ALL ABOUT DEDICATION

ALL ABOUT DEDICATION 

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph had to bring Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to be dedicated, and Luke describes the dedication ceremony of Jesus in the temple in symbolic detail. ‘Then it was time for their purification offering as required by the law of Moses, so his parents took him to Jerusalem to dedicate him to the Lord. The law of the Lord says, “If a woman’s first child is a boy, he must be dedicated to the LORD.’ (Luke 2:22).

The Jewish rite of dedication was a re-enactment of the firstborn sons of Israel being redeemed from the angel of death when Israel was supernaturally released from bondage under Pharoah and the firstborn sons of Egypt were slain (Exodus 13:12).
The dedication of the firstborn is called Pidyon haben, whereby the father presents the child with five silver shekels to the priest, returning his firstborn son to God. The priest then symbolically offers to accept five silver shekels instead of the child’s life, and once the payment is made the son is redeemed (Numbers 18). 
The number five in the Bible speaks of grace and silver typifies redemption. The redemptive power of grace over bondage to the Law is also symbolised by Luke in the fact that there are also five mentions of the word Law in that chapter of Luke even though Luke didn’t craft the chapter sections! The Holy Spirit does as he wills – and there is nothing that compares to those five mentions of law in any other chapters in the New Testament. Jesus was dedicated on our behalf for us to be supernaturally brought out of bondage from the world and from the Law by his grace. We saw in the book of Acts that Luke observed and understood Paul’s fervent teaching of grace overcoming the bondage of the Law, and he embeds the power of that truth into this Gospel also.

The Holy Spirit had prompted a man named Simeon to go to the Temple that day. The Holy Spirit had once revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen Jesus, God's anointed King. And so when Mary and Joseph arrived to present the baby Jesus to the Lord the Spirit bore witness to Simeon that his prayer had been answered, and he greeted them, taking the child in his arms and praising God.
‘Lord’ he said, I have seen him as you promised me I would. I have seen the Saviour you have given to the world. He is the Light that will shine upon the nations, and he will be the glory of your people Israel! now I can die in peace. (Luke 2:29)

Then Simeon blessed them all and said to Mary about her son Jesus.
‘This one is assigned for the fall and rise of many in Israel and as a sign that will be opposed and denied by multitudes in all the earth, and that the thoughts of their hearts might be revealed. 
This prophesy declares Jesus as the one who represents the central truth of human life which challenges us to either accept or reject the truth of his virgin birth, his life, his death and resurrection, his ascension and his sending of the holy Spirit. This truth is the challenge that provokes opposition and denial in the human heart, where all our inner conflicts between light and darkness are deliberated and judged, bringing every human heart into account. Jesus now stands in the middle of every decision we make, to give us his wisdom and justice and truth. This is ours if we let him into our heart - and it is on offer for all of mankind. 

Meanwhile, a group of highly esteemed Wise Men called Magi set out from Babylon in the East, and these Babylonian scholars knew the Biblical scrolls that spoke of a coming Messiah. Babylonian philosophy and beliefs had been impacted by the Jewish prophet Daniel during the seventy year captivity of the Jews, and he had become a prophetic hero of both the Jewish and Babylonian cultures.  
These Wise Men would have seen an exceedingly bright star for some weeks in the eastern night sky (which is now known to have been a convergence of two great planets) and they had followed this great light to the region of the special birth and had been asking questions around Jerusalem about the birth of the new king of Israel. 

Their line of questioning and discussion came to the ears of the local ruler King Herod, who acted as an intermediary to Caesar, and he had become extremely threatened by the news of this supposed special child whose birth had been heralded by some shepherds and was being excitedly spoken about all over Judea. He also had some knowledge about the Scriptural prophesies about the birth of a Messiah or a new king to begin a new kingdom in the earth, but he was obsessed about creating his very own dynasty instead. So Herod secretly summonsed the Wise Men to his palace and told them the whereabouts of the region where they might find news of the child. He asked them to come back and inform him of the child’s exact location, telling them that he too wanted to worship this new king. All he needed to know was where to send his garrison of soldiers so that the child could be killed.

The Wise Men proceeded to follow the bright star and were guided to the house where Joseph and Mary and the child Jesus were still staying, and when the men were invited to see the child they went down on their knees and worshipped him and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 
That same night an angel gave a message to the Wise Men in a dream warning them not to report back to Herod, so the men departed and returned to their homeland another way. After their departure the angel also appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt that night, and to stay there until he brought further word, warning him that Herod was seeking the young child to destroy him. 

Then Herod became infuriated, and he commanded a garrison of soldiers to go out and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its surrounding districts, from two years old and under. This tragic event was prophesied by Jeremiah; ‘In Rama a voice of weeping was heard and lamentation and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, unable to be comforted because of her loss. (Jeremiah 31:15, Matthew 2:18)

Herod died soon after this, and the angel spoke to Joseph in another dream that it was now safe to leave Egypt, fulfilling another prophecy which was spoken through the prophet Hosea; ‘Out of Egypt I called My Son’ (Hosea 11:1). But when Joseph learned that the son of Herod, who now ruled in his father’s place, was as treacherous as his father, he was afraid to go back to the area, until the angel appeared to Joseph again in a dream and told him to go to a quiet lakeside village in Galilee where they would be safe. They came and settled in a city called Nazareth, fulfilling yet another prophesy, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’ (Matthew 2:23), and they settled there as a family for many years, where Jesus grew from a child into an adult. 

During this growing up time in the life of Jesus there is an account of one special incident when Jesus was twelve years old. His parents took him with a caravan of many other families to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover, which they did every year (celebrating the saving of the lives of the firstborn and the supernatural deliverance of Israel out of Egypt). 
When they were on the journey home, and one day out from Jerusalem Mary and Joseph noticed that they had not seen Jesus for the whole day, and they supposed that he was with relatives and friends in the crowd, but when they asked around it was clear that he was not with the caravan, so they went back to Jerusalem to search for him. It was only on the third day that they finally found him in the Temple, astounding the teachers of the Law with the depth of his questions and the wisdom of his answers. Jesus said to his perplexed and distressed parents ‘didn’t you know that I had to be about my Father’s work?’ Jesus then went home with them and was subject to them, and the Bible says ‘Jesus grew and increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men. (Luke 2:52)

Jesus knew the fulness of his Heavenly Father’s love towards him, and that he was the one who would make that unlimited love available to all of us. He also knew the unlimited dedication of his Father toward him. It is one thing for us to know and realise through Jesus the love of our Father God, but it is another thing to know his unlimited dedication to us as well. Jesus was sent to express God’s dedication to us and to share it with all of us as people that he wants to live for and live with forever. 

There is an inbuilt capacity created by God in every human heart to desire to dedicate themselves to something greater than themselves that is be born out of true concern for a noble or virtuous cause, or to dedicate themselves lovingly to a relationship. But there is also an intense form of dedication to a harmful cause that is born out of resentment and vengeance against a perceived injustice. Our capacity for heartfelt dedication is but an echo of God’s great dedication to all of us as his own beloved human creation and this was totally lived out in his dedication to Jesus, who responded with his total dedication back to the Father. And Jesus gives us the grace to respond in dedication back to God. 

Within the heart of every person there also exists the fierce dedication of the Holy Spirit struggling to win our hearts for Jesus, and his struggle with the human soul results in mankind’s agony of inner conflict. That is the hidden and suppressed inner pain of a sad humanity. But real freedom from that pain comes with our acceptance of God’s relentless dedication to us. And out of that freedom comes our dedication back to God in giving ourselves to Jesus as a brother and friend and as our Lord and Saviour (John 15:15).