Genesis 17

Who are you?  What are you doing here?  More importantly, who does God say you are?  And finally, what’s the purpose He’s given you? Each of those questions are reflected in the story of Abraham and Sarah. Their experience with promises, faith, doubt, and questions are all highly relatable to me.  How about you?

Leaning into God for our identity can be the most transformative thing that happens to us in our lives. 

Transcript

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Who are you? What are you doing here? More importantly, who does God say that you are? And finally, what is the purpose that God has given to you? Welcome to Meet Me in the Word. I am for real, glad that you have joined us today. Each of those questions are reflected in our passage today, which is Genesis chapter seventeen, and none of them are particularly light. Go ahead and open up your copy of the scriptures over there, once again Genesis seventeen. By the way, my hope for us today is to really just kind of let this story sink in and then to kind of consider it and our own connection and relationship with God sort of as a as a result of having read this and and thought about it. We're going to dive right into this, but before that, let's pray. Jesus, thank you for just the reality that you know us better than we know ourselves. God, we're here to meet with you. Would you meet with us? Amen. All right, Genesis seventeen. When Abram was ninety nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am God almighty, walk before me faithfully and be blameless. Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers. Abram fell face down and God said to him, As for me, this is my covenant with you. You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram, your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations, I will make you fruitful, I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. 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. The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you, and I will be their God. Then God said to Abram, Abraham, as for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep. Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come, every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner, those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any circ any uncircumcised male who has not been circumcised in the flesh will be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant. God also said to Abraham, As for Sarai, your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai. Her name will be Sarah. 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. Abraham fell face down, 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? And Abraham said to God, if only Ishmael might live under your blessing. Then God said, Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard you, I will surely bless him, I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation, but my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year. When he had finished speaking with Abraham, God went up from him. On that very day Abraham took his son Ishmael and all those born in his household or bought with his money, every male in his household, and circumcised them, as God told him. Abraham was ninety nine years old when he was circumcised, and his son Ishmael was thirteen. Abraham and his son Ishmael were both circumcised on that very day, and every male in Abraham's household, including those born in his household or bought from a foreigner, was circumcised with him. All right, let's take a moment just to pause and listen to God. You can pause this podcast if you'd like. Let's take some time now and just kind of hang out with this story a little bit. We will work through it kind of systematically, but I might bounce just a little bit here and there just to bring out certain themes. But the first thing I really wanted to pull out is there have been 13 years between the last sentence of Genesis chapter 16 to the first sentence of Genesis chapter 17. And I was just thinking, have you ever waited 13 years for something to take place in your life? Like that's more than a blip on the radar screen, isn't it? Like that's a significant amount of time. And sometimes life is like that. We we do have things that enter into our lives. And for for Abram and Sarai, who became obviously Abraham and Sarah, they had been waiting a long time. And while they go through these seasons of questioning and doubt amidst their faith, there there is just kind of a genuine human understanding here that like it's not it's not like God made a promise and then, you know, six months later it all started to happen and things were were moving along. No, this is years, even uh into decades that it's taking for all of this to come to fruition. I'll bet that some of you uh that are listening to this are you you do have something in your life that's that's taken a while for it to come about. And I would encourage you, in the midst of your waiting, continue to seek God. He is good and his timing is perfect. All right. I asked you some questions at the beginning, and let's highlight them as they pertain to the text. So the first one is who are you, right? Um and that really is an important question, and usually we just answer that question with our names. And in this case, their names are actually changed, uh, and the covenant in the context of those name changes uh is reiterate reiterated to both of them in kind of different ways, way specific to them, but but certainly it's all it's all consistent. So Abram becomes Abraham, and uh so his identity literally changes. Who does God say that you are? Well, for him, uh the meaning of his name, Abram, which meant uh exalted father, it still means that, uh, and then to Abraham, which is a father of a multitude. So both pretty cool names, uh to be honest, but there's definitely a shift. Uh you you were this and and now you are uh that. And then for Sarai, she goes from Sarai to Sarah. Again, who does God say that you are? She went from being princess, Sarai, to noble woman in Sarah. And we see that name change there in verses 15 and 16. Uh Abram's part of this is verses 3 through 8. I don't think I said that at the beginning, but just if you're trying to track along, uh, that's where we were pulling those uh different things from. And then, you know, uh kind of that question of what are you doing here, right? Like, and that really is to do with land. And it's interesting to me that the promise and the covenant that God makes with Abraham is absolutely connected to descendants. And we've talked about this a little bit in previous weeks. It's to do with descendants and making him into this great nation, but a nation needs a place to be, so it's also about the land. And so the land that he was residing in, but residing in as an outsider, as a the NASB, I think says sojourner, but a foreigner. It wasn't his, but he was he was just there. God's saying, look, this will be yours. And if you go back uh to Genesis 15, God actually has Abraham, you know, kind of walk the length and the and the width of the land to just understand uh the nature and the the range maybe of of God's promise to them. So all of that is happening for them. And then that that last question, like, what is your purpose? What's the purpose that God has given you for them? Their purpose was birthed, no pun intended, or maybe I did, whoa, uh, was birthed in the promise that God gave them, right? So their identity, their mission in life was all formed in their relationship and their connection with God. I just think that's really interesting and and cool for us to consider, even for ourselves. Then let's talk about this covenant of circumcision, and it really, you know, talks quite a bit about it between verses 9 and 14. And I don't think you need me to explain to you sort of what the text says, but it prompts me, uh, whenever this subject comes up to think about like why? Why, why this? And the question I've had more than once has been like, why did God choose circumcision uh as that particular physical act over something else? Like, I kind of get it, and I and I hope that you do as well. Like, it's the sign of of the promise of the covenant, it's a physical thing, like it could be, yeah, it it's it's all of those different things, but why did God choose that act over something else that would maybe also be physical, something to do with a person's hands or their just some other part of their body? Why, why that? And uh, you know, we're not told exactly the reason, you know, kind of like the logic behind uh that that specific act, but people have done some thinking about it, and I wanted to share just a couple of thoughts here. And these are things that we hold a little more loosely, but they might help us to make some sense of it. Uh one of the uh ideas that's presented is this idea of separation from sin. So it's just the act of cutting itself, uh, cutting away the corrupt flesh and the worldly desires, uh, being distinct, I think is it's like it's a metaphor. It's uh that's present in that. So just sort of that's uh symbolism that's carried there. And then the other part is this sense of devotion, uh applying the mark to uh to the man's reproductive organ or the male reproductive organ, they do it when they're when they're little. It's a physical acknowledgement that human life and generations belong to God. And so there's this trust that's I think baked into it. And again, was that actually you know what God was thinking when he said, This is what I'm you know, gonna mark you with in terms of of the sign of the covenant? I don't know for sure, but there does seem to be some richness there for us, just to kind of consider that. Spiritually speaking, and I want to make sure that I brought this out for us as Jesus followers. Circumcision doesn't carry any spiritual significance for us. And if you have questions about this part of things, uh I would encourage you to read uh Galatians in particular in the New Testament, especially chapter four, starting at verse 21 through to chapter 5, verse 12. And really the whole book addresses the Jew versus the Gentile issue. But this part actually speaks directly to Sarah and Hagar. So, like right back to this particular story that we've been talking about so far, and then uh the circumcision and the promise and how that relates to us as people who who follow Jesus, we're we're aligned with him. And so if you know, kind of working out like what place does that have for us today, uh, go to go to Galatians and even in Romans, it gets talked about in the in the earlier sections of it. You can go back and uh and find those those bits there, especially Romans chapters uh two and three, address circumcision and the law as a whole in general. I hope that's helpful for you as you navigate that. Ultimately, um we we just see that that God is absolutely blessing uh uh Abraham and Sarah and their descendants, including Ishmael, right? Including uh the son of Hagar and and both uh you know, both Sarah and Abraham and Hagar really have said, Lord, you know, what what do we do with all of this now that we have it here? Uh and uh and and God says, Yeah, I've I've heard you about that. I I've I've I've heard your request and I will bless him, but he won't be uh the son of the covenant. He's there's a promise there for sure, but it's it's going to be different. The covenant is with Isaac specifically. All right. I really want to just leave you with one thing to hang out with for yourself, and that's that very simple but profound question. How has God changed your identity, right? Who are you? What are you doing here? Who does God say you are? What's your purpose? All of those things kind of baked into that. But how has God changed your identity? By the way, if you don't know the answer to that question, that's okay. Lean into that. Ask the Lord, who who do you say that I am? And and let him inform you. Take time to pray about it. If you have trusted people in your life who also follow Jesus, talk to them about it. It's really good and healthy for us to recognize that that becoming uh a son or a daughter of God, by the way, that's part of your identity, uh, that really does change not just a belief system, but who we actually are. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you. That again, you not only know us better than we know ourselves, but you actively make us who we are becoming. God help us to remember that. To love you and to follow you and to walk faithfully before you. Amen.