OCI 2014 Leadership Retreat: One Thing

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Outpost Centers International

Afternoon Devotionals

Lael Caesar

The Beauty of the Lord

Why do I want to talk about the beauty of the Lord?

The aim of the exercise is to complicate uniqueness.

Well, you see, unity and the oneness of 1 may well be larger and more transcendently glorious than we have recognized, than we have granted, than we have appreciated.

And so maybe we need to understand that oneness is not a simple matter, certainly not a trivial matter.

Let's read the scripture reading together, everyone.

1 thing have I desired of the Lord that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.

It may not be as world-encompassing as having a representation of OCI in every nation under heaven.

But it's a good dream too, it's a good vision.

I always like to give the people of God a seven-word summary of what I'm going to say.

So if I don't say it, you'll know what I meant to say.

And if you're asked hereafter, what did he say, this is what you were supposed to say.

I said, whether that's what you heard me say or not.

Altogether now, what's the message today in 7 words?

Temples and catwalks serve radically different purposes.

Oh God, you who charm us by your grace, show us your face today.

Until we are overwhelmed by love and cannot do but gaze upon your face forever and forever, and see the beauty of our God within his temple.

The following scenes are from Paris Fashion Week.

Featuring creations by Chanel, or for Chanel by German designer Karl Lagerfeld.

I understand there's some folks here from Germany.

Over here there's a model with leggings full of holes, and then that's the kinds of things that happen on the catwalk.

Now, here's Rihanna in the shopping cart with other important people.

It has shopping carts and supermarket products, but it still has the sophisticated women and their sophisticated attire.

I actually know her personally, which is quite remarkable.

I met her at my son's wedding, she and her mom.

Her mom is her photographer, and she was helping her mom at my son's wedding.

I see 1 of them that says Miss Upstate New York, so I imagine that that 1 must be the previous Miss Upstate New York, because she was just crowned in January, I think.

So, You find sophisticated people, you find sophisticated attire, you find good looks.

King David said to the entire assembly, you may read along with me, my son Solomon, whom alone God has chosen, is still young and inexperienced and the work is great, for the temple is not for man, but for God.

The temple is apparently to contrast with the catwalk, because the catwalk is for people.

Sophisticated men and women prancing around.

Not necessarily because you've been there, but.

They then become part of the news, and so you see it on the news.

The fact that I never have doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with going.

Or maybe you're supposed to get invited to these things, and I've never been invited.

We've said it before, temples and catwalks serve radically different purposes.

And God's house is not for fashion parades.

Robin, who's Madison's mom, Madison is the beauty queen and Robin is her mom.

Robin told us about Madison when we met in January for the wedding.

She says, she is not, and Madison is not interested in being Miss World or anything like that, her aim is to build her resume.

She wants to be a scholar, she wants to study, and study costs money, and the scholarship applicant who has the best resume gets the most money.

So Robin and Madison are interested in more than looks, you might say.

Academe is better than a parade of bodies.

A catwalk for beauty or a catwalk for scholarship?

I've been, I see somebody shaking her head.

I've been thinking of the many variations on this kind of option that we face in life.

Glenn Greenwald and Ed Snowden versus the NSA.

The American Civil Liberties Union versus whoever the establishment may be.

I felt like putting up for this frame, ACLU Alabama, but some of you are not from Alabama, and you still have an ACLU or something like it wherever you come from, Germany or Korea or wherever.

America versus Moscow, now you can relate to that 1.

Or America versus North Korea, or America versus Iraq, or America versus China.

Assad versus Al-Qaeda, Iran versus Israel, ABC versus CBS versus NBC, MSNBC versus Fox.

This choosing thing is a very important strategy.

Because whoever is behind it, It keeps us from David's narrow-minded focus on 1 thing.

1 thing have I desired of the Lord that will I seek after that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, for what purpose?

Just Like John

Just like John, there is at least a little bit of facetiousness in this introduction.

I'm going to have to turn around because I don't have a prompt here to let me know that things are going right.

Meanwhile, What is the aim of today's exercise?

Everybody, to focus by and on the only light there is.

Because it's time to face reality and because I really didn't think enough about it when I sang the spiritual.

I've been thinking about it now and thinking, you know, we have a problem here.

But let's read our scripture reading together.

For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more and I saw the holy city the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband And there shall no longer be any night and they shall not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the Sun.

Because the Lord God shall illumine them and they shall reign forever and ever.

No need for lanterns, no need for moon or sun because the Lord God shall give us light.

Everybody, my city does not need crystal triangles.

Come on, say that together because it's true.

I confess to you that there is at least a little facetiousness in today's introduction.

Truly I don't know if there ever isn't facetiousness in anything Lyle Caesar says.

1 conscientious listener from yesterday said, we have a saying in Germany, that you think around corners.

So I told him, Actually, I have spent my life confusing people.

And my wife has spent our married life together begging me not to confuse.

But I'm probably naturally confused and have not been converted enough from confusion.

So bear with me and let's say that together again everybody.

Oh wonderful God our light and our life and our love.

Thank you that with you we have no lack and because of you we need no candles.

I can't sing anymore, but I used to sing male quartets and stuff like that.

Me and the King's Heralds and all the other guys that Wayne Hooper and HMS Riches and the Voice of Prophecy taught to sing male quartet music.

And of course, just like John, I Want to Be Ready was, probably still is, 1 of the hits.

I want to walk in Jerusalem just like, you know, I've been thinking about it, what, what is that all about?

Does anybody have any idea why we all sing about walking in Jerusalem just like John?

Was it because everybody wants to go to Israel?

I mean if it had been Moses or I want to walk in Jerusalem just like Enoch or just like Elijah, you understand that but John.

Jews all over the world are always talking about going to Jerusalem.

Every year they conclude their Passover feast by saying next year in Jerusalem.

It used to be because they lived with an unfulfilled longing.

They couldn't access the city and so every Passover ends next year in Jerusalem but that's not true anymore.

There are 600, 000 Jews living in Jerusalem now and 5.3 million others who have direct access anytime they want to who live in the Israeli Republic and of course millions of others around the world who can go whenever they want to the Aliyah and you know just just go up but they still say next year in Jerusalem.

John Bloom who was president of the blog Desiring God, believes that next year in Jerusalem actually expresses a spiritual longing for the promised peaceful messianic Jerusalem, a profound wish that the next year be a happy 1.

Do you live with longing too for a Jerusalem where everything will be happy?

Do you long for a better city than the 1 that you live in if you do live in a city or a better place than the 1 you live in even if you don't live in a city?

New York is the greatest city in the world.

That at least that's what the announcer says every night on CBS when he introduces Dave Letterman.

From New York, the greatest city in the world, and New York has a lot to recommend it, especially crystal triangles.

You, you didn't know that New York was famous for crystal triangles?

You may not know about New York's crystal triangles, but you know about Times Square.

And you know that every year on the 31st of December, a million people scrunch themselves into this 1 place at the junction of Broadway and 7th Avenue in central Manhattan to see the ball.

And 1 billion people all over the world spend their December 31 watching the 1 million people in Times Square and fantasizing about being there in person.

The ball that these people are looking at is a bunch of crystal triangles.

32, 256 energy-efficient lights reflected to the 2000000000 eyes watching the ball by 2, 688 glittering Waterford crystal triangles.

And since this staring at crystal triangles has no equivalent annual spectacle anywhere in the world, crystal triangles must be a grand and very important thing.

But my city does not need crystal triangles.

The city that Jesus has for me does not need crystal triangles to give and reflect light and it doesn't need 32, 256 energy-efficient lights to be reflected by its Walliford crystal triangles.

My city marks the ultimate contrast between all that is fake and contrived and artificial that finds its unparalleled climax in the heady intoxication of rocking New Year's Eve in Times Square in New York City under a ball of glittering Waterford crystal triangles.

Jesus is in my city and Jesus is the light of the world.

What does John 8 12 mean and Jesus when he says it I am the light of the world.

In context of our key word this week 1 I'd like you to notice that Jesus does not say, I am 1 of the most crucial, significant, important, essential, whatever, he does not say the most anything.

Lewis in Mere Christianity puts it, and I want you to read with me I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Jesus I'm ready to accept Jesus they say as a great moral teacher but I don't accept his claim to be God they want him to be on par with the Buddha and so Jesus can give you some moral insight and the Buddha can give you the enlightenment or you can experience it keep going That is the 1 thing we must not say.

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said, thank you, would not be a great moral teacher.

He would be either a lunatic on the level with the man who says, I am a poached egg, or else he would be the devil from hell.

Either this man was and is the son of God or else a madman or something worse.

You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher he has not left that open to us.

You fall at his feet or you call him a devil from hell.

The world has had its great teachers, men of giant intellect and extensive research, men whose utterances have stimulated thought and opened to view vast fields of knowledge.

And these men have been honored as guides and benefactors of their race.

But there is 1 who stands higher than they.

We trace the line of the world's teachers as far back as human records extend, but the light was before them.

As the moon and the stars of our solar system shine by the reflected light of the sun, So as far as their teaching is true, do the world's great thinkers reflect the rays of the Sun of righteousness.

Every gleam of thought, every flash of the intellect is from the light of the world.

If Jesus doesn't shine it, there is no light and all you brilliant physicists out there, this light does not bend, it is not subject to any gravitational pull, it just goes all the way through all the gravitational entities to the core of all being.

John 8 12 do you know when John 8 12 is articulated?

John doesn't begin with chapter 8 verse 12 He begins with chapter 1 and in chapter 1 he says Jesus is the light that lights every person who comes into the world.

He is the light of life and the light of judgment and John 8 does not begin with chapter 12 there is verse 11 and verse 10 and verse 9 and verse 8 before that what are all those verses about they are about the woman groveling in shame behind him because he has turned his face to the ground to help save her dignity and he's looking on the ground because he's writing there and people want to see what he's writing they come over and look it is dark in the world and he is shedding light and it goes in all directions.

Before he came as Ellen White put it, desire of ages 22, the earth was dark.

Two Opinions

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.

One Thing

And the aim of the exercise is, everybody, to re-educate is a bad word, because usually re-education is what you do if you, what you get if you love Jesus, and you want to serve him with all your heart, and the people in authority, the responsible people, recognize that something is wrong with you, so they send you to a camp for re-education.

But that does not mean that re-education has to be a bad thing.

So we are going to attempt some re-education, but it is for a specific group.

It is not for the godly and holy, necessarily.

The athletic types, the guys who are on low-protein, high-carbohydrate diets, and tofu and garbanzos, and go to bed at 9 and wake up at 5, and go for a jog 3 miles every morning, or 10 miles, or whatever.

Let's read our scripture reading together.

And I'll keep saying that because it is an astonishing verse.

Everybody, And Ahimaaz answered, When Joab sent the king's servant and your servant, I saw a great tumult, but I didn't know what it was.

Thank you, O wonderful Heavenly Daddy, for putting words on our lips because you have put something in our heart, something unmistakable, so that When we are asked a reason, we can answer with reverence and godly fear and focus.

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