He is Our God and We are His People - Pastor Tom Loghry
In Genesis 17, we see another continuation and confirmation of God’s promises to Abraham. A physical symbol of God’s covenant is established through the practice of circumcision.
Transcript:
Genesis 17 verses 9 through 14. Then God said to 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 uncircumcised male who has not been circumcised in the flesh will be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant.
Parenting is a tough balancing act. You don't need to be a parent to know this. Once we're grown up, it's not unusual for us to look back sympathetically on the struggle of our parents. Raising kids isn't easy. There are two extremes that parents are often drawn towards. On the one hand, parents are drawn towards making their kids the very best. That's not necessarily bad. But it can become bad when a parent's affection for their child becomes dependent on their performance. It becomes bad when a child feels like they're just never good enough. to earn their parents' love. The other extreme is the parent who has all the affection in the world and thinks their kid can do no wrong. That might be called the fun parent, who always says yes, and who has no expectations for their son or daughter. What we have here in these two extremes are distortions of true love. The parent who truly loves their child will love their child unconditionally while also seeking what is best. This parent will not and should not love everything their child does and will seek to direct them in the ways of wisdom and righteousness. However much that son or daughter fails or succeeds, that parental love will remain.
We have a picture of God in the image of the parent. Those who are God's people are invited to call upon Him as Father and receive care as His children. And this is the kind of relationship that we see emerging between God and Abram. Since we began in Genesis 12, God has promised Abram at least four times that he would give Abram countless descendants, that he would give him the land of Canaan, and that through Abram, the world would be blessed. Abram didn't do anything to deserve these promises. He simply believed God, and his face was counted as righteousness. But now here in Genesis 17, we see the relationship between God and Abram begin to take fuller form. We are ramping up to the birth of the Son that God has promised. So turning to Genesis 17, starting in verse 1, Moses tells us, 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 you 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 very 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 possession to you and your descendants after you, and I will be their God. One thing I just want you to kind of notice here as we go into Genesis 17 is how many years we've quickly spanned in the course of a few chapters. When we started in chapter twelve, Abram was seventy-five. And now here in chapter seventeen, he's ninety-nine. And in just the last chapter he was eighty-six. So you go from 13 years. I think this is important to notice because it reminds us that we don't have a complete biography of Abram's life. I'm sure some very interesting things happened in those 13 years, but that's not the point. The point isn't to tell the complete story of Abram. The point that God has here is to show what he is going to do in the life of Abram through him. We're being told the story of God's redemptive mission of mankind. So God appears to Abram and he says, I am God Almighty, walk before me faithfully and be blameless. So you have God telling Abram who he is, and then telling Abram who he ought to be. He tells Abram, I am God Almighty. which in the Hebrew is El Shaddai, maybe you've heard that before. El Shaddai means God Almighty. So that's who God is. He's the Almighty God who is able to bring these promises to completion. And who Abram is supposed to be is one who's to walk faithfully and blamelessly. And what God is really telling Abram here is that is what it means to be the covenant people of God. God has made these promises. In return, Abram and his descendants ought to be faithful and be blameless. Now we hear elsewhere in scripture figures like Noah, Job, we see the psalmist talking about those who are blameless. The psalmist says in Psalm 119, one, blessed are those whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the Lord. So that's what it means to be blameless, to walk according to the law of the Lord. Now of course we know that no one is in fact perfect, apart from Jesus Christ. And Abram himself wasn't perfect. So when we see that word blameless, we have to understand it in a particular sort of way, within the light of faith, in which Abram's actions are manifestations of his faith and him being loyal to God. even if he's not actually perfect.
I think that's important to note just because when we get to verse two it can sound very much at first as though the covenant is completely dependent upon Abram's obedience. It says then I will make my covenant between me and you. Now if you go to other translations of the Bible it's interesting because it doesn't translate it quite that strongly because the word then isn't that's an interpretive choice here based on what had just followed in terms of God telling him to be faithful and blameless. Other translations just have it and I will make my covenant or it just says I will make my covenant. There's an idea here though that God has some expectation. Maybe state it a little bit too strongly here in the NIV, but it's an expectation nonetheless that God does have for His covenant people. When we get to Genesis 26, where God is now speaking to Isaac and extending the covenant promise to him. He says in Genesis 26 verses 4 through 5, I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because Abraham obeyed me, and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees, and my instructions. So we've said Abraham wasn't perfect. but according to what God was expecting of him, he was blameless insofar as that he was faithful to God. This is just a reminder to us that faith and action do go hand in hand. Yes, it starts with belief, that's the beginning of faith, but if you actually believe and trust in someone, and particularly in God, then you're going to act out on that faith. And that's exactly what Abram has done. And what we have here in Abram is a shadow of Christ's own obedience. Now, we've already said multiple times Abram wasn't perfect, but that's why it's a shadow of Christ's obedience, and his obedience is proceeding from faith. And so when we look across the Old Testament, we find others who were also faithful and obedient in this sort of way. And so we can almost think of it as though these are the people who across history were, to kind of make a football analogy, they were able to move the ball around the field. They were faithful to God. We were able to see their progress and growth. But in themselves, they were never enough to score the touchdown. Because if they were sufficient on their own, why in the world would the Son of God take on human flesh and be crucified to a cross? It doesn't make sense if they were enough. They weren't enough. They did have faith and it was pointing towards Christ.
This is what the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 11:39. He says after referring to Abraham and a bunch of other icons of the faith, he says, these were all commended for their faith. just as God just commended Abraham for his faith when he was talking to Isaac yet none of them received what had been promised since God had planned something better for us that only together with us they would be made perfect and then it goes on into the next chapter to say Jesus Christ, he's the author and perfecter of our faith. So when we think about God's expectations that he has for his covenant people, there is a little bit of conditionality here in terms of Abraham and his descendants enjoying the blessings of that covenant. But it's the sort of conditions that a parent might set. So you can think of it like this. Like if you say, to your child, especially when they're young, eat your supper and you'll be able to watch television. So otherwise, if you don't eat, you're going to bed without dinner. Sometimes that's a consequence you might have. And you might let that play out if they refuse to eat. But just because you made that a condition then doesn't mean that you're going to now neglect your duty as a parent to care for your child and say you're never going to eat again and you're going to starve to death. No. You'd be failing your side of the covenant as a parent. And this is kind of the position that God has in relation to mankind. He does set conditions and expectations. And if we do not abide by those expectations, we face consequences for that. And yet God does not abandon us. And it points us back to Genesis 15. Remember, there was that weird ceremony where God told Abram, take these various animals, divide them in half, and then wait. And he revealed his covenant to him. He didn't make Abram walk through the animals though. Only God did. And remember the significance of that was that through walking through those animals, God was saying, this curse would be upon me if I don't hold up my promise. Now God did in fact face that curse by going to the cross, but he never broke his promise. So we know that God is going to keep his covenant promise. But in the meantime, Abraham and his descendants could face consequences for not abiding by God's expectation that they would be faithful and blameless.
It reminded me of, I watched an episode of Family Matters with Sara and James the other night. Maybe you remember that show. Eddie Winslow in the show tried to get his driving license, didn't get it, decided he was going to drive the car anyways to impress his girlfriend. And he ran into the front of his house and created a huge hole in the wall. And as you can imagine, his father was not happy. and he got grounded for a couple of months and he wasn't going to be able to try out for his driver's license again until the end of that time but his father still loved him even though there was consequences there and he still wanted what was best for him and that's the nature of God's relationship with us. We see this played out or promised I guess in Jeremiah thirty verses ten through thirteen and seventeen. Through the course of Israel's history they were not blameless, they were not faithful, and they were sent into exile ultimately. The Babylonians came in and they were forced to live in Babylon. And this is what God tells his people through the prophet Jeremiah. He says, so do not be afraid, Jacob, my servant. Do not be dismayed, Israel, declares the Lord. I will surely save you out of a distant place, your descendants from the land of their exile. Jacob will again have peace and security, and no one will make him afraid. I am with you and will save you, declares the Lord. Though I completely destroy all the nations among which I scatter you, I will not completely destroy you. I will discipline you, but only in due measure. So again, kind of that parental sense, I will discipline you. I will not let you go entirely unpunished. This is what the Lord says, your wound is incurable, your injury beyond healing. There is no one to plead your cause, no remedy for your sore, no healing for you. Sounds pretty grim. But then God says in verse 17, but I will restore you to health and heal your wounds declares the Lord. Because you are called an outcast, Zion for whom no one cares. So God anticipates, he knows that the descendants of Abraham are going to fall away, that they're not going to be faithful, that they're not going to be blameless, but he's going to keep his promise. He's going to heal the incurable wound. They couldn't fix themselves, but God is going to heal them. And he ultimately accomplishes that in Jesus Christ. So looking at the rest of the passage here, we see that God reiterates his promises to Abram that he's going to make him into a great nation, countless offspring. But there's some other things here as well besides that in inheriting the land of Canaan. Abram is given a new name. Now we get to call him Abraham, which is much easier, because I always have to think mentally, like I'm saying Abram, not Abraham. We call him Abraham.
Why did he get that name? It was to remind him of this promise that he was going to be the father of many. That's what the name Abraham means. It means father of many. And there's some additional details here as well. God tells him that your descendants are going to be kings. He also tells him in verses seven and eight that he's going to have this covenant that he has with God as an everlasting covenant. Again, reminding us of just how firm God's promise is, that it's not going to go away. And what's more, what's best of all, is God promises him that he will be Abraham's God. He's going to be his descendant's God. That's better than all the promises in the world. It's better to have the God who makes these promises, then just a blessing that might be here for today and then go away tomorrow. What God is telling Abraham is, I'm looking out for you. I'm looking over you. You have my love. God told Abraham that he expects him to be faithful and blameless. And with this expectation comes an iconic symbol of what God expects. So we look at verses 9 through 14, and Clay did a great job reading that. I'm not going to read it over again because we have a lot of verses to cover. What God expects is that Abraham and all the males of his household will be circumcised and that this would be a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham. Now this might seem a little strange to us, why would God expect this, require this? Well the practice itself was not uncommon at that time. It was very common for circumcision to take place when a male reached kind of the coming of age, kind of adolescence or at the time of marriage So it was a very familiar sort of rite. But what's different here is that God is using this rite not to show, like, OK, you've kind of come into your masculinity. It's to show that Abraham's family belongs to God, that this is his people. So that this is something that takes place not when a man, once a male grows into manhood, but in fact it happens at eight days old. That the members of Abraham's household are marked out that early on. And we see that, that happened in the case of Christ, eight days after Christ was born. He was circumcised. And notice also here that the circumcision is to be practiced not only for those who are Hebrew, who are literally physically, you know. genetically related to Abraham. But for everyone, Hebrew and non-Hebrew, and this is again kind of a foreshadowing, I think, of how God's intent has always been universal, that it's not racial, as though God was only dedicated to the Jewish people. He was working through the Jewish people in order that the whole world would be blessed. And we see a glimpse of this in Abraham's household, as those who are non-Hebrews counted among the covenant people by receiving the mark of circumcision.
Now the purpose of circumcision is a sign, as I've said. But something that we should understand here is that there's no value in circumcision itself because it is a mere sign. and what Paul says in Romans 4 is that circumcision was a sign of Abraham's faith. So we look at Romans 4, 9 through 17. He says, is this blessedness only for the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness. Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised or before? It was not after, but before. And he received circumcision as a sign, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe, but have not been circumcised in order that the righteousness might be credited to them. So what Paul is saying here is that because Abraham was counted righteous for his faith before he was circumcised, it's also possible that those who are uncircumcised, the Gentiles, the non-Jews, would be counted righteous by faith in Jesus Christ without having to undergo circumcision. For the purposes of Abraham, we can see circumcision acting as a sign in the same way as a ring acts as a sign of maybe love for someone. So when a man proposes to a woman that they'd get married, he presents a ring, and the woman wears the ring as a symbol of that love, of that covenant that's going to be sealed between them. Now the ring is not the love, it's just a sign of that, but it's important nonetheless so that it's marking out that I have a fiance. I'm not going to get another fiance. I belong to him and in turn when the man, even though he doesn't wear a ring, he belongs to her too. This is what circumcision is representing, is that Abraham and his family belong to God. Now what God is really desiring here though is not just a mark in the flesh. He wants the complete commitment of His people. He wants all their love. He wants sin to be cut away from their hearts and for them to be completely devoted to Him. this being indicated as being the ultimate desire of circumcision. It says, and now Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to Him, to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and to observe the Lord's commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good. just a longer way of saying what God said, I want you to be faithful and blameless. The Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. If the Lord set his affliction on your ancestors and loved them and he chose you their descendants above all the nations as it is today, circumcise your hearts therefore. and do not be stiff-necked any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. That's what the physical circumcision is pointing towards, is God's desire that his people would be righteous and completely devoted to him. And even later on in Deuteronomy 30, where we have the anticipation of the Israelites being sent into exile, we also have this promise that God will, in fact, perform the circumcision of the heart. He says in Deuteronomy 30 verses 4-8, even if you've been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. He will bring you to the land that belonged to your ancestors and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors. The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts in the hearts of your descendants so that you may love him with all your heart, with all your soul and live. So again, that's the purpose of the circumcision. God is wanting to bring his people to a place where they love him with all their heart. The Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies who hate and persecute you. You will again obey the Lord and follow all his commands I'm giving you today.
Paul testifies to this in Romans 2 verses 28-29 he says that circumcision is circumcision of the heart that's the true circumcision by the spirit not by the written code and in Colossians 2 verses 11-15 he indicates that this circumcision is our baptism in Jesus Christ. It's interesting to note that kind of connection there because remember when does circumcision happen? Eight days after male is born. So you can kind of see how the practice of infant baptism would emerge. Now, I disagree with that. But you can see how the association there would kind of say, oh, this is how we identify as God's covenant people. But Paul, Paul does say this about this connection in Colossians 2, 11-15. He says, In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands, just as God had promised. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness which stood against us and condemned us. He's taken it away nailing it to the cross and having disarmed the powers and authorities he made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them by the cross. So in Christ our sin is cut away. Death is cut away so that we may now put on Christ and live the resurrection life that he gives us. Circumcision is not what's intrinsically valuable. It's just a signpost to what God desires. And that's why Christians are no longer expected to have to be circumcised, because that was just a sign pointing to our baptism in Christ. Paul says this is what, in fact, God desires. I'm just going to run through this real quick. We've got a series of verses here. In Galatians 6, he says, circumcision and uncircumcision don't mean anything. What counts is the new creation. In Galatians 5, he says, the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. In 1 Corinthians 7, he says, keeping God's commands is what counts. Now again, we're not saved by keeping God's commands because we couldn't possibly be saved by that because none of us keep God's commands completely. We're saved by faith in Jesus Christ who did keep God's commands completely. But our salvation in Christ results in us doing good works because that was the purpose in God redeeming and restoring us because that's what we were created for. We were created to reflect God's righteousness.
We're reminded of this again in Ephesians 2. It's such an important passage to remember, verses eight through 10. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by work so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works. You've been baptized in Christ. You've been circumcised in Christ to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. So the strange practice that we don't understand, we see how it's pointing towards Christ. Now that we see Christ, we have the advantage of hindsight. We can see how it's all working together and what God's actually desiring here. After instructing Abraham on circumcision, God has a surprise for him. God has something to say about Sarai. Verse 15, 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'll bless her so that she'll be the mother of nations. Kings of peoples will come from her. Abraham fell down, 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, Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety? 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'll be the father of 12 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." So you note that change going from Sarai to Sarah. Now the meaning here isn't as obvious in the case of Abraham, because the root meaning still kind of means the same. It means princess. it may be that God is making this change in order to strip Sarah's original name, Sarai, of its pagan associations. You'll remember the first sermon we did on this, I talked about how the name Sarai was associated with the Akkadian moon god's consort, his queen, basically. So just by making that little change, what God may be doing here again is marking out Sarah as his own. You don't belong to the pagan gods, you belong to me.
Now what God tells Abraham here is a bit of a news flash. And sometimes we can miss this. For 13 years, Abraham has believed that Ishmael fulfilled the promise that God had given to him. Abraham wasn't worried anymore. And we can tell this by the way that he responded, because he pleaded with God, just let Ishmael be the one. but that's not what God has in mind. He says, no! you are going to have a son through Sarah not through Hagar. And this just makes Abraham laugh. He's like, how is that possible? A son be born to a man who's a hundred years old and Sarah bearing a child at the age of ninety. Now, I talked about this in that first sermon a little bit. Their 100 probably isn’t really our 100, and their 90 isn’t really our 90. And if you want to get scientific, they probably weren't experiencing as much genetic mutation at that time as we've experienced. But it's still really old. And based on what Abraham's saying here is you don't have any sort of expectation that this would happen. And that will become more clear as we follow Sarah's side of things in trying to wrap her mind around this. But again, Abraham had assumed that Ishmael was going to be the one, and so this is why he pleads. It just seems ridiculous that they could possibly have a child through Sarah. But God insists. He says, you're going to name him Isaac. And the name Isaac means laugh. He's like, I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you. I'm going to bring you forth a son, and I'm going to remind you of how you laughed at me making this promise. It's going to come to pass. Isaac's going to be the one who's going to receive the everlasting covenant, not Ishmael. Now he offers some encouragement, some comfort to Abraham, because Abraham truly cares for Ishmael. He says Ishmael's going to be blessed but he's not the one through whom the covenant's going to come. It's Isaac. He tells him that this is going to happen next year. Now Paul picks up on the significance of this differentiation between Isaac and Ishmael, Sarah and Hagar in Galatians 4 verses 21 through 23. He says, tell me you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a dying promise. Now you, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise. What's Paul getting at here? Well, in the case of Hagar, We know that she was a slave in their household. And we did talk last week about how God was basically promising her that her descendants would be free, that Ishmael would be free. He would be a slave to no man. But Paul is using this figure of her as a slave to highlight the difference between human efforts and God's promises. because that's what Hagar really represents. Remember, Abram and Sarai, they had conspired that, oh, you know, I'll give you Hagar and we'll get the covenant that way. didn't amount to anything. Covenant is only realized by God working supernaturally and making it so that Sarah can conceive and give birth to Isaac. It's free. It's a free gift that's given. It's not something that they've earned or deserved.
And now because we've received that covenant ultimately through Jesus Christ, we likewise walk in freedom. We are not saved by our efforts. We are saved because God has been faithful to his promise. Now closing out the chapter, we find Abraham responding in obedience in a way that reflects his faith in God. 22 he says, 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 are bought with his money. Every male in his household then circumcised them as God told him. Abraham was 99 years old when he was circumcised and his son Ishmael was 13. Abraham and his son Ishmael were both circumcised on that very day. Every male in Abraham's household, including those born in his household or bought from a foreigner, was circumcised with him. Just on the way things are described here, we're reminded that this was a personal visitation from God. It was not a dream or just something that Abraham had imagined, but God had actually come and visited him, such that when it's over, it says God went up from him. And Abraham's response is striking. Now, as you might imagine most of us would not be very eager to follow up on what God is requiring here, but it says that Abraham, that very day, on that very day, did exactly what God asked him to do. He believed that it was somehow possible that God was going to make it so that Sarah would conceive and give birth to a son. That it would be worth going through all that pain and mess of circumcision, that God would be his God, that God would be the God of his people. He didn't put it off. There's an example for us, I think, in that when we have faith in God, we say we believe, we should act out of that faith. And so often we say, yeah, I believe, and yet we don't act. Abraham acted on that very day. we should have that same sort of urgency and zeal and desire to respond. Abraham was 99, Ishmael was 13, and he was obedient, circumcising everyone in his household. The covenant is now moving beyond Abraham. It includes Sarah. It incorporates everyone in their household. Above all the promises of prosperity, stands the greatest promise of all, that God would be the God of Abraham and his children. He is their God. You can give a kid many good things, clothes, food, education, but there is no greater good they can have than their parents. We can have all the riches of this world, but without God, we are hopeless. Our wounds are beyond healing. But God can heal us. God can restore us. God has promised Himself to us. He's offered Himself to us through the Son, Jesus Christ. He is the fulfillment of all God's promises to Abraham. Like Abraham, these promises become ours by faith in Jesus Christ. God becomes ours and we become his children. And like any good or earthly parent, God gives us his love without charge. But out of that same love, he desires to raise us to be the sort of people they were supposed to be. Before Jesus Christ, The children of Israel could not live up to God's expectation. None of us have. But because He loves us, God sent His Son to fulfill all those expectations. Jesus makes up for all the wrong we've done. He pays for all the holes we've put in the walls. But what's more, He gives us a future. We are no longer slaves. We are free. We are children of the promise. Whoever has been baptized and has been circumcised in the heart, and now the Holy Spirit has been given rule over your heart, your walk is improving. You're becoming more faithful. You're becoming more blameless day by day. But you're not saved by your improvement. Only Jesus saves. But He has saved you to heal your walk so that you will no longer walk with a limp. So that we can enjoy a closer walk with God until that day when we are brought to His side. We look eagerly towards that day. Let us pray.
Dear Father. We thank you that even in you laying out these expectations for Abraham, we continue to see yet again a picture of your grace, of how you didn't abandon him when he decided to come up with his own plan of having a child with Hagar, and of how you were to be faithful to your promise even when his descendants didn't live up to what you were calling them to be and to do. Father, we thank you that circumcision is just a signpost to Jesus Christ. Of the work that you've performed in Him. So that through Jesus Christ, it's now possible that the power of sin can be cut free from our hearts. So that we can become your people, your children. All that you've desired us to be. Thank you for truly loving us, Father. Thank you for loving us in such a way that you have not abandoned us. Thank you for loving us in such a way that you haven't just left us to our sin and our corruption. Give us the faith of Abraham father that we would trust in Jesus Christ and that we would act out of that faith just as he did. We ask this in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us this Sunday as we continue our sermon series looking at the Bible's account of Abraham. It's our joy to welcome you into our community.
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)