I’d like to start with Isaiah 43, from the first verse.
But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob,
and He that formed thee, O Israel:
Fear not: for I have redeemed thee,
I have called thee by thy name; thou art Mine.When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee;
and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee:
when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned;
neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.For I am the Lord thy God,
the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour:
I gave Egypt for thy ransom,
Ethiopia and Seba for thee.Since thou wast precious in My sight,
thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee:
therefore will I give men for thee,
and people for thy life.Fear not: for I am with thee.
And I would like to go to Exodus 29, starting with verse 4.
And Aaron and his sons thou shalt bring unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and shalt wash them with water.
And thou shalt take the garments, and put upon Aaron the coat, and the robe of the ephod, and the ephod, and the breastplate, and gird him with the curious girdle of the ephod:
And thou shalt put the mitre upon his head, and put the holy crown upon the mitre.
Then shalt thou take the anointing oil, and pour it upon his head, and anoint him.
And thou shalt bring his sons, and put coats upon them.
And thou shalt gird them with girdles, Aaron and his sons, and put the bonnets on them: and the priest’s office shall be theirs for a perpetual statute: and thou shalt consecrate Aaron and his sons.
And then, in Romans 12, starting with the first verse:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,
which is your reasonable service.And be not conformed to this world:
but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
Let’s pray.
Lord, we want to thank You this morning for coming down to earth, to redeem us, to ransom us for Yourself. Well, You did it for Yourself, and we are the beneficiaries of what You have done. We want to thank You and praise You.
And Lord, as we come this morning, we want to ask You to reveal Your logos, Your concept, to us of what consecration is. Lord, we have our own ideas, and we do not want to run off with our own ideas. We want to know what it is You think about this, and what it is You want in us through this.
And Lord, we are unable to do this unless, by the Holy Spirit, You quicken the Word to us and make it so that we understand what You are trying to get across to us. And then, by giving the Spirit also, Lord, that we might through Him obey the things that You want us to do and be pleasing to You.
Lord, we do not want to come to the place of thinking that these are hard things and stuff like that. We want them to be true. We want them to be real. We want You to show us what it is and how these things are accomplished. We are asking this in Jesus’ name.
Maca over here just asked me, “What’s the difference between consecration and sanctification?” I said, “I thought you knew.”
Some people have said that they are like two sides of a coin: sanctification is what God has done, and consecration is what we do. But, you know, it is like Max said when he was doing sanctification: there are even two sides to consecration. There is God’s side, and there is our side.
They go together; they cannot be apart. You have to have God’s side first, or you will never have our side. And that is the biggest thing about it.
And so, in these verses that I read, you are probably going, “What does Isaiah 43 have to do with consecration?”
Well, it has to do with what God has done to bring us into a place where He is consecrating us. What He is saying is, “I bought you. I redeemed you.” Okay, this is part of My side of consecration. “I bought you. I brought you into a place before Me.” This is what I have done.
And then you see that in what He says: “You are Mine.” Do we say, “You are mine,” to anybody? Oh yeah, we do. I say it to my wife: “You are mine.”
I mean, was that not the thing that we wanted when we were looking for a spouse—someone to say that they were ours? And that speaks of a relationship, a relationship that God wants.
God has done everything that He knows to do, that He has a right to do, to make us His own. And it does not besmirch His character at all.
We were talking about things today during the Lord’s Table. I was just thinking that here we have God, who has brought us into this place without hurting who He is at all. He has not taken down the standard of holiness, or righteousness, or anything, by redeeming us, because of the way He did it.
Through Christ, by bringing His Son to earth, who lived holy before Him, and then laying all the sin on Him, He could put His righteous judgment on Him. He put us into Christ, and all that judgment and all that fury came out.
So He did not have to put that aside and say, “Well, I cannot be just.” He is God. He is everything. He has not changed at all. Nothing in Him has changed. He has kept everything intact and still brought us into a place of relationship with Him.
Now, another thing about consecration is not only that we are brought to a place of relationship, but also that we have been brought into a place of purpose.
From Exodus, you can see that they are talking about Aaron. Aaron and his sons—the purpose that they had before God—was as priests.
Now, we know, if we read our Bibles in Exodus, when Moses brought the people before God at Mount Sinai, God said, “I will make them a kingdom of priests.” He wanted us all to be priests.
But if you remember, even then there was a falling away of some, and so it was left to one group, one family, to be priests. But that is not in God’s heart. God’s heart is that we all be priests, and that we all come into the purpose that He has for us as men.
And that is a generic “men”; that includes women, okay? But all of us have purpose. We are all to be brought into God’s purpose for man.
And all of this is His part of consecration. He has done that work. It says in that part of Exodus that He has given them hats, tunics, a crown, ephods—all those things. He has clothed them. He has done everything. He has put them in that place and given them everything they need to be in that place of purpose.
I could have even read a little further, where He talked about when they sacrificed the ram, even putting the blood on the ear, the thumb, and the big toe, signifying that everything has been cleansed so that you can hear Me, so that you can serve Me. Everything is under that blood, under that blood of the covenant, of the new covenant, which is Christ.
And so all these things are on God’s side. Just like Max said in sanctification, these are the things so that we have a solid ground, because our consecration is God consecrating us.
Now, what about our part? Because here is where we get really funny. We want to say, “Okay, now it is my thing, and I have to do all these things.” We want to get away from that: “I have got to do all these things.”
Because in Romans 12:1, the whole key to our side of consecration is found in one little word, and that is the word therefore: “I beseech you therefore.”
What is he talking about? He is saying, “Look back to all the rest—Romans 1 through 8.” Because of that, because of what God has done for you, now I ask you to present yourself a living sacrifice.
Now, that is our place: to give ourselves as a living sacrifice. But when we are thinking about this, our consecration is a response to what God has done for us. We are responding.
It is much like Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, his response to the kindness of the bishop. His life was changed. It did not happen overnight. If you read the book, it is not like the movie. You read the book, and he does some bad things even after he has that experience.
But the whole thing is, that thing so touched him that it changed his whole life. One of the bishop’s statements was, “I have ransomed your soul from evil. Give your life back to God.”
And really, that is what we are doing in consecration: we are giving our lives back to God.
Now, what does that mean? There are two ways I want to look at this.
First of all, it is giving our life back to God in relationship. Secondly, it is giving ourselves back to God to be in His purpose. That is what it is all about. That is what consecration is all about.
God wants relationship, and He wants us to be in His purpose. He wants to include us in His purpose. That is why Christ came into the world. That is why He died. That is why He was raised from the dead.
He has called us into a relationship with Him, and He has called us into His purpose. What I want to do is apply this idea of consecration to two things: relationship and being called into God’s purpose.
I am going to give a definition about consecration, and then I want to give an illustration of that definition. How does that look? So we are going to look at these things and go from there.
Again, I am not trying to be theological. I am not going into the deep things. I want to make it simple, so we understand, “This is what God wants of me.” It is a simple thing, what He wants of me.
Now, simple things can go very deep. But it is not for us to understand the depths at this moment. We will understand the depths as we go further and further and further into our consecration. We will find the depths of these things.
But if I just tell you the depths of these things, all it becomes is teaching. The depths of these things are to be found in experience. They will coincide with what the Word teaches about it, but the whole thing is, we want to look at it simply. It is a simple thing, but it is a deep thing.
First of all, in looking up these things—and part of the joy of doing things like that is looking stuff up—anybody who does any sort of teaching knows that the joy is not in the teaching. The joy is in the finding. You start looking: “Oh, I did not know that. Oh, that is cool.”
I looked in my Vine’s Greek book for the word “consecration.” They did not have a Greek word for it. Is that weird?
Almost all the words that mean consecration—a lot of the words that are for sanctify—have to do with consecration. But the words that really mean consecration are in the Old Testament. They are Hebrew words. The ones they do have in Greek are translated that way, but it is not really that this word means precisely this. It is really weird, and we will get into that later.
The other thing is that consecration is a verb. There are nouns for it, but everywhere we are looking in these places, it is a verb. In other words, it is an action; it is not a thing.
For example, for me to say, “I do my devotions”—what are devotions? It is a noun. I do my devotions. I do them, right? But devotion is a verb. It is something that you are in the process of doing. It is not merely something that you do; it is the thing that you are doing. You are devoting yourself to something.
When we look at this, we want to look at relationship first. Relationship is always first. Relationship is always first.
The English definition for consecrate means to dedicate or to devote. So my response to God, then, is to be devoted or dedicated to this new relationship—to be faithful in this new relationship.
Another way you can say it is this: in this relationship, be faithful. Just be faithful in your relationship.
Now, I do not know if you know, but I think William and Judith’s anniversary was this week—forty-three years? Forty-three years. That is older than I am as a Christian.
Now, how much consecration has there been in that relationship? You see what I am saying? When we are thinking about relationship, that is what we are talking about. It is, “I am faithful to the one to whom I am related, and they are faithful to me.” It is a give-and-take.
Now, we already know how faithful God is to our relationship. How many of us have fallen since we have been Christians? Has God kicked you out? No. He is faithful to His relationship.
Matter of fact, when we take our wedding vows, what are our wedding vows? For better or worse, sickness and health, rich or poor. The bride cannot just say, “Well, I will take better, richer, and healthy. I will take that.” No, you get the whole package. You get the whole thing.
And when the Lord redeemed us, He says, “I redeemed you, Jacob,” and then He calls him Israel. You get Jacob and Israel. And He is committed to that relationship.
We see it all throughout the Scriptures. We see His commitment to the relationship.
Now, for us too, it is a commitment. These things are hard. I think, in this period of time, in the 2000s, commitment is different. How far does commitment go?
I know that growing up, you had one job. That was it. You had one job. Now, I do not know about you, but I hate to change jobs. When I really got into my career, I think I changed jobs four times, and three of those times I was forced to change, because I do not like to change. The other one, I wanted to—not for bad reasons, but because of something I wanted to do.
But today, people look at jobs like, “I am going to work here for three years, and then I am going to go on to something else.” There is really no commitment to a company, or companies are not committed. The idea that marriage is forever becomes, “Well, gee whiz, this marriage is until I do not like it anymore,” or something like that.
But as far as the way God looks at things, His commitment is forever. He did not buy you for three years.
Kenny, who is the Redskins quarterback? Oh yes, you do. Kirk Cousins, right? The whole thing is about renegotiating contracts, right? “We are going to renegotiate.” There is no renegotiating. This contract has been signed in blood. It is forever. It is eternal.
God is not giving up. The thing is, our relationship with Him—we talk about eternal life—that is what it is all about. It is an eternal relationship. We have been brought into this relationship, and all He wants from us in this relationship is faithfulness.
Be faithful. That is what I want for you.
I know my wife goes, “Jim, I just want you to come home at night.” She wants me to be faithful to her. “Jim, I do not want you to date other women. I want to be the only one.”
Well, I can say the same thing to Barbara. “I do not want you to have other men. I want you to be the only one. I want you to come home.” Those things there—that is my relationship. That is my vow. That is all part of our relationship here.
We are one for each other, and we have become one. We are becoming one more and more, because she will start to say something, and I will go, “I was just thinking that.” It is funny how that works out.
Now, I am not saying that I am perfect in everything and stuff like that, because there is a lot of stuff. But the whole thing is, the Lord wants a faithful companion—a faithful spouse, a faithful other—devoted to that relationship.
We can see this devotion in life, and we can see it in the life of the Lord Jesus. I know you are going to say, “Oh, well, the Lord Jesus was the perfect man.” Well, yeah, He was.
The thing is, He is the standard for relationship. That is why it is good to look at Him—not to say, “I have got to be like this,” but to say, “This is what it looks like.” We look at Jesus as a man, and we see exactly what God is looking for in man as far as relationship goes.
We can see this relationship in His words. Jesus said, even as a young boy, “I must be about My Father’s business.” That talks about His relationship with His Father: “I want to be part of His business. I want to be part of what He is doing. I want to be in that very thing. That is what I want.”
We can see it also in, “Not My will, but Yours be done.” “I am in that relationship. I want to be faithful to that relationship.” Father and Son—that is the relationship that He came as man to be in: Father and Son. Not just in the Godhead, but here on earth.
Matter of fact, how did He teach us to pray? “Our Father.” He put us in that type of relationship and put God in a different type of view for us. He is not way out there. He is not just a God of the universe, but He is Father.
Everything that a father is supposed to be, He is: Provider, Protector, all those things. That is who He is.
We can see it in His secret life. We have been allowed to see some of the secret life of Jesus, and part of our consecration is our secret life.
You do not know what my relationship with my wife is. You only know the public part of it. But we also have a secret relationship at home. Nobody else sees it, because it is within the house.
That secret relationship that you have is also a big part of consecration. If you do not have that secret relationship, something is going to be missing. You cannot just be a parade person. You have to be real at home.
When you look at the Gospels, Jesus rose up early and went off to pray. Remember, that is after He calls Peter and heals Peter’s mother-in-law. He rose up early and went off to pray. They went out to look for Him, and they said, “Okay, now we have got to go out, and we are doing all these other things.”
He went alone to the mountain to pray. There was this secret life, this unseen life, not public life, that was part of His consecration.
And I think this is the hardest part of consecration, because no one keeps you to it. We have Adore, who is really good sometimes at saying, “Hey, where were you last meeting?” She keeps you to it. But who does it in the secret place?
That is why I said it is hard. Nobody sees. You do not know if I have been praying this week, do you? You do not know if I have been reading the Word this week. You do not know what I have been doing.
But the Father does. The Father knows you have been missing. You are missing in action. You have been out of fellowship with Him. But the whole thing is, it does show up in your life eventually. It does show up.
That is why the Pharisees lacked relationship. They had the façade. Some of us are the same way.
We know about His relationship in His knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures. How did He get that knowledge? A lot of you young guys go, “Well, gee whiz, He is the Author of the Bible, so of course He had it.”
No. Remember, He became man. He had to get that knowledge like all of us as men do. He had to read the Scriptures. He had to meditate on the Scriptures. He had to think about them and pray over them: “Give Me understanding. Show Me, Father.”
All these things are part of His relationship. They show that He is devoted to this relationship: “I want to know My Father, because My Father is in His Word. I can find My Father in His Word. In His Word, I can find the purpose that He has for Me.”
Then we see it in His works. I just wanted to read this one little thing. It says in John that He always did the works that the Father showed Him. But here is the wonderful thing: at the beginning of His ministry, in Luke 4, He goes to the synagogue.
Remember, He called for the scroll of Isaiah, and it was given to Him:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor;
He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
to preach deliverance to the captives,
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty them that are bruised,
to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
His works all did that, and all those works were because that is what the Father’s will was. The Father’s will was to unchain those captives, to heal those who were sick.
And not just in a physical way. The whole thing was that He wanted to set them free from sin and death so that they could come to God. That is His whole ministry: to bring people to God, to bring people and put them in this relationship with God.
Now, I just want to say this: a devoted life is not a secluded life. It does not mean that because we are devoted to God, we all of a sudden pack up our bags, move to the nearest cave out in Luray Caverns, sit there, grow beards, and just meditate all day. That is not life.
Look at the life of Jesus. You see Him looking for time to get alone because, in the midst of everything, He is in the crowd. He is in the busyness of the day. He is with His disciples, all these things.
So, a devoted life does not mean a secluded life, but a devoted life does mean a faithful life—faithful to make time for the things that are most important.
Remember Martha and Mary? “Martha, Martha, Martha, you are worried about so many things. Only one is necessary.” That is it.
It says, “Present your bodies to be a living sacrifice,” but it is not just the body; it is the whole thing. If I came home and Barb was just happy with my body being there, I could just turn off. She could talk to me and just talk to my body, and I would not be listening to her at all.
Sometimes that is the way it is. We have all done that. Your mind is somewhere else; you are thinking something else. But the whole thing is that I give myself to that person with whom I am in relationship.
I give myself. Giving myself means my whole attention: my body, my mind, my spirit—everything goes into that attention. That is what God wants. God wants it all. He wants that whole thing, that whole sacrifice.
It is a life that is not entangled. In other words, it can go through what you have to do during the day, because we have to do things during the day, right? I have a job.
When I was younger, it was not that I just had a job, but I had little kids. You have got to be a father, you have got to be a teacher, you have got to be a husband. But it is not being entangled in all those things so that you cannot get out and say, “Oh, Barb, I cannot be with you today because I am taking the kids to the park and they have got this stuff here. Hey, I will see you next week. I will pencil you in.”
No. It is a time that, after those kids are in bed and you are saying, “I am not doing any more work,” then you go, “Here I am, Barb. Now you have my attention. I am not leaving the day until you have my attention.”
Without relationship, consecration becomes the religion of the Pharisees and Sadducees. It becomes legalistic, lifeless, and burdensome.
That is consecration in the flesh. It is burdensome, lifeless, and legalistic. We look for others to be towing the line like we are towing the line.
The consecration the Lord wants is not anything like that. Consecration is alive because we have found that the Father is alive by relating with Him.
Now, secondly, my part in being called into His purpose begins with the realization that you are not your own.
Some of us have realized that young; some of us have. The first time I really realized that I was not my own, I got my draft notice.
I want to say it was June of 1972. I got that notice: “Appear for your physical,” on such-and-such a day. All of a sudden, I found out I belonged to Uncle Sam, and there was nothing I could do about it.
You could burn your draft card, but then you would go to jail, you know, stuff like that. So I went for my physical. That was the last year they were drafting, too.
It was draft by lottery. There were 365 days in a year. I was number 46, and they were drafting that year up to number 50. Lucky me.
I was disqualified. No, I was disqualified physically. I tell my students it was because I was too good-looking.
But you know something? When we think about this, first of all, when the Lord calls you, no one is disqualified. He has made us all qualified. That is what Christ has done for us. He has made us all able, fit, in the Spirit, to be about His business and to be called into His purpose.
The second time I really found out that I was not my own was after having some experiences with the Lord and after I had read The Normal Christian Life and realized that I could not get any closer to God than I was because of what Christ had done.
The next week, I just had that sense—like it says in Isaiah—the Lord saying, “You are Mine. You are Mine. I have purposes for you. You are going the wrong way right now, but when this is over, you are Mine. I want you to know that, and I have things that I want for you.”
That was an awesome experience on the inside. It was not like some voice, but there was just that sense inside that the Lord said, “You are Mine. I bought you. I purchased you for Myself. I have things that I want for you.”
Now, there are a couple of words. I am going to use the Hebrew one, and I will use a Greek word that they translate as consecrated.
The Hebrew word for consecration here has the meaning of “to fill the hand.” Consecrate means to fill the hand.
In other words, you come to God, you stretch out your hands, and they are empty. Well, who fills the hand? It is God.
This is an interesting concept, because when we think of consecration, we think, “We have got to bring something to God.” God says, “You bring Me your empty hands, and I will fill them.”
One of our excuses, especially as young Christians—and especially Christians who do not feel they have some kind of ministry that is public or administrative or something like that—is that we feel, “Well, I cannot do anything.”
Our complaint, our reasoning, is, “I am just nothing great. I have nothing to give.” So we do not. We sit. We sit and listen. We do stuff like that.
Moses did this, right? When God was calling him to go to Egypt, Moses had so many excuses: “Oh, I cannot do this. I cannot speak. I cannot do this. I do not even know Your name.” All these things.
And God was just saying, “Stretch out your hand. Just stretch out your hand.”
You notice in Exodus, a number of times when He is bringing plagues, what does the Lord say to Moses? “Stretch out your hand.” Then locusts came. “Stretch out your hand.” Read Exodus and you will find that. Sometimes it says, “Stretch out your hand and take your rod.”
But the whole thing is to stretch out your hand, because who is behind all these things? Is it Moses calling these things? No, it is God.
The whole thing about being called into His purpose is that God is looking for someone who is going to say, “I have got nothing, but You have told me to do this, so I am coming to You. Here I am.”
Then you are trusting the Lord to fill it. You are trusting Him to do what He said He wants to do. That is the big thing about this consecration.
Yes, we have to deny ourselves in this. But in our consecration, we are coming and letting God be God. We are allowing God to be Himself and do what He wants to do, because we are called into His purpose. It is not His purpose for me; it is His purpose.
Get out of that, “I cannot, I cannot,” because it is not that. It is empty hands. “I am coming with empty hands.”
Now, the other word that was given is a Greek word from Hebrews, and the root word means “to make perfect,” or “to perfect.”
What that really means is to take something all the way to the end. That is what it means: to take something all the way to the end, or to see a matter all the way through to completion.
Is that not commitment? Consecration is another word for commitment, right? You are committed to doing something. “I am committed to the purpose that God has told me to do.”
My example of commitment would be Joseph. God gave Joseph a vision, right? Then all these bad things seemed to happen, right?
But God was saying to Joseph all the way through this, “Are you committed to My vision being fulfilled?”
A lot of times when we get into these things, we look at Joseph—and I am sure Joseph thought this way, because he was a fallen man like the rest of us.
When Joseph had those dreams about his brothers bowing down to him—twice—and even his mother and father bowing down to him, how do you think that made him feel?
When you read the Scriptures, does it seem like he was humbled by that? “Oh, this is too great for me, Lord.” No. Was he not kind of going, “Hey, check out the dream I had. You guys are bowing down. Yeah, man, bowing down to me. Mom and Dad, you too.”
And his brothers were saying, “That is wonderful, Joseph. We want to kill this guy.” Is that not the way it was?
All of a sudden, we find him in a pit. Then we find him as a slave. Then we find him in prison.
The Lord is saying, “Are you going to give up now, Joseph? Are you going to wait to see Me carry out My promise? Are you going to see this all the way through to the end?”
Now, there is grace for that. You cannot tell me Joseph was always going, “Oh, God is going to do something,” and stuff like that. Remember, in the seventies, those of you who are my age anyway, you get a flat tire: “Praise the Lord. This is great.” I do not do that anymore.
But I am sure he was at times in great despair. I bet he probably said, “Lord, what about these dreams? You gave me these dreams. I know these dreams are real. What is going on?”
It says that the Word of the Lord tried him. The Psalms talk about that. But he came all the way through.
I think what he found out, in seeing this all the way through to the end, was that when he was put in the place where the men bowed down to him, that was not even the big thing to him.
If you read Genesis, it says he remembered the dreams that they bowed down to him, but he did not gloat or anything like that. He found out that God had called him into an even greater purpose than just being an exalted person.
He said there was going to be famine, and God had sent him ahead to be provision—not just for his brothers and his family, but for the whole Mediterranean world.
That is how big God’s heart is. Remember, as I said, He loves sinners. He loves His people too, but He loves sinners too.
The whole thing is, will you see it to the end? That is what I want in my life. That is my consecration: will I see it to the end?
Jesus gives parables about that. Who is going to build a tower and does not count the cost? Or who goes into an army? It is about counting the cost.
Brothers and sisters, consecration is not an easy thing, because it moves in on our life. Marriage is not an easy thing. Being a father or mother is not an easy thing. But how many of us have desired those things?
They are desirable things because of the fruit of them. Without purpose, there is no fruit—or at least there is no fruit unto eternity. There is no eternal value in anything.
But if it is in that purpose, there is fruit unto eternity. That is what consecration is for. There is fruit.
Is that not the parable of the vine? They should bear fruit, and bear fruit, and you are trimmed so that you bear more fruit. All that kind of thing—that is consecration.
Lending yourself, if I can use it, or lending yourself to God.
My grandfather, on my father’s side, his parents rented him out to other farms to earn money. They rented him out. They lent their son.
Well, it is like us lending ourselves to God. Hopefully, out of that, we become bondservants. We come to the place of saying, “Lord, I could not have it any better. This is what I want.”
Consecration can be summed up in two words: Follow Me.
That is consecration. When the Lord came to those disciples and said, “Follow Me,” notice what some of them did. It says some of them left their nets behind, and they followed Him.
Levi left his tax office. He followed Him. There were some who said, “I cannot do it.” The rich young ruler: “I cannot do it.”
Because it is asking something of you. It is asking for you. It is asking you, “Give yourself. Give yourself.”
It would be so easy if we could give something else. “Oh, I could just tithe. Can I not just tithe? I will give You my money—at least ten percent, because that is a tithe, right? I need the other ninety.”
“I will give You my Sunday mornings—not my afternoons, because baseball is on. I will give You my morning. I will read my Bible in the morning, and I will say a few short prayers, and that is it.”
If we could just give those things and that was enough. It is not enough. Because what did the Lord redeem? He redeemed all of you—the whole thing.
There is no compartmentalizing consecration. “I split my life up in this and this. Oh yeah, and here is my consecrated life.” No. Consecration is a whole life. It is a whole life—the life given to God.
Another word that means consecrated is where we get the word Nazarite vow from. That is another word for consecration. “I am giving up. I am making a vow. I am giving up myself to God.”
So it is summed up in “Follow Me.” Really, what it is, is me committing to following the Lord, whatever that means.
Because really, I do not know what it means, do I? I just know He says, “Come and follow Me.” What does that mean? “I want you to come where I am going. I want you to just come alongside Me. I do not want you to walk behind; I want you to come with Me and walk with Me.”
In Matthew 11:28-30, we have that being yoked up. Consecration is committing to the yoke.
If you look at a yoke, you have these two things ahead for each one. You are together, and it is a big wooden thing. I am sure it is heavy. I do not think I would like to be under a yoke, so to speak.
But Jesus says, “I want you to yoke with Me.” Then He says this, because He is carrying the yoke, right? He is going to be your yoke partner:
Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me;
for I am meek and lowly in heart:
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.
Now, I want to ask you this: do you think that Jesus’ yoke was easy? Do you think it was light? I am sure that when He carried the weight of us all, it was not.
But why is He saying, “My yoke is easy, My burden is light”? Because He is saying, “I am under the yoke with you. I am shouldering most of the weight.”
That is why it is easy, and that is why it is light. When I mean easy and light, I do not mean, “Oh, my life is going to be just so wonderful. I am going to be walking next to Jesus, maybe even skipping while we are under the yoke, and this is just going to be so fun.”
Life is life. I hate it when some of my kids say, “Well, yeah, I want a job that is fun.” What is a job called? It is called work, right? What does work mean? It does not mean that it is fun. Sometimes it means it is hard.
But the thing is, it can be satisfying. The outcomes of those things can be satisfying.
So it does not mean you are skipping along through everything, but it does mean that because He is with you, it is easy. Because you are never alone. It is light because He is bearing it with you.
I wish my older sister would find that. Since my mom died, she is still sorrowing. I wish she could yoke up with the Lord and let the Lord take that from her, and just say, “I am shouldering it. I am shouldering it for you.”
But it is the same with us. We go through life, and we go through hard times and stuff like that, and we are trying to be faithful to the Lord. The Lord says, “You just walk with Me.”
He is the Good Shepherd, but the Good Shepherd also leads us into the valley of the shadow of death. That is part of what He does. But He leads.
If He leads, what does that mean? He is with us. He is going with us. He is not going, “Well, there is the valley. Here is a canteen. Good luck. Oh, here is a Scripture for you too.” He is not doing that.
He is leading. He is with us. “Well, how is He with us?” By the Holy Spirit. Our yoke-mate is the Holy Spirit.
In 1 John 2, it says you have an anointing. That is what it is talking about. It is not saying you do not need teaching and stuff like that, but it is saying that as you are walking along this way, you will find that the One who is with you is there.
He is the One who will encourage you. He is the One who will quicken things of that nature.
When you look at the rest of Isaiah 43, it says, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. I will be with you. The rivers shall not overflow you.” In other words, you will not be overcome by them.
“When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flame will not scorch you. For I, the Lord, am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.”
In all these things, He is saving you, and hopefully saving others.
Now, brothers and sisters, we can have our consecration stolen. It can be stolen from us because we are in this world, and we get entangled in the things of the world, and we just say, “I cannot do this.”
Samson had his consecration stolen, did he not? You can read about Samson.
But I will say this, and this is what I want to close with: the Lord is so gracious. I think He knows how easily we can be taken aside, how easily we can veer off this way and that way.
If we go back to Exodus 29, where it talks about the priests and their being consecrated, at the end of the chapter the Lord says, “I want a perpetual offering every day, and I want it twice.”
“I want you to do it twice: once in the morning, and once in the evening.”
I know why the one is in the morning. You want to start your day right. You want to start in the presence of the Lord, and you want to have that strength going out.
Why at night? To remind us that we are His. After we have gone through the whole thing of the day, and all the problems or whatever of the day, we come back and realize again that we are His.
He says, “Come back to Me at night and give Me an offering. The offering I want is you. Give Me yourself. Give Me your attention.”
“Give Me your spirit, your soul, your mind, your body. Before you go to bed, come alongside Me. Let Me wash your feet. Let Me clean you up. Let Me go over the day with you, so I can forgive you.”
“You can see that I am not condemning you, but we need to make some things right.”
This is part of our consecration. I think this is the part of our consecration that we leave out, because we feel that the morning sacrifice is sufficient.
The evening sacrifice was ordained by God also. “I want you to come back in the night. Just give yourself back to Me. I do not care where you have been for that day, but I want you to come back at night.”
“Just come back and touch Me afresh. Let Me touch you.” That is part of our consecration.
So, brothers and sisters, notice I did not say, “You have got to do this, and you have got to do that, and you have got to do the other thing.”
Because when you are in relationship, the Lord will let you know the things that are to be done. There is no list of things. There are no lists of do’s and don’ts and stuff like that.
But your relationship with the Lord is just like your relationship with any of your friends. You know that by doing certain things, you offend your friends, or your wife, or your children. You know those things.
So what do you do, if you want to keep that relationship? You deny yourself. That is just a common, natural thing.
When you take that natural thing and put it spiritually, it is the same thing with the Lord.
I have always thought it was so weird. I was raised Catholic, and one of the prayers we would say was the Act of Contrition. In the Act of Contrition, it would go, “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee.”
Sometimes we have been offensive to the Lord, and we just have to say, “Lord, how have I offended You? How have I offended You today?” Let Him show us.
That is the whole thing. That is the whole thing about consecration and sanctification: it is us being in this relationship where the Lord shows us.
Yes, He uses the Word. Yes, He uses other brothers and sisters. But the whole thing is, it is the Lord showing us, because it is the Lord who has redeemed us, the Lord who wants this relationship, and the One to whom we really want to be related.
So when we think about consecration, it is a commitment. It is being faithful. “I want to be faithful to this relationship.”
“Lord, I want to serve You in Your purpose, but I do not have anything. So here I come. I just give You my empty hands. You have to fill them.”
“If You are calling me to these things, I do not know how I am going to do them. But here my hands are. Fill them.”
“And then, Lord, I just want to see it through to the end. I do not want to be like Demas, who loved this present world and left.”
“I want to be like Mark, who, having left, was recovered and restored, and then useful again.”
“I just want to be in that place where I am yoked. I want to commit myself to the yoke. Because I am yoked to Him, I know I cannot do any better than that—just to be yoked to Him.”
The whole thing about those Pharisees is that they had no relationship. Therefore, God was rules in a book.
We have a living God. A living God. The living God has redeemed us and wants us to be in a living relationship with Him.
In order to do that, we have to come to Him. Then we have to be faithful in that relationship. But come for that relationship.
Let’s pray.
Lord, we do just want to thank You that You want us. Like Uncle Sam thinks, “I want you,” Lord, You want us.
Lord, You did not discard us. Oh, how grateful we are that You have not discarded us, that You redeemed us. You know us by name. You know us by Jacob, and You know us by Israel.
You walk with us. You are with us in everything, Lord. You do not just send us off on our own. You are with us. How much more could we ask for than that?
Lord, we want to know You in this place. We want to be those who are faithful to this relationship You are calling us into. We just want to be lovers of You.
And in being lovers of You, being those who are what we should be—whether it be prophets, or priests, or helpers, or whatever—we do not know, but You do.
We just ask You to lead us in that path that fulfills Your desire for us and will fulfill our desire for You.
Lord, we want to be those who can say, “I want to give myself to be that living sacrifice.” Lord, we hold back because we are afraid of whether it costs too much or You are asking something too much.
Lord, help us find out. Help us be drawn to this: that Your yoke is easy and Your burden is light.
We commit ourselves to You, Lord, because, Lord, we cannot say, “I am going to do this.” We are afraid.
So we come to You and say, “Lord, help us.” You know our desires because You put those desires in us. Fulfill them in us, we pray in Jesus’ name.