Dedication Part 1: Dedication Defined

Everything in God’s universe is built in an orderly arrangement. There is focus and direction in all that God does. Let us take a look simply at creation. The day and the night, the seasons, they all follow an order, the order of God. The same is with man. God also has a order for man. Dedication is the picture of everything he does.

Rm 13:1-5
All authority and order is resident in God. The source of all authority is God and God dedicates authority for us to become his representatives. We have a calling, a unique place in God’s order needed to be fulfilled.

But very often we are not willing to accept his dedication. We do not see or accept what he has for us in his order of things. It is only when we recongnise and accept this dedication he has for us, that we can represent him.

Let’s take a look ar Jesus. God’s total way of doing things is in Jesus Christ his son. Jesus is the perfect example for one who has accepted dedication. Everything that Jesus did represent God exactly.

In contrast, instead of accepting God’s order of dedication, Satan chose to be God. He sets up his own realm, his own order. But this is contrary to God’s will. Every other order apart from God’s order of things is doomed to failure. Even our own order of things fail if we are not in God’s order. In the beginning, God dedicates to Adam a certain sphere for him to use it for God’s good and man’s good. He wanted Adam to represent God. God was going to use Adam for his glory, for man to worship God and for man to find that God is worthy. He wanted Adam to accept this dedication and establish it in the Garden of Eden.

Eve also had a dedication. But she didn’t accept her dedication of God’s order. Satan tempted Eve by telling her that she could be like God and Eve assumed that maybe man could be as God, knowing good and evil. When Adam and Eve fell into the lie of Satan, they sold themselves out to Satan and is now under his rule and order of things. This was the developing of the soul-life. Man now live no longer in God’s order but in Satan’s order of things, the World.

As you can see today, everything fell into pieces without God’s government and order. Everything was beautiful and good at the beginning, but now it is in a mess after Satan took control.

Dedication in God’s universe requires everything to be in God’s order, fulfilling its place, in its proper position.

God did something to recover things and put things back into his order and purpose. He finds man sold out to slavery of the world under Satan, so according to his mercy, he redeems us and brings man back to him.  Titus 3:5-He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to his mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the holy spirit.
Ephesians 2:4-5-But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ ( By grace, you have been saved)

We must take note that mercy can only be demonstrated to guilty people. We are all guilty and we must acknowledge that. God had found us in a hopeless position that he shows mercy to us.

God has shown his mercy in this three steps:

1) First, God buys us, paying the price of sin through Jesus’ death on the cross to buy us, the slaves.

2) Secondly, he not only buys us, but buys us out. Not only did he pay the price, but he took us out of slavery, Satan’s order of things.

3) Then, he loses us.

That is God’s mercy in redeeming us. God loses us, so that his mercy, can lead us back to dedication.

Rm 12:1-Therefore I urge you brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

Mercy is God not allowing us to get what we deserved for our wrong doings.

God so-to-speak brings us back half-way, then he loses us, so that mercy can get hold of us. Once we have been bought, bought out and set free, we must gladly make a choice, make a decision for ourselves to follow him.

Christianity is not like joining a club where everyone is bought by God and forced to be under God’s membership. We have a choice. God gives us a choice to choose whether to follow him. We must on our own accord want to present ourselves to God as a living sacrifice by our own freewill to God. This choice we must make after we are touched by God’s mercies toward us.

Hence, dedication is taking what that belongs to us and by glad-heart choice presenting ourselves to God, going under a new government, back to the order of God. Dedication is simply the presenting of ourselves back to God as in Romans 12:1 This presentation or dedication is an initial-act, a decisive-crisis presentation. It is a once-and -for-all situation, not an ongoing process. For that moment, there is finality. There is no such thing as a rededication. Dedication is later followed by a commitment.

Let us take a look at the Old testament.

Deuteronomy 15: 12-17- If your kinsman, a Hebrew man or woman, is sold to you, then he shall serve you six years, but in the seventh year you shall set him free.
When you set him free, you shall not send him away empty-handed.
You shall furnish him liberally from your flock and from your threshing floor and from your wine vat; you shall give to him as the Lord your God has blessed you.
You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today.
It shall come about if he says to you, ‘I will not go out from you,’ because he loves you and your household, since he fares well with you;
then you shall take an awl and pierce it through his ear into the door, and he shall be your servant forever. Also you shall do likewise to your maidservant.

The slave becomes a bondservant. The awl through the ear is a sign that forever the servant belongs to that household. Likewise, we shall be God’s bondservant forever when we dedicate our lives to God.

Leviticus 14:14
The blood is applied on the right ear, then the thumb of the right hand and then on the big toe of the right foot. Blood sprinkled signifies that the body parts are separated unto the Lord. That is what God wants. He wants our ears first, followed by our hands and then our feet.

Psalms 40:6-Sacrifice and meal offering you have not desired; My ears you have opened(pierced); burnt offering and sin offering you have not required.

When God pierces our ears, it signifies that first of all, he wants us to be attentive to him, to hear his voice speak to us. God doesn’t want sacrifices and meal offerings, but us to be attentive.

Many times we try to dedicate something to the Lord, our music talents, our service in Church, but God wants none of these. None of these. He doesn’t even want your time. Time is a sacrifice too.

What God wants is us. Just us. He wants our ears to be attentive and opened to him, so we can do what he says with our hands and walk in his ways with our feet. That is all he wants from us, dedicating ourselves to him. Only then, we can find true joy in delighting in him.