1. Long time no see! (1-2)

Last week in Genesis chapter 16, we caught up with the story of Abram that we left off a year ago. Back in Genesis chapter 12 you recall how God chose a man through whom he would put into effect his plan of salvation for humankind. He promised Abram that a great people would come from him, a people who would be uniquely God’s people. He promised him a Land, and a special blessing. This blessing would not be just for him and his family. God promised that through the seed of Abram blessing would come to the whole world. 

But Sarai had born Abraham no children. And Abram and Sarai had to wait an awful long time for God’s promise to show any sign of appearing. And when their faith faltered, they both had a go at improving on God’s promises. Back in chapter 15 it was Abraham who got sick of waiting for God to come good on his promise of a son and so, following ancient custom, he adopted his servant Eliezer as his heir. But God said, no Abram, this man is not to be your heir. He re-affirmed his promise and Abram set about the hard work of waiting again. Then ten years later, it is Sarai who gets sick of waiting. She concluded that she must be just not good enough for God to use to bring about his promise, and she asks Abram to have a child by her maidservant Hagar, another normal cultural practice of the time. But again God corrects them and yet again restates his promise that the child will come from Abram and Sarai, not from Hagar. 

Now Abram was eighty six when that happened, and look at how today’s passage opens. “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him…”

Abraham’s stretched faith
We don’t know exactly how long they waited between the time God spoke his first promises to Abram in chapter 12 and when he spoke in chapter fifteen. But it was several decades. And when God did speak again it was to tell them to wait longer. And then ten years after that God tells them to wait longer again. And then he speaks here fifteen years later. They have been waiting now for half a century to have a child! No wonder they think it’s impossible. No wonder they have tried several times to force God’s hand. No wonder the New Testament commends Abraham for his faith and patience.

Hearing God is not normal!
Now as well as being an example of faith, the story of Abram highlights something else too. And that is, it is not normal for God to appear and speak to people in visions, even in the bible. There are those who urge us to seek dreams and visions and miraculous signs from God as part of our everyday Christian experience. But the fact is, it was never a normal part of the life of faith, even for the great ones of the bible story, like Abraham, or Moses, or even the Apostles. Miracles are miraculous because they are the exception, not the rule, even in the bible. Look at Abraham. Yes as God’s chosen instrument through whom would come the child of the Promise, he was a very special person. But even to him God only appeared very rarely in his long life. Even for Abraham it was the exception not the rule. When God speaks here, it has been a quarter of a century since his last personal appearance to Abraham. Just once in twenty five years has Abraham received a supernatural visitation from the Lord. For the rest of the time, he was in exactly the same situation we are in. He had to live in faith, a normal, uneventful life in his own culture and world.

That it was something extraordinary, even for Abraham, shows in his reaction to God’s appearing. He falls facedown before God. This is the effect that an appearance of God, or even an angel of God, always has on people in Scripture. 

When people saw Jesus in his glory, they had the same reaction. Remember Peter’s reaction when he saw the miracle of the fishes when Jesus first called them as his disciples. He fell down and cried in depair, “Depart from me Lord for I am a sinful man.” 

Abraham’s response here is the right one, when he falls prostrate before the Lord, because he recognizes that only the great mercy of God can save him, as a sinful human being, from God’s righteous justice and judgement on sin.

2. As For Us... (3-22)
Covenant Promises & Duties
What does God say to Abraham? He says what he has always said. He reiterates his promise, which he has made by solemn oath and covenant. As the writer to the Hebrews says “Men swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument.” That’s the purpose of God’s oath to Abraham. It seals the matter once and for all, it confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. But unlike men, who swear by something greater, there is none greater than God and so he swears by his very self. He is the one who cannot lie. Did you know although God is Almighty and Infinite in power, there is one thing that God cannot do? He cannot lie, because He is Truth itself.

So God reaffirms his covenant oath. But then he goes on to reveal to Abram some of what this covenant will mean for the parties it involves. And you notice that each paragraph or section in these verses starts with the words, “As for so-and-so…” As for me, says God and then he sets out the implications of the covenant for him. Then it’s “as for you,” meaning Abraham, in verses 9 to 14. Then “as for Sarai”, and “as for Ishmael”. Let’s look quickly at each of these, before we see how it all affects us today.

As For Me… (3-8)
Verse 3:
3…God said to him,  4 ‘‘As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations.  5 No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations.  6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.  7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.  8 The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.” 

Okay, Abraham, this is my side of the deal, says God. And the first sign of the covenant he gives Abram is to change his name. God gives two signs in this passage. One is a change of names, and the other is the sign of circumcision. What both have in common is that they are vivid and daily reminders of God’s faithful promises. Now, whenever Abram introduces himself to anyone, he will remember that he is no longer Abram, which means “exalted father”, but Abraham, meaning father of many peoples, and he could not help but remember God’s promise.

There is nothing new in what God says, and the same is true throughout scripture, and in our own lives too. What we need to hear is not something new and exciting, but, as one hymn writer has put it, “tell me the old old story.” We don’t need new revelation from God, we simply need to be reminded time and again of God’s faithfulness to us in his promise to save the world through the offspring of Abraham, the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Notice that the covenant begins and ends, not with what we do at all, but with God’s promise to do it for us. The eternal Covenant of God is a promise of salvation that is undeserved, unearned and unlooked for. Abram never sought God and his blessing. Abram never deserved God’s blessing by being a good bloke. God simply chose to come to Abram and put his blessing on him. And both the Old and New Testament writers make it plain that Abraham simply took God at his word and believed his promises. We are saved only by simply trusting God to save us and giving up our own hopes of justifying ourselves by our own goodness. In verses 3 to 8 here, God is simply saying to Abraham, or rather saying again to Abraham, I have chosen you and I am going to bless you. Believe it or not! This is what I am going to do for you and your descendants. I am going to be their God, their Lord, their saviour and I’m going to bless them whether they like it or not, because I’m that kind of God! I’m not the kind of God that has to be bribed or coerced like the gods of human imagination. I’m the true God, and I am the God of grace, not of works, who saves his people out of sheer undeserved love.

As For You... (9-14)

But then God goes on in verses 9 to 14 to tell Abram that although there is nothing he can do to contribute to this salvation, God’s covenant choice of him has certain implications for how he will live his life in this world. He says: “9 Then God said to Abraham, ‘‘As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come.” The covenant is unilaterally implemented by God, but it is bi-lateral in obligation. That is, both God and Abraham are bound by it. And this is Abraham’s part of the deal. He is to keep God’s covenant. That means he is to guard it, cherish it, and show that he accepts it and values what God has said in it, by obeying its stipulations. The first of these covenant stipulations is that he is to bear the mark of the covenant. He is to circumcise himself and all the male members of his household and all his descendants from now on are to bear this mark as a sign of the covenant promises of God.

Now why circumcision? There are several reasons that this is an excellent sign of God’s covenant promise.

1. It involves cutting and blood. In these times, a covenant was made by sacrificing animals, as we saw in chapter 15. In fact, the term for making a covenant is literally to cut a covenant. So the cutting of the foreskin reminded Abraham that God had cut his covenant with him, that God had given his solemn oath that these promises would come true.
2. It involves the male reproductive organ. It was by reproduction that Adam passed on his new fallen sinful nature outside the garden of Eden. Not that sex is intrinsically evil, it isn’t, it is a gift of God. But is by sexual reproduction that humanity spread and that sin spread with them, over the face of the earth. Also, the promise is to the seed of Abraham. The child of the promise who will come from Abraham’s own descendants.

Now circumcision was not something new and unknown among Middle Eastern peoples. But the reason and timing God gives Abram are something completely new. For many peoples around the world, including some Aboriginal tribes, it was a rite of passage, an initiation into manhood. But this is something different. Abram’s descendants are not to be circumcised at age twelve or thirteen when they become officially men, but as 8 day old children. And again that is because this is sign, not of something we do, but of God’s promises. An 8 day old child can do nothing to earn its salvation. Yet that is when the sign of the covenant is administered, and as that child grows up he will continually have that mark on his body to remind him that God has chosen him by grace to be one of his people. Of course, administering it on the 8th day of life is also a far kinder practice than its use as a rite of passage by other peoples! An 8 day old child will not remember the pain of it, and will heal far quicker than an adult or older child. Abram himself was not so lucky of course! Nor was Ishmael and all the other males in his household.

Now what about the physical sign of circumcision today? Do we still need it? The unequivocal answer of the New Testament is no. It has been superseded by the sign of the New Covenant, Baptism. And the obvious parallel between circumcision and baptism is one of the strongest arguments for the practice of infant baptism of the children of believing families.

Now Circumcision is, like Baptism, the sign of the covenant, not the substance. It is a result, not a cause of God’s choice and salvation. And the New Testament makes a big thing about the fact that Abraham received the covenant promises by faith alone, long before he was circumcised, and hundreds of years before the law of Moses was given. It is not by religious rituals like circumcision or baptism that we are saved. It is not by keeping the ten commandments or any of the other of God’s Law. Like Abraham, we are saved by faith in God’s promises alone.

Furthermore, both the Old and the New Testament writers reveal that there is another circumcision that is far more important than that done in the flesh by human hands, and that is the circumcision of our hearts. Our inner being must be indelibly marked by God’s Holy Spirit with the true sign of the covenant, namely a heart that belongs to him.

As for Sarai... (15-17)
Well in verses 15 to 17, God speaks about how the covenant will affect Sarai. ‘‘As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah.” God puts Sarai on an equal footing with Abraham.” Just as he has renamed Abram as Abraham, he also renames her, as an indication that she also belongs to God and is under the covenant, despite not being a circumcised male. Furthermore, like Abram, she too will be blessed, and she will be the means by which the promise will come about.

“I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.” 

As For Ishmael... (18-20)

Then in verses eighteen to twenty, we see, as we did last week, that God’s grace under the covenant extends even to the child who is the result of human sinfulness and their attempts to fulfil the promise by human effort and not by faith. Ishmael too will be blessed and like Abraham will be the father of many nations. 

The Child of Promise—Isaac (16,19,21)

But the promise will not be fulfilled through him, but rather through Isaac who is to be born of Sarah. The promises to Ishmael only extend to this life and to earthly fulfillments, whereas through Isaac will come the true child of Promise, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will bring about the true, the spiritual, the eternal, the cosmic fulfillment of the covenant.

3. The Obedience of Faith (23-27)
The final verses show how Abraham obeys God because of his faith. His response of faith begins with, of all things, a laugh! Verse sixteen says “Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, ‘‘Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?””

Sometimes, when you think about how great God’s grace to us is, and how impossible his promises, it makes you laugh, not in unbelief or scorn, but in wonder, relief and joy. “How can it be,” as the hymn writer asks, “that I should gain an interest in the Saviour’s blood? Died he for me, who caused his pain, for me who him to death pursued? Amazing love, how can it be, that thou my God should’st die for me?” 

And Abraham’s laughter here points forward as a type not only of the laughter of faith that marvels that one so sinful as me or you should be saved by God, but also of that laughter that will be ours on the last day, when Jesus comes to take us home and to fulfil everything he promised Abraham. Then our joy will be complete. 
But in the meantime, there is a walk to walk. And we see in the concluding verses of this chapter how Abraham is a model, not just of faith, but of the obedience that comes from faith. Right away he does what God commands. He and all his household are circumcised.

Conclusion: As For Us…!
Now what does this all mean for us? The New Testament says that God’s promises all find their Yes and their Amen in Jesus. He is the Seed of Abraham. He is the child of Promise, and through him God makes and keeps his eternal covenant with humanity.

Now did you notice from Genesis 17 how God’s Covenant came to Abraham? It comes the same way to us. Does God come and say, “Listen here old chap, how about we make a deal? How about we sit down and draw up a contract and decide on the terms? No! He says simply, “as for me, this is my covenant with you.” Notice that it’s God’s covenant with Abram. God does not say, this is your covenant with me, or even this is our covenant. This is my covenant with you. God unilaterally implements the covenant and its terms. This is my covenant with you he says. He invites us to take it or leave it, but not to modify it or propose an alternative one. We cannot ourselves decide its terms and content. And yet so many people try to deal with God in just that way. They try to make their own contract with God. They say to God, how about I do this or that or the other for you God? How about I make a pilgrimage, or engage in this ritual activity? How about I worship you in this way or that way. Would you like a statue? That’d be good wouldn’t it? If I try to live a good life and not be too bad, how about you reward me with heaven? That’s a fair enough arrangement isn’t it? It’s like Paul Hogan’s character Crocodile Dundee in the first movie of that series, when he says “yeah, me and God, we’d be mates I reckon.” But that’s not how it works. God decides, not us, what his terms are for a right relationship with Him, and for how we are to worship him. 

The writer to the Hebrews sums up the attitude of the New Testament to the oath God made to Abraham.  It says in Hebrews 6, “God did this so that…we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”

Do you have that sure and certain anchor for the soul? Has you heart been circumcised by faith? Do you have the hope that Abraham had? A hope based entirely on the grace of God and his promise to us in the child of the Promise, the seed of Abraham, Jesus, God’s own Son? That hope, that one hundred percent assurance of salvation, can come only by faith in the eternal promises of God. 
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