As we head off into another year, I feel our theme this year is “he shall be holy unto thee: for I the LORD, which sanctify you, am holy”. (Leviticus 21:8)

These words were spoken regarding the Levites who had been called out from the nation of Israel to serve the Lord. They were to be holy and set apart for God’s pleasure.

Over the Christmas break I read a sermon by Spurgeon teaching on 1 Peter 2:7 “Unto you therefore which believe he is precious”. Spurgeon laid the challenge, is He precious to us? So precious that we gladly forsake everything else? On Sunday we looked as Psalm 37 and saw that it is God’s desire that we be righteous – set apart. Three times in the study we saw the admonition ‘Fret not!’. Worry is poison to the spiritual life. When unmasked, fretting is simply a declaration that we don’t trust God with our circumstances. Even if things really were as bad as our worrying would like us to believe, God is still on the throne! He still loves us more than we can know; He has promised to never leave us or forsake us. God is a good, good Father, and has promised in His word that all things do work together for good for those who love Him. One of the greatest commands in Psalm 37 is in verse 7: “Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him”. In the natural this is hard. We must be walking in the Spirit daily; we need to be in the Word (or we simply default to being in the world!).

I believe that, this year, God wants us to simply be set apart for Him. To be holy just because He is holy. To spend time just enjoying our God, to delight ourselves in Him.

God has made you a promise: If you 1) trust in Him, 2) delight yourself in Him, & 3) commit your way to Him, He will do the rest! He will give you the peace, rest & righteousness we inwardly crave (but naturally cannot obtain).

May God bless you through 2018. This might be the year He comes for us! Let’s make sure we are dressed for our wedding day!

You can listen to the audio on this web page, or save it for listening to later.  We have also made available the Powerpoint slides (in PDF format) that outline the key points of this study.

We hope and pray this teaching will bless you and encourage you to undertake your own personal study and adventure in God’s Word!

The principle of dedicating ‘things’ to God runs throughout the whole Bible. It is not specific to children, although there are indeed examples of this. Right from the first few pages of the book of Genesis we read of people offering things to God. Able offered his ‘sacrifice’ and God ‘respected Able and his offering’ (Gen 4:4). King David of Israel summed it up with the following words:

“Yours, O LORD, is the greatness, the power and the glory, the victory and the majesty; For all that is in heaven and in earth is Yours;…….. ………For all things come from You and of Your own we have given You” (1 Chron 29:11-14).

When it comes to children there are various examples of them being dedicated. The most well known is the example of Hannah and Samuel found in the book of 1 Samuel. Hannah was barren (unable to have children) but once a year she visited the temple of the Lord in Shiloh with her family. On one such occasion, she prayed and wept before the Lord that she may be granted a child. God heard her prayer and she conceived and in due course she gave birth to a boy and named him Samuel. She was so grateful to God that, in accordance with the prayer she had prayed, took Samuel back to the temple after he had been ‘weaned’ and offered him to God ‘all the days of his life’ (1 Sam 1:11).

The account of Samson found in the book of Judges (Chapter 13-16) is another example very similar to the above. A lady called Zorah was also barren. This time an Angel appeared and told her that she was to have a baby boy but that he should be ‘dedicated’ to the Lord.

We read in the book of Leviticus (chapter 3:12-13) that God required all of the tribe of Levi to be dedicated to Him – ‘to do the work of the tabernacle’ (vs 8).

Countless items were also dedicated to the Lord for the tabernacle – See Numbers 7, and for the Temple (see 1 Chronicles 26).

So basically, anything of value, or that which was to be ‘separated’ for God, was dedicated to Him.

It is from this principle then that Christian parents for centuries have wanted to dedicate their children to God. Firstly as a ‘thank you’ (‘all things come from God’), and secondly with the prayer that God will watch over the child and bring the child to a point where he or she is able, and willing, to make their own personal commitment to Jesus.

It is the desire of Christian parents to see their children grow up to love and know God as they themselves do, and also to see their children serve God as was the case for Hannah with Samuel and Zorah with Samson.

A ‘service of dedication’ is simply a public statement of the above in regard to a child’s life. The Christian parents of a child publicly commit their child into God’s safe keeping, knowing that He will answer their prayer and also give them peace.