Devotional Materials. Week Commencing Sunday 13th
February 2022Call to worship
“For by him (Christ) all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him” Colossians 1:16
“For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.” 1 Timothy 4:4
Our first hymn celebrates God as Creator. It encourages us to praise Him as such and commit ourselves to Him, for we belong to Him.
Hymn
All creatures of our God and King MP 7
St Francis of Assisi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CS-oOC_AAY
Opening Prayer
Father God we thank you for all your goodness to us; for creating the world and for preserving it until now. For the regular return of day and night, and of the seasons. For wonder of Nature and the beauty of the earth. For our own creation; that we are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’. For the ordinance of marriage and family life. For our friends and loved ones. We thank you for our memory which builds on the experience of the past. For our imagination which admits us to a wider world than we could otherwise know
Father we thank you for the grace by which you have revealed yourself to us. For Your patience with our waywardness. We thank you for the promise of all things new and for our re-creation in your dear Son Jesus Christ.
Father, You have made us for yourself- we gladly entrust ourselves to You. Please lead us as we worship You this morning.
We continue our series on the life of Abraham this morning. Today’s title is ‘Marked for life’. Our first reading is…
Reading. Genesis 17
17 1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. 2 Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.”
3 Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, 4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. 5 No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”
9 Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. 10 This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. 12 For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. 13 Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. 14 Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”
15 God also said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. 16 I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”
17 Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” 18 And Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!”
19 Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. 20 And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. 21 But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.” 22 When he had finished speaking with Abraham, God went up from him.
23 On that very day Abraham took his son Ishmael and all those born in his household or bought with his money, every male in his household, and circumcised them, as God told him. 24 Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised, 25 and his son Ishmael was thirteen; 26 Abraham and his son Ishmael were both circumcised on that very day. 27 And every male in Abraham’s household, including those born in his household or bought from a foreigner, was circumcised with him.
Hymns
I worship You, almighty God MP 864 (piano)
Sandra Corbett
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVcW9zejTr0
Ascribe greatness to our God the rock MP 40 (piano)
Mary Kirk- Barthow & Mary Lou king
(no YouTube link)
Prayers
O Lord, our Lord, how glorious is your name in all the earth! High above the heavens your majesty is praised. We praise you O God for You have created all things and made us anew in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Confession. Almighty God, we confess that we have often misused and ill-treated your creation: hear us, and in your mercy save us and help us. For every act of carelessness that has treated the world merely as a playground: Father forgive us. For every act of wastefulness that forgets the cry of the needy: Father forgive us. For every act of selfishness that defies your just rule over our lives: Father, forgive us- save us and help us. Cleanse us from our sins through the love of Christ, and set us free for his service through the power of the Spirit; for the glory of your name. Amen (Church Family Worship)
Lord of majesty and splendour, the King of creation, from You comes all wholeness, peace and well-being. We come with our needs and in our brokenness, seeking Your help and knowing You alone can make us whole. Come Lord, and renew us; through Jesus Christ our Lord
Holy and ever- loving God, we come before You in love and adoration: You only are the Lord, You alone are God most high. We pray for all who have lost their faith, for all who have ceased to worship You, for all who have been led away to chase after things that are not God.
We pray for your Church and its faithfulness to you. All who witness to your presence. All who declare your love. All who reveal Your glory in their lives. All who go out in mission. We pray that they may remain strong in their faith. O Lord Almighty and ever with us.
We pray for all who have the care of others, for all the caring professions. We pray for teachers, doctors, nurses and medical workers, for all who have the care of children and young people, for all who support the elderly and infirm.
We thank you for all who have been a support and help to us. We pray for those who have been our guides and protectors, for those who inspire us and those who love us; we remember all who have shared their lives and their love for us.
We bring before You all who suffer from loneliness or neglect: we pray for any who lack love or support in their lives. We remember all whose minds have lost their reason; we pray for all who have become difficult to live with, and for their loved ones; we think of all who live in confusion or deep despair. We pray for loved ones who are ill. (time of silence)
O Lord Almighty and ever with us, hear us and help us. Amen (from ‘Glimpses of Glory’ David Adam)
Reading. Colossians 2:6-15
So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self, ruled by the flesh, was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
Hymn
Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise MP 199 (Guitar)
Steve McEwan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9-PHNjYg6s
Sermon. “Marked for Life’ (Genesis 17)
At this point in the narrative it looks as though Abram has blown it! Thirteen years before, at Sarah’s suggestion, Abram had gone to her maid Hagar and fathered Ishmael. Abram’s action warns us of every attempt to force God’s hand to short cut His promises or speed up His workings by taking things into our own hands. As we heard last week, short cuts cast long shadows. We still feel the force of Abraham’s error today. It was indeed a false move, a terrible mistake. Abram stepped outside of God’s will for his life.
The question we now ask is “Has God written him off?’
Well, God reassures Abram. His reassurance takes the form of a covenant commitment. Similar to the ones described in chapters 12 and 15, but going deeper.
First, God speaks to Abram with a new name “I am God almighty” (1). The name is ‘El Shaddai.’ This stresses God’s omnipotence. Perhaps there is comfort and rebuke in this revelation to Abram; it’s as though the Lord were saying to him ‘I am the Almighty, I am full of resources, I can cope with impossible situations, and I can do this on my own. I don’t need your misguided efforts to help me out, I can make this promise and covenant work.’
Next follows a new and strong ethical challenge ‘walk before me and be blameless’ Abram had occasionally forgotten to walk with God. He must now dedicate himself to doing God’s will. We will see something more of what that ethical challenge entails when we consider God’s command to circumcise, a little later in our passage.
God again promises to make many descendants of Abram. But now he will be the father of many nations. The original promise was that Abram would produce a great nation. In keeping with this promise, God changes Abram’s name to Abraham, which means ‘father of many’ (4, 5).
God also promises that kings will come from Abraham’s line. This looks forward to Saul and David’s kingship and other kings ascended from David (6).
God stresses that His covenant was not only with Abraham, but also with his offspring after him- throughout their generations- as an everlasting covenant (7). Genesis chapters 12-50 do indeed describe how God was with Abraham’s descendants, how they multiplied in Egypt and how they did indeed form a great nation when Israel settled in the land of Canaan- the land already promised here (8).
Such are God’s gracious promises to Abraham. But a response is required of him. And in our passage the response is specified as circumcision.
Circumcision (17:9-14)
God here establishes a visible seal and sign of His covenant relationship with Abraham’s offspring. Those males who would participate in the covenant must be descended from Abraham, in the line of promise through Isaac- verse 19 makes that clear. They must be circumcised. But the requirement of circumcision is extended to all males who lived/ were to live among the people of Israel. (Abraham was to circumcise Ishmael who was not included in the covenant. God promised to bless Ishmael (20) but the covenant would come through Isaac not Ishmael). Any male servants/slaves coming into Jewish households, along with any male children born to them must also be circumcised. So every male living among the Jewish people was to be circumcised; ‘every male among you’ (repeated 10, 12).
Nevertheless, circumcision was commanded as a sign of the covenant.
So, somehow circumcision is to symbolise the keeping of the covenant (9, 10).
The question to ask here is ‘In what ways?’, ‘In what ways does circumcision symbolise the keeping of the covenant?’
The emphasis of the covenant is on the promised offspring- sometimes referred to as ‘Abraham’s seed’ (and referring to the numerous descendant that would follow).
The male sexual organ is the amazing, divinely created instrument for the transmission of this seed from one generation to another. The circumcision- the ‘cutting round’ of that organ- symbolises God’s complete ownership of the man and the man’s use of that organ, so it is subject to God’s protective and productive purposes.
In a broad sense then we can understand circumcision as a sign to the individual concerned, his parents, and his wife. It wasn’t a sign to be shown to people in general, but was personal. To his parents it would confirm they had been faithful in transmitting the seed through Abraham’s descendants to their son, and were now trying to follow God’s will in training him. To his wife, it would give assurance that he indeed was a descendant of Abraham. She could joyfully submit to him in their marriage, in faith that God would bless their home and their children. Circumcision would also be a daily reminder to the man himself. That he and his family were in a covenant with the God of Abraham. The God they were to walk with, obey and so live blameless lives.
This should be our priority today, the family owned by God. The Christian family.
I have submitted myself to Christ, I will look for someone to marry who has also submitted themselves to Christ. We will work together so our children will also be brought up as Christians.
Someone who is not a Christian may exhibit some aspects of Christian behaviour but essentially they will be going their own way in life. They resist Christ’s authority and so it’s likely you will have to conform to their image.
I have seen some situations where certain men appear to be interested in Christianity because the women they are attracted to are Christians, but once the woman has been won the man no longer has any interest in Christianity. In such circumstances the man was all along the ruling authority in his life, not Christ. Paul counsels believers not to be ‘unequally yoked’ with unbelievers (2 Corinthians 6:14, the image of oxen, pulling a burden). Because of different allegiances you will end up pulling in different directions.
The Christian family, don’t settle for less.
But what if your spouse was a Christian when you married them and they have backslidden and no longer profess Christ? Or perhaps you became a Christian after you were married? That’s the same situation as my parents. These are tough situations to be in. But the Lord knows your circumstances. The Scriptures suggest He will give you special grace for you and your family. The Apostle Paul counsels you win your unbelieving spouse, not by words, but through loving behaviour and prayer (1 Peter 3:1). In 1 Corinthians 7:14 the Apostle Paul explains that where your spouse is not a Christian, your children are also in a mysterious way ‘holy’ before the Lord, “For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.”
The sexual act and reproductive process are joyful and dynamic and enjoy God’s full blessing when carried out according to His revealed purpose; the marriage union of a man and woman who love Him, who have His love for one another and who obey Him.
Sadly again and again men have listened to Satan’s lies and fallen into sexual immorality and so corrupted the marriage ordinance given by the Lord.
Here we see another symbolic meaning of the act of circumcision. The ‘cutting’ of the foreskin speaks of surgical removal. A complete separation from sexual sins so prevalent around them. Many of these sins centred in the misuse of the male organ. In the next chapter we see God’s righteous judgment on Sodom because of these sins. The book of Jude in the New Testament says “Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and to perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.” (Jude 7). Not even ten righteous people could be found in that city, otherwise judgment would have been averted (Genesis 18:32). Consider too Abram himself had committed adultery by his union with Hagar.
So God is drawing a clear line here. The Jewish man in complete contrast, is ‘to do righteousness.’ To separate himself completely from such sins. He was to see himself as a member of God’s elect nation, he was to be distinctly holy before God in his sexual conduct. His circumcision would remind him of that.
We thought of various examples last week about our society increasingly sharing the same permissive pagan outlook of Abraham’s day, and the damage done to marriage, the family and inevitably the wider community through sexual immorality.
We have to understand God forbids sexual immorality because He loves us.
Listen to this sad story of Stephanie Marrian, a former model and actress, and at the time of writing she was 45 years old:
“I finally split up with my last partner after twelve months when I found out that he was living with another woman. He was the biggest creep in the world. I felt he’d made a fool of me. Last year I became a Christian. That means I believe sex outside of marriage is wrong, so unless I change my views or marry, I’ll never have sex again. I’ve been celibate before- I was four and a half years in my mid-twenties. I was a model at the time, and I couldn’t bear the way men assumed that if you went out with them you would end up in bed. It was the late 70s and it seemed everybody was doing it, but I had old fashioned ideas and never got into casual relationships. I was waiting for Mr Right. I was 29 when he found me. Before that, the earth never moved for me during sex, but it did with him. Then I ruined it all by having an affair. I hoped I would win him back, and so I was celibate for 6 years, but he married someone else.”
God forbids sexual immorality precisely because He loves us. He has something so much better for us and our families.
Sadly Steve Chalke has moved away in recent years from the Bible’s authority on important issues, so I usually would not endorse his teaching. However I came across something he wrote in his earlier days which speaks well into the point I am making here. Chalke wrote:
“A few years ago, I was taking part in a live debate on the BBC’s Radio Five Live’s Drive Time show. One of the stories the programme was covering was on the issue of adultery. As we chatted the presenter chipped in, “Why is God so miserable? Why has He got such a downer on anything we do? And then, building into a real anti-God rant, she added, ‘Don’t do this and don’t do that. Don’t commit adultery. It’s pathetic.”
I interrupted her with a question. Does it really say, ‘Don’t commit adultery?’ ‘Yes it does,’ came her rapier reply. “Well I’ve never read that bit,’ I said. ‘You know very well it’s in there,’ she retorted. ‘In fact it’s in there twice. It’s one of the Ten Commandments.’
‘Oh, now I know what you are talking about,’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s just that I didn’t recognise it at first because of the tone of voice you were using.’
‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘You’re absolutely right,’ I continued. ‘God does say that we shouldn’t commit adultery, but not in the way you’ve read it. You see, before He gives any of the Ten Commandments, He introduces Himself as the God who loves Israel. He lets them know that He is for them not against them. He wants the best for them.
‘God didn’t sit in heaven making a list of all the thing He knows human beings like to do and then outlaw them all to spoil our fun. Rather, He knows the pain and heartache that we will cause others if we pursue agendas which are contrary to the way He made us to be.’
“The Ten Commandments is a loving God saying, “Look, I am the God who loves you. I’m on your side. I got you out of slavery. I’m the best deal you’ve got going for you. Trust me. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t abandon me. Don’t commit adultery, because if you do it will unleash destructive powers that will slowly overshadow you, destroying you, your families and your society. Trust me. Don’t be stupid.”
The presenter looked at me in astonishment. Quietly she said, ‘No one has ever explained it to me in that way. That makes so much sense.’ Within minutes, the phones were ringing with dozens of people all saying the same thing, ‘Why hasn’t anyone ever told us this before? I’ve been going to church all my life and no-one has ever explained it to me like that.”
God loves us. He does not want to see us destroy ourselves and each other. He has planned something much better.
The significance of circumcision in the New Testament
As the Old Testament unfolds it became clearer still that commitment of the heart to obeying God was meant to accompany the physical act of circumcision. In Deuteronomy 10:16 Moses tells the people to circumcise the foreskin of their hearts.
In the New Testament true circumcision is also seen as something inward and spiritual. Paul writes ‘real circumcision is a matter of the heart- it is spiritual and not literal.’ (Romans 2:29). But Paul’s teaching in the New Testament goes further on the issue. He shows bodily circumcision is no longer required to identify believers as part of God’s people. Bodily circumcision is the shadow which is now obsolete because the reality has come. The reality is that the believer’s heart is circumcised by Christ.
In our passage from Colossians these words were read: ‘In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self, ruled by the flesh, was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins ‘
Paul is saying here that all believers have already been ‘circumcised’. They have undergone a spiritual circumcision. In coming to Christ we are forgiven our sins. Christ paid our sin debt on the cross. He ‘cuts away’ our sinful nature- ‘the flesh’. It’s rendered inoperative, so we need no longer be enslaved to its desires (The old sinful nature is not eradicated- it is still possible to sin, but the sinful nature’s power over us is broken). A spiritual transformation has taken place.
Paul uses the imagery of baptism to further explain the nature of this spiritual operation. When Christians are baptised by immersion, they are completely buried in water. This burial symbolises our being ‘buried with Christ’. That is a picture of our death and burial to our sinful old way of life. When Christ died, our old nature died with Him. But coming up out of the water symbolises our being raised to new life with Christ. Then in Colossians 3:1-3 Paul explains it is this dying with Christ and being raised with him that is the basis now for ethical living.
So in Colossians 3:5 he goes on to say ‘put to death therefore whatever in you is earthly: fornication (term for sexual immorality in general), impurity, passion, evil desire and greed…’ These are just the sort of sins the Old Testament circumcised Jewish male was to separate himself from. So must we Christian believers.
But we have a better basis by which we can do so:
This spiritual circumcision. We died with Christ; our sinful nature was rendered inoperative and the Holy Spirit now makes us uncomfortable with any present sin. He urges us to ‘die’ to these- to put them to death- since such sins belong to our old nature. But this inner operation means we are also ‘raised with Christ.’ Our new nature is orientated towards Him. We love Him. So we hate the sins He hates and love the virtues He loves. Our new nature wants to be like Christ, we follow His pattern; we die with Him to sins and live with Him to righteousness
And it is ‘with Him’- in relationship with Him. He is with us. He enables us to die to the sins of the old nature and rise to the qualities of the new. C.S Lewis writes ‘You are no longer thinking simply about right and wrong; you are trying to catch the good infection from a Person. It is more like painting a portrait than like obeying a set of rules…the real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself. He is beginning so to speak, to ‘inject’ His kind of life and thought into you. Beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man. The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin.” (Mere Christianity).
So you see the ruthlessness with sin is still the same in the New Testament as the Old. In the Old it is to be ‘cut away’ In the New, we are to ‘put to death’ sins. But the New Testament inward circumcision gives us the power in Christ and the pattern of Christ to do so effectively.
Conclusion
Well it must have been difficult for Abraham to obey God and have all the males circumcised in his community that day. Bear in mind they would have been left incapacitated for several days- leaving Abraham’s home and possessions with no protection at all. (Apart from God’s protection!). But Abraham obeyed.
However, to undergo spiritual circumcision is more difficult again. The almost impossible step of completely surrendering yourself to Christ. That handing over your natural self to Him; but it is easier and far better that you do in the long run. C.S Lewis writes:
“The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there. I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked- the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.” (Mere Christianity).
……………………………………………………..
Hymn
“In Christ Alone” MP 1072 (piano)
Stuart Townend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn9-UNer6MQ
Blessing
May the love of the Lord Jesus draw us to Himself.
May the power of the Lord Jesus strengthen us in His service,
May the joy of the Lord Jesus fill our souls,
May the blessing of God Almighty the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
Be amongst us and remain with us always
David Barnes 9/2/2022