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: We're calling this series Dimension.
A sphere, a realm, another stretch, another dimension.
I envision it to be a teaching series always.
I'm not to preach. I love to preach.
I love to preach. I'll preach if I can get one person to stand still or two to walk slow.
But I really enjoy teaching with a group of people who want to go into a different dimension, who want to go deeper, who want to go further or higher because then we can cover the subject with more depth and more substance sometimes than is possible in a sermon. Furthermore, because of the ongoing nature of the series, I don't have to cover a total amount of material. I don't have to get to the end of a sermon tonight. So I'm going to teach to the end of the time and when I'm finished, I'm finished. We'll take it up next week.
And so that's the joy of this extended series. It is, I think a nine week series. The topic of this series is the Holy Spirit, the person and work of the Holy Spirit, or I might make that more appropriately, I'm coming to it, the person and works of the Holy Spirit.
Now that's this year when pastor came to me with the idea. I was very taken with it. I wanted to do this, these Wednesday night series, but, but he wanted a series of series.
All right.
What I'm trying to do each time is teach as much of the material that I have prepared and then take a stop and do questions because we're recording. I don't want to stop and do questions all the time. I have to repeat the questions or we have to get microphones scattered about the audience or all kinds of things. So please, I hope you're taking notes. I urge people to take notes and, and that you'll just write in the margin of your notes your question.
Now, before I begin tonight, I always get the best questions at the breaks or afterward. But I did get a couple of good questions tonight. And so I just want to, I'm going to deal with one of those now and one I think I'll cover in the substance of the teaching.
So the question was on last week we talked about, we're talking about the Holy Spirit, the breath of life, that this third person of the Trinity. In Hebrew, ruach, wind or spirit or breath.
So he is the he, not it. He is the breath of God, the wind that brooded over the face of the abyss. And the Spirit of God, there's not a difference. It's one spirit, the Spirit of God.
Now, the question was, and it was a very good question, what about the moment that Adam came alive?
So when it says God breathed the breath, the ruach, into Adam's nostrils, and he became a living soul, a self, in Hebrew, ish.
Adam didn't call himself Adam. That's English. He called himself ish.
It means a personality, a person, personhood, that's what. Or what's the better word? A self.
Adam saw himself as a self. There was a person, something about him that was different from the. From the creatures over which he had been given dominion. So he saw himself as Ish.
When Eve was made from his rib, he called her Isha, another self. That's a self too. That's.
So the minute he saw her, he said, okay, this is not a chimpanzee here. Okay?
Somebody that was cleverer than I said. When Adam awoke and saw Eve coming toward him naked in the morning mist, he said, eesh, ah.
Hebrew was forever changed.
But when did Adam become Ish? When did he become personhood, made in the image of the person of God? When did that happen?
It happened when the breath of life came into him.
So in that sense, this was the question. I'm taking too long to answer this precious lady's question, but it was such a good question. So did the question is, did Adam then receive the Holy Spirit?
And the answer to that is yes, but not the way Pentecostals talk.
Okay, so he has every baby that is born, every baby that is conceived receives the breath of life. The Holy Spirit is called the Lord, the giver of life.
So people talk about the Lord withdrawing the Holy Spirit from someone because of sin.
They do not mean literally that he withdrew the Holy Spirit. If God withdraws the Holy Spirit from you entirely, you will die.
Because the Holy Spirit is the Lord, the giver of life. The clay vessel, the body which was to become ish, is not ish until the breath of life comes.
Because the breath of life is the Spirit of God. That makes man a trinity, just like God is a trinity. At that point, he was only body.
Now he has to become body, spirit, and soul, or psyche. He has to become the three in one. That only happens when the Spirit of life comes but remember this when we talk about the person of the Holy Spirit. He is the third person of the Trinity, and he is the Lord, the giver of life.
But he does a multiplicity of things in the lives of us who are also ish.
We are persons. You are alive, and you have been touched by the Holy Spirit.
But think of all the works. We're going to be talking about various works of the Holy Spirit. Teaching, illumination, conviction, baptism of the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit. Those are works of the Holy Spirit, but they are not a new Holy Spirit. Jesus said to his disciples, you shall receive the Holy Spirit. But this is not a spirit you don't know because he has been with you.
Now he's going to be in you at a whole new level.
So the question, did Adam receive the Holy Spirit when God breathed into him? Yes.
Did he receive the Pentecostal blessing of the upper room? No.
On the other hand, remember, this is.
This is a little bit complicated theology. Are you okay? Stand with me. All right.
On the other hand, Adam didn't need the Pentecostal blessing of the upper room.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Why?
[00:07:51] Speaker B: Because he had never sinned. He did not need sanctification because he did not lack it.
He did not need power because he did not lack it.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam walked and talked with God.
So he received the Holy Spirit as the Lord, the giver of life, and he became a soul and a spirit and a body, a triune being in the image of God. So, yes, he received the Holy Spirit.
No, he didn't receive the Holy Spirit. Like Acts, chapter two.
That's probably more. Where is that young lady that asked that? Are we good?
That's the problem with asking Rutland a question. You get a novel for an answer, but it may discourage further questions. Okay.
Okay. Stamos Listos, are we ready?
Let's go. If you have your Bibles, let's take those now, if you will, and turn to the Book of Exodus, the third chapter of the Book of Exodus. And then in a minute, we'll read from the 19th chapter of the Book of Leviticus.
It could well be that you said to yourself as you came here tonight.
I know that when anybody teaches on the Holy Spirit, he's bound to start in Exodus, but probably you didn't.
Exodus, chapter two.
Exodus, chapter three. Just as I said, it hurts me when you laugh at me. All right, here we go. Exodus, chapter 3, verses 13 and 14.
And Moses said unto God, when I am come unto the children of Israel, and they say, unto me. And I say unto them that the God of your fathers has sent me unto you. And they say to me, what is his name?
What shall I say unto them?
And God said to Moses, I am who I am.
And he said, thus shall you say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you.
This is a intriguing passage of Scripture because it is one of the earliest and most powerful revelations of the character and nature of God.
As we talk about the Holy Spirit.
He is the Holy Spirit.
We're going to be talking in subsequent Wednesday nights in these teachings. I know many are eager to hear teaching on the. On the baptism of the Holy Spirit, on the gifts of the Spirit. We're gonna take time. We're gonna work on the gifts of the Spirit, try to really understand gifts of the Spirit in the life of the believer. But there is no way to really comprehend the person and primary work of the Holy Spirit apart from that divine adjective which is part of his very name, the Holy Spirit.
There is a reason that he is not just called the power Spirit or. Or the gift Spirit. He is called the Holy Spirit.
On last week we talked about. Let me just summarize briefly. The Holy Spirit is the breath of God that brooded over the face of the abyss. That he is the agent of reportage inside the Trinity, that He is constantly reporting back to God. He is also the agent of communication with us. He is constantly teaching. We're gonna get talking about that later on. All the things that Jesus said is expedient for you that go away, because until I go away, I cannot send the Holy Spirit to you. And all the things that he would do when he came in that sense to us, all of that. He's all of those things. But above all things, he is the Spirit of holiness.
We talked about the fact that he is also called by Hebrew idiomatic expression the finger of God.
And that in the finger of God we see that he wrote the law and in tables of stone, that at Belshazzar's feast he wrote in the wall of the. Of the orgy that Belshazzar was doing in the book of Daniel. And we see the finger of God alluded to in the. In the confrontation with Pharaoh's Egyptian magicians, that the lice, they could not turn to. They could not turn the dust to lice, because he said they. This is the finger of God. He says, in other words, Moses and Aaron are operating in the Spirit of the God of Israel. And we can operate in ledger domain. We can operate in Witchcraft, we can operate in those things, but we cannot duplicate the power of the. Of the finger of God is the expression that even the Egyptian magicians use.
Now.
Now let's look at this confrontation, this conversation between God and Moses, because it's intriguing.
God summons Moses through the personification of the burning bush.
Next week, if we don't get to it tonight, but next Wednesday night, I'm teasing you. We're going to talk about the various symbolic representations of the Holy Spirit throughout the Old and New Testament and what they teach us, because each of them is pregnant with implications. But here we do see.
Fire is always a symbol of the Holy Spirit.
So the fire that has engulfed this bush is what draws Moses aside, and God speaks out of that.
So it is an encounter between Moses and God through the person of the Holy Spirit.
And God tells him, go down into Egypt. Tell Pharaoh to let the people go. I'll send Aaron with you. All of these things.
Then there is this fascinating passage which we just read.
Moses, in a burst of peculiar wisdom, says to God, look, the people of Israel have been in bondage in Egypt for 430 years. 430 years.
Not just physical, but emotional, mental and spiritual, cultural bondage.
So they've been surrounded by the vast blasphemous pantheon of Egyptian gods and goddesses, all. All of which are named.
So when I go down there and say, the God of your fathers, fathers. 430 years of fathers. I say, the God of your fathers, is that Abraham? Or is that three generations ago? Or five generations, or six generations? 430 years.
Moses says to God, they're going to say, what is his name?
What is his name? All the Egyptian gods and goddesses have names. Is it Ra, the God of the sun? Is it Isis, the goddess of fertility? What is your name?
I can't tell them. A burning bush sent me.
Give me a name.
And God answers in this intriguing way, I am who I am.
Thus shalt thou say unto the people of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you. I am who I am.
In other words, God says, the most important thing that I am now revealing to you and through you to the people who serve me, is that I am always consistent with my own character.
I am who I am.
I am always who I am. I am never anything else.
And if I am who I am, I am also never a part of who I am. I am altogether always, all the time, all that I am. I am never partial. I am never was, I am never shall be. I am who I am. I am I am who I am. Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto thee.
All right.
I was driving through a small town in a certain southern state and I used to point out where it was. I won't mention that. Just due west of the state of Georgia and driving through a small town, I saw a sign. And I'm not mocking the religious enthusiasm of the song, I'm mocking the sign itself. There's a rude, painted, hand painted sign with an arrow pointing down a side street. And it said Holy Ghost Revival now in progress. But holy was spelled H o l e y.
And it dawned on me that the great impediment to a move of God in this country may lie in our spelling.
H o l e y is the exact opposite of H o l y.
H O l e y. That's not your God, that's your socks.
H O L e y means full of holes.
H O l y means lacking nothing, entirely perfect.
H o l e Y. Holy Ghost. That's the kind of Holy Ghost a lot of people have got. It's one that's full of holes.
So there is no way for us to proceed talking about the Holy Spirit until we understand what holiness means.
So there's been a great deal of struggle in the. In the church trying to understand the character and nature of holiness as it applies to God. And then subsequently, when we come to Leviticus, the character and nature of holiness as it applies to the believer.
So let's suppose that I had a whiteboard up here and I could draw a circle that meets the definition of perfect circleness. It's equidistant from the center at every point on the perimeter. It's a perfect circle circle. I could draw that circle. It's entirely perfect. There's not a gap. It meets the definition. It is entirely perfect and consistent with what we believe to be true about circleness.
It is in that sense then not to say that it is divine. It is to say in that sense that it is perfect and that it meets its own definition. It is a holy circle. H o l y.
Now I take the eraser and just rub out a gap on the perimeter.
Now it's holy. H o l e y.
Now, in order to enclose the gap, I take the Magic marker and I enclose the gap. I fill in the hole, but I do it with a squiggly line.
Now, it is not got a hole in it, but it has something in it that does not meet the definition of circleness.
So now it's no longer a holy circle.
There is nothing missing from God that, if it were added, would make him a better God than He is.
There is nothing in God that, if it were taken out, would make him a better God than He is.
He is minus nothing. And there is nothing in him that is extraneous to his character.
God is holy. Is. I am.
Now, here's a very important. Here's a very important question.
I'm going to propose to you two philosophical propositions using exactly the same words. Exactly the same words. I'm only going to slightly vary the order of the words.
And I want you to tell me if they're the same thing.
God is holy because he does not sin, or God does not sin because he's holy.
Same words.
God is holy because he does not sin.
Proposition number two. God does not sin because he's holy.
How many say those are the same?
I didn't get a single sucker to vote.
How many say they are not the same? Raise your hand.
They are forever and a day not the same. They are eternally not the same. The chasm between those two statements is huge and fixed. And between it, many, many fall to their deaths. If God is holy because he does not sin, it means that his character is the result of his actions.
And therefore we define in theologically speaking, if God is holy because he does not sin. We actually define in the terrifying proposition that God might someday sin, in which case he's no longer holy.
But if God is holy, if God cannot sin because he's holy, then his actions are the result of his character.
Therefore, if God is, I am.
Then. Therefore the possibility of God sinning is defined out.
God cannot sin.
He cannot countenance sin. He cannot think of sin.
He cannot quit being God. He cannot will think, speak in opposition to his own nature.
When I was in college at the University of Maryland, while Lincoln was in his second term, I believe at that time.
So rude to laugh at me.
I took a relatively blasphemous course called philosophy. And the professor was an atheist, and he was an evangelistic atheist.
He wasn't content just to go to hell. He wanted all the rest of us to go with him.
And if he found out that you were a Christian in that class, your life wasn't worth living.
So somebody ratted me out.
And one day he said, Mr. Rutland, please stand up. I stood up. He said, it's come to my attention that you're a Christian. I said, yes, Dr. Johnson, I'm a Christian.
He said, then you must believe in God.
I said, yes, actually it's something of a prerequisite.
I do believe in God.
He said, I want to ask you a question. He said, can your God do anything? Everything.
I thought, this is my chance to make a bold witness to this atheist and this whole class. And I put my hot little hand in the air and I said, yes sir, Dr. Johnson, my God can do everything. He said, then riddle me this. Can your God make a rock that he cannot pick up?
Well, you see, he had me, didn't he? If he couldn't make the rock, that violated the given. If he could make the rock, then he couldn't pick it up and then that violated the given. My dear friends, that's just philosophical bubble gum.
He had practiced that little trick to a razor's edge and he used it to try to gut the faith of unsuspecting freshmen.
But if I had only known what I know now.
Through the years I thought about going back and see if that atheist had try that with me one more time.
Because his question is the most important question of eternity.
It is the most important question of eternity and it's the most important question to your well being, personally and individually. Can God do everything?
It requires a bold answer of great faith that is informed with biblical truth. And the answer is no.
God cannot do everything. If I had known to answer him that, it would have ruined his entire trick.
Can God do everything? I would have said, no, Dr. Johnson, what a horrible idea.
No, God cannot do everything.
Our God is more surely limited than a galley slave.
Not by the parameters of his power, but by the frontiers of his character.
Our God cannot do everything. There are a lot of things God can't do. God can't sin. He cannot lie. He cannot quit being God. He cannot ever operate in a way, think in a way, speak in a way that he is in opposition to his own nature. No, God cannot do everything. That is the wonder of his holiness.
Our God cannot do everything.
When I was in early days of my ministry, I met an elderly lad. I was in my 20s and I made a very close relationship with an elderly Chinese lady. She was in her 90s. Think about that. 50 years ago she was in her 90s. So she's been gone to be with Jesus for decades now. But she taught me a lot. And she was born in mainland China before the revolution, before the communists took over the country. She was born in a pagan household.
And she told me that when a new baby came to the household, perfect healthy baby, a male child, which is what they wanted was what? Then the father would wrap the baby up, put him under the bed and go out in the front yard, shoot off fireworks or blow a bugle or bang cymbals together, whatever it was, until he had the attention of the gods. And then he would revile them.
Oh, he'd say, I hate you. I hate you. You sent me this wretched child. You have cursed this family, and I curse you.
Then when the neighbors would come over, they'd pull the blanket back and show the baby. And the neighbors would whisper, beautiful, beautiful, congratulations. Cover the baby back up and say, whoa, is this house.
Woe to this house, this wretched excuse for a child to never bless anybody.
I said, why would they do that?
She said, because pagans view the gods as. As great, huge, powerful human beings.
So you take the human power, just your own mind, your imagination, your creative thought, and multiply it 50 million x. You've got an intellectual and spiritual force to deal with.
But if you do that, what, you magnify the human character. So now you have a great, horrible, envious, evil, wicked, capricious child who can destroy the world.
You see, the pagans never thought of gods as being holy.
They thought of gods as being powerful.
Remember your study of Homer in college? Remember the Trojan War was actually fought out in the earthly realm because of dispute between goddesses in the supernatural realm, because gods and goddesses were not seen as anything different from us. They were just bigger and more dangerous.
At one point, even Apollo transmogrified himself into the form of a swan and committed bestial rape upon a woman.
So the idea of being with a God or knowing a God or loving a God or anything else, that'd be horrifying to a pagan.
Pagans don't want intimate encounter with the gods. They just either want to get something good from them or keep them from killing their kids.
So if the gods of this Chinese lady's parents saw that they loved the baby and they were happy, they might be envious and kill it.
So they had to convince those gods, they had to manipulate those gods into thinking they didn't love the child and that they weren't blessed in order to keep them from.
What if God was like that?
What if our God was like that? Whimsical and capricious and undependable.
What if somebody came in tonight, just came in off the street and came to brother Jerry and me and said, look, I don't know anything about God.
I need to get saved. I've lived a sinful life. I've got all these problems that I need to be forgiven and get saved. We said, well, who knows?
Have a seat there on the front row. Brother Jerry and I will go up here into the holy of Holies and we'll send up a few trial petitions.
If it looks like God's in a mood to answer prayer, clap our hands three times, come on up, we'll ask him. Maybe he'll forgive you.
If it looks like God's not in a mood to answer prayer, stomp my foot three times. And you run home and get under your bed. Cause God's going to kill you, sucker.
Why can I say to anybody, anywhere, a crack addict on the street or the Queen Elizabeth in Buckingham palace, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved in thy house. How can I do that? Because God's word is anchored in his character.
The Holy Bible is the result of a holy God.
I never have to worry that God will be capricious, whimsical, changeable.
Now, what does that mean to you personally?
That's kind of theoretical, but what does it mean to you personally? That God is. I am. Here's a dreadful anthropomorphism, but just go with it for a minute. Okay, let's suppose that God wakes up one morning and his blood pressure is too high and his blood sugar is too low. And he wakes up and looks out of heaven, and the first person he sees is. Is you.
It's a little bit sobering, isn't it?
And he looks at you. He says, look at.
What was I thinking?
Making white guys with brown eyes.
I need my divine head examined.
He said, all right. All the white men in the whole world with brown eyes, zap, smallpox.
We laugh. Was. God isn't gonna, is he?
No, God isn't going to do that.
God isn't going to do that. But why isn't he going to do that? He isn't going to do that because his disposition you would you personally. His disposition to you is not variable based on any of the realities in your life. There's nothing you can do to make God love you any less.
God doesn't love you because of who you are. He loves you because out of the resource of who he is.
Now, that's good news. But here's the better news for church people. There's nothing you can do to make God love you any less. Here's the better news. There's nothing you can do to make God love you anymore.
So the people spend their whole Christian lives trying to make God love Them.
And the fact of the matter is they can't change God one bit.
God loves you out of the resource of who he is. God cannot not love you.
God is I am.
And John tells us what it is. God is love.
Love is not one of the neat things that God does.
God is love.
Therefore the Holy Spirit. Now watch.
The Holy Spirit is the spirit of holiness. And holiness is the love of God.
Holiness is the love of God.
God is love is I am. Is holy.
Therefore God says to Moses, thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am that who I am.
Now comes the harder part.
Look at Leviticus 19:1 and 2.
Here's the hard part.
This is not in the same place, but still part of the 40 year conversation between God and Moses.
And God spoke unto Moses and said, when thou shalt come unto the children of the congregation of Israel, he shall say unto them, you shall be holy. For for I, the Lord your God am holy. We've already established that God is holy.
Now God says, but you shall be holy. For I, the Lord your God am holy.
Am I the only one that that feels a little unfair?
Am I the only one that sees that God is holy? Well, yes, he's like God and all right. Do you see this? But he says, when you go to the congregation of the children of Israel, you shall say unto them, you shall be holy. For I the Lord your God am holy.
Now that feels a little over the top.
Let's suppose that this was not a Wednesday night Bible study at this great church. But let's suppose that this was the first day of class at an upper division math class in some great university.
And you register for this class. You come in. I'm picking this will teach you to teach. Sit on the front row, son. This is why people sit in the back. So you come in, you register for this class. It's some huge thing Boolean algebra or something. Okay? And the first day of class, I'm the professor. I walk in and I look at you and I say, you shall make an A.
You shall make an A in this class because I'm the teacher. You shall make an A.
Now I don't know about you, but that's where I just gather up my books and head straight to the drop ad counter.
Tell the nice lady at the drop ad counter I'd like something maybe European basket weaving.
And I'd like a professor who's not criminally insane.
Now suppose it's the same class.
Same class, same professor, same exact words.
But he says it this way. I know you're nervous.
You've never been at this level of mathematical operation ever before.
But listen to me.
You shall make an A because I'm the professor. I'm the greatest teacher in math that's ever lived. And you shall make an A.
That's when I say, yes, I'm a major in math.
Do you see?
Do you see the difference?
So one day, after chapel at a university where I was the president, a kid came up to me and said, Dr. Oatman, there's something I don't understand. Leviticus 19:2, you shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. Is that a command or a promise? And I said, yes, you got.
Is a command.
We are summoned to holiness.
That didn't just go away.
We are summoned to holiness.
But God says it will happen in you.
Because I am the God of holiness. And what I do is holiness.
I am that I am. Therefore, you shall be holy. For I, the Lord your God, am holy. That holiness is the work of God because of the character of God. Go back to our proposition. Listen to this now. Is God holy because he doesn't sin?
No.
Right.
Stay with me. Are you awake?
Is God holy because he doesn't sin?
That was weak. Is God holy because he doesn't sin?
But God cannot sin because he's holy, right?
But now we in the Christian world turn Leviticus 19:2 straight upside down, and we say in if you won't be. If you won't sin, you can make yourself holy.
So we reverse the very thing that makes God holy and lay it on ourselves. If you will do right, you'll finally be right.
And you're doomed to failure.
Zechariah, chapter four. It's not by might, it's not by power. It's by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
You cannot squeeze holiness in from the outside.
Look, I got to say this.
Some of y' all may not like this, but I ain't running for nothing in Georgia.
But here it is.
50, 75 years ago in the Pentecostal and holiness world, we knew what holiness was. We were clear.
Don't go to the movies.
Women don't wear makeup.
Don't bob your hair. Don't wear short sleeve dresses.
Men don't let your hair touch your collars.
You were holy.
The only problem was, 30, 35 years into the Pentecostal movement, there were people who were weaned on holiness in the holiness camp meetings of the world that were mean as rattlesnakes.
Why? Because you can't spin. Shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone. This year I'll be holy. If it cast kills me.
[00:38:09] Speaker A: What?
[00:38:10] Speaker B: It will kill you.
It will kill you because the Bible tells you you can't do it.
It's not by might, it's not by power.
Holiness from the outside in. Holiness defined by action hoping to change the inside. It didn't work for the Pharisees and it isn't going to work for you.
It isn't going to work for anybody. You can't behave well enough, you can't follow enough laws to change your heart.
Later on in that conversation between God and Moses, God says the most amazing thing to Moses. Put now thy hand into thy bosom.
Put your hand in your shirt front. Do you remember this?
And God says, now pluck it out.
And it was what? Who can tell me?
Leprous. He's covered with leprosy.
That was a terrific moment for Moses.
Wow, cool.
Disturb my life at 80 years of age. Send me back into Egypt where there's a price on my head. Tell me to lead two and a half million stiff necked rebels into the wilderness where there's no food and give me leprosy.
What a great God.
Then God says what? Put thy hand yet again into thy bosom and pluck it out. And this time it's what?
Clean? Whole. Whole. Well, I won't pretend to know everything that God was trying to say to Moses in that. But surely among what he was saying is this.
What we do with our hands will sooner or later be the extrapolation of the condition of our hearts.
You can't make it this way, it flows that way.
God says, I'll change you here.
I'll change you here.
Alison and I were, we were married as just babies. She was 17 and I was 19. We were going to school and going to college and going to graduate school. So we just had to wait on kids. And so the eight years that we were childless. Childless couples are fascinated with the children of others. And there was a couple that lived next door to us in graduate housing. And one day we were out on their back porch and the little girl came up with a little flower. Looked like she'd been chewing on it.
And she said, daddy, why is it when God opens a flower, it's so beautiful and when I try to do it, it looks like this?
And then before he could answer, she said, oh, I know.
God opens them from the inside, out of the mouths of babes.
That's a profound theological statement.
That's a profound Theological statement. God opens them from the inside.
The primary work of the Holy Spirit. Pentecostals have got to hear this. Charismatics have got to hear this. Baptists have got to hear this. This is not denominational. This is a profound theological reality. The primary work of the Holy Spirit is tied to the fact that he is called the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit, who he is, is the Spirit. Romans, chapter one. He is the spirit of holiness that raised Christ Jesus from the dead.
In Greek mythology, there was this place called the island of the Sirens.
The sirens were creatures. They were later on, subsequently sort of memorialized theatrically in oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? But the sirens were actually sort of demonic spirits.
Women who sat on rocks around their island. And when they sang. It's the reason that horns on emergency vehicles are called sirens, because when they sang, the song was irresistible.
It was irresistible. Once you heard it, you couldn't stop yourself. You would be drawn to it.
So they would sit on those rocks, and as ships went by, the sirens would sing. And the sailors couldn't stop themselves knowing they're going to die.
They would drive their ships on the rocks and drown. And the sirens would loot their treasures.
Isn't that a perfect picture of sin?
Isn't it perfect knowing that this alcohol is turning my liver to a stone.
I'll turn into that liquor store.
Knowing that the cocaine is going to fry my brain. I'll sniff it up my nose. No, I can't stop myself. That's the siren call of sin, okay?
In Greek mythology, two men made it past the island of the Sirens safely.
They did it different ways.
The first was Odysseus. We call him Ulysses.
In the Odyssey, he found out about the island of the Sirens.
So he poured molten wax in the ears of all of his sailors and then tied them up in chains.
And then he chained himself to the mainmast. But he now had no one to pour wax in his ears.
So he commanded his sailors, when the ship sailed past the island of the Sirens, they were to scream at the top of their lungs and see if they could drown it out.
And so they sailed past the island of the Sirens in chains, in bondage, their ears stuffed and screaming, and they made it.
Is that all the victory that God can give us?
Is that it?
That our only, the only victory we have over sin is.
[00:43:58] Speaker A: Really.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: I'm not saying they're not going to heaven when they die, but the sooner the better, Okay? One other man made it safely past the island of the Sirens. He was Jason.
Do you remember Jason? And the Argonauts. His ship, the Argo. The sailors were called the Argonauts.
When Jason heard about the island of the Sirens, he took a completely different course.
Jason did not chain up anybody. He didn't put wax in their ears. He found a magic lute player that he heard when the lute player played.
No one could hear anything else as long as he played. Jason put the magic lute player up on the deck, and Jason and the Argonauts all sat at his feet and listened to him play.
And when he played the music so captured them that when they went past the island of the Sirens, they just couldn't hear it.
And Homer writes that when the Sirens realized the Argonauts could not hear them, they went silent to hear the lute player, and they turned to stone.
And no one ever died at the island of the Sirens ever again.
Sanctification, the work of holiness, is not just screaming against the siren sound of sin.
It is hearing a sweeter melody, falling in love with the Holy Spirit.
We are not holy because we do not sin.
God's breath is the spirit of holiness.
That's not bad. Holiness is not bad news.
Holiness is good news.
[00:45:56] Speaker A: You've been listening to the Leader's Notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review today's podcast. You can follow Dr. Rutland on Twitter @Dr. MarkRutland or visit his website, Dr. MarkRutland.com join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
