Abram’s old. Ninety-nine years old to be more specific.

 

As you might recall, God had promised Abram that He would make a great nation out of him. However, that still has yet to happen and time is running a bit thin. You might want to note that Abram’s wife, Sarai has aged pretty well herself—well past the age of having babies.

 

They’re old and they still have yet to see God’s promise. Sarai wasn’t able to have babies in the time she should have been able to, why would she start having them now? This doubt that God would hold to His word grew so strong that Sarai gave Abram her maid as a wife and sure enough, the maid had a baby and named him Ishmael. So Abram does have a son after all. But this son wasn’t part of the plan. He was meant to have a baby with Sarai all along.

 

 Well now that they’re old doubters God decides to make His glory known. He APPEARS once again to Abram, making Himself known as “El-Shaddai (meaning God Almighty).” “Serve me faithfully and live a blameless life,” He tells Abram. “I will make a covenant with you, by which I will guarantee to give you countless descendants.”

 

Abram’s only reaction is to fall face down on the ground. Notice that even though he’s old, even though he hasn’t seen anything, even though God has told him about this covenant twice already, Abram does not answer God with the question “WHEN!?”

 

No, he simply falls to the ground.

 

God went on. “This is my covenant with you: I will make you the father of a multitude of nations! What’s more, I am changing your name. It will no longer be Abram. Instead, you will be called Abraham, for you will be the father of many nations.* I will make you extremely fruitful. Your descendants will become many nations, and kings will be among them!”

 

Now before we go on, perhaps you’re wondering what the significance of changing his name was all about? Well, back in the day name were given with reference to once character. Now a’ days we tend to receive our parents favorite names and then our names don’t mean as much to our personality.

 

For example, my name, Jamin, supposedly means “south wind” or “teacher” or something like that. My last name means “the broad meadow.”

 

………….

 

Abraham’s original name meant “exalted father,” and this new name “Abraham” sounds a lot like the Hebrew term that meant “father of many.” Can you imagine how cool that would be? The One and Only God gives you a new name—a new purpose or meaning. Man, I would wear that thing around with pride.

 

Moving on…

 

“I will confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you, from generation to generation,” God continues. “This is the everlasting covenant: I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you. And I will give the entire land of Canaan, where you now live as a foreigner, to you and your descendants. It will be their possession forever and I will be their God.”

 

Don’t understand the importance of this covenant? Okay, imagine having made a deal with someone under these circumstances:

 

Your Part: Serve your dealing partner faithfully and live outside of sin.

 

In Return: You will receive the greatest power in the entire galaxy.

 

Oh yeah, but there’s one more thing to this deal. “The Mark of the Covenant.”

 

But what is this mark you ask? Well men, brace yourselves and thank God that He sent Jesus to save you from having to do this if you didn’t receive the mark at birth.

 

Circumcision.

Yeah, that’s the mark and all the men must follow it.

 

Now for those of you who don’t know, circumcision is cutting off the foreskin of a penis. The foreskin is a roll of skin that covers the end of the penis that can be pulled back in order to urinate. Women can be circumcised too by cutting off the clitoris, but don’t worry ladies, that wasn’t part of the deal. Just the men are in on this one.

 

Didn’t expect a sex lesson today did you?

 

Moving on once again…

 

God has quite a bit to say about this mark. “Your responsibility is to obey the terms of the covenant. You and all your descendants have this continual responsibility.”

 

Did you catch that? CONTINUAL responsibility. In other words, every time someone has a baby, it must be circumcised for that baby is under the covenant as well. They are to wear the mark as well. Now we’ll see much later in Joshua how the people under covenant forgot about the mark over time and had to be circumcised as grown men.

 

“This is the covenant that you must keep: Each male among you must be circumcised. You must cut off the flesh of your foreskin as a sign of the covenant between me and you. From generation to generation, every male child must be circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. This applies not only to the members of your family but also to the servants born in your household and the foreign-born servants whom you have purchased. All must be circumcised. Your bodies will bear the mark of my everlasting covenant. Any male who fails to be circumcised will be cut off from the covenant family for breaking the covenant.”

 

To summarize:

Babies are to be circumcised on the eighth day.

Servants are to be circumcised.

Do it or be cut off from the covenant.

 

Now you might be wondering what “servants whom you have purchased” means. Wouldn’t that be slavery?

 

Not entirely. Servants were not to be handled the same way that we Americans did. They had rights and it was actually good for them because they would get a good place to stay, food, and all that jazz. It was like a job.

 

While we’re at it, God decides to change Sarai’s name as well. He gives her a name oh-so-popular in today’s society: Sarah. But what was the point behind this? Both her original name and new name mean “princess.”

 

It doesn’t matter! I imagine that if God gave you a new name, you would feel honored, privileged, and renewed! You are no longer the same person because in God you have become new. Although I must say, I would rather not have my own name changed to Sarah. I’m not really pretty enough to be a princess. I’m not really of royalty either.

 

In fact, just to make sure we’re on the same page: I am a man.

 

God tells Abram of Sarah’s role in this covenant: “I will bless her and give you a son from her! Yes, I will bless her richly, and she will become the mother of many nations. Kings of nations will be among her descendants.”

 

When Abraham heard this he bowed down to the ground. A good cover-up to his actual thoughts.

 

He laughed thinking “How could I become a father at the age of 100? And how can Sarah have a baby when she is ninety years old?” Apparently Abraham must have taken God’s covenant the wrong way. There’s no way that would ever happen. So in his disbelief he comes to a rather stupid conclusion. He figures God must have been talking about the son he had with Hagar. After all, if a man’s wife gives him her maid as a wife because she can’t have babies, the baby that comes from that maid is supposed to be considered the original wife’s baby.

 

So yeah! That’s what God meant when He said “I will bless her [Sarah] and give you a son from her!”

 

Talk about doubt. I wish I knew such specifics on my life.

 

“May Ishmael live under your special blessing!” Abraham said.

 

But God corrected him. “No—Sarah, your wife, will give birth to a son for you. You will name him Isaac, and I will confirm my covenant with him and his descendants as an everlasting covenant.”

 

I like to imagine the look on Abraham’s face right here.

 

So that still does leave the question of what happens to Ishmael? After all he is out of Abraham’s blood. Well God fills him in on that:

 

“As for Ishmael, I will bless him also, just as you have asked. I will make him extremely fruitful and multiply his descendants. He will become the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant will be confirmed with Isaac, who will be born to you and Sarah about this time next year.” With that, God left Abraham.

 

On the day that Abraham received all of this news he gathered up his son Ishmael, every male in his household, including those born there and the ones he had bought and circumcised them, just as God had told him to do. Not a bad deal for the servants really. Especially the foreign ones. I mean it stinks to have to go through with getting the mark, but they’re pretty fortunate to have entered into God’s covenant even though they didn’t come from Abraham’s blood.

 

Ishmael was 13 on this day when he was circumcised.

And good ol’ Abraham was 99 years old.

 

Ouch…

 

 

 

Genesis 17

 

 

 

 

 

 

*If you hadn’t made the connection before, perhaps now you know where the song “Father Abraham” came from. And no, it wasn’t Abe Lincoln.