“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 same day. 27 And every male in Abraham’s household, including those born in his household or bought from a foreigner, was circumcised with him.”
During college, I worked as a pharmacy technician. Pharmacy techs have a variety of responsibilities— taking scripts, processing scripts, counting pills, and so on. Since this was a rather large pharmacy, each of us technicians was assigned a station for our shift and told to stay there. One tech would count the pills; when there were no pills for her to count, she waited. Another tech was on the computer; when there were no scripts for him to run, he waited. I thought that was a bit inefficient and so if I had nothing to do at my station, I left my station to do something else. If there were no customers up front, I would go back and check the answering machine. If there were no pills to count, I would check the stock.
Eventually, the head pharmacist told me to do what I was told—to stay at my station. I told him that I was helping by attending to other responsibilities; he told me that I wasn’t helping because I wasn’t doing what I was told. When I left the front desk to check the answering machine, patients would start to form a line. That created difficulties not only for me when I returned to my station but also for those who would process the glut of prescriptions that followed. The head pharmacist had reasons for telling each person to stay at their station. He had a plan. I didn’t understand that plan, but the fact is that I didn’t need to understand that plan to do what I was told. I should have done what I was told even though I didn’t understand his plan.
That’s what Abraham did. Abraham didn’t understand God’s plan. He didn’t understand why God wouldn’t confirm the covenant through Ishmael. He didn’t understand why this miracle birth of Isaac was necessary. He didn’t understand how circumcision fit in. He didn’t understand, but unlike me in the pharmacy, Abraham did what he was told without understanding the plan.
What about you? You obviously want to understand what God is up to in your life—who wouldn’t—but you need to check yourself because if you need to fully understand everything about God’s plan for your life and for how your obedience fits into that plan before you obey, you won’t obey. You won’t do your part in the plan. In other words, you won’t be like Abraham; you won’t have faith like Abraham and that’s what it is all about. You don’t need to fully understand God’s plan to obey and do your part in the plan. That is the claim of this sermon: you don’t need to fully understand God’s plan to obey and do your part in the plan.
We will study this in two points. First: doing what God commands. Second: the plan of God. First, we will consider how Abraham did what God commanded. Second, we will see how this obedience fit in with the plan of God.
First: doing what God commands. In our last study, we saw that Abraham laughed at God’s plan to keep His promises. Abraham believed God’s promise that he would have descendants as numerous as the stars of the sky, but he laughed at God’s plan to deliver those descendants by way of his barren ninety-year-old wife. In that same conversation, God had asked Abraham for a sign of his trust in His promises. He asked Abraham to be circumcised and to circumcise his household as a sign of the covenant.
Now put yourself in Abraham’s place. You’ve heard God’s plan to keep these promises through your ninety-year-old wife—whom you know quite well—and you find the this plan laughable. The sign of trust that God asked for involves cutting into your sexual organ, which seems like a ludicrous idea to you given that this promise in which you are trusting involves you making a baby. Calvin imagines Abraham saying to himself, “what does this mean, that I… with one foot almost in the grave, [must] mutilate myself?”
Abraham didn’t understand God’s plan. He didn’t understand why God couldn’t just confirm the covenant through Ishmael. He didn’t understand why God required this painful sign of trust. What Abraham did understand is the lesson that we must learn: you don’t need to understand it all in order to obey; verse 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.”
Obedience without understanding it all is really the only way it can ever go because none of us, Abraham included, will ever understand the entirety of God’s plan for our lives. You want to know how it is all going to work out? I’m sure Abraham did. I’m sure he would have loved to read the rest of the book of Genesis before he obeyed, but that’s not how it worked for him and that’s not how it works for you.
Maybe you are a father. You didn’t get to understand the entirety of God’s plan for you in becoming a father before that child was born. You still don’t. What you must do is to obey what God says about being a father in the present without knowing what God will do with that obedience in the future. You don’t need to understand the entirety of the plan for you and that child to love and train that child in the ways of the Lord today. God is the one who plans. You are the one who obeys.
Abraham obeyed not because he understood it all, but because he trusted that God did. Years ago I rappelled down a cliff. I was not excited about the opportunity. As I was being strapped in, I asked the people in charge any number of questions about the rope. ‘How much weight can this rope support?’ ‘What’s the average length of life for a rope like that?’ ‘How many times has this rope been used?’ At some point, the person in charge gently made clear that the rope would hold whether or not I understood everything about it. I didn’t need to understand everything about that rope to trust the rope. Abraham didn’t need to understand everything about God’s plan to trust God.
Acting on faith really does involve a leap. For me on that day the leap was jumping backward off a cliff. For Abraham on that day the leap was circumcision. As Calvin put it, “[Abraham] must, of necessity, have been entirely devoted to God, since he did not hesitate to inflict upon himself a wound attended with acute pain, and not without danger of life.”
Yes, Abraham did laugh at God’s plan to keep His promises, but he also obeyed this command to be circumcised. That is incredibly encouraging because we laugh and doubt all the time; however, ask yourself what does Scripture highlight about the life of Abraham? It doesn’t call him the father of laughing. It calls him the father of faith. Perhaps your assessment of yourself as a child of God is less gracious than Scripture’s assessment of the children of God.
Abraham’s obeyed even though he didn’t understand. He obeyed right away; you see that at the beginning of verse 23, “on that very day.” He obeyed all the way; you see that at the end of verse 23, “as God told him.”
Abraham obeyed right away all the way. Children, that’s what your parents want from you. They want you to learn to obey right away all the way. If mom tells you to clean your room, she doesn’t want you to dawdle. She wants you to do it right away. She doesn’t want you to kick your dirty clothes under your bed. She wants you to clean it all the way. She wants you to learn to obey that way because that is what God expects and she is training you to obey God. She wants you to learn to obey from the heart.
That is the obedience that Abraham gave to God. He was willing to obey right away all the way because his heart was in it. His heart was already circumcised. His flesh was circumcised because his heart was already circumcised. His outward actions were a sign of his inward reality. Jesus said that is the way it goes with us, “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”
The fact that outward words and actions reveal inner realities is the reason that legalism is always doomed to fail. It isn’t enough not to commit adultery. What you need is a heart that wants to be faithful, and that isn’t natural. It isn’t enough to not murder someone. What you need is a heart that wants to love others, and that isn’t natural. That’s what Jesus was driving at in the Sermon on the Mount. That’s what was on display in Abraham’s circumcised heart. That’s what is on display in the sign of his circumcised flesh. That’s also what’s on display with Matthew professing his faith. It is really not all that different from Abraham undergoing circumcision as a sign that he is part of the covenant. Matthew is publicly affirming that he is part of the covenant just as Abraham did. Maybe that’s something you need to consider as you think about professing your faith or as you think about the profession that you’ve made.
That’s Abraham’s side of the equation. Now we think about God’s side of the equation. That’s our second point: the plan of God. Abraham didn’t understand God’s plan. He most likely found this act of circumcision rather confusing and rather risky. I’m not merely talking about his own body. I’m talking about his servants. Abraham had a huge number of servants. He had enough to fight with the four kings. Imagine calling that many men together to tell them that tomorrow they must be circumcised. I don’t know how that conversation actually sounded, but it sounded like something because it happened. Calvin was right to say that Abraham probably feared that, “the major part of his servants would rise up against him.”
Abraham didn’t understand why he needed to have his entire household circumcised. God did. Remember, God plans; we obey, and this was an important part of the plan of God. You see that in the phrases, “on that very day” in verse 23 and “on that same day” in verse 25.
These emphatic phrases are used to highlight days of profound importance. Moses used them to describe the day of the flood; “on that very day Noah and his [family] entered the ark.” He used them to describe the Exodus; “on that very day the Lord brought the Israelites out of Egypt.” He used them to describe the arrival at Mount Sinai, “on the first day of the third month after the Israelites left Egypt—on that very day—they came to the Desert of Sinai.”
Those were obviously important days. God considered this to be an important day in His plan. This was the day on which God set apart a people from the world. There would henceforth be two types of people in the world: those like Abraham and those unlike Abraham, and this sign of circumcision was a reminder that what was needed to belong to God was faith like Abraham.
Abraham was marking the people of God. By circumcising his servants, even though he might have feared they would rise up against him, Abraham was saying something about this faith whether he knew it or not. He was saying that the faith of Abraham was possible for rich and poor alike. The master bore the same mark as the servants. As Victor Hamilton put it commenting on Abraham circumcising his servants, “Grace cuts across all social categories.”
God wanted Abraham to mark not only himself but also these farmhands with the same mark to show that, “grace cuts across all social categories.” The poor received the same sign of the covenant as the wealthy. The powerless received the same sign as the powerful. Abraham was not somehow more God’s child than Abraham’s lowliest servant who shared his faith in God. Abraham is not somehow more God’s child than you if you share Abraham’s faith in God. Abraham didn’t understand all of that, but he didn’t need to understand all of that to circumcise those servants. He didn’t need to understand that this descendant promised to him who would bless the whole world would be born to two poor parents in a barn rather than be rich like him. Good understood that.
Abraham didn’t see the worldwide ramifications of his willingness to circumcise the males of his household, but he didn’t need to see that in order to obey; verse 27, “every male in Abraham’s household, including those born in his household or bought from a foreigner, was circumcised with him.”
Even on the first day of circumcision we see that the inclusion of foreigners was a nonnegotiable. The author of Genesis chose to mention this inclusion of foreigners to remind the reader of the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12: “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
God had called Abraham out of a life of moon worshipping and into faith in the promises. He would do the same with people every nation, and you that in those foreign-born males who were circumcised. That is the story of missions. It is the story of men and women who have nothing in common with Abraham and nothing in common with the apostles other than faith. Listen to this letter written by Krishna Pal, one of the first converts in India in the 19th century; he wasn’t a Christian for too long when he wrote these words, “to the brethren of the church of our Savior Jesus Christ, our souls’ beloved… The love of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ, was made known [to us]. In that day our minds were filled with joy… we understood that we were dwelling in darkness… we came to know that sin-confessing, sin-forsaking, Christ’s-righteousness-embracing salvation [could] be obtained. By light springing up in the heart, we knew that sinners becoming repentant, through the sufferings of Christ, obtain salvation. In this rejoicing, and in Christ’s love believing, I obtained mercy. Now it is in my mind continually to dwell in the love of Christ: this is the desire of my soul.”
That sounds so much like a letter from the apostles because that is the faith of the apostles. That sounds so much like faith like Abraham because that is faith like Abraham. Krishna Pal wasn’t enculturated into it over the course of generations any more than Abraham was enculturated into faith over the course of generations. He heard God speak like Abraham did when he was worshipping the moon and he believed like Abraham did. It is a faith for the nations. You see that in Matthew DeVries’ profession of faith in the God of Abraham today. DeVries isn’t a very Jewish name unless I’m mistaken.
Abraham couldn’t have imagined that on the day that he circumcised those foreign-born servants. He couldn’t have seen how this faith in the promises would bless the whole world, but the great truth of this passage is that he didn’t need to see that all in order to obey. God was planning it. Abraham simply needed to do what he was told.
God was marking a people from every socio-economic background—servants and masters. He was marking a people from every nation. He was marking them on the outside as a sign that they must be marked on the inside. Let’s just think about Ishmael; verse 24, “Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised, and his son Ishmael was thirteen.”
What’s clear by this point in Genesis 17 is that Ishmael was not the son of promise. That privilege belonged to Isaac. Ishmael, could however, put his faith in the promises just like his father Abraham did. That’s why he was included in the covenant. That’s why he was circumcised.
Jewish boys still have their bar mitzvahs at the same age when Ishmael was circumcised, at thirteen, as a sign that they are in the same position as Ishmael. Being born to father Abraham is not enough. They, like father Abraham, must put their faith in the promises. It isn’t enough to be the flesh and blood son of Abraham. It isn’t enough to be circumcised in the flesh even if Abraham did the circumcising himself. Ishmael needed a circumcised heart.
If Ishmael never received a new heart, his circumcised flesh would mean little more than certain Mother’s Day cards. Imagine a son who does next to nothing to honor his mother for 364 days of the year, but on Mother’s Day he buys a nice card filled with all sorts of sentiments that he would never say. His mother, of course, smiles when she receives the card as mothers do and she thanks him while fully expecting that he will do nothing to honor her tomorrow or until the next Mother’s Day. That card means nothing. That’s circumcision in the flesh without circumcision in the heart.
Ishmael wasn’t the child of promise—that was Isaac—but Ishmael could still have faith in the promises. He was circumcised in the flesh because he could be circumcised in the heart. The book of Genesis doesn’t tell us much more about Ishmael. We don’t know whether he had a circumcised heart. God didn’t see fit to tell us, but God did see fit to tell you how you can know if you have a circumcised heart.
He gives us all sorts of ways to test ourselves. We’ve seen a number of them over the course of this series. Here’s another one from Jesus. Jesus told the Pharisees that they might be circumcised in the flesh like Abraham, but they didn’t have circumcised hearts like Abraham because they didn’t do what Abraham did. What did Abraham do? Jesus told them, “Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.” The Pharisees didn’t do that.
Abraham would have rejoiced to see how Jesus was giving circumcised hearts rather than just circumcised flesh. The Pharisees didn’t rejoice in that. Abraham would have rejoiced to see the rich and poor coming to Jesus just as he himself had circumcised both groups. The Pharisees didn’t rejoice in that. Abraham would have rejoiced to see the whole world coming after Jesus just as he himself had circumcised foreigners as a sign that they were to be included in the covenant. The Pharisees didn’t rejoice in that. “Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.” The Pharisees saw Jesus’ day, and they weren’t glad. The Pharisees were circumcised in the flesh only. Abraham was circumcised in the heart and you know that because Jesus says that he would have rejoiced if only he could see what Jesus would do.
You have an indication that you have born-again heart, a circumcised heart, if you rejoice at what Jesus did, does, and will do. If you have no joy in hearing what Jesus has done or continues to do or will do, your heart is not circumcised no matter how religious you are. You just have the outward form without the inward reality. Jesus is always the litmus test.
Now Abraham didn’t see all that Jesus would do. He didn’t understand all of God’s plan. He simply knew that he needed to obey, and you see what God did with that obedience. God used this people Abraham marked out to bring about the salvation of the world. “Salvation is from the Jews,” as Jesus the Jew put it.
You don’t know what God will do with your obedience, but when you see it, you will rejoice just like Jesus said Abraham would rejoice to see his day. As Paul put it, “no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him.” You might not understand everything about God’s plan for you. You might not understand what the obedience that is right in front of you has to do with that plan. God does. That should be enough. Amen.