Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible Part in the Book of Genesis. Tonight is Part #10 of Genesis, chapter 17 and we are going to read Genesis 17:9-11:

And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.

You know, the Bible is not a simple book. We have learned that and the more we Part the Bible the more complex we understand it to be, although God can often write in what may seem to be an easy-to-understand way, like the Epistles of John or verses like John 3:16. People think these things are just so easy to understand and, yet, God repeatedly confounds the wisdom of man. God confounds the natural-minded individual with these seemingly simple statements of the Bible, but there is nothing simple and this is true when we read about the covenant of God. We read about the covenant in the days of Noah when God spoke of making a covenant with Noah. There was no mention of circumcision at that time, but now God is speaking to Abraham and God is talking about a covenant that He wants Abraham to keep and the sign of the covenant is circumcision.

The emphasis of this covenant has to do with circumcision, so people get confused by it. This happened to the people of Israel. They thought they understood it – it was simple: God made a covenant with their forefather Abraham and to keep that covenant all males had to be circumcised when they were eight days old. They observed the outward sign of the covenant, which was circumcision, and they did it faithfully overall, we would have to say. And this tended to give them a sense of security, along with a few other laws like keeping the Sabbath Day. So a physical descendant of Abraham would think, “I am of the lineage of Abraham and I am under that covenant because of what it says in Genesis 17:9.” Again, it said in Genesis 17:9:

And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations.

The physical Jews would read this or hear it taught in the synagogue and they thought they were keeping the covenant by taking upon them this sign of circumcision and, therefore, they were not covenant breakers. They were keeping the law that God gave to Abraham and his seed.

Yet, Israel of old did the same thing as the New Testament churches later did in taking the Word of God only literally, but Christ spoke in parables (and Christ is God). So, when God said to Abraham in Genesis 17:10, “This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised,” Israel of old was not looking at the deeper spiritual meaning which you must do when you read the Bible. If you doubt that, just read Galatians, chapter 4 where God refers to Sara and Agar and their children Isaac and Ishmael and God says, “These are the two covenants,” but there is no indicator in the Old Testament that this was an historic parable.

Jesus would speak parables and He would say, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” So, people were warned that it was a parable, but Jesus, the Word made flesh, was teaching us how to understand the whole Bible. The Bible says that Jesus spoke in parables and then it adds: “…and without a parable spake he not unto them.” This is what we must do. When God speaks of circumcision, do not think only of physical circumcision. Yes, there was a literal, historical aspect to it, but we must look for the deeper spiritual meaning. What happens when we search the Bible concerning “circumcision”? Do we find statements that would force us to look at a deeper, spiritual meaning? Yes, we do. For example, it says in Deuteronomy 30:6:

And JEHOVAH thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love JEHOVAH thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.

This is “spiritual circumcision” because God does not physically circumcise the heart. Circumcision involves cutting away of the foreskin and it causes bleeding, so any literal circumcision of the heart would lead to death. It had to do with the “spiritual circumcision” of salvation and this is the covenant that God is making with Abraham and He says, “This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised.”

Before we look further at “circumcision,” let us look at the word “covenant” again. We see it in Exodus 34:27:

And JEHOVAH said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel. And he was there with JEHOVAH forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.

This is the same Hebrew word translated as “covenant” that we are reading about in Genesis 17. As I mentioned previously, the covenant is really the Word of God or the law of God. When God said to Adam in the Garden of Eden that Adam was not to eat of the fruit of a specific tree, that was a “covenant.” Keep the covenant and live or fail to keep the covenant and die. That is how it always is. God made a covenant with Noah and it had to do with the Word of God. God made a covenant with Abraham and stressed a law of “circumcision,” and, yet, there is much more to that law; God speaks of circumcising the heart to love the Lord with all our heart, mind and soul. And how do we love God? Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” Again, the covenant is the Word of God, the Bible.

That is what we see in Exodus 34:28:

And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.

When we read the Ten Commandments, we are reading various laws and there is not a law of circumcision in the Ten Commandments and, yet, God is calling them His “covenant.” Why? It is because the number “10” points to the completeness of the Word of God or the law of God. The Ten Commandments are a way of expressing the complete Bible or the complete law and that is the “covenant” spoken of in the Bible.

It says in Exodus 19:5-6:

Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.

But the children of Israel did not understand that they had to keep the whole law of God because the entire Bible is the covenant of God. They could not just keep the law of circumcision or the law of the Sabbath or another ceremonial law or even the Ten Commandments. They had to keep all that the Bible said and they could never do that – no one can do that. And that is why no man is justified by the law in God’s sight, but by the faith of Christ. Only the Lord Jesus Christ can keep the covenant. He is the Faithful One. He is faithful and true. He is the one with perfect obedience who keeps the covenant on behalf of His elect people. Therefore, God says in Hebrews 12:24:

And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.

It also says in Hebrews 13:20:

Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,

He paid for our sins and sin is a breaking of the covenant. That is what sin does and every sin breaks the covenant God has with man who was created in His image and created to be obedient to Him. Yet, every time man fails to obey, he breaks the covenant, as it says in Isaiah chapter 24:5:

The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.

These are synonyms. To transgress the law or to change the ordinance is to break the everlasting covenant, the eternal law of God. Christ is the essence of that law because He is the Word which has existed from eternity past and will continue forever into eternity future. God cannot be separated from His Word. They are the same. Man breaks the Word of God and he breaks the covenant and, therefore, he is a covenant breaker, according to Romans, chapter 1 where God details the sins of people at the end of the world when He has given man over to sin. God then lists 23 horrible sins. It says in Romans 1:28-31:

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:

Included in this list is the fact that man is a “covenant breaker” and this is why he must die, if God has not saved us. This kind of language is found in our chapter in Genesis 17:12-13:

And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed. He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised…

We can understand this to mean that that there is a necessity to be circumcised in the heart, which only God can perform, and then we are able to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind or soul and to keep His commandments perfectly from the heart and to “keep the covenant.” Again, it says in Genesis 17:13-14:

He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.

We must stop thinking of these things literally. God is saying that the individual that is not born again or circumcised of the heart will be unable to keep God’s commandments perfectly and, therefore, he is a covenant breaker. Yes, God is using an historical picture to set up a “sign.” That is all it is – it is an outward physical sign that points to a deeper spiritual reality. God is setting up circumcision as a sign of the covenant, pointing to salvation. If you become saved, by the grace of God, you keep the covenant. If you do not become saved, you are a “covenant breaker.”

Historically, those that were circumcised and had their male children circumcised were keeping the covenant on one level, but again, it was pointing to a far greater truth.

I will read a couple of verses in Exodus 24:6-7:

And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the book of the covenant…

Now it is not just circumcision and it is not just the Ten Commandments, but God is referring to it as an entire book. These would have been the writings that God moved Moses to write, but it is pointing to the whole Bible, because “bible” means “book.” It is the book of the covenant.

Again, it says in Exodus 24:7-8:

And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that JEHOVAH hath said will we do, and be obedient. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which JEHOVAH hath made with you concerning all these words.

Again, the Bible is not easy to understand and, yet, there is a key. Of course, Christ is the key and He must grant understanding to His people. He must open our eyes to understand the scriptures, but once we understand that Christ spoke in parables and we begin to develop a “dictionary” of spiritual terms and meanings, we are able to “translate” the Bible. No – I do not mean to translate it from Hebrew and Greek to some other language, but to translate the physical words in to the “spiritual language” of the kingdom of heaven.