Hello, this is Pastor Steven Anderson from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona.
Today I want to talk about Genesis 17 verse 14 where the Bible reads,
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.
Now a lot of people today would have you to believe that in order to be one of God's chosen people,
you just have to be a certain ethnicity.
And they'll say that the Jews, quote unquote, today,
because they descend from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
are God's chosen people just by virtue of their ethnicity,
just by virtue of that physical descent.
But what this verse shows is that even under the old covenant,
you had to do more than just be born into a certain family
in order to be one of God's chosen people.
You had to also be circumcised.
Even under the Old Testament, circumcision was necessary.
And if a person were not circumcised,
then that person were cut off from his people.
Therefore, they're no longer considered one of God's chosen people
because they've broken that covenant.
Now in the New Testament, we do not observe physical circumcision.
Galatians chapter 2, Galatians 5 and 6 make that very clear.
Under the new covenant,
there's the circumcision of the heart and of the spirit.
But what I'm illustrating is that being a certain ethnicity
has never made you automatically God's chosen people.
Under the old covenant,
you had to be circumcised among other things
in order to remain one of God's chosen people.
So again, this just goes to show that this idea
that just a race or an ethnicity
is automatically God's chosen people.
You try to point out the fact,
hey, they reject the Lord Jesus Christ.
They're worshiping another God.
People say, it doesn't matter.
It has nothing to do with it.
It's just the fact that they are descended
from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
that makes them chosen or elect.
Now some might say,
well, they are physically circumcised though.
So under the old covenant, they're good.
Well, guess what?
The old covenant is no longer in effect.
Hebrews 8 says,
and that he sayeth a new covenant,
he hath made the first old.
Now that which decayeth and waxeth old
is ready to vanish away.
In the new covenant,
if they don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,
they are not the chosen people.