Circumcision of the Heart (03/28/2004)

Turn with me this morning to Colossians chapter 2 and verse 10, and after that we're going to go into Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 10.

And we've been talking for some time, for those of you that are visiting, we've been talking about the finished work of Christ and all that he accomplished on the cross and in his death, burial, and resurrection and ascension.

All of that already having been completed, all of that finished, and what it has accomplished both toward God but also for us.

And so we've covered many topics concerning this, but last time we started talking about the concept of being circumcised in the heart, the circumcision of the heart.

And last time, just to review a little bit, we talked about that this is not talking about physical circumcision.

We all know that in the covenant that was made between God and Abraham, there was the covenant of circumcision in the physical sense of that, that offset the

Jewish people as God's people, and the circumcision was a visual type that showed this, very similar to the way that water baptism, our baptistry is behind this window, by the way, if you don't know where it is, we do have one, and it's very similar to water baptism in the sense that it is a physical picture of a spiritual truth.

But in this topic of the circumcision of the heart, we're not talking about something that is physical.

Secondly, last time we talked about the fact that the Bible uses terminology to talk about three kinds of people.

First of all, there is that which is called the circumcision of the flesh, and if you read that in the New Testament, that means the

Jews. Then there is the uncircumcision, and if you see that in the New Testament, that means the

Gentiles, the whole world other than the Jews. And then there is that which is called the circumcision of the heart, and Paul discusses that and that really is a new thing that the prophets of old had never considered before.

It was a mystery that God gave Paul to reveal to the church and to the whole world.

And the circumcision of the heart, now follow me in Colossians chapter 2 verse 10, we're going to read just a couple of verses here, and we're going to take this passage and talk about it next

Sunday, the Lord willing, but I want to read the first three verses of it together, and then we'll go into Ephesians chapter 2 for today.

Colossians 2 10 says, and ye are complete in him which is the head of all principality and power, in whom also you are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, wherein also you are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God who hath raised him from the dead, very appropriate since today we're having a water baptism which pictures this spiritual baptism that's discussed in verse 12.

Verse 12 doesn't have anything to do with water, it is a spiritual baptism.

The water baptism pictures this. But when you look at verse 12 there, it talks about the fact that we were in Christ the day that he died.

We were in Christ the day that he was buried, and we were in Christ when he rose from the dead, and this is all spiritual and it's called the operation of God.

It is the work of God. No man can do this work. Only God could do this in his son

Jesus Christ. And what God did was he swept across time, all the way from when we left the

Garden of Eden as we were talking about in Sunday school this morning, hadn't gotten to the place yet where we had to leave the

Garden of Eden, but man got to that place through sin. All the way from that first moment of sin up until today, and even on out into the future, all of the human race right up until the time of the rapture, and perhaps even into the millennial kingdom, all of the sins of God's people were placed in the body of Christ the day that he was on that cross.

He suffered on the cross before he died physically. He suffered a separation from God that we will never understand.

He suffered what hell really is all about, which is the separation of God while he was still breathing, nailed to the cross.

And the earth turned, the earth shook and the skies turned dark. And Jesus said,

Eli, Eli, ala sabachthani, which means, my

God, my God, why have you forsaken me? At that moment, his physical body was hanging on that cross,

I believe, as a man totally separated from God. And he did that on our behalf, and our sins were in him the day that happened, and this is the operation of God.

This is why we cannot save ourselves. God could only accomplish this. And in the context of this passage, it talks about verse 11, in whom also you are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.

And what that means is that in Jesus' death, he gave his body. It's as if his body were cut off.

And at that time, our sins, the sins of our flesh were in his body, and that body was cut off.

And that's what physical circumcision in the Old Testament pictured, but they didn't see all that yet. But it was a picture of that.

And Jesus Christ is the one who was cut off for the sins of man, of God's people.

And because of that, we can only be circumcised of the heart in Christ. It's not something we can do ourselves.

Now let's go into Ephesians chapter 2, and let's start with verse 8.

And this passage also deals with the idea of circumcision, but the whole passage will begin to teach us what this operation was that God performed on our hearts.

What is this operation of spiritual circumcision, circumcision of the heart, something that happens on the inside, not on the outside?

We learned last time also that there were five elements of this spiritual circumcision of the heart.

First of all, those who have been circumcised spiritually have these attributes.

Number one, they worship God in spirit. They are not so caught up in the outward form of religious services.

They worship God from the heart, in the spirit. Secondly, they rejoice in Jesus Christ.

That says a lot more than those few words. Because what it means is they don't rejoice in religious service.

They don't, they're not overly caught up in the forms of man, the religion that man creates, whether it be among the

Catholics, the Roman Catholics, or whether it be among the Southern Baptists, or the Independent Baptists, or the

Methodists, or whatever group you could name. True people of God who have been circumcised of heart, that is all secondary.

It is not the main thing because their main joy is in Jesus Christ because they know their salvation is in the man, in the relationship with the man, not in anything or religion, or set of rules, or works that we could do.

It is not tied up in all that. Therefore the rejoicing is in the man, Jesus Christ. And thirdly, they have no confidence in the flesh.

You see, all of the religiosity and the flesh are tied together. People don't realize that.

People think if they can set up a list of good things to do, January the first, every new year set up a list of good things to do, and if you could just do those things, read my

Bible through three times this year, make sure that I do it one more time than you do, that sort of thing.

That's all of the flesh. What if I could walk around, my brothers and sisters, and talk with a real spiritual voice, and never laugh, never tell jokes, always just have that calm, serious, brave atmosphere about me?

Wouldn't you think I had prayed far more than you? Wouldn't you think I had been in the

Word more than you have? Wouldn't you think that you need me to pray when you're sick because you can't pray as well as I can?

Or how about if I had that pastoral voice as I preach? All right, ladies and gentlemen, let's have the singers come on up and the dancers come and dance.

Hallelujah! We'll teach you how to be successful today. Some of you are saying, yeah,

I wish he was more that way. Well, when you start dancing, I'll be more that way, okay?

But anyway, all of that's of the flesh. Everything you can name that's of religion is of man, it's of the flesh.

But those who have been circumcised of the heart, the rejoicing is in Jesus Christ, and they have no confidence in the flesh.

They know that every time they try to depend on that flesh to do a set of good things or to appear religious or whatever, it fails.

So they have no confidence. This is how much confidence that a person who is circumcised in the heart has in his flesh.

It can add nothing to his salvation. And fourth, it is not outward of the flesh, but rather, and also it is not of the letter of the law, but rather, it is inward in the heart, it is of the spirit, and it is not praised by man at all.

Men like the religiosity better. Men like bringing all the groups of the great religions of the world together into one place and let them all get up and speak and hear the wisdoms of Buddha and the wisdom of Muhammad and in the words of the great prophet

Jesus, mix it all in. That's a lie. It's all of the flesh. It's all of the devil inspired of Satan.

And it gets much praise from man, but the person who is circumcised of the heart and lives that life gets zero praise from man, but he gets praise from God because this is

God's way. Lewis Barry Schaeffer said, we stand thus before God as one whose sin nature or flesh has been judged and for whom a way of deliverance from the dominion of the flesh has been secured.

Now let's go to Ephesians 2 .8 and we'll see how God does this work. For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God.

Not of works lest any man should boast. So as we begin to study this operation of God, this spiritual circumcision of the heart, we see first of all that it has to do with faith.

It is a gift that only God can give and it is not of works and no man can boast about it because it has nothing to do with the flesh.

And then verse 10 says, for we are his workmanship. Once again, the boasting is gone because this is of God.

We are created in Jesus Christ, in Christ Jesus, for the very purpose of good works, which

God hath before ordained that we would walk in them. So this circumcision is not of hands, but it is of God, but it produces outward fruits, which other men can see from time to time, and this is all ordained of God.

This is how God has made it to be. God has made it to be that that person, once he has his heart circumcised and their name written in the

Lamb's book of life and they're saved, it is ordained of God that because of that salvation, because of that change of heart, there will be outward works that flow from it.

The works contribute nothing to it. They flow from it as fruit comes from the tree, from the root, which is

Jesus Christ. Now, verse 11, Ephesians 2, 11, wherefore, now, because all of this is true, since it is true that we are saved by faith, not of ourselves, since it is true that we are saved through faith and it's a gift of God, not of works, and we cannot boast about it, since all of this is true, wherefore, remember that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision, now we're going to bring in our principle here where it uses physical circumcision to picture the circumcision of the heart.

You once were called uncircumcision by the Jews. That means you were

Gentiles, and it's about to specify why it is that you did not know

God in that state. Now let's look at this. We were called

Gentiles uncircumcision by those who were called the circumcision of the flesh, which was made by hands.

So the Jews who had been circumcised physically by the hands of man called us the uncircumcision, as if their physical circumcision made them better.

And they began to focus on the outward religiosity of the great religion that God had given them, which was all supposed to be a physical picture of the spiritual relationship they had with God, and they began to lay aside that relationship and focus on the outward religious physical things of their religion and love that more than they loved

God, who gave it to them. And so then they would look at the Gentiles and look down on them and call them the uncircumcision, because they didn't have that physical circumcision.

That's not all that different than a Church of Christ person looking at a Baptist and saying, you can't possibly be saved, you didn't get baptized in Church of Christ water.

Now if you come over here, well you already got in your water, yeah I know, but if you come get in our water, you can be saved. See that's like the circumcision saying you're the uncircumcision.

It's all wrapped up in the outer form, the flesh, can't save a soul either way.

In fact, Paul said neither circumcision nor uncircumcision availeth anything but faith and love, which works in Jesus Christ.

So they called us the uncircumcision. Now look at this, Paul is going to go ahead and teach us a little bit about this.

Verse 12, this is the state that we were in before we were saved.

Not only were we far from God, but we weren't even considered by the

Jews to have any chance of salvation because we didn't have their religious forms either. We didn't have any of it.

So that at that time you were without Christ. We were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.

The commonwealth of Israel means that they had the oracles of God. They had been given the word of God through Moses.

They had been given the revelation of God through their prophets. And that's who

God gave it to. It was revelation that could only come to them from God.

It is information that the human race cannot have outside of God. They can't find it in science.

They can't find it in nature and they can't find it in human psychology. It's nowhere. It's not in a book. There's nowhere to find this.

The only way that the human race had it is that God gave it down through time to the

Jews as a people. Well, we were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.

We didn't have a clue about that stuff being Gentiles. So you had no opportunity, no chance to know

God because you were not around or a part of the commonwealth of Israel, the nation that had the truth, that had the oracles of God.

Now, it is true that God had a system where Gentiles could be brought into the nation of Israel and partake in those things.

But if they did not do that, they had no chance of knowing God because the revelation of God was through the commonwealth of Israel and they were aliens from it.

Secondly, it says we were strangers from the covenants of promise. Not only did they not have the information that they needed, the gospel message they did not have it, but they also did not have the covenant that God made with Abraham.

And later on through the Jewish line, they didn't have the Abrahamic covenant.

They weren't part of it. So therefore they could not be saved because the Abrahamic covenant is the covenant of faith and they were strangers to it.

They didn't know anything about it. This is the state that we were in before we were saved.

Now, when you put all that together, the phrase having no hope makes sense. How could you have any hope of eternal salvation if you did not have the oracles of God and the revelation from heaven to earth so that therefore you knew nothing about it?

How could you have any hope of salvation at all if you weren't brought in under the Abrahamic covenant, the covenant of faith?

So you had no hope and in fact you were without God. You thought you knew about a created creator of some kind or in that day they thought there were many gods and they thought they knew something about God.

But the truth is they were without God in the world. Now verse 13 is the good news.

It says, but now in Christ Jesus, you who were once upon a time far off are made nigh by the blood of Jesus Christ.

You see his circumcision, the cutting off of his flesh on the cross that day was our circumcision.

And it is what brought us into the commonwealth of Israel where we have the revelation of God.

It made us where we're no longer strangers to the covenants, but on the contrary, we are brought in to the

Abrahamic covenant. And now we have hope and we are with God because of the blood of Jesus Christ.

We're no longer far off. We were made nigh. Verse 14 says, for he is our peace.

That's not just talking about peace in the world, that's talking about peace with a just and holy creator.

Now you think about that one for a moment. How many of you in here would raise your hand and testify that you've sinned?

Let me see. Look there, public confession. Okay now I want you to stand one at a time and name them all.

No, don't do that. There's only one you need to name those two and that's the Lord.

But if it's true that everyone that is of an age of understanding raised their hand, and we can, as moms and dads, raise our hands for those who didn't, say yeah they're in too, they've sinned also.

If that's true and we have a God who is perfectly holy, which means without sin, incapable of being in the presence of sin, and we have a

God who is perfectly just, who proclaimed in the beginning of time the wages of sin is death, the way that he said it that day was the day you eat the fruit thereof you shall surely die.

And then the wages of sin is death, the soul that sinneth it shall die. Many times throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New, that law is chimed out by God and he's just and he will not break that law, and yet all of us have sinned.

Well then we can't be at peace with God on our own. We cannot in ourselves, in our own flesh, be at peace with a

God who hates sin. And that is a major problem for us. The amazing thing was

God considered it something that he wanted fixed as well. And in the great council when time began before anything was made, and the

Father and the Son in the Spirit collaborated and discussed and made a great decree,

Jesus Christ said I will go and die for the sins of your people, of my people.

And that blood is the reason that the Bible says in verse 14, he, not the religion, not the rules, not being a goody goody two shoes, not turning over a new leaf, but he, the person, the man,

Jesus Christ, is our peace. Who hath made both one, that means the

Jew and the Gentile, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us, the Jew and Gentile, but also between us and God.

You remember the temple veil that separated everything from that place called the

Holy of Holies? At the moment in time when Jesus cried out, my

God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And in that time when the sky turned dark and the earth quaked, that veil was torn from the top to the bottom.

It was probably about this thick, and it was torn from the top to the bottom miraculously.

And because of Jesus Christ, God showed through that event in history that peace was available, that that veil was removed, and all a person had to do was come to the

Lord Jesus Christ in faith and receive him as their personal Lord and Savior, and they would have peace with God.

Well, we see that it was Christ's flesh that was cut off so that we could be circumcised in Christ.

Let's go into verse 15. We've already seen that we were uncircumcised, we were without Christ, we were aliens, we were strangers, we had no hope, we were without God, and we were far off.

That gets pretty bad. But then we found that we are now made nigh by the blood, we're at peace with God, and we're one with the commonwealth of Israel, and there's more good news.

Verse 15 says, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, so the hatred that you, your flesh had for God, maybe to some of you it was very subtle, maybe you're one of those that the world would call a good person.

Some of you it was not so subtle, you were what the world would call any number of things.

But the truth is, all of us were enemies of God in the flesh. And Jesus, by dying for us, has abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in the ordinances, for to make in himself of Twain, that's the

Jew and the Gentile, one new man, so making peace. Now when

Jesus died on that cross and was resurrected, and ascended and presented his blood at the mercy seat in heaven, the true one, where God is, he destroyed the enmity between God's people and God.

He even abolished the law and the commandments, which means the Old Testament concept of law has been abolished in Christ.

And he made peace. Because the Old Testament law, as I've said before, is linked with the flesh.

And all it could do was show us how exceedingly sinful we really were, it never could correct the problem.

But that was good, because it was like a schoolmaster that taught us that we need a

Savior, that we cannot save ourselves through rules and outward forms and ordinances, but we need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

So he abolished the enmity, the hatred, the enemy concept that we had towards God, and he made peace.

And, verse 16, that he might reconcile both unto God. Now notice it doesn't say reconcile

God unto us. God did not need to be reconciled, we needed it. We were the ones who counted

God as an enemy. God never counted his children as an enemy. You do realize you were chosen before the foundation of the world, the

Bible says in Ephesians chapter 1 and many other places. God knew you with a loving knowledge before he made anything.

He's always known that you would be his child, and he never hated you, and you were never his enemy, but you counted him as an enemy because you were born into this world lost and blind and deaf and lame and impotent spiritually.

And then when Jesus called you to himself and you looked up like Paul did on that road and you said, Lord, what would you have me to do?

For the first time in your life, the light was turned on and you realized you were God's child. And you no longer counted

God as an enemy because you realized the peace was there because Jesus died for your sins.

So he destroyed the enmity and he reconciled both the Jew and the Gentile unto

God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby. So we were reconciled to God and the enmity was slain, so now we can be friends of God.

Verse 17, and he came and preached peace to you which were afar off and to them that were nigh.

The ones far off were the Gentiles. They had no clue, did not have the oracles of God. The ones that were nigh were the

Jews, and yet they were lost and needed Christ because they were trusting in the outward forms and ordinances too much.

Now there were those through the Old Testament time who were saved, obviously, who trusted in the

Lord, not in the ordinances, and looked forward to the coming of the

Messiah by faith. For through him we both,

Jew and Gentile, have access by one spirit unto the Father.

So now we see that we have access to the one which earlier we had no hope of knowing.

Now, therefore, you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, that means the

Old Testament saints, and the household of God. So now we as Gentiles have become fellow citizens with the

Old Testament saints who were truly circumcised of the heart, the ones who were, and we are part of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.

Now I want to get on the short rabbit trail here, but how many of you have ever seen a house built from scratch?

Alright, they lay the foundation, and then they begin to frame it.

Let me ask you this, once the foundation is laid and the framing goes up, do you ever put more foundation on it?

You don't, do you? And those around us today who believe that there are still apostles in the world, still prophets who can prophesy the future, they're lying or deceived, or both, because you don't build the foundation but once.

God built it through the apostles and the prophets, as verse 20 says, with Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.

God doesn't have to build a foundation every day. He built it once, and then He gave us the full canon of the

Word of God as He gave us the New Testament and completed it, and now we have it today, so we no longer have prophets and apostles, so don't believe anybody that tells you you do because it violates verse 20.

Now, let's get back to the message. In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the

Lord, in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God through the

Spirit. Now, let's stop and see what this operation has brought to us and review a little bit.

We were uncircumcised, and now we find ourselves circumcised of the heart and reconciled to God.

We were without Christ, but now we find that in Christ, Jesus has slain the enmity, and we are friends of God.

We were aliens of the commonwealth of Israel, and now we're one with the commonwealth of Israel.

We were strangers from the covenants, but now we have access to God because we're brought under the covenant relationship with Abraham, the covenant of faith.

We had no hope in the world, but now we have peace with God. We were without God in the world, but now not only are we fellow citizens and part of the household of God, but our bodies are the habitation of God.

God dwells within us. How different can you be than the two?

Being without God and then finding oneself with God living within me.

You're talking about total opposites, and we've come from a place where we were far off to the place where we have been made nigh by the blood of Jesus Christ.

All of this, if you go into chapter 3, verses 1 through 5, was a mystery that the Old Testament saints did not have.

Verses 6 through 12 show us clearly that it was a mystery, and that we've been made partakers of the promise in Christ by the gospel.

What promise is that? That's the Abrahamic promise. And verses 13 through 17 show us that it is the inner man where Christ dwells in the heart.

And verses 18 and 19 show us that the truly circumcised is rooted and grounded in love.

Look at Ephesians chapter 3, verse 15, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man.

This is an inner, inward heart operation that God does.

It is not outward, it is not physical, it is not of the flesh. The only way that the flesh takes part in it at all is it's brought in as a servant of you and of God because of this birth.

It can now serve God because you're in control of it and you are circumcised of the heart.

That he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love, let me stop there a moment.

A truly circumcised person has those attributes. They are rooted and grounded in love.

You find a person in church that calls himself a brother or a sister.

There are some now that calls himself a sister, you know. Some hold churches for homosexuals that have risen up in this world.

But you find people that call themselves a Christian and yet they're not rooted and grounded in the agape love of God, which is not conditional.

They don't treat you with kindness. They treat you just like the people at work treat you and yet they're sitting there at church calling themselves a

Christian. It's not so. They only have an outward form. Maybe they've been baptized in the water.

Maybe they've been circumcised in the flesh, but they have not had that inward heart circumcision because all those who have, the

Bible says that Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the rest of the saints what is the breadth and the length and the depth and the height and to know the love of Christ, which passes all understanding and knowledge that ye might be filled with all of the fullness of God.

This is truly the evidence of the filling of the Holy Spirit. Now unto him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, this is this operation, the power of this spiritual circumcision, the operation that God performs on our heart according to this marvelous power unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end.

Amen. This circumcision opens the source of the power of God.

It brings the power of God himself into the life. It brings the possibility of the breaking of the dominion of the flesh.

We no longer have to serve the urges and desires of the old man. We're no longer under that principle.

We no longer have to yield to any temptation. We have the power of the operation of God.

He's been, he's given us a new heart and a new mind. And so long as we walk in the spirit, then that new man will control the flesh and make it be a marvelous servant of God.

And when we lapse into the flesh and we go into the old mind and the old man, we can do any heinous sin that any lost person can do.

And that's why the world's so confused by our religion. That's why there's no praise of man in what we do or what we have because they can't figure it out.

One day you'll be spiritual and walking with the Lord. The next day you'll slip into the flesh and cuss somebody when they run in front of you in their car or you'll shake your fist at them just like the world does.

How can they figure that out? They can't. That's why there's no praise. They'd rather you be under a rule, a set of rules where you're not allowed to shake the fist.

So you look really good on the outside. You look very religious. You look like God in their eyes.

The world loves that, but God hates it. God would rather have you born again in Christ and he would rather have it be obviously because this is how it is and he is sovereign, therefore this is how he desires it to be that if you lapse into that flesh and you sin, that you have the ability to come back to him in the heart where no man can see and get right with him, sit in his lap as a little child as you parents sit there and say,

Daddy, I am sorry that I disappointed you. Thank you for the blood of Jesus that has already taken the sins away from me.

Now wash my feet and cleanse me of the sin that I just did and restore my fellowship with you.

I love you, Lord. The world can't see that. All they can see is when you come out of the room, your countenance is shining and they can't figure that out because just 20 minutes earlier you had sinned right in front of them.

Can't figure it out, but God loves it. It has great praise of God and that's why the circumcision of the heart is where it is.

This outward stuff is, you know, does not please God. It's right here.

Is there a real true relationship between you and the Lord Jesus Christ? Have you ever prayed from your heart of hearts and said,

Lord Jesus, I want you in my heart? I want you to be my boss and run my life instead of me doing it.

I want you to get the glory for everything I do in my life instead of me. And I want you to be there when

I do fall to pick me up and carry me and help me through that time and make me more like you because of it.

Even what we consider to be bad, those times, Lord, you'll use them to make me more like you.

That's the circumcision of the heart. The world knows nothing of it unless we tell them.

Let's stand and have prayer together. Father, we thank you for your word once again today as we have enjoyed coming together and sitting at Jesus' feet and having your

Holy Spirit teach us your very words and what they mean. Each of us,

I'm sure, learned some part of a truth that the rest of us may have missed because it's what you needed to be in our lives and we needed to have today.

Thank you that you've taught us that our salvation is not of man, it cannot be performed with the hands of man, but only by you.

We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ for dying for us, for rising again, for ascending into heaven and presenting your perfect blood as the perfect sacrifice and the payment for our sins and that which reconciled us to God and brought peace between you and us, or I should say between us and you.

Lord, thank you for bringing us back to you and for saving us from a fallen race.

Lord, we thank you for the fact that Kenner was saved last week and that she's your child and we rejoice at picturing that through the baptism this afternoon.