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4. God and the Covenant
Genesis 12-25
4. I will establish my covenant
Genesis 17:1-22
I wonder if you remember what were you doing in 2009? (speak to neighbour best answer? most outrageous?
Here are some of the world events that happened in 2009.
Dan Bidwell, Senior Pastor 6 March 2022
- Barack Obama became the first African American President of the USA. (Joe Biden was sworn in as Vice President)
- In March of 2009, the World Health Organisation declared a pandemic. Remember what? Swine flu H1N1. (Total 12,500 US deaths. Kind of pales in comparison with COVID...)
- Miracle on the Hudson Pilot Sully Chesley Sullenberger landed US Airways Flight 1549 safely on the Hudson River. All 155 passengers survived.
- 2009 was the year that Michael Jackson died. Bitcoin was created. And the world was still getting over the global financial crisis...
Me, I was in Bible college. I had quit my job as a school teacher at the end of 2007 and enrolled in a 4 year full time theology degree, aged 32 with a wife, 2 kids and a mortgage.
Now thats a long introduction to talk about the idea of the mortgage contract.
We all understand how a mortgage works we enter into a contract or an agreement with the bank where they agree to pay for the house upfront and I agree to repay the loan for the rest of my life. If I fail to make repayments, the agreement is broken the bank sells the house and keeps any money still owing to them, and I get whatevers left over.
Thats the mortgage contract, right?
We all understand how contracts work. Both parties have obligations to meet, otherwise the deal is over. The agreements broken.
Our Bible story today is all about a contract a covenant that God makes with Abram, and a covenant that he makes with us.
So why dont we pray that God would speak to us today about his covenant promises? 1
Our Father, you are the God who spoke creation into being. Your words shaped stars and planets. They cause the world to keep turning even today. So we ask that you would speak life- shaping words to us today, helping us to understand your promises to us from this part of the Bible. Speak to us, we pray, in Jesus name. Amen
COVENANT CONTEXT
So our Bible passage today is all about a contract that God makes with Abram a covenant. Actually its not the first covenant God has made with Abram.
As weve traced the story of Abram over the last 4 weeks or so, youll remember that this section of the Bible is all about how God called Abram out of the country of his father, and made three promises to him.
- God promised he would give Abraham Land
- God promised hed make Abrams family into a great nation
- And he promised Abram that through Abrams family, he would bring blessing to the
whole worldThree promises land, nation and blessing.
But God had made those promises to Abram 24 years earlier than the chapter we open up to today. And for those 24 years, Abram waited and waited for God to fulfil his promises.
You see, there were problems. The land was already occupied by the Canaanites, and after 24 years that hadnt changed.
And the great nation? Abram and his wife Sarai remained childless. 24 years after Gods original promise, Abram is 99 years old, Sarah is 89 and it seems impossible that they will ever have children. Not humanly possible, anyway.
Not that they hadnt tried. In our story last week Abram and Sarah had tried to have an heir another way. Sarah had given her Egyptian maidservant to Abraham so that he could have his heir through her. And they did have a son, Ishmael. But everything about the story tells us Ishmael was not the son God intended to give Abram.
24 years is a long time to wait... They werent 24 years of complete silence though.
You see, 13 years earlier God had made a covenant with Abram (thats in Genesis chapter 15). God had reminded Abram of his first promises Land, Great Nation, Blessing. And God had performed a symbolic sign that he would keep the covenant he had animals cut in half and God passed between them as a sign that he was deadly serious about keeping his covenant.
2
But that was 13 years earlier thats why we thought about 2009 just before 13 years and the promise had not yet been kept.
Can you imagine if you had signed a mortgage contract in 2009, but nothing had happened between then and now? Imagine you were still waiting for payment to come through towards the house? I think you probably would have given up expecting it to happen. Youd cut your losses and get on with life, right?
I wonder if thats how Abram felt?
COVENANT PROMISE
Open up Genesis 17 with me because after 24 years the bank is about to pay out... Reading at v 1
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, "I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. 2 Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers."
Can you imagine? After 24 years? How does Abram react?
3 Abram fell facedown...and God said to him, 4 "As for me, this is my covenant with you:
You will be the father of many nations. 5 No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.
7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.
8 The whole land of Canaan, where you are now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God."
The great nation, the land of Canaan God promises them again to Abram. And now God changes Abrams name to reflect the reality of the covenant promises coming true. Abraham one little syllable change and Abrahams new name means father of many nations!
Sarai gets a name change as well. Pop down to v15: 3
God also said to Abraham, "As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. 16 I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her."
Sarah means princess she and Abraham will have descendants who rule as kings...
After all this time, Gods promises to Abraham were coming true. But the most precious promise the promise that he and Sarah had probably given up on so long ago the promise they had probably cried about and mourned over the fact that they would never have children that human impossibility was now being overcome by God himself.
Abraham is overcome with joy!
17 Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, "Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?"
And God tells Abraham that, indeed, Sarah will have her son within the year (v21). The childs name will be Isaac which means he laughs... Just like Abraham had laughed with joy at the thought of his long awaited son.
Thats the covenant promise.
All the questions that Abraham must have had for those 24 years, now they were all answered. When? And how? And who? All answered.
Now there was just one thing for Abraham to do.
Covenant Sign
Abraham had to keep his end of the covenant bargain... v9:
9 Then God said to Abraham, "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. 10 This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.
PAUSEWhy circumcision?Why does God ask every man descended from Abraham to perform this sign of the covenant?
4
Theres no way out of it. Its clear what God says to Abraham here Abraham and all his descendants must be circumcised if they want to be included in Gods covenant. Theres no exceptions even slaves and foreigners who come to live in Abrahams family. They all have to be circumcised. If not, theyll be cut off from Gods people cut off from the covenant...
Trying very hard not to make inappropriate jokes here...
Whats so magical about circumcision that it means God will accept you if youve done it, and hell cut you off if you havent?
Let me ask you a question. How do you know Im married? (Audience participation) I wear a wedding ring.
When we get married, we exchange rings as a token of our pledge the ring doesnt mean were married, but its a symbol of our promises to one another. Its a sign of the exclusivity of our relationship this ring lets other people know that Im married. This ring should remind me if Im ever tempted that I belong to one woman only the woman who put this ring on my finger.
Now I can take my wedding ring off, and it doesnt change the fact that Im married. But youve seen the movies. We all know what it means when a husband takes his wedding ring off and slips it into his pocket.
God wanted his people to have a permanent symbol of their pledge, a permanent sign of the covenant. Circumcision is not something you can undo, or take off.
So is there anything magical about circumcision? Couldnt God have made it some other sign? Like a tattoo, or a piercing? Why circumcision?
I think it comes back to Abraham and Sarah and how only God could overcome their childlessness. Abraham tried to produce an heir on his own terms he tried to play God with his reproductive bits. But God wanted Abraham to know that life comes from the Creator alone. And no descendant of Abraham will exist without Gods blessing of life poured out upon his people, poured out upon his children. When theyre in the land, and when they become a great people and they are enjoying blessing after blessing, God wants his people to remember where it all came from. Where it all started. With a promise to an old man... And the sign of circumcision was to be a permanent and constant reminder.
Its worth pausing there and asking yourself whether you recognise Gods goodness to you in the normalness of life. If God is the source of life then you are made by him do you remember
5
that with thankfulness? And if God is the sustainer of this world do you remember that every breath you take is only because God allows it?
Our world wants us to swallow the lie that God doesnt exist. The world wants us to believe that we create our own luck; that our destiny is in our own hands; that were in control...
But the covenant of circumcision reminds us that there is only one person who is in control of everything God alone...
If youve forgotten our blessings come from God alone, wouldnt it be great to go home this week and really focus your prayers on being thankful to God for all the ways he looks after you?
Covenant Confusion
Now I think there are two potentially confusing ideas in our Genesis Bible reading today... The first is this What does God mean when he says: you must keep my covenant? And the second, what does God mean when he says, this is an everlasting covenant?
I think plenty of people get confused about this Christians and non-Christians the question of whether God still wants us to circumcise boys. I have Christian friends who decided to circumcise their baby boys because of this passage. The thinking goes, if God says to Abraham, this is a sign for all your descendants and this is an everlasting covenant, and God says we have to keep the covenant, some Christians say, we should get it done. Circumcise him.
Maybe some of you have done that, or had it done to you. I know some people feel very strongly about circumcision. In a second I want to take you to the New Testament to see what the Bible says about circumcision in the light of Jesus and its going to tell us that circumcision is not that important.
The far more important question is the first one what does God mean when he says you must keep my covenant?
See, lots of us will read Genesis 17:1 and say, God wants me to be blameless before hell keep his promises to me. Do you see what I mean?
The LORD appeared to [Abraham] and said, "I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. 2 Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.
Sounds like God is saying, first you live a perfect life blameless You walk in front of me, Ill be watching. If you can do that, then Ill do my bit. Kids, land. Whole shebang.
IS that what Gods saying there?
6
It sounds like an impossible covenant for humans to keep, if God expects us to be perfect before hell accept us as his children...
Thats how lots of people imagine God.So I want to show you from the New Testament that actually, God knows we can never be
perfect without him, and so God keeps the covenant for us in the person of Jesus Christ.
Covenant Fulfilled
I want to spend a minute thinking about being good enough for God.
A few years ago in an Alpha class, I had a lovely lady in the group, shed been in church for 20 years. I asked, What must we do to be saved?
Her answer: You have to be a good person! Its the Gen 17:1 answer, right? Walk before me and be blameless!
But the reality is, we arent able to do that. Look at Romans 3:10-12 on your handout. Its actually not possible for anyone to walk blamelessly before God.
There is no one righteous, not even one... there is no one who seeks God.All have turned away... (Rom 3:10-12)
As sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, weve all turned our backs on God. We dont walk before God, we walk away from him. And we do things that put us on the wrong side of God. Were not righteous, we dont seek God.
If God were to say, I will not establish my covenant with you until you turn back and do the right thing, none of us could be saved. There would be nobody who would turn back to God. Not even one. Wed all be cut off from God.
But the great news of the Bible is that God doesnt cut us off, even though thats what we deserve. Because of his great love, God made it possible for sinful humans to be made righteous again through faith in Jesus.
2 Corinthians 5:21 (on your handout) says
God made him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Jesus is the only human who ever lived a blameless life. And so Jesus became the covenant keeper for us. His righteous life was exchanged with our sinful life. His blameless walk was
7
exchanged with our walking-away-from-God life. Jesus exchanged his life for ours, so that we can receive the benefits of Jesus sinless life. Thats what the cross is all about. But the way we receive Jesus righteousness is by faith.
And thats where Abraham comes back into the picture. You see, right back in Genesis 15, before God made any covenant with Abraham, before the sign of circumcision was ever mentioned, Abraham believed Gods promises and God credited Abrahams faith to him as righteousness.
Abraham never had to earn Gods favour, or earn his own righteousness by doing some religious act, like circumcision. No instead circumcision was just an outward sign of the inner righteousness Abraham already had by faith when he was uncircumcised (Romans 4:11).
And if circumcision is just an outward symbol, it means that anyone can be right with God through faith in Jesus, circumcised or not.
So circumcision and uncircumcision mean nothing in the end its the heart that matters. And funnily enough even Gods people understood this long before Jesus was around. In Deuteronomy 10 and Deuteronomy 30 God talks about people having circumcised hearts hearts that know they belong to God alone. Hearts that seek no longer to turn away from God, but instead to walk faithfully before God and to be blameless. Hearts that want to keep Gods covenant through faith.
So I want to finish this morning by asking, where is your heart at?
Are you seeking God, and trying to walk faithfully before him? Are you trusting in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins? And are you turning away from the things that you know arent good for you, and turning your life back towards God?
Because thats what the heart of the Christian faith is. A heart that turns back to God. A heart that sees to do his will, a heart that wants to see his will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Our hearts are so much more important than outward symbols of religion...
So as we finish, God is asking us: where is your heart at?
In a moment, we are going to sing our final song, and thats a chance to reflect on where your heart is at. Every time we sing here at church, its a chance to let God speak to you in a different way and sometimes the words of a song, or a tune will impact us differently. So let this song wash over you. And as you do, you might like to think about how your heart will respond to God today.
Will you pray with me?
8
Watch at: https://youtu.be/3cWT19rhu9M File Downloads: https://dq5pwpg1q8ru0.cloudfront.net/2022/03/28/15/17/31/e8d90525-3460-4f5f-a191-bf4daf7eb465/03.06.22%20Sermon%20Transcript.pdf
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Genesis 12-25
4. I will establish my covenant
Genesis 17:1-22
I wonder if you remember what were you doing in 2009? (speak to neighbour best answer? most outrageous?
Here are some of the world events that happened in 2009.
Dan Bidwell, Senior Pastor 6 March 2022
- Barack Obama became the first African American President of the USA. (Joe Biden was sworn in as Vice President)
- In March of 2009, the World Health Organisation declared a pandemic. Remember what? Swine flu H1N1. (Total 12,500 US deaths. Kind of pales in comparison with COVID...)
- Miracle on the Hudson Pilot Sully Chesley Sullenberger landed US Airways Flight 1549 safely on the Hudson River. All 155 passengers survived.
- 2009 was the year that Michael Jackson died. Bitcoin was created. And the world was still getting over the global financial crisis...
Me, I was in Bible college. I had quit my job as a school teacher at the end of 2007 and enrolled in a 4 year full time theology degree, aged 32 with a wife, 2 kids and a mortgage.
Now thats a long introduction to talk about the idea of the mortgage contract.
We all understand how a mortgage works we enter into a contract or an agreement with the bank where they agree to pay for the house upfront and I agree to repay the loan for the rest of my life. If I fail to make repayments, the agreement is broken the bank sells the house and keeps any money still owing to them, and I get whatevers left over.
Thats the mortgage contract, right?
We all understand how contracts work. Both parties have obligations to meet, otherwise the deal is over. The agreements broken.
Our Bible story today is all about a contract a covenant that God makes with Abram, and a covenant that he makes with us.
So why dont we pray that God would speak to us today about his covenant promises? 1
Our Father, you are the God who spoke creation into being. Your words shaped stars and planets. They cause the world to keep turning even today. So we ask that you would speak life- shaping words to us today, helping us to understand your promises to us from this part of the Bible. Speak to us, we pray, in Jesus name. Amen
COVENANT CONTEXT
So our Bible passage today is all about a contract that God makes with Abram a covenant. Actually its not the first covenant God has made with Abram.
As weve traced the story of Abram over the last 4 weeks or so, youll remember that this section of the Bible is all about how God called Abram out of the country of his father, and made three promises to him.
- God promised he would give Abraham Land
- God promised hed make Abrams family into a great nation
- And he promised Abram that through Abrams family, he would bring blessing to the
whole worldThree promises land, nation and blessing.
But God had made those promises to Abram 24 years earlier than the chapter we open up to today. And for those 24 years, Abram waited and waited for God to fulfil his promises.
You see, there were problems. The land was already occupied by the Canaanites, and after 24 years that hadnt changed.
And the great nation? Abram and his wife Sarai remained childless. 24 years after Gods original promise, Abram is 99 years old, Sarah is 89 and it seems impossible that they will ever have children. Not humanly possible, anyway.
Not that they hadnt tried. In our story last week Abram and Sarah had tried to have an heir another way. Sarah had given her Egyptian maidservant to Abraham so that he could have his heir through her. And they did have a son, Ishmael. But everything about the story tells us Ishmael was not the son God intended to give Abram.
24 years is a long time to wait... They werent 24 years of complete silence though.
You see, 13 years earlier God had made a covenant with Abram (thats in Genesis chapter 15). God had reminded Abram of his first promises Land, Great Nation, Blessing. And God had performed a symbolic sign that he would keep the covenant he had animals cut in half and God passed between them as a sign that he was deadly serious about keeping his covenant.
2
But that was 13 years earlier thats why we thought about 2009 just before 13 years and the promise had not yet been kept.
Can you imagine if you had signed a mortgage contract in 2009, but nothing had happened between then and now? Imagine you were still waiting for payment to come through towards the house? I think you probably would have given up expecting it to happen. Youd cut your losses and get on with life, right?
I wonder if thats how Abram felt?
COVENANT PROMISE
Open up Genesis 17 with me because after 24 years the bank is about to pay out... Reading at v 1
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, "I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. 2 Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers."
Can you imagine? After 24 years? How does Abram react?
3 Abram fell facedown...and God said to him, 4 "As for me, this is my covenant with you:
You will be the father of many nations. 5 No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.
7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.
8 The whole land of Canaan, where you are now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God."
The great nation, the land of Canaan God promises them again to Abram. And now God changes Abrams name to reflect the reality of the covenant promises coming true. Abraham one little syllable change and Abrahams new name means father of many nations!
Sarai gets a name change as well. Pop down to v15: 3
God also said to Abraham, "As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. 16 I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her."
Sarah means princess she and Abraham will have descendants who rule as kings...
After all this time, Gods promises to Abraham were coming true. But the most precious promise the promise that he and Sarah had probably given up on so long ago the promise they had probably cried about and mourned over the fact that they would never have children that human impossibility was now being overcome by God himself.
Abraham is overcome with joy!
17 Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, "Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?"
And God tells Abraham that, indeed, Sarah will have her son within the year (v21). The childs name will be Isaac which means he laughs... Just like Abraham had laughed with joy at the thought of his long awaited son.
Thats the covenant promise.
All the questions that Abraham must have had for those 24 years, now they were all answered. When? And how? And who? All answered.
Now there was just one thing for Abraham to do.
Covenant Sign
Abraham had to keep his end of the covenant bargain... v9:
9 Then God said to Abraham, "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. 10 This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.
PAUSEWhy circumcision?Why does God ask every man descended from Abraham to perform this sign of the covenant?
4
Theres no way out of it. Its clear what God says to Abraham here Abraham and all his descendants must be circumcised if they want to be included in Gods covenant. Theres no exceptions even slaves and foreigners who come to live in Abrahams family. They all have to be circumcised. If not, theyll be cut off from Gods people cut off from the covenant...
Trying very hard not to make inappropriate jokes here...
Whats so magical about circumcision that it means God will accept you if youve done it, and hell cut you off if you havent?
Let me ask you a question. How do you know Im married? (Audience participation) I wear a wedding ring.
When we get married, we exchange rings as a token of our pledge the ring doesnt mean were married, but its a symbol of our promises to one another. Its a sign of the exclusivity of our relationship this ring lets other people know that Im married. This ring should remind me if Im ever tempted that I belong to one woman only the woman who put this ring on my finger.
Now I can take my wedding ring off, and it doesnt change the fact that Im married. But youve seen the movies. We all know what it means when a husband takes his wedding ring off and slips it into his pocket.
God wanted his people to have a permanent symbol of their pledge, a permanent sign of the covenant. Circumcision is not something you can undo, or take off.
So is there anything magical about circumcision? Couldnt God have made it some other sign? Like a tattoo, or a piercing? Why circumcision?
I think it comes back to Abraham and Sarah and how only God could overcome their childlessness. Abraham tried to produce an heir on his own terms he tried to play God with his reproductive bits. But God wanted Abraham to know that life comes from the Creator alone. And no descendant of Abraham will exist without Gods blessing of life poured out upon his people, poured out upon his children. When theyre in the land, and when they become a great people and they are enjoying blessing after blessing, God wants his people to remember where it all came from. Where it all started. With a promise to an old man... And the sign of circumcision was to be a permanent and constant reminder.
Its worth pausing there and asking yourself whether you recognise Gods goodness to you in the normalness of life. If God is the source of life then you are made by him do you remember
5
that with thankfulness? And if God is the sustainer of this world do you remember that every breath you take is only because God allows it?
Our world wants us to swallow the lie that God doesnt exist. The world wants us to believe that we create our own luck; that our destiny is in our own hands; that were in control...
But the covenant of circumcision reminds us that there is only one person who is in control of everything God alone...
If youve forgotten our blessings come from God alone, wouldnt it be great to go home this week and really focus your prayers on being thankful to God for all the ways he looks after you?
Covenant Confusion
Now I think there are two potentially confusing ideas in our Genesis Bible reading today... The first is this What does God mean when he says: you must keep my covenant? And the second, what does God mean when he says, this is an everlasting covenant?
I think plenty of people get confused about this Christians and non-Christians the question of whether God still wants us to circumcise boys. I have Christian friends who decided to circumcise their baby boys because of this passage. The thinking goes, if God says to Abraham, this is a sign for all your descendants and this is an everlasting covenant, and God says we have to keep the covenant, some Christians say, we should get it done. Circumcise him.
Maybe some of you have done that, or had it done to you. I know some people feel very strongly about circumcision. In a second I want to take you to the New Testament to see what the Bible says about circumcision in the light of Jesus and its going to tell us that circumcision is not that important.
The far more important question is the first one what does God mean when he says you must keep my covenant?
See, lots of us will read Genesis 17:1 and say, God wants me to be blameless before hell keep his promises to me. Do you see what I mean?
The LORD appeared to [Abraham] and said, "I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. 2 Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.
Sounds like God is saying, first you live a perfect life blameless You walk in front of me, Ill be watching. If you can do that, then Ill do my bit. Kids, land. Whole shebang.
IS that what Gods saying there?
6
It sounds like an impossible covenant for humans to keep, if God expects us to be perfect before hell accept us as his children...
Thats how lots of people imagine God.So I want to show you from the New Testament that actually, God knows we can never be
perfect without him, and so God keeps the covenant for us in the person of Jesus Christ.
Covenant Fulfilled
I want to spend a minute thinking about being good enough for God.
A few years ago in an Alpha class, I had a lovely lady in the group, shed been in church for 20 years. I asked, What must we do to be saved?
Her answer: You have to be a good person! Its the Gen 17:1 answer, right? Walk before me and be blameless!
But the reality is, we arent able to do that. Look at Romans 3:10-12 on your handout. Its actually not possible for anyone to walk blamelessly before God.
There is no one righteous, not even one... there is no one who seeks God.All have turned away... (Rom 3:10-12)
As sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, weve all turned our backs on God. We dont walk before God, we walk away from him. And we do things that put us on the wrong side of God. Were not righteous, we dont seek God.
If God were to say, I will not establish my covenant with you until you turn back and do the right thing, none of us could be saved. There would be nobody who would turn back to God. Not even one. Wed all be cut off from God.
But the great news of the Bible is that God doesnt cut us off, even though thats what we deserve. Because of his great love, God made it possible for sinful humans to be made righteous again through faith in Jesus.
2 Corinthians 5:21 (on your handout) says
God made him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Jesus is the only human who ever lived a blameless life. And so Jesus became the covenant keeper for us. His righteous life was exchanged with our sinful life. His blameless walk was
7
exchanged with our walking-away-from-God life. Jesus exchanged his life for ours, so that we can receive the benefits of Jesus sinless life. Thats what the cross is all about. But the way we receive Jesus righteousness is by faith.
And thats where Abraham comes back into the picture. You see, right back in Genesis 15, before God made any covenant with Abraham, before the sign of circumcision was ever mentioned, Abraham believed Gods promises and God credited Abrahams faith to him as righteousness.
Abraham never had to earn Gods favour, or earn his own righteousness by doing some religious act, like circumcision. No instead circumcision was just an outward sign of the inner righteousness Abraham already had by faith when he was uncircumcised (Romans 4:11).
And if circumcision is just an outward symbol, it means that anyone can be right with God through faith in Jesus, circumcised or not.
So circumcision and uncircumcision mean nothing in the end its the heart that matters. And funnily enough even Gods people understood this long before Jesus was around. In Deuteronomy 10 and Deuteronomy 30 God talks about people having circumcised hearts hearts that know they belong to God alone. Hearts that seek no longer to turn away from God, but instead to walk faithfully before God and to be blameless. Hearts that want to keep Gods covenant through faith.
So I want to finish this morning by asking, where is your heart at?
Are you seeking God, and trying to walk faithfully before him? Are you trusting in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins? And are you turning away from the things that you know arent good for you, and turning your life back towards God?
Because thats what the heart of the Christian faith is. A heart that turns back to God. A heart that sees to do his will, a heart that wants to see his will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Our hearts are so much more important than outward symbols of religion...
So as we finish, God is asking us: where is your heart at?
In a moment, we are going to sing our final song, and thats a chance to reflect on where your heart is at. Every time we sing here at church, its a chance to let God speak to you in a different way and sometimes the words of a song, or a tune will impact us differently. So let this song wash over you. And as you do, you might like to think about how your heart will respond to God today.
Will you pray with me?
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Watch at: https://youtu.be/3cWT19rhu9M File Downloads: https://dq5pwpg1q8ru0.cloudfront.net/2022/03/28/15/17/31/e8d90525-3460-4f5f-a191-bf4daf7eb465/03.06.22%20Sermon%20Transcript.pdf