Latest / Reformed Thinking / “That Very Day”: Covenant Obedience and Covenant Community (Genesis 17:23–27)

Transcript

“That Very Day”: Covenant Obedience and Covenant Community (Genesis 17:23–27) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to Reformed Thinking. This is the deep dive where we
• 0:03
  try to stop looking at Scripture as just a collection of stories
• 0:06
  and start analyzing it as the carefully constructed Word of
• 0:10
  God. Right.
• 0:11
  And today we're focusing on a short, almost administrative
• 0:14
  sounding passage that comes right after one of the Bible's
• 0:17
  most stunning theological scenes.
• 0:19
  We're in Genesis 17, looking at verses 23 through 27.
• 0:23
  Yeah, it's only 5 verses, but they seem to hold a key to
• 0:26
  understanding the link between saving faith and, you know,
• 0:30
  actual obedience. That's it.
• 0:32
  It's where this high stakes theology hits the ground in a
• 0:34
  real world situation. Yeah.
• 0:36
  I mean, just before this God has revealed himself as El Shaddai
• 0:40
  God Almighty. And he's just established the
• 0:42
  covenant of circumcision. But then as soon as God's speech
• 0:45
  ends in verse 22, the whole focus shifts.
• 0:48
  The camera, so to speak, swings entirely over to Abraham.
• 0:51
  We go straight from divine revelation to human response.
• 0:54
  And that move is so critical. If verses one through 22 are all
• 0:58
  about God's promises, then verses 23 to 27 are about human
• 1:01
  action, human administration even.
• 1:03
  So the question we're really digging into in this deep dive
• 1:05
  is this why did Moses feel it was necessary to record the the
• 1:11
  precise administrative details of Abraham's obedience?
• 1:15
  Right. Why not just say and Abraham
• 1:17
  obeyed? Why is the text so concerned
• 1:20
  with the swift and thorough execution of the command and
• 1:23
  not, say, Abraham's inner spiritual feelings at that
• 1:26
  moment? Well, the sources we're looking
• 1:27
  at are pretty clear on this. The author's goal is to show
• 1:31
  that faith, if it's the real deal, has to be authenticated by
• 1:35
  obedience. And not just any kind of
• 1:37
  obedience. It has to have two specific
• 1:38
  qualities. It's got to be immediate and it
• 1:41
  has to be comprehensive. And the phrase that carries all
• 1:43
  of that weight, it's repeated twice, is on that very same day.
• 1:46
  That specific time marker is almost like a theological
• 1:51
  challenge to our modern habit of spiritual procrastination.
• 1:53
  And our tendency toward partial submission too.
• 1:55
  Yes, so our goal here is to unpack what that immediacy
• 1:58
  means, connect faith and works correctly.
• 2:01
  You know 1 justifies the other validates and then traces bloody
• 2:04
  physical sign of circumcision all the way to its fulfillment
• 2:07
  in Christ. OK, let's get into it.
• 2:09
  Section 1. We're starting with the
• 2:11
  exegetical side of things, the technical analysis of how
• 2:14
  Abraham obeyed. Right, because it's not just a
• 2:17
  moral story, it's a theological statement that's actually coded
• 2:21
  into the grammar of the text. I think we have to start with
• 2:24
  that time marker you mentioned. The immediacy on that very same
• 2:27
  day sounds simple enough in English, but the Hebrew suggests
• 2:31
  something much stronger, doesn't it?
• 2:32
  Oh, absolutely. The Hebrew phrase is bidyem haya
• 2:35
  mahasa, and this is where we need to slow down a bit because
• 2:38
  Moses used a construction here that basically eliminates any
• 2:42
  wiggle room. The word MMM literally means
• 2:46
  bone or substance or essence. It's a physical word.
• 2:51
  Bone. So when it's used with time,
• 2:52
  it's like on the very bone of this day.
• 2:55
  That's a strange image. It is, but it's powerful instead
• 2:58
  of just saying Bayon, which just means on the day, Moses chooses
• 3:02
  the most forceful and concrete way possible to pin down the
• 3:06
  exact moment. So it's an emphatic device.
• 3:09
  It's meant to convey that this was done on the self same day,
• 3:13
  the very substance of that day, with no time gap allowed.
• 3:16
  That's it. It just rejects the possibility
• 3:19
  of postponement. God spoke in the morning.
• 3:21
  The work started that day, Not the next morning, not after a
• 3:24
  committee meeting that day. Why do you think he uses such
• 3:27
  forceful language here? Was that a common thing in, say,
• 3:30
  legal documents from that time? Well.
• 3:33
  Scholars of ancient law do point out that specific time markers
• 3:36
  were used in treaties to show immediate obligation.
• 3:38
  But the force here feels you need to God's revelation.
• 3:44
  I mean, God had just given Abraham a really sensitive
• 3:46
  command. It involved pain and blood and a
• 3:48
  huge logistical challenge. So Moses uses the most concrete
• 3:52
  language he can find to show the reader that Abraham's internal
• 3:55
  trust in God Almighty showed up instantly in external action.
• 3:59
  It's like a divine timestamp confirming his decisiveness.
• 4:02
  And the lack of any narrative filler between God speaking and
• 4:05
  Abraham acting just reinforces this.
• 4:07
  Absolutely. The narrative goes from God
• 4:09
  finishing his speech in verse 22 straight to Abraham start the
• 4:12
  process in verse 23. The silence is it's really loud.
• 4:16
  It is. There's no internal monologue,
• 4:19
  no God can we talk about this, No bargaining like he did for
• 4:22
  Sodom. Here the immediate authority,
• 4:24
  the commander, is just met with the immediate submission of the
• 4:28
  servant. There's no discussion of the
• 4:30
  logistics, no. OK, I need to work out a plan
• 4:32
  for aftercare. We just go straight from the
• 4:34
  divine order to Abraham picking up the knife.
• 4:37
  And that speed is also built into the verbs themselves.
• 4:40
  The Hebrew uses this series of wah, consecutive imperfect verbs
• 4:44
  that just they drive the action forward without a pause.
• 4:48
  So Wei Aqua and he took and then right away Wavell and he's
• 4:52
  circumcised, yes. The grammar itself mimics the
• 4:55
  speed of the obedience. It was done promptly, tied
• 4:58
  directly to the moment God spoke.
• 4:59
  So the message gets hammered home through grammar, through
• 5:03
  syntax and the pacing of the story.
• 5:05
  God speaks, Abraham does, and non delaying obedience is shown
• 5:09
  to be the necessary response of a living faith.
• 5:12
  I think so. The text is basically treating
• 5:15
  spiritual delay as being the same thing as disobedience.
• 5:17
  Because if the creator gives a command, any time spent
• 5:21
  calculating on our part suggests we're questioning his authority.
• 5:26
  But that does bring up a practical question.
• 5:27
  What about wisdom? I mean, what if God gave this
• 5:31
  command right as the sun was setting?
• 5:33
  Wouldn't it be more responsible to wait for daylight to make
• 5:36
  sure it was done properly for all those men?
• 5:38
  Is immediate supposed to mean instantaneous or does it just
• 5:41
  mean non delaying, as in as soon as you can reasonably do it?
• 5:45
  That's a fair question, and the consensus seems to be that
• 5:48
  immediate here means a total rejection of any delay that's
• 5:52
  rooted in, say, self preservation or calculation.
• 5:55
  You had to organize hundreds of men.
• 5:57
  That takes time, but the text signals that the decision was
• 6:01
  instantaneous and the execution began within the framework of
• 6:04
  that one single day. So he didn't sleep on it.
• 6:08
  He started the process right away.
• 6:09
  He did, and that process had to be comprehensive, right?
• 6:12
  Which brings us to the second feature of His obedience.
• 6:15
  It wasn't just fast, it was total.
• 6:17
  Right, and Moses uses repetition here to make sure we get the
• 6:20
  full scope of it. The word coal is key.
• 6:22
  Coal, meaning all or every, and it appears over and over again.
• 6:26
  It reads almost like a legal contract setting up a covenant
• 6:29
  structure that demands total compliance.
• 6:31
  So Abraham's obedience, it wasn't some private act of
• 6:34
  piety. It was public.
• 6:36
  It was corporate. It involved everyone under his
• 6:38
  authority. It was Moses lists everyone with
• 6:41
  such precision. In verse 23 he says Ishmael, his
• 6:44
  son, all who were born in his house, and all who were bought
• 6:47
  with his money. That detailed list keeps us from
• 6:49
  shrinking the event down into something just individual.
• 6:52
  He was acting as the head of his whole clan.
• 6:54
  The federal head and his decision placed covenant
• 6:57
  obligations on hundreds of people who were his family or
• 7:00
  his property. And that leads directly to the
• 7:02
  cost, the economic and security cost.
• 7:04
  This is where his faith really stands out against any kind of
• 7:07
  human pragmatic thinking. It does.
• 7:09
  I mean, think about it. An encampment of Abraham's size
• 7:13
  with over 300 trained men depended completely on their
• 7:16
  ability to defend themselves. We saw that in Genesis 14 when
• 7:19
  he rescued Lot. He could raise an army in a
• 7:21
  heartbeat. He had a standing military.
• 7:23
  Now think about what God just commanded him to do.
• 7:26
  The sources really stress this. Abraham placed his entire
• 7:29
  economy and his physical security under the sign of the
• 7:33
  covenant. He didn't make exceptions for
• 7:35
  the Warriors who defended them. No.
• 7:36
  Or for the slaves who did all the work.
• 7:39
  This wasn't a small group, this was all of them.
• 7:41
  Because circumcising every able bodied man at the same time
• 7:44
  makes them totally incapacitated for days, maybe longer.
• 7:48
  Right. That's a massive security risk
• 7:50
  in a hostile world. You become this huge undefended
• 7:54
  target. He basically disarmed his own
• 7:56
  military on purpose. If a the raiding party had seen
• 7:59
  this or just decided to attack while they were all recovering,
• 8:02
  it would have been catastrophic. Everything would have been lost,
• 8:04
  his people, his wealth, his life.
• 8:07
  So his comprehensive obedience wasn't just about checking
• 8:10
  boxes, it was a radical statement that his source of
• 8:13
  protection had shifted entirely from his own strength to his
• 8:16
  God. His trust was totally in El
• 8:19
  Shaddai, the God Almighty who had just spoken to him.
• 8:22
  He left no room for human strategy.
• 8:24
  His obedience was total. It was exact.
• 8:26
  It was complete. It tells us that real faith
• 8:29
  can't hold any area of life back from God's claims.
• 8:33
  So the immediacy of his actions speaks to his reverence for
• 8:36
  God's authority. And the comprehensiveness of it
• 8:39
  speaks to the totality of his trust.
• 8:42
  This is a heart that treats God's Word as absolutely
• 8:45
  binding, even when it makes you vulnerable, I think.
• 8:47
  That's the right conclusion, and that leads us to the the painful
• 8:51
  reality of the ACT itself. Moving into Section 2, the
• 8:55
  costly nature of the ACT, we tend to just glide past the
• 8:59
  physical part of this command. We read he's circumcised and we
• 9:03
  just mentally check a box, but we have to think about what this
• 9:06
  bloody ritual actually meant in its context.
• 9:09
  The Hebrew verb is mole to circumcise.
• 9:12
  It involves the cutting off. The word is care off of the
• 9:14
  foreskin, the Orla. So it's a violent, bloody
• 9:17
  removal of flesh, and in the ancient world, ceremonies
• 9:21
  involving blood and cutting flesh had a life and death
• 9:23
  weight to them. They did.
• 9:25
  This wasn't just about hygiene. It was a permanent physical mark
• 9:28
  that signaled judgment against the very source of human life.
• 9:31
  It was a sign of judgment against the flesh.
• 9:33
  It symbolized the need for blood atonement, a recognition that
• 9:36
  the natural line of Adam is corrupt and needs to be
• 9:38
  purified. It was a refusal to let the
• 9:41
  covenant be just some sentimental idea.
• 9:44
  Every male body carried a permanent scar.
• 9:46
  That said, I belong to God and my flesh has been judged.
• 9:50
  Let's talk about the personal costs, especially the ages
• 9:52
  involved. Abraham was 99.
• 9:55
  The text highlights that for a reason.
• 9:57
  For a man that old, this procedure would have been
• 9:59
  agonizing, and it would have carried serious health risks
• 10:03
  like infection. It strips away any romantic idea
• 10:06
  of easy obedience. It does.
• 10:08
  It confirms that his faith wasn't just some abstract idea
• 10:11
  in his head, It was a costly physical submission.
• 10:15
  The maturity of his faith is shown by the physical severity
• 10:19
  of what he was willing to do. And then there's Ishmael.
• 10:21
  He was 13. He's a teenager going through
• 10:24
  this painful thing. He would have understood exactly
• 10:25
  what was happening. Correct.
• 10:27
  And his compliance with his father's shows how serious it
• 10:30
  was to belong to this covenant community.
• 10:32
  But Ishmael's inclusion is where we get a really key theological
• 10:36
  point. One that sort of sets up the
• 10:38
  rest of scriptures teaching on covenant membership.
• 10:40
  It does because we know from the verses just before this that the
• 10:45
  covenant line, the line of promise, was explicitly
• 10:49
  established with Isaac. Right verses 19 to 21 God is
• 10:52
  clear Isaac is the one. Yet Ishmael, who is about to be
• 10:56
  sent away from the line of promise, is circumcised.
• 10:59
  Why? Because God commanded it.
• 11:01
  That's it, Period. Abraham's administration of the
• 11:04
  sign was effectively blind to who would get the spiritual
• 11:07
  blessing. He just obeyed the commander's
• 11:09
  authority. He didn't make his own judgement
• 11:12
  call about who deserved it. So this immediately sets up a
• 11:14
  vital distinction inside the Covenant community itself.
• 11:17
  It does. It's a distinction between the
• 11:19
  external administration of the sign, the physical mark on
• 11:22
  Ishmael and the slaves, and the internal reality of election,
• 11:25
  which was the promise resting on Isaac.
• 11:27
  So Moses seems to be inserting this profound theological
• 11:30
  realism right at the start of the covenant people.
• 11:33
  It's the sober truth of Scripture, the Old Testament
• 11:36
  community. Israel was designed to be a
• 11:38
  mixed body. It had both The Isaacs, those
• 11:41
  with saving faith, who had the inward reality, and the
• 11:43
  Ishmaels, those who just had external allegiance and the
• 11:47
  physical mark. They were under the claims of
• 11:50
  the covenant, they got its temporal benefits, but they
• 11:52
  lacked the spiritual union it pointed to.
• 11:54
  Right. So the sign acts as a boundary
• 11:56
  marker. It identifies everyone under the
• 11:59
  covenants claims, but it can't by itself guarantee the inward
• 12:03
  reality of regeneration. The outward proximity just makes
• 12:06
  you more accountable. That's the result of the mixed
• 12:08
  community. The sign is from God and it
• 12:11
  carries huge privilege and obligation, but it doesn't
• 12:14
  mechanically create what it signifies.
• 12:16
  And Ishmael's presence there, next to Abraham and Isaac,
• 12:19
  serves as a permanent warning throughout the Old Testament.
• 12:22
  Outward marks can exist with an unchanged heart.
• 12:25
  And that pushes us past the physical ritual for the deeper
• 12:28
  need for a new heart, which is a perfect quick transition to
• 12:31
  Section 3, systematic theology, Faith works, and the covenant
• 12:36
  community. Before we connect obedience to
• 12:38
  our own lives, we have to get the doctrine of justification
• 12:40
  right. We have to secure the foundation
• 12:42
  first. I mean, a reader who just look
• 12:44
  at Genesis 17 might think Abraham earned his standing with
• 12:47
  God by submitting to this. But systematic theology
• 12:51
  interpreting Scripture with Scripture says no.
• 12:54
  It has to because we know from Genesis 15.6 years before this
• 12:59
  that Abraham was declared righteous.
• 13:01
  He was justified by faith alone. Solified.
• 13:05
  He believed God and it was credited to him as
• 13:08
  righteousness. So the circumcision in Genesis
• 13:10
  17 is not the basis of his justification, it's the seal of
• 13:14
  it. Paul is so clear on this.
• 13:15
  In Romans 4.11 he says Abraham received circumcision as a seal
• 13:19
  of the righteousness he already had by faith.
• 13:21
  And that timing, that distinction between the
• 13:23
  justification men in Genesis 15 and the sealing event in Genesis
• 13:27
  17 is just so vital for the Christian life.
• 13:29
  Why? Well, it guards against two big
• 13:31
  errors that always try to creep in and distort the gospel.
• 13:34
  First, it guards against legalism.
• 13:36
  Adding works or rituals to salvation.
• 13:38
  Right. If Abraham was justified before
• 13:39
  he was circumcised, then salvation is purely a gift you
• 13:42
  received by faith, not a wage you earned by obedience.
• 13:45
  And the second error is the ritualistic view of salvation.
• 13:48
  That's the danger of what's called Exopher apparado, the
• 13:52
  idea that just doing the ritual, the ACT itself, mechanically
• 13:56
  gives you grace. And the fact that Ishmael got
• 13:58
  the sign proves that the sign doesn't guarantee the spiritual
• 14:01
  reality. We have to be clear, faith alone
• 14:04
  justifies, not the ceremony. So the sign confirms faith, it
• 14:08
  doesn't create it. But if faith alone justifies,
• 14:10
  why is Abraham's immediate and comprehensive obedience so
• 14:14
  central to this text? Isn't that just adding works?
• 14:17
  Back in That brings us to the reformed balance.
• 14:19
  It's a position that avoids both legalism and what's called
• 14:22
  antinomianism. The idea that you can have faith
• 14:25
  without obedience. Yes, and the principle is this
• 14:28
  While phage alone justifies, the faith it justifies is never by
• 14:32
  its nature alone. It is immediately active.
• 14:35
  This is summarized so well in the Westminster Confession of
• 14:38
  Faith. It is chapter 16, Section 2.
• 14:40
  It says a good works like Abraham's immediate costly
• 14:43
  submission are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively
• 14:47
  faith. They don't save you, but they
• 14:49
  show that the saving transaction has actually happened in your
• 14:52
  heart. So Abraham's on that very same
• 14:54
  day action is a historical argument against this idea that
• 14:58
  real faith can exist without the necessary confirmation of
• 15:02
  obedience. If he had delayed or refused or
• 15:05
  made exceptions for his soldiers, his claim to believe
• 15:08
  God would have been shown to be false.
• 15:10
  His action was the necessary confirmation of his internal
• 15:12
  trust. Faith works.
• 15:15
  If it doesn't show up in obedience, James tells us, it's
• 15:18
  a dead faith. Genesis 17 is a concrete picture
• 15:22
  of what living faith looks like. OK, that makes the link between
• 15:25
  faith and obedience not a contradiction, but a seamless
• 15:29
  theological result. Faith looks to God.
• 15:31
  Obedience follows God. So now we can shift from the
• 15:34
  individual Abraham to the community, the ecclesiology part
• 15:38
  who gets the covenant sign. And that Ishmael scenario really
• 15:41
  presses on this. Right, the Old Covenant sign
• 15:43
  circumcision was applied to every male in the household,
• 15:46
  regardless of their personal faith.
• 15:47
  It was the covenant was physical and national in how it was
• 15:51
  administered. It included Ishmael, born of the
• 15:54
  flesh, and it included slaves who were just economically part
• 15:57
  of the house. Which created that mixed
• 15:59
  community we talked about. They were marked as part of the
• 16:02
  physical nation of Israel, but not necessarily heirs of the
• 16:05
  spiritual promise. Exactly.
• 16:07
  Now how does that contrast with the new covenant?
• 16:09
  Well, the new covenant prophesied in Jeremiah 31 is
• 16:12
  described as superior because it deals with the internal reality
• 16:16
  first. God promises I will put my law
• 16:18
  within them, and I will write it on their hearts.
• 16:21
  And the author of Hebrews argues that this covenant is better
• 16:24
  because it's founded on better promises, and it's made only
• 16:27
  with those who know the Lord. And this internal change is what
• 16:31
  dictates who gets the new covenant sign baptism.
• 16:35
  We don't baptize Ishmael's those who are just physically attached
• 16:37
  to a believing family but show no sign of internal change.
• 16:40
  We reserve the sign for those who share Abraham's faith, those
• 16:44
  who show they are Isaacs through a credible profession of faith.
• 16:48
  This defends the Church against the danger of, you know, nominal
• 16:50
  Christianity, where people rely on an external ritual instead of
• 16:55
  a personal living union with Christ.
• 16:57
  He. Guards against just going
• 16:58
  through the motions. We honor the sign because God
• 17:01
  gave it, but we're after the substance.
• 17:03
  And the fact that the physical shadow of circumcision has now
• 17:06
  passed just affirms that the external mark was always meant
• 17:10
  to be temporary. It was pointing to something
• 17:13
  deeper. So if the sign was temporary and
• 17:16
  physical, but it's still demanded this total submission,
• 17:19
  where does the trajectory of this command end?
• 17:22
  This takes us to Section 4, the redemptive historical path to
• 17:26
  Christ. Right.
• 17:26
  If we just treat Genesis 17 as a moral lesson about being
• 17:29
  obedient, we miss the whole gospel.
• 17:31
  We have to move from admiring the patriarch to focusing on the
• 17:34
  savior. This bloody ritual isn't an end
• 17:37
  in itself, It's a shadow that finds its substance at the
• 17:39
  cross. Let's go back to the meaning of
• 17:41
  the cut. Circumcision was a self
• 17:43
  maledictory oath. It was a curse you placed on
• 17:46
  yourself. A pledge tied to the covenant
• 17:48
  curse. You were saying if I break this
• 17:51
  covenant, may I be cut off from God's people just like this
• 17:54
  piece of flesh is cut off? Every male in Israel carried A
• 17:57
  literal mark that symbolized the judgement they deserved for
• 18:01
  breaking the covenant. And Israel's history is just one
• 18:03
  long story of breaking the covenant, which means they were
• 18:06
  constantly piling up the judgement signified by that
• 18:09
  mark. The debt kept getting bigger.
• 18:11
  So who could possibly bear that accumulated curse?
• 18:14
  The path leads straight to Golgotha.
• 18:17
  Jesus Christ, the spotless covenant keeper, the true seed
• 18:20
  of Abraham, was subjected to the ultimate circumcision.
• 18:23
  He wasn't just cut in a small way.
• 18:25
  He was cut off entirely, separated from the Father, and
• 18:28
  judged for us. Isaiah 53.8 prophesied it.
• 18:31
  He was cut off from the land of the living.
• 18:34
  For the transgressions of my people.
• 18:35
  He was stricken. Christ took the knife of divine
• 18:38
  justice that was due to every covenant breaker who had ever
• 18:41
  lived. He exhausted the curse in his
• 18:44
  own body. So that one drop of blood in
• 18:46
  Genesis 17 was a faint shadow pointing to the ocean of grace
• 18:50
  poured out at Calvary. Christ bore the curse so that
• 18:54
  the spiritual mark regeneration could be given to us.
• 18:57
  And this brings us to the source of our new obedience.
• 18:59
  The power for us to obey today comes entirely from our
• 19:03
  spiritual union with the Christ who fulfilled that curse.
• 19:06
  This is the circumcision made without hands that Paul talks.
• 19:09
  About Colossians 2 point O1 says it's so clearly in him.
• 19:13
  You were also circumcised with the circumcision made without
• 19:16
  hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the
• 19:19
  circumcision of Christ. OK, So what does that mean?
• 19:21
  Practice. Well, two things happened when
• 19:23
  we were united to him. First reunited to his death.
• 19:27
  The spiritual reality of being cut off means our old rebellious
• 19:30
  nature was judged and put away. Which gives us the power to say
• 19:33
  no to sin. Right and 2nd we receive His
• 19:36
  perfect life, which includes His perfect immediate submission to
• 19:39
  the Father. This is the imputation of
• 19:42
  Christ's act of obedience. So where Abraham obeyed
• 19:44
  immediately but was still a Sinner, Christ obeyed perfectly
• 19:48
  and immediately. And our standing before God
• 19:50
  isn't based on our shaky obedience, but on Christ's
• 19:53
  flawless record, which is credited to us by faith.
• 19:57
  So when we read about Abraham's decisive action, we don't
• 20:00
  despair at our own slowness. We look to Christ, whose act of
• 20:04
  obedience was perfect even to the point of death.
• 20:07
  And the spiritual reality is regeneration.
• 20:10
  The Holy Spirit cuts away the Stony heart and replaces it with
• 20:13
  a heart of flesh, like Ezekiel 36 promised.
• 20:16
  Our obedience is not a desperate attempt to gain covenant status.
• 20:19
  It's a grateful reaction to the status we've already received in
• 20:22
  Christ. We obey not to become God's
• 20:25
  people, but because through Christ being cut off, we are
• 20:29
  God's people. The imagery of the sharp knife
• 20:31
  in Genesis 17, which was terrifying, is transformed into
• 20:34
  the sword of the spirit which we now use to slay our sin
• 20:37
  empowered by resurrection life. OK, the theological groundwork
• 20:40
  is there. We have the Abraham's immediate
• 20:43
  obedience grounded in the reality of Christ's perfect
• 20:46
  obedience. So now we can apply it.
• 20:47
  Section 5 Application Law and Gospel in our actual lives.
• 20:53
  And we can start with the first use of the law.
• 20:56
  The law as a mirror that shows us our sin and drives us to
• 20:59
  Christ. And the mirror here is that
• 21:01
  phrase on that very same day. That phrase is a huge rebuke to
• 21:06
  our sin of spiritual procrastination.
• 21:08
  It confronts the the infection of pragmatism in our decision
• 21:11
  making. We're always calculating the
• 21:13
  social cost, the inconvenience, before we obey a clear command
• 21:16
  from Scripture. Right.
• 21:17
  We delay repentance because we're afraid of the consequences
• 21:20
  of confessing. We delay reconciliation because
• 21:23
  we want to protect our pride. We put off an ordinance because
• 21:25
  the timing isn't perfect. Think about Abraham's situation
• 21:28
  again. He had every practical, self
• 21:31
  preserving excuse to delay. He was old, he was a leader, his
• 21:34
  whole camp would be vulnerable. And yet he acted.
• 21:37
  The law funders from this text walk before me and be blameless.
• 21:41
  And when we delay, it shows something deeper than just a
• 21:44
  scheduling problem. It shows the idol of autonomy.
• 21:47
  We act like we have the right to judge God's commands, to decide
• 21:49
  which ones can wait until we feel more comfortable.
• 21:52
  Partial or delayed obedience is to God just rebellion.
• 21:56
  If we're harboring Ishmael's, you know, those pet sins, those
• 21:59
  areas of our life we refuse to bring under the spiritual knife
• 22:02
  of God's Word, we're doing the very thing this text stands
• 22:06
  against. We feared the pain of cutting
• 22:08
  off our sin more than we feared the God who commands it.
• 22:11
  The law just leaves us with no defense.
• 22:13
  But if we stop there at the mirror, we're just left
• 22:16
  condemned. So we have to move immediately
• 22:18
  to the remedy, the gospel, Christ's perfect submission.
• 22:22
  The goal of the law is first used is to drive us away from
• 22:25
  ourselves and to Christ. We look away from our own
• 22:28
  stumbling obedience to the perfect, active obedience of
• 22:31
  Jesus. Where we hesitated, he was
• 22:34
  decisive. When the Father's will meant
• 22:36
  drinking the cup of wrath, Christ didn't wait.
• 22:38
  He submitted Himself completely. His obedience was perfect,
• 22:42
  immediate and comprehensive all the way to the cross.
• 22:44
  And our standing is based entirely on that perfect record,
• 22:47
  credited to us by faith. This truth, justification by
• 22:51
  grace alone, is the only stable foundation for any obedience
• 22:54
  that follows. We don't obey to earn favor, we
• 22:56
  obey because we've already received it fully in Him.
• 22:59
  So, grounded in that grace, we can now move to the third use of
• 23:04
  the law, the law as a guide for our grateful submission for
• 23:07
  sanctification. What does the obedience of faith
• 23:10
  look like in our lives today, now that we're free from the
• 23:13
  law's condemnation? Well, first, that imagery of the
• 23:16
  sharp knife demands the mortification of sin it
• 23:19
  requires. It's a spiritual ruthlessness
• 23:21
  toward our own indwelling sin. We can't make excuses for lust
• 23:25
  or pride or bitterness. We have to cut them off.
• 23:28
  The command for immediacy applies directly to our
• 23:31
  spiritual warfare. We have to stop negotiating with
• 23:34
  our idols and deal with them on that very same day.
• 23:37
  John Owens famous line is the perfect application here.
• 23:40
  Be killing sin or it will be killing you.
• 23:42
  That's it. If we put off the necessary
• 23:44
  painful act of putting sin to death, that sin will just grow
• 23:48
  and get a stronger hold on. US and Abraham's actions speaks
• 23:51
  to family leadership. He acted as the federal head,
• 23:54
  leading his whole household into the covenant sign.
• 23:56
  This is a call to serious, godly leadership for heads of
• 23:59
  households. Right.
• 24:01
  In a culture that promotes passive fatherhood, this text
• 24:04
  really challenges that If God's word is true, it has to shape
• 24:08
  the daily rhythms of the home. That means courageous
• 24:11
  correction, family worship, reading Scripture together,
• 24:13
  catechizing children, making sure the home is ordered for
• 24:16
  service to the Lord, not just for comfort.
• 24:19
  The covenant claims of God are never just private, they lay
• 24:22
  claim on whole households. Abraham's obedience was
• 24:25
  administrative and corporate. And finally, the text speaks to
• 24:29
  the unbaptized believer or anyone putting off the clear
• 24:32
  ordinances of the church. If you profess faith in Christ,
• 24:36
  but you've neglected the sign of the New Covenant, you are living
• 24:39
  in a state of delayed obedience. Abraham didn't wait until it was
• 24:42
  convenient or safe. He just acted.
• 24:46
  And we hear so many excuses. I'll do it when my family can be
• 24:48
  there, or I'll wait until I feel more ready, or I'll wait until I
• 24:52
  understand every little detail. But the example in Genesis 17
• 24:55
  shows that the obedience of faith demands swift action once
• 24:59
  God has spoken. The question isn't about
• 25:01
  convenience, it's about submission.
• 25:03
  It just asks has God spoken and pushes us to obey before the sun
• 25:08
  goes down on that opportunity. The story in Genesis 17 closes
• 25:12
  not with a big speech from Abraham, but with a scene of
• 25:15
  silent, total submission. His action was immediate, it was
• 25:19
  exact, and it was comprehensive. It shows that covenant grace
• 25:24
  demands A surrendered response. And we've seen that faith and
• 25:26
  obedience are distinct. Faith justifies, obedience
• 25:29
  confirms. But they can't be separated.
• 25:32
  True faith will show up in immediate, costly action.
• 25:35
  The world tells us, delay, blend in, keep your religion internal
• 25:39
  and comfortable. But God summons us with
• 25:41
  Abraham's example that very day. Believe, obey, and pursue
• 25:45
  holiness. And this leads us to the
• 25:47
  unavoidable, challenging question that the sources really
• 25:50
  press on us. Since the inclusion of Ishmael
• 25:52
  shows that the external sign, even though it's weighty,
• 25:54
  doesn't produce the inward reality, the final thought has
• 25:58
  to be about your accountability to God.
• 26:00
  So if you bear the external mark of association with Christ's
• 26:03
  people, maybe through baptism or church membership, or by
• 26:06
  reciting Reformed confessions, what specific immediate action,
• 26:10
  what cutting away of the flesh or sin in your life, proved that
• 26:13
  the inward reality of regeneration has actually taken
• 26:16
  place? You're summoned now to examine
• 26:18
  what clear command to Scripture you're postponing.
• 26:21
  God requires not just profession, but total,
• 26:24
  surrendered, immediate obedience.
• 26:26
  We hope this deep dive into Genesis 17 has helped you better
• 26:29
  understand the relationship between covenant faith and
• 26:31
  works. Thank you for tuning into
• 26:33
  Reformed Thinking.