Crushing by T. D. Jakes

Author:T. D. Jakes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: FaithWords
Published: 2019-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

Cutting a New Name

Forgive me for dramatizing this bizarre surgery in the ancient desert on the edges of Egypt, but it demands not just our understanding but our experiential appreciation. Just about any man would be hesitant to line up for a circumcision at a mature age. Simply put, being approached with a knife is already something that would give anyone pause. However, someone approaching you with a knife for circumcision might cause them some injury. We all have our limits, and I believe each man of age would consider that as one of them. Yet, God approached Moses that evening for the very thing that was required of every Hebrew male on the eighth day of his life. But, looking within Exodus 4:18–31, it’s quite clear that Moses had not led his son under the knife.

I must admit that this is a peculiar passage in the Bible, and one that troubled me for many years. I wrestled back and forth with the question of why an omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent God would commission Moses to carry out His orders of setting His people free and, while he was on his way to do just that, suddenly decide to kill him. Why would God go back on His word? Was circumcision that serious? If so, why?

It was the humanity in me that was asking such questions. However, God’s divinity spoke, and I realized that if God really wanted Moses dead, Zipporah could have done nothing to stop it. It’s quite possible, then, that God did not require Moses’ life, as some have been led to believe. Rather, God was proving a point that would be illustrated over and over again throughout Scripture. If circumcision was so important to God that His visit almost killed Moses, doesn’t that warrant us looking back at its institution? It’s that question that directed me back to Abram. Notice that I spoke of his old name (Abram) and not the one he was later given by God (Abraham).

It’s in Genesis 17 that we first hear about circumcision, and though the very thought of it frightens most men to their core, it was something that Abram did to himself not at eighteen, thirty, or even sixty years of age. Abram performed his own circumcision at the tender old age of ninety-nine! It’s here that an overwhelming population of sensical people begin shouting their question: Who would do such a thing, and why? Well, I offer nothing better than God’s own words:

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