The Midpoint Ministry

This is a women's devotional on the need for and practical application of applying spiritual disciplines to our lives. This devotional launches us into a women's ministry book project in which we will collect and share our favorite practices with each other. Link for Handout: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bdfMWWYNs08S4nYV4K-__F2HRSQR9PNP/view

The role of the prophet was to call Israel back to covenantal faithfulness when they strayed. Elijah is the epitome of a prophet and his confrontation with the prophets of Baal show us the disposition, courage, and conviction of the prophets.

Worshipping God is a powerful practice, yet we unintentionally glean so many of our principles of worship from our culture instead of from scripture. Pure worship is illusive. Sometimes we have to aggressively combat the sentimental of our minds and the cute-but-lesser versions of God that the world promotes today. The world is full of vintage-ironic thrift-store versions of Jesus.  You can pick up a Velveteen Jesus at every corner estate sale, and you can worship a consumer-diluted Jesus through so much of our contemporary self-centered spirituality. To recapture His magnitude is a struggle of will. We think it’s more romantic. We think an occasional stroll into nature is an equal match for the heavyweight knockout punches of Satan and the numbing toxins and chains of cultural relativism. Worshipping His fullness is a fight.  It’s a fight against the enemy. It’s a fight against entropy. It’s a fight against ourselves. Psalm 29 is an aggressive Polemic. It puts God on the throne at the embarrassing expense of Baal in an "anything you can do I can do better" display of divine oneupmanship.

God has given Israel a king after His own heart in David. This sermon unpacks a turning point in Israel's history: God's covenant with David. There are echoes of the promises made to Abraham but more importantly, promises that there will be a king from David's line that will reign forever. New Testament writers and Christians see this fulfilled in Jesus. God's intentions were for Israel to have a king that would lead them in a way that would be a blessing to all nations. It's a continuation of the overarching theme of God acting to reach all peoples.

Israel asks for a king like "all the other nations" (v.5) so they could be "like all the other nations." (v.20) It wasn't that God never wanted Israel to have a king (cf. Gen 17:6, 49:12, and especially Deut. 17:14-20!) but he did not intend for them to be like all the other nations. They were to be God's treasured possession, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation (Ex. 19:5-6). They were rejecting God as their protector and ruler so they could more resemble the nations around them --the very opposite of holiness! The pressure and temptation to assimilate to the world is as powerful today as it was then.

The story of God often advances through the overlooked. Or those that overlook themselves While there are dozens of powerful  stories of defiant heroism, Scripture has equal—if not more—accounts of God’s providence moving through the everyday averageness of His faithful people. If you don’t consider yourself more than amateur in your faithfulness, there is an overwhelming conviction that you must hold — God cares more about your consistent faith than your occasional heroism. It’s easy to find inspiration in young people evangelizing with hundreds in a day, and overlook you mowing your neighbors yard, or having a couple that’s going through a bump over for dinner and a place to talk it out. It’s easy to glorify someone who has the ability speak in front of hundreds and forget about the ones that have a heart for teaching the gospel in children’s ministry or at a nursing home. All of your “unexceptional” acts of daily devotion are the prime soil for God to remain the hero in His story. The entire book of Ruth — and the line of David — happens because the Israelites obeyed God’s law and left grain for foreigners. It’s because of their reputation of kindness and faithfulness that Ruth and Naomi even journey back to Bethlehem form Moab. Ruth takes place in the midst of Judges. One is a cycle of sin and a few occasional heroes. The other is a small-town story of faithful people advancing the kingdom. This sermon is about the beauty of unceremonious discipleship and the ways God has always built His Kingdom through little things — like barley, board meetings, and a little black dress.

During the times of the judges, God takes a Gentile (Moabite) woman, and redeems her. Through Ruth would come David, and later would come Jesus (Matt. 1:5). This is a story about a God who redeems the powerless and then through them, works in a way to bless the nations. It also serves to bridge the story from the time of the judges to David.

During the Passover, God judged the Egyptian gods and exposed them as lies. Israel was always meant to show the world who the one true God is yet we find when they enter the Promised Land, they turn to worship the gods of the people around them. They can't show the world the glory of God when they are giving their allegiance to the gods of the people around them. This will be an issue for Israel moving forward. Judges also points us to the need of a leader, a king, who can direct us towards faithfulness to God. There are plenty of gods in our society disciples are tempted to serve. When we give these "gods" our allegiance and worship, we compromise showing the world how amazing the true God is. This sermon challenges the "gods" we are tempted to worship.

The backdrop for this sermon is Deut. 4:5-8. We are to live as God intended so the nations will notice and turn to God. Ecclesiastes calls out many of the things people live for: money, pleasure/comfort, success/achievement, etc. The Teacher's wisdom reveals we have far less control over these things than we care to admit (in fact, he'd say we don't have any control over them!) and therefore it is foolish to base your life on them. After all, hevel happens. While Proverbs may chart the ideal course for our lives, the Teacher reminds us that the desired input/output is not guaranteed. That is the hard and beautiful truth about Ecclesiastes. What does this leave us to live for? If we live with a fear of God we can then live with joy, trusting God will control what we can't. This allows us to enjoy the gifts God has given.

1 Kings 8 is the grand opening of the temple— a place that will hold a special significance for Israel's relationship with God moving forward. Solomon acknowledges God is bigger than the temple, but the temple becomes the place for Israel and the rest of the world to meet God. It was an anchor point to experience the divine, providing stability for Israel to love out the covenant so that "all peoples on earth may know the LORD God" (v.60). The theme continues: Israel is blessed and walks with God not only for their sake, but so all people on earth may know God.