Same Covenant, New Features

Order of Service

• Call to Worship — 1 Timothy 6:13-16
• Hymn — To God Be the Glory
• Prayer of Invocation
• Prayer of Confession
• Assurance of Pardon — 1 John 1:9
• Confession of Faith — Apostles' Creed
• Pastoral Prayer
• Offering
• Hymn — Blessed Assurance
• Scripture Reading — Genesis 17:1-14
• Sermon
• Lord's Supper — Behold the Lamb
• Benediction
• Doxology

Sermon Title: Same Covenant, New Features

Scripture: Genesis 17:1-14

I. The Name of the Covenant

• A. Genesis 17 adds "flavor and new features" to the same covenant first promised in Genesis 12 and formally established in Genesis 15.

• B. Naming in Scripture signals the authority of the one who names and carries the promise of God bound up within the name.

  1. God renaming Abram as Abraham — "father of a multitude of nations" — is an exercise of divine authority over both the man and the covenant.
  2. Compare: Simon renamed Peter (Matthew 16:18); the child named Jesus because he will save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21).

• C. The name change in verse 5 declares an already-confirmed reality: God speaks of what he has promised as though it has already occurred, because his word is certain.

• D. The pattern mirrors the New Testament epistles: indicatives (who you are declared to be in Christ) precede imperatives (therefore walk blamelessly), just as God declares Abraham's identity before calling him to walk before him.

• E. In Romans 4, Paul argues that Abraham was counted righteous by faith (Genesis 15:6) before he received circumcision — that is, Abraham believed while he was, in biblical terms, still a Gentile.

  1. Paul's point in Romans 4:11: the purpose was to make Abraham the father of all who believe without being circumcised.
  2. A true Jew is one circumcised inwardly of the heart (Romans 2; Deuteronomy 10:16).

• F. The "mystery" now revealed in Christ (Ephesians 3) is that the nations (Gentiles) are grafted into the one covenant through faith — already hidden in Abraham's name, now made fully clear in Christ.

  1. The Greek word for Gentiles is the same word for nations, underscoring the Abrahamic character of the New Testament.
  2. Paul can say to a Gentile Corinthian church: these are our fathers (1 Corinthians 10:1).

• G. Every believer in Meridian, Mississippi was in the mind of God at the name change: united to Christ, in whom all the promises of God are yes and amen (2 Corinthians 1:20), every passage of Scripture speaks to us as participants in God's grand cosmic redemptive story.

II. The Sign of the Covenant

• A. God institutes circumcision as the sign of the Abrahamic covenant (v. 10), cutting away the flesh as a consecration to God — death to the old man, life to the new.

  1. The name change (Abram → Abraham) and the sign of circumcision are correlated: newness of identity is matched by a sign of newness of life.
  2. As God called Abram out of Ur (giving him a new name and a new inheritance), he declared himself Abraham's covenant Father — circumcision seals that filial relationship.

• B. Verse 14: to be uncircumcised is to be "cut off" — the language of covenant curse, a deliberate play on words mirroring the cutting ceremony of Genesis 15.

• C. God speaks of the sign using the language of sacramental union — he calls circumcision "my covenant" (v. 10, 13), because the promises are so bound up in the sign that the sign is spoken of as the thing itself.

  1. Compare: the rainbow as God's covenant with Noah (Genesis 9); Jesus saying "This is my blood of the covenant" at the Supper.
  2. Peter says "Baptism now saves you" (1 Peter 3:21) in the same Hebrew covenant-sign idiom — not that the physical act saves, but that the promise is so bound up in the sign it is spoken of as the thing signified.

• D. Circumcision finds its fulfillment and termination in the crucifixion of Christ: Colossians 2 teaches that Christ's cross is the true circumcision; Isaiah 53:8 says he is "cut off from the land of the living."

  1. Christ dies outside the camp, bearing the covenant curse of being cut off — he is our circumcision.
  2. Because the final blood of the covenant has been shed at Calvary, the signs of blood (circumcision, Passover) give way to bloodless signs: bread, cup, and water.

• E. Practical application: as the Hebrews were to look at their circumcision and have faith drawn out in the sure promises of the covenant, so believers are to look back to their baptism and draw out faith in those same promises now fulfilled in Christ.

  1. Martin Luther, tempted by Satan, would say: "I have been baptized."
  2. The goal is not to treat baptism as a magical act but as a covenant sign that bolsters and anchors faith — "use that puppy."

III. The Extent (Longevity) of the Covenant

• A. The word "everlasting" permeates the passage (vv. 7, 8, 13, 19), raising a tension: how can circumcision be an everlasting covenant sign if Paul declares it of no value after Christ?

• B. Abraham himself never possessed the land and would not live to see nations come from him — so "everlasting" cannot be exhausted by his earthly lifetime or by Israel's history alone.

• C. The answer to the everlasting nature of the covenant is Jesus Christ.

  1. Joshua 21:43-45: the Lord gave Israel all the land and rest on every side, fulfilling the promise at one level.
  2. Hebrews 4:8: "If Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on" — the earthly rest was a type pointing to a greater Sabbath rest.
  3. Hebrews 11:16: the patriarchs were seeking a better, heavenly country — that is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, because he has prepared a place for them.

• D. The physical land of Canaan was a type and shadow of the imperishable, heavenly country — the everlasting rest that Christ, the final Joshua, has entered and prepared for his people (Hebrews 4).

• E. The Lord's Supper is the covenant meal in which believers feed on Christ — the sum and substance of the Abrahamic covenant — and taste the foretaste of the everlasting rest: the wedding feast of the Lamb where every tribe, nation, and tongue, sons and daughters of Abraham, rejoice together in his presence forever.