RESOLVED
Nehemiah 9:38-10:39
S: Courage
Th: Brave Hearts
Pr: WE MUST HAVE THE COURAGE TO COMMIT TO GOD.
?: How? How do we commit to God?
KW: Values
TS: We will find in our study of Nehemiah 1:1-11 three values we should embrace that will demonstrate our commitment to God.
The _____ value we should embrace to demonstrate our commitment to God is…
I. PURITY (28-30)
II. PULSE (31)
III. PARTICIPATION (32-39)
alternate subpoints
RIGHTEOUSNESS
RHYTHM
RESOURCES
Version: ESV
RMBC 23 Mar 03 AM
INTRODUCTION:
ILL Notebook: Promise (rain)
A store manager overheard a clerk saying to a customer, “No, ma’am, we haven’t had any for some weeks now, and it doesn’t look as if we’ll be getting any soon.”
Alarmed by what was being said, the manager rushed over to the customer who was walking out the door and said, “That isn’t true, ma’am. Of course, we’ll have some soon. In fact, we placed an order for it a couple of weeks ago.”
Then the manager drew the clerk aside and growled, “Never, never, never, never say we don’t have something. If we don’t have it, say we ordered it and it’s on its way. Now, what was it she wanted?”
“Rain.”
Have you ever had difficulty with making a promise?
I know I wouldn’t be promising rain!
TRANSITION:
Well, we return to our study of Nehemiah today.
During the first part of Nehemiah, we focused on the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem.
It was a task that was accomplished successfully.
Now…
1. Context: After the rebuilding of the wall, the people of Jerusalem are rebuilding their faith.
We noted last week that the people of Jerusalem had broken hearts that needed to be rebuilt.
They needed to recapture their spiritual lives and rediscover the importance of confession, adoration, reflection, and commitment.
During our study of chapter 9, we saw that the body of the text was a prayer.
And…
2. After spending time in prayer, they gained a proper perspective on who God is and their relationship to Him.
As they prayed, the people’s perception of God was enlarged.
They were seeing God as He truly was.
Not only that, they were getting the proper perspective on who they were.
The irreverence of their own lives was coming to the fore.
For God’s holiness exposed their impurity.
God’s faithfulness uncovered their betrayals.
God’s love revealed their self-centeredness.
So, in this process, the people demonstrated courage.
They had the courage to confess their sin.
They were dependent on God and wanted to get right with Him.
So, by example, they show us that…
3. When we recognize our dependent relationship, it is proper to make a new beginning (9:38).
Note the text immediately following the prayer…
“Because of all this we make a firm covenant in writing; on the sealed document are the names of our princes, our Levites, and our priests.”
The people didn’t want their prayers to be empty words that were said and then forgotten.
They were going to live a new set of priorities.
They were going to nail this thing down.
They were determined to keep these promises, even if no one else did.
ILL Notebook: Commitment (Declaration of Independence)
Pause with me for a moment and listen to this covenant promise:
“For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
Do you know where that came from?
If you said the “Declaration of Independence,” you are correct.
And these men that wrote it, do you know what else they did?
They signed their names.
They put their “John Hancock” right on it (and for John Hancock, who was President of the Continental Congress in 1776, he literally did it).
In the same way, the people in Jerusalem were also making the same kind of personal commitment.
And to demonstrate their sincerity, they put their names on the dotted line.
The next 27 verses are filled with names of people that put their name on the line.
It was a declaration of distinction.
They were going to live differently.
As these people, by example show us that…
4. WE MUST HAVE THE COURAGE TO COMMIT TO GOD.
You see, life change doesn’t really happen without commitment.
Without a commitment, we become vague and cloudy in our approach to life.
We don’t get ourselves pointed in a specific direction in order to make the difference.
So, you see, we need the courage to make these kinds of commitment.
But how do we do this?
How do we commit to God?
Well…
5. We will find in our study of Nehemiah 10:28-39 three values we should embrace that will demonstrate our commitment to God.
OUR STUDY:
I. The first value we should embrace to demonstrate our commitment to God is PURITY (28-30).
[28] The rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants, and all who have separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the Law of God, their wives, their sons, their daughters, all who have knowledge and understanding, [29] join with their brothers, their nobles, and enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s Law that was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the LORD our Lord and his rules and his statutes. [30] “We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons.”
Here, we learn that…
1. We should live an authentic faith.
The people of Israel were to have a distinctive witness.
God had called them to be a missionary people.
They were to show the greatness of God by living for Him.
They were to live a life a faith that was to be attractive to the world.
This being true, it was essential that the good news about who God was and what He was like was not to be corrupted.
For this to be accomplished and for God’s people to truly be His people, the principles of faith had to be lived at home.
They had to live lives of distinction.
This meant that they were not going to bring in or allow any unholy influences into the home.
The testimony of their own history, though, had proved otherwise.
They had allowed these influences to invade the sanctuary of the home, and it wrecked their faith.
The context for this principle is one we have studied before…the giving of sons and daughters to marry into another faith.
For Israel, over and over again, this practice had proved disastrous for the spiritual and moral life of the nation.
It is not hard to see why.
The religions of the surrounding lands hardly practiced sexuality according to God’s design.
They practices included public lewdness, prostitution, obscenities, the worship of sexual organs and even the killing of children.
This was the antithesis of what God had planned.
You see, for God…
2. Marriage is holy.
God doesn’t just think marriage is a good idea.
It is better than a good idea.
It is what He has designed, ordained, and blessed.
For the intimacy of marriage is the picture of how He desires our relationship to be with Him: faithful, fruitful and even fun!
ILL Notebook: Marriage (From this day forward)
One evening, Roger Welsch was impressed by a meat entree his wife had prepared. So he asked, "What did you marinate this in?" His wife apparently surprised by the question, dropped her fork and went into a long explanation about how much she loved him and how life wouldn’t be the same without him. Roger must have looked confused, so she asked, "Well, what did you ask me?"
When Roger told her what he had asked, she laughed and said, "I thought you asked me if I would marry you again!"
Later, as she was cleaning up in the kitchen, he called out, "Hey, hon, would you marry me again?"
Without hesitation she replied, "Vinegar and barbecue sauce."
When we give consideration to what is happening today in this area of marriage, it should give us pause to redouble our efforts and commitment.
Cohabitation is on the increase.
Divorce is escalating.
And for the church, there is an unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate the uniqueness, security and permanence of marriage as God has designed.
But for this to happen, it must start in the home.
Marriage must be lived according to God’s standards and it must be passed on to the children.
Parents must have a resolve to disciple their children about their future partners.
Too many parents overlook and excuse their children when they enter into relationships that are outside of God’s design, for fear they will lose their children.
I might venture to say that they are already in the process of losing them when it gets to that point…
And in turn, young men and women must also have an unbending resolve to not entangle themselves in a relationship with someone who is not following Christ (notice I did not say someone who identifies themselves as a Christian).
The standard should be high, because we need to develop relationships that are based on Christ.
In II Corinthians 6:14, Paul writes…
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?
We must understand that…
3. Marriage to an unbeliever is an act of disloyalty to Christ.
We must get our thinking right in this case.
You cannot marry someone, establish a home with that person and think that your faith is going to be untouched.
You see, marriage is much more than romance.
It is union of everything.
So, we must value purity.
If we do not, we cannot commit to God and we will undermine of our own faith.
II. The second value we should embrace to demonstrate our commitment to God is PULSE (31).
[31] “And if the peoples of the land bring in goods or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on a holy day. And we will forego the crops of the seventh year and the exaction of every debt.”
I like using this word “pulse” here.
It is a word that points to that which is alive.
And it points to the fact that…
1. God has given us a rhythm to life.
There is a pace.
There is a pulse.
And we find it here in the concept of the “shabat,” the Sabbath.
We are not to become slaves to work.
Workaholism is not God’s design.
For we are to slow our pace and rest from activity.
ILL Notebook: Work (whole pill)
Al was finding it difficult to sleep at night. He begged his doctor to give him a strong sedative. The doctor obliged, but told him to take only half of the prescribed pill. But to make sure he slept, Al took a whole pill and went to sleep.
Al awoke to a warm, sunny dawn. He felt refreshed and cheerful. And he walked into the office, he saw his boss and said, "I’m ready. I slept like a dog. I jumped out of bed like a kid this morning."
The boss said, "That’s nice. But where were you yesterday?"
Well…
2. We are designed for rest, worship, and witness.
We are designed to live lives that are God-centered.
God is our priority.
So we need to stop in the pace of things and contemplate His greatness, His faithfulness and His involvement in our lives.
We must take time for rejoicing and celebration.
God is good.
We need to be witness to that and declare the truth about Him.
The concept of rest, though, reached beyond the weekly application.
For…
3. Our work practices are to reflect our trust in God.
The concept that we find here is the forgoing of growing crops every seventh year.
God has even given a pulse to the land.
But for the Israelite, it was bigger than that.
It was an opportunity to agree on who owned the land.
God was the owner.
The Israelite was a steward that had been entrusted the land.
Not only that, but taking the year off forced the believer to trust God to provide.
We look at this idea of a rest for the land, and we may be tempted to think it is out of date.
No one does that anymore.
But there is application for us in today’s business world.
Because in your work-a-day world, there are a lot of decisions that you should make that do not make sense in the eyes of the world.
But because you are honest and have an aversion to that which is unethical and sleazy, you will not participate.
Your trust is in God and His pace for your life, not in what you can get away with.
Therefore, we must value God’s design, His pulse for life, and live it, if we are going to be committed to God.
III. The third value we should embrace to demonstrate our commitment to God is PARTICIPATION (32-39).
[32] “We also take on ourselves the obligation to give yearly a third part of a shekel for the service of the house of our God: [33] for the showbread, the regular grain offering, the regular burnt offering, the Sabbaths, the new moons, the appointed feasts, the holy things, and the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel, and for all the work of the house of our God. [34] We, the priests, the Levites, and the people, have likewise cast lots for the wood offering, to bring it into the house of our God, according to our fathers’ houses, at times appointed, year by year, to burn on the altar of the LORD our God, as it is written in the Law. [35] We obligate ourselves to bring the firstfruits of our ground and the firstfruits of all fruit of every tree, year by year, to the house of the LORD; [36] also to bring to the house of our God, to the priests who minister in the house of our God, the firstborn of our sons and of our cattle, as it is written in the Law, and the firstborn of our herds and of our flocks; [37] and to bring the first of our dough, and our contributions, the fruit of every tree, the wine and the oil, to the priests, to the chambers of the house of our God; and to bring to the Levites the tithes from our ground, for it is the Levites who collect the tithes in all our towns where we labor. [38] And the priest, the son of Aaron, shall be with the Levites when the Levites receive the tithes. And the Levites shall bring up the tithe of the tithes to the house of our God, to the chambers of the storehouse. [39] For the people of Israel and the sons of Levi shall bring the contribution of grain, wine, and oil to the chambers, where the vessels of the sanctuary are, as well as the priests who minister, and the gatekeepers and the singers. We will not neglect the house of our God.”
1. Everyone participates when it comes to giving so that we will get our priorities right.
This section of the text tells us a great deal about giving (and we could give a great more amount of attention to it than we will, but we are going to give consideration to the broader principles).
First, let me say that if we are going to be truly committed to God, then so must our wallet, our purse, our bank account and our retirement accounts be committed to Him as well.
The overall principle that must be observed here is that from what we earn, God comes first.
We must plan appropriately to give to God first, then spend the rest.
We are not to “tip” God with our leftovers.
We are not to give just when we feel like it, that is “when the Spirit moves.”
Giving is to be planned and systematic.
It is to be done each year.
There is a firm expectation of a tithe (10%).
This is because that a work that benefits all must not rely on the charity of a few.
ILL Notebook: Giving (pocket change)
One Sunday, in the midst of a church’s building program, the pastor made an announcement before the worship service. As he looked at the gymnasium full of people sitting in pews from the old sanctuary, he said, "We have all the money we need to complete our project." A brief silence was followed by cheers and applause.
"There is just one problem," he continued. "Some of it is still in your pockets."
Well, there is a reason to give.
For…
2. When we give, we maintain the structure of worship and support the expansion of spiritual and moral values.
Giving is very practical.
For the Israelite, it was an investment in the temple and its supporting cast.
They were making provision for those that gave spiritual guidance.
The same is obviously true here as well.
When we give, it is an investment in our community.
For though we support this building, the building is not Randall Memorial Baptist Church.
Rather, we are Randall Memorial Baptist Church and Randall Memorial Baptist Church meets here.
So when we give, we invest in what God is going to continue to do through us.
We support the difference the gospel had made in us and what it will continue to do.
If we are going to be committed to God, we demonstrate it by particpation.
We participate by the giving of our possessions and resources for His glory.
APPLICATION:
Do you have the courage to commit to God?
You know…
1. We must realize that our enemy is not worried about indefinite aspirations.
Once in a while, I come across someone that says, “I’m not going to promise that.”
“I’ll just break it.”
“I’m not that good.”
“I’m just going to do the best I can.”
Well, at first this sounds like integrity, but I wonder if it is.
It is good to recognize our own inconsistencies and tendencies toward unfaithfulness, but I can’t help but think that this recognition is also a very good for excuse for not trying.
When we are vague about our commitments, we tend to wander.
We make little progress.
This is why we must have the courage to commit to God.
For it is the promise that gives us direction.
The promise is made in response to God’s conviction, and it is made in the realization that God is going to be there to help us succeed.
He desires to bless us with success when we are committed to Him.
This means that…
2. We can discipline ourselves to attempt great things for God.
This is what a disciple does.
We discipline ourselves to do better, to accomplish more, to be greater for the kingdom of God.
ILL Notebook: Commitment (to my one and only)
At a jewelry store, a young man bought an expensive locket as a pres-ent for his girlfriend. "Shall I engrave her name on it?" the jeweler asked.
The customer thought for a moment, and then said, "No - engrave it ’To my one and only love.’ That way, if we ever break up, I can use it again.”
Hardly a commitment there…right?
But let me say in contrast, that vows and promises are the language of love.
At a marriage ceremony, vows are made – we commit to the other person – no mater what.
You see, when we truly love someone, we muster up the courage, and we commit to them.
In the same way, if we love God, then we will be committed to Him.
We will sign on the dotted line, so to speak.
So we must ask ourselves…
3. Is Jesus the Lord of our relationships, our time and our possessions?
BENEDICTION: [Counselors are ]
Commit to God…and let Him be Lord of your relationships…give Him the freedom to guide and direct you to the people that will make you better for the kingdom of God.
Commit to God…and let Him be Lord of your time…don’t over pace yourself, but give time for rest, worship and witness in the recognition that it His rhythm for life is for our own benefit.
Commit to God…and let Him be Lord of your possessions…recognize that your wealth finds its source in god’s goodness to us; so honor Him by letting go and bless Him by trusting him for all your circumstances.
Now may the God of peace equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
