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: Well, if you have your Bibles, if you'll take those and turn to the second chapter of Luke.
What I'm going to read are two passages that don't seem to connect. Luke chapter two. And then we'll turn directly to Acts chapter one.
What I want to deal with is the conflict and the and the confluence between the natural and the supernatural.
And I want to deal with two widely disparate points in the life and ministry of Jesus. His birth and his promise of the baptism of the Holy Spirit after the resurrection.
So Luke chapter two. And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was the governor of Syria.
And all went to be taxed, everyone to his own city. Pause just a moment. It means the city of your lineage, what Your family city.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because it was the house and lineage of David to be taxed, with Mary, his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was that while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
And she brought forth her firstborn and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for him for them in the end. Turn to Acts chapter one.
Now we have gone through the life, the death, the life, the ministry, the death of Jesus, his crucifixion, his resurrection.
And now Luke, who wrote the book of Luke, has now decided to write another book that's about the post resurrection church and the power, the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit.
So he is now beginning his second book.
The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, meaning the book of Luke, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which he was taken up after he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen, to whom also he showed himself alive after his passion, meaning the crucifixion by many infallible proofs being seen of them 40 days. And look at the next line. Make a note of it, or underline it, or circle it or something. And speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God and being assembled together with them, he commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which saith he. You have heard of me for John.
That's John the Baptist. It's very important to me as a Pentecostal, to know that the first person to preach the baptism of the Holy Spirit was not a Pentecostal, he was a Baptist.
For John truly baptized with water. But you should be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.
When they were therefore come together, they asked of him, saying, lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?
And he said unto them, it is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power, but you shall receive power after that. The Holy Ghost is come upon you. And you shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth. Now put your hand on your Bible, if you will, and let's pray together. Padre bendito celestialter Amos. Gracias por tu presensio. Conos otros in esta manana. Por que tenesi tamos mucho.
Te glorificamos a judo me, por favor.
Thank you, Lord, for all your presence with us.
We yield ourselves to you as fully as we know how.
In Jesus, mighty name, the strong Son of God.
Amen.
The.
Evidently there are a few people here that speak the heavenly language.
You. You do not have to speak Spanish to go to heaven. I've heard that that's not true.
You will be given lessons once you get there.
But why stand in that long, embarrassing line?
All right, all right.
It seems odd, doesn't it, to preach in January, this far past Christmas of. On the passage of the birth of Christ. The Nativity passage which I just read at the beginning.
But I think maybe from this vantage point we can think of it in a different way.
We tend to make a Christmas card out of the story.
We tidy it all up. We know from our childhood catechism, don't we? Jesus was very God and very man. That's the secret of the Incarnation.
Incarnation, the word of God. Pre existent, co. Eternal second person of the Trinity. That pre Existed, even creation was spoken into the womb of a virgin girl. And he became the physical man, Jesus. That that person, Jesus was the pre. Existent. Co. Eternal second person. The Word of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, we know that and we know that he was very God and very man. He wasn't half God and half man. He wasn't God from the waist up or something. He was very God and very man.
The problem comes that the, the man side of that, the human side of that is what we struggle with.
And we struggle with it right from the very beginning. In the Nativity, you see the Christmas cards with the holy family, the traditional. And they're walking into the streets of Bethlehem. Mary sitting on the donkey and Joseph leading the donkey. And there's always this resplendent glory around them. They all have halos. Joseph has a halo, Mary has a halo. She's got a halo around her tummy. Donkey has halos.
And we. And we forget that. The Gospel according to Luke, I just read it to you, states it straight out. And they had no halos. That's in the Bible now. That's not the way the Bible says it, but that's what it means.
The Bible says. And there was no room for them at the end.
Somebody shows up at your hotel with a halo, you just find him a room.
You go down to the poor sucker in 119 and say, I'm sorry sport, you're out.
These people glow in the dark.
They had no halo. There was nothing distinctive about them. They didn't walk through the streets of Bethlehem and people stick their heads out the windows and say, Luke chapter two.
Nobody was acting out Bible stories.
Going to say something to you now. Hold on to your chairs. Here we go.
There was nothing miraculous about the birth of Jesus now, except in the sense that all babies, births are miraculous. There was nothing miraculous about the birth of Jesus.
The conception of Jesus was a miracle.
It was a miracle.
The miracle of the immaculate conception.
But his birth was natural.
His conception was supernatural. The birth was natural.
But we don't like that.
We don't like that. Listen to the Christmas hymn. Which one is it? I think Away in a Manger. The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head. The cattle are lowing. The baby awakes. The little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.
Sup with that.
The baby Jesus couldn't cry. He was like born without tear ducts or. What does that mean?
What does that mean? Because we can't stand the idea of the Savior of the world laying there squalling his lungs out.
We don't like that. Where are the women here that have babies? Let me see your hands. How many did that baby crying make?
We had three crying they made all night.
So the Baby Jesus couldn't cry.
Because we don't like the idea of the baby Jesus laying there crying.
But let me tell you something. If I. I'm an equal opportunity preacher. I like to offend everyone.
So if we haven't done it so far, let's try this.
Not only did crying, he make. He made everything else babies make.
Put that on a Christmas card.
Now see, we don't like that idea. That's so natural.
That's so natural. That's so human. Because we don't like the idea of somebody having to change the Messiah's diapers.
But if that's not true, that's not just a minor issue. That's a profound theological issue.
Hebrews says we don't have. We do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with our feelings of infirmities.
So if Jesus never laid there in his own filth needing somebody else to clean him up and care for him, he can't understand when we need someone to clean us up and take care of us.
But that's the tension between the natural and the supernatural embodied in the person of Jesus.
Jesus didn't float around 3ft off the ground with shafts of purple light flowing out from his fingernails and New age music playing in the background.
He just looked like everybody else. Let me tell you something else too.
The book of Isaiah says he wasn't even handsome.
Hollywood cannot stand that. You will never see a movie about an ugly Jesus.
I'm going to tell you something. I think that's going to be the title of my next book is the God of the Ugly.
The Bible. The book of Isaiah says he was not comely that we should desire to look upon him. He was not handsome.
He was just a human being who just happened to be God.
That was the tension of his whole life and ministry.
He's. He's God. And the Word, the pre existent Word became flesh.
But all that anybody could see was the flesh.
Do you see?
He struggled with it his whole ministry. He is God thinking in transcendent cosmic reality.
But he's got to take those thoughts and lay them on the boxcars of human vocabulary that are not strong enough to bear the weight.
He's thinking in God, but he's talking to people who are thinking inhuman.
So he's using human words to mean supernatural reality.
So it's the conflict of the natural and the supernatural in everything that he said.
We've had 2,000 years to work with this stuff.
Imagine hearing it for the first time. Imagine you're on the front row When Jesus says, let the dead bury the dead.
Oh, yeah, that's gonna work.
Sounds like a Stephen King novel, doesn't it? The Night the dead Bury the dead.
But you see, he's talking about death, not death.
He says, these people look like they're alive, but they're dead. These people are just dead. You shouldn't be dealing with them. You're alive. Let the dead people bury these dead people.
That goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden, the whole thing. In the Garden of Eden, the conflict between the natural and the supernatural was over the issue of life and death.
So God says, in the day that thou eatest of the fruit in the center of the garden, you will die.
Satan said, you're not gonna die. You're not gonna die. God is jerking you around.
And Eve took of the fruit and ate and saw that it was good to eat. And she gave the man and he did eat.
Here's Dr. Rutland's question.
Did they die? Did they bite that fruit and drop down dead? Did they die?
No.
Did they die?
Yes.
That issue is fundamental to the conflict between the natural and the supernatural.
And it's in everything Jesus said. Every room Jesus left, everybody was asking themselves two questions. Who. Who was that guy and what was he talking about?
Try this one. Sometimes it got downright funny. Try this one.
Jesus in a room full of Jewish people. It's packed. Philip and Andrew come to Jesus and say, there are two Gentiles, Greeks, there are two Gentiles at the door and they'd like to come in. Should we bring him in or not?
And Jesus says, unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it cannot bring forth a great harvest. But if it falleth into the ground and dieth it bringeth forth a great harvest.
That's his answer.
That's his answer. Can't you see Philip and Andrew, as they go back saying, do you think he meant like yes or no?
But he's talking transcendent, he's talking supernatural. As long as I the Word am in the seed pod of this human natural body, how big of a building can we build to get people in here? But if I will go into the ground and die, I will bring forth the supernatural harvest of the worldwide church so that all gentiles can step over the threshold into the commonwealth of Israel.
Sometimes, don't you think that imagine, am I the only one, that the disciples were just thick headed?
I mean, doesn't it seem to you at some point they should have like, gotten it?
How. How about the resurrection of Lazarus.
Jesus walks out into the cemetery. Lazarus has been dead four days. His body is decomposing.
His sister says, I love the prissy language of the King James. She says, lord, by now he stinketh.
And Jesus says, roll away the stone, Lazarus come forth. And his body, which has been decomposing, reassembles at a cellular level. And he receives life and walks out.
Don't you think somebody should have said, I don't know, I'm just guessing here, Messiah?
And maybe they did.
But the resurrection of Lazarus was not the problem. That's purely supernatural. And that seems like the domain of God.
We believe God can raise the dead.
Here's the problem. When they left the cemetery to walk back to Lazarus house, Jesus is wiping sweat his forehead.
The sweat was the problem, not the resurrection.
We know God can raise the dead. Can God sweat?
That's the conflict in the incarnation.
That conflict still resides in the church.
The struggle between what is natural, what is supernatural, and how do they.
How do they flow together?
So the life, death, crucifixion, resurrection of Jesus. And then for 40 days, we come to the first chapter of Acts. Jesus is speaking to them of things pertaining to the kingdom of God, things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
And he says, now that's all we know. We don't know what he said. Things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
And Jesus says, not many days from now you shall receive the promise of the Father.
And the disciples said, oh, now we get it.
Now we get it.
That Jesus, that guy now he's been killed and raised from the dead. We have a military, political, religious leader that cannot be killed. How many times can you kill a guy?
Now? He's going to set up the throne of David in Jerusalem and rule the Gentile nations with a rod of iron. And we're all going to share in it. And now comes the kingdom.
Hasn't he been talking 40 days? Things pertaining to the kingdom of God. And so he says, not many days from now you shall receive the promise of the Father. And they said, lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And Jesus says, no.
He says, no, you keep thinking kingdom.
You're not going to get a kingdom.
You got to think kingdom.
You're going to get a kingdom, but it won't be a kingdom.
They said, lord, you said we would receive power.
He says, you will receive power when that the Holy Ghost has come upon you.
They said, that's what we stayed in here for, was power. We're ready for the power, he said, but the only thing is you're not going to receive any power.
You don't get power. Power is natural. Power is of the kingdoms of the world. Power is of Caesar. Power is of armies. Remember the conflict, the conversation between Jesus and Pontius Pilate?
Pilate says, look, I like you. I don't want to kill you, but they say you're a king. Are you a king?
Jesus hardly talked at all the whole time during the trial. But then he talks.
He says, yes, I am a king.
I'm not a king like Caesar. He's a king. If Caesar was arrested, his army would rise up and fight.
Caesar is a king with an army. I'm a king. I have an army. But they're. They're not going to rise up and fight. Yes, I'm a king with a kingdom, but not like Caesar. He's just a king.
And Pilate went out to them and said, let's don't do this.
I don't know what's going on here, but something's wonky.
You don't want to kill a guy that talks like that.
So that whole struggle is still going on with the disciples.
It went on the whole time between the natural and the supernatural.
Remember the night that Jesus was arrested?
Remember that Simon Peter, who had just slept through the prayer meeting. That'll tell you something.
But Simon Peter awakes and the cops are putting the cuffs on Jesus.
Simon Peter pulls his sword out and whacks one of the cops, chops his ear off.
Jesus says, oy.
Peter said, you said sword.
I heard you say get a sword.
Jesus says, sword.
Not sword. Sword.
And the only regenerative, recreative miracle recorded in the New Testament. I'm not saying it's the only one Jesus did. It's the only one the Bible records.
He made lame legs walk. He made blind eyes see. But the only human body part that he caused to grow back.
He touched that cop and his ear grew back.
Wouldn't it be a horrible, pathetic, stupid tragedy if after 2000 years Jesus still has to come along behind the people that we whack and heal them when we're whacking them in his name?
We don't get to whack anybody.
There's no Christian Mujahideen, no Christian Jihad. We don't have that job description. See, we don't get to whack anybody.
So we said, Lord, we.
We want to whack people.
We want to whack. We don't whack them in your name, but we want to whack People. Jesus said, nobody, Nobody gets to whack anybody.
We say, well, what did we get?
Jesus says, you. You get to get whacked.
We said, lord, we want to be the whackers.
He said, no, you get to be the wackies.
He said, lord, we want to pay Pontius Pilate and Caesar Augustus and. And corrupt religious leaders. We want to pay them back what they did to you. We want to do it to them. We're ready to do it to them. We want to crucify these people. Jesus says, you don't get to crucify anybody.
We don't?
No.
What do we get?
You get to get crucified.
We say, lord, that.
See, that doesn't feel good.
If anyone would come after me, let him take up his cross daily and follow me.
So here are the disciples.
Post resurrection, pre Pentecost, stranded in this terrible moment.
Lord, we want the supernatural. You shall receive it.
Is it going to make us kings and powerful and political leadership? Are we still going to live in this world where Caesar runs everything?
Now listen to me on this, brethren.
Caesar always runs everything.
Now we're going to have to get this through our heads.
We don't get to replace Caesar.
Jesus himself didn't replace Caesar.
We live in a world. I hear Christians somehow all the time. We're terrified. We're going to. There's going to become a new world order, a one world leadership, a dictatorship that will persecute Christians.
That's how we began.
The Christian community at its greatest most powerful, most supernatural moment was living under a one world government run by a madman in a foreign country.
And all it did was get us killed and thrown to the lions and slaughtered and our business confiscated and the power of the supernatural flowed in miraculous grace.
So where do we stand in this tension? Where do we stand in this? There are two equal and opposite errors. The one is to deny the power of the supernatural. Because it's awkward and complicated and difficult.
We just say, okay, God doesn't deal that way anymore. We're not going to have signs or wonders or the gifts of the spirit or miracles that can. We'll just cut that off. But that strands the church operating in our own strength and our own power.
Now let me tell you something. You can actually do a lot in the church in your own strength and power.
I know that sounds awful to say that, but it's true. You can actually build pretty big churches, do a lot of good things in your own power. A church without the Holy Ghost and is not totally from an observational and outside point necessarily going to be a failure.
It can be, at the outside level, quite successful. But there is no power.
There's no power.
On the other hand, we can take the power of the supernatural into our own hands and try to make that work.
Equal and opposite errors. The one is to deny the supernatural. The other is to take it into our own hands.
We're going to run the supernatural.
We can take it in our hands and cause things. That's what I always used to tell the kids at the universities. I'd say, listen, don't add anything.
Don't add anything.
Why isn't.
I've never heard it here. Maybe you have it. But somebody has a word of prophecy in service.
Why can't they give a word of prophecy in their own voice?
Why does it always have to sound weird?
Because we're trying to make it sound supernatural.
So this kid came to me at ORU and he said, I went to my home church this weekend and he said, something happened that really bothered me. I said, what was it? He said, a lady gave a word of prophecy and it sounded so real, so powerful. He said, it moved me. I said, what was the problem? He said, her grammar was bad.
He said, can't God. Doesn't God have good grammar? I said. I said, listen to me. What you're dealing with is the perfect mixture, the power of the supernatural flowing through limited human instruments.
When we try to make it seem supernatural, we mess it up.
But God is working through the natural to effectuate the supernatural. That's the blend.
And it's always like that.
I believe that Pentecostal theology, and that's not necessarily an oxymoron, I believe that Pentecostal theology is not actually pneumatological, it's actually incarnational.
It is the power of the Holy Spirit flowing through flesh just as it did in the life of Jesus.
For supernatural power, when we take it in our hands, when we try to make it seem something anybody with profit on his business card probably isn't one.
So when we try to make. Just see, when you take it in your hands. A lot of you here evidently speak Spanish.
What is the Latin root for every romance word for hands? Mano, from which we get the English word manipulate when we take hold of the supernatural to convince you, control you, dominate you, create. My own little kingdom I am manipulating when I deny the supernatural and operate in my own flesh. Kingdom.
That's what burst churches wide open.
Kingdom against kingdom.
Kingdom. When you search through the annals of all these church fights, you ever Drive down a road. I mean, it's discouraging, isn't it? You drive down a road and there's a church, you know, the Antioch Church.
You go a thousand yards down the same street and it's the new Antioch Church, thousand yards more. It's the Antioch Remnant Holiness Church of God by the gas station.
And you realize what's happened is it was not about. You ask any of those people what it was about. Oh, it was about what we sang. It was about whether we put the words up on a screen. It was about. This is not about any of those things.
What it was about is who's in charge here.
It's always kingdom against kingdom, the kingdom of the old people against the kingdom of the young people against the kingdom of the music against the kingdom of the children's Ministry is the kingdom of the youth. And they just divide up and fight.
And that's. That's the stuff of Caesar.
That's the stuff of Pontius Pilate. That's natural.
That's natural.
The other error is trying to control and manipulate and use the supernatural to get our own way to glorify ourselves.
See, thou shalt not use the name of the Lord thy God in vain. I was raised to believe that meant don't use Jesus to cuss people out.
Which, by the way, is not a good thing. Okay, I'm real, like, opposed to that. But that's not what that verse means.
What that verse means is you don't get to use the authority and name of God for vain, glorious purposes.
When you say, thus saith the Lord.
When you say, thus saith the Lord, you better have the goods.
Wouldn't it be nice? I often say, God, would it be so good if you would like help.
Some nincompoop stands up and says, thus saith the Lord. Wouldn't it be nice if God would say, no, I didn't.
This sucker is on his own.
But that's the reason that we receive and operate in the gifts of the spirit in community, because we're supposed to judge those things. We're supposed to discern those things.
I've been in churches. Somebody gives a word of prophecy, and you can tell from the opening phrase that they've got one wheel in the ditch.
You can tell it the minute they start. You think everybody in the church is sitting there thinking, oh, God, this guy's nuts.
And everybody's going, praise God. Praise.
That's where the tension between the natural and supernatural is. Is right where the rubber hits the road.
That's where Somebody has to say, bob, we love you. This doesn't invalidate your place in the universe, but we won't receive that today.
God's not near as mad at us as you are.
Have a seat.
Probably had a tough time with the old woman last night, but you're not going to inflict it on us.
That's. That's. That's the tension.
That's the tension when it gets all wonky and weird and supernatural at a level that people are just using the supernatural to jerk each other around. That's manipulation.
When we slam the window on the fingers of the Holy Ghost, then we're operating. We'll have anything left but the flesh.
You shall receive power when that the Holy Ghost has come upon you in order to be my martyr witnesses worldwide.
My kingdom.
That's the way we close the Lord's Prayer, isn't it?
Thine is the kingdom, Thine is the power.
Thine is the glory forever and ever.
You get in underneath that and that awesome. Huge tension between the natural and the supernatural finds an effective manifestation in common saints like you and me.
Well, let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we pray for an outpouring of the spirit of power.
Come, Holy Ghost.
Empower us in our daily lives in the church.
May it not be corrupted. May it never have our fingerprints on it.
God, spare us from the temptation to manipulate and control.
But spare us, God, from our own strength and our own devices when the flesh has failed us.
Come, Holy Spirit, in Jesus name.
Amen. God bless you and God bless this great church.
[00:33:59] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on X at Dr. Mark 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.
