Latest / More Than Medicine / DWDP-Gen 17: 9-14 Circumcision, The Sign of the Covenant

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DWDP-Gen 17: 9-14 Circumcision, The Sign of the Covenant · More Than Medicine

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to More Than Medicine, where Jesus is more than enough for the ills that plague our culture and our country.
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  SPEAKER_01: Hosted by author and physician, Dr.
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  SPEAKER_01: Robert Jackson.
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  SPEAKER_02: Papa, can you tell me a story?
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  SPEAKER_02: Do you really want me to tell you a story?
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  SPEAKER_02: Well, you go get your brother and your sisters, and I will tell you a story.
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  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Devotions with Dr.
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  SPEAKER_02: Papa.
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  SPEAKER_02: Gather around, grab your Bible, and let's look into the written word which reveals to us the living word, who is our Lord Jesus Christ.
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  SPEAKER_02: Today we're at Genesis seventeen, verses nine through fourteen.
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  SPEAKER_02: God said further to Abraham, Now as for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations.
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  SPEAKER_02: This is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you.
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  SPEAKER_02: Every male among you shall be circumcised, and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be the sign of the covenant between me and you, and every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout your generations.
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  SPEAKER_02: A servant who is born in the house or who is bought with money from any foreigner, who is not of your descendants.
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  SPEAKER_02: A servant who is born in your house or who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised.
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  SPEAKER_02: Thus shall my covenant be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant.
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  SPEAKER_02: But an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people.
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  SPEAKER_02: He has broken my covenant.
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  SPEAKER_02: Now after Ishmael's birth, thirteen years go by.
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  SPEAKER_02: Abram continues to prosper.
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  SPEAKER_02: Ishmael grows up, and Abram has given up hope of ever having a son by Sarai, his eighty nine year old wife.
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  SPEAKER_02: He's getting old himself and forgetting God's covenant promise.
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  SPEAKER_02: However, God has not forgotten, and when the time is right, he will keep his promise.
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  SPEAKER_02: God is faithful.
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  SPEAKER_02: Even when you and I are unfaithful, he is always faithful.
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  SPEAKER_02: Remember, four times before this chapter he reminded Abram of his covenant, but here in chapter seventeen he uses Berith, the Hebrew word for covenant thirteen times.
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  SPEAKER_02: Nine times it is called my covenant.
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  SPEAKER_02: Three times it is called an everlasting covenant, and one time it is the covenant between me and you.
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  SPEAKER_02: In every case God Himself uses well God Himself was speaking.
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  SPEAKER_02: Didn't I tell you last week that this was one of the remarkable things about Scripture that it records actual conversations between God and selected men?
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  SPEAKER_02: Well let's look at verse nine.
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  SPEAKER_02: God reminds Abram that both he and his descendants, even though there's not a descendant of his own on the scene yet, that both he and his descendants were obligated to keep my covenant throughout their generations.
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  SPEAKER_02: Why?
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  SPEAKER_02: Because they were a chosen people to show forth the manifold greatness of God.
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  SPEAKER_02: Were they chosen because they were numerous or wealthy or mighty?
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  SPEAKER_02: No.
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  SPEAKER_02: God in fact chose them because they were small and weak to show forth his mighty power.
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  SPEAKER_02: Even today there are forty Arab nations and one point five billion people arrayed against the nine million people in the little tiny nation of Israel.
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  SPEAKER_02: The odds against Israel are overwhelming.
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  SPEAKER_02: But if you have read the end of the book, you know that God will keep his promise.
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  SPEAKER_02: God will keep his covenant with his chosen remnant, the chosen remnant of his people, and they, though small in number, will triumph over the rest of the world arrayed against them in order to show forth his manifold greatness.
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  SPEAKER_02: Now watch this.
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  SPEAKER_02: In first Peter chapter two verses nine and ten.
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  SPEAKER_02: Let me read that verse to you.
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  SPEAKER_02: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
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  SPEAKER_02: For you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God.
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  SPEAKER_02: You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
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  SPEAKER_02: Who's Peter talking to?
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  SPEAKER_02: Well he's talking to the Christian people.
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  SPEAKER_02: Why?
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  SPEAKER_02: Why would he choose you and me?
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  SPEAKER_02: In First Corinthians chapter one, verse twenty six through thirty one, let me let me switch back to First Corinthians a very unique passage where God talks about why he chooses them.
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  SPEAKER_02: For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world, to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world, and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that he may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God, but by his doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption, so that just as it is written, let him who boasts boast in the Lord.
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  SPEAKER_02: Did you get that?
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  SPEAKER_02: So why?
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  SPEAKER_02: Why would he choose you and me?
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  SPEAKER_02: For the same reason that he chose a small group of Hebrews.
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  SPEAKER_02: He chose you and me so that no man may boast before God, and to show forth his mighty power.
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  SPEAKER_02: Now look at verse ten and eleven.
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  SPEAKER_02: Let me read verse ten and eleven to you again.
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  SPEAKER_02: This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you.
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  SPEAKER_02: Every male among you shall be circumcised.
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  SPEAKER_02: And you, Abram, you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be the sign.
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  SPEAKER_02: It shall be the sign of the covenant between me and you.
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  SPEAKER_02: So in verse ten and eleven God describes the covenant, the covenant of circumcision.
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  SPEAKER_02: Now, I don't know about you, but I imagine Abraham shivered and broke out in a sweat from head to toe.
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  SPEAKER_02: And then like Middle Eastern men are prone to do, he probably began to negotiate.
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  SPEAKER_02: I mean he negotiated with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, didn't he?
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  SPEAKER_02: So here he goes, Lord.
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  SPEAKER_02: I mean Adonai?
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  SPEAKER_02: Wouldn't a red dot in the middle of the forehead be sufficient?
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  SPEAKER_02: Or what about a tattoo, say a big A for Adani right on the forearm?
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  SPEAKER_02: Or Lord have mercy, just chop off my pinky finger, but not the foreskin, Jiminy Cricket.
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  SPEAKER_02: But God was not in a negotiating mood.
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  SPEAKER_02: This applied to all of Abraham's physical descendants, but also to his household servants, his household slaves, and children born to the household servants and the household slaves.
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  SPEAKER_02: So let me ask you this why circumcision?
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  SPEAKER_02: Have you ever wondered that?
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  SPEAKER_02: Now I suppose there were some sanitary and health reasons.
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  SPEAKER_02: In fact, uncircumcised patients do have issues with infection and adhesions and even cancers at a higher rate than do uncircumcised male patients.
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  SPEAKER_02: But I think this is incidental.
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  SPEAKER_02: Circumcision was commanded as a sign of the covenant.
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  SPEAKER_02: The emphasis was on the promised seed and the abundance of progeny promised to Abram.
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  SPEAKER_02: The circumcision, literally the cutting round, was a picture of the complete enclosure within God's protective and productive will.
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  SPEAKER_02: Now pay attention.
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  SPEAKER_02: How many times did I hear my wife say to my children, I'm not trying to limit you, I'm trying to protect you with the household rules and regulations that we had laid down for our children.
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  SPEAKER_02: Now listen to that again.
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  SPEAKER_02: I'm not trying to limit you, I'm trying to protect you with the household rules and regulations that we had laid down for our children.
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  SPEAKER_02: Well, God's divine laws for Israel did the very same thing.
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  SPEAKER_02: It protected them from danger and ungodliness, but did not limit them with its protective boundaries.
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  SPEAKER_02: Circumcision was a uniquely personal sign of the covenant between a husband and wife, reassuring the wife first that her husband was a descendant of Abraham, to whom she could joyfully and completely give herself, trusting that God would bless their home.
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  SPEAKER_02: To any son that God gave them, the act of circumcising him would demonstrate their obedience to the covenant and their faithfulness to transmitting the seed to their son, to whom God had blessed their union.
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  SPEAKER_02: To the husband, it was a daily reminder that he himself was set apart to God and should and shared in the ministry of the chosen people of demonstrating God to the world.
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  SPEAKER_02: That which is most sacred, of course, can be most debauched.
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  SPEAKER_02: God's first commandment after creation and after the flood was to be fruitful and multiply.
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  SPEAKER_02: Of course, this was to be accomplished within the context of marriage between one man and one woman.
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  SPEAKER_02: Any other context becomes a vehicle for sin and corruption, fornication, adultery, and sodomy.
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  SPEAKER_02: I'll tell you the truth, fully forty percent of my patients cohabit in these sinful arrangements and endure STDs, broken families, and broken hearts.
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  SPEAKER_02: And their children are the broken pieces.
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  SPEAKER_02: This brings us to another meaning of circumcision described in Deuteronomy ten verse sixteen and thirty, Deuteronomy thirty, verse six, where God admonishes the children of Israel to circumcise their hearts, and to not stiffen their necks any longer.
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  SPEAKER_02: And he promises that God Himself will circumcise their hearts, and that of their descendants to love the Lord their God with all their heart and with all their soul, so that they may live.
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  SPEAKER_02: Removing stiff necks and stubborn pride and sinful hearts is evidently a work of Holy Spirit, both then and now.
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  SPEAKER_02: Look, I can't even change my wife's mind.
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  SPEAKER_02: So what makes me think I can persuade my patients to quit smoking or drinking booze or being sexually active outside of marriage?
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  SPEAKER_02: That's foolishness.
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  SPEAKER_02: Only Holy Spirit can cut away or circumcise the heart of sinful men.
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  SPEAKER_02: All I can do is speak the truth in love and pray that Holy Spirit will do the rest.
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  SPEAKER_02: Circumcision of the heart is delicate spiritual surgery.
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  SPEAKER_02: It's a surgery deep in the soul of man that occurs where proud, arrogant folks dare not trod.
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  SPEAKER_02: But listen to me, Holy Spirit goes there routinely and works miracles, causing spiritual birth, circumcising hearts, and delivering brand new Christians into the kingdom of God.
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  SPEAKER_02: You're listening to devotions with Doctor Papa.
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  SPEAKER_02: We'll be back again next week.
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  SPEAKER_02: Till then, remember that Jesus loves you and your doctor loves you.
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  SPEAKER_02: Until we're back, I pray the Lord will bless you real good.
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  SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Jackson Family Ministry or to schedule a speaking engagement, go to their Facebook page, Instagram, or web page at Jackson Family Ministry dot com.
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  SPEAKER_00: Also, don't forget to check out Doctor Jackson.