What Value has Circumcision? 1

Transcription

1 What Value has Circumcision? 1 1 Today, circumcision is something of an enigma! There are those who oppose it on grounds that they consider it wrong and cruel to inflict this on a child. Others, because they wish to see this mark of ethnic identity stamped out. Conversely, some will circumcise their sons whether or not the faith component is there or not, purely for health reasons. Whether you are for it or against it, it is an issue today. Nevertheless there is an important aspect to circumcision that is much less well considered. I quote from where Moses is relating to his people the instruction that he had received from God: Go, the LORD said to me, and lead the people on their way, so that they may enter and possess the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask 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, and to observe the LORD s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good? To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the LORD set his affection on your forefathers and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations, as it is today. Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt. Fear the LORD your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name. He is your praise; he is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes. 2 {Deut 10:11-21} Some twenty chapters further on, we come to: 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, 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, 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. 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. 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. 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. {Deut 30:1-6} {This is the promise of a, /from the, New Covenant} The use of the term heart in these passages, signifies the core of our being, the seat of our emotions and the centre of our will. So we will briefly consider, why physical circumcision in the first place? Then why the people were told {in this passage,} to circumcise their hearts. {Not just the foreskins of their sons} And also, why there is also a promise applying to a later date, that God will perform Himself, this operation on the hearts of His people. Should anyone think that this arrangement is a bit arbitrary, it is given to counter the effects of that done to us by hasatan! He who stole our hearts and for a while, our destiny! 1 This article produced by Mayim Chayim Messianic Fellowship, PO Box Eastbourne, East Sussex, U.K. - mayim_chayim@btinternet.com

2 The practise of physical circumcision began upon the person and people of Abraham following God s instruction. Nevertheless, why was this required, especially for adult males? And it was not only Abraham that endured the experience. We read: When he had finished speaking with Abraham, God went up from him. On that very day Abraham took his son Ishmael and all those born in his household or bought with his money, every male in his household, and circumcised them, as God told him. Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised, and his son Ishmael was thirteen; Abraham and his son Ishmael were both circumcised on that same day. And every male in Abraham s household, including those born in his household or bought from a foreigner, was circumcised with him. {Genesis 17: 22-27} Health issues aside, {and the cleanliness issue is certainly a valid reason for male circumcision,} the reason for the requirement will be found within the preceding verses of the above chapter. There we read that God covenanted {promised} the land of Canaan {roughly speaking, the territory west of the river Jordan, and much of Lebanon} to Abraham forever. Abraham s part of the arrangement and also that of his male descendants, was to be circumcised in their flesh. To identify themselves as the people of God and to dedicate the part of themselves which secures their future {through children,} to Him. Following the Exodus from Egypt around four hundred years later, they were to be ushered in to an experience not known since the time of Jacob and his sons. During their time of slavery in Egypt and whilst they spent forty years in the desert, Israelites would not have seen much rain. We read from Deuteronomy chapter 11 and verses 10-12: The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end. The Eternal God, their God, was not only intending to fulfill His promise to Abraham, but also ensure that it was a great place to live. Moreover, it was /is to be even more special, as Moses proclaimed in Exodus 15:17: You will bring them in and plant them on the mountain of your inheritance the place, O LORD, you made for your dwelling, the sanctuary, O Lord, your hands established. Yet to fully benefit from this arrangement, they were instructed not to take God for granted. The two preceding verses from Deuteronomy, read: Observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, and so that you may live long in the land that the LORD swore to your forefathers to give to them and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. Well, could they take steps to assist themselves here? Moses had just passed on the means, as we read from the preceding chapter: Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. {Humble yourself} Fear the LORD your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name. He is your praise; he is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes. They were to own Him as their God, just as He was willing to Own them as His people! It was put to them this way, resuming from chapter 11 and verse 13: 2

3 .... if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied. Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. Then the LORD s anger will burn against you, and he will shut the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the LORD is giving you. Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the door-frames of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the LORD swore to give your forefathers, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth. If you carefully observe all these commands I am giving you to follow to love the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways and to hold fast to him then the LORD will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and stronger than you. Every place where you set your foot will be yours: Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the western sea. No man will be able to stand against you. It can be clearly seen from this - Holding fast, faithfully obeying, loving and serving Him with heart and with soul, i.e. - Circumcising their hearts, that this was a commitment like unto to a marriage agreement. The physical aids of writing His words on door-frames etc. and even physical circumcision, were not an end in themselves, but a help, to focus into the necessary next step. Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. To quote from the apostle Paul s letter to the believers in Rome: Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. If those who are not circumcised keep the law s requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker. A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. 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. What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision? Much in every way!.... {Romans 2:25-3:2} Those latter questions and the answer are often seemingly overlooked. We do need things to help us focus, that God may be and also remain, our Primary love. We at Mayim Chayim, for example not only read concerning, but also seek to keep as best we can the Feasts of the Lord and Sabbath days as Scripture teaches. Why? Because for one thing, their practice aids us in understanding why they were given And their benefits! Moreover, we are assured that there are blessings to be had when one does a thing God s way, even away from the Holy Land. A matter of Life and Death, is how these matters are portrayed within Deuteronomy 30: 15-. See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. Yet even to those who do not have the witness of the Word, covenants and tradition, the evidence of the heavens speaks: 3

4 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God s invisible qualities his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.... {Romans 1:18-22} And from the Psalmist Psa 19: 1-4: The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. The Eternal One cannot be ignored except at our peril. So what went wrong for His people? And whatever happened to No man will be able to stand against you? It s obvious! With the best intent in the world, they couldn t keep their side of the agreement {and neither would any of us have been able to either, in their shoes!} Yet as Paul explained above, - True Jewishness is about submission to God, not one s ethnic identity. And just as they were, we also are obliged to also do as Moses commanded To circumcise our hearts. Which means, to Walk in obedience with a right heart! Physical circumcision is important being the sign of the covenant {Gen. 17:10,} and it is also intended to bear witness to us, that sin needs to be cut away from the heart. When Abraham circumcised himself, it demonstrated his commitment to the Eternal. The One who had called him out of his old life and set his feet on a new path. It signified trust and obedience! Abraham s actions and trust proved that he had a circumcised heart. Have we one? We have focussed in on Abraham, Israel and the Jews. Nevertheless, those of us who would say we belong to God through saving faith in Jesus, have irrespective of ancestry, the same obligation to ensure that our hearts are also {being} circumcised. To just have had our sins forgiven is not sufficient! Jeremiah later picks up the same theme, so a few references from there: This is what the LORD says to the men of Judah and to Jerusalem: Break up your unploughed ground and do not sow among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, circumcise your hearts, you men of Judah and people of Jerusalem, Or my wrath will break out and burn like fire because of the evil you have done burn with no-one to quench it. {Jer 4: 3-4} O Jerusalem, wash the evil from your heart and be saved. How long will you harbour wicked thoughts? {verse 14} Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem, look around and consider, search through her squares. If you can find but one person who deals honestly and seeks the truth, I will forgive this city. {Jer 5:1} To His disciples Yeshua said: "It is written, 'Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.' " {Matthew 4: 4}....go and make disciples of all nations.... teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. {Matt 28:19-20} 4

5 5.someone came to Him and said, "Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?" And He said to him, "Why are you asking Me about what is good? There is only One who is good; but if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments." {Matthew 19:16-17} We have an obligation to do more than encourage people to get their sins forgiven! Rather, we should assist them to walk as Yeshua Himself walked. {1John 2:6} Bearing this in mind, more from Jeremiah, from chapter 6 and verses 10 & 16: To whom can I speak and give warning? Who will listen to me? Their ears are closed so that they cannot hear. The word of the LORD is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it. But I am full of the wrath of the LORD, and I cannot hold it in. This is what the LORD says: Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, Ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. From chapter 9:12: - 10:3: What man is wise enough to understand this? Who has been instructed by the LORD and can explain it? Why has the land been ruined and laid waste like a desert that no-one can cross? The LORD said, It is because they have forsaken my law, which I set before them; they have not obeyed me or followed my law. Instead, they have followed the stubbornness of their hearts; they have followed the Baals, as their fathers taught them. Therefore, this is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: See, I will make this people eat bitter food and drink poisoned water. I will scatter them among nations that neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will pursue them with the sword until I have destroyed them. This is what the LORD Almighty says: Consider now! Call for the wailing women to come; send for the most skilful of them. Let them come quickly and wail over us till our eyes overflow with tears and water streams from our eyelids. The sound of wailing is heard from Zion: How ruined we are! How great is our shame! We must leave our land because our houses are in ruins. Now, O women, hear the word of the LORD; open your ears to the words of his mouth. Teach your daughters how to wail; teach one another a lament. Death has climbed in through our windows and has entered our fortresses; it has cut off the children from the streets and the young men from the public squares. Say, This is what the LORD declares: The dead bodies of men will lie like refuse on the open field, like cut corn behind the reaper, with no-one to gather them. This is what the LORD says: Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: That he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight, declares the LORD. The days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will punish all who are circumcised only in the flesh Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab and all who live in the desert in distant places. For all these nations are really uncircumcised, and even the whole house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart. {And now these peoples are informed within many of their churches that God s Law has been put aside since the coming of Jesus. } Hear what the LORD says to you, O house of Israel. This is what the LORD says: Do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by signs in the sky, though the nations are terrified by them. For the customs of the peoples are worthless....

6 6..The word of the LORD is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it. The days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will punish all who are circumcised only in the flesh.... This really is the point of this article! - Ultimately, we will need a work of God to be wrought within us. After all, He is Holy beyond our imaginings. How can we hope to stand before Him and live, if HE does not finish the job of circumcising our hearts? Consider Malachi 3:2-4: "But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap. "He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness. "Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years. Nevertheless in This Age, prior to His coming I believe we must ask for this! Consider the words of Yeshua from the Beatitudes - How we are meant to Be! For example: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed He said, are those who are like this! And later on in His instruction, He also tells us not to worry; to lay up treasure in Heaven; to build on the Rock etc. Yet how can we become like this, do these things? Through Ezekiel, and from within chapter 36 verses 21-29, the Almighty One tells us How and Why He will so work within us: I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel profaned among the nations where they had gone. Therefore say to the house of Israel, This is what the Sovereign LORD says: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Sovereign LORD, when I show myself holy through you before their eyes. For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. You will live in the land I gave your forefathers; you will be my people, and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness. One day this will be done for all His people. Best for us if we say Do it for us, Now! {For this is our time!} Consider:.... The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord. This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

7 7 No longer will a man teach his neighbour, or a man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. {Hebrews 8:8-12} Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord s Christ. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, A light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. {From Luke 2: 25-32} Such is the grace and love of God, that He intends to do for those who have not already known and responded to his love, a work of transformation so that they can and one day, will. Moreover, this will not apply to His chosen people Israel, only. Isaiah chapter 49:5- reveals something wonderful: And now the LORD says He who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I am honoured in the eyes of the LORD and my God has been my strength He says: It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth. Now you will I trust, have noticed some very significant things within the last two passages quoted. 1. God intends to restore His ancient people the House of Israel {which includes but isn t only, the Jews} back to Himself. 2. God intent is to also bring into relationship with Himself- Outsiders, non-israelites. For the Christian, that could well include a developing attitude towards Scripture- {God s Value System Covenant Directives- Blueprint for Living.} When He said in Deuteronomy 30 that He was setting before His people Life and Death - Life came through Obedience to the instructions being given. If you think that the coming of Jesus changed all that, you are wrong It didn t. How could it? Can it now be all right to commit adultery {for example,} because Yeshua came? - Ludicrous! Yeshua said: I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practises and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven {Matthew 5:18-19} How can these Laws of God, {even the ones that do with forbidden meats, fowl and seafood,} be obsolete when we read the above? For, everything has Not yet been accomplished as concerning the Almighty One s purpose for the human race.

8 8 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. {Deut 30:6} If you haven t {or are not desirous about having,} the same attitude as shown within Psalms 1 & 119, then, although you may believe in Jesus, you still haven t got a circumcised heart and you need to come before Him to deal with your problem. But Why should that be considered a problem? Well, consider this: Awake, awake, O Zion, clothe yourself with strength. Put on your garments of splendour, O Jerusalem, the holy city. The uncircumcised and defiled will not enter you again. {Isaiah 52:1} And this: This is what the Sovereign LORD says: No foreigner uncircumcised in heart and flesh is to enter my sanctuary, not even the foreigners who live among the Israelites. {Ezekiel 44:9} A Thought! There are Many ways of considering the Parable of the Prodigal Son {which appears within Luke 15.} I would put to you one which has just come to me. That we can be in Far Country, without knowing that we have journeyed there. We can even squander away our sonship privileges without realising the fact, ending up bereft and spiritually hungry. It doesn t even have to be deliberately done. The beauty of this parable is however, that once we realise that we have been eating pig food, {pig also, usually} and seek to find Father, He will meet us on the road and assist us Home! May I remind you of what was penned by Jeremiah? For we read earlier: This is what the LORD says: Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, Ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. The apostle John would encourage us - This way: This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. {1John 1: 5-9} We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, I know him, but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. {1John 2: 3-6}

9 9 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure. {1John 3: 1-3} My refs. - from: The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1984; Published in electronic form by Logos Research Systems, 1996 (electronic edition.).. Hodder & Stoughton: London. & From the NASV also, With Thanks.