Genesis 17

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel, and I’m delighted to be leading us through Genesis chapter 17 today if you want to get your Bible or swipe there on your devices. Let me ask you this question as you’re doing that, if God promised to do something that seemed impossible to you, would you trust Him? Can God do what appears to be impossible when it comes to human reason? When we closed out our study of Genesis chapter 16, Abram and Sarai were 86 and 76 years old respectively. Yet God had still promised them a son plus innumerable descendants. How did the couple manage trusting God together? How many times did their faith waiver or falter? How many times, for instance, did they become impatient? Did that impatience ever lead to some kind of frustration with God’s delays or to a marital argument or to a sleepless night?

These are really good questions when you start to think about how long we have between chapters even here, because Genesis 17:1 opens with a statement that Abram is now 99 years old, which means Sarai was 89, and if the couple had had difficulty conceiving before, what hope would there have been now? Then verse one goes on to tell us also, and you’ll read this with me in a second, that Yahweh appeared to Abram and said to him, dot, dot, dot – I’ll leave that hanging because we’re going to read it in a second. Here’s where we get God reaffirming His promise. After 13 years, from 86 years of age at the close of chapter 16 to 99 years of age, at the opening of chapter 17, 13 years go by, what would God say? Nothing had happened. They hadn’t had a child. They hadn’t had a son, the first of any descendants.

How did Abram respond to God as God appears to him and speaks to him again? What does it mean for the rest of us who years and years and years later trust in or put our faith in this God of the Bible? Join us now. I think you’ll really enjoy this study that we’re going to call “The Unhurried Mystifying, but Faithful Covenant God of the Bible.” All right, so chapter 17, and it goes just like this: “Now, when Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God almighty’.” I love this. I love when God reveals Himself so clearly to someone in the pages of Scripture. We’re always looking for that, aren’t we, when we go to Scripture, and we read it. How does God reveal Himself here?

This is one of those times where it becomes really clear. El Shaddai is the title that God has here and is revealing to Abram, and it is used about four dozen times throughout the Old Testament. He says, “I’m God Almighty, I’m El Shaddai, walk before me and be blameless.” Some of your translations might say, “Walk before me and you will be blameless.” Which is right, which is wrong? They’re both right, I think. When you walk before the Lord, the idea there is that you’re walking with His approval, you are seeking His wisdom, His ways; you’re walking in His will and in the paths of righteousness.

“Walk before me and be blameless.” Then verse two, “I will establish my covenant between me and you and I will multiply you exceedingly.” You heard me emphasize those two little words, “I will.” They appear 16 times in this chapter. This chapter is really all about God, and it’s all about God saying, “I will, I will, I will, I will.” I love that because I’m always looking for God’s will. I’m concerned and interested in learning about God, and how is it that He’s the almighty, and how is it that His promises apply to me over the years? Do I sometimes maybe get it wrong when I’m trying to discern what His promises really are from scripture? Do I just proof text, just lift something out myself and claim it?

Is there something about these promises that are unique to Abram and unique to Sarai here in this space time history, this little slice of that? Let’s continue our study. I think some of this will become clear. God, when He speaks says, “I’m God almighty, walk before me. Be blameless. I will establish my covenant between me and you. I will multiply you exceedingly.” He’s 99 years old and God saying this again to him. You wonder, “How’s Abram going to respond?” Verse three tells us. “Abram fell on his face and God talked with him saying, ‘As for me, behold my covenant is with you and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations.’” This is amazing. I’m not surprised that Abram fell on his face, even just the appearance of God, even just the voice of God speaking to him again after 13 years.

We have no record of any other voice from God or message from God or Angel appearing to him. We just have these 13 years of everyday life and silence since the last time God stated His promise to Abram and Sarai. Thirteen years. It’s a long time, more than a decade, and so many of us are so impatient all the time. I’m impatient. I send a text, I’m impatient that the text has to go all the way up to the satellite and all the way back down, and because it’s got a little photo or something in it – it takes more than two seconds! We are so trained up in being impatient. Here Abram, 13 years, God shows up. God speaks to him, and Abram’s response is to fall on his face.

His response is not, “I’m overwhelmed,” not “I’m just exasperated I haven’t heard from you” or “What have you done for me lately?” It’s not that kind of thing back in their day and time, as we see with Abram, his falling on his face. We’ll see it a couple times in this chapter. His falling on his face before the Lord is his sign of a resolute submission to God: a resolve to trust and believe God, to honor God, to respect God in the moment. He is going to be overwhelmed and, in many ways, astonished at what God says and how He continues to make these promises, just like we would be. Let’s see what happens. “Abram fell on his face and God was talking with him. ‘Behold, my covenant is with you and you’ll be the father of a multitude of nations.’” Not just one nation, not just one group of people, but looking all the way forward to the end of the Bible.

This is Genesis, remember? All the way forward to Revelation where, standing before the throne of God, will be who? People from every tongue and tribe and nation and people group. I’m telling you, if you pull the thread here in Genesis, your Bible crinkles all the way through to Revelation. It’s all connected. It’s got this one big meta narrative: God in pursuit of a people He can call His own and God making it possible for us to be reconciled to Him. Sinners, though we are, holy and almighty as He is, He has done everything necessary, and this is part of the storyline. I love this thing. Now God’s going to change His name from Abram to Abraham.

Abram means “exalted father,” but Abraham means “father of many nations,” a broadening of the promise; as if God’s just doubling down and saying, “No, I know you’re 99. I know it’s been 13 years since the last time I talked to you. No, this is really happening and it’s happening bigger than you could have imagined, all right?” The Bible account records that God says, “No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham. I will make you the father of a multitude of nations and I will…” You could circle all of these “I wills” by the way in your Bible or if you have that ability on your device to do that.

Like I said, there are 16 of these, at least 14 depending on which English translation you have. “I will make you the father of multitude nations.” Verse six, “I will make you exceedingly fruitful and I will make nations of you and kings shall come forth from you.” Verse seven, “I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your descendants after you and I will…” Verse eight, “… “give to you and to your descendants after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”

As we have seen before, here we have God promising not only a progeny, a line of descendants, but also the land that will be the promised land where the children of Israel will come and settle further down the line in history. Verse nine, “God said further to Abraham, ‘Now as for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin and it shall be the sign of the covenant between me and you.’” Again, this is one of those sorts of awkward things to talk about sometimes, but this is one of those visible signs or seals of God’s covenant.

In our own day and time, through the New Testament lens, we see that the practice of baptism is now appropriately the sign of the covenant between each and every believer in Jesus Christ, in that we are united with Christ and His death, His burial and His resurrection. When we baptize folks, we will often do an explanation of what that’s like because we practice immersion here. They’ll go down into the water and it’s as if they were being united with Christ as a visible display of their union with Christ in His death and His burial. Then they come back up out of the water to symbolize their being resurrected into newness of life in Christ. It’s a beautiful sign and symbol of the covenant. Here of course, with circumcision, a delicate thing to talk about, every single day Abraham will be reminded, multiple times a day, he’ll be reminded that he belongs to the God who makes promises and keeps promises.

The covenant-making God and the covenant-keeping God – He belongs in every part of who he is, even the most intimate part of who he is belongs to this kind of God that makes covenants and keeps covenants. I love this. That will be a sign and a symbol that he’ll pass on, not only through his household, but through the generations to come. Let me finish reading this, and He will describe all of that for us. Verse 10, “This is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin and it shall be the sign of the covenant between me and you. Every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout your generations. A servant who is born in the house or who is bought with money from any foreigner who is not of your descendants, a servant who is born in your house or who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised, for thus shall my covenant be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant.”

I know, these guys are all going to be adults. Here Abram is 99. Babies nowadays, male children are typically circumcised while they’re still in the hospital. The idea here is, it’s verse 12, “Eight days old or older.” It’s fascinating to me that some of my medical friends will tell me when a baby boy is first born, it actually takes about a week before their blood is ready to actually form a clot. If they were to be circumcised before that eighth day back then, they would’ve bled out, they would’ve died.

It’s amazing how God, who has designed the human body, who’s designed a world where science is even possible; it’s amazing how that God, even in His instructions here, gives that kind of detailed instruction. “Every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout your generations, even the servants that are among you.” Verse 14: “An uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant.” God takes this very seriously and it’s very much an everyday, multiple times a day reminder to the heads of households back in their day and time, that they belong to God and every part of them belongs to God. Really powerful. Then God said to Abram, “As for Sarai, your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.”

God’s not only changing Abram’s name to Abraham, but Sarai is the name that his wife has been going by. Now she’s going to be called Sarah. As far as we can tell, both of those words, those ancient Hebrew words go back to the basic meaning is “princess”. They’re very, very similar. It’s almost as if God is saying, “Oh, she’s 89, no problem. She’s still a princess.” I love that about this because indeed she’s precious to Him and she’s, of course, been wondering and she’s had the social stigma of being barren all of her life all the way up now till 89 years of age. When she has Isaac, it’s only about a year from this particular time, she’ll be 90 and Abraham will be 100 years of age when God actually chooses to fulfill this promise and the timing is just right.

For now, she’s still being called “princess,” just a different version of the same word. Verse 16, God says, another “I will.” “I will bless her and indeed I will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations, kings of peoples shall come from her.” A little more detail given as God continues to reaffirm His promises to this precious couple, this precious aged couple. Then Abraham responds in Verse 17, “He fell on his face and laughed.” This time he falls on his face just as he did earlier in the chapter, and now he’s falling on his face again and this time he’s laughing. I really believe he’s laughing for joy. It’s kind of this mixture of wonder and amazement and joy. I mean, come on.

It’s sort of like, can that really happen? I can’t believe you would say that God, Yahweh, I can’t. Here’s what happens. “He fell on his face, and he laughed, and he said in his heart,” the narrator here, which we think is Moses is giving us some insight into this because this story had to be handed down. You’ve got to know that. I mean, this must have been an amazing story to tell around the campfire for generations to come. Here it is: “He fell on his face and laughed and said, in his heart, ‘Will a child be born to a man 100 years old? Will Sarah, who’s 90 years old, bear a child?’” Abraham evidently forgetting that his own father had him when his father was 130 years of age, but we always tend to operate within the context of what we know and what we’re experiencing.

Where he’s at right now, he’s literally laying on his face laughing out loud and in his heart, he’s thinking, “I just can’t believe this is true.” Again, we’ve all had amazement and wonder to think that something we’d hoped for, dreamed for all our lives, wondered if God had forgotten us. Yet here it comes; this promise and he’s wondering about it and thinking about it. Abram said to God then, “Oh, that Ishmael might live before thee.” He even offers up sort of an alternative to God. I can’t even imagine that to be true. Maybe you meant Ishmael, that kind of thing? We do that all the time in our prayers, don’t we? We’re always giving God alternatives. I love this about the God of the Bible. He never has to have a plan B, He never has to have an alternative strategy because His plans and His purposes are always accomplished, aren’t they?

We need to remember that don’t we? Even after 13 years, even when it seems impossible, nothing is impossible with this sovereign God of the Bible. He offers up Ishmael thinking, oh, surely that’s how you’re going to accomplish your promises, God. God said, “No, but Sarah, your wife will bear you a son and you will call his name Isaac, which means he laughs.” Every time you call his name, you’re going to remind yourself, Abraham, that you laughed about this, and that it created either such joy or wonderment or some collision of the two, whatever, but you’re going to be reminded of that.

Then God says, “I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.” As for Ishmael, if you’re out there wondering what was going on with Ishmael and Hagar. As for Ishmael, “I’ve heard you. Behold I will bless him and will make him fruitful and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall become the father of 12 princes. I will make him a great nation.” Indeed, if you want to read ahead, you can see in Genesis chapter 25 that the Lord does that. The Lord actually fulfills His promise even to Ishmael here as well.

In other words, this God of the Bible is faithful. I love this about Him. Verse 21: “My covenant, I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you at this season next year.” Now God is becoming so specific, which He has not done up until now, but in chapter 12, in chapter 15, when the covenants started, here He comes and He’s going to say, now it’s going to happen next year. When He finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham, verse 22 says, and now here’s Abraham’s response. Verse 23: “Then Abraham took Ishmael, his son, and all the servants who were born in his house and all who were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s household, and he circumcised the flesh on their foreskin in the very same day as God had said to him.” Again, if you’re one of that crowd and it’s it, boy, you want to what? I mean, you got to find yourself asking “How about a temporary tattoo or something? Wouldn’t that be just as good?” You’re thinking of alternatives just like Abraham was thinking of an alternative earlier.

No, this is what God wants to do and it’s very serious and solemn and God wants it to be taken seriously. Verse 23, “He took Ishmael, [who’s now 13 years of age] He took the servants,” and all of them were circumcised as God had said to him. Verse 24: “Now, Abraham was 99 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. Ishmael’s son was 13 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. In the very same day, Abraham was circumcised and Ishmael his son.”

To have that sacred ceremony together with Ishmael, I mean it goes without saying. They both would’ve remembered it for a long time, but for more than one reason. There was a sacred nature to it. This father and this son together on that day. “All the men of his household who were born in the house or bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him.” This is fascinating to me that God is establishing His covenant in such a beautiful and a permanent way. There’s pain in it, that’s correct, but it’s personal and it’s a diverse group of people; people a variety of ages from 13 to 99, and a lot of guys in between that. It’s not just people who are Abraham’s descendants, but it’s people who are in the household, foreigners from either came from Egypt with them or somewhere along the way have joined the household as servants.

Maybe this is the only way they could find employment because we know that Abraham is rich and wealthy. On and on, the possibilities go for the way this symbol, this seal, is going to remind everyone that the God of the Bible is a covenant-making, covenant-keeping God, and that He intends to bring salvation to His people. All right, so what do we learn here? Let me throw up a couple of slides. First of all, the three chapters talk about the covenants, God’s covenant with Abraham presented in chapter 12 for the first time. God’s covenant with Abraham ratified in Genesis 15. We studied that with the coming of the covenant ceremony that was there. Then God’s covenant with Abram reaffirmed in Genesis chapter 17 here as we have studied it.

Now, what’s the purpose of this covenant, and what is God saying in all of that? Let me just use this quote from Derek Kidner, one of my favorite commentators on the Book of Genesis. His economy of language is just amazing. If you want to get just a single volume commentary on Genesis, Derek Kidner’s is a great one. He said this.

“Spiritually, the essence of the covenant is personal, like the ‘I will’ of a marriage. The pledge ‘I will be their God’ far outweighs the particular benefits. This is the covenant. The striking feature of the stipulations is their lack of detail. To be committed was all. Circumcision was God’s brand; the moral implications could be left unwritten until Sinai, for one was pledged to a master only secondarily to a way of life.”
Derek Kidner

You see that this covenant, again, like we learned from Rabbi Jonathan Sachs in our previous studies, this is personal. This is very much God saying, “What I want to give you is myself, and what I want you to give me is yourself.” Again, another reason for why this covenant, in terms of the choice of how God symbolizes it, is such a very personal thing, an intimate thing. This God of the Bible wants a relationship with you and a relationship with me. That’s at the heart of that. No matter what the symbol looks like itself, whether it’s circumcision in the Old Testament or in the New Testament, and since water baptism where you’re down in the water and back up, it’s still very much a personal union or dwelling with our God. The sovereign God of the Bible is always and everywhere active and on the move, and He wants us to know that.

He’s moving in your direction. He’s moving in my direction. He’s watching from the windows like the prodigal son’s father waiting, for even if you’re way off in a far distant country, waiting to just see you in the distance to turn around one step. We’ve said it so many times before, if there’s 1,000 steps between you and God, the minute you take that one that starts the turn where you repent and turn toward God, He comes running out to you. That’s how eager He is to live in a right relationship with you. So much more eager than we often are ourselves to be reconciled with God. Look at how this God of the Bible loves us. He is the covenant-making, covenant-keeping God. He’s the sovereign God of the Bible, and He is always an everywhere active and on the move.

The other thing that I like to highlight from this chapter is God’s absolute right of choice. When to appear and speak to Abram, what to call Himself. Here He is revealing Himself as El Shaddai, God Almighty. With whom He will speak. God has that right. What to say, whether He’s offering commands or promises, reaffirming His covenant as in this chapter or giving instruction and warnings or judgments, whatever. God is the one who has absolute right of choice in these things. Who to claim as His own. Who to give anything to and what to give them, what to command, what to demand from anyone at any time, anywhere. This is the divine prerogative of the sovereign God of the Bible. We have an example here in chapter 17, a reminder that even though this couple is 99 and 89, it’s all right. Don’t let the odds or circumstances before you eclipse your faith in the sovereign God who is all around you.

One more time, read that with me, will you? Don’t let the odds or circumstances before you eclipse your faith in the sovereign God who is all around you. Yes, that is so true. He is all around you. He is all around me. He is as we see throughout the pages of Scripture and all the way into the New Testament promises of Jesus. He promises never to leave us or to forsake us, that He is with us always, no matter what we’re going through. I want to remind you of that. Can you imagine this dear couple? Thirteen years of silence from heaven, thirteen years of nothing after those promises were stated in chapter 15. Thirteen years before God even shows up again to speak to them. How many times, they might have found themselves wondering if God really meant it, if God was really even there anymore or had He had abandoned them altogether.

Maybe you feel like that sometimes. I know I have, in terms of my feelings anyway, they come and go all the time. That’s why I need God’s word. That’s why we study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. You see, faith grows by hearing the Word of God. Faith grows by believing and walking according to the Word of God. Faith grows by trusting Christ who is Himself the living Word of God. As we trust Christ and as we walk with Him, even as we see it here in the life of Abraham, you see his faith growing and we’re going to see it tested and tried and stretched even further in the coming chapters. When we go through all of that, it’s Christ we’re trusting and not ourselves. It’s Christ we’re trusting, and not the culture around us.

If it’s Christ we’re trusting, and not our wallets or our careers or the next opportunity or the next administration or the next political upheaval or whatever we’re looking for; if it’s Christ we’re really trusting, you see, He will prove Himself to be the faithful sovereign God of the Bible. J.I. Packer says it this way,

“‘Wait on the Lord’ is a constant refrain in the Psalms, and it is a necessary word, for God often keeps us waiting. He’s not in such a hurry as we are, and it is not His way to give more light on the future than we need for action in the present, or to guide us more than one step at time.”
J.I. Packer

As that old song says, “one day at a time.” Yeah. This is an ongoing thing. We’re called to continually wait on the Lord, but we don’t wait in a hopeless way.

We don’t wait and despair. We wait anticipating. Why? Our faith, or what we’re actually waiting on, is God Himself, not the circumstances to change. Not the circumstances to go away or to go the way we want them to or to go in our timing, but we’re waiting on the Lord because we trust the Lord. I love the way Dale Ralph Davis puts this in his teaching on this chapter. He says,

“We would prefer to have a deity with high blood pressure and one that gave promises with microwavable instructions on them, but He doesn’t do that. Having a covenant God is to have a God who baffles us with his strange and stubborn ways.”
Dale Ralph Davis

I love the way he said that. That is so true. I do want to be able to program a microwave sort of response from God every time I want something, or I want something to be out of my life.

Maybe you’re that way too. Maybe you understand this sense. One thing we find in the timeless truths of the Bible is that if we hurry the waiting, we might miss the wisdom and the glory that only waiting can bring. That’s so true. Sometimes I’ll listen to a preacher named Voddie Baucham, and he said this once,

“Radical Christians are not people who jump around at concerts. Radical Christians are not people who just wear Christian t-shirts. Radical Christians are those who bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit.”
Voddie Baucham

Yeah. If you want to be radical, really radical, love, joy, peace, and even that last one, self-control, look it up in Galatians chapter five. They’re all listed there. They’re amazing and they’re the fruit of the spirit at work in our lives, bringing out meekness or kindness and gentleness and all these amazing things that we can’t just drum up ourselves.

What happens is we’re trusting in the God of the Bible who transforms us and changes us. We’re not meant to be just Christmas trees that we stick little ornaments on of moral achievements and things. We’ve stopped doing this and started doing this. That’s just an endless parade of moral failures waiting to happen. The Christmas tree idea/ image, that’s not who we’re supposed to be. We’re supposed to be fruit trees. The fruit grows because the tree is rooted and grounded in God’s Word, planted firmly by streams of living water, and the Holy Spirit is bringing this fruit to life in our hearts, transforming us and changing us. It’s like Abraham and Sarah trusting God, and I think they do a pretty good job after 13 years here. I’m not saying they’re perfect. I’m not saying they’re the ultimate heroes of this story.

I think God is. This chapter is about God. It’s God who says, “I will” 16 times. We tend to focus on who gets the control in the pace or the direction or the outcome. That’s the way we all tend to think. We’re so used to all of that, especially here in the west. For Abram and for Sarah now, 13 years had passed with just everyday normal life. The question is, would they now, could they now trust God? Next year, of course we know, we’ve seen the rest of the story here. Isaac’s going to be born. Man, is that going to be awesome because his name will just give them joy and laughter. So for us, what’s the question? What’s the faith response God might be looking for? Let me post it up on the screen for you. Can you find rest in the quotidian ordinariness of an everyday life, trusting the unhurried mystifying, but faithful covenant God of the Bible?

Great question to ask ourselves. Great question, I think, to be confronted with as you consider this story and think about all of it. God has his own sense of timing, and if you knew, if I knew, everything that God knows, we might understand His timing and His pace and His direction and the outcome. We might understand all that a little bit better. The question though, really is, here’s a God that’s willing to make a covenant with us. As far as I can tell, that’s not the kind of thing that any other gods do.

The other religious belief systems say, “Follow these rules and you might appease the angry deity.” With the Christian faith, with the Gospel, with the God of the Bible, who all the Old Testament points to and finds its fulfillment in Jesus Himself, what you have is a God that provides everything necessary for you and for me to be reconciled to God Almighty in the person and work of Jesus Christ. The question is, will we wait on the Lord? Will we lift the empty hands of faith, and trust in Him, and rest in His promises as we wait on Him?

(Edited for Reading)