¿En Qué Te Dedicas?

All right, good afternoon once again. Quick breather, grab a slug of water. No, I'm kidding.

Well, as I mentioned in my message on the last Holy Day of Unleavened Bread, I've been working to learn a second language. And I started to realize over the last little bit the importance of time spent thinking and reading and writing and listening and speaking in that language, ultimately using it on a pretty regular basis. And we talked about that in the message. We talked about immersion in that language, as well as regular practice. We also addressed that when it comes to full immersion, which most language people say, hey, this is the way to do it, is go pack up your things and move to another country for a period of time.

We don't have that option. We don't have the ability necessarily to just drop everything and move to some foreign place so that we can learn the language to that degree. So what you have to do is you have to create very intentionally opportunities to do that while still being here and maintaining responsibilities. So I have been incredibly thankful for the Internet in this particular endeavor. And it has its issues, don't get me wrong, but it is an incredible tool when it's wielded appropriately. Thanks to online language learning software, a host of apps and messaging programs, you can achieve almost face-to-face contact with people who speak a different language than you do, kind of like a modern-day pen pal at the push of a button. In fact, I have a Tuesday and Thursday morning standing meeting with Jaime Diaz down in Chile. And we get up and he listens to me blather on and on in Spanish and nods his head because he had probably... I imagine what I'm saying makes no sense at all. But he's so gracious and he's so patient and he smiles and he'll clarify occasionally as I know that I'm not making sense at all. But in the attempts that I've had learning this language, I have had opportunity to talk with people from all over the Spanish-speaking world. I've talked to folks from Mexico, from Costa Rica, Venezuela, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, or Paraguay, Uruguay, whatever, however you want to pronounce it, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, and even across the pond in Spain. It has been fascinating to learn about their cultures, their customs, and the diversity of language from them directly. And one of the challenges that I've run into, and many of you have tried to learn another language knows this all too well, many countries have different ways of saying things. You think about it from a standpoint even in the United States. We have the way we would say something here in the northwest and then there's a way of saying it in the south, or in the northeast, or in some cases even the Midwest. There's just different ways of saying things in those. Now you imagine for a second, Spain shows up, conquers a bunch of countries, and then by and large over time leaves. Well, as time goes on that language changes and it evolves and it becomes slightly different from country to country to country. That's been a challenge to get used to because what I can say to one person from Mexico doesn't make sense to a person over here. It's not used in that same way. It takes them getting used to and kind of trying to get your brain used to being able to wrap your mind around the way that the language can be used. But regardless of where the person's from, it doesn't matter which country they're from, what I found is most of the conversations that I've had with folks tend to progress in a pretty similar and predictable fashion. We call it small talk here in the United States. What's your name? Cuales de Nombre. What's your name? Where do you live? Nonde vivis. Where do you live? What do you do for work? En qué trabajas. At least that's how I thought. You say it. It is correct. That is one way of saying it. That is one way of saying it. But one thing that blew me away as I started to talk with people from various places in Latin America, they had different ways of asking that question. In fact, I saw one way over and over and over again, so much so that I had to go to a translator and find out, have I learned this wrong or are they saying it wrong? Obviously, the answer is I would have learned it wrong. But, you know, I'm giving the possibility that I had it right. No. But what I found was when I looked at the translator, the way I said it and the way they said it was right, two different ways of essentially saying the same thing.

When folks from other countries asked what sort of work I did for a living, they didn't ask me, N. K. Trebejas, which basically directly translates to, in what do you work? I mean, if you're going to translate it in kind of clumsy English translation, it's in what do you work. Instead, they asked me, N. K. Te Dedecas. N. K. Te Dedecas. To what are you dedicated? To what are you dedicated?

And, you know, I reflected on that question as I learned what that was and I thought about it. And as time went on, I realized that is an incredibly profound question for a simple little bit of foreign language small talk.

That's incredibly profound. Because a person can work at a job to which they are not dedicated. You probably have coworkers who you are listing in your head right now going, yeah, that sounds a little like so-and-so.

They show up, they punch the clock, they do their work, they punch out, they go home, and there's not necessarily an ounce of dedication, commitment, loyalty, devotion, or sacrifice.

I have an example of this and I'll list it. Hopefully the person never hears this. But I had a friend who worked in a job like this and he would go in in the morning and he'd show up a little bit earlier than he was supposed to start his shift. He'd sleep on the couch in the office until the clock hit precisely 7 o'clock. His phone alarm would go beep beep beep beep beep beep and he'd sit straight up, walk in and start work.

At the end of the day, he'd go punch in, he'd work for the day, and when the day's done he pulled a Fred Flintstone.

Yabba-dabba-doo, blow the whistle, slide down the brontosaurus, and that was that. It didn't matter if the job he was working on was part way complete, it didn't matter if there was a coworker, in this case his father, who was elbow deep in an engine and needed somebody to hand him something.

The answer was, sorry, Dad, it's 4 o'clock, I'm out. And off he went. Punch the clock. See you later. I'm out.

Was he dedicated to that job? Well, I suppose it depends on your definition. But no. No, I'd say no, not really. I mean, not really. He wasn't willing to sacrifice for it.

Google Online Dictionary defines dedicated as devoted to a task or purpose, having single-minded loyalty or integrity. Dictionary.com goes a little further and says to devote fully or to give oneself over.

Some synonyms for the word are committed, devoted, staunch, firm, steadfast, resolute, unwavering, loyal, faithful, and true.

A person who is dedicated to something is committed. They're devoted, they're steadfast, they have a single-minded loyalty and integrity. They are willing to give themselves to it, to sacrifice for it.

Someone who is not is a person who is more or less indifferent. Someone who is dedicated to something cares less about themselves and cares more about the purpose, the goal, or the task.

They give themselves over to it. They deny the self. They deny their desire to quit, take the easy way out, be comfortable. In short, the goal, the job, the cause, the purpose, whatever it may be, takes precedent in their lives.

NK to Dedecosts. To what are you dedicated? And in case you hadn't guessed already, that's the title of the message today. NK to Dedecosts.

So let's start today by turning over to Romans 12. Romans 12. We were here in the message that we did on the last day of Unleavened Bread. In fact, I'm going to consider, short of calling them a part one and a part two, they're loosely affiliated. We'll use that terminology.

Because to be honest, this concept was in my head when I wrote the other one and when I went through the other one. This whole concept of dedication and what we're dedicated to is very much connected with what we went into on the last day of Unleavened Bread.

So rather than officially connected, part one, part two, again, it's loosely affiliated. But in Romans 12, Romans 12, let's go ahead and turn over there. We'll go ahead and pick it up in verse one.

Romans 12 and verse one says, You know, when we consider the meaning of the spring holy days and we consider Christ's sacrifice, we consider Christ's sacrifice to be a living sacrifice. And do not be conformed, or in this case, shaped is kind of the way the word is, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

You know, when we consider the meaning of the spring holy days and we consider Christ's sacrifice on our behalf, buying us back from death, the only result of conclusion we can make if we respect that sacrifice is that we offer a new life.

And that is the only reason why we consider the magnitude of our lives as a living sacrifice in return. That is the only reasonable response. When you consider the magnitude of what was done for us, the only reasonable response is our life in return.

As such, when we give ourselves over to God willingly as a sacrifice, we're working on not allowing ourselves to be conformed to this world. He gets into that in verse 2. We put away the thoughts that are not in line with His ways. We think, we speak, we act differently. We don't allow ourselves to be shaped by the world. We don't allow ourselves to tune into those attitudes that Satan broadcasts, anger and bitterness.

We put those things away. We don't allow ourselves to be shaped and molded by those things. Instead, He goes on in verse 2 and says, we allow ourselves to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, putting on those unleavened attitudes, the unleavened of Christ, and allowing that mind, that thought, and that speech and actions to come forth from within.

When our mind is transformed, little by little as time goes on, we become more like God. We become a living sacrifice. I don't know if you've ever thought about this before, but when you read those words, living sacrifice, it's almost kind of a contradiction in terms in some ways. When you think of sacrifice, sacrifice implicates death. You sacrifice the animal, or whatever it was at that point in time, and it dies. It's a one-off. It's a one-time giving of that thing. But in this case, living sacrifice, that's not really how this works. Living God's way, being a living sacrifice, requires a giving of ourselves each and every day. In an analogy—I don't know, I'm trying to think of a way to explain this—in an analogy, if we think of our life as being worth a hundred bucks— in fact, actually, chemists say you're worth a lot less than that. I think they said something like $17 worth of chemicals when it's all said and done, like if you were to sell off the chemicals in the human body. But if our life is worth a hundred dollars, a sacrifice, in some ways, is cashing that in and handing it over. But a living sacrifice is like going down to the bank, cashing that hundred dollars in for ten thousand pennies, and then giving a handful of pennies or two every single day for the rest of your life. The net result's the same. At the end, you spend a hundred bucks. But the difference is you've done it over time. You've done it a little here, you've done it a little there as time has gone on, and that's a living sacrifice. A little each and every day as you put that self away, you put away your own desires and you sacrifice for what you're dedicated to. You would die, as the Apostle Paul says, a little each day. He says in 1 Corinthians 15. Let's go over to Luke 9. Let's go over to Luke 9, and we'll see the passage here. Christ talks a little about this concept. Luke 9, and we'll pick it up in verse 23. Luke 9 and verse 23. We have Christ here addressing those gathered. And in Luke 9 verse 23, it says, Then he said to them all, If anyone desires to come after me, if anyone desires to follow me, to be my disciple, let him deny himself. Take up his cross daily and follow me. So we see three kind of specific things there. Deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. And they're related. They're related, but they're a little different in each thing. Deny himself, put that self away, take up that cross and follow him. He says, For those that desire to come after him, to become his follower, to be his disciple, they must deny themselves daily. Taking up that cross and coming after him. And that symbolism, that emblem there that we see, it wasn't lost on Christ.

Nor was it lost on those that were gathered. In fact, it's interesting. There's a little historical account. When Christ was 11 years old, so when Christ was 11, in a town that was about four miles away from Galilee, there was a gentleman named Judas. They call him Judas the Galilean. And Judas the Galilean kind of developed a fourth sect of Judaism in some ways called the Zealots.

And Judas the Galilean, when the age of Christ was about 11, raided the Roman armory in Sephorus. And Sephorus was about four miles away from Nazareth. And as you might imagine, they swept into the armory, they stole a bunch of armor and weapons and stuff from the Romans, and equipped themselves to then do battle against the Romans. Well, Romans being who Romans are, their response was swift and merciless.

Just absolutely swift and merciless. The Roman legions swept into Sephorus, they burned the city to the ground, all of its inhabitants were sold into slavery, and two thousand of the rebels were crucified in lines of crosses alongside the roads to and from Sephorus, as a statement to those who might consider following in Judas' shoes.

This was something that the people of that time had seen before. That concept of a cross, that concept of crucifixion, wasn't something new that they needed to have defined to them. They'd seen this before.

There's a lot of ways to kill a person, you know, when it comes down to execution. And, you know, unfortunately the Romans perfected a number of them.

Some of them are very swift and merciful, others of them are not swift and not merciful. They're long and they're torturous. And there was nothing swift or merciful about crucifixion.

You know, it was not an efficient and effective way of putting someone to death, which is evidenced by the fact that they would have to go along later and often break their legs or pierce them through to finish them off.

The significance of the cross and what it symbolized would not have been lost on those gathered who heard these words. They knew it represented death, they knew that it represented their own willingness to kind of walk that road.

And Christ Himself said, look, this isn't a one-time thing. They have to take that cross up daily, each and every day, dying to themselves each day, putting their own desires and their own wants to death, and instead sacrificing those wants and following Christ.

There's a meme that always makes me laugh whenever I see it. For those that are not sure what a meme is, I'll define it for you.

Basically, it's a picture that somebody has taken and they put text over the top and the bottom of the picture. And usually it's something ironic. That's why it's humorous, is because it's ironic.

And in this case, this particular picture is a couple of beautiful people jogging down the street in the sunshine, smiles on their faces. They're fit, they're very beautiful people, and they're smiling as they jog down this sunny street. They just look great. Super fit, super athletic.

And the meme says, this could be us, but we like tacos and beer.

You know, when you think about sacrifice and when you think about wants and desires and things, everyone wants to be fit. Everyone wants to be successful. Everyone wants to reach their goals.

How many people, though, are willing to do the hard work and deny oneself to achieve them?

Everyone wants a gold medal, but not everyone wants to train like an Olympian. Michael Phelps is a phenomenal swimmer. Michael Phelps is an incredible swimmer.

Yes, he has natural talent. His arms are far longer, you know, wing spread-wise, and he's got six inches extra arm wingspan than he does height, which is incredible.

But he also got up incredibly early in the morning, trained six hours a day, swam up to 50 miles a week in his training leading up to the Olympics.

A lot of people want to get the gold medal, but they don't want to train like an Olympian. They don't want to make the sacrifices necessary.

Some of you may be aware of this, some of you may not. Alison Churchill from our Eugene congregation just participated in the Boston Marathon this past Monday.

She went and ran the Boston Marathon, and for those that maybe aren't familiar, if you're not in running culture, you may not know this, but the Boston Marathon is not an all-comers marathon.

You can't just decide, I'm going to sign up for Boston and go run the Boston Marathon. You have to qualify.

You have to go to a certified qualifying marathon and run a certain time in order to qualify to go.

Then you have to pay your entrance fees and all the other stuff that just allows for you to do that.

But you have to qualify in order to go. In Alison's case, she had to complete 26.2 miles in less than 3 hours and 35 minutes in order to qualify just from the beginning.

That's her age class. So for perspective, that's about 8 minutes and 58 seconds a mile, and that's a consistent pace the whole entire time. That's just to qualify.

She finished Boston in 3 hours flat, 38 seconds. She ran it with a 652 pace for the entirety of 26.2 miles in some of the worst conditions the Boston Marathon has seen.

There were 25 to 45 mile an hour wind gusts. In some places, up to an inch to an inch and a half of rain fell, and the temperatures were in the high 30s.

So it was like running in Oregon, basically. So that's, you know, I mean, there's that. But out of 13,391 women who signed up to run the marathon, she finished 83rd of 13,391 women.

As you might imagine, even qualifying to run Boston is a result of hard work. I mean, it is. It's a culmination of early morning training sessions, long runs in the cold, in the rain, injuries, setbacks, successes. And I'm certain that there has been time where she had to deny herself to say no to a late night out with friends, because she had to get up the next morning and go do speed work, or had to get up the next morning and go, you know, run a big long run or something along those lines.

But marathoning itself, running in general, is a sport of discipline. And discipline is not fun. It's not enjoyable. It's not enjoyable.

But in order to dedicate yourself to something, whatever that something may be, a person has to be disciplined.

Let's go over to 1 Corinthians real quick. Let's go over to 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 9. We'll go ahead and break into the context of the passage. We're going to pick it up in verse 24. 1 Corinthians 9 and verse 24.

Apostle Paul loved sports analogies. I don't know about love, maybe that's not too strong of a word, but he used them semi-regularly.

And I would imagine at that time even to great success. For us, though, we can connect with it. Sometimes the agricultural references, they go over our heads. Sometimes some of these other things.

But I would venture a guess most of you have participated in a foot race. And if not an official foot race, at least one that I bet I can beat you to the tree.

An unofficial foot race, as you might consider.

But 1 Corinthians 9 and verse 24, the Apostle Paul writes, You kind of have that Captain Obvious moment, like, okay, of course. Everyone who runs in the race, they all run.

Sometimes people walk in the back, sometimes they're strollers. In today's races especially, it's different.

But 1 receives the prize. They all run, but 1 receives the prize.

Run in such a way that you may obtain it.

Everyone who competes for the prize is tempered in all things, and now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown.

Therefore I run thus, not with uncertainty. Thus I fight not as 1 who beats the air.

Verse 27, I think often we read this passage, and our interpretation is that we must train to run the race and simply finish.

I think that's what we consider this sometimes. We look at this and we say we have to run the race to finish.

But that's not what Paul says. Paul says, train in such a way that you win it, that you take first place, quote-unquote.

He's telling the members in Corinth, by way of analogy, look, everybody in the race runs, runs, runs, but only 1 gets the prize.

He's telling them to run in such a way that they can obtain it, to train hard, to be temperate, to deny themselves, discipline themselves in such a way that they can be the first one across that line and obtain that prize.

And his point is, as he goes on, he says that they're willing to do that level of training. You know, somebody like Michael Phelps, if he's willing to swim 50 miles in a week to get a gold medal, he says, how much more should we then train to receive an imperishable crown?

Something that really has value when it's all said and done.

So he says, therefore he runs, not with uncertainty, not like he's not really sure what he's doing or it's a fun run. You know, he's out there with a goofy costume on and running down the street. That's not the kind of running he's talking about here.

He says he hunts down that prize like a pack of dogs on the scent.

If you guys have ever seen cross-country teams, really well-honed cross-country teams, they hunt in packs.

Five or six guys stick together and they hunt in packs.

And they run out there and they pick off people one by one by one by one, and they advance the rest of them up.

And then they go, and the idea isn't that, you know, oh well, we'll be okay with... No, they want one, two, three, four, five, and six.

They want all of the places. They don't want just one set of points. They want all the points. And so they hunt in packs. Paul's essentially telling them, train like that, that you can get out there and you can take that first place.

He says he doesn't train to beat the air. He's not out there, you know, fighting like he's just sparring with a punching bag.

He's training to fight and survive.

That he disciplines himself and he brings his body into subjection. His point is that we must spiritually train in the same way.

Some of you may be aware of a race that's held down in Tennessee called the Barkley Marathons. Who's ever heard of the Barkley Marathons? Okay, a couple people. I learned about the Barkley Marathons from a Netflix documentary. It looked fascinating. It looked quirky. And it is. It's absolutely quirky. But in case you haven't heard of it, the Barkley Marathons is a very quirky ultramarathon. Which was devised by a man that some think is actually a little bit crazy. His name is Gary Cantrell.

And the race is loosely based on James Earl Ray's escape attempt from the Brushy Mountain State Pen in the Smoky Mountains.

And so, back in 1977, June 10th, those of you that maybe read about this, James Earl Ray, who was convicted of his fascinating Martin Luther King Jr., escaped, along with six other people, from Brushy Mountain State Pen. And after running for 55 hours in the woods surrounding the prison, he'd only made it eight miles.

Eight miles after 55 hours of being on the lam when they captured him and they captured everybody else. Cantrell, at the time, in 1977, read about the story in the paper and said out loud to his friend, I could run at least a hundred miles in 55 hours. And so, the next year, him and his friends set out to go run a hundred miles in under 60 hours. It was very informal at that time. It was just a group of them kind of hanging out and doing this. And as time went on, it grew and it grew and it grew. In 1986, he became official and he devised a 100-mile course consisting of five 20-mile loops for a full 100 miles.

And set a 60-hour timer and the first sparkly marathon was run. Official. As it's gone, it's morphed a bit, but it's been going now for the past 20 years in its current form. This race has 20-mile loops, again, five of them, for a total of 100 miles. It has 66,000 feet of elevation gain overall as the time goes on, as you go down and back up again. For perspective, that's a smidge more than twice the height of Mount Everest.

In 100 miles. It's one of the most difficult endurance races in the world. Racers have to find, in addition to that, they have to be pretty good at orienteering. They have to find these unmanned checkpoints in the woods to prove that they went on the right course. Because there's people, they don't station the people out in the woods, they leave a book.

And the idea is you find the book and whatever your bid number is, you tear that page out and put it in your pack. And so when you get there, he can look and say, yep, you have a page of this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, of all of these different books you hit all the places you were supposed to hit. But to make it more interesting, the book titles are reflective of the pain and the suffering that they're experiencing.

For example, one book one year was Body in the Woods. Others have been If Tomorrow Comes, and Next Week Will Be Better. And they tear out the number of the page of their bid number and they throw it in their pack and they go. Most runners that run this race don't even complete the first loop. They don't even complete the first loop. When you drop out of the race, you have to come and stand in front of the group in front of the yellow gate, and someone plays taps on a bugle, and then you can go home.

Like I said, it's a little quirky. To date, after 20 years of official times and a little over 1,000 participants, only 15 people have ever finished the course in the time allotted. 15 of the thousands of participants over 20 years of times.

2018, no one finished. 2018 was fogging. There are people out there lost in the woods going in circles. No one found their ability back in 60 hours. But the race is done when the 60 hours are up or the last person drops from exhaustion. And the race is officially over at that point in time.

How do you prepare for a race like that? Seriously, how do you prepare for a race like that? Not just physically, but mentally. There's a guy by the name of Joel Gatt who has run the Barclays before, and he ran the April 2016 Barkley marathon. And to train for that, he ran a race where he completed 460 miles and 90,000 feet of climbing over several days.

This wasn't just in a day, right? Several days. 460 miles. He also finished the Bigfoot 200 miler. He finished the Tahoe 200 miler, which included 60,000 feet of climbing as well. And then he ran the Icarus 6th day and finished all of these things. 375 miles in total.

So this guy's running these multi-day things where can you imagine running one or two marathons worth in a day and then getting up the next day and going, all right, well, I'm going to go run one or two more? I can't. I can't imagine that. I honestly can't. Some of you guys know that I did a half marathon back in 2014.

If I'm being perfectly honest, between miles 12 and 13, I wanted to just run right next to the crowd and then just kind of flip into them. And just be like, go, everybody! Yeah! Woo! And just be done. I didn't want to take another step.

I literally did not want to take another step. And my brain is screaming at me. Screaming at me. What are you doing to me and why? Right? I can't imagine 460 miles. I can't imagine 100 miles. Your brain and body and mind are just yelling at you to stop, to give up.

This is too hard. This makes no sense. Why are you doing this? And the sheer discipline that must be involved to require yourself to put the foot in front of the other again. Or, I don't know, maybe you just check out. Maybe you just completely check out for the time. I don't know. He went on to say—there was an interview in Outside Magazine—he went on to say, I failed at Barkley in 2012.

He said, Barkley beats most people mentally. They simply don't have the will to subject themselves to going back out there. It's a special kind of challenge, he said, and it's one that I love. It's 60 percent physical and 100 percent mental.

It's kind of Yogi Berra math there. It was 60 percent physical and 100 percent mental. But Joel Gatt, to this day, has not completed the Barkley marathons. Even after that year of all of that training, Barkley still shut him down. He wasn't able to finish it. Despite all those miles, all that training, all that work, he still wasn't successful.

Disciplining ourselves as disciples of Jesus Christ requires a denial of ourselves. A shutting down of that little carnal voice that tells you to do this or to do that. The shutting down of that little voice that says you're not going to be good enough. And listening instead to another voice. The one that tells you the truth. The one that works with you, not against you.

Tells you to put to death those wants and those desires, especially those that are in conflict with being a disciple of Christ. Let's go over to Galatians 2. Galatians 2 and verse 20.

Galatians 2, and we'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 20.

Galatians 2 and verse 20. The apostle Paul makes the point.

He says, I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

He says, I've been crucified with Christ, that he himself, Paul, has been put to death. That old man, and he lives as a new creation, as a result of Christ living within him. That the life that he lives, he lives by faith.

Again, we mentioned it earlier. He said in 1 Corinthians 15 that he dies daily, that he puts himself to death a little bit each day.

And we can see that, actually, in Paul's journey and in Paul's record that we see in Scripture. We can see that. We can see that after that incredible conversion on the road to Damascus, that each and every day he died a little more.

He crucified himself. He crucified the desires, the lusts, the flesh, until he thought and he spoke and he acted more and more like Jesus Christ.

A few pages further into the book, in Galatians 5, he clarifies his statement that he makes in Galatians 2.

Galatians 5, just following the litany of the lusts of the flesh and the fruits of the spirit there in Galatians 5, 22-24, he says in verse 24 of Galatians 5, he clarifies his statement a little bit.

He says, And those who are Christs have crucified the flesh with its passions and its desires.

If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit. And then he says in verse 26, let us not become conceited, provoking one another or envying one another.

He connects this statement back to Galatians 2. He says, He crucified the flesh, He crucified the self, along with its passions and its desires, and that it was no longer Him who lived, it was Christ's spirit living in Him.

And then he goes on in that section, essentially, as he's kind of making his point that the actions then follow, the fruits of the spirit will show in our lives, they'll show in our thoughts, our actions, and our speech.

You know, we come to our rabbi as disciples, and when we commit to following Him, to taking up our cross and coming after Him, we dedicate ourselves to Him. We dedicate ourselves to God.

The disciples as a whole were a group of men that were dedicated to Christ and to the Father. They went forward from the events of the day of Pentecost, emboldened.

I mean, if you look at the book of Acts coming out of the day of Pentecost, they were emboldened by what happened at the day of Pentecost, and they went out just on fire. They went out on fire.

In fact, in Acts 6, we can see that it was growing so rapidly that they had no choice but to institute an office of deacon or deaconess in this case, taking care of that day-to-day operation of the church. It just became so much that they couldn't do it. Their preaching of the gospel was being affected by having to take care of these other things. And so they ordained deacons to assist with the day-to-day operation of the church so that they could eat, sleep, and breathe the Word of God and preach the gospel to the churches.

As they went out into the world, they took that gospel message to all these different places. They faced a number of dangers and perils to take that gospel to the world.

And it's interesting to me that in every recorded example that we see in Scripture, they did not shy away from speaking the truth and preaching the gospel to the world around them, regardless of what those hearers might hear from them or experience.

They may have said it in different ways. The Apostle Paul was very good at meeting his audience where they were and understanding what needed to be said to his audience, but they never shied away from the truth. In fact, Stephen in Acts 7 is a great example. Go ahead and turn it over to Acts 7. We're going to ultimately pick it up in the later part of the account, but you can kind of follow with us as we go through here. It's hard to tell, going into this, whether or not Stephen knew what the end result was going to be from the start.

It's really kind of hard to tell.

But he walked, those gathered in that location, essentially preached the gospel to them, starting with Abraham to the present day. Walked them down this path, just deftly and passionately walked them down this path through the gospel message, walked them through their own history, and then they bring them to what we have recorded in Acts 7, verse 51.

In Acts 7, verse 51, he drops the hammer.

He brings them along, he gives them, he starts where they were, what they needed, and he walks them one by one, piece by piece, through the history of their people until...

verse 51.

And I don't know if any of you have ever had the opportunity to speak in front of a hostile audience or not.

I'm not saying this is a hostile audience, so give me a second. Let me finish that.

I don't know if you've ever had that opportunity to speak in front of a group of people that do not want to hear what you have to say.

In my role as instructional mentor this last year, it wasn't this year that I did it, it was last year, and I had an opportunity to go present some professional development as part of a team of teachers at one of the elementary schools in our area.

And just to give you a quick bit of the context, we had to go and present a series of strategies to the elementary teachers because they weren't teaching their kids mathematics.

And I'm not saying they weren't teaching it well, they weren't teaching it at all.

They were sacrificing the time of mathematics in order to teach language and reading, which their kids needed desperately.

But they also needed to know how to add and subtract, because when they get to the middle school you start throwing letters in there and it starts to get confusing.

So we started our presentation. We were all smiles. We did not want to do this presentation either because we knew it was going to end poorly.

It was going to be hostile no matter what we did, because at some point you're calling somebody out for something they should have been doing for a long time and we're not doing.

And so we start the presentation and the audience had smiles on.

And those smiles start to kind of turn to like, huh? You start to see the jaw clench, the glowers kind of set in, and then pretty soon the universal sign.

Kind of get that tooth-picking thing, you know, that kind of thing that happens sometimes.

And they were noticeably angry by the time we were done. I mean noticeably, which was evidenced by their questions and comments.

If I'm being honest, evidenced by their questions and comments. But look, it was a message that they needed to hear.

They didn't want to hear it, but they needed to hear it. And we delivered it as gently and as firmly as we could possibly deliver that message. And what they did with that was up to them.

I mean, that's the reality of it. But I envision Stephen's sermon in Acts 7 to be somewhat similar.

Because at the beginning of it, he starts with what you might call red meat.

I mean, he's speaking to a Jewish audience here and he's throwing him red meat at the beginning.

He starts to talk about Abraham and how the people of Abraham... I mean, that is red meat to a Jewish audience.

And so down the line it goes. Down the line it goes.

It started with what they wanted to hear and it ended in a very different place.

It ended with a call to change. It ended with a call to become dedicated, to become moldable, to reject the traditions of men and turn to God to dedicate themselves as disciples of Jesus Christ.

And we pick it up in verse 51 with some firm words in verse 51.

Verse 51, Stephen says, You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in hearts and ears.

You always resist the Holy Spirit as your fathers did, so do you.

Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?

Which of the prophets that came to your people did your fathers not persecute?

And they killed those who foretold the coming of the just one, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers, who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it.

We see they weren't having any of this. They weren't having any of this.

The account goes on in verse 54, When they heard these things they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth.

But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And in verse 56, he says, You know, those who were gathered felt viscerally what he said. Notice what it says. They were cut to the heart. We've seen that before. We saw that on the Day of Pentecost. The message that Peter delivered caused them to be cut to the heart. But what was their response? Their response was, Oh, men and brethren, what have we done? What do we do? Tell me, what do we do, Peter? Peter said, Repent, be baptized. Receive the Holy Spirit. These guys said, right here they were cut to the heart. What did they do? They gnashed at him with their teeth.

He goes on, again in verse 57, after Stephen provides the vision that he had seen.

In verse 57 it says, They cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and ran at him with one accord. Just to give you an example of that. It's just juvenile, of course. But you've probably done this before when you were kids. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. I can't hear you. La la la la la. That's exactly what they did. They stopped their ears and made a loud noise so as to not hear what he had said to them.

And then they rushed him. Not just one, all of them rushed him. It goes on in verse 58, They cast him out of the city and they stoned him, and the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul, who we know as the Apostle Paul. They stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

And then he knelt down and he cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not charge them with this sin, one of two places, where we see this the other being Jesus Christ. And when he said this, he fell asleep. The people ran Stephen out of town and they stoned him. And as he was bombarded with stones, as he was pelted, and he was bleeding from many wounds and nearing death, he knelt down to the ground and cried out to God that God not charge them with the sin that they were committing.

And with those words he died. Is there any question, when you read the account of Stephen, is there any question of Stephen's dedication to God? No. Was this somebody who was just punching the clock, going through the motions? No. No. No. Stephen was dedicated. The Apostle Paul is another example. He suffered greatly to bring the message of the Gospel to the people and he experienced an unbelievable amount of perils and trials and difficulties.

Let's go ahead and turn over to 2 Corinthians 11. Let's go ahead and turn over to 2 Corinthians 11, where they kind of list all these different things out. Again, not in a way of boasting. You know, sometimes I think we have to be careful when we read these things because it can kind of appear that way.

But the point that he's making to the people that are gathered, because his genuinicity, for lack of a better term, was in question. And there were people that were really stirring the people up against him, saying, well, you know, who's this guy? You know, who is this guy, anyway? You know, trying to call into question his authority and his genuineness. And so he makes the point that, you know, he's talking about these other gentlemen when he starts this phrase here in 2 Corinthians 11 and verse 23.

So in verse 23, he's talking about these other people, we'll pick it up in 22. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? He says, I speak as a fool, and I am more.

In labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often. From the Jews, five times, I received 40 stripes, minus one. Kind of fun fact. They applied their floggings in groups of 13. And so you'd sentence to 40, but 13 times 3 is 39, so you'd save one back. And so you apply it in groups of 13, and then, you know, you just don't give the last one, the 40, so to speak. It says, three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I've been in the deep, in journeys often, in perils of waters, robbers, perils of my own countrymen, perils of Gentiles, perils in the city, in the wilderness, in the sea, among false brethren, in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness, besides the other things, what comes upon me daily, my deep concern for all the churches.

He's not saying this to Brad, he's saying this to say, look, have they been willing to sacrifice so much? You know, they're calling my... Paul's saying, they're calling my genuineness into question. Have they been willing to experience all of these things just to bring you the gospel? You know, there's some pretty famous examples of Paul getting worked over. You know, one of them where he, you know, gets pelted with rocks and really gathers around him and he stands back up and rolls his sleeves up and goes right back into the town, you know, to follow through again.

But these are just a sampling of the experiences that the Apostle Paul had in his service to God. Just like the training schedule for the Berkeley Marathon, the experience was that of pain and of suffering.

It wasn't easy. You know, and if you think about it too, it would have been a lot easier after that first vlogging to go, you know what? You're right. I'm good. I'm done. I'm not going to preach anymore. I'm just going to go back to the way of life that I was before. But he didn't do that.

He was dedicated to God. He was dedicated to his people and he was dedicated to preaching the gospel to the world. Paul had given himself, like Stephen, over to the cause. His own needs, his own wants, his own desires, they didn't matter. His carnal poles, he said he crucified right along with his own needs. He was flogged, he was arrested, he was beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, constantly traveling, weary, sleepless, hungry, thirsty, besides the other things. He was more dedicated to God than he was to his own physical life. He put his self to death, put his needs, wants, and desires on the back burner. So what does that mean for us today?

Does that mean that we have to, in order to prove our dedication to God, be martyred or beaten senseless for the truth of God? Is that what we take away from these two examples? No. No. Absolutely not. Is it possible that we might face that in the future? Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is entirely possible that we might face that in the future. Is that something that he's asking of all of us? No. Not necessarily. Let's go ahead and turn over to 1 Thessalonians 4 today as we begin to close. This is what this looks like for us today.

1 Thessalonians 4. 1 Thessalonians 4, the Apostle Paul is writing to the church in Thessalonica and telling them what a life that is dedicated to serving God looks like. What a life looks like that is dedicated to God. 1 Thessalonians 4, and we'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 1. We'll go through verse 12. 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 1 says, Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more. Just as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God, for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus, for this is the will of God, your sanctification.

That you should abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and in honor, not in passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God.

That no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this manner, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified.

Verse 7, for God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore, he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us his Holy Spirit. But concerning brotherly love, an expectation of us, concerning brotherly love, you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another. And indeed you do so toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia.

But we urge you, brethren, that you increase more and more. You know, I don't know if you've ever had a chance to talk with maybe your kids that have, you know, a really good grade in a class, and they go, well, what more can I do? You can always do better. That's what he's telling them here. You can always do better. There's always room to grow in these things. So, verse 11, that you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your own hands as we commanded you, that you may walk properly toward those who are outside and that you may lack nothing. A life of dedication to God, one that pleases him, looks like a quiet life.

Following the commandments of God, abstaining from fleshly lusts, putting away uncleanness, loving one another and leading a life of peace, minding our own business, working with our hands that we might abound. It's a life that focuses on working each and every day to crucify the desires of the flesh, to put to death ourself, quote-unquote, to take up that cross each and every day, paying, as you might consider, a handful of pennies each and every day, spending our life in payment to God, a little here, a little there, for the rest of our lives.

The big question becomes, how will we spend that time and energy?

You know, if you think about our lives and what they really are, yeah, we could say that they're worth a hundred bucks, but really what we have, the value of our life, is the lifespan that we have. That's our currency. It's time. How do we spend it?

Because we'll spend our time and our energy on the things that we're dedicated to. Always find time for those things. It's the other things that are hard to find time for sometimes.

But the things that we find important, we will find time for.

And so, as we reflect on our lives coming out of the spring holy days, as we kind of head on towards the day of Pentecost, and we kind of consider and think about how we spend our time or what gets the best hours of our day, what is it?

Is it work? Is it family? Is it hobbies, friends, television shows, social media, homework, self-improvement, distraction?

Is it God?

And Kaedetikas?