Genesis Chapter 17

¹ And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.

² And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly.

God was here to make a covenant with Abram and the result of this covenant God told Abram to walk before him and be perfect. God had promised Abram to multiply his seed as the stars of the sky….and Sarai, after a long time went by, and she grew tired of waiting, took things into her own hands and sent Hagar to conceive a child with Abram. This was not God’s plan and even though it happened, God still kept his covenant with Abram, it was in God’s time though…not Abram’s and Sarai’s time. So I take the command of God to Abram to be perfect is for Abram to trust God perfectly and completely to fulfill the covenant with him…no more taking things into his hands to help God along with the plan…. now Abram had to completely trust in God and wait. Perfect faith and obedience.

³ And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying,

I’d read passages where men and women had a visitation with God and how they reacted to it. For some reason, I never really thought about the responses they had on a deeper level. Now I guess I’m reading it and putting myself in their shoes more. CAN YOU IMAGINE GOD APPEARING BEFORE YOU? I’ve had preachers pray over me and the entire time I was thinking they could see how sinful I was, they can’t but, I was a baby Christian so what did I know, it made me nervous. If I had that reaction to a preachers prayers, I can’t even imagine what a sudden appearance from God would do… but falling on my face would likely be a part of that… along with trembling and amazement.

⁴ As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations.

⁵ Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee.

Abram upon entering into this covenant with God has his name changed to Abraham, which means in Hebrew : Father of multitudes; Father of nations.

⁶ And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee.

Abraham had one son of promise, Isaac. Isaac had 2 sons, but only one was the son of promise, Jacob. Jacob had many sons, and these became the 12 tribes of Israel, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. Jesus comes from the tribe of Judah. It took 3 generations before the 12 sons/tribes were born, but I don’t see anywhere after God made this covenant with Abraham, where he took things into his own hands the way he did with Ishmael, to bring about the things God promised him in the covenant. He trusted in God perfectly, it seems, even when God told him to take his ONLY son (Isaac was the only son of promise) and sacrifice him, Genesis 22:2. Abraham followed God in complete obedience.

⁷ And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.

This is very important… God was making a covenant with Abraham, a man, and his children, to be their God forever. God had dealt with Adam and Noah… but this covenant was different, it involved a whole nation of people that would be born from Abrahams seed. THIS IS AN EVERLASTING COVENANT!

Numbers 23:19 ¹⁹ God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

If both of these verses are true, and they are… then replacement theology is false. The lie of replacement theology is that when Jesus was rejected and crucified by the Jews, they lost the position they had with God that God had given them in his covenant with Abraham, and the Christians took their place. God knows all things, he knows the past, present and future… he knew what was going to happen when he entered into the covenant with Abraham, and he still made the covenant. From that, you have to conclude if God made the covenant knowing that the Jews would reject Jesus, he plans to keep this covenant with Abraham. The Jews are always the same beloved apple of his eye that they always were. What happened was they became blinded to the truth for a time and in the end, they will see who Jesus is clearly and accept him as their Messiah… their savior and Lord. The book of Revelation is the testimony of Jesus and the revealing of Jesus… it takes place right there in Israel…the Jews will see Jesus for the glorious Messiah, Savior of the world. The rejection of Jesus by the Jews meant that salvation was offered to the Gentiles.
The mindset that the replacement theologist need to get out of is the idea that God can only have one people at a time. It is entirely possible for God to have 2 covenants going with 2 different people at the same time. One being the Jews and the other being the Church. Jesus is the shepherd of 2 flocks that will ultimately be joined together at the end. The Jews are the natural olive branches, and we are the grafted in wild olive branches… we form a single tree. Christians, and I’ve been guilty of this myself, get the idea that they are the warm center of God’s only focus…. we aren’t. We aren’t even the main focus… Israel is. In Revelation, the entire revealing happens around the Jewish people. We as the Church are a part of it, but we aren’t the only part… or even the main focus. God is going to fulfill every promise he has made to Israel, he has never rejected them or replaced them with the Christians…. the church needs to unlearn that.

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.

⁹ And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations.

Read Romans 11

¹⁰ This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised.

The act of circumcision is the entrance into this covenant with God….it’s a token of the covenant.

TOKEN: noun noun: token; plural noun: tokens
1. a thing serving as a visible or tangible representation of a fact, quality, feeling, etc.”I wanted to offer you a small token of my appreciation”
2. a voucher that can be exchanged for goods or services, typically one given as a gift or offered as part of a promotional offer.”redeem this token for a free dessert”
adjective
1. done for the sake of appearances or as a symbolic gesture.”cases like these often bring just token fines from the courts”

¹¹ And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.

¹² And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed.

We really don’t give circumcision much thought in America because it’s accepted as normal. Not all parents circumcise, but most do. I elected not to circumcise my sons and was considered odd for making this choice. Today, a doctor does this quick procedure a day or so after the baby is born… often before the baby goes home. We don’t think much about it because it’s so normal and a doctor does it out of sight and ear range of the parents. In Abrahams time it was done when the baby was 8 days old by the father… and later, by a person called a mohel.
Abraham had to cut off his own foreskin. This took a lot of faith to do, he had to believe. He’s about to cut his reproductive organs as a token of his entering into a covenant with God where Abraham is promised a child and to be the father of many nations. The very organ he would need to have those children, he was about to cut… so it took faith….and then he had to circumcise every male in his household.

13 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 for an everlasting covenant.

¹⁴ And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.

¹⁵ And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.

¹⁶ And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall be of her.

¹⁷ Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?

¹⁸ And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee!

Abraham had to let go of his own plan to embrace the plan that God had for him. Abraham was acting out of his fleshly limitations. He was old, Sarah was old… Ishmael was already born…etc. He didn’t think he could father another child and he didn’t think Sarah could give birth. His faith right here was limited to what he knew as a man. Abraham wasn’t making this new covenant with a man, he was making it with GOD. God had better plans.
Abraham had to let go of his own plan to embrace the plan that God had for him. Abraham was acting out of his fleshly limitations. He was old, Sarah was old… Ishmael was already born…etc. He didn’t think he could father another child and he didn’t think Sarah could give birth. His faith right here was limited to what he knew as a man. Abraham wasn’t making this new covenant with a man, he was making it with GOD. God had better plans.
I do this too… I pray for something then after asking God to move I start thinking about ways to get what I prayed for. The most dynamic time I can remember that God did the amazing for me and my husband was a time when there was nothing I could do at all…except leave it in God’s hands. I wasn’t even able to contribute to the solution…or even come up with one…but God did and to this day I am still blown away at what God did. The end result was a solution far better than I could have even imagined, complete with additional blessings. I also remember times when I prayed and then went forward with a plan instead of waiting on God…it was a set back…I was in the way of what God wanted to do.

¹⁹ And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.

My thoughts: God tells Abraham of his plan…. not Ishmael, but Isaac would be the father of many nations… the one the blessing would come from. Ishmael came before Abraham gave God a token (circumcision) of his commitment to the covenant with him, so Ishmael could not be the son of the covenant…Abraham had to dedicate his life and seed to the covenant, then Isaac was born, the child of the covenant between God and Abraham.

²⁰ And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation.

Ishmael was still a son of Abraham and Abraham loved him…God saw that and gave him this blessing. It reminds me of the blessing given to Esau after Jacob actually took the birth right Esau sold to him for a plate of beans. Isaac loved both boys, but Esau was his first born and he was a hunter that delighted his father. Once he had given Jacob the birth right he could only bless Esau.

²¹ But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year.

²² And he left off talking with him, and God went up from Abraham.

²³ And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house; and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the selfsame day, as God had said unto him.

Abraham obeyed God that very day and circumcised every one of the male servants and household members as well as Ishmael and himself. This wasn’t a couple people, Abraham had many servants….enough that he was able to go to battle to get his uncle Lot and all of his belongs from an army of a few nations. So there was a lot of men being circumcised that day in obedience to the covenant God made with Abraham. And God blessed Abraham.

²⁴ And Abraham was ninety years old and nine, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin.

²⁵ And Ishmael his son was thirteen years old, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin.

²⁶ In the selfsame day was Abraham circumcised, and Ishmael his son.

²⁷ And all the men of his house, born in the house, and bought with money of the stranger, were circumcised with him.