Bud Powel: Infant Baptism

http://basketoffigs.org/Facebook%20Notes/zipporah.htm

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.