The Invitation to Change.

If you haven't been around before, the last Sunday of the month, we pause for our Sunday at the table. Our communion Sundays. Our Sundays of just fellowship, togetherness, celebration, remembrance. Typically, we would partake in the communion elements together, but we are going to partake in feasting at the park in just about an hour or so. We will enjoy that time of fellowship and remembering the Lord's goodness as we gather around the table.

But today, we're going to be reading a couple different passages as we get started. Luke chapter 14 is our first text of the day:

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus and turning to them he said, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes even their own life, such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

Luke 14

This next text we taught on last week in Matthew chapter 6:

No one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon, being money, possessions, fame, status, or whatever is valued more than the Lord.

Matthew 6

The call to be set apart and fully devoted

One of the really important things to pay attention to as we read the text is both of these scriptures can sound very harsh and abrupt, and there's a lot of strong language of hate and serving. What does that look like?

First of all, in the Luke text where it says whoever wants to follow Jesus must hate his father, mother, brother, and sisters: when you translate those words back, at the time, they did not really have a word that equates to our English language of hate. It's not what we think of hate as, like being bad or treating them poorly. What it's really saying is you must love everybody else less than you love Jesus. Jesus must be the center. Jesus must be the first and the one that you love more than anything else.

And then we get into this text where it's explaining that you can't really serve both God and anything else. It has to be the Lord. We see this idea coming up all over scripture, Old Testament and New Testament.

We're going to be jumping around, but if you heard last summer, we started something that we called Set Apart Summer, which comes from the Hebrew word in the Old Testament, consecration. If you break that down, it really means to be set apart and fully devoted. Set apart from the worship of money, fame, possessions, all those things, anything that's keeping us from Jesus, and fully devoted to Jesus and following his ways in fullness.

One of the things that we did last year is we launched our Daily Rhythms journal. A couple years ago, as a church, we decided to center everything we do around spiritual practices that help us become like Jesus. Because we recognize that as a church, our mission is to create the culture of Christ. In order for us to create the patterns and the customs and to be like Jesus in our everyday lives, then we have to practice that. We have to be intentional in how we practice that.

Every single day in the morning, it guides you through just a quick little prayer, praying through scripture. Midday, pause and take a break and acknowledge God's presence, pray for the people in your life. And then at the end of the day, pause and have a time of examine, where you check in with your heart, where you check in with how you're doing, anything that you need to confess and surrender to the Lord. We truly believe that day by day, as we practice these things, that it changes who we are.

This next summer, summer two, we're going to do it again: Set Apart Summer round two. Starting in a few weeks, June 8th, we're going to have our kickoff. Today is a bit of a prep, like, hey, here's what I want you to be thinking about as we go into this. Set Apart is coming from this idea of consecration.

We hear about consecration earlier in Exodus for the first time, but a huge theme of consecration is in Joshua. Joshua chapter 3 verse 1: Moses has passed on the leadership of the Israelites to Joshua, and he's now leading them. It says, early in the morning, Joshua and all the Israelites set out from Shittim and went to the Jordan where they camped before crossing over.

After three days, the officers went throughout the camp giving orders to the people. When you see the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God and the Levitical priests carrying it, you are to move out from your positions and follow it. Then you will know which way to go since you have never been this way before. But keep a distance, about two cubits between you and the ark. Do not go near it. Joshua told the people, consecrate yourselves today for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you.

The invitation to follow and change

Our main idea for today is this: The invitation that we have is to follow Jesus, and it's an invitation to change. We can change. Jesus is calling his disciples in Luke there to leave everything that they have and to move into a new way of living. This new way is saying to be set apart, to leave everything else behind and to be fully devoted. This is this idea of being all in.

But here's what I want to clarify before we move throughout the rest of this text today: all in and saying yes to following Jesus is not the same as all figured out. All in equals faithful and showing up even when I don't have it figured out. We see that in the life of Jesus' disciples, the people that he gathered. We have people like Peter, who was so back and forth of these moments of being like, yes, I'm going to go preach and proclaim your goodness. And then like, I'm not quite sure anymore. We have people like Thomas who brought a lot of questions.

What Jesus asks of us is not, hey, figure it all out and come and follow me when you feel like fully ready. But he asks us to be faithful, to keep showing up and taking that next step and to bring all of our questions and all of our curiosity to him. The good news in all of this, that we continue to see in consecration, is that as the people live set apart and fully devoted, that miracles happen, that breakthrough happens.

The story in Joshua is that they're going to cross over the Jordan River. God's going to dry up the Jordan River for them to cross over and enter the promised land. Then they're going to get to Jericho and they're going to march around seven times and the walls are going to come crashing down. Breakthrough starts to happen as they consecrate themselves.

Consecration throughout Joshua

I want to walk through where we see consecration happening in Joshua. First, we see it before they crossed over to the Jordan. Before they saw that miracle, this was this kind of spiritual and personal consecration. They had this moment of saying, okay, we are going to take a moment and be set apart and fully devoted.

Then in Joshua chapter five, there was this moment where the Lord told the people to go back. It says that the Lord said to Joshua, make flint knives and circumcise the Israelites again. All those who came out of Egypt, all the men of military age died in the wilderness on the way after leaving Egypt. All the people that came out had been circumcised, but all the people born in the wilderness during the journey from Egypt had not. So there was a second moment of circumcision, consecration that took place. It was making sure everybody was saying, hey, it's been some time since this has happened, so I want you to do this again. I want you to renew the commitment, renew the consecration, renew the covenant, and make sure everybody is included.

Then we see in Joshua chapter 6, it happens as an act of obedience. Then we see in Joshua chapter 7, after this major sin took place and failure of Achan, he consecrated again as the sign of repentance. Then we continue to see this in Joshua 8. And at the end of Joshua in chapter 24 is this act of worship unto the Lord.

The point of all of this is that consecration continues to happen along the way. It's not like once you just say, okay, I lay it all down and I'm fully devoted to you, we keep living life. We might make mistakes. We might pick up things again that we should have left behind. We have to continue to have patterns and rhythms in our lives of consecration. Moments where we intentionally say, I am going to set this down and I am going to be fully devoted to God instead.

In the Old Testament, we see a lot of people living consecrated from things. As you get into some of the things of the Pharisees in the New Testament or the priests in the Old Testament, they would consecrate themselves from things. We see the Pharisees then in the New Testament that they really were committed to consecrating themselves and fully devoting to all these laws and rituals, but still not living set apart. I want us to understand as we talk about living consecrated that it is both set apart and fully devoted.

Because if we just remove things and we stand there empty, there's no good. And if we just all of a sudden start devoting ourselves to all these things, but we're still carrying all of this with us, we're still missing it. We need to be set apart and fully devoted. Set apart from what doesn't serve us, but fully devoted to what does.

Why is it so hard for us to follow Jesus in this? Well, one of the first times we see consecration mentioned is in Exodus. It says in chapter 19 verse 10, the Lord says to Moses, go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their clothes and be ready by the third day because on that day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.

As they were preparing for the presence of God to come, they consecrated themselves. This had to do with cleansing. Washing the clothes at this time was like what the priests would have done. The cleansing and the washing of clothes, the changing of clothes was like a change of status. They had this moment where it's saying, hey, go change your status.

Jesus invites us to follow him and he also invites us to change. This is good news. He invites us to enter into being cleansed and healed by him so that we live differently. The things that were hurtful and harmful to us and held us back no longer have a hold on our lives anymore.

Think about it like this. When you wake up in the morning and you get dressed, the first step is not putting something on, but it's first taking something off. You first take off your clothes, your old things, in order to put on your new clothes for the new day. This is where we often get stuck. We just start putting on, putting on, putting on without first removing the old. We are being invited to live into this new life, but in order to fully devote ourselves to that, we first need to remove what is no longer serving us in this season anymore.

The power of change and community

One of the things that I love that I get to do is when I sit in a therapeutic space with my therapist hat on, I get to remind people the power that we have to change. What I love then as a pastor is I get to often remind people that now science and brain researchers are confirming what Jesus has been telling us since day one: we can change. Things that are deeply wired in your brain, we can actually rewire that. This is an amazing thing that we get to be a part of.

This researcher Charles Duhigg wrote this book called The Power of Habits. There's a quote I want to read to us because as we look at Set Apart Summer, we're going to talk about taking three months to intentionally reset our practices. Say, what do we need to remove from our lives, take a break from, and what do we need to replace it with for a set amount of time?

For years, we've talked about this idea that in 21 days you can have a new habit. Well, that's still the case for some things, but usually that's the easier things. Here's what this guy says in his book: there's no such thing as a 21-day start to a new habit. The amount of time it takes will vary from person to person. In general, habits that feel more pleasurable in the moment are easier to form, while less pleasurable, but with generally better long-term effects, are more challenging to form. It's much easier to eat a piece of chocolate cake every day than it is to finish an hour-long workout. This is often the case because short-term pleasure produces an influx of dopamine, the feel-good chemical. It takes 10 seconds for that to activate after we eat a piece of chocolate cake, but an hour for us after a long workout to feel the dopamine rush.

I think we can all agree what's better for us every day: the chocolate cake or the workout? I'm not against chocolate cake, just so we're clear. But this is a common thing for us to think about. Is there some things that can give us that dopamine hit, that rush, that we can do every single day? We know that if we keep eating the cake every day and working out every day, we're probably not going to see the results that we want. But something has to go in order for us to get to that next place that God is inviting us into.

So yes, there are some things that are easy, like starting a habit in 21 days. But some of the deeper things, for some of us, it might take years. My encouragement to you is to start slow and to start somewhere. Do not be so focused on where you want to be. But okay, this is where I am now. Recognize that every single step I take can get me somewhere and can get me closer to the change that I want to see happening in my life.

There is also deep research that has now been confirmed of the power of community, the power of us doing these things with other people. There's research that shows that social connection releases oxytocin and dopamine, chemicals that promote our learning, chemicals that promote our resilience in our brain, chemicals that help rewiring become more effective. When we're talking about taking a time as a community together to say we're going to live set apart and fully devoted, it's not just because we like hanging out, although we do. But there's something scientifically, chemically proven in our brains that shows us that when we do this together, we're going to learn faster. We're going to be able to rewire our brains.

What does this look like for us to live set apart and fully devoted? To allow the Lord to cleanse us and to be intentional to name the things that we need to remove and the things that we need to replace, to go all in? This idea of fully devoted is to give all of your time, all of your resources to a person or a cause.

We often hear this language of devotion on a wedding day. I've stood and officiated many weddings and you usually say, I'm fully devoted to you, forsaking all others. Think about it. Those of you who are married in the room can think about this. On your wedding day, did you know everything about your spouse? No. On your wedding day, did you know the questions you would soon have about them? Did you know the things that were going to maybe annoy you a little bit about them? But you took that step of faith to say, I'm going to be fully devoted to you without fully knowing them.

I think sometimes we get so scared to take steps closer to Jesus because we think that if we're going to live fully committed and devoted, that means we have to have it all figured out. That means we have to know the path fully. But really, we're saying yes to a lifetime of devotion. We're saying yes to a lifetime of these rhythms of consecration, of saying, I'm going to now set this down and fully devote this to you over and over again.

What I want us to hear is that there's an invitation for us to come. Jesus calls us to follow him. The invitation involves that we get to change. We don't have to stay the same. This is a beautiful thing. But consecration is a part of our call to follow Jesus.

Healing in the process

If we go back to Joshua chapter 5, it says that they were all circumcised. Now, that is a painful thing that happened. It says, after the whole nation had been circumcised, they remained where they were in camp until they were healed. This is what I love about God in the Old Testament, and we see it continue through the way that Jesus lived in the New Testament: there is time for healing.

Sometimes when we remove things from our lives, when we cut them out, we're going to feel the pain of that. That's when other times we can start to question because it's like, well, God, I'm laying this down for you. So shouldn't it feel good right away? But we just were reading about that example of like when you eat the piece of cake in 10 seconds, you're like, wow, I feel great. But it doesn't last. It doesn't have a lasting impact that's healthy for your body.

But when you spend that hour going through that painful workout and you're enduring that and you're resilient in that, it's not sometimes till the end of that that you get that dopamine hit and you actually feel good, and it takes more time. It's a process. Sometimes when we remove things, there's going to be pain. But God has patience for you in that process.

When we say yes to following Jesus and when we celebrate baptism, it's not the same as, I have it all figured out and I'm never going to be in pain again. But it's, God, I'm going to be faithful to you. I'm living for you no matter what comes my way. I trust that you're good and I trust that you're kind and I trust that you have time for me to heal. You have time for my questions. You have time for me to continue to consecrate myself time and time again.

What do you need to change?

Matthew 6 says, no one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other. He will be devoted to one and despise the other. The question as we wrap this up today is this: what do you need to consecrate from and what do you need to consecrate to? What do you need to remove and what do you need to replace? How this summer do you need to be set apart and fully devoted?

As we move through these next couple weeks getting ready for June 8th, we're going to be announcing some more ways that we want to resource us as a community to do this. We're going to be launching what we're calling form groups this summer. If you're here and you're like, yeah, I want to practice the Daily Rhythms, I want to practice being with Jesus, and I would love to partner with someone to do that, we're going to have an opportunity for you to sign up and we're going to pair people up and just say, hey, we're going to commit for these next few months to having some sort of weekly check-in together. You can decide: is it a text? Is it a phone call? Is it we're going for a walk?

But to intentionally follow Jesus together. This summer, as we talk about being set apart and fully devoted, we want to add in this theme that we feel like the Lord's put on our heart: set apart and fully devoted as a community to community. To be people that are living set apart and fully devoted to Jesus, but doing that together as we see the power of what that looks like to follow Jesus together.

Last summer we have the journals, which are available if you want to grab one on the table or you can get them on Amazon. We're also going to be rolling out an online version and Josh has some things up his sleeve that we'll be announcing soon that he's been working hard on to get some things digital so that you can have more access to it.

For now, I want you to start to think: coming June 8th, as we get ready for this Set Apart Summer, what are things that you need to remove that you need to lay down? And then start thinking: what are rhythms that you want to replace that with so that we don't just consecrate from things or to things, but we live set apart and fully devoted.