OCI 2014 Leadership Retreat: One Thing

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Outpost Centers International

Afternoon Devotionals

Lael Caesar

The Beauty of the Lord

Just Like John

Two Opinions

One Thing

Yesterday we said Jesus is the light of the world and the day before we said catwalk business is not temple business.

We looked at the contrast between the undertaking to which we are committed, which God has assigned us, and what the world offers.

And yesterday, we acknowledged that Jesus didn't say he was 1 of the most significant, important, shalewale, umpoyabedu, whatever.

And of course, that needs to be brought to bear on our own experience.

And we try to do it by making clear that the virtuous things that we do Do not thereby entitle us to some wondrous applause and affirmation.

That is what got the devil in the beginning.

Lord, deliver us from ever believing in our betterness.

My mother and older sister said I was good before I knew myself.

Then I ask you what's the difference between that kind of thinking and, Lord, I thank you that I am not like other people are.

Well, today, instead of talking about 1, we will talk about 2, but maybe it will bring us to 1.

The aim is to advocate for polarizing theology.

You don't believe in the middle of the road.

You grab on to something and you start hammering it and everybody else who wants to be balanced and reasonable and deal with equanimity and so on gets upset at you.

There's some kind of polemic that she is, well, today's goal is polarizing theology so all the balanced, even-minded, Dispassionate saints in the congregation had better start praying hard.

Scripture reading, let's read it together.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, for by it the men of old gained approval.

By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.

And without faith it is impossible to please him.

For him who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him.

Finally, for whatever is born of God overcomes the world, and this that overcomes the world.

Faith that is the master of prevailing ideology and material circumstance.

Faith that comes from you and guarantees the victory.

That Ahab said to him, is this you, you, troubler of Israel?

If it hadn't been for Elijah, the whole countryside would be green and every Israelite would be seated under and plucking grapes from his own vine and shaking down figs from her own fig tree.

If it hadn't been for Elijah, The land would be cut with rivers and brooks that sang.

And all the Esau's of the land would be bagging big game.

But instead of that, the earth and its carcasses rot.

And Obadiah is out hunting, not for big game, but for water, before the last horses collapse and Ahab has to walk to work.

Yahweh is my God is his name, and that is the trouble.

The trouble is people walking around with God's name written in their forehead.

The trouble is people unafraid to call sin by its right name.

The trouble is people ready to stand for the right though the heavens fall.

To stand for the right before the king and his court and his consort and her pagan priest father and all the Canaanite imports into the land that God had commissioned his people to clean up and occupy, drive out the Canaanites.

He said, drive out the Canaanites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Parasites and all, drive them out.

And if they would diligently obey him, he would overflow their barns and their storerooms.

Deuteronomy 28, If not, Numbers 33, 55, those whom you let remain of them will become as pricks.

You know, I see the word pricks and I say, you know, prick is fine, but pricks in your eyes.

And thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land in which you live.

Ahab has a better way, it's more sociable.

Be nice to the people, win their confidence and get them to marry you, then bid them follow you.

Follow you to your church, your country, I mean, to set up standards they are comfortable with and faith that they can live by, faith in a God who gave them their rain.

He was the weather god, the god who gave them their grain.

Dagan means grain, and he was the son of Dagan.

And a god who had received authority from the head of the pantheon to rule, Jezebel's Baal was son of the ancient El.

If Baal wasn't 3 in 1, at least he could multitask, he could do 3 things at a time.

And besides that, he had a divine father, El.

How did they get rain and grain from their Baal God?

And his devotees were actively involved in the process.

Worship was a very practical and highly symbolic matter.

Male and female engaged as best they could on a human plane in what they understood their God to do when he sent rain.

Far as they could tell, Baal was inseminating the earth so it could produce, so they did that in the high places.

What was there about that to be mad about?

You keep your Yahweh and leave us our Baal to each her own.

Well, this is Elijah's understanding of the trouble with that.

The trouble with Baal, as far as Elijah is concerned, is that Baal and Yahweh both make the same claim.

Bale claims that every bird and bee and flower and tree and mountain and sea and coffee, postum and tea and you and me come from Baal, or you know, today we don't say Baal, we say evolution.

Yahweh and I claim that in 6 days, I being Elijah, or me, or you, God grant, in 6 days, the Lord Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is and rested.

The Sabbath day blessed, sanctified it and gave it to us in perpetuity as a testimony to his creative authority.

This morning, they announced the scripture reading, and it was 1 verse, Luke 10, 42, and I reached for my Bible.

And the brother started reading, and I thought, bless his heart, I need to get into the teacher mode.

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Afternoon Devotionals

Two Opinions

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