Well, I'm. I'm definitely. You're definitely not in Africa right now, but I do have my African shirt on. From the Imani Malele choir. If you'll turn your scriptures to Nehemiah, chapter 10.

One of the things that's going on here, the first, like, half of the chapter is a whole bunch of names, and I'm not going to read them all to you. But don't think it's because I can't. I know how to pronounce every single one of those. Maybe, we'll see. But what's happening here is after everything's been going on, after they have rebuilt.

The temple had been rebuilt when Nehemiah showed up, and then he got the people to rebuild the walls around the city. And after they've done all of this, there's still something going wrong. And in Nehemiah, Chapter nine. And what we saw last week was the people gathered together to have the law of God read to them. Just sounds like a riot, doesn't it?

I mean, how many of you have made it through numbers in one sitting, like the Book of Numbers or Leviticus is difficult, but they did. They came and they stood while it was read for hours. This says they spent the first quarter of the day listening to the. The word, the law, being read. They recognized that the law was not just rules for life, but it was actually a rule of life.

See, the law wasn't just, hey, if you break this rule, you're a bad person. The law was there to guide them for how to live as the children of God in the land, the promised land of God. And so as they were reading that, or as it was being read to them, they recognized there's something wrong with our hearts and with our hands. Our hands are dirty, our hearts are impure and unclean. And so they repented of their sins.

Sin is a big thing. It's. It's always something that's going on in our midst, and it's something that we must repent of. And they repented of their sins. And as they did that, they were weeping before God because they recognized what was wrong with them.

And so they. They had prepared the. The space, the temple. They had prepared the walls, the city walls and the gates. They had even prepared some of the.

The positions for people like priests and things that needed to be put in place so that they could have their proper worship. But now they had to prepare themselves. They repented of their sins, so now they're prepared in that way. But they also had to prepare for the future. They had to prepare to say, we're going to stick to this.

We're not going to allow ourselves to slide back into the old ways. And so they've done all these things, they've confessed their sin. And the thing that we need to remember is that God is always more concerned with our sin than we are. Like, there's so many people in this world today that want to trivialize or downplay sin. It's popular to really kind of say we all make mistakes, we all have struggles or things that are difficult or things we're trying to overcome.

And for sure we do. But there are times where those things are deeply rooted in our sin, yours and mine. And we need to confess that sin. We don't even do what the scripture says. The scripture actually says, confess your sins one to another.

Now I know there's a couple of you that have actually sought each other out and have been doing that. I don't know what you said. That's none of my business. The truth, the good part of that is you're saying, I've got sin. And until I confess that to someone else I really like, yes, I confess it to God, I don't need another person so that I can be absolved of my sin.

I don't have to talk to a pastor, a priest, a layperson. But there's something when we talk to one another and say, this is where I struggle. This is the sin that keeps having dominion over me. I was at National Day of Prayer gathering on Thursday out at Zephyr park, and we had a great time there. And there was this guy that I met like right afterwards, and I saw him there.

Everybody was kind of getting ready to leave and I just saw him and I didn't know him, I didn't recognize him. And I shook his hand. He didn't seem to be with anyone else. He was just kind of there on his own. And we started talking and it seemed like this was somebody that I wanted to get to know a little better.

And I said, are you busy after this? Like it's lunchtime. Everybody at least wants to eat lunch, right? Like, let's go eat. He said, sure, let's do it.

So we went over, we had lunch and that lasted two and a half hours. And we're talking about all these things and he does missions work and he and his wife have a daycare. Then they're a Christian operated daycare. And so we're talking about those things. And then all of a sudden we're just start it Wasn't like confessing sin to each other, but it was just saying, here's where I'm going through right now.

And I was telling him something about my life and what I was having a hard time with. And then he hit me with this. He said he learned that he has a problem with pride. And I said, okay, how's that? You don't seem like a proud guy to me right now.

He said, God told me that everything that I do in my life that I haven't first relied on God or asked for his help and blessing is me working out of myself. That is pride. I was like, whoa. And I just said, hold on a second. Everything that I do in my life that I haven't first asked God into, that is pride, is prideful, is being proud of myself and my abilities.

And I said, I need to marinate on that one for a while. And so we were kind of confessing our sins in that way. It wasn't just this like, forgive me, Father, for I have sinned kind of thing. It was this. It was this.

Here we are. Two guys had just met each other just hours before, minutes before, and yet we felt that it was a safe place to say, here's what I'm going through in my life. Here's where God has been checking me on these things and saying, I want to erase this out of your life. God is more concerned with your sin than you are. But the beautiful thing is that when he, through His Holy Spirit, reveals it to you, you begin to say, okay, now how do I work through this?

How do I get out of this sin or this habitual sin? By the grace of God, through the power of His Holy Spirit and the blood of Christ, which cleanses us from all sins, we are made clean, and we can begin to work our way out of this. I've got a sermon that I'm supposed to listen to later today. I didn't get it. I just started it earlier, and Amy's bugging me.

It feels like forever. But it was literally since last night, one of the churches that we listened to, one of the preachers we listened to. And I believe it speaks into this a little bit. So I'll be checking that out later and saying, okay, you know, maybe it would have been nice if I could have done that, but the guy just preached it last night, you know, but maybe I could have learned something from him and shared it with y'all. Well, the people, what they're doing here, and we're going to pick up our scriptures here in Nehemiah, chapter 10.

Starting. Starting in verse 39. What's happened is the people have gathered together after their confession time. Now they've gathered together and they've decided that what they're going to do is they're going to make a commitment and they're going to sign it. And so that's where all the names are here.

These are the signatories on it. There's a ton of documents in history that have signatories on it. Like the Declaration of Independence in this country is a big one. Those were people that, under the threat of their own lives, they signed their names to that document. If the war had gone a different way, they would all have been executed as traitors.

And so that took a lot of courage, a lot of strength of conviction for them to sign their names. But even maybe more importantly, these men, these leaders of the families signed their names to this because they said, if we don't do this, if we don't continue to live this way, if we don't plan the future for how we're going to lead our families, we will fall into sin again and we will be vomited out of this land and exiled once again, maybe for good. So we're going to pick up here in verse 30 and read through the end of the chapter. And this is. This is some of the things that they signed on to do.

They said, we will not give our daughters in marriage to the neighboring peoples and we will not take their daughters in marriage for our sons. We will not buy on the Sabbath or on a holy day from the neighboring peoples who bring their wares and all kinds of grain to sell on the Sabbath day. We will let the fields lie fallow every seventh year, and we will cancel every loan. We accept responsibility for fulfilling the commands to give one third of a shekel each year for the work of the temple of our God, for the loaves of presentation and for the regular grain offerings and burnt offerings, for the Sabbaths, for the new moons, for the appointed meetings, for the holy offerings, for. For the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel and for all the work of the temple of God.

We, the priests, the Levites, the people, have cast lots concerning the wood offerings to bring them to the temple of our God, according to our families, at the designated times, year by year, to burn on the altar of the Lord our God, as is written in the law. We also accept responsibility for bringing the first fruits of our land and the first fruits of every fruit, fruit tree, year by year, to the temple of the Lord, we also accept responsibility as is, as it is written in the law, for bringing the firstborn of our sons and our cattle and the firstborn of our herds and our flocks to the temple of our God. To the priests who are ministering in the temple of our God, we will also bring the first of our coarse meal or grain, our of our contributions of the fruit of every tree, of new wine and of olive oil to the priests and the storerooms of the temple to our God, along with a tenth of the produce of the land to the Levites. For the Levites are the ones who collect the tithes. In all the cities where we work, a priest of Aaron's line will be with the Levites.

When the Levites collect the tithes and they will bring a tenth of the tithes to the temple of our God, to the storerooms of the treasury. The Israelites and the Levites will bring the contribution of the grain, the new wine and the olive oil to the storerooms where the utensils of the sanctuary are kept and where the priests who minister stay along with the gatekeepers and singers. We will not neglect the temple of our God. Let's pray. God, we thank you this morning for your word, for every bit of your word that's useful for teaching, for instruction, for salvation.

Lord, show us what you have for us this morning from your, from your scriptures. None of your words are wasted in here. None of your words are without purpose or without cause. And so Lord, we thank you for them. We pray that through your Holy Spirit you would reveal to us what it is that you have for us to learn in Christ's name.

Amen. Some of the commitments they made are interesting and almost kind of we, we understand them. It makes sense to us. Some of those commitments are, are, are ones also that we may not understand at all whatsoever. For instance, the commitment, like the very first thing right off the bat, is that they won't have these marriages with their sons and daughters to people of the neighboring lands.

Now that is a prohibition or a commitment against, not necessarily an interracial marriage, but against an inter religion marriage. In other words, they won't combine themselves or they won't unite themselves to somebody of a different religion. And the reason why is because, and actually Karen came in and asked me about this earlier this morning. And here's the reason why. Every time where a believer in God unites themself with somebody from a different religion or a non believer altogether, what ends up happening is the person of godly character and morals always ends up sacrificing their morals and sacrificing their place in life down to the level of their partner or their spouse, they never end up.

And maybe there's occasionally the. The example that this is wrong, but in, in broad terms, they. They never end up elevating the spouse into faith in God. It tends to be the other way. Now, the difference is some of you might be saying, wait a minute, I know somebody.

Yeah, if somebody, if they're both non believers, and then one becomes a follower of Christ, that tends to have an impact and an influence on their unbelieving spouse. The scriptures talk about that in First Corinthians, and we discussed that in our Bible study a few weeks ago on Wednesdays. But one of the things that is a fallacy is somebody says, oh, well, I can change him or I can change her. I'll lead them to faith in Christ. The problem is you've already compromised your morals, you've already compromised your faith and your trust in God in uniting yourself to this person.

And so as you do that, you end up already starting that relationship from a place where you've compromised your faith in God. And so, of course, you're going to be the one that continues lowering yourself and lowering your commitment and faith in God to the point where you're no different than the one who is a nonbeliever. And so what they're saying they're going to do is they're saying, you know what? We look back at our history, like, we look back at all this stuff, and we realize that over and over again, every time that we have married somebody from a different faith, their idols come in, their idolatry comes in. And one of the things that's so interesting about idolatry is it's a lot of fun.

Sin is a lot of fun in the moment. I didn't hear any amens, but I didn't hear you saying, whoa, no, you're wrong, Pastor. If it wasn't so much fun, nobody would be doing it. If sin wasn't enjoyable in the moment, it wouldn't be a popular thing. It's.

It's fun to go and, and do all the stuff that we see popularized on TV and in social media, just popularized by the glamour of the world. It's fun to go do those things. There's a reason it's so popular on every source of media that's. That's surrounding us. It's easy to say, okay, you know what?

I can do this. It's even easy to say, you know what? I can, I can cheat a little bit on my taxes, steal from my employer. I can, I can maybe have this flirtatious relationship with somebody that I'm not married to. I can, I can, I can do all these things over here.

I can watch content, movies, not just movies, but pornography and all these things. I can get into all that and it's really fun and nobody knows and it's not going to hurt anyone in the moment. That might be absolutely 100% true. But sin will always take you farther than you planned to go, drag you down deeper and lower than you ever would have allowed yourself to go. It'll always require more of you than you were ever willing to give at the outset.

And the consequences for it continue to stretch out throughout the years of your life to where you look back and you say, I wish I'd never taken that first step. And so sin always tends to do that to us. So when I started out this morning by saying that God is more concerned with our sin than we are, it's because we're really dumb, aren't we? I mean, we're so dumb, we look at this and we say, I know it hasn't worked before, but I can do this. Like, I know it didn't work out so well for that person, but I have a stronger will than they do.

Maybe I have less baggage or issues or I didn't have those problems growing up. So I know I can do this and it won't be a problem for me. Many people find out all too late into their addictions, their ruined lives, their broken apart families, they're their lost jobs, their medical struggles, the decisions that we make in foolishness and in ignorance early in life that tend to weigh us down later. And we say, I wish that I hadn't done that now. The Israelites looked back and they said, whenever we married somebody that was not of the Jewish faith, it became a problem for us.

That other person's doing just fine. They're enjoying their place there. Because to be part of the Jewish community in good times was really good. When the Jews were prosperous as a nation. It's a great place to be and everybody wanted to be there.

When they turned their backs on God and they, they fell away from Him. It was not the best of times, it was not the best place to be. So what had happened was during the time of exile, they were out of the land for 70 years, but a few people were left, just kind of the peasants of the land to work the fields and grow crops and turn them In a bunch of. Most of it to the king of Babylon and later to the Medes and Persians. And at one point, when the Persians are in control, they end up sending some people back to rebuild the temple, to rebuild the city, to rebuild the city walls, to begin life again in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas of the nation of Israel.

And so now it's beginning to be a good land again, and the blessing of God and the king is upon it. But what had happened in that 70 year meantime was there were still people that were left in the land. And then the, the. The kings that had overtaken them moved other people in from other nations they had conquered. And so those people all intermingled and intermarried and intermixed.

And what ended up happening was you got this group of people called the Samaritans. Later on, Jesus would talk about them, or not talk about them, talk with them. He would go visit them, he would minister to them. But they had this problem whereby most of the people of Israel really hated the Samaritans. I mean, a deep hatred, because it goes back to this commitment where they said, we won't intermarry with other people of other faiths.

And anybody who did that is messed up. And so they looked at the Samaritans as a religious half breed, which is what they were. They had brought in foreign religions with the worship of God. And 400 years later, by the time of Christ, we have these struggles, these problems. And so Jesus meets this woman outside the well in Samaria in John chapter four.

And he's talking with her and she says, well, you know, you guys, sorry, I didn't mean to say well twice there. She says, hey, sorry. He met her at a well and she said, hey. She said, hey, what's up with you Jews? You tell us we got to go down to Jerusalem to worship, but every time we try to go there, you really try to kick us out because you hate us.

So we just started worshiping on Mount Gerizim. We set up a worship place over there on that mountain. But you say, we got to go to this mountain, which was Mount Moriah, where Abraham was supposed to have sacrificed his son according to God's message to him. And as he's about to do it, God says, no, don't do that, because later God is going to sacrifice his son on that mountain for us. And so the Samaritan woman says, what does it matter what mountain we worship on?

That question is still relevant today. So many times people say, what does it matter? Does it matter where I worship. Does it matter what they're saying from the platform? Does it matter what version of the Bible we read?

Some of these things do matter and some don't. Does it. Does it matter what songs we sing, who it's about? Does it matter what the. What the overall ethos of that group is?

Does it matter if I worship from home, on a screen, on my phone or on my computer, on my tv? Or does it matter if I come in person? Does it matter if I show up every week or just once every month, six weeks, twice a year? You know, does it really matter? So this woman, you know, her quandary with Jesus is still going on today in the hearts and minds of pretty much everyone that's considered religion.

What about this? Aren't all religions the same? Aren't they all just going up different sides of the mountain trying to reach the same God? No. Categorically, no.

First of all, by the texts of pretty much every religion. That's impossible. Second of all, I choose to look at the one that has a. The most historical documentation proving it. I mean, there are more copies of manuscripts of the Scriptures than of any other historical anything.

Any other kingdom, any other religion, any other historical figure doesn't even come close. The manuscripts that we have of the Scriptures are the oldest of any historic literature. Like, we have manuscripts dating within decades of the original author's autographs, like the original script that the authors of the books of our Bible wrote. We have copies dating back within decades, if not, you know, single years of when they were written. We have bits of it that show that, like, it's reliable, it has been handed down to us.

No matter what somebody has told you or what you've heard. Critics of the Scriptures say, when they say, oh, well, there's. There's transcription errors. Not like you think there are. There might be little things.

Like earlier when I was reading, and that print keeps getting smaller in my Bible, even with my reading glasses. And I stopped because I was sure there was a period. I'm like, oh, that was a comma. I just couldn't see the little part. So anybody that I was like, why do you need the lights on in the classroom over there?

Or something is. I hate the fluorescent lights. I get it now. Okay, you definitely need those. I usually carry, like, a little pocket flashlight.

And there have been times where I'm like, I can't read this bottle or something. So I'm like, what are the ingredients of this thing I'm about to eat, you know, and I'm shining my Light on it because I can't see it. So I get it. I never knew when I bought a flashlight to carry every day that I would use it just for reading things, but here I am. I guess that's because I'm stubborn and, and haven't been to the eye doctor yet.

So I probably need to do that. But we. I don't know why I was saying all that.

So the text that they were copying, it's like there might have been very tiny errors because somebody couldn't see very well. That's what I was getting at. But the transcription discrepancies that are there do not affect anything to do with any doctrine of Scripture, any doctrine of faith in God. They don't negate the character of Christ or of God or the Holy Spirit in any way, shape or form. They're very minor things that we can get hung up on if we're trying to have anti faith, if we're trying to have faith against God.

But to have faith in God is proven that you can trust the word of God. The Scriptures are faithfully transmitted to us over the centuries. And so when we look at these arguments that people have and we say, aren't all religions going up the same mountain or the same hill? No, I look, I choose the one. Even though I was born following the Christian faith, I have a choice.

And as I've looked at other religions, I say, first of all, this book is more trustworthy than any other religious text that there is out there. But second of all, the God of the Bible, his son Jesus Christ came down and died for us. Salvation is not something I have to earn. Salvation is not anything I can earn. Salvation is a gift of God to us.

And there's nothing else. There's no other religion that does that. They all demand sacrifice. They all demand some kind of action on your part. We're going to see that part of the commitment they made was for the sacrifices that they would bring.

And so we wonder about that and we say, what changed? What's changed is Jesus Christ. So keep that in mind as we look through some of the things that they said that they were going to abide by. When you look at it, it shows that the first thing they say is that they're going to keep from those interfaith marriages. But the next thing they're going to do is they're going to keep and maintain their Sabbath observance.

Now, Sabbath observance, they say, will be on two levels. The first one will be every seventh day, a weekly Sabbath rest. And on that Sabbath, there's not a whole lot that says what they will do. There's a lot that says what they won't do. They won't work, they won't sell things.

In other words, they won't be involved in trade or in production. They won't be involved in anything that produces income or purchases goods. They're going to shut that down. And one of the things that is going on that we'll see later in Nehemiah is there's people that are, that are foreigners that live nearby and they're trying to bring their goods in and sell them on the Sabbath. And Nehemiah is like, no, cut it out.

And if you don't stop coming here on the Sabbath, I'm going to arrest you. And so they were pretty serious about that. But they'll not only cease working and production on the Sabbath day, but they would also cease planting and growing crops every seventh year according to the law of God. He wanted the land to lie fallow. In other words, the land itself gets a rest.

And part of the reason that the Sabbath or the exile lasted as long as it did was was because they hadn't given the land its sabbath rests every seventh year. So they were, they were 490 years, they hadn't given it its Sabbath. And So that's, that's seven, 70 cycles of seven. And God gave the land its rest during that 70 years of exile. And so they said, okay, we're going to keep up with that.

There also there was various regular offerings they would keep up with. There was a third of a shekel temple tax that was paid every year by males 20 years and older. And they would continue to do that, which just was kind of for the upkeep of the temple and certain other expenses. They would bring various different offerings throughout the year, including ones for different festivals and for new moon offerings. Now by the way, I've heard people say before, like, oh, they worshiped the moon.

No, they had a lunar based calendar. The calendar wasn't built like ours. You know, like when you look at the calendar, some of your paper calendars still show like the phases of the moon at any given week in the calendar. The Jewish calendar was based on the moon cycles. And so the new moons were like, well, when there's a new moon, it's the beginning of the month.

And so it was a dedication that when you'd have the new moon celebration, it wasn't celebrating the moon. It was using that as a keeper of time to say it's A new month. And I have a renewed commitment to following God and to worshiping Him. There's something beautiful about saying, okay, it's a new month. We just had that a couple days ago.

Great. Let's. Let's kind of keep our focus on God. It's a reminder that this month I'm going to keep that. Why wait for New Year's Day when you can do this every day?

Every first day of the month. They also brought their sin offerings. They brought wood for the altar for the sin offerings. The people had been, like, kind of assigned different rotation for that. And so they would keep up with this.

They would bring their first fruits, fruits of all their produce. So whatever you were growing, whether you had fruit trees, olive groves, wine, you know, wine presses and grape vines, you know, vineyards, all that stuff, whether you had fields with, like, wheat crops, barley grain, whatever it is that you're growing, you would bring the first fruits, you would bring the first portion of the harvest, and you would present that to God, and you would bring a tenth of everything that you had. So you would bring a tenth of what your harvest was going to be, and you would bring that and present it to God. Now, in the harvest seasons, they would put the Levites, who didn't have that tribe, did not have their own allotted land. The Levites lived in the towns amongst the rest of the Israelites.

And so one of their jobs, when they weren't on the rotation to be at the temple to provide temple service, their job was to be in the towns. This is crazy. Collecting offerings from people. You think, what if we sent our pastors out to do that? Like, just go into the, like the neighborhoods, like the hoas or the trailer parks or whatever it is.

We're like, all right, pay up. First of the month. You know, it's payday. Oh, that seems weird and untrustworthy. Don't worry.

It says there had to be somebody from the line of Aaron, one of the priests that was there overseeing it. So now you've got the priest overseeing the collection by the Levites to make sure that it's all done. Well, I don't know what happens if the priests are crooked and the Levites are crooked. I guess the people get abused. And so we always have to be on guard against that.

In fact, our church has safeguards for the income that comes in here. And then one of the things also that happens is the of those tithes, 10% of them is taken by the Levites and put in the storehouses of the temple to provide for Temple service that goes on there by the priests, the gatekeepers, and the singers, they are able to stay in some of the storerooms above the temple, and they're able to eat out of its provisions and live off of that when they are on rotation for service at the temple. And so just like that, like, for instance, any church of the Nazarene, any offerings that you give, a portion of those goes to support other Christian work around the country and around the world. And so everything that you give to this local church, 13 and a half percent of it is divided up to several different things around the world. And those are all trackable online by a group called ECFA Evangelical Church Fiscal Accountability.

If it's not right, that sounds right. It's the same letters, ecfa. And they kind of keep track of how different charitable organizations and different nonprofits utilize their funds. And so all of that stuff is kind of not identical to what's going on with their system. But it's saying, like, we want to make sure that what is given is given appropriately and properly and that it's managed properly.

So the people had a responsibility to actually give of their tithes and their offerings. The interesting thing is I used to think when I wasn't reading the scripture quite deeply enough, I said, I don't see any place where Jesus said that we have to tithe. You know, where's it at, Jesus? I said, if he doesn't uphold that law from the Old Testament, then it's not a law that directly applies to our lives. The problem is he does do that.

There's several places where Jesus is approached about this, and one of those is, is where these. He's actually criticizing for how the Pharisees tithe. He says, look at you guys. You guys are tithing out of your, your, your light things like spices, and you're neglecting the weightier matters of the law, like justice and mercy. He said, you should be doing the former without neglecting the latter.

In other words, Jesus right there is saying you still should be tithing, even down to the minuscule minute things. But, but you're, you're, you're filtering out those things. You're, you're making sure you do those tiny things, but your heart is wide open and you're not allowing the justice and mercy that people need and that God has commanded you to offer to them. You're not doing that part of it. You should be doing both things.

So Jesus in that place very clearly to me, and I, I said, okay, God, I'm sorry, I've I've preached that poorly, you know. But what I did say was that the example that Jesus sets forth is actually extravagant. Giving is sacrificial giving. Because another place he talks about it, he says, all these people, they're coming in and they're dropping bags of gold and money in the offering box. Now I say, praise God for that.

Do it, but do it from your heart, not because, oh, I can do it, so I will. And. And then he says, there's this, there's this, this widow lady that shows up. And I love this story because Jesus and his disciples are just posted out there, like, watching, like, we've got an offering basket back in the back row there. Jesus and his disciples are posted up right next to it, watching what people are giving.

Everybody's like, wanting to kind of give in secret. Like, you know, just kind of chuck it in as you walking past. Because it's nobody's business what I give. I love that people are always putting their, their, their cash contribution in envelope and not signing it or anything because it's nobody's business. Would I give?

I mean, on one hand, no. But on the other hand, it's like, you know, one of the things is God knows. And usually it's not somebody that's like, I don't want them to know that I give this much. If you want to give a whole bunch of money in secret, be my guest. I don't care.

But it's usually people that are like, kind of ashamed to show their $2 that they threw in when they just blew like 150 bucks this past week on, like, dumb stuff that they didn't need. You know what I'm saying? You feel me on this? I'm not judging how much you give. If you give two bucks and that's all you have to give.

Praise God. That's what Jesus praised in that moment was he says, this woman has two copper coins. I did the math on it, like with the exchange rates from, I don't know, like the year 30 to now. And it's somewhere around like six bucks. It's not much.

And so she gave just a few dollars. But Jesus said, I don't know how he knew this. He's Jesus, I guess. He said, look, guys, did you see that? Were you paying attention?

And they're like, yeah, I was paying attention. Those guys gave a lot. He's like, no, you missed it. She gave out of her poverty, they gave out of their wealth. She gave everything she had to live on.

She gave 100% of her in of her money, and she had 100% trust that God would provide for her. Now, I don't have that faith. I don't have that faith that that lady did. I want to, but I also don't want to do it and be like, okay, God, here's a challenge. Boom, there's everything I've got.

Now you got to feed me and pay my bills and put gas in the tank and car insurance and all those things that don't seem to be going down. You know, it's like, I don't want to challenge God on that. And yet at the same time, I see Jesus praising that kind of faith. So the thing that they were doing here in Nehemiah was they were committing to giving their tithes. They said, we're going to do that.

We're going to give that. And, you know, the thing is, in the book of Malachi, God is talking with the people, and he says, you know, you've been robbing me. How? In tithes and offerings. And if you want to try me, try me.

Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse and see if I won't throw. Throw open the floodgates of heaven. So much so that you won't be able to contain the blessing. Folks, this isn't actually a sermon on tithing. I just.

I'm passionate about this because I've seen the way it works in my life and in the lives of several of you who started that journey and said, I haven't been faithful in my tithing, and I want to do that. Folks, you're robbing God of giving you a blessing. God wants to give you a blessing. And, you know, the thing is, if you think, well, why should I give my money to God? Ah, it was never your money to begin with.

It wasn't yours to begin with. If you're holding on to it like it's yours, you've misplaced the ownership of that and your little peon position in this world. You see, you're put here as a steward, a manager of God's resources. And if he has blessed you with a large amount of resources in your hands, he has done that for you to be a wise steward of it. Now, that might mean to provide for your family.

It might mean to provide for others around you. It might mean that you. You. You have people with needs that you're able to meet because God has blessed you with the ability to do that. And I've witnessed that with many of you, especially taking care of others within the congregation.

When a Need hit them. And I commend you for that, and I salute you for that. But many of us still haven't learned that tithing is something that God still commands us to do. And he calls us to do that. Not just so we can say, oh, well, the church's bills are paid, or the pastor's salary was paid, or any of that stuff.

Folks, I don't need a salary. Like, please don't take it from me, but like, I don't need it. I can go work. That's not a problem. The problem is I want to be here.

I want to increase the amount of ministry that we do. And the more that I have to go somewhere else to work, the less that I'm able to do that. I'm willing to, but it's not profitable. And so what they did, what they saw was they said, if we send the Levites into fields to work, if we send the priests out into the fields to work, if they have to raise animals or grow crops or grow olives or grapes or whatever it is, if we're doing that, then the priests are saddled with this problem where they're not able to be at the temple to minister. And we work too hard to rebuild this temple and rebuild the walls of this city to have to have the temple vacant.

So what we're going to do is we're going to bring in not just tithes and not just those offerings, but we're going to bring in the temple tax, we're going to bring in the wood for the altar, we're going to bring the animals for the sacrifices. We're going to make sure that all of the needs of the temple worship system are provided for so that when we come to meet with God, there's no hindrances there. And so one of the biggest things that I think is interesting that they didn't commit to doing was prayer. I didn't see anywhere where they said, and we're going to pray. Now, part of the idea is the temple is supposed to be a house of prayer for the nations.

Jesus was quite upset about that when they turned it into a financial thing rather than a place of prayer. But prayer is how we connect with God. It's our connection with God. And so they have this thing where they would come to the temple to have that connection with God. Folks, it's a beautiful thing to come to the church and pray.

It's a beautiful thing to come out. You know what would be like, the biggest joy for me is while the music is playing and the announcements are scrolling before the service starts. If there were people that just said, I can't possibly come and worship here this morning, until I've been down on my knees at this altar praying and just unloading my heart before God and giving up my burdens to him and allowing him to bring me rest. Their commitment to maintain the temple and the system of worship that was going on there is filling in the breach. They had the breaches in the wall, but now they're filling in the breaches in their worship system.

And as they're doing that, God is meeting them there and he's filling the needs that they have. But for us, we have a lot of these things figured out, but one of the things that's still missing is that prayer. This, this is not what I call what I would think or estimate as a house of prayer for the nations. I, I think I mentioned this last week that, that I have to fill out these, these reports. Well, Amy usually does it, but these reports to the denomination, like every month and it tells us like, how many people were there and how many first time visitors and all these different things.

And then there's that one that says, and how many people were actively involved in prayer ministry.

And it's just crickets, folks. It should be 100%. I can't express how much importance there is that our church would be involved in. Not just like prayer, like, okay, I did it, check, Got that part of the list done. Okay, well, I said I would, so I'd be there.

No, how much are we involved actively on being on our knees and saying, God, there's things that need to happen that they won't happen without you doing it. Remember what my friend confessed? Everything in this life that I do without asking God for his help is my pride. And for too long it's been all too easy to operate church. Not just here, it's all over the place.

It's been too easy to operate church and do it on our own efforts because we know what we're doing. We've done this before, we've done it for a long time. We can make it happen. You know, a lot of churches you'll go to, maybe you've visited one, maybe you've been to a church that's got all these big crazy lights. And I honestly don't know what happened with these.

They keep changing. And I think it was my daughter's fault, she turned them on. But anyway, they like on a color change thing, but they have like, not just a slow color change, they have like flashing lights and hey, no problem. I like a good concert, you know, but, like, they've got that. They got smoke, they've got, you know, so many watts going through their subwoofers that you feel it and you're there and the lights are down and the lights are flashing and you think, oh, I felt that today.

Well, yeah, you did. Your senses were assaulted. You could feel it in your chest. You could hear it, you could see it, you could. You could smell it.

I mean, like, that smoke and everything has. It's. It's not really smoke, but it has a smell to it. You know, the fog. And so it's like maybe what we were actually doing was manufacturing a counterfeit of what it feels like when the spirit of God is in our midst.

Because when the spirit of God is there, and I'm not trying to knock these churches, I feel like I have had some times where I drew closer to God when I've attended a worship service like that. I promise you, I know it was real and genuine what God was doing in my heart. And yet at the same time, it's so easy for us to say, well, just in case the spirit of God doesn't show up today, we're going to make it feel like he was here. Just in case God isn't really pleased with our worship, in case he really didn't feel like this was a home for him to be in our midst today, I'm going to go ahead and. And con convince the people that this is what had been here, that God had been here and this is what had happened.

I'm not saying that that's their intentions. I'm not trying to put that on these people. I believe there's people with genuine heart for God that are trying to lead the people, but somehow that we've gotten. Whether it's on that scale or just on our regular services here at First Church of the Nazarene, we can get to the place where we say, okay, if I do this, this and this right, it's going to. People are going to say, oh, I met with God today, and they're going to go home unchanged.

You see, the thing that happened in Nehemiah 10 was the result of them confessing their sins, hearing the word of God proclaimed to them, and they had a revival that broke out. Now, it's the weirdest of revivals because it's a revival where it's pretty calm. They signed a document. When you think of like a document signing is not really that exciting and energetic. There's not like fireworks going off behind somebody signing the Declaration of Independence or a president signing executive orders, which there's been a whole lot of those.

I don't know who keeps all those things straight. But anyway, like, there's not like all this big fanfare. It's just like you can hear the camera clicks and the signing of the pen or the marker on the paper and all this stuff. It wasn't a revival with a big flash and flare. It wasn't this move of the Holy Spirit where you could say, oh, man, the Spirit of God was there.

And yet the Spirit of God was in their midst as these men signed the documents, their family's names on them, and said, my family is going to worship God the way God wants to be worshiped. We're not here to worship for somebody else to see it or for somebody else to be happy about it. We're here to worship God for him to be happy about it. And until I get in my heart that what matters, the only thing that matters is that God is pleased with how I'm living and how I'm worshiping Him. And until we get to that place, nothing that we do matters.

And so their revival sprung forth from a confession of sin, and it blossomed into something where they said, and we're going to keep this going. I believe that that can happen in our day, in our church, but it will not happen without people being committed to prayer. Folks, I would be happy if Elaine and the worship team never got to sing a song, if I never got to preach a word, never got to open the scripture because there were people that were down front. They started the morning out praying, and they said, you know, I started praying last night. I've got a burden on my heart this morning as I enter here, and I just want to come down and I just want to pray.

There's people that I know that they're going to hell when they die. There's people that I know that don't know Jesus. There's people that I know that are struggling, whether it's with their. Their mental health or just some. Some thing where they believe that people are against them, whatever it might be.

They're going through these things and they're fighting it on their own. And I just know that I need to bring them before the throne of God because I can't fix them. I can't help them. But Christ can. And I believe by the power of God he will.

Folks, if I never get to preach a sermon, that is fine with me. That's fine with me. But we'll never get there until you have a burden of prayer on your heart. So my challenge to you this morning that if your heart isn't fully centered on God, you will always revert to religious observance rather than allowing the word of God to speak to you. So I'm going to pray with you this morning.

I'm going to spend a couple minutes. Would you just come up and play? Elaine, I'm going to just spend a couple minutes. I'm not calling you to a new faith in Jesus, but perhaps a new commitment that you'll seek the face and heart of God. If you would like to come forward and pray about anything, please do.