Genesis 17:1-18:15 Laughing at the Promises of God

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service. This is a message from the series, Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis, by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filsek.

If you'd like to learn more about Recast or access our sermon archive, please visit us at recastchurch .com. Here's Pastor Don.

Church Announcements and the Call to Grow in Faith, Community, and Service

Well, good morning. If you can find your seats, we're gonna go ahead and get started here. So, love to hear the conversations and the chatter going on, but be sure to check out the worship folder that you received when you walked in.

This is just scratching the surface of the different things that are going on here at the church and so, if you get this, you read it, you're kind of like, oh, there's some stuff going on. But really, the way to connect here is by filling out a connection card.

So, if you've never done that before and been willing to share your email address with us, that's the primary way that we stake in communication with people, is we send out a weekly email. It has all kinds of links and different things that are on there.

You can unsubscribe yourself from that at any time. So, just signing up for it doesn't mean that you're locked into getting that in your inbox all the time. But I recommend that everybody who is calling Recast Their Church, make sure that you filled one of these out and put your email address on there, just so that you have the information available to you.

That doesn't mean that you have to read it every week as it comes in. And then, remember that there's a place to put prayer requests on the back and different check marks there. As a leadership team, the elders really love to get these prayer requests because then we know how to pray for you better.

We do pray for you guys on a routine basis, but knowing the specifics is very beneficial to us as we pray. And then also remember that those connection cards go in the black box back there. If it's your first time turning one in, take one of those coffee mugs too.

And then any offerings would go in the black box too. If you're not gonna use the envelope you received, then just recycle that in the white basket next to it. It says to recycle. And then we can reuse these week in and week out.

Saves us on some printing and things like that. And also remember that any gifts that are given that are marked expansion fund will go towards our hopes to build a building towards our facility. And so we're seeing money roll in with marked expansion fund and that goes into that specific account.

Now I wanna highlight for you this morning that we're a church that's dedicated to growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service. How many of you have heard that before? You've heard that phrase?

Good. That means that you're paying some attention. That ties in with our core values. Our core values being reproducing, community, authenticity, simplicity, truth, an acronym for our name, RECAST. But growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service highlights that simplicity one there in the sense that you may have noticed that we, how many of you noticed that we don't have an evening service?

Have you noticed that already? We don't have a Wednesday night meeting. We have pretty low programming here. And that's because we have kind of boiled things down to three things that we believe are essential for you to be growing in your relationship with God.

That is that you are growing in faith, growing in community, that is relationship with other believers and growing in service, that is growing in the way that God has made you to serve either within the church or outside of the church.

But I wanna zero in on what we're talking about when we talk about growing in faith. The faith we're talking about is the trust that we place in God, the belief in him and the trust that we put in him that influences the way we interact with the world around us.

If you actually believe that God exists, you believe the things that he says is true of him, then is that going to impact your daily life? It will. It will necessarily, if you really believe it, it will impact your daily life.

And so that's what we're talking about when we're talking about growing in faith. We've been studying the life of Abram together and we've seen him growing in faith. Would you agree with me on that? Like from the first time that God appeared to him and called him out, we've seen him growing in faith.

But there's something that I wanna highlight about the way that we've seen him grow that I think is significant for us to understand. And that is that growing in faith is not always linear. Okay, so some of us might have the expectation that yeah, if you're growing in faith, then you're better tomorrow than you are today.

And you're better next week than you are today. And you're better next month than you are today. Are you getting what I'm saying? That we have in our minds just, some of you like to organize things very well and like to put things in categories.

And it's like, okay, if you're growing in faith, it's just this nice, steady slope, getting closer to God every day. And is that real life? Is that how your faith works? Or are there a lot of fits and starts in your life?

Is it kind of like a rollercoaster ride where there are high points and there are low points? And I think some of us want to look at these biblical characters and we wanna give them more credit than they deserve.

We wanna make them superhuman. We wanna take them and make them consistent characters. Where Abram, I mentioned last week that I saw Abram as passive. Some people didn't like that comment because they actually said, I don't see Abram as passive because look, he came out of Ur.

He obeyed God and he had that plan in Egypt and he did all of these different things. Did Abram ever show plans and initiative? Yes. Was he ever passive and didn't have a plan and didn't have any initiative?

I think Abram's a lot like me. I think he's fairly inconsistent. There are times when he's got a plan and he's like, yes, let's go do this. And he's a man of faith. And then there's other times where he's like, I don't know, you guys take care of it.

Is that consistent with what it means, what you experience as a human? I think so. He needs constant reminders. He is, in the text of scripture, called the father of faith. But we see that he's just an awful lot like us.

He needs constant reminders. At times, he forgets the promise. At times, he argues with God. But by God's great mercy, we see him, God, being steady and stable, even in the midst of the rocking waves of his people growing in faith.

So we do indeed need to be drawing closer to God through reading about who he is and then living our lives according to what is revealed of God in scripture. That is growing in faith. But it's gonna be a rocky road of peaks and valleys.

God Renews His Covenant with Abram and Changes His Name

In our text this morning, we see God once again renew his promises. He's gonna appear to Abram after some time has passed. And he's gonna renew that covenant. And we see Abram and Sarai laugh in the face of God.

God's gonna make some promises to them. They're gonna laugh about those promises. So God names the child of the promise laughter. He has a sense of humor. And he takes the very mode of their disbelief, laughter, and names their son after that disbelief.

It's kind of funny. So let's open our Bibles to Genesis chapter 17. And we're gonna read the entirety of chapter 17 and then a little over into 8 .15. Some of you are like, oh, if we're gonna take off that much, it's gonna be a really long sermon.

It's actually gonna be just fine. We'll get there. But page 10 in the Bible in the seat back in front of you. So if you pull out that paperback Bible, you go to page 10, you'll be there. And we're gonna read this in its entirety, a little bit longer passage than we're used to.

But if you don't own a Bible, please take that one with you. I say that every week, but I mean it sincerely. If you don't own an English Standard Version of the Bible, you can take it as well. But follow along.

This is the very words of God to us here at Recast Church this morning. 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 may multiply you greatly.

Then Abram fell on his face and God said, 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 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 to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession. I will be their God. 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. He has broken my covenant. 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 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, shall 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've 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 God, God went up from Abraham.

Then Abraham took Ishmael, his son, and all those born in his house, or bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day, as God had said to him.

Abraham was 99 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, and Ishmael, his son, was 13 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. That very day, Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised, and all the men of his house, those born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him.

Abraham, El Shaddai, and the Call to Walk Before God

And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre. As he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, "'O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, "'do not pass by your servant.

"'Let a little water be brought and wash your feet "'and rest yourself under the tree, "'while I bring a morsel of bread "'that you may refresh yourselves, "'and after that, you may pass on, "'since you have come to your servant.'.

"'So,' they said, "'do as you have said.'. And Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah and said, "'Quick, three sayas of fine flour, "'knead it and make cakes.'. And Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man who prepared it quickly.

Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared and set it before them, and he stood by them under the tree while they ate. They said to him, "'Where is Sarah, your wife?'. And he said, "'She is in the tent.'.

The Lord said, 'I will surely return to you "'about this time next year, "'and Sarah, your wife, will have a son.'. And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years.

The way of the woman had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, "'After I'm worn out and my Lord is old, "'shall I have pleasure?'. The Lord said to Abraham, "'Why did Sarah laugh and say, "'shall I indeed bear a child now that I'm old?

"'Is anything too hard for the Lord?'. "'At the appointed time, I will return to you "'about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.'. But Sarah denied it, saying, "'I did not laugh, for she was afraid.'.

He said, "'No, but you did laugh.'". Let's pray. Father, as we read this text, we see what potentially could be some confusing things in there, and at the same time, we do see at least the gist of this, that you are revealing further your plans with Abraham and Sarah, and even changing their names to Abraham and Sarah, and altering the course of their direction, what they thought was going to happen.

Father, they are putting their trust and their understanding in Ishmael as the child of the promise, and you're saying, no, that's not gonna be the way that it is. And Father, there's distrust, and there's laughter, a divisive laughter in this text.

There's a laughter of unbelief, and then you, in your divine sense of humor, name their child after their laughter. Father, that you are the God of promises, who is all-powerful, almighty. As you reveal yourself in the text, the title El Shaddai, the Almighty, the Powerful One, the One who is able to accomplish what He sets out to accomplish.

And then even challenging, is anything too difficult for you? Father, I ask that as we walk through this text this morning, as we have an opportunity to sing songs to you, we would recognize you as El Shaddai, the All-Powerful, the Almighty One, who is able to accomplish that which you set out to accomplish, that nothing that is facing anyone in this room, nothing is too difficult for you to overcome.

Father, I pray that you would make us a people of faith, that trust, that you indeed are powerful enough to accomplish your purposes, and I praise you for that ultimate accomplishment in sending your Son, Jesus Christ, to deal with our biggest problem, our sin and our brokenness.

Father, I pray that as we sing songs to you, that we would do so out of hearts, released and free in Jesus Christ. Father, that we would recognize the amazing and awesome work done for us on the cross.

Father, that we would rejoice that these old covenant things have passed away and a new covenant of grace has been ushered in through your Son, who is the offspring of Abraham, and it's in His name that we pray, amen.

The 13-Year Gap, Ishmael, and the Meaning of El Shaddai

I wanna encourage you to keep your Bibles open to Genesis chapter 17, as we kinda walk through this text together and kinda see what's going on here. Remember that at any time during the message, you can get up and get some more coffee or juice or donuts or whatever it takes to kinda keep your focus on the Word of God.

Let's start off with a question. For how many of you, 13 years is a long period of time? Any of you? 13 years, fairly long, fairly long in the scope of your life. 13 years can be a pretty big chunk of time.

A lot can happen in 13 years. Would you agree with me on that? But what we see here in our text, it's kind of valuable for us to see this, I think this is important, is that between the end of chapter 16 and the start of chapter 17, 13 years have gone by.

So since we last talked about Abram a week ago, we are now going to pick up the story 13 years later. It's kinda like you ever watch a movie and it actually says that on the bottom of the screen, present day, 13 years ago, whatever, it just says, we've just advanced 13 years.

Look at the end of chapter 16, verse 16, says this, Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram, then the start of our chapter. When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, 13 years.

But there's something significant about that. How old is Ishmael now? He's 13, okay, he's now a young man. Hagar is his mom. Abram is his dad. Notice the complete absence of any relational interplay between Sarai and Ishmael.

He's now 13 years old. He is, for all intents and purposes, considered to be the child of the promise. We don't see how Sarai and Hagar are interacting. We don't see how Abram and Sarai are interacting.

We just know that 13 years have passed since we last talked about this whole family fiasco thing that's gone down here. And it is very, very apparent from, as we walk through this text, and I think it's valuable for us to understand, think about 13 years of doting on that son.

Think about 13 years of Israel, I mean Israel, of Ishmael being perceived to be the son of the promise. Probably being told that he was the child of the promise. We're gonna see some indicators throughout the text that it's pretty clear that Abram thought he was the one.

As a matter of fact, he desired for Ishmael to be the one. I picture their family raising Ishmael to know God and to worship him and to walk with him, and there's this understanding that he's going to become a multitude of nations.

That was promised to Hagar, his mom, and so there's all of this, all of these keys in the back of their mind that are like, this is the child. Do you see what I'm saying? They are perceiving that Ishmael is the child of the promise, and God appears to Abram once again at the start of our text.

It's implied that it's been 13 years since any special visitation or vision from God has happened. 13 silent years of going on business as usual. How many of you kind of have in your mind the notion that God appears every couple days to Abram?

Like you just kind of feel that way, right? This is a 13 year hiatus and he shows up, and God gives himself a title right from the beginning that is intended to flavor this entire account. This entire interaction is wrapped up and rolled up in the significance of this title.

I am God Almighty. Some of you might recognize the Hebrew phrase that's behind that phrase in English, El Shaddai. How many of you have heard God referred to as El Shaddai before? The phrase El Shaddai in Hebrew, that title, that name for God, means the most powerful one, the all-powerful, the one who is able to accomplish that which he sets out to accomplish.

No questions asked, he can get it done. That's what we mean when we say El Shaddai. That's what that phrase means, he can do it. He has limitless power. But yet here in our text for the first time, there's a stipulation put on Abram.

We've been seeing what has all along appeared to be a one-sided covenant, and that's with intention. God wanted to up front make sure Abram did not think he was going to usher in the promises of God, so God was the one who went through the animal pieces.

If you were with us back in chapter 15, when he made that unilateral covenant and told Abram to cut the animal pieces in half, and then God walked through them, but Abram didn't. How many of you were here for that, and you remember that?

Okay, that was significant because that's God doing that, God taking on his part and Abram's part, but now he's gonna identify that he is concerned for the way that his people behave, that there is now, that the covenant is established, there is some standard for Abram.

Now, how many of you know there's no law spelled out yet for Abram? You can go through this text, and Abram doesn't necessarily know all that is coming, but there's a foreshadowing of the giving of the law that's gonna come in a few centuries down the road for the people of Abraham, the people who are gonna come from him, but when it really comes down to it, there's no law spelled out, and yet he is told to walk before God and to be blameless.

How many of you, the notion of being told to walk before God and to be blameless is a little bit overwhelming if you don't have any rules or regulations or don't know what to do? Are you getting what I'm saying?

I mean, is that a little bit of an overwhelming job description? Abram, what I want you to do is I want you to walk before me as if to say, and the significance of that phrase is walk as if I am watching you.

That's what it means to walk before God, and by the way, I want you to be blameless too. Pretty big calling, would you say, from the terminology that's used there? The idea of walking before God, like I said, is one of walking, living our lives in such a way that God is seeing us.

We get a glimpse of this type of life when we recognize that God is with us at all times and nothing is hidden from his gaze. Is that motivating to any of you? Any of you ever motivated by the notion that God sees you at all times?

Is that a little bit motivating? Now, I wanna highlight, though, that for many of us, our thoughts turn to, oh no, he saw that, right? Oh no, he was there when I said that? Oh no, he heard that? But I want you to think of it from another perspective, that you are a child of God.

He loves you and he delights over you, and as one of the prophets says, he exalts over you with joy and with dancing. He is delighted in his children. Do you think about God from that perspective? God wants to motivate you with his presence for joy.

You are his child and he wants you to succeed. Is that a different perspective than, oh no, he saw me? There is a way of viewing God solely as judge that is a scary life, and some of you, I fear, have lived under that for your entire lives, where it has constantly been the big guy in the sky who's looking, he's looking for me to fail, and he's just gonna squash me like a bug if I fall, if I falter, if I fail, rather than seeing the, seeing God as a father who is encouraging and moving along, and part of it is that the imagery is broken for many of us.

The word father doesn't carry the notion it's supposed to, right, and so just that notion of a father who is loving and is cheering on his children, the challenge for those of you who are fathers here, right, a little bit of that.

God is seeing, God is there, he knows, he is observing what's going on, he is watching and seeing. We saw him as the God who hears and sees last week. The word blameless, though, so he is supposed to live in such a way that he recognizes that God is there.

God is with him, God is there observing, but then the word for blameless has a flavor of relational integrity to it in Hebrew. So where we think of blameless as just strictly like, there's no faults in him, it is not a word for perfection per se.

He is not saying, I demand of you, Abram, that you make no mistakes ever, but that you remain true and faithful to me in relationship. That is what he's calling Abram to do by this. God is calling Abram to stick with him.

God is saying to Abram, stick with me, trust me, honor me with your life. The calling of God comes to us with a call to be holy, make no mistakes, that is reality, that is true. But true faith is not gonna be satisfied with a sinful walking away from God.

Do we fail? Do we falter? How many of you would admit that maybe you fail from time to time? Okay, let's scrap that. Everybody just raise your hand and then I'll ask the question, okay? Because we have already sinned this morning.

We have broken God's commands, we have fallen short of what he made us to be already today, probably more than once. Would you guys agree with me on that? So what is this then that when we get captured by sin, or can a believer, a person of true faith who has relationship with God get captured by sin?

Yes, we can. But are we gonna be satisfied with that? Are we gonna be settled in that? Is that gonna give us delight and joy? Or are we gonna be miserable when we're in a life of sin if we are his children?

He is not gonna let us off the hook. Nobody who is a child of God, a child of his covenant promises through Jesus Christ, now in the new covenant, nobody's gonna be satisfied with a sinful walking away from God.

The call is towards holiness. And we are a people who delight and long for his coming because we know then this body of sin and death will be done away with. How many of you look forward to the day, the thing that you most desire and delight in is the day that he will return and remake you without sin?

I long for that day. There's nothing I want more than that. I'm not trying to be hyper-spiritual. It's just the reality of what I long for. I look forward to the day when I can stand before my Lord and Savior without sin.

I need somebody to say amen on that. Okay, thank you. I long for that day. And that's the longing of our hearts when we see our sin and our crud and our brokenness, right? Any of you ever just get discouraged with yourself and you're like, man, I just wanna be doing more.

I wanna be more useful to God. But the sin is in here and it's like, I look forward to that time. Is God working on us? Is he improving us? Yes, by his grace and by his mercy. But it's a battle, right?

It's a lifelong battle. That's what he's calling Abram into here in this covenant relationship. He's saying it's not just this one-sided thing. There's a progressive revelation of this covenant that's going on in this text in verse two.

God has already laid himself on the line for both sides of the agreement, but here in chapter 17, he's revealing that Abram is not just a passive party to this agreement, that there are some things that he desires of Abram to do.

So Abram, in this meeting with God, falls flat on his face before him. That's an appropriate position for us in worship to God, by the way. Have you ever done that before? In prayer to God, just laid out in front of him on the floor, just said, I'm yours.

And God continues to reveal this promise. Of course, we know that Abram is gonna become the father of many. How many of you, that's starting to sound like a broken record for you? You know, we've been going through the book of Genesis, and every week, I'm telling you, Abram's gonna become a great nation.

But now, God kind of increases, ups the ante a little bit, and it's like he's slowly revealing more and more of himself, more and more of his plan, more and more of his promise. And he says, no, Abram, you're not just gonna become a great nation, but you're gonna become the father of a multitude of nations.

Not just one people coming from you, but a multitude of peoples. His name has been Abram, exalted father. But now, his name becomes Abraham, the father of a multitude. His name is changed by God. He will be exceedingly fruitful, and kings will come from his line.

It's a promise from God. Abram will become a royal line that's new. He hasn't been promised that yet, prior to this chapter here. And it's also a foreshadowing of a good king. A good king over all kings, who is gonna be a descendant of Abram, who's gonna come from his line, and is going to be royal.

His name is Jesus Christ. But I wanna pause for a minute, and I want you to think about what we see here. What kind of things can faith do in your life? What kind of situations can it put you in? What is Abram's name changed to?

Father of a multitude, that's what Abraham means. So his name is changed to that. And how many kids does he have? He's got one. Ishmael, how many of you think that went well for him at the marketplace?

Everybody, my name is changed. I want everybody, you all are now gonna, instead of calling me Exalted Father, I want you to, my name's been changed by God Almighty. He's calling me the Father of a Multitude.

Snicker, snicker. Can you imagine the crowd's response? We're gonna call you what? How many kids do you have again? You know? Jedediah's got 16 down the street over here, okay? Hezekiah has 23 children, and you're gonna call yourself the Father of a Multitude?

Where is your one single son? Can you imagine the sneers and the mocking as he calls himself the Father of a Multitude? And he has but one child. Faith can bring us to a place of looking silly to the world.

Would you agree with me on that? Sometimes by acting and living according to faith, we look goofy, we look silly. Now some of it is just our fault because we're goofy people, okay? And don't blame that one on God.

But sometimes when we're actually following God, it actually is that we look silly. But consider that trust in his Father also brought Jesus to a place where he was mocked as well. God is not promising that we are going to be friends with the world around us, right?

Verses seven through eight are a reminder of the promise to give him and his offspring the land. So we've seen the promise given and a refreshing of that promise. Remember, 13 years have passed. He needs to hear this stuff again.

And here God emphasizes that it is an everlasting covenant, emphasizing that Abraham's offspring will indeed perpetually hold the deed to their property. And again, it could potentially get repetitive for us.

God's gonna make Abram into a great nation. He's gonna give him the land. He's gonna turn him into a promise. One of his offspring is gonna be a blessing to all peoples. And it could keep just kind of sounding repetitive to us week in and week out.

But it's important for us to put this in context. 13 years have passed. This guy is 99 years old. He needs to be reminded of this promise time and time again. Abram needs the perpetual reminder that God is working his plan.

And it's all driving towards a sign in our text of the covenant, revealed to us in verses nine through 14. The sign of the covenant of the Abrahamic covenant, that old covenant that God will bless him and make him into a great nation and will multiply nations out of him, the sign of the covenant is circumcision.

It's to be an irreversible mark in their flesh as a sign of their ownership by God. God owns them and it is for their generations on down. Now, a couple of points to note about circumcision can be kind of a strange topic.

But the first thing I wanna highlight is that it was a common practice in the ancient world. The Hebrews did not invent the idea or the process or the procedure for circumcision, it was predated in the text.

The Egyptians were doing circumcision hundreds of years before this text came to pass. So historically, circumcision was going on. It was often a right to manhood during this era and this time. And so that's what the Egyptians did with it, is when a man became a man, they circumcised him.

Some cultures perform the circumcision as a ritual immediately preceding the wedding, the person's wedding, which seems like bad timing to me. Just throw that out there, give you something to laugh about, because, you know, it's awkward.

But second of all, so that's the first thing, is that they didn't invent this. This is something that was going on, that God is adopting a cultural phenomenon, something that people were already doing, and he adopts that as his sign, his symbol.

Just like I think that rainbows were still happening before he adopted the rainbow as the sign of the covenant with Noah, right? There were still rainbows before that, but he adopted something that was already going on, and here he does the same thing.

The second thing that I wanna point out is that this is not a medical procedure for improved health. It was a religious sign and a religious symbol and a religious duty that was to be performed to all of the boys, eight years old, I mean, eight days old.

And so that was a, it was not medical. That's what we have in our mind, but that's not the case. The third thing is that the sign is not accidentally related to reproduction. It's not accidental or incidental that it's related to that.

It's not like God chose some sign or symbol to make us uncomfortable, like that's why he did it, and so he could just kind of talk and kind of blush about it and stuff. I've often thought, though, and I think maybe some of you in the room, maybe if you're thinking and you've read through the scriptures and you've kind of wondered, like, why not a nose ring?

That would've been kind of easy. How about a gauge in the ear? Nice cross tattoo on the forehead? Something that's really obvious and visible? Have any of you thought along those lines before, or is it just me?

Am I the only one? I mean, it could pierce my lip, all kinds of things, right? I think only three of us have thought along those lines, like, why not something else? Okay, I guess I'm a little in the minority on that one.

But that misunderstands who this sign is for. Why this sign? It is for the man to remember his ownership by God. It is a symbol to the individual that God owns me. And then, like the rainbow, when we see the rainbow in the sky, what are we supposed to remember?

We are to remember that God remembers his covenant. That's what it says in the text in Genesis. So when we see the rainbow, we are to remember that God is a promise-keeping God. What is the promise that the symbol of circumcision is pointing to?