Circumcision of your heart!
Last time we looked at the failure of the Old Covenant. It provided a way for them to approach God, but it never changed their hearts. The Law of God was only a rule on a stone tablet but not on their hearts.
What must change for people to be what God wants them to be? Jesus clearly states that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, all your soul and all your mind. If your heart is not changed then it will be difficult to love God in that way. Neither would you be able to love God with your soul and your mind either if your heart stays untouched.
Here is what God promises for the New Covenant through the Prophet Ezekiel.
Ezek 36:25-27 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
God will take out a heart of stone and put a heart of flesh in them and then put His Spirit in them to follow God. We know that the Holy Spirit is the promise of the New Covenant that Jesus gave us. Not only will they receive the Holy Spirit but you have to know what the Spirit will do in the New Covenant.
Paul states that as new believers in Christ, we are a new creation, old things have passed away and all things have become new- 1 Cor 5:17. Not only are we created new but as the old body was crucified with Christ, we were circumcised in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
Col 2:11 In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:
The sign of the Old Covenant was the circumcision of the flesh and that made the Jews different as a nation. A natural sign and a natural nation. The sign of the New Covenant is the circumcision of the heart and everyone that believes can now be part of the Spiritual Israel. A Spiritual Sign and a Spiritual Nation. We are now the people of God.
Rom 2:29 But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.
Phil 3:3 For we are the circumcision, which worships God in the spirit, and rejoices in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.
So we see that during the born again experience, The Holy Spirit comes and dwells in us, changes our heart from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh, and circumcises our hearts so that we are now identified as the children or the people of God. But is that all that the Spirit does?
Not only does he do all these things but more important is that He writes the laws of God on our hearts. Remember that what God wanted from the beginning was that they would have His Laws on their hearts. Look at what Paul writes to the Church in Corinthians:
2 Cor 3:1-3Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
This is exactly what God promised Israel when He promised what He will do in the New Covenant when He spoke through the Prophet Jeremiah.
Jer 31:31-34 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
1. What a glorious promise. The Holy Spirit writes His Laws on our hearts and now we become a letter that everyone can read. Jesus is the Word of God – John 1:1. What do you think the Holy Spirit writes on your heart?
2. The Holy Spirit also teaches us all the things that Christ taught us – John 14:26. He will never teach you wrong or anything contrary to God’s Word.
3. The Holy Spirit will write and guide you in all Truth – John 16:13. He never speaks on His own but will always glorify Christ.
John said that Jesus is the Word. John also said that He is the “Voice” of one crying in the wilderness. Jesus is the Word, we are His voice. What He writes on your heart through the New Covenant is what we speak. We speak life and righteousness to a dying world.
Do the Words of your mouth reflect what God has written on your heart through the Holy Spirit?
