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.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Hello, this is Mark Rutland. Before we begin today's message, I have a very special and very happy announcement. Our son Travis, who is the pastor at Liberty Square Church in Cartersville, Georgia, has just launched his own podcast featuring the sermons that he preaches there and elsewhere. I'm so excited to offer this to you because I believe Travis is one of the finest preachers I hear today. My wife and I attend that church and I look forward to every single message filled with application and and anointing. He is a terrific preacher and you're gonna be blessed. The name of the podcast is very obviously the Travis Rutland Podcast and you can find it on all major platforms including Apple podcasts, Spotify and others.
Or you can listen directly through the Global Servants website, at globalservants.org/podcast.
His new episodes are going to be released every Thursday and they will be ready for you when you wake up and start your.
I hope you'll subscribe. Listen each week, leave a five star review and let Travis know how much his messages encourage you as they encourage me. Here I am in my late 70s and one of the finest preachers that I hear today, ever hear today, is my son. It thrills me to offer him to you through his new podcast, the Travis Rutland Podcast.
God bless you.
If you have your Bibles, if you'll take those and turn to the book we call Philippians, the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the church at Philippi, or Philippi, some people say.
So let me just give you a little background on the letter and then we'll dive right in.
Philippi, as it is often called. We often in America we tend to say Philippi.
It is a town in Macedonia.
It is named for Philip of Macedonia. He conquered the town and in his own modest and humble way renamed it for himself, Philip of Macedonia. But we do not know the name Philip of Macedonia. When I say that to you, it doesn't ring a historical bell, does it?
But you know his son's name, Alexander.
And so Alexander the Great was the son of the, of the founder of Philippi.
It's a pagan city.
It's, it's not in Asia, it's on the European side. It's in the northern stretches of what we would call modern Greece.
It's across the Hellespont from Troy where the ancient the Trojan War was fought.
And by the time of the New Testament, the ancient Troy is called Troas.
So it's on the European side. Many of the other letters, as I told you, are about churches that are in Turkey, in contemporary Turkey, what was called Asia Minor under the Roman Empire.
It is written. The letter is written in about 62 AD from prison in Rome, from Paul's second imprisonment in Rome.
It is a personal thank you letter.
It's not.
It's different from the other letters. He's not really scolding anybody or straightening anything out or challenging anybody or doing some exotic teaching.
There are some wonderful verses of Scripture in it, often quoted Philippians 4 and 13 and others.
But really, it's a sweet letter.
And it's a letter from prison to people under the oppression of the Roman Empire.
And yet it is the most joyful of all the New Testament epistles.
I want to read the first few verses and then we'll pray.
Paul and Timotheus, Timothy, we would say Paul and Timothy, the servants of Jesus Christ. To all the saints of Christ Jesus which are at Philippi with the bishops and the deacons.
Grace be unto you, and peace be you unto from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God upon every remembrance of you. Let me give you the revised Rutland translation of verse 3.
I am filled with gratitude every time you cross my mind.
Every time I think of you.
I'm filled with gratitude always in every prayer of mine for you making request with joy, being confident of this very thing, that he which began a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.
Bow your head and close your eyes, please.
Heavenly Father, with our heads bowed, our eyes closed, and our hands upon the word, we're asking, Lord, that you will speak to us deep within, that we will hear that we've got mail.
Come, Holy Spirit, we believe you for it.
In Jesus name, Amen.
As the pastor's wife said, as Paul stretched out his quill to the parchment and began to write what was in his mind.
And when they read the letter was the same thing in their minds. You wonder about that as you read all these letters. But at the church at Philippi, I believe when they read the opening part of the letter, which I just read to you, I believe they remembered the same thing Paul did.
Listen to the words again, being confident that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. How did he begin a good work in them?
Years before, some 12 or 13 years earlier, Paul had come to a frustrating moment in his ministry.
He was struggling with the feeling that he couldn't quite hear from God and that doors that he wanted to go through closed, and he felt that God was closing them.
He was in the southeastern edge of Turkey and he wanted to go north and east into what would be called Greater Asia Minor.
And he says the Holy Spirit hindered him, stopped him. We're quick in this country, in Christianity, to blame every frustration on Satan.
Sometimes God stops the thing. Don't go there. Don't do that. Don't do that now.
And Paul is struggling.
He tries to go north and the Holy Ghost says no. He tries to go west, and the Holy Ghost says no.
It's a frustrating time in a minister's life.
And then one night in the ancient city of Troy where the war, the Trojan War, was fought in the city called Troas, at that time, Paul is asleep and he has a dream.
And in that dream, there is a man who is dressed not as an Asian, but as a European.
And Paul recognizes his garments look different.
He's on the Greek side and not on the Asian side.
And this man looks at Paul in the dream, that must have been a remarkable experience.
And he says, come over to Macedonia and help us.
Paul perceives that the closed doors were to hem him in. In the coastal town of Troas, he was almost hedged in by the Holy Spirit.
They get on a ship. He and Timothy and some of the others get on a ship and head across the narrow waters of the Hellespont.
And they go to Philippi.
And there Paul finds a group of women, pagans, don't misunderstand when it says they are consecrated women. They're pagan women. They go down to a river and pray, but they don't know who they're praying to.
They have a hunger for God, but they don't know God.
They're good women, but they don't understand righteousness.
And among them a very prominent and very wealthy woman named Lydia.
She owns and manages a business that produces highest level cloth for the royalty and nobility of Europe.
It would be against the law for a commoner to wear purple.
So her clientele, this is in contemporary London.
This is the guy who makes the shoes for the king.
He's not a royal person, but he's not a cobbler for somebody to make work boots.
And Lydia gets saved.
She believes she opens her house to Paul the Apostle.
She says, if you trust my faith, come and live in my house. Come and stay with me.
Paul and his evangelistic team stay there. And God begins to bless.
And there is revival and there's a move of God.
And then Paul is arrested, stripped naked in public, beaten within an inch of his life.
And he and Silas, one of the other missionaries that are with him, are thrown into a prison.
And in the bottom of the prison, and at midnight, Paul is overwhelmed with joy.
And he begins to sing, and Silas begins to sing. They're worshiping God, singing in the prison. At the middle of the night, God sends an earthquake, shakes the prison so profoundly that the doors spring open.
The Roman jailer, cognizant of the Roman law that a jailer is committed by Rome to keep the prisoner. If the prisoner escapes, the jailer has to do his sentence.
So if all those prisoners escape, they all come to him. And if any of them are sentenced to death, he will be executed. His best option is that he'll be sentenced to work himself to death in a Roman galley. His worst option is that he'll be beheaded.
He's just about to throw himself on his sword when Paul the Apostle says, I love the King Jesus. Paul springs in.
Paul jumps in where he is and says, do thyself no harm, brother.
We're all here.
Nobody's going anywhere.
Isn't that interesting? Paul speaks for all the prisoners.
I just wonder about the safecracker in cell number four.
If he didn't say, you know, speak for yourself, Jack, I'm making a run for it.
But this is supernatural.
This is supernatural. Something remarkable is happening here.
The earthquake, the worship, the praise. Everybody just staying in their cell, and the jailer says, what must I do to be saved?
It's not clear to us what was in his mind entirely. What does he mean? What do I need to.
What do I have to do to be saved from Rome? What do I have to do to be saved in this world? We don't really know.
I don't know a lot about jailers in any culture, but I think a jailer in the northern Grecian remote area of the Roman Empire is going to be one pretty tough guy.
Maybe brutal, maybe he's been violent with previous prisoners.
And he falls at Paul's feet and says, what must I do to be saved?
Paul says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved. And thy house.
That night, the jailer takes him to his house, bathes his wounds, puts salve and ointment on him, his whole house, all of them baptized.
And the church in Philippi is birthed in supernatural power.
So when Paul writes with you at the beginning, they're not talking about the beginning in Jerusalem. They're not talking about the beginning of the resurrection of Christ. They're talking about the beginning of the supernatural miracles, the salvation of Lydia, the transformation of the town, the conversion of the jailer, the explosion of the church in revival.
When he says to them, when I think of you at the beginning, and I remember you in joy when that letter is read in Sunday morning at the church of Philippi, everybody's thinking of the same thing.
They're all remembering the supernatural beginning.
And Paul takes joy in these people.
He must remember the joy he had in the jail cell that night.
He must think about it and remember that moment.
Paul lived a supernatural life. But you just gotta admit, midnight you're praising God after you've been beaten within an inch of your life, you're naked in the jail cell, in the bottom of the prison, and God sends an earthquake, knocks the chains off of you and opens the doors. This is not something you forget.
And when you think about the church at Philippi, you think about this. You remember Lydia, you remember that jailer.
I have to believe he became that. He became one of the elders and deacons that he's writing about here.
Many years ago, Mark Niswander, a Methodist missionary, and I, great friends. We're still great friends.
We went to Monterrey, Mexico.
Mark was teaching at Juan Wesley Seminario in Monterrey, John Wesley Seminary. I had been invited down to be a guest lecturer. And we took some of the seminaristas, the seminary students, and we went to a nearby colonia of Monterrey, a suburb. And we were going to do an outdoor crusade in the walled compound of a house, a big house.
A wealthy family was going to let us use it. They set chairs up and invited the neighborhood to come in. It was pretty kind of dangerous, little colonia. So they invited us to come in.
And just as we were beginning to start the crusade, everybody said, there's a gang against the back wall. And there were about eight or nine very dangerous looking hombres backed up, just standing against the back wall against the house as it would be, because the compound went this way.
And it began to rain.
It just poured rain.
And maybe, am I the only one? Can I have to stand up here and admit my carnality? You just want to say, God, are we all on the same team?
And then we had the great miracle.
Mark and I prayed, and God Put his hand over that courtyard. Literally.
It rained on all four sides of that courtyard. Poured rain. And the rain was a wall around the courtyard.
It was a straight out miracle.
And when I gave the invitation, every member of that gang came forward, gave their lives to Christ.
I went back four years later, and there was a new church there, El Templo Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem Temple was the new church there.
And I had a prayer meeting before the service. Sunday morning service. They said, let's meet with the deacons before the service. They all come in and pray with the young student pastor we had there. We met in such nice men, met them all, business folks. And we shook hands, everything like that. And they all said, brother Utland, it's so good to see you again.
I said, do I know you?
It was the gang.
They were all the deacons of the church.
That's the church of Philippi.
That's when I read the letter to the church of Philippi. That's what fills my heart. I think about churches like that, where you've been, where you preach, you had a revival, where somehow. You know what I'm saying, Pastor?
That when you think about them, you think about that thing. Paul says that. And when he writes to them, they all think of it too.
And they all think of Paul. Now, remember Paul.
The church began in prison, and Paul's in prison again.
When Paul writes, he says, I'm writing to you now. He's writing from prison in Rome.
His life is hanging by a monofilament.
And what does he write about?
Yes, he writes about God's providence. My God can supply all your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Yes, he writes a thank you, I thank you. When none of the other churches cared about me or provided for me, you did. Your generosity still moves me when I think of it. He writes about all that, but the number one thing he writes about is joy.
I wonder if the joy that he had at midnight in a Philippian jail is what he thinks of as he writes. I wonder if he is even cognizant of the fact of how often in this letter he uses the same word.
As something of a modest creative writer myself, I try to be careful not to use the same word over and over and over again in the letter. Either Paul wasn't aware of it or he was reckless in the use of it.
The word is chara.
Chara in Greek, C H A R A. But you say the C H har chara, and it means joy.
Or khairo, which means the verb of that, to rejoice.
You can see that they are connected even in English.
To have joy or to rejoice.
But there's another word that he uses in the letter which is from the same root, and it's charis, gift or grace.
So Paul weaves the whole letter around the idea of the gracious gift of God. It's from charis, it's from the root word of which we get what we call ourselves, charismatics, gifted people that have been touched by grace.
Some people think we've just been touched.
But Paul says, I thank God for your gift to me. I thank God for God's gift to you. I thank the gift for the gift of you.
And the letter is laced with joy.
Let's work our way through some of this joy for just a moment.
Take your Bible and let's do like a Baptist sword drill here. You ready?
Verse 4.
Always in every prayer of mine for you all making requests with joy.
Paul talks about praying with joy.
Could you. Can you. Can you fancy yourself in prison? For how many times has he been in prison? And how many cities stone beaten, tortured, rejected, despised? And he says, every time I pray for you, I pray with joy.
Go to verse 18, the same chapter. What then?
Notwithstanding every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached. I therefore do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.
He says, I know there are people who preach just to gall me.
They know I'm in prison and they think the word will reach me. That because they're preaching, that it will gall me, that I'll feel envious and filled with strife because they're out liberated preaching and I'm in prison. He says, I rejoice, he said, even if their motive is no good, Christ is still being preached.
This guy.
When you read Paul's letters, you realize you're not even a Christian.
You know, it explores your carnality, doesn't it?
Turn to verse 25, same chapter.
And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and the joy of faith.
The joy of faith.
Paul says, look, faith is not supposed to be hanging on to the end of the rope, holding on. If I could just stay alive, if I can grit my teeth and bear it until Jesus returns and gets us all out of here.
Paul says faith is supposed to be joyful.
Turn to chapter two and verse two.
Fulfill ye my joy, that ye may be like minded, having the same love, being of one accord and of one mind.
Let nothing be done through Strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.
Now he says, not only is my joy in faith, and my joy is in prayer. My joy is in you personally.
He says, I rejoice in you. You are part of my joy.
I think we need to hear. You've got mail.
God has a word for you.
He takes joy in you.
There is a wonderful passage of Scripture where Christ speaks to Ananias about Paul the Apostle Saul of Tars.
And he says, go now and pray for him and lay hands on him. For behold, he prayeth, behold. You don't say, behold a beat up old bicycle.
Behold means something awesome, something that inspires you. What makes God say, behold the prayers of a new convert.
God takes delight in you. You give God joy.
Go to verse 17 of the second chapter.
Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all. He says, I'm in prison. If I'm executed here, I will have joy while the sword falls.
How rejoice not only have joy. Look at what he says. He uses both the noun and the verb. Do you see that he says, I joy and rejoice.
I joy and rejoice.
Turn if you will now to verse 18, the same chapter for the same cause also. Do you joy and rejoice with me.
Now think what he's saying.
If I am executed in Nero's prison, I will be joyful and I will rejoice. And when the news reaches you, I expect you to be joyful and rejoice.
I expect you to rejoice with me. Our friend is in heaven.
He has won the victory.
He says, I will rejoice while I'm being killed.
And when the word reaches you, I expect you to rejoice too.
Turn to verse 28, same chapter I sent him. That is his associate. I sent him. Therefore, the more carefully that when you see him again you may rejoice that I may be the less sorrowful. He says, I'm sending someone to you so that I know when you see him you'll rejoice. And I'll be here in prison, imagining you rejoicing and hugging him and embracing him when he arrives.
And the idea of your joy will give me joy in prison.
What manner of man is Paul the Apostle?
That he says, while I'm in prison, when I think of how happy you are, it'll make me happy.
Praise God.
Now turn to verse 29.
Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness and hold such in reputation, because the work of Christ be.
Because for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his life, to supply your lack of service toward me.
So he says, he has come even at the risk of his own life. Turn to chapter three and verse one. Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord to write the same things to you for me indeed is grievous. Is not grievous.
For you it is safe. He says, look, I know I'm pounding this point. Joy, joy, joy, joy. Rejoice, Rejoice, Rejoice. Rejoice. He says, I know that. But he says, it may be grievous to you to hear it over and over and over again. It doesn't bother me, he says, I'm going to keep repeating it. Rejoice in the Lord. Please notice, he says finally. And then he writes two more chapters. I love this guy. This is how I preach.
Turn to verse chapter four and verse four.
Rejoice in the Lord always.
And again I say, rejoice. He just told them in chapter three. He just said, I'm going to keep saying this. It doesn't bother me. It doesn't grieve me. It doesn't to say to you, have joy and be joyful, have joy and rejoice because of the grace of God, the gift of God that has touched our lives. He says, you have been graced, therefore you have joy, therefore you do rejoice. And I'm going to keep saying it, even in the same sentence. He says, rejoice. And again I say, rejoice.
Now turn to verse 10 of the fourth chapter.
But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at the last, your care of me has flourished again, wherein you were also careful, but you lacked opportunity. He says, now that your gift has arrived, I realize you were filled with care for me, but you just couldn't get the gift to me.
The gift that arrived to Paul the Apostle, it reminded him, Lydia.
It reminded him of the Philippian jailer.
But he says, I was worried that you didn't care for me. Now I realize you were careful. We use the word careful in English to mean a different thing than it did in Old English. Careful in Old English meant filled with care for me. You were careful for me. And he says, now I see you were careful for me.
You just didn't have the opportunity to get the gift to me. Now it's arrived, filled with joy.
What a letter.
Joy, joy and rejoicing on almost every in every verse. Of Philippians, written from prison.
So he says, my joy is despite circumstance.
My joy is despite circumstance.
I, I struggle with this in my own life that so often my ability to rejoice is circumstantial.
When something great has happened, rejoicing is easy.
I just want to come to that place in my life where I can rejoice despite circumstance.
Maybe even, maybe even because of the circumstance.
Can I come to that place? Oh God, touch me with such grace that as they force me to kneel at the chopping block that I can say to the guy with the sword, I rejoice in this moment.
God help me to come to that. His joy had nothing to do with circumstantial reality.
Secondly, his joy was related to God's operational grace in his life and in the lives of others.
He, he was rejoicing because of what God does in people's lives.
The gift of grace.
Third, his joy is tied to community.
His joy is tied to community.
There is a plus and a minus here, a positive and a negative.
The positive is this.
We should rejoice in each other.
There is more than one reason why it says forsake not the assembling together of yourselves.
I understand, you know, that people have issues and they have to stay home and watch church on tv. And I understand that. I'm not making light of that. There are people that are ill. My 97 year old mother, she watches. She thinks she attends Beaufort Church of God. She, she's in South Florida so she's not able, she can't go to any church, let alone this one. But she loves it. She watches. I understand that. Having said that, I do want to say to you I believe it is important to be at church, to be with Christians, to experience the joy of the community, to rejoice in each other. When we gather together, when we come in church on Sunday morning or Wednesday night here or wherever you go to church, then I urge you to contemplate the reality of how you take joy. When you see that couple. Oh look, they're back.
Oh, he's here. Oh, she's well. Oh, she's doing better. Oh, they're here in church even though, even though the father died and they must be grieving. Oh, I rejoice that they're here in church finding the healing grace of God that Paul says our joy is tied to our community.
That's the positive.
What's the negative.
We must remember that those things that we do that damage community, damage the joy of the community.
And if the joy of The Lord is our strength, and Scripture says it is what we do to damage the joy of others saps their strength in the Lord.
When people rejoice in each other, they get stronger.
When the joy of each other is damaged, when relationships wounded, people act ugly in church in some way or another, it draws down on the joy and that makes it weaker.
And then finally, the source and ground and foundation of all Paul's joy is also the source and ground and foundation of ours.
We rejoice in the Lord when everything, all of this is gone.
When all of this is gone, everything's burned up, gone.
Everything that we love, everything that grieves us, everything that's wonderful, everything that's horrible. When all the political parties and all the kings and tyrants and armies are all gone. When they're all gone, everything is gone. What will remain is Christ. And our joy will be consummated when we see him face to face.
Joy unspeakable.
Joy beyond our capacity to express it. Joy unspeakable and full of glory.
Imagine what that will be like.
So Paul says, I'm writing to you because I remember you and I remember how we began.
Now I'm asking you right now, can you remember how your walk with Christ began? I'm talking to you. You've got mail.
I remember where I got saved.
Can you remember where? The moment. The exact moment. Maybe you weren't saved because of an earthquake in a prison, but can you remember where you received Christ? If you can, raise your hand, can you remember that? Remember it then.
Think of it right now. Bring it into your mind as at the beginning. That's how it started.
Now rejoice in that.
Take joy in it. Take joy in the fact that he who has begun a good work in you will perform it. God hasn't forgotten how you got saved. Saved.
And any goofy thing you've done between here and there doesn't wipe that out.
Rejoice in the Lord. Rejoice in the Lord. And again I say, rejoice in the Lord.
Discipline yourself to have joy.
[00:34:56] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leaders notebook with Dr. You can follow Dr. Rutland on X at Dr. Mark Rutland, or visit his website, Dr. MarkRutland.com where you can find information about his materials and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
