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All right, if you're a guest with us this morning, I just want to say thank you for worship been with us and being a part this morning and all the craziness that it was today as we were in our second week of getting started with our studies and all of those schedules.
It's been a good morning so far with everything that's going on.
But for our first time guests, we want to say thank you for choosing to be here with us this morning.
At the end of every row, there's a little card there, if you wouldn't mind, at some point in time during the service, just filling that out.
And then as you leave today, you can walk out these double doors that are right here at the back of our auditorium.
And there's a basket you can drop that right there.
But what we would honestly prefer is at the end of the service, my wife Erin and I will be back here at this back table.
And if you could just stop by, you could hand us that card if that's all you want to do because you've got somewhere to be, that's fine.
But if you've got questions to ask, we would love to answer your question and at a bare minimum, just thank you personally for worshipping with us and so we would love to have you come and join us back there after the service, if you wouldn't mind.
So with that said, if you have your Bibles, and I hope you do, I want to encourage you to join me in Genesis, chapter 17, which is where we're going to be this morning.
Now, we have been making our way through this wonderful, wonderful book, the first book of the Bible, when we open up and see of all of the things that God wants to teach us and grow with us and do this.
And someone was just talking about how much they've enjoyed walking through this book, I'll say I've taught out of Genesis repeatedly in my life as being a pastor.
I've never worked this way, verse by verse through it and it has been wonderfully excruciatingly good.
Do you know what I mean?
It does wear you out.
It is hard, it is difficult a lot of times to work through this, but God has just been wonderful through that.
And so I'm excited.
If you're curious, when on the calendar are we going to be finished with Genesis?
I can give you a definite answer.
All right.
I don't know.
That is the definite answer that we have this morning.
So we're going to cover all of.
Chapter 17 this morning.
So let's start.
We're going to read verses one through eight as we get going.
When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I am God Almighty.
Walk before me and be blameless that I may make my covenant between me and you and may multiply you greatly.
Then Abram fell on his face, and God said to him, behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations.
No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be 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.
So we see this big piece that is happening.
It's that piece where we have been talking about this guy named Abram who will become this man named Abraham.
And we see this journey that we've been walking through with this.
And continuously what we have seen is this call on God from that very first time in the life of Abram to go and that God is going to do something with this.
And we've looked at this covenant relationship that's there that is from God.
It is maintained by God, it is carried out by God.
It is all of these things that we see in the work of God.
And it's been this beautiful picture as we've walked through this, because we see this dynamic of like, man, God is always getting it right then and today, and he's working through a group of people that don't always get it right then and today.
And what we see here, what I want us to kind of take a brief moment and pause at, is look at and see the expectations of the Lord, because it's been this little bit of a journey that we've gone on with Abram.
Now, from what we looked at last week to what we look at this week, what we're going to look at this week, there's about a 13 year gap.
We don't know a ton of what's happened in this 13 year gap, but in the record of scripture, we see this 13 year gap, and then God comes and he has this conversation with Abram, who in this conversation becomes Abraham, and God identifies himself in a new way to Abram.
He says, I'm God Almighty.
Right?
If you go back, if you were a Christian in the 80s, el Shaddai, Amy Grant, right?
You heard that Tamara's nodding her head, right?
It's all coming together, all this, right?
So this is the name that we see and what we believe.
What I believe in scripture of what happens here is what we see is we see Jesus in bodily form in the Old Testament standing before Abram.
And in this he does three things that I want us to look at in these expectations of the Lord.
He does three things.
Number one, what we've already talked about, he reveals Himself to Abram.
And Abram sees the Lord.
This isn't a vision during a sleep.
This isn't how the God is going to work as this figment in his mind, as Abram is here, just as you are looking at me, abram looks and sees the Lord.
And then secondly, God gives Abram an expectation.
He says, Walk before me and be blameless.
Walk before me and be blameless.
And in this, there's two things in the language here that is used that God is communicating.
He says, walk before me.
The first, right?
So this is going to go all the way back to the beginning.
If you are walking, you are going.
And so this is an affirmation of what God has been doing in the life of Abram when he called Him from the very beginning to go.
But he now says go.
And as you go, go before me, Abram.
Go.
But know that I see you.
Know that I see you.
We were talking to some friends of ours this weekend.
We went away for a cross country meet at Polly's Island.
And so the team left on Friday to go run.
And so us as parents, many of us went down because the race was early that morning and pretty long way to drive.
And so we went and we were talking to some parents and they had left their 15 year old at home alone, right?
I haven't done that yet.
I've got good kids.
It terrifies me, right?
And they were telling us before they.
Left, they put cameras all over their.
House and randomly they would get on their phone and say through the cameras.
In the house, son, we see you.
Right?
Not that he was doing anything wrong.
They just wanted him to know, we see you.
So God says, Walk before me.
Go and know that I see you.
Right?
Wherever you go, whatever you do, I see you.
I'm there.
And then the next expectation that he gives him is be blameless.
That just kind of has to feel a little heavy, right?
Go.
I'm watching you.
I can see you now.
Be blameless.
So let's understand what this word means.
A lot of times we can hear the word blameless and think for perfection.
But when this word here is used.
It'S talking about a wholeness of something, somewhat a wholeness that's there.
The expectation that is there is not for a man that we've seen has had his struggles and we will see have his struggles.
He says know that I see you.
Be blameless, which means wholeness.
God's saying, Be wholly devoted to me.
Be wholly devoted to me.
So in your successes and in your.
Failures and in the journey that you.
Will go on Abram, god says, be wholly devoted to me.
Now, I love this because what this is communicating, what God expects of what we see in the life of Abram is this that what God expects from us as we obey Him comes out of this real, tangible way.
Of how we know him in our relationship with Him, that he is our Father who sees us, who knows us, who invites us to know Him and says that within that, the expectation to communicate back to us right.
Is be devoted to me.
Be wholly devoted to me.
And so Abram responds.
He responds to God.
He falls on his face, is what Scripture tells us.
And so in this moment when God gives this challenge, when God gives this expectation, I see you be wholly devoted to me.
Abram responds to the Lord, and he does so in a manner of not chest out, I can do this, but is face down in submission and honor, right?
So his response to the call is not within me and myself.
Man, Lord, I got this figured out.
I'm just going to go and do this.
It's that in the expectation of the Lord to go and do that, his response is submission and honor.
And so Abram's response shows the glory to God, the submission of who he is, and complete surrender, right?
Take this in our life.
Go make disciples, go and proclaim My name.
Go and walk in the power of the Spirit, right?
Did Abram always get this right or always we'll get this right?
No.
Are you and I going to always get this right?
No.
But what do we walk in is.
Submission and honor for the Lord as we see this.
And then what God does here is God does something.
God then changes.
This is the third thing of what we see here.
God changes Abram's name.
He changed it from Abram to Abraham.
And when we look at these words, it's pretty cool, especially when we think of the work of the nations, of what God has the word Abram, which is kind of the piece that Abram's been working with through all of this, right?
Because we know he and his wife Sarah sarah at this time, I'm sorry, when we jump back, not ahead of where we're going to go, right?
They have not been able to have children, but he is finally able to have a child when he steps out of the God's plan for him and he gets hagar pregnant and has ishmael.
But for all of his adult life, for mostly all of it, we see that he's one without child.
But the name Abram means father of many.
And so what God does here in this moment is God changes his name from Abram to Abraham.
And the name Abraham means father to many.
You know, God changes names in the Bible.
It's one of the things that I love when I see God doesn't always change names in the Bible, but it is definitely a practice that he does.
Probably the most common one for us is when God changes Saul to Paul.
There's this distinctive that happens in the ministry of Paul that's there.
And God moves his name from the past of who he was to the future of who he is now.
I grew up with my name.
My brother in law who's working, he's an attorney and he's working on some legal documents for Aaron.
And he sent her a text message yesterday.
And the text message said, I know Bo's real name isn't Bo.
I'm pretty sure there's a Vernon somewhere in there.
Can you send me his name?
And Aaron showed me the text message and many of you maybe didn't know that my name was Vernon.
So there's that, right?
And I would show a hands if anyone else here is named Vernon.
But no.
And it took me back to a spot in life.
19 85 86.
As I was early on in school, in elementary school, there was a commercial that came through, right, with a guy named Ernest.
Y'all remember Ernest?
And I don't remember what the commercial was about, but I know the catchphrase was, anybody remember it?
Hey, Vern, you know what I mean, vern.
That first day of school, little awkward bow, I'm not kidding you.
My head has not gotten any bigger.
Since I was seven, right?
And I'm sitting there and the teacher says, Vernon.
And it hit me, bo's not my real name.
I have to answer to this.
And then from that moment on, moving forward, you know what I mean, vern?
You know what I mean, vern.
You know what mean vern.
Right?
And so in scripture, we see that God changes names.
It's not what he always does, but it's what he and when we're coming through, when we look at our relationship with the Lord, maybe some of you are thinking like me, that would be really cool to have had the name change.
Not a name change because I changed my name.
Not a name change because my parents gave me a nickname that I go by, but that there is this name change that happened, that marked this time in my life that before I was this person.
And now moving forward, I am this person, right?
Like it would be really cool in that moment.
Like Abram is going to walk out of this moment and no, I'm not Abram any longer.
I'm Abraham and my name points to the faithfulness of God and what he is doing in my life.
Can you imagine what it would be like on the day that you got saved, whether you were seven or 77.
If God came to you and said.
Your name is no longer going to be this because this is who you.
Were, but your name is going to be this, because this is who you are.
But here's what happened.
That did happen.
You see, your name before.
Your identity before was sinner, was enemy.
And in salvation, what God did was God changed your name.
He changed your identity.
God said, no, you're no longer marked by what you did.
You're marked by who you are in Christ.
And so you're not a sinner, but believe it or not, you're a saint.
You're no longer an enemy.
You're a child of God, and this is who you are.
You're no longer identified by what you've done, but you're now identified by the covenant that you're marked in, in the blood of Jesus Christ.
And this is who you are.
And so I love as I sat there this week and just kind of read through and saw this interaction between God and now Abraham, and we can see these two takeaways that we can apply in what we've gone through and what we're going through as God revealed himself, as God shared his expectation, as Abram responded in obedience.
And then God changes his identity.
Well, we see that in salvation, right?
God revealed himself to us.
He shared his expectation with us.
We respond to this gracious call and offer of grace on our life.
And in that, God changes our identity, but not just in that moment of salvation.
But the other way is how God continues to do this for us in our daily obedience to Him.
God continues over and over again through the truth of His Word, to reveal Himself to us.
This is who I am.
This is what I've done for you.
This is my expectation, as he reminds us that as well.
And then every single day, in moment by moment, you and I get the wonderful, beautiful opportunity to respond again to Him in submission and humility for the glory of God.
And then God continues.
Our identity has been changed, but God continues to shape us and mold us more and more into being like Christ.
And we see this over and over again.
So I want to ask you a.
Couple of questions before we move on to the rest of 17.
Number one, who are you?
Who are you?
Is your identity marked by what you've.
Done and what you're doing?
Are you a sinner or is your identity marked by the blood of Christ who saved you and redeemed you, and you're a saint, the defining point of salvation, who are you?
But then the second question is this are you living in an identity crisis?
Are you trying to in your mind you're a saint but just wants to jump back and live in this life and this pattern of sin?
That's you one of two things.
Number one, live in who you are.
Live in the confidence of your salvation repent and live in the boldness of christ.
Number two.
It's the journey that I went through as I came to faith in Christ is asking yourself the question, am I even saved?
Have I been trying to fake this thing through?
Have I not submitted to God through humility and obedience to Him and his power and his work and his expectation?
Have I been trying to do this all on my own?
And then you need to fall down before the Lord in submission and obedience.
Let's look verse nine through 14.
And God said to Abraham, right now.
This is the part where his name has changed.
Moving forward, here's what you're to do.
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, and.
He has broken my covenant.
And so now what we get is this passing on clearly of the covenant and what this is going to be and what this is going to look like.
God says, now it's going to be different than this conversation, Abraham, that you and I have had.
There's actually going to be this sign of the covenant that is there.
And so God tells Abraham, now you shall keep My covenant.
You will live in obedience what I've called to you to do as well, but that those after you should then do the same.
And then God gives the command of circumcision to Abraham.
And Abraham was to obey God, mark every male with the sign of the covenant.
And now the question why?
Why was God doing this?
And there's lots of thoughts about this.
There's lots of things that we can go to and read and try to draw from this.
But when I come to a practical nature of this is what we've seen and what we're experiencing and what we're going to continue on with ishmael and what will happen from Him is God has chosen for Himself a people, and that these people were going to be different.
They're going to be marked different from those around them as they obey the Lord, and that they're going to be known.
We see this throughout Scripture, over and over again, that these are God's people.
We'll see it as we continually read through the Old Testament of God speaking through the prophets to them, of God taking their experiences and imparting them on Scripture so that thousands of years later, you and I can read these and understand what it means to be a part of God's people, but also understanding the very character and nature of God and who he is.
But the question has come up from time to time is that did this circumcision?
Is this the moment that when Abraham would obey, did circumcision save Abraham?
And that's going to be something that Paul has to deal with.
It's going to be something that's going to continue on through the church of are there these practices that we have to do?
And in order of doing those, that's really going to be what saves us?
And I would say no.
And Scripture, I believe, agrees with me.
In that what we saw from three.
Weeks ago, no, that's not what happened.
It wasn't that Abraham did this and then he saved is that Abraham had faith.
Genesis 15 six.
And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him, abraham as righteousness.
He believed.
I read an author this week that said circumcision was not the means of his salvation, but the mark of his separation as a man in a real covenant relationship with God.
Paul writes about this in Romans four, nine through twelve.
Is this blessing then only for the.
Circumcised or also for the uncircumcised?
For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness.
How then was it counted to him?
Was it before or after he was circumcised?
So pretty clear on the question.
It was not after, but before he was circumcised.
He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had made by faith while he was still uncircumcised.
The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, and to make him the father of the circumcised who were not merely circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of faith that our Father Abraham had before he was circumcised.
So the external efforts then and today are not the means about salvation which it's granted, but instead it's this internal working of salvation that brings about the external change.
It's what God's going to do in us before God does anything through us.
Paul in Romans 228 for no one is a Jew who is merely one.
Outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical.
Verse 29 but a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart by the Spirit, not by the letter.
His praise is not from man, but from God.
And so we see this beautiful picture of what God's going to do, but it goes back to that moment.
And Abraham believed, and it was counted to him as righteousness.
Verse 15 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 people shall come from her.
Verse 17 then Abraham fell on his.
Face and laughed and said to himself shall a child be born to a man who is 100 years old?
Shall Sarah, who was 99 years old bear a child?
And Abraham said to God, oh, that.
Ishmael might live before you.
And God said no.
But Sarah, your wife shall bear you.
A son and you shall call his name Isaac.
And 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.
And so what we see here is the son of promise and the son of flesh.
We see the son of promise in Isaac that God has been clear with.
This is what I'm going to do, Abraham.
This is what I'm going to provide, Abraham.
This is how I'm going to do this, Abraham in the promise of God.
And then we see the son of flesh that is born where Abraham says, no.
Abraham.
And Sarah, we step out of what you've said and we take control of this our way.
And we see the conflict.
We see the peace that is there and then here's, so many times you and I live in that conflict.
The promise of what God's told us the promise of the truth of God's word the promise of truth of the obedience that God has called us to and he's called us to live in the truth of the Son of promise.
But you and I choose to respond in the son of flesh.
Now ishmael has been born.
This has been established.
This is Abraham's appeal here.
And what we miss in those and what I love that these six verses point us to is the goodness and the mercy of God.
And so God takes Sarah.
Can you imagine last week when we were reading about this plan that Sarah comes up with for Abraham to conceive a man who she loves a man who she left many behind to follow after a man who has not treated her extremely well and she can't provide him what he needs?
And so she comes to the point of saying, Take my servant because in Saria's words at the time my womb has been closed and cannot provide for you what God has for you.
God says, in all that she's done, we're going to take her and we're going to change her name too, her new name, Sarah.
It means princess.
And now not only will a son come from her, but royalty will come from her.
Royalty will come out of this lineage.
And scripture tells us that Abraham laughed.
They laughed.
Now, it's unclear of why he laughed.
Was it in mocking the Lord, maybe.
Was it in, like, whoo God?
If you're going to do that, that's going to be all you in this moment, right?
We don't know.
But we do know that there was.
This practical nature of Abraham that goes, and I'm going to be 100, she's going to be 99 God.
You know, there could be another way.
There could be another way.
God could ishmael could Ishmael walk before you?
Could my plans, Lord, of what I've done, could they go and do this instead?
Right?
And God says, no, I'm going to give you Isaac.
I'm going to give you a son.
His name will be Isaac, which, by the way, means laughter, the irony and.
Sense of humor of the Lord, right?
His name will be laughter.
But God does answer Abraham's prayer, and he says, But Abraham, I have blessed past tense, I have blessed Ishmael, and I will continue to do so.
A source of conflict from the moment he was conceived until today.
But God's faithful in the extremes.
It's what we see.
And so verse 22, we'll close with this 22 through 27.
When he had finished talking with him, god went up from Abraham.
Then Abraham took Ishmael, his son, and all those born in his house or bought with his money every male among the men of Abraham's house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day, as God said to him.
Abraham was 99 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin in Ishmael.
His son was 13 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin.
In that very day, Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised in all the men of his house.
Those born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner were circumcised with him.
So God's done communicating of what he needs to communicate, and then he leaves.
Very simply, Abraham made the decision to obey.
To obey.
Living by the faith of his heart, right, and not the flesh of his skin.
Abraham made the decision to obey.
Logically, the deck is stacked against him.
Logically, what God is saying is going to happen is an impossible task.
He has been asked to do something difficult in the literal, what he has been called to do.
You're going to go, you're going to be circumcised.
Your son is going to be circumcised.
Everyone in your house is going to be circumcised.
Everyone of your family is going to be circumcised.
Every male, every male servant, every male slave, they're all going to be circumcised.
And you are going to do this.
But his obedience.
That we see here is not in his abilities of what he has to do, but his obedience is in the God who has called Him to do these things.
And we see the work that God.
Does in Abraham is the work that God does in all who place their faith in Him.
In Colossians two nine through twelve, we're going to close with this passage of Scripture.
It says this for in Him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily form.
And you have been filled in Him who is the head of all rule and authority, in him being Christ also.
Were you circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of flesh, by the circumcision of Christ.
Having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with.
Him through faith, in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.
You see, you and I, we were not there.
In Genesis 17, you and I did not follow this same description of what God would say must happen to be obedient to me.
But he says that through the work of Christ, your body of flesh, it's been removed because of the work of Christ.
And when we're found in Him that flesh has been cut off and has been removed from you.
And that in that that you are buried with Christ, that as he died, you died too.
As he paid for your sin, your past life has been removed.
But now your past, your present and your future of sin, it's been paid for.
And so now you're raised, you're raised in new life.
Now live in who you are, don't live in who you were.
We've been called.
We'Ve been chosen, we've been marked to be different.
And our difference is not because we've in ourselves figured out some great morality and developed within ourself some high level of character that we then go and do, but it's because of the work of Christ in us.
And our response of obedience is submission and glory to the King so that we can go into this world and truly be different.
To be a people of peace, to be a people of hope, to be a people of the promise, the covenant that we have in Christ in Christ alone.
A covenant that was made and set in his blood, not in ours.
Would you pray with me?
God, I thank you so much for the truth, the power of Your word.
God, I thank you for Your grace.
And Your kindness that is displayed and that is shown.
Lord, I thank you that you are still doing the impossible, that, Lord, you choose to use a group of people that in and of themselves are imperfect, all with a past, all with a debt to be paid.
And in Your kindness and in Your mercy, you pay the price you make the way, you establish a covenant, you establish a promise, lord, you circumcise our hearts to make us truly different.
And so, Lord, I thank you that I am not trapped in having to fake through a bunch of religious rules to try to appease a holy God.
But, Lord, you changed me.
You made me different.
You moved me from sinner to saint.
You moved me from enemy to friend.
You moved me.
You made me a child of God.
And now, Lord, in my obedience, it's because it's who I am.
It's because the work of Your Spirit that's in me, it's the reminder of life through the power of the Spirit.
It's the reminder that I died with Christ.
And I walk in the newness of life.
And when, Lord, when some of that old skin tries to rise up and come from me, Lord, you and Your kindness and Your grace, Lord, you bring me back to you in submission.
You bring me back to you in repentance, in the reminder that that's not who I am.
This is who I am.
And God, I pray.
I pray because there's some people in this room.
There's some people in this room, Lord.
Who are sinners marked and identified by the sin of their life.
And today, Lord, you're calling them to take that step of faith, of trust in you.
And, Lord, today I pray that they would take that step of faith, put their faith, hope and trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
And, Lord, today they would step from sinner to saint.
Lord, I also pray that there may be some people in here today who are saints.
But, Lord, they've slidden back into a pattern to a behavior, and their life is not marked by who they are in Christ.
But, Lord, what people see is who they were before Him.
And God, in Your goodness and Your kindness, Lord, would they come back to you repenting before you and experiencing the freedom that comes in you.
It's in Jesus name we pray.
Amen.
Thanks again for listening and be sure to check back next week for another episode.
In the meantime, you can visit us@willowridgechurch.org or by searching for Willowridge Church on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.