Deuteronomy 10:12-22--Circumcise Your Heart

Deuteronomy 10:12-22
English Standard Version

Circumcise Your Heart
12 “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, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good? 14 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. 18 He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. 19 Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. 20 You shall fear the LORD your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear. 21 He is your praise. He is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen. 22 Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.

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See how the conversation about the letter of the Law is followed by a conversation about the people giving their hearts to the LORD and how God is not simply looking for external obedience, but He wants them to have changed lives and changed hearts that are forever marked in a way that everyone knows that they belong to the LORD?

To fear the LORD is to honor Him and to obey Him, and to serve Him with both awe and reverence.  We are to love the LORD our God with all of our heart and soul (and mind and strength), and we are to obey His commandments because He has given to them to us for our good.

The LORD is the Maker, Creator, Ruler, and Sustainer of everything in heaven and earth--things seen and unseen.  The LORD specifically chose, by Election, the patriarch--Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the LORD has specifically chosen Israel as a people for Himself.  Why?  For no reason other than it brought Him pleasure and glory to reveal Himself and His plan of salvation to the world through these people--people which did nothing to deserve His love (none of us deserve it) and to work in them and through them in such a way that everyone's response must be "Glory to God."

So the people are called here and now to dedicate themselves by being marked not outwardly through the covenant of circumcision that was given to Abraham at the birth of Isaac (which the Pharisees were so proud of in the days of Jesus), but to circumcise their hearts so that they would no longer be stubborn and rebellious like the previous generation that had just fallen dead in the wilderness.

Moses then calls the LORD the God of gods and Lord of lords, and tells us that He is great, mighty, awesome, and impartial in all of His judgments.  He never takes a bribe and gives justice to those who have no one to speak for them--the widow and orphan.  He takes care of the sojourner (like Abraham and his family were, and how these people were in Egypt) making sure that they have food and clothing.  In fact, for the very reason that these Israelites were sojourners in Egypt, they are to have compassion on sojourners and take care of them just as they would have wanted others to take care of them.

They are to fear the LORD and worship and obey Him only.  They are to cling only to Him, and swear only by His Name.  I believe this to once again be a warning to the people to avoid idolatry and fraternization with the Canaanites--don't intermarry with them, don't get into business dealings with them, and don't try to make treaties or friendships with them.  Cling only to the LORD and trust wholly in Him for everything.

The people are to remember to praise Him for who He is and what He has done for them.  The ways in which He used the plagues to defeat Pharaoh, the way in which the Red Sea swallowed up Pharaoh's army, and the way in which the LORD brought judgment upon the people who were rebellious with fiery serpents and even having the earth open up and swallow them and their families and their possessions.  The people have seen great and terrible things that should remind them to fear the LORD and give their hearts completely to Him.

Last, but not least, the LORD has Moses remind the people that He has been faithful to fulfill the Abrahamic covenant.  When Jacob and his children and grandchildren went down to Egypt, they were but 70 people, but the LORD blessed them and multiplied them from a family into a nation of people that were already uncountable like the stars in the heavens and that is even moreso true today as the LORD has been faithful to protect Israel though all of history.  Why would He do this thing?  Again, for His good pleasure, to show how good and powerful He is in a way that will cause all the nations of the earth to worship Him, and to fulfil His plan of salvation not just for the people of Israel, but for the whole world through the one of whom the Abrahamic covenant speaks, "Through you will all the nations of the world be blessed."  Do not lose sight of the gospel even though we are only in the book of Deuteronomy.  It's all about Jesus from Genesis to Revelation.  Jesus is the one that makes it possible for us to have clean hearts that are "circumcised" for the LORD and the one who fulfilled the Law that we could not--His righteousness has been imparted to us, and our unrighteousness has been imparted to Him