Circumcise Your Heart

Deuteronomy 10:14–17 (ESV) Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. 15 Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. 16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.

This is perhaps one of the most compelling appeals from Moses to Israel in all the Pentateuch. You hear his emotional call to this people known for mindlessly walking in disobedience over the course of 40 years since God saved them. And in this appeal, Moses goes all in on them realizing who God actually is, who they are because of Him and what their response should be. 

First they are to understand that the Lord is God and owner of all things. He does not need Israel. He does not come to them and save them because He is lonely and missing something. No, He has chosen them. He has decided to love them out of all the peoples of the Earth. While the Bible opens with God giving mankind the command to be fruitful and multiply it is Abraham's children who receive God's special favor. While at the Tower of Babel the people gathered to make a name for themselves, Israel is the chosen nation through whom the Name of God will be proclaimed to those nations. It is God's marvelous grace that choses this little helpless people and does wonders through them for all people to see. The lesson of God's choosing Israel shortly after the Tower of Babel is that mankind, no matter how boastful he gets or great he thinks he is, apart from the love of God, he is nothing.

To this end Moses appeals to the people that they circumcise their hearts. They are to not simply be another nation with another god among the many nations and their gods, they are to be people who are emotionally and spiritually bound to the God who called them and loved them. The difference between Israel and the nations around them was that their God did not need outward formulaic religious practices. Their God was to be their highest love, their greatest joy and their deepest commitment. God comes to us and saves us so that we might be transformed inwardly from the heart - a new heart set apart from the loves of this world.

Moses appeals also that they be no longer stubborn. Trust this God who loves you. Our hearts are circumcised when we give up doing life on our terms with our own ideas. This is where most of us struggle with God. We sincerely think He's about to do us wrong or has misled us. We turn to idols who we think can fulfill us and give us pleasure when all they do is ultimately fail us and destroy us. Moses tells them that this is THE GOD... this is not one of the many "lords" or powers out there among the nations. Israel has been accepted by the LORD who will bless them and multiply them. And the proof of their God's love and care for them has been 40 years in the making. He did not give them up and He brought them this far and will bring them all the way in to the land.

Deuteronomy 10:20 (ESV) You shall fear the LORD your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear.

Again, the Lord is looking for a people are joined to Him and love Him. This is not religious practice, this is relational closeness that comes from the heart. 

To know the Lord is to relent of your way or the ways of others and to yield heart and soul. 

Amen.