Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible Part in the Book of Genesis. Tonight is Part #11 of Genesis, chapter 17 and we are going to read Genesis 17:9-14:

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. 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: 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.

Last time, we saw that the covenant identifies with the Word of God or the law of God, the Bible. The law of God stipulates and declares that anyone that breaks the law will die. This is what happened to Adam and Eve and this is what happened to the people of Israel. This is what happens, over, and over again, with mankind for any that attempt to keep the law of God in order to get right with God. In attempting to keep the law, they are trying to keep the covenant and, yet, they always fail under their own strength and, as a result, they perish.

Here, God is laying out another sign of the covenant, which is circumcision, and He is stressing that every male child must be circumcised any that are not circumcised in the foreskin of his flesh will be cut off from his people. He has broken the covenant.

Mankind has broken the covenant of God and mankind are covenant breakers. They have transgressed the law and the law’s penalty is death.

We are going to take a closer look at the sign of the covenant, which was circumcision. God said in Genesis 17:10-11:

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.

This is the law of God and it was to be taken seriously, so we find that when Isaac was born, it says in Genesis 21:4:

And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac being eight days old, as God had commanded him.

Circumcision took place on the eighth day of a male child’s life. God gave that law and as students of the Bible we wonder why God picked “eight days.” There could be a physical reason for this, but the Bible is not concerned, ultimately, with the physical realm or the natural things of the world. Its concern is the deeper spiritual meaning. Why did God specify eight days? It says of the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, in Luke 2:21:

And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called JESUS, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

It was the parents’ responsibility to have their child circumcised, but remember that God said the soul of the child would be cut off if he was not circumcised. The Lord Jesus obeyed all the laws of God and Christ made sure His parents obeyed this law of circumcision and He was circumcised on the eighth day. Again, we wonder why it was eight days. Why not 10 days or two weeks? If it had to do with allowing the child some time before undergoing that type of procedure, one could pick any day thereafter, but God intentionally selected the eighth day from birth. Regarding eight days from birth, we read an interesting statement of Christ in John 7:22-23:

Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision; (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers;) and ye on the sabbath day circumcise a man. If a man on the sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day?

Here, there is language indicating that circumcision took place on the Sabbath Day. Of course, children can be born on any day of the week, so the eighth day would vary according to the day when a male child was born. Could this be telling us about Gentiles, like those that were mentioned back in verse 17, where it said, “he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed.” That is possible and if it was a Gentile that was now Part of the house, they were to be circumcised, so they could have coordinated and circumcised that male on a Sabbath Day. That is one possible explanation for this. It does refer to a “man on the sabbath day” receiving circumcision in verse 23, so maybe it is pointing to an adult, except we are reading of a male child in Genesis 17. It is mentioned a couple of times in this passage. For instance, it said in Genesis 17:14:

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.

This is possibly indicating that when God is speaking of a “man on the sabbath day” receiving circumcision, it could apply to a child because of the language of “man child” in verse 14.

Jesus was referring to the Law of Moses, which could refer to any information in the first five books of the Bible, including the book of Genesis, and, yet, we do not find that kind of stipulation in the book of Genesis concerning the Sabbath Day. Maybe it is somewhere else in the first five books of the Bible, but the only passage that seems to apply is in Leviticus 12:1-3:

And JEHOVAH spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days; according to the days of the separation for her infirmity shall she be unclean. And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.

Again, it just mentions the eighth day, but it does not specify that the eighth day must be a Sabbath. If you look up all the variations of the word “circumcision,” you will find it is only used a handful of times in the first five books, mostly in Genesis 17 which we are presently reading. Twice in Deuteronomy, God refers to circumcising the heart. It says in Deuteronomy 10:16:

Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.

Of course, that is an impossible command to obey because no one can do this and live.

The solution is found 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.

God was commanding an impossible thing of the reader. The reader is left helpless and he could only fall upon the mercy of God, beseeching the Lord, “O, Lord, circumcise my heart for me.” The Lord also commanded an impossible thing in the New Testament when He commanded the reader to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” from the heart. It could only lead one who God was drawing to Himself to a broken condition where he would cry, “O, Lord, I believe. Help thou me my unbelief. Grant me the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ and then I will be saved.”

But these verses in Deuteronomy are not speaking of the eighth day and they make no reference to the Sabbath, so how can we understand what Jesus meant when He said in John 7:22-23? Again, it said in John 7:22-23:

Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision; (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers;) and ye on the sabbath day circumcise a man. If a man on the sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day?

(When we read of circumcision in Genesis 17, God is commanding Abraham to be circumcised and this was long before the days of Moses, so it was not “of Moses,” but it first took place with the forefathers.)

So, the outworking of this law had something to do with the Sabbath. God commanded it to be on the “eighth day.” To keep the law of Moses, the Israelites would circumcise a man on the Sabbath and there is a connection being made between “circumcision” and the “Sabbath.” Of course, in the Old Testament the Sabbath Day was on the seventh day. It does not seem to fit this idea of an eight-day period. How could they work it out? I do not know. None the less, God is making a connection between the eighth day (when a man child was to be circumcised) and the Sabbath.

This is something that we need to keep in mind because it is interesting how the word “circumcised” is used in the Old Testament. The word “circumcised” is used in a way that leads us to the time of the end of the world and the time of the final destruction of (unsaved) mankind and the time when God’s elect people receive our new resurrected bodies.

How can circumcision direct us to these things? We must keep in mind what God is saying in Genesis 17:11:

And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin…

This is also said in the second Part of the verse in Genesis 17:13:

… and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant.

And it is also seen in Genesis 17:14:

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.

It is stressed that circumcision is of the flesh. The flesh was to be circumcised and circumcision was the “cutting off” of the foreskin of the reproductive organ or the literal “cutting off” of flesh. That was the token or sign that God caused the Israelites to perform, again, and again, in their generations. Whenever a male child was born, they cut off flesh on the proper day.

We understand that, but how does that relate to the end of the world? The end of the world is when the destruction of the wicked will take place and that is when God will give His elect people our new resurrected bodies. It relates to the end of the world because on the last day when God’s people are raptured and all (the elect) in the graves are resurrected and raised up to meet the Lord in the air, what does the Bible tell us will happen? We read in 1Corinthians 15 that there will be a resurrection of the body – there will be a change. It says in 1Corinthians 15:51-54:

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

There is another way we could express the idea of the “corruptible” putting on “incorruption” and the “mortal” putting on “immortality.” It is the removal of the “flesh” because we are still in the flesh. We are in bodies of “clay.” It will be the putting on of the new resurrected spiritual body. Notice what it says in the verse leading up to this passage in 1Corinthians 15:50:

Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.

If the flesh of God’s people cannot inherit the kingdom of God, what does that mean? It means that on the last day our “flesh” is cut off from all the elect. This spiritually describes “circumcision,” or the “cutting off” of the flesh.

We do not have time to discuss this further in this Part, but I want to go slowly and we want to think about this amazing truth the Bible presents to us. We will be able to see why it is that the Israelites were circumcised the “second time” in the book of Joshua at the end of the wilderness sojourn and just prior to entering into the Promised Land. We will see how that identifies with the “cutting off” of the flesh of our bodies at the end of the world before we enter the new heaven and new earth, which the Promised land represented.

We will also see how God has given a time path for this “cutting off” of the flesh. And, yes, it relates to the “eighth day.” If anyone is familiar with God’s statement to Noah, “And yet seven days,” you will understand what I am referring to because 2Peter, chapter 3 relates that seven days to seven thousand years. In several places, God emphasizes that the man child was to be circumcised on the eighth day and we will see this picture even more strongly as circumcision truly ties in with the end of the world and the cutting off of the flesh of God’s elect as they receive their new resurrected bodies. It is also the cutting off of the flesh of the wicked and since they are only flesh, they will not receive new resurrected bodies when they are “circumcised” in the Day of Judgment, but they will be cut off and cease to exist for evermore.

The Bible states these things. Through the word “circumcised,” the Bible will show that this is what God has in view when He spoke to Abraham and told him to circumcise the “flesh.” After we consider that, then the next question is this: if God ties circumcision to the end of the world and the final removal of all flesh (flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven), why is it eight days? Do you see that since it is pointing to the end for the final cutting off of the flesh, then the eight days become very important?

Lord willing, we will pick up this topic in our next Bible study.