Hey! This Must Be Pretty Important, You Think?
Published on
Facebook, September 9, 2010
By Bud Powell
Ex
4:25 "Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her
son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to
me."
The Promise Is to You and Your Children!
Poor Zipporah. What do you expect from this
poor woman? Her husband Moses had been out in the desert talking to a bush and
now was determined to go back to Egypt where he had been wanted for murder. It
was hard to make any sense of it. She was the daughter of a priest of Jehovah
in Midian and had led a simple life until then.
She had married Moses when this 40 year old
Egyptian had appeared out of nowhere and defended her against the brutal
shepherds at the well, and he had come to live with them. We don't know much
more about her, but the implication is that she had resisted the circumcision
of their oldest son. It was not that she was completely ignorant, perhaps, of
the rite of circumcision for she was a Midianite, also descended from Abraham
through his second wife Keturah. [1Chron. 1:32 etc].
But somehow she was at the center of the
quarrel between God and Moses over the circumcision of Gershom. Moses had been
given his instructions at the Burning Bush, and now had put Zipporah and his
two sons on an ass and they were headed back to Egypt. Moses was going to
deliver the message to Pharaoh from God, "Let my firstborn go, or I will
slay thy firstborn."
But that's the rub. Here is Moses going back to
deliver the Firstborn of God and he has not given the sign of God's promise to
his firstborn. He had yielded to his wife --a common infirmity of meek men, and
Moses was the meekest of men--and Gershom was unclean before the Lord, not
bearing the sign of the promise that God had given Abraham.
So on the way to the inn the Lord confronted
Moses and sought to kill him. The details in the holy account are meager, but
the facts that are there show that God did not take Gershom's uncircumcision
lightly. Nothing is said about whether Moses had a good heart, or that Zipporah
was well meaning, or that Gershom was too young to understand. The children
must have been rather small, what with Zipporah and the two boys all riding on
the ass. [See Genesis 4:21-26]
"Well, all righty then," was
Zipporah's response. "If you are going to get all hot and bothered about
it. I think it is stupid, but here we go." She gets a sharp rock, bares
Gershom's tiny member and whacks off the foreskin. Not exactly the accepted
procedure. She throws the tiny piece of flesh at the feet of Moses and says,
"You are surely a bloody husband to me."
But God let Moses go. Nothing is said about
poor Gershom and his long ride on the ass after that. No child protective
agencies in those days.
What is the meaning of this? It goes to the
heart of the meaning of circumcision, which carried at least two meanings, both
of which are relevant today. The first is that God can only be served with
purity and all that issues from man is unclean because of the pollution of the
human race by Adam's sin. Sin must be cut off and atonement made. God had told
Abraham: "14 And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin
is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken
my covenant." --Genesis 17:14 It is inconceivable that God would overlook
the sin of Gershom and Moses when the sign of the promise of blessing to
Abraham and his seed was lacking in Gershom's flesh. Judgment must begin in the
house of the Lord. "Moses, if you believe the promise, circumcise your
son. Otherwise you are a hypocrite. Listening to your wife is good to a point,
but you have overstepped the boundary and God doesn't tolerate slackness in
obedience."
The second meaning of circumcision is that
the Promised One would come through Israel, and even then lived in the bodies
of the tribe of Judah, from whom He would come. It must be that God's promise
to Abraham that in his seed all the families of the world would be blessed.
That is the only thing that made Israel special, the Promise concerning the
redemption of the world, the cutting off of sins. Messiah would accomplish this
for he would be "cut off" for the sins of the people according to
Isaiah 53:8ff.
2Co 5:21 "For he hath made him to be sin
for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in
him."
How could Moses even pretend to be faithful
to the promise given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob if Gershom did not bear the
sign of the Promise. Circumcision was the sign and seal of the way that God
provided to Israel to escape the wrath of God and obtain eternal redemption. It
was the way designed by God to show their faith in the Promise. Hence, all the
males must be circumcised or they implicitly denied the very reason for
Israel's existence.
John the Baptist, the last of the Law and the
Prophets, pointed to Jesus of Nazareth as the Promised One who would build His
church on the work of the Holy Spirit, rather than on the deeds of the
flesh--with the emphasis on redemption accomplished and sealed by the Holy
Spirit. He would baptize with the Spirit, hence He would be greater than the
prophets and greater than John the Baptist and greater than Moses. Greater,
too, than Aaron, for Jesus would be a priest after the order of Melchizedek to
whom Levi paid tithes while he was still in the loins of Abraham..
The sign and seal of this new order would be
baptism. Those who were unclean under the old order--uncircumcised--would not
need to be circumcised, for their uncircumcision would be cleansed by baptism,
as Paul declares in Colossians 2:11-15.
Every objection raised against infant baptism
can be raised against the circumcision of Gershom. Eve was named the Mother of
all Living because she believed the Promise and was clothed by God who hid her
nakedness. What a wonderful name given by her to Adam, who saw that her seed
would give life to the world, doing away with the death that she had wrought by
her sin. Grace would overcome the curse. Gen. 3:20, 21. Our Baptist friends are
more the daughters of Zipporah rather than Eve or Sarah, who did not deny
circumcision to her son Isaac, believing that the Promise would come through
him. Zipporah was a woman of faith, but it was over-ruled by
sentimentality and emotion here, I suspect.
If you believe that the church is based upon
your experience, then baptize only adults, and establish an essential humanism
and independency in the church. You will have a division every five or six
years as people exert their individuality. But if you believe that the church is
established by grace through the Promise of the Spirit through the Lord Jesus,
then have your children baptized and affirm the Promise. For the love of heaven
don't leave them both uncircumcised and unbaptized!!! And hurry up about it.
