Genesis 17 Be perfect.

Genesis 17

Empty spaces - what are we living for?
Abandoned places - I guess we know the score.
On and on, does anybody know what we are looking for...

Lyrics from Queen’s famous song “The show must go on”. Great song. Great questions. Why are we here? What are we here for? What is the reason we exist? Why did God make you and make me? For what purpose?

Well, the answer we get in this chapter is surprising: we’re here to be perfect. God made us to be perfect because he is perfect, and we were made to reflect his glory. Let’s dig in to this chapter:

1. What will God do?

The chapter opens with God making a promise: 2 I will make a covenant (promise) with you, by which I will guarantee to give you countless descendants.”

But hasn’t he already done this? What’s going on?

Well, it’s worth comparing the earlier chapters 12, 13, and 15 to this one, 17. Because here there is something new.

Once again God appears to Abram and promises him a land, a people, and a blessing. But instead of one nation, Israel, Abram will now be the father of many nations – v5. This is so significant that God changes his name to mark this occasion: Abram “exalted father” will now be called Abraham “father of a multitude”.

You see, not only will Abraham be a “blessing to all nations” (ch 12:3) but the father of many nations. And more than that, we suddenly get the idea of Kings coming from the Abrahamic line. But there’s something else, something far more significant: v7 “I will confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you, from generation to generation. This is the everlasting covenant: I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

God promises to be with Abraham’s descendants: he will be their God and they will be his people.

The Bible story is like an onion. As we read through the story, we peel back layer after layer of the story. Or the Bible’s like an ogre, because ogres are like onions, with layers (Shrek!).
The Bible is like a brilliantly written story which reveals just a little bit more of the mystery until at last the whole thing clicks into place and you’re like “Ah!”
Actually it’s not “like” that – it IS that. This is God’s story, revealed to us bit by bit, and the “Ah!” moment is when Jesus steps onto the pages of his story and we’re like “Oh, it was all about him! He’s the hero of the story! He’s the mystery now revealed!”
Jesus is the blessing to all nations. Jesus is the King descended from Abraham who will gather people from every tribe and nation and family and language group on Earth into one new humanity. The new people of God by faith. The people who have Abraham as their father because he is the man of faith. Abraham believed God, and it was credited as righteousness we read a few weeks back. The everlasting covenant of chapter 17 is fulfilled by Jesus. And we are the descendants of Abraham if we too have faith in the promises of God.

So it’s this great new promise, a new revelation of God’s covenant. Wow. But there’s also a new demand, a new sign of faith. God tells Abraham how he must respond.

2. What must Abraham do? Be blameless

17:1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am El-Shaddai—‘God Almighty.’ Serve me faithfully and live a blameless life.

We’ve heard this before. Where? Noah. Gen 6:9 Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God.

And God spoke to Noah. So too with Abram: Blameless. To be in a covenant relationship with God, you need to be perfect. Noah knew God, and he was “blameless”. Abram knew God, and God said “be blameless”.

Jesus said “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matt 5:20.

Now the Pharisees we’re used to thinking of as bad guys – they were the ones who killed Jesus! But actually these were the church leaders of the day. They were well respected – everyone wanted to be like them. They were holy men, careful to obey the law in all its details. Righteous? They were righteous. They are the poster-boys for getting to heaven under your own steam: these guys were serious. They would wear the right clothes. They would pray at the right times with the right words. They would tithe their garden herbs, taking a tenth of them to the Temple. Their whole lives revolved around serving God. And Jesus said “You must be more righteous than them!” Whaaat?

To us Jesus might have said you need to be more righteous than Mother Teresa. Or more gentle than the Dalai Lama. Or more lovely than Debby Garratt. It is something shockingly difficult, impossible even.

Jesus said “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of Mother Teresa, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Abram, Serve me faithfully and live a blameless life.

The only way to know God is to be perfect. Think about the epistles (letters to the churches) we’ve studied: Romans and Ephesians. Both of those call on us to act perfectly. Eph 4:1–4 (NLT) Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. 2 Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. 3 Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace.

Lead a life worthy of your calling. Be humble and gentle, patient and united – always. That is Christian behaviour. How’re you doing with that?

Romans 12:1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.

Be a holy sacrifice. Be perfect. Abram, serve me faithfully and live a blameless life.

But wait just a minute. I was here last week. I preached the sermon! And I remember that Abram wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t blameless at all! He was an adulterous sexual sinner, abusing Sarai’s poor servant girl Hagar, along with his wife, using Hagar’s body for his own purposes. What Abram and Sarai did to Hagar was terrible – about as far from “blameless” as you could get. It was so terrible that Hagar ran away to the desert to die.

And then in the very next chapter God says “blameless”. What’s going on here?

Has Abram – Abraham - fixed up his game in the thirteen years since the abuse of Hagar? Has he turned over a new leaf, tried really hard – you know, brushed his teeth, shined his sandals, combed his hair, used New Spice? Is that’s what’s happened?

Well, it might be nice to imagine so, and maybe that’s what you were taught at Sunday school: Abraham was a good guy, so God liked him, and was his friend. He scanned the hearts of all the people, and saw Abraham’s heart was good, and so chose him. That kind of nonsense is all around us: the Jehovah’s Witnesses teach it, prosperity gospel peddlers teach it, most of the State churches appear to teach it, most of the Sunday School material seems to teach it. Be good, and then God will like you.

That is a lie.

Because if you actually READ what the Bible says, instead of what you think it says….well, the message is quite different. Abraham has not changed. Oh, he’s certainly grown in his faith, no doubt about that! Only a man trusting that God could raise the dead would be willing to sacrifice his son whom he loved (chapter 22).
But he still lies about his wife Sarah being his sister (in chapter 20), and this time he really has no excuse! He just doesn’t have enough faith to believe God’s promises.
He laughs when God says he’ll have a son in this very chapter (v17).
He allows his wife to abuse Hagar and Ishmael and send them out into the desert to die (chapter 21).
Abraham is no saint. He’s not really the type of man you’d want your daughters to marry, is he? He’s the kind of leader who would be in Telen all too often for the wrong reasons (or in Se og Hør: exclusive interview with Hagar “He sent me away to die!”).

Abraham was not perfect. He did not try really hard and become perfect. He is not perfect, not blameless. Yet God says to him “be blameless”. God says to us “be blameless”.

What’s going on?!! How can we do this?

Well, here we come to a great truth at the heart of the Bible. To borrow from Major Ian Thomas: if we are made in God’s perfect image, why should He not demand perfection from us. It is a perfectly reasonable demand. That demand only seems unreasonable to us because we’re missing something, something so obvious, so clear, so necessary. Sin clouds our minds because sin says “I am God!”.
What’s missing is this: God. God Himself. He is the missing piece of the puzzle. To quote: “When God made you and me, His intention was that we in normality would be seen as different to the animal kingdom by a quality of life and behaviour that would allow for absolutely no possible explanation but God within us.”

We were designed needing God to be fully human. There is indeed a God-shaped hole in each of us. We are designed to be perfect, but we were NOT designed to achieve that perfection on our own. We must have God’s perfection, God’s righteousness, in order to be perfect, be righteous. True humanity, really LIVING, is only found when God lives within us. He is our life.

And that’s why God says to Abraham, says to us: be perfect. Be like me, for I am with you. 7 I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

Man without God is like a car with no engine. He is our engine, our driving force. Without him, we are nothing. Serve me faithfully and live a blameless life.

3. How can we be blameless?

Well, there was a big clue a few chapters back, just before the big mess with Hagar. Turn back to chapter 15, verse 6: And Abram believed the LORD, and the LORD counted him as righteous because of his faith.

In the story of Noah, we read that everything humans thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil (6:5), but v8 Noah found favour with the Lord”.

In v1 of Ephesians 4 it says Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God.

Therefore. Because of what God has done. Because you’ve been called by God.

Verse 1 of Romans 12 says the same thing. And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you.

And so. Because of all he has done for you. How often we skip over those words! But that’s the truth. Never remove moral exhortation from its redemptive context. That means never preach “this is how you behave” without the gospel of grace. We are saved. We are declared righteous. So be what you are!
It’s not try really hard, but be what you now are: a new creation.
It’s like saying to a car with no engine: drive vs. saying to a car with a new engine fitted: drive. One is impossible, one is perfectly natural!
Christian, be what you are. Let the Holy Spirit transform you. Give yourself over to God: your time, your money, your relationships, your love life, your sex life, your friendships, your work, your dreams, your career, your “rights”. Everything you are, everything you have – give it over to God. You belong to him.

The sign that Abraham believed that he was forgiven by God, that he belonged to God, was circumcision. His body was marked: a sign that he and all his descendants belonged to God. 10 This is the covenant that you and your descendants must keep: Each male among you must be circumcised. 11 You must cut off the flesh of your foreskin as a sign of the covenant between me and you. …13 All must be circumcised. Your bodies will bear the mark of my everlasting covenant.

His circumcision was a sign of the covenant. It was a sign of his faith. Because we humans are rather stupid, Israel kept getting that wrong and trusting in the sign rather than having faith! “Oh, I’ve got the sign, I don’t need to trust God!” Whoops.

The external sign symbolised an internal change. That’s why the New Testament talks about a circumcision of the heart, and why our sign is not circumcision but baptism. We do not bear the mark in our own bodies, because that mark was pointing towards the One whose body would be marked for our sins.
Jesus is our sign of circumcision. His body bore the mark of God’s everlasting covenant. Eternally, his body is scarred.

And so in baptism we celebrate our old life being put to death with Jesus on the cross, and us being raised to new life with him in his resurrection. We are a new creation, with new, circumcised hearts. Hearts that belong to God.

So we then are part of the multitude of nations that come from Abraham. He is our father, not by blood, but by faith. And we are part of that amazing promise in v7 “I will confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you, from generation to generation. This is the everlasting covenant: I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you.
He is our God because our King, Abrahams descendant, Jesus, the Christ, bore our sins upon the Cross, took the mark of the covenant in his own body, and won for us the righteousness of God, so that we can believe and God be counted as righteous.

In Christ, you are fully human. Friends, rejoice! And start living out what God’s put in you. Yes, you will stumble and fall, but remember that Jesus has already borne your sins: you are counted as righteous. And stand and carry on. Abraham stumbled many times – but each time he was forgiven, blessed, raised up. Have faith. Trust God’s word. You are forgiven in Christ.

This is the everlasting covenant: I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you. He is our God.

Our response? I am El-Shaddai—‘God Almighty.’ Serve me faithfully and live a blameless life.

Praise God that he himself bore the marks in his body to cover our sins, to give us a new heart, and make us new creations: truly human. Thank you Father.