Speaker 1: Hey, what up?
Speaker 1: It's Mark Carter on, the Pastor of Fierce Church.
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today.
Speaker 1: I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the message.
Speaker 1: Hey, I think we're going to have some fun today.
Speaker 1: Last weekend we were in the Road Out series and we talked about how important it is to understand the love of God.
Speaker 1: Like we've got to understand, we've got to have revelation on this thing the love of God.
Speaker 1: God loves you.
Speaker 1: He loves us in so many ways, and this week we're talking about another part of that that is equally important to understand.
Speaker 1: And here is something to wet your whistle a little bit A circumcised heart is necessary to start and keep serving Christ.
Speaker 1: That sounds really weird and it is a little weird.
Speaker 1: We're going to get into the weirdness of it.
Speaker 1: But a circumcised heart is necessary to start and keep serving Christ.
Speaker 1: What you're going to find out that means is there has to be a sense that we fear God enough to get us to do what he says Not in I'm in danger, but in.
Speaker 1: I respect him and I reverence him enough If he's going to lead us on the road out.
Speaker 1: That means we have to do some of the things that he's, all of the things that he's calling us to do, in a very faith-filled way, because some of it's going to be scary.
Speaker 1: So we are going to jump right in Now.
Speaker 1: Some of you, you don't serve God yet or you don't do it in any kind of a formal way.
Speaker 1: Maybe you do at work, maybe you do at home in multiple ways.
Speaker 1: Some of you have seen other people claim to be serving God and, honestly, they seem a little bit callous.
Speaker 1: They seem like I don't even know if that's what it is.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I even want that Agreed.
Speaker 1: There are folks in situations like that, but don't let that take away from you the focus of what God might want you to hear today Sound like a deal On your way to serve God.
Speaker 1: Okay, so, if you remember, moses is on the way back.
Speaker 1: God has convinced him it's a good idea to serve God, so he's on his way back.
Speaker 1: He's getting his things ready Now.
Speaker 1: He's got all of his stuff.
Speaker 1: He's headed back to Egypt.
Speaker 1: He hasn't been there in a long time Now, right before this, god had told Moses.
Speaker 1: This is what I want you to say to Pharaoh, verse 23, let my son go, meaning the nation of Israel, the people that are enslaved, so that he may serve me, but you've refused to let him go.
Speaker 1: That word serve Some translations might say to worship me, and it's really the same word.
Speaker 1: Okay, the word is avad, and here's what it means.
Speaker 1: It means to work, serve labor, do, minister, do the work of ministry.
Speaker 1: To serve as worship.
Speaker 1: Meaning it's not everybody just standing around being like ooh, like those little green aliens from Toy Story.
Speaker 1: It's not that Okay.
Speaker 1: It's worship in the sense of like I'm going to do things, take actions, joining God in his mission in the world.
Speaker 1: That's what worshiping is.
Speaker 1: I'm joining you.
Speaker 1: Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 1: Like he invites us to join him in his mission.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have a sit-out, he could do it without us, but he invites us.
Speaker 1: It's an honor.
Speaker 1: He says I'm inviting you out.
Speaker 1: Moses is calling, is going to be calling his words come out and serve.
Speaker 1: Meaning we've got to get this.
Speaker 1: Yo.
Speaker 1: We weren't freed just to be free, though that is definitely a great benefit of being out of the bondage of sin and fully forgiven by Christ.
Speaker 1: We were freed in order to serve slash worship.
Speaker 1: That's what we're.
Speaker 1: God wanted all the time, meaning he always wanted I freed you so you could join me.
Speaker 1: I freed you so you could get on the cosmic mission that is the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and so he's inviting these people in and he's inviting us in Now.
Speaker 1: I'm willing to bet whichever president was your last favorite or least disliked, if they called you up.
Speaker 1: Okay, say, they were in office and they called you up and they're like hey look, I know that you don't know me very well, but I really want you to serve with me.
Speaker 1: There's all kinds of stuff I want to do and I just know you are the best solution for this problem.
Speaker 1: But it's not just that.
Speaker 1: I want you to do it because I know, you know that you've got the right gifts.
Speaker 1: I want you to do it because I want to be around you.
Speaker 1: Now, if anybody that important said that to most of us would be all over that thing, man, even if you didn't like them, you'd be like well, maybe I can be a force for change.
Speaker 1: I'm still kind of honored because they're so important that they want to be around me.
Speaker 1: Well, check it out.
Speaker 1: Here's some great news.
Speaker 1: The God of the universe, which is much higher than the president, has requested your presence on his team.
Speaker 1: He says I don't want to do this without you.
Speaker 1: I could, but I don't want to.
Speaker 1: I don't want to use you.
Speaker 1: I want to be around you.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm inviting you in.
Speaker 1: I want to be with you as we do it.
Speaker 1: That is a great honor.
Speaker 1: Now here's going to be something a little bit weird.
Speaker 1: We're going to see the story take a huge twist for a second, but it's as we talked about last week.
Speaker 1: It's all for the purpose of instruction.
Speaker 1: So God can tell us what he's like.
Speaker 1: Watch this Moses and his family.
Speaker 1: They're on their way back to Egypt verse 24.
Speaker 1: But it came about at the overnight encampment, on the way that the Lord met Moses and sought to put him to death.
Speaker 1: What Wasn't this?
Speaker 1: The God that just sent me back?
Speaker 1: I mean, we were all like didn't take God forever to talk him into it.
Speaker 1: Why would God appear to want to kill Moses?
Speaker 1: And we're going to?
Speaker 1: This is a spoiler alert.
Speaker 1: We're going to find out later in the message.
Speaker 1: It's because Moses didn't get around to fail to miss the important circumcision of his son, at least one of them.
Speaker 1: That's a weird thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're going to talk about circumcision in just a second.
Speaker 1: Just to give you clarity, this was a covenantal agreement that God had made with Moses's ancestor, abraham.
Speaker 1: He says all of your people, from here on out, all your males, need to be circumcised.
Speaker 1: It's a sign.
Speaker 1: It's a sign that they belong to me.
Speaker 1: It is a sign that I've got an agreement with them that your nation is going to obey me and I'm going to bless them.
Speaker 1: That's the agreement.
Speaker 1: Now, this male circumcision thing this is.
Speaker 1: It's hard to be a pastor.
Speaker 1: You got to talk about circumcision on stage.
Speaker 1: I don't even like saying circumcision, like it's awkward for me.
Speaker 1: It involves, you know, parts and pieces that I don't like to even say.
Speaker 1: I don't want to use a word.
Speaker 1: I'll come up with a different word, but I don't want to say it.
Speaker 1: Okay, so whenever I have to talk like this, I just want to make it less awkward for me.
Speaker 1: I don't want to have to look at you too clearly.
Speaker 1: All right, so, oh boy, we're talking about circumcision.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, just flow with me, please.
Speaker 1: Just imagine a banana.
Speaker 1: Okay, now imagine the tip of the banana.
Speaker 1: The peel is cut away, but there's still banana underneath, okay.
Speaker 1: So some skin of the banana is cut away, but there's still skin underneath, okay.
Speaker 1: That's what it is for the male reproductive part when circumcision happens.
Speaker 1: And this is not what everybody of the time did.
Speaker 1: It was a very unique, special thing that God called His people to do, and you gotta understand a couple symbolic things about this.
Speaker 1: First, guys, how many know I mean even just during the course of a normal day, if you're just, if you're going normal, I mean you're gonna go to the bathroom, you're gonna use the restroom probably what I mean five, 10 times, I don't know how many it is for you, but probably a lot.
Speaker 1: And picture this.
Speaker 1: So every time one of these Israelite men went to off to the side of the tribe to relieve themselves, they looked down because, guys, you know what that's like.
Speaker 1: You look down and you're like, oh yeah, I belong to God.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is a permanent reminder Multiple times a day.
Speaker 1: I and my family belong to God.
Speaker 1: But it's also, I mean why?
Speaker 1: In the most intimate part of a male?
Speaker 1: Because God is saying I am into the most intimate parts of you.
Speaker 1: I know you like nobody else does.
Speaker 1: I see you in ways that nobody else can possibly understand.
Speaker 1: I am that close, I'm in your soul, god says.
Speaker 1: That's where I am.
Speaker 1: That's how close I am.
Speaker 1: I'm not some distant God, that's some little idol you place on the mantle.
Speaker 1: I'm the God that seeks to, loves to.
Speaker 1: Ultimately will, through the Holy Spirit, after the resurrection of Christ, reside within you.
Speaker 1: It's a weird thing to talk about, but it's an awesome God, isn't it?
Speaker 1: So that's what's happening with Moses.
Speaker 1: This promise was made in Genesis 17.
Speaker 1: This is Abraham promised that he would do this.
Speaker 1: Moses knew about it.
Speaker 1: We can see in the passage, because God's angry, that he didn't do anything about it.
Speaker 1: And it's problematic.
Speaker 1: We use that word a lot today.
Speaker 1: It's problematic, it's problematic.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know how much of that is really problematic, but this is problematic.
Speaker 1: This will get you killed Because God is.
Speaker 1: He's like Moses.
Speaker 1: I need you to be serious about my business.
Speaker 1: Okay, now, you can't go pronounce judgment on Pharaoh's house if you haven't taken care of your own house.
Speaker 1: You can't go represent me there if you can't represent me here.
Speaker 1: And sometimes my friends, we've like we want to be even used by God somewhere, and God's like well, take a look at your home first.
Speaker 1: Take a look at what's inside.
Speaker 1: How are you doing there?
Speaker 1: It's not that don't do anything until everything is perfect, because it's never going to be perfect on planet Earth.
Speaker 1: But if there are areas where we are flagrantly ignoring what God asked us to do, god says, that doesn't represent me very well and it looks weird to people when you go try to teach them about me and they're like do you know about him?
Speaker 1: Because it doesn't seem like maybe you do.
Speaker 1: So this is what's happening with Moses right here.
Speaker 1: I don't know why.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, like Moses didn't get around.
Speaker 1: I mean, check it.
Speaker 1: Moses has been gone for 40 years.
Speaker 1: I mean you think he'd get around to it?
Speaker 1: This son is likely not a baby, this is a grown man, probably.
Speaker 1: And Moses just never got around to it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he was busy.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know Zipporah that's his wife.
Speaker 1: She's a Midianite.
Speaker 1: Maybe she doesn't like this.
Speaker 1: It's like this is weird.
Speaker 1: This is your father's religion.
Speaker 1: Keep this out of here.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's just.
Speaker 1: He was with the sheep.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know what he was doing, but he didn't get around to circumcising his son and he's not even sure it's a big deal.
Speaker 1: And you're like, yeah, okay, I get that, but why so severe?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: It could have just been like a hand slap, like bro, come on, get it together.
Speaker 1: But that's not.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 1: He's about to die.
Speaker 1: Why so severe?
Speaker 1: Well, because Moses is not ready to represent God and the calling is high.
Speaker 1: He's gonna sit in Moses' seat, he's gonna be the Moses in the Bible.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know that yet, but that's who he's gonna be.
Speaker 1: He's gonna be this really important guy and it's training for later.
Speaker 1: Because it's one little disobedience at the end of his life that Moses doesn't do that he's like eh, and he loses the privilege of going into the promised land, this thing that he's been working for all this time.
Speaker 1: Obedience is a big deal the higher you go, and so it's a severe thing.
Speaker 1: God says if you're gonna represent me to this level, moses, you gotta rock honoring me, you gotta rock the holiness thing.
Speaker 1: You can't just disrespect me, you can't pretend it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: And here's another thing we don't always understand about God.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons God wants us to obey is because he's a jealous God, and when we give ourselves to evil, we give ourselves to sin.
Speaker 1: We're choosing that thing.
Speaker 1: We don't feel like it's this way, but we're choosing to love this thing over God.
Speaker 1: He treats it like he's in a relationship with us and he's jealous that we're cheating on him.
Speaker 1: And here's what God says.
Speaker 1: He says you are mine and I do not share you with evil, not for your ewes Spouses.
Speaker 1: You don't want to share your spouse, come on, you don't want to share them.
Speaker 1: God doesn't want to share us.
Speaker 1: He's like.
Speaker 1: That is antithetical to who I am.
Speaker 1: I don't share with evil.
Speaker 1: He's so severe because he's dead serious.
Speaker 1: Philippians two in the New Testament talking to us, and now that I'm away from you, this is the apostle Paul talking, god speaking through him.
Speaker 1: You must be even more careful to put into action God's saving work in your lives.
Speaker 1: Obeying God with deep reverence and fear For God is working in you, giving you the desire to obey and the power to do what pleases him Notice those two proves that God is really in it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna say this is important later when we get into the circumcision of the heart.
Speaker 1: But the desire to obey is presence and the power to do it.
Speaker 1: When you have the inexplicable desire, it's not just that you're like oh my gosh, I gotta do this thing God wants me to do.
Speaker 1: Now, when there's a desire that is being formed in you, you're like I don't even know why, I don't even know why.
Speaker 1: Suddenly I want to obey and it's kind of working.
Speaker 1: That's a sign that the Holy Spirit is doing something called helping re-circumcise your heart.
Speaker 1: But Moses can't move forward.
Speaker 1: He can't move forward because while, like Moses, we often want to move forward with the agenda or with the plan, god says first let's move forward with character and we this is you've seen this theme already in this series, throughout Exodus Before I can do a great work through you, god says I've gotta do a great work in you.
Speaker 1: And the more and more we move forward in the great work through you, the more there has to be constant refining.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because 1 Corinthians 4-2, now, the most important thing about a servant is that he does just what the master tells him to do.
Speaker 1: You guys have heard that before.
Speaker 1: The most important thing is that he does what he's told to do.
Speaker 1: The most important thing is that he's found faithful.
Speaker 1: Now, none of us are really faithful, none of us.
Speaker 1: We're all insufficient in our obedience.
Speaker 1: We all don't really.
Speaker 1: Even when we kind of know what we're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: We still don't do it perfectly.
Speaker 1: There's still gaps that are missing.
Speaker 1: But today's, the point of today's passage is on the way to serve God, pursue a circumcised heart.
Speaker 1: Pursue a circumcised heart while you're on your way to serve God.
Speaker 1: Verse 25,.
Speaker 1: So Zipporah took a flint knife and cut off her son's foreskin and threw it at Moses' feet and said you are indeed a groom of blood to me.
Speaker 1: His cheek is irritated.
Speaker 1: So he, the Lord, left him alone.
Speaker 1: At that time she said you're a groom of blood because of the circumcision.
Speaker 1: So clearly this is a Pura man.
Speaker 1: She doesn't like this.
Speaker 1: And it's even weirder to think if this is her son is like an adult son.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, but whatever she's like, well, you didn't get around to it, moses.
Speaker 1: I didn't like it.
Speaker 1: But now clearly we're all gonna die if we don't get on the program of your God.
Speaker 1: So here we go.
Speaker 1: She grabs a knife and she takes care of it.
Speaker 1: Now, even though she doesn't like it, you still gotta bless God for a spouse that is willing to like, sometimes get in your face and be like we gotta obey God.
Speaker 1: Okay, time's up Now.
Speaker 1: We gotta do this now or it's gonna keep on going downhill.
Speaker 1: That's what Zipporah does.
Speaker 1: So she's a reluctant lifesaver, but she's still doing it.
Speaker 1: Bless God for Zipporah.
Speaker 1: Thank God he had her.
Speaker 1: Moses had her.
Speaker 1: Bless you.
Speaker 1: So what's happening here?
Speaker 1: Zipporah is helping Moses get where he's supposed to go.
Speaker 1: God says hey, man, this is a do not pass go situation.
Speaker 1: You can't cross this bridge until you obey me.
Speaker 1: And once you do, we can move this thing forward.
Speaker 1: And poor Moses, like he's even, like he's gotten to the place of like, all right, I'll do it, reluctantly, but I've got faith to do it.
Speaker 1: And sometimes we've even got faith.
Speaker 1: We're like I'm doing what I know to do, and yet the Lord's like yeah, but this, I'd like you to go forward too.
Speaker 1: But this, this is the thing you've been trying to pretend is happening, this thing you're trying to avoid.
Speaker 1: It's the conviction you don't really want For Moses.
Speaker 1: It was this old school circumcision.
Speaker 1: And the lesson is guys, at the end of the day, if we're gonna be in God's program, if we're gonna go serve God, we've gotta humble ourselves and say I'm gonna do it God's way.
Speaker 1: The other ways don't work.
Speaker 1: I can't do it a secret way, can't hack God.
Speaker 1: I can't get around this thing.
Speaker 1: I've gotta just do it the way God.
Speaker 1: If it's gonna get done, I've gotta do it the way God says to do it.
Speaker 1: That's the way that brings life.
Speaker 1: Can't just do any old plan.
Speaker 1: Gotta do God's plan.
Speaker 1: Now, in the New Testament, in the Old Testament, one time thing Israelite males are circumcised.
Speaker 1: In the New Testament there's a circumcision of the heart and what we learned is that that Old Testament circumcision, while important and a sign of the covenant then was only a shadow.
Speaker 1: It was only a foreshadowing of the true and better covenant, which would be the circumcision of the heart and that would be the marker when people are circumcised in their hearts, when they're sensitive to God's commands, when they're sensitive to God's will, when they're empowered to do what he wants them to do.
Speaker 1: That's what that was always foreshadowing.
Speaker 1: It's see, in the New Testament, as God always was, he's concerned about the inner person.
Speaker 1: It's the inner man, the inner woman.
Speaker 1: Not exterior cutting, but a cutting that happens on the inside.
Speaker 1: This happened to me multiple times.
Speaker 1: Okay, sometimes it's with trials, sometimes it's with sickness.
Speaker 1: I received a lot of we'll call sand let's change the metaphor.
Speaker 1: I was being sandpapered a lot when I was sick for four and a half years, like here's a lot of stuff that God was doing, convicting me of and be like see this, see this.
Speaker 1: I was trying to get your attention before but I couldn't, so now let's talk about it now.
Speaker 1: And over that four and a half year period there's a lot of stuff that it's like oh, cut that off, cut that off.
Speaker 1: Oh, my motives, I get it.
Speaker 1: My motives were wrong, my behaviors were wrong, some of my goals were wrong.
Speaker 1: Now I understand God is wanting to deal with that stuff, but I won't let him.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that, maybe, is a little bit more intuitive to some of us.
Speaker 1: There's been TV shows that I'm like I love this show, but it's like full of hell.
Speaker 1: And the Lord's like, yep, I'm not pleased.
Speaker 1: When you watch that show I'm like, oh God, it's funny.
Speaker 1: And I'll argue with him.
Speaker 1: And he's like, yeah, but you can't move forward until you let it go.
Speaker 1: And so finally you get to a place like cut it off, just cut it off.
Speaker 1: But other people like it Cut it off.
Speaker 1: But what are people going to say?
Speaker 1: Who cares?
Speaker 1: Cut it off, just why?
Speaker 1: Because that's the sign, that's the marker, that's how the world knows.
Speaker 1: They don't see your inner man, they don't even see your underplaces.
Speaker 1: They see your actions.
Speaker 1: Your actions flow out of a heart that allows itself to be cut by God.
Speaker 1: Another time this is early on in my walk with God I had a buddy that I really liked and I wanted him to be happy Like I wanted him to like me.
Speaker 1: You ever had friends like that?
Speaker 1: You're like I, not only like them, I want them to like me.
Speaker 1: It's important to me that they like me, it's cool that I'm friends with them, so I want them to be my friend.
Speaker 1: Well, I noticed that even though I wanted to be an influence on them for Christ, they were increasingly a negative influence on me and I kept feeling that conviction in the heart Like, dude, there's nothing good that comes from this.
Speaker 1: I know you're trying, but his heart is hard, he's not open to this and he just keeps sucking you in to evil.
Speaker 1: And at one point just had to get to the place with God of like cut it off.
Speaker 1: Hey, buddy, I love you, but I just can't hang out Like, I can't go to that thing, I can't do those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because my life is set apart to Christ.
Speaker 1: Well, that's weird.
Speaker 1: Well, get used to it, because it's going to be that way for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: I don't want to fight you for another five years.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to go with Jesus.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of thing that God will cut off.
Speaker 1: And here's what I tell you.
Speaker 1: It's always a trade-off, and when God wants to cut something off, you're giving him something.
Speaker 1: But see, god only trades up.
Speaker 1: Isn't that awesome of God.
Speaker 1: He doesn't give you something less, he gives you something more.
Speaker 1: It's always an upgrade with God.
Speaker 1: He's like oh you trust me with that.
Speaker 1: Okay, cool, now I've got this.
Speaker 1: You didn't even see this coming.
Speaker 1: Here's this thing, here's this new relationship, here's this new promotion, here's this new blessing that you didn't know was going to happen.
Speaker 1: See, moving into God's promised land for all of us is always accompanied by a cutting-away process.
Speaker 1: It's not even just once.
Speaker 1: It's a process.
Speaker 1: It happens once, but then it keeps on going.
Speaker 1: So here's something really fun Deuteronomy 36, the Lord, your God, will circumcise your hearts.
Speaker 1: This prophecy about the future in the Old Testament will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love Him with all of your heart, with all your soul, and live.
Speaker 1: Circumcision is weird, but the circumcision of the heart, it's kind of equally weird.
Speaker 1: But God is saying I promise I'm going to get even deeper than your body parts and I'm going to help you obey.
Speaker 1: You can't obey Really.
Speaker 1: You can't really do all God wants you to do apart from God's help, with a circumcised heart.
Speaker 1: And it's scary.
Speaker 1: But what it does is it takes our stony heart and it makes it soft because God's circumcising makes it soft, and so you start to feel things that you didn't feel before and suddenly you care about things that you didn't care about before.
Speaker 1: And we all got to look at the trajectory of our lives.
Speaker 1: If we're progressing with Jesus, if that's one of your goals, if you want to progress with Jesus, you're going to get more hurt as you go with life, because there's more people to hurt you and there's more events.
Speaker 1: But there's also a counteract.
Speaker 1: There's an antidote happening there too.
Speaker 1: The Spirit of God is circumcising your heart.
Speaker 1: So, even though harder things are happening, he's saying no, don't get stony, get soft again, get soft again, trust again, even though you have no reason to Believe again, even though everything has shown you that you shouldn't Go ahead and move forward, even though everything in your head is screaming stay back.
Speaker 1: No, you keep on going.
Speaker 1: You forgive them again, you move forward again.
Speaker 1: See, a circumcised heart is a heart that wants to obey.
Speaker 1: It's a heart where evil is cut off.
Speaker 1: It's a heart that is increasingly sensitive.
Speaker 1: All right, I want to show you my little illustration.
Speaker 1: Some of you have been looking at the scene of my arm and you're like what is that?
Speaker 1: I hope you didn't miss half the sermon because you're paying attention to that thing.
Speaker 1: This represents my heart.
Speaker 1: It's hard man, it's like a callus over my heart.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to use a banana because I figured that's just too visual.
Speaker 1: So this is my heart, my inner hard heart.
Speaker 1: And see, the problem is the Spirit of God comes, sometimes like a river.
Speaker 1: He's like rivers of living water and yet, even if he's trying to get in, I can't feel that, like there's nothing.
Speaker 1: This is duct tape and a paper bag, but spiritually speaking, you can't feel what God wants you to feel.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because you're clinging to your things, you're clinging to yourself.
Speaker 1: Now, when we come to Christ, jesus himself comes.
Speaker 1: He says we need some increased sensitivity.
Speaker 1: So he begins to work on your callus heart and he gives you a circumcised heart.
Speaker 1: Now, oh, I feel that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's real sensitive.
Speaker 1: I can feel everything about that water and that's how God wants us to be.
Speaker 1: It happens initially when we trust Christ, when we mourn over our sin and turn to him and ask for forgiveness, and he fills us with this Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1: And when that happens, jesus cuts this thing and now I can feel all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: I feel bad about stuff.
Speaker 1: Other people don't feel bad about it.
Speaker 1: See, before, when I had this thing on, you could come and tell me hey, man, that's things sin.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, yes, that's sin.
Speaker 1: I don't believe that.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because my heart was hard.
Speaker 1: But once Jesus cut it off, I'm like, oh my gosh, there's all kinds of places that I'm sinning.
Speaker 1: And I could feel it.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't to crush me under the power of the law, under its weight, it was to alert me.
Speaker 1: Oh, ding dong, I need a savior, I need a Jesus to carry this.
Speaker 1: I will be crushed by it, but Jesus can fulfill it.
Speaker 1: Come on, somebody.
Speaker 1: I wish somebody thought that was a good illustration.
Speaker 1: It increases my sensitivity, it increases my sense of God's affection.
Speaker 1: Right, guys, if you're wondering like why don't I ever feel God?
Speaker 1: Or why don't I ever see some of these things that people are talking about?
Speaker 1: Well, it might be sometimes because your callus has grown back.
Speaker 1: See, this is the trick, man.
Speaker 1: Jesus does it, but then we've gotta keep doing it.
Speaker 1: He makes us initially aware, but then we've gotta fight for it.
Speaker 1: See, it was promised when you came to Colossians 2.1,.
Speaker 1: When you came to Christ, you were circumcised, but not by a physical procedure.
Speaker 1: Christ performed a spiritual circumcision, the cutting away of your sinful nature.
Speaker 1: First, let me just give God props, because he's awesome.
Speaker 1: He didn't send an angel, he didn't send somebody else, he didn't send somebody like hey, little toadie in heaven, go cut that thing off.
Speaker 1: Man Jesus is so intimate with you that he came himself because I'm gonna cut away the flesh of that heart so that it can feel me and hear me and see me Again.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make them aware of the kingdom, this heart thing and the Bible.
Speaker 1: The heart isn't just like your love thing, it's not like your place where you just feel emotions.
Speaker 1: It's the seat of yourself.
Speaker 1: It's all of the things you love, all the things that you don't love, all the things that you allow in.
Speaker 1: Think about it like a city.
Speaker 1: Okay, if there's a city, and let's pretend in this city there's no internet yet.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 1: So there's just one place in the city where all the decisions are made.
Speaker 1: This is like where justice is meted out.
Speaker 1: This is where people say this is what we're gonna let in the city and this is what we're not gonna let in the city, that building, whatever that is.
Speaker 1: That's what the heart is to you.
Speaker 1: Your heart is where you make the decisions.
Speaker 1: Your heart is where you decide we're gonna let this in and we're not gonna let that in.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be about.
Speaker 1: We're gonna love this thing and not love that thing.
Speaker 1: That's your heart.
Speaker 1: And so a circumcised heart is a heart that says oh well, I no longer want to love things that Jesus doesn't love and I want to love things that Jesus only does love.
Speaker 1: For if you live according to the flesh now, here it is.
Speaker 1: Jesus did the initial one.
Speaker 1: Now we keep doing it.
Speaker 1: For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if, by the spirit, you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
Speaker 1: Jesus did it.
Speaker 1: But I gotta keep cutting it off.
Speaker 1: It'll get hard over here.
Speaker 1: Gotta cut that off by the spirit, with his help.
Speaker 1: And it is a high calling, dude.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's costly, it's a high calling.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of pruning, it's a lot of plowing, it's a lot of digging in when other people don't seem like they have to dig in.
Speaker 1: It's not just a one-time event, it's on repeat.
Speaker 1: But a circumcised heart is necessary to start serving God and to keep serving God.
Speaker 1: This is why I mean just to like connect the dots.
Speaker 1: That's why it's a good idea to come to church, because your heart's gonna be circumcised a little bit more.
Speaker 1: That's why, when people go to that midweek thing called the Grove where we're studying scripture, we're learning how to study it for ourselves.
Speaker 1: The reason we do that is not just because we're Bible dorks.
Speaker 1: It's because it sensitizes the heart.
Speaker 1: God's word is cutting.
Speaker 1: Every time you run into it it's cutting.
Speaker 1: This is why stuff like connect class in a couple weeks is a good idea for those of you who've never been, because God's word is in there and it's gonna cut, it's gonna help.
Speaker 1: It's gonna make you Remember Jesus is trading up, he's not taking, he's giving.
Speaker 1: It's gonna make you more aware of His presence, of what he wants to do.
Speaker 1: So what should be done?
Speaker 1: Well, first, let's recognize that Jesus really did all the things that need to be done.
Speaker 1: Jesus did it.
Speaker 1: Jesus is the one who saves.
Speaker 1: Did you notice?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 1: Zipporah had to save Moses.
Speaker 1: Now, earlier, pharaoh's daughter had to save Moses.
Speaker 1: Moses, he's just delivered.
Speaker 1: He's like the guy in Exodus.
Speaker 1: He's the deliverer that keeps needing to get saved.
Speaker 1: Did you see this by somebody else?
Speaker 1: There's a message in that for us.
Speaker 1: You might serve God, you might be sent by God, you might be on a mission from God, you might be taking the road out, you might be helping people, you might be doing all kinds of stuff, but you will always be a servant that needed to be saved.
Speaker 1: You'll always be someone that needed Jesus from the get-go and every day.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because our serving isn't enough.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be insufficient, it's gonna be inadequate.
Speaker 1: We're gonna miss it sometimes.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we're gonna be radically wrong about how we did a thing or where we did a thing or why we did a thing.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get it wrong and we're gonna need to be able to trust in somebody else's record of serving God right, and that someone is Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: See, jesus' cross is the proof that God loves you.
Speaker 1: It's the proof that God's love outweighs his justice.
Speaker 1: That's one of the tensions in the entire Bible.
Speaker 1: Which is gonna win, god's justice or God's love.
Speaker 1: God's love wins.
Speaker 1: He fulfills his justice through Jesus' sacrifice and death on our behalf.
Speaker 1: So what do you do?
Speaker 1: Well, first, I'm hoping that the Spirit of God is convicting many right now, like you're, thinking of the things that, like man, I'm kind of ignoring that, and maybe that is something that God wants to cut off.
Speaker 1: Whatever that thing is, with the Spirit's help, as we saw, cut it off.
Speaker 1: Cut it off.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, cut it off.
Speaker 1: It might be a one-time thing, it might be a multiple-time thing, it might be fast, like Zipporah's was, or it might take a long time.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, or as God makes you aware of it, let's restart.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cut this thing off.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna believe, I'm gonna trust about that.
Speaker 1: So cut it off.
Speaker 1: And then, for some of us, the truth is, my friend, you don't really have a circumcised heart.
Speaker 1: You never actually got born again.
Speaker 1: Now, that's not a scary word.
Speaker 1: All that means is you tell Jesus I need you to make me what I'm supposed to be, because I can't do it.
Speaker 1: It's a admission of humility, it's a mission of I can't do this without you.
Speaker 1: If I'm gonna be what God wants me to be, I need to, in a sense, be born again into the different person that he wants me to be.
Speaker 1: It's still me, but now I've got spiritual power.
Speaker 1: I've got what a circumcised heart.
Speaker 1: Now I can serve Him in the power of the Spirit, and it's a delight, instead of in the power of the flesh and it's weary.
Speaker 1: Some, some of us I wanna invite you to do that, and then others of us and all you do to do that, and we can do that when we're praying a second.
Speaker 1: All you do is ask, dude, it's super simple.
Speaker 1: You don't have to jump through any hoops, you don't have to dive in any oceans.
Speaker 1: All you gotta do is ask and He'll do it, just like that.
Speaker 1: But for some of us, like Moses, now let's get on with serving God.
Speaker 1: You know you need to keep this circumcised heart thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, do it and let's keep going.
Speaker 1: Let's keep serving God, whatever we gotta do, for some of you I'm saying this nicely your failure to serve is keeping you from getting a circumcised heart.
Speaker 1: Because the truth is, for some and we've all been in season like this we all know what this is like, but you're like hanging back, like I don't wanna, like that's too much time and I don't wanna get involved, and what you don't realize is that's a version of selfishness.
Speaker 1: That's the very character traits that God wants to cut off and you're like, okay, let Him cut it off.
Speaker 1: Okay, serve, do unselfish things and you'll find he is cutting off the flesh.
Speaker 1: Here's a good thing about circumcised heart, a real circumcised heart.
Speaker 1: Here's all.
Speaker 1: It is real simple.
Speaker 1: It is Jesus Christ in the center of my heart.
Speaker 1: It is Him making the decisions, it's Him making the call, it's Him on the throne of the heart and he gets to do whatever he wants.
Speaker 1: And even when I get away from Him, we say God, okay, I've grown callous, circumcise my heart again.
Speaker 1: Hey, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1: If you don't have a home church and you're looking for a Bible preaching community that has its heart set on passionately knowing Jesus and being His witness in our generation, check out Fears Church.
Speaker 1: We'd love for you to join us, either digitally or in person.
Speaker 1: Also, if you're looking for leadership development related content, don't forget to check out the Fears Leadership Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts from.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to those of you who give generously to support this ministry.
Speaker 1: It's because of you that this is possible.
Speaker 1: You can click on the link in the description to give now or visit Fears Church for more information.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this podcast, why not subscribe?
Speaker 1: Share it with your friends, click on the share button, click on the red screen and share it on social media or wherever you share such things.
Speaker 1: Whatever challenges you're facing, I know you can make it.
Speaker 1: Don't give up.
Speaker 1: Hang on to Jesus.
Speaker 1: He won't let go of you.
Speaker 1: Jesus loves you so much and we love you.
Speaker 1: I hope someday we get to meet in person.
Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening.