Commitment

ECC 4:4,5

Recently at work I had a class called project management framework. They got all the employees in our department in to train them. It was a two day class filled with a lot of acronyms but basically, the gist of it was that you should do what you committed yourself to do. Two days to tell us that we should fulfill our promises. Isn't everyone taught that? Isn't it something you're taught as a child? It should be something we teach our children and that we work on in our own lives. We'll see this as we study this matter in the bible.

We're going to look at commitment to God as well as people.

Mat 5

³³"Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' ³⁴But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; ³⁵or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. ³⁶And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. ³⁷Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

Have you ever known someone that couldn't be trusted to do what they said they were going to? “Oh yeah yeah, I'll do that.” It never got done and they didn't really mean it when they said “yes.” Sometimes you have to hound the person to get it done. Their “yes” is not really a “yes.” And then other people who are always reliable and do what they say they're going to do.

The world would be so simple if people did what Christ recommended here. When you say yes, do what what you said you were going to do. Say no when you can't do something rather than saying yes and not doing it. Be a person of your word. For some of us, this may mean learning to say “no” when we're unable to do something. That can take a lot of practice to learn to say “no” if you're not used to it. But as they mentioned in the class I took, it can be much better to let someone know you can't do it in the first place than to let them assume it can be done and then fail in the end when they're depending on you.

We see the dedication of Jesus' disciples that he called into his service. Whether they were fishing or in the midst of something. He called them and they were willing to drop their life where it was and follow him.

Jesus warned about the cost of following him and taking it into account before deciding to commit to him. We may be shunned by the world and even our family because of our belief in Christ. We must be willing to follow through with a commitment to Christ when we begin to follow that path as a new Christian.

Luke 14

²⁵Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: ²⁶"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple. ²⁷And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
²⁸"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? ²⁹For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, ³⁰saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'
³¹"Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? ³²If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. ³³In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.
³⁴"Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? ³⁵It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.
"He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

That's an interesting comparison, to call our commitment to being a Christian as though we were being salty. Salt is a mineral and it can sit there forever and still be salty. If we lose our saltiness and the judgment day comes, there's no turning back. Jesus was clear about the commitment to him. It was not going to be easy for those who did it. For example, for some of the Jews who converted to Christianity, they had a very difficult time...probably even from their own families. Jesus uses the analogy of building a tower. If you're building a skyscraper today, you'd fail badly if you didn't come up with a pretty good estimate of how much it's going to cost to build it. Does your company have the investments needed to build the skyscraper? If we build it, how much can we rent out the space for? You better believe that any company that does such a thing is going to have detailed estimates for the cost of materials and labor.

But there were also those who thought they were ready to commit to following to Christ, but weren't really.

Mat 8

¹⁸When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. ¹⁹Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go."
²⁰Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."

[Maybe this man had good motives and wanted to follow Jesus. But apparently, Jesus knew that this man had underestimated the task and that he'd eventually fail to follow him. He didn't count the cost. (I'm assuming that this man didn't end up following Jesus wherever he went.)]
²¹Another disciple said to him, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."
²²But Jesus told him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead."

[Jesus' mission was so urgent that there wasn't even a chance for this disciple to bury his father. This was the commitment that Jesus expected from his disciples. Jesus was putting things into perspective for them and for us. God is most important.]

One who puts his hand to the plow and turns back

Luke 9

⁶¹Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good bye to my family."
⁶²Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God."

Jesus didn't even give a chance to go back and say goodbye to his family. Jesus was really trying to impress how important it was to commit to following him. For his disciples, there would be much worse things later on than not being able to say goodbye to your family or not having a comfortable shelter or not being able to bury your father. His apostles would go so far as to die for his cause. By the time they had done so, they knew quite clearly the commitment they had made. Someone who wasn't immediately dedicated to him wasn't ready for what would be involved in following him.

This may happen even today. If someone's family wants to keep them from their commitment as a Christian, they will face a hard time. This is a fact. Jesus was being quite fair in warning about things like this.

Hannah committed her son, Samuel, to God

1 Samuel 1

⁹ Once when they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on a chair by the doorpost of the LORD's temple. ^{[2] 10} In bitterness of soul Hannah wept much and prayed to the LORD . ¹¹ And she made a vow, saying, "O LORD Almighty, if you will only look upon your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the LORD for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head."

Hannah made a promise to God. She told said that if she had a son, she'd dedicate him to God. God gave Hannah the son she asked for. What did she do then? Did she decide, once she had what she wanted that she couldn't dedicate the child to God? I'm sure it was a difficult thing for her when her son Samuel was only three to hand him over to Eli the prophet, but she followed through with her commitment. After that, God rewarded her three sons and two daughters. Samuel grew into an important prophet to the nation of Israel in their earliest stage. You can imagine quite a different outcome if Hannah had said “yes” to something she couldn't do.

Job was committed to God. He was so committed that he lost everything he had except his commitment to God.

James 5

¹⁰Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. ¹¹As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job's perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.
¹²Above all, my brothers, do not swear--not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your "Yes" be yes, and your "No," no, or you will be condemned.

James repeats Jesus' warning here to simply do what you say “yes” to. Say “no” to what you can't do. We're reminded also of Job's commitment to God in the face of losing everything. Did he say, “I can't go on any more. This is too hard.” No. Even though it got as hard as it gets for him, he didn't fail in his commitment to God.

Abraham was committed to God to the point of being willing to give up his son. He was so committed to following God's will that he had the knife ready to give up his son. God stopped him, but God had seen his obedience. Perhaps after God had seen so many who had failed to commit to him after they said they would. He'd seen Adam and Eve as they gave in to temptation and forgot about their commitment to do as God said. He'd seen the people of the earth become so wicked that he had to destroy them all, aside from Noah and his family. He'd seen the people lose their commitment to him and try to become like gods as they built the tower of Babel. He wanted to really see if this Abraham was loyal. And he was. He became the father of many nations.

Just as with almost any topic, the Psalms mention commitment.

We are told to commit our way to God in

Proverbs:

Psalm 37

⁵ Commit your way to the LORD ;
trust in him and he will do this:
⁶ He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn,
the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.

Psalms 1

¹ Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
² But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
³ He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
⁴ Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
⁵ Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
⁶ For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

Here's another analogy about faithful Godly people. Those who are committed to God are like trees, rather than plants with shallow roots. And just like in a garden, where it's very easy to grow weeds and unwanted plants with deep roots, the world makes it very easy to have shallow roots. It's a much more difficult thing to have deep roots, to be rooted in a faith in God. As we have to water the more precious fruit-bearing plants in our garden and show them much more care than a weed, we must be careful to weed and water and nurture our lives in Christ.

This is a nice way to think of commitment. If you put down your roots in the Lord, you can't be pulled up. A major part of putting down those roots is to change the heart to try to get rid of hatred and jealousy and sexual immorality. Just like if I commit to being at a meeting on time, I can't commit to other appointments at the same time.

We have to make a choice on what we will serve. Jesus, himself said this.

Matthew 6
²³But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
²⁴"No one can serve two masters. 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 Money.

God would be pleased to have us follow him. Satan would be pleased to have us follow him. As with many things, the better way is harder. To follow Satan, all you have to do is let go. It will pretty much happen automatically. To follow God, we have to work at it. You have to continually try to improve and to serve God.

Commitment in marriage

Marriage is the biggest commitment you'll ever make to another person. You are telling them you'll be there through thick and thin. Before you even date someone, you should count the cost. Can I trust this person as I lead a Christian life? Do I trust this person to commit to me? There's the analogy of a married couple being yoked together like oxen pulling a plow. It's very hard to be yoked together when the other ox is pulling in a different direction.

Matthew 19

³Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?"
⁴"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' ⁵and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? ⁶So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
⁷"Why then," they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?"
⁸Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. ⁹I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."
¹⁰The disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry."

People don't like commitment. You can see that in the attitude of the people Jesus was talking to. Just the very idea of having to stick with their wives for their whole lives without some way out seemed to make them uncomfortable. So often we try to escape going through with what we said we'd do. That's why, when you look at legal documents, you see a list of definitions at the beginning to narrow down EXACTLY what the document means. Later, you'll see basically the same word or phrase repeated in so many different ways. It's because people will always try to find a loophole to avoid an unpleasant obligation.

For example, if we look at this condition from a website:

You may not, under any circumstances do any of the following: publish, post, distribute, or disseminate defamatory, infringing, obscene, or other unlawful material or information on this website.

Why couldn't they just have said “you can't post?” Because then someone would have said, “Ah, you didn't say I couldn't publish such things.” People love loopholes that get them out of doing unpleasant things. Kids are very good at this.

Back to this issue of marriage, the disciples seemed to think that if you have to stay with your wife for your whole life and never divorce, you may as well not get married in the first place. At least Jesus was getting them to think about counting the cost of such a thing.

What happens after we fail?

Ephesus had forsaken their first love in Revelation

Revelation 2

³You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. ⁴Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. ⁵Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

Even after they had somewhat failed in their commitment to God, the Ephesians were given a second chance to repent. Likewise, we have a chance to repent and turn to God at any point.

Failures in our past can be powerful motivators/stepping stones to help us renew our commitment. As Clint mentioned the other night, Jesus' disciples and how Jesus was telling them that they would fall away from him. Peter said that he wouldn't. Jesus told him that he would. Peter was so sure that he could commit to following Jesus even through torture that night. He cried later when he realized that he hadn't been able to carry through on his promise. Likewise, perhaps we believe sometimes that we are able to perfectly commit to Christ and we have become frustrated when we have failed him in some way. But as Clint pointed out, Peter got back up after falling and became such a loyal servant to Christ. And so we have to keep getting backup and trying harder the next time not to fall down.

Jesus understood commitment. He was committed to his Father and he was committed to us to the point that he gave his life for our mistakes. We owe him a commitment.