Nehemiah Part 6: Obedient, Faithful, Powerful
"We have acted very corruptly against You and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses.
Nehemiah 1:7
Think about that. Very corruptly - Sopranos, the mafia. You are not a very corrupt person are you? That is a very hard word. It must be like stealing, murder, or running off with the money, leading people into drugs. Very corrupt. Nehemiah says here they had been simply disobedient. We think disobedience is just OK. It is OK, we will just let it slide. Yeah, OK, everyone is a little disobedient. You know, the kids there are a little disobedient. They did not do what they had promised. But that is not what God said. He called them very corrupt.
You know, 99% of the time you have to listen to God, but once in a while you have to listen to Moses. Once in a while Moses gets something from God and you have to, once in a while, listen to Moses. That is what this says. I spoke to Moses, I gave Moses something to help you. I gave him some commandments, and you did not listen to Moses, you did not respect Moses, you did not pay any attention to Moses. You just thought, ah, that’s just Moses. He is just in a bad mood today. He killed somebody anyway. He ran off, now he is back here and he plays like the big shot! He is the big shot leader, Moses. We don’t have to listen to him.
But we have got to. We ignore what the church says, ignore what the pastor says, ignore what is preached. We shouldn’t do that. We can examine it and say is that the Bible? Is that what the Bible says? Does the Bible say that? And we come to the honest conclusion, if that is possible, the Bible says that, and then we do it. Otherwise we run the risk of God calling us a very corrupt person.
"Remember the word which You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, 'If you are unfaithful I will scatter you among the peoples…”
Nehemiah 1:8
Unfaithfulness brings disunity. Unfaithfulness brings division. If you are an unfaithful person then around you is only division, around you there is only problems. Are you faithful? Are you faithful in the church? Are you there? Are you always there? Most of the time there? All you can be there? Are you faithful? Faithful to God? Faithful to one another? Do you have a faithful nature? Or have you your whole life long jumped from job to job to job, from relationship, to relationship, and you are not faithful? Then around you is that spirit of unfaithfulness, around you is that disunity.
Faithful. If you are faithful, that causes unity. Unity causes power. Unity brings a supernatural, natural strength. We have seen that though history. Small groups, but because they were united they did great things. They did not do great things because they were of great numbers. They maybe did not even do great things because they were right. You can be right and it still does not happen. I mean, what we preach is right, but still maybe nothing will happen. It is not because what you preach is right or wrong, always. It is about that unity. Without that unity there will be no power. It is obvious. Whether it be a family or a business.
How do you win a baseball game without unity, without everybody recognizing his position? The right fielder cannot be the pitcher, OK? I am sorry, you are not the boss, you are not the pitcher, you are not the pastor, you are not the person who says it, you are the person who receives it. The right fielder cannot be the pitcher. He has got to be the right fielder. He is important there. The center fielder, the left fielder, the first baseman, the second baseman, the third baseman, the shortstop, they have to be in their position. They have to be there, they have to recognize it, they have to stay there. You cannot say I just don’t want to be there anymore.
That is what we do in the church. We say I am tired of being the catcher, always having to squat down all the time, to have all that stuff on. I don’t want to be the catcher anymore. I want to be the pitcher. The pitcher gets all the glory. I am the catcher. I am just squatting there, all these sweaty smelly batters are coming up there, they are stinking all over the place. I have this umpire leaning over my back like he does. No, I don’t want to do this job anymore. No, I am going to quit. I don’t want to be the catcher. But you can’t do that! It causes disunity. It causes the team to weaken. Every time you leave, every time you don’t do your job, every time you have a bad attitude, every time you don’t show up, every time you hide, you are weakening the church, the Company, the family. Unity!
