Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #18 in Genesis 34, and we are reading Genesis 34:22-25: 

Only herein will the men consent unto us for to dwell with us, to be one people, if every male among us be circumcised, as they are circumcised. Shall not their cattle and their substance and every beast of theirs be ours? only let us consent unto them, and they will dwell with us. And unto Hamor and unto Shechem his son hearkened all that went out of the gate of his city; and every male was circumcised, all that went out of the gate of his city. And it came to pass on the third day, when they were sore, that two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brethren, took each man his sword, and came upon the city boldly, and slew all the males.

I will stop reading there.  We have been going through this chapter, trying to understand (as best we can) what God is trying to teach us spiritually.  And I think we have settled upon one definite truth that shines through in many of these verses in this chapter, and that is that the Gospel of God, which is the faithful teaching of the Bible, must be taught honestly, faithfully, and truly, and without any deception.  And the terrible thing that happened here was that the Gospel was delivered to the people of Shechem, and they were told that if they were circumcised, they could marry the daughters of Israel, and vice versa, and become “one people,” and they could enter into the family of God, or the kingdom of God (at least in an outward way). 

That is what they were told, but the sons of Jacob told them these things deceitfully because they had no intention of joining together with them as one people.  They had no intention of giving Dinah to be Shechem’s wife, nor to take the daughters of this city as their wives.  Their intention was very wicked.  It was to come upon the men of Shechem on the third day when they were sore from the circumcision and to destroy them.  They would kill them.  The sons of Jacob had been circumcised themselves, so they understood that one is particularly sore on the third day, and it would be very difficult to move quickly and to pick up a weapon to defend oneself.  If someone who was young and strong came upon them, as Simeon and Levi did, these men would have been in a very weakened condition, and we can see from this description that it was a “slaughter.”  It was no contest whatsoever.  They were apparently easily killed by the sons of Jacob. 

So the children of Jacob used their knowledge of the Gospel, we could say, as they knew what the experience of being circumcised would entail, and they knew precisely what day to come upon them at a time when these men were at their weakest.  So they were using something God had given, as circumcision was instituted by God.  God was the one who commanded Abraham to be circumcised, and for Abraham to circumcise all the males in his household.  God gave that Law, so they used the Law of God as a “destroying weapon” to kill the men of Shechem.  They destroyed the whole city, took their riches, their wives, and their daughters.  It was an awful thing for them to do.  It was extremely terrible because they were misusing what God had given them for “good.”  Circumcision was a sign given to Abraham and his descendants (Israel) that pointed to the “cutting off” of sin, and it really pointed to the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ when He Himself was “cut off” for the sins of His people.  And circumcision was a sign of that, as we know, because God commands in Deuteronomy 10:16:

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

Man’s problem is his “heart.”  Since the fall in the Garden of Eden, man has had a desperately wicked heart of stone.  He has a spiritually dead heart, and that is why God says, “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart,”  or cut off the sin of the heart, and be no more “stiffnecked,” which has to do with the refusal to obey.  This word “stiffnecked” is found in Nehemiah 9:16-17:

But they and our fathers dealt proudly, and hardened their necks, and hearkened not to thy commandments, And refused to obey…”  

That is what sin does.  It is a hardening of the heart, spiritually, against God, as the sinner refuses to obey the commandments of God.  He thinks he knows better than God, and he is wiser than God.  He thinks he knows what will make him happy, but it is all wrong.  It is all foolish madness, and he will die as a result.

But this is what God actually wanted to be “cut off.”  He wanted the heart to be circumcised, or the sin of the heart to be removed, so He gave the physical sign of circumcision which was done to the reproductive organ of the male, and the cutting away of the foreskin (and the shedding of blood in that way) pointed to one having their sins removed from their heart.  And it is equivalent to New Testament baptism, and we have talked about that.  New Testament baptism, or being washed with water, pointed to the washing away of sin from the heart.  You see, it is almost an identical thing, or at least, what it is pointing to is identical.  Of course it was a different sign for the different eras, but what it pointed to is the same thing.  We need to be cleansed from all our sins; we need to have all our sins cut off.  Just as God commanded Israel to be physically circumcised, He commanded the Christians of the New Testament era to be physically baptized, and to take upon them the sign of water baptism, understanding that it cannot wash away anything.  Water cannot take away sin.  Although the ceremony of water baptism was biblical, and those involved were trying to follow the biblical direction to command, those baptized in that manner were never saved, nor had forgiveness of sins, because of the physical water.  Physical water cannot do anything other than to cleanse away physical dirt.  It was a sign pointing to the baptism of the Holy Spirit in salvation, just like circumcision. 

And here in Deuteronomy 10:16, God is indicating that physical circumcision is to be understood as a sign post pointing to salvation, and that is why those who were physically circumcised (descendants of Abraham or strangers who became Jews) were not saved by that physical act.  It never saved a single person, just as the keeping of the seventh day Sabbath never saved anyone, or the observance of other ceremonial Laws, or the attendance at feast days in Jerusalem, or the offering of sacrifices.  These things never saved anyone because they were all types and figures pointing to a deeper spiritual reality.

As far as circumcision, God lets us know about that deeper spiritual reality 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 commands, “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart,” but it is an impossible command to perform.  No one can circumcise his heart, and no one is foolish enough to try because we know that we would die if we tried to do this.  And God never intended for anyone to circumcise his physical heart.  He is talking about the soul, which is invisible.  The spirit of man cannot be seen.  You cannot take a knife to your soul.  You cannot cut away the sin from your soul.  You cannot purge away the gross iniquity and the filthiness because it is a spiritual thing, and God, who is Spirit, is the only One qualified and able to perform the circumcision of the heart, which is also spiritual.  And it is accomplished through the hearing of the Word of God.  We understand that the Word of God would enter into the life of one of God’s elect and saves that person.  We tend to think in New Testament terms, so we readily picture the Word as “water” that comes and cleanses our soul, washing away all of our iniquity as the blood of Christ cleanses us.  The Gospel, the Word, brings that spiritual water, and spiritually applies the shed blood of Christ.  But, equally, we could look back at the Old Testament and see that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and that Abraham, David, Joseph, and others that were saved men, and we could say, “Well, with that man Noah, God circumcised his heart, and God circumcised the hearts of Abraham and David.”  God performed the spiritual circumcision of these people, and in doing so, He made them spiritual Jews.  That is the definition of “spiritual Israel.”  They are the ones who have received the circumcision of the heart, and that is done by God, which is why it is said to be done “without hands.”  If you remember, we read that in Colossians 2:11:

In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:

You see, Christ was also “cut off.”  He was circumcised spiritually as He was “cut off” while bearing the sins of all His elect.  And in Him, “…ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands,”  Why does it say, “without hands”?  It is because “hands” would point to something physical, although God does sometimes refer to Himself as having hands.  But in this case, He is illustrating that it is a spiritual circumcision accomplished in the spiritual (invisible) realm of existence, and it has to do with Christ’s atoning work and the payment He made for sin.  Our sins were “cut off” in Christ, whereby He was “circumcised,” and in Him, we were “circumcised” as well.  And this is also joined with baptism here.

As far as the phrase, “made without hands,” this word is Strong’s #886, and it is only found three times.  The first time is in Mark 14, when false witnesses arose against Christ, and it says in Mark 14:58:

We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands.

He was referring to the “spiritual temple.”  There is a distinction.  Of course these were false witnesses, but Christ was referring to the temple of His body.  Nonetheless, it is a true distinction.  There was the temple made with hands.  There was Zerubbabel’s temple, and before that was Solomon’s temple, and they were made with hands.  But there is another temple made without hands, and that is the spiritual house, or spiritual temple, consisting of all those the Lord Jesus has saved, and they were built up into a spiritual house, according to what we read in 1Peter.  It is spiritual, so the reference to “without hands” emphasizes that aspect of it, indicating that it was not physically built as was the outward physical reality of Solomon’s temple, which pictured the spiritual temple.  So the building up of the temple is using a like figure to spiritual circumcision, and it is the “circumcision made without hands.”  We were all circumcised in Christ at the same time, and that was once at the foundation of the world when He was “circumcised,” and that laid the foundation of the spiritual temple, consisting of those that were then guaranteed to be saved.  And God would seek and search out the “lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and He would find them, and lay them as “living stones” upon that foundation (who is Christ) until it was built up and complete, and we know that this spiritual house was completed by May 21, 2011.

One other place we find this same Greek word, #886, is in 2Corinthians 5:1:

For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

(The word “dissolved” is “thrown down.”)  This is a very similar thing regarding the “building” of God.  God’s building project was to construct His spiritual house in which He would dwell for evermore.  So all that fits in with what we were saying about the verse in Mark 14:58.

We have come to the end of our time.  Lord willing, we will pick this up again when we get together in our next Bible study in the book of Genesis.