Day 164—Required and Given
What God Asks, and What He Provides to Answer With
However you can engage today, we’re here. Read, listen or both.
The written portion gives an overview, with verses broken down into smaller bites, and journaling/prayer prompts for reflection. In the podcast, Steve Traylor reflects on today’s passage with Scripture reading, a deeper pastoral teaching, and prayer (about 15 minutes). Perfect for morning coffee, commutes, or when your eyes need a rest.
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Hard Questions, Honest Answers: Deeper dives on difficult topics that arise along the way
Deuteronomy 10–11
Moses is an old man preaching his last sermon. He will not cross the Jordan. He knows it. And what he chooses to say with his final breath of authority is this: God has been faithful. You have seen it. And He is asking you to walk with Him still.
That is what these two chapters are. Not a legal catalog. A final appeal from a man who has spent forty years watching God keep covenant with a people who kept breaking it. Chapter 10 opens where Israel’s worst moment ended: the golden calf, the broken tablets, the mercy of God that refused to let the failure be final. From that ruin, Moses draws out a question and an answer that every weary person eventually confronts—What does God actually want from me? And then he spends the rest of both chapters answering it.
The chapters are not abstract theology. They are preached to people who have watched the ground swallow Korah and his company whole, who have seen water come from a rock, who have buried parents and siblings in desert sand. They have a history with God. It is complicated. It contains gratitude and grievance, obedience and revolt. Moses knows this. He is not preaching to perfect hearers. He is preaching to real ones.
That is still the congregation. People who have a complicated history with God. People who have seen enough to believe, and suffered enough to doubt. People who need both the requirement and the provision—because the asking and the enabling belong together.
Today we see that the God who requires is also the God who—by grace, through covenant promise—supplies what He commands. He does not lower what He asks. He provides, through the Spirit’s work, the means of answering it. And the covenant He offers is designed for broken people who need more than commands. They need a new heart.
A note before we begin: these two chapters cover a great deal of ground, and this study focuses on key movements rather than every verse. If you have the energy, reading Deuteronomy 10–11 in full alongside this study will reward you. But if you don't—the heart of it all is here.
1. New Tablets, Old Mercy
Deuteronomy 10:1-11, select verses
At that time Yahweh said to me, “Cut two stone tablets like the first, and come up to me onto the mountain, and make an ark of wood. 2 I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke, and you shall put them in the ark.” 3 So I made an ark of acacia wood, and cut two stone tablets like the first, and went up onto the mountain, having the two tablets in my hand. 4 He wrote on the tablets, according to the first writing, the ten commandments, which Yahweh spoke to you on the mountain out of the middle of the fire in the day of the assembly; and Yahweh gave them to me. 5 I turned and came down from the mountain, and put the tablets in the ark which I had made; and there they are as Yahweh commanded me.
The first tablets were broken. Israel knows this. Moses shattered them at the foot of the mountain when he saw what the people had done—the calf, the altar, the dancing. It was an act that named what had already happened in Israel’s heart: the covenant was already broken before the stone hit the ground.
And then God told Moses to hew new tablets.
He did not wait for Israel to deserve new ones. He did not require years of demonstrated faithfulness before He reinscribed the words. He told Moses to come back up the mountain, and He wrote the commandments again—according to the first writing. The same words. The same law.
He did not revise what He required. He did not reduce what He offered. He started over.
The mercy of God does not lower the standard. It provides a new beginning within the same standard.
If you have been in a season where you know you have broken something—a vow, a pattern of faithfulness, a relationship with God that was real and then drifted—this passage does not tell you that God lowered His expectations to accommodate the failure. It tells you He hewed the tablets again. The covenant is still the covenant. And the offer of restoration moves toward you even before you have demonstrated that you deserve it.
Journaling/Prayer: Is there something in your walk with God that you know was broken—a commitment, a season of closeness, a habit of prayer you have not been able to restore? Can you receive the image of the hewed tablets as a word for you specifically today?
You don’t have to climb the mountain with your own stone. The invitation back into covenant life is issued by the One who keeps making room for the return. If you can’t receive that right now, simply sit with the fact that He didn’t stop with the first pair of broken tablets. He made more.
If you joined us somewhere along the way and want the full story behind the golden calf, the broken tablets, and God's renewal of the covenant, see Days 116–121 (Exodus 32–34). Those studies tell the whole painful, merciful sequence.
2. Circumcised Hearts and the God of Everything
Deuteronomy 10:12-22, select verses
12 Now, Israel, what does Yahweh your God require of you, but to fear Yahweh your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, and to serve Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 to keep Yahweh’s commandments and statutes, which I command you today for your good? 14 Behold, to Yahweh your God belongs heaven, the heaven of heavens, and the earth, with all that is therein. 15 Only Yahweh had a delight in your fathers to love them, and he chose their offspring after them, even you above all peoples, as it is today. 16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked. 17 For Yahweh your God, he is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, the mighty, and the awesome, who doesn’t respect persons or take bribes. 18 He executes justice for the fatherless and widow and loves the foreigner in giving him food and clothing. 19 Therefore love the foreigner, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.
“What does the LORD your God require of you?” The question is structured almost as a rhetorical concession—only this. Fear. Walk. Love. Serve. Keep. Five verbs that encompass an entire life.
But Moses frames them as being for your good. Not as a burden designed to demonstrate loyalty. The commands describe the shape of the life Israel was made for. They are the terms of a relationship that is itself the good.
Then comes the sweeping claim of verse 14: the heaven of heavens belongs to God. Everything. The entire universe, from edge to edge.
And then verse 15: yet He set His delight on your fathers. The contrast is staggering. The God who owns everything chose one family. Not because of what they offered—the text never suggests Israel was superior or more deserving. He chose them because He wanted to. His love is not a response to their lovability. It is a free gift of sovereign affection.
The love of a God who owns everything and still chose you cannot be explained by anything you brought to the table.
This is the ground of verse 16’s command: Therefore circumcise your heart. Because of who He is and what He has done, remove the hardness. The image is stark—the outward mark of covenant membership points to an inward work that must happen in the will, the affections, the deepest orientation of the self. A person could carry every external marker of belonging to God and still have an uncircumcised heart: unchanged, resistant, stiff-necked.
But here is what Moses does not say in verse 16: here is how to do it. He gives the command without supplying the mechanism—because he cannot. Israel’s history to this point is proof that willpower does not produce heart-change. They had seen the plagues and still built the calf. They had heard Sinai and still complained. The command exposes the need it cannot meet.
Deuteronomy 30:6 answers the gap: God will circumcise your heart. That is the promise. Not: if you try hard enough, you will eventually manage it. But: the One who commands it will Himself perform it. Jeremiah will prophesy a new covenant with the law written on hearts. Ezekiel will describe a new spirit placed within. And Jesus will inaugurate that covenant in His own blood—the fulfillment of what Moses could command but Israel could not produce.
The command does not manufacture the transformation. It points to the promise. And the promise points to Christ.
This matters for the reader who has tried and failed to change a deep pattern—who has resolved again and again to be less bitter, more trusting, more willing, more open—and found the resolution empty by Tuesday. The command is not a measure of your success. It is a diagnosis and an arrow. The arrow points forward, to the One who does the work grace enables and covenant promises.
And then immediately, astonishingly, Moses turns from the cosmic to the particular: this God who owns all things and shows no partiality—loves the stranger. He gives food and clothing to the foreigner. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow. Therefore: love the stranger. Because you were one.
If you have ever felt like an outsider looking in at something you couldn’t access—belonging, community, the sense that you were known and included—the passage names a God who specifically attends to that position. He does not overlook the person without a place at the table. He is, the text says, the God who gives food and clothing to the one who has no claim on either. That is the character of the God who is asking you to walk with Him.
Journaling/Prayer: Where are you most stiff-necked right now—most resistant to God’s movement in a particular area of your life? What would it look like to open that specific place to Him, even if only barely?
You don’t have to manufacture the softness yourself. The same God who commands the circumcision of the heart is the One who promised in Deuteronomy 30 to do it Himself. Bring the hardness to Him. That itself is a form of opening.
3. Eyes That Have Seen, and a Choice That Remains
Deuteronomy 11, select verses
2 Know this day—for I don’t speak with your children who have not known, and who have not seen the chastisement of Yahweh your God, his greatness, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm, 3 his signs, and his works, which he did in the middle of Egypt to Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and to all his land; 4 and what he did to the army of Egypt, to their horses, and to their chariots; how he made the water of the Red Sea to overflow them as they pursued you, and how Yahweh has destroyed them to this day; 5 and what he did to you in the wilderness until you came to this place…
26 Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse: 27 the blessing, if you listen to the commandments of Yahweh your God, which I command you today; 28 and the curse, if you do not listen to the commandments of Yahweh your God, but turn away out of the way which I command you today, to go after other gods which you have not known.
Chapter 11 turns on two words: remember and choose.
Moses opens with a distinction that’s easy to misread, so stay with it. He says: I am not speaking to your children, who have not seen what you have seen. The natural assumption is that he means the Exodus generation—the ones at the Red Sea, who heard Sinai thunder. But that generation died in the wilderness, judged for refusing to enter the land.
The people before Moses are their children—raised in the wilderness. A few may have been very small children in Egypt, old enough for a fragment of Passover memory, but below the age of accountability when God judged their parents, which is why they were spared. Most knew Egypt only as a story told by parents who later died in the desert. What they witnessed directly is what Moses lists: God’s discipline in the wilderness, the ground opening under Dathan and Abiram, forty years of formation and provision and consequence.
Their own children—not yet old enough to stand in Moses’s assembly—have seen nothing. They will hear it all secondhand.
The distinction is this: your eyes saw enough. Let it do its work. Memory in Deuteronomy is not nostalgia. It is the engine of obedience—a return to fact rather than a manufactured feeling. Israel is being told: this happened. You were there.
The application is not identical for us—we stand on the other side of the cross, not on the plains of Moab. But the movement is the same. If you have lived long enough with God, you have your own history: the prayer answered in an impossible moment, the provision that came from nowhere, the time you were carried through something you were certain would destroy you. Memory is not decoration. It is evidence.
Chapter 11 then ends at a crossroads. Moses sets blessing and curse before them—Gerizim and Ebal, two mountains facing each other across the valley. Not as a threat. As a clarity.
This is not a prosperity formula—not a formula for ease, but the shape of life under God’s covenant presence. Not every hardship is consequence for disobedience; Job’s friends made that error and God rebuked them for it. But the life of covenant attentiveness is not neutral either. To walk with God, attend to His word, keep returning—this shapes a person differently than the alternative. The blessing is not a prize. It is what covenant life, sustained over time, produces.
Moses will not cross over. The people will. And they carry the question: Which mountain?
Journaling/Prayer: What is one specific thing God has done for you—something your own eyes have seen, something you have personally lived through—that you have been forgetting to hold onto? What would it mean to let that memory do its work in you today?
Sit with one memory of God’s faithfulness. Just one. You don’t have to generate certainty about the future. Let the past do its quiet work.
Summary
Two tablets, hewed again. A heart that must be cut open and made ready. A God who owns the universe and attends to the stranger. A people who have seen enough to know He is real. And a crossroads waiting at the end of the sermon.
Deuteronomy 10–11 is not a chapter of easy commands. It is a chapter of honest appeal: given everything you know, given everything He has done, given the new beginning He keeps offering—walk with Him. Not because you have finally earned the right to try again. Because He hewed the tablets again before you earned anything.
The God who requires the circumcised heart is the God who promised to perform it—and grace that enables real obedience does not replace the obedience; it makes it possible. What He calls for, He ultimately supplies by His Spirit. The New Covenant that Jeremiah and Ezekiel would describe—and that Jesus would inaugurate—is the fulfillment of the command Moses gave on the plains of Moab. The Spirit’s work in those who belong to Christ does not remove the call to walk, love, fear, serve, and keep. It provides, finally, the heart that can.
Come to Him with the broken tablet. Come with the stiff neck. Come with whatever your eyes have seen—including the hard things, the years that confused you, the prayers that went unanswered. Come, as Moses says, today. The choice is still in front of you. And the One who set it there is the God who makes new beginnings out of broken things.
Action / Attitude for Today
Think about the tablets. God could have said: you broke the covenant, the covenant is finished. He said: hew two more stones.
If you are in a place where something between you and God has broken—a discipline, a posture, a season of closeness that you have not been able to recover—take Moses’ image with you today. The second tablets did not require Israel to first prove themselves. God wrote the words again as an act of mercy, not as a reward.
Take one small step back toward the covenant today. It doesn’t have to be large. It might be reading this study. It might be one honest sentence spoken to God. It might be naming the specific place of stiff-neckedness and holding it out—not resolving it, just opening the hand.
Say this prayer, as much of it as is true for you today: “Lord, I know You have done things my eyes have seen. I have forgotten some of them in the weight of right now. I bring You my broken tablet and my stiff neck and my exhausted heart. I am not asking to do it perfectly from here. I am asking for a new start. I know You are the One who said ‘hew two more.’ Let that be enough to take one step back toward You today. Amen.”
The One who required the circumcised heart also promised to perform it—and the grace that enables real obedience does not replace it. Your job is not to manufacture the transformation. It is to keep showing up to the One who supplies what He commands.
The Bible for the Broken is published by Aurion Press LLC. © Aurion Press LLC. All rights reserved.