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: Alright now if you have your Bibles, if you'll take those and turn if you will to the book of Acts, the third chapter, the 11th verse, then we'll read the fifth chapter, the 12th verse. And then we'll go to the eighth chapter, 3:11.
And the lame man which was healed, held Peter and John. And all the people ran together unto them in the porch which is called Solomon's. Solomon's porch. Greatly wondering Solomon's Porch. It is a portico along the eastern side of the outer court of the temple of the women's court.
Okay, Solomon's porch. Now turn to chapter 5 and verse 12.
And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people. And they were all with one accord.
Where?
In Solomon's porch. Okay, now turn to Acts, chapter 8, verse 5.
Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ unto them. And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spoke, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did for unclean spirits, crying with a loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them, many taken with palsies and that were lame, were healed. And there was great joy in the city.
Acts, chapter 8, verse 14. Now, when the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John, who when they were come down, prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Ghost. For as yet he was fallen upon none of them. Only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost. And now if you will turn to verse 25.
And they, meaning the apostles, when they had testified and preached the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem and preached the Gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.
Then to verse 29.
Then the Spirit said unto Philip, whoops, I pushed you too far. Down to verse 26.
And the angel of the Lord spoke unto Philip, saying, arise and go toward the south into the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert.
And Philip arose and went. And behold a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority, under Candace, or Candace it would be queen of the Ethiopians who had the charge of all her treasure and had come to Jerusalem to worship, was returning and sitting in his chariot read Esaias or Isaiah the prophet. And when the spirit said unto Philip, go near and join thyself to this chariot. And Philip ran thither to him and heard him read the prophet Esaias and said, understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, how can I except some man guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him. And the place of the scripture which he read was. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter. And like a lamb dumb before his shearers, so opened he not his mouth. In his humiliation, his judgment was taken away. Who shall declare his generation for his life is taken from the earth? And the eunuch answered Philip and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? Of himself or of some other man? Then Philip opened his mouth and began at the same scripture and preached unto him, Jesus. And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water. And the eunuch said, see, here is water. What doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, if thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. And Philip. And he commanded the chariot to stand still. And they went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch. And he baptized him. And when they were come up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more. And he went on his way rejoicing. But Philip was found at Azotus. And passing through, he preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea.
We thank God for his word.
I've lived almost all my life in the United States.
But I was born in the Republic of Texas.
And my grandfather owned what we gloriously titled a ranch. A small 150 acre cattle farm in East Texas. A little ranch house on there. And I loved to go out there. And I was certain I was Audie Murphy or the Lone Ranger or whatever. And we'd ride those hills of East Texas. But in the evening, the old people would sit on the little porch. I went back to this house many years later.
Have you ever had this experience? It was so small, it was tiny. And there was this big veranda on the front porch. Big, wide, open concrete porch. And when I went to see that house, it was a little concrete stoop, but I remembered it as huge. And the old people would sit there in the hot East Texas evening. As the sun was going down, drinking iced coffee, and we'd play on the porch.
My grandfather used to say, I could hear. I can hear his voice to this day. Get off the porch and say, Look, I've got 150 acres here.
Anybody else ever have this experience that your children just want to play right under your feet? Get on the phone.
Just get on the phone. And perfectly normal children go demon possessed.
And he would say, get off the porch. Get off the porch.
He kept a broom that was leaned up against the house, and we pretty much had it timed right most of the time. But finally his volume and intensity would get louder. Get off the porch. And then we'd see his big hand reach for that broom and we'd dive for the front yard. But every now and again, you were just a little bit slower than you should be. And the pop of that, you know, not the broomstick, but the straw in. And he'd just pop you on the rear end and pop you base over apex out into the front yard.
And then he'd just stand there and he'd say, now listen to me. Get off the porch.
One of the last things that Jesus says to his disciples is, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel.
Every creature.
Eight chapters later, they are still on Solomon's porch.
Eight chapters later.
Even here in this wonderful passage where the apostolic community at Jerusalem hears that this lay evangelist named Philip has had a great move of God in Samaria. They send up to them Peter and John, who pray for them, and there's this outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Many people who had been saved in the name of Jesus and healed in the name of Jesus now are baptized in the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus. And the next verse says, and the apostles returned to Jerusalem.
Sometimes I feel like anybody here ever remember the British comedy group called Monty Python? Anybody here? I'm the only one in the whole room. Thank you, brother. I appreciate you admitting that you have as disturbed a sense of humor as I do. But there's a wonderful scene from one of the Monty Python movies where this king says to the guards, he wants to lock his wayward son up in a room. And he says to the guards, I'm leaving.
Stay here.
Let anybody come in and don't let him leave. Do you understand? They say, yes. And the king starts away and the guards are following him. And he says, wait a minute, where are you going? They said, we're coming with you. He said, no, stay here.
Don't let anybody come in until I Come back. Do you understand? Yes, they said, we understand. Stay here. And anybody that shows up, open the door and let them in. He says, no, no, stay here, guard the door, don't let him out. Don't let anybody in. Do you understand? They say, yes, we understand. Don't let anybody in. But if he wants to leave, let him out. Now the king is really frustrated. He says, no.
Jesus says, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Do you understand? And the disciples say, yes, we understand.
Stay in Jerusalem and don't talk to anybody that isn't Jewish.
So Jesus keeps saying, get off the porch. The Holy Spirit is urging them outward, further, all the world.
Samaria is only two days walk. We're not talking about Rome here or Great Britain, Samaria.
But it is inhabited by people that are racially not consistent with the Jewish people. They're not. They're kind of at odds with each other. So it is a racial difference, it's a cultural difference, it's a religious difference. They're Samaritans. They worship differently. They worship on Mount Gerizim. And so there's a difference between them. But still it's just Samaria.
But Jesus can't get them to go there.
So finally you can almost sense God reach for that broom and he says, get off the porch. And they're just a little too slow. So he whacks them with persecution.
Now listen to Dr. Mark. I'm not trying to.
This is not a threatening message. It's just an important message.
Sometimes God leads us where he wants us to go.
But if we won't follow, he can unleash the dogs to drive us where he wants us to go.
So he uses persecution to actually push the disciples off of Solomon's porch and out into the world, at least to Samaria.
But who goes?
Not the apostles. They stay at Jerusalem. It is this layman.
He is referred to as Philip the Evangelist, but really he's a lay evangelist.
And he goes, driven by persecution, out of the city, up to Samaria.
But he doesn't go there to hide out.
He doesn't go there saying, God, don't let the cops find me in Samaria. Driven out of Jerusalem, he goes to Samaria and immediately turns that moment of persecution into a moment of evangelism.
And he begins to be used. I have Mexico on my mind tonight. A lot. I'm going to share several things that happened to me in Mexico after I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit in 1975. I know that sounds like remotest Antiquity. But I was 28 years of age. By the time I was 29, I was traveling fairly frequently in Mexico with a great old independent, non denominational Pentecostal missionary named Jim Mann. Jim and Helen are now both in heaven. But I was traveling around Mexico with them.
I took some Methodist preachers with me. I was in the Methodist Church at that time. And I wanted to get these Methodist preachers infected, I mean, filled with, with the Holy Spirit.
So I took some of them with me. And we were in the van in a service station in McAllen, Texas, about to cross the border over into Mexico.
And the guys in the van started arguing over who was going to preach. The first night in the first church, they're arguing, I want to go first. I'm the oldest, I'm all this kind of thing. And I just. I was so tired of it. I just got out. Jim was inside trying to pay for the gas, but I couldn't find him.
So I got out of the van and went inside to find Jim.
And he was kneeling down behind the desk in the service station office, praying with the service station attendant to receive Christ.
He's a layman, not ordained. He's just a layman. He had been a restaurant owner in Houston, Texas, and God gave him a miraculous healing and he became a missionary in Mexico. So the contrast of it was inescapable.
Five ordained Methodist preachers with master's degrees sitting in the van arguing about who gets to preach and this humble layman leading somebody to Christ in the service station.
So when God pushes us out further, when he stretches us, he says, get off the porch.
It may be that you. I'm not trying to.
I'm not trying to.
I don't want to show anybody out. I'm not trying to get you to raise your hand or something, but it may be that you have never ever won anybody to Christ in your life.
That you go to church Sunday after Sunday, that you pray, that you read your Bible, but you are not excused from the task of the church.
Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. You can't pay Joey Grizzle to do your work.
And it may be that God has someplace for you to have that kind of a meaningful witness.
It's not complicated.
But the.
One of the proofs of authentic spirit filled living is the impulse to share Christ with other people.
We talk about what it means to move beyond theoretical Christianity. If you were here the first Wednesday night, we talked about the difference between theoretical Christianity and real spirit filled living.
The spirit Filled Christian, the spirit of Christ is within you, and there is an almost irrepressible desire to share with people.
I was with Dr. Terry Takel one time, a great missionary evangelist, and he teacher on prayer.
We were staying in a hotel, different rooms. We came down to go to breakfast. We met in the lobby, and we were gonna walk across the street to have breakfast at a place that was open when we met in the lobby. He said, I got a word from the Lord this morning when I was praying.
I said, what was it, Terry? He said, I was praying and God spoke to my heart as clear as I can hear your voice right now.
He said, today you will share Jesus with Muhammad.
I said, well, Darren, Muhammad's been dead since the 8th century. I don't know. What does that even mean? He said, I don't know. I'm just telling you what the Lord told me.
Went across, we're having breakfast. Waiter came, take our order.
Terry looks up at him and he said, look, I want to give you a card. It's got a prayer written on it. If I gave you this card and I told you that if you would pray this prayer that three times a day, every day, that God would bless your life, would you do it? The man said, yes, I would. I would pray that.
Terrius handed him the card, and I looked at the card as he handed it to him as the Lord's prayer.
Just hand him a card with the Lord's Prayer. He said, pray that every morning, every day, at noon, every night before you go to sleep, and God will bless your life.
He said, what's your name, son? He said, muhammad.
So the waiter left, and Terry looked at me over the eggs as if to say, so the point of that story is that you don't know who you're going to encounter that God may be saying to you, get off the porch.
Christianity is not an effort to be as Christian as you can be and remain as safe as Christ as you can stay.
He's constantly pushing us out, further, challenging us, calling us to something different.
Isn't it fascinating that the apostles come up to check on this revival, pray that the power of the Holy Spirit will be extended and believe God for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And as soon as they do what God has called them to do, they go right back to where they were, straight back to Jerusalem.
But it leaves Philip.
There's this lay evangelist, and the angel of the Lord comes to him and says, go down the road to Gaza, which is desert.
It's fascinating to me that God doesn't try to make it sound better to him.
He didn't say, go to Gaza or hey, this is going to be a great experience, or hey, I'm going to show you a miracle. He makes it just as clear and as unappetizing as he can make it arise, go down the road to Gaza, which is desert.
And that's all he tells him.
I want you to think about it from Philip's point of view.
Philip has just been used to win an entire city to Christ.
The city of Samaria. An historic Samaritan city that has just been signs, wonders, miracles, healings, deliverance, demons cast out, mass baptisms, mass baptisms. And then comes an apostolic community as if to affirm the revival that Philip has been preaching. And there's this outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Let's be honest with each other.
Don't you know that deep in his heart Philip was praying now, Lord, now where?
Now where do you want to send me?
Rome?
Lord, you gave me Samaria, give me another city. Where do you. How about, how about Corinth or Ephesus?
Where do you want to send me?
And God says, Gaza.
A lonely desert road, Gaza.
And this is fascinating.
It says, Philip arose the next morning and departed.
He must just be a more spirit filled Christian than I am. Am I the only heathen in this room that has ever argued with God?
Lord, there may be some variables here of which you are unaware.
So I told you Mexico is on my mind tonight.
I.
I began to go to Mexico with Jim Mann and I fell in love with it.
After I've been down there just a couple of times, I'm not going into it, it's complicated, but I had experienced a tremendous personal miracle, a miracle of communication. It's not important except it just, it was so huge and it was so unexpected and so splendid and enduring. It wasn't a one time thing. It was something that happened in my life so huge.
And it seemed to me that experiencing that miracle that way, that it was obvious proof that God was calling me to be a missionary in Mexico. I had Jim, I had his affirmation. He was wanting me to come work with him. I went home and told my wife and she was open to it.
I went down to Jim's house in Ciudad Victoria in the state of Tamaulipas and I just went into his back room of his little mission house with nothing but some big bottles of fruit juice and I stayed for nearly a week and locked myself in and just prayed and said, God, here I am.
Just confirm it. Just speak to me, God, here I am.
And at the end of the week, if I've ever heard from God in my life, I heard him say, go home.
Go home.
I'm not calling you, I'm sharing with you from my heart. I felt rejected.
I said, lord, all the people in the world that you're trying to call to the mission field, and they won't go, I'm volunteering.
Furthermore, God, what about that miracle?
What was that about?
He said, that was about me being God.
That had nothing to do with you.
He said that was because I'm God and I can do that stuff.
He said, I'll use you.
I'm gonna use you in ways you can't think of right now.
I'm going to use you, but not now, not here, not in Mexico.
I went home hurt with the Lord.
You probably don't want to hear that. I know you're thinking, wow, this heathen. Why are we listening to him?
I came back and Allison said, well, what did the Lord say?
I said, well, he said, no.
He said, no. She said, that's all. I said, no. He said, I'm going to use you, but not here, not now, not in Mexico.
She said, then we must obey.
I think if I had gone on and forced God's hand, gone on to Mexico. I'm not God, is not mean. I'm not saying God would have killed me or something.
What I do know is the adventure that I've experienced since then would have, to one extent or another, been abbreviated or aborted.
All the things, all the countries. I've preached multiple times on every inhabited continent of the globe.
Dozens and dozens of countries, Huge churches in foreign cities, tiny little villages.
I preached barefoot on a bamboo platform in the jungle of Thailand.
I've traveled in the deep forest of South America in the Amazon tributaries, paddled up tributaries of the Amazon in a dugout canoe.
I've been held at gunpoint in Africa more than once.
An adventure.
And I'm not saying that if I had stayed in Mexico and disobeyed God, I'm not saying that God would say, okay, then I'm just going to kill you.
God's not like that, I don't think. What I do know is all this would have been missed.
I pastored a megachurch. I was the associate pastor at another megachurch here in Atlanta. I've been the president of two different universities.
Just if you're hearing this as somehow self congratulatory, you're missing the whole point. And it's not on me, it's on you.
The whole thing has been an adventure. Look, if you take a small child by the hand and lead them through Disney World and then they go home and the child says, oh, we rode this ride and we did this, and we did this and we did this, it's nothing about that child.
It's nothing about that child. You're the one that led them through in Disney World.
So my life is nothing about me.
God took me by the hand and led me through all the rides.
Is that making sense?
God's. I'm.
You think you understand missions because you want to be in a nice, tidy little missionary work in Victoria, Mexico. He said, I'm going to show you some stuff. But that's nothing about me.
That's about a mighty God who had a different plan.
So it says, Philip got up and departed.
I wonder, is he so sanctified holy that it didn't feel funny? Give me a whole city signs, wonders, miracles.
And then the desert.
As he walked that desert road that day, I wonder if he didn't say, this just doesn't feel like it's going to lead to another revival.
So along comes a chariot, and there is an Ethiopian, the treasurer, the CFO of Candace Candesi, the Queen of Ethiopia.
And I know many people have wondered about this. They say, why? Why is an Ethiopian going to Jerusalem to worship at the temple anyway? Why has he been there?
Well, in the first place, he's not allowed to go inside because he's a eunuch, so he has to stay in the outer court. The second place is, why would an Ethiopian go?
Because there are many, many people in Ethiopia who believe they are Jews, direct descendants of Solomon.
Anybody remember the last emperor of Ethiopia? His name was Haile Selassie. I remember. Anybody here remember Haile Selassie? One of his titles was the Emperor of Ethiopia, the lion of the tribe of Judah.
Why would the emperor of Ethiopia be called the lion of the tribe of Judah? Because the Ethiopian Jews and the high Court of Israel has accepted that they are Jews and sent planes to pick up Ethiopian Jews and take them to Israel. And you can see Ethiopian Jews on the streets in Israel today.
They believe that when the queen of Ethiopia went to visit Solomon and she talked about his glory, they believed that when she returned to Ethiopia that she did not just come with treasure.
They feel that Solomon sent her home blessed.
And they believe that the Jewish people in Ethiopia are direct descendants of Solomon through the Queen of Ethiopia.
So he's a Jew. He's an Ethiopian Jew riding in a chariot in the middle of the desert and reading the book of Isaiah.
And the Holy Spirit says, approach this chariot.
And Philip, I love this. It says, philip ran to the chariot.
What if God said to you one day where you're working on a plumbing contract. I don't know what you do for a living.
You teach in school, here in a law office, waiting to sign a contract or deal with somebody's will.
And the Holy Spirit said, go over there and speak to him about Jesus.
Would you say, okay, I'm going.
Oh, I mean, is that what we are? We're Christians, like our teenagers cleaning the garage.
Okay, I'll clean it, but you've ruined my Saturday.
It says, he runs to the chariot and begins to explain to him the prophecies of Isaiah about the suffering servant. Even Jesus our Lord.
And faith arises in that Ethiopian. And he believes and is baptized in water beside the road.
I want you to think about this.
The first African convert to Christianity was not won by David Livingstone.
He was won by a lay evangelist.
A thousand years earlier, when Livingstone arrived in Africa, there were Christians.
Because of this.
Now, just. I don't mean to be offensive on a Wednesday night, but remember, he was a eunuch.
He was incapable of reproduction.
But God made him into a Christian, filled with the Holy Spirit and able to reproduce his kind in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The whole story is full of miracles. It's one miracle after another.
It's not finished.
Philip baptizes him in the name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit stands him up. And all of a sudden Philip's gone.
Says he appeared on the streets of Azotas preaching. I've always had one question. It's a little bit irreverent. I've always wondered, was he wet?
I've always wondered, did being translated into another city, did it dry him out?
So you think.
Think of it from the standpoint of that Ethiopian. When he got back to Ethiopia, I met a man on a desert road who led me to Christ, who baptized me and who was caught away in the power of the Holy Spirit and disappeared.
Wow.
Wow, right?
Think of it from Philip's point of view.
I obeyed God when he took me from a citywide revival into a lonely desert road.
And the miracle was at the end of the road.
God never explains the outcome to us.
He expects our obedience up front. Amen.
I'm asking you, as we close, what could God ask you to do?
To whom could God send you tonight that you would, if you obeyed, might crack open something that there's no other way that God could do it the likes of you, you say, oh, I'm not the apostle John. Neither was Philip.
He was a layman who obeyed God.
God gave him a city.
God called him into a desert.
God gave him two miracles in a row, the salvation of an Ethiopian eunuch and translation in the power of the Holy Spirit.
I believe that God calls us, in the normal course of Christianity, to obedience without question, in remarkable and surprising places.
Understand us now, these things.
Amen.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on x@DrMark Rutland, or visit his website, DrMarkRutland.com where you can find information about his materials and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
