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 Luke, chapter 19.
I'm going to begin reading in just a moment the Palm Sunday story, part of the Palm Sunday story. This being Palm Sunday, I want to read this passage of the Triumphal entry while you're turning there.
The pastor talked about communication.
I became fascinated with communication in undergraduate school. I spent more than 50 years studying the discipline of communication. What makes it work, when it fails, why did it fail, what went wrong?
And I've really tried to apply myself to it linguistically and in mass media, radio and television, and in the written word, in preaching and teaching.
I know what you're thinking. If he spent 50 years studying communication, seems like he'd be better at it.
But you don't know how bad I might have been.
But here's what I've decided. We're one to boil the discipline of communication for a thousand years.
The creme descence that would rise to the top is just four the right message to the right party in the right way at the right time. If you get any of those four variables wrong, it can all go wrong, really wrong really fast.
You can think that you're transmitting a clear and positive message. And the response that it elicits may not be at all what you had hoped for.
Every married man in the room knows exactly what I'm talking about right now.
One of the challenges that we face in communication now is that technology has exacerbated out of all control the transition of language.
There are words that we use that don't mean the same thing that they used to mean.
I think I'm probably the oldest person in the building right now as I look around. But is there anybody here that remembers when gay meant happy?
I want gay. Back when I was a kid, gay had nothing to do with orientation. It was about disposition.
Remember the Christmas song Don we now our gay apparel? That doesn't mean Christmas in drag.
It just means we're happy at the birth of Christ.
I was preaching recently in California, which is evidently where the English language will be destroyed.
And I was speaking to a high school audience about this many high school kids. And they were so positive from the opening sentence of the sermon. They were just with it. And afterward I was speaking to a group of boys. The first boy said, Dr. Utlin, you are one bad preacher.
In my lifetime, bad has come to mean good.
The second boy said, you're the baddest preacher I've ever heard.
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.
The fourth boy, not content with these low altitude compliments, he said, you are not just bad, you're not just sick. He said, you are the OG of crunk.
I have no clue.
I teach the National Institute of Christian Leadership. To which your pastor made reference.
Some years ago a young man came through who now pastors a hip hop church, whatever that is. And so I called him. I figured if anybody knew, he would know. I said, tommy, I've just been told I was the OG of crunk. What does it mean? Oh, he said, OG means the original gangster.
So I said, I'm the original gangster of crunk? He said, yes.
I said, tommy C.
What I would like to know is what does it mean?
Oh, he said, I assumed you knew what crunk means. I thought you just wanted to know what OG means.
I said, tommy, I don't know what any of it means.
He said, it means you beat a Mac daddy.
I said, tommy, what I'm after here falls more along the lines of a definition.
He said, Dr. Mark, I'm trying to. He said, it means you be off the chain.
I just decided to leave it alone.
Now here in the passage that we're going to read is a remarkable moment of communication.
Jesus sends two of the disciples off on an errand and gives them the frailest kind of response in case of any kind of friction.
And it works.
Luke chapter 19, beginning with verse 29.
And it came to pass when he. That is Jesus, of course. And it came to pass when he was come nigh to Bethphage and to Bethany, at the mount called the Mount of Olives. He sent two of his disciples saying, go ye into the village over against you, in which at your entering you shall find a colt tied. Whereon yet never man sa loose him and bring him hither. And if any man ask you, why do you loose him? Thus shall ye say unto him, because the Lord hath need of him. Look at that sentence. Because the Lord hath need of him.
And they that were sent went their way and found it, even as Jesus had said unto them. And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto them, why loose ye the colt? And they said, the Lord hath need of him.
And they brought him to Jesus. And they cast their garments upon the colt and they set Jesus thereon. And as he went, they spread their clothes in the way. And when he was come even to the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen.
Put your hands on your Bible if you will, and let's pray together.
Lord, with our hands upon the Word and our hearts and minds as open as we know how to get them, we ask you to do all the rest.
Sweep aside every barrier to divine communication rushing over the threshold of our souls.
Speak to us that when we leave here today, we'll say one to another.
Surely we have heard from the Lord in Jesus name, Amen.
Palm Sunday story is an account of an eruption of spontaneous grace, the outpouring of joy and praise. People pulling their outer garments out their coats and laying them in the road so that even the donkey's hooves won't touch the dirt, waving the palm branches, crying out hosanna. Which is Hebrew for save us now and enjoy unspeakable, unfettered spontaneous grace.
But the whole event is triggered and empowered by a single moment of spontaneous grace.
Imagine Jesus sends two of the disciples.
He says, go to the next village.
Go to the first house, the first driveway on the right. You're going to see a brand new fire engine red F250 pickup truck with the sticker still on the window.
Now, I know what you're saying. Where do you get all that?
A donkey is what? A beast of burden and a means of conveyance. That's a pickup truck.
And you say, obake. What about the sticker on the window? It says it right there in the Bible. It says, upon which never man had set brand new, just paid for. It's all there. And Jesus says, simon Peter, take a screwdriver with you. I know you're misspent youth.
And when you get there, hotwire it and bring it to me.
And if anybody says, where you going with my truck?
Say, the Lord has need of it.
Am I the only one I can imagine Peter saying to John, does this worry you at all?
They look at the truck in the driveway. John says, it's got an NRA sticker on the back.
They hotwire that truck and start to back it down the driveway. And this guy charges off of the front porch and says, where are you going with my truck?
And Peter says, the Lord has need of it.
And he says, go.
Now, that is a moment of unfettered, unrestrained, spontaneous grace.
He just releases it based on that. On that. The Lord has need of it.
This is not really a sermon about giving this morning. We're not about to launch a capital campaign. But I'm just. I just want to say to you that we want the unfettered grace of God. Us, Ward, we want to receive the grace of God. We don't want God to dole out grace in pennies. We want a flood of grace usward. But the problem is we don't understand the obligation.
Grace flowing out from us into other situations. Giving, no less.
Look, I believe in tithing. I haven't discussed this with your pastor, and he can straighten this out on Easter, but I believe in tithing. I preach tithing. I teach tithing. I practice tithing. I believe in tithing. Yes, every now and again, somebody will say to me, tithing is Old Testament. That's a law. We're not under the law anymore. I never argue. I say, yes, that's exactly right. We're not under the law. We're under grace.
Now, here's my question.
Does grace give less than the law or more than the law?
And people say, you know, I am under the law now that I think of it.
So I believe in tithing. I practice tithing. I teach it. But I don't know who counts the offering here. You ever get these checks say, $413.17?
I always think, what's up with that? I can tell you what's up with it. Somebody sits down with his check stub, and he multiplies it times one. God, here's your tithe. $413.17 and not one penny more.
Okay, that's tithing. Yes, but round it up.
And beyond that, I'm not just talking about satisfying tithing. I'm talking about giving, releasing the joy of surrendering.
Some years ago, I was preaching at a large Methodist church in Georgia. And in those days, they didn't put guest speakers in hotels. You stayed in people's homes. So I was in this very luxurious home, really, a mansion in the north side of Atlanta. And the older couple that I was staying with there had taken me to the church that night in two different cars. I rode with the man. The lady came in her car at the service, the lady came to the altar call, and she said, I want A special infilling of the Holy Spirit. But there's a blockade between me and God.
I said, do you know what it is? She said, I know exactly what it is. She said, you've been in my house. My house is decorated, furnished with priceless antiques. The whole house.
She said, I'm terrified if I surrender my life to God, he'll make me give away my antiques.
Isn't it funny the stuff we get in our heads? She said, can you guarantee to me that God won't make me give away my antiques?
I said, no.
I said, he may require them tonight. I can't guarantee you that, but I don't see a direct connection. But you have to surrender. You just surrender everything. And she did. It was wonderful. A great moment of breaking.
Her husband came and said, look, I'm going to go on home. You bring Dr. Rutland with you. It started to snow, and he said, I will take care of the dog. She said, just get a blanket in the house. Wrap the dog up and put him in the garage. Leave the door open.
We stayed and talked with people, and then I rode home with her. When the light. We went up the driveway. When the light shined in the garage, she stopped the car and burst out laughing.
I said, what is so funny? She said, the dog. Look at the dog.
I said, yes, ma', am. I see. It was a big German shepherd wrapped up in a blanket. I said, I see it. She said, I. I told my husband to go home and wrap the dog up in a blanket. She said, that's a $5,000 antique quilt.
I said, well, it hadn't been laying on it but a couple of minutes. Go get it. She said, no, no, leave it. I gave the antiques to God. If he wants to give them to the dog, that's his.
Now, look, this sermon is not going where you're afraid of. Nobody's trying to get your truck or your antiques.
What it's about is the effluence of grace from us. The Lord has need of it, yes, but I want to say to you, there are people around you that have need of the grace of God. That the grace of God has flowed into you. Your spouse, your kids, your co workers are longing for the grace of God around you. We allow the grace of God to pool in us and therefore lose its outflowing power, while there are people around us that badly need it.
Family members.
We disgrace family members by picking at them and prying at them and criticizing. Some years ago, when I was the president of a big Christian university in the Midwest. A man came to see me about his son. Thousands of kids at the school. I didn't know them all, but I happened to know this guy's son.
I said, oh, that's a wonderful boy. You have really raised a fine son. He said, I know all about that. That's not why I'm here.
I said, well, why are you here? He said, it's that earring. He said, I can't stand the sight of it. I want you to make him take that earring out.
I wanted to say, sir, you had him 18 years.
I've had him three semesters. Why is this my job?
But, you know, I felt he wasn't ready for that discussion.
The next morning, I called the boy in my office. I said, do you know who was here? He said, oh, yeah, and I know why he was here.
He said, he wants me to take this earring out.
I said, son, your dad is a piece of work.
He said, Dr. Rutland, this is so stupid. I said, it is stupid. He said, imagine allowing an earring to stand between you and somebody you love. I said, isn't that juvenile and adolescent? He said, it's not only that. It's selfish. I said, it is selfish. He said, oh, I know what you're doing.
I said, look, son, one of you is going to have to be an adult. And I met your dad.
He said, you're right.
He said, I never thought about it from that side.
He said, it was always my dad's issue. I never thought about it from my side.
He said, you're right. I've never been so proud of a college boy in my life. He reached up and took that earring out, put it on my coffee table, and he said, my dad will never see that earring again as long as I live.
That's Grace.
He could have stood on his rights. He could have said, Look, I'm 21. You can't do this. Instead, he let Grace flow into it. It's not just with our kids, either. Our spouses.
We disgrace our spouses. We're all the married men in the house. Will you raise your hand? I'm going to help you.
Your wife walks out with that new dress on that she bought at the mall. She's modeling that dress for you.
She's modeling that dress. She didn't want you to peer over the top of the sports page.
How much did that set me back?
I'm going to confiscate your credit card.
She's modeling the dress for you. You throw that paper aside and jump to Your feet say, whoa, whoa.
Look at you, baby. You wear that on Wednesday night, and we're going to be late to prayer meeting. Now, that's grace.
That's grace.
I travel constantly. I travel all the time. Sometimes I'm leaving my house. We've been married nearly 57 years. This summer, dawn, no, I know your applauser for her, and I start to leave, head off to some godforsaken foreign country, Michigan or something, and my wife will put her little hands on my face and she'll say, mark, you are the handsomest, sexiest man I've ever seen.
Look. Look up here.
I live in the real world.
We not only disgrace our families, we can make disgraceful churches, whole churches that are disgraceful, churches that are based on the incoming grace of God. And they pull it up. It won't flow out.
I was preaching one Sunday. A man came up to me and accused me of lying. He said, I'm leaving the church because of the lie you told.
I said, what lie?
He said, this morning in the pulpit, I heard you. He said, you said, that battle happened in 1917 in World War I. He said, I'm an expert in American military history, and I know that that battle didn't happen till early 1918.
He said, A man that'll lie about a thing like that will lie about anything. And he said, I can't attend a church where there's a liar in the pulpit.
I said, well, by no, I mean adios.
As an attorney in that same church, my dear friend, still my friend after. Here's the other side. After every sermon I ever preached, morning, night, Wednesday, anything, he always came up to me. He said, oh, Dr. Rutland, that's the greatest sermon I've ever heard in my life.
Look, I was born a night, but I wasn't born last night.
You can't preach the definitive Christian masterpiece three times a week, year after year after year. I know that at an intellectual level, but I like that lawyer lying to me.
When I came out of the pulpit, I was looking for some grace.
Now, I know what you're thinking. We cannot do that with our pastor. We pump his ego up. We can't go on and pump. There'll be some mean old lady in the lobby with a pen. She'll pop him.
After a half a century in the ministry, I now believe that the entire Christian community is divided into only two tribes, pumpers and poppers.
I believe that the eyes of God move to and fro through the earth to find a church full of pumpers into which he can pour his grace.
We disgrace our churches, we disgrace our families, we disgrace our marriages.
But that's not the worst.
We disgrace ourselves, claiming to be people who live under the unfettered, unrestrained grace of God. We live in levels of useless condemnation.
You ever hear anybody say this? And if you've ever said it, I know you'll never say it again. You ever hear this? I know God has forgiven me, but I can't forgive myself. You ever hear that?
Here's the highbrow theological answer to that.
Who do you think you are?
God Almighty says that your sins are no longer remembered. And you say, yes, they are. Are you a more righteous judge than the omnipotent God of the universe? He has buried your sins in the sea of forgetfulness and they are remembered against you no more. And that's gr.
But it's not just at a theological or sin and righteousness level.
It's useless cosmetic issues.
We stare into the full length mirror of self evaluation and we loathe what we see.
We say, look at you.
What happened to you?
Where did your hair go?
And whence cometh this fat.
We condemn ourselves over the most silly and trivial things.
Look, this is church. It's a great church, but this isn't real Christianity.
This is church. I've never committed a really venial sin in church.
Real is a really cold, snowy day in January when you rush out to your truck in a hurry and slam your hand in the door of your car.
That's real.
That's when you can that all that anger and rage. I'm getting an attorney. Ford Motor Company's going down.
Or you can blame yourself. Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I.
Or more likely, blame God.
Well, thank you.
Or you can lift that mangled paw aloft and say, grace be unto thee.
Look, if you've never raised up under a kitchen cabinet and knocked your brain loose, your turn is coming.
And when you do, when your wife is standing there trying to keep from laughing, laugh first.
Grant her the grace to realize how stupid you looked.
And grant yourself the grace to realize you're no better than the rest of us.
I'm going to free you up this morning. Are you ready? I want you to turn to someone near you, not your spouse. Turn to someone near you. There. Look them right in the eye and say, I'm not perfect.
Go on.
Isn't that wonderful?
Cat's out of the bag.
Free at last.
Praise God Almighty. Free at last.
Now I'm going to really shock you. Are you ready?
Turn Back to that same person and say, I already knew that.
Think of all the psychological, emotional and spiritual energy we spend trying to convince each other of our perfection. And nobody ever believed it for a moment.
We're all subject to grace. We all need grace. We all live by grace. We all walk by grace. We're all forgiven by grace. And we all need grace from each other.
The Lord has need of it is all Jesus said.
And the guy said, that's a sufficient explanation for me.
I would say your spouse has need of it. Your dad has need of it.
Your husband has need of it. Your co workers, the surly clerk at the dollar store has need of it.
The people around us have need of it.
Let me close with this.
You're a jolly crew.
I'm going to tell you the funniest church story that you've ever heard.
The funniest stuff happens in church.
Are you ready? I have a friend who is a pastor in a certain Pentecostal denomination. He invited an evangelist to preach in his church and he had one of these ladies in the church, one of these self proclaimed prophetesses. You have any of those?
No. Oh, we'll send you some. Yeah.
Into every life a little rain must fall.
You know, nobody can hear from heaven but them. They've all got the red phone.
She told the pastor of the Lord revealed to her that the evangelist shouldn't come.
The pastor said what he should have said, well, he hadn't revealed it to me and until God speaks to me, he's coming.
She wouldn't leave well enough alone, would she?
First night the evangelist got about five minutes into his sermon. That lady stepped out in the center aisle, raised her hand, pointed her finger in the evangelist's face and said, woe. Thus saith the Lord. Thou thinkest that thou art a humdinger, but thou art not a humdinger, saith the Lord. Thou art a dinger.
I said, my God, pastor, what did you do?
He said, I froze at the controls.
He said, nothing in life had prepared me for that moment.
He said it was the evangelist that saved the day. He stared at her a moment and he put his head over on the pulpit and burst out laughing.
Laughter in a church will feed itself.
Begin laughing over here, over here. Then the musicians started laughing. That's usually where the problem is. And when that laughter reached a crescendo, that old lady slammed her bible shut. She got under the exit sign and she said, I'll never darken the doors of this church again.
The pastor said, Dr. Mark. It was the hour of deliverance.
Now here's the weird thing.
That old lady was right about one thing.
Thus saith the Lord, thou art not humdingers, thou art dingers.
But saith the Lord, I see thee in thy dingerness, and I love thee just the same. Isn't that wonderful?
That's grace.
The whole Bible ends the whole Bible ends with this sentence.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
It's as if God says at the end of the Bible, I've said this on every page and you just won't hear me.
So I'm going to say it one last time.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
God bless you and God bless this great church.
[00:29:19] 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, 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.
