We turn to our scripture passage for this morning, which is Genesis 17, one through 27. If you have a pew Bible, that's on page 11. I invite you to stand as you're able out of respect for the reading of God's word. 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. Then 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 Abraham. For I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful. I will make you into nations and kings shall come from you. 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 to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God. 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. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. 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 of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is But with your money shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant. And God said to Abraham, as for Sarah, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her. And moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her and she shall become nations. Kings of people shall come from her. Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child? And Abraham said to God, O that Ishmael may live before you. God said, No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father 12 princes and I will make him into a great nation, but I will establish my covenant with Isaac. whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year." When he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham. Then Abraham took Ishmael, his son, and all those born in his house, or bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day, as God has said to him. 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. That very day, Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised, and all the men of his house, those born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him. The brass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God abides forever. Amen, you may be seated. There are words that we say in the church, and sometimes I wonder if we know what they mean. Sometimes it's apparent that we're speaking, you could say Christianese, right? Using words just because they're part of our ambiance and we've heard them, but have we really taken the time to know them? Words like blessing or grace or mercy, we tend to say them because we hear them and they're the words that Christians use, but what do those words mean? And today I wanna hone in on one particular word, the word covenant. the word covenant. It seems like, especially in our Presbyterian circles, our Orthodox Presbyterian circles, we use that word covenant a lot, but we don't always know exactly what we mean by it. We're speaking Christianese. We say, you know, a child of the covenant, or the God of the covenant, or we name churches covenants. And this is good and well, I'm not saying we shouldn't, absolutely. But we ought to know what we mean when we say that. And we have a prime opportunity to lean in and know what God's covenant means because he establishes it here in chapter 17 with Abraham. And he not only establishes it, but he gives a vivid picture of it. He gives a sign and seal of it. And that sign and seal, that token of his covenant is the sign of circumcision. And so we're going to lean in and look at what this, I mean, what is covenant? And we're going to have a visual cue that helps us understand it, but we're also going to see through God talking to Abraham that he explains what covenant means. When we're talking about covenant, we're talking about what? We're talking about a relationship with God, but not just any relationship. We're talking about a bond in blood, sovereignly administered. We're talking about a relationship in which God has total control of our lives. And we submit to everything to Him because it is good and well to do so. We find freedom in God's total control of our lives. And so we need to see, first of all, what is at the core of this idea of covenant? What's at the center of it? And then we need to look at the sign of the covenant, and then we need to consider the significance of the covenant for us today. Look at the core of God's covenant. What is at the center of that idea, the word covenant? Well, at the center of our covenant relationship with God is a complete and total surrender to his control over our lives. You'll notice what happens in this passage is that God appears to Abram and then he proceeds to do what? To rename him and pretty much everyone else in his household. You're no longer Abram, now you're Abraham, and finally we can take a deep breath, me in particular, because I've been careful, trying to be careful not to say Abraham before God renamed Abram. I've been saying Abram, but now, oh, finally, I can take a deep breath. He's Abraham, okay? And it means father of a multitude. So here's Abraham, and he's walking around, and everyone he would meet, he'd say, hi, my name is father of a multitude, nice to meet you. Hi, I'm father of a multitude. Can I help you? And every time he'd say this, people would be reminded of these promises that God had given to him, and Abraham in particular would remember these promises that were given. And then God comes and he renames Sarah, or Sarai, into Sarah, which means princess. And Sarah meant princess, and Sarai means princess, and they're basically the same thing, but God is renaming her, because why? Because he can't. And then he gives this child of promise a new name, right? The one who hasn't even been conceived yet. He says, his name's gonna be Isaac. Now, I want you to think about this for a moment. What if every time someone joined the church, I renamed them? What if I said, hi, I'd like you to meet Sean, but he's no longer Sean, we should call him Bradley. Or what if we had a child up here baptizing them like we did the past two weeks and had that privilege? And what if I said, you know, we're about to baptize this child, but her name is not Mary. Her name is now Sally. The parents would be shocked, right? They would say, you can't do that. You're not allowed to do that. And they'd be right. That would be a total and complete abuse of church authority. I don't have the power to rename any of you. I don't have the power to name a child before the child's born, but God can do that. Why? Because he's God. And he gives himself a name here in this passage, doesn't he? He says, I am El Shaddai. I am El Shaddai. I am God Almighty. And that name El Shaddai is a new one, one that you might have heard of. It might be familiar with. But this is the first time that God lays out that name and gives it forth to Abraham. He says, before I rename you, before I rename your wife, before I name your soon to be conceived child, I want to tell you who I am. I'm gonna give myself a new name, El Shaddai, God Almighty, God All-Powerful, the God who is in complete control of all things, and by the way, in control of you. That's why God can rename Abram to Abraham. That's why he can rename Sarai to Sarah. That's why he can name this child Isaac before he's even born or conceived. because he holds every part of our life in our hand, in his hands, he is in complete control. Now, doesn't this completely buck against the idea of God that we have in our world? I remember several conversations, I mean, I can't even count how many conversations I've had with people around Dayton or in Philadelphia when I was in seminary, just talking to people about Jesus and telling them who God is and them saying, you know, that's not the kind of God that I wanna believe in. I prefer a God who, and then they'll go on to say, to speak of a God who makes them very comfortable. They'll say, you know, I don't really like the Old Testament God. I really like the New Testament God of love and peace. We're not talking about different gods, of course. But they're saying, what are they saying? They're saying, I prefer God to be like this. I feel most comfortable when God is under my control. I like to fashion God in this way. It makes me feel good. It makes me comfortable. It lets me do the things I want to do. And when we approach God this way, and by the way, I'm not just saying it's out there, we should really be aware that we all are tempted to do this every day in our hearts, to remake God, to form and fashion him in our own image. to diminish attributes that we feel uncomfortable with, to enlarge ones that make us feel good about God. And what we do when we do this to God is we're saying, I like when he's under my control. I like to interview him and make sure he's who I want him to be before I give him power over my life. And the truth is, this is not at all how it goes. God comes to us, he comes to Abraham and he says, I am El Shaddai, I am God Almighty. You walk before me, you submit before me. I'm in control of everything. We don't get to decide who God is in our lives. He sets the term of his relationship with us and we humbly bend to his will. That's what covenant means. Covenant means God's in control, and so we bend to that control. And as you're going to see, I pray you see, this is a good thing. It would be disastrous to have it any other way. But I wonder how we're doing with this this morning. Are we tempted to form and fashion a God of our own making, one that fits under our control, one who we've interviewed for the job, or are we in the nature of the covenant saying, God, I see in your word who you are. Lord, I submit, I bend, I will give up even the things that I treasure most because you are my God, because you're El Shaddai. That's the core of God's covenant, is a relationship with God in which complete surrender takes place to his control over our lives. He is our sovereign, all-powerful God. But then he gives a sign of all this, and the sign is circumcision. And I want you to see that God's power over our lives is clear from this covenant of circumcision, which touches the most sensitive part of Abraham's personhood. Circumcision, is placed upon that male, that reproductive part of the male body, which is most sensitive, most personal to Abraham, and as we're going to see, is the source of his sin and guilt. Circumcision highlights three aspects of God's relationship with us. First, the covenant is personal. When God comes to us and says, I am El Shaddai, live before me, we need to understand that this relationship with God is a personal one. There is no area of our lives which is off limits to God. He desires that every aspect of our lives be shaped by our knowledge of him, including our relationships, our calendars, and our habits, everything. And I've thought of this before. I've talked with people who say, well, God wouldn't be interested in what I do in my bedroom, would he? Yes. God cares about what you do in your personal life, in the intimate details of your life. He cares about your thought life, what goes through your head. It is this deistic, impersonal God, a mere watchmaker, who would just start things in motion and start a relationship with us, but be disengaged from it. That's not a real God. The real God is up close and personal, and there is no area of our lives that is off limits to him. He wants his covenant and his relationship with us to shape everything, and so he's up close and personal. You can imagine how uncomfortable Abraham must have been when God started talking about circumcision. He's like, oh, whoa. So that's where this is going, yes. God is giving Abraham this super visual, tangible example saying, I own all of you. All of you needs to be in submission to me. All of you needs to be true to me. All of you needs to, needs to submit to me. The covenant is personal. And we need to ask ourselves, what area of our lives needs to be brought into greater closeness to God? What area of your life is out of sync with total submission to God's will? Where are those areas of your life where you are pushing or pulling against the grain and saying, well, not that yet, Lord. You can't touch that yet. You can't go there. You can't ask me to give that up. Or maybe it's more subtle. You say, I'll get to that eventually. Let me have this for a time, Lord. What area of your life needs to bend now to God's control? The covenant is personal. Everything must submit to our great God. Even the personal details of our lives and the intimate ones. The covenant is personal. It is also permanent. Now this mark which God places upon Abraham was not the kind of mark that could be reversed, is it? It's there for good. And when God places it upon Abraham, it's this permanent mark that shows what? That when he calls disciples, when he sets them off from the rest of the world, when he calls them to follow him, he calls them to follow him forever. And from the other side, God pledges to never forsake them, right? This sign means that God is always our God and he's never going to give up on that. And it means that we are his disciples and we should never give up on that. And it's a call to a total life. And so when young persons are professing their faith, I've heard one of our elders ask a really good question. He says, are you ready to follow Jesus your entire life? And they say, yes. And he says, even when it gets hard? And by God's grace, they say, yes. And he says, even unto the day when you die? And by God's grace, the person professing their faith says, yes, even till then. Even till then, he is my God. Even till then, I will follow him. Right? The call to covenant relationship with God is not one that has an expiration date. It's not one that you say, well, I'll take this up for now and see how it goes and as long as it suits me. No, it is a call to take up your cross and follow the Savior all the way to death and then beyond death, all the way to glory, knowing that he will be faithful to you that whole way, all the way to glory. It is a permanent covenant. God says over and over again, an everlasting one. I'll never, never abuse my side of this covenant. You can count on me. But the reverse question comes to us. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, will you follow Him all the way to glory? The covenant is personal. It is permanent. The covenant is also purifying, cleansing, when God brings the sharp knife of judgment close to that sensitive part of Abraham. What is he doing? He is in fact exposing this man to be a sinner in desperate need of saving. And I want you to think about this for a moment. First of all, think of that knife of judgment and where it comes near. It comes near to the very part of Abraham that he used as an instrument of unrighteousness just in one chapter previous. What did he do in Genesis chapter 16? Well, his wife comes to him and says, hey, we're not having a baby fast enough and I don't think it's gonna happen. Why don't you take Hagar, my servant? Go and lie with her. And what does Abraham do? He listened to the voice of his wife and he sinned. And what God is doing with that knife, when he says, Abraham, I'm gonna put my sign upon you, and here's how it's gonna happen, what's actually happening is Abraham has this visual reminder, I deserve judgment. I've sinned against God. I've used the members of my body as members of unrighteousness. Right? I deserve to be like those animals in Genesis chapter 15 that were cut up in half in judgment and condemnation. I deserve for the curse of the covenant to fall upon me. That's when that knife gets near to Abraham, that's the reminder. And it's worse. Because when that knife comes near to the place which is so closely associated with reproduction and children, what actually is being reminded is this. We are all sinful sons of Adam. All those descending from ordinary generation. are under God's wrath and curse from Adam. In Adam's fall sinned we all. You see, there's this ongoing problem, isn't there, in the human race? That Adam sinned and that everyone descended from Adam is sinners. That's the problem that needs a deep solution. And when God brings that knife close to Abraham, to that part of him that's associated with children, he's reminding him that children of man deserve judgment. But then what happens? Does the knife pierce and kill? No. No. The knife performs surgery to remove flesh from Abraham. and from his sons. The knife does not kill, the knife removes flesh. And in doing so, what is actually pictured here? What is pictured is that Abraham needs cleansing. He needs sin removed from him. And guess what? He's gonna get it. And Abraham needs... New birth. He needs that heart of flesh removed so that he can have a living heart, a new heart. And guess what? He's going to get it. The book of Deuteronomy says that the foreskin of our hearts needs to be circumcised. We need that heart, outer shell of our hearts removed, that sinful stubbornness of us cut off so that what we would have is in fact a heart that is living and breathing and lives for God. And what is pictured is that Abraham is going to get this. The removal of the flesh from the body represents Abraham's need for a new heart cleansed from the guilt of sin. Brothers and sisters, do you see your own need for spiritual cleansing? Do you see yourself as a son of Adam? Who needs the new birth? Who needs? Who needs your sins removed? Who needs that old man cut off so that you can be a new person before the Lord? Personal, permanent, purifying mark. This is the sign of the covenant. This is the outworkings of God's total control over Abraham's life, over our life. Now there's one other thing I want to point out about this sign. Who is this sign primarily for? It is primarily a sign for God. When God sees the sign on his people, he remembers his promises and remains faithful to them, just like the rainbow. Remember the rainbow earlier in the book of Genesis? He said, this is the sign of my covenant so that when I see it, I remain faithful. You see, when God sees his people, and he sees them stained with sin, and he says you are guilty, when he sees that mark upon them, the mark of circumcision, he says, and yet, you are purified and yet you are cleansed and yet the judgment which you deserved has already fallen. The sign is a sign of the Lord so that when he sees his covenant sign, whether it be circumcision or baptism or the rainbow in the sky, he remembers his faithfulness and he pours out his grace upon sinners rather than his condemnation. Circumcision is no longer a requirement now that Christ has fulfilled the ceremonies of Moses. Book of Galatians says this over and over again. It says, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision mean anything, but rather what it was all pointed to, new life in Christ Jesus. And so we see that, yes, this sign is a sign for God, but its significance is something that we need to learn and live out today. Let's talk about the significance of God's covenant. The core of God's covenant is total control of our lives, complete surrender to His control. The sign of the covenant here in Genesis chapter 17 is circumcision, which points to that control being personal, permanent, and purifying. And then the significance of the covenant comes in several directions. First of all, we need to understand today that the covenant which God enters into us with us is a call to personal holiness. Now think about this. The covenant with Abraham was not just for Abraham and for the Jews descending from him, but also for us. And we're reminded of this in the book of Galatians. It says that God preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham. It says that we are sons of Abraham. And then the book of Colossians says that we have received a circumcision. So all of this is really very relevant to us even though it happened so long before Christ came to die for our sins. It was all pointing forward to Jesus and then to how we would live out our Christian lives. So the first thing is that we need to know that covenant is a call to personal holiness. Circumcision and now baptism mark us off from the world and they call us to live out the identity which God has given to us. Now, when I am lining up circumcision and baptism and comparing them, I'm not just doing that on a whim. What I'm doing is I'm appealing to Colossians chapter two, which does this for us, right? When Mr. Jones read the first scripture reading, he read how baptism and circumcision are corresponding. In fact, what do they do? They symbolize the same things. Think about this. Personal, permanent, and purifying covenant relationship with God. That's what both of these things do. The removal of flesh from the body and the cleansing of water in the new covenant are pointing to the same thing. Our need for cleansing, our need for the removal of flesh and guilt, the need for the new birth. That's what these things are for. They mark us off from the world and summon us to live out the identity which God has given us. I am El Shaddai, walk before me and be blameless. Now listen to Romans chapter six, verse one. What are we to say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Baptism says this. You used to be someone. Then God renamed you. Then God cleansed you. Then God sent you in a new trajectory, not towards sin and destruction, but towards holiness and new life. God has renamed us. In baptism, he places his name on us, doesn't he? Our name is God's name. Therefore, walk before God and be blameless in this sinful generation. If you have been baptized, your name has been changed, you are to live as one who has been transformed and being transformed by El Shaddai. So the covenant is a call to personal holiness and I look out to you and I look at myself and say, where do you need to start to live holy? more in step with that holiness today? What is the personal, intimate area that God is touching and saying, walk before me and be blameless? This is the old you, leave it behind. Your name has changed, walk before me and be blameless. What do you need to let go of today to walk more in step with God's covenant? There's more, the covenant is also significant to us today because it is still a call to our children. How could I not say something about this in Genesis chapter 17? Originally, when I had heard that we had a series of baptisms coming up and they were little ones, it dawned on me that right around the time of these baptisms would be Genesis chapter 17. But what happened is there was a winter storm and God in his providence said, You're not going to preach this sermon when Atticus Sutter is baptized. You're going to preach another sermon. But today, I want you to remember back to the two baptisms you just saw last week and then the week before. And I want you to understand that our justification for doing this, our justification for bringing forward our little ones to receive the sign of the covenant. Well, it really begins here in Genesis chapter 17. Along with believing Abram, every male member of his house was circumcised with a sign that God's promise extends to the whole family. I am God to you and to your offspring. You see, God didn't wait around to see whether Abraham's children would prefer to be Christians or pagans. He decided for them. He said, you're going to be disciples, you and your children. He decides for them. Isn't that kind of counter-cultural today? It is. We say, well, our kids should decide who they want to be. We should teach them and they should decide whether they want to go that way. Not so fast. Let's be careful where cultural ideas creep in and start to shape the way we think about us and our children. What God says about our children is they are mine. They are to walk before me. I am their God. They have responsibilities to me whether they signed up for it or not. They need cleansing in Christ just like you. And so we don't believe that baptism or circumcision automatically save infants. Only through faith and appropriating the truths of the covenant does salvation belong to a person. But, God places these promises upon our little ones, brings them into the orbit of His covenant, and says, go ahead. Embrace these promises, go ahead. Live out these promises. When we baptize our infants today, we continue to set apart our children for life in Christ's kingdom, even before they've decided whether they like the terms of the covenant. or not, that's actually a good thing, because if we were left to ourselves, totally to ourselves, we'd choose no every time. But God in His grace disrupts that and says, I'm gonna do a new thing with you and your children. So the covenant is a call to us, to personal holiness. It's a call to our children to holiness, and then it's a call to receive cleansing in Christ. And this is really the thing that we need to see. We must not miss. Indeed, circumcision in baptism could never cleanse from sin. No way that water washes away sin. No way that this surgery called circumcision would actually remove sin. No, these are signs and seals that point to the reality, which is what? faith in Christ, embracing the Savior, and His blood cleansing us from our sins. You see, Colossians 2 says that on the cross, Christ underwent a circumcision. That's what it calls His death on the cross, a circumcision. Why? Because on the cross, Christ was cut off from the land of the living. On the cross, the knife of judgment pierced Him. like an animal, like an animal in Genesis chapter 15, bruising and bleeding him, spilling his blood. Why? Because we could never cleanse ourselves from our own sin, only the blood of a perfect sacrifice. Christ took the great judgment curse that we deserve so that we would have cleansing, that we would have the new birth, so that we could become new people, transformed. so that the knife would not have to kill us, but rather tenderly remove our heart of flesh. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, this is what he did for you. He took the great circumcision of the cross upon himself. And now what? Now I am El Shaddai. Walk before me and be blameless. Christ has freed you from condemnation. Christ has freed you from sin. Therefore, be holy before him. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you have cleansed us from our sin through the blood of a substitute, through the blood of Jesus. We thank you for this, personal pursuit of us that touches every aspect of us and transforms our whole lives. That Jesus wants the whole of us and he wants the whole of us walking as new people and he was willing to go even to the cross to accomplish that. We thank you for this. We ask that we would be transformed by this knowledge and we would walk lives of holiness blameless before you. We pray all this in Christ's name.