let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." Do we have circumcised ears so that we are hearing God's Word? Then, too, the Bible speaks about the circumcision of the lips. Moses understood the spiritual meaning of circumci sion in this respect. When God called Moses to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, Moses sought to get excused on the ground that he was "slow of speech, and of a slow tongue." Even after God assured him, "I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say", Moses objected (Exodus 4: 10-14). Not long after Moses' refusal to speak for God, he confessed the real reason why when he said, "I am of uncircumcised lips" (Exodus 6: 12, 30). The little member of the body, created by God as the vehicle of speech, Moses had not surrendered to the Lord. When he confessed that his lips were uncircumcised, it was a step in the right direction. Isaiah came face to face with the same condition in his own life when he cried, "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips 1 and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." Immediately, God sent an angel with a live coal of fire from the altar and caused it to touch Isaiah's mouth. Then He said to Isaiah, "Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged" (Isaiah 6:5-7). Our Lord said, "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh" (Matthew 12:34). The heart, ears and lips need to be circumcised. Now with these Old Testament Scriptures before us, Ro mans 3:25-29 becomes more easily understandable. "For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law; but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision" (3:25). Paul is saying to the Jew, "You have the mark of circumcision on your body, but you do not so much as try to conform to God's Law. Your heart is turned away from the Lord, your ears are not open to His Word, and your words do not honor Him." The Jews' circumcision identifies him as a member of a particular race, but for all practical purposes he was in God's sight as one who had never been circumcised. "Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision" (2:26)? In other words, if an uncircumcised Gentile exercises himself to obey what he kriows to be right 75
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