Sunday Worship Service 10:30am

Pastor Russell Johnson preached through Nehemiah 10, the chapter where Israel's confession and prayer from chapter 9 become a signed, public covenant. Pastor Russell opened with two stories about the weight of putting your name on something — the fifty-six men who signed the Declaration of Independence knowing their signatures were evidence of treason, and his own experience as a newlywed sitting in a Ford dealership in Grand Prairie, Texas, physically nauseous as he initialed page after page of a car loan. "That's what a signature does. It turns desires into commitment." Eighty-four leaders affixed their seals to a document, and then the rest of the community — wives, sons, daughters, everyone old enough to understand — joined in, taking on themselves "a curse and an oath to walk in God's law." Pastor Russell stressed this was not an attempt to earn God's love but a response to the extravagant grace of chapter 9: "Biblical repentance is not about trying to clean yourself up so God will finally accept you. It's responding to God honestly enough that your direction begins to change." He walked through three specific commitments the people made. First, a marriage commitment — refusing intermarriage with pagan nations, not as a racial prohibition but as a protection of distinctive worship, with Solomon as the cautionary example. Second, a Sabbath commitment — refusing to buy from merchants on the Sabbath, letting the land rest every seventh year, and canceling debts, all of which cost something real and required trusting God to provide. Third, a worship commitment — funding the temple through annual contributions, organizing firewood supply ("no wood, no worship"), bringing firstfruits, and tithing, with the phrase "house of our God" appearing nine times. Pastor Russell closed with Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus — secret followers who finally went on the record at the cross, in daylight, with everyone watching — and asked the congregation: "Where do you need to make a specific commitment to honor God in response to His faithfulness?"