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A CIRCUMCISED HEART (I)
MONDAY, APRIL 19
Deuteronomy 10:12-16

Psalm 19:1-14

 

“The law of the LORD

is perfect…”

 

A CIRCUMCISED HEART (I)
 
Standing in the plains of Moab, Moses addresses the people of Israel. They are about to enter the promised land of Canaan; Moses is about to depart for its heavenly equivalent. He reminds the people of God’s law, and lays before them God’s requirements (v 12).
 
These are not small requirements. God’s demands of His people are comprehensive, including both the outer and the inner life. They are to “fear” Him in their hearts, and to “walk” outwardly in His ways. They are to “love” Him inwardly, and to “serve” Him in their lives. In short, God requires of His people total and complete consecration ‒ “serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul.”
 
At the same time, God’s requirements are not unreasonable. In the first place, they are codified in good commandments. This is a crucial realisation. God’s law is not a perverse mechanism of sadistic pleasure. It is not an evil instrument of divinely-sanctioned oppression. It is not the inconsistent product of capricious carelessness. No! God’s law is meant “for thy good.” God has set forth in the moral law His just and holy standards, that we might know them and live by them. He is the Creator of the universe! What other standard could we possibly adopt? Who could surpass or even rival the wisdom of God, in devising a “better” rule by which to order our lives? It would be no lesser folly for the celestial bodies to conspire against the natural laws, than for human creatures to think of “emancipation” from God’s moral law as an endeavour capable of promoting human flourishing.
 
Plainly, we live in times of staggering moral blindness. The world is set, it seems, on overturning God’s moral order. Vice has been turned into virtue: carnality has become the new chastity; fornication the new fidelity; perversion the new piety. Human “autonomy” has been enthroned in the place of God ‒ but for a man to be “set free” from the law of God is no less disastrous than for a train to be “set free” of its rails. Do you recognise that God’s law is meant for your good? Will you commit yourself, by God’s grace, to obeying this good law with all your heart and soul?
 
THOUGHT: God’s law ought to be embraced, not chafed against.

PRAYER: (Use Psalm 119:97.)

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