Let's finish up Genesis chapter 17 tonight. We're looking at the end, verses 23 through 27, and the conclusion of the chapter is just focused on Abraham's obedience to God in applying the sign of the covenant to himself and to all the males in his household. And I think from it what we'll do, and there's not a lot here, but I didn't cover it last time and I couldn't make it fit into the next chapter. So what we'll do is we're going to look at what we can learn from Abraham's obedience, about how we're to obey God's commands, how we're to obey him and live by faith, live by faith in God's promises. and trust him in his grace and his mercy that he gives to us. And this is what leads to and is the basis of our obedience to God. So let's just read verses 23 through 27, which says, Then Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all the servants who were born in his house, and all who were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's household, and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the very same day as God had said to him. Now Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. And Ishmael his son was thirteen years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. In the very same day Abraham was circumcised, and Ishmael his son. All the men of his household who were born in the house or bought with money from a foreigner were circumcised with him. Let's open with prayer, asking the Lord to bless the preaching of his word. Our Father in heaven, we ask that you would establish our footsteps in your word and do not let iniquity have dominion over us. We pray, Father, that as we have been rescued from sin and death by Jesus, that now you would help us, that we would live an obedient life, that flowing from our faith in Christ and our conversion in Him, we would seek to live to your glory by obeying your commands. Help us to understand what obedience looks like, and by your Spirit, we ask of you that you would apply these lessons to our own personal lives. And we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. I think the first thing that we notice as we come to the end of the chapter here is in verse 22, if you recall, when God had finished talking to Abraham, it says, God went up from Abraham. And that's important because we see that Abraham knew he was speaking to God. He knew that these commands came from God who lives in heaven. And they were divine ordinances. These weren't just merely the opinions of men or suggestions that he thought might be good. And it's God's ascent back into heaven that becomes like a physical manifestation of this reality. It's the heavenliness of the commands that gives them their weight. And this is important as we begin to look at and apply this text to our lives and think about obedience and what obedience is all about. We need in our obedience to be convinced in our minds that we are obeying God's commands and not merely the opinions of men. And as we look at the text, it's interesting as I'm thinking about the sermon and how to apply it. I'm not going to tell you really to do anything other than to be obedient, which becomes quite important in our lives because obedience is something that we all struggle with. The Holy Scriptures, as we have been given them, contain God's Word, and I've said often to you, as found in the idea of law and gospel. We have God telling us the good news of salvation, the gospel of Jesus Christ, in this gospel portions of His Word. He's telling us that He has sent someone who can save us from our sins and that we can rest upon Christ and that we can have rest in Him. And all these benefits of salvation come to us, much like in this portion of Genesis in chapter 17, God makes all these promises to Abraham. These are gospel promises. I'm going to do this. I'm going to give you a son. I'm going to give you descendants. Your descendants are going to be great. These are all promises of God that are pointing us to the gospel. But also in God's Word, we've been told how we are to live. We're told how we're to live in light of faith in the gospel, in light of believing the promises of God. And the Lord takes his word and he mysteriously seals the word in our hearts by his Holy Spirit who indwells his people. And the Holy Spirit lives in us to testify and illuminate the scriptures to our hearts and minds in order that we would understand them and that we would be motivated and pressed to obey them. The Holy Spirit works in our conscience to be obedient to God. And all of this comes to us giving us this sure and certain understanding that the Bible is the very Word of God, that this is heavenly doctrine and not just the ideas of people. With all that being said, as we think about the point of the text, think of it in these terms, because God has graciously given us His word, and because He has spoken to us clearly in His word, we should seek to obey His commands, and all of His commands, in a way that demonstrates the faith that we do have in His promises. And I want to look at this text and point out that character of obedience. What does obedience look like in light of faith? And so, just a couple of things before we jump into that. I'm not talking about the law and its condemning use here. The law as it comes to us and it shows us our sin and it causes us to run to the cross of Jesus Christ. But rather we're looking at the law in its third use, which is very important. The law that comes to us as we are secure in our salvation in Jesus and teaches us how we are to live as Christians. What does that kind of obedience look like? And by doing this, I hope you'll see that these lessons here are a helpful way for you to learn what it is to seek God first, to seek first his kingdom, to seek first his righteousness. with an attitude of thankfulness and trust that motivates that obedience. So the first thing we're going to talk about in obedience here is comprehensive obedience. I want you to notice this in verse 23. Then, so after God has ascended into heaven, God has told Abraham what he is to do. God has told them, you're to do this on the basis of what I said I'm going to do, which is to give Sarah and you a child, and give you descendants, and it's in this descendant all the nations are going to be blessed, and I'm going to make these nations great. Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all the servants who were born in his house, and all who were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's household, and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the very same day as God had said to him." Now, it's interesting because 24, 25, 26, and 27 say the same thing, just in a different way. And when that happens in scripture, we have to ask, what's going on here? What is God trying to communicate to us? And again, I think the idea of understanding the character of obedience is what's being emphasized by the Holy Spirit here. So we have, first of all, in verse 23, a comprehensive look at Abraham's obedience. And we have to take a moment I think sometimes when we're dealing with examples of obedience out of the Bible, we get familiar with the story, and we kind of overlook what's actually happening here. Just take a moment to really think how commendable this obedience really is, and how faith has to result in obedience, even when that obedience is painful. And this is, again, we read about circumcision in the Bible, and I think we familiarize ourselves with it so much. And then we kind of put it into our context where it happens to our children when they're like a week old or whatever, and it's all surgical and like they don't even know it happens. They just got a sharp rock and did this, right? This is a whole different level. We have to take a moment to recognize that, that they didn't prep the surgery room. They didn't have any kind of painkillers. They just went out and did it. And the reason that Abraham obeyed God was that he trusted the Lord. And you would really, really have to trust the Lord to go out and to do this. And we don't wanna think little of that in any way. I was gonna say, we don't wanna undercut that, but the pun was too clear there. He trusted the Lord, he believed God, and this results in his obedience. Now, James 2 in verse 14, we have this commentary on Abraham that I think is important here. And James says, what use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith, but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and be filled, and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so, faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. But someone may well say, you have faith, and I have works, show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith, by my works." You believe that God is one. You do well. The demons also believe and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works? And just as a note here, he's using justification not in the technical term that we use it today as justified by faith, but rather he's using the word in the non-technical sense that his works demonstrated the reality of his faith. That's all that that's meaning there. So he says, was not Abraham our father justified in the non-technical way by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works. And as a result of the works, faith was perfected. And the scripture was fulfilled, which says, and Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness, and he was called the friend of God. In verse 26, this is the verse that's familiar to us all, for just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead. James' point is this. If Abraham had walked away from his encounter with God, if he had come away from this meeting with God and he would have said, I believe, I believe everything that God said, and then turned around and not done what God had told him, James is saying, was that real faith? And the answer is no. If our faith in God goes no further than inconvenience, right? I can't be inconvenienced. If it can't even go into the painful surgery that he undergoes here, Then perhaps, as James is insinuating, that's not real faith. Faith apart from works is dead. Faith always results in works. It always bears the fruit of obedience. And sometimes the obedience is delayed. That's not excusing it. We're going to look at that as an aspect of the character of obedience, that obedience ought to be immediate. But faith always results in obedience. Abraham believed God. Therefore, in the very same day, he obeyed God. And we notice the comprehensive nature of his obedience there in verse 23. Abraham, Ishmael, all the people of his house, all the males of his house on that day, they were all circumcised. He did not hesitate to inflict upon himself and all of his household a very painful, very obviously uncomfortable surgery. But in that day, he made sure that the job was done. He made sure that everyone in his household was circumcised so that his obedience could be said to be comprehensive. He obeyed God. Now, again, we want to apply this. What do we learn? How does this apply to our lives? Well, I think it's telling us this. In the same way, God does not call us to a half-hearted, sort of pick-and-choose kind of obedience. God is calling us to a comprehensive obedience in our lives. He calls us to obey Him in all aspects, every circumstance, and every command. One of the most tragic things that I've heard over the years as a pastor is when somebody has been rebuked for their sin and they sit there and they'll acknowledge, yeah, I've got an error in this part of my life and I'm not doing this correctly. But here's the thing, they'll say, God's not working on me in that area of my life right now. Or they'll say something like, you know, I just don't have, I don't have the faith to do that. I don't have the faith yet to do that. God hasn't given me enough faith. You know, on that point, the point of faith, if you would look at Luke chapter 17, and I want to make this point because I hear that one a lot. You know, God hasn't given me the faith to step out and do this in my life. I remember a gentleman who was not in this church, but I was asked to talk to him. He was living with a woman that wasn't his wife, and he was a Christian, and he was trying to figure out what to do. And I counseled him, you need to move out, and you need to not marry an unbeliever. and be very clear about that, and that this was his excuse. I don't have the faith to do this. I don't have the faith. So in Luke 17, Jesus addresses this. Let's start in verse three, where Jesus says, Be on your guard if your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day and returns to you seven times, saying, I repent, forgive him. The apostles said to the Lord, increase our faith. They say this because of the difficulty of what Jesus asks. How do I forgive somebody this many times? And the response to Jesus, you're gonna have to give us more faith, because we don't have the faith to do this. Jesus says to them in verse six, if you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and be planted in the sea and it would obey you. And then he tells a little parable here. Which of you, having a slave plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, come immediately and sit down to eat? But he will not say to him, prepare something for me to eat, and properly clothe yourselves and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterwards you may eat and drink. He does not thank the slave because he did the things which were commanded, does he? So you too. When you do all the things which are commanded, you say, we are unworthy slaves. We have done only that which we ought to have done." So again, I want you to think about this because when the apostles hear the command for forgiveness, their cry is, we need more faith. I've got to have more faith to do this. And then Jesus immediately tells them, faith isn't the issue. He says, listen, if you had faith, like a mustard seed, the smallest amount of faith that you could possibly have, you could say to this mountain, be cast into the sea, and that mountain would go. You and I don't have a problem with not having enough faith. Our problem is an obedience issue. And this is why Jesus moves from the mustard seed to the parable of the slave. And it gets to the end of the parable and he's saying the issue isn't faith or a lack of faith or you need more of this or more of that, more Christian maturity or God to work on you here or there. This is just an issue of obedience. You and I as Christians are the slave who just does what God tells us to do. It never becomes an issue of, I need this or I need that. Our obedience is to be comprehensive because God said to do it. The second point here, going back to Genesis about his faith, is that obedience needs to happen in every stage of life. You notice this in verses 24 and 25. Now, Abraham was 99 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. And Ishmael, his son, was 13 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. I find that interesting that this is all pointed out. Now, there's chronological issues here that help us, but we've been told that Abraham's 99 multiple times here, haven't we, in chapter 17. Why does God bring this up? Why does the Spirit put this in here? Why does he give Ishmael's age and Abraham's age and tell us about this? And I think the reason is is because it's a thing that we do that at every stage of human life, we find a way to excuse people in their sin. The elderly, right, are very often excused for their sin and their behavior, and we say things like, they're not gonna change. They're too old. They can't quit that now. They're stuck in their ways, right? I have a dad. I know how this is going to go. I've seen it enough to recognize this is one of the poor excuses that we've manufactured for not obeying God. But it doesn't stop there. You talk about folks my age, middle age in your 40s. At any point now, I am expected to have a midlife crisis and go off the deep end and do something really dumb. And everybody gets to go, oh, yeah, he's just having his midlife crisis. It's not a big deal. Or I can have a series of them. And it's just expected that this would happen. And it doesn't stop there. When folks are young, what do we say of them? They gotta go sow their wild oats. They gotta go do their thing. This is just what young folks do. And we make this whole set of convenient excuses at every stage of life for people to disobey God, and then we think it's okay because they're this particular age. So here we have Abraham at 99 years old. And instead of Abraham saying, I'm not getting circumcised. I'm 99 years old. I'm too old for that stuff. Nothing's getting messed with on me. Abraham obeys God. He obeys God at great cost to his well-being and his comfort, right? He could have very easily said, I can imagine, this is what I would say, no way, I'm too old for that. I'm not gonna do that now. He could have been stubborn, as elderly people tend to be at times, because frankly, we're tired. I'm not in your crew yet, I'm still middle-aged. you get tired. And sometimes you just want to get coasting through this thing and be done. But remember this, the Lord's not done working with you. He's still sanctifying you as long as you're here and he's still calling you to obedience. Ishmael could have thought, my dad has lost his ever loving mind. This is the dumbest thing that my dad's ever come up with. And he could have bailed on the whole thing and done the teenage rebellion thing and whatever else you want to call it. In the end, he agrees. He agrees to receive the sign of the covenant. I wrote this down because it was funny. There's a church father by the name of Ambrose who gave the reason why Ishmael had to be circumcised. He said, even the fact that Ishmael was circumcised in his 13th year is an obvious reason, he says. And I was struggling with this, so I was hoping this would solve it. But he says, because one who is beginning to be sexually active should trim the ardor of his passion so as to abstain from illicit unions and limit himself to a legitimate union only. I don't think that was the purpose of circumcision, but Ambrose was really sure that that was the reason, right? We do this to trim the ardor of these young folks. The point is this, Ambrose even bought into a bit of that, didn't he? Like he's 13, we expect these kids to go do this, so here's how we're going to stop it. And the point rather is this, our age, never is ever an excuse for disobedience. At every age, we are called to obey the Lord. We're never too young to obey. We're never too old to obey. And every stage of life, we are called to this comprehensive obedience. Now, the third thing we read here is in verse 26. In the very same day, Abraham was circumcised and Ishmael his son. Now, God's already said this. Why does he say it again? I think he's calling attention to what we call immediate obedience. Our obedience needs to be immediate. It cannot be delayed. We can't put it off. We ought to be doing what God tells us to do quickly and not put it off till another time that we deem might be more convenient for us. I mean, this is, of all the commandments right here, this would have been one to think about and maybe delay on somewhat. Like, let me wrap my mind around this first. The problem is, the longer that we delay, the more we are likely to not obey at all. I mean, think of it just in another sense, like when we make plans to go on a diet or an exercise routine or some kind of, like, I'm going to go visit this place one day in my life. The longer we put those off, the longer we put off the doing, the less likely we are to ever do them. The same thing goes with obedience. The longer we put off obedience in our lives, the less likely we are to obey. This is why it's so important for us to know the word of God so that we can immediately obey the word of God and not have to wrestle through the clarity of the commandments. We need the word to be present in us so that we can immediately obey. Abraham doesn't think twice. He just goes out and he just does what God calls him to do, and he does it immediately. Just drag this into our Christian world here, because nobody would deny that we need to immediately obey God, but we Christianize our delays. Not terribly long ago, I made a decision in my life, and some people had asked me if I had prayed about the decision that I made. Did you pray about this? The decision was simple. God had told us to do, I'm not gonna bring up what it was, God has said clearly in his word to do this thing, and I did this thing. And so when people would ask me that, and multiple people asked me, and I said, no, I didn't pray about it. And they were kind of shocked and like, well, what do you mean you didn't pray about it? Well, can you imagine the folly of such a prayer, Lord? Very clearly in your word, you have told me to do this thing. What do you think I ought to do? Could you give me some guidance on whether I should do it or not? And what I want to point out here is sometimes we do need to pray about decisions because they're not clear. I was talking to Kathleen this morning about this. The older you get, the more indecisive you get, like you don't know what to do anymore. And you find yourself praying for guidance more and more and more because there's too many factors in life now, too many contingencies. And so I don't wanna dismiss the need to pray for decisions, but there are times where, just to put it crass in a redneck sort of way, you just need to shut up and obey God and not play this kind of, well, I'm gonna go pray about this and think about this and meditate on it. There are times we just do what God says to do. I mean, very simple things, don't murder people. Don't commit adultery. Don't tell lies. And it goes on and on into the good things that we do in life. Should I help a person who's in need? You don't need to pray about that. Should I be kind to my neighbor? That's not something to pray about, that's something to do. And very often, what we're doing is tricking ourselves. We're saying, I don't really want to do that thing, and so I'm gonna use this Christianized excuse of I'm gonna go meditate and pray about this before I do it, so that we delay. And in the delay, we know eventually our conscience is going to ease up, and we won't do the thing at all. And so immediate obedience is important because of the deceitfulness of our own hearts. Now, the last thing here is the example of obedience. Notice this in verse 27. All the men of his household who were born in the house or bought with money from a foreigner were circumcised with him. I may have too much imagination as I read the Bible, but I just, I can't help it in this situation of Abraham going to all the men in his house and saying, I had this meeting with God, and here's the sum of it, and here's what he's asked us to do, and so I'm going to need you all to do this now. And I just can't imagine being in that crowd. I mean, I would think, yeah, he's gone charismatic on us. This is getting weird. How did he get all the men in his household to do this? We know Abraham had at least 318 fighting men. Remember the War of the Kings that we looked at earlier. So he had all these great fighting men in his house. Surely he had more men besides who worked with him. I don't think it's out of line to put a low estimate that he had 400 men, right? 318 fighting men and maybe 80 more who worked for him. That's probably a really low number. How do you convince 400 guys to circumcise themselves? And here's the answer. You go first. You do it first. When we see people obey, when we see people setting an example of obedience, we tend to follow along. When somebody paves that path for us, it kind of makes us easier for us to step out in obedience, especially in difficult things. Example is huge when it comes to obedience. We have to be willing, though, to go first. Sometimes we're called to be the one to go first to do what's right. You know, we're going through this whole house selling thing right now, and one of the things we're learning is how much in a hot real estate market like this where there's lots of money in play. Greed is unbounded. And you start seeing everybody is trying to make a nickel, you know, not in a right way, a righteous way. I have no problem paying people for doing their job, but everybody is trying to make more and more money than they ought to be making. We get this inspection done and they tell us the things that are wrong with our house that need to be fixed. One of them was they wanted $2,800 to put in a new post to hold our electrical box. You see it for what it is. All this is, is just greed driving people to make as much money as they can possibly make off of a $75 post and a hole that you have to dig. It was interesting as we were thinking about it. We have this inspection on the house that we were going to buy, and your immediate tendency, my immediate tendency in my heart was, well, I'm just going to stick it to the next guy and make it up there. As you start thinking in a righteous way, me and Evelyn both agreed, you know what? We're not going to do that. We're not going to have any part in this game. and we're going to back out of it. It was interesting because it's not glorious, it's not glamorous. We're going to lose lots of money because we're not going to play this greed game with everyone else. But as I'm looking at the text, somebody's got to go first. Somebody has to stop doing the game that everybody else is doing. And this is what Jesus tells us. He says, let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. In fact, in 1 Peter 2, verse 11, Peter says, Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers, people who are not, this is not your home. This is not where you live. to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may, because of your good deeds as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. Example is a powerful motive. for others to follow in obedience as well. And so long as we're not willing to go first, to be like Abraham, as an example to his men who would follow him in obedience, understand that we can be the cause of other people stumbling. Our unwillingness to go first can be the cause of other people stumbling and falling into the traditional paths of sin and disobedience. You have to remember, especially as Christians, people are watching us. They're watching you. Every single day, everything you do, every phone call, every business transaction, every job you do at work, people are watching you to see what kind of person you are. And everything that you say with your mouth is either backed up by your behavior or everything you say with your mouth is utterly erased by your behavior. And as ambassadors of Christ, we have to be very careful about this. When we partially obey, when we make excuses for disobedience because of our age or life situation, or we delay in our obedience, we are setting an example for others to follow. And we're making a testimony. We're making a testimony about the faith. Abraham's obedience, was a great demonstration here of his faith. Remember, he ruined his witness in Egypt. He ruined it from his sin. But here he demonstrates his faith, and he sets first an example here that we ought to follow. And so in thinking about the end of chapter 17, that's the point I want to drive home. May we strive to obey God in every way. May we strive to obey God at all times. May we strive to obey God without delays. And may we strive to obey God in such a way that we set an example that others will follow. Let's close in prayer.