-Have you ever been a part of a club that had a secret sign? In my early 20s, I found out I accidentally had joined a club that had a specific sign, but no one told me what that sign was, so I kept getting dirty looks when I was participating in it and didn’t realize. Shortly after I graduated from college I bought a motorcycle, and no, my mom was NOT happy about it!

-But I soon discovered that there is this thing called a “motorcycle wave” but it’s not at all like a normal wave, there’s a very specific way of waving whilst driving the motorcycle (and keep in mind how many things you’re also trying to manage: throttle in the right hand, brake with the left hand, shifting with your foot, another brake with your other foot), the motorcycle was is 2 fingers angled down at 45 degrees, like this. Once I learned the “code” I was off to the races, and an official motorcycle driver! Since then, I’ve learned that Jeeps have wave, VW Bugs have little flowers in their cars, and Texas Tech Red Raiders like to shoot em up.

-Today’s text is like learning the code to enter a club, but this club is being a part of God’s chosen covenant people. Let’s read:

READ/PRAY

1. God’s Commitment (1-8)

-Left off last week with Abram being 86 when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael, now we’re jumping ahead 13 years to another pivotal moment in Abram’s life. But once again, don’t forget that we’re reading a condensed account of his life. We moved 1 verse and jumped ahead 13 years!

-And based on what we read last week, I’m guessing they weren’t the easiest 13 years of Abram’s life: contention between Hagar and Sarai, trying to care for and raise his son, who’s not related to his wife. Yikes!

-So Abram’s closing in on his centennial birthday, and God once again appears to him. Some weird phrasing:

-Begins with who He is (God Almighty) proceeds to an ethical command for Abram, literally tells Abram to walk before Him and be blameless. This phrasing has been used before to describe someone else in the Genesis story:

-Noah was described the same way, so Abram is following in the line of God’s chosen people: being called by God, declared righteous, blameless in character, and walking with God. 

-I want to take some time to think about that reality, because I think it’s a piece that has been glossed over or dismissed in our world today, and that is the imperatives of the gospel. I would argue that we’ve nailed the indicatives, but to the neglect of the imperatives. And if you didn’t realize you were coming to an English lesson today, just wait and it will make sense!

-An indicative is a fact, imperative is a command, and the Bible has both. An example of an imperative is: Jesus died for you, or Noah was a righteous man. The imperative is seen with Abram: walk in front of me and be blameless. And that’s also true of us today, because if we are saved, then we are declared righteous, we are made holy, but then we also are commanded to live differently, to live lives that are marked by that righteousness. I love the way Paul talks about this in Gal. 5: Do you see the indicatives and imperatives here? Just as there are some truths given to Abram, there are some truths given to us: those who have been saved belong to Christ Jesus, we have crucified the flesh, but the imperative is: walk by the Spirit, live by the Spirit, keep in step with the Spirit.

-I don’t know about you, but when I hear that, I think of my kids whose steps are significantly shorter than mine. When I take them shopping with me I regularly need to look back and encourage them to keep up! That’s not at all what is intended by Paul here, the imagery isn’t us running to keep up, a better picture would be when I go on walks with just Cara and don’t have to try to prod our kids to hurry up! We are able to keep in step with each other, enjoying the company, the time, the conversation. That’s what Paul means here: working together for the same goal, which in the case of the Spirit is becoming more like Jesus. I think you even see that with Abram here, God tells Abram to walk in front of God, which means God has his back, Abram can’t get away from Him, but there’s also the imperative to Abram: be blameless. Live a holy and set apart life. The indicative LEADS to the imperative, but the imperative will never get you to the indicative. Friends, we are all called to live a blameless life, but if you try doing it in your own power and strength apart from the Spirit you’ll constantly be falling short. Live a holy life, but do it by relying on God. This is why the outline to this sermon is so important: it begins with God’s commitment, but then moves to see what He commands His people to do. You can’t separate those 2 things, if we are saved it must lead to holy living.

-Why does God then go on to say He will set up His covenant, hasn’t He already done that? Yes, but He continues to reiterate and further explain the implications of the covenant. And Abram responds correctly: falling facedown in worship (this time), and God promises Abram that he will become the father of many nations, which requires a name change.

-Abram means exalted father, Abraham means father of a multitude. His first name looks back to his past, most likely the exalted father was Abram’s father Terah, but now God has picked him out from all the other peoples of the earth and is shifting the focus from his past to his future as now every time someone calls out his name it’s a reminder of God’s promise to him.

-Not only that, but God will fulfill His promises: Abraham will be fruitful, nations and kings will come, and this covenant will be passed down to the generations that come from Abraham, nothing can change that! Abraham’s blessing will happen: land, seed, and blessing. Just like what Adam & Eve were given back in the beginning: a perfect garden to care for, offspring to help them fill the earth, and the blessing of everything they could need in perfect relationship with God and each other. Abraham is supposed to be a new Adam, starting over with a new people in a new place to be God’s representatives on earth.

-But just as in Eden, there are stipulations, requirements that God has for Abraham:

• God’s Commands (9-16)

-Here the stipulation isn’t to avoid eating from 1 tree, it’s to practice circumcision. If you don’t know what circumcision is, I’ll let you ask someone sitting nearby you!

-Circumcision is meant to be the marker of God’s people here. Every male is commanded to go through the process, and there’s even a time stipulated: 8 days. This is meant to point us back to creation because what happens on the 8^th day? Correct, nothing! It’s meant to signify a new creation (which is also why Jesus is raised on the 8^th day, reinterpreting even this act). And it’s supposed to be an act that everyone does who is brought into this people, slaves, family members, no one is left out.

-And the Lord goes on to say why this is significant. Yes, it’s a physical act, but that physical act signifies a spiritual reality. Just as God’s covenant with Abraham is permanent, so the sign of the covenant is permanent. 

-And there’s also negative implications to anyone who doesn’t obey these markers: just as the foreskin is cut of in the act of circumcision, so anyone who does not obey this sign of the covenant will be cut off from his people. If someone refuses to identify themselves with God, God will refuse to identify Himself with them. The marker that you belong to God is circumcision.

-And just as Abram’s name was changed, now it’s time for his wife: Sarai to Sarah, not a major change and both words mean the same thing: princess or queen. What is unique is there is some evidence that Sarai would have been the spelling in Ur, Sarah would have been the spelling in Canaan, shifting their focus from the past to the future. God is changing their primary allegiances and planting them in a new land so that they can have their children and be blessed.

-And remember, the most important thing we’ve learned about Sarah so far is that she’s barren, but now God says specifically that she will give birth to a son.

-How does Abraham respond? This is where we go back to God’s commitment to Abraham:

• God’s Commitment, Part 2 (17-22)

-Once again, Abraham falls facedown, but this time he laughs, and that laughing idea is going to be a minor theme to pay attention to for the next couple of chapters, so find some way to make a note in your mind about laughing for the next few weeks. 

-This time, Abraham laughs and mutters under his breath instead of talking to God, because Abraham is looking at his life and realizing that what God’s promised here seems impossible. Abraham is almost 100, his wife is a young and spry 90.

-Let me tell you how absolutely miserable that sounds! After surviving the sleepless nights of babies, I have zero desire to go back to the infant days, and I can only imagine that will be even more true the older I get! Having babies is a young man’s game. And I can only imagine how Abraham felt about that idea! So then Abraham says to God: what about my son?

-And God answers that taking matters into his own hands isn’t the correct way to receive God’s blessing. Not only will Sarah have a son, but his name is also supposed to be Isaac, which means “he laughs,” so where Abraham laughs in disbelief, his son will be a constant reminder of God’s provision. And the laughing son is the one who will continue the covenant line, not Ishmael. Ishmael will still be blessed by God, but only materially.

-And that’s an alarming place to be, and something that God threatens throughout the rest of the OT: His people can have His blessing, but He won’t go with them. And friends, is that ever true of you too?

-How often do we only consider our Christianity in comparison to all the other things people could try? That’s some of where our evangelism is difficult today because we’re just 1 in a myriad of competing options. The way people often respond is “I’m glad that worked for you, but here’s what’s working for me.” And how often do we just fall into that same temptation? We’re following Jesus because it seems to just work for us. But what do you do then when things get difficult, or following Jesus no longer seems to be working? Don’t forget that Jesus is the King, we spent an entire year last year looking at that reality in Revelation, where we see the point of this story, what it’s ultimately pointing to is a child coming from Abraham who will be a blessing to the entire world because He provides a way for people to be reconciled to the one true and living God! But that doesn’t come about through our efforts or work, it’s only by being obedient to Him. Ishmael serves as an example of God’s blessing apart from His presence, which isn’t worth anything in eternity, and is a reminder that what the world chases after isn’t the same as the things God wants for His people. And then God leaves after this promise.

• God’s Commands, Part 2 (23-27)

-And Abraham obeys, at least this time! And one thing to note about this process is that Abraham is completely entrusting himself to God for this to work out. The very means by which Abraham will be able to have descendants is at risk of being cut off with an errant stroke of a knife, but he’s slowly learning to trust God.

-Now I’m not sure how this conversation would go with the rest of his people, but Abraham convinces them all to be obedient, I can just picture every guy going “you want us to do WHAT?!” But they’re all obedient to Abraham, and ultimately to God’s commands which is a good example for us to follow too: we should look to obey what God commands us to do, even if it doesn’t make sense.

-But that gets us to 2 primary responses for us from this text: the first is that you can do all the things God commands without being a part of God’s covenant people, and the second is the command for all to be circumcised, just not a physical circumcision. We’ll look at both of those ideas in turn

-First, the need to obey God as a fruit and not as the root.

-The temptation for every human is to obey God to try to get something from him. We look at the rules as a burden instead of a gift, as the means by which we stay as God’s covenant people, but that’s not the intent. The rules are the way God has ordered the world so it’s His gift to us to help us understand how to function and flourish as God intended the world to operate, and the reality is until our hearts are transformed it’s going to feel like a heavy burden. But when Jesus comes, He tell us that His yolk is easy and His burden is light, and it is, but only when you’ve been brought spiritually from death to life. Then those rules that felt like an unfair burden suddenly become our desires, meaning they’re the fruit of a transformed life. And that’s what we see in Ishmael: his obedience doesn’t make him a part of God’s covenant people, nor does it lead to a transformed heart.

-The second is the command for all of us to be circumcised, but not in the way this passage talks about!

-The point of circumcision wasn’t just the physical act, because just a few books later, look at what God commands His people: Deut. 10

-Again, we see God’s commands to be holy and walk in the ways of the Lord, and the way to do that is by obeying God’s commands. But then notice what God says about circumcision: don’t circumcise your body, circumcise your hearts! This tells us the point of circumcision has always been to have a transformed heart (in the OT that’s referring to your inner most being). That is being sensitive to following and obeying God.

-And Paul picks up this idea in Rom. 4 when he talks about righteousness not coming through external observance of the law, but through faith! Notice that Paul makes an explicit connection to the timing of Abraham being declared righteous and circumcision, and the reason Paul states this is because of the division in the early church. The early church became fixated on circumcision as the sign of the covenant, to the point that unless a male was circumcised he was viewed as not truly being a part of God’s people.

-Which leads to Paul getting so frustrated in Galatians that he says this: Gal. 5. Friends, at this point in salvation history, circumcision has no bearing on anything. What matters now, and what Paul says is “faith working through love” other translations state this as “faith expressing itself through love.” 

-When we’re tempted to look to our external obedience, or add markers to be “better” this is a reminder than nothing we do adds to our holiness, what we’re called to be is circumcised in the heart, and just as this was meant to be a permanent marker, so is our salvation meant to be a permanent marker where we now live differently because of the faith we now have.

-Because circumcision doesn’t matter anymore, we now have new markers of God’s people, which Paul summarized here as faith expressing itself through love. But God has also given us new habits that mark us out: baptism and communion.