Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the president of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website, globalservants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: If you have your Bibles, if you'll take those. And while you're turning to the Gospel of John, the first chapter, there are those passages of scripture which are powerful, but they are often overlooked because of another passage of scripture which kind of swamps them in proximity.
So for example, there are not very many people that can tell you what John 3:15 is.
It just gets swamped by John 3:16.
So the first few verses of the Gospel of John are so powerful. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the same was in the beginning with God. And all things were made by him. And without him was not anything made that was made. The whole part of John chapter one is so powerful that we often lose some of the other passages. I want you to look at verse 16. We're going to read 16, 17, 18 John chapter one. 16, 17, 18.
And of his fullness have we all received grace for grace. I'm reading from kjv. Your translation may read grace upon grace or grace multiplied by grace. Grace and grace and more grace.
For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
No man hath seen God at any time.
The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. Now add the first few verses of John to those verses I just read. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the Word was God, and the Word became flesh.
So that the Word is the revelation of the Father.
And through the Word, even this same Jesus, we see what the Father is like.
And what the Father is like is grace multiplied by grace multiplied by grace multiplied by grace.
Put your hands on your Bible and let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, in the next few moments, I pray that your spirit will brush aside every barrier to divine communication.
Come, Holy Spirit, speak to us. We pray in the mighty name, Jesus, the strong Son of God.
Amen.
When anybody tells you who they are, listen.
Pay attention. When they reveal what they're like, don't blow it off. Pay attention.
If somebody says to you, you know, I hate you, listen to them.
If somebody says, I love you, listen to them.
The same is True of some of the world's great faiths.
I always say you can tell what a religion is like by what its founder comes carrying.
Moses came carrying the law.
Moses Muhammad came carrying a sword.
Jesus came carrying the cross.
So you cannot separate the militancy at the heart of Islam from the character of it. I'm not here preaching on Islam today. I'm just saying there is a militancy at the very heart of the faith.
And in passing, I want to say this. Too many people understand Allah to be another name for the God of Abraham, Isaac, Israel and Jesus. It's not another name for the God of Jesus, it's another God.
And Islam is a faith based on another God, at the very heart of which is a militant sword.
The spirit of murder is at the heart of Islam.
Now, therefore.
Now therefore, I want to know what is at the heart of Christianity.
If, if that reveals that I'm not. I'm not here. This, I'm not preaching against Islam. I'm trying to use that as a backdrop to talk about this.
Therefore, what is at the heart of Christianity? What reveals the very heart of this which we call our faith? What's the. What's the revelation?
John tells us that Jesus is the revelation, the full, true, the truth and grace. The full, true revelation of God is in the fullness. The fullness of God is revealed in Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
Now Moses came carrying the law and taught us that there is judgment with God. The law teaches us that there is judgment and a call to holiness, but that the law could not fully reveal who God is.
But when Jesus came, he says, now I'm going to show you what the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, what my God, what my father is really like. The full, true revelation of God is grace upon grace.
The one great truth about God.
Grace.
The generous, giving, sacrificial heart of God Almighty.
That God is above all things, a God of generous, giving grace.
When we understand that, we understand the essence of this faith.
Jesus did not die to save us from God.
Sometimes we have the idea and I hear evangelicals preach a kind of Pocahontas faith.
You know, Pocahontas said to her, dad, don't, please don't kill him. I love him.
But Jesus didn't throw himself on our bodies to save us from God.
God sent Jesus to save us from us.
There is a cross. There was a cross at the very center of who God is.
Jesus is not the lamb slain from Calvary. He is the lamb slain from the foundation that giving sacrificial grace is at the very heart, the very essential, the quintessential definition of who God is is giving sacrificial grace. Every other faith demands that we sacrifice for God.
God sacrifices our. God sacrificed for us.
Everything that we do, everything that we give, all that we worship, all that we say, all of that is a reflective response to God here in his love Bible. The Bible says here in his love, not that we love God, but that he first loved us.
Every statement of love. In every statement of love, there is an inherent question in every. Every time anybody says I love you, there is a question embedded in that statement.
So, guys, where are all the married guys? Let me see where you are. Okay, you put your arms around your wife and you say, baby, I love you, I adore you. No, I'm not telling you to do it now.
If you do it now, this is going south.
If, if you put your arms around your wife and say, I love you, I adore you. I worship the ground you work on.
I love you, I love you. If you do that, there's a statement, yes, I love you. But what's the question?
Do you love me too?
So you say to your wife, baby, I love you, I adore you.
And she says, I always feel like you're my brother in Christ.
Then you know, you're not hitting on the numbers, not tonight.
What you want to hear is I love you too.
So herein is love that God first loved us. So in everything that God does in the life and the revelation, the truth through Jesus came what truth and grace.
So the true revelation of God was in the character of Jesus.
Let's explore it a little bit.
What about the people to whom Jesus ministered?
You remember the passage where Jesus is at dinner with all these big shots and this lady. Well, maybe not lady. This sinful woman rushes in off of the street, starts kissing his feet.
I heard one preacher say it wasn't as embarrassing in those days. It didn't mean the same thing.
No, let's be honest. You're at a dinner party, any place, any civilization, anywhere in the world, some woman rushes in off of the street and starts kissing your feet. That's an awkward moment.
I know how I would have responded. I would have get up.
They're going to wonder where we met.
The greatest thing about that story is not what Jesus does.
It's what Jesus doesn't do.
He doesn't draw away from her.
He doesn't reject her.
He allows the grace that is in him to flow into her. And is the exchange grace for grace.
Grace for grace. What about the thief on the cross?
Do you ever think about this?
In the last split second of both of their lives, Jesus life lived in holiness and perfection. This guy lived in sin and violence. And in the last split second, he says, lord Jesus, when you come into your kingdom, remember me.
What if Jesus had said, now, now, now you're just trying to win at the last minute.
What if Jesus had said, are you kidding me? Live your whole life in sin, violence. You're hanging on the cross for murder. Now you want to come in the kingdom? I don't think so.
Instead he says, this day you will be with me in paradise.
What about us? What about our own petitions for forgiveness?
We say, lord, please forgive me, please forgive him. What if he said, okay, I forgive you, I forgive you. But I want you to know how you've hurt me.
That's not your God, that's your mother in law.
What if we.
You say, well, if he just will let me come to heaven. What if you're in heaven and you've been in heaven for you come through the throne room and Jesus and Peter and Paul and them, they're in there laughing and telling jokes and you come in and Jesus says, shh, there he is.
That's not heaven, that's hell.
That's a junior high school.
When he forgives, he forgives utterly. When he gives, he gives without limitation. When he blesses, he blesses because he enjoys blessing. That's the very core of the first chapter of John. Jesus reveals who God is and. And the God of Abraham, Isaac, Israel, and Jesus, the God we call God, our God, is a God of grace and generous love. Grace upon grace upon grace.
Therefore, when you start to talk about holiness, or let's put it another way, godliness, a godly life, a godlike life.
The core, the essential reality of a godly life, therefore has to be a life of grace.
Therefore has to be a life of grace and generosity. The giving grace of God has to be revealed in us. As the grace of God was revealed in Jesus, the grace of Jesus has to be revealed in us.
It is a giving relationship.
Because he loved, we love. Because he gave, we give.
I was preaching a revival service at First United Methodist Church in Marietta, Georgia. Dr. Charlie Sinath, God rest his soul, was the pastor, and he invited me in to preach Holy Spirit revival Sunday morning through Wednesday night.
In those days they didn't put you in hotels. You stayed in people's homes.
And I stayed in this mansion. I mean, a beautiful home with these Old people. I was in my early 30s. These were really old people, way up in their 50s and this gorgeous multimillion dollar home. And I preached Sunday morning, Sunday night when I gave the invitation for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The lady of the house came to the altar and I went over and knelt with her. There were a lot of people doing ministry, but I just knelt with her because I was in her house. And I went over to her and I said, you want to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit? She said, yes, I do, but there's something between me and God.
I braced myself. You know, what is this? I said, do you know what it is? She said, yes, I know what it is. She said, it's my antiques.
I said, what?
She said, you've been in my house.
The whole house is decorated with antiques. She said, I don't even have any idea. Priceless. The whole house is decorated in antiques. And she said, I'm terrified that if I give my life fully to God, he'll take my antiques.
Isn't that funny?
She said, can you guarantee me that God won't ask for my antiques?
I said, no, no. I said, he may ask for your house, your car, everything. I said, no, I cannot guarantee you that.
I said, here's the thing.
If that is standing between you and the fullness of the Holy Spirit, the joy, the baptism of power that you want, give it to him and see what he does.
She broke. She broke, prayed through. She said, God is yours, the house is yours. Everything's yours. All that I have is yours. She received the baptism of the spirit in a beautiful, beautiful way. So after the service, we're standing talking and her husband came up and said, look, it's starting to snow. It's really cold. I'm going to go home and get the dog out of the backyard and put him in the garage. And you bring Dr. Ohtlen in your car. She said, okay, but she said, just put him in the garage, leave the door open, but get a blanket for him.
So fine. He left. After a while, I left, went in the car with this lady. When we pulled up in the driveway and the lights shown into the garage, she stopped the car and put her head on the steering wheel. Started laughing.
I said, what? What's so funny? She said, the dog. The dog. I said, I. I can see him laying there on a blanket. She said, I sent my idiot husband home to put a blanket on the dog. She said, that's a $40,000 antique quilt.
I said, well, he hadn't been Laying on it for long. Go and get it. She said, no, no. She said, I gave it to God. If he wants to give it to the dog, that's fine.
There is a certain level of victory in just getting your hands off of everything.
So there is also a certain level of delight in it, of joy.
I was preaching in a small village in West Africa in Ghana, and we had gone way out in the bush and this was a little village, mercilessly hot poverty, no running water, no electricity, nothing. We just did the crusade right in the middle of the day in open square. I preached off of the.
Off of the hood of the car. We were in beat up old Peugeot and I just stood up on the hood of the Peugeot and preached. And the people responded so powerfully, standing there in that blazing sun in the middle of the day. And it was so wonderful and powerful and we finally had to go to make our way back to some semblance of civilization. I climbed down off the car and we started away. And the people gathered around the car and coming from the back of the crowd, they were passing hand to hand over this crowd a naked loaf of bread, big long loaf of bread like that, and a live chicken. And this chicken did bend its wings back and tied the wings. And they're passing this chicken and this loaf of bread over the crowd to me.
And I turned to o', Donna, my associate there, and I said, oh, Sammy, they're giving that to us. He said, yes. I said, sammy, I cannot take that.
I said, look, look how poor that may be. The only chicken in this village. I said, I cannot take that. He said, listen to me, you're going to take it.
He said, you're going to take it. I said, sammy, they don't have anything.
He said, you're right, they don't have anything. Will you steal their generosity as well?
He said, anyway, white man, you don't want to eat the chicken? I will.
The joy, the delight, the liberty of their giving. When he handed me that loaf of bread and that chicken and I held them up like that and I said, thank you, thank you. And they were cheering as we drove off. Sammy said, give me the chicken.
But this is what occurred to me. This is what occurred to me.
God doesn't need anything. We've got.
God does not need anything. I didn't need that chicken. I didn't need that loaf of bread.
I had in my pocket money that would have bought every kind of livestock in that village.
I didn't need that.
But they needed the joy and the delight of giving it. And they needed my response to receive it with gratitude and to praise them. And I thought to myself, that's exactly how it is to God.
To God. Everything I've got, everything. I, I don't have a multimillion dollar house filled with antiques. I don't have it. But if I had it and I gave it all to God, it is as a loaf of bread and a live chicken, and he doesn't need it.
That's the delight of the life, of generosity, of just giving.
What kinds of offerings can we make to God? Let me give you a few. If you've never thought of these.
First of all, okay, let me deal with the issue of tithing right away, because that's always a big deal to people.
I don't know what you teach, so pastor can straighten this out next Sunday, but I believe in tithing. A tithe is 10% of your income. And then people start asking all these questions. Do I tithe before taxes or after taxes? If I own a company, do I tithe off the company and my personal income? And all these, all those are legalistic questions. I don't deal with any of those. You sort those things out with God and with your own spirit. What I'm talking about is tithing. The second thing is, then I have people say tithing is Old Testament. That's under the law. I'm under grace. I never argue with them. I always say, you're right, you're 100% right. Here's my question.
Does grace give less than the law or more than the law?
And they always say, you know, I am under the law, So I believe in tithing.
And here's the if your faith is not at tithing now, start somewhere.
Start somewhere. If your faith is for 5%, if you don't have faith for 10%, start with 5%.
Try God. I promise you, you will not regret it. Go to 7. Go to 10.
My wife. And I'm not. I'm just saying this to say to you, we left 10% years and years and years ago.
10% is. That's, that's not the piece de resistance of Christian giving.
Kindergarten.
That's where you start.
Then comes offerings. There are all kinds of ways you can make offerings. One is a thank offering.
Look that that day comes, that moment in your life where you just are that Sunday particularly thankful for something. You're just thankful that a new grandchild has just come and you're just thankful. Or maybe, maybe your own last child has finally gotten out of the house.
Whatever it is just a thank offering. Then there's no amount assigned to that.
That's not a percentage. That's a thank offering.
One is a love offering. You just want to express love for something, a ministry, an idea, a moment just to say love. A thank offering, a love offering, a praise offering is perfectly good. In the Bible, they talk about a wave offering that the priest would lift the loaf of bread or whatever it is and wave it back and forth. In other words, the connection between giving and worship.
Lord, I just want to worship you today. Now, I'm not suggesting that you hold your check up and wave it around, but I'm just saying that there is a connection between the response of love. He loves me, I love him. He gave to me. I want to give to him and I want to worship him. And this morning, I just feel particularly worshipful.
I want to give generously.
I don't know who counts the offering checks here. I don't know who counts it, but you ever get these checks, they're like $314.17.
You ever get those?
What's up with that?
I can tell you exactly what it is. Somebody sits down with his paycheck and a calculator. Paycheck times one, there's your tithe, and not one penny more.
Come on, round it up occasionally, double it occasionally, just get reckless.
Give because of joy of graciousness.
Now go beyond money.
Grace for life.
Grace upon grace. Remember what the passage says. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus.
So grace and truth.
So, guys, listen to Dr. Mark. I'm going to help you. All the married men, listen to this. This is why you came right here.
When your wife says, does this dress make me look fat?
Listen to me. That's a moment for grace, not truth.
Does this dress make me look fat? You don't want to say, Well, I don't think it's the dress, baby. No, that's not. That is not going to work for you.
She says, does this dress make me look fat? You say, baby, anything you wear, you make it look good.
In fact, no matter what you wear or don't wear, you still turn me on.
That will work for you because that's grace and truth.
And it has to do with all kinds of things in life. When I was the president at oru, where Trey was, I came around the corner of a building one time. There was a boy standing there, young student standing there, had an armload of books, and we kind of nearly collided. And I said, oh, hey, you Handsome, how you doing? And he dropped them all.
I said, well, son, did I scare you? And he said, yeah, kind of.
He said, I'm 22 and nobody has ever called me handsome.
Yes, exactly. I wanted to say, where is your grandmother?
It's your job.
All your grandchildren should be the smartest, handsomest, most wonderful, most perfect children. I told my son, our son Travis pastors a great church. I told him. I said, oh, your sons. He's got a. Our oldest grandson is Mark.
I said, travis, I feel like that perfection is a recessive gene. It skips a generation.
And he said, that's the strangest thing, Daddy. That's just what Pawpaw told me.
The grace, the generosity.
When we first came back from Africa, our little boy wanted to be an American.
He wanted to do an American thing. He joined the Little League.
Oh, God, what a demonic experience.
I don't mean the little boys. The little boys, they're so cute. The little boys that I'm talking about, the dads.
Some big old fat slob sitting up in the stands yelling at his little boy in public, keep your eye on the ball, stupid.
I just wanted to climb up there and say, keep your eye on this sport.
We got in the car after one game.
Travis was so downcast. I said, oh, you made me so proud today, Travis. He said, I struck out four times. I said, yeah, but you were the best.
I said, everybody struck out. Little League, Little League's not about getting hit. It's a race between first base and the backstop.
Everybody strikes out and the catcher can't catch the ball.
I said, you struck out the best.
He said, really?
I said, I'll watch those other little brats that throw the bat and kick dirt and cry. I said, oh, I was just ashamed.
But I said, you struck out. You put your bat in the rack. You handed your helmet to the next kid and went and took him place on the seat. I said, I was so proud. He said, really, Dad? I said, listen, son, you strike out like that two or 300 times, they're going to put you on the All Stars.
We talked about it all the way home.
We got home, his mother had soup and sandwich. She said, how was the game? He said, I struck out four times.
She said, do you think he understands the game?
Grace upon grace.
The life of grace, the life of generosity. The life that gives not by measure, but gives generously and graciously and goes beyond adventuresome giving, adventuresome giving.
There is in all of us, by the thumbprint of our Creator, there is an Appetite for adventure.
We are made that way. Many of us have bludgeoned it into insensibility over our years. But there is still. I can prove it to you.
Why do people go to scary movies? Why do take their popcorn and their Coke and go sit in a dark theater and say, come on, scare the liver out of me?
Why? It's because it's a vicarious adventure. It's safe.
They get the thrill of the adventure, but there's no real risk. The monster's not going to really come off the screen and eat them.
They like that.
Here's another one. Bungee jumping.
Let me ask you, anybody here ever actually. I'm not talking about seen it on tv. Has anybody here ever actually done bungee jumping? Will you raise your hand? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Let me say something. My mama didn't raise no fool. So climb up on a tall tower, let a stranger tie a rope around your ankles and pay him to throw you off.
What's up with that?
I can tell you what it is. It is the adventure of watching that ground rush up at you and feeling the surge of adrenaline and praying to God Almighty that they measured that rope right.
But without, without real risk, there is no real adventure.
If the risk is artificial, then the adventure is just the jungle ride at Disney World.
You got pop up plastic hippopotamus that comes out of the river, but there's no real risk. The real adventure happens when there's real risk.
That's when you get out on the edge.
Listen, Pastor, I'm not trying to run your people off, okay?
But it's not safe for you to be here.
This is not a safe church.
It's a good church, but it's not safe.
Our God is a good God, but he's not safe.
The closer you get to God, the more risky the adventure is.
Because the closer you get to God, the more you can hear him say things that you couldn't hear when you were far away.
So God can.
God can actually ask for the antiques.
See, Heard this one preacher say it. I didn't. It's not my job to argue with preachers. I didn't say anything to him. But he was talking about the rich young ruler.
Remember the passage? And it says, jesus said, go and sell all that you have and give it to the poor and come again. And it says, he went away sorrowful, for he was very wealthy. So this preacher said it was a test. That if he had said, all right, Lord, I'll do it. I'll be Right back, Jesus would have said, okay, now you don't have to.
I said, I don't think so.
He said, lord, I'm going to sell it all and go give it to the poor. Jesus said, I'll be right here.
I think God calls us to the real adventure of service and love and grace and generosity, where he calls us out into the deep water of it, the generosity of forgiveness.
There are people in this room, not because I know you, but because there are this many Americans in the same place. There are people in this room that are still struggling to forgive something that you think is unforgivable.
After all these years, after all this time, decades, maybe you can't really forgive because you have not really understood the nature of your own forgiveness.
Once you understand grace upon grace, once you understand that, you said, God, forgive me. And he says, forgive you. It's gone. It's washed away. I have no memory of it. It's under the blood of my son. You're not just forgiven, you are cleansed. You're perfected, you are sanctified. It's over. It's completely over. And then your. And then your next door neighbor says, can you please forgive me because I was a month late returning that bar of tool. And you say, yeah, fine.
God says, see, that's not the way we do it.
The way we do it, he said, this is what Jesus said. This is risky Christianity. The way Jesus says this. He says, here's the. Here's this tool I borrowed a couple of months ago. I know I told you I'd bring it back after a couple of days. I forgot. Let me bring it back to you. Jesus says, you say, you know, I gave that to you.
I forgot to tell you. Please forgive me. I didn't loan you that tool. I gave it to you, and I don't want it back.
I almost never get an amen to that.
It's real.
It gets real. When you start. It's fine to talk about theoretical generosity. It's another thing when you start to write the check or make the pledge or give the tool or let go of the antiques, that's a whole different thing.
Starts to get real.
Why? Because this is real.
It doesn't say, Jesus revealed truth and grace. Theoretically, he revealed truth and grace on the cross.
You can't get any more real than the gift of your life in unspeakable agony.
So he says, I'm going to show you what God is like in the sacrificial death of the cross.
And I'm going to Expect you to show those around you what I'm like in the sacrificial risk of obedience.
Well, you've been very patient this morning.
Let me.
Let me bring this to a conclusion.
Think about that lady at First Methodist when she prayed to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
The issue is not really the humorous story about the dog in the quilt.
The issue is the victory of her life.
She was free.
God didn't, as far as I know, take the priceless antiques. I know. I know she didn't give them to me, so I don't know. I don't know that he did take them. What I know is she went in her house free.
She wasn't living in that agonizing tension. I want God, but I'm afraid of what he'll cost me. I want God, but I'm afraid of what he'll demand. There is a freedom in saying, God, I give you everything.
I give it all to you. There's nothing you can ask of me. There's no place you can ask me to go. Even India again.
I'm just saying there's no place he can lead you. No sacrifice to which he can call you. Nothing that doesn't reveal his grace through you, in you as you.
God revealed his grace and grace upon grace through the life and sacrificial death of Jesus Christ.
He reveals his grace and sacrificial love through our lives.
Adventuresome, giving, surrendered and free.
Now that's what God wants for you.
[00:37:09] 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.
