You Will Be the Father of Many Nations (Genesis 17:1-27)

You Will Be the Father of Many Nations

 

Genesis 17:1-27

 

Today’s text is telling the story that God makes his covenant between him and Abraham. The Book of Genesis includes several scenes where God promises Abraham to bless him. In Genesis 12:2, God says to Abraham, “You will be a blessing,” and in 15:5, God shows him the countless stars in the sky and says, “So shall your offspring be.” In today’s text as well, God blesses Abraham, saying, “You will be the father of many nations.” Especially in this chapter 17 of Genesis, the word “covenant,” which promises God’s blessings upon Abraham and his descendants, appears 10 times (2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 19, 21), and all of them are out of God’s own mouth, saying “my covenant” or “my covenant between me and you.”  God may bless Abraham just secretly and silently. I wonder why God repeats coming to Abraham, giving him promises, and confirming them over and over again. In fact, Abraham is not a man with whom God would make a covenant. God says about himself, “I am God Almighty.” In contrast, Abraham was an old man aged nightly-nine. Because of his age, his body was as good as dead. He was just waiting for his last day with no hope and with no joy. Then, God makes a covenant with Abraham as such. Considering Abraham’s aged body, God’s covenant is an empty promise that cannot be fulfilled. What is more, for many years, God had been promising Abraham that he would give him a son, yet this poor old man is still childless. Seeing these facts, it seems the covenant between God and Abraham does not make a sense, and it may not bring forth any good outcomes. Still God is very serious and assertive to him. And he said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless.”

 

God says to Abraham, “Walk before me and be blameless.” It’s not easy what God demands from Abraham by saying “Be blameless.” We may think about that in connection to the word “Walk before me.” In Genesis 6:9 as well, with regard to Noah, it says, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.” This suggests that Noah was called a blameless man because he walked with God. In the same way, we may understand that Abraham would become blameless “through walking before God.” There is a medical scale named “Glasgow Coma Scale,” and this is to evaluate a patient’s consciousness by measuring his level of responsiveness to stimuli or instructions. This scale measures the patient’s eye opening response, verbal response, and motor response. The picture below shows the scales of verbal response and motor response. When the patient is completely unconscious, he doesn’t respond at all. On the contrary, if he is fully conscious, he speaks in a way “oriented to time, person, and place,” and therefore he can have a normal conversation with others. He is also able to follow instructions, and therefore, he can work together with others just through verbal communication. If two persons are highly responsive to each other’s words, they can be a good partner to each other and work together as if they are one body. If they have difficulty in communication with each other, there will be confusions and misunderstandings. In order for one to make the other to do something, he may have to use “physical force” instead of saying “verbal instructions.”

 

The Glasgow Coma Scale is to measure people’s responsiveness to stimuli or instructions, but we can also apply this to “spiritual responsiveness.” Spiritual responsiveness is how people responds to God and his words. In today’s text, God gives a long announcement from verse 1 to 16. These words can be summarized into one statement: “God would bless Abraham and his descendants.” And for this, God gave the more immediate promise that Abraham’s wife Sarah would bear him a son. Abraham, who was listening to God’s word facedown, laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” Though not in today’s text, Sarah also shows the same response to God’s word “Sarah your wife will have a son,” by laughing and saying, “Will I really have a child, now that I am old?” (Genesis 18:11). To childless Abraham, God said, “You will be the father of many nations.” To the old couple whose bodies were as good as dead, God said, “Your wife Sarah will have son.” For Abraham and Sarah, God’s word didn’t fit their situation at all. So they were confused. Instead of saying “Thank you!!!” to God, they laughed quietly. And, instead of praising God Almighty, they deplored their old and futile bodies. In the Glasgow Scale, their responses were not “no response” but still they were not “well oriented to time, person, and place.” They showed inappropriate responses, and they spoke inappropriate words. In this sense, their spiritual responsiveness to God’s words came short of “being blameless.”

 

“Being blameless” that God demands from us is “our response to God.” One whom we call “a spiritual man” or “a man of faith” is a person who acknowledges God Almighty and accepts him into his real life. And he receives the word of God exactly as it is said, and walks according to the word. We often try to find “being blameless” in myself. Of course, the result is disappointment and despair. It is just like Abraham and Sarah who deplore their useless bodies. In fact, the word “blameless” can be used only to God. God calls himself, “God Almighty (El Shaddai).” The meaning of “almighty” is not just limited to “power.” God uses this name in his relationship with Abraham, and in his relationship with each of us. That is, God is “Abraham’s God Almighty,” and “my God Almighty.” So some understand “God Almighty” as “All-sufficient God who fills all my needs.” We are in need every way. In power, in love, in wisdom, in holiness, in righteousness, we are so poor. We are all like old Abraham and barren Sarah. However, God is full in every way. And with this fullness, God fills our empty vessels overflowing. God’s fullness is never limited by our poorness. Therefore, despite our poorness and weakness, we should respond to the God Almighty and All-sufficient. We should receive and believe the promises that the God Almighty and All-sufficient gives to us just as they are said. We should obey so that the promises may be fulfilled in my life just as they are said.

 

God commanded Abraham to be circumcised. Verse 10-11 say, “This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.” Circumcision is a painful procedure that cuts away a piece of body. In Genesis 34, Jacob’s sons deceived the men in the city of Shechem into having circumcision, and in 3 days after the circumcision when “they were still in pain,” Jacob’s sons attacked the city and killed all the males. This incident shows that circumcision is accompanied by extreme pains. God commanded that Abraham and all the men in his house are to undergo circumcision as “the sign of the covenant.” In the Glasgow Scale mentioned above, we can find the word “pain.” When a person’s consciousness is not clear, the tester tests the patient’s responsiveness by applying pains. God also sometimes uses pains in order to wake up people’s spiritual consciousness. We can find many stories as such in the Book of Judges. Judges 2:1b-3 say, “I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall not make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall break down their altars.’ Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this? And I have also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; they will become thorns in your side, and their gods will become snares to you.’” God spared some aliens in the land of Canaan, and used them as thorns to wake up his people of Israel and lead them to remember and keep God’s covenant. Because of their spiritual insensitivity, God had to use such extreme measures. But Abraham’s circumcision works in a different way. God didn’t use pain to upgrade Abraham’s spiritual sensitivity and to move him as God wanted. God just told Abraham to get circumcised, and Abraham obeyed the command. Verse 23 says, Abraham did “as God told him” and “on that very day.” Amazing!!! Out of his spiritual sensitivity, out of his reverence for God, he obeyed, taking the painful procedure, cutting his own flesh, bleeding his own blood, and enduring the agonies many days. In this way, God’s covenant penetrated into Abraham’s body, into his flesh and veins through the painful procedure. And, surprisingly, this happened just through the verbal communication between God and Abraham. God said, and Abraham listened and obeyed. Abraham obeyed the command until he took the pains. This is more than a response to God’s word. Abraham grabbed God’s covenant and engraved it into his body. He cut a temple in his body and enshrined the word of God in the temple. Simply saying, Abraham was not spurred with pain to listen to God, but he listened to God until taking such a great pain.

 

Sinner: When he suffers – He listens to God – In order to get out of the suffering.

Righteous: When he hears God’s voice – He obeys – Until he suffers.

 

In this sense, I believe Abraham’s circumcision is a shadow of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Jesus often said to his disciples, “Keep watch!” (Matthew 24:42, 25:13, 26:38, and so on). Especially when he was praying at the Garden of Gethsemane before the suffering, Jesus said to Peter, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak” (Matthew 26:41). Human lives, spiritually insensitive, are merely blind races to run away from pains. For this reason, we are very sensitive to fearful news, and we never seek pains however desirable it is. In this sense, we are spiritually dead, or at least, unconscious, showing no response to God’s commands such as getting circumcised, which is “for nothing” or “for something that would happen 400 years later.” But Jesus was so different. He was always surrounded by fearful enemies. Even Jesus knew what was waiting ahead of him. But all these thorns couldn’t threat or distract Jesus. He walked like a lamb to the slaughter, not opening his mouth at all. He showed “no response” to temptations and threats. He responded to just one thing, that is God’s will, praying “May your will be done.” He prayed so even when it meant his painful death. Abraham’s circumcision is his “no response to his own dead body” and “full response to God’s covenant.” In the same way, Jesus’ suffering is “no response to temptations” and “full response to God’s will.” This is the meaning of “Keep watch!” Circumcision is engraving and enshrining God’s covenant in my body. Then, I become a holy seed of God that conceals the word of life in it. Jesus is the seed of the new covenant. God’s covenant was fully accepted, engraved, and enshrined in Jesus’ body. It penetrated deeply into every cell of his body and into every drop of his blood. With this, all of God’s promises given through Jesus Christ came to be valid, and even, “to have been fulfilled” in him.

 

God changed the name from Abram to Abraham, and from Sarai to Sarah. The change of the name doesn’t mean that they became a better or greater person. It means that they are new, totally different persons in God. Abraham is the same person as before, but having God’s covenant sealed with his circumcision, he became a new person. Abraham is the one who responded to God and his words, so he is blameless. Abraham is a holy seed fertilized with God’s covenant. Now Abraham is not a childless old man but the father of many nations. It is because he responded to God. Our life is lived blamelessly by responding to God. We are holy because God is holy. We are merciful because God is merciful. We are children of light because God is light. We love because we are loved by God. We give because we have received from God. We forgive because we are forgiven by God. We serve because we are served by God. By responding to God, we let blameless God dwell in me, and by responding to God, we also grow up into blameless men and women. Paul says, “Everything that does not come from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23), and he also says, “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it for the glory of God” (1Corinthians 10:31). Jesus glorified God by giving his body and blood to God’s will. Now Jesus is the holy seed fertilized with God’s new covenant with the whole world, and this seed has been sown into us for our life and our holiness. In Mark 8:38, Jesus says, “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.” I pray that God help us to show no response to this adulterous and sinful generation, but to grow in responding to Jesus and his words with great joy.