Consecration of the Firstborn

Well this morning we are back in full swing as we press forward with the Exodus narrative and of course we're getting to the Exodus proper. We're in these next several weeks looking at how God will finally bring his people out of the grasp of Pharaoh at that last impasse between the Red Sea and the army of Pharaoh.

The Command to Consecrate the Firstborn

We're not quite there yet but we are beginning chapter 13 and this morning we're looking at verses 1 and 2 as well as 11 through 16 where God gives a command and instructions about the firstborn. So beginning in Exodus 13, 1 and 2.

Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever opens the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and beast, it is mine. With these verses we come to an entirely new concept in the biblical storyline.

We have not seen consecration in this way before. Here the Lord says, whatever opens the womb among the Israelites, whether of man or of their own cattle, their own animals, that belongs to the Lord. He says it is mine.

So consecrate it to the Lord. That's the command. In other words, set it apart. That's what consecration means. Very similar to sanctification as we'll see later on this morning. To be set apart, especially for some sacred purpose or devotion.

And so this fundamental idea of dedicating, devoting, or setting apart unto the Lord the firstborn. And we come again to this in verses 11 through 16. Now verses 3 through 10, we considered some, I think it was last month, in chapters 12 verse 14 through 20, with the feast of unleavened bread.

So we included those verses with our discussion of that feast. We're not going to have any time to look at verses 3 through 10. However, it's important to recognize the flow. Again, God is not only drawing His people through the Passover and Exodus, but He's also commanding them with how they will remember this ever after.

And so these instructions are part of this whole complex of maintaining the Passover and keeping the feast. And the feast of unleavened bread, we said, is how Paul describes the Christians need to not have the leavened bread of malice and wickedness, but the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

So we spoke about this larger picture of purity, of mortification, as part of our sanctification in the Lord. And that, of course, is after the justifying event of the Passover. Christians of all ages are saved through the blood of the Lamb, and therefore, they keep the feast in sincerity and truth.

Sanctification flows out of justification. But getting back to this law of the firstborn, verse 11,. And it shall be, when the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, as He swore to you and your fathers and gives it to you, that you shall set apart, again the language of consecration, set apart to the Lord all that open the womb.

That is, every firstborn that comes from an animal which you have, the males shall be the Lord's. So we have the command repeated. It's an elaboration of verses 1 2. Set apart to the Lord all that open the womb.

The wording's not clear in verses 1 2. This could speak of male or female, but by the time we get to verse 13, it becomes clear that males are in view for the firstborn law. Why would that be? Well, males would be representative of their future households, representative, therefore, of the next generation of the Israelites, even as the male offspring of the beasts of the earth and the cattle of the Israelites would represent that next generation, the seminal fruit of the former generation.

So we have this idea of belonging to the Lord requiring a being set apart or a devotedness to the Lord. Just as He set aside or set apart or consecrated the seventh day. Just as He set apart, set aside, or consecrated the tabernacle.

Just as He set aside or set apart or consecrated the tribe of Levi. You see this again throughout the unfolding narrative in Exodus. Most of this concept is the bedrock, the soil of Leviticus. This idea of what is rendered separate unto the Lord, that which is holy unto the Lord.

Here, this law of the firstborn applies to both man and beast, and we have that more clearly in verse 13. Perhaps a confusing verse. I can't imagine too many people, if you were looking at this passage ahead of time, said, oh yes, verse 13.

That's the real heartbeat for me of this passage. Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, and if you will not redeem it, then you shall break its neck. And all the firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem.

So here's verse 13, and we have a real elaboration of the principle of the law of the firstborn. Notice, all of the firstborn, whether man or beast, belong to the Lord. But here we have this elaborate principle.

There is a distinction that is made between the sons of Israel and the beasts. But every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, and if you shall not redeem it, then you shall break its neck.

But, we should say, rather than and, all the firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem. So the principle is made clear in verse 15, later on. Therefore, the Israelite father would say to his son, I sacrifice to the Lord all the males that open the womb.

There's your biggest title, your biggest umbrella for this law. I sacrifice to the Lord all males that open the womb. However, all the firstborn of my sons I redeem. So all are sacrificed, but the sons are redeemed.

And then we have this elaboration. Well, what about a donkey? In other words, what about an unclean animal? Because donkeys are rendered unclean, ritually impure. They are not allowed to be offered unto the Lord.

Nevertheless, they belong to the Lord. And so you either redeem them as well, just like the sons, or you must kill them. And the idea is you kill them by the breaking of the neck. You wouldn't want to even kill them in a way that shows some intent or some possibility of them being sacrificed.

They must not be sacrificed. So like the male sons, these unclean animals belong to the Lord. And yes, they either are killed or they are redeemed. And we see the logic of the law of the firstborn. All the males that open the womb, they belong to me and they must be given to me.

They must be sacrificed to me. However, the Lord will not allow the sons of men to be sacrificed. So they must be redeemed. And that's the law. All the firstborn of my sons I redeem. Why? Verse 13. All the firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem.

So it's a token sacrifice that comes by way of redemption. By the way, Spurgeon drew a wonderful message. If you are prone like I am to read a Spurgeon sermon at least weekly, this would be a great one to look up.

It's one of the few messages he preached out of Exodus 13. But he had a wonderful gospel-focused evangelistic sermon all from this text about the unclean donkey. To me that's just a total flex. That's just Spurgeon just being like, give me anything, I'll make a gospel message out of it.

But in part he draws out this beautiful point. God could not receive the donkey because it was unclean. But still it belonged to the God for all of that. God's claim extends to all the firstborn, clean or unclean.

And that claim is maintained. Sinner, you cannot serve God. You're too sinful. Your heart is too evil. Your service too impure. But still God claims you for a perfectly holy life. And that claim has not ceased.

It has not lost its power. God's law does not change though you have been changed. You see, God's claim upon fallen men has not changed. And this is the gospel which we have to preach to you every time we stand before you.

Namely this. Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who's offered as a substitute for the ungodly, the unclean, the unacceptable. That we might not die. Christ died. That we might not be cursed. Jesus was cursed and hung upon a tree.

That we might be received. He was rejected. That we might be approved. He was despised. That we might live forever. He bowed his head and gave up his breath. And then Spurgeon says, if any man wants to understand theology, he better begin here.

This is the first. This is the main point. And in some ways that's a lot like what Moses is saying to the people. If you want to understand the theology of the Passover, you better begin here. With the redemption.

With the substitute. Life redeemed by way of the Lamb. And so once more we see this intent not only for the event to be remembered, but to be instructive. There is a didactic content to the memorial. In other words, it's intended to teach more than just to remember what God had done.

Exodus 13 beginning in verse 14. So it shall be when your son asks you in time to come saying, what is this? This theme that we've seen throughout these past two chapters. Your son will ask and this is what you'll say.

By strength of hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt. Out of the house of bondage. And it came to pass when Pharaoh was stubborn about letting the people go, that the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt.

Both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of beast. Therefore, I sacrifice to the Lord all males that open the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem. You see my son, the father would say, you should have died that night if you were there.

But God spared you by the blood of the Lamb. All the firstborn belong to Him and must be given to Him. But just like He redeemed the sons on that night, so I redeem all of my sons still. The Passover theology of sacrifice and devotion unto the Lord.

This, he says, it shall be as a sign, as a frontlet, as a testimony, a visible perhaps testimony. Egyptians were known to wear amulets, papyri often with certain inscriptions rolled up and worn, whether as an armband or something perhaps around the neck.

We know of the Teflim that the Jews wore, the phylacteries that Jesus spoke of that the Pharisees were so fond of. This may well have been a physical aspect to this command. It shall be as a sign, I think that's the right way to understand it, as a sign, but they actually made it quite literally a sign.

Something worn like a frontlet became an actual frontlet between your eyes. For by strength of hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt. In other words, never forget this saving event. Never cease to not only remember, but to walk in such a way that your whole life corresponds to that saving activity of God.

You have so been consecrated to the Lord. The whole event of Passover then is rehearsed with every first birth among the Israelites. Every time a little boy or an animal is born, as soon as something opens the womb among the Israelites, the Passover is rehearsed.

It's brought to remembrance. Now importantly, God's claim on the firstborn is not here connected with his general lordship over all creation. Too many commentators, I think, make the mistake, Terence Fretheim in his commentary is a classic example of drawing creation theology into the chapter here.

Of course, if you're talking about firstborn, if you're talking about birth and God's right or God's claim, you're naturally thinking about God as creator. There's certainly good truth there. God has a claim on all that he has made because he has made it.

He is the creator, therefore all things are for him and unto him. We don't deny that for a moment, but notice that creation is never appealed to in the logic of chapter 13. God's claim on the firstborn is not here connected with his lordship over creation or the fact that he is man's creator.

As we see in these verses instead, it's based on the fact that God had already set apart to himself the sons of Israel as his firstborn. In other words, the whole people of Israel have already been described as the firstborn son of God and that is why he spared them and yet struck the firstborn of Egypt.

Do you remember this from chapter 4 verse 22? This you shall say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my son, my firstborn. If you don't let my firstborn son go, then I will kill your firstborn son.

So God makes a distinction between this son that he has adopted, his people Israel, and the son of Pharaoh, the people of Egypt. It's the same thing we see in Numbers 8. It's not connected to creation, but rather to redemption.

In other words, and here's the main point, in other words, it is not because the Israelites were delivered, it is not because they were adopted and claimed that God delivered them. No, no, no. It's not because they were delivered that he adopted them.

No, it's because they were his own that he delivered them. Very important point. It's not because he delivered them that he says, well, I guess now you're my son. I guess I'll adopt you now. No, no, no.

It's the other way around. He delivered them because he had already adopted them. They were already his firstborn son, therefore he delivered them. And so naturally this sets them apart unto God. If that was already the case prior to the Passover, how much infinitely more after the fact?

And that's the logic of redemption, intensifying the claim that God has on the life, but also giving the ethical motivation for us to consecrate ourselves unto the Lord, as we'll see in application. So Desmond Alexander, who has a tremendous, it's rather technical, but a tremendous commentary, it's been very helpful in my own understanding, and he spends some time elaborating this idea of redemption going hand-in-hand with consecration because of the nature of the Passover.

And so Desmond Alexander in his Apollos series commentary on Exodus, he says this, God's remarks regarding the firstborn underline a connection between being holy and belonging to God. Being holy and belonging to God.

Both must go together. God's remarks regarding the firstborn underline a strong connection between being holy and belonging to God. Both go together. Anything that belongs to God, moreover, must be dedicated to his service.

If it belongs to God, it is for his use, for his service. Now think back to the logic of that call upon Moses. You shall go to Pharaoh and say thus, let my people go, says the Lord, that they may serve me, rather than serve you.

I have a rightful claim as their God and their Savior. You do not have such a claim, Pharaoh, so let them go that they may serve me. It's the same logic here. If they belong to God, then part of that belonging is holiness and part of that holiness is service.

Later on, the Levites are set apart by God, chosen not only to be those who serve in the tabernacle, but interestingly, in Numbers 3, they serve now as the ransom for all the firstborn of Israel. So rather than Exodus 13 being in play, Numbers 3 begins to shift the way this law of the firstborn works.

Now all of the firstborn sons of the Israelites are considered redeemed because all of the sons of Levi are dedicated unto the service of God. And so now the ransom takes place among the priesthood of the tribe of Levi.

But notice even there, and we'll see this in the consecration when we get to Exodus 29, even there we see the same elements of Passover at play. These main elements of the Passover. An atoning sacrifice.

In other words, a sacrifice that answers the guilt, the thirst for justice, and spares from the the angel of death. So we have an atoning sacrifice that comes about through paying a ransom. A ransom that is paid by the blood of the Lamb, or later on we see that ransom is actually given a monetary figure.

For males, that's five shekels in Numbers 18. And so there's a ransom that is paid. And then there's a element of purification. There's a purifying from sin, the Feast of Unleavened Bread as part of this Passover complex.

And then there's a holy meal to eat, just like on the night of the Passover. So notice these elements. An atoning sacrifice, a payment of ransom, a purification from defilement, a holy meal that is consumed.

All of these things are at play, not only in Exodus 12, but also when Aaron and his sons are consecrated unto God in Exodus 29. So what does that mean? Well, I think Desmond Alexander is right on the money.

The Passover is rightly understood as a consecration ritual. And I think the implication here is massive. The Passover, in other words, is not merely an event of deliverance, but in its very substance, ongoing, ever after, is a consecration ritual.

It's the means by which God not only delivers His people, but consecrates them unto His service. They're brought through the blood of the Lamb unto the service of God, just like the Levites in Exodus 29 will be brought through the blood of the Lamb unto service for God.

And so the law of the firstborn being connected to here, even as Exodus 29 connects to Numbers 3, helps us understand that God brought about the Passover for the sake of the service, for the sake of the consecration.

In other words, there's no cheap grace here. Passover was always about consecration. Salvation was always about service, do you see? Matthew and Mark, in their own unique way, especially emphasize this.

What does Jesus say? One of the most pivotal aspects, the sort of crowning moment in the Gospel of Mark. Remember our years in Mark when we came to that beautiful divide and this unfolding revelation of who Jesus is and why He has come and what He will do?

And what does He say in 1045? The Son of Man came to give His life as a ransom for many. Now is that ransom mere deliverance? Or is that ransom a deliverance that brings about consecration? John has the vision in Revelation 5.

You see the same elements in Revelation 14. Worthy are you? Who's worthy? The Lamb. Why is the Lamb worthy? Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people from every tribe and language and people and nation.

And what did that ransom accomplish? What did that deliverance bring about? Well, what does John go on to say? By your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation and made them a kingdom and priests to our God.

Do you see? The ransom, the deliverance, the Passover in its fullness is for consecration. By this you have made them this. They were ransomed for God. The Passover then is rightly understood as a means of consecration.

And yet for all of this we do not commonly think about consecration. For all of this we hardly use the language of consecration. I'm ashamed to say it, Roman Catholics speak far more often of consecration than we do.

The closest we get are Pentecostals. For some reason Pentecostals love to think of themselves as consecrated. Amen! You say, I'm just consecrating this to God or I'm trying to consecrate myself today.

Amen! That's a right view, right language, right application. So I think in our perhaps inability to connect the Passover as a consecration ritual, in other words to connect our salvation, our deliverance to consecration, I think we end up reducing or misapplying what sanctification is or the logic of sanctification in the life of the Christian.

That's my main thrust of application this morning. I don't think it only affects sanctification, that's just one part. In fact, I think if we rightly understand the logic of consecration, it has application in every direction.

Most of what we'll cover now in application, I'm just giving three points, I'd be just as happy to have an extra week and maybe look at more of the horizontal dimensions of consecration, what that means for a church body or ecclesiology, what that means for all sorts of aspects of the Christian's life.

But here let me highlight three things. So we're trying to recover the concept, the language, the logic of consecration being intimately connected to salvation, toward the salvific event. Why are we doing that?

Because Exodus 12 is followed by Exodus 13, because the night of the Passover is followed not only by the Feast of Unleavened Bread, but also the Law of the Firstborn. The logic of Passover is consecration, okay?

Consecration and Conversion

That's why we're looking at application in this way. So let's consider how consecration comes to bear on three things. First, consecration and conversion. Consecration and conversion. In other words, holiness discovered.

When you're converted and you discover the holiness of God and are rendered holy by God. Holiness discovered. So that's first, consecration and conversion. Secondly, consecration and sanctification. Consecration and sanctification.

In other words, holiness devoted. And then third, consecration and evangelism. Consecration and evangelism. In other words, holiness directed. So if holiness discovered, holiness devoted, holiness directed.

So beginning first with consecration and conversion. When we talk about conversion, we talk about that initial act of repenting and trusting in Christ for salvation from our sins. We talk about justification as a declaration from God by faith that we are righteous in His sight because we have been united to Christ by faith.

We're no longer our own. We recognize that now we are in union with the Son, and as the Father looks on the Son, so He looks on us. We are declared to be righteous. Just is the sentence, the verdict that is laid down because of the blood of our Savior.

Well, that's justification, and we see it right there at the very dawn of conversion. It's what it means to be converted, whether that process is like a lightning strike in the confines of a day or something that's drawn out over time.

These things will always be at play, but just as the Passover is followed by the Feast of Unleavened Bread, so that repentance and faith is followed by a life of sanctification. And when we talk about sanctification, we always think of this lifelong pursuit of holiness with all of its ebbs and flows, when in fact the Bible more commonly speaks of sanctification as a position rather than as a progression.

Now there's some who would say we too readily take any language of transformation or renewal and we just throw it into the bucket of sanctification. So when we come across verses that speak to being transformed from one degree of glory to the next, or being renewed by the washing of the water of the Word, we tend to just say, oh, that's sanctification, right?

We have transformation or renewal, that's the language of sanctification. And there's some scholars who have said we should separate that move, we should not throw automatically into the concept of sanctification any aspects of renewal or transformation.

Let renewal and transformation be renewal and transformation. Perhaps we should strictly view sanctification as being set apart unto God, being set apart by God for God, our position, our standing before Him.

Now I think that goes a little too far. I would be hesitant to say there's nothing progressive or transformational about sanctification, so I think that goes too far, but it's a good point to make. We tend to assume sanctification is exclusively progressive, when in fact the New Testament pictures sanctification as primarily positional.

You're standing, you're status before God. So when we talk about positional sanctification, we have verses like 1st Corinthians 6 verse 9, and such were some of you, he says, you know, we know that the unrighteous don't inherit the kingdom of God, he says, such were some of you, but you were washed, tense is really important here, you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

Notice in the word order here, sanctification comes before justification. We were sanctified, we were justified. Paul, you've got it all wrong. We were justified and we will be sanctified. No, no, no, Paul says, you're misunderstanding.

You were sanctified with the same concrete finality as your justification. But of course we have other language where we have the concept of sanctification and the reality of it, whether or not the words are used.

And I think there is something to say about the progressive idea of sanctification. Ephesians 1 3, just as he chose us and him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy. Notice, we should be holy.

It's what he will do. He always begun a good work, will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. But notice that it's the should be, not the were, should be, holy. By the way, that word holy, holiness, it's all connected etymologically to sanctification or consecration.

Hebrew actually has a few different terms, but when the Hebrew was brought into the Greek, it was all just hagiazo. From the noun in Greek, hagios, holy. So sanctification or consecration is to render holy, to set apart, to devote.

So when we're talking about holiness or sanctification or consecration, in one way or another we're talking about the same thing. But my argument here is we need to be very careful and thoughtful about how we use language, as you'll see I hope.

It is because God is holy that He sets apart His people to be holy. In setting them apart, they are made holy, right? To be set apart is to be made holy, and yet they must also make themselves holy, right?

All the firstborn belong to me, so consecrate them to me, right? In other words, I have made you holy, so be ye holy. It's the same logic. God sets them apart, by that very act they are holy, and yet they must be holy.

He set them apart so that they would become holy. Now that holiness is a response, as we've seen, to redemption. Because He's delivered them, they are set apart unto Him, to image Him in His holiness.

For God is holy, so we must also be holy. Not conforming ourselves, as Peter says, to former lusts, as in our ignorance, but as He who called you is holy, so you also be holy. In all your conduct, as it is written from Leviticus 11, be holy, for I am holy.

When we understand the logic there, we see this consecration has at its very heart a relationship with God. You are mine. That's a language of possession. It's a language of relationship. I will be your God.

You will be my people. Why? Because I've set you apart unto myself. I've delivered you so that you would be mine, and I am holy, and if you would walk with me, then you must be holy as well. So consecration and conversion, or holiness discovered.

D. A. Carson points out the same point that's been made earlier, that sanctification can sometimes speak to the process of purification in our life, but in Paul, he notes, it commonly refers to that initial setting aside of a believer unto God at his conversion.

So consecration and conversion. We are sanctified by God when we first believe. When we were saved by faith in the blood of the Lamb, we were consecrated to God. We are set apart unto God, and this has brought, I think, a very important point into how we describe holiness.

Peter Gentry, who's an Old Testament scholar, he teaches at Southern, who's just phenomenal. He's, you know, he's excellent. I've sat under some of his lectures, and he's a very eccentric man, but he just has this incredible grasp of nuances in the text, and he's very thoughtful about how we sort of steamroll a certain understanding, and it's quite painful to go back and unlearn things that are just taken for granted.

So he has some very seminal thoughts on how we understand the word holiness, and he says this, I doubt that holiness should be primarily understood in terms of separation. I'm painting myself here because that's usually my go-to.

The idea of holiness is separateness, separation, right? And he says, I doubt that holiness should be primarily understood as separation, and he goes through the history of the lexicons and reasons why this has become the case, and he says, for holiness to be seen as primarily separation or transcendence runs against the evidence we have from its early usage, and if we follow its early usage, we find a through-line throughout biblical understanding that the basic meaning of holy is consecrated, in other words, devoted.

Sinclair Ferguson, by the way, has the same view in perhaps more layman's terms. Sinclair Ferguson has this tremendous book called Devoted to God, Blueprints for Sanctification, and he makes the point that when we're talking about the attributes of God and what's the thrice-claimed attribute of God, holy, holy, holy, we talk about the holiness of God, but Ferguson says if it is an attribute of God, it must be true of God irrespective of the fact that he has a relationship with creation, right?

It could not be an essential attribute of God if it can only be discovered or revealed in relationship to something he has created. It must be within reference to himself if it is an essential attribute.

So he says this, any attribute of God must be true of God as he always existed in the eternal Trinity before creation, and since there is no attribute of God in this case that involves separation, holiness cannot be defined fundamentally as separation.

Do you see the point? We can think of holiness because God is separate, transcendent from what he has made, but if holiness is an essential attribute of God, he was holy before he made anything. So if we think of holiness as separation, what is he separate from?

It's only him, and he would not separate himself from, you know, the Father from the Son or from the Spirit, right? There's a perfect communion within the Godhead, so holiness then can't be fundamentally separation.

So then what is it? It's devotion. Ferguson says we mean this, holiness is the perfectly pure devotion of each of these persons to the other, and this is his conclusion. To be holy, to be sanctified therefore, is in simple terms to be devoted to God.

So you see the beauty of this picture of consecration. What is God doing when he sets apart the sons of Israel unto himself? He's telling them what sanctification is. You are now to be utterly devoted to me.

I have delivered you, therefore devote yourselves unto me. So here you see the positional merge with the progressive, because as you're devoting yourself unto God, because you've been devoted by God unto himself, there will be this progressive conformity to his image.

You will inevitably be holy as God is holy. This relationship of consecration demands it. So that's consecration and conversion. Secondly, consecration and sanctification. If conversion is holiness discovered, then consecration is holiness devoted.

And we've already seen this with the Feast of Unleavened Bread, right? This calls for a uncompromised purity among God's people. Sweep out all of the leaven. There must not be any leaven, and we saw how Paul takes that up in 1st Corinthians 6.

And so coupled with this consecration of the firstborn, the Israelites were to remember their deliverance, and they were to set apart or consecrate their lives and their ways, even as they had acknowledged they had been set apart for this very reason.

So this is a perpetual testimony. The Israelites were born remembering that they had been set apart unto God. Think about that. Every firstborn son was brought into the world in this relationship of consecration.

Now think about the logic of the new birth. When God has brought about the new birth in the life of a believer, what does that new birth demand? Consecration. It's the law of the firstborn. I am now yours, utterly, exclusively.

My life will be a service unto you. I have been born unto you, and we see new birth tied with deliverance. I have been delivered by you, and I've received this new birth. Therefore, I am yours, holy, completely.

Here, Lord, I give myself away. It is all that I can do. That's holiness devoted. Again, the Lord's judgment on the firstborn in Egypt is the explanation for why he has delivered and consecrated the firstborn of Israel.

The sons of Israel were not exempt from God's judgment. They should have been struck down just like the sons of the Egyptians, but instead of receiving judgment that they deserved because of the blood of the Lamb, they received mercy.

But you, you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, who once were not a people but now are the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.

So again, we see the logic of consecration, right? God has a rightful claim on all things, but that is not the basis for his claim upon us. He claims us as believers because when we deserve judgment, we received mercy instead by the blood of the Lamb, and for that reason he has delivered us.

We're born again unto him, and so our lives are now devoted to him. It is mine, he says. If you've been born again unto God, you cannot have the New Hampshire license plate as your life motto, you know, live free or die, my way or the highway.

It's mine, the Lord says. I saved you. I birthed you. You're my son. I've redeemed you, and now you belong to me. For an unbeliever, this sounds like cosmic tyranny. You can listen to old debate recordings from Christopher Hitchens.

This is one of the reasons he hated God so much and went around the country promoting his books and his debates about his hatred for God. It was the father who never lets go, the father who demands everything, and he had this rejection for this cosmic tyrant.

But for the believer, when you understand the price that has been paid and the love of God in Christ is shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit, this is the most magnificent thing you could ever hear.

I've been working through a volume of essays in honor of Sinclair Ferguson called Theology for Ministry, and I was reading at the end a little biographical sketch by Chad Van Dixorn of the life of Ferguson.

And he grew up in a devout home, and yet, like so many in perhaps our own homes, was very disinterested. Sundays were the worst day of the week. All the things I can't do. I have to go listen to teaching, and when will it be over, and I could just do what I want.

It was the drudgery of all things divine. And then he began to wrestle with his own sense of sin, and after his conversion, a great ordeal of wrestling and wanting to close with Christ and feeling conviction of sin and having great hopes and even an interest in the world and yet not closing with Christ.

And as he has told it in many different settings, one day he slipped and he fell, and when he kind of came to, an older man was there and noticed that he had a Bible in his hand, and he said, son, are you saved?

Are you saved? And it struck right through Ferguson's heart. But he recalls after how Sunday became the greatest day. Now it was the delight of the week, and all the things that had been drudgery were now great joys to him.

And it was this work of transformation that brought about consecration in his life. He realized now I want to serve God with my mind, with my heart, and with everything I can. I want to help others come to know this God who has made himself known to me.