When God Speaks: Abraham, Covenant, and the Promise of Isaac
by Jeremy Painter
April 22, 2026 · Abundant Hope Fellowship, Bremerton, Washington
Kind: Bible study
Scripture: Genesis 17, Psalm 119:1, Deuteronomy 10:14-18, Deuteronomy 30:6

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/jeremy-painter--when-god-speaks
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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I really feel fortunate. I really feel blessed to be able to do this, to be able to open up our Bibles and go patiently through Scripture. And today, I'd like to go through Genesis chapter 17. I'll just read straight through myself and then just like to call on different ones to read through each verse as we go through the verses. Okay, Genesis 17, and I'm in the English Standard Version. When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I'm God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you and may multiply you greatly. Then Abram fell on his face and God said to him, Behold, my covenant is with you and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will

make you exceedingly fruitful and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout the generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession and I will be their God. That's quite a speech, that's just God talking. I don't know if you're sensitive to how rare that is in Scripture. God speaks, he's the only one that speaks in Genesis chapter one for obvious reasons, and really chapter two as well. But as the Bible proceeds, you get less and less direct speech of God and more and more of human being speaking for God. All right, but we're getting direct speech right here. And God's not done, he's going to continue. And God said to

Abraham, whenever you see somebody speaking, and then you see in the very next sentence, the narrator interrupts and it says that this person spoke. That usually means that there is some kind of pause. There might be a lengthy pause between God's or the character's first time speaking and then the second time speaking. That seems to be what it was, what it indicated to an ancient audience. So here you get in verse nine, God said to Abraham, as for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your offspring after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or brought or

bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. Both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh, an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant. Verse 15, And God said to Abraham, as for Sarah, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarah, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her and she shall become nations. Kings of people shall come from her. And then God finishes speaking for the time being. Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, to himself, Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, like how he immediately picks

up on the name change, he's been calling her Sarah his whole life, 99 years apparently. And just like that, Sarah shall she bear a child. She's 90 years old. And Abraham said to God, O that Ishmael might live before you. Okay, so now he's speaking out loud. O that Ishmael might live before you. God said, No, but Sarah, your wife shall bear you a son and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes and I will make him into a great nation. But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year. When he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham. Then Abraham took Ishmael his son and all those born in

his house or bought with his money. Every male among the men of Abraham's house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day as God had said to him, Abraham was 90 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin and Ishmael his son was 13 years old when he is circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. That very day, Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised. You see, here are lots of repetition and all the men of his house, those born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner were circumcised with him. Okay, that's Genesis 17. All right, let's let's go to verse one and just reread verses one and two. Janet, can you do that? In what Abraham was 90 years old at nine, the Lord appeared to Abraham and said unto him, I am the Almighty God, walk before me and be thou perfect, and I will make my covenant between me

and thee, and will multiply thee exceeding. All right, so you have King James translation there and it uses the term perfect instead of blameless, and I'll get to that in just a moment. All right, so the last time God spoke to Abram, it was in a dream. That was in the previous chapter or two previous chapters. Genesis 15, it was in a dream, but now he appears without the framework of a dream or a vision. God in some very visible, tangible way presents himself to Abraham to the point, not only is he visually there in some sense, but after it's over, he went up. Okay, so the presence in a way, the visual presence leaves. All right, and he refers to himself as the Lord Almighty. If you could put up, Alex, put up verse one if you would please. All right, I am God Almighty. The Hebrew term is El Shaddai. Anyone remember that Amy Grant song? All right, if you haven't

heard it, it's a good old song from the 80s and the term El Shaddai means something like the God who is sufficient. His grace is sufficient for me, for me, for me, that old song, or more simply, Almighty God. He's completely sufficient. He has all might in power. God usually goes by this name when he's having a conversation with a patriarch about his future posterity, about his future descendants. So if you look up, you don't have to do this right now, but Genesis 28 and 3, Genesis 35 and 11, Genesis 43 and 14, 48 and 3, and 49 and 25, and all of those occasions when God refers to himself as El Shaddai or God Almighty, it's when he's speaking to a patriarch about his future posterity or his descendants. In Genesis 5, in the days of Seth's son Enos, we're told that men began to call upon the name of Yahweh. In Genesis 13, it's said that Abraham called on the name

of Yahweh. In Genesis 14, Melchizedek prayed for Abraham and referred to God as El Elion or God Most High. In Genesis 16, we find the first instance of a human being giving God a name. So in every other case, God reveals himself in some way and the people respond to that name that he's revealed himself by. But here, in the previous chapter, Genesis 16, Haggar called God a name that she hadn't heard from him. She called him the God who sees or the God who cares for me. Here we have, in Genesis 17, God referring to himself as El Shaddai. And when Abraham goes to sacrifice Isaac in a few chapters, Abraham calls Mount Moriah, Yahweh, Yirei, or Jehovah Jireh. There's another old song, Jehovah Jireh, My Provider, His Grace. There it is. It's in that song as well. It means the Lord will see to it or the Lord will provide. So already, we're just in the first few chapters of Genesis

and we get all these different names of God. And what we see from Haggar when she names him the Lord or the God who sees me, Melchizedek calls him the God Most High. Abraham calls him the one who provides Jehovah Jireh. Do you have a testimony about God? These are testimonies of God. I learned something about his nature in this circumstance I went through or this problem I had. This particular corner my life got into at some point. And God showed up at the last moment and saved me in some way. And so the character gives God a name. It's a testimony of who he is. It's a revelation of his character. Do you have a testimony about God? An event in life that's revealed to you something about God. I have some great stories. I don't know if they're great to everybody else. They probably wouldn't be. But they're great to me. They've taken on greater significance as I've gotten older. In

life. I don't know if I've told all of you or any of you this instance in my life, but it's just a few years ago. Is Morgan in here? Does she have to step out? Okay. All right. Maybe it's easier if she's not in here for this. Before John came into her life, she was engaged. And it felt like a runaway freight train. There was something in the back of our heads that knew that this was not going to go well. And God put a stop to it. He put a stop to it and made sure that she ended up with John. John's in Minnesota or Indiana I think right now attending a wedding. So I'm sparing both of them right now. They don't have to be in here to hear this, but I can't tell you how miraculous the situation. I can barely describe it to you how miraculous the situation was. How absurd the circumstances were. I'll just give you the

brief of it so that you understand my testimony. She was engaged with somebody and he was a doofus and that's the polite term. And I asked because there was no marriage counseling going on. I asked, I'll do this. I will meet with me five times before you get married. You're getting married in two months. Meet with me. And so Starbucks, six o'clock before Wednesday night service, meet me there and we'll just have five sessions. I want to go over some like finances, child rearing, you know, who takes responsibility for what and that sort of thing. Work these kinds of things out. So we so I get there at six o'clock is yeah, Laura's in here six o'clock. I'm there at the Starbucks. I have one hour and then we're going to Wednesday night service. Get there. And it's 605 now. Nobody is there 610 615 nobody's there. Okay, make a phone call. Where are you? And my daughter sobbing on the phone. He

said he won't meet with you doofus doofus. Why? I don't really understand it. The father stepped in and and he doesn't want this sort of thing and and and you know just excuses. So anyway, I'm I'm as mad as I have ever been in my life. I'm so angry. You're going to marry my precious daughter in two months and you can't even have the decency yourself to call me up. You just no show. And you're a man of honor and you're taking my daughter. So, oh, Lord, calm me down. Help me. And so I go to church and but I had said to Morgan, tell doofus and her doofus dad, his doofus get her doofus dad to tell them both. I want to meet with them after church. I we really need to have a meeting after church and get this worked out. So it's Wednesday night, get to the service. And they're there. And then I get a calendar notice notification in

15 minutes. You're scheduled for a Zoom meeting with a church in California. So it's West Coast time to conduct their Bible study over Zoom because they were still doing ever since COVID they stopped meeting together. And I had agreed weeks before to do this. So they were all going to be waiting on me in 15 minutes. So I had to rush home to get on my laptop and start the Zoom. Really, I should have stayed and taken care of business. That's what I should have done. See doofus too. But I thought, okay, tell them. I said to Laura, tell them we'll meet next Wednesday. I have to go to do this service. So I left. But as I was leaving, I said, tell them next Wednesday. And she said, Oh, I'll tell them. And I knew what that meant. I'll tell them what I want to tell them, not what you want me to tell them. I said, No, you won't. And she

just said, Well, and so I left. I thought next Wednesday. See, here is my plan. My plan was, I'm going to fix this situation. I'm going to smooth it over. There's some kind of misunderstanding. And maybe this guy, he's been raised by in this family. And, and they've had all kinds of problems. And maybe he's just immature. And, and if he spends a little bit of time with normal people, maybe he'll just straighten out. That's what I really thought. I really thought, I really thought that the leopard could change his spots. You know, that I was some kind of Superman, I had magic words. I was just a great counselor or something like that. That's what I thought. So my plan was to fix everything. But while I was doing the Bible study, Laura, after the service, went up to the young man, and he's about six foot six. And apparently from what bystanders have said, she was pointing her finger up at

him and giving him the, we used to call it 411, the business. You know, you shouldn't have done this, even if he was the worst person on earth, that's still the, that's still her father. You should honor him, at least by showing up and saying, I don't, I don't know that this is appropriate and do something. Anyway, they had that conversation. And, and so the next morning I find out, Oh, Morgan is in here now. Okay. The next morning I find out that they've broken up, called off the engagement. And I was so sad. I was so sad. There was this kid in my class at the college. He kind of looked like the young man. And so my heart went out every time I saw him every day. And so there was just every time I saw him, there was just this, this absolute ice pick going through my heart. Sad at, there was a nice part of the kid too. And

I thought I had ruined completely, you know, by making that bad decision, I had ruined my daughter's future and, and whatnot, you know, you know, you just don't know. So time went on. And then we started, Lauren, I started finding out just how doofus it just how much mess there was going on in that family, how much mess was going on in him buying a $3,000 PlayStation, buying her a $300 ring, because he couldn't afford something better. I mean, that's just that's a little thing that, but that's just it's telling it's one little tiny detail that kind of speaks to priorities and maybe give you a little glimpse into the future if you're paying attention, which I wasn't. So every time the anniversary of their wedding date came around every month, you know, that date would come around, she would be off sobbing somewhere. And probably three months went by, I think it was just past their original wedding date. And just this

silence. And she thought, this guy left me basically at the altar. I wasn't good enough for him. It wasn't about him anymore. It was about not being good enough. And, you know, as we're learning all this information, at one point I just had, you know, just this like a thunderbolt thunderbolt of knowledge of revelation. It was as clear as I have ever heard God speak, but I didn't hear it audibly. I just knew it. I was saying words now that I hadn't premeditated. I was saying these words to her. Jesus told his disciples about, don't worry about preparing when you go before those rulers. The Holy Ghost is going to give you the words. And the Holy Ghost gave me words. And the words were, do you know how much God loves you? Do you know what God has spared you from? You understand that, right? You were about to end your future. Your future was about to come to a close. There

was nothing in the future but divorce for you and a broken home. And there might have been children involved. That was what was in store for you. And your father was not paying attention. The guardian that he put in your life wasn't paying any attention. He was about to give a rubber stamp off on something that he had red flags for. And he even made the stupid decision to make a Bible study when his daughter's future was at stake. And you know what God did? He shoved me aside and stepped in my place and took over and made sure that the one person in the family that would say it exactly as it needed to be said would be the only one there to say it. So he moved me out of the way. He arranged for me to be out of that, out of the Bible study, out dealing with the California situation so that she would be there to say what

needed to be said, it would move the needle and make sure that there was an end. You see, when you can't put it all together, when you can't understand you, there's no rationality for what just happened. There's no sound reason, not something you can really figure out when things are moving so fast and you don't feel like you're in control anymore. There's one of two things that's happening, either the devil's in control or God's in control. I don't know how else to explain it, but to say that, something supernatural is involved. God's at work. In this case, God was looking out for her. He played the trump card over me, took over. I don't have a name for God for that, except that God is my family's guardian. That's my name for him, the God who sees me and cares. I have, if you look back over your life, if you look back over your life with a heart of gratitude and thankfulness,

you're going to find again and again and again God showing up in various places when you were about to make big mistakes and God absolutely stood in your way. God is my guardian. God is my family's guardian. Oh, thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. When I see these characters in the Bible, these Abraham's and Hagar's calling God a name, that name is exceedingly special to them and precious because it revealed God's character to them and his involvement and his care for them. All right, back to the Bible study. Before, before I proceed, maybe consider doing that, looking back over your life and thinking of what God has revealed himself to be to you. Also, just as a reminder, it's very, very likely that God has showed up at various junctures of your life to save you and protect you, and you'll never actually know. You have no knowledge of what you've been spared. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean

not upon your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your path. Praise God. All right, so God has referred to himself here as El Shaddai, the all-powerful, and he's about to reveal just what El Shaddai means, not just with words, but with action. All right, now he tells Abraham, he says, walk before me, Abraham, or Abram at this point, and be blameless. Walk before me and be blameless. All right, Enoch was said to walk with God, Noah was said to walk with God, and to have been blameless, and Job is said to have been righteous and blameless. To walk with God is to live in friendship with God. To be blameless is to live with complete loyalty to God. All right, so there's no betrayal of God in your heart. You walk with God in full integrity. All right, the King James says, be perfect, and that doesn't necessarily mean be forever sinless. The word perfect there,

in Elizabethan English like the King James Bible has, the word perfect used to be used not to mean sinless, or flawless, the word perfect used to mean complete or whole. All right, and we have completely changed the meaning of perfect to where now it means flawless or sinless, but at one time it meant complete. The only way in which we still use the word perfect in the old English way is with the term or the phrase a perfect stranger. That doesn't mean they're sinless or flawless, it means they're a complete stranger, right? All right, so that's what that means. God is not requiring Abraham to be absolutely without sin, then there would never be a need for him to have a sacrifice or a sacrificial offering of any kind, but rather that he be complete in his integrity and his walk in his friendship with God, no betrayal in his heart. Judas, of course, betrayed Christ. Peter teetered on the edge, but at

one point he said, I know who you are to Jesus. He said, you're the Christ, the Son of the living God. And then blessed are you, Jesus said, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but the spirit. And then he says, Jesus then goes on to talk about going to Jerusalem to suffer and die. And Peter says, no, don't go to Jerusalem. I forbid you to go to Jerusalem. And then Jesus turns around to him and says, get behind me, Satan. And then the King James is, for thou savorest not the things of God, but the things that are of man, what Jesus is saying in ordinary language is, why are you on the devil's side right now? You're taking, you're not taking God's side. Why aren't you taking God's side? Get behind me, Satan. You don't want to be on the wrong sides. What God is calling Abraham to here is to complete loyalty to him. All right, no

betrayal of him or his principles. All right, Psalm 119, it's the longest chapter in the Bible. And it begins with, happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. And so here also walking with God and being blameless are associated with each other. Okay. And then when Abraham hears this, he hears that he's going to, once again, he hears the promise of God establishing his family. He, he falls on his face. He falls on his face. This is Abraham essentially saying, I will be blameless. I will walk with you. I will be in loyalty with you. And this is him acquiescing, falling on his face. Christians, for whatever reason, Christian, Christian tradition doesn't really have the same, we don't have the same tradition of kneeling down and putting our, our head on the forehead on the carpet or on the floor. But that was apparently the tradition in the fifth, sixth, seventh centuries after Christ for Christians

to do that in the Middle East. And a Middle Easterner by the name of Muhammad, maybe you've heard of him. He learned a lot from the Christian traditions that were around him. And so he taught his followers also to lay down on the floor, prostrate themselves before Allah. And today, if you, if you go to the Middle East or Muslim country, if you see a man in his fifties or sixties, who's at least he's devout, you'll almost invariably see a black mark on his forehead and it's a scar. And it's caused by the kneeling down and then putting the face on the carpet and then rocking back and forth and then getting back up, which again is an ancient Christian tradition that was picked up by the Muslims. All right. But that's, I learned when I went to Algeria that if you don't, if you're in your fifties and sixties and you don't have that on your forehead from all the prayer, you

might actually use a little makeup right there to, to put a mark in and let people think you're a little more devout. There's a little hypocrisy in all of us, I suppose. But anyway, Abraham, this is the ancient tradition going back to Abraham. He fell on his face before God. This is him accepting this covenant, receiving it with gratefulness. All right. God's already promised children to Abraham twice and made a covenant with him. So why is he referring a third time to making a covenant with Abraham? It seems that God is, he's already counted Abraham's faith as righteousness. So he's already made the covenant. But here God seems to, there aren't multiple covenants going on. It's God wanting to confirm or ratify the covenant that's already in place. Previously, he made the covenant unconditionally to Abraham, but now, just before performing the miracle for Sarah, God wants to know whether or not Abraham is going to remain in fellowship with him. He doesn't

require anything of Abraham to initiate the covenant. He doesn't send him on a quest to prove himself worthy before making a promise to him. But he does want to ratify the covenant that he made. So when you enter a covenant with God, the covenant can't really be completely broken by both sides. God always upholds the covenant with or without your loyalty. But what he does do once you agree to the covenant is sanction you if you break the covenant. That is, if you enter into covenant with God, he's the one that upholds the covenant. And if you break the covenant, the covenant's still in force, but he disciplines you. You see what I mean? The covenant's not over. It's still in force, but he's going to discipline you. And this is precisely what happened to Israel. That's why they were taken into captivity in Assyria and Babylon. This wasn't God cutting them off and forsaking them forever. This was God disciplining them for

breaking their side of the covenant. All right, Abraham's response to this is falling on his face. All right, let's read verse four. Brother Moe. Okay, can you keep reading until verse eight all the way through eight? All right, Abraham's name is modified as a response. He's not only going to be a father of a nation, but now he's going to be called the father of a multitude of nations. Now, it would seem that God's referring to the birth of Ishmael in the previous chapter, and that Ishmael is going to be one of the nations that's being mentioned here, but we're going to find out that this isn't the case. Abraham's fatherhood of a multitude of nations is specifically a promise in reference to Sarah's offspring. All right, so let's consider who's Sarah's offspring. It's Isaac, but what nations come from Sarah? Israel's one. Okay. Edom. Exactly. So Isaac has two sons, Jacob and Esau. So Jacob is going to be the father of

the nation of Israel, and Esau is going to be the father of the nation of Edom. So there are two nations right there. Okay, what about later down the line in Israel's history, what nations exist as a result of Sarah? Samaritans? That's good. Okay. There's the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom. Remember, Jacob had 12 sons, or he had more sons than he had. It's complicated. Anyway, there are 12 tribes that come from Jacob, and Judah and Benjamin become the constituents for the Southern Kingdom. That's the kingdom that Solomon and Solomon's descendants rule. And then there's the Northern Kingdom, which is the other 10 tribes, and it's the more powerful kingdom of the two for most of Israel's history. But anyway, you have the Southern Kingdom, the Northern Kingdom, you have Edom. And then remember what God said to Abraham. He said, you're going to be the father of kings. So you have all the Davidic kings, you have the kings of Edom,

you have the kings of the Northern Kingdom, like Ahab and Jeroboam and Jeroboam II. But ultimately Abraham's descendant Jesus will be the king of kings. He will tell his apostles to make disciples of all the nations so that in, ultimately, Jesus inherits all of the nations of the world. What's the great Handel's Messiah song say? It's a reiterating something from Revelation, the words. The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever. So ultimately, Sarah gives birth to many nations and ultimately the king of kings. God's going to make this an eternal covenant with Abraham, he says, and it's going to be passed down as an inheritance to all future generations of Abraham's children. And this covenant involves the land of Canaan, which encompasses most of what is today the state of Israel. Somebody once asked, I forget who it was, a famous media figure, he asked one of our presidents, it

might have been Richard Nixon, proved to me the existence of God and his response was the existence of the Jews. I mean, in spite of everything, every other nation has fallen apart and crumbled into dust and there are no more. But the one nation, the nation of Israel has persisted in spite of mighty efforts to exterminate them down through the centuries, through the millennia. It's absolutely amazing. So today, the modern state of Israel is roughly encompassing the promise that was made to Abraham. All right, God said to Abraham, oh, I'm sorry, let's turn this over to Brother Gray, verse nine through verse 14. It's a very specific problem. And he is eight years old, shall be certain size among every nation. I mean, it raises me that it's the only house for all my strength. It's not a blessing. Even if it's gonna die now, some people will fall with one. Okay, so now God burns to Abraham and tells him how he

expects Abraham to respond. All right, and it's circumcision. This is what I want you to do now. There are all kinds of jokes that you could tell right here. I've heard some pretty, pretty funny ones. I just imagine explaining this to your family. God told me, well, all of that aside on a very serious note, because this is actually an issue that ends up persisting all the way into the Christian era and needs a great deal of explanation. Circumcision was meant to be a reminder. Why circumcision? It was meant to be a reminder of the real power and the real source of Abraham's descendants. They only exist because God performed a miracle on an old man's body. It wasn't Abraham's natural youth or energy or vitality that brought the Abrahamic nations into existence. It was God's sovereign power alone. That's what it's meant to be a reminder of circumcision. All right, so it has to do with procreation. Every subsequent male was to

be circumcised as a reminder that their source was God, not man. The other nations of the world are of the world. They're from the world. They have their source in the will of man. But not so the children of Abraham, as John's gospel would later put it, to all who received Jesus, who believed in his name. He gave power to become children of God who were born not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. All right, and God refers to circumcision as a sign of the covenant, sign of the covenant. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. Circumcision was to remind the Israelites to remember the plight of Abraham and Sarah and therefore to trust God. The Israel was literally a nation, again, I repeat, Israel was literally a nation made out of a dead man

and dead woman's body for reproductive purposes anyway. All right, then there's this note, eight days old. A male that's eight days old, circumcise him. Eight days older or older. Okay, so not before the eighth day. And why would that be? Apparently there's some medical evidence for not circumcising a baby until the eighth day because something happens right around that time to allow for greater blood clotting. I don't know if that's the reason or not, that would be a physical reason. All right, but the spiritual significance is the number eight. In creation, what day is the seventh day? In Genesis chapter one, what day is the seventh day? It's the Sabbath, right? It's Saturday. All right, so what day then is Sunday? It's the eighth day, the first day of the new week, the first day of the new creation. Boy, it got so quiet in here. Was that the baptismal tank? Okay, early Christians met on Sunday because it was the day that

the Lord rose from the grave. And in time Sunday became known amongst early Christians as the eighth day or the first day of the new creation. When we're baptized, we come up out of the water. We are a new creation. We're eighth day people. Alex, I don't know if you have the photo up there. Can you, you put it up there? All right, go to the next picture, if you would. There we go. All right, so this is in Algeria. And it's a little village or ancient village, the ruins of an ancient village called Tepasa. It's on the Mediterranean Sea. That's the Mediterranean in the background. And I'm inside of what was an ancient baptismal tank. All right, this is the remains of a church from the 300s in Algeria, once one of the strongest Christian communities in the world. Really, Algeria was the epicenter of ancient Christianity, more than Rome, more than Jerusalem, more than Ephesus, Algeria. That's where St. Augustine came

from. Many, many great Christians came from this area. And here's a church that was beautifully situated right on the Mediterranean. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my life. And these are, these are right next to me as a Muslim, his name was Nidal. And I'm not sure how devout he was because he's sitting at a baptismal tank with me right there. But anyway, he was very kind to show me this because he knew I'd want to see it. And I went there looking for one specific thing. I wanted to see the outside of the baptismal because ancient baptismal fonts all had a very, very predictable architecture. They were round, but outside, they were eight sided. There were eight. It was octagonal. And I looked at this particular baptismal tank. I go to the next slide. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures, but you can see at the bottom left hand corner where the outer edges of the font

would have been. And I was looking for the eight side because it's supposed to be a circle set on an eight or an octagonal structure. And the reason why ancient Christians did their baptismal tanks were octagonal was because they believed that in baptism, you became a citizen of the new creation, the eighth day Sunday, the day of the Lord, the Lord's resurrection. Okay, so the first day of the new creation. All right, so I started digging around a little bit. There was a couple inches of dirt and Nadel asked me, well, what are you doing? You know, this is an ancient site that's being overseen by historical society, right? This is UNESCO World Heritage site. Probably shouldn't dig too much. I said, I'll put the dirt right back, but I just want to dig down a little because I think it's hiding something or it's just been eroded. And sure enough, I could just got down about four inches and I saw the

pediment. And it was eight, there were eight sites, eight sided pediment. It just reliably had eight sided baptismal tanks. All right, significant again of what baptism meant. All right, so circumcision is in a way symbolic of what would be baptism someday. You're part of a covenant now. You're a part of a holy nation, a nation of kings and priests. All right, you have been circumcised in the heart. You have put off the old flesh. All right, remember Paul said, put off the old man and put on the new man. That's a reference to circumcision, but spiritual circumcision through baptism. All right, circumcision came to be understood in the Old Testament as a sign or a physical representation of a deeply spiritual condition. All right, I need to finish. I'm just going to read a couple of verses here. In Deuteronomy chapter 10, God said, Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that's in

it, yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples as it is today. Circumcise then the foreskin of your heart and do not be stubborn any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who's not partial and takes no bribes. He executes justice for the orphan in the widow and loves the stranger, providing them food and clothing. All right, so the command to Israel is already it's not just meant to be a physical thing that you do, but more importantly, it's indicative of a spiritual condition to circumcise the heart, means to not be callous toward God. Deuteronomy 30 says, Moreover, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul in order that they may

live. Okay, so what would happen to what happens to a guy, an ancient Israelite, who circumcised physically but is sinful in his heart? All right, that circumcised decision of the flesh is of no use whatsoever. It's completely invalidated by the heart and yet a Gentile who was not circumcised in the flesh, but had the right heart towards God, Paul called righteous. Okay, so it was meant to be originally a physical sign indicating a new creation or at least you're part of a new nation and you have put off the old flesh and you are a new creature in some sense. And so in the New Testament, Paul says in Christ is the whole fullness of deity dwelling in him bodily and you have come to fullness in him who is the head of every ruler and authority in him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision when you were buried with him in baptism. You see, you see the association in the

ancient Christian mind, it was an equation between physical circumcision in the Old Testament was equal to baptism in the New Testament because you're putting off the old flesh and becoming a new creature. All right, I'm halfway through this and I'm out of time, so we'll pick up where we've left off. All right, well, thank you everybody for being here at this Bible study and for listening intently and participating. Why don't we stand and pray together?