How
Grace Circumcises Our Hearts
Deut.
30:1-10 (NIV)
When all these blessings and curses I have
set before you come upon you and you take them to heart wherever the Lord your
God disperses you among the nations, [2] and when you and your children return
to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul
according to everything I command you today, [3] then the Lord your God will
restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all
the nations where he scattered you. [4] Even if you have been banished to the
most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather
you and bring you back. [5] He will bring you to the land that belonged to your
fathers, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous
and numerous than your fathers. [6] The Lord your God will circumcise your
hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with
all your heart and with all your soul, and live. [7] The Lord your God will put
all these curses on your enemies who hate and persecute you. [8] You will again
obey the Lord and follow all his commands I am giving you today. [9] Then the
Lord your God will make you most prosperous in all the work of your hands and
in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your
land. The Lord will again delight in you and make you prosperous, just as he
delighted in your fathers, [10] if you obey the Lord your God and keep his
commands and decrees that are written in this Book of the Law and turn to the
Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
Our universal human problem – we know what to do but
we are powerless to do it!
[6] The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts
and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your
heart and with all your soul, and live.
The heart is the seat of the entire acting self –
all our imaginations, thinking, decisions are shaped by the heart.
1. A circumcised
heart is when we serve and obey God not because we have to but because
we want to and because we love to
Our pleasure and our duty, though opposite
before, since we have seen his beauty, are joined to part no more: (Olney Hymns; Book
III, Hymn 3, p. 293)
A circumcised heart
exists when our duty to God and our pleasure in God are joined together
as one
Romans
2:29 (NIV)
No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly;
and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the
written code. Such a man’s praise is not from men, but from God.
[6] The Lord your God will circumcise
your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him
with all your heart and with all your soul, and live. [7] The Lord your
God will put all these curses on your enemies who hate and persecute you. [8]
You will again obey the Lord and follow all his commands I am giving you
today.
Deut.
29:4 (NIV)
But to this day the Lord has not given you
a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear.
2. Signs of a Circumcised Heart:
Love – A circumcised heart exists when we not only understand God’s love and
teachings but when we finally experience, taste and see it
Obedience Change – We don’t obey to get a changed heart; rather, the obedience is the result
of the changed heart
Living – We don’t just exist amid the changing waves of life but we live
fully because of real spiritual growth
Genesis
15:9-10; 12, 17-18(NLT)
The Lord
told him, “Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a
three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” So Abram presented all these to him and
killed them. Then he cut each animal down the middle and laid the halves side
by side…As the sun was going down, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a
terrifying darkness came down over him…After the sun went down and darkness
fell, Abram saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the halves
of the carcasses. So the Lord made a covenant with Abram that day
Col.
2:11-12 (NIV)
In him you were also circumcised, in the
putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of
men but with the circumcision done by Christ, [12] having been buried with him
in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who
raised him from the dead.
3. Begin to fully
grasp the depth of what it took for Jesus to be cut off and make possible a
new heart, if that moves you, that is the beginning of a new heart
To see the law by Christ
fulfilled
And to hear His pardoned voice
Transforms a slave into a child
And duty into choice. (Book III, Hymn 62, p. 344)
I am grateful to Tim Keller,
from whom much of this sermon came from…