Clough Genesis Lesson 51

Regeneration follows justification – Genesis 17:1:-11

In this chapter of Genesis we come once again to the complex of stories in the Old Testament surrounding the call of Abraham. In response to chapter 15 we received a very heavy pile of feedback cards, which I’ll attempt to answer in general this morning, the first two that are more or less unrelated to the major theme, and then those cards that were related to the major theme itself.

Please recheck Genesis 16:13, the phrase “after seeing him” seems to indicate that Hagar did not see three manifestations of God. If Hagar only saw one manifestation of God then the verse is not an indication of the plurality of God. I think you did not hear me out fully. I didn’t say that she saw three manifestations of God; I said that she saw the manifestation of God called “the angel of the Lord” which Scripture distinguishes from Jehovah, and because she saw one manifestation of God that was distinguished from Jehovah, she did see a plurality in the Godhead. And scholars for centuries and centuries, incidentally even in pre-Christian times, have noticed that in Genesis 15 the plurality of God is there.

The second question, would you explain more why you say that Genesis 15:18-21 does not mean that Israel has a right to that land today. Again, be careful, I didn’t say that Genesis 15:18-21 says Israel does not have a right to the land. I said she does not have a right to all the land. I said that in the time prior to the Messiah there can be some occupation, but for Zionism to insist on full occupation in land in response to Genesis 15:18-21 prior to Messiah’s time is wrong; Messiah will give that land to them.

Now the rest of the feedback cards had to do with my remarks about the order of faith, justification and regeneration. And because I said it in that order which is different than hyper-Calvinism which argues that regeneration must take place first in order that faith occur in the depraved hear, in order that justification occur, there was a conflict. For example, one card says how do we reconcile the concept of faith before regeneration with the doctrine of total depravity? And this would be typical of several of the cards. Is it fair for us to criticize such a position, regeneration before faith as opening the door for certain teachings that we would not agree with. In other words, we could say that of dispensationalism and so on. Another question, I’ve never read any of the mainstream Calvinists who adhere to the view that salvation could come apart from the hearing of the Word. Would you give examples please? Again, I didn’t say salvation, I said regeneration apart from the Word of God. If you want a reference, page 318 of Abraham Keiper’s book on the Holy Spirit, when he says at the bottom of that page and the top of page 319, “The first stage of regeneration God works without meaning,” in italics. Another example of this would be Bunyan, which I will show later in the lesson today.

Let’s go back to the text and notice what we’ve done; first the method. Our method of teaching is to go and look at the sequence of historic revelation. That is, that when God speaks to man He speaks in a certain order. That is, He reveals creation first, then He reveals evil, then He reveals the flood and so on. And this sequence is important to follow and therefore when we deal with a passage, such as justification, or we deal with a passage on regeneration or some other passage and this becomes a very studied doctrine in the New Testament, we want to always remember that the passages that study that doctrine in the New Testament are passages like Romans 4, Romans 3 and so on, that look back to the original Old Testament passage, and the original Old Testament treatment of justification is found in connection with just the event we are studying, the call of Abraham.

So our method is to go back to the call of Abraham, not the New Testament, the call of Abraham and get solidly in mind that picture and that story and then we can follow Paul in a little bit better way. The problem that has happened in history, I believe, that in some streams from the Reformation to our present time, not all but some streams, we have had a capitulation, almost in a rationalistic way, to a medieval view of logic that argues that one can start with axioms and deduce and deduce and deduce theorem after theorem so to speak, and obtain theology this way. And this is a late addition to the stream of reformed thought. Originally what characterized the Reformation was the commitment to a literal hermeneutic of Scripture, that is, the Reformers, John Calvin, Martin Luther, who overturned Europe and ended the dominion of the Roman Catholic Church, insisted that the source and origin of theology had to be a Bible interpreted literally. That was how they gained their insight and we believed the Reformation should continue, if necessary, even reforming the Reformers. The church age goes ahead, not backward, and as the progress of dogma increases and we become more careful students of exegesis we can improve and refined those doctrines. Let’s not forget, great though the Reformers were, their exegetical tools do not compare with the tools available to the diligent student of Scripture today. For example, in the last 50 years there has been advances in Old Testament interpretation that are just fantastic, that confirm the age old interpretations of the text ,but nevertheless are things that have just been discovered. It takes the church time to develop many of these things. So our commitment is to the hermeneutic and then we obtain our doctrine there from.

Now let’s look at the flow of the story of Abraham and see if in the call of Abraham and this phenomenon we can observe something. Genesis 12-14, in that interval, you remember it started with God calling to Abraham to get out of Ur of the Chaldeas and to come to a land that He would show. That’s the call of God, that’s like God calling to the non-Christian today, come out from the world to a land, or a place, or a position that I will show you. And remember that during this call that existed from Genesis 12 on down, actually through Genesis 15:5, this whole period of God’s call, was a period in the text that argued quite explicitly that Abraham, by himself would not have gone to the land. Abraham was depraved. Abraham had nothing in himself, absolutely nothing in himself to merit his position in the plan of God. Abraham, in fact, in the last part of Genesis 12, lapsed, he fell. Remember the story? Where did his wife wind up when Abraham failed to lead spiritually? She wound up in Pharaoh’s harem. And so obviously the author of this text is clearly indicating that it is the sovereignty and the graciousness of the call that buoyed Abraham along and brings him to the land. In theology we call that efficacious grace, the sovereign gracious call of God to Abraham, to move him and to bring him along to the place where he can be blessed.

In Genesis 13 we see Abraham’s faith begin to develop in response go God’s call and finally in Genesis 15:1-5 we see at the very last part of this process, though some theologians would call the efficacious call a point, all right, call it a point, and then call it something else, whatever. But at the end of this process, from Genesis 12 on through Genesis 15:5 where were Abraham’s eyes focused. Think; God had promised him a land, God had promised him to be a worldwide blessing, and God had promised him a seed. Now of all those three promises which was the one promise that God kept directing him to. It’s like Abraham wanted to go through a maize and he’d first head out that way, God slammed the door. So then he’d come back to the tunnel and he’d go out this way, God slammed the door. And then he’d come back down and he’d go up this way. Finally God got him in the right path and the right path was a central preoccupation with what? The seed, bringing forth the man child that would be heir of salvation.

And so here we have Abraham and God said I expect you to produce a male seed and that male seed is going to go on in history and from this we will obtain the worldwide blessing. That’s what God’s promise is, and He keeps calling Abraham to do this. He says I’m going to do it with you and Abraham takes it as… he tried every method under the sun practically to do this and it failed. Well, along in Genesis 15:5, by that time Abraham is fully cognizant of the fact that humanly speaking it is impossible to bring forth the required male child.

That’s why in the New Testament when the New Testament authors use this passage in the Abraham complex they insist that it’s not the land promise, it’s not the worldwide blessing promise but it’s the seed promise that was central to Abraham’s conversion. Romans 4:17-21 for example, speaks of the deadness of Sarah’s womb and the helplessness of Abraham to bring this forth by himself. Now that’s analogous to something that goes on in our heart at the point of salvation. God calls to the non-Christian in a similar way that He calls to Abraham, except instead of saying I will bring forth a child from you the Holy Spirit says I will bring forth righteousness.

In fact, you are required to bring forth righteousness; you have no place in my plan unless you bring forth the fruit of righteousness. But then as an unsaved non-Christian Christian quickly finds out there is nothing in him, there is nothing in him to produce the fruit of righteousness. There’s no way that a non-Christian can say that if he were to be struck down in death, there’s no way that you can have the audacity to claim, immediately in the presence of God, you have got something that will make you approved in His sight. Nothing! Like Abraham, you are rendered fruitless. And so therefore toward the end, just before conversion, the attention is focused upon “but God must supply the righteousness.” Just like God must supply the lone male child for Abraham; it’s got to be completely of God. And when the person is responsive this way and he looks to God to provide, then he is justified. Faith precedes justification.

Genesis 15:6 once again, “And Abraham believed in Jehovah; and Jehovah counted it to him for righteousness.” Now three observations about verse 6 before we get into today’s chapter. The first thing is that the faith in verse 6 is not righteousness because it says “God counted it for righteousness.” Well, if you credit something as righteousness, the very fact you had to say that tells you originally it wasn’t righteousness, but you’re counting it as righteousness. So we’re not saying that Abraham’s faith is meritorious in any way. The faith that Abraham had is not righteousness, it has to be credited as righteousness. So that’s the first thing: the faith is not that which grants Abraham approval in God’s sight. But it does precede justification.

A second observation of verse 6 is that the righteousness itself is not in view. Where this righteousness comes from in verse 6 is never stated in the Old Testament. That’s why in Romans 3:25-26 we find Paul saying finally when Christ dies there we find where the righteousness comes from, but all during the Old Testament it was a mystery where the righteousness comes from.

And finally, another observation in verse 6 is that the faith Abraham has denies his own righteousness. Faith is like your eyes, they don’t see themselves, nor does faith see itself. This faith, of verse 6, looks solely to God. The Reformers had an expression for it—sola fide, only by faith. In other words, there could not be any other source, any other motivation, any other gimmick that a person could bring before God; not because you were baptized, not because you are full of good works, not because of religious things, prayer, church membership, church attendance. These things are fine but they’re not perfect and God demands nothing less than perfection. So what do you do? You stand as Abraham in verse 6 and you look with your hands at your sides empty, nothing except looking up for God to provide the necessary righteousness. Now that’s the faith that God counts as righteousness. It isn’t righteous itself, it’s counted as righteous.

A further thing; in verse 6 we come to the justification. So now Abraham is called, and then the next step he is justified, and as Abraham is justified, notice in verse 6 it says “God counted it to him for righteousness.” Now the action of the verb to count or credit takes place where? An interesting question; where does the action take place of that verb? Does it take place in heaven where God is; this is God and this is the creation? Or does it take place down in creation, down in space/time history. Well, if the subject of the verb “count” our “think” or “credit” in verse 6 is God, and it’s describing a mental process of God, then there’s only one place it can take place—in God, in heaven. It doesn’t take place in the heart, it doesn’t take place in the creature, it doesn’t take place in that concept of space/time history of the finite place where man is. It says God “counted it to him for righteousness.”

So therefore the justification depends completely on what’s going on in God’s mind, not what’s going on in man’s heart. Those are two different distinct places. And this is what the early Reformers tried to do and I think they’ve been betrayed by the later reformers. The early Reformers tried to say, against the Roman Catholic Church, for example, at that time, it insisted here comes the non-Christian, God the Holy Spirit works a work of grace in the heart and then God looks down at that and He says I accept it and therefore you are justified. It was precisely because of the fact that Rome had been putting the work of grace in the heart first, and then saying on the basis of that you’re justified but the Protestants turned it around and said no, justification is first, the Holy Spirit isn’t going to touch your filthy heart until He receives legal clearance from God to do something. And he doesn’t get the legal clearance from God until you are justified. So justification has to precede any kind of regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.

That was the word of the earliest of the Protestants and it was there because in the battle ground against Roman Catholicism that argued in reverse and they insisted on this. Well then later, some of the later Reformers came down and said no, that’s not the way it was, we have to go back to the old Roman Catholic scheme of putting grace in the heart first, then justification. And so we reverse the thing and we have a statement like this, from his eminent Puritan Reform man of John Bunyan who in 1685 said, (quote) “A man may be justified before God even when he himself knows nothing thereof, when and while he has not faith in it.” In other words, you can be justified, entered into position in Christ, and never belief, be absolutely unconscious of the whole thing because this occurs first, then faith follows. “To say,” Bunyan went on that “an unjustified man has faith is to overthrow the gospel.” One wonders if Bunyan ever read the text of Genesis 15:6 which says Abraham believed and then it was counted as righteousness.

So instead of going along with that stream of the Reformation we go along with the original Reformers that put justification first. First comes the legal, then comes the moral side. First there must be faith in justification and then out of that we obtain the results. If you want to see how this works, think of the sin of Adam in the fall. In the fall in the Garden, when Adam and Eve first sinned they’d violate the law of God and God then said I impute, or I credit sin upon you. That’s the legal position. As a result of that Adam gains inherent sin; that’s the moral condition following from a legal situation. So first the imputed sin, then the inherited sin. And it’s the same thing the other way around; first the imputed righteousness, then the inherent righteousness of regeneration. And so we have that as our sequence.

Now watch the Abraham story and review where we’ve come. Genesis 12-14, the call. Genesis 15 the justification. Now let’s look at Genesis 16, which we did last week, remember what the issue began in Genesis 16? The whole issue was the issue of what was Abraham produce, the fruit; what changes occur in his life, in other words, the domain of regeneration. And in this case Abraham produces what the New Testament authors call “the seed of the flesh,” that is, the rejected seed, Ishmael. Ishmael is rejected because Abraham is still not producing the seed that God wants Abraham to produce.

Ishmael was produced by a human gimmick; a gimmick of the adopted type system of going in with the maid, that kind of thing. Now when this is looked at it’s like a person, Abraham, who is justified in chapter 15, legally he’s in Christ, positionally he is saved, he is a Christian and yet he acts like he did before he was a Christian, and that’s exactly what the text is saying. Of course… of course, the legal justification has occurred and the behavior hasn’t caught up with it yet. This is to be expected.

Now in Genesis 17, as we read the text, you notice the emphasis was over and over again on the seed, so in Genesis 17, instead of the seed of the flesh we’re going to have the seed of the Spirit, this is the miraculous seed produced through Abraham and Sarah miraculously by God the Holy Spirit, the fruit or the result of the justification. Now let’s look at the text.

Genesis 17:1, “And when Abram was ninety nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abraham, and said unto him, I am the Lord Almighty God.” Abraham and Sarah have gone on for 25 years… 25 years since the time that couple was promised the seed. For 25 years they have sweat it out and this is patience. One side note about this, as Americans there are many great things about our country but one of the weaknesses we have as Americans is that all of us tend to be impatient. We want everything yesterday and we carry that attitude into the Christian life; we get mad at God because God doesn’t sanctify us as fast as we think we ought to be sanctified, and we get upset with a slow progress in our lives. Now part of that is good, to motivate us but if you get to the point where you are so upset with yourself and your failures and you look down at yourself and begin to run the program and plan of God down for you personally, you are drifting way wide of the Scriptural mind. The answer is patience; 25 years it took the Holy Spirit to work in this couple where He got them together finally in a position where he could bless them. So 99 years he says and now he says “I am Almighty God,” El Shaddai, I am the God of strength, literally, I am the God of Majesty.

Looking back once again on Abram’s experience, what’s happened? God has called him, God has justified him, and now he’s about to be partially glorified, following the sequence of Romans 8:29-30. And people will object, particularly that stream of the Reformation that argues that regeneration occurs first, will say how can this kind of faith arise out of a totally depraved heart unless regeneration takes place. And my response is that I have no earthly idea how that faith arises out of a totally depraved heart and I feel under no compulsion to invent a mechanical system of doing it and labeling it regeneration when the text doesn’t support it. I am content to stop where the text stops. I believe in total depravity, I believe in the efficacious call of God and I have no earthly idea how it works. And for me to go father is to engage in an evil view of logic, and it’s illegitimate and it does not follow from the Scripture.

So at this point God declares His majesty and His mightiness. And He says that at this point I called you forth and I’ve justified you and now Abram, I am the mighty God that is going to bless you. Now the last part of verse 1 says, “walk before Me, and be perfect.” Now that sounds like Abraham has got to produce the righteousness all by himself. Wrong! And here, thankfully, we are helped in our Bible interpretation by some of the hermeneutical finds coming out of the treaties of the ancient world. In the ancient world there were many, many different kinds of legal treaties. Two of these figure quite prominently in understanding the Bible.

One kind of treaty was called a suzerainty vassal treaty, that is, it would be a treaty, say Pharaoh would make with the king of Edom. The suzerain is just a name for the great powerful king, and the vassal would be the name for the smaller nation, mutual aid pact type thing. And Pharaoh would say to the king of Edom, now king of Edom, I want you to pay me taxes, I want you to provide a levy of men for my army, I want you to provide a certain amount of trade and business for Egyptian merchants. In return for that, if you play ball with me I will bless you and in blessing you I will give you protection; anybody hits Edom will be considered as a hit on Egypt. And therefore Pharaoh will develop a protection system for the king of Edom. In other words, we would say, to use a Latin expression quid pro quo, we’d say this for that. We’d say that here we have a treaty and the treaty says if you do this you will be blessed; if you don’t do this you’re going to be cursed. If—then, and that’s precisely the format of the Mosaic Covenant, just like the fundamentalist dispensationalist Biblicist argued and argued and argued, and they had many people in the Reformed camp who said there was no difference between the treaty of Abram and the treaty of Moses. And we kept insisting oh yes there is. And sure enough, we are vindicated by the archeological finds, indeed there is.

A second kind of legal format is called the royal grant. The royal grant form is a treaty that’s a little different, it’s not quid pro quo, it’s not if you do this then I’ll give you a blessing. The royal grant says this: because I sovereignly choose to do this, I give you. The royal grant is a grant and that’s it. And the grant says I give you this and I expect that this will cause things to happen in you and you will play ball with me but whether you play ball with me or not is not the issue, I grant you this; I give you a grant.

Now when these grants were given the language was just that at the end of verse 1, “walk about and be perfect.” The word “perfect” here doesn’t mean sinlessly perfect. The word “perfect” means be conformed to the grant, conformed to the treaty. It is a legal language and you can trace it out in the concordance, it’s still used that way in the New Testament. For example, Paul says by the law before I was a Christian I was perfect, the same kind of word. Now he doesn’t mean he was perfectly righteous, he just means that he adhered perfectly to the customs, the general customs. And so the word “be thou perfect” is a legal term in verse 1.

So in Genesis 17 God comes to Abram and He says all right, I’ve called you, I’ve justified you and now Abram, 25 years have come and gone and I think you’re just about ready to be blessed. So now in chapter 17 we enter the blessing. The royal grant form here is the same as the Abrahamic Covenant, and this is a projection. Genesis 17 is a projection of the Abrahamic Covenant begun in chapter 15. But as we say this and our eyes fall down on the first verb in verse 2 we discover oh-oh, we’ve got a problem, because we no sooner get through the first verb in verse 2 than we see it’s a future tense. How is this? I thought the covenant was made in chapter 15. Why does it say in verse 2 “I will make” the covenant with you? We’ve got a problem, and it is a problem, so let’s see how to solve the problem without having an inconsistency in the Scripture. Conceivably both God and Abraham knew what they were talking about and therefore if we see a contradiction we must be outside non-qualified observers.

Let’s turn back to Genesis 15:18 and notice the language. Back there we have the origin point of the Abrahamic Covenant, the justification of Abraham would correspond today to that’s the time he became a Christian. He was put in Christ, or in God’s position of blessing.

Genesis 15:18 says, “In that day God made a covenant,” or literally “cut a covenant,” and I explained when we went through chapter 15 where the picture of cutting the covenant came from. You cut literally the animals in half, but one bloody hunk of meat on one side of the path and one bloody hunk of meat on the other side of the path and the consignees of the treaty walked between those pieces of meat. That was just the ancient way of signing a treaty. And God signed it in Genesis 15. That’s the origin of the treaty, “cut a covenant.” But in the Hebrew when you come to Genesis 17:2 it doesn’t say “cut a covenant,” it is the Hebrew verb nathan which means to give. Well you say, that doesn’t seem to me to make much difference, but it does. The difference here is seen, perhaps best, when they’re going into the land later on in the Old Testament and God says to them I give you the land, it’s in front of your face. Now what do we mean by that, I give you the land, it’s in front of your face? Hadn’t he been given it back in the Abrahamic Covenant? Yes. The covenant gave it back here but it wasn’t empirically, historically given them until this point. So now in Genesis 17:2 God says now I’m going to give you a manifestation of the covenant. Before it was just a vision, now there’s a real physical thing you can see.

Well, what is it that you can see? You come down to Genesis 17:13, we’re told exactly what the seen thing is, what the subject is of Genesis 17, “He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and My covenant shall be in your flesh” and the person in verse 14 who does not engage in circumcision, he has broken My covenant. So the giving of Genesis 17 hasn’t got to do with the cutting of the covenant or the origination of the covenant, it has to do with the giving of the covenant sign, and the covenant sign is circumcision.

What about this; let’s watch how this develops and unfolds in the dialogue between God and Abram.

Genesis 17:2, “And I will” we translate it “give My covenant,” My covenant sign understood, “between Me and thee, and I will multiply thee exceedingly. [3] And Abraham fell on his face:” that’s a formal setting of an inferior to a superior; it’s a form of an intensified salute. And then in verse 4 it begins, “As for me,” unfortunately the King James translators didn’t follow through with a good thing. They started all right in verse 4, “As for me.” What they ought to have done in verse 9 is continue, “And God said to Abraham, ‘as for you’” because in the Hebrew it’s two distinct sections. Genesis 17:4-8, that is the obligations of God on the royal grant; this is what I’m going to do for you; verses 9-14 Abram, this is what I want you to do back. One is the initiation, the other is the response: as for Me, as for you.

All right, let’s look at the “as for Me” passage, Genesis 17:4-8. Here’s what God is going to do for Abram and Sarah. “As for Me, behold, My covenant is with thee,” see, He’s not making it again like you’d get if you just read verse 2, the covenant already is, it’s been existing since Genesis 15. Abram’s been justified since Genesis 15. “My covenant is with thee,” we would say you are “in Christ,” you are in My plan, “you are going to be a father of” literally in the Hebrew “a crowd of nations. [5] Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be called Abraham; for a father of a crowd of nations have I made you.” Here’s where Abraham, in the sequence of verbs he’s been called, he’s been justified, and now he’s going to be glorified. Now glorification technically in the Bible refers to the resurrection but since we know the physical resurrection or the resurrection of the body is going to take place in the future, the preliminary form of the resurrection is regeneration. In fact regeneration, technically, if you want to be picky, doesn’t even occur in the Old Testament. Regeneration is the resurrection of the human spirit, and then we have the resurrection of the human body. So here’s the glorification stage of Abraham’s life. Abraham’s regeneration is mentioned here because we’re talking about his nature, what his nature is going to produce.

And as God gives him a new name we look at this name, “Ab.” The word A-b is the word father, the Jewish word for father. That’s why in your New Testament, remember there’s a passage that says whereby we call Christ “Abba, Father,” well Abba was just a little ancient Middle Eastern version of da-da, as a little baby would start to articulate the sounds in its mouth. And so ab-ba would be all the little baby could manage from Ab, he would double and reverse the syllables. Listen to children; you’ll see them do this all the time. So Abba in the New Testament is just a very intimate name for our Father. We are on such close terms with God the Father, the New Testament tells us, that you can call Him daddy.

All right, A-b is the Hebrew word father; “ram” r-a-m, the ending on that was a high, or it could be an adjective the high one, or the exalted father, honored father we would say, Abram. But now his name changes to “raham” and by various opinions of various men this generally means a crowd of people, “father of a crowd of people.” The name changes because now there’s going to be historic fruit generated.

Now in Genesis 17:6 the actual word “fruit” appears for the first time in the text. Here, “I will make thee exceedingly fruitful,” now we’ve got production as a result of justification. “I will make nations of thee and kings shall come out of thee. [7] And I will establish My covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee,” see, and that thing occurs several times, talking about the progeny of Abraham, “thy seed after thee in their generations for [an everlasting covenant]” a covenant that goes on and on and on and on literally, “to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. [8] And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession: And I will be their God.”

We want to take a close look at verses 7-8; they tell us a lot about how God thinks and how stupid some other people don’t think. In verse 7 it’s talking about redemption in history. The Christian church has always had this problem; it has gone on for century after century after century. And that is there always will be that few group of people who insist that material things and possessions are unspiritual and they will go, for example, as a nun and a monk, the vow of chastity, the vow of poverty, and these other vows that strip away what we call the normal things of life, because (quote) “we want to become more spiritual.” And yet God’s Word really doesn’t give too much emphasis to this. And in these verses, Genesis 17:7-8, where it says I will be the God of Abraham and his seed, immediately there arises a very unspiritual thing in verse 8, property. Property and redemption go together. They always have in God’s mind and they always ought to in yours.

You cannot have freedom unless you have private, not socialist government, private property. And yet where do most of the clergy put all the emphasis? The government’s got to confiscate this because Joe Snodgrass makes $75,000 a year and Joe Snodgrass might not spend the money just the way I want so we’re going to vote for a political program that will rip all his income and profit away from him so (quote) “we can spend his money wisely for him.” Something has crept into our thinking when it is wrong to be wealthy, rather than wrong in misusing wealth something has happened. There’s a mentality that starts that says we can’t trust man with property. And God says right here I trust you with property. I’m going to give you property, I’m going to redeem you and part of the expression that you’re saved is property because property is the means you have of expressing your freedom. Try expressing your freedom if you don’t have property. You can’t give to anybody. Giving requires that you own something to give, does it not? Then how can you give that which is not owned. So property is an axiom of freedom. It’s strong in the Scriptures and we have a predisposition in America at this time against it. It is considered a sin to have property, where as the Bible says no, the sin is the misuse of property. The same thing with the gun laws—it’s a sin to own a gun, especially a hand gun, you might be able to defend yourself that way, we can’t have that. And so therefore since it’s a sin to own a weapon rather than the sin misusing the weapon Big Brother will take away all your property because you little children don’t know how to use… Big Brother knows more than you do on how to use property. And this is said to you in the name of Christian ethics by liberal clergymen. You’ve got to see through this. It is just a rouse; it’s the greatest rip-off that has ever gone on in history that the government can take your property. It began with Nimrod in the kingdom of man in the Bible before Genesis 10. So beware of this false thing.

Here you have ammunition, property is the only way you can express your freedom. Remember the two words in the American Revolution: liberty and property. And why did we have that first revolution? Because the British were taxing and taxing and taxing and taking away the property. And people said the property is ours and you’re not taking it away, period. So we had a war to protect property. But today that would be considered unspiritual, sort of not too ethical. Well, everybody has a right to his opinion even if it’s wrong.

Genesis 17:8 is God’s opinion and God’s opinion says that property is right and God is so concerned about property rights that much of the Mosaic Law, I would dare say 30% of the Mosaic Law deals with property rights. Would you please tell me why is God so interested in property if it’s such a sin to own it. The sin is in the misuse thereof, not in the ownership. So Genesis 17:7-8 as God finishes out His obligations to Abraham, I will establish the seed and I will give that seed property.

Genesis 17:9 starts Abram’s response. Abram has got to do something in response to this because he’s a creature; he has human responsibility and his human responsibility plays out. What is Abraham to do?

Verse 9, “And God said unto Abraham, “Thou shalt keep My covenant,” notice the shift in the verb you will make it, you don’t have to hold on to it, “keep,” that’s all, just the word “keep.” That means to observe the ordinances of it, “keep My covenant … you and your seed after you in their generation.” How? Verse 10 tells us. “This is My covenant [which ye shall keep, between Me and you and thy seed after you:] Every male child among you shall be circumcised.”

This morning we can’t go into all the details of circumcision in the Scripture, we’ll treat that next Sunday but we want to get into some of the details. Notice first, only the men are members of the covenant, not the women. Now why do you suppose God set up the first functioning covenant with the men? He had a way of signing that covenant no woman could. Why did He do that? To make it clear that the man is the spiritual head of the home. Every generation after that, if the woman was out of it spiritually, well, that’s her problem but God’s going to clobber the man. The man is the spiritual head of the home. It always has worked that way, it always will work that and there won’t be a time when it doesn’t work that way.

So the very signing method of the covenant forces the issue that it is the man who is held accountable for this, and for that reason the man is given the authority in the home. It’s not that the man is a dictator, as I said, look at Genesis 21, but it does say that the man is held accountable and you can’t be held accountable if you don’t have an authority to execute it. So therefore the man of the home has authority, the woman of the home does not have and can’t have. She’s not held responsible, he is. And this is why it behooves men particularly to know the Word of God, contrary to our usual thing where momma does all the spiritual learning in the home. It didn’t used to be that way. In the days of the Reformation it was the men who studied the Word of God and then they taught their wives and then they taught their children, because the men were very clearly held accountable. So it goes all the way back 2000 years before Christ; almost 4000 years ago the point was made that God holds us men responsible for our homes. We can’t pass this responsibility to our wives and to our children.

Another thing about circumcision; the circumcision is most obviously connected with the propagation of children here because the children are that which Abram wants to bring forth, the male, the elect seed. And so the circumcision draws attention to the sexual reproduction that will lead to children. Now why does God have such an obvious physical picture? For a very simple reason: Christ reproduces His nature in believers and if you turn to 1 John 3:9 that talks about the regenerate nature you will see the language borrowed from this imagery. This is that very troublesome verse that many Christians run into to and they say yikes, what is 1 John 3:9 talking about, it seems to me it’s a contradiction. No, just look. In 1 John 3 it says, “Whosoever has been born of God does not routinely,” the idea is habitually, “commit sin.” Why? “Because his seed remains in him.” What seed? Some of you students who have the Greek text you’ll notice in verse 9 that the word “seed” is the Greek word “sperm.” And the imagery is so very obviously a follow on from the early idea in the Old Testament, of Abraham begetting children in circumcision and so as Abram begets children the elect seed in circumcision, so Jesus Christ puts His seed in us, notice “in” us; that is the regenerate nature. So the circumcision emphasizes and is tied to regeneration. If you want a passage to study on your own I would suggest Colossians 2:11-13.

So let’s back off of the big picture and see what we’ve got. Genesis 12-14 Abraham is called. Genesis 15 Abraham is justified. Genesis 16 he produces the seed of the flesh and Genesis 17 we’re talking about the elect seed, the chosen seed or the righteous fruit. This is the fruit that God wanted in his life; fruit that Abraham himself was incapable of producing, fruit that had to come by an act of God.

Turn to Romans 6:21 and you’ll see a New Testament analogy to this for a practical application. We have said that this whole Abraham story shows a sequence. It shows a man believing, then it shows him justified and then it shows him producing the fruit. He is depraved, he is incapable of doing this apart from an act of God, and yet the acts of God do form a sequence. And in Romans 6:21-22 we are addressed. We’re not in the business, spiritually, of having Ishmael and Isaac, although a lot of our young couples are having children. Spiritually, in Romans 6:21-22 we’re talking about righteousness, godly righteousness, not just good works but good works that emanate from Christ.

So in Romans 6:21 is says: “What fruit had ye then,” “then” is before we became Christians, “What fruit had ye then,” in other words, like Abraham producing Ishmael, “in those things whereof you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. [22] But now,” now that you’re Christians, now that you are “in Christ,” now that you have been made free from sin, not “being made” but “have been made,” aorist tense, you are now in position in Christ, you have become servants, aorist tense, you are now in position to God, “you now” present tense, “you are now having your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.” In other words we, like Abraham, God calls us to produce a fruit, He called Abraham to produce Isaac but Abraham couldn’t produce Isaac, Abraham had to look to God exclusively for God to produce Isaac through him and so the Christian is to look to Christ and His righteousness to have that righteousness flow out through Him in this kind of fruit.

This is the message of this text. Faith, justification and then we see the results of regeneration. And this was the sequence, as I said, that Calvin himself followed in his work, The Consensus Tigurinus, where he said, (quote) “We are accounted just by the imputation of gracious righteousness and then we are regenerated in new life.” “… and then we are regenerated in new life,” end quote. And said the early Lutherans, the regeneration and renewal follows justification.

So the early reformers and Genesis 12-17 line up, they’re both… all of us are saying basically the same thing, that there is this sequence to follow. The challenge we have today is the greater truth, the spiritual truth, God calls every member of the human race to produce righteousness. Those whom He calls effectively to Christ, in those people He demands and will produce this righteousness. And the question each one of us has to ask is whether we have that kind of relationship with Christ.

Our hymn this morning