Circumcision and the Outsiders
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here with Mill City Church. We are going to walk back through a little bit. Last week, Chet walked us through the story of Sarah and Hagar. This morning, we get to do that.
We get to do it a little bit differently this time. It's going to be on page 7 if you have a Blue Bible. We're going to be mostly in 17 today. If you don't have a Bible, please take that Bible home. That is our gift to you. A few weeks back, my wife and I got to do something that's been on our bucket list for a while.
We got to see the Broadway production Hamilton. If you haven't heard of it, it's a hip-hop Broadway that tells the life and legacy of Alexander Hamilton. We finally got to see it, and it absolutely blew our minds. It was way better than we thought it could be. And there's this two-song set in the first act. And the first song is the telling of how Alexander Hamilton met his wife, Eliza Schuyler.
And it's just the story. It's how they met. It's how Angelica, her sister, introduced the two of them. They meet. They start writing letters. They fall in love.
They get married. And on the set, when the wedding is over and the song is done, there's this center part of the stage that is circular. And it can go forward and it can go backwards. It goes in a circle. And they start reversing the set. And they start going back in time.
And they tell the story again. The second song is called Satisfied. It's one of the biggest songs from the whole production. And in that song, it tells the story, but it tells it differently. It gives a little bit of a why, a little bit of what's going on behind the scenes. It's this Angelica Schuyler, it's the sister.
She's the one singing the song. And you realize it's a whole lot more complicated than it actually looked, that Angelica actually sees Alexander and falls for him. But she doesn't realize, she doesn't think he has the money, has the class to hang with her New York royalty. So she sees her sister. Her sister also falls for him. She introduces the two of them with the hope that she can kind of have access to him later.
It turns into this weird love triangle that continues throughout the whole time as you see it play out. And we get to do a little bit of that today. We get to walk back through a story that was told last week. But we get to see what's going on behind the scenes. We get to see the bigger picture of what's happening here. Because if you are just working through this story, you might miss what's happening.
Like I can read one of the passages we're going to have today is Genesis 17. And in 10 and 11 it says, This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your offspring after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. And when you read that, it kind of feels a little bit out of place. Like we're going through this story.
Where did this come from? But there is major eternal significance in what's happening here. It has implications that play throughout the rest of the Bible. So we want to get a different view on this story. As we work from Genesis into the New Testament this morning, we're going to see the implications that play out. So I'm going to pray, and then we're going to dive in.
God, I'm thankful that you've given us your word. I'm thankful that we get to hear what you have to say. God, I pray that you would show us the big picture of what's happening here, and that would motivate us to respond to your glory. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so like I said last week, Chet introduced this story of Sarah and Hagar.
I want to give a quick recap of what happened in chapter 16. So Sarah and Abram, at this point, had been changed to Abraham. Sarah and Abram are waiting on this promise. This promise of a line, of a son, of a legacy, of descendants. They're waiting on it, and it does not happen. And Chet hinted at this last week.
At this point, she probably has gone through menopause, and they don't believe the promise is going to come, so they decide that they're going to force the promise themselves. Sarah suggests, why don't you take my servant Hagar, and we can have a line through her. And Abraham doesn't step up. He doesn't say, no, we're going to wait for the promise. No, he says, okay. So she conceives, and then when she conceives Hagar, the text says that she looked upon Sarah with contempt, which is a little bit of saying, it's a little bit of a power play.
There's a little bit of a, she's going to stage a little bit of a coup here. She's going to try to overthrow the line, overthrow the promise. And Sarah's not having that. She responds with deep anger, and the text tells us that she abused her. So in the middle of all of this, Hagar, she bounces.
She just leaves. It kind of turns into a Latin soap opera very quickly, which, for the three of you that laughed, everyone else, if you don't know Latin soap operas, go YouTube Tello Novello today. Take five minutes to watch the dramatic scenes. You're welcome. But it quickly turns into that.
And Hagar is in the wilderness, alone, pregnant, and God meets her. He meets her where she's at, and he calls her and says, there's a greater purpose for you. There's a plan here that you are going to have a son. That son will be called Ishmael. Ishmael is he who hears. This is God hearing her affliction, and he responds.
And he says, you're going to have a great nation that comes from you. And what ancient commentaries have done is they have traced the line of the Arab people back to Ishmael. They've looked at, we won't read this today, but later in 17, it talks about how Ishmael is going to have 12 princes come from him. They're ancient commentaries that look back at those 12 princes, and that is where they draw their line. The Arab people come from Ishmael. And then later on in history, we know the story, Islam comes along, takes hold of that tradition, and claims that Ishmael is actually the one who got the real promise.
And then the rest is history after that. We see the great proclamation in Genesis 16, 12, the prophecy. It says, he, talking about Ishmael, shall be a wild donkey of a man. This is talking about his legacy. His hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen. And that played out even into today.
That Arabs and Jews are still at odds, that Arabs and surrounding nations are still at odds. And then 13 years later, it picks up in Genesis 17, where we're going to be today. So 13 years later, Ishmael is 13, Abraham and Sarah are approached by God. It says in verse 1, When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly. So this covenant, this promise, starts in Genesis 12.
And we've watched it unfold, that God tells him he's going to make a great nation. He's going to bless his descendants as numerous as the stars and the sand. And then he promises that he's going to have the promised land. There's going to be a great land for his people. And then we walk through Genesis 15, when the ceremony of splitting the animal in two, and God walking through. And this promise, this covenant is continuing to unfold.
But this right here is the climax. This is the climax of the covenant in Genesis 17. So this is a big moment. And the text continues in verse 3. It says, That Abram fell on his face, and God said to him, Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be called Abraham.
For I have made you into a father of a multitude of nations. So that's what Abraham means. A father of many. This name change is significant. It's meant to jar Abram, because names are significant in the Old Testament. They have meaning and value, and a name change is really big.
It would be big in our culture, too. If I walked in this morning with my kids, only one of them, because one of them decided to get sick on the way here, and went back home. But if I walked in with both of them, and checked them in, and Isaac's at the front, and Isaac goes, Hey, Ellie. Hey, Bridgers. And I said, No, no, no, no. That was them.
We changed their names. This one, Ellie, is now she who rules the children. And Bridgers is he who destroys the children. Now, what snacks are you having today? That would catch Isaac off guard. First, he'd be like, Dude, we can't put that on a name tag.
You got nicknames? Yep. Ruler. Destroyer. You got this. What about snacks?
Like, he would be, No, no, no, no, no. Are you trying to stage a coup in Kid City? What's happening here? You get Raz involved, it would be a big thing, because a name change is meant to jar you, it was meant to jar Abraham, to remind him of the promise. No, this promise is going to happen. You are going to be a father of a great nation.
There is going to be many that are blessed through you. So, Abraham's all right. Feeling it? Verse 6. I will make you exceedingly fruitful. I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you.
And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your offspring after you, and I will give to you and your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession. I will be their God. Now, we'll get to this in a second, but that language of offspring is significant. And we'll pick that up later. It continues in verse 9. He says, And God said to Abraham, As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations.
This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your offspring after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised. Now, I feel like Abraham was feeling really good until that last line. He's like, wait a second. The name change was cool? Circum what?
Huh? Huh? And he would have been familiar with signs that came with covenants. He could think back to Noah. He's like, man, Noah got the rainbow. You did this really cool thing when you made the covenant with Noah.
Circumcision? That's really how this is going to be? Yes. And he keeps going in verse 11. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. Now, there's a few things I found puzzling in life.
My wife mentioned this a few weeks back. She said, why do mosquitoes exist? And I wanted to argue because that's what I love to do. And I couldn't. I said, I don't know. I don't know if they serve a purpose.
Like, they're just annoying. I can't really make a case for them. I don't know if you've ever thought about this either. Why does Tarzan have a clean-shaven face? It doesn't make sense. He grew up in the jungle, raised by apes.
It's like, that doesn't make sense. And I have stumbled upon this before over and over again. And I'm like, why? The most significant sign of the Old Testament. Why did God choose circumcision? It seems odd.
It seems like a curveball. It seems a little bit out of place. So first out of the gate, let me give you, let me say two quick things. Firstly, this is what circumcision is. It is the removal of the foreskin from the male genitalia. There's the scientific explanation.
Circumcision means to cut around. Now, you may have heard of something called female circumcision. That is a false term. It is. That's not like that. That is what we, what happens across the world is called, female circumcision is actually called female genital mutilation.
It is a barbaric practice that still happens today. But the term female circumcision, it doesn't apply because circumcision only applies to males. There is no sign, there's no female circumcision in the Bible at all. It is only male circumcision and females are brought into the covenant by being mothers, by being daughters, by being wives. They're brought into the family of God that way. There's no need for a female son.
So that's, that's something that we need to know coming out the gate. Secondly, I just want to state this. We'll get to this more clearly later. We as Christians in the new covenant do not have to practice this. This is a medical choice that you can make, but this is not something that is practiced. Jesus fulfills the law of the Old Testament.
He fulfills the sign of circumcision. What happens in the New Testament, which we don't have time to get in today, is that it gets replaced by the sign of baptism, that baptism is the new sign of the new covenant just as Abraham trusted God and was circumcised. Those in Christ who trust in him are responding in baptism and that is our sign. So those two things we need to state right out the gate. Let's keep diving into the text.
Verse 12. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not in your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh as an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, hear this, shall be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant.
So not only is this it's seeming a little bit odd it gets more serious. If you don't do this, if you are not circumcised, if the men in your household are not circumcised, if you do not circumcise your son, you are cut off from the covenant. So this is a really serious sign and the question is why? Why is this so significant? Why is it so important? I'm going to give you four reasons why this sign has great importance in this story.
The first is that this is a sign of the promise through faith. It's a sign of the promise through faith. Hear this, Abraham had to have trusted God. We see the evidence here. But also, he wouldn't have circumcised himself if he didn't trust God.
That's not how that works. You just don't up and do that. No, he had to actually trust God and follow through on this command. And this sign, this promise, this sign is explicit for a reason. It is intentionally sexual. Abraham trusts God and then he goes through with this and he is going to pass this on to his son Isaac.
Because we read last week that we're not going to have time to read this week that Ishmael gets circumcised. He responds and circumcises himself. He circumcises Ishmael and the men in his household. So why can't Ishmael get the promise? And the reality is is that he's not going to get the promise because there's something unique and intentional about Abraham trusting God then being circumcised then conceiving Isaac. It's intentional for a reason.
He is going to pass this on through Isaac and this is going to go all the way down the line. Second, this covenant was a sign of cleanliness and purity. We see this play throughout the entire Old Testament. Circumcision was a cleansing ritual. The rest of the Old Testament is going to refer to those who were clean and those who were unclean. You're going to see that over and over again.
Clean, unclean. And the reason why is because God is taking possession of his people. And this is an act, a holy act, what the Bible is going to say, a consecrated act. They have made themselves holy, that they are going to be set apart from the rest of the surrounding nations. So this clean, unclean distinction is going to show up over and over again.
And it is a daily and regular reminder for the people of God that you belong to him. That you are his people. You are supposed to be set apart. Third, this was a sign of priesthood. Circumcision is a priestly sign. Contrary to popular belief, Jews were not the only ones that did this.
They were the most famous for doing this and there weren't many other ones who actually did this, but there were some and there's one group of people that's actually very significant for understanding this and that was Egyptian priests. Egyptian priests would circumcise themselves and what they were doing was they were saying, we are separate from the rest of the Egyptian people, we have consecrated ourselves, we have made ourselves holy and we have access to the Egyptian false gods. And what happens as the story plays out is that the Israelites eventually end up in Egypt. They are enslaved for 400 plus years.
Then God, through Moses, brings them out of the promised land and when they come out of the promised land, here's what God tells them, you will be a kingdom of priests. You are going to be, as the New Testament calls it, a royal priesthood. You're a kingdom of priests. They just circumcised their priests. This whole nation bears this sign. And when you get into the land, the promised land, and you set up the nation of Israel, this is where I will rule and reign from, this is where the tabernacle and then the temple will be, you are to be a royal priesthood that will reflect the glory of God to the surrounding nations.
It's a priestly sign. Lastly, it's a sign of new creation. This is a sign of new creation. Why the eighth day? Why were circumcised, why were boys wait, why do they wait eight days to circumcise them? Chet gave a little bit of medical evidence, this is a little bit of God's design in humans, that blood starts to clot better by the eighth day.
It is safer then. But the theological reasons are because the eighth day, hear this, comes after the seventh. The significance of that, and this is a, is that it goes back to Genesis 1. The God created the world in seven days. This was the first week and the first day after, that was the first day of this newly created world. And what happens is, is that on the eighth day that the males are brought into the covenant.
They're brought into the covenant. This is day one for you being a part of the nation of Israel. So there's a whole lot of significance that is packed in to this sign. But like many signs and many symbols over time, this is going to start to lose its meaning. It's going to start to fade. And this happens with symbols.
I mean, in our culture, if you've ever been to a barber shop and you've seen a barber pole, you probably thought, cool, America. The red, white, and blue stripes. That's actually not where that comes from. It goes back to medieval times. In medieval times, there were barber poles and what these would signify is that barbers weren't just skilled with the blade to shave, but also could do basic surgery. So this pole, the red stripe symbolizes blood, the white would symbolize bandages.
Some think that the blue symbolized veins and that they were known for this is a place that once you see the pole that you can get basic medical care. But over time, that sign fades. We start to lose the significance of it and that happens with the sign of circumcision. Over time, circumcision ceases to be a sign of the faith, a sign of the promise, a sign of new creation, a sign of priesthood and it gets reduced down to a few things. It gets reduced down to ethnic superiority. We see this in the New Testament that the circumcised ones are superior.
They follow the law. Circumcision is always attached to the law. They follow the law that that makes them righteous, that makes them better and that makes them insiders. That they are higher than the pagan outsiders. That circumcision makes you an insider. And by the time that Jesus comes, circumcision has been so corrupted by pride and self-righteousness.
And then he comes. Jesus enters the scene and what does he start doing? He starts ministering to outsiders. He starts ministering to Samaritans. He starts ministering to Romans. He starts ministering to outsiders and he starts calling out the insiders.
He starts calling out the religious leaders. And he starts to expose the hypocrisy of the whole system. He starts to expose the hypocrisy of the good parts of their story. Circumcision was meant to be a good sign. The law is a good gift that God had given and they had used it as a bludgeon to keep outsiders out. Even against their own people.
And he starts to expose the failure of the system. He starts to expose the failure of them as a priesthood. And eventually this gets him killed. And he's killed. He conquers death at the resurrection. Then he commissions out the church.
And he says, go and make disciples of all nations. And then the church responds. And you read through the book of Acts that Gentiles start to be reached. That outsiders start to be reached. They start believing and trusting in Jesus. And then a new problem happens.
A group of people called the Judaizers which comprised of super Jewish Christians but also Jews who just wanted to stir trouble in the New Testament church. They start to come into the church and this is where we pick up in the New Testament in Galatians 4. It's page 566 in your blue Bible. In Galatians Paul addresses the problem of this group. This group comes into the church. They start preaching a different message.
They start preaching yes, okay, Jesus but you need Jesus plus circumcision. So they were going around trying to have people circumcised. You need Jesus plus the law. You need Jesus plus customs. You need Jesus plus the festivals. And anytime whether it's then or now that you start preaching a Jesus plus message you have lost the gospel.
It is only by Christ and faith in him alone. It is only by grace by what we just sang. And Paul just absolutely dismantles it. Take some time today to go read the first three chapters of Galatians. Man, he absolutely just dismantles the argument. Goes hard after it.
And then we get to chapter 4 and he shifts the story back to Sarah and Hagar. And we look at this from a different angle. Picks up in verse 21 it says, Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman, one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh while the son of the free woman was born through the promise.
Now this may be interpreted allegorically. Let me pause real quick. Allegorically here means he's taking two literal people with literal stories and they are symbolic of something that is greater. Doesn't mean they weren't real people with real stories. We see that he uses Abraham and circumcision in the book of Romans. They are real people with real stories and real meaning.
He just takes these two figures and shows something greater. This may be interpreted allegorically. These women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai bearing children for slavery. She is Hagar. So Paul begins to set up this argument.
He starts to say children of freedom and children of slavery. And in verse 25 he says, Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia. She corresponds to the present Jerusalem for she is in slavery with her children. Now, you probably didn't catch this because you're not a first century Judaizer going around trying to circumcise people. But Paul just threw some major shade.
I mean, he just threw some major shade here. You see, Mount Sinai is the place where the law was handed down. And he talks about present day Jerusalem and he's referring to these people. He said, You Judaizers, you people, you who boast in the law, who boast in circumcision, who uphold these things and do not understand them, y'all aren't children of freedom. You are Ishmaelites. You are children of slavery.
And that, man, those are some fighting words. That's the moment in the playground when two kids are going at it. One kid finally says something. Everyone backs up because they know something's about to go down. Someone's about to start throwing bows. He absolutely lays it down, but he didn't let up.
Verse 26, he says, But Jerusalem above is free. She is our mother. He's talking about heavenly Jerusalem. This isn't literal Jerusalem. This is the place where God rules and reigns from. And then he picks it up in verse 27.
This is where the story really all starts to tie together. Isaiah 54, 54, this is what's being quoted here in this passage. He says, For it is written, Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear. Break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor. For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband. I just want to pause for a second.
This is a sub-point of this. But isn't it cool here? This is a small picture that we get that you don't have to have literal children to have a spiritual legacy, an eternal legacy, that by taking the gospel to those who don't believe, you can have children of faith that will eternally be in the presence of God. That's just a helpful word for a culture, I think, that's overly obsessed with kids. He says, Who has no husband, now you brothers, like Isaac, are children of the promise. So he quotes Isaiah 54 and this story starts to come into full view.
He says, For years, of this argument coming up to here, is for years they have lost the symbol of circumcision. They've lost what understands the story of Abraham, the formation of the nation of Israel. They've lost the handing down the law. All this has been lost over time. And they have made it as a message of outsiders, insiders and outsiders, Jews and those who were not Jews. Paul quotes Isaiah 54 and what's being implied here often in the New Testament when the Old Testament is being quoted.
This is not just Isaiah 54 1 that is being understood here. He's actually bringing in the meaning, the context, which is verse 2 and verse 3 of Isaiah 54. And this is what Isaiah 54 2-3 says. Enlarge the place of your tent. Let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out. Do not hold back.
Lengthen the cords. Strengthen your stakes. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left. And your offspring will possess the nations and will people, or in other words, inhabit, and will people the desolate cities. And that is when this story starts to come into full view. The tent was always going to get bigger.
The tent was always going to get stretched. It was not literal descendants of Isaac. It was not literal descendants of Abraham. That was never the story. It was through faith that you became children of God. Through faith in the promise.
The tent was always going to get bigger. And that word offspring here is significant. Paul in Galatians 3 addresses this. This offspring here is singular. And it would have been understood at the time to be implied to the nation singular Israel. Paul comes along and says, actually, no.
No, actually, in Christ, He is the offspring. That is the one this is talking about. That an offspring is going to come and perfectly fulfill the requirements of the law, perfectly fulfill the sign of circumcision, that He's going to take that perfection on the cross with Him, and then He's going to make a way through the resurrection, loosening the power of death, loosening the power of the law, and then after this, in the big, beautiful twist, what Chet likes to call the M. Night Shyamalan move, which, his name is M. Night Shyamalan, in case you're wondering. The big twist that happens here is that this tent was always going to be expanded and that Ishmaelites, Africans, Greeks, Romans, everyone, the plan was to save them all.
The plan was to save the nations that when Christ would come, they would be brought into the tent. That's the beautiful twist of this whole story. This story's been longing for, because I'll be honest, man, sometimes when I read this story, I get frustrated, because Chet said last week, there's no good, there's not any exemplary characters here. I mean, Abraham is, again, passive, again, failing. Sarah gets vicious, and Hagar, I mean, she's not innocent. She tries to overthrow the line.
She shows contempt. But there's a part of me that gets frustrated, because I'm like, now what kind of choice did she have? What about Hagar? What about Ishmael? And I have often heard, in the past, as people have thought about this story, as they've thought about, as we ended last week in 21, when Hagar and Ishmael are wandering in the desert, they are thirsting to death, they are getting ready to die. I have heard people say, you know, wouldn't it have just been better had they died?
Wouldn't it have just been better had they not gotten water? Had God just left them? And what's being implied when that is said is what good are this people, this wild donkey of a nation? What good are the Arab people? And the same that is said about them can be said about us, because all of us were outsiders. I haven't seen your Ancestry.com profiles, but I'm willing to go on a limb and say most of you, if not all of you, are not Jewish.
We are all outsiders, wandering in the desert, thirsting, having no hope. Jesus comes along, someone brings the gospel to us, and then we actually get to drink living water. We get exposed to the gospel, we believe in Him, we're brought into the family of God. That's the hope of the mission of the church. That's the hope of the mission going forward. And what can clearly be seen is that God cares about the Arab people.
You can see it in His care for Hagar and Ishmael and the story, and you can see it today. There's a something called the 1040 window in missions. It's the latitude and longitude from North Africa all the way to Indonesia, and it's the most unreached, the most lost people groups in the world, and the overwhelming majority of that window are Arabs and Muslims. Because Islam eventually comes along, takes that tradition, and there are billions that are wandering around in the desert that don't have water, that don't have the hope of the gospel. Some of them don't even have access to it. There's not someone within a thousand miles who believes in Jesus who can actually bring living water.
They are thirsting in the wilderness. But the hope of the gospel is that God cares about Arabs. He cares about the lost. And He is sending people out today to go out and bring living water. There's a couple in our church, Ben and Patricia. They're here.
I'm not going to point them out and make it awkward for them. But they're here and they're sitting over here. They are here. They were in Lebanon. Patricia is Lebanese. She grew up in Lebanon.
And this is her first time in the States. And Ben was a missionary for close to a decade. They are part of a missions organization called 1040 Hope. And I've loved having them here. I've loved having them in our group as we've talked through how Jesus is saving lost people in Lebanon. How people are trusting in Jesus.
And it gets me excited. It gets me fired up. But you know what's even cooler than that? They are like one of hundreds of thousands of mission organizations of churches who have a heart for the Arab nation and are sending people in to bring living water. And as we close out today, may we be humbled in worship by the God who sins because if He had not sinned, we would still be outsiders. We would not have access to this living water.
