DAY 6 – NO HIDING

HAGAR & CIRCUMCISION AND LUST & DIVORCE

Genesis 16 & 17 and Matthew 5:27 - 48

While yesterday at the outset I could see a theme of blessing, as I began today’s I saw no such theme. It would be wrong to try each day to find a theme. I would end up falsely forcing the text into some idea rather than just letting the text speak for itself…yet by the end I found God saying that He doesn’t want us hiding any part of ourselves from him.

Genesis 16 brings us to a story that follows on the heels of God just having made this amazing covenant with Abram, a covenant where God has walked the blood trail. Abram and Sarai are getting impatient (I know what that is like). Sarai suggests they take matters into their own hands. After they carry out their plan Sarai is immediately upset. She is so upset that it leads to sending Hagar and the child away in essence to die. God not only hears the cry of those suffering, but He see and he intervenes – the “God of seeing” is literally what we read in the Scripture. What is interesting is that Ishmael is born when Abram is 86 years old, which would mean he would be 13 or 14 years old when Isaac is born and it would seem is in the camp and circumcised.  Like earlier stories we have read I have more questions than answers around some of the specifics of Ishmael and what his future holds. I have to pull myself up and look at the bigger picture. The Big Picture is God has a plan that through Abram He is going to make himself known to the world. He will do it through an impotent man and a barren woman. Yet they get ahead of God. God’s reaction? He sends an angel, intervenes in the matter of one being treated unjustly in this plan, and re-engages Abram…but only until 14 years go by…I imagine just to let him think about it more.

Genesis 17 Opens at this point, Abram is 99 years old, and God connects again. Abram walks before God, is renamed Abraham, and God re-states His Promise. I find the text interesting: “…walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and multiply you greatly…” The words “be blameless” and “that I may make my covenant” catch my eyes. What is God driving at here? Abraham won’t be blameless, nor will I? Will God keep his part of the Covenant even though Abraham won’t be blameless? This is where I believe circumcision comes into the story.

The procedure to circumcise someone seems like an odd choice. Might God have come up with something else? Yet it asks the person to demonstrate a depth of intimacy. The procedure requires the removal of the foreskin, the uncovering of the most hidden parts. Only under the most intimate of relationships, marriage, is this openness expressed.

In Deuteronomy 10:16 we are told to circumcise the foreskin of our hearts, and in Jeremiah 4:4 the same is commanded. There is a complete, unhindered desire on God’s part to completely know us. This perspective leads me back to God’s command to be blameless. God’s Word to Abraham is an invitation to a relationship. Not just any kind of relationship, not a casual relationship, but a relationship where God asks, indeed commands, complete intimacy. In the end He knows the thoughts of our hearts, He doesn’t need the circumcision…we do. That is why all, male and female, must circumcise their hearts. No Hiding.

Matthew 5:27-44 might be Jesus telling us “no hiding” behind the Law. (He has come to fulfill it, but even more Matthew 5:17). There is a repeating phrase, “You have heard it said…” What is it we have heard said; the Law. Here are the rules: no adultery, no divorce, no false oaths, and no excessive vengeance. All of these laws were well established, and all of them were rather progressive by the surrounding cultural standards of the day. Jesus however finds not the Law lacking, but those who practice it. Too much hiding behind it and too much looking for loopholes (Mark 7:11 is one of the big loopholes Jesus calls out). Matthew 5:27-44 seems to be saying be blameless…don’t lust, don’t look, don’t touch… and love your enemy. It ends with “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (verse 44).

We are not perfect though. So what is the point? To me it seems the point is we don’t pretend to be perfect. Please do not misunderstand, we should try to live our lives in accordance with God’s Word, but when we don’t…no hiding. When we don’t we need to go God to our Heavenly Father who sees all things as Hagar proclaimed (and elsewhere, e.g. Psalm 33:13-19 & Hebrews 4:13) and forgives all things (2 Chronicles 7:14, Psalm 103:3 & 1 John 1:9). We need to go to him with circumcised hearts.

It takes courage to be open and honest with God. It takes faith that His love does not waiver. It takes patience and waiting on Him. I find these hard things to do, and apart from God I cannot do them. The Scriptures today speaks truth through an ancient story and an timeless God.