The Covenant Signified

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So we are in Genesis chapter 17 today. We'll be looking at the whole of the chapter, and as we do, as we begin, I want to reflect on something that is in line with the theme. In the fall of 2007, I had been a believer at that point for about a year.

I had some important questions that were beginning to emerge in my study of Scripture. Several months earlier, I had begun to have this strong desire, a gripping desire, a growing desire to serve in pastoral ministry.

And so I began taking, started with an Old Testament class in the Pentateuch, that's in the first five books of the Old Testament. And as I was engaged in this study of the Pentateuch, I began to develop some, it was more than curiosities, it was just very serious, earnest questions about the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

And in particular, as I was working my way through Genesis, it had to do with a theme that we're looking at today, the theme of circumcision. And as a new believer and as a believer that was seeking to study and understand the Bible, I really struggled with this.

What is the significance of this covenant sign and its role both in the Old Covenant people of God and the New Covenant people of God, if I can say it that way. And so I booked an appointment with my pastor during his office hours and went and visited him and brought with me a list of burning questions that I wanted to ask him.

And so as we sat down across from each other, I asked some of these questions. I said, why did God command the practice of circumcision, of all the things that he could have commanded, why circumcision in the Old Testament?

And another question that I had was, why don't we practice it today as believers and participants in the New Testament or the New Covenant? And because my pastor had completed seminary training and he had a rather impressive wall of books in his office, I thought, surely if there's someone in the church who I could ask, should ask, it would be him.

And yet, I came to realize that nothing could be further from the truth. And I don't mean that lightly. I don't want you to come and ask me questions and be disappointed with my answer and then use it in a sermon illustration 20 years later.

But seriously, his response was wholly disappointing, wholly unsatisfactory. And the reason for that was this. As he launched into his response, he explained that the earliest books of the Bible were not historically reliable.

They were not trustworthy sources of divine truth. But instead, and I'm seeking to quote him almost verbatim, he said, you know, those early books, they were just a product of the ignorant speculation of cavemen who were just, they're smashing rocks together and they're trying to come up with an origin story for the world.

And so, circumcision is really of no consequence. You do not, of all the things that you need to rack your brain over, racking your brain over something in the book of Genesis is essentially a waste of time.

And what he was subtly relaying, or not so subtly relaying, was that we should not get our theology from the Old Testament, especially those first five books. It's simply a window into the wives' tales and worldview of those early humans who had barely evolved from their previous developmental state as Neanderthals.

And so, in his mind, my question didn't even justify a response. The books of the Torah were little more than ignorant speculation and circumcision belonged to the vestiges of this era of cave-dwelling troglodytes.

And I distinctly remember sitting across from him in that office and maybe, hopefully, you would have the same response that I did, but as I sat across from him in the office, I resolved two things. One, that his answer was altogether unacceptable, and two, that I would never seek his counsel again in my Bible school studies, which is a very difficult place to be with your pastor.

And if you feel that way about us, you should tell us. We should work it out. And it would be later that I would come to understand that really what my pastor believed, it wasn't even deism. It was almost agnosticism.

He was, whether he knew it or not, a student of a man named Friedrich Schleiermacher, a German scholar who we would now know as maybe the first father, the earliest father of modern theological liberalism.

And Schleiermacher taught that the Old Testament, if anything, if you just take your Bibles for a moment, find the book of Matthew, the beginning of Matthew. Schleiermacher taught that everything before the Gospel of Matthew, this section right here, this is an appendix to the Bible.

It's not part of the Bible. It is a historical commentary on the Bible. It helps us to understand the old-fashioned way of thinking that these people had. But it is not relevant today to the Christian life.

We would call him a heretic, a Marcionite, amongst many other things. And my pastor did not know this, but he was, too, a heretic and a Marcionite. And God saved us out of that church rather quickly. And it was for our good, and I trust for your good as well.

And so that day, I left my pastor's office with this question unanswered. And what's interesting is, while I wasn't satisfied with the answer, I wasn't able yet to find the answer I was looking for. And so I held on to this question for years.

I went along day by day, week by week, year by year, thinking circumcision is a rather odd thing. And yet I don't understand why it's there. But it's there, and so I accept it. And what I want to do today, brothers and sisters, is to be the opposite of my pastor to me.

I want to be a pastor to you and to demonstrate from Scripture that, in fact, this is not an appendix, but this is the gospel in old covenant form. And that in the book of Genesis, and particularly in chapter 17 of the book of Genesis, we get a remarkable explanation when we dig into it of what circumcision is.

And then as we look through the rest of the Bible, a fulsome picture of what it signifies. So if you're here, sitting here, and you're wondering to yourself, why would God ordain the practice of circumcision?

What is its significance back then? What does it signify? What value does this doctrine or this practice have for us today? Well, Genesis 17 teaches us this very thing. It answers these questions. And it does away with this idea that it is just the vestige of a rock-crushing caveman.

Instead, what we find is that this old covenant sign, this old covenant seal, has tremendous significance for our Christian theology. It's not merely a surgical procedure, but it communicates God's covenant faithfulness and his saving power in the world.

Some rather perhaps old or strange modification of the male anatomy conveys something to us about the gospel. And I want to show you that today. And so we're in Genesis 17. We're going to divide it into four parts.

It is, in many respects, a didactic passage, or it's a passage that lends itself to a didactic approach. We have to teach through this. But I hope as well that as we teach through it, I'm able to exhort from it as well and bring the truths here to bear on your own hearts.

God's Covenant Confirmed

And so in Genesis 17, we'll look first at verses 1 through 8. And what we see here is what I'm calling God's covenant confirmed. God's covenant confirmed. Genesis 17, verse 1 reads like this. When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I am God Almighty.

Walk before me and be blameless that I may make my covenant between me and you and multiply you greatly. Then Abram fell on his face and God said to him, Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations.

No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be called Abraham. For I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you.

And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.

As we land here in Genesis chapter 17, what we immediately discover is that some significant time has passed since the narrative that we looked at last week with our brother Robert. If you look at chapter 16 and verse 16, we see that Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael.

That as Ishmael is born, we've got Abram in his ripe young age, ripe old age of 86. And now at the beginning of chapter 17, he is on the doorstep of his 100th birthday. So 13 years have passed between that scene now and what we find here.

Ishmael is now a teenager. And Abram is concerned, as far as Abram is concerned, God's promises for a son and a multitude of descendants is going to come through this teenage boy, Ishmael. But as God has often done in Abram's life, he enters back into the scene and again communicates something of his grace and kindness to this undeserving man.

Now you will remember that prior to chapter 16, God appeared to Abram. He made great promises to him concerning children, descendants that he would have. What we saw in chapter 15 when we looked at this idea of justification by faith alone, how God cut a covenant with Abram, right?

Literally the animals were cut in two. Abram prepared the animals. God put Abram into a state of sleep and then passed through those animals and made a covenant with Abram. And you would think then at the end of chapter 15 and getting into chapter 16 that we would find Abram now full of faith.

But where do we find him in chapter 16? At the polar opposite end of that faith spectrum. Instead seeking to take matters into his own hands, he does something almost reenacting the fall of the garden.

He listens to the suggestion of his wife. He goes into his wife's servant, Hagar and through Hagar, he has a son, Ishmael. And so what you would almost expect in chapter 17 is then for us to come to a scene that is filled with chaos, right?

The wages of sin, the disordered fruit of unrighteousness. And yet in chapter 17, we don't come to that scene of chaos. Instead, what we find is remarkably different. In Genesis 17, what we see is this, that the God appears to Abram again, not to destroy him, not to take the covenant promises away from him, but to confirm the covenant that he had made with him at first and to ordain a sign and seal to further establish that covenant.

And rather than finding chaos, what we find is actually a chapter that is characterized by literary orderliness and beauty. I wanna show you this because I think it's important. But in chapter 17, what we actually find is a beautiful chiasm.

Now you know chiasm, I've talked lots about chiasms. It's in the shape of the key, right? The Greek letter. And so it comes out and moves back in. And one of the things that I have repeatedly mentioned to our Institute students this summer, and I'll be saying it in the fall when we're teaching hermeneutics is this, that choice implies meaning.

That when the inspired author of scripture chooses to use a literary device, chooses to use a genre, chooses to use particular language, he is implying meaning by that. He wants you to see something and to learn something, not just by the words, but by the use of those words.

And so chapter 17 is a perfect chiasm. And I'll take us through it. In verse one, we see that Abram was 99 years old when the Lord appeared to him. This corresponds with verses 24 through 27, where we read Abram was 99 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin.

It moves out from there. Verses one through eight deal with the covenant being confirmed. At the same time, on the opposite side of the page, 15 through 22 deals with that covenant confirmed and explained.

And the climax of this covenantal chiasm is verses nine through 14, where the chiasm peaks at the circumcision or the covenant sign of circumcision. So choice implies meaning. What we find here is that God is not done with Abram, but actually in a remarkable way, is again here to orchestrate and to confirm the covenant that he has made with him.

That God's plan continues despite Abram's unfaithfulness. And perhaps that is why even on the heels of Abram's faithless actions, this chapter contains the word covenant 13 times. There's more mention by language of covenant in chapter 17 than anywhere else in the Bible.

God makes a covenant with Abram. Abram disastrously falls in that covenantal relationship. And what does God do? He repeats the covenant again and again and again. And the question is why? Why the orderliness?

Why the covenantal chiasm? Why the repetition of this covenant language? It is because God wants to convey in this chapter that despite the sinfulness of man, he is a covenant-keeping God. That even when our faith is weak and puny and ineffectual, he is always, always, always faithful.

So in verse one, God introduces himself as God Almighty. In the Hebrew, El Shaddai. He is not limited by man's faithless actions. He repeats the same promises that he has always guaranteed to Abram. In verse five, he does something that happens again and again in this chapter.

He brings up a name to make mention or to signify something important. And in verse five, he actually changes Abram's name. Whereas Abram means exalted father, he changes his name to Abraham, which means the father of a multitude.

And what we see here is almost universally recognized as a confirmation of the covenant between God Almighty, El Shaddai, and Abraham. It's not a new covenant. That covenant has been cut when the fire pot and the flaming torches passed between the animals.

Rather, it's the reestablishing of that same covenant. And here we see again that God not only cut a covenant with Abram, but he desires to confirm, to establish this covenant, to demonstrate his faithfulness.

And even at this place in the passage, I think that we would do well to pause and consider its significance, to recognize God's unmerited grace and covenant faithfulness toward his people. Even his people, and this is true of Abraham now, who make a spectacular mess of their lives because of their covenant unfaithfulness.

Now you might think that I'm embellishing that. Did he really make a spectacular mess of his life? Well, let me ask you, if I was here and you knew me as you do, and you knew that I was in a marriage relationship with my wife, and because we could not have children, my wife gave me her closest friend so that I might marry her and have children by her, would it yet be a mess that I've made of my life?

Or if you knew that God himself appeared to me and I had one of the most glorious prophetic visions in all of the world, and that God established a covenant with me, the mountaintop experience of every person in this room, and then the very next thing I do is take my wife's friend or servant to be my wife to procreate through her, would it then be a mess?

To not believe the promises of God, to violate my own marriage covenant, and then to violate the covenant that my God has made with me is to make a ruinous mess of one's life. And yet, despite Abram recapitulating the fall, despite these ruinous consequences, God shows his grace to Abraham.

Now are there consequences for his sin? Absolutely. For the short term, we're gonna see consequences as a result of Ishmael's birth. In the long term, we're gonna see consequences of Ishmael's birth. It was Ishmaelite raiders who bought Joseph and delivered him into Egypt, sold him as a slave.

It was the Ishmaelites in Psalm chapter 83 who wanted to bring the nation of Israel to nothing. It is the Ishmaelites today, 4 ,000 years after Abram, or just under 4 ,000 years after Abraham. It is the Ishmaelites who the Muslims point to as the descendants of Muhammad and ultimately their lineage as a people, that some of the challenges in this world that are a result of Islam find their origin in Ishmael.

And yet, while sin has very real consequences, God does not forget his covenant with Abraham. Instead, he renews it. And he shows himself God Almighty, El Shaddai, not just mighty to destroy, but mighty to save, mighty to show grace and mercy.

And this is why. Because Abram's standing before God was not based upon his performance. Have we not learned this already? That it was based upon God's gracious and unbending choice of him and the atoning work of the Messiah who was to come.

That God called Abraham, the pagan idolater, out of Ur of the Chaldees. He transformed him. He made him his own. He did the saving work. He gave Abraham these precious promises. And when Abraham believed God's promises, because when he had nothing else to offer, God credited that faith to him as righteousness.

Though Abraham lived nearly 2 ,000 years before Christ, he preached the gospel that was preached to him beforehand. That's what Genesis chapter, or Galatians 3 and verse 8 tells us. Therefore, his sins were atoned for by Christ, who was still yet to come.

And even when Abraham's faith was weak and near to absent, God's unchanging grace for him and Christ was as strong as it had ever been. What manner of love is this? That God shows such kindness to sinners.

That he shows such kindness, not just to the righteous, but sinners. That if God's grace, if God's kindness, if God's covenant-keeping love should be for the righteous, what? We would all be damned. But alas, God's covenant-keeping grace, his covenant-keeping love is for the unrighteous, for sinners.

And therefore, we have a gospel to preach. The Puritan Thomas Manton, he summarizes it well, speaking on this very thing. He says, men are ready to anger, slow to mercy, quickly inflamed, and hardly appeased.

I feel like that's a description of me. I trust that to some degree, that is a description of you. That when someone wrongs us, we are very hardly appeased. He says, but it is quite contrary with God.

John Calvin adds, how richly does he supply us with the means of contemplating his mercy when as frequently happens, he continues to visit miserable sinners with unwearied kindness until he subdues their depravity and woos them back with more than a parent's fondness.

Robert alluded to it last week. I know as we discussed Genesis 16 with Robert leading up to it and looking at 17, he wanted to get to this place, but alas, it wasn't in his chapter, but it's in my chapter that even when Abraham makes a mess of his life, it does not affect the fact that God has chosen him and that he is right before God by faith only because of the Messiah who would come.

God does not reject Abraham because of his sin in the same way that he does not reject you and I because of our sin. Because God promises to save his own. He promises to save unworthy sinners and he binds himself by covenant to fulfill that promise and therefore he always keeps that promise.

And therefore, sinners who believe in God's promise are secure in him. But that's not all that we see. God has more kindness to show Abraham still. And we see it in verses 9 through 14. And it is this, God's covenant signified.

God's Covenant Signified

Not just his covenant confirmed, but his covenant signified. And God said to Abraham, as for you, you shall keep my covenant. You and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your offspring after you.

Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised every male throughout your generations whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring.

Both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people.

It's an interesting word picture there, isn't it? Not circumcised, cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant. So in God's kindness not only does he confirm his covenant with Abraham even after he makes a mess of his life but he establishes it with a sign and a seal.

Something that you can see. Something that is experiential that is tangible. And the covenant consists of this. Verse 10 tells us that Abraham and all his household and all of his descendants in the succeeding generations are required to be circumcised.

I don't think you need me to describe it in detail but it involves the removal of the foreskin from the male genitals. And every member of Abraham's house was to bear this permanent sign on his body as a reminder of God's covenant with him.

Now without question this might seem like a strange covenant sign but it is one that has tremendous symbolic significance if I can say it that way. And probably some of you have the same question that I had 20 years ago.

Why this strange seal of the covenant? Of all things, why this? I mean God could have ordained Abraham to wear a turban to signify the covenant. He could have ordained a covenant meal like the Passover meal to signify this covenant.

But why such a painful ritual? Why something so bloody? Why something that not only is worn on the body but that becomes part of the body? These are important questions. And in fact the answer to these questions is nothing short of a wonderful picture of the gospel.

This very thing. But perhaps it's helpful first to appreciate the practice of circumcision that it was not unheard of in Abraham's day. That we can look at historical records and it was about 500 years, 600 years before Abraham that we begin to see the practice of circumcision coming up.

Practiced first by the Egyptians in ancient Near Eastern art. There are pictures of Syrian soldiers who are fighting in the nude and they're circumcised. So you see pictures of this in that era already.

It's not something that the Jews have invented or that God has invented right here in this interaction with Abraham. And yet it was practiced at least in part for health reasons. That in a time when hygiene was not what it is today, it prevented infection amongst the men and even difficulty among the women.

I was reading something, I'll tell you it's funny doing a study throughout the week on circumcision, the things that you find. But the Jewish women through history have suffered from less cervical cancer.

Actually the lowest number or the lowest level of cervical cancer amongst all the known people groups because of circumcision. The health benefits of circumcision. And so it was practiced in these ancient days and yet God does not give this for the purpose or for health reasons, at least not principally.

Why this sign? In my studies, one of the things I've encountered is that there's a diversity of views and some of them are rather strange or rather novel. Some of the views that I've come across are these that it was to remind men of human sinfulness, right?

Almost like a punishment, right? This is something, every time you look at it, you'll remember how sinful you are. I don't think that that is hitting the mark. Another theologian has argued that it was a cleansing ritual that because the male reproductive organ represented the depths of depravity because original sin was passed through it, this was a way of cleansing man and limiting maybe perhaps some of that original sin passed through the man.

I think that too is missing the mark. Then what is hitting the mark? And I think that we can appreciate the reason for the sign, the form that it takes simply by considering the details of the covenant itself.

What was being promised in the covenant? Offspring. Offspring and land. And so perhaps the best explanation that I'm borrowing from the words of one theologian is this. He said that the covenant's orientation toward future generations was that which determined the form of the covenant sign.

You do not get future generations without the male reproductive organ. To say it another way, it was a covenant sign applied to the reproductive organ with the promise of reproduction. Those two go hand in hand and we don't need to overthink it.

We don't need to ascribe evil to a particular part of the body. It was simply a seal that corresponds to the covenant that it signifies. But then the question is this. Why a bloody sign? Because it was a bloody sign.

I think that there are two answers to this. That it needed to be a bloody sign because a permanent sign required that it be bloody. You can't make the change without it. But secondly, and I think more importantly, it pointed to the seed that was to come.

It pointed to another bloody act, if I can say it this way. And this has been a theme all throughout the book of Genesis. That the seed has made an appearance in almost every single chapter of the book after the fall, after the Proto-Evangelion of Genesis 3.

And so why not this chapter as well? That Abram was promised a myriad of offspring, but he was almost also promised the offspring singular who was going to come and crush the head of the serpent. So I like what R .C. Sproul writes on this.

He says, this practice draws attention to the concept of seed or offspring. And what he's getting at is that the pain of the sign played a part in its significance. Sproul goes on, he says, this act points toward the sacrifice of Christ who experienced divine judgment in order to bring sinners into a covenant relationship of fellowship and peace with God.

It's the shedding of blood at the initiation of a covenant. Now, if that sounds bonkers to you, if that sounds like it's a, maybe an origin type of interpretation, he's not alone. Many other theologians have said the same thing.

Another, Nick Batzig says, circumcision, like the Passover, served as a blood sign of the gospel. Blood had to be shed if God was going to justly cut away the corruption of fallen human nature. This points to the blood of Christ as the fulfillment of that which circumcision typified in the old covenant.

Circumcision pointed to the need for the bloodshed of Jesus. And so by participating then in this covenant sign, one was not only identifying themselves with God's covenant community, but the sign reflected their messianic expectations.

And you can see this begin to develop in the Jewish mindset that this is not only signifying that I am a Jew, that I don't just, it's not just I don't belong to the uncircumcised nations, but I belong to God's covenant people and this is a sign of the expectation of the Messiah, that seed that is to come.

That is being pictured in this covenant seal. And so circumcision then was to serve as a daily reminder that they belong to God, not to the surrounding nations, that God was going to keep his covenant promises and that those covenant promises would ultimately be fulfilled in the Messiah.

And we see this explained in Romans chapter four. Let's go there together. Romans chapter four in verse 11. This is what we read. I'm gonna read from verse 10 just so that you can see that I'm not plucking this out of its context.

How then was it counted to him? Speaking of Abram and righteousness being counted to him by faith. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised.

Verse 11. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised so that righteousness would be counted to them as well.

Now he's dealing here with the circumcision party and other different ideas, but what I want you to see is this. That the covenant seal of circumcision actually came as a seal, a sign of righteousness by faith.

And this is significant because I think sometimes we like to think of the Jewish religion, not just the Jewish practice of religion, but the old covenant religion as being somewhat merit-based. Yet what we see in the old covenant is this, a picture of justification by faith alone worn on every man through the whole period from Abram to the birth of the Messiah.

That it was not a merit-based system, at least as designed by God, whereby the people were expected to work for their righteousness, but every day when a man woke up and he assessed his own anatomy, he was reminded that man is justified by faith alone in Christ.

That God built this into the very fabric of Jewish culture. And then so to miss it, what was to miss something that every man had experienced, that God has always been in the business of saving sinners by faith alone in him and his promised Messiah.

That is what circumcision is about. That is what circumcision has always been about. That is why the Judaizers in the book of Galatians, when they're coming and they're saying, you need to be circumcised to be saved, Paul can say, absolutely not.

That is the very picture of being saved by faith alone in Jesus Christ. Circumcision doesn't make one righteous. It demonstrates that one is made righteous by faith. And this is a reality that Jews missed for those nearly 2000 years leading up to Christ.

It's a reality that Jews today still miss that we are saved by faith alone in Christ. And so this is why we must embrace then Genesis as Christian scripture. It's not at odds with the rest of the Bible.

It is not to be treated like an appendix to the New Testament. It is preaching the same gospel that we find all throughout the New Testament. That every time an eight day old boy was circumcised in Israel, the gospel was preached.

I know that sounds strange. Maybe it sounds crazy, but that's what Romans 4 tells us. Now I could say a great deal more, but I'm gonna save it for my fourth point. So we'll carry on into verse 15. We'll look at my third heading.

God's Covenant Explained

We have God's covenant confirmed, God's covenant signified. Now we have God's covenant explained. And God said to Abraham, as for Sarai, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.

I will bless her. And moreover, I will give you as a son, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her and she shall become nations. Kings of people shall come from her. Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?

Shall Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child? And Abraham said to God, oh, that Ishmael might live before you. God said, no, but Sarah, your wife, she'll bear you a son and you shall call his name Isaac.

I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly.

He shall father 12 princes and I will make him into a great nation. But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year. When he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham.

Now this will be a shorter point, but I'll say this, that here God not only confirms the covenant with Abraham, but he explains that it's not going to be Ishmael through whom the seed or through whom this innumerable number of people will come, through whom the covenant promises are fulfilled.