Child of Toplady (revised 2)

All right, I have a long way to go before I become a master hymnologist, but how’s this for my very first attempt:

87.87 D (e.g. Austria, Abbot’s Leigh, Calon Lan, Ebenezer, Here is Love, Lux Eoi)

CHRIST HAS DIED FOR ALL HIS PEOPLE,
Chosen ere the world began.
In our place, for our transgressions,
Suffered he, the sinless man.
Now through faith we stand forgiven:
Full atonement has been made!
This, the ground of our assurance:
At the cross sin’s price was paid.

From the grave Christ rose, victorious,
Lifted to the Father’s side,
Where he sits, now interceding
For his church, his chosen bride.
In our stead he faced God’s fury:
Now our hope is safe and sure,
For our sin in Christ once punished
Will be judged by God no more.

On the day of resurrection,
All will stand before God’s throne:
Some condemned to wrath eternal,
Others saved to be Christ’s own.
We rejoice in our redemption,
Wrought by him effectually,
Waiting for the new creation,
There to serve eternally.

(c) Daniel Newman 2006

Mathematics Fun

A friend of mine who will soon be a Mathematics teacher showed me this:

Well I thought it was funny, anyway.

Right wing rag

I was amused by THIS cartoon, posted by David Field this morning. I was also struck by this:

It’s funny, but also sad because it’s becoming increasingly true of modern evangelicalism with its strong emphasis on social action but little preaching of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Tetelestai

Tetelestai

Finals

Wednesday 2.30pm
Thursday 9.30am
Friday 2.30pm

I very much covet your prayers over the next few days. I expect the ‘blog will be neglected for the duration, but one never knows…

The Semi-Pelagian Narrower Catechism

THIS is very, very funny.

(Thanks to David Field of Oak Hill Theological College, who posted the link on his ‘blog).

Chewbacca Dr. Richard L. Pratt Jr.

Chewbacca

Dr. Richard L. Pratt Jr.

True Hunter-Gatherers

In Jeremiah 16.14ff, Yahweh is promising to bring Israel back out of the countries to which they had been exiled in judgment against their iniquity (vv. 12-13). He then says :

“Behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares Yahweh, and they shall catch them.” (v. 16)

It suddenly “clicked” for me that Jesus described the mission of his disciples in the same way:

“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (Matthew 4.19 and Mark 1.17)
“From now on, you will be catching men.” (Luke 5.10)

The implication of this for our understanding of Jesus therefore seems to be that he is the one who brings about the true restoration of Israel, sending out his fishers to catch the remnant of Israel and bring them into the restored, eschatological kingdom, a mission which encompasses even the Gentiles (v. 19). This is the continuing mission of the church as we live between the advents of Christ.

Verse 16 continues:

“I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rock.”

Go, hunt them down!

False Unity

No no no no no.

The official website of this event is HERE

Daniel 3: Out of the Frying Pan…

I’m very much looking forward to studying this in the BNC OICCU group this evening. You can’t really go far wrong with this chapter. I thought I’d have a quick look at it this morning in advance (I am not leading) and I ended up devoting my whole quiet time reading to it. There’s so much there. Jeremiah 15 will have to wait! Here follows some thoughts.

Introduction

Do you ever feel as if you just want to give up living the Christian life? You’ve been going for a while and just find it so difficult. You have a new Master to serve. Yet the world around you is carrying on as it always has, doing all that it can to satisfy its desires and you’re tempted to succumb to the attractions you forfeited when you acknowledged Christ as your Saviour and King. It’s so hard. And you know you should be spending time each day praying to your heavenly Father and listening to his voice in the Scriptures. You know you should meet regularly with believers, encouraging one another, and praising God and hearing his voice together. It requires commitment. How easy it would be to miss a day here, a week there, and spend longer asleep, or at work, or doing the DIY, just like the world around you. And being a Christian doesn’t win you many friends – trying to share the good news of the Lord Jesus offends your colleagues, and they just think you’re aloof and ‘holier than thou’. Wouldn’t it just be better to pack it all in?

Well, the people of Israel faced a similar situation. They had been exiled to Babylon, a pagan land with pagan gods and pagan morality. “How shall we sing Yahweh’s song in a foreign land?” (Ps. 137.4) they could well cry. Do they remain faithful to Yahweh, with all the difficulty and unpopularity and persecution that would bring? Or do they forsake him, and adopt the worship and mores and practices of Babylon? Daniel 3 holds up not only the example of three men who remain faithful, but also the saving activity of our faithful God as a goad to compel us to remain true. These are lessons Israel need to hear in a foreign land, and they are lessons we need to hear as God’s church living as aliens and strangers in the world.

There are two big reasons not to forsake God: idolatry is stupid and what goes up must come down.

1. Idolatry is stupid (vv. 1-7)

Here Nebuchadnezzar lays on a united worship service and all the eminent statesmen from all the provinces of his empire are there. When the band strikes up, they are to fall flat on their faces in worship of the statue that Nebuchadnezzar has set up, on pain of death. It seems as thought the writer wants us to see how silly this situation is. The phrase set up is repeated extensively. He “set it up” (v. 1). He gathered the people to worship the image he “set up” (v. 2). “Set up”, “set up”, “set up”, “set up”. It’s not a real god. It’s the work of human hands. How silly all this pomp and ceremony is for something that someone has made. Richard Baxter is recorded as having thanked God for the “class of sinners in this place [Kidderminster]“, where he served, for it demonstrated well the stupidity of sin. That’s the impression the writer is trying to create here.

Don’t God’s people find themselves in the same situation today? Oh, we don’t have to bow down before false gods in such a literal sense (yet – but it’s not all that implausible is it with the growth of Islam in this country, and in America). But isn’t there the pressure at work to plot and scheme to work your way up the pecking order? If you don’t, then you’re passed over for promotion. Or you report some gross act of dishonesty and you’re fired for not being a team player. Perhaps there’s the expectation to work above and beyond the standard hours – perhaps on a Sunday, or late in the evening – and when you refuse, which you’re quite within your rights to do, because you prioritize meeting with God and his people on his day, or because you’ve made that commitment to the children’s club or the home group, you lose your job. There must be some significance to the word “image” – see Exodus 20.4. The people saw no form when God appeared to them at the mountain, so they were not to make any image of him. For us, Christ is the image of the invisible God (Col 1.15) and Christ is revealed to us in the Scriptures. We may seek to proclaim Christ as the exclusive Saviour and Lord and lose our friends. We may be encouraged to think that all religions are equally valid ways of worshipping God and even be invited to multi-faith services. When we refuse, we are thought of as extremists and are reviled.

The pressure to conform must have been great. With all those eminent officials assembled to bow down before the image, it’s as if Tony Blair and Gordon Brown came out to endorse it, as well as David Beckham making an appearance in support. And is there not overwhelming peer pressure on us as believers today to conform to the pattern of the world?

Yes, in all those situations, we could submit to the world and be pressed into its mould. But how foolish that would be, for then we would be worshipping things that have been “set up”, “set up”, “set up”, “set up”, the work of human hands, rather than the true, living and sovereign God. It’s interesting actually, that in the rest of the story, Nebuchadnezzar is only given the title “King” twice. It’s as if the writer is reminding us that the ruler of this world is not the king: God is. The fear of the Lord, then, is the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of mere men is utter folly.

2. What goes up must come down (vv. 8-30)

I intend this in the opposite sense to its common usage. What I mean is that the path to exaltation is humiliation.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to worship the image, in obedience to God’s word, and they were reported to the king. He gives them one last opportunity to worship his image or else they will be thrown into the furnace. N. even presumes that he is greater than God, expecting there to be no god who is able to deliver S, M and A out of his hands. S, M and A are confident in God’s ability to save but recognize that he may not actually save them. In that case, they are willing to perish rather than deny their God. The furnace is heated and they are bound, fully clothed and thrown into the furnace. A fourth man is with them in the furnace, and then they are brought out unscathed, evoking the praise of N. S, M and A are then promoted.

Isn’t this the continuation of the conflict and victory foretold in Genesis 3.15? This time, S, M and A are the seed of the woman, the people of God, with Nebuchadnezzar and his men the seed of the serpent. Yes, S, M and A are bound, and thrown into the furnace, but they are spared, while N’s men are consumed (v. 22). And is not this the pattern of Jesus’ life? Sinclair Ferguson, in his very helpful Proclamation Trust Booklet on Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, describes this as “proleptic participation”. The shape of the cross is divinely imprinted on the lives of God’s people before and after Christ. Christ, the Seed of the woman, was given the opportunity of saving himself through the worship of Satan (Matthew 4.9-10) and he resisted. He had to go the way of the cross, humbling himself “by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Phil. 2.8). By taking the punishment for sins on the cross, he defeated the enemy of God and his people (Col 2.14-15), the Serpent himself. He rose again from the dead and is now seated at the right hand of the Father: “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name”. Through humilation, he is glorified.

This is true of those who are united to Christ by faith in the present. There is conflict now with the world and pressure to deny our Lord. We must “take up our cross and follow him”. This is surely what the apostle Paul was talking about in Acts 14.22, when he encouraged the disciples “to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God”. Individual believers may be preserved from death. God is good to us, more so than we deserve. We may not be preserved: last October we remembered the 450th anniversary of the martyrdom of Latimer and Ridley, and this March the 450th anniversary of the martrydom of Cranmer. S, M and A are the remnant of the Old Testament church in this narrative and corporately they are preserved. Christ will build his church, “and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16.18).

This salvation will of course ultimately be the experience of each believer when the Lord Jesus returns and crushes Satan under his (and our) feet (Rom 16.20) and we will enjoy the resurrection of the body and everlasting glory. “Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life.” (Rev. 2.10).

It must be stressed that we’re not saved meritoriously. Christ suffered and was exalted, and by virtue of our union with him and his benefits applied to us – the forgiveness of our sins and the imputation of his righteousness – we will be delivered. It’s dependent on God’s mercy, not our merit. But the means or the route through which we get there is the way of the cross.

Having this confidence, let us follow the example of S, M and A in the midst of a land that is hostile to us and to our Lord and resist the pressure to forsake him and worship things that have been “set up” by human hands.

Conclusion

The Christian life is hard. It would be easy to give up and go the way of the world. The message of Daniel 3 is: “Don’t!”. Idolatry is stupid, and hardship is the way to glory. Christ died and rose again. United to him we will rise again. He will preserve his church. So let’s hold fast and not forsake him because of the ultimately temporary pressures of the world.

Tempus fugit

Where has today gone? I’m sure they turn up the speed of time shortly before Finals. Time passes more quickly in Oxford than elsewhere in the country, I have found, anyway. How Oxford time is therefore five minutes slower than Greenwich Mean Time is beyond me!

Practical Application of Biblical Theology

Please can we kindly remember in which period of redemptive history “we live and move and have our being”. We do not live in the same period as the Chronicler. We live after the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ and after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. It is surely therefore inappropriate to sing (for example) “Lord, let your glory fall // as on that ancient day”, that day when God’s “presence like a cloud” descended and “the priests were overwhelmed”. To expect this detracts from the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word who “became flesh and tabernacled among us”, which is surely the inauguration of the fulfilment of the God’s glory and presence manifesting itself in the temple (see, e.g. John 2.13-17). Of the Lord Jesus, the apostle John could write, “We have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father”. To be sure, this continues to be fulfilled in believers now, who are living stones comprising the temple of which Christ is the cornerstone, as Christ is present in them by his Spirit (the giving of the Spirit a once-for-all event in the believer’s life contemporaneous with conversion). This will of course be consummated in the New Jerusalem, in which is placed the throne of God and of the Lamb, when “his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or son, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign or ever and ever.” (Revelation 22.3b-5)

Mastermind

In case anyone is interested and has access to a television set, I shall be appearing on Mastermind on Thursday (18th May) at 8.30pm on BBC2. My specialist subject is The Reformation in England 1500-1600.

Turretin on the Covenant of Grace (iv)

“The Old Testament is taken most especially in two ways, either broadly or strictly. Broadly, it denotes in general the whole dispensation under which the fathers lived from the beginning of the world until Christ. It contained the doctrine of grace delivered to the ancients, promising salvation and life to the people openly (indeed, under the condition of perfect obedience rendered to the moral law and the threatening of transgressors with death, together with the intolerable burden of ceremonies and the yoke of the most restricted Mosaic polity); reservedly, however, under the condition of repentance and faith in the Messiah about to come. In this respect, the Old Testament embraces three things most especially: (1) old doctrine, partly legal and partly evangelical; (2) an old servile form of worship and ecclesiastical service, laborious and shadowy; (3) the old method of external polity bound to one people and place.”

Twelfth Topic, Q. VIII, III

“Strictly, however, it denotes the covenant of works or the moral law given by Moses – the unbearable burden (abastakto) of legal ceremonies being added, absolutely and apart from grace. The former was signified properly and of itself (if the scope and intention of the lawgiver be considered) because in that first economy, he joined together these three things by giving the old covenant or legal dispensation, not to abolish the promises, but to lead unto Christ. The latter is accessory and accidental, springing from an ignoring of the true end and the devising of a false. Te true end was Christ for righteousness to every believer (Rom. 10:4) but the self-righteous Jews did not obtain this end because it was proposed under a veil (2 Cor. 3:14), i.e. under a wrapping of types and of figures because the promise of grace on account of Christ was clothed with legal rites. Hence they invented a false end, maintaining that the law was given in order that by its observance they might be justified before God and be saved (Rom. 10: 3-5). Against this error the apostle everywhere disputes from that hypothesis which takes the law strictly and opposes it to the promise.”

Twelfth Topic, Q. VIII, IV

“The New Covenant is also taken in a twofold manner either broadly, in as much as it stands for the covenant of grace in general made with sinners, which existed under the Old Testament as well before Christ appeared as under the New after he had been manifested; or strictly, for the covenant of grace promulgated after the manifestation of Christ in the flesh, which should continue to the end of the world.”

Twelfth Topic, Q. VIII, V

“Those… who make two covenants diverse in substance, take the old covenant strictly, not only separating the promise of grace from it, but opposeing the one to the other. In this sense, Paul seems to take it frequently (as 2 Cor. 3; Gal. 4), so that the old covenant is the covenant of works and the new the covenant of the gospel and of faith. On the other hand, they who maintain only one (as Calvin, Martyr, Ursinus) take the word covenant more broadly, as embracing also the promise of grace (although somewhat obscurely). Because that promise was dispensed in different ways before and after Christ, they distinguish it into two – the old and new – by a distribution not of genus into species (as the former), but of subject according to accidents (which the others do not deny); thus they differ only as to the different use of terms, but not as to the thing itself (as Calvin observes, ICR, 2.7.2).”

Twelfth Topic, Q. VIII, VI

Turretin on the Covenant of Grace (iii)

I make no apology for reproducing swathes of Turretin on this subject. He writes very lucidly and steers a clear, safe course through this sometimes confusing matter.

“It pleased God to administer the covenant of grace in this period [from Moses to Christ] under a rigid legal economy – both on account of the condition of the people still in infancy and on account of the putting off of the advent of Christ and the satisfaction to be rendered by him. A twofold relation (schesis) ought always to obtain: the one legal, more severe, thorugh which by a new promulgation oft he law and of the covenant of works, with an intolerable yoke of ceremonies, he wished to set forth what men owed and what was to be expected by them on account of duty unperformed. In this respect, the law is called the letter that kills (2 Cor. 3:6) and the handwriting which was contrary to us (Col. 2:14), because by it men professed themselves guilty and children of death, the declaration being written by their own blood in circumcision and by the blood of victims. The other relation was evangelical, sweeter, inasmuch as “the law was a schoolmaster unto Christ” (Gal. 3:24) and contained “the shadow of things to come” (Heb. 10:1), whose body and express image is in Christ.”

Twelfth Topic, Q. VII, XXXI

“According to that twofold relation, the administration can be viewed either as to the external economy of legal teaching or as to the internal truth of the gospel promise lying under it. The matter of that external economy was the threefold law – moral, ceremonial and forensic… The form was the pact added to that external dispensation, which on the part of God was the promise of the land of Canaan and of rest and happiness in it; and under the image of each, of heaven and the rest (sabbatismou) in him (Heb. 4:3, 9); or of eternal life according to the clause, “Do this and live.” On the part of the people, it was a stipulation of obedience to the whole law or righteousness both perfect (Deut. 27:26; Gal. 3:10) and personal and justification by it (Rom. 2:13). But this stipulation in the Israelite covenant was only accidental, since it was added only in order that man by its weakness (adynamian) might be led to reject his own righteousness and to embrace another’s, latent under the law.“

Twelfth Topic, Q. VII, XXXII

“The end of that economy (by way of negation [kat' arsin]) was not the justification of man. By reason of the moral law, they could easily know their own sins, by which they became guilty (Rom. 3:20); the irritation of their lusts (Rom. 7:7); the impossibility of fulfilling the moral law (Rom. 8:3); the curse of the law, which it denounced against the least transgression (Gal.3:10). By reason of the ceremonial law, they knew that the end of that economy was not the justification of man (1) from the nature of the ceremonies, which was wholly worldly and carnal, having nothing in common with the conscience; (2) from their repetition and iteration, such as the justification which consists in not remembering of sins (Heb. 8:12)”

Twelfth Topic, Q. VII, XXXIII

“Such was the external dispensation of the Old Testament. The internal, latent under it, pertains to the substance of the covenant of grace and of the gospel promise. This was also administered in different ways and by various degrees. On God’s part, it contained both Christ himself (the foundation of the covenant promised in the oracles and lying under the types of ceremonies) and in his sufferings, crucifixion, death and glory (obscurely indeed and hidden)… and promises (temporal as well as spiritual), which the formula of the covenant (“I am thy God”) includes in itself.”

Twelfth Topic, Q. VII, XLIII

“To these spiritual promises pertain (1) remission of sins and justification. As this derogated the law causally in itself considered, so it is ascribed to faith in Christ (Acts 13:39; Rom. 4:7) and was claimed by the fathers (as Abraham, David and others, Ps. 32; Rom. 4)… (2) Adoption, attributed to the Israelites, not only as external (Rom. 9:4), but also internal, without which the former would have been useless (Gal. 4:2); although it was connected with a servile condition on account of the minority of children… (3) Sanctification, which is everywhere commanded and promised under the Old Testament (Lev. 26; Is. 1). (4) The gift of the Spirit, included in the promise made to Abraham (Gal. 3:13, 14) and found to have been promised frequently elsewhere… However this was not in the same manner as under the New Testament… (5) the resurrection of the dead, which Christ deduced from the formula of the covenant; (6) eternal life, also included in that formula as the apostle gathers from the same (Heb. 11:10)”

Twelfth Topic, Q. VII, XLV

Chiasm in Exodus 6

None of the commentators (by which I mean Motyer in his BST on Exodus, T. D. Alexander in the IVP New Bible Commentary, the Tyndale OT Commentary and Davis, a liberal SCM commentator) appear to have spotted this but it seems to be clear:

A I AM YAHWEH (v. 2)

B I appeared to ABRAHAM, ISAAC AND JACOB and established my covenant with them to GIVE them THE LAND of Canaan (vv. 3-4)

C I AM YAHWEH who will bring YOU OUT FROM UNDER THE BURDENS OF THE EGYPTIANS (vv. 5-6)

D I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God (v. 7)

C’ I AM YAHWEH who has brought YOU OUT FROM UNDER THE BURDENS OF THE EGYPTIANS (v. 7)

B’ I will bring you into THE LAND that I swore to GIVE to ABRAHAM, ISAAC AND JACOB (v.

A’ I AM YAHWEH (v.

The point of this block comes in v. 7, which is the refrain of the covenant of grace: “I will take you to be my people and I will be your God. This is in answer to Moses’ complaints in 5.22-23: “Why have you done evil to this people?”; “You have not delivered your people at all.”

God is therefore giving assurance to Moses and to Israel that despite the worsening circumstances they find themselves in, he is going to take Israel to be his people and he will be their God, just as he promised in Genesis 17. This is a miniature of the enlarged (but connected) promises we have in Christ, being heirs of Abraham and members of the covenant of grace and thus true Israel by faith in Christ. In the New Jerusalem, we “will be his people, and God himself will be with us as our God” (Rev. 21.5). The land we await is no less than the new heavens and the new earth. Richard Pratt compares the land which Israel was to occupy with Omaha beach, the starting point for the advancement of the kingdom of God which will expand to fill the whole, renewed earth. We, too, live in a pagan country that is hostile to us and, although I am no prophet or prophet’s son, there will be times when things get horribly worse, both for the church corporately, and by extension for members of the covenant community in their own lives. This therefore, is a message that we very much need to take on board and preach to ourselves and store up for the future. We have the added advantage of being able to look back in the pages of Scripture of the completed Exodus event, as well as the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, which guarantees our own resurrection on that last day if we are in him.

(Can I just preach this to my FOCUS table? It’s far more efficient and I would still – I hope – be modelling good Bible handling to them. I’d let them ask questions and discuss where they wanted to. Peter Masters’ “Bible Studies” at the Metropolitan Tabernacle are sermons, after all.)

Reformed Gospel Preaching

The other night I was listening to Richard Pratt who commented (whilst talking about the assemblies in Chronicles) that it wasn’t un-Reformed to be joyful and celebrate. He said that most neo-Calvinists thought being Reformed meant being mean to people and feeling sad all the time and he cited the Heidelberg catechism, question 2, which asks, “How many things are necessary for thee to know, that thou … mayest live and die happily?”

Yesterday, a friend drew my attention to an article in the Times reporting on a study carried out for the Church of England which “has debunked the widely held view that young people are spiritual seekers on a journey to find transcendent truths to fill the “God-shaped hole” within them”. This sounds suspiciously like Romans 3.10 – “no one seeks for God” – which was Paul’s verdict on humanity nearly 2,000 years ago, and which, of course was David’s conclusion about 1,000 years before that (Pss. 14 and 53). This is particularly helpful to remember when the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship worker tells you that people are interested in spirituality. On the whole, they are not. The Church of England report concluded that “the goal in life of young people was happiness”.

Putting the two together, it seems to my mind at least an excellent idea to use the second question of the Heidelberg Catechism in the evangelization of our society. Why invent something new when the old resources work well enough? In answer to the question “What do you need to know to live and die happily?” the Catechism gives three answers with Scriptural proofs:

1. How great your sins and miseries are

One (of many) verses that may be used is Titus 3.3: “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.”

2. How you may be delivered from all your sins and miseries

Acts 10.43: “Whoever believes in Jesus receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

3. How you shall express your gratitude to God for such deliverance

Romans 6.13: “Present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.”

This is the message I intend, with the help of God, to proclaim to Oxford next Saturday as we continue in our open-air work. It is at the same time Biblical and incarnational, holding firmly to the ancient path of the repentance and faith while meeting people where they are. And it requires next to no work on my part, because the Reformers have done an excellent job in setting forth this truth.

Turretin the Northerner

“This was the opinion of our Calvin with many others…”

Topic 12, Q. VII.XVI

Turretin on the Covenant of Grace (ii)

The particularity of the covenant of grace appears from various considerations…Sixth, from the sealing of the covenant, which is particular; whether the external by the sacraments (which are the peculiar property of the church) or the internal by the Spirit (Eph . 1:13), given only to the members of Christ. Nor thence can you properly infer – therefore also the covenant belongs to the called who are in the church and not only to the elect. For the offering of the sealing is one thing, the real application of it another. The former is common to all the called; the latter special to believers. So far is the covenant from being sealed for salvation unto unbelievers that on the contrary their own condemnation is sealed because they pronounce judgment upon themselves.

12, VI.XVI

A Warning to Fathers

The perils of not applying the covenant sign to your children:

“At a lodging place on the way the LORD met him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” So he let him alone. It was then that she said, “A bridegroom of blood”, because of the circumcision.”

Exodus 4.24-26