Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Luke 2:21-32. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Luke 2, beginning at verse 21.

And when 8 days were completed for the circumcision of the child, His name was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. Now when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. As it is written in the law of the Lord, every male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons.

And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. And this man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel. And the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord Christ. Then so he came by the Spirit into the temple. And when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of the law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God.

And said, “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel.”

Let’s pray. Father, we pray that your spirit now would speak to us, speak to us, Lord God, by means of your word, transforming us, bringing us to repentance for sins. But to great joy, delight, and praise to you for the salvation accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to consider these things laid out before us in your holy word. And may you engrave the truths of these scriptures upon our hearts. Make us, Lord God, to have hearts that are circumcised according to your spirit and word. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Those of you who have been here for several years know that for myself personally—and I guess probably it’s also become true of most of us in this church—we enjoy our Christmases. I tend to like to stretch them out. We don’t usually get rid of our tree till after the first of the year. Last year we actually sort of did. I think it was last year or the year before. There have been times in the history of our family when we do the 12 days of Christmas or at least make an effort at it. And so here we have a text that kind of reminds us of the 12 days of Christmas.

We have two turtle doves in this text. Probably there’s a reason why in that old medieval folk song it is two turtle doves, which we’ll get to in the course of this sermon.

What we have here is a text that the church has—and particularly the early church and the medieval church, not so much in the last century or two, but the historic Orthodox Christian Church—has looked at this text once a year, and many elements of the different communions represented in Christianity have found it an important text for them.

Let me set the context of this sermon. We’ll be talking about how this text has been important to the church from the Patristics—that’s the early church fathers in their writings. They considered what this circumcision and naming of Jesus was all about, all the way up to the poet Milton in the 17th century and other popular poets. Popular, very popular works of the Renaissance period focused on this aspect of the circumcision and naming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Many sermons and poems have been written about it. Renaissance art actually reflects this text in many paintings that were done of the circumcision and presentation of Jesus at the temple. So we have a text here that the church has celebrated. So you know I’m going to talk today about the circumcision and naming of Jesus. What’s all this celebration for? What is the big deal to the church? And I’ll have to quote a few things from the church to show you it was a big deal.

But I also want to put this in the context of Christmas. What we have here in this account, and particularly verses 21 and 22, which we’re going to focus on the circumcision and naming of Jesus and Mary’s purification—this is a Christmas story that we don’t normally get to. We normally talk all about Luke chapter 1 and the beginning of Luke chapter 2, and then we get to the angels and the Gloria in Excelsis being sung by the angels to the shepherds. The shepherds go and it’s great, and they go back praising God, and then we skip over to the latter part of what I read here—to the Nunc Dimittis: “Now let us thy servant depart in peace,” a traditional text of the Christian church for the Advent season and for Christmas and the following weeks.

So we’re familiar with the Song of Simeon. We’re familiar with the shepherds and the angels. Not so familiar with what’s in between these two bookends. And I want to focus on it because there’s a nugget of great value here. There’s a pearl of great price found in this picture of what happens recorded in verses 21 and 22.

Now I mentioned the celebration of the church. Let me read you a couple of brief portions of poems. The first was written by Milton, and his poem was entitled “Upon the Circumcision.” This was a cause of meditation by poets in the 17th century.

“He that dwelt above, high throned in secret bliss, for us frail dust emptied his glory even to nakedness. And see obedience first with wounding smart. This day. But oh, heir long, huge pangs and strong will pierce more near his heart.”

So Milton, reflecting the views of the church, sees the circumcision of Christ tied to his ultimate—the piercing of his heart, the sacred heart on the cross, the piercing of his side, blood and water coming out, apparently evidence of the pierced heart. And they saw this circumcision as the first part of that. So Milton spoke of that in his sonnet on circumcision.

Another poet, Crashaw, wrote a sonnet of the same year, and his sonnet was entitled “Our Blessed Lord in the Circumcision to His Father.” The poem begins this way:

“To thee these first fruits of my growing death. So Jesus is addressing the Father: ‘To thee these first fruits of my growing death. For what else is my life do I bequeath?’”

And then the poem ends with this:

“These cradle torments have their torrid towardness. These purple buds of blooming death may be earth the full stature of a fatal tree. Until my riper woes to age are come, this knife may be the spear’s preludium.”

So the poets of the 17th century—of the church, ones that we admire like Milton and Crashaw—saw in this text a very important truth relating to the redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ being begun symbolically, at least as a prelude, here in circumcision. The knife is a prelude to the lance, or the knife is a prelude to the spear. So the church says this. Let me read from some of the sermons of the historic church in the medieval period.

“What shall be said of the circumcision which pertains to the salvation of mankind and immortality?” This comes from a Ciceronian humanist who died in 1431—a good representative of humanists who thought that the coming of Christ produced real value to humans. “What shall be said about this first holy shedding of blood, the most precious blood which today our Lord spills for us for the first time?”

Now they’re commemorating the feast of the circumcision, remembering the day of Christ’s circumcision. “He wished to be circumcised that he might extinguish the flames of our detestable lust. By the voluntary gift of his blood, we are told Christ has prevailed over the devil.”

And in this speech here, they congratulate Christ as a victor in this line. He says, “We celebrate the day in which our victor brings back to us the first trophies of the victory over our perpetual foe.”

So the medieval church saw in the circumcision of Christ these first elements of the total victory of the Lord Jesus Christ—the first trophies of the victory over our perpetual foe.

Another sermon delivered in the 1400s says this: “Today he began to open for us the door and to make accessible the entry to life. At the moment the boy was circumcised, the weapons for our salvation appeared for the first time in the blood of that infant.”

Again, in another sermon from 1485: “Today is opened for mankind the book of the circumcision, the first volume of the most bitter passion. Here issues the first blood of our redemption. Today we begin to be saved. Holy Father, for we have Jesus who today has chosen to spill his blood for the sake of man whom he created.

“For until this most holy day, which is not unjustly set at the head of the year, we were all exiles. Let us enter through the gate which circumcision has opened for us and which today lies open even wider through baptism. Let us venerate this most sacred day of the circumcision which we can call the gate that opens the way to paradise. The gate that opens the way to paradise.”

And so the church, from the sixth century onward, saw the beginning of the year—the opening gate of the year—as correlated to the circumcision of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is a picture of the opening of the gate to paradise.

The early church, the medieval church, the Patristics, down to Milton in the 17th century celebrated greatly this day of the circumcision of Christ. At our watch night service, we sang a little song—a medieval English folk song from probably the 17th or 18th century. Let me read you two verses here. The tune that this is normally sung to is “Greensleeves.”

“The old year now away is fled. The new year it is entered. Then let us all our sins down tread and joyfully all appear. Let’s merry be this holiday and let us run with sport and play. Hang sorrow, cast care away. God send us a merry new year.”

“For Christ’s circumcision this day we keep, who for our sins did often weep. His hands and feet were wounded deep and his blessed side with a spear. His head they crowned with a thorn and at him they did laugh and scorn who for to save our souls was born. God send us a merry new year.”

Circumcision was tied to the church as the entrance or opening of the year.

Now last week, in the first sermon of this new year, this new century, this new millennium, I talked about the need for holiness. Speaking on the Sanctus, I hope some of you had some degree of conviction this last week for your lack of holiness. I mean, if we think that we’ve attained to the kind of holiness that God has consecrated or separated us to, we of course are wrong.

I hope we saw that in our relationships with one another, in our work, in the relationships to the exercise of dominion, to the use of our money, to the use of our time—we fall short of the requirements of God’s holy word. We said last week that we can measure these things by visible signs set before us. How well do we sanctify the day of the Lord? How well do we sanctify the worship of the Lord, the formal worship that lies at the center, symbolically or theologically, of this day?

And how well do we preserve the rest of the day for a day set apart? That’s the only place where holiness is specifically mentioned in the Ten Commandments—to keep the Sabbath day holy, the Lord’s Day holy. How well do we consecrate our money? You’ll be finding out. We’ll be sending out receipts in a week or two from the church. And if you’re a member of this church or give your tithes primarily to this church, you can multiply it by 10 and see how faithful you were in terms of your money.

Now, maybe you gave things—not trying to make you feel bad for giving or not giving us money—but it’s a symbol that God sets before us to call us to the consecration of our money. Well, our money is produced by our vocation. And when you come forward to tithes and offerings, you’re saying that all that you do this week is holy, set apart. You’re to walk in the emperor, the Lord Jesus Christ’s groove of the new covenant holiness that he has opened for us.

You’re to walk in the context of the kingdom. You’re to take the kingdom with you wherever you go. The kingdom is not spatial in the sense of “here’s the kingdom in this church and outside is not.” The kingdom is within you. Yes, we take the kingdom. The crown, King Jesus, rules over every area of life and thought with us wherever we go.

Now there’s a man who believes that, who’s under attack: Senator John Ashcroft. Last week on Larry King Live, they showed the tape of his acceptance of an honorary degree from Bob Jones University—10 minutes long. You can bet there’s going to be howling and squealing about it, because he said that there’s a difference in life between those who say “I have no king, no political authority but Caesar” and those who say “We have no king but Jesus”—the cry of the early American colonists.

See, Senator Ashcroft takes the kingdom with him wherever he goes—to the office or whatever he does. Are we doing that in this new year? How well did you do at the entrance of this year in taking the kingdom with you?

It’s not wrong to drink, but it’s wrong to drink outside of the kingdom for drunkenness or solace or whatever it might be. You’re to drink in the kingdom. Conjugal relationships within marriage are a proper thing, but only when they’re seen in the context of the kingdom.

I want to make this point now and get it out of the way, and I hope it doesn’t offend you. But I said last week, and I believe it’s true, that the scriptures correlate our relationship of man and wife to really the rest of our relationships with everybody else. If you can’t exercise kingdom activities in the context of your relationship to your wife—every day talking, whatever you’re going to do together—then you’re going to have a very difficult time outside the church, outside of the family walls, unless you’re being a hypocrite. So you got to focus on the family.

That’s why in Ephesians and Colossians, which we’ll get to in a little bit, the focus on the family is the application of all the doctrinal stuff that calls us to holiness. And I said that really the marriage relationship, with the center of it Genesis 4:1—”Adam knows Eve,” conjugal relationships, holy to the Lord.

And I might offend a lot of you today, but I want to try—if I can, if God gives me grace through the preaching of this word—I want to try to put a stake through the heart of improper lust in the context of our families and certainly in the context of the young men of our church growing up. I mentioned last week: this is how the Illuminati picked guys off—by feeding their passions. This is how the enemy will pick you off.

And our job, as we’re valiant warriors for Christ, is to put an end to that sin if we can, by the grace of God, in the context of our homes. The sin of improper lust.

Now the early church—you read, you may have heard a reference there to getting rid of our lust in the context of circumcision. The early, middle, and early church, with its Greek notions, saw pleasure as bad and correlated circumcision to that. I don’t want to do that with you. It’s wrong and evil, that kind of thinking. God wants us to delight in proper relationships within marriage. But what I do want to say is that in this area—that most men have great temptation and difficulty in—this sign of the Old Testament says a lot of other things, which we’re going to get to, at least a few of them today, says a lot of things. But is it not obvious that at the sight of some of our most heinous sins, God tells man—consecrated, holy—the sign of the covenant is applied to that portion of the male anatomy?

Now, for other reasons as well, but I think that, you know, if we can think of it that way, men: if we can say God has put a visible sign on the church in the Old Testament for thousands of years, they were to see that sign upon themselves as God’s sign of ownership in that area. Young men, understand this. You may or may not be circumcised today, but the scriptures tell you when you were baptized, He placed his name on all of you.

And he wants us, specifically as we consider the circumcision of Christ, to remember in that particular area—representing your relationship, really, certainly to your spouse, more than that—the way we deal with each other in the context of ordinary Christian fellowship. God says, “Mine, mine.” Drive a stake through any problems any of you young men are having. If you need to flee the internet, do so. If you need to tell a friend, a pastor, a wife, a spouse, a parent, do so.

Put a stake through the heart of this thing and do it now. Young men that are growing up: we want you to be valiant, as Zebedee Valiant was valiant, strong warriors, not diminished by the sort of sin that circumcision is a picture we should not engage in.

So the early church celebrated. Why do they do it? Well, I got seven points here of what this celebration is all about. Getting to the text now, and they’re really quite simple—and I hopefully I won’t belabor them. They’re very simple points.

First of all, the church celebrated a new creation, because the text tells us that this name day or circumcision day was 8 days after the birth. When 8 days were completed: January 1st runs 8 days if you include Christmas and January 1st, after the celebration of the birth of Christ. And that correlated the entrance of the new year to this door of paradise that the medieval church spoke of. It’s a new creation.

Remember in the Old Testament: the whole picture of the tabernacle, temple system was a new world, a new garden, a new creation that’s going to come in Christ. The animal had to be 8 days old to be sacrificed. The altar was consecrated and ready for use on the eighth day. The priest went through seven days of purification. On the eighth day, the priest is ready. God was showing us that history moves from the first creation week to a new creation on the eighth day in the sacrifice and the priest and the altar—that is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Here he is. He’s circumcised on the eighth day in that temple. It is a picture that salvation has been accomplished and a new creation is in effect.

St. Thomas—from Justin Martyr rather, in the second century of the church, to St. Thomas Aquinas—it is the sense of the mystery that the circumcision on the eighth day prefigures Christ’s resurrection, and therefore implicitly the resurrection of all the world. That’s how the church saw it for 1500 years. And that’s how we should see it today. The 8th day isn’t some little anomaly. It is given to us throughout scripture to be the beginning of a new creation week.

The Venerable Bede, writing in the 8th century, says this: “We look forward,” he says, “to our true and complete circumcision when on the day of judgment all souls, having put off the corruption of the flesh, we will enter the four corner of the heavenly kingdom to behold forever the face of the creator. This is prefigured by the circumcision of the little ones in the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. The time of this most long-for entrance is that eighth day on which the circumcision is celebrated.

“Moreover, the daily practice of virtues is our daily circumcision. That is the continence, cleansing of the heart, which never fails to celebrate the sacrament on the eighth day, so-called because it exemplified the day of the Lord’s resurrection. Jesus will rise up on the eighth day.”

What the church celebrated was a new creation. The day—the door to paradise, the door to the new creation affected by our savior—is open symbolically on this eighth day.

Secondly, the church celebrated a new man: the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, in his incarnation, is stressed by the early church. This was a very important point for the early church—that Jesus was circumcised and bled and thus proved himself to be the incarnate Lord.

Circumcision is a covenant sign given to us in Genesis 17. And the new humanity that Christ is going to bring to salvation in union with him are, in essence, circumcised by his circumcision. He takes upon himself the covenant sign of Genesis 17.

Now again here: what does that covenant sign mean? What does baptism, its correlation in the New Testament, mean? Well, first: it means there is no hope in natural powers or in generation. Again, it’s a symbolic castration. And it says that we cannot raise children for God on our own. We cannot have sons of God without the grace of God, without the covenant of God. The covenant is a declaration of our hopelessness, of the total depravity of mankind, and the inability of mankind to have seed of his own.

Now, Genesis 17 is placed between the incident with Hagar and Ishmael and then the coming birth of Isaac. Abraham was trusting in generation, and God said, “No, trust in my gift, my promise and grace.” So when Jesus becomes the new humanity for us, becoming incarnate, and takes upon himself the covenant sign, he takes the covenant sign.

It’s a stress on justification by faith. We baptize infants because they’re passive. You know, other cultures circumcise—still do circumcise people—but every other pagan culture doesn’t do it at birth or eight days after. They do it when the child reaches adulthood, 12, 13 years of age. Why? Because every religion outside of the Christian religion is works righteousness ultimately, and the man must attain to that new life. Not so for us.

Abraham was circumcised at an advanced age. But after that, every one of his children will be circumcised on the eighth day. All under his covenant, all those under his covenantal headship. Why? Because God says: it is my choice of these people. I chose Zebedee Valiant to place this child into this home. You didn’t choose him. I did. And he doesn’t choose me. I choose him. I put my mark on him. And he is raised understanding: I have called him to respond in faith and enabled him to do that. But I start the process.

God says circumcision is a picture of that. Baptism of infants is a picture of that. It’s a Calvinistic way to do baptisms—in the sign of the covenant. We’re to hope not in generation. We’re to hope in regeneration and the new creation. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, he’s a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things have become new.”

Galatians 6:15 says, “For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but a new creation. Neither circumcision or uncircumcision avails anything but a new creation.”

The point was: that’s what circumcision was. It was a picture for men to know that they need a new creation, a birth from above to be right with God. Circumcision is a picture on the eighth day, and in the very act, of the need for regeneration, not generation. For the need of grace, justification by faith, not justification by works. It is a picture of humility before God in his sovereign election, not natural privilege for us.

Of course, it was perverted by the Jews. “If any man is in Christ, he’s a new creation.” When we baptized Zebedee Valiant, he was baptized in the name of Christ. The picture is union with Christ. And we are to think of Zebedee Valiant as a new creation in the Lord Jesus Christ—a new creation.

Those that were circumcised in the Old Testament were correlated to the new creation. Those that are baptized in the New Testament are also correlated to the new creation in Christ.

The covenant sign as well that Jesus takes upon himself is a sign of his active obedience. In Galatians 4:4 and 5: “When the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.”

Jesus takes upon himself the need for obedience to the law in every detail. By his circumcision, remember, Paul writes that later on. “Well, don’t you know that if you get circumcised, you got to keep all the law of God.” Circumcision is that mark of complete lawkeeping. And our savior here, on the day of his circumcision, enters into that repeated submission on his part to fulfill all the requirements of the law for us.

We’re saved by the works of the act of obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. From one perspective, justification is “just as if I never sinned.” But you’re not left neutral, and on the other side of it is the imputation of the righteousness of Christ as man. You see, his perfect obedience to the law is imputed to your account. It’s as if you had obeyed fully every jot and tittle of the law, because Jesus did.

And he shows that to us here by voluntarily entering into this relationship of being bound to keep the whole law of God. The active obedience of Christ refers to his work on earth, doing works in relationship to the law. His passive obedience historically has referred to his death on the cross.

And here what I’m saying is that when Jesus comes as the new humanity, he comes to work the works that are required of you to be right with God. He comes to obey fully the law of God. And so he comes and participates in circumcision for that reason. But he comes also—we don’t want to see works apart from faith. Romans 3 tells us explicitly that circumcision, the circumcision that he consents to, that he enters into—that this circumcision is a sign and seal of the covenant of God. It’s a sign, he says, that Abraham received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised.

So circumcision is a picture of justification not by works ultimately but by faith. How can we put those together? How can we say on the one hand the act of obedience of Christ is important and on the other that Jesus saves us by faith?

Well, I think the way we put those together is that Jesus’s works were faithful works. Jesus in his humanity had perfect faith, and that faith is what led him to those works. And so it is the faith and works of the Lord Jesus Christ that becomes ours. And as Jesus is pictured for us here as being circumcised, he takes upon himself the sign of the covenant. The sign that we must rely on the grace of God, that our perfect obedience has been accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ.

And our faith as well is the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ, not our own, coming from outside of us, granted us graciously by God.

So this is the new humanity come to fulfill this sign of the covenant. But it also is a bloodletting. And as I said, the early church saw this. The medieval church saw this. And there are various visual representations of this—that this bloodletting, this bloodletting that is from a stone knife. Circumcision is a prefigurement of the redemption affected on the cross, once and for all, by his death.

And there are these different bloodlettings of Christ that the church has talked about. And what we see here is that—and that’s why this medieval song I just read, sung to “Greensleeves,” has this verse about his circumcision. Then it talks about his suffering, the passion on the cross, because the early church and the medieval church saw this relationship. Why do they see it that way?

Well, first it’s obvious. First it’s obvious that he’s going to shed blood for us. And here he is, the man of sorrows. And as Milton put it: all his life is going to death for our sakes, from one perspective. And it’s seen here on his eighth day. Eighth day, he’s working for us in the context of his circumcision. Eighth day, he begins to picture for us the bloodletting.

Matthew Henry says that he submitted to it to give an instance of his earthly obedience—his obedience unto blood. Then he shed his blood by drops, which afterwards he poured out in purple streams.

So we have obvious correlations between the shedding of blood of our savior. But the scriptures also—Jesus tells us that he is a baptist to undergo, which you don’t understand. He says, in talking to his disciples about baptism later in this same gospel in Luke 12, that the baptism that he was going to undergo was his death on the cross.

So Jesus takes this sign of purification of baptism, which correlates to circumcision, and applies it to the cross on which he will suffer for mankind. And I think we’re then justified in saying that we have on this eighth day—the day of the new creation, the Lord Jesus Christ becoming perfect humanity for us—taking upon himself the act of obedience, but also taking upon himself and beginning to demonstrate the passive obedience, the shedding of his blood on the cross, making atonement for the sins of his people.

And as I said before, we have secondly they celebrate the bloodletting in terms of a declaration or a demonstration of actual humanity. And Bede also wrote about this at some length. I won’t read it. But the medieval church saw in this act the demonstration that this was not some kind of fantasm body, this was not some kind of mysterious body. This was a human body that the Lord Jesus Christ took upon himself.

Let me read just a little bit of this from Bede: “Great and marvelous mystery. The child is circumcised and is called Jesus. What connection is here between these two things? But in this you may recognize him who comes to be mediator between God and man. The circumcision is proof of the true humanity he has assumed. While the name given to him reveals his majesty. He is circumcised as a true son of Abraham. He is called Jesus as a true son of God.”

And so they saw this necessity of Christ entering into circumcision as being the demonstration of his actual work for us on the cross, but also his demonstration of the incarnation.

Thomas Aquinas gave seven reasons why Jesus was circumcised for us. And the first one has to do with this point we’re making here. “First, to show the reality of his human flesh against the Manichaeans who taught that he had a body which was merely appearance, against Apollinaris who said that the body of Christ was consubstantial with his divinity—in other words, that they weren’t two separate natures. They were divided or mixed. And against Valentius who taught that Christ brought his body from heaven.”

So it’s not important we know these guys’ names, but it is important to know that the church has had heresies thrown against it having to do with whether Jesus did or did not take upon himself actual humanity, a human body in the incarnation. And it is very important for the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement of our savior that he suffers for our sake death in the human body.

In the book of Hebrews, this incarnation of Jesus—this taking upon human flesh and putting death to death, so to speak—is the reason why we are no longer held in bondage to sin. In Hebrews, it says that we’re held in bondage to sin by our fear of death. And Jesus has taken upon himself human flesh to die in that flesh and thus release us from the fear of death of ourselves. He’s released us from death.

So the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, while seeming maybe some kind of removed doctrine, has an absolute positive requirement for you in terms of your growth in grace—the apprehension, the taking to yourself the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. What that doctrine means frees you from the fear of death that drives you into subjection to sin.

Without the assurance of the forgiveness of your sins through the atonement of Christ in a real human body, then there is no relief for your guilt. You wait and wait, but really you have no true relief from your guilt because of the lack of Jesus taking upon himself humanity and dying for us.

So circumcision was also seen in its bloodletting. First, the prefigurement of his passion, but secondly is the proof of his incarnation.

And finally, circumcision is the removal of defilement. And this is kind of a segue to the next point on the outline.

In Leviticus 19:23, fruit trees are said to be unclean by being called uncircumcised. “Trees are uncircumcised to you when you go into the land,” God says. There’s a relationship between circumcision and cleansing. At Gilgal, the people of God are circumcised. And what we’re told in Joshua 5:9, “Lord said to Joshua, ‘This day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.’ Therefore, the name of that place is called Gilgal”—rolling—”to this day.”

Circumcision is also the sign of the covenant. It’s the proof of Christ’s humanity. It’s his act of obedience and his passive obedience being prefigured. But it is also a picture of the removal of Egypt, the rolling away of the reproach, the cleansing of the tree that is you.

And so the third thing the church rejoiced in was this: divine savior, the Lord Jesus Christ who came. His name is Jesus. We’ve talked about that. But then the fourth thing the church resoundingly celebrated in was a purified people.

Jesus is circumcised on the eighth day, prefiguring the new creation. He’s circumcised, shedding blood for his people, showing that he’ll make atonement for their sins. He keeps the law for us perfectly before God, and we have his imputed righteousness. He keeps covenant with us and enters us into all the blessings of the obedience of the covenant laid out in Deuteronomy 8 and 28.

And immediately then the text turns to the purification of Mary. “Now when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were completed, she then takes Jesus up to the temple and presents him.”

This is the application point. The Lord Jesus has brought about a new creation through his active and passive obedience, pictured in circumcision and in his true divinity, being named Jesus. He’ll save us from our sins. And immediately, the text wants us to think of the purification of Mary.

You know, in the Old Testament, you had a baby. If it was a boy baby, after 40 days, you had to come and bring a gift to the priest, an offering. If you were poor like Mary, you brought two turtle doves. One of those offerings was a sin offering. You had to purify that altar. The other was an ascension offering, representing your ascension into the heavenly place through the ultimate animal to come, the Lord Jesus Christ. Mary was purified by a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The whole point of Christ’s circumcision is that it leads, it opens up that door through his active and passive obedience to our cleansing, the way that Mary was cleansed.

We’ve talked about this before, but it’s good to point out again. In Leviticus, where this law is found in Leviticus 12, there are various aspects of the human life that are talked about that are in need of cleansing. The first one in Leviticus 11 is our food and drink. Certain foods are clean, certain foods are not clean. Jesus comes, and one of the impacts of what he does is to cleanse all foods for us, pictured in the incident with Cornelius. All foods are now clean.

Another effect of the fall, recorded in chapter 12 of Leviticus, is this one we’re reading about here. Our offspring create a condition of impurity to the mother. To have a baby, which is a good thing, manifests the effects of the fall. And Mary needs to be purified. We need to be purified. Dale and Bobby, when they try to raise up their child for Christ, if they understand the impact of Leviticus 12: childbirth is polluted. The child is tainted with original sin. We need that relationship of father, mother, and child to be purified by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, consecrated or holy.

So it shows us in Leviticus 12 that Jesus comes to effect the purification of the church, pictured here for us symbolically in the relationship of Mary’s purification. And God says that we’re to apply this purification to ourselves.

I’ve said that we’re supposed to walk in this world in the context of the kingdom way of holiness. How do we do it? We do it by appropriating the work of the Lord Jesus Christ that purifies us from the manifestation of the effects of the fall. Where will we see those manifestations most? We’ll see it in our food and drink. We’ll see it in whether or not we raise our children for Christ. Implications of childbirth include pain. You’ll have children, God told Eve, but the redeemer will come so that your childbearing will become easier. You’ll be able to raise your children in the context of the faith.

But we can expect attacks from Satan in terms of how we go about eating and drinking to the glory of God or not. How do we raise our children in a child-centered home or a God-centered home? Do we regard our children ultimately as not our children? We have no children. We have children on loan to us by God. Mary understood that. As part of this process, Mary had to redeem Jesus, because the firstborn of the men had to be bought back from God. He claimed them all.

The Exodus from Egypt: God said, because of that, every firstborn that opens the womb of cattle or beast or man is mine. That’s what the Levites were. They represented the firstborn of Israel. Her own child had to be bought back from God. Now it’s still God’s, but she retains custody over raising him for God.

So this story tells us that where we can expect difficulties is in this arrangement—that the application of Christ’s work is first applied to mother and child, parent and child.

Now Leviticus goes on to talk about other means of defilement. The next thing that’s to be cleansed is leprosy. Adam, as a result of the curse, had sweat on his forehead, and that correlates to the leprosy on the skin of the man in Leviticus chapters 13 and 14. That says that where we can expect attacks, where we can expect difficulties for us, walking tomorrow morning through the day—through the door of paradise opened up symbolically by the circumcision of our savior, representing to us all of his life of lawkeeping and all of his shedding of blood for us on the cross to forgive us of our sins.

That opens the door for walking into the world in a kingdom way of holiness. And when we go about doing our vocation, we can expect that to be a place where we’re going to have to actively apply the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ in purifying that for us. Adam’s vocation was affected. Eve’s childbearing was affected. Our rejoicing with food and drink in the context of the kingdom is affected by our sin.

Adam’s clothes—he needed new clothes. He needed empowerment for his work. God had to clothe Adam in Genesis 3 and 4. And so, lepers’s clothes have to be cleansed. Adam was kicked out of the garden, and our homes are another place where we have to see the application of the purity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then finally, as I said before, in Genesis 4:1, the relationship of man and wife. God says that the Lord Jesus Christ has opened a way for us. He pictures us between the Gloria in Excelsis and the “Now let us thy servant depart in peace.” He gives us this picture of the circumcision of the Savior on the eighth day and the purification of his mother, accomplished ultimately by his work on the cross.

He tells us that as we move from singing glory and praise to God at the beginning of our service and at the end of our service—well, we don’t sing it yet in this church, we will soon, I hope—the Nunc Dimittis, “at the end of this service, we have in our hearts: Now let your servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen the glory that you prepared, the salvation for your people Israel.”

In between those is an apprehension, an application of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in his passive and active obedience. And in between those is a dedication on the part of his people to know his word and to do things in relationship to that word.

Why is Mary doing these things? Well, we’re told over and over again that the reason why she redeems her son and why she cleanses herself and gives, brings Jesus for circumcision—is it’s according to the law of God. God’s people are a law-abiding people. And this is celebrated in this text.

You know, it’s interesting. You can look them up later, but in Ephesians 3:16-18 and Ephesians 5:18-22, very familiar text about wives submitting to your husbands is the last text, speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. But in one of these texts—in the text from Colossians, or Ephesians rather—it says to be filled with the spirit in verse 18, and in the parallel text in Colossians it says that we are to let the word of God dwell in us richly.

In the book by Ruvolo that some of the women are going through on Sunday mornings on prayer, she points this text out as a great picture of the importance of the Reformed doctrine that the spirit speaks by means of his word. You see, the spirit dwells in us, and as a result we have relationships with one another, singing psalms and spiritual songs, being good wives and husbands, and the word of God dwells amongst us.

And as a result, we speak to one another in psalms and spiritual songs and enter into correct relationships in the context of the home. The scriptures are saying the spirit meets, talks, and works by means of his word.

Simeon comes along at the end of this text, and he says, “Now let thy servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen this salvation you prepared from before time. My eyes—at the end of our day together, we need to see these truths of Christ’s circumcision, his cleansing and purification of his people, his active obedience and passive obedience.

We need to see this in terms of our eyes. We need to apprehend Simeon’s eyes of faith, who saw in the child in the temple that day not just another child, but he saw the promised one of Israel. He saw the consolation, the salvation of his people.

We today, as we enter into this new century, need to walk in the way of holiness, consecrate ourselves anew to appropriate the active and passive obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to see that our lives—every bit of them—is to be purified according to the word of Christ. We’re to be a peaceful people.

What are you now? Simeon said, “Now let your servant depart in peace.” What’s troubling you today? You know, peace is the right orderliness of God in the context of our being. We all have things that trouble us and remove our peace. What is it for you? What area of your life needs to see the purifying work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who at the day of his circumcision pictures for us the opening of the day of—