Genesis 17 - Beginning To Commit

Main Idea: Commit to live your life in obedient recognition of God’s promises.

• God is your holy Redeemer.

• You are called to personal holiness.

• Your life is meant to draw others to your God.

Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Today, we are continuing our series in the Book of Genesis, specifically through the life of Abraham in Genesis 12 through 25.

And in this series, we've seen that there was a man named Abram, who was from kind of modern day Iran, Iraq, and he was called into a relationship with God himself.

He had been promised children after decades of barrenness for him and his wife, Sarai. He was promised a land for his descendants and God had given Abram a promise that all the peoples of the world would be blessed through Abram's family.

However, in this partnership with God, Abram had consistently shown himself to be an untrustworthy partner. He has half obeyed God. He has used people.

He's made decisions that have put God's promises at risk. And last week, we saw that he even committed adultery by listening to his wife Sarah's suggestion for them to have a child through her household servant Hagar.

And despite God's love for Abram, there needed to be a consequence for his actions.

There has to be some sort of justice that is done for the wrong that Abram has consistently been doing against God's creation and how he has tried again and again to thwart God's plans by trying to live his life on his own terms.

So today, we're going to see how God's justice and his incredible love and grace meet in a way that keeps his promises to Abraham, that he is able to do everything that he promised while still being just or good in dealing with such a flawed

individual. In the course of discovering God's method of balancing grace and justice, we're also going to see the call that God lays on Abraham, which is the same type of call that he is making to you this morning.

The call to commit, specifically to commit to live your life in obedient recognition of God's promises.

You see, though you personally haven't been promised limitless descendants, land filled with kings and nations to come from your specific lineage, at least, pretty sure none of you have been promised that, or a promise of the Messiah himself coming

through your lineage, you have been promised some things by the Lord. But it is only as we recognize God's promises and allow ourselves to receive them by faith that they make a difference in our life and in the lives of those around us.

I do want to put the cart in front of the horse for you this morning and let you know up front some things that God wants you to commit to so you can be thinking about those possible commitments throughout the message today.

First and most important, God wants you to commit your life to Jesus, that he would be your Savior and your Lord for your relationship with God, for your eternity, for the way in which you live your life today, God wants you to commit to Jesus as

your Lord and your Savior. That as you think about your relationship with God, as you think about perhaps your eternity and heaven and hell, that you would stake all of your hope on Jesus.

That you would say, even as we just sang, that because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross, that is the reason why I can have a relationship with God.

That is why I am expectant for a home in heaven because of what Jesus has done for me, because of his love for me.

So that's number one, is that you are called to commit to live your life for Jesus, commit your life to Jesus, accepting him as your Savior.

Second, I want to encourage some of you today to commit to publicly declare your faith in Jesus through baptism if you've never been baptized. And if you have been baptized, commit to publicly declare your faith in Jesus through the Lord's Supper.

And third, I want to encourage you today to commit to be an integral part of a local church in the way the New Testament talks about it. Like a stone in a building, like an ear in a body, or like a sibling in a family.

You might say, okay, well, where does any of that come from the life of Abraham? We'll find out today. And I'm very excited because up until this point, I've said the name Abraham very many times in this series.

Up until today's message, his name has been Abraham. It's, the name means exalted father in Hebrew. Finally today, his name gets changed by God to Abraham.

And we'll talk a little bit about why that is, but I'm so excited that I no longer have to caveat myself or make myself think every time, no, no, no, at this point, he's Abraham. So I'm excited for that. But let's do this.

Let's pray together. Let's ask for God to speak to our heart.

And if there's an area, maybe even that was just mentioned or another area that God's laid on your heart where he wants you to commit to follow him in, be open to obeying and following what God has for you today.

We'll see all of the many reasons why we would commit to this particular God and what his plans are for us. But let's have a response of obedience to commit to live our life in obedient recognition, God's promises. Let's pray together.

Dear Jesus, thank you for today. God thank you for the gift of, Lord, this church body to be able to worship together.

And God, we ask that if there's someone here today that does not know you as their savior, that today would be the day that they choose you. And Lord, in whatever steps of growth you want us to take today, may we be faithful to follow them.

Lord, we are so grateful that we do not come to you and just hope that maybe you listen, but Lord, we know that whatever we ask according to your will, you hear us. And so God, we come asking for you to work in our hearts and our minds today.

May Jesus be glorified. We pray all of this in your name. Amen.

Let's walk through the passage and we'll highlight a few things along the way. Genesis 17 and verse number one, when Abram was 99 years old, the Lord Yahweh appeared to him saying, I am God Almighty. The Hebrew word for this would be El Shaddai.

Live in my presence and be blameless. I will set up my covenant between me and you, and I will multiply you greatly. Want to notice one thing.

This comes right on the heel of Abram's failure with Hagar, which is just the last one in a series of failures that Abram has committed. And so when God says live in my presence and be blameless, this isn't coming in a vacuum.

This is God saying, I want to have a relationship with you. I want to bless you. I want to make your life and the lives of those that come after you to experience all of the happiness that I created you for.

And you keep not living in my presence, and you keep not being blameless. Instead, you keep going your own way. And so God says, I want you to change who you are.

But he gives a specific way in which Abram will do that. He says, I want you to begin walking with me, living with me.

He says, I'm going to set up this promise, this covenant between me and you, and everything that I promised before about blessing your descendants. All of that's going to take place.

But then verse three, then Abram fell face down and God spoke with him. This is him being afraid of what's happening. He's interacting with God himself.

And so, there is a justifiable fear as he encounters the voice of God. Verse number four, God says, as for me, here is my covenant with you. You will become the father of many nations.

Your name will no longer be Abram. Your name will be Abraham, for I will make you the father of many nations. So this is going from Abram, exalted father, to Abraham, father of a multitude, or father of nations.

Whenever God renames someone in scripture, it's always indicative that there is a new purpose, there is a new identity and mission for that person.

So here he says, Abram, I want you to recognize, even in the name that you give to others, I want you to recognize the call that I've placed on your life, which is, you are a covenant partner, and here's my promise that I made to you that you're

going to be the father of many nations. You're not just an exalted father, a glorious father of just Ishmael, but I have a promise that I was going to give you children through your wife, Sarah.

He says, I will make you extremely fruitful and will make nations and kings come from you. I will confirm my covenant that is between me and you and your future offspring throughout their generations.

It is a permanent covenant to be your God and the God of your offspring after you. And to you and your future offspring, I will give the land where you are residing, all the land of Canaan, as a permanent possession, and I will be their God.

God here says, this land is not just going to you, this is going to go to your family lineage forever. And he says that Abram's descendants, now Abraham's descendants, they will know Yahweh.

They will know this God as the God that they worship throughout all of their generations. It used to be that your gods were kind of localized, that if you were in Egypt, you were worshiping Ra and all of the others.

If you were in Canaan, maybe you were worshiping the Philistine God Baal. If you were over in Babylon, you might be worshiping Marduk. And it just kind of depended on where you were geographically.

But God here encourages Abraham and says, you and all of your descendants after you, you are going to worship me wherever you are. Then verse number nine, and this is where we get weird for today.

God also said to Abraham, as for you, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations are to keep my covenant. This is my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you, which you are to keep.

Every one of your males must be circumcised. You must circumcise the flesh of your foreskin to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and you. Throughout your generations, every male among you is to be circumcised at eight days old.

Every male born in your household or purchased from any foreigner and not your offspring, whether born in your household or purchased, he must be circumcised. My covenant will be marked in your flesh as a permanent covenant.

If any male is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that man will be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant. Okay.

All of us together. Let's go. Huh?

Yeah. What in the world is going on? Couple things happening here.

Number one, circumcision already existed pre this moment. This wasn't something that the Jews created. This wasn't something that God himself only created in this moment.

This had already been a human practice often around the time that a person got married would be when this particular procedure would take place.

But God says, I want this practice to happen for all of the people that say, I want to be a part of the covenant, that family promise that God has made with Abraham. I identify with the people of God through this.

Now, why this particular sign of the covenant? Again, attempting to be gracious, not graphic, and so adults in the room, just track with me.

In the previous chapter, Abraham had used a particular portion of his body in order to sin and to break the marriage covenant that he had had with Sarah.

And now, God has that particular portion of his body be cut away, removed, and he says every single time that you notice this, which you would as a person, as a human, you are going to remember the promise that I made to you.

Now, there is actually within Genesis itself, another sign of the Covenant that we read about.

And we learned about it when we were back in Genesis chapter 9, which is immediately after the flood, God brings a sign of the Covenant that he makes with Noah. Do you guys remember what that sign of the Covenant was? It's the rainbow.

And it was a reminder every time that it would rain of God's promise that he said, I will no longer flood the earth in the way that I did, now I have this promise with you.

And actually, the way that the author of Genesis describes the flood is that it was a cutting off of all flesh.

And much this way now in Genesis chapter 17, there is a cutting off of flesh, only instead of it being all of humanity, instead of humanity being judged for its sin and a cutting off of all flesh happened, now God says, I have a Covenant, a promise

with Abraham. And so I'm going to judge him for his sin. There's going to be a cutting off, but it's not going to kill Abraham, and it's not going to kill any of his descendants.

And the call that he has is this is going to be throughout all of your generations.

If you'll remember, it was through the line of Abraham and through the line of Isaac that we'll read about in just a moment that Jesus Christ the Messiah came, that Jesus would be born to a human family.

And so God's intention with calling Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and later on Judah and David was to have a physical descendant, one that would be truly human and truly God. Of course, we know Jesus Christ.

And so God says every single time that you guys make new humans, you're going to remember the purpose and the promise that I have for you. Now, I think we can all agree. It's a little weird.

It's a weird sign. This isn't normally how we interact. And as we look at the New Testament, as Jesus came, he was crucified and he died and he was buried and he rose again three days later for our sin.

The Bible says that he made a new covenant. It was no longer the covenant that was made with Abraham and with all of his descendants. It wasn't the covenant with David any longer.

Now there was a new covenant. We would have the phrase the New Testament in Scripture. And the Bible says the way in which the people of God now identify with God and with God's people is no longer through circumcision.

It's actually through baptism. It's what we'd read about in Colossians chapter two. We'd read about it in Romans chapter six.

If you want to be someone that publicly declares to others, I am a part of this new covenant community. I am with God and with his people. We declare that through baptism.

There were even some early fights as you look through the beginning chapters of Acts.

As the Jewish people were navigating through, Jesus had come, they had received him as the messiah, and they wondered, okay, what do we keep from the old covenant, and what do we give up in embrace of the new covenant?

And so they were going around to churches that the apostle Paul had planted and said, you know, you accepted Jesus, that's wonderful, that's great. You also need to get circumcised, and you need to follow all of these laws from the Old Testament.

And Paul, of course, took great umbrage to that. That was not the way that Jesus or the apostles had set it out.

And so they talked together, and you can read in Acts 15 about that, where they establish that circumcision as a sign and identification with the people of God was no longer going to be the way in which we identify with God's people.

Now it is through baptism, that just as Jesus was baptized at the start of his earthly ministry, when we say I'm one of the Jesus people now, the way that we publicly declare that to others is through baptism.

So at the very beginning when I said some of you may never have been baptized, I want to encourage you take that step. That's the way in which scripture says we publicly declare to others. It's even in Jesus' great commission in Matthew 28.

Go therefor and make disciples of all nations. And the very first thing as they are made a disciple, he says, baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe everything that I have commanded you.

Then in verses 15 and 16, God elaborates a little more. He says, I'm making a covenant with you. I have the promise of your descendants.

And here's the sign of the covenant that I want you to adopt. That much as every time you see a rainbow, you remember God's judgment and you remember God's promise, so it was to be with the people of God.

That every time they saw the sign of the covenant that was within their own body, they would remember both the judgment, what they ought not do, and they needed to remember the promise of God.

And now he begins again talking about Abraham's descendants. God said to Abraham, as for your wife, Sarai, do not call her Sarai for Sarai will be her name.

This would be roughly the equivalent of going from calling her name Princess to her name being Queen, that there is an exalted position that Abraham was to view Sarai with. Verse number 16, I will bless her. Indeed, I will give you a son by her.

I will bless her and she will produce nations kings of peoples will come from her. God, if you will reaffirms, even though Sarai and Abram in the chapter previous had basically given up on God's promise to Sarai that she would have any children.

God says, no, no, no, I'm not done with her. And in fact, I'm lifting her up.

As a small aside, how grateful I am that in the moments when I think, man, God's done with me, I'm just down and out, that God lifts us back up, and he has a care and a love for us, that he never rejects us, that he never forsakes us, but instead he

restores us. And I'm incredibly grateful for that. But verse number 17, Abraham fell face down, and this time it's not really in reverence. It's just that he laughed and said to himself, can a child be born to a 100-year-old man?

Can Sarah, a 90-year-old woman, give birth? And as we read through scripture, sometimes we read about odd things. This would be one of those things.

It wasn't just that old individuals were always popping out new babies. This was a situation that was humanly impossible, and Abraham treated it that way.

So Abraham said to God, if only Ishmael were accepted to you, if only this child that I had with my wife's household servant, if only you'd bring all of the lineage and all of the promises through him.

But God said, no, your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will name him Isaac, laughter. I will confirm my covenant with him as a permanent covenant for his future offspring. As for Ishmael, I have heard you.

If you remember, the name Ishmael means God has heard. He says, as for God has heard, I have heard you. I will certainly bless him.

I will make him fruitful and will multiply him greatly. He will father 12 tribal leaders, and I will make him into a great nation.

We looked last week at the fact that, yes, God worked in some specific, very cool ways through Abraham and through his descendants, but God's plan was never just to work through one people group.

God's call, his blessing, the life that he wants is not just for one family, but for everyone. Maybe you do not come from a background in which you grew up in a Christian home. Maybe you, as you've lived your life, you haven't walked with God.

I want you to know that God's blessing and his plan and his purpose, his redemption and salvation found in Jesus Christ is for you.

Don't ever think that just because you don't come from a specific background, because your life hasn't looked a certain way, that God does not desperately love you and wants you to be a part of what he has.

Then God says, but I will confirm my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you at this time next year. He says, yes, I will bless Ishmael, but my special covenant, the promise of the Messiah, that is coming through Isaac.

When he finished talking with him, God withdrew from Abraham.

Then verse 23, So Abraham took his son, Ishmael, and those born in his household or purchased, every male among the members of Abraham's household, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskin on that very day, just as God had said to him, as a

small aside, do you obey God immediately when he tells you something? This was not something in the grand scheme of every command in the Bible.

This might not have been the command that I was like immediately going to do personally, but Abraham did it the very day that God told him to. Let's have immediate obedience to our father.

Abraham was 99 years old when the flesh of his foreskin was circumcised, and his son Ishmael was 13 years old when the flesh of his foreskin was circumcised.

On that very day, Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised, and all the men of his household, whether born in his household or purchased from a foreigner, were circumcised with him.

In these verses, we could see that Abraham personally obeys and adopts the covenant and teaches everyone that he is responsible for, if you will, all of his employees, his son Ishmael, everyone.

He encourages them to adopt the covenant, to be a part of God's family as well. Thankfully, I don't think I have to say the word circumcised that many times for a very long time, and I am looking forward to it.

So, if we're going to commit to the Lord, certainly this same call is not the exact same call for you today. We're not going to have just a giant medical procedure for all of the guys at the end of today's service. What do we commit to?

Well, I mentioned some of those commitments at the very beginning of the service, so that you could be thinking, what does it mean to commit to be one of God's people? To be noticeably one that would follow and love and obey the Lord?

What does it mean to live in obedient recognition to God's promises? Well, first today, I want us to see that God is our holy redeemer. That God's identity determines what we are committing to.

God starts off before he says anything about the Covenant and the promise and the things that Abraham needed to do. He starts it off by saying, I am God Almighty. Live in my presence and be blameless.

He calls Abraham to live the kind of life and existence that God himself lives.

A life that is lived not for selfish gain, not for seeing what we can get out of other people, not how we can get ahead in life, but in how we can serve and love and bless others. That's what God consistently showed to Abraham.

He showed him forgiveness. He showed him grace. He showed him generosity.

And even as we've been looking through the previous chapters, we've seen times where Abraham adopts God's way, where he is gracious and gives huge plots of land to his nephew Lot, even though he could have selfishly hoarded all the best land for

himself. We've seen times when he has refused blessings from others and given it away to other people so that only God would be the blesser of Abraham's life. So God's identity determines what we are committing to.

Who is this person that I would live my life in service to, live my life in relationship with? And I think about Jesus. He was the one that came.

He lived a human life. He really was born 2,000 years ago. And he lived the human life in the way that God intended for us to live it.

Never with any sin, never with any selfishness, never with any unjust anger, never with any unkindness towards anyone else, with perfect love and joy and self-control. He was baptized at the beginning of his ministry.

He died for your sin, in your place, taking the punishment for all of the wrong things that you have done. You see, sin didn't just have a punishment in the Old Testament, whether it was with Abraham or whether it was the flood.

Your sin and my sin has a punishment. And the Bible says it's eternal separation from God, that we would be forever away from the source of life and happiness and joy and purpose. But that separation doesn't just start once you die.

It's right now.

And for everyone that has not accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord, they are walking through life without the presence of God himself inside of you, without knowing every single day that the Lord is walking with you and guiding your steps.

But that's not God's plan. That's not what he wants for you.

Though we have all rejected his way, though we have decided to live life on our terms in what the Bible calls sin, anything that we think or say or do that goes against the law and character and word of God.

That as we've sinned and we've been separated from God, God himself pursued us in the person of Jesus.

And when Jesus died on the cross, he died paying the price in full that he was separated from God, even crying out on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from me?

And he was separated in that moment from God so that we would never again have to experience separation from our father. So Jesus died for our sin. He rose again.

And he was actually the one that started the church, if you will, the Jesus people, those that would gather together every Lord's Day, every Sunday, to praise the Lord, to sing to him, to pray to him, to worship him, to hear from his word, and to

remember that he is coming again. That's who our Jesus is, this holy redeemer. His kindness, his goodness, his forgiveness, his faithful loyalty and his humility ought to guide our actions, our words and our thoughts.

Great illustration of this that popped into my head was in the game, Simon says, you know, if I tell you, you know, Roy, put your hands on your head. Simon says, put your hands on your head. OK, all right.

Simon, if you will, determines what you do. And certainly the worst Simons of all are the ones that say Simon says to do something, but they're doing something else. I hate those.

Jesus is not that for us. What he has commanded us to do, he himself has done. And we are called to mimic and follow God, our holy Redeemer.

He is the one that we commit our lives to. And secondly today, we are called to personal holiness. And think of the words in 1 Peter, be holy because I am holy.

For us, we are called not just to be grateful for everything that God is and everything that He's done, we are specifically called to mimic Him. We are to believe in His death and resurrection for salvation from sin and a relationship with God.

We are to believe in what Jesus has done based on the promise from Romans 10, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. We are to be baptized, identifying with Jesus and with His people based on the promise from Romans 6.

We were buried with Him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.

Every time a person is baptized, we see that phrase, I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Buried with Him in baptism, raised to walk in newness of life. That we are called to follow and mimic Jesus in that holiness.

We are called to live a life for God according to what God has said in His word. We're supposed to, if you will, follow the instruction manual, a whole book of this is what the Lord has said.

Not so that we can attain salvation, that's only found in Christ. But as we seek to mimic Jesus, we need to know who He is.

We need to know how He thinks, the words that He said to others, how He interacted with hard times and difficult people and human evil and the trials that come into our life. We need to know how to navigate it. And so God has given us His word.

I love the promise that Jesus said in John 15, the one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit. That we are to live our life for God, realizing that Jesus' presence and joy and growth is found as we pursue him and mimic him.

And we are called to join in to be a part of his real visible church. Think of the promise that Jesus gave in Matthew 16. He says that he will build his church and that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.

For you today, do you identify as a jerk? Someone who simply just says whatever is on their mind?

Are you holding on to unforgiveness, refusing to reject a heart hatred that demands personal punishment of the other person because of what they've done?

Are you living your life apart from the commands of God, to loyal commitment to one's spouse for life or to your local church? Like Abraham, turn from your way to God's way and commit to follow him. One preacher in the 1800s said this.

He was in Britain, so you'll see some mention of the queen. What would her majesty think of her soldiers if they should swear they were loyal and true and were to say, Your Majesty, we prefer not to wear these uniforms.

Let's wear the dress of civilians. We're honest men and upright, but we do not care to stand in your ranks acknowledged as your soldiers. We would rather slink into the enemy's camp and into your camps too.

And not wear anything that would mark us as being your soldiers. Some of us do the same with Christ. We are secret Christians and slink into the devil's camp and into Christ's camp, but we are acknowledged by none.

Today, will we choose to identify, to commit to be a person of God? That we would mimic his actions, his words, his behaviors, his mindsets, and follow him.

We're not just called to personal holiness so that you can be like, yeah, I'm a great holy person. I mimic Jesus all the time. No, not the point.

The point is your life is meant to draw others to your God. This is what we see in Abraham's life. That as God told him, live before me, live in my presence, and be blameless.

And here's the covenant that I'm making with you.

And I want you to do this with everyone that's a part of your family, so that everyone that, if you will, is part of your family, is also in this promise of joy and the greatness that I have promised to you.

I want them to be part of my family, just like they're part of yours.

So Abraham, he encouraged, we'd know from a couple of chapters previous, there were at least 300 guys, 301 because Abraham went to rescue Lot with 300 people that were his employees, his household servants, managers, all that.

And so we know there's at least those 300 and Ishmael, and he convinced all of those guys that we need to be in this covenant, in this promise relationship with God.

I wanna ask you today, who are you encouraging to join you in your walk with the Lord? Who are you bringing into the new covenant that we have with Jesus?

Is perhaps one of the reasons why our witness is so ineffective is that our lives are lived so different from a covenant partner with Jesus.

We don't look like what someone that's walking in relationship with God would look like, so that people go, oh, well, yeah, they're inviting me to church, but they ain't living like a church person.

They're not living like a person that's showing kindness and forgiveness. They're not living like a person that has integrity in how they deal with others. They're not truthful with me or with other people.

Can I encourage this? Part of our commitment to live in light of God's promises is to realize that your life is not your own. You don't belong to you, not if you're a Christian.

You belong to God. And if we belong to God, may we consistently invite other people to join us in that walk.

I think about what was said about John and Peter when they were arrested by the Sanhedrin just a couple of years after Jesus had risen from the dead and had ascended to heaven.

And what shocked the Sanhedrin, the ruling council, is they had arrested these individuals that were preaching in the name of Jesus and declaring that salvation could only be found in Jesus. They said, these are unlearned and ignorant men.

And I think many of us could identify with unlearned and ignorant. But it says, they took note of them, that they had been with Jesus. I want the life of Jesus to pour out of me so that others are drawn to know my Savior because I'm following him.

Will we fail day by day in doing so? Absolutely. We are not perfect.

He is perfect. But may we draw attention to the fact that he's our reason for living. And as we do so, let's draw others into that relationship with God.

It's the reason why we are still here. Certainly to walk with God personally, but then to help others along in their walk with God.

If you need to see maybe what that life looks like lived out, what it looks like for a person to genuinely walk with Jesus, I'd encourage you to spend time with your elders, with the deacons at this church.

Spend time with some of the people here that have faithfully followed Jesus for decades. I love our row with Clara and Helen and Charlene and Martha. I love seeing you guys over there.

And I think back to, man, Miss Helen, decades that you have followed the Lord. And I'm certain no one's tattled on you. But I'm certain there's been times when you didn't do it as well or as effectively.

But I'm thankful that now at her years old, you are still here worshiping the Lord whenever you're able. And I want to have that kind of faith, that the commitment to Jesus over the long haul would be what typifies my life.

And maybe you're a Christian that you have been saved a long time, you have walked with the Lord a long time, and everything's kind of dull at the moment. Can I encourage you to spend time with some new Christians?

To spend time with a Caitlin or with a Zach, someone that is relatively newer to the faith and has a fire in their soul, that every time that I interact with them, man, it makes me a little bit more excited.

Because our tendency as Christians, especially if we've been at it for a while, we're like the Ephesian Church and Revelations too. And we begin to lose our first love.

We lose sight of what it is to be forgiven and loved and redeemed and a part of God's family and to have the Holy Spirit living inside of us and to be able to have a church family. We lose sight of it.

And so let's stir that up through our relationships with other believers. Today, we're called to commit. Abraham had a pretty big commitment that he needed to make and that he was called to have all of those within his household make.

He made the commitment because of the promise of God. That God said, here's who I am. Here's the purpose and mission that I have for your life.

And so, here is, if you will, the sign of this covenant, that you would remember where you were, where you came from. The very sign of the covenant itself would remind him of his sin with Agar, but it would also remind him of the promise of God.

So it is, even when we're baptized, we're picturing Jesus' death, his burial, and his resurrection, that he died for our sins, that he was buried for three days, and he rose again.

And so even in that, if you will, covenant sign, we recall everything that Jesus did on our behalf.

As we observe the Lord's Supper this morning, it's why we observe the Lord's Supper, because we remember, Jesus says, every time you do this, I want you to remember me. I want you to remember what I've done for you.

We remember his body that was broken for us, how he was whipped, how he was hit, how he plucked out his beard, how he was nailed to the cross. We remember that as we partake of the bread.

We remember his blood that was given on our behalf, that his very life essence itself was spent so that we could experience total forgiveness, freely and forever, through what Jesus did on our behalf.

Today, have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and your Savior? Have you ever committed to him to say, God, I realize that I am a sinner. I have not lived my life in the way that you would have me to.

But God, I believe that you died for my sin. I believe that you were buried and you rose again from the dead. And so God, I commit my life and my soul to you.

I am yours, being my Savior and my Lord. Forgive me of my sin and give me a home in heaven. There's never been a time in your life where you have done that.

I want to encourage you, you can do that today. You don't have to have a pastor or someone that, if you will, ushers you into God's family.

Certainly, we'd be happy to pray with you and to guide you, if you will, in that expression of faith and repentance to God. When I did it, I was nine years old and saw my mom's birthday in 2006.

And ever since that moment, I'm so grateful that I committed my life to the Lord. I've fallen and failed plenty of times, but I'm thankful for God that has never once failed me. I've never accepted the Lord.

That's the thing God wants you to commit to today. God doesn't want you to get baptized if you have not committed your life to Jesus as your Savior. God does not want you to, any of the other commitments pale in comparison to that.

But if you are a person that says, I do believe in Jesus, but I've never committed myself, I've never identified with the people of God through baptism, then I promise you it's much less painful than the previous sign of the covenant that Abraham had

to deal with. Lord willing, it should be completely painless. I haven't ever had someone say, Ouch, when I baptized him yet. So Lord willing, that streak continues.

I would encourage you right after service, talk with me. I would love to connect with you on getting baptized. It's the way in which we publicly, corporately declare, I'm on the Jesus team.

And then today you go, OK, well, I'm saved and I've been baptized. And I guess I got nothing to commit to. No, no, no.

Commit to live your life in mimicking your Savior, following him step by step, for the purpose of being able to invite people along with you into your walk with the Lord.

That people that right now, if you will, are outside of the covenant family, they don't know Jesus is Savior.

But our goal as Christians is to bring them alongside so that more and more people would know the Lord, that they would experience forgiveness and joy and the dwelling of the Spirit.

And if we're going to do that effectively, it means that we got to deal with one another in a loving, caring, Christ-like way.

So however God has spoken to you today, I want to encourage you, commit to live your life in obedient recognition of God's promises. This is who God is, this is what he said, and so I'm going to live my life in response to that.