GENESIS
ABRAHAM
Genesis 17:1-27
INTRODUCTION
It's been 24 years since God called Abram to follow Him from the city of Ur to the land of Canaan, 24 long years. During all that time great and wonderful things have occurred: the promise of blessing, the sojourn into Egypt, the split with Lot, the rescue of Lot, the covenant ratified by God (the smoking oven), and the episode of Hagar and Ishmael. Abram is now 99 years old. His life from a human perspective is winding down. Surely nothing more is on the horizon.
Human perspective many times is wrong. Starting with this chapter and concluding in chapter 22 Abram's life is going to take off like a rocket. During these next few years Abram is going to experience ecstasy, excruciating pain, and finally joy beyond all description. He will experience the birth of a beloved child, and finally a resurrection that is second only to Jesus'.
Most of us mistakenly think that in order for God to do something wonderful through us, He will need a lot of time. Actually, that is NOT true. Many times something which lasts only a few minutes can have far-ranging and far-reaching effects. For example, it does not take a long time for an earthquake to occur; it only lasts a few minutes at the most. Yet look at the devastation those few minutes can bring into the lives of so many people. We talk about the events of 9/11 as though it were a whole day; the truth is that the 2 planes crashed into the Twin Towers within just a few minutes of each other. Today we are still feeling the effects of those few minutes because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. God was not wasting Abraham's life for 100 years; He was waiting till Abraham was 100 years to produce an earthquake whose effects we are still experiencing today. In the same way, although you may not feel like God is doing anything in your life right now, don't think He won't do anything in the future. He may just be aligning the plates of your life into the proper to produce that spiritual earthquake in your life.
Moreover, whatever Abram's life teaches us, it teaches us that "it ain't over till it's over." Those Christian senior adults who act as if God made retirement only for the purpose of playing golf or dominoes need to take seriously the life of Abram. God is not finished operating in our lives until we draw our last breath here on earth. I want to be like Milton Cunningham and go out in a blaze of light. There is a precedent for Milton's attitude; it is the life of Abram.
GOD REPEATS THE COVENANT (17:1-8; 15-21)
God's Words Regarding Abraham (17:1-8)
"I am God Almighty . . ." (17:1)
Why does God begin His remarks with this description of Himself? Because God is about to announce something to Abram which seems impossible to happen. In fact the only reason that it is going to happen is that the God who is making this promise to Abram is Almighty. (The literal Hebrew words here are El Shaddai, the title to Amy Grant's classic Christian hit.)
Of all the different names given to God in the OT, the name El Shaddai is the one most associated with the stories of Abram. Whatever else God has shown about Himself in the story of Abram, the fact that He is almighty is the major attribute of Himself He has shown to Abram.
The other day we were studying chapter 1, book 4 of Mere Christianity. In that chapter C. S. Lewis was showing how creation reveals God to us. (That only makes sense since what is made reveals the person who made it, just like the painting reveals to some degree the painter.) To quote Lewis:
"Everything God has made has some likeness to Hmself.
Space is like Him in its hugeness . . . it is a sort of symbol of it [the hugeness], . . ."
Although space is like God in that both are HUGE, God is greater than the vastness of space since He created space. Now try to wrap your mind around that one aspect alone. Just think of the millions and millions of galaxies there are in the universe. (According to the head of the astronomy dept. at UT Austin, there are between 10 billion to 100 billion galaxies in our universe.) Our Milky Way galaxy is just one of them, and now just think about how huge that one galaxy alone is. It measures 100,000 light years in diameter (586,569,600,000,000,000 miles--5.9 quadrillion in length) and 10,000 light years in depth (590 trillion miles in depth)! In other words, if you travelled at the speed of light for 100,000 years, you could cross the entire length of the Milky Way. And that's just ONE galaxy! When you calculate the length of those 10 billion galaxies, you come up with 5.9 octrillion miles in length
(5,865,696,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles). The God we worship is Almighty. Don't you think then that whenever God says He is going to do something that He is going to be able to do it? Whatever our lives reflect, they should always reflect the awesome power of God.
Whenever some think about that awesome power in our lives, they immediately turn to the more spectacular miracles: healing the sick, raising the dead, etc. These are truly miracles indeed. Over the past 55 years though I have seen that the true miracles of God are those in which lives are transformed: teenagers who were skeptical about God are now excited about Him in their lives, people drowning in sensuality now experiencing the holiness of God, people who were hard are now the most loving of creatures, men who were distant at home now committed and devoted fathers and husbands. If God is so powerful that He can create this vast universe, then He is powerful enough to change your life.
Well, God is about to do something wonderful in Abram's life, and the only reason He is going to be able to do so is that He is God the ALMIGHTY! If God is telling you that He is about to do something wonderful in your life, He can do it because He is God Almighty.
As a token of His promise to fulfill that covenant, God changes Abram's name. God changes his name from Abram meaning "great father" to Abraham "the father of a multitude." Why does God change his name? To signify that God will make nations of him and that God will bring forth kings from his seed. Moreover, God will give the land of Canaan to his descendants as an everlasting possession.
HOWEVER, God does say that nations and kings, plural not singular (Jewish race), but nations and kings will come forth from Abraham and the selected seed. Who is God referring to here? He is referring not only to Abraham's selected physical seed but also to his selected spiritual seed, Christians. Whenever we exercise the faith of Abraham, we show that we are spiritually descended from Abraham (like father, like son). In this promise we see here the germ of God's vision of Abraham's spiritual descendants, Christians.
As a result this promise is much larger than can be imagined. It covers the races and multitudes throughout all ages and generations who have placed their faith in God and thus have actually become spiritual descendants of Abraham. From this vast group of people have emerged Christian kings such as Alfred the Great and great nations which have carried the standard for Christianity throughout the ages, especially western Europe.
This expanded vision also affects the concept of the land. As long as the promise refers to the Jewish people, the promise refers only to the land of Canaan promised to Abraham's selected physical descendants, the Jews. When it refers to Abraham's selected spiritual descendants, Christians, it refers to the whole world. Paul is referring to this when he writes:
"For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants
that he would be HEIR OF THE WORLD . . ." (Rom. 4:13)
Not just heir of Canaan as many think but heir of the world. Moreover, go back to the Sermon on the Mount. In the 3rd beatitude Jesus not only uses the word "bless" (referring back to the Abrahamic covenant), He also says that the gentle are blessed because they shall INHERIT THE EARTH! These descendants of Abraham shall one day fulfill the very purpose God had designed for mankind in the first place:
"Be fruitful and multiply,
and fill the EARTH, and SUBDUE IT;
and RULE over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky,
and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Gen. 1:28).
God's Words Regarding Sarah and Isaac (17:15-21)
In this event what we are seeing is the first hint of resurrection in the Bible. The Sadducees of Jesus’ day did not believe in the resurrection because they said it was not taught in the first 5 books of the Bible (the books written by Moses). This passage and Gen. 22 will show that resurrection actually is taught in the first 5 books of the Bible. Abraham’s body is dead reproductively; yet life springs from death—the very essence of resurrection. Paul claims that resurrection is the meaning of the event: “As it is written: ‘A father of many nations have I made you’ in the presence of Him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead . . . “ (Rom. 4:17).
God informs Abraham that although He is going to bless Ishmael and make of him a great nation since he IS Abraham's son, Ishmael is not the chosen seed, the chosen descendant. That son would come through Sarah and Sarah alone.
SEALING THE COVENANT (17:9-14)
The Purpose of Circumcision
The covenant, agreement has been made. Is that all? No. God understands man fully well. We are PHYSICAL creatures. For most of us the saying is true, "Out of sight, out of mind." We need constant reminders of our relationship with God.
Every year I like to make a trek down to Austin, TX. I loved attending the University of Texas, and I loved living in Austin. Although Austin to many may seem weird, to me it is the place where the Lord really got hold of my life and changed me. The house I lived in one summer right next to the university is still standing. Each year when I go to Austin, I like to drive by the university and especially by that little house. They bring back memories of the change Jesus made in my heart there.
We need physical reminders of our relationship with God. God places a PHYSICAL rainbow in the sky to remind us of His promise not to destroy the earth again with water. He gives us PHYSICAL baptism by immersion and PHYSICAL bread and wine to remind us of His death on Calvary. In light of this need God instructs Abraham to perform a surgical procedure upon his body and upon the bodies of his male descendants in order to remind them constantly of the agreement He had made with Abraham and his descendants, circumcision. Why circumcision? Whereas it is true that circumcision actually promotes health, more is involved. The main focus of the covenant, agreement with Abraham is on Abraham and the seed, the thing reproduced by Abraham's sex organ. The markings on the male sex organs focus attention on the seed, the future descendants and especially the descendant who will fulfill God's promise made first to Eve, then to Seth, Noah, Shem, and finally to Abraham.
Circumcision/Baptism NOT Necessary for Salvation
Unfortunately the Jews of Jesus' day misunderstood the significance of circumcision. They claimed that circumcision was basically the way God saved Abraham and hence all his descendants, physical as well as spiritual. A person might live a good life; however, he was not necessarily saved if he was not circumcised. In the same way a person might lead a bad life and still make it to heaven because he was circumcised.
Paul though argued that circumcision had nothing to do with salvation. Paul was 8 days old when he was circumcised, and yet he was as lost as a goose until Jesus stopped him dead in his tracks on the journey to Damascus. Forget Paul though. More importantly, Abraham, the father of the faith, the one who got the ball rolling, was saved or made right with God a full 24 years BEFORE he was circumcised (Gen. 15:6 versus Gen. 17). Well, if Abraham the father of the faith was made right with God before he was circumcised, then his sons are likewise saved apart from circumcision. In fact, the way Abraham was saved is the way ALL his descendants are saved. He was saved, made right by faith and faith alone (Gen. 15:6); so if we are truly his descendants and thereby saved, then we too are saved only by faith. (This is precisely Paul’s argument in Rom. 4:1-12 and Gal. 3:6-14.)
This line of reasoning not only applies to circumcision but also to any other thing we might try to add to salvation: baptism (either sprinkling or immersion), the 7 sacraments, reading the Bible, going to church, etc. Why don’t they have a part in our salvation? Because they had no part in the salvation of Abraham, the father of the faith. Faith and faith alone brought Abraham into a right relationship with God, and faith and faith alone in Christ on our part saves us. Yes, we are to be baptized just like Abraham was circumcised in order to highlight what Christ has done for us; however, neither circumcision nor baptism play any role in our salvation.