[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.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Prayer of faith in the Spirit. They all sound the same to God.
What he's hearing is the Spirit that prays.
And there is in the prayer of faith in the Spirit, there's no separation in space and time.
That's very important. It's not a vague theological point. It's critically important in the way we think about everything.
So there are people, I have friends in Ghana tonight. Now it's about midnight in Ghana and I have friends there in Ghana, I'm closer to them in the spirit of God than I am to people in Georgia that are not in the Spirit.
There's no separation in space and time. If we are in God and God is in us, then we are all together in him at the same time, whether we are awake or asleep.
And the prayer of the spirit within us is not limited or confined by the intellect within us.
So we don't even know right now the interaction between Angela's spirit in the hospital and the spirit of God at a level that we can't even comprehend.
Well, I didn't come here tonight to speak on that, but it was in all our minds, I think, and is in my mind the beautiful prayer language. I'm fascinated with language. I'm just absolutely fascinated with it, the way the words sound. Sometimes you can tell something about the culture of a people by the sound of their language.
Japanese, for example.
Japanese is extremely methodical. Consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel. Toyota, Yokohama. And it's an extremely orderly and precise people.
100 million workaholics.
I always said if the Japanese people turn to God, you're going to see the greatest evangelist that God has ever seen.
Spanish.
Spanish is from Latin. It's a Romance language and it's romantic.
There are just some things that you can say in Spanish that you just can't say in Russian.
No matter what you say in Russian, it sounds like, give me all your money.
One of the primary languages of Nigeria is Igbo.
And Igbo is an aggressive sounding language that means God loves you and I love you too.
It's interesting, isn't it?
And Swahili. Swahili is a businesslike language that's getting on with it because Swahili is not actually a tribal language.
It's a created language, commercial language.
And so it's just fascinating to me that God, even in the Tower of Babel, he could have confused them all.
And yet he confused them all in beautifully creative ways. What a mighty God we serve.
Well, I know you came tonight for a lecture on language and culture, and I'm delighted you were here for that.
No, we'll get right into it.
So tonight and next week are sort of bookends.
So at the end of the service tonight, we're going to invite everyone who cares to, and no obligation cares to or can physically to come forward. And we're going to pray about next week, but we'll also pray for healing at that moment. We've prayed for healing. The point of this series has been two things.
Real life in the Spirit, to move beyond theological Christianity, theoretical Christianity, and talk about life in the Spirit, in the way we live, the way we're married, the way we talk to our kids, the way we do business.
That there ought to be some way in which being filled with the Holy Spirit makes a difference in the way we do life on a day to day, minute to minute basis. How we think, how we view the world, how we experience victory and tragedy.
But there is this issue of being baptized in the Holy Spirit to start with.
And so tonight and next week are kind of part of the same thing, but it would take too long.
We're confined somewhat by time on Wednesday night because of the children and the youth. And so we don't want to make the children's pastors all angry at us.
So tonight I want to speak on Pentecosts, plural Pentecosts, after Pentecost.
And then next week I want to talk about my Pentecost and yours.
So if you have your Bibles, turn to Acts, chapter two, if you will.
And I'm just going to sort of flip through a little bit, if you'll stay with me. And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing, mighty wind. And it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as a fire. And it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Now I was required, when I began graduate school at Emory University, I was required to buy a Scofield Bible. It was the Bible we were to use for the Whole for my entire mdiv. In the footnotes of the Scofield Bible In Acts chapter 2 it says subsequent to Pentecost, no believer ever need ask again to be filled with the holy spirit.
So Dr. Scofield infers from Acts chapter two that because the Holy Spirit fell on the church extant at that moment, that everybody ever in the body of Christ was automatically filled with the Holy Spirit.
But the problem with that theology is the book of Acts.
If the Book of Acts stopped at Acts chapter two, that's perfectly valid.
But there are subsequent Pentecostal experiences before the forget about 2023. There are more Pentecosts, plural, before the Book of Acts can end.
So if that's all they needed, why do they need some more?
So suppose that there's somebody here tonight. That 6:30 is early on a weeknight and there may be somebody here saying, you know, let's kind of hurry this up. I'm hungry. I skipped supper. I came straight from work, picked up my wife, came here. I'm really hungry and by 7:30 I'm going to really be starving. I said no.
Be at peace. Brother Pastor and I had a lovely dinner.
No. What would he say? What? He should say no. What's the matter with you? I didn't. I'm not worried about you. I'm telling you I'm hungry. I said no. You didn't understand. We were filled.
Be at peace.
So that's what that theology says in a practical way. I'm talking about practical. On a practical basis. There are people that stare up at pulpits Sunday after Sunday, month after month, decade after decade, their entire lives, saying I am hungry.
There must be something more.
Say no.
Be at peace.
Simon Peter and one hundred and nineteen others were filled with the Holy Spirit 2,223 years ago.
He's saying no.
What about me?
Turn to Acts chapter 4.
Begin with verse 31. And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and spoke the word of God with boldness.
Well, were they?
What about what happened two chapters earlier? Doesn't it say they were filled with the Holy Ghost?
So are you telling me then that once we're filled with the Holy Ghost we never need to be filled again? Then we must be better Christians than the first century Christians were.
Cause they felt their apparent felt need in the face of the world that they were living in.
We think we live in a dangerous geopolitical age, but we're not living under the worldwide rule of Caligula the emperor.
They felt the need for the Holy Ghost. Having been filled with the Holy Ghost, they wanted to be what? Filled with the Holy Ghost.
Okay, but. One might say okay, but that, that deals with the Pentecostal community.
If the word Pentecostal is offensive, the community that had been at the original Pentecost, they wanted more of what they had.
But anybody subsequently coming into the body of Christ after them, they wouldn't need that. Turn to Acts chapter 8, if you will.
Acts chapter 8:14 following. 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 had fallen upon none of them. Only they were baptized in the name of Jesus. Now pause a moment.
They were baptized in the name of Jesus.
Were they believers or not? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Receive baptism for the remission of sins. If they weren't believers, then we don't know what it means to be a believer.
Either we are confused, cosmically confused, or the Bible didn't understand what was going on. Well, we can't countenance that conclusion.
So they were believers.
When the representatives of the apostolic community, the community that had experienced Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, had re experienced Pentecost in Acts chapter 4. When they hear that these Samaritans have been saved, have been born again, they're every one of them born again. Water baptized, dripping wet Baptist, every one of them.
And when the apostolic community in Jerusalem heard that, they immediately sent unto them Peter and John. And the first thing they prayed was that they would receive the Holy Ghost.
Why?
Because the community that had experienced Pentecost felt that every subsequent believer should experience Pentecost.
The Pentecost experience is not optional equipment for those that are somehow too weak to live Christianity on their own.
This is not a bumper sticker that goes on the bumper of some Pentecost car.
This is necessary equipment for life.
And when the apostles laid hands on them then and there, they received the Holy Ghost.
So the day of Pentecost, they themselves needed a subsequent infilling.
Then the first great non Jewish Samaritans.
Non Jewish, but still not, not, not racially acceptable Jews. Samaritans in Israel, but, but Samaritans.
The first great wave of evangelical Christianity outside the the community basically of Jerusalem, let alone Israel, receives the Lord Jesus Christ. Signs, wonders. The whole town is water baptized. And immediately the first thing the apostles do is pray for them to have an experience of Pentecost.
But what about outside Israel?
What about out and out, Gentiles, Greeks, Pagans?
Acts, chapter 19.
And it came to pass that while Apollos was at Corinth, that Paul, having passed through the upper borders, came to Ephesus. And finding certain disciples, he said unto them, have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed?
Look at just the question puts the ax to the root of Dr. Scofield's footnotes.
If we never need to ask again, then the question shouldn't be asked.
And finding certain disciples, he said unto them, have you received the Holy Ghost since you first believed?
Their answer, by the way, is astonishingly contemporary.
And they said unto him, we have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.
All right.
The experience of Pentecost is the sanctifying and empowering reality that God has provided as the necessary equipment to live, work and die in this present age in a way that gives him glory.
And without it, we are fighting ill equipped.
I'm not saying, and wouldn't dare to say that somebody that hasn't been to Pentecost is not going to heaven. When they die, they're going to heaven. The baptism of the Holy Spirit doesn't fit you for heaven. The baptism of the Holy Spirit fits you for earth, fits you for life.
It's the empowerment.
So here's what I was taught. This is what I was actually taught. Listen to this.
Professors should be held accountable for this.
I was taught that the early church was like a rocket ship that took off and it had these initial boosters, the Holy Spirit, the gifts, gifts of the Spirit like tongues and prophecy and signs and wonders and miracles, those kinds of things. And they to blast the rocket ship off. But at some point the rocket ship gets outside the gravitational pull of the earth. And now those antique rockets are no longer needed in the rare atmosphere of the outer space where the church now is. And those rockets fall away and fall to earth.
What? What absolute nonsense.
It doesn't even make any sense in this. In the 50 or 60 years of the book of Acts. If that was all true, those blasters should have fallen away immediately after the second chapter of Acts.
But the signs and wonders and miracles, the gifts continue on. It wasn't just the apostles either say, oh, God gave gifts to the apostles. Philip was not an apostle. He wasn't even a preacher. He was a lay evangelist.
He was a lay evangelist. The only thing he'd been ordained for was the wait tables.
Persecuted and driven out of Jerusalem and went to Samaria and full of the Holy Ghost.
God gave him signs and wonders, and an entire town went to Christ.
And when the apostolic community showed up, they said, they still need the Holy Ghost.
They still need the Holy Ghost.
Now, having said all that, for every truth there is an equal and opposite error.
So the truth is.
And it is a truth, and it is an immutable truth.
There are only two kinds of Christians that have been to Pentecost and Christians that need to go there.
It's not optional. It's not like, oh, no, no, that's for you. No, see, it's like, not.
But here's the alternative, and that is that we want everybody to receive the Holy Ghost the way we did.
They don't take all those Samaritans and march them to Jerusalem and take them into the upper room and wait for wind and fire.
The wind and fire, by the way, never happens again.
But that's a concomitant proof of a witness of his presence.
That's not the Holy Spirit.
They didn't pray. God give them wind. God give them fire. They said, God give them the Holy Spirit.
So the story is told of this lady was walking out through a field, and she fell down into an abandoned well, waist deep in the water, and the sides of the well were slick and mossy. She tried everything. Exhausted, she couldn't get out. Finally, desperate, she began to scream. Nobody would come.
And so she prayed. You know how people do in those things. We do a deal with God. And she did.
She said, if you'll get me out of here, I'll be the greatest soul winner this county has ever seen.
Right at that precise moment, a man leaned over and said, let me help you. And he pulled her out.
Unlike so many of us, though, she remembered her deal.
She became the greatest soul winner that county had ever seen.
This is the way she'd do it. She'd lead people out in that field and push them down in that well.
See, we.
We all want everybody to find Jesus in the same well we found him in.
So to. To talk about subsequent Pentecosts means the quintessence of the experience, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit himself, not. Not concomitant witnesses, the Spirit himself.
Jesus is not in the business of stamping out little tiny charismatics and Pentecostals with a cookie cutter who all look alike and note the same things and say it the same way and sound alike and know where to put their hands up in a worship service. That's not what he's about he. About he is about empowering believers to live triumphantly in the insane in which we live and that. That that experience is promised to us.
Jesus.
I'm not talking about an apostolic promise. It's a messianic promise.
It go. It's pre Messianic.
Joel, chapter two says, after the coming of the just one. Hamashia, after the coming of the just one, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh.
It is that passage that Peter quotes on the initial Pentecost, but he doesn't say this is it never to be repeated again. They live in the expectation of the fullness of the Spirit. How do they describe Stephen at the point that he's being stoned to death?
They describe him as being full of the Holy Spirit.
That's. That was the primary requisite and quality of the primitive church.
To believe that the Holy Spirit was necessary, was needed.
Christians live impoverished lives spiritually, unnecessarily, shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone. This year I'll be a Christian if it kills me.
The only problem is what?
It'll kill you.
It will kill you if it doesn't put you straight in a religious loony bin, rocking back and forth in a straight jacket and humming Jesus Loves Me because there's no triumph in it. There's no joy in it.
To be able to look up into heaven as the stones hit you in the face, blood dripping in your eyes, and say, I see Jesus.
And people, people identified that voice as the voice of the Spirit. And filled with the Spirit, they identified that as the, the, the essential quality of the spirit filled life.
We, we're not supposed to do this on our own.
Jesus himself promised it.
Luke 11:13.
If you, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them? That ask him.
Another translation, not another translation, another version, one of the other gospels renders that passage, remembers Jesus saying it this way. How much more will God give good things to them that ask it?
So if you had those two writers together and you said, well, did he say good things or did he say the Holy Spirit? They would say, yeah, exactly right.
But the thing is this. Jesus prefaces that with the nature of carnal fatherhood.
He says, look, you dads, you're not wonderful people, maybe, but if your son asks for an egg, you don't give him a rattlesnake.
If he asks for a. If he asked for grits and breakfast, you don't give him a stinging scorpion.
They all said, well, no, I'm not going to do that. They said, well, then, if you ask God for the power of the Holy Spirit to live triumphantly and in peace and joy, he's not going to slip you the green weenie.
He's going to give you something wonderful.
He's going to give you power. You ask for power and grace and life and love. It is, John Wesley said, a baptism of love.
John Wesley described it in this way. Listen to this. This is fascinating to me. He said, it is the exchange of breath.
We breathe out the stale, fetid air of our carnality, and he breathes in the Holy Spirit. He is, in fact, the breath of God.
Ruach Kadesh. The Holy Breath, the Holy Spirit, the wind of God. You translate it any way you want to. Comes out. It's like quibbling over good things. Or the Holy Spirit. Yes, the pneuma, the breath.
It's a Greek word from which we get everything about the breath. Pneumonia is a disease of your breath.
A pneumatic drill operates on the power of compressed air.
So the baptism of the Holy Spirit, John Wesley says, is Jesus doing mouth to mouth resuscitation with tired Christians.
So there's this fascinating passage in John between the resurrection and Pentecost, and Jesus is with the disciples.
And it says he breathed on them.
And he said, receive the Holy Spirit.
But.
But there's nothing in the text that indicates to us that they did.
Nothing happened in the room that was recorded.
It didn't happen until Pentecost.
So what do we make of that?
Here's what it must be.
Jesus was prophet, priest and king. But in that moment, I think he was speaking prophetically.
He was making a prophetic sign act.
He's saying, when you hear that, receive.
So if I say, next Wednesday, Pastor Joey's coming to your house, receive him.
I'm not telling you to do it now, but when you hear that, knock on the door.
Open the door.
Let him in. Give him something good to eat. Obviously, he's starving to death. Look at him.
Feed your preacher, son.
So that's what Jesus says. Look, the wind's gonna blow.
It'll sound like it'll be the Holy Spirit.
Receive him.
And on the day of Pentecost, they did.
And then arrested and beaten and threatened.
They didn't pray. God, hide us. Hide aside. As they said, God, give us boldness. And God filled them fresh with the Holy Spirit.
And then they went to Samaria and they said, God, all these new Christians, but they weren't at Pentecost. Give them Pentecost. And he did.
And in Ephesus, a pagan Greek city, they said, God, look at all these people. They need the Holy Spirit.
So why wouldn't he say that? In 21st century America, if there's ever been a body of Christ that needs power to live triumphantly, to minister boldly, and to live and die with joy in the face of an adversarial culture, we need the Holy Ghost.
We need the Holy Ghost.
It's not.
Look, it's not a Pentecostal as in Church of God or Assemblies of God or Church of God in Christ. It's not a Pentecostal possession.
We don't get to stand over on the side of Pentecost and look at non Pentecostals and say, nani nonny, boo, boo.
We got the Holy Ghost. And you don't.
On the other hand, nobody gets to stand on the other side and say, we don't need the Holy Ghost. And you do.
No. Now see, we're all in this pool of weakness and powerlessness together.
We all, every one of us, every born again Christian, every person who has ever received Christ as savior, no matter how exciting or wonderful or powerful that conversion experience was, as in Samaria, where they saw signs and wonders, people healed and delivered and the whole town water baptized.
Wow.
Wow. But the first thing the apostles prayed for was that they would have a Pentecost of their own.
So therefore, I think it's inescapable that we must say, at the risk of sounding arrogant, that Dr. Scofield was wrong. Amen. He was just wrong.
Subsequent to Pentecost.
It's not that further Christians never again need to ask. It is the substitute Pentecost. Every new Christian needs to ask now.
Then, as the body of Christ matures, the issue becomes living in the Spirit.
So Paul the Apostle. I mentioned this on last Wednesday night. Paul the Apostle writes about being filled with the Holy Spirit.
Be being filled, live in the constant state of being filled.
I kind of got an aggressive conversation with a guy.
He said, talk about fresh infillings, fresh baptism of the Holy Spirit. He said, what's the matter with you Pentecostals? Do you leak?
And I said, yes.
I said yes. Don't you?
I said, are you, you so sanctified, holy, that you don't need anything more from God tomorrow than you needed the day you got saved?
No, no, no.
Do you leak? Yes.
So Paul says we have to live in the state of being filled. Be.
Have a state of existence. Be being filled.
So we constantly receive every morning when you open your eyes, you should say, lord, fill me with the Holy Spirit.
In every kind of situation or circumstance, there are things that we go through in life.
Scary stuff.
Bad stuff, hard stuff, sad stuff, Good stuff. Wonderful stuff.
Look, my.
My wife has become a baseball fan. Never in my life did I think. I can't tell you what a shock that is to me.
This year she's become a baseball fan. No, no, that's not right. She is a Braves fan. She's a fanatic.
She's a fanatic. We wake up in the morning and she says, good morning, Mark. What time's the game?
Listen, I'm bracing myself. If the Braves lose the World Series, we're going to need the Holy Ghost at our house.
Look, life is real. Life is earnest.
I'm just saying to you, we receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
We keep receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and we live every day receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Breathe on me, breath of God.
Fill me with life anew.
So here's.
As I start to bring this to a Conclusion, Acts, chapter 19.
When Paul the Apostle arrives at Ephesus, and he says, if you received the Holy Ghost since you first believed. He said, we didn't even know there was a Holy Ghost. Now, that doesn't make any sense, because actually he's in the synagogue.
All the Jews believe in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's mentioned on the first page of the Book of Genesis, and they're Jews. And said, if they. If he had said the Eli, do you believe there is a spirit of the living God? The finger of God that carved the Ten Commandments? Do you believe that there is a Holy Spirit?
Do you believe that they would say, oh, yes.
Why did they say, we don't. We never heard of it? It's because he used a verb that didn't make any sense to him.
He said, have you received the Holy Spirit since you first believed?
That's what threw him off.
So suppose I made a trip to New York, and I came home, see brother Joey. And I said, joey, have you ever eaten a pickup truck?
He would say, well, I don't even know what you're talking about. I've never heard of a pickup truck.
I would say, what are you talking about? You live in Georgia. There are more pickup trucks than there are people.
But what would throw the conversation off? It's the word eaten.
Because I went to a deli in Long island that has a. A submarine sandwich that's so big you put everything on. They're Called pickup. Pickup truck.
So I said, man, have you ever eaten a pickup truck? It's the verb eating that threw him off. He knows what pickup trucks are.
So when Paul said, have you received the Holy Spirit? They said, we didn't even know there was a Holy Spirit.
They knew there was a Holy Spirit. What they didn't know was, could they receive it?
They identified the Holy Spirit as being for kings and warriors and prophets and apostles.
But who is he talking to?
There's not one person in that congregation whose name we know.
We don't know what they did for a living.
We don't know anything about them. They weren't heroes, warriors. There aren't Christian books written about them.
They were people in whom the Apostle Paul, when he arrived at their worship service, sensed something was missing.
He said, have you received the Holy Spirit? Since you first believed?
Have you received the first time?
Have you gone on receiving?
Have you received lately?
Are you continuing to receive? Have you received the Holy Spirit?
Don't tell me you believe in the Holy Spirit. Three in one.
Have you received the Holy Spirit?
What I want to do tonight is risky business because I don't know what's going to happen in your life between now and next Wednesday night.
But here's what I want to do tonight.
I just want to make you hungry.
I want you to worry about it all week.
I want you to come back next Wednesday night saying, it doesn't matter what you say.
I'm here to receive, if you will pray and seek God and say, lord, I need what he's talking about. I need what he's preaching about. I could read from the Yellow Pages. Are there any such thing anymore? I don't think there's Yellow Pages anymore. I could read from WI Fi and you'd receive the Holy Spirit.
So I want you to search your heart.
What needs to happen in you next Wednesday night?
What I want to talk about next Wednesday night is my Pentecost.
My Pentecost.
How you should receive Pentecost. I'm not going to try to push you in my. Well, but you can.
You can speak theologically about Pentecost, but after you've said that, the only thing you got left is your testimony.
That's all you got left.
So next Wednesday night, as this church begins its season of revival I want to share with you what happened to my Pentecost.
A man who didn't believe in it, preached against it, mocked it, believed in Dr. Scofield and thought the Church of God was a cult.
I'm gonna tell you about my Pentecost.
[00:37:50] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on
[email protected], or visit his website, Dr.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.
