Sign of the Covenant

Good morning.

Today's text is Genesis 17, verses 1 to 14.

Genesis 17:1–14

It says, When Abram was ninety-nine 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 four the father of a multitude of nations.

No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be called 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 God, for an everlasting covenant to be God to you, and to your offspring after you.

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 brought 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 surely be circumcised.

So shall my covenant be in your flesh as 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks to those of you here in person.

Thanks for uh joining us here this morning, braving this crazy weather uh to come hear a sermon about circumcision.

And uh to everybody at home, thanks for gathering with us.

There's something about the week after March 8th where we're not able to gather together in person.

I don't know uh what it is.

We should mark it off on our calendars and I'll plan a vacation or something.

Uh but thanks for you if you guys that are here are gonna have to laugh extra loud um for the makeup for the the belly laughter from the folks at home.

Uh but thanks for joining us.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

And it's crazy looking out and seeing, you know, at so few people here just feels like the summer reminds us of that time.

And man, that was tough.

And preaching to a camera is pretty tough.

And we've got a sermon here that is really substantial.

Uh from this text, I think you could preach just about uh the whole corpus of scripture just by looking through this text because it connects with so much of the Bible, with so much of redemptive history.

Uh, so there's so much to see here.

But before we start unpacking that, I want to make a couple of quick announcements.

Uh, first of all, we've got a members' meeting on March 28th.

So if you're a member here at Redemption Church Denver, uh, you can join us for that meeting.

It'll be right after church from 11 to noon.

And we're going to be covering up some uh pretty exciting news for the future of our church, uh, as well as covering some uh assessments that we've done of our church and areas that we really want to focus on to grow as a community and to just grow in our health as a community.

So it'll be an exciting meeting, a really forward-looking meeting.

We hope you'll be able to join us.

Uh and also the RCD Kids Volunteer Training was set to be today, but we bumped it one week.

So that'll be next week from noon or excuse me, from 11 to noon as well.

So if you work with RCD kids or you'd like to join us for that training right after next week's service.

Also, our next uh short class, our next uh study is coming up, and it's going to be taught by Heidi and John Kushnroff, are teaching it together.

And it's going to be on biblical manhood and womanhood.

So there's so much discussion in our culture now about what gender means and what this what the core of our identity really is.

And we often get so focused on the drift of our culture away from a biblical understanding that we've we've forgotten how to make a positive case for what the Bible describes gender to be.

That there's a beauty here and a wonder that God has built into men and women in his creation.

And so much of that gets lost as it gets pitted against each other.

And so Heidi and John are going to be teaching this class.

I think it's going to be so useful.

Uh if you're married, I think it's going to be useful for that relationship.

If you're raising kids, I think it's going to be so useful.

If you're single and you would like to be married one day, perhaps, or you're wrestling through what these cultural questions of gender mean for you and your faith.

This class is going to be so helpful.

Uh, I think it's going to be uh to touch on just a lot of what it means to find our identity in Scripture and to find our identity in Christ.

So uh you can sign up for that in the app, and the kickoff dinner for that will be March 26th.

So you can join us for that then.

All right, let's pray and we'll get into our text for today.

Holy Father, we praise you for the snow that's coming down outside.

We praise you that you stored it up in your storehouses and you pour it out where you will.

Lord, we pray that your word would work just like that snow on our hearts, that wherever it falls, it waters the earth.

And Lord, we pray that your word would do the same for our hearts this morning, that wherever that it would accomplish exactly what you have for it to accomplish.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Okay, so this is going to be a part one sermon.

And because we're so separate, I'm gonna try and move through some of these high-level things about this text at a pretty steady clip.

But as I was saying earlier, this is one of those texts that's so central to our understanding of what it means to have been saved by faith alone.

And through this text, we could look out and address all sorts of topics in Scripture.

From this text, we could preach the importance of the sacraments.

We can get to the nature of salvation by faith alone.

We can talk about the extent of the covenant and God's covenant people, in God's promises to his covenant people.

We can talk about anywhere in Scripture where the phrase, I will be your God and you will be my people, sums up the covenant.

Because here we see that laid out for the first time in this really clear way, that God is calling for himself a particular people to be his people.

And the promise that he has for them is that he will be their God.

That's the heart of what we're looking at.

God will be our God.

So today we're going to look at this in the way that God lays out his covenant.

We're gonna look at three things.

We're going to look at the giver of the covenant, who is God.

Then we're going to look at the offer of the covenant, of the covenant, the promises that God makes to Abram in this covenant.

And then we're going to look at the stipulations or the requirements of the covenant.

What does God require of Abram in order for this covenant to be fulfilled?

So the giver, the offer, and the stipulations.

First, the giver.

Genesis 17, one through two.

It says 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.

So from where we left off last week, this is four years later.

And here we see that it's four years later, and God comes to Abram and he gives him a new name, and he gives God introduces himself in a new way.

And let's look at exactly what he says.

He says, I am God Almighty.

This is where God introduces himself as El Shaddai, God Almighty.

And then he calls Abram to walk before me and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you and may multiply you greatly.

Now, the parallels that we see here is this verse and the way that God is talking and introducing himself is just like Jesus' great commission that he makes in Matthew 28.

God introduces himself here, God Almighty.

Jesus describes himself in the Great Commission.

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

And then Jesus says, Go therefore, make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to do all that I have commanded them to do.

Here we see that same format.

God says, I am God Almighty.

That means all authority is his.

Then he calls Abram to walk in this discipleship relationship with him, obeying everything that God calls him to do.

Walk before me and be blameless.

God is calling Abram to a blamelessness before him.

And just as Jesus introduces baptism as the sign of the membership in this discipleship relationship and this covenant that God has called his people to, here, what God introduces is the sign of circumcision to mark out the covenant people.

And so we've got this similar dynamic moment.

This is a great commission type of moment, which here we see this is the start of God's chosen people with a unique identity as his people in the world and a sign of that identity.

Just as with Jesus in the new covenant, we see him claim all authority, call disciples out of the world, and then mark them with a sign to show this is his new covenant people.

Here it is to a nation and a tribe.

With Christ, it is to all peoples, because that dividing line is broken down.

So you can see we're in some pretty deep theological waters here, that this is such a foundational moment that is built on in the new covenant.

And we see those covenantal patterns established here that we still draw on to understand our relationship with Christ.

So let's stay with this text here.

Why is it that God calls Abram to be blameless?

He calls Abram to be blameless because he is showing the uh it here's the point that I want to make.

It's not that he's bartering with Abram in order to barter his blamelessness and say, if you're blameless, then your blamelessness is what you owe me.

And then once I get that, I'll give you what you deserve.

No, that it's not that type of a dynamic.

Because notice why he calls him to be blameless.

Be blameless that I may make my covenant between me and you and may multiply you greatly.

God is making this covenant and laying these conditions so that God might give.

These are the conditions of God's giving.

See, He's not bartering to get something.

God is giving from the very beginning.

And that means that there is a certain type of heart that God can give to.

Otherwise, what God gives can't be received.

So God is saying, in order to be in this covenant with me and receive these gifts of my multiplying you, then you need to be able to have a heart that receives me.

And so God is calling Abram to this covenant where he does all the giving, but he has to prepare the heart of the one who receives.

And then Abram's response is this in Genesis 17, 3.

Then Abram fell on his face.

So this is the first time that we've seen Abram fall on his face before the Lord.

But it isn't the first time that we've seen the Lord establish a covenant with Abram.

In fact, we've seen it about four times so far.

And we've seen Abram do a number of things.

We've seen him question back to God and say, Sure, you promised me the land, but will the sun actually come from my own loins?

Is this promise of offspring?

Is that something I'll actually receive as my offspring?

And God patiently answers him.

We see Abram respond in obedience when he's initially called out from the land of Ur to go into the land of Canaan.

And Abram responds in obedience to God.

But here, when God introduces himself as God Almighty, and then calls Abram to be blameless before him, we see Abram fall on his face before the Lord.

This is the first time that we see that happen.

Why do you think that happens with Abram?

Part of me wants to just stop the sermon here and let us just consider what if there is such a one as God the Almighty?

And what if he requires of us before him absolute blamelessness?

What if that's real?

What is the response of a heart who's confronted with that type of terrifying reality?

Abram falls on his face before the Lord.

It is the absolute blameless one coming to us saying, You be blameless, and I will bless you as I call you into this covenant.

But outside of your blamelessness, you stand before me, your creator, bearing blame.

He falls on his face before the Lord.

The reality is so stark and so terrifying that Abram falls on his face.

But now God lays out the covenant to Abram.

In the standard terms of any covenant, in the standard terms of any contract, we see that it has promises and it has stipulations.

Okay, so the promises of the contract are uh those things that God says that he will be giving to Abram.

And the stipulations are the things that he requires in return, just like any contract.

So let's go ahead and first God lays out the promises.

God says, as for me, I will do these things for you.

That's what he says in these promises.

Genesis 17, four through five.

We'll see, well, let's begin with, we'll see in these promises the identity that Abram receives, the prestige, the scope and scale of the promises, and the heart of the promise.

So four things identity, prestige, scope and scale, and heart.

Genesis 17, four through five says, 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.

So what we see Abram receive here is a whole new name.

Abram, remember, his face, he's fallen before the Lord in this terror before God Almighty.

And then what does he receive?

He says, Abram, my covenant is with you.

My covenant is with you.

God comes down before the sinner, fallen before him, and he says, Abram, you, my covenant is with you.

And then he gives Abram a whole new identity that is based in the promise of God.

The covenant will become the center of Abram's identity.

As and God shows this by giving Abram a new name.

And it's a name that is more expansive than the name that he had before.

He will no longer be called Abram, but he will be called Abraham.

Abram means the high father.

Abraham means the high father of multitudes.

And so God says, you will be called Abraham.

And what will be the center of your understanding of yourself and the very thing that you are called by other people?

It is the promise that God has made to you.

See, Abram's identity, now Abraham, Abraham's identity is not something that he conjured up from within himself by self-discovery.

It's not something that he manifested out in the world by creating something that would then reflect his identity.

Abraham's identity was bestowed upon him by the promise of God.

The center of who he is as a person is defined by the promises of God.

That is most fundamentally who he is.

The covenant provides an identity.

Next we see the prestige of the covenant.

Genesis 17, 6 says, I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you.

Here we see the prestige of the covenant.

Kings and nations are to come from Abraham.

And so we see that there is a glory attached to this promise of God, that he will be the high father of multitudes, including nations and kings that will come from him.

And a pointer in this that we see is the nations and the kings that will be brought in in the new covenant, so that all people and all tribes and all tongues will be brought in under the banner of Christ.

And here we see a pointer towards that, in this promise of nations that come from Abram, Abraham.

That's going to be tough to switch.

And then we see the scope and scale of the covenant.

Listen to this.

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.

Do you see the scope and the scale of this?

It extends into eternity.

And it extends not just to Abraham, but through his offspring forever.

And we will see this become a promise that is given to Abraham and then is passed through the generations leading up to Christ.

That is the shape of the promise that is given to Abraham in this covenant that he receives here.

And we see that it is meant to be an everlasting possession.

It is generational and it is everlasting.

The breadth of this covenant is mind-shattering.

And then finally, we see the heart of the covenant.

Genesis 17, 8, at the end of that verse, it says, God says, and I will be their God.

This beyond the land, beyond the offspring, this is the heart of the covenant.

God promises to them that I will be your God.

That they might be able to say with legitimacy that God is for us, who can be against us?

That these people, Abram's offspring, might be able to echo through the ages, the Lord is.

On our side, what can flesh do to me?

That they might be able to rest in the present care of the Lord.

Sure, we wander in the desert, but God is our God and He gives us food from heaven and water from the rock.

That they might be able to say with a personal certainty that God is their God.

He is with them.

He is for them.

He is advocating for them.

He is defending them.

He is all part of I was watching this video.

Do you guys know Jordan Peterson?

I really like him.

And watch this video this week.

He's been he's been do hosting these podcasts with this guy named.

We're good.

Oh hey, for those of you that were just gone, I just started uh ad libbing up here about Jordan Peterson.

Oh but I watched this video this past week where it that guy, Jordan Peterson, who's become sort of this uh, I don't know how you describe him, famous professor, uh, which is rare.

He's the probably like he's like the only one.

And he's been talking with this Christian guy repeatedly named named uh Padgeot, I think it's Simon Paggio.

Uh and uh this just this past week they released this podcast, and I saw a clip of it, and it was just stunning because we saw Jordan Peterson make the same exact realization that C.S.

Lewis makes in his conversion story, which he relays in the book Surprise by Joy.

And they literally make it almost word for word, they make the same connection where they realize that Jesus is both this, he carries with him this myth, this mythical significance that they that they see throughout all these other ancient cultures and ancient literatures.

But then he is this real historical person that exists just like you and I do out here in the world.

And Jordan Peterson, he'd he says, he says, but in Christ, those two things come together as one.

And so it's like the story of God, the promises of God really connect with our actual lives and our actual world here in a real way.

And he gets choked up saying it.

He he tears up and he says, I think I actually believe that is what's strange.

And then when we he gets choked up further, and he says, Because I've experienced in my life where these the truth of these narratives actually take place here in reality.

And we see that in Christ.

And I say that because in him I felt in watching him come to that realization, I felt this deep conviction in my heart personally, which was seeing somebody experience the weight, the weight for the first time of what if God is real?

And what if he is my God?

It's it's all it's crushing and uplifting.

We spend so much time in this material, and we cut we gather together weekly, and I just want us to grasp and remember.

I want to grasp and remember in my heart.

God is our God.

Now the stipulations.

In Genesis 17, 9, and God said to Abraham, As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you, throughout their generations.

So we've had the as for me in the covenant, here's the as for thee.

Genesis 17, 10.

This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your offspring after you.

Every male among you shall be circumcised.

That is the covenant.

What must Abram keep?

Every male among him must be circumcised.

I want us to be a little shocked for a moment, just at the total simplicity of this.

God called for a blamelessness.

And then what does he say first?

You will just be marked out as my people.

You will just take this act of faith, this representation of my promise to you, and you will just bear it in a way so that you can never forget my promise to you.

As an adult, I imagine that's something you would never forget.

And we see that in this total simplicity, that there's this moment here which is which is capturing the heart of this covenant.

You know, we're not at Mount Sinai yet.

At Mount Sinai, we're given the Ten Commandments, and it's described to us.

Here is the type of life that is appropriate for the one who is marked out as God's people.

But we're not there yet.

What's shown here in preeminence is that it is most important to be marked out to your master.

You are first called out as his people, then you are shown his way of life.

But first, the step is to be marked out as his people.

It is further explained in verses 11 through 12.

It says, You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins.

Listen to this.

It shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.

What is circumcision a sign of?

I want this to be pounded into our brains.

What is circumcision a sign of?

Yeah, we can all you can all say it.

The covenant.

Circumcision is the sign of the covenant between God and between Abram and his offspring.

That's what circumcision is the sign of.

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.

So this is a household movement for the men in the home.

And that the whole household is marked under this covenant.

And the covenant, in its simplest terms, I will be your God, you will be marked out as my people.

You will walk in faith before me.

So let's take a bit of time and let's try and understand the nature of the sign.

Because the question is like, why circumcision?

Why is that the marker that God chooses as the sign for his people?

Well, let's consider, first of all, what is Abraham wrestling with in terms of the promise?

Will I have this offspring?

Will my son come from my own loins and be my offspring that God has promised to me?

God has said, look at the dust of the earth, your offspring will be like this.

Look at the stars of the heavens, your offspring will be like that.

So Abraham is walking around and he looks down and he sees, he sees a promise stretched out before him, and he looks up into the night sky and he sees a promise stretched out before him, but then he looks at his life, and there is no offspring.

But God, because of the weakness of our understanding of him, because it is enough for God to just say, Here's my promise, now believe me.

But God understands our frame.

He understands the constant reminders that we need.

That we need something that's not just in our intellect, and we need something that's not just in the situations that we are a part of, but we need something in our experience for his promises to be really taken into our heart in a sustainable way.

And so he gives this sign that isn't in the stars, it's not in the dust of the earth, it's in Abram's own body.

And it's right at the point where the promise must take place.

He can't engage in pursuing offspring without being reminded of the promise of God towards him to provide that offspring.

Do you see it?

And likewise, this becomes a promise that this symbol grows, just as just as all of these symbols in Scripture, they're like seeds that are planted in Genesis, and then they grow in breadth of meaning.

When Moses talks about circumcision in Deuteronomy, he'll say, You must be circumcised in your heart.

And he'll mean that you must have your selfishness and your pride and your arrogance towards God cut off and separated from you.

And so what makes a circumcision true?

It is a faithful reception of the promise that it represents.

Now, here's the um uh it I'll continue on.

Verse 17, verses 4 with the nature of the sign.

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.

You see, this is also a cutting off to represent a cutting off and inclusion.

This is a boundary marker of God's people.

And it's the boundary of those who are pure and clean and blameless of God's people, and they are marked out from the rest of the world, which is called unclean through this time.

And so this becomes the marker of God's people.

So what he is saying here in this sign is I will be your God, you will be marked out as my people.

Now, secondly, let's keep going in this.

You've got to move into the the extent of the sign.

Because it's given to Abram, Abraham, who then receives this sign by faith, uh which shows us the faith that he already had.

But then it's to be given to his offspring who are only eight days old.

Now, those eight-day-old offspring do not have the faith to receive this sign.

But that's why it is important to recognize that this is not a sign of the faith of the recipient.

This is a sign of the covenant.

And here's what they might know: this covenant people, as they move on through this journey of multiplication, of becoming a tribe in the nations of people who are marked out by this circumcision and by the culture that God develops here, they might be born into this community that God has designated and called out from the world.

And they might think, those promises of God, sure, the promise that uh like we saw in Genesis 15, that I might be righteous just by faith alone, that just by faith I might come into the promise of God and be counted blameless before Him.

How could I possibly know that that really applies to me?

Because God never met me and called me out from the land and called me out from my father.

I never had an experience where God spoke to me.

He never promised me offspring, he never promised me land.

I don't have any of those experiences of that promise, but God gave them a physical sign so that they might know that promise is for me.

And I can take it up by faith alone.

All that it takes to bring me into that promise is just faith.

And I know because I've been given the sign of the covenant, because God has attended to the weakness of our frame, and he's given us a way of knowing it, which is that sign of the covenant.

Augustine refers to the sacraments like this as a physical word.

You know, how do we, how do we know uh Christ?

How do you come to Christ?

It's by hearing.

And you hear the word that's given to you, but God knows our frame, and so he attends to our need for this physical word that he gives to his people that they might be marked out.

So that then their circumcision, which is physical, when they understand the promise that it represents, they might take up this physical circumcision as the sign of the covenant, and it becomes a circumcision of their heart when they receive it by faith.

Now we see the Jewish people throughout history, they neglect that second part.

And throughout this whole story of redemption, it becomes neglected.

And they say, it is enough that I am circumcised, it is enough that I am counted as God's people, and therefore I can live whatever way I please, I can believe in and have faith in whatever way I please, because God has made his certain promise to Abraham and to Abraham's offspring.

And I know I'm Abraham's offspring because I know.

And they neglected that it was always a sign, listen, not of their faith, but of the covenant.

And it was to be picked up.

This covenantal promise was to be picked up by their faith so that it became active in their hearts, and that it wasn't just a circumcision physically that mattered.

That was a sign, an assistance, an accommodation to our weak frame by a God who is both legendary, incredible, creator of the earth, narrative, moral, metaphysical, and he made it physical.

In our bodies, like he would do for himself one day when Christ came.

And he put his promise in the bloodied and cut flesh that would bring it forth.

What else is circumcision a picture of?

Do you see these parallels that are being drawn out here?

This is the first time I'm I'm speaking on this, and it's something that I'm learning recently, and so I want you to uh uh, in a sense, bear with me, and I'm asking you to come along for a bit of a ride.

But this is why it has been typical in the Reformed tradition for infants to receive the sign of baptism.

And I'm not asking you to buy into that all of that right now, but I want to help you see a sort of plausibility structure here for why that might be the case.

Because circumcision becomes transformed in meaning in the new covenant, where the sacrament that was given to God's people who were marked out by a nation and an inheritance is now marked out by faith and offspring.

And so it is given to the offspring of Christians as a sign of the covenant, which is to be picked up by faith in the same way that it's always been, in the same way that it's always been.

When we look to Genesis 15, which was a couple weeks ago, I want to press us into here, and then next week we're going to look at New Testament scriptures that are expounding Genesis 17, because we have to to get what this means for us.

But when we were looking at Genesis 15, we saw Abram was counted righteous just because of his faith.

Just because of his faith.

God saw his faith and said, I count you righteous.

And then God performed a covenant ceremony with Abram, which required Abram to do nothing in return.

And God makes his promise to Abram in that context absolutely certain.

Says, I will give you this offspring, I will give you this land, the world will be blessed.

And that is made absolutely certain to Abram as God passes through two times down the aisle of the severed carcasses of the animals that marks out the covenant.

And we talked about how this gives us this certainty that we can be righteous just by faith.

And our certainty is based on God making his promise absolutely sure by God taking on the punishment himself, taking on all the burden of the covenant himself.

But here we see a covenant that seems different from the one that we saw in Genesis 15.

Because in this covenant, there is a stipulation required.

There is a work to be done that takes place in this covenant.

And it's a simple thing, although perhaps not a very fun thing, which is circumcision.

So the question is, which is it, right?

Is this unconditional, like we saw in Genesis 15?

Or is this conditional, like we see in Genesis 17?

Do you feel the tension?

Does that make sense?

I just want to make sure we're all together on the question.

Is this unconditional like Genesis 15, or is this conditional like Genesis 17?

Here's what it is.

This is the dynamic.

I will be your God.

You will be my people.

Genesis 15 was not an unconditional promise.

It was a very highly conditioned promise.

But in it what's it conditioned on?

The blamelessness of Abraham's offspring.

Now, how can God take a promise and make it absolute this will come to pass and have it conditioned on human offspring?

We know the answer.

It's because the offspring of Abraham would lead to Christ.

It's because what God conditioned, He perfectly provided for.

And so what is our faith?

In it is in the God who perfectly provides what he requires of us so that he can make promises that require us to be his people.

And then just as he says in Ezekiel, I will come down and I'll give you a new heart.

By faith alone, you can receive a new heart.

It always works like this.

I will be your God.

You will be my people.

God is not just looking to draw sinners out of the world into another category of sinners.

God is looking to make sinners into righteous people by faith alone.

By faith alone.

So these covenant promises are yours to be taken up by the power of faith.

That God will make me righteous in Jesus Christ by faith alone.

One of the ways that we take up this promise is in communion.

Which, if you're a Christian, please join us today in communion.

And we take up that promise.

The sign is a physical accommodation to our frame.

It doesn't make something happen, but it allows us to understand in a unique way this offered word.

So before we do that, I want to see if, Tim, are there any questions?

Yeah, I thought there might be.

With the general public circumcising their children, are they misusing the covenant because they don't understand it's a covenant?

I think that the general public circumcision is outside of a Jewish context, it is not done for particularly spiritual reasons.

I think that the predominance of circumcision in the United States is mostly just a cultural phenomenon and isn't necessarily tied to any spiritual significance whatsoever.

For the Christian, this covenant is this sacrament of the church, which existed for this time in the covenantal history, does not apply any longer.

So there is no benefit of being circumcised or not circumcised.

It points towards uh no extant uh covenantal reality for us uh in the present.

Uh so let me make sure I got the question.

Uh as far as misusing the covenant, uh, it's that's probably overstating it for most people.

I think they would probably cite uh uh reasons like health benefits or something like that uh would more be of their concern.

Um yes, but for Christians, it is uh no longer of any of any spiritual value.

It is not a sacrament as it was.

It's been replaced in the new covenant.

Uh are there any other questions?

I I feel like there's gonna be so many questions from this week.

And if there's not, that's okay.

We don't have to handle them now, but reach out to me.

I'm sure there's gonna be a lot more questions.

Okay.

First Corinthians 11, 23 through 26 says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Now, Lord, pray that you would bless this time of communion.

Father, that we would be nourished in remembering, uh, Lord, that we partake of your covenant.

And that as we take these by faith, Lord, that we might be picking up this promise, that you have atoned for our sins, that we're righteous before you by faith alone.

We lift this up in Jesus' name, amen.