Encountering God Through His Covenant (Genesis 17:1-27)

Hi, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning into Newsong Churches Podcast.

We're a biblically faithful, gospel-centered Anglican church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

You can learn more about us at Newsongportperry.ca.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

A reading from the 17th chapter of the book of Genesis, beginning at the first verse.

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 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 be God to you and to your offspring after you.

And I will give to you and to your offspring after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.

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

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

Every male among you shall be circumcised.

You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.

He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised.

Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised.

So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant.

Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people.

He has broken my covenant.

And God said to Abraham, As for 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 ninety years old, bear a child?

And Abraham said to God, Oh, that Ishmael might live before you.

God said, No, but Sarah, your wife, shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac.

I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.

As for Ishmael, I have heard you.

Behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly.

He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation.

But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.

When he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham, and then Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all those born in his house or bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day, as God had said to him.

Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, and Ishmael his son was thirteen years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin.

That very day Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised, and all the men of his house, those born in the house, and those bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

God said, 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.

So let's pray.

Oh Lord, you are our shepherd.

And therefore we lack nothing.

Lord, you graciously invite us to delight ourselves in the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Would we come by faith and find our greatest joy at your table?

And Lord, you are our covenant-making God.

Would we rest assured in your promises today and every day?

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So where do you go to encounter God?

It's a question I like to ask, maybe not in those words, but in some kind of words.

Maybe it's an occupational hazard, but I'm always interested in the answers that I get because it says a lot about who we assume God to be and how it is we assume He works in the world.

When I was very early in ministry, I gave someone a call who uh hadn't been to church in a long time, called to check in and just sort of see how you're doing.

And this person informed me, you know, church just really isn't doing it for me anymore.

I find I really connect with God on long nature walks.

And so that's what I'm doing on Sunday mornings.

I take a long walk in nature.

And I'll be honest, I didn't really know how to respond.

Maybe some of us have had that thought.

What am I doing here on Sunday morning?

I could be walking in nature.

I could be eating brunch right now.

I think about brunch a lot.

When I was a student, I remember talking to someone who said, you know, I gave up going to church a long time ago.

Because when Jesus gets serious, he always wants to help other people.

So why would I go to church, sing some songs, hear some words, when I could go and serve at a soup kitchen?

Now, the question I probably should have followed up with is, how often do you go serve at a soup kitchen?

But the point is, this is how I encounter God.

I go and help other people, right?

Now, based on the podcasts I listen to, there is a surge in encountering God through some pretty, I don't know, extreme means.

It's a very interesting conversation we have nowadays, but there seems to be a surge in popularity around psychedelics, which is a way of encountering God in some pretty wild ways.

Or at least so goes the reports of some who've taken psychedelics, right?

Now, I am in no way trying to suggest that long walks in nature, delighting ourselves in God's creation, or serving in a soup kitchen, right, caring for those who are in need, are bad things at all.

I'm less convinced about psychedelics, by the way.

But if you want to buy me a coffee and try and convince me otherwise, then I'll enjoy the coffee.

Where do we go to encounter God is the question.

And there's lots of different answers we could supply, right?

Maybe we've heard some of these answers before, pondered them before.

Here's the thing about this question.

This is what I got to thinking about this week.

That's really only half of the equation, isn't it?

If I ask myself, where do we go, where do I go to encounter God, the question I'm pondering or failing to ponder, perhaps, is the other way, is the other side of that equation, which is where does God promise to encounter us?

Right?

Encountering goes two ways.

We know that in the relationships we have.

Perhaps the simplest answer could be the truest answer.

We encounter God where God promises to encounter us.

And perhaps that frees us up from trying to invent new and wild ways to encounter God.

We simply have to go to where He promises to be.

I think this is what we're seeing patterned in the life of Abraham, right?

We're calling this sermon series encountering God.

So I suspect we're coming, you know, today and every Sunday we gather, with the intention to encounter God in some real and vivid and life-giving way, right?

Why else would we be here?

And what we want to do is encounter the God who Abraham encounters in such a way that we grab onto the hope that Abraham grabs onto, right?

That we understand the good news in a way that Abraham understands the good news.

That we're transformed in a way that Abraham is transformed.

And when we're considering how Abraham encounters God, we have to deal with this very wild encounter in Genesis 17.

Abraham is encountering God in the context that God has chosen to encounter Abraham, and that context is a covenant.

A covenant is the context in which Abraham encounters God.

Now, what is a covenant?

I'm glad you asked.

Here's one definition: a covenant refers to the act of God in freely establishing a mutually binding relationship with humankind.

Through the covenant, God bestows blessings on humans in conditional and in unconditional terms.

A covenant is a binding promise, and God wants to meet his people in the context of his promise.

So theologian Michael Horton writes in Introducing Covenant Theology, great book, he writes, that particular architectural structure that we believe the scriptures themselves to yield is the covenant.

If we want to understand how scripture is structured, Horton is saying we need to understand something about the covenant, the covenants that God makes.

It is not simply the concept of covenant, but the concrete existence of God's covenantal dealings in our history that provides the context within which we recognize the unity of Scripture amid its remarkable variety.

What's Horton saying?

He's saying if we want to understand how scripture is structured, we need to understand covenants because it's God's covenant promises that move his plan of salvation forward.

So it's really hard to uh overstate the importance of covenants and of God's covenants.

And if like Abraham, covenant makes for the context in which we encounter God, then it's to God's covenant that we need to go to know him, to understand him, to love him, even as we are known and loved by him.

So here's the point.

As for Abraham, we encounter God in the context of his freely given covenant.

And his covenant has two parts.

This is what I want us to see in our scriptures today.

This is what I want us to consider as the architect or pardon me, architecture of scripture.

Covenants have two parts to them, which are these: the word of promise and the sign of grace.

When God makes a covenant, we have a word of promise to grab onto and we have a sign of grace as a means of assurance.

We want to encounter God where He promises to encounter us.

So we go to His covenant.

My hope is as we look at Genesis 17 together, we find it liberates us from silly or extravagant endeavors that we might otherwise undertake to try and encounter God on our terms.

And instead, it invites us to enjoy a great assurance, a great peace, and a great joy in knowing that God wants to meet us with his promises and in his way.

So let's encounter this covenant-making God together.

Open up the scriptures, if you will, to page 11 in the Bibles in front of you, or open up your order of service to Genesis 17.

We're going to focus particularly on the first half of Genesis 17, because I think it helps us make sense of the rest of what we see in Genesis 17.

But let's encounter God in the context of his freely given covenant.

First, let's understand his word of promise as it relates to the covenant.

Let's look at verses 1 to 8.

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 Abraham 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 called Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.

I will make you exceedingly fruitful.

I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you, 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 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.

So if there's one word you're noticing being repeated and repeated and repeated, I suspect it's the word covenant.

It shows up in my counting twelve times in Genesis 17.

Very clearly, God has covenant in mind.

So who exactly is God revealing himself to be here?

If we want to understand God by his word, by his word of promise, then we need to take God at his word and ask, what is God saying about himself?

Well, here's how he introduces himself once again to Abraham, right?

Verse 1 I am God Almighty.

El should I, right?

God all-powerful.

What I think God wants to communicate to Abraham is that nothing is impossible for him.

There is nothing that can outpower this all-powerful God, including Abraham's advanced age, and any challenges there seems to be to God fulfilling his promise to Abraham that he made back in Genesis 15 to provide Abraham with a promised offspring, right?

God is powerful enough to keep his promises.

That's what God is saying to Abraham.

That being the case, there are two appropriate ways to respond to who God is, and God says these things to Abraham.

I am God Almighty.

What does that mean?

Well, walk before me and be blameless, right?

Walk before me.

Some translations might put it this way.

Maybe you're reading a translation, different translation in front of you.

It might put it this way: serve me faithfully, right?

That's what God's saying to Abraham.

When we ask each other, how's your walk with the Lord going, right?

We're not talking about getting our steps in or something like that.

Instead, we're talking about our attitude of devotion, right?

Of learning, of obedience.

When God is calling Abraham to walk before me, he's saying to Abraham, Serve me faithfully, serve me exclusively.

What we have, this bond of promise, is exclusive to us.

So walk in it.

And be blameless, God says.

Now, I don't take this as meaning moral faultlessness, right?

Never make a mistake ever again, Abraham, right?

Well, Noah and Job both are described in similar terms, and we better believe that they're sinners as well as Abraham, right?

The word used to translate here, be blameless, you could also translate as unblemished, as in the unblemished lambs that were used for sacrifice, right?

So the idea here, as one uh commentator puts it, is Abraham is to be loyal to God with his entire being.

He's not to blemish himself with competing loyalties to other gods or other purposes.

He's to be wholly loyal to the Lord his God, El Shaddai, right?

He's God Almighty.

He keeps his promises.

He calls us to be faithful to himself who keeps his promises.

And God makes his purpose to Abraham known, right?

What's his purpose here?

That I may make my covenant with you.

Where am I looking here?

Verse 2.

That I may make my covenant between me and you, it may multiply you greatly, right?

So this is what we saw being stated in Genesis 15.

Do you remember a couple of weeks ago we looked at Genesis 15?

God asked Abraham to, you know, split these animals in half, lay them out as it were.

Then God put Abraham in a deep sleep, and he alone was the one to pass through the animals, right?

It was a sign act.

It was God making an unconditional and one-sided covenant with Abraham that he would fulfill his promises, that he would supply the blessing and the nation and the offspring and everything Abraham needs to fulfill God's purpose of blessing the entire world.

And he would do this regardless of Abraham's merit, regardless of Abraham's effort, God would be the one to fulfill his promises, right?

So how does that relate here to Genesis 17?

He's already made this unconditional covenant with Abraham, but here we have something of a covenant renewal, or a covenant amplification, you could call it, right?

With every successive covenant that God makes, it's as though the covenant is becoming more and more focused until it comes to a point.

And if you have a suspicion about where that point is, we'll sure get there.

God is renewing his covenant, he's amplifying his covenant, he's drawing out the implications of his covenant promises.

And this covenant, God wants it to be known, involves Abraham being a father of a multitude of nations.

Did you see that in verse 5?

It's not enough that Abraham would father one nation, but through Abram's descendants, many nations of the world will come into being.

That's true for Ishmael, right?

We saw the birth of Ishmael last week in Genesis chapter 16.

Genesis 16 · chapter mention

Ishmael will father a great nation.

But through Isaac as well, God will raise up a great nation, Israel.

But even beyond that, the new covenant, Galatians chapter 3, suggests to us that Abraham has descendants, Abraham's descendants are whoever put their faith in the Messiah, right?

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

In the Lord Jesus.

Abraham is the father of many people of faith across all nations in the world.

And so this makes a name change highly appropriate, right?

Abraham means exalted father.

Well, God wants Abram's name to be Abraham, which means father of multitudes.

In other words, when God makes a promise, when he makes a covenant, it shapes our identity, shapes who we are.

He wants to make that explicit with Abraham.

That's true for us as well.

God will make Abraham a father of a multitude of nations, and this covenant will endure, right?

This is a covenant that will last throughout their generations.

It's not a covenant promise with an expiry date.

It will be ongoing, and God will be faithful to his promises from generation to generation.

And what's true for Abraham is true for us new covenant believers as well, right?

When Peter gets up to give his sermon on the day of Pentecost, what does he say?

He says, This promise is for you and for your children after you.

God's promise is transmitted from one generation to the next, which is why we at New Song want to be very intentional to raise up the next generation in faith, right?

So let's take this all together.

What do we see?

We see Almighty God situates his encounter with Abraham in the context of his covenant, right?

Abraham encounters God in the context of God's covenant promises.

And it suggests to us that we encounter God in the context of his covenant, particularly his covenant word of promise.

We see the promises God is making to Abraham, right?

Not just promises for Abraham's benefit, but promises that will be a blessing to the whole world through.

Abraham and his descendants?

Maybe this answers one of the objections that maybe some of us are thinking, right?

Because we think there are many people in the world, and many people in the world in Abraham's day.

Shouldn't God care about them as well?

What's God doing spending all his time and attention on this one particular person, this one particular family, right?

And the answer to that is this is the way that God chooses to work.

He makes particular covenant promises to particular covenant representatives, not for their own benefit, but for the benefit of the whole world through them.

We can skip ahead to verses 15 and 21, and that's what we see being established through Abraham as it relates to Isaac and Ishmael, right?

God is promising the birth of Isaac, right, through Sarai, who's renamed Sarah, right?

And by the birth of Isaac, we're going to have the covenant promises being carried forward through this chosen line.

But Abraham, who's kind of incredulous, I mean, I can't blame him.

He's pretty advanced in his age and surprised that he'll father this child, you know, says, Well, may Ishmael live before you.

God, remember, I've already got a son.

We could, you know, he's perfectly qualified, isn't he?

And God says, No, no, I'm going to carry the promise forward through Isaac.

Now, what's God doing?

Is he excluding Ishmael?

Well, no, God has purposes for Ishmael as well.

He's going to raise him up into a great nation.

It's as though God is making his covenant with Abraham and carrying it forward through Isaac, not to the exclusion of Ishmael and the other nations, but for the sake of Ishmael and all the other nations.

This is how God chooses to work by way of his covenant through his covenant representatives, right?

It's a little like I've really scratching my head trying to think of a modern equivalent, right?

Because sometimes ancient Near Eastern culture can be very different from us.

Sometimes it can be very similar to us in ways that might surprise us.

But I was thinking about the job of an ambassador, right?

An ambassador to another nation, right?

Now, granted, there's all sorts of scandals that ambassadors can get involved in, but if an ambassador is doing what he or she is supposed to be doing, an ambassador, when an ambassador is appointed, they are appointed to be a representative of that country, their country, their nation, their people, to another people, right?

In a way that should mutually benefit both.

When an ambassador is appointed, probably they shouldn't think, oh, this is great.

I'm going to enjoy a good income.

I'm going to enjoy some great, you know, state dinners, I'm going to, you know, like all the fancy, you know, everything else.

Probably they should be thinking about the responsibility that goes with being appointed, right?

And in a way that isn't just for their benefit, it's for the benefit of their people and for the benefit of all people, if the ambassador is doing what they're supposed to be doing.

This is the theologic of covenant representation, as it were, right?

God appoints a covenant representative so that that representative can be a blessing to the world.

That was God's purpose in appointing Adam to be our first covenant representative, but by way of Adam's disobedience, we reaped not the covenant blessings, but the covenant curses.

That's why God answers Adam with a new covenant representative, and his name is Jesus.

And through Jesus' faithfulness, we enjoy the covenant blessings not through our work or merit, but by way of his.

Because he's our ambassador, he's our representative, he is the one who's reconciled us to our holy God.

Do you see how this covenant representation works?

Because it's so crucial and it carries forward through the whole of Scripture, right?

It means that our relationship with God is not based in what we do for God, but what God has done for us.

Do you see the difference that that makes?

Your relationship is not as secure as your effort, your faithfulness, your obedience.

Yes, it involves all of those things, but your relationship with God is as secure as his promises to you, which he makes unconditionally, which we have only to receive by faith.

It doesn't exclude discipleship, right?

That's God's call to Abraham to walk with him and be blameless.

It doesn't exclude discipleship.

But your relationship with God doesn't go up and down on the basis of how great your week was and how Christian you were this week.

It's as sure and it's as steady an anchor as God's own promises to you.

That should be a great assurance for us as Christians, shouldn't it?

It should give us joy and hope each and every day, right?

Where do we find God's word of promise?

Well, for Abraham, God spoke to him directly.

And God's certainly capable of doing that.

God will certainly do what he desires to do, but for us as Christians, we're told we have an even better way, a better way of finding God's word of promise, and that is by opening up Scripture.

Here is God's words that He has spoken to human beings, written down so that they can be transmitted from one generation to the next.

And we can go and read about and enjoy the same covenant promises that have been passed down from one generation of the church to another, the faith once delivered to all the saints, right?

When we open up scripture, we don't open it up to find neat Bible trivia facts.

We open it up to find words of life and hope by way of God's promises to us.

We go to be reminded what the source and hope of our salvation is, right?

God encounters us in his chosen context, which is his covenant word of promise.

That's what we see in Abraham.

That's what's true for us today.

Now that's point one.

Let's see what we can do for point two.

We encounter God in the context of his freely given covenant, which includes words of promise, but God does not let his word of promise float in mid-air.

No, he gives us a concrete assurance and means of grace to communicate that promise to us.

That's exactly what God is doing to Abraham in verses 9 to 14.

Let's touch on this briefly.

God said to Abraham, As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout all 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 the 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 was bought with your money shall surely be circumcised.

So shall my covenant be in your flesh, an everlasting covenant.

Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people.

He has broken my covenant.

Right?

Not making us uncomfortable at all.

I'm sure nobody feels awkward, right?

Us modern Western readers of this text.

What is going on here?

God makes promises, but he gives effectual signs, concrete signs, to bear witness to those promises.

That's what we saw in the story of Noah.

If you remember after the flood, God makes a covenant promise to Noah to never flood the earth again.

What does he do?

He points him to the rainbow and says, This is going to remind you that I'm never going to flood the world again, right?

This is what he's doing for Abraham.

I'm making a promise to you, and this will be a sign and a reminder to you that I intend to keep my promise.

This will be an ongoing witness to you.

Now, Abraham's sign here is circumcision, right?

The cutting off of the foreskin.

And as strange and bizarre as that might seem to us modern audiences, we should recognize a few things.

One, this is not a new invention in Genesis 17.

So it's actually a practice that was pretty familiar to the surrounding nations in the ancient Near East at the time.

In fact, many in the Egyptian priesthood would be circumcised as a matter of consecration to do their service, right?

So there's layers of meaning here that I just don't have time to get into, but you can ask me over coffee, right?

The layers of meaning that would be communicated in this in this sign act, one suggests that what is unclean is being cut off.

As a matter of being reconciled and enjoying the covenant relationship with this holy God, what is unclean is to be cut off and done away with so that we can be wholly consecrated to God.

But number two, I think it really matters that it's the uh part of the male anatomy that is responsible for begetting and generating the next generation of life that is being marked here by God's covenant sign, right?

In other words, from generation to generation, with every new child begotten, the covenant family is reminded that we live and exist and depend wholly on God's word of promise.

That's the idea here.

And who's qualified to receive this?

Well, first and foremost, males are, well, exclusively males are qualified for this sign.

We see that in verse 12.

He who is eight days old, right?

Every male throughout your generations.

And we modern readers probably want to ask, well, why isn't there a covenant sign that includes women as well?

And a little bit we need to have our Western mindset perhaps challenged here.

I operate on a basis of being an autonomous individual, right?

I'm an individual, you're an individual, and we're individuals who choose to gather together.

But in the ancient Near East, that wasn't the mindset, right?

The mindset was far more communitarian.

First and foremost, I'm not an individual.

I exist in a network of relationships, the primary relationships being with my family, with my household.

So this covenant sign to the male in the household would be a sign that represents the whole household's consecration to God.

This was not to the exclusion of women, this included the whole household of the people of God.

This was a sign that was normally given to men who are uh baby boys who are eight days old, which suggests to us that God's word of promise wholly uh depends upon his initiative and not any work or merit that we think we've earned, right?

As if we've gotten old enough to do some good work to earn God's grace.

No, this is simply applied to us, apart from any initiative we think we may or may not have taken.

And then, three, who qualifies for this, is anyone in the household.

Did you notice that?

I guess I always assume this might have been a way that God just wanted to mark off Jewish people from other people, but he says, whoever is in your household, whoever is bought with your money shall be circumcised, right?

Regardless of your social background or your status or your standing, if you are in a covenant household, you are entitled to enjoy the covenant blessings and benefits of God.

This is an invitation to all people through Abraham and his descendants, right?

So again, Almighty God situates his encounter with Abraham and Abraham's descendants in the context of covenant, and he makes that covenant most vividly known through this covenant sign of circumcision.

It's a sign of grace, it's a sign of God's ongoing goodwill to Abraham.

And the way that we think about this covenant sign says everything about the way we think about uh the what's signified, the covenant promise that's signified.

In a way.

Let me say this.

Nope, let me go to verse 14.

This is why we see such drastic uh uh consequences for those who reject the covenant sign, right?

Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in his flesh shall be cut off from his people.

He's broken my covenant.

The way we think about the covenant signs is everything we think about the promises of God, at least in Abraham's day.

But for us, new covenant believers, circumcision is no longer our covenant sign, some of us say, praise the Lord.

No, our covenant sign in Christ, God's way of moving forward his covenant and his good will towards us, is ratified not through circumcision, but through baptism.

And this is made very explicit in the New Testament.

In Colossians chapter 2, Paul writes, In Christ, you, church, were circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

Just as circumcision was for God's old covenant people the initiation into the covenant blessings, baptism is our initiation to the covenant blessings through Christ.

And how we regard the importance of God's word of promise should be in every way how we regard the importance of baptism.

We cannot hold onto God's word of promise while despising the sign of that promise or rejecting the sign of that promise, right?

But when we embrace the sign of that promise, we are embracing the importance of God's promise to us.

And it becomes a great assurance to us, doesn't it?

That we are included in God's covenant people.

The fact that circumcision was applied to men males eight days old is part of what makes our church believe that it's most biblically appropriate to baptize infants as well.

Because that generation is, or that promise is not just for us who've come to faith, but for our children as well, that they may be raised in the faith.

I know that there are those who disagree with me, and you're, I'm so glad you're here and so glad we worship together.

But I think catching the goodness of God, that he communicates his promises, not on the basis of whatever we think we have or haven't merited, but purely on the basis of his initiative is a great assurance to us as Christians.

God wants to be generous and gracious to you and I, and so he gives us his word of promise, and he gives us these signs so that they may be means of assurance, concrete assurance to us.

So where do we go to encounter God?

Do we take long nature walks?

Do we serve other?

Well, of course we delight ourselves in all the good gifts that God has given us, but if we want to meet God where he promises to meet with us, we go to where his covenant is made known.

We go to where his word of promise is proclaimed, and we go to where his covenant signs are shared.

And friends, I hope we recognize something of the order of our service on Sunday morning, right?

Here we are, delighting ourselves in God's written word, declaring God's promises of forgiveness and salvation in Christ.

This should be a great assurance to us.

And then as we come, we observe baptisms and we observe the Lord's Supper, the new covenant which Christ has made through his broken body and through his blood that attests to us that we are forgiven.

And as sure a sign as circumcision was for Abraham, baptism in the Lord's Supper is a sure sign of God's grace to us in Christ.

We can rest assured of God's grace and mercy towards us because of the signs that He has given to us.

So we come with hearts full of faith, ready to delight ourselves in this promise-making and promise-keeping God.

He has made a covenant for us in Christ that will last for all generations and will bring us into eternity.

So let's delight ourselves in him.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's word today.

If you live in the area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

Newsong's ministry is entirely funded by the generous giving of those who worship and journey with us.

If you feel called to support our ministry with a financial gift, please go to newsongportperry.ca giving to make your contribution.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.