Deuteronomy 10 - God's Outline for a Nation's Recovery
This chapter has been my favorite so far due to the incredible summary of exactly what God is expecting from His people. It encapsulates the issue of the law and the heart together very well with perfect continuity with what Jesus preached and Paul wrote. God desires people who want to serve and obey Him even when it is hard or conflicts what our flesh may think it desires. The area the Pharisees went wrong starts with a complete misunderstanding or outright forgetfulness of this chapter. Circumcision was symbolic and only meant to reflect a heart changed towards loving and obeying God's commands.
12 “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good?
God's statutes and commandments are for our own good; just as a loving parent puts limits, roles, and restrictions on their children to protect them. There are extremely good reasons that God put these statutes in place and they are to be respected with the same love God has for us in return. We are to walk in all of God's ways, not to mutate, adjust, or warp His moral law for any kind of modern culture even if it makes us uncomfortable. Our modern western culture is not more inclusive for the sake of being loving and accepting of everyone, it's happened before in the past and has the explicit goal of eroding God's statutes entirely all in the name of attempting to say it is to try and be more loving of everyone. As if love is in conflict with God's law of morality and roles given to His own creation? Who are we to make this claim? Who are we to oppose God and think we know better than the One who designed and created us? I do not believe we can, in good conscience, claim to be able to know what God's intent for each statute is and pick and choose or modify what they mean by coping about each and every original word trying to dissect a reason not to follow it.
16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. 18 He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. 19 Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. 20 You shall fear the Lord your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear.
It is no coincidence that God places love even of the sojourner that is a guest in your nation either. Some of the worst evil on earth has been enacted by dehumanizing guests to the point of death. This is by no means, however, a justification for allowing these guests to rule over you. The tribe of Levi was to be the only tribe in charge of the ark and God's tablets. You still can and should love the sojourner without giving them full equal opportunity and citizenship and keeping them distinct from your own tribes. There is a middle ground between how the Hebrews were treated in Israel as slaves and how immigrants are treated in the United States basically being given elevated status even above citizens. This seems to be what God is pointing at when outlining the way a nation of His people is to be ordered. Always focusing on the love and mercy of Him while desiring to treat each fellow human creation of His with the love they deserve. All while keeping the designed roles and order God so clearly lines out throughout the Holy Scripture from old to new covenant.