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: Now, if you have your Bibles, if you'll take those and turn if you will to the book of Exodus, the third chapter of the book of Exodus, Exodus, verses 13 and 14.
I want to read this morning from the King James Bible. If you're following me in a modern translation, we will not read remarkably different, but I like that. The kids at the universities used to ask me all the time why I liked the King James Bible. They said you always use the King James Bible.
But part of it was loyalty. I went to high school with King James and Jimmy. We called him Jimmy. He wasn't a king in high school.
The other is, I just. I like the flowery Shakespearean language of the King James Bible. All the these and thou's that offend everybody else. I guess it appeals to my theatrical heart. But I just like the King James. The sound of the King James Bible appeals to me. I just can't get used to some of the modern versions. Or Jesus comes down to the Sea of Galilee and greets the apostles. What's happening, dudes?
It's just me.
But you don't have to have a King James Bible. You follow me in whatever cheap communist imitation you've got.
Come on, lighten up.
You do not have to have a King James Bible to go to heaven.
One would be given you when you get there.
But why stand in that long, embarrassing line?
I'm joking. You understand, right?
I'm always afraid somebody will say, amen, brother, Amen.
Well, it's great to be here.
I want to speak this morning on the word holiness.
It's interesting what happens with words.
It's interesting what happens with words.
Sometimes words can be hijacked by contemporaneity. They. They come to mean different things.
I see a lot of young people here this morning. I think you will be amazed to find that there are words that mean one thing in your life right now.
And by the time you are my age, if the world still exists, then you will find that they don't mean the same thing. I mean, words change meanings. And they used to change over thousands of years. Now they change over a generation.
We're coming up on Christmas now.
Gay is a good example Gay used to mean happy. How many of you remember when gay, it had nothing to do with sexual orientation. It just meant happy. Don we now our gay apparel. It doesn't mean Christmas in Dragon.
When that happens with any word, there is a certain level of tragedy attached. But when it happens with our biblical vocabulary, when it happens with the words with which we think about God and talk about God, when those words become twisted or lost or or even ignored, then our devotional access toward God may actually be warped around our our dysfunction in vocabulary.
And such a word is holiness.
I want to, I want to read two passages of scripture. If you have them, I think they'll put them on the screen for you this morning. One is from Exodus 3, 13 and 14. This is the conversation between God in the personification of the burning bush and Moses on Mount Sinai.
And Moses speaks to God in a burst of very earthy wisdom.
And he says, when I'm come unto the children of Israel and say unto them, the God of your fathers hath sent me unto you. They will say unto me, what is his name? What shall I say unto them?
And God said unto Moses, I am that I am.
Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto thee.
And then In Leviticus, chapter 19, verses 1 and 2, there's sort of a 40 year conversation between God and Moses. And this is at another point in that 40 year conversation.
God is now speaking to Moses.
When thou comest under the children of the congregation of Israel, say unto them, you shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.
You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, in the next few moments, I pray that your spirit will bear witness with our spirits, that we may get a heart of wisdom.
Come, holy spirit, deal with us. We pray in the wonderful name of Jesus, the strong son of God.
Amen. And Amen.
It is one of the great tragedies of the contemporary American Christian vocabulary. That the word holiness in some quarters is on harder times than sin is that there is something sometimes about the word holiness that causes people to flinch, to step back.
But the fact of the matter is the word holiness is that which makes us know what kind of God we serve.
Here is a fascinating passage. When Moses is called by God to go down into Egypt to tell Pharaoh to let the people go and to lead the people toward the promised land, Moses does not ask for a fresh definition of who God is. For the Egyptians, please notice. When I come unto the children of Israel and Say unto them, the God of your fathers has sent me unto you. They will say unto me, what is his name? And Moses knows that for Egypt, that the demonstration of supernatural power is what will do the. The what would do the work that needs to be done. But when he comes to the people of Israel, Moses knows that they have been in bondage in Egypt for 430 years.
That's not just physical bondage, not just slavery. They have been inundated with Egyptian culture.
They have been swamped by 430 years. Their culture, their religion, their way of thinking about God has been informed by the Egyptian pantheon, the gods and goddesses of Egypt.
So Moses says, look, they have been so far in bondage to Egypt, they don't even know who you are anymore.
I can't say to them, a burning bush sent me.
When I say the God of your fathers, they're going to say, what God raised the Egyptian God of the sun, Isis, that blasphemous goddess of the Nile and sexuality and fertility?
What is his name? What shall I tell them?
Listen to God's answer.
I am that I am. I am that which I am.
I am who I am.
I am that I am. Thus shalt thou say unto the people of Israel, I am hath sent me unto thee.
In other words, God states his nature as being the ever present, present tense, ultimate reality. God is never I was, he is never I will be. He is never partial. He's never in part, we never receive some of God I, I. When I was a child growing up, I. I don't know if I heard this.
Sometimes you can't tell, looking back on your childhood, whether you actually heard something or whether you heard something else, and it's what came into your mind.
But I think I remember a preacher preaching on the omnipresence of God, that God is everywhere. And at some point, I think he said it's like steam, that if steam or cloud or something fill this whole room, that God would be. There would be steam up in that corner and steam down here and steam up there. There'd be steam everywhere. That's a very bad definition of omnipresence because what it means is some of the steam is up there and some of this theme is down here and some is here on the platform. But that's a very bad definition. God is. I am, is holy. It means that all of God is everywhere, all at the same time. That's the miracle of omnipresence. If God is holy, you never receive part of Him.
God is always Everywhere, all at the same time, ever present.
That's the miracle of holiness and omnipresence.
I was driving through a small town in Alabama one time, and there was a sign, and it was hand painted, kind of rudely painted. And had an arrow pointing down a side street. And it said the name of the church. And then it says, holy Ghost Revival now in progress. And the sign pointing down the side street, but it spelled it H O L E Y. Holy H O L E Y.
And I thought to myself, the great barrier between us and a move of God in this country may lie in our spelling.
H O L E Y is the exact opposite of H O L Y. H O L E Y is not your God. That's your socks.
H O L E Y means full of holes.
But H O L Y means lacking nothing. There is nothing that we can add to God that would make him more or better God than he is.
And there is nothing extraneous in his nature that, if it were removed, would make him a better God than He is.
When I was in undergraduate school, I went to the University of Maryland for my bachelor's degree. Right at the end of the Civil War.
And it hurts me when you laugh at me.
And I took a course there in philosophy. And the professor was an atheist, and he was an evangelistic atheist. He wasn't content just to go to hell. He wanted all the rest of us to go with him.
And if he found out you were a Christian in there, your life wasn't worth living. So I just decided to keep my mouth shut, my head down. But evidently somebody ratted me out.
So one day he said, Mr. Rutland, will you please stand? Well, you just dreaded that. And he said, I understand you're a Christian. I said, yes, Dr. Johnson, I'm a Christian. He said, then you must believe in God.
I said, well, yes, it's something of a prerequisite.
And he said, then I want to ask you a question. Can God do everything?
And I remember thinking, this is my chance to make a bold witness to this atheist and this whole class. And I put my hot little hand in the air and said, yes, sir, Dr. Johnson. My God can do everything.
He said, then riddle me this.
Can God make a rock that he can't pick up?
Can God make a rock that he cannot pick up?
You see, he had me, didn't he?
You see what it is? If he couldn't make the rock that violated the given. If he could make the rock, then he couldn't pick it up, and that violated the given.
My dear friends, that is intellectual and philosophical bubblegum.
If I had only known what I know now.
Through the years, I thought about going back to the University of Maryland and see if that turkey would ask me that question one more time.
That was evidently some kind of little trick that he had honed to a razor's edge, and he just used it to gut the faith of unsuspecting freshmen. But if I had known what I know now. That question is the most important question, not just of your life.
That is the most important question of eternity.
Can God do everything?
And it demands a bold and authoritative answer, but one that is informed with biblical truth.
Can God do everything?
No, God cannot do everything. I wish I'd known that. I would have said, My no, Dr. Johnson. What a horrible thought.
No, God can't do everything. There are a lot of things God can't do. He can't sin. He can't lie. He can't will think or speak or act in opposition to his own nature. And God cannot quit being God.
Our God is more limited than. Than a galley slave. But he is not limited by the parameters of his power.
He is limited by the frontiers of his character.
God must always be God.
That's what holiness means, that God is always is. I am.
Wouldn't it be awful if God was capricious, whimsical?
I wonder if you've ever had an acquaintance or a friend or whatever that you just never knew which one of them was going to show up.
Isn't that awful? I hate that feeling. You just see her get out of the car and you think, is this going to be the nice Susan, or is this the crazy one? And you just. What if God was like that? What if you feel some problem or pain or difficulty or hardship and you used to come into the office in heaven and tap on the door, God, are you in there? And he says, what?
What do you want? He said, no, never mind, never mind. I'll come back tomorrow. No, open that door. Come on in. Now you've disturbed everything.
Wouldn't that be awful?
But why isn't God like that?
He isn't like that. Because nothing in you, nothing in the world, nothing in your circumstances alters who God is. God is always himself, is. I am. Is holy. God is holy.
Now, if he is always himself and always the same, I want to know what he's like. I mean, what if he was always the same, but he was always evil?
I want to know what God is like.
What is the quintessence of holiness From Exodus we wait until the book of First John to get the theological answer.
One John says, God is love.
So look at what it means.
God is. I am, is holy, is love.
So the holiness of God is not that which separates us from God. What separates from us from God is our unholiness.
What makes us know that God is approachable and always the same, and that he always loves us, no matter what, is his holiness.
It's a dreadful anthropomorphism, but let's just go with it for a moment, okay? Let's just suppose.
What's your name? I forgot. Joyce. I knew that. Joyce. Let's just suppose that God wakes up one morning, his blood pressure is too low, his blood sugar's too high, he looks over the walls of heaven, and the first person he sees is you.
It's a little bit scary, isn't it?
And God looks at Joyce and says, what? What was I thinking?
Making blondes with blue eyes. I need to have my divine head examined.
All over the world, all the blondes with blue eyes zap smallpox.
But we laugh a little nervously.
God isn't going to do that, is he?
No, he isn't going to do that. But why not?
It is because nothing in us, no variable in us, varies God's attitude usward. In other words, God doesn't love Joyce because of anything in her. God loves Joyce because of who he is, not because of who she is.
Now do you see what that means?
A lot of people think that the greatest news of that is that nothing we, nothing bad that we do can make God love us any less. And that is good news. Nothing evil that you do can make God love you any less.
That is true. But that's not the greatest news.
The greatest news is that nothing that you do can make God love you anymore in the world. People are afraid. God, the church. Church people are going to earn more and more the love of God. If I pray a little more, if I fast a little more, if I give a little more, God will love me more.
Shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone. This year, I'll make God love me if it kills me.
The only problem is what?
It'll kill you.
If it doesn't put you right in a religious loony bin first, rocking back and forth in a straight jacket and humming Jesus loves me.
You can't vary God.
You can't bury God.
God loves you out of the resource of who he is. God is holy, is I am, is love. God is, I am, is love.
That's great news, isn't it?
Now, the problem is the second passage, isn't it? The passage from Leviticus 19.
And God said unto Moses, when thou comest unto the children of the congregation of Israel, thou shalt say unto them, you shall be holy. For I, the Lord your God, am holy.
Well, that's. You see the problem with that passage, don't you? Am I the only one?
I want to say God. That feels a little unfair.
You shall be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy. Sure, you're holy. You're God. We live in Texas.
I mean, it seems a little unfair for the God of all the universe to hold me to his standard.
You shall be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy. If I was God. If I was I am, I would be holy.
But there's two ways to say anything.
Let's just suppose that you sign up for a class at a university in higher math, Boolean algebra or something like that. Are you gifted in math? You are. All right. Just imagine. Then you show up for class on the first day, and the professor storms into class and throws his material down. And he looks down at you and he says, you shall make an A.
You shall make an A in this class because I'm the professor and because I am who I am, you shall make an A.
Now, I don't know about you, but that's where I gather up my books and head straight to the nice lady at the drop ad counter.
And I say, I'd like to drop Boolean algebra, please. And I'd like a course in Middle European basket weaving.
And I'd like a professor who's not psychotic.
But suppose you get the same professor who says the same thing, but he says it a different way. If you put the accent on the wrong syllable, any word sounds funny.
Suppose that same professor walks in the room and he says, I know you're nervous.
I know you've never been at this altitude and velocity of mathematical studies, and I know you're nervous. But don't worry. You shall make an A.
You shall make an A. Because I'm the greatest math professor that's ever lived. And because I am who I am, you shall make an A.
That's when I say, yes, I'm gonna major in math.
So one of the students at the last university where I was President said, Dr. Olund, in Leviticus 19, it says, you shall make. You shall be holy. For I, the Lord your God, I'm holy. Is that a. Is that a command or a promise?
And I said, yes, exactly.
It is A command. You shall be holy. God calls us to holiness.
But then he says it will happen because I am who I am, not because you are who you are.
You shall be holy because what I will work in you is consistent with the character and nature of who I am. What I do in you is me.
You shall be holy because I am your God. I'm not apart from you. I'm not different. I'm not separate.
You can count on me to work in you that which you cannot work in yourselves.
That's the reason that the book of Jeremiah says, from now on the law will not be written in tablets of stone.
But I will write the law inside you.
Later on in the conversation between God and Moses on Mount Sinai, God says to Moses, you remember this part? God says, put now thy hand into thy bosom. Put your hand in your shirt front.
And God says, now pluck it out. And he pulls his hand out. Who can remember? It's what?
Leprosy. Covered with leprosy. That must have been a thrilling moment for Moses disturbed my life at the age of 80.
Call me into Egypt, where there's a price on my head. Tell me to confront the strongest king in the whole world. Tell me to lead three and a half million stiff necked rebels into the wilderness where there's no food or water and give me leprosy.
What a good God.
But then God says, now put thy hand yet again into thy bosom and draw it out. And this time it's what?
Clean? Well, whole.
Now I won't pretend to know everything that God is saying to Moses in that. But surely among what he's saying is this.
What you do with your hands will sooner or later be the extension of the condition of your heart.
Who you are here changes what you do here.
And it never works the other way.
It didn't work for the Pharisees, it doesn't work for legalists. Obey the rules, follow the law, be a good person.
And finally it'll change your heart. It will never change your heart. But what you do in the extremities of your life, how you act, think, talk, all of those things will finally be the extension of the condition of your heart.
So what God does in us with the power of the Holy Spirit, that's the reason the Holy Spirit is called the Holy Spirit. In Romans chapter one, it speaks of the spirit of holiness that raised Christ Jesus from the dead. So the spirit of holiness that comes inside of us, raises us from the death of our own lives to experience his life in our life. Extended.
Now, here's the second theological question that I always get.
Does that happen all at once?
When the Holy Spirit comes, Are we entirely sanctified? Does that happen as an event, or is it a process?
And the same answer to the last question.
Yes. Come on, say it out loud. Yes, it does happen as an event. When the power of the Holy Spirit comes within us, don't tell me nothing happens. When the power of that Holy Spirit comes inside of us, don't tell me nothing happens. Remember the burning bush that spoke to Moses? Before the fire came into that bush, it was just a shrub, like every other shrub on the mountain.
But when the fire came, it became the burning bush. When Moses leaves, the fire lifts and it becomes a natural bush again. Another it's just a shrub. But that fire was in that shrub, engulfed that shrub. Don't tell me there are any parasites left in burned those parasites out.
So when the Holy Spirit comes in us, he burns much out. He does much in us. Don't tell me nothing happens. By the same token, don't tell me that everything that is ever going to happen in my life happens in one moment.
So we are sanctified.
We are being sanctified in process.
And when we get to heaven, we will be finally and fully sanctified.
So, yes, there's an event, yes, there's process. And it's followed by another event.
So that the power of the Holy Spirit is working within us to reshape us in his image from the inside out.
Now, the challenge for us is that we don't get to run the process in anybody else's life.
We live in community.
And the problem is God is doing stuff in you at a different pace than somebody over there. And what we want is for everybody to be on my pace.
I heard about a lady that was walking out through a field and she fell down into an abandoned well.
She tried everything in the world to get out of there and then realized she was alive. She was unhurt, but she was at the bottom of the well. It was covered with slime. She couldn't get out. She was waist deep in water. She screamed and screamed nobody would come.
And finally what happened was she did what so many people do. She decided to do a deal with God.
She said, if you'll get me out of here, I'll become the greatest soul winner that this state has ever seen.
Just about that time, a man leaned over and said, I heard you scream. Can I pull you out? And he pulled her out of there, and she kept her into the Bargain. She became the greatest soul winner that that county had ever seen. Here's how she did it. She would lead people out there and push them down in that well and go off and leave them.
See, we want everybody else to find God in the same slimy well where we found him.
So this lady came to me and she said, I was pastor of a huge church in Orlando. And she came to me and said, I know you think my husband's a Christian, but she said, I want to tell you something you don't know. My husband's a chain smoker.
I said, what, Margaret? I know he's a chain smoker. Your husband smells like a chimney all the time.
I said, I know he's. She said, well, doesn't that mean he's not a Christian? Can a Christian be a chain smoker? I said, margaret, guess who was in my office yesterday. True story.
She said, who? I said, howard was here. Your husband Howard?
She said, he was. I said, yes. He came here to give me a testimony of a victory that he's getting in his life. She said, what? He told me that God was moving in his spirit to allow him to forgive and love your mother in law and your mother, his mother in law. And she said, you know, I have noticed that Howard is being nicer to my mother lately.
And I said, now here's my question.
Would you rather that God take cigarettes out of his life or make him be nice and loving and forgiving with your mother?
And she said, well, Dr. Utland, I can't make that choice.
And I said, no, Margaret, you can't.
That's exactly right. Nobody gets to make that choice in anybody else's life.
See, here's the thing. Sanctification is like a fence that has to be painted. All the boards in the fence have to be painted on the outside and on the inside. On one life, God is painting on board number 42 on the inside. On another life, he's painting on board number 19 on the outside.
And all those boards have to be painted. They're all going to be painted, but God is doing the painting. And let me tell you two great theological truths. You can rest your entire theology on this truth. Two things. One is there is a holy God who runs the universe, and you're not him.
If you master those two things, it can change the way you live in community with others.
Now, the issue of personal holiness in the world full of sin is this. How do I deal with the issue of sin? How do I deal with the issue of temptation? What does holiness Mean in my life in Greek mythology. I know you'll remember the island of the Sirens. It was an island. There were these aquatic creatures that sang. This was memorialized in the movie oh Brother, Where Art Thou? They were these women who would sing, and the song was irresistible. A sailor in a ship going back could not stop himself. It's where we get the name for the emergency horns on the top of ambulances and police cars. They're called sirens because of these women and sailors who heard this song. They couldn't stop themselves. Knowing they were going to die.
They would turn their ships, drive their ships up on the rocks, drown, and the Sirens would loot their ships.
Isn't that a picture of sin?
Isn't that perfect? Knowing that it will finally kill him. Somebody goes into a crack dealer's house knowing it can destroy him, knowing it'll destroy his family, knowing it could destroy his life, knowing he's going to prison, knowing it could kill him and he can't stop himself.
Two people made it safely past the island of the Sirens. In Greek mythology, one was Odysseus. We call him Ulysses.
Ulysses heard about the island of the Sirens. So before they got within earshot, he chained all of his men up in chains. And then he poured molten wax in their ears. Then he chained himself to the mainmast. Now there's no one to pour wax in his ears.
So he commanded all of his men, when they came within earshot of the island of the Sirens, to scream at the top of their lungs.
So they sailed safely past the island of the Sirens, chained up and screaming. Ah, is that all the victory that we can get?
Is that it?
Every time we have a temptation, every time we see something we shouldn't look at, we just have to chain ourselves up and scream.
I mean, is that it?
I'm not saying you won't go to heaven, but the sooner the better.
There was another man who made it safely past the island of the Sirens. Jason. You remember Jason and the Argonauts.
Jason also heard about the Sirens, but he didn't use chains or wax. He found a magic lute player and he put the lute player on the deck. And Jason and all the Argonauts sat at his feet. Because when this lute player played, it is said that the music was so magical that they couldn't hear anything else as long as he played.
And so they sat there at his feet and he began to play his music. And they were so enraptured, so caught up in the music, that they couldn't hear the sirens.
And then it says that when the sirens realized they couldn't reach the Argonauts, they fell silent and listened to the lute player. And when they did, they turned a stone and no one was ever again drowned at the island of the Sirens.
Don't you see what it says about holiness?
Holiness is not just about fighting sin off with all of our strength.
Holiness is when we simply hear a sweeter melody.
It's not in hating sin.
It is in loving the God of holiness.
And when we fall so in love with the music of Jesus that we simply don't hear the siren song of sin around us.
Listen to me, my brethren.
Holiness is not the bad news.
How can it be that we have made it so?
Holiness is not the bad news.
Holiness is the good news.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on x@dr. Mark Rutland, or visit his website, drmrutmarkrutland.com where you can find information about his materials and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leaders Notebook.
