“Take one ram, and Aaron and his sons are to lay their hands on the ram’s head. You are to slaughter the ram, take its blood, and splatter it on all sides of the altar. Cut the ram into pieces. Wash its entrails and legs, and place them with its head and its pieces on the altar. Then burn the whole ram on the altar; it is a burnt offering to the Lord. It is a pleasing aroma, a food offering to the Lord. You are to take the second ram, and Aaron and his sons must lay their hands on the ram’s head. Slaughter the ram, take some of its blood, and put it on Aaron’s right earlobe, on his sons’ right earlobes, on the thumbs of their right hands, and on the big toes of their right feet. Splatter the remaining blood on all sides of the altar. Take some of the blood that is on the altar and some of the anointing oil, and sprinkle them on Aaron and his garments, as well as on his sons and their garments. So he and his garments will be holy, as well as his sons and their garments.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Not many people experience the kind of dedication to something that allows for incredible things to happen. It takes a lot to reach that point. Whenever someone does reach this point, the results are pretty consistently extraordinary. How do you reach such a place of total dedication? It starts with a decision. At that point, there’s usually a ceremony of some sort. It could be formal. It could be very informal. But from there, the rest is just follow through. This next set of sacrifices we see are all about dedication. Let’s explore what’s happening here.

Last night, I stayed up late to watch Katie Ledecky win her eighth Olympic gold medal and her twelfth overall Olympic medal. She now joins the ranks of the most decorated U.S. women Olympians of all-time. And she’s not done competing in this year’s events. The odds are better than fair that she will come away from this Olympics as the single most decorated U.S. woman Olympian in history. In fact, she may have already eclipsed that mark by the time you are reading this if you don’t get to it until this afternoon.

Watching her swim last night was incredible. At one point, per the tracker on the screen, she was ahead of her next closest competitor by nearly 15 seconds. She practically had time to catch her breath before anyone else finished the race. What’s even more incredible is that she made the whole thing seem effortless. She swam 1500 meters, set an Olympic record in the process, and looked like she was putting about as much effort as it takes for me to swim across our local community pool. The few times they showed the underwater camera angle, she was barely kicking her legs.

Let’s just state the obvious for the sake of the conversation. You don’t reach that level of success without some natural, God-given talent. All of those other swimmers in that race had spent years training for the event and worked incredibly hard. And she blew them completely out of the water. She simply operates on another level than any of the rest of them. But natural talent has to be developed, or it doesn’t do us any good. Katie Ledecky has developed her talent. Long ago she dedicated herself to being the best swimmer she could be. She has worked incredibly hard to get to where she is. She has said no to who knows how many things in order to commit herself to this one path. And the results speak for themselves.

I would not begin to tell you that if you just worked hard enough, you could achieve what Katie Ledecky has. You probably can’t. I certainly can’t. But then you weren’t built for swimming like she was. You were built for something else. And if you find your something else and dedicate yourself to it sufficiently, the results will speak for themselves too.

The next sacrifice Aaron and his sons were going to perform (which, again, doesn’t actually happen until we get to Leviticus), was a whole burnt offering in conjunction with another sin offering. The point of the whole burnt offering was to symbolize a person’s total dedication to the Lord. It was about making a statement: I am going to be as fully dedicated to obeying your commands and doing your work as this sacrificial animal has been dedicated to these flames. I will give myself to this task until there is nothing left of me, and everything belongs to you.

The blood rubbed on the three different parts of their bodies (right earlobes, right thumbs, and right big toes) was a part of this symbolism. They were dedicating their thinking, their doing, and their going fully to the Lord. Let me go ahead and note that the symbolism in no way translates to Donald Trump in spite of the fact that he had blood on his right earlobe since that’s where the assassin’s bullet hit him. Any time you hear someone make such a claim or see one come across your social media feed, you are free to roll your eyes (if you aren’t with them in person) and keep scrolling or change the subject.

Practically speaking, and as we have been talking about, we don’t have to do anything like this in order to serve God faithfully and well. Jesus was our one sacrifice. No more are needed. That being said, the kind of dedication that Aaron and his sons were being called to here in both symbolic and practical terms is still very much a calling we receive today as followers of Jesus.

This call comes from none other than Jesus Himself. He made abundantly clear what His expectations of His followers are. We are to be dedicated to Him and no one else. He’s not willing to share our loyalties with anyone or anything else. More than once He told people who sought to follow Him with divided loyalties that they needn’t bother applying until they were prepared to go all in. He said very clearly that His followers needed to be prepared to deny themselves, to take up their crosses (which, in the culture of the day, was an expression indicating a whole life commitment to something), and only then could they follow Him.

The truth is that God wants to accomplish great kingdom growth through the lives of His people. Great kingdom growth, though, can only happen with great amounts of kingdom power. Kingdom power only has a single source: the King. Unless we surrender ourselves wholly to His working through us, a surrendering that is demonstrated by our faithful willingness to do what He says rather than what we want, there is only so much He will be able to accomplish in and through our lives.

The more we surrender ourselves to Him, the more He will be able to do through us. If you want to see the kind of world-changing impact happen through your life that you hear about in inspiring stories about other people, your dedication to Him is the means by which that will come about. But – and this is important – the kind of kingdom-advancing impact God wants to have through our lives may not look the same as the kind of kingdom-advancing impact we want Him to have through our lives. We want to experience the kind of success that the world is going to celebrate. The trouble with this desire is that the world doesn’t tend to celebrate kingdom success very often. It is more likely to oppose it. What this means is that if we want to get this right, we have to have the right understanding of the kind of kingdom-advancing impact God wants to have through us. From the standpoint of the world, it may not look like our total dedication to God accomplishes much. Thankfully, we aren’t worried about what it looks like from the standpoint of the world. We are concerned only with the standpoint of the kingdom. And from that view, things that seems small here, look entirely more impressive.

So, again, no, you probably aren’t going to swim 1500 meters in under 15 and a half minutes. That’s okay. You’re not built for that. When you commit yourself to God in Christ, though, your kingdom-advancing impact can be entirely more impressive than that. All it takes is a commitment and follow through. And you won’t be on your own for that. You’ll have the help of God’s Spirit working in you. You really can’t lose. You just need to make the commitment.