The Gospel Preached Beforehand to Abraham
The Mark of the Covenant
Genesis 17 & Philippians 3:3
Circumcision: We are going to be looking at a difficult subject that led to the confusion that Paul is dealing with in Galatians. In spite of his clear explanations & warnings, it has continued to plague the church for centuries. These aberrations are too numerous to mention here. I pray the scriptural trail we shall follow in this study will lead us to a much more satisfactory and Biblically accurate conclusion.
Genesis 17:9-14 A physical mark for a physical people!
We see in this chapter, the third time God has spoken to Abram of His Covenant with him. Here He gives him a new name, Abraham–father of a great multitude. In 17:15 his wife Sarai name, meaning my princess, is changed to Sarah, meaning princess. This perhaps to imply that she was the princess/mother of a great multitude. How much more wonderful is Revelation 14:1, where we find that the spiritual seed of the father of the faithful, Abraham (Romans 4:16), have the Name of their Heavenly Father written upon their foreheads!!!
A. Why the “flesh of your foreskin” as a token, a reminder of the covenant? Here is a conjecture, at best! The foreskin signifies a veil between the fruitfulness of the male and the fruitfulness of the female in the one flesh union that God created. It’s removal signifies the foreshadowing of “nothing between” those who are within the terms of God’s Covenant with Abraham and their God. As we travel through Israel’s history, we find the continual willful disregard of the conditions of the Covenant, and God’s increasingly equating their physical mark of “circumcision” with the “uncircumcision” of the heathen nations around the. It came to mean nothing.
B. Note that Abraham & succeeding generations were to circumcise not only their own children, but any born in their household, and that included slaves bought with money or any one who chose to become a part of their household. Anyone not circumcised in this broad view of household was cut off from the Covenant, for they have broken that covenant, not having this mark.
Exodus 4:24-26 Moses the lawgiver & the Mark
A. God was so serious about this Mark of the Covenant that his chosen deliverer and law giver could not approach the captives with an uncircumcised son in his household! Whether God sent an angel, whether an illness, we are not told. But keep this in mind! No one, not even Moses, was fit to carry God’s Word of Deliverance to His captives who did not have the Mark of the Covenant upon him & his household!
B. Zipporah got the message! Whatever God’s death threat, she, a Midianite, knew of the law of the covenant and immediately understood the problem. Her words summarize the relationship of the physical seed of Abraham to the Law all their days. “Surely a bloody husband you are to me. A bloody husband you are because of the circumcision.” Blood was the mark of belonging in the Physical Covenant, both as evidence of heritage and inheritance, but also of being the chosen physical people of God in the world. (Deut. 4:5-7)
But this physical mark was not any more adequate to signify the true descendants of Abraham than the Law given by angels on Sinai! Here are but a few passages that make it plain from the very beginning of their relationship with the God of Abraham, that this physical mark alone did not satisfy God’s desire for His people! He had something greater in view.
A. Leviticus 26:27 & 39-8-42 The warnings in the Law seem to be always more lengthy than the promises of blessing. If Israel “walks contrary to Me”, captivity and scattering among the heathen will be the “promise”. But if they repent, even in this captivity, “If then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled and they then accept the punishment of their iniquity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham.”
B. Deuteronomy 9:10-17 Moses is recounting the blessings of God in restoring the tablets and leaves no doubt about what He desires from them (vs 12). And the exhortation to them is “circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked.”
30:1-6 & 10 Similar to Lev. 26 in its warnings of captivity with a promise based upon true repentance & change of heart (vs 2) with the added glorious hint of a new “heart covenant”.(Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:16-36; Hebrews 10:12-18)
C. Jeremiah 4:1-4 Jeremiah returns to the language of Deuteronomy, “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your hearts.”
9:25-26 Especially graphic in comparing Israel to the heathen! “For all nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.”
D. Habakkuk The whole of Habakkuk is a doorway to the New Covenant!
1:4 Habakkuk’s complaint to the LORD because of the seeming powerlessness of the Law. Then comes God’s promised judgement & Hab’s quandary as to the Pure & Holy God using impure vessels for judgement.
2:4 And then comes the New Covenant’s repeated theme. “But the Just shall live by faith.” (Rom. 1:17, Gal. 3:11, Heb. 10:38)
3:17-19 And then we have the summary of what this true faith looks like. All sight may be to the contrary, but “yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.”
2:15-16 And yet he uses the physical lack of circumcision as a metaphor for the heinousness of the sin of seduction as Israel’s condemnation! Their outward behavior exposed their uncircumcised heart!
And that brings us to the New Testament and it’s (particularly Paul) glaring testimony as to the ineffectiveness of physical circumcision and the fulfillment of the shadow in the evidences of the New Covenant circumcision of the heart.
A. Romans 2:4-6 & 17-28 The hardness of the impenitent heart creates a storehouse of judgement in the Day of God’s Wrath and physical circumcision of the Jew does nothing to change that. In fact, a hard impenitent heart eliminates any claim to Jewish heritage, that is, being the true seed of Abraham! The only circumcision God accepts is that of the heart, which 4:16 declares to be only by faith!
B. Philippians 3:3 “For we are the circumcision.” And here is what “faith circumcision” looks like, and it is far more clearly evident than that of the natural jewish male!
1. We worship God in the Spirit. John 4:23-24 God is not worshiped by anything man-made!!! Paul makes this plain in Acts 17:22-25. The Father seeks worshipers who worship Him in spirit & truth, God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him MUST worship Him in spirit & in truth.” Place and activity have nothing to do with worship apart from the heart.
Romans 12:1-2 Our lives are the altars of worship. I Corinthians 6:19-20 Our bodies are the temples of worship. I conclude that life is worship, 24/7!!! WORSHIP IS NOT RELIGIOUS!!! The gathering of the saints is the gathering together of the 24/7 worshipers. The place of gathering and the activities of the gathering may or may not be a part of the collective worship depending upon the hearts of the worshipers!!! Do we worship Him in our cars, our homes, our jobs, our entertainment?
2. Rejoice in Christ Jesus. (Hebrews 10) We rejoice in God’s Only, and Perfect Means whereby we can enter into this Eternal Place of Worship–the Holiest Place of all. Because of Jesus (Hebrews 1&2) we have the foreskin of our hearts removed. There is no vail/foreskin on our hearts when reading the old testament as it was and is upon Israel. (II Cor. 3:12-18)
3. And have NO CONFIDENCE IN THE FLESH!!! And this is a biggie! Fleshly confidence causes the growth of a new foreskin upon the heart. I go back to the place and activity lust of the contemporary church. The foreskin is thick!!! May God be merciful to this mutilation (NKJV in Phil. 3:2) that we call the church. The Old Covenant had a sacrifice for sins of ignorance for both priests & people. (Leviticus 4) I wonder if our Jesus isn’t ever before the Father in His High Priestly ministry, with this on His Lips for us in this day, “Father, forgive them, for they haven’t a clue what they are doing!!!”
The Mark of the Covenant
Genesis 17 & Philippians 3:3
Circumcision: We are going to be looking at a difficult subject that led to the confusion that Paul is dealing with in Galatians. In spite of his clear explanations & warnings, it has continued to plague the church for centuries. These aberrations are too numerous to mention here. I pray the scriptural trail we shall follow in this study will lead us to a much more satisfactory and Biblically accurate conclusion.
Genesis 17:9-14 A physical mark for a physical people!
We see in this chapter, the third time God has spoken to Abram of His Covenant with him. Here He gives him a new name, Abraham–father of a great multitude. In 17:15 his wife Sarai name, meaning my princess, is changed to Sarah, meaning princess. This perhaps to imply that she was the princess/mother of a great multitude. How much more wonderful is Revelation 14:1, where we find that the spiritual seed of the father of the faithful, Abraham (Romans 4:16), have the Name of their Heavenly Father written upon their foreheads!!!
A. Why the “flesh of your foreskin” as a token, a reminder of the covenant? Here is a conjecture, at best! The foreskin signifies a veil between the fruitfulness of the male and the fruitfulness of the female in the one flesh union that God created. It’s removal signifies the foreshadowing of “nothing between” those who are within the terms of God’s Covenant with Abraham and their God. As we travel through Israel’s history, we find the continual willful disregard of the conditions of the Covenant, and God’s increasingly equating their physical mark of “circumcision” with the “uncircumcision” of the heathen nations around the. It came to mean nothing.
B. Note that Abraham & succeeding generations were to circumcise not only their own children, but any born in their household, and that included slaves bought with money or any one who chose to become a part of their household. Anyone not circumcised in this broad view of household was cut off from the Covenant, for they have broken that covenant, not having this mark.
Exodus 4:24-26 Moses the lawgiver & the Mark
A. God was so serious about this Mark of the Covenant that his chosen deliverer and law giver could not approach the captives with an uncircumcised son in his household! Whether God sent an angel, whether an illness, we are not told. But keep this in mind! No one, not even Moses, was fit to carry God’s Word of Deliverance to His captives who did not have the Mark of the Covenant upon him & his household!
B. Zipporah got the message! Whatever God’s death threat, she, a Midianite, knew of the law of the covenant and immediately understood the problem. Her words summarize the relationship of the physical seed of Abraham to the Law all their days. “Surely a bloody husband you are to me. A bloody husband you are because of the circumcision.” Blood was the mark of belonging in the Physical Covenant, both as evidence of heritage and inheritance, but also of being the chosen physical people of God in the world. (Deut. 4:5-7)
But this physical mark was not any more adequate to signify the true descendants of Abraham than the Law given by angels on Sinai! Here are but a few passages that make it plain from the very beginning of their relationship with the God of Abraham, that this physical mark alone did not satisfy God’s desire for His people! He had something greater in view.
A. Leviticus 26:27 & 39-8-42 The warnings in the Law seem to be always more lengthy than the promises of blessing. If Israel “walks contrary to Me”, captivity and scattering among the heathen will be the “promise”. But if they repent, even in this captivity, “If then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled and they then accept the punishment of their iniquity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham.”
B. Deuteronomy 9:10-17 Moses is recounting the blessings of God in restoring the tablets and leaves no doubt about what He desires from them (vs 12). And the exhortation to them is “circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked.”
30:1-6 & 10 Similar to Lev. 26 in its warnings of captivity with a promise based upon true repentance & change of heart (vs 2) with the added glorious hint of a new “heart covenant”.(Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:16-36; Hebrews 10:12-18)
C. Jeremiah 4:1-4 Jeremiah returns to the language of Deuteronomy, “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your hearts.”
9:25-26 Especially graphic in comparing Israel to the heathen! “For all nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.”
D. Habakkuk The whole of Habakkuk is a doorway to the New Covenant!
1:4 Habakkuk’s complaint to the LORD because of the seeming powerlessness of the Law. Then comes God’s promised judgement & Hab’s quandary as to the Pure & Holy God using impure vessels for judgement.
2:4 And then comes the New Covenant’s repeated theme. “But the Just shall live by faith.” (Rom. 1:17, Gal. 3:11, Heb. 10:38)
3:17-19 And then we have the summary of what this true faith looks like. All sight may be to the contrary, but “yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.”
2:15-16 And yet he uses the physical lack of circumcision as a metaphor for the heinousness of the sin of seduction as Israel’s condemnation! Their outward behavior exposed their uncircumcised heart!
And that brings us to the New Testament and it’s (particularly Paul) glaring testimony as to the ineffectiveness of physical circumcision and the fulfillment of the shadow in the evidences of the New Covenant circumcision of the heart.
A. Romans 2:4-6 & 17-28 The hardness of the impenitent heart creates a storehouse of judgement in the Day of God’s Wrath and physical circumcision of the Jew does nothing to change that. In fact, a hard impenitent heart eliminates any claim to Jewish heritage, that is, being the true seed of Abraham! The only circumcision God accepts is that of the heart, which 4:16 declares to be only by faith!
B. Philippians 3:3 “For we are the circumcision.” And here is what “faith circumcision” looks like, and it is far more clearly evident than that of the natural jewish male!
1. We worship God in the Spirit. John 4:23-24 God is not worshiped by anything man-made!!! Paul makes this plain in Acts 17:22-25. The Father seeks worshipers who worship Him in spirit & truth, God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him MUST worship Him in spirit & in truth.” Place and activity have nothing to do with worship apart from the heart.
Romans 12:1-2 Our lives are the altars of worship. I Corinthians 6:19-20 Our bodies are the temples of worship. I conclude that life is worship, 24/7!!! WORSHIP IS NOT RELIGIOUS!!! The gathering of the saints is the gathering together of the 24/7 worshipers. The place of gathering and the activities of the gathering may or may not be a part of the collective worship depending upon the hearts of the worshipers!!! Do we worship Him in our cars, our homes, our jobs, our entertainment?
2. Rejoice in Christ Jesus. (Hebrews 10) We rejoice in God’s Only, and Perfect Means whereby we can enter into this Eternal Place of Worship–the Holiest Place of all. Because of Jesus (Hebrews 1&2) we have the foreskin of our hearts removed. There is no vail/foreskin on our hearts when reading the old testament as it was and is upon Israel. (II Cor. 3:12-18)
3. And have NO CONFIDENCE IN THE FLESH!!! And this is a biggie! Fleshly confidence causes the growth of a new foreskin upon the heart. I go back to the place and activity lust of the contemporary church. The foreskin is thick!!! May God be merciful to this mutilation (NKJV in Phil. 3:2) that we call the church. The Old Covenant had a sacrifice for sins of ignorance for both priests & people. (Leviticus 4) I wonder if our Jesus isn’t ever before the Father in His High Priestly ministry, with this on His Lips for us in this day, “Father, forgive them, for they haven’t a clue what they are doing!!!”