Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the president of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website, globalservants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: If you have your Bibles, if you'll take those, please, and turn to Colossians Paul's letter to the Church at Colossae.
And this is the next in a series in this fall semester of teachings on the Epistles.
Epistle simply is a fancy word for letter. The letters of the New Testament, the messages of the New Testament.
What I've tried to do is make each of these personal. To say this is not just the letter to the Church of Colossia, the letter to the church at Ephesus, or the letter to the Church of Philippi. The then you've got mail. If these are letters, these are letters to you, to us. In the present age, there may be perhaps none of them which is more relevant than this one.
I want to read Colossians 1:11, 19.
Strengthened with all might according to his glorious power unto all. Patience, long suffering, and with joyfulness.
Giving thanks unto God the Father, which hath made us meet.
It means worthy. Okay. Made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption through the blood, even forgiveness of sins. Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For by him were all things created that are in heaven, that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by him and for him. And he is.
Please notice, it doesn't say he was. And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence.
For it pleased the Father that in him, this same Jesus, that in Jesus should all fullness dwell.
If you have your Bible with you, put your hand on it and let's pray together. Heavenly Father, I pray that in the remainder of this time together that your spirit will deal with us, Lord, that you will really search us and speak to our hearts. We believe you for it. We thank you for we want it.
We don't want to Be reluctant in any way. We don't want to be reserved. We're asking you brush aside every one of our carefully constructed mechanisms of self defense.
Deal with us.
We believe you for it. We thank you in advance. In the name of Jesus, the strong son of God.
Amen.
This letter from Paul, written from prison, along with the letter of Philemon. I'm not going to deal a lot with the letter of Philemon. It. It deals with the letter to Philemon. It deals with an escaped slave, a man named Onesimus. And Paul makes a tricky little play on the man's name. Onesimus in Greek means useful.
And he says to Philemon, I know that he has been useless to you in the past, but he's going to be useful now. And he talks to him about it. It's a very. It's a very personal and warm and friendly letter. But it is sent along with this letter and a letter he mentions to the Laodiceans. That letter is not extant. We don't have the letter to the church at Laodicea.
Unless it actually is the letter that we call Ephesians. It may very well be the letter that we call Ephesians.
Now, I've said all of those introductory remarks just to tell you what about the letter? Now I want to talk to you about tonight.
I have recently read at some length an extremely disturbing theological survey. It comes out every year, the State of Theology Survey.
And I have watched for the recent years as the church that we call the Evangelical Church, the evangelical world, has drifted further and further away from bedrock theological truth.
But this year it took a lurch to the left that was stunning.
It took my breath away.
There were stunning things. And I'm not going to deal with everything in the report. That's not the point of this. I want to deal with one great fundamental truth.
When I read through what has happened to American evangelical theology, I almost said to myself, I think I'll abandon the rest of this fall semester and just teach a course in theology.
But maybe, maybe we'll do that.
Maybe we'll do that in 2023.
But among all of the devastating things that we saw, things that the drift away from the authority of scripture, that scripture is just another of sacred writings, that they're all are about good. The drift away from the necessity of saving grace and the saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in his grace.
An increasing number of evangelicals are now saying that it doesn't matter which faith you have, that God only wants you to have faith.
That if the righteous are Saved by faith, that's fine, but it doesn't matter what your faith is.
But among all of those things, the one that shocked me, it hit me with force, was that among the evangelicals surveyed, and I was not surveyed, I don't know if any of you were, I don't know who these evangelicals were.
But among the evangelicals that were surveyed, 30% said that they do not believe that Jesus was divine.
Now my brethren, listen to what I'm going to tell you now.
There may be sub level variables of theological reality that we can argue about.
I don't think what you believe to be true about the rapture of the church is going to determine whether you go to heaven or not.
You can have that completely and totally wrong and let me assure you that probably all of us do.
You can have that completely wrong and still go to heaven there. There are vast multiplicity of minor issues of theological debate that we can debate about.
But I, if nobody else has made this clear in your hearing, I don't want to go to bed tonight and feel that I didn't make this clear.
And if I haven't made it clear in the past in other places I've preached, I think I'm going to have to start preaching it.
This man, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the historical figure Jesus was the pre existent second person of the Trinity.
He was and is almighty God.
It was through him that everything that is was spoken into existence. He is the word through which it was spoken into existence.
He is, he is the I am, he is before time began, he is God now. That's what we're going to deal with tonight.
So it's bad preaching and good theology to tell you the whole point of the sermon and then preach it.
But the bottom line of this is if you don't hear the rest of the sermon, at least you're going to hear it at the very beginning. Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the historical manifestation of a pre existent God Almighty, the second person of a triune God.
Any denial, any equivocation to say, well yeah, I kind of believe that that's an equivocation. Any denial, any equivocation on the divinity of Christ is not optional theological equipment. It is, and I state it without apology, heresy.
Verse 15 of what we just read who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creation.
Jesus himself said, how could he have been any clearer? If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.
If you have seen me, he is the visible manifestation of an invisible God.
Verse 16.
For by him Were all things created that are in heaven and that are in the earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by Him. Pause right there for a minute. All things were created by Him.
If Jesus is not God, what man can create angels?
What man can create dominions, powers, authorities? What man can create the variegated leaf of an African violet?
What man can make a blade of grass?
If he is not God, then how could he create all things?
But not only that. Look at the end of the verse.
Not only were they created by him, they were created for Him.
The entire created universe exists as a present for the glory of Jesus, who is God.
Verse 17.
And he is before all things.
And he is before all things.
Jesus said to the Pharisees, oh, Abraham longed to see this day.
How he longed to see Messiah. How he longed for this moment. Oh, he would have loved to have stood here and looked on me.
And the Pharisees said, how could you know what Abraham wanted? You're not even 50 years old. And Jesus said, before there wasn't Abraham. I am.
I am means Yahweh. He said, I am God.
I am God.
Look at verse 19.
For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell. The fullness of what?
The fullness of God. The full revelation of who God is. The character and nature and power and witness and love and grace. Every characteristic of God the Father Almighty. The full revelation of that rested bodily in Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
John, chapter one could not be clearer.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.
Therefore, collaterally, God the Father and God the Son.
But he was God.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the Word was God.
And then John says, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
The. The mystery of the Incarnation is unexplainable, is absolutely, absolutely without hope. There is no mystery of the Incarnation, without the mystery of the Trinity.
Jesus is the Word.
He was the Word. He is the Word. He is before all of creation.
Matthew, chapter 16, verses 16 through 18.
Jesus quizzes the disciples.
Whom do men say that I am?
They offer some of the lamest answers imaginable.
There's a. Well, some people say you're John the Baptist, raised from the dead.
Other people say you're Elijah.
You're not Elijah, are you?
And then Jesus says, forget all that.
Forget what everybody else says. Now listen to this. This is fundamental.
It doesn't matter what everybody else says. It doesn't matter what the whole nation thinks. It doesn't matter what theologians think. It doesn't matter what college professors think. It doesn't matter what Pharisees or scribes or rabbis think. What do you say?
What do you say?
And good old Simon Peter, I love this guy.
Bold as brass. He got it wrong about half the time.
Stood up when he should have sat down, laughed when he should have cried. Walked out of the boat and then sank. He's just. He's just that guy. He's just that guy that's out there.
Who do you say that I am? Everybody else is silent. Only Peter, he says, I know who you are. You're the Christ, the Son of the living God.
You're the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Now this is fundamental.
What natural man can be the son of the living God?
The Son of the living God.
God's Son. Fully the fullness of God dwells in His Son, His Son. The God cannot give birth to other than God. This is not Greek mythology.
Jesus is not a mixture.
He is altogether God. Yes, in altogether human form. But the Godness of him is undiluted by the humanity of him.
John, chapter 4.
Jesus discusses theology with a fallen woman.
A remarkable moment you've all heard. Every one of you in this room has heard a sermon about why that woman was out there in the middle of the day.
Because she didn't want to spend time with any of the other women because she was promiscuous.
So she came alone.
And Jesus said, give me something to drink. She said, now here's a funny thing.
You Jews hate us and you won't talk to us until you need a drink. Now you need me.
Can you hear that anger?
Jesus said, if you knew who I was, you'd ask me and I'd give you a drink.
And she said, you don't have a cup, you don't have a string. How are you going to get me a drink? He said, I'll give you water. You'll never have to thirst ever again.
And she says an interesting thing.
She says, our forefathers say we should worship God here on Mount Gerizim. You Jews say they should worship at the temple. Which one? Why would she ask him that?
It's completely out of place in the whole conversation.
Jesus, teach me about worship.
Jesus says, the hour cometh and now is when true worshipers will worship God in truth and in spirit.
And her lights come on.
And she says, listen to this. A promiscuous woman alone at a well with a Jewish rabbi and she says, when Messiah comes, he's gonna talk like you, kind of like you, a lot like you.
He's going to teach us stuff like you're teaching.
And Jesus says, he who speaks unto you now, I am.
Jesus reveals his divinity to a fallen woman in a foreign country in all three gospels and all three, all three synoptic gospels.
In the Mount of Transfiguration, the thunderous voice of God, the Father Almighty, says, this is my Son.
How could it be any clearer if you doubt that? You doubt the voice of God Almighty, this is my Son and his baptism.
The voice of God, this is my Son, in whom I am well pleased.
John, chapter 8, verse 58. Jesus says, before there was an Abraham, I am now.
That brings us to a word, a theological word, not a biblical word.
And that's the word trinity.
Some say, I don't believe Jesus was God because the trend, the word trinity is not in the Bible.
There are words that we use to describe things that are in the Bible. The words themselves are not biblical. But if we deny the Word, we may be bordering on denying the reality that they describe.
For example, the phrase, when you die, you'll go to heaven is not even in the Bible.
It's not in the Bible.
I saw three people. There's a. Wait, they're opening, they're starting thumbing through. It's not there.
It's not saying, though, that that reality isn't real.
That reality is real. I'm just telling you, because the specific words go to heaven are not in the Bible doesn't mean that's not exactly what the B teaches.
The sinner's prayer, not in the Bible, but it describes a thing that is real. God, have mercy on me. Forgive me, a sinner. I receive you, Lord Jesus, as my Savior and Lord. That's a reality.
But the phrase the sinner's prayer is not in the Bible, the word Trinity is not in the Bible. But it describes a reality that is absolutely essential to every other part of theology.
There's nothing.
Listen to what I'm telling you. There is no other point of theology. That it is fundamental to everything, that it means to be a Christian, to be a believer, and to understand who God is apart from the Trinity, that there is one God. Hero, Israel. The Lord your God is one God.
But when God breathes, he breathes himself, His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the holiness of God. The Spirit of God cannot be anything other than God.
He is God, the Son of God. The Word of God cannot be anything other than God. Can God cause his progenitor to be other than God? God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. There are not three Gods, there's one God. But these three ramifications of who God is are in one God. And that, you can call it anything you want to, but the prevailing theological term is Trinity.
So the argument that because the Trinity is not stated as a word in the Bible is that it doesn't exist is to say that you don't go to heaven because it doesn't say so in the Bible.
God the Father, God the Son, Jesus Christ. The Word pre existent, co eternal with God.
It's a part of this survey evangelical pastors who are preaching that Jesus was the preeminent creation of God, the top man, the greatest man ever created by God. The pure expression of God's creation was Jesus. That is a blasphemous lie.
Jesus was not created by God. God through Jesus Christ, the Word created everything that is he is the uncreated, pre existent Word of God.
There's never been a time when there wasn't the Word in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. And that Word became flesh and dwelt among us and lived and died and rose from the dead and went back to where he had come from, the right hand of God, the Father Almighty.
There's never been a time when there was an uncreated, when there was a created Jesus.
No man, no man could be do the things that the Bible says he can do.
Three equal and opposite errors exist relative to the Trinity.
One is that there were three Gods. That's blatantly, patently blasphemous. That's idolatrous.
We are not, after all, Hindus.
The second is that Jesus was the only God.
That is also a blasphemy.
That there's no Father, that there's no Holy Spirit, that Jesus is God and there's no other God commonly called Jesus only and it is celebrated by United Pentecostals. But it's, it is a, it is a wicked lie.
The third is that Jesus was not God.
All three of those are dreadful lies.
There is a blessed truth, call it whatever you want to. If the word Trinity offends you, then come up with words to describe the reality of a God in three persons. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. And the Son is Jesus. Any denial, any equivocation, even, even just hedging your bet on the divinity of Christ destroys the fundamental reality of all Christianity. There is no real Christianity apart from the divinity of Christ.
Now I want you to turn to Colossians 2, 14, 15.
I want to read a fascinating passage of Scripture buried in this little letter to the church at colossae.
Chapter 2, verses 14 and 15. Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances, the law that was against us, which was contrary to us, Jesus took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.
And having spoiled the principalities and powers, he made a show of them, openly triumphing over them in it.
He uses an acceptable concept.
Everybody at the Church of Colosseum would have known what he was talking about.
We. We have the concept of a triumph, of a victory. But this is a Roman terminology that every one of them would have known.
When a warrior, a leader, a general like Pompey or Julius Caesar or any of the great Roman generals went off to a foreign country to fight a war, they went to Gaul and defeated them. Or they went to the Seleucid Empire and defeated them. When they came back, they would have what was called a triumph.
It was a parade, a magnificent parade. And the people of Rome would line the streets and they would bring in conquered loot. There would be wagons piled with gold and silver and all those things. There would be wild animals from that area, things that didn't exist in Italy, and they would bring them all that. The people would cheer, and then the army would march, march through, and then people would cheer and then would come riding in a chariot, the general himself.
And the people would be cheering madly, wildly for the general.
And behind him would come those that he had captured and conquered in the foreign country.
It would be the. The kings and the warriors and the generals and the leaders in chains and rags, some naked, walking, trudging along behind his chariot.
Paul says, let me give you a vision of the earthly mission of Christ.
That when he came, he conquered every foe that opposes his children, every demonic force, every opposing spirit, everything, principalities, powers, dominions, everything that came against his Son. He has already defeated them. And he leads them behind him in his triumphal procession, stripped of their power, their loot taken away from them, everything.
And Jesus kicked the door open of hell and went inside and said to Satan, give me that which is mine, and that's us.
To deny the divinity of Christ is to deny the victory that we've been given.
What man defeats the powers and principalities of the present age, no man does that. Only the Son. The Word in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily.
It was a. It was a divine victory by a divine Savior.
Therefore, before the risen Christ, we must claim our victory by claiming and affirming his divinity.
If he is not God and the conquering God, then we are still slaves to slaves.
The principalities and powers of darkness of this present age still rule us because they cannot be beaten and defeated and taken away by anything except the living God.
If we deny the godship of Jesus, we deny our own hope of victory.
If we deny the godship of Jesus, we deny the eternal sacrifice. What man can die for us? No man can die for another man.
The finest man who ever lived is still sinful.
How can the blood of a sinful man redeem a sinful race?
It has to be the eternal blood of an eternal sacrifice. To deny or equivocate on the divinity of Christ is actually to deprive ourselves of the saving, sanctifying blood of Jesus.
If Jesus is but a man, his blood availeth not for us.
If we deny the divinity of Christ, we deny his priesthood above in the holy of holies, that right now Jesus is in there praying for us, that right now he is making intercession for us. But what man, not Moses, not Abraham, what man would go in before God, the Father Almighty, and having poured his blood on the mercy seat, now makes intercession for us while we live here?
To deny or equivocate on the divinity of Christ denies us of his eternal priesthood after the order of Melchizedek.
If Jesus is but a man, even the greatest man that ever lived, we have no sacrifice, we have no salvation, we have no victory and we have no priest.
We are fools among fools and slaves of slaves.
This is fundamental.
If there is any preacher who ever hears my voice, and you have ever, ever inched away from the full 100% divinity of the eye of Jesus, as I am before there was an Abraham.
Go back, brother. Go back.
Preach the truth, claim the truth, receive the truth and repent.
I have heard it, unfortunately, not infrequently, in Pentecostal and charismatic circles.
I don't want theology.
I've heard it. I don't want theology. I've heard preachers say it. I'm no theologian.
That's not true.
You may be a bad theologian, but you are a theologian. You are theologians. Theology simply means what you believe to be true about God.
You are practicing theologians, every single one of you. On what is your theology based?
If your theology is not based on the. On the authority of the Word of God, then what secret knowledge is it based on?
What thing out there?
What secret mystery knowledge has come to you that transcends the authority of the Word of God.
That's the reason Paul wrote the letter to the church at Colossae.
He said there are people who claim mystery knowledge, who claim that they know something beyond what you've been taught and what you've understood to be true about God and Jesus. He said they, they live in this mystery knowledge in Greek nosos, where they are what we call gnostics.
That is to say that they believe that there is some knowledge that transcends the old timey knowledge of the Word of God.
Last week, for those of you that weren't here, we, we went all the way back to vacation Bible school. We sang old timey vacation Bible school songs. Maybe we ought to sing one again. The Bi ble.
That's the book for me.
Stand Alone on the Word of God. If your theology doesn't arise from the Word, if it isn't consistent with the Word, if it isn't alone blind with the Word, if it doesn't confirm the Word, may it be damned for what it is, heresy that will lead men to destruction.
If your theology is not based on the Word of God, it is not Christian theology.
And if from the Word of God you do not derive fundamental reality of the divinity of Christ, that 30% of those who call themselves evangelicals deny the divinity of Christ, that Christ was divine, the second person of the Trinity.
On what then do they base anything else they preach?
Be a good person.
God have mercy on our souls.
Well, let me bring this to a conclusion.
Thomas the apostle, 2,000 years after his death, still has to wear that dubious name tag Doubter.
We still, we see it all the time doubting Thomas.
Poor doubting Thomas.
I don't know if he was doubting or not. He was certainly struggling. Maybe we ought to give him a new name tag. Struggling Thomas.
He wasn't with the guys on the road to Emmaus.
He didn't have the revelation. As Jesus broke bread with them and revealed to them he wasn't in the. He wasn't in the cemetery when the risen Christ spoke to Mary.
He wasn't with them. He's struggling.
I want to understand who this Jesus was and is. And I don't get it. He said, I'm so confused.
Is he God? Is he human?
I don't get it. He says, I just, I need something to pin my faith on. I want to touch the holes in his hands. I want to touch the wound in his.
And Jesus appears to him and he says, you struggling is over.
Touch me.
Touch me.
And Listen to what Thomas says.
My Lord and my God.
My Lord and my God.
Now, if Jesus would allow him to get away with that blasphemous life. It's not true.
Then Jesus is a. Is a charlatan.
He's a confidence man. He's a flim flam artist.
That's what flim flam is based on. Creating some kind of a subterfuge that makes you think something that isn't real.
So if Thomas says, my Lord and my God, he doesn't say, the greatest man that ever lived.
He doesn't say kind of God.
He says, my Lord and my God.
My Lord and my God. This is a Jew talking to a Jew. To identify a human being as God is the most egregious blasphemy ever. You should be stoned to death right there. And Jesus doesn't, doesn't rebuke him.
To allow him to go on in that mistaken and misbegotten idea if it isn't true, would make Jesus a flim flam man instead.
We need to understand what Jesus says.
Jesus says, have you believed because you've seen me?
But there will come others who will believe without having seen me.
And that, my dear friends, is you.
That's you.
I've struggled. Life is hard. Life is confusing. I don't understand what happened to my nephew. I don't get this problem I'm facing in my finances. I don't get all that. I just want to touch God.
I just want to touch God. And Jesus says, touch me.
Jesus says, if you have touched me, you have touched the face of God.
If you have seen me, you've seen God. If you believed in me, you believe God. And we say, my Lord and my God.
My Lord and my God.
Jesus is not simply a great teacher or a miracle worker with the power to heal.
He is the pre existent, co eternal second person of the Trinity. Father, Son and Holy Ghost. One God in three persons. And without that, there is no other theological truth.
If that's not true, the rest is a lie.
But if it is true, then we can say in the face of history and horror, my Lord and my God.
Let's pray all over the house.
All over the house.
We bless you. We laud and magnify your holy name. Blessed be the name of the Lord, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. We praise you, Jesus.
We praise you as God, pre existent, co eternal before creation. That everything that was made was made by you and for you. And that it would fall to pieces without you. It consists by you, you are not just a great man.
You are our Lord and our God.
We thank you for it.
In the mighty name Jesus, the strong son of God.
Amen. Amen. And amen. Well, magnify the Lord in the house.
[00:39:25] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on x@dr. Mark Rutland, or visit his website, drrude markrutland.com where you can find information about his materials and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
