Well, so we started our little Advent series last week looking at Genesis 3 and seeing where man fell into sin and God immediately promised, I'm going to bring someone, I'm going to send the offspring of the woman to come and crush the head of Satan and to deal with all of the ruin, the curse that Adam's disobedience has brought upon the earth. And we're sort of tracing the theme of offspring. We're really skipping through the Bible. There's only so many chapters or verses that we can do in just a few weeks. And this morning we have a rich one before us. And the promises that are contained here are really just an extension, in some ways, from the promises in Genesis 3. They're just a furthering of them. They're revealing more of what God is going to do. And just so we're on the same page historically, where we are in the Bible, Adam and Eve leave the garden. Remember they were told, be fruitful, multiply, subdue the earth. They go out, they begin to have children. God begins to see that the hearts of men are continually sinful. Brings the flood, Noah's Ark time. We pass over that, we pass over the Tower of Babel, and we land in the time of Abraham. And so would you please stand for the reading of God's Word. This is Genesis 17, verses one through 19. Remember, beloved, these are the very written words of God. 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 and I will make you into nations and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings and 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. And 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 bought with your money shall be surely 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 Sarai, 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 peoples 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 90 years old, bear a child? And Abraham said to God, oh, that Ishmael might live before you. And 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. Indeed, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our Lord stands forever, and may he add his blessing to it. You may be seated. Pray with me again. Great Heavenly Father, we've come to our time in your word, where you speak to us, where you deliver to us again your love and your promises. Lord, we ask that your spirit would come to open our eyes, open our hearts, open our ears. Help us to understand these things, help us to love you, help us to love our Savior more because of it. And it's in his name we pray, amen. Well, some of you know this about me, but I'm one of those people that love long, epic stories. I wanna, if I'm gonna watch a TV show, I am not gonna watch anything that is usually less than four seasons. And it has to have a big storyline that goes through all of the seasons. I want it to be intriguing. I want it to be interesting. I want it to be confusing at times. I wanna be able to relate to the characters. I want the characters to confound me sometimes. I wanna see great battles. I wanna see every little detail in the whole story come together. I wanna see it all make sense. I wanna see it all connect. Really what I want is I want a story that transcends my existence. I'm not asking for much. That's all I'm asking for. And I know many of you are the same way. It's why we like things like Star Wars. It's an epic. Lord of the Rings. We want something that is beyond us, and yet we want something that we can relate to, something that we're connected to. And as you know, the scriptures, the Bible, God's story is the epic of epics. It's the epic on which all other epics hang. They derive from, they all start here. And one of the things that's so vastly different about the epic in the Bible, it's not just that it's true, although Star Wars could be true in another galaxy. It's not just that it's true. It's that you and I are often mentioned in the story. We have a stake in this. We are involved. We are a part of this incredible epic that God is declaring and bringing about. And even though that's true, we can often feel that we don't relate, that we're disconnected, that we're distant from this. Abraham's very different than you. He lived 4,000 years ago. He walked everywhere he went. He lived in a tent. He had to carry all of his things wherever he went. He lives in a place that many of you have never been. God appeared to him. I don't think any of us have ever experienced that. And God said some pretty strange things to him at times. God promised the world to him. Meanwhile, you sit here, you're gonna go get in your car, something Abraham never even thought of, and drive to wherever you wanna go. And in your pocket is more than likely a device that basically gives the world at your fingertips. It's like we live in different dimensions from Abraham, and yet the promise to Abraham, these promises given to him are so important. Everything here is so important to us because just as Abraham, all of his hopes rested on these promises, so do ours. All of our hopes rest right here. Everything is riding on the promises that come from God. And this morning, I wanna look at this promise. I'm just gonna use singular most of the time, but there's multiple things to it. And we're gonna look at the promise really through three aspects. I'm gonna have a fourth sort of point, but three aspects of the promise. And the first one is I want us to see the substance of the promise, the substance. Look at verses one through three, the very beginning of three. 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. Just sort of tracing the story of Abraham, we know a lot of this. Abraham's called out of Babylon, out of the era of Chaldees. He comes into the land of Canaan. You go all the way back to Genesis 12. What is God telling? He makes all these wonderful promises. I'm going to bless you. I'm going to give you offspring. I'm going to give you land. I'm going to make your name great. And we come to chapter 15 where that wonderful covenant ceremony where God obligates himself that he will fulfill all that is necessary to bring about these enormous promises. And basically he says, if I don't do what I say, let me die. Let me die. And even though Abram has no children, the Lord points up to the sky, all the stars that he had created, probably mainly for this one moment, to say, you see, your offspring are gonna be like the stars in heaven. And the initial promise to him came 75, maybe a little bit after that, and Abram's been waiting for 24 years. He's 99. 24 years. It's understandable for him to be a little impatient. I get impatient waiting 24 seconds for the Keurig to finish. 24 years is too much. And in Abraham's impatience, what does he do? Something like Adam and Eve, he listens to the voice of his wife and he takes Hagar and he tries to bring about a son whom he thinks maybe the promises of God, maybe I can provide in such a way that will bring about the promises of God. So now the Lord shows up 13 years after that debacle with Ishmael to confirm the covenant. This isn't new, it's the same covenant. He's already said he's gonna add some things to it. And what does Abraham do? Falls on his face. If you met the Lord, you'd fall on your face. We all know this. In reverence, overwhelming in the promise, but I think also something for Abraham is this. When he falls, I sense him pleading with the Lord. Please do what you've said. Bring about your promise. This is something Abraham greatly desires. And so while Abraham's on his face, the Lord is gonna further these promises and deepen them. Look at the second half of three to five. 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 Abraham, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. So certain is the promise that God gives him a name, changes his name that would reflect the promise. And did you notice the language? I have made you the father of many nations. It's as if it's already happened. But if you're Abraham, I don't even have a child. This seems impossible. And the Lord doesn't stop sort of promising the impossible. Look at how he furthers this and heightens it in verses six through eight. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, even though you don't have any children. And I will make you into nations and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you and 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 offering after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession. And I will be their God. The language goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. God told Adam, be fruitful, multiply. What does the Lord say here? I will make you exceedingly fruitful. I will greatly multiply you. Kings are gonna come from you. That's how we're gonna subdue the earth. God is not leaving anything to chance. I will bring all of this about through you. I will bring about all the things that I command. The land is gonna be yours. And then there's this sweet promise. I will be a God to you. I will be a God to your offspring after you. Such a sweet promise of the Lord. Something that all of this is really driving at, presence with God. You know, when my family goes back to Texas, there's usually, when they're about to go, they know they're gonna go and they love going, especially the children, there's a question I get. And the question is, Daddy, are you coming with us? The answer 98% of the time is no. I don't wanna go, no, that's not true. And when I say no, there's usually an audible disappointment. Oh, the way I interpret that, the way I understand that is something like this. Dad, we'd love going to, We love vacation. We love going to see family. We love getting to play with our Nana and Papa. We love to do all the things that are there. There's so many wonderful things that we can't do. But you know what, Dad? We almost don't want to go if you don't go with us. That's the way I interpret it anyway. I think it's almost just like trying to be nice to me. They want my presence. They want me to be there, I think. We don't have to think about that with the Lord. He wants to be with his people, and his people want to be with him, and that's what he's promising to them. So here's God reiterating all these enormous promises, furthering them, all the while, Abraham still doesn't have a child, owns no land, has nothing, and the Lord is so tender to him, he gives him the new name. You know what, every time Abraham said Abraham, or heard someone else call his name, you know what it said? God has made promises to me. God is good. And in my name are those promises that he's going to keep. And as awesome as that is, is him carrying around the promises in his name, there needs to be something for everyone, not just for Abraham. And so God doesn't just give him a name, he also gives him, not just, he gives him a sign. So this is where he moved from a substance of the promise to the sign of the promise. Look at verses nine through 11. 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 foreskin. It shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. Abraham is charged, keep the covenant. That sounds familiar. It sounds like what God told Adam, keep the garden, guard it, be a steward over it. Abraham's job, you're gonna be a steward over my covenant. And part of your stewardship is that you're going to pass along this sign of circumcision to every one of your children and everyone that's really in your house. Now, if you're Abraham, you might be thinking, I think the name was enough. I'm 99. I'm not sure I need the sign. Can we at least negotiate about what the sign should be? I have some ideas. But of course the Lord knows he's picked the perfect sign and this communicates to Abraham and everyone after him the blessings and the curses of the promise. Blessings and curses of the covenant. And we're not, we could spend weeks on circumcision. And if you wanna read something, I'll give you something on it. You just let me know. I'm just gonna breeze over some of these things of what this is. Many of you already know this. Circumcision, it symbolized their inclusion into the people of God. When you got circumcised, it meant I am an heir to the promise. It means I'm a part of this people that has been set apart for God that I can wait and I will receive the promises that he's making to Abraham. So I get them too. It also symbolized the idea of cleansing. But it showed a particular type of cleansing. There needed to be a bloody cleansing. A cutting away to clean his people. And so it showed there needed to be some type of cutting away. What's being cut away? Sin. More than that though, old life, and more than that, the curse that is upon the people. It's picturing cutting away the curse that is over the heads of God's people. And so think of circumcision like this. I like the way somebody just put it into a sentence. Circumcision signified being set apart from a cursed position to a blessed position. from being one who was cursed to being one who was blessed. Now we all know that circumcision was never meant to just be something of physical things. And I wanna show this to you. So if you have your little bulletin, you need to be on the sermon notes page, page six. And I've given you a couple of verses. We're gonna look at both of them. But the first one we're gonna look at from Deuteronomy. Circumcision never meant to be just external, always an inward reality. Look at Deuteronomy 30 verses five and six. There's gonna be some themes that come up. It says, and the Lord your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that sounds familiar, that you may possess it. And he will make you more numerous, more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. And then here's our verse. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring. Why? so that you will love your God with all your heart and with all your soul and that you might live. Circumcision pointed to something that God had to do for his people. It would ultimately be something that he would do in and for his people so that they would love him properly, so that they would be made alive in him, that they would enjoy this fellowship And so to receive the physical sign of circumcision, you just needed to be born to somebody else who was part of the family or somebody that was brought in. But to receive the reality, faith was necessary. You know this about Old Testament Israel. They often misunderstood what circumcision meant. They thought receiving the sign was just enough to receive the promises. Not true. It's just a sign. that pointed to an inward reality that must be received by faith, that God must perform on and in his people. And so this is where the warnings, the curses of circumcision are also here. If someone did not express faith, if they did not come to trust in Yahweh God Almighty and in his promises, now circumcision pictured them being cut off from the people. So as opposed to the curse being removed from them, in a sense, they would have the fullness of the curse poured out upon them and they would be cut off from God's gracious promises if they did not come to Him in faith. Now the sign and the substance are so closely connected. Did you see this? Look at verse 13 at the end of it. So my covenant, So shall my covenant be in your flesh, an everlasting covenant. Earlier he talked about circumcision being the covenant, sort of, they're almost the same thing. You can speak about the sign of circumcision as if it's the same thing because really within the sign is also the substance of what God has to do for his people and what that means for them. How important is circumcision? Look at verse 14. This is a little scary. 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. So if you don't receive the sign, you're a covenant breaker. You're not getting the sign and you're disobeying the Lord by doing this. Now in the New Testament perspective, We can say, this is actually speaking more about the spiritual reality, if you do not receive the spiritual circumcision that is necessary, you are cut off from the people. How deeply connected circumcision is the promise of multiplying him. Without getting weird here, circumcision is in the male reproductive organ. And it's through that, that God promises to bring about descendants, to bring about offspring. And so think about this, through the very tool that is used to do this, God has put the sign for his people that offspring will come from him. And that leads us to the third part to this, third aspect. We've got the substance of the promise, the sign of the promise. Now we have the son of the promise. Look at verses 15 to 18. 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 99 years old bear a child? And Abraham said to God, oh, that Ishmael might live before you. You feel the tension in this, don't you? You can relate to Abraham. They know there is a child bearing age. Just imagine, this is what Abraham's saying, look, Lord, with all due respect, and I don't want her to hear this. She's old. And she's past child caring. I don't know how you're gonna do this. I don't see this as something that is possible. But he so desires a child. The desire for a child for Abraham probably outstrips any of our desires for children. Now don't be offended by this. Many of us desire children greatly. Some of us have gone through very difficult times of waiting for children, of not being able to have children, all those different types of things. But why would I say Abraham's desire for a child is even greater than any of ours? Because Abraham knows that all of the promises are bound up in Isaac. They're bound up in a child that God must give him. Without this child, nothing can be fulfilled. Without this child, not even Genesis 3.15 will be fulfilled. See, Abraham probably knows the promise to Adam, that one would come, an offspring to come to crush the head of Satan. He's like, is my child, is he gonna be the one, maybe through him? How is God gonna complete his promises without this? Everything is hanging on this child, the heir to the promises. This isn't just about wanting a child to sort of grow up with and play baseball with, which is also wonderful. There's so much more here. He knows everything is riding on the son. Everything is hanging on this. And Abraham has provided himself a son in Ishmael. So what does he do? Lord, can we just use Ishmael? You know what this is, right? This is Abraham asking the Lord if he can live by sight. Lord, look, I get this 13. Okay, he's in middle school. He's 13, I know. But can we just go with him? And the Lord says, no, you must live by faith. You must live according to my promises. All of them will come. not through your human hand, but through my divine hand. Look at verse 19. God said no. I think he said it nicely. 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. Look, Abraham, all your hopes, everything you want, all these promises are gonna be bound up in what you cannot see. It's going to be bound up in what seems impossible. It's going to be bound up in this son. This is why I told you earlier, Abraham, I introduced myself. I'm the Lord God Almighty. You need to know who you're dealing with. This isn't a problem for me. I'm gonna overcome Sarah's barrenness. I'm gonna overcome her not being able to have a child, her age. I'm gonna overcome your impatience. I'm gonna overcome everything that seems like an obstacle to get in the way of me bringing about my promises. Even if you do that, I'm gonna get around all of that. I'm gonna bring about everything that I want to. Nothing's going to stop me. And they're gonna come in Isaac. The land, the kings, the offspring, everything is gonna come in the son. that is coming to you. This is why you can see later when God asks him to kill Isaac, it's not just that he has to kill his son, which is bad, you know, in his mind, he's like, what am I gonna do with this? It's that how will God bring about his promises if Isaac is dead? It's greater than that. Have you ever put your hope in someone and they completely failed you? Like sort of all your hopes were bound up in something Maybe like the way some of you watch the Steelers. You know not to put hope in them. When I was in college, many of you know I played tennis. I played at A&M and we were in a big match against the number two team, Illinois. Everybody's match is done except for one guy's match. This is a huge match. If we can win this match, it changes the whole season for us. We'll probably go on to be in the top three. It's just enormous. And the guy that's playing, he and the guy they're both playing, they're both so nervous. And all of us watching are so nervous. All of our hopes are riding on this guy to win. It was torturous. It was a terrible match to watch. I get PTSD when I think back on it. He lost. I don't think anybody talked to him for a week. I'm kidding, two days. All of our hopes evaporated. Just gone. Season changed, nothing was the same. What if God fails? What if God changes his mind? You know what Abraham has? He has God's word to him and the instruction to circumcise himself and that was supposed to be encouraging. That's all he has. The chapter ends with him circumcising everyone and himself, walking in faith and obedience, waiting on the promises of God. And the promises to Abraham are just outlandish. They're wonderful, they're great, but they pale in comparison to what's behind them, to the reality of them. And this is where Paul does something for us that just blows the text up in a different way. And this is the second verse that I've given you in your text. Paul says something about our particular passage and other promises here that allow us to see this through just a completely different lens. Look at this Galatians passage in chapter three. Paul says, now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say to his offsprings, referring to many. but referring to one and the offspring who is Christ. In the passage, this is what we call collective singular, meaning it's referring to many, but at the same time, it's singular. And what Paul says is, when you read the passage in Genesis 17, read it through the lens of the promises to Christ and all of them that are in him, all of them that will be brought about in him. This is where my fourth point is gonna be this. I'm using all S's, it's the summation of the promise. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna bring all of these together, we're gonna run it through the grid quickly, through all of these different aspects. So think of how now this passage coming to bear, thinking about it through the lens of the coming Christ. The very words, think of the son of the promise, the very words that are spoken to Abraham and Sarah, don't they sound familiar? you will have a son, you will bear a son and you will call his name Isaac. What is said to Mary? You will bear a son and you will call his name Jesus. But the son that comes is not just any old son, this is the son of God. This is God himself in the son coming to bring about the promises. And you know, Mary, he's not just going to have to overcome barrenness. He's not just going to have to overcome an age problem. She's a virgin. That seems impossible. God says, not for me. And this is where Human nature of Christ has not come about by man, but the Spirit of God forms him, not by human hands, forms the person of Christ in the womb of Mary. Think back on what we saw in Psalm 139. Christ, the God-man, Jesus, God himself in the flesh, will be the one to come and it'll be in and through him, this son, Isaac's just preliminary, through this Son that all this comes. Why can God be so certain that His promises will be brought about? Because He's the one that's going to come and fulfill them. He's not gonna leave any of it to chance. He will come Himself and He will bring about everything that you need and that I need in order to save us and anything beyond that. He will do it Himself. Nothing will be left to chance. But the Son is, is Christ, but Christ is also the substance. All the land, all the promise of offspring, the heir of all things, the Immanuel, Jesus is Immanuel, God with us, coming to be with his people, coming to walk and dwell among them. You know Abraham, you know this in the book of Hebrews when it says that Abraham wasn't looking for just like a human city, he knew there was a greater city that he was looking beyond that was not made with human hands, sing a theme, but will be made by God's own hand that he will provide a place and a dwelling and all of the blessings for his people. So Abraham's looking for it, he knows it. And Christ himself is the ultimate prize. We often forget this. It's not the things that we get. It's Jesus himself in whom are all the things that come to us. You're promised to get Christ and you're promised to get fellowship and eternal life in and through him with the Father, Son and Spirit. You do know that the triune God owns everything, right? You get everything in him, all of it. Nothing is left out. And see part of the substance of the promise was to deal with the curse. And that leads us to the last little aspect of summing all this up is the sign of the promise. How does this relate to Jesus? The little baby boy born in a manger will on the eighth day be circumcised. But Jesus will experience, go through, receive a different circumcision. a circumcision that was pointed to when he received that sign on the eighth day. This is where we need Paul again. Look at your confession of faith. Look at the first bolded part in the confession of faith. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh, how? By the circumcision of Christ. Is this speaking about the circumcision that Christ experienced or is this speaking about a circumcision that Jesus performs on his people? It's both. But Jesus experiences first a circumcision of his own. It's a circumcision of all circumcisions. It's the circumcision where he is dealt with as a covenant breaker. He is the one who receives the fullness of the curse of which circumcision pointed to. He receives all of it. He in a sense is cut off in his circumcision on the cross. when he dies. But that's not the whole story because we know he was raised from the dead, given life. And now what does Jesus do? He performs circumcisions. You want to talk about a great epic that we're all involved in. Do y'all realize what we saw this morning? We had the sign this morning that pointed to the sign that Abraham's being given in Genesis 17, 4,000 years ago. The sign that Micah received. Remember, Paul connects circumcision and baptism, basically the same thing. What do we see with Micah? He's brought into the community. He's part of the people. He's an heir of the promises. He's also, we got to see, washing away sin. pictured for us, him dying and rising again with Jesus Christ. What's our hope? Faith. So that all of that will be true of him. Every time we see a baptism, we're seeing all of this reality presented to us. You and I are this long line of people, of this promise, of this great epic that God is writing. And I know it's 2021. I know we're coming to Christmas. What is it, November 28th? We have no idea sometimes. Like on Thursday, you and I will forget this. We forget the great epic that God is writing that we're a part of. We get to see these wonderful signs. We're gonna see another one in a minute. Guess what, there's another death pictured right here. And see, if you've been circumcised with Christ, you have been cut off from the world. You've been cut off from the curse. The curse that came in Genesis three no longer hangs over you, just doesn't. Sin has been removed from you. If you've received the reality of circumcision, which baptism also pictures, received by faith, this is your reality. This is the epic that you live in right now. And see these promises to Abraham, think of it this way, they've come to pass. We have them by faith, not by sight. Just imagine being Abraham for a moment. Imagine the day Isaac is born. Many of you that obviously have children, you know what that day is like. When that child pops out, whatever the proper hand gesture that should bring. It's a little euphoric. It's weird. I can't believe the child's here. But you're so excited. My hopes aren't tied to my children, thankfully. But Isaac though, I mean, what about Abraham? I imagine him doing a Lion King thing. Isaac is here. Think of this, when Jesus is born, if the creation could present him, the creator has come into the world. The creator and redeemer, how does creation welcome him? How about God's people? The euphoria, the promise has arrived. The one who said he would come has come. He's the substance, in him is the sign. He's the son of that promise. That's what Christmas is about. It's what your life is about. It's what everything is about. Let's worship him. Let me pray. Oh, great heavenly Father, how marvelous is your word. How marvelous are you. The great story you were telling is so far beyond us and yet you include us. Lord, help us, help us to understand these things spiritually. Lord, I pray for those here who do not know you. Lord, may you circumcise their hearts even now. Bring them to faith, open their eyes to see the reality of Jesus Christ and His saving work and the hope that is in Him. Lord, help all of us focus our eyes and our attention, our lives upon Him, upon whom all our hopes rest, all to His honor and glory. It's in His name we pray, amen.