Text: Genesis 17:1-27
Introduction
Thirteen years have passed since the close of chapter 16 and Abram’s son Ishmael being born. In spite of Abram’s efforts to force the timing of God’s promise by having a child with Hagar, he still has to wait 13 more years before God brings about the divine consummation of the divine promise!
I. God Confirms His Covenant—Yet Again (vv.1-14)
- As we’ve noticed before in Abram’s story, the narrator is not subtle when it comes to the timing of the events under consideration. It has now been over 24 years since God first promised Abram descendants! We are meant to feel the weight of Abram’s waiting.
- So in v.1 God begins his address to discouraged Abram by again pointing to Himself as the one true God. God reminds Abram that God is able to do anything!
- In v.3 Abram falls on his face before this august vision of God Almighty, implying that he is at least beginning to see God—and therefore himself—clearly again.
- vv.4-5 God gives Abram further assurance of his promises by changing Abram’s name to Abraham.
- Throughout Abram’s struggles to wait on God’s lingering promises, God has already given Abram the covenant seals of the stars, and of the covenant ceremony in which God swore by his own life that He would be faithful to Abram.
- Now in Gen 17, God will add two additional assurances! The 1st is that God changes Abram’s name to Abraham, which as v.5 suggests means ‘father of a multitude’.
- vv.6-8 contain God’s recap of his covenant promises to Abram, now Abraham, some of them more explicit than ever: 1) I will make you exceedingly fruitful, 2) I will bring from you nations and kings, 3) these blessings will be not only to you but to your offspring, 4) I will give the Promised Land of Canaan to you and your descendants, 5) this is an everlasting covenant, and 6) all of this because I will be your God.
- This theme ‘I will be your God and you will be my people’, found thru both Testaments, sums up God’s entire redemptive plan. God is working, throughout history, to bring people into a relationship with himself again!
- Throughout Abram’s struggles to wait on God’s lingering promises, God has already given Abram the covenant seals of the stars, and of the covenant ceremony in which God swore by his own life that He would be faithful to Abram.
- vv.9-14 The expression of the covenant began mostly with statements of what God will do for Abraham, but now turns to the ‘as for you’ obligations. There is a stress in this gracious covenant on mutual responsibility within the relationship.
- On one hand it is one-sided in that God set up the terms alone—yet, there are two parties in the covenant; and God’s grace demands response.
- God gives Abraham another sign, one which will require something of Abraham.
- In v.10 the covenant of God required Abraham to believe that he would bring people from him biologically; so now the sign is appropriately related to reproduction in order to confirm Abraham’s faith.
- Circumcision signifies a need for cleansing from sin (as all blood ceremonies in Scripture do). Circumcision is bloody, personal, invasive, permanent, painful. An appropriate symbol of salvation and the cost of overcoming sin!
- Christ’s work on the cross was bloody, personal, invasive, permanent, painful. And as we trust in Christ for our salvation from sin, and seek then to overcome sin personally in our lives—we find sanctification to be bloody, personal, invasive, permanent, painful.
- We are reminded in v.12 that being Jewish/part of God’s covenant people was never about mere ethnicity, even in the OT. Even servants not from the Israelites were also to be circumcised.
- From the beginning, God was symbolizing the fact that salvation was not just for the physical descendants of Abraham, but Gentiles can become his people as well.
- And as v.14 points out specifically, refusing to submit to God means you are not among those who are God’s people.
- On one hand it is one-sided in that God set up the terms alone—yet, there are two parties in the covenant; and God’s grace demands response.
II. Abraham Struggles to Believe—Yet Again (vv.15-21)
- Although Abram has been walking by faith in the 13 years since Gen 16 closed, it is also evident that he has been in some ways experiencing a spiritual decline. We see in Abram’s response to God’s great promises here.
- vv.15-16 contain God’s additional confirmation, in changing Sarai’s name to Sarah. Both names mean ‘princess’, but God is pointing to the fact that he will make Sarah a princess in his own way.
- Sarah is the only woman in the Bible whose name is changed. And in v.16 God now specifically lays out what he had not explicitly stated before, that Abraham’s promised child will come from Sarah.
- v.17 This grand sign and promise prove too much for Abraham. Abraham is now 99 years old, and Sarah is 90! New name or not, Sarah is clearly beyond child-bearing years.
- Abraham falls to his face before God again, but this time in incredulous laughter.
- So Abraham presents God with a more reasonable solution in v.18. His expectation was so low that he responds to God with: “Oh that Ishmael might live before you!”
- vv.19-21 God replies, “No, Sarah will have a child in fact, just as I said, and his name will be Isaac, which means ‘he laughs’.”
- As we will see later in chapter 18, Sarah will laugh like her husband at the very idea of her becoming pregnant at her age. Yet the incredulous laughter of both Abraham and Sarah will be turned to laughs of delight as God fulfills his promise through them both in a way greater than either of them could even imagine.
- Yes, Ishmael will be blessed in his own way, but God’s eternal plan of redemption will come to pass thru Isaac—who will come from Abraham and Sarah!
III. Abraham Obeys God By Faith—Yet Again (vv.22-27)
- Again, despite all his personal doubts and wrestling with anxiety over the future, Abraham still trusts and obeys God in the midst of his fears.
- The main point of this passage is that, tho Abraham had plainly wrestled with God’s plan, Abraham nonetheless had a real faith in God and therefore really obeyed God even in the hard times.
- Abraham would participate in the bloody, personal, invasive, permanent, painful act of circumcision because he trusted God’s way of salvation rather than his own.
- As important side points from this same passage, we know circumcision does not bring about salvation, and never did. Who is the first child circumcised in the OT? Ishmael. And he does not receive the blessing of God, lives in opposition to God.
- Circumcision is a confirmation of a promise, which still has to be received by faith. Without faith, the good news does not profit you.
- Circumcision does not bring you into the covenant; it confirms that you are in the covenant. Abraham was already in the covenant with God (since Gen 12) and more than two decades later (in Gen 17) he is circumcised.
- Paul specifically makes this point in the book of Romans by asking the question, when was Abraham circumcised? Ro 4:11.
- This is why Gentile believers are in equal standing with Jewish believers. Circumcision did not confer salvation, but confirmed what Abraham had already received from God, by faith.
- Circumcision is a confirmation of a promise, which still has to be received by faith. Without faith, the good news does not profit you.
Conclusion
Are you one of those whom Jesus called the true children of Abraham? Abraham is the father of a multitude of spiritual believers. What matters is not your ethnic identity, but your relationship to Jesus Christ: John 8:38-42.
- Those who are true children of Abraham, numbered among God’s people, are those who—like Abraham—trust in God’s plan of salvation, in Jesus, rather than their own best ideas or efforts. Php 3:3