The Circumcised Heart

Moses was speaking to the children of Israel just prior to their entering in the land of Canaan - the Promised Land. The first generation which disobeyed God had fallen dead in the wilderness. The second generation, brought up in the wilderness, was here prepared to cross over into the Promised Land of God.

They were under the Moses Law. Moses spent the entire Book of Deuteronomy recalling and restating the Mosaic Law which includes circumcision as a sign of God's covenant relation with His people. But in the middle of the whole setting Moses said:

"And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command you today for your good? In deed heaven and the highest heavens belong to the Lord your God, also the earth with all that is in it. The Lord delighted only in your fathers, to love them; and He chose their descendants after them, you above all peoples, as it is this day. Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer" (Deu. 10:12 - 16, NKJV, emphasis added).

Clearly Moses linked uncircumcised heart with being stubborn and stiff-necked. Basically Moses was saying that if Israel would circumcise their heart, their heart would be tender, soft and sensitive so that they could hear God and be touched by Him. If their heart remained uncircumcised, their heart would remain hard and callous and insensitive to God.

People with uncircumcised hearts

One of the characteristic traces of God's people in the Old Testament was their hardheartedness. God called them rebellious, stubborn and disobedient children. In fact they were so characteristic of all fallen humanity. They were no more stubborn than any other ethnic group or nationality; they were just like us.

The Words of the Lord came to His people through His prophets, but they refused to listen:

According to Zechariah

"But they refused to heed, shrugged their shoulders, and stopped their ears so that they could not hear. Yes, they made their hearts like flint, refucing to hear the law and the words which the Lord of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets" (Zech. 7:11, 12, NKJV).

According to Jeremiah

Jeremiah's ministry was to give a message from God to people who didn't like to hear it.

"O Lord, are not Your eyes on the truth? You have stricken them, but they have not grieved; You have consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to return" (Jer. 5:3).

Israel refused to submit and bend under the Hand of God.

"Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No! They were not at all ashamed; nor did they know how to blush" (Jer. 6:15; 8:12).

Israel had forgotten how to feel guilty when God said something was seriously wrong.

"Therefore the showers have been withheld, and there has been no latter rain. You have a harlot's forehead; you refused to be ashamed" (Jer. 3:3, emphasis added).

One of the reasons why rain was withheld was that the nation was stubborn, refused to feel guilty and refused to be ashamed - a judgment of God.

"Harlot's forehead" was a metaphor used to describe the nation of Israel in comparison of a woman who was so misused and abused that she got so harden that when you look into her face there was no softness, no tenderness, no gentleness and no compassion.

God's warning to the Hebrew believers

Many Jewish believers, having stepped out of Judaism into Christianity, wanted to reverse their course in order to escape persecution by their countrymen. The writer of Hebrews exhorted them to "go to perfection" (Heb. 6:1). He urged them to develop within themselves an enduring faith to withstand the tests and trials of life.

"Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellions. Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called 'Today' lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin" (Heb. 3:7, 12, 13, emphasis added).

Notice that "unbelief" is a product of an evil heart; "sin" causes the heart to be hardened.

God was saying, "You must obey, respond and stay soft. Don't let things in your life cause you to resist and hold back what I am speaking to you today".

"Today" is repeated several times all through to the next few Chapters. I believe the reason being, the key for tomorrow is today! What they had started today must carry them through until tomorrow. But they had grown so accustomed to not believing and disobeying God that by the time they got to the test of their faith, their hearts began to harden and got callous before "tomorrow" arrived.

Tender hearted Bible Characters

Here are some examples of tender hearted Bible characters:

1. David

According to the Scripture the greatest person ever lived with circumcised heart and was tender to the Lord was David. God removed king Saul and made David king.

God said, "I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will" (Acts 13:22, NKJV, emphasis added).

Notice that it is impossible to do all of God's will without a circumcised heart.

David's encounter with Saul

1 Samuel 24 tells of how David spared Saul when he found him in a cave. Instead of killing Saul, David only cut off a corner of Saul's robe.

"Now it happened afterward that David's heart troubled him because he had cut Saul's robe, and he said to his men, 'The Lord forbit that I should do this thing to my master, the Lord's anointed, to stretch out my hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord'" (1 Sam. 24:5, 6, emphasis added).

David's heart was so sensitive and tender that he felt bad even just cutting off a bit of Saul's robe.

David's confession of sin

2 Samuel 12 tells of David's confession of sin after Nathan, sent by the Lord, to confront him after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed later. David saw the evil in his own heart and said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord" (2 Sam. 12:13). He also wrote the beautiful Psalm 51 - a prayer of true repentance. Only a person with circumcised heart could write "Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight" (Ps. 51:4).

2. King Josiah

Josiah was a son of David and he became king when He was only eight years old.

"And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the ways of his father David; he did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left" (2 Kings 22:2).

Josiah started a National revival and restoration of the work of God (Verses 11, 16, 18).

The Lord said, "Because your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, that they would become a desolation and a curse, and you tore your clothes and wept before Me, I also have heard you" (2 Kings 22:19, emphasis added).

The lesson learnt is - The Lord hears the prayer of a person who has a circumcised heart, a heart that is tender, soft and sensitive enough to hate sin.

Circumcision of the whole person

So far we have dealt with the circumcision of the heart. The Bible reveals two other areas of our bodies (our lives) that need to be circumcised.

1. Circumcision of the ears

Jeremiah was sent by the Lord to speak to a people (Judah) not only with uncircumcised heart but also with uncircumcised ears:

"To whom shall I speak and give warning, that they may hear? Indeed their ear is uncircumcised, and they cannot give heed. Behold, the word of the Lord is a reproach to them; they have no delight in it" (Jer. 6:10, emphasis added).

2. Cicumcision of the heart

For the sake of completeness I mention this again. Here are more Scriptures on the circumcision of the heart:

"And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live" (Deu. 30:6).

"Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your hearts, you men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, ..." (Jer. 4:4).

3. Circumcision of the lips

At the commission of Moses to free the children of Israel from the land of Egypt Moses said before the Lord:

"Behold I am of uncircumcised lips, and how shall Pharoah heed me" (Exodus 6:30)?

At the commission of Isaish as a prophet he said to the Lord:

"Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips" (Isaiah 6:5).

Uncircumcised lips are unclean and unfit for the Lord's use.

Relationship between circumcision and our faith

The three areas of our body that need to be circumcised are collectively involve in the salvation process - closely related to our faith.

"So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17).

"But what does it say? 'The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart' that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:8, 9).

The three areas of our body provide the channel by which the Word of God must go through before "the power of God unto salvation" (the gospel) coming out of it. In other words, the Word has to come in our ear, goes down into our heart and comes out (confesses) out of our mouth. In every place that the Word has to go, that area has to be circumcised; has to be tender and sensitive to God. Whether a person is saved or lost entirely depends on the condition of his ears, heart and lips - circumcised or uncircumcised!

Let us use the story of the rich man and Lazarus as an illustration of the above Spiritual principle (Luke 16:19 - 31).

The rich man who was tormented in Hades had five brothers. God had been speaking to them through Moses and the prophets; God had been trying to get their attention, but they didn't have the circumcied ears to listen and the circumcised heart to believe.

Jesus said, "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead" (Luke 16:31).

The problem is not who speaks to them, but lies in the condition of their ears and their hearts!