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: You have your Bibles. Now if you'll take those and turn, if you will, in the Old Testament to the book of Zechariah.
Zechariah.
I'm going to begin reading in chapter four, verse six in just a moment.
I'm going to be reading from the King James version this morning.
There is a passage that is translated in KJV Grace.
And it's translated in some of the contemporary translations, more modern translations, differently. It's not vastly differently. It's. They translated God bless it.
But so if something, if God graces something, he does bless it. I can, I can see the Hebrew word is canon should be translated grace. And the King James Bible translates it Grace.
So I'm going to. I like the King James Bible. I just grew up on it. And you don't have to have a King James Bible to go to heaven.
One will be given you when you get there.
But why stand in that long embarrassing line?
I'm joking. I'm always afraid something. Amen. Amen.
No, no, I, I grew up on the King James Bible. The kids at the university always used to ask me, why, Mr. President, why do you always read the King James Bible? I'd say, well, first of all, it's loyalty. I went to high school with King James.
Jimmy, we called him Jimmy. He wasn't a king in high school, you know.
And then the second reason is I like the, I like the flowery Shakespearean sound of the King James Bible. All these and vows that offend everybody else appeal to me. I, I like that. I just kind of used to some of the modern translations where Jesus comes down to the Sea of Galilee and speaks to the disciples. What's happening, dudes?
It's just me.
So I'm going to read from King James, Zechariah, chapter four, starting with verse six.
You follow me in whatever cheap communist imitation you've got.
This church has way too much fun, this Zechariah, chapter four, beginning with verse six. Then he answered and spoke unto me, saying, this is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel is an Old Testament type, the Prince of Restoration, the restoration, saying not by might nor by power, but by My spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts. Who art thou, O great mountain? See the word mountain in prophetic writing.
Mountain may mean all kinds of things. What it almost never means is mountain.
It can mean an agency of government or a force, an army, something like that. A power of. Of the secular world. Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel Thou shalt become a plain.
So here's the revised Rutland translation. Who do you think you are, geopolitical forces of the present age? Who do you think you are? Tyrants and kings and armies? When Jesus shows up, you'll be as flat as a tortilla.
And he shall bring forth the headstone of it thereof with shoutings, crying grace, grace unto it.
Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me saying, the hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house. His hands shall also finish it. Doesn't that sound New Testament?
He who hath begun a good work in you also shall come complete it, shall perform it. His hands began what God is doing in your life. His hands began it. His hands will complete it. Now put your hands on your Bible and let's pray together.
To a more maravioso.
Pray.
Lord, we praise you, we worship you.
Somehow, Lord, brush aside every barrier to divine communication, linguistic, generational, and speak to us deep within that. When we leave here today, we will say to one another, surely the Lord has spoken unto us in the mighty name, Jesus, the strong, Son of God.
Amen. Amen. And amen. Amen.
I've devoted my life to the study of communication.
In writing, obviously. 20 books in radio and television, mass media, and in preaching, teaching. I've tried to understand what makes communication work when it goes south. What went wrong?
I know what some of you are thinking. If he's studied communication his whole life, seems like he'd be better at it.
But you don't know how bad I might have been were one to boil the entire discipline of communication for a thousand years. The creme de sauce that would rise to the top is simply four things.
The right message to the right party in the right way at the right time.
Get any of those four variables wrong, and it can all go wrong, really wrong really fast.
One of the things that's happening now in communication, even when we're all speaking the same language, is that words are changing. They've always changed. Words have always changed. When you read the King James Bible. There are some words in the King James Bible that don't mean mean the same thing in the 21st century. However, now, because of Technology, the, the transition of words has accelerated rapidly. Their words. Now where, let's see, there's somebody over here under the age of 21. Raise your hand. I see some young people. Okay, I have a word of prophecy for you. Here it is. If you should live to be my age and Jesus tarries, there are words that you now use.
You'll still use them, but they won't mean the same thing.
They won't mean the same thing. Anybody here know what I'm talking about? They're just words now that don't mean the same thing. I went to speak to a high school audience in California recently, which is evidently where the English language will be destroyed. And there was thousands of high school kids. And they were with it from the moment I began to preach. I don't know when I've ever preached to an audience so engaged they were with me from the opening sentence of the sermon almost. And afterward I was speaking to a group of boys down front and the first boy came up to me. He said, Dr. Mark, he said, you are one bad preacher.
In my lifetime, bad has come to mean good.
He meant good.
He said bad. He meant good.
The second boy said, you're not just bad. He said, you're the baddest preacher I've ever heard.
I didn't have the heart to tell him that baddest is not even a word in the English language.
The third boy said, you're not just bad. He said, you are one sick dude.
One can only sense my level of personal affirmation.
Early on in life. I, I set a sort of a life goal of becoming a really sick dude.
The fourth boy was not content with these low altitude compliments. He said, you're not just bad, you're not just sick. He said, you are the OG of crunk.
I have no clue.
I, I teach the National Institute of Christian Leadership. And some years ago a young man came through who now pastors a hip hop church, whatever that is.
So I called him. I said, look, Tommy, somebody just told me I was the OG of crunk. What does it mean? He said, OG means original gangster.
So I said, he told me I'm the original gangster of crunk.
He said, right.
I said, okay, see, that really didn't help me much.
I said, what I'm, what I'm looking for is what does it mean?
And he said, oh, oh. He said, it means you beat a mack Daddy.
I said, tommy, what I'm after here would fall along the lines of like a definition.
He said, Dr. Mark, I'm trying. He said, it means, you be the mack, daddy. You be off the chain.
I just decided to leave it alone.
Now, when a word loses its meaning, any word, there's a certain level of tragedy attached. But when it happens to our functional biblical vocabulary, the way we think about God, and therefore the words with which we talk to each other about God, then it can. It can mean that our. Our understanding of who God is is warped around our misapprehension of the words themselves.
Years ago, I used to preach the Minneapolis Soul Fest. We would go into downtown Minneapolis, set up a big platform with great banks of speakers and band. We'd blast the music out about 9 decibels above the level where all the birds in the air died. And we'd get a. Get a big crowd up and out and preach. And then the people would come forward and the platform was high like this, so that when people came forward, the workers would just kneel on the apron of the platform and pray with people.
One person came right here in front of the pulpit and put her forehead over on the edge of the platform, and her hair fell down. And I realized nobody saw her.
So I came and knelt down and I said, young lady, you want me to pray with you? She said, yes.
I said, do you want the Lord in your life? She said, I need help. I need help.
So I said, arb, pray with me. Right out loud. Pray with me as I lead you, Heavenly Father.
She didn't say anything.
I said, miss, look, just say the words that I say. I'm going to lead you.
I started again.
Heavenly Father.
She didn't say anything. I said, what's. What's the problem? And she looked up for the first time, and this eye was swollen completely shut.
She had a horrible bruise down across her cheek, and her upper lip was split open until I could see her little teeth, tears streaming down her battered face. She said, you know, mister, I got all the Father I can handle.
And I realized she was not resistant to the work of God in her life, that she couldn't understand fatherhood.
Now, when that happens to any of our Christian vocabulary, it can warp how we understand who God is.
So here's a word in Zechariah, chapter four. Grace.
It's come to mean almost anything in the body of Christ. And therefore it's come to be almost to mean almost nothing.
If you use it to mean everything, it's meaningless. We use it like agape, mayonnaise. You slap enough of it on anything, it can make rancid ham taste good.
The Picture of grace here in this passage of Scripture is so graphic, so beautiful, and so surprising because am I the only one? I tend to think of grace as a peculiarly, or maybe exclusively New Testament concept, that the Old Testament is about law and the New Testament is about grace. So here in this minor prophecy of the Old Testament is this powerful and graphic image of the operation of grace. Here's the image it is of us on one side of a massive and unassailable, impregnable mountain. Huge. It's an escarpment that goes in both directions from pole to pole, higher than we could never get over, we could never tunnel through, we could never get under it. We're on one side, and our Savior, Jesus is on the other side. Now we know that he's our Savior because we've been saved by grace.
Salvation by grace is language that's accepted in the contemporary evangelical world. We know that we're saved by grace, not by works, lest any man should boast, but we're saved by grace through faith, and that not of ourselves. So we know that the problem is that, that we tend to see salvation by grace as an isolated historical event.
I receive salvation by faith through grace. My name is written in the Lamb's Book. My sins are under the blood. Now I've had grace.
Now we tend to think Jesus retreats to the other side of the mountain and he says, now get this mountain out of your life.
Get this out of the way. And where it was, I'll build a smooth place where we can build a temple or a tabernacle, if you will, where Moses says, where God says, where I will meet with you. We want this mountain out of the way. So Jesus, we think, goes to the other side and we spend the rest of our Christian walk trying to move that mountain. Shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone. This year, I'll move the mountain if it kills me.
The only thing is it'll kill you if it doesn't put you right straight in a religious loony bin, rocking back and forth in a straight jacket and humming Jesus Loves me because you'll never move that mountain.
So it just makes people angrier and angrier. And I'm not saying. I'm not saying they're not going to go to heaven when they die. They go. They just get angry and I can't move the mountain. They feel defeated and angry, older and bitter. Everything.
I believe they're going to heaven when they die, but the sooner the better.
That is a joyless, powerless kind of Christianity that Lives longing for the mountain to be moved and living in my own ego, impotence, ability to move it.
That's the point at which many people leave the church and some even leave the faith.
Probably every one of you in here knows someone who used to go to church here or somewhere. Now they no longer go. And they, they have all kinds of excuses, things they, they gripe about all kinds of stuff. It's too hot, it's too cold. The preacher's got some weird accent. I can't understand a word he says.
The drummer's so crazy they have to lock him up in a glass booth.
Something. No, they have something all the time.
The fact of the matter is they have a kind of twisted idealism that says I won't go to church. They think it's hypocrisy. I won't go to church with that mountain in my life.
So instead they stay home with the mountain in their lives. It doesn't resolve the mountain or its destructiveness.
Others take a different approach.
They drape the mountain in camouflage.
So they drag the mountain like a. A ball and chain draped in camo behind them across the parking lot of spirit filled churches, encountering other people dragging their camo draped mountain. And we enter into them mutually agreed upon covenant of suspended disbelief. Do you see a mountain in my life? Nay, brother, thou hast no mountain.
What about me? No mountain there. Let's go to church.
And in the spiritual domain over our heads, there may be a veritable Sierra of unresolved issues.
Others, and it's most of us, thank God, others finally face the futility of our battle with the mountain.
And the mountain is different in every life. It's different in every life.
Hurt, hate, anger, racial prejudice, chronic sin, bondage, alcoholism, drugs, whatever it is. It's different in every life. But we finally deal with the futility of our battle.
Maybe years and years. And finally we, we fall at the foot of the mountain and cry out to Jesus on the other side, lord, are you over there?
Because this sucker won't budge.
And I quit.
What do you say to that? I quit.
What we think mistakenly is that from the other side of the mountain we're going to get a tongue lashing.
Because we've projected onto Jesus the face, voice and personality of our high school football coach.
So we think he's going to scold us, you big fat sissy.
If you can't play with pain, you can't play on the Jesus team.
Pull your socks up and hit that mountain again.
I actually played high school Football, right at the end of the Civil War. I remember.
Rude to laugh at a guest speaker.
Work with your people, Pastor.
I played in the old days. I wonder if there's any men here old enough to remember before I played. Before there was platoon football, you didn't have offensive and defensive specialists. You played both ways and you had to. There were only 19 boys in the school. You just put your helmet on and play till you died.
But I played quarterback on offense and I played free safety on defense.
I dreaded our inner squad scrimmages more than any game we played because our son, our coach's son, was a tailback on our team. And he was the most vicious and lethal runner I've ever attempted to tackle. If Bobby got into the deep secondary, he came at you all helmet and knees and demons.
And I was a gentleman. I didn't want to impede Bobby's path to glory.
I would have escorted him into the end zone.
But Bobby was on a search and destroy mission. He would chase me.
Finally I said, what is up with you? You're not the biggest guy ever tackled. What's the deal? He said, you want to know what the deal is?
Come home with me after school.
Well, I was shocked at that.
Nobody went home with Bobby.
Not only was he a vicious and lethal runner, he was a vicious and lethal human being. We were all terrified of him. We thought he was psychotic.
I went home with him after school and we went into his garage and he pulled the metal garage door down and waist high all across it looked like somebody had been hitting him with a sledgehammer.
He said, there's your answer. He said the day I started the sixth grade, my football coach dad put a helmet on my head and made me bend over at the waist and run headfirst into that garage door. And he said, I've hit it every single day. Birthday, Christmas, New Year's. No acceptance. Every day. And any day I didn't hit it hard enough, he would hit my legs with a braided whistle strap. He said, you run into a metal garage door every day for about six years and, and 165 pounds safety just don't look like much.
Well, no wonder he was a vicious runner.
And no wonder he was a vicious human being.
That's child abuse of the worst order.
To force your son to attempt what you both know is impossible. No matter how he works out in the weight room or how perfectly he goes into a three point stance or with what ferocity he approaches, he'll never pull punch through that Door.
And then you take all that frustration piled up in the psyche of an adolescent male and focus it on the opposition, on a football field for your own glory as a coach.
Shame. Shame.
Is that your Jesus?
Because if that's your Jesus, your Jesus is my devil.
Do you think he comes behind us with the braided whistle strap of Protestant works, righteousness lashing our legs? Pray better, fast more. Be a better Christian.
The ministry is not exempt.
There's more than one of us is trying to preach our way out from under that lash, be a better preacher, build a bigger church.
That's just not Jesus.
So we collapse at the foot of the mountain and we cry out, lord, are you over there?
I quit.
And instead of a tongue lashing from the other side of the mountain comes words we never thought we'd hear.
Good.
I've been waiting for you to quit.
Now stand back.
And then it's says this remarkable thing. Jesus shouts.
What does he shout? Do better. Work harder. Muscle up? No, in fact, he doesn't shout at us at all. He shouts at the mountain.
And what does he shout? Grace. Grace.
And the mountain melts like wax.
The liberal humanist will tell you that God doesn't really care about the mountain, that he nudges the angels in the ribs and winks. Boys will be boys. But that condemns you to the destructiveness of the mountain, whatever it is.
The legalist tells you that grace is that God will finally make you strong enough to move the mountain. But that condemns you to failure because the Bible says it's not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, said the Lord of hosts.
So grace is. God wants the mountain out of your life, but he wants to move it himself.
Now he's also a gentleman.
You want to hammer on that mountain your whole Christian experience. God will stand on the parapet of heaven with the angels at his elbows and watch you back up and run at that mountain. You say, well, this boy's going to hurt himself.
Here he comes again. Boom.
That's going to leave a mark.
It is when we surrender that the operation of grace can begin.
Your efforts do not help God.
So. So what happens is we become graceless.
Can I coin a phrase? We become disgraceful.
We become disgraceful Christians, disgraceful lives, disgraceful churches, because you cannot give away what you don't have.
When the reservoir of grace runs dry in your life, the people around you that are longing for the overflow of the river of God's grace go hungry and thirsty because you can't give away what you don't have.
And so we create the aberration of graceless, disgraceful Christians.
Whole churches that are disgraceful.
I pastored a church in Orlando some years ago. One Sunday morning, I was shaking hands with people in the lobby after this man came up to me. He was so angry, he could hardly talk plain. At first, I thought he was speaking in tongues.
He said, well, I'm leaving the church. I said, why? He said, because of the lie that you told in the pulpit this morning.
I said, what are you talking about? He said, oh, I heard you. I heard you. Maybe nobody else in the church heard you, but I did. You talked about a certain battle in World War I, and you said, that battle happened in 1918.
He said, I happen to be an expert in American military history, and I know that battle happened in 1917.
He said, A man that a lie about a thing like that would lie about anything. And I can't attend a church where there's a liar in the pulpit.
I said, well, bye.
No, I mean, adios.
That is just disgraceful.
That's disgraceful. To pick and pry at somebody and try to make mistakes into lies, that is disgraceful.
Let me tell you about another man in the same church. My dear friend, still my friend. An attorney in the church. After every sermon I preached. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, all the years I was there, every sermon I ever preached, soon as it was over, he'd come up and say, oh, Dr. Rutland, that's the greatest sermon I've ever heard in my life.
Now, look, I was born at night, but I wasn't born last night.
I know at a cognitive level, nobody can preach the definitive Christian masterpiece three times a week, year after year after year. I know that intellectually. But I like that lawyer lying to me.
When I came out of the pulpit, I was looking for that attorney.
I wanted grace.
Now, I know what you're thinking. We can't pump our pastor's ego up like that and go on and pump. There'd be some mean old lady in the lobby with a pen. She'll pop him.
After a half a century in the ministry, decided that the entire race of Christianity is divided into only two tribes, pumpers and poppers.
I believe the eyes of God move to and fro through the earth, looking for a church full of pumpers on which to pour out his grace.
People are longing for grace. They want to pull up in the parking lot of the church and. And say, mmm, what's. What's that smell?
Oh, I love that. Mmm.
But they didn't even know what it is. You may not even know what it is. It's the sweet, attractive aroma of the grace of Almighty God.
We not only disgrace our preachers and our churches, we disgrace our own families. We disgrace our own families.
When we came home from Africa, our little boy is now a great pastor. He was 11 years old. He 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. Little boys were so cute. I'm talking about the dads.
Some big old fat slob sitting up in the stands yelling at his own 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're on the way home from a Little League game one day. Travis was so downcast. I said, son, you look great today. He said, I don't think you understand the game. He said, I.
He said, I struck out four times.
I said, oh, everybody. I grew up. I played Little League. I said, I understand the game. Everybody strikes out. Little League is just a race between the backstop and third base. I understand the game. Nobody can actually hit the ball.
But I said, you were the best.
He said, really, Dad? I said, oh, I was so proud of you. All those other little brats that kick the dirt and cry, throw their bats. I said, you'd go over and put your bat in the rack, hand your helmet to the next kid and take his seat on the bench. I said, I just wanted to stand up and say, my little boy. Woof. Did it right there.
I said, you strike out like that a couple of hundred times this year, they'll put you on the All Stars.
We talked about it all the way home. We got home, Allison had soup and sandwich for him. She said, well, how'd the game go, Travis? He said, I struck out four times.
He went upstairs. She said, you think he understands the game?
It's disgraceful how we act toward our families. Disgraceful.
I was the president of a university in the Midwest. This man came to see me because I want to talk to you about my son. Thousands of kids at the school, I didn't know them all, but I happened to know his son. As soon as he named him, I said, oh, I know your boy. What a great kid. He's in one of our worship teams. He's a chaplain in one of. The. One of the dormitories. I said, oh, he's a great kid. He said, I know all that. I know all that. That's not why I'm here.
I said, well, why are you here? He said, I'll tell you exactly why I'm here. It's that earring. I want you to make him take that earring out of his ear. I can't stand the thought of it. Every time I look at him, all I can think sees that earring. I want you to make him take it out.
I wanted to say, you know, you had him 19 years.
I've had him three semesters. How come? It's my job.
But I. I felt he probably wasn't in a place to hear that.
So the next day, I called the boy in my office. I said, you know who was here yesterday? He said, oh, yeah. I knew who was here, and I know what he was here about. He wants you to make me take his earring out. I said, man, your dad is a piece of work.
He said, Dr. Rutland is so stupid. I said, it is stupid. He said, can you imagine letting an earring stand between you and somebody you love? Isn't that stupid? I said, it's stupid. It's petty and childish. He said, that's right. It's petty and sound childish. Let an earring destroy a meaningful relationship. I said, that is so, so stupid. He said, yes. Oh. He said, I know what you're doing.
I said, look, son, one of you is going to have to be an adult. And I. I met your dad.
He said, I never thought of it that way. He said, it was all. I was only thinking of it from my side.
I never thought of it that way.
He said, you're right. I'm letting an earring destroy my relationship with my dad. I can't believe I've done this. I've never been so proud of a college boy in my life.
Took that earring out and laid it on my coffee table.
He said, my father never see that the rest of my life.
Now, listen.
Look up here.
I'm old.
Let me admit to you. Am I the only one.
Boys with earrings. You ever just take that out of your ear and give it to your sister?
On the other hand.
On the other hand, that is disgraceful.
How can we let things like that disgrace. We disgrace our own families?
I. I came around the corner of the university building one day, and there was a boy standing there holding a stack of books. And I said, hey, you, handsome. How you doing? And he dropped them.
I said, well, son, did I scare you? He said, well, kind of you did.
He said, I'm 22 years old. Nobody has ever Called me handsome.
Where are his grandparents?
Where's his mother?
That's disgraceful.
That's disgraceful.
I went to a pastor's house one day and a beautiful little daughter there and she came out wearing them. She was about 6. She had one of these little princess gowns on. You know what I said, oh, you look beautiful. You look like a princess. He said, doctor, I'll thank you not to do that.
He said, I don't give my. I don't give my daughters carnal compliments.
I only compliment them on things, virtues. I tell them how brave they are, how good they are. So he said, I'll thank you not to do that. I said, sure, no problem. No problem at all. But I'm thinking to myself, oh, thou fools.
I got two daughters. I've got two daughters. They're both gorgeous. They look like their mother from the time they were in kindergarten. I'd take them on my lap and say, oh, baby, your eyes are beautiful. Your skin is so soft. Your hair is gorgeous. You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Why?
Because I knew someday some 16 year old boy is going to say, oh, your eyes are beautiful. Oh, your hair is so gorgeous.
I wanted them. Grace builds somebody up. It builds them up inside. It edifies them. I want her to be able to say, my dad's been telling me that for 15 years. I don't owe you anything.
Grace our churches, we grace our pastors, we grace our tomb, children, we listen. You'd be amazed at how disgraceful marriages are. Just disgraceful. People that love each other and then we'll give each other any grace. Where are the married men in the room? Married men, raise your hand. Oh, I'm gonna help you.
Your wife walks. Your wife walks out with that dress that she bought at the shopping mall. She's modeling it for you.
She says, look what I bought at the mall today. She didn't want you to peer over the top of the sports page. I might say that set me back.
I'm gonna confiscate your credit card.
That's disgraceful.
She says, look what I bought today. She's modeling it. You throw that newspaper aside and jump to your feet, Baby, look at you.
You wear that on Wednesday night and we're gonna be late to prayer meeting. Now that's what she wants to hear.
That's grace.
That's grace.
And you ladies, I'm gonna help you. Now, your husband is like God in one way.
Saw one woman lean over and said, well, this, this is why I came right Here.
No, here it is. The Bible says God has numbered the hairs on your husband's head.
So has your husband.
And he does not need you to remind him that the number is decreasing annually.
It's not funny. It's not a joke.
No.
We've been married this summer 58 years. I travel all the time. Oh yes, I travel. I'm still traveling all over, everywhere. I start to go out of the house and go off to some God forsaken foreign country, Ohio or something, and my wife of 58 years will put her little hands on my face and she'll say, oh God, Mark, after all these years, you're still the handsomest, sexiest man I've ever seen.
Look, look up here.
I live in the real world.
But a lawyer and a wife that will both lie to you is grace.
We disgrace our churches. We disgrace our families. Worst of all, we disgrace ourselves.
We live in useless and destructive levels of self judgment that should have been resolved by the grace of God years ago.
Have you ever heard anybody say. If you've ever said it, I know you'll never say it again. And if you ever hear anybody else say it, you'll know what to answer. You ever hear this? People say, I know God has forgiven me, but I can't forgive myself. You ever hear that? Here's the answer to that. It's, it's. You might want to write it down. It's kind of a high tone theological answer, but you can look it up later on. Here it is. Here's the answer. Who do you think you are?
That's the answer. Who do you think you are? God says there is therefore now no condemnation. The almighty God who spoke light into existence, says there is therefore now no condemnation. And you say, yes, there is. Who do you think you are?
You make yourself a better judge than God Almighty. That is disgraceful. You hold yourself in bondage to sins that God has already not just forgiven, but forgotten.
But it's sorry, no worries, just Covid. It's hard.
It's not just sin, it's. It's stupid cosmetic issues.
We, we judge ourselves. We, we measure ourselves against movie stars that have had $50,000 worth of cosmetic surgery and all this stuff. We hold ourselves in bondage. This stupid things. We look in the full length mirror of self evaluation and we despise what we see. We say, look at you.
What happened to you?
Where did your hair go?
And whence cometh this fact?
We disgrace our own selves. We disgrace ourselves.
Look, we're all in this together. We're all human.
We all have issues. We all have.
Listen, if nobody's told you there's something funny about you.
No, there's something funny about you. We can all see it. You need to get in on the joke.
People, people just make themselves disgraceful. Look, this is not real Christianity. I'm not trying to run your people off, but this, this is church.
I've never committed a really venal sin in church. This is not real.
Real Christianity is Tuesday morning when you're running late to work and you run out and slam your hand in the door of your own truck.
That's real.
That's real. That's where you find out about grace in your life. You say, oh, I'm getting a lawyer. Ford Motor Company's going down, they're going down.
Or you condemn yourself. Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave demo.
Or more likely, you blame God. Well, you've done it to me again.
This is what I've come to expect.
[00:42:31] Speaker A: Fat.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: Or you can lift that mangled paw aloft and grant yourself grace.
Sooner or later everybody does something stupid.
Sooner or later you dads listen to Dr. Mark. Sooner or later you raise up under the kitchen cabinet and knock your brains loose and everybody in the family freezes. Can we laugh? Can we laugh? Can we laugh?
And you can scream at your wife and kick the cat. Or you can laugh first and give everybody permission to join in.
We disgrace. We live disgraceful lives.
And it's completely unnecessary because God longs to pour his grace into the empty vessels which are us so that they flow out an overflowing fountain of grace that touches the people around us. Our wives, children, our spouses, our co workers of. We can become fountains of grace or we can become brittle, angry, disgraceful lives that wound the people around us.
Well, let me close with this.
What about God himself?
Have you ever thought about this? The last thing that anybody says to you is really important.
I've been making a little study of famous last words.
I kind of thinking about trying to write an article or maybe a book or something on famous last words. It's fascinating the things that people say on their deathbeds. John Wilkes Booth, who murdered Abraham Lincoln, as he lay dying, he put his hand up that it held the gun in front of his face and he said, useless. And he died.
What a pathetic waste.
John Wesley, on his deathbed he said, the best part is God is with us.
What is God's last word?
Suppose somebody came in here today and said, I don't know anything about Christianity. How can I Understand it. And we said, oh, here, take this Bible, take a Bible and read. And he starts to read in the book of Genesis and he. He goes through the prophets and he begins to give faith. And then he reads about Jesus and the resurrection and he's just beginning to think, this is wonderful, this is joyful. What if he came to the end of the Bible and the last sentence in the Bible said, thus saith the Lord.
I was just joking. I hate all of you.
No. Is it just me? Would that be a little disheartening?
Or what if you came to the end of the Bible and said, I'm going to take some of you to heaven, I'm going to take most of you to hell, and I'm not going to tell you the basis on which I choose?
Well, that's terrifying, isn't it?
Did you come to the end of the whole Bible and it says, though God says, I've been saying this and saying it and saying it, and I'm going to say it one last time. I said it in the creation. I said it in the Garden of Eden. I said it through the law and the prophets. I said it through my son. I said it on the cross. I said it in the Resurrection. I said it through the apostolic Church. I've said it on every page of the New Testament. And now I'm going to say it one last time. And the whole Bible ends.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
All the way.
All the way time.
All the way to heaven.
Grace is not just the singular salvation event. Yes, that's grace, but it's grace every step and breath of the way.
Their whole denominational wars fought over how many works of grace there are would an asinine argument, and one from which I have excused myself. I no longer take part.
How many works of grace are there? How many breaths have you breathed?
How many morsels of food have you put in your mouth? How many times were you protected from death by angelic presence and you weren't even aware of it? It's all grace all the way.
The grace.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
Hallelujah to the Lamb.
[00:47:30] 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 maturity and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
