Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: The Circumcision of Jesus
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri, New Year’s Eve Service

Meditation upon an aspect of the law as applied in the life of our Savior. We’re in the middle of the twelve days of Christmas, celebrating Jesus’s birth on December 25th and Epiphany on January 6th. Next week I’ll give an Epiphany sermon. This week, however, I’ll be talking on the circumcision of Jesus. This happened, of course, eight days after he was born, coinciding with our celebration of the new year, not by accident as we’ll discuss in our sermon today. We’ll think about the implications of this part of the law—the circumcision, and specifically the circumcision of our Savior—from Luke 2, reading verses 21-41.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Luke, chapter 2, verses 21-41, and we’ll be focusing on verse 21:

“And when eight 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 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’s Christ. 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 people, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel.’”

And I will stop there.

Let’s pray. Father, we rejoice in the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have great joy and celebration in our homes, in this church, in our hearts, in this wonderful festive season of the coming of Christ. Now teach us, Lord God, by your word, the implications of this short little verse that talks about the circumcision of Jesus on the eighth day. Bless us, Lord God. Transform us, make us more joyous and more committed to serve you in the context of this new year. In Jesus’s name we ask it, and for the sake of this kingdom’s advance. Amen.

Please be seated.

Martin Luther’s wonderful song says, “This little babe so few days old.” That’s what we’re going to talk about today—the little babe Jesus so few days old and how he enters into this warfare that’s spoken of in that wonderful song: “He has come to rifle Satan’s fold.” And then in verse two:

“With tears he fights and wins the field.
His naked breast stands for a shield.
His battering shot are babyish cries.
His arrows looks of weeping eyes.
His marshal enemy’s cold in need,
And feeble flesh his warriors’ steed.”

Well, certainly we can think of that in direct application to this text before us and a description of the circumcision of the Lord Jesus Christ. So it’s a fascinating thing. I studied this actually when we first moved into this church. We had a New Year’s Eve service here, and I talked a little bit about the circumcision of Jesus and did some study then. It’s really interesting how in church history so many of the church fathers and throughout church history—sermons, poems, sonnets—written to celebrate and meditate upon the circumcision of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Circumcision was performed on the eighth day. So we know that’s what is happening here. Jesus is eight days old, this little babe so few days old, and he was circumcised. No doubt he cried as an infant. This circumcision indicates his full humanity, and yet also we see the beginning of something very important. On the eighth day of the Savior’s life, Christians have just been struck over this event for millennia now.

I want to read some quotes here. The first is from Milton’s sonnet upon the circumcision. So Milton actually wrote a sonnet in the 17th century on the circumcision:

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

So Milton is making the connection between the beginning of the suffering of Jesus—the first bloodletting we could say, the first pain and manifestation of the blood of the Savior being shed—with what will eventually happen years later in his adult life and in his ministry. He will then perform this wonderful salvific work completed, as it were, on the cross. And so what was a small, perhaps stony knife lancet used then becomes a spear in the side of Jesus. The imagery that Jesus’s life is the sacrifice for us is what Milton was speaking of.

Crashaw in the same year wrote a piece. The title of his composition was “Our Blessed Lord and His Circumcision to His Father.” So this is put in the words of Jesus to thee—that is, to his Father:

“To thee these first fruits of my growing death,
For what else is my life? Lo, I bequeath…”

That’s how the sonnet begins, and it ends in these words:

“These cradle torments have their torredness.
These purple buds of blooming death may be urged
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 prefigurement of the spear in the side of our Savior with his circumcision.

Various sermons have been given on the circumcision of the Lord Jesus Christ and recorded for us. A particular sermon given by a man who died in 1431 says this:

“What this circumcision pertains to the salvation of mankind and of your immortality. And this is what the sermon says in part: ‘What shall be said about the first holy shedding of blood? This most precious blood which today our Lord spills for us for the first time. 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 the oration congratulates him as a victor whose triumph is compared with the military triumphs of ancient Rome.

“In the feast of the circumcision, we read: ‘We celebrate the day in which our victor brings back to us the first trophies of the victory over our perpetual foe.’”

And really, this is very much in line with the song by Luther. This little babe so few days old is already conquering our perpetual foe, Satan. And circumcision is a reminder of that.

A published sermon delivered in 1460 by Giovanni Antonio Caminano 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. The weapons of our salvation first appear in the blood of the infant on the day of his circumcision.”

So again, in Antonio Lolo’s oration of 1485, he says this:

“Today is open 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 has 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 as he said, it’s not unjustly set at the beginning or head of the year, the celebration of the circumcision of Jesus.

In another sermon in 1508, another man wrote this:

“Rightly the church decreed the celebration of this day of life, which is the forecourt of our redemption in a sure compact of salvation between Christ and mortals.”

In your outlines on the second page, I have the lyrics to a song. I love Christmas CDs. I’ve got a bunch of them. I’ve given out a number of them to you all in the last couple of years. In one of these—I don’t remember if it was a Christmas CD or maybe it was specifically New Year’s or Advent, I don’t remember—I heard this song for the first time and really liked it. So we’ll just read through it on page two, and note that this is from a collection in 1642, the Black Letter Collection, rather, an English traditional carol. So this predates 1642 of course; how much it predates it, we don’t know.

The words are this. The tune, by the way, is Greensleves. If you want to try singing this at home, it’s a little tricky. We tried it back in 2001 when I think we did that here at our church on New Year’s Eve service. It’s a little tricky. You have to sort of make some words sound a little different, but let’s just read it:

“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. Let’s cast care away.
God, send us a merry new year.”

And I know that many people will be celebrating this evening, and it’s proper to celebrate the close of the last year and the opening of the new year.

Verse two ties the circumcision of Jesus Christ to this celebration:

“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 at the spear.
His head they crowned him with thorn.
They crowned him with thorn,
And at him they did laugh and scorn
Who for to save our souls was born.
God send us a happy new year.”

So again, that conjunction of the beginning of the new year—a picture of the new creation affected through the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ, our redemption by his blood—that first bloodletting being celebrated on the day of his circumcision.

Verse three:

“And now with New Year’s gifts each friend
Unto each other they do send.
God grant we may our lives amend
And that truth may now appear.
Now like the snake, cast off your skin
Of evil thoughts and wicked sin,
And to amend this new year begin.
God send us a merry year.”

It’s proper to make resolutions and try to put off definitively sins and put on Christian disciplines and graces, to shed our skin as it were and emerge not now as the serpent but now really as the picture of the Lord Jesus Christ transformed.

Interesting. Line three: “Now with new gifts each friend.” When we first got married and started having kids, we did that for a while. We didn’t give presents on Christmas. We wanted to save the day for the celebration of Christ’s birth and new presents for the new year. I think my mother’s family had done that at some point. Plus, it gave us the discounted toys after Christmas was over. And then we really made the kids unhappy one year. We pushed it back to Epiphany when the Magi brought the gifts. So now it’s January 6th. They don’t get their presents to—. Well, anyway. Okay. So that’s verse three, a wonderful picture of the sanctification that the circumcision of Jesus calls us to.

Verse four:

“And now let all the company
In friendly manner all agree.
For we are here welcome, all may see
Unto this jolly good cheer.
I thank my master and my dame,
The which are founders of the same,
To eat, to drink, and now is no shame.
God send us a happy new year.”

So to rejoice with feast and eating and drinking and to give blessings to the one whose party you’re at is a good thing to do.

“Come lads and lasses, everyone.
Jack, Tom, Dick, Bess, Mary, and Joan.
Let’s cut the meat unto the bone,
For welcome you need not fear.
And here for good liquor you shall not lack.
It’ll wet my brains and strengthen my back.
This jolly good cheer must go to rack.
God, send us a happy new year.”

Nice lines. And it gets better in verse six:

“Come, give more liquor when I do call.
I’ll drink to each one in this hall.
I hope that so loud I must not brawl,
So unto me lend an ear.
Good fortune to my master’s send,
And to our dame which is our friend.
Lord bless us all, and so I end.
God send us a happy new year.”

So the celebration of joy with eating and drinking—including, you know, in moderation the kind of beverages that God commended to us in Deuteronomy 14 to give men joy in his heart, generation as I said—all is a great celebration with commitment in the new year to follow Jesus and is tied in this great carol to the circumcision of the Lord Jesus Christ, the putting off of the old and the coming of the new. So it’s a wonderful image, is it not? And it’s a wonderful image that I’ve maintained for a number of years now at New Year’s—this meditation on the circumcision and the implications of it.

So I commend it to you. May your new years have this kind of stamp put upon them.

Now, having heard this sermon and remembering this connection of these things, it’s interesting. I went to an online music service called Raps City and I thought, “Well, maybe I’ll try to see if I have a good version of it on there.” And they had three versions of this carol, and every one of the versions skipped verse two—the one about Christ’s circumcision. So they turned it into just a body drinking song, leaving out sanctification of our Savior. That’s where we’re at as a culture.

May our New Year’s not be like that. May we remember verse two in our merry-making tonight.

All right. Now to the outline.

First of all, what is all this joy about? Why you know all these wonderful ponderings and musings and great orations, sonnets, sermons, songs all for the circumcision of Jesus? Something that doesn’t really connect with us. Well, you have to understand that circumcision is a picture of new creation.

“When eight days were completed…”—and you know, I hope you don’t ever tire of this. But the truth of the matter is that the eighth day is a picture of new creation. Creation happens in seven days, and then the new creation begins on the eighth day. In the Old Testament, the tabernacle and temple had to be cleansed and gotten ready for seven days. On the eighth day, it was ready to go. The altar specifically had to be cleansed for seven days. On the eighth day, sacrifices were ready. Sacrificial animals, almost always much older than this, were required to be at least eight days old according to the law in the Bible. And the priest and the other priests had to go through a consecration or cleansing process for seven days. And on the eighth day, there a new creation, a new Adam. That’s what’s being pictured in those sacrificial laws—the new creation that will happen because of the new Adam, the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So circumcision is tied to that new creation. And Christ’s resurrection is prefigured in the circumcision and implicitly the resurrection of all in the context of the new creation. So new creation is on this eighth day.

Let me read from Bede the Venerable. It dates from 673 to 735 of England. I always think of our church’s order of worship—the one we normally, I think it’s this Sunday, we have it—the old one with the life of Christ around the edges. That’s what that is, by the way, the life of Jesus, kind of you know, what the liturgical year is all about. We got that from a cover, I think, a book that Howard L. had of the history of England according to the Venerable Bede. So for some reason, that woodcut that became our church’s order of worship cover for so long is related, at least in my mind, to this particular edition of Venerable Bede’s writings.

Anyway, he composed a classic homily for the feast day of the Lord’s circumcision. Bede himself ends on the familiar eschatological note. The circumcision as the type of that ultimate cleansing. Quote from all stain of mortality: “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 forecourt 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 the most longed 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 continuous cleansing of the heart which never fails to celebrate the sacrament of the eighth day—so-called because it exemplified the day of the Lord’s resurrection.”

So the eighth day of circumcision in the law pointed forward to the eighth day resurrection of Christ, the rolling away of the defilements, the effects of the curse of the Old Testament and the Fall, and the new creation come fully through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So he was circumcised on the eighth day. God made the world in seven days. The eighth day then is a sign of the new creation. The temple, altar, priests, and sacrifices all were ready on the eighth day. Circumcision is a sign then of the new creation. The eighth day—circumcision was done on the eighth day. And by analogy, we can say that circumcision is this new creation, and there are specific verses that affirm that as well.

So we have a new creation as the basis for the celebration of the circumcision of Christ in the new year, prefiguring the final new creation but also the fact that the new creation has come in kernel form, as it were, now through the work of Jesus.

Secondly, circumcision of Christ means a new man. The humanity and obedience of Jesus Christ is seen in this circumcision. “He was brought on the eighth day for the circumcision of the child.” Now what does it mean? Circumcision was given in Genesis 17. It is, of course, the cutting away of the foreskin of the male generative organ. And that’s important because of what it’s a picture of. It’s a sign of the covenant, but it’s a sign that there is no hope, there’s no future, there’s no hope for the future for us in our abilities, in our generative capabilities. We can have kids, but there’s no hope in those children apart from the grace of God.

So it is a cutting off of all of the delusional hopes of mankind that we can look forward to a happy new year being sent to us on some basis of our own works, our own abilities, our own generative powers. You can’t have kids. The only kids you have are born dead, and they need to be brought back to life through the sacrament of baptism. That’s the imagery of baptism, which is now the New Testament equivalent of circumcision. And that’s what it’s all about.

You know, the circumcision—it’s very different. Tribes practice circumcision. You can go on Raps City and find tribal songs about circumcision. But when the tribes, pagan tribes practice circumcision, it’s when a boy becomes a man. He’s 12 years old, then he’s circumcised. It’s a sign that he has attained to something. You see, but circumcision in the Bible is the sign that there’s nothing the person is attaining to. It’s the sovereign act of God. It’s not what he’s doing so much as it’s what God does. Baptism is a sign of God’s election, his unconditional election of his people, not the sign that we chose for him. Eventually, that’ll happen. We will make decisions for Christ. But that’s not the basis for our salvation. Never mistake that.

So circumcision is a sign that there is no hope in generation, but only hope in regeneration, in the work of God. There’s hope in regeneration.

I mentioned this new creation. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, we read this: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.”

That’s circumcision—was a sign of the rolling away of the past, the mark of the curse, the Fall, and a moving forward in context of new creation. And the Bible says very definitively: we don’t have to wait for the final advent of Christ for the new creation to appear. You are a new creation in Christ now.

And then in Galatians 6:15, we read, “For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but a new creation.”

Now, he’s saying that the sign in and of itself can’t affect anything. But he’s telling us what the sign means. He’s saying circumcision is that mark of new creation.

So circumcision of Christ is the new creation. It is the new humanity. It’s the rolling away of the curse. Jesus had no sin. Why did he need to be cut? Well, because there’s a—what’s being rolled away in circumcision is the sign of the manifestation of the Fall of man. You see, the cleanliness—the clean and unclean laws in Leviticus don’t mean that something’s sinful. It wasn’t sinful, you know, to do those things that you had to be cleansed for, to touch a dead body. Well, you were supposed to take care of things and sometimes you inadvertently touched the dead. But you were still unclean. Sexual relations made you unclean. It didn’t mean you’d sinned. It meant that every aspect of man’s life was tainted by the Fall and needed to be cleansed definitively.

So the circumcision of Jesus Christ is that beginning of the demonstration of the cleansing of all things through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There’s no hope in generation, but there is hope in regeneration, the work of God’s grace upon us.

So as we look forward to the new year, there’s no hope in it on the basis of our own works. Baptism replaces circumcision. And circumcision is a sign of the covenant. And it means that our only hope for the future—our only hope for the future—is God’s grace. Now, it’s not a slim hope. It’s a sure hope because it actually happened and Jesus was circumcised and you’ve been baptized and you’ve been brought into that new creation. So it’s not like a fishy kind of hoping, sort of thing, but it’s an affirmed truth based upon the historical actions of Jesus shedding his blood for us.

So there is this going on: active obedience is the next point of your outline, and this is kind of a controversial subject these days. Let me just briefly state what it is and not get into a big deal about this. But you know, many reformed people have taught—I have taught—that okay, so the point is circumcision is a law or command that Jesus is fulfilling as Mary gets him circumcised. And you know the scriptures tell us in Galatians 3:10: “As many are of the works of the law are under the curse. For it’s written: Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law.”

And in Galatians 4 it says this: “When the fullness of the time had come forth his son born of a woman born under the law to redeem those who are under the law that we might receive the adoption as sons.”

So there’s a relationship of Jesus to lawkeeping. And some people have talked about it as active obedience and passive obedience. So Jesus actively obeys the whole law of God and merits then salvation for us, and he passively on the cross dies for our sins. So justification is being forgiven on the basis of his death but also having the righteousness of Christ imputed to us. So active and passive obedience—they’re not particularly helpful categories, some people think. And one reason why is just English. We talk about passive obedience of Jesus on the cross, and we think that he wasn’t doing anything, but he was. The term passive came from the original term which meant passionate. Jesus is passionately—which we could say actively—dying for us on that cross. There’s nothing really ultimately passive about it, you understand? There’s passion. Passive comes from passionately. We think of, you know, in a kind of stoic, removed way. This is what we think of passive being. But that’s not what it is. Jesus is suffering for us willingly on that cross. He is actively doing that.

And his active obedience—if the problem you have by saying that Jesus obeyed the law for us and therefore we get to go to heaven is that now our salvation is tied to works and not faith, the works of Christ but still works—perhaps a better way to think of this is that Jesus certainly obeyed the Father’s law, but he did it as a faithful son. He didn’t need to earn eternal life. He had eternal life from the Father. And when he comes in the flesh, he stays obedient because he’s faithful. He believes the Father’s word. And that evidence of that is his keeping of the Father’s law.

But if it’s his faith that drives him to that obedience, then it’s we’re saved by grace and by faith and by the faith of Christ, not as a result of works of the law. God never gave the law as the method of salvation. He gave the law to a redeemed people. Right? He doesn’t say, “Keep the law and I’ll take you out of Egypt.” He says, “No, I’m taking you out of Egypt, and as a result of me giving you life, here’s how you should live. Here’s the law.” That’s the purpose of the law. So the law is never really ultimately a means of salvation. The law is how you should live because you have relationship and faith with the Father.

And Jesus is that, so certainly we can say that because Jesus was born in the law, the importance of Christ’s faithful obedience to the Father is prefigured in this circumcision in obedience and conformity to the Father’s law.

So circumcision is this new creation. It’s the sign that there’s no hope for the future in our own works and our own generative abilities but only in the grace of God. And the circumcision of Jesus is a demonstration of his faithfulness in obedience to the Father’s law. And that faithfulness in obedience is ours since we have union with Christ. We’re brought into union with Jesus. We have his faithful obedience, and we’re called then to live according to the law as well.

So, and of course all of this is because circumcision is the sign of the Abrahamic covenant. And that’s what’s, you know, clearly given to us. And I don’t want to dwell on that point, but that’s what’s going on.

So circumcision—the celebration of the circumcision begins with this consideration that there is this new creation, this wonderful new creation that’s prefigured from it. But it also, however, is a bloodletting. And here I have on your outline passionate obedience. We should say passionate obedience, and we’ve made this point that there is this prefigurement from knife to lance. So from the knife of circumcision to the lance in the side of Christ at the end, the bloodletting of Christ—his life is marked by bookends of obedience to the point of shedding blood for us.

And there is this sign. It’s and so again, what happens at the end is not unusual or different from what happens at the rest of his life. His whole life is lived sacrificially for us, and the demonstration of that—the beginning of it—is that eighth day circumcision of the new creation.

So there was this painful. Matthew Henry says that Jesus submitted to it to give an instance of his early obedience, his obedience unto blood. Then he shed his blood by drops, which afterwards he poured out with purple streams for us, his people. So we can see this connection to the covenant and then to the bloodletting and to the suffering of Jesus Christ for his people.

And we also here have a demonstration of the actual humanity or incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we could take some time in that. We won’t, but the point is that his circumcision—you don’t circumcise a phantasm, a spiritual thing that has no body. So the circumcision on the eighth day is a reminder of the real incarnation of the second person of the Trinity. He’s fully human in that bloodletting.

And some have seen in the connection of this to his name. He’s circumcised and then his name is given. The name is Jesus because he’s going to save his people from their sins. That we have this demonstration of the full humanity of Jesus in his circumcision and the full divinity of Jesus. He’s Yeshua, Yahweh saving his people. That’s what Jesus is. It’s Joshua, which means Yahweh saves.

So we have the full humanity and the full divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ in this one little verse describing his circumcision, which is also his naming day.

The naming day. And of course, I was kind of focused on the circumcision, but the naming that goes on here is at the heart of our celebration of the future as well, right? He’s Jesus and he’s called Jesus because he’s going to save his people from their sins. So we have this development, and we could go through historical readings, but we’re not going to take the time. But it is again a subject of meditation of the church in the medieval period particularly on the circumcision that leads them to another demonstration of the full humanity and the full divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Bernard of Clairvaux, who followed shortly after Anselm—yeah, Anselm, who we studied at Reformation Party—Bernard of Clairvaux made some dramatic improvements in medieval theology based on this, seeing in the circumcision the naming—the two, both the humanity and the divinity of Jesus. So I mean, they believed it up to then, but they began to articulate more and more what it actually meant and biblical evidences for it.

Removal of defilement. I’ve talked about that a little bit already. But in Leviticus 19:23: “When you come into the land which have planted all kinds of trees for food, then you shall count that fruit as uncircumcised. Three years, it shall be as uncircumcised to you. It shall not be eaten.”

So set apart. So fruit trees were seen as uncircumcised the first three years. And in other words, manifesting the Fall. And then the manifestation of the new creation is after three years. This cycle of three meaning death and resurrection. So, you know, it’s just another indication of the tie that what circumcision is all about is a removal of defilement or uncleanness. That’s what’s going on in circumcision.

At Gilgal in Joshua 5:9, all the people of Israel get circumcised. They weren’t circumcised the whole forty years in the wilderness. Now they’re going to be the priestly nation. Circumcision in part is the sign of the priesthood. They’re going to get circumcised at Gilgal. And then in verse 9 of Joshua 5, we read: “Then the Lord said to Joshua, ‘This day I have rolled away the reproach—’ Gilgal means rolling—’so at rolling, I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you. Therefore the name of this place is called Gilgal to this day.’”

And the circumcision—the rolling away of the defilement of Egypt, the rolling away of the manifestations of the effects of the Fall—Jesus’s circumcision is the definitive moving picture of God rolling away the curse from mankind now, from the new creation, in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as a result of this, of course, he is the divine Savior.

And I’ve given you the references there that he was given the name Jesus because he would save his people from their sins.

And the outline goes on to talk about how the effect of this is a purified people. Mary then brings, goes through the purification ritual. Jesus is circumcised on the eighth day. Thirty or sixty-six days later is the purification of the mother, and that’s described in the text before us. Again, we see Mary’s obedience to the law, but what we see is the purification element of this—that Jesus produces in his circumcision a definitive purified people. And this people is can be seen as prefigured in the circumcision of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then these references to purification that follow them also, of course, he has produced a redeemed people. And this redeemed people becomes then a law-abiding people in the context of the text that goes on to talk about the law being performed by Jesus’s mother. So the new creation people are redeemed. They’re a new humanity. That’s who we are. And we’re specifically said to be a lawkeeping people.

Jesus’s mother “offered a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord,” and “the law of Moses is what she is referred to as doing as well.” Luke frequently in his gospel makes the statement that Joseph and Mary “did what was written in the law of the Lord.” These words teach us that we must not at our own suggestion attempt anything in the worship of God. We must obediently follow what he requires in his word.

So the redeemed people are a lawkeeping people as well.

And then finally, that lawkeeping people are also a peaceful people. We went on to read the Nunc Dimittis that follows this description of the circumcision of Christ. So we’ve got this new year, this new creation, the rolling away of defilement, all these things are pictured. And then this is when after those things have occurred—that’s where Luke’s gospel comes in, verses 25 and following—the song of Simeon, the Nunc Dimittis: “Now let your servant depart in peace.”

So Jesus comes to affect peace for his people, and that peace is seen as affected by that initial bloodletting. So Jesus will have to fully die on the cross thirty-three years later. But Simeon departs in peace. He has seen the demonstration of the Lord’s salvation. And in the text in Luke’s text, that’s tied to Jesus giving his blood through the right of circumcision for the people that he’ll make into a new humanity.

The name Jesus, then, Jesus is fully human. Circumcision means that the Fall has been reversed, the rolling away of the effects of the Fall. The name Jesus is a reminder that he saves us. The text told us in Matthew that you’re to call his name Jesus because he will save the people from their sins. He saved us by his pain, blood, and ultimately his death. He bled for us at the beginning and end of his life.

So again, the bookends of his life are marked by bleeding and connected to his death.

And this, I think, is what I want to conclude with in terms of application: I think this gives us a sense of who we’re to be as well. Jesus is a real man whose life is marked at its beginning and end as being sacrificial for his bride. He’s laying down his life for the sake of his people. Jesus bleeds for us, we could say, before he commands us.

And this is a picture to all of us that we’re to be servants. We’re to live lives of self-sacrifice for others. But in terms of Jesus here and his work for the bride, I want to make particular application for a couple of minutes to men. We are called in the same way to live our lives sacrificially for our wives, are we not? You know, we’re to love our wives in the same manner in which Jesus loved the church, which is to lay down his life for her. We’re told in Ephesians.

And so men—Jesus dies for his church. And the circumcision of our Savior is the beginning of his self-sacrifice, his pain, his suffering for the sake of his bride. And so in the new year, my suggestion, my strong suggestion to the men of this church, married men particularly, is to lay down your life sacrificially for your wife. To have your life marked by sacrifice. In other words, to live it for somebody other than yourselves, to serve other people.

And the scriptures tell us that this is what we’re to do. We’re to not—uh, we are to be a circumcised people, and we’re to be a self-sacrificing people for the sake of others. This is true, this is true in a broadest sense of all of us. For instance, in Deuteronomy 10, verse 16 says: “Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart and be stiff-necked no longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality nor takes a bribe. He administers justice for the fatherless, the widow, loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing. Therefore, love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

So we’re called upon as people of God to circumcise our hearts as well. And indeed, in Deuteronomy 30, we’re told that this is what God does: “The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live also. And the Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate you, who persecute you, and you will again obey the voice of the Lord and do all his commandments which I command you today. And then the Lord will make you abound in all the work of your hand.”

Why are we, as a Christian people, the tail and no longer the head in this country? Because our hearts are no longer circumcised. And we pray that this new year, here at Reformation Covenant and across the nation, but here certainly, we pray that we may enter into this new year with a renewed commitment to circumcise our hearts and to see God at work circumcising our hearts to the end that we would obey the Lord God. And as a result of that obedience, God then brings judgments upon the nations and he brings us into blessing.

In Leviticus 26, he says: “I have also walked contrary to them and I brought them into the land of their enemies. If their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they accept their guilt, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham. I will remember, I will remember the land. The land also shall rest.”

So again, the turning away from reproach is the taking upon ourselves the circumcision of our hearts that we may hear the voice of God, love him with all our heart, soul, and strength. And that’s what we’re to commit ourselves to do in this new year.

Verse 4 says: “Circumcise yourselves to the Lord. Take away the foreskins of your hearts, you men of Judah, inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus my fury come forth like fire and burn so that no one can quench because of the evil of your doings.”

So God calls on us to emulate this work of the Lord Jesus Christ and the power of the Spirit. We’re in union with Christ, and the same self-sacrificial enduring of pain that Jesus went through on his naming day means that our name, our identity is wrapped up in the same way with our service for the Lord Jesus Christ, and that service, as being given to other people, self-sacrificially.

Remember the verse: “Now with New Year’s gifts each friend and to each other they do send. God grant we may our lives amend and that truth may now appear. Now like the snake cast off your skin of evil thoughts and wicked sin.” Circumcise your hearts is what this verse is saying. “And to amend this new year begin. God send us a merry new year.”

So God calls us, as true men, to sacrifice for our wives. “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word.”

There’s the balance. Husbands are not doormats for wives. They’re sacrificing for their wives and their families to the end that they may mature them in the context of the word of God, that we minister the word to them. It’s not sacrifice for the purpose of sacrifice. It’s sacrifice and undergoing pain and difficulties, putting aside our will, taking up God’s will and the service of our families in a renewed way. This is done for the purposes of leading them into further maturity.

Both doormat theology and perversions of dominion theology are brought to nothing by this verse. Husbands are not to blindly serve and sacrifice if, as a result of that, their wives resist—the result of that is sin. They’re to sacrifice to them that their families might be matured, but they’re not to exercise dominion, commanding all the time without any sacrifice. Jesus bleeds first and then commands.

Jesus shows us the way on his day of circumcision. His identity is Savior. That’s our identity as men in the context of our homes—in a lesser sense, of course—but that’s our identity. And that identity is only fulfilled as we see our name related to the circumcision of our hearts, to serve God first and to serve our families that God has placed us in the context of.

When we were still without sin, due time Christ died for the ungodly. “Scarcely will a righteous man—for a righteous man will one die. Yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Our sacrifice doesn’t wait for the other person to be good first. We begin that process through the sacrifice and dying, laying down our wishes and desires and instead taking up God’s desires and wishes for our family and serving those that God has placed us in the context of.

There is this relationship. Circumcision is the day of Christ’s love, which is tied to his salvation of us. 1 John 3:16: “By this we know love because he laid down his life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”

I want to conclude by quoting this poem from Edgar Guest. Edgar Guest was a bit of a sentimentalist poet, died in the middle 20th century. He was in Michigan. I was given this copy of this poem by Roy Garrett years ago. Edgar Guest is becoming a little bit more known, but not in a positive way these days. The Lemony Snickett books have brought Edgar Guest up again. In the eleventh book, I think, Guest is talked about as a horrible poet by Lemony Snickett—horrible sentimental sort of stuff. The book line have Herman Melville emblazed on their shirts in that eleventh book. And Lemony, or the bad guy Count Olaf, has Edgar Guest on his shirt.

So people at least are hearing Guest’s name again, but not in a positive way. And there’s a little bit of sentimentality to this. And you know, it always embarrasses some of us to hear this poem read. But I think it’s wonderful, and I think it really captures—I think—the application of the circumcision of Christ in the context of his name as Savior, to affect the new creation of people who would follow in his image. We’re Christians, and we follow our Savior in that same way, and specifically with application to men and their lives and how we live our lives in relationship to others.

The term he uses is “Lord make a regular man out of me.” Well, you know, real man, regular man means a real man. Regular didn’t have the sense of ordinary, but a regular man, a real man, you know, a man’s man.

Well, here it is:

“This I would like to be:
Braver and bolder,
Just a bit wiser because I am older.
Just a bit kinder to those I may meet.
Just a bit manlier, taking defeat.
This for the new year, my wish and my plea:
Lord, make a regular man out of me.

This I would like to be:
Just a bit finer,
More of a smiler,
And less of a whiner.
Just a bit quicker to stretch out my hand,
Helping another who’s struggling to stand.
This is my prayer for the new year to be:
Lord, make a regular man out of me.

This I would like to be:
Just a bit fairer,
Just a bit better,
And just a bit squarer.
Not quite so ready to censure and blame,
Quicker to help every man in the game.
Not quite so eager man’s failings to see:
Lord, make a regular man out of me.

This I would like to be:
Just a bit truer,
Less of the wisher
And more of the doer,
Broader and bigger, more willing to give,
Living and helping my neighbor to live.
This for the new year, my prayer and my plea:
Lord, make a regular man out of me.”

Jesus Christ was a regular man, a real man. In fact, he ushers in the new humanity that we celebrate on the day of circumcision, the rolling away of the old creation and Fall, the establishment of the new creation, the new humanity. He’s a regular man, and a regular man is this sort of man who’s willing to help others, to lay down his wishes and desires, to suffer pain and struggle—the denial of himself, which is always pain to us, right? The denial of ourselves—to serve other people. This is the regular man that the Lord Jesus Christ is and calls us to be as well.

He gives us his Spirit that we may, in union with him, be regular men and women—real ones—living out the circumcision of our Savior in our joyous celebrations. Don’t forget the circumcision of Jesus tonight in your merry-making and tomorrow in your renewed commitments to be better people.

Let’s pray.

Almighty God, whose blessed son was circumcised in obedience to the law for our sake and given the name that is above every name, give us grace faithfully to bear his name, to worship him in the freedom of the Spirit, to proclaim him as the Savior of the world, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.