Joshua 5:2 – At that time the Lord said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time.

Joshua 5:3 – And Joshua made him sharp knives, and circumcised the children of Israel at the hill of the foreskins.

Joshua 5:4 – And this is the cause why Joshua did circumcise: All the people that came out of Egypt, that were males, even all the men of war, died in the wilderness by the way, after they came out of Egypt.

Joshua 5:5 – Now all the people that came out were circumcised: but all the people that were born in the wilderness by the way as they came forth out of Egypt, them they had not circumcised.

Joshua 5:6 – For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, till all the people that were men of war, which came out of Egypt, were consumed, because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord: unto whom the Lord sware that he would not shew them the land, which the Lord sware unto their fathers that he would give us, a land that floweth with milk and honey.

Joshua 5:7 – And their children, whom he raised up in their stead, them Joshua circumcised: for they were uncircumcised, because they had not circumcised them by the way.

Joshua 5:8 – And it came to pass, when they had done circumcising all the people, that they abode in their places in the camp, till they were whole.

Joshua 5:9 – And the Lord said unto Joshua, This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you. Wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal unto this day.

Joshua 5:10 – And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of Jericho.

Joshua 5:12 – And they did eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after the passover, unleavened cakes, and parched corn in the selfsame day.

Joshua 5:13 – And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land; neither had the children of Israel manna any more; but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.

Hello readers, what’s missing is Gilgal. Today we are looking at Joshua 5, and what happened at a place that would be called Gilgal. Something very important in the history of the children of Israel happened at a place called Gilgal. Maybe you look back in your life, and there are some places which have a specific name, because it was at the place in your life where God did something great in your life. Gilgal hardly seems great when you look at what happened there, but it was essential to everything that would follow thereafter as they fought the fight of faith in Canaan.

Today there are many Christians who profess Jesus Christ and call themselves God’s people (just like Israel were)… but they’ve never come to this important place in their lives, they’ve never come to Gilgal. You see Gilgal missing from their lives. There’s been no spiritual circumcision. They’re not circumcised from the sins of the flesh and from their identity in this world. And that’s why there’s no Jericho victories in their life. You’re not going to see the power of God and big walls that are in your path falling flat until you make a stop at a place called Gilgal. Many Christians really do miss out on everything that belongs to a saved life, because there’s been no circumcision of heart.

Philippians 3:3 – For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.

Gilgal is a special name for a special place. It was a place of circumcision, a place of God taking away the reproach of Egypt from his people. There’s a reproach in each of our lives that needs to be taken away. That reproach is sin.

Proverbs 13:34 – Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.

In order to move forward in Christian life, the reproach of sin, the reproach of Egypt must be rolled away from your life. Sin must be dealt with, and getting saved is an operation of God on your heart. Today I really want to see that while physical circumcision was done by men’s hands, spiritual circumcision is done by God… it’s God’s operation on our hearts. We need that. We need to be delivered from the sins of the flesh. Our flesh sins, we all have the nature to sin. We need God to make a change in our life, and only he has the power to operate on the heart! Just as they were physically changed at Gilgal, we need to be spiritually changed.

Giglal was bloody and painful. I don’t want to go through that! Our nature is to avoid Gilgal. It’s much easier not to confront with and deal with sin in our lives. It’s much easier to keep our relationship with sin and this world. The hill of the foreskins became Gilgal. But a very uncomfortable, inconvenient, painful time of your life where sin is exposed and dealt with might just be where God does his greatest work in your life. Without conviction of sin, there is no repentance, and with no repentance there is no forgiveness, and with no forgiveness there is no new life and joy and peace and happiness. Being right with God is worth it. Gilgal marked a separation between these people and Egypt. Imagine having sin’s reproach taken away from your life. Imagine no longer being owned by sin and identified with it.

In the Bible, we see often see places with special names that meant a lot to people at that time… but those places are for us as well, and Gilgal is one of them. It’s one we’d like to skip for sure. Can’t we just go straight to beating Jericho? But there are no shortcuts with God though we try to find them. Pain came before joy and blessing. There’s painful truths in our own lives who’s fixing require obedience to God and taking the sharp knife of the word of God to address in each of our own lives. Down the track it’s worth it. Coming down the track was blessing, victory and deliverance for Israel.

Before Israel would ever conquer Jericho, they’d need their Gilgal experience. Gilgal is not optional, it’s compulsory for a believer. Many Christians today lack a Gilgal, and that’s why there is no victory and no power of God in their lives. What’s missing is Gilgal. There’s no separation from them and a life of sin, there’s no difference between themselves and Egypt, sin hasn’t been dealt with in their lives, and the reproach of sin is upon them and they’re useless in the fight of faith and the service of God. There’s no salt and light… because there’s no Gilgal.

We have to lay hold on truth for ourselves. You have to get saved for yourself and get your own walk with God. So often we live without any spiritual reality of our own. Many Christians have that herd mentality, they feel safe because of who they are around. There’s no internalizing of truth, there’s no application of truth to one’s own life. People get their identity based on the group they are in or belong to while they have no spiritual reality. Each male had to be circumcised. If you didn’t, you were the odd one out, you were cut off, and you weren’t entitled to any of God’s promises. God had made it such that circumcision was a sign and token of his covenant with Abraham. If you lacked it, well read here… Genesis 17:14 – And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.

Today, God’s promises involved a circumcision, but a very different kind of one. A spiritual one. The spiritual trumps the physical. This verse isn’t saying go and get physically circumcised… that doesn’t amount to anything. Anyone can do that, it doesn’t make you saved. The circumcision that is necessary for a Christian is spiritual. Sin must be dealt with in your life. Your heart must be set free from bondage to the sins of the flesh. Sin will bring a reproach into your life, mark it down. Your flesh will prevent you from serving God, from believing God, from obeying God… and sin will bring shame, guilt, condemnation into your life. Sin is ugly, it’s uncomfortable and inconvenient to deal with it, but it must be deal… it must be cut off. Today, so many Christians are really just uncircumcised Philistines, there is no difference between them and the rest of the unsaved world in how they think, speak and live.

The walk of faith, the walk of a believer… it’s only possible if our heart has been circumcised. You may read Joshua 5 and think ugh, or cool story, or irrelevant, or I don’t get it… or whatever. You may get nothing out of it. But as you go along in your life, if you are saved, this chapter will make sense and mean something to you. The reproach of sin in your life must be dealt with. How can you serve God and obey him and walk with him by faith with an uncircumcised heart that loves and desires to sin? The setting in Joshua 5 is that the children of Israel are finally entering Canaan, the promised land. They saw the promised land many years earlier, but it took a lot longer to go in. In our lives often we see what we need to do, we know what we need to do, we know what we should do… but how many years go by before we do something about it? We love our sin so much we delay don’t we.

This story found way back in Joshua 5 bears much significance for the believer today. The whole lot of them had to get circumcised. It was God’s command. Israel was meant to be a circumcised people… however none of them were circumcised… because that’d been neglected in the next generation. Israel was meant to be a circumcised people physically, and today the church of God is meant to be a circumcised people spiritually. Did you know that when you get saved, there is an operation that takes place? God’s operation. In Joshua 5 you see man operating… but in Colossians as we will quote ahead… spiritual circumcision is God’s operation! The fact is, the Bible teaches us that there is an operation even more real than physical circumcision that takes place in your heart when you repent of your sins and believe the gospel.

Colossians 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:

Colossians 2:12 – Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.

Colossians 2:13 – And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;

When you get saved, God creates a new creature in you. He goes to work on your heart. Something changes inside. That’s why you think and live and speak and do differently. Christianity is the religion of the heart, and that’s where God goes to work. From the heart flow all issues of life, the problem with us and our life of sin is that there is a fundamental heart issue. And unless God goes to work, unless he operates on your heart through his word… nothing will ever be cut off from your life. Egypt, the reproach of sin, identity with the world… nothing will go. You can’t be joined to God without being separated from your past life, you can’t have Egypt and Canaan at the same time… you can only have one… who will it be? You see that in Christians today, they are religious, but there is no spiritual circumcision. Nothing has been cut off their heart, their hearts lusts to all sorts of wickedness and sin. You can be religious… the Jews that stoned Stephen were very religious… but they were uncircumcised in their heart. God had never changed them and done nothing in their heart… their hard heart wasn’t receptive to the knife of God’s word.

Salvation is a new creature. There’s a new heart in there because God has operated in the sphere where no man can see and no man can change… but that operation that’s going on in there, where God can see where to cut and we can’t… that’s what amounts to a lifetime and kingdom difference. The instant you repent of your sin and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ to save you… God comes to dwell in our hearts by faith. Because he’s holy, he makes a place for himself to dwell in us… and that new person in us, that person is entirely separate from that old person. Even if we don’t get it, we just trust that it is so because God says it is so. Nicodemus when talking to Jesus about being born again said… how can these things be? If you don’t get it, that’s fine… just trust what God has said and reckon it to be so. But God does confirm the truth of what he says he’s done as we suddenly think, live, and speak differently. Something’s changed, God’s cut some things away from our heart, he’s taken the reproach of sin away from our lives. Those children of Israel were distinct from all the other nations because of their circumcision, can the same be said of you in a spiritual sense as a Christian in this world today?

But then you’ll realize after you’re saved, you still battle sin. So there is a practical truth here as well, we must come to Gilgal in our lives to deal with our sin. Ask God to take away the reproach of sin from your life. We have to reckon what God has said he’s done to be true in our lives and live in that truth. The truth is, they’d cut some of the flesh away, but they had a lot left still didn’t they. We will only be entirely free from sin when we die. That’s why sin is so triumphant, because that is the complete separation from our body of sin and from that nature to sin that is present with us for life’s journey. To be truly set free from sin, we need to be set free from this body of sin. Maybe you don’t think you’re a sinner. Read God’s word… and his word will go to work on your conscience and convince you that you absolutely are a sinner. We all sin, it’s in our very nature to do it. The reason we struggle with sin is because it’s in us to sin, nobody had to teach us to sin, it came naturally to us. It didn’t start that way, but it became that way by man’s choice in Genesis 3. Sin is the legacy of man’s disobedience to God, and it’s inherited, it’s contagious, and it’s a deadly disease that brings death in each of our lives both practically and ultimately if you are not saved.

You know, that new person created in you when you get saved is entirely distinct from that old person. There’s a clear line drawn between your old man and your new man. But while you still have that old man nature… you are in a different case now. You aren’t owned by sin anymore, Satan has no claim to your soul, you have the freedom and grace and liberty to obey God and live a life victorious over sin. You don’t have to sin anymore. Egypt doesn’t have any claim to you anymore. After they circumcised themselves at Gilgal, there was a separation that was put with themselves and that past identity of Egypt. Many Christians today lack this separation, this sanctification by God in our lives unto himself… they lack spiritual circumcision, the cutting away of their flesh from their heart and lives. They live fleshly, sinful lives because there’s no internal reality to their profession. There’s been no operation of God, there’s been no working of God in their lives. It’s all as surface level as a physical circumcision was. God wants us to be circumcised in our hearts. God wants our heart to be circumcised from a life of sin, from sin’s reproach, from identity with this world.

Jesus came to a bunch of religious people who were not just physically circumcised, but gloried in it. These were the guys that opposed him the most. They had the physical circumcision, which really meant nothing… but they were uncircumcised where it mattered most, in the heart. Stephen, just before he was stoned, would say this to that same Jewish mob… Acts 7:51 – Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. God had never changed their heart. He didn’t dwell there. God dwelt in a tabernacle and a temple, but that was just a picture of where he would ultimately dwell… in believers hearts. For him to dwell there, our heart needs to be made suitable for his habitation. And he does that. You know, this blog isn’t about self effort, as that is what we naturally think… this blog is about the futility of man’s attempts to change himself and his evil heart and the need to trust and obey God. Remember the Israelites OBEYED God’s word… that’s why God took the reproach away.

You can try operating on yourself, on your own life and heart, as much as you want. But what you need is God to change you. God has not operated in many Christian’s hearts. That’s the problem. There is no circumcision. God gave Abraham circumcision as a sign and token of his covenant that he made with him. If you didn’t get circumcised you weren’t under that covenant. It was required. That’s why the Jews were so big on it. But they just didn’t quite get it did they! All that was pointing to the future circumcision that would happen as a result of taking part in the new covenant, a spiritual circumcision in which we are set free from the bondage and reproach of the sins of the flesh. If you weren’t circumcised you had no part of God’s promises. That’s a lesson to us today, if you aren’t born again, if there is no circumcision in your life of your heart… you have no part and no stake in God’s promises and blessedness. You’re not his.

The necessity of spiritual circumcision today is this. Without God changing your heart, without his operation on your soul and spirit… sin will dominate your life, and continue to enslave you. You have no answer to your fleshly desires apart from God’s operation on what’s inside. And if God has operated on your heart, it proves and verifies your salvation, him fulfilling his promise and you being a partaker of his promise. Every child of God, every partaker of his covenant… has it. If you don’t have it, you’re not part of his new covenant. Spiritual circumcision shows who are his children and who are not. It’s so necessary because in the Christian life, our flesh has to be dealt with. Spiritual circumcision is vitally connected with being born again… without it, you’re not born again, without it you’re not his. When you get saved, God cuts away that flesh from it’s hold and  influence and power over your heart, mind and soul. Many Christians today have no circumcision of heart… they love the world, they love sin… their flesh has never been cut off… there has never been a distinction in their lives between themselves and a past life… Egypt. Because there past life actually isn’t past… yes it’s meant to be as per Ephesians 2… but most Christians don’t have a past life, because it’s not past yet… it’s their present reality.

This story found way back in Joshua 5 is a wonderful picture for the believer today. God said to Joshua, make thee sharp knives. I got to thinking about those sharp knives and I thought of the word of God, because the word of God is the sword of the Spirit. Hebrews 4:12 – For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Most people have no circumcision tool because they have no word of God. God’s word is what’s required to operate on all of our hearts to bring about conviction and repentance of sin and saving faith in Jesus Christ. There’s no division between Christians and a life of sin because God’s word is missing in their lives. They’ve put down the sharp tool, they’d rather keep their flesh. Their flesh has quite a hold, and holds sway on their heart… and they’re like us at Gilgal, knives down people, we don’t wanna do this. It’s too bloody and painful, it’ll cost me too much. Salvation is bloody, blood was required to atone for our sins and deliver us from certain hell.

God’s word must operate on us. God’s word in accordance with the working of the Holy  Spirit is who performs the spiritual circumcision. When God makes a change, true change happens. Many men never really change, despite their new leave and new phases of life and growing up… people don’t fundamentally change inside until they get saved. Circumcision was a sign of the covenant, and it’s a sign you’re saved. Victory and deliverance from sin, separation and distinction from Egypt, from your former life and master… that’s all a sign of the indwelling Holy Spirit, who is there with the chief purpose to circumcise our hearts so we are free and able to serve God. God had a plan for them to go into Jericho, they were serving God… but they couldn’t do it without Gilgal. You can’t fight and win battles if sin is in your life with dominion over you. It needs to be dealt with and you need to be completely severed from it. Have you been separated from your sins? Salvation is a separation between us and the penalty, power and presence of sin in our life. Or is the reproach of sin still on your life? Sin is still on you, and controlling you, and influencing your life? Is the reproach of sin still on you because Christ is not in your life?

You kinda think that Israel should’ve got what circumcision really was all about. We kind of get to thinking that the Old Testament is completely distinct from the New Testament. But it’s not. You can’t understand the Bible without both. And in the Old Testament, God did teach the people of what the really necessary circumcision was.

Deuteronomy 10:16 – Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.

Deuteronomy 30:6 – And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.

Sin and disobedience and rebellion and worldliness is a reproach on both a saved and unsaved life.  As Christians we need to come to Gilgal. We need to pray for God to deliver us and change us and work in our lives to deliver us from sins of the flesh. We need to pray for deliverance from a stony hard heart. God is concerned about your heart. Spiritually we are circumcised when we get saved, but practically we need to live in that reality of needing separation from sin unto God in our lives. How do we do that? Well that’s an operation we can’t do. So often we’ve got the knife in our hand trying to work on ourselves, when the knife really needs to be in God’s hand. It’s God’s work to change our hearts, to deliver us from sin… we can’t do that. Our responsibility is just like those children of Israel. Believe and obey his word. It takes an circumcised heart to want to obey God’s word… as your flesh doesn’t want to obey God’s word.

Without God’s word, you’re never going to be saved, you’re never going to be separated, you’re never going to be made fit for battle. Without God’s word there will be no distinction between you and the rest of this world. There’s no circumcision in believers today, there’s no separation from the world, there’s no dealing with the flesh that cannot but sin… because there’s no word of God. Maybe you’re still wondering, why is circumcision so necessary? Because when they did it, God said he’d rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off them. As we have already discussed, the Bible says sin is a reproach to any people. Sin in our lives has brought a reproach upon each one of us, and like they each needed to be circumcised, so we all need to be saved from sin, and delivered from sin in our daily lives by Jesus Christ, who ever lives to make intercession for us.

It’s worth noting at the end of this event, the Bible says they kept the Passover. You may think you’re losing in obeying God, believing God, following God, and surrendering all this world has for a life of his will over my will. But you’re not. They experienced a blessing after the circumcision… they kept the Passover. You’ll never enjoy who Christ is and what’s he’s done for you until you’re saved and right with him. Many people have never truly worshiped and praised God in their heart and in truth.Your worship and service is never going to be acceptable if you’re not right with God. If there is no separation between flesh and Spirit. God doesn’t accept your flesh, though you may try and make it look presentable.

I’ve been thinking about this thing, and it seems like work. But the whole secret (which isn’t a secret, but more is a reflection of our natural thinking) is that it’s God’s operation. We can talk about it all day but it’s not something we can do for ourselves. They physically circumcised themselves but that didn’t stop them from sinning, and it didn’t change their hearts. God needs to take away the reproach of sin from our lives, and he will. He will take away that flesh in accordance with his promise. Only God can take you from a life of sin to a life of service. We can’t change our own hearts. We can’t operate in a sphere we can’t even see to cut. Get in God’s word and God’s word will operate on you. That’s why we tell people the gospel and sow seeds, because God’s word goes to work.

Only God can take away sins hold on you. Who can change the nature and desire of your heart but God only? Only God can perform that operation. You can’t serve God, you can’t follow him, you can’t walk in Canaan land in your flesh. What’s stopping us from truly following God is that there has been no operation on our hearts. We need to get in God’s word. God’s word is a sharp knife. It cuts between living and dead, clean and unclean, Spirit and flesh, corruption and incorruption, truth and lie, light and darkness, holy and profane, sanctified and worldly, new and old, saved and unsaved.

Believing in God’s word has a circumcising effect on the heart of the reader. You can’t fight a good fight of faith uncircumcised in your heart. If your hearts want to sin, how can you serve God? It takes God to deal with sin’s grip and power and influence on you.  You can’t separate yourself from sin. That takes God. God wanted them to see that, how futile their efforts and self circumcision were. What’s required is faith, let God work on your heart both in terms of salvation and in sanctification as he separates you from a life of sin unto himself. Sin is a reproach on your life and my life, and we need to trust and believe in God to deal with that problem. They obeyed God’s word and when you believe the gospel and lay it to heart, that’s obeying God’s word.

It’s God’s operation…. their physical circumcision which they did made no difference to their behavior. But when God does it to you… there’s a change. The solution to your fleshly life isn’t trying harder, it’s looking to Jesus Christ. You don’t even know where to start on your heart. It’s inoperable to man. It’s utterly wicked and corrupted. So you have before you self effort, self improvement…or God’s operation. God has the power and ability to deliver us from sin and change our heart. He will when you believe on him. What can take the flesh off your heart? What can take the desire to sin away? Christians struggle because they’re just like the world, uncircumcised in heart, just with a religious facelift. The Jews had religion. They were circumcised, but in heart they were no different to anyone else. Often our profession is as empty as theirs.

The only way we can have our desires and nature changed is through God. The message of Gilgal isn’t try harder and do better… because we can’t.  They obeyed God in their life, it was the hearing of faith. They could circumcise themselves all they wanted… but it was God that took the reproach away. All they did was cut some skin off. Christians today lack Gilgal. They have no circumcision of their heart. They are in the flesh and walk after the flesh. They sin because that’s what’s in their heart to do. There is no separation unto God in their lives. There is no power of  God in their lives, there are no Jericho’s falling down today because nobody is obeying God. God took the reproach away not because of their works but because they by faith obeyed him.

Has there ever been a separation between the sins of your flesh and life walking after the Spirit. Is there any distinction between your new life that you say you have and your old life? Or is your old life your current life? As already stated, Christianity is a religion of the heart. It’s a new heart and a new life. That’s what salvation is. God means business with salvation. People have salvation without the salvation part. Salvation from what? Sin. God wants to remove that love and lust and desire to sin from your heart. But maybe you have no old life, you just have the same life you’ve always had. You may do this and that, but in the heart there is still flesh, there is sin in there, that reproach has never been taken away from your life.

How much of a distinction is in your Christianity between what’s godly and what’s not, what’s holy right and true and what’s not? Read Ephesians 2… there’s a past walk, a past talk, a past conversation, a past thinking … because salvation is a new life. Maybe there’s no new thinking because there’s no new heart. There’s been no operation of God in your life, because there’s no faith and no belief and no obedience. We do have a practical responsibility to obey God. Maybe nothing’s been cut off from your old life because your old life really isn’t that old. You just got religious. But death is inside you, you’re full of sin.

God said to Joshua, circumcise them the second time. What a truth in this statement. The first circumcision was physical in the Old Testament under the Old Covenant, but the second circumcision under the new covenant is spiritual. What a wonderful picture in a gruesome Old Testament story. God had something a whole lot better for his people. Only God can create a new heart in you. It’s so easy to think, oh I’ve gotta do better, but actually doing better must come from a new heart. You can go and circumcise yourself physically, that doesn’t avail anything. Plenty of circumcised “law keeping” Jews are in hell today. Salvation is an operation on the heart. And it’s God doing it. All man could do was cut some physical flesh off… and that never changed any of their consciences, that didn’t make them clean and pure inside, it did nothing. But in that, there was a great lesson being taught of the need for that separation deep inside us where our heart is cut free from bondage to the sins of the flesh.

This was a difficult blog to write, I do hope it’s made some semblance of sense. But what we do need to get from it is that we need to be spiritually circumcised. We need a new heart, we need God to operate. We can’t do it. It’s God’s domain and God’s work, it’s he who knows what needs to be cut and where to cut. God’s word is a sharp tool, that’s why this world hates it. They like their uncircumcised heart, they love their sin and their death. If you’re a Christian, hopefully you’ve had your Gilgal. See what sin is, see what it’s doing to your soul and mind and life. Ask God for deliverance and just believe his word for your life. It’s God’s work, salvation is of the Lord… and so is sanctification. There’s a life that needs to be past, not present. You can have victory and deliverance from sin, you can walk in Canaan land, you can have that reproach rolled away. A great stone was rolled away when Jesus rose from the dead, and heaven’s light shone in that opening of the tomb. What prevents us from being able to serve and follow and praise and worship God has been rolled away, get you sin under the blood of Christ, believe his word, trust him in your very real life today… it’s worth it.

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