Every organization that does not recruit
new members will become extinct. Every year thousands of young teens are
recruited to join gangs. Teens who have a dysfunctional family and little
support are lured into the prospect of belonging to the “family” of the gang.
They are proposed loyalty, support, and a true sense of belonging. Many of the
initiation rites of gang members are designed to show the seriousness of their
commitment and the courage of their conviction. There are a variety of
initiation rites, everything from fighting your way out of a circle of gang
members, to participating in a theft or in extreme cases committing murder.
Whatever the initiation rite, it is designed to cost the prospective member so
that they show their commitment.
Gangs have a
high cost of membership. Their membership is costly because the promised reward
is great. They get to belong to something beyond themselves. Many of the gang
members have never experienced the true loyalty and love of a family are
desperate to belong and feel that sense of support from people who claim will
always have their back. Sadly, gang loyalty is a mirage. A good friend of mine
joined a gang in his earlier teens with the promise of people that will always be
there for him. One day he was arrested and facing up to 40 years in prison.
While he was standing in the court room, he turned towards the gallery to see
his loyal “family” who promised to always be there for him. Except when he
turned, he saw no one. He was alone. The loyalty and belonging was a mirage.
Gangs make
promises that they cannot deliver. And yet, their promises of belonging and
connection are woven into our very make up as individuals. We want to belong to
something beyond ourselves. We want loyalty and commitment. We want people to
stand with us regardless of what comes our way. We want our membership to a
community to mean something. Gang members want to experience “family.” And we
are no different. We all want to experience “family.” It is easy to see the
powerful allure of gang affiliation, which is why thousands of teens choose to
walk through the painful and costly initiation every day. And without even
knowing it, gangs are dimly reflecting a story that is far greater than the
loyalty of fallen man.
God promises
loyalty and belonging to his people. The difference is that his commitment to
keeping his promise or covenant is not like that of a gang member who bails at
the first sign of real trouble, but a promise that is an everlasting covenant.
Genesis 17 sets up the requirements and initiation rite of his covenant
community. Genesis 17 pictures one of the greatest events in all of redemptive
history. God makes his covenant with Abram, which marks off the boundaries of
the covenant community of God with a sign.
The Covenant Stated
Abram
has already been received promises from God. In Genesis 12:1-3, Abram is called
to leave his country and his kindred to go to the land that God will show him
to make him a great nation and to ultimately bless all the families of the
earth. In Genesis 15:1-6, God promises to give Abram a son and asks him to go
out and look at the night sky and to number the stars to see how numerable his
descendants would be and it says of Abram that, “he believed the Lord, and the
Lord counted it to him as righteousness.” (Gen. 15:6).
Abram did not earn righteousness, but it was given to him.
Abram has not been given requirements of the promise until Genesis 17. When
Abram was ninety-nine 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.” (Genesis 17:1-2)
The LORD appears to Abram, who is now 99
years old, and introduces himself as God Almighty, or El Shadday. El Shadday is
used throughout Genesis to show God’s ability to keep his promises specially to
make the barren fertile. Thirteen years had passed since Abram tried to fulfill
the promise himself by uniting with his maidservant Hagar to provide an
offspring. Hagar gave birth to Abram’s first son, Ishmael. God reminds Abram
with His name that He and He alone has the power to fulfill His promises. How
often have we tried to take God’s place to do what only He has the power to
accomplish?
God tells
Abram that he must walk before him and to be blameless. The language would have
reminded the readers of Noah in Genesis 6:9, “Noah was a righteous man,
blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.” Literally, Abram is to walk
before God wholly devoted to Him. Abram must totally surrender to The Lord, God
Almighty, his Eternal King. As God made a covenant with Noah by putting his bow
in the clouds, He is ready to make a covenant with Abram. The covenant is the
Lord’s. Nine times in this chapter we see God refer to the covenant as “my
covenant.” Abram gave the perfect response, Genesis 17:3, “Then Abram fell on
his face.” Abram bowed in humble submission.
God inaugurates this new era in redemptive
history by giving Abram a new name to clearly identify his promise.
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 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, and I will
be their God.” (Genesis 17:3-8)
God changes Abram’s name to Abraham to symbolize him being
the father of a multitude of nations. Remember in Genesis 12, God says to Abram
that, “I will make you a great nation,” but here it is a multitude of nations
clearly alluding to his promise to bless all the families of the earth. The
heart of this covenant is in the last five words, “I will be their God.” God
promises an everlasting covenant to be the God of the descendants of Abraham.
Notice the verb tense in Genesis 17:5,
“for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.” God has already
made Abraham into a multitude of nations before he even has received the child
of the promise. God’s Word always accomplishes its purpose. Isaiah 55:10-11,
“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but
water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and
bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall
not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall
succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10-11) God will fulfill
his promise.
The Covenant Sign
We
know that God will fulfill his promise, but how will Abraham and his
descendants show that they believe? God gives them a specific requirement in a
covenant sign so that they will be a clearly identified as his people. God has
already said what he is going to do, but now Abraham is receiving his marching
orders. Genesis 17:9-14,
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.”
The sign of given to Abraham is different than the sign given
to Noah. Circumcision, unlike the rainbow, has to be performed by human beings
to show their partnership in the covenant. Circumcision was a sign for the
people to be marked off as God’s covenant community. They were to show that
they were totally committed to God.
Circumcision
was a permanent sign in the flesh as a permanent reminder of the permanency of
the everlasting covenant of God. Circumcision was a painful, bloody initiation
rite into the people of God. It was not easy obedience. And yet, circumcision
was appropriate because it was a physical reminder that God promised physical
offspring to Abraham. That which provided the seed would carry the mark of
God’s people and would be a constant reminder of the promised seed that was to
come.
God establishes the seriousness of his
covenant by providing a poignant word play for his hearers, Genesis 17:14, “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.” One scholar notes,
The warning that
he “shall be cut off from his people” involves “a word play on cut. He that is
not himself cut (i.e. circumcised) will be cut off (i.e. ostracized). Here is
the choice: be cut or be cut off.” The one who will not submit to this painful
rite of covenant membership has disobeyed the covenant stipulation and thereby
broken God’s covenant. Therefore he has forfeited his privilege of being part
of God’s covenant community, and God requires his excommunication from the
community.
God takes his covenant very seriously. Circumcision played a
huge role throughout the history of God’s people.
How would
the Israelites in the wilderness have received this command? The Israelites
were being encouraged to continue with covenant faithfulness to God as they
entered into the land of the Canaanites. Israel needed to be distinct from the
surrounding world. God was very clear in his commandments, so wouldn’t all the
Israelites already have been circumcised? God commanded Joshua 5:5-7,
Though all the
people who came out had been circumcised, yet all the people who were born on
the way in the wilderness after they had come out of Egypt had not been
circumcised. For the people of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness,
until all the nation, the men of war who came out of Egypt, perished, because
they did not obey the voice of the LORD; the LORD swore to them that he would
not let them see the land that the LORD had sworn to their fathers to give to
us, a land flowing with milk and honey. So it was their children, whom he
raised up in their place, that Joshua circumcised. For they were uncircumcised,
because they had not been circumcised on the way. (Joshua 5:5-7)
A whole generation had not been circumcised because of the
sin of their waywardness of their parents. Now as they were becoming adults,
they needed to fulfill the covenant obligations. Understanding that the
original hearers were not circumcised underscores the importance of the
covenant sign. Will Israel continue to walk with God?
Outward
circumcision is no longer the sign of God’s people. God is not after an outward
circumcision, but the inward circumcision of the heart. Circumcision has been
replaced with baptism. Baptism is now the covenant sign of God’s people. Paul
makes this point explicitly in Colossians 2:11-14,
In him also you
were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the
body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him
in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the
powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead
in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive
together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the
record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside,
nailing it to the cross.
Being buried with Christ in baptism is a sign that you have
experienced the circumcision of Spirit.
Paul makes this point also in Romans 2.
Circumcision is no longer outward and physical, but it is a matter of the
heart. It is done by the Spirit. Paul was only drawing on Moses’s words in
Deut. 10:12-16,
“And now, Israel,
what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to
walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your
heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the
LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good? Behold, to the LORD your
God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.
Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring
after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. Circumcise therefore
the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. (Deuteronomy 10:12-16)
The only way we can experience the circumcision of the heart
is through the new covenant. Jeremiah 31:33-34,
For this is the
covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares
the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.
And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each
one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they
shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD.
For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
(Jeremiah 31:33-34)
And we demonstrate that we are children of New Covenant
through rites of baptism and the Lord Supper which ensure we live in
righteousness as God’s covenant community.
Baptism helps mark the boundaries for the
people of God. As circumcision clearly identified the people of God in the Old
Testament, baptism clearly marks the people of God in the New Testament. We all
were at one time dead in our trespasses and the uncircumcision of our flesh.
God fulfilled his everlasting covenant when he sent Jesus Christ to the cross.
Jesus canceled the record that stood against us. The demands for our sin was
literally nailed it to the cross and was paid in full by Christ. Therefore, for
anyone who turns from their sin and calls upon Christ in repentance and faith
is made alive by the Spirt. We are born again. We are new creatures in Christ.
The challenge in the West is that baptism
does not have the same cost as it does in the rest of the world. Circumcision
was painful and it was costly. It signified a permanent change. It is not
uncommon in America to have people baptized two or three times, but in places
where Christianity is vilified like in the Middle East and Asia, to be baptized
is costly. Many of our brothers and sisters enter into the baptismal waters
knowing that it may cost them their life. They literally understand the meaning
of being buried with Christ. Their baptism literally may mean their death.
Baptism is always costly because it says that you have died. You are no longer
your own, but you belong, both body and soul, in life and in death to God and
his Son Jesus Christ. Baptism is always costly because it came at the expense
of the death of God’s own Son.
Let us not trivialize membership in God’s
covenant community. In Abraham’s day, God said if you are not circumcised you
will be cut off from God’s people. So today, if you have not experienced the
circumcision of the heart, you will be cut off from God’s people. Baptism does
not save you, but is a sign that you have been saved. Have you experienced the
circumcision of the heart (i.e. believed by faith?) Have you been buried with
Christ in baptism? The New Testament does not see those as mutually exclusive,
but intimately connected.
The New Testament never explicitly
baptizes infants. Infant baptism became popular in the church in the 3rd
century under the leadership of Cyprian of Carthage. Paedobaptists, (those who
baptize infants) believe that as babies were circumcised, so to should babies
be baptized. Peter proclaims at Pentecost those all must, “Repent and be
baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins are
forgiven,” and then says, “for the promise is for you and for your children,”
recalling this passage in Genesis 17. Paedobaptists make their argument from
anaology and silence. (By analogy see above). When I say by silence, this means
that when they see households being baptized in the book of Acts, they assume
there would have been infants. The Jewish believers would have connected
baptism with circumcision so they would have naturally baptized infants. And
yet, they miss Peter’s clear exhortation to repentance and the end the end of
his quotation of Genesis 17 when he adds, “and for all who are far off,
everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself,” and who, “received his word.”
Circumcision is no longer outward and physical, but of the heart. Infants
cannot experience repentance and thus they should not be baptized.
We cannot lose the distinctiveness of the
covenant community. We are God’s people. We, like Abraham, are called to walk
before God and be blameless. Baptism cuts us off from the world and unites us
to Christ. Baptism is the entrance rite of the New Testament church as the
Lord’s Supper is the continual rite that marks us off from the world. We need
to celebrate baptism and the Lord’s Supper. God takes these signs very
seriously. He took circumcision in the Old Testament very seriously (even
excluding Moses from entering the promise land for failure to circumcise his
children) and thus, we should take baptism in the New Testament just as
seriously. It is not an add on for the Christian faith, but central to our
expression as the New Testament covenant community.
Abraham took the command of the Lord very seriously. After
receiving the sign, Abraham went that very day to obey. Genesis 17:22-27,
When he had
finished talking with him, 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 ninety-nine years
old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. And Ishmael his son
was thirteen 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.
The very first act of circumcision was done to all the people
of the house including Ishmael, the house servants, and even foreigners. We see
the beginning of the covenant people of God who chose to fully surrender to
God.
The Covenant Son
Abraham was not the only one who had their
name changed that day. God changed Sarai’s name to Sarah because she was going
to bear a son. Remember God’s introduction, He is El Shadday, God Almighty,
Genesis 17:15-21.
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 peoples 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
ninety 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 have
heard you; behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply
him greatly. He shall father twelve 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.”
Abraham didn’t fully believe God right away. He laughed at
God’s suggestion that Sarah could bear a child. We know he still trusted God
because he was willing to be circumcised and to circumcise his house.
Abraham walked in obedience even when he
did not fully understand, because he fully convinced that God was El Shadday,
God almighty who had the power to bring about his promises. Let me close today
with a call for all of us to have hope. In hope to believe against hope that
God is able. God is mighty to meet your needs. God is mighty to heal your
sickness. And God is mighty to save. Romans 4:18-25,
In hope he
believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he
had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he
considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a
hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No
unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in
his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what
he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.”
But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but
for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the
dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our
justification. (Romans 4:18-25)
The promise made to Abraham was written for our sake so that
we would be counted as righteous who believe that God delivered up Jesus for
our trespasses and raised him from the dead for our justification. God promised
an everlasting covenant to Abraham so we would always have hope in Christ.
Beloved, walk before God and live in righteousness as we await the blessed hope
of the appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
