[Text: Genesis 17)

Scripture Intro: When most men get married, they discover that there is “clean” and then there is “CLEAN.” We just didn’t know how deep the cleaning could go. In this passage, God is teaching Abram about how deep his need of cleansing goes.

[Read and pray]

Intro: When asked about his volunteer efforts in the post-Katrina clean-up Doug reflected, “His name was Tuli and he'd been sleeping on a soggy mattress for two months. After he had dragged the remnants of his bed from his house, he'd wrapped it in plastic and put it under a blue tarp suspended by bent chainlink-fence posts. Leaning against broken cinder blocks around him were framed wedding photographs of his son and daughter-in-law. Welcome to post- Katrina Biloxi, Mississippi.”

He went on, “I arrived in Biloxi on November 7, 2005, for five days of volunteer work but quickly realized that even 500 days would not be enough…. (When the storm hit the coast) (r)oof shingles peeled off, exposing attics packed with diplomas and books, while sediment-laden seawater poured through shattered windows. Shoes floated through hallways, saturated teddy bears tangled with sewing machines, and Cheerios boxes wrapped around bedposts. Closet rods snapped from the weight of soggy clothes. The violence was absolute and unrelenting…

At the base camp, we volunteers armed ourselves with sledge hammers, pickaxes, crowbars, and shovels to drag out a family's wrecked belongings and then strip the house. Walls, insulation, ceilings, flooring—anything that was not a 2-by-4 had to go. The work dislodged showers of dust and muck that mingled with our sweat. Face masks blocked the airborne riffraff but did little to filter the stomach-churning stenches that emanated from kitchens. What had been food was now blackened masses of quivering rot, fermented in the subtropical heat of a late Mississippi summer. Once our task was complete, the frame of the house could be sprayed by professionals, killing the toxic mold that had blossomed as the floodwaters receded.”[1]

The effects of Katrina went far beyond and lasted much longer than the winds and the waves of the hurricane itself. The gulf coast was marred and spoiled by the filthy water that stagnated and bred disease in peoples’ homes.

FCF: Like that stagnant water, sin marred everything after the fall, especially human nature. Only we couldn’t tear down our nature and rebuild it from scratch. We couldn’t fix ourselves. Our natures had turned from being beautiful and right in God’s eyes to being marred and broken and wrong. Just think back on some of the story we’ve heard so far…Cain, Lamech, all humanity before the flood, drunken Noah, cursed Canaan, even Abram’s deception and deep unbelief… everything we’ve heard about only confirms what our own hearts tell us. We always stand in need of the cleansing work of God to purify our hearts that are marred by sin.

The grace of this passage is that God gives a sign that what we need most has become reality. Cleansing was real for Abram, the sign told him so. And it is real for you, too, as God himself has come to cleanse you and draw you to himself.

When the LORD appeared to a then 99 year old Abram, he made himself known in a new way – as God Almighty – and then he gives two commands to Abram: “walk before me and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you….” This is what we call covenant obligation. When two parties enter into a covenant relationship they make promises to each other. God has already made promises to Abram and now God tells Abram what he expects of him; walking in relationship with God and being holy just as God is holy.

What would your reaction be to such a command from the Almighty God? I think mine should be like Abram’s in v. 3. He knows he isn’t blameless. He remembers his lies down in Egypt that flowed out from his unbelief in God’s power to protect him. He remembers his poor treatment of Hagar in the aftermath of trying to use broken, human means of making life right again. He feels his need of cleansing from his sinful, broken nature and so he falls down on his face before the LORD in a position of deep humility.

But the LORD doesn’t leave him there. God immediately confirms what He has already promised in chapters 12 and 15; (v. 4) God’s covenant IS with Abram. The promises of Land, Seed and Blessing are all restated with a significant additional promise (in vv.7-8) that the LORD will be God to both Abraham and his offspring forever in the covenant.

That is how the LORD deals with us when we come humbly to him, not making excuses for our brokenness, not blaming others for our sin, not pretending everything is okay and we’re basically “good people.” God knows Abram’s need and he knows our need. Do you feel that need for cleansing?

Abram gets a new name as part of the deal to encourage him that God will do all He has promised in His covenant with Abram (now Abraham). The irony of his old name meaning “exalted father” will be left behind and he will be Abraham, the “father of a multitude.” This is foreshadowing the beginning of the fulfillment of the promise to bless Abraham with offspring; offspring who would eventually bring blessing to all the families of the earth.

In v. 9 the LORD turns from talking about what He will do to what Abraham is to do. Abraham is to be circumcised along with every male born in his house or foreigner who belongs to Abraham.

Circumcision wasn’t a new thing and it didn’t originate with Abraham in this moment. Nearly every ancient Near East society practiced it, from the Egyptians to the Mesopotamian peoples. But their practice was typically to circumcise their men at the time of puberty or just before marriage as a mark of manhood or as a sort of sacrifice to ensure fertility.

But here God re-appropriates the sign. It would include the promise of offspring for Abraham but God extends it his infant children as well to say that it is about more than just procreation and it is about more than humanity’s ability to obey the covenant. This is a call to recognize and embrace the power of God to cleanse us from our brokenness God Almighty commands Abraham to be circumcised to demonstrate that cleansing is His work alone.

The act of circumcision, the cutting off of flesh, was symbolic of human need for cleansing, the removal of the sinfulness that became a part of us after the fall. By making this the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham, a covenant that looked toward the restoration of humanity to intimacy with the LORD, God has two goals:

to humble them with a life-long, constant reminder of their need for cleansing before the LORDto point them to the reality of cleansing already accomplished in their covenant relationship with the LORD.

God is saying that circumcision is more than just a sign pointing to a reality, it is a seal that that reality has already come into being when it is received by faith. As Abraham hears and obeys the covenant sign he is demonstrating his faith that the LORD is able to do and has already done that which He has promised. He believes that, because God is faithful to the covenant, Abraham stands before God as blameless, as holy…and as clean as God has commanded. He believes it and he acts accordingly by embracing the sign.

The greatness of the promise circumcision points toward is why failure to obey the sign carries such harsh consequences in v. 14. Failure to take hold of the sign is a failure of faith in the LORD. There can be no cleansing apart from faith in the LORD!

And there can be no cleansing that comes by human effort. That’s the significance of the next section starting in v. 15 as the LORD promises that He will display his power once again by making a 99 year old man a father and a 90 year old woman a mother. Abraham laughs and I would have, too. But then he asks if the LORD would bless his own efforts to make life right by establishing His covenant with Ishmael, his son by Hagar the servant. But God will not allow it because you can’t fix brokenness through brokenness. If the promised offspring who would bring blessing to the whole world is to come, he will come by the power of the LORD himself and not through human effort.

Nevertheless, God will bless Ishmael. It will be an earthly blessing, however, and not eternal blessing in the covenant. Cleansing and restoration will come by the power and action of God alone and He will do it through the offspring He promised long ago. Sarah (who gets a name change, too) will bear a son and his name will be Isaac because Abraham laughed at the plan of God. And God chose Isaac, a child not yet born, and sets His covenant love on him to bless him and use him to be a blessing to the whole world.

When God finished talking Abraham has work to do. He lines up every male in his house and obeys the LORD by circumcising everyone from himself to his son to the least of his servants that very day. Abraham takes hold of the sign of the covenant eagerly in faith that God is powerful to do what He has promised. Not only will God give him a son through Sarah, but there is hope that his deep need of cleansing, the removal of his sinful nature, is being accomplished in the same covenant with the LORD.

The nation of Israel would later misunderstand the sign of circumcision. They began to take it as a thing of pride, forgetting that it was meant to humble them and remind them of their need for cleansing. They began to take it as a marker of ethnic identity, forgetting that it was meant for anyone, not just those of Abraham’s bloodline.

The LORD would remind Israel that circumcision was always about more than just an external rite or ethnic identifying marker. It is the deep need (and gracious provision) of heart cleansing that circumcision is all about since their nature was broken just like Abraham’s. God told them through Moses to circumcise their hearts and stop being stubborn in Deuteronomy 10. But the people couldn’t do it themselves (just like Abraham couldn’t bring about his own cleansing before the LORD and couldn’t make God’s promises come true through his own efforts). So God tells them through Moses that there will come a day when “the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” (Deuteronomy 30:6 ESV)

That day came when the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified.

(Colossians 2:9-14) “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. 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.”

In the bloody sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, God cut off our sinful natures and cleansed us more deeply and fully than we could ever hope. God did what our weak efforts couldn’t do. He came to us in power, in the flesh, and made us alive with Christ. He forgave our sin and nailed our brokenness to the cross, leaving it there. The blood of Christ has accomplished what the bloody rite of circumcision anticipated, the removal of our sinful flesh and the restoration of the righteousness we lost because of our sin. We are cleansed and given the very righteousness of Christ himself and we receive it just like Abraham…by faith in the One who makes the promises.

And so the bloody rite of circumcision is replaced in the New Testament by the sign and seal of baptism, the washing with water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. A bloody act is no longer necessary because Jesus shed his blood once for all. And just like circumcision, it is not merely the external sign that saves! We must look in faith to Christ! It is only by his blessing and work that what is symbolized in baptism becomes a reality in our hearts.

Baptism becomes the sign and seal of God’s promises as God comes to us through it displaying His power to save. Like circumcision, it is not about your response to God or your ability to cleanse yourself through your obedience. On the contrary, it points us both to our deep need (and God’s full provision) of cleansing from our sin through the death of Christ. More than that! It points us to the new life we have because of our union with Christ in His resurrection!

Circumcision was a constant reminder for Abraham of God’s promises to him. It would have been a comfort to him and an encouragement and a strength to him that God is powerful to bring about the cleansing and redemption He has promised.

As for you who have been baptized, think on your baptism, especially you who were baptized as children. Look to it with faith in Christ and be strengthened by the sign that God has come to you and set his love on you in Christ and has cleansed you of all your sin and brokenness and has made you alive with Christ and will always keep you because He has promised that He will.

Application: As you look on your life and see the remnant and reality of brokenness, the sign and seal of baptism is meant to point you to the truer reality; that God has cleansed you so fully in His sight through the blood of Christ that no stain or blemish or other mar remains. When God looks at you he no longer sees a broken rebel, but He sees his own beloved child who is united to Christ by faith.

So, let the freedom God has given you lead you away from the sin that so easily entangles us and let us continue to look to Christ and our union with Christ in our baptism. You have been cleansed. You have been given a new heart that is not enslaved to sin. Don’t return yourself to slavery again when Christ has set you free to begin living in the beauty that God intended in the beginning!

But remember, too, that Christ has cleansed our hearts for a purpose just like Abraham. Mike Williams says that the “outward rite of the covenant symbolized the gracious promise of God…and the inner (cleansing) necessary for the life of covenant mission.”[2] That means that our restoration to a right standing before God, the cleansing from sin and the renewal of our hearts, is meant to lead us and empower us in the work God has for us. And so we are freed to go into the world, proclaiming the victory of God in Christ, calling all people to repentance and faith in him and ourselves working to bless others with our deeds of love and service.

There is a backward facing aspect to baptism as it deals with our need of cleansing from a broken past. There is a present aspect to baptism as it promises life and mission for us now. And there is a forward looking aspect to baptism as well. Our confession says that it is a sign and a seal of “our engagement to be the Lord’s.” God has not united you to Christ in this life only and your baptism is meant to point you to the time to come when the fullness of our salvation is revealed; when Christ comes again to make all things new. On that day you who look to Christ now with eyes of faith will see him with your own eyes. We will join with all of those who have been washed and cleansed by the blood of the Lamb saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb! ...Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” (Revelation 7:10-12)

[1] A reflection by Doug George on his volunteer work post-Katrina found at http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2006/01/fieldwork2.html

[2] In Far As the Curse Is Found by Michael Williams, 130.