Thursday - The Fine Print of Your Responsibilities

Nehemiah 10:32-37 – Also we made ordinances for us, to charge ourselves yearly with the third part of a shekel for the service of the house of our God, for the shewbread, and for the continual meat offering, and for the continual burnt offering, of the sabbaths, of the new moons, for the set feasts, and for the holy things, and for the sin offerings to make an atonement for Israel, and for all the work of the house of our God. And we cast the lots among the priests, the Levites, and the people, for the wood offering, to bring it into the house of our God, after the houses of our fathers, at times appointed year by year, to burn upon the altar of the LORD our God, as it is written in the law: and to bring the firstfruits of our ground, and the firstfruits of all fruit of all trees, year by year, unto the house of the LORD. Also the firstborn of our sons, and of our cattle, as it is written in the law, and the firstlings of our herds and of our flocks, to bring to the house of our God, unto the priests that minister in the house of our God: and that we should bring the firstfruits of our dough, and our offerings, and the fruit of all manner of trees, of wine and of oil, unto the priests, to the chambers of the house of our God; and the tithes of our ground unto the Levites, that the same Levites might have the tithes in all our cities of tillage.

Two sections of the fine print are behind us now: relationships and priorities. The next section gets practical: actual money, actual labor, actual weight to carry.

None of this is glamorous. A shekel tax. A wood offering. Firstfruits, firstborn, tithes, all of it accounted for before anybody spent a cent of it on themselves. Somebody had to keep the fire burning on that altar every day, which meant somebody had to keep cutting and hauling and stacking wood, year after year, with no applause for it.

They did not wait to be asked. Verse 32 says it plainly: "we made ordinances for us, to charge ourselves." Nobody forced this giving. They volunteered for it before anyone required it of them, and they gave the first portion, not whatever happened to be left over.

Real commitment eventually shows up as a task nobody notices. What is the unglamorous thing God is asking you to carry, whether anyone ever finds out you carried it or not?