SPIRITUAL
DIARY FOR 9/15/2011 9:29:37 AM
My Worship Time Focus: The Support Promise
Bible Reading
& Meditation Reference: Nehemiah 13:10-14
Message
of the verses: 10 I also discovered that the portions of the Levites had not been
given them, so that the Levites and the singers who performed the service had
gone away, each to his own field. 11 So I reprimanded the officials and said,
"Why is the house of God forsaken?" Then I gathered them together and
restored them to their posts. 12 All Judah then brought the tithe of the grain,
wine and oil into the storehouses. 13 In charge of the storehouses I appointed
Shelemiah the priest, Zadok the scribe, and Pedaiah of the Levites, and in
addition to them was Hanan the son of Zaccur, the son of Mattaniah; for they
were considered reliable, and it was their task to distribute to their kinsmen.
14 Remember me for this, O my God, and do not blot out my loyal deeds which I
have performed for the house of my God and its services.”
As I begin this SD I want to go back
again to one of the promises that these Jewish exiles had made with Nehemiah in
the tenth chapter of Nehemiah in order to show that they are now in this
chapter breaking that covenant that they had made with him and most of all with
the Lord: “For the sons of Israel and the sons of Levi shall bring the
contribution of the grain, the new wine and the oil to the chambers; there are
the utensils of the sanctuary, the priests who are ministering, the gatekeepers
and the singers. Thus we will not neglect the house of our God” (Ne.10:39).
Nehemiah takes care of this problem
and gets the people back to where they should have been. What we seen in this passage are a couple of
items that need to be addressed. The
first one is the importance of the temple worship, and keeping the temple
worship going that way that God had intended to operate. This was the center of worship for these
people and the Lord had set up how it should work through Moses when he had
built the tabernacle and then when David planned for the temple he set up other
things that went along with what Moses had set up because the temple was much
bigger than the tabernacle. God had led
David to do things like having choirs at the temple to sing and he even wrote
the music for them to sing.
It is easy to make worship just a
process that does not flow out of the heart and that makes it wrong. We all worship in one way or another and
worship is 24/7/365. How this worship is
going is up to us.
The other item that is discussed is
giving. The giving of the tithes and
offerings stopped and so the room where these things were stored became empty
and so that is why Tobiah could stay in it.
Dr. Wiersbe speaks of giving in this section and has some very good
things to say, and so I wish to quote a couple of them here. “When God’s people start to decline
spiritually, one of the first places is shows up is in their giving. ‘For where
your treasure is, there will your hearts be also.’ (Matthew 6:21) “Giving is both the ‘thermostat’ and the
‘thermometer’ of the Christian life: It
measures our spiritual ‘temperature’ and also helps set it at the right level.”
“
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: Since we
left a church that we had gone to for many years and have not joined with
another church, my giving has not been as “normal” or as regular as it was
before. I am grateful for this reminder
from this section and will get back on track as soon as I can.
My Steps of
Faith for Today:
1.
Do your giving while your living so your are knowing
where it is going.
2.
Continue to learn contentment.
9/15/2011 10:10:39 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment