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.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: If you have your Bibles, if you'll take those and turn, if you will, to the gospel as Luke records it. I'm going to read quite a lengthy passage of scripture tonight. It's not what I have usually done, but I want to tonight we have, we have each week in this series, by the way, this is the now the beginning of the New Testament. We've been dealing with events in the Old Testament. We have this one and three more and I, I will be finished with this spring semester. I hope you've enjoyed this series and that you will, that you will find a blessing in this one tonight. This one is sort of perhaps one of the more unique of all of them we've been talking about like the, the Moses movie. And so there were people that were around Moses and people that were around Elijah and people that were around Abraham.
So we tried to concentrate on those lesser lights, people that were around the great light in the story.
And each week I've given you somebody from Hollywood or television something that you say, you know, I never heard of that name.
So each week I've tried to come up with somebody that is pretty well known in many ways, but you don't know their name.
They're, they're also mentioned in somebody else's movie.
So in a moment, not right now, but in a moment I'll show you this woman's picture. Melinda Ruth Dillon. As a matter of fact, she died last month at the age of 83.
She was born quite coincidentally in the same tiny little town as President Bill Clinton in Hope, Arkansas.
She made 25 movies.
She was in many, many television shows of different things. She was never the star of anything.
She was nominated two times for Academy Award. She did not win either time. Two times as best supporting actress, once for the Absence of Malice, a movie with Paul Newman, and once for Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
But I think that what you will know her best as we'll look at this picture and is the mother in A Christmas Story. She was the mother of Ralphie and Randy in A Christmas Story, just coincidentally, you might want to know the boys with the spectacles. There is Ralphie. His name is Peter Billingsley, just coincidentally. And his Also is not a real famous name, except does the name Billingsley ring a small bell? His aunt was Barbara Billingsley was the mother in Leave it to Beaver.
So evidently Peter Billingsley had a great connection with famous mothers and nobody knew their names.
Now, likewise in the movie of the Virgin Mary, in the Mary movie, there are a vast host of people in there whose names we don't know.
But they are celebrated. They're quite celebrated, but we don't know much about them.
So if you will turn to Luke, chapter one.
And I want to read a lengthy passage of Scripture.
For as much as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word. It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order. Most excellent, Theophilus, if you'll remember, that's also the person to whom the book of Acts is written, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed.
There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias of the course of Ebaiah. And his wife was of the daughters of Aaron. And her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.
And they had no child, because that Elizabeth was barren.
And they were both. And they both now were well stricken in years. And it came to pass that while he executed the priest's office before God in the order of his course, according to the custom of the priest's office, his lot, meaning Zacharias, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord. And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense. And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord, standing on the right side of the altar of incense.
And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.
And the angel said unto him, fear not, Zacharias, as for thy prayer is heard, and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son. And thou shalt call his name John, and thou shalt have joy and gladness. And many shall rejoice at his birth.
And he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. And he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother's womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to The Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, meaning Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready a people who prepared for the Lord. And Zechariah said unto the angel, whereby shall I know this? For I'm an old man and my wife well stricken in years.
And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel that stands in the presence of God. And I am sent to speak unto thee, to show thee these glad tidings. By the way, that's a rebuke.
Do you understand that? He says, how do I know these things are true? He says, I'm the archangel Gabriel. Stand in the presence of God. I didn't come here to lie to you.
And behold, thou shalt be dumb.
So let me just say this in passing.
Don't mess around with angels, okay?
And shall not be able to speak until the day that these things shall be performed because thou believest not my words which shall be fulfilled in their season.
And the people waited for Zacharias and marveled that he tarried so long in the temple. And when he finally came out, he could not speak unto them. And they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple. For he beckoned unto them and remained speechless. And it came to pass that as soon as the days of his ministration were accomplished, he departed to his own house. And after those days his wife Elizabeth conceived and hid herself five months, saying, thus saith the Lord, Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on me to take away my reproach among men.
And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto the city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her and said, hail, thou art highly favored. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying.
And cast in her mind what manner of salutation this could be. And the angel said unto her, fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son and shall call his name Jesus. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, I thank you for this evening. For these people who have come in their numbers. Lord, bless this church and may the spirit of the. Of your holiness and grace and peace rest upon their protracted prayers. And may they be fruitful, and may they be as incense before your throne. I believe you for it. I thank you for it. In Jesus name, amen.
Among those in the Mary movie who are not the stars of the movie, Mary is the star of the movie.
Now, later on, we get into the Jesus movie. There are other people, but at this stage, Mary is the star of the movie. I'm not going to explore the character and person of Mary very much. I want to deal with those also mentioned in the cast.
And among those, hardly any. Well, with one, there is one more.
But few in the Mary movie are more notably impactful upon Mary's life than her kinswoman, her cousin, Elizabeth.
Now, you must remember this.
Elizabeth does not know about the miracle that is happening with Mary. This is extremely important.
Mary knows about the miracle that's happening with Elizabeth.
The angel speaks to Zacharias. Zachariah struggles with hearing it, with believing it. He says, look, I'm old. My wife is old. We're past childbearing age. How can. In other words, he says, can you give me a sign? How is there some way I can know you're telling me the truth? And the angel sternly rebukes him and says, how's this for a sign? I'm going to strike you dumb.
And he can't speak.
Now, there is a humorous place in the passage a little further on. I want to deal with it before we come back to Mary. When he comes out, he signifies unto them somehow, like a game of charades, that he has seen an angel.
Am I the only one?
I would like to have known how he acted that out.
What would.
I don't know. What did that look like when he's trying to tell them, and they perceived from what he did that he had seen an angel, a miracle, a sign.
And then he evidently is able to communicate that yet again to his wife. And she conceives and has a baby. And they have agreed that the baby's name is to be John, because the angel dictated his name shall be John.
When the baby is born, they ask Elizabeth, when what's the baby's name? And she says, john. Well, they're shocked because that's not the way that 1st century Jews named their children. You were named for your grandfather, your great grandfather, your uncle, your cousin. The names were kept in house, if you will. And she says, name is John. And they said, you don't have anybody in your whole family named John. We're asking the father.
So they went to Zacharias.
And this is this is the funny part.
It says they made signs to him.
What would. Should you name the child?
You see what's funny, right? He wasn't deaf.
You ever see people that speak to the somebody from another country, and when they don't understand them, they raise their voice.
I want some more tea.
So it said they make signs to Zacharias. What should he name the child? And he says, John. And his. And his speech returns. It just tickled me to realize that he's not deaf, he's mute.
And so they acted out. What do you want to name the baby?
So this.
This is.
This whole process with Elizabeth and Zacharias is going on now. Zacharias kind of drops from the story, but go back into the time of Elizabeth's pregnancy.
So the baby is not yet born.
Now this same angel appears to Mary.
And again, I'm not dealing with the.
She's certainly central to the story, but I don't want to deal with Mary's character and virtue. But it is blatantly obvious at the very beginning, she doesn't ask for a sign.
The. The priest.
The priest asks for a sign. This basically ignorant and unlearned village girl, probably about 15, maybe 14, maybe 16, that would have been marriageable age at that time.
She doesn't even ask for a sign. She just says, be it unto me according to thy word.
So she truly is a heroine and to be venerated in many ways. But the angel says to her, your cousin Elizabeth is also great with child. And that's a miracle too, because she's past the age.
So Mary goes to see Elizabeth and then is this dramatic moment.
Remember, there are no doorbells.
So she cries out from the doorway outside.
She says, elizabeth, are you home? Elizabeth.
Knock. She cries out, elizabeth. And Elizabeth begins to praise God.
And she says, what a miracle. Listen to this phrase.
Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
That's amazing.
She doesn't know. She has none of that knowledge by angelic presence.
She has that knowledge by revelation of the Holy Spirit.
The baby inside of her, who is to become John the Baptist, leaps in her womb. The baby recognizes the voice. The babies, the two babies, witness with each other.
The two women witness with each other. It is a remarkable, supernatural moment.
Now we are all, I think, or at least I am, and most of you are Protestants, so we are certainly not wanting to give way to Mariology.
But in our. Sometimes in our Protestant fear of worshiping Mary or praying to Mary, we have forgotten what a magnificent heroine she was.
And you'll remember. Then Elizabeth's praise and the angel's praise, they combine.
And that is what the Catholics call the Hail Mary. And I want to be clear with you. I'm not inviting you to say it or know it or memorize it. And we certainly do not pray to Mary about anything. We don't pray to anybody. There's only one man, one intercessor between man and God, and that's the man, Jesus. That's settled.
But still, the Hail Mary is an interesting prayer. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death. So there is this combination biblically, between what the angel Gabriel says to Mary and what Elizabeth says to Mary and this confluence of this supernatural event of Zacharias with this angelic encounter while he is ministering in the. In the tabernacle.
Mary's angelic encounter and the supernatural miracle of Elizabeth's pregnancy. All of this in different places, different locations. It all flows together.
Person of Elizabeth, two pregnancies, two women, kinfolk.
In Elizabeth, the supernatural sensitivity reaches a peak from the sound of Mary's voice.
She doesn't just say, I know something's happening.
She doesn't just say, I felt something when you called out.
Listen to what she says.
She says, who am I that the mother of my Lord should visit me?
Mary is younger. Mary's their cousins, but she's like her niece. She's. She's young. This is older lady, younger lady. And she steps through any pride or resistance or know it all or anything else. She doesn't know. There's no way that she knows at this time that. That Mary is even pregnant, let alone that she is pregnant through supernatural encounter with the Holy Spirit, let alone that the baby to be born is Jesus, let alone that he is her Lord.
It's a miraculous moment when this magnificent woman, Elizabeth, prophesies, this is the mother of my Lord.
And her praise transcends denominational limitations.
Now, it's interesting.
Elizabeth is never mentioned again in the New Testament in one chapter, but in my view, except for one person I'm coming to in just a moment, and I think you know who he is.
Elizabeth plays as profound and important a part in the. In the Mary movie as anyone except Mary herself.
What a confirmation it must have been to Mary.
What an affirmation. Think she's going there because the angel tells her your kinswoman is pregnant?
She's Also had a miracle. But she doesn't understand. She doesn't know what it is. And Elizabeth doesn't know it at all.
So when she calls out, Elizabeth, are you in the house? And she begins to praise God and then announces, I know you're the mother of my Lord. And think how it must have affirmed Mary.
Think how she must have. Because she's the only one who's heard the angel.
She's the only one that's heard from the angel.
Hail Mary, blessed art thou.
God has chosen you. You're going to give birth to this child. And his name will be Jesus. And he's going to be a blessing to many.
Your cousin in the hill country of Judea. She's also pregnant. Go and see her.
And Mary goes prepared to tell Elizabeth that she's pregnant and try to tell her about this supernatural event with this angel. And Elizabeth announces it at the moment of her voice.
Think what that must have meant to Mary to have this older woman in her life that affirms her and blesses her.
Then there is the practical.
Just this young girl pregnant, basically out of wedlock, to have this older woman who accepts her and receives her and loves on her and affirms her and that they share this supernatural reality, this incredible visitation of angels in two different families, in two different three locations.
Mary, Zacharias and Elizabeth. And it all flows together and takes some kind of shape in the person of Elizabeth.
But as often happens with people also mentioned in the cast, Elizabeth goes away.
Now comes the second most important, or perhaps the most. The most important. But the second important person in the Mary movie is Joseph.
Joseph is often kind of viewed by modern Christians as a stick figure, a prop in the plays that we do at Christmas where the children put on bathrobes and use yardsticks for shepherd staffs and all the rest of that. Joseph is just kind of. He doesn't have any speaking role when you're trying out for parts in the Christmas play. Nobody wants to be Joseph.
Joseph just stands behind the manger, you know, but listen, this person is huge in this story.
Joseph is also mentioned in the cast.
He is a man of incredible calm assurance in the supernatural guidance of God. In his life, he sees the answer to the dilemma. He's a good guy. He's a decent guy. His fiance is pregnant. He knows it's not his.
He could have her stoned to death. He could drag her out in the middle of the street and have her stoned to death.
He ought to, according to the law of Moses, he should do that.
He should say to her, father, I want the bride price back. I want everything. Instead, he's willing to just say, okay, fine, we'll just end it. Let her go. It must have been humiliating to him.
Humiliating.
And then to hear this in a dream, Joseph, everything is okay.
The child in her is there. By the power of the Holy Spirit, trust that.
Go ahead with the marriage.
Don't sleep with her until the baby's born.
Now listen to me, brethren.
That's a pretty serious frog to swallow.
We may we have the Book of Luke. Joseph didn't.
He had a dream.
Am I the only one? You ever wake up from a really powerful dream and you're not even sure whether it was real or whether you dreamed it or to what extent. Have you ever had a dream? You weren't even sure whether you were running the dream.
Am I the only one? You think, I'm not sure that was a real dream? Or was I just kind of half asleep and making the dream happen the way I wanted it to?
And Joseph says, fine.
He marries this girl.
They have a Platonic relationship until she gives birth to this baby.
He provides for her. He is a decent, good, merciful, kind man.
It is interesting that in both the New Testament and the Old Testament, the two men that were the most gifted with dreams were both named Joseph.
He is obedient to the Holy Spirit.
He is a faithful provider, and he provides protection for the woman Mary and for the baby Jesus.
Joseph is critical to the outcome of this story.
Without Joseph, the story could have gone terribly wrong. At every level of the thing, Joseph is divinely situated by God to yield to the dream, to overcome his pride, to deal with. You've got to know that he knew everybody in town was laughing at him.
We don't know Joseph's age. We know virtually nothing about him. But given what we know about the culture of the time, probably he was considerably older.
It would have been much more customary for older men to finally have the financial stability to take on a wife.
So he probably was much older.
He knew the people in Nazareth were laughing at him behind his back.
That old fool.
His fiance's pregnant and they were laughing at him.
He must have known that.
There must have been times when he struggled. And yet he remained faithful and calm and obedient to the witness of the Holy Spirit and to the dreams that he had. And then when he has the dream to take the child and go into Egypt. That's expensive.
He's left Nazareth. Now he's got to leave Judea. He's going to leave Bethlehem, he's going to Egypt. He has to stay in Egypt until yet again, in another dream, God's says, go back to Israel.
Joseph is not just a stick figure, he's not just a prop in this play.
Joseph is critical to the story.
And then there are others that are in the play about whom we know basically nothing.
The shepherds, the wise men.
We don't know much about them at all. We don't even know their names.
And yet they represent something that's happening in this story.
They represent further affirmation for the miracle that's been announced, enunciated to the Virgin Mary.
That this baby is spectacularly different from this baby is not like every other baby. This baby is the child of God. This baby is going to be the Lord.
Mary even do that. The mother of my Lord.
Not the mother of a prophet, not the mother of a new mode, the mother of my Lord.
This is over and over again. There's this supernatural affirmation to Mary of what she has heard one time from this angel. As far as we know, the angel never comes again. She's basing everything that she believes on this.
So these shepherds come, these wise men come. There's the gifts, there's all of this supernaturalness.
Now, I just want you to hold that in your mind for a minute.
But all of that has to basically last 30 years.
Because if that kind of thing were happening every day to Jesus for the first next 30 years, don't you think we'd have some record of it in the Bible?
So there's the mixture of the natural and the supernatural. Even in the story of the Virgin Mary, the birth of Jesus is natural.
The conception is supernatural. The conception is a miracle, but the birth is natural.
All of the pain, blood and fluid and worry and fear and everything else that happens in every other birth happens in the birth of Jesus.
There's nothing supernatural about the birth of Jesus.
She's alone in a cattle stall and her only midwife is her elderly husband.
This is natural.
There's 30 years.
Am I the only one? Haven't you ever wondered that Mary looked at Jesus when he's 14, 15, 18, 20, 25.
The story began so spectacularly.
But they're watching Jesus work in the in his father's business, whatever it was. There's huge debate now over whether it was a carpenter shop or stonemason, but doesn't make any difference. He's working in his father's business like everybody else. People come in, hey, Jesus, I need to Buy something fine.
Nobody walks in and says, wow.
Mary's voice is forgotten. Not forgotten, but faded. It's gone. It's back there. She's never mentioned again. One chapter of the Bible. Elizabeth is never mentioned again.
It's now. It's day after day after day after week after month after year after year. Three decades of the absolutely mundane and natural.
Angels don't come every day.
The baby Jesus doesn't glow in the dark.
And listen, I don't mean to freak everybody out, but there was some time from the birth of Jesus that he had to be changed.
Jesus wasn't born potty trained.
Is this.
I'm not trying to freak you out, but that's like really natural.
It's unpleasantly natural.
I don't know that she's thinking to herself, what a great honor.
The angel's gone.
Elizabeth's word of prophecy is back there.
The wise men aren't there. The shepherds. The shepherds aren't helping her. She's just changing a messy diaper.
All the years and years of it.
So here's what I'm trying to say.
In your movie, in the movie of your life, there are those moments which are splendid and supernatural, filled with grace.
A lady once came to me at the church I pastored. And she said, an angel spoke to me in my house last night.
She said, do you believe me? I said, I have no reason to doubt you.
I don't want to answer the question whether I believe you. What I will tell you is I have no reason to doubt you. Angels come, they do appear to people. I know you, you're a Christian. I know your faith. I know your trust in the Lord. I have no real reason to doubt you until you tell me something else.
I said, did the angel speak to you? She said, no.
I was alone in my bed and I was afraid. She was an older woman. She said, I was alone in my bed and I was afraid. It was a terrible storm. And when I looked at the chair by my bed, there was an angel. And he didn't say a word. He reached over and patted my shoulder and I felt incredible peace.
She said, do you believe me? I said, nothing you've said yet makes me doubt it.
I said, I don't think he'll be here tomorrow night.
I don't think he's coming to rock you to sleep every night.
Are you beginning to sense what I'm saying?
That life is a mixture?
The most supernatural Christian life, the most anointed, prophetic, spiritual life is a mixture.
And we have to learn how to walk into the natural supernaturally and into the supernatural naturally.
There are two equal and opposite errors.
The one is that we.
We want to be and be thought so spiritual, so Christian, so anointed, so something that we add to the story that we try to make it seem more supernatural.
The other side is that we become so. The other error is that we become so ground down by the naturalness of life, the drudgery and the mundane and the stuff you go to a. I don't know. I'm not prophesying over. But if somebody comes to this prayer that's going on here week after week or day after day at this prayer, at this church, and on the way home, your car has a flat tire.
I'm not prophesying, okay?
I'm just saying the prayer you say. Oh, man, the prayer meeting seemed so great.
I guess it wasn't.
Now I've got a flat tire. Now, see, the flat tire doesn't invalidate the prayer meeting.
By the same token, not every minute of every day of your. The rest of your life is going to be a spectacularly supernatural prayer meeting. Sometimes you got to change the tire.
I don't know if this is communicating.
Let me bring it down to where we live as Pentecostals.
Take, for example, the manifestation of the gifts.
When we try to make the gifts seem more supernatural, we actually betray the naturalness of who we are.
You don't ever have to give a word of prophecy in a voice that's different from yours.
And when you do, you actually infringe on the supernaturalness of it with your flesh, what people hear and experience. And they can work through it. They can work through it sometimes. But what they hear and experience is your flesh.
You don't ever have to make it seem more spectacular, more supernatural.
It can be naturally supernatural life, even the life of the mother of Jesus Christ was doing the laundry, cooking the bread and making supper and sorting it out. With Joseph, what happens is.
Can happen.
And it did happen in.
And I'm not dissing the Roman Church, but it did happen. The Roman Catholic Church, they came up with this theology of the perpetual virginity of Mary, that Mary remained a virgin the rest of her life. But there's only one problem with that. See, it's like the Bible, okay?
The Bible says that Jesus had lots of brothers and sisters.
Those were not virgin births.
So the first child is a supernatural miracle of a virgin birth, but the others are Joseph's, and they're conceived like every other kid.
But if you say that Seems so human and everything. We want Mary to glow in the dark and answer our prayers and everything.
But the problem with that is that's not the way the Christian life works.
You can have a dream. You can have a dream that that makes your hair stand on in supernatural anointed. You can be touched in a worship service. You can go to a Sunday morning service. And a word of God penetrates the veil of flesh. And you are alive with God and have an argument with your idiot husband on the way home from church.
Do you understand what I'm trying to say to you? Tonight, Mary is surrounded by other people in the cast.
There's Elizabeth and there's Joseph. Thank God for him.
Thank God for Elizabeth. There's these shepherds, wise men.
There's the evil villain of Herod, as all of that is surrounding her life.
But those stories cover like three chapters.
And from there until the bar mitzvah of Jesus is 12 years. And from there until his first miracle, which Mary had to make him perform.
My friend Doran Heiliger, who's my Jewish guide in Israel, he says it's the most real story in the entire New Testament. He said even Jesus had a Jewish mother.
But for 12 years, there's nothing but real life.
And then the scene at the temple, Knowest thou not I must be about my father's business?
And that just confused them.
And then there's 18 years till the miracle at Cana of Galilee.
In those years, it's really natural.
There are people in your movie that are going to be used of God to bring a touch of the supernatural to your life, receive it, be grateful for it, and let it affirm what God is already doing in your life.
And in the midst of the natural, of the day after day after day of just serving God while you make supper or sell life insurance, you don't have to tidy it up.
God will do all the rest.
Well, let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you'll take this simple little teaching and somehow make it meaningful in our lives.
Lord, I pray that you will send an Elizabeth when we need one.
That just at the moment we're beginning to doubt the whole thing, shepherds will show up.
Lord, I believe you, that the gifts that we could never have imagined will come. I praise you for that.
But God, on the regular, day in, day out, I pray that you will allow us somehow to be supernaturally natural.
Help us, oh Lord, in Jesus name. Amen.
Well, it's not a very spectacular teaching tonight, but I became more and more convinced as I studied the life of Mary, that the supernatural moments in her life were mind numbingly spectacular.
But there just weren't very many of them.
God bless you, everybody. Good night.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on X at Dr.markrutland 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.
