shall likewise be cut off (as Esau later will be.)
        3. Those born to Abraham or under his spiritual authority don’t have a choice about being in covenant with God. They are in covenant with God.
        4. Only question — will they benefit from the covenant, laying old of it by faith in the promised Seed or will they reap the covenant’s curses by dobuting God and going their own way?
      6. At 8 days
        1. What rich significance!
        2. Circumcision was not unique to the children of Abraham
          1. Other nations practiced it too
          2. But they did so at puberty or just prior to marriage
          3. God says, do it to your babies
        3. You don’t wait until they reach an age of accountability to confess they’re sinful and need a Savior
        4. Sin doesn’t come with puberty, it comes with birth.
        5. You don’t wait until they can exercise faith in the promises of God, you call them to faith in those promises and you warn them of the dangers of trusting in their flesh and of being cut off from God’s people.
        6. On the 8th day, the day Christ was raised from the dead
          1. The first creation week — Days 1 through 7
          2. Then a totally new creation day at the resurrection of Christ.
    3. The Significance to Us
      1. We are the offspring of Abraham by faith, as Paul says.
        1. And circumcision is given as a sign to his offspring forever
        2. Yet we are not circumcised.
      2. Our circumcision is with Christ.
        1. He was cut off for us
        2. He underwent the wrath of God, passing through the cut up pieces
      3. So we are circumcised as children of Abraham through the circumcision made without hands in the circumcision of Christ
      4. Php 3.3 — For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh
      5. We do not merely look forward to the seed who will come, our baptism is a more powerful seal
      6. We participate in the Christ who is and who sits at God’s right hand.
      7. God has circumcised our hearts, he has made us clean, he has taken away our sins.
  3. The Promise to Sarai and Abraham’s Response
    1. God’s First Speech
      1. Sarai gets a new name
      2. The new name means the same as the old "princess"
      3. But God is again asserting ownership
        1. Her father may have named her princess, but he had no power to make her one.
        2. But God in naming her princess, will fulfill what he promises
      4. As Abraham is to be the father of nations, she will be their mother
      5. The seed will come from her body.
    2. Abraham’s First Response
      1. He again falls on his face, this time not to worship.
        1. His response is one of utter unbelief, the opposite of faith
        2. He is more than just politely skeptical
        3. He laughs at God’s idea that such an old man shall have a child by such an old woman
        4. This is too hard a thing for God; it cannot be taken seriously
        5. He had before confessed his faith that God was Almighty; now his faith falters. This is more than he can believe
        6. He tries to help God out
      2. O that Ishmael might live before you!
        1. Here he is, God, the child of my flesh.
        2. Don’t knock yourself out trying to do the impossible
        3. I’ve produced the heir here in a plausible, reasonable way
        4. But for that reason Ishmael is an unsuitable heir
          1. He represents the effort of the flesh
          2. But Abraham is not to receive the inheritance by an effort of his flesh
          3. It must be done in such a way that it is clear that all the glory goes to God
    3. God’s Second Speech
      1. No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son.
      2. You’ll call him "Isaac" = "He laughs"
      3. Ishmael will indeed be made a great nation, but he is not the one through whom I will establish the covenant
      4. Isaac, will be the one through whom I establish the covenant, the one born of Sarah
      5. He vanishes out of sight
      6. Abraham is not allowed a further response, this is God’s final decision.
      7. It only remains to see whether this further preaching has resulted in faith in Abraham
    4. Abraham’s Second Response
      1. He circumcises his household, just as God had said. I.e. he believes God’s promise now.
      2. Come and believe God’s promise as well.
        1. The seed has come in a way that no man could have brought him
          1. Isaac was born to a woman too old to have children
          2. And Jesus was born to a virgin, no man produced the Christ in her womb.
          3. The impossible has been done.
          4. Imitate Abraham’s faith by believing that God who has done so much will finish the task.
        2. Remember your own circumcision in Christ — your baptism points you to it.
          1. He was cut off for your sins, circumcised from among the people
          2. And by that death he put an end to sin
          3. You are baptized into that death; sin has no more hold on you
          4. You were raised with him as well to a new life full of good works, works no man can produce, not Ishmael works but Isaac works. Believe that these good works are yours and you will laugh with joy to see them produced as fruit in you.
        3. All the promises of God are yes in Christ
          1. You are Abraham’s children; he has been fruitful indeed
          2. You have been made kings and priests to God; kings have indeed come from Abraham and Sarah.
          3. Believe it. God spoke of you when he spoke to Abraham over 4000 years ago.
        4. Come! Walk before God and be blameless. He has established his covenant with you in Christ

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