[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: If you have your Bibles, if you'll take those and turn if you will please, to the Book of Ephesians, Paul's Letter to the Church at Ephesus.
Now, when you're an itinerant preacher, when you're traveling and preaching, it's a great luxury.
You don't have to have the discipline of preparing messages all the time. All you need is three good sermons and a fast car.
So sometimes then the Lord will move on you for a new message. This is a brand new message this morning and I may want to preach this elsewhere in the future, but I needed grace filled guinea pigs.
So you look likely, but this is a new message. This morning I felt the Lord kind of move on my heart as I'm able to hear him, which is pathetically bad. But I felt this was a sermon for this church this Sunday. It's not just sermon number nine because it's Sunday.
So this is a new a new message this morning.
It's from Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus. I want to begin reading in chapter four, beginning with verse 23.
And be renewed in the spirit of your mind that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness, wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth to his neighbor, for we are members one of another.
Be angry. Or a better translation might be when you are angry, sin not.
Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Neither give place to the devil. Let him that steal, that stole, steal no more.
But rather let him labor working with his hands the thing which is good that he may have to give to him that needeth. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying. Edifying means building up to the use of edifying that it may minister grace unto the hearers.
And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you along with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
Now, if you Will go to verse chapter five. I want to read the first two verses there and then skip ahead.
Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children and walk in love as Christ also hath loved us and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor. Now go to verse 18 of that same chapter.
And be not drunk with wine where it is excess, but be filled with the spirit, or you might read it.
Continue being filled. Live in a state of being filled with the Spirit.
Verse 19. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, Singing and making melody in your heart unto the Lord, Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Now put your hand on your Bible if you will, and let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you for this morning, this very exact moment, this place, these people, this time, and Lord, we pray that you will break in upon us, brush aside all of our carefully constructed mechanisms of self defense.
May we be open before you and receive everything that you have for us.
In the mighty name Jesus, the strong son of God.
Amen. Amen. And amen. I took my undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland right at the end of the civil War and I had my second semester of my senior year. I was one credit short of the number of credits I needed to graduate. So I just needed a one credit course. Where do you find that? So I went into the physical education department and I found a course on canoeing.
So I signed up to take a one credit course on canoeing. The first two classes we were in a classroom and the guy talked about different things.
And then he said at the end of the second class, he said, all right, on Friday when we meet, it was Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Class, he said, on Friday when we meet, we will meet in here. We'll meet at the lake at the back of the university and we'll get in the canoes.
And the girl in the class said, what?
What? He said, we're going down to the lake and get in the canoes. She said, I can't do that. She said, I'm terrified of water.
He said, young lady, this of course in canoeing, what did you think? She said, I thought it was going to be theory of Canoeing.
Everything at the university, the 101 class in everything at university is theory. You have theory of everything. So she thought it was going to be theory of Canoeing. We were just going to meet in A classroom somewhere, evidently. I don't know what the theory of canoeing is, but we were just going to explore that for a semester.
It has.
It has dawned on me after more than half a century in the ministry, that there are many, many people in the church who think that it's a course in theoretical Christianity, that we're just going to talk about the theory of Christianity. We're not ever going to actually go down to the lake and get in the canoes.
Theoretical Christianity has a certain level of appeal to us. It never taxes us, it never challenges us, it doesn't deal with us, it doesn't change us.
It allows us to concentrate on theological issues, theoretical issues, but it never changes where the rubber meets the road.
And that is how we deal with each other.
That is the fundamental essence of practical Christianity.
Certainly there is the verticality of Christianity, how we relate to God. That goes without saying, our relationship with God.
But the real, the real essence of practical Christianity is the horizontal reality. How we treat each other, how we.
How we deal with those issues of personal life.
So in the passage which we read, there's a sort of a catalog of negative and positive things in human relationships. Listen to some of the negative ones. Lying. Anger, stealing. Wrath. Anger, angry clamor.
That's an interesting phrase, isn't it? Evil speaking. Bitterness, malice. But all of those things are how they affect someone else. When I lie, I'm lying to someone else.
When I am angry, I'm angry with another person. When I'm stealing, I steal someone else's money.
If I'm filled with wrath, I take that wrath out on someone else.
When there's angry clamor, that's you talk all mad and angry, clamoring. Evil speaking, that is. By the way, evil speaking is a direct English. This is the English translation. Paul was writing in Greek, but he was thinking in Hebrew. His native language is Hebrew. He. And the phrase in Hebrew is lashon hara. It means, it translates literally evil speaking.
And it is a vastly written upon in rabbinical writing as evil speaking. How do I talk about people? And Paul lists that. Lashon haral. Evil speaking. Bitterness, I'm bitter with others.
Malice, I'm malignant with other people.
Then he lists some positive aspects of human relationships. Generosity. There's no such thing as theoretical generosity.
It's practical. You have to actually give somebody the pen and not the car. Evidently, edifying means we build up others.
It's not theoretical edification. Our words, our phrases, our attitudes, we build up. We build up someone else. Kindness. You can't be theoretically kind. You're kind to somebody else. Tenderhearted with others, forgive others.
The totality of the issue Paul explores in Ephesians 5 and 12. He says, all of this falls under the category of walking in love.
Walk in love.
But none are theoretical.
Real, live Christianity is our relationship with others.
Now, the problem is this.
We so concentrate on the theory of Christianity that we miss the dynamic of the convicting power of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is certainly the spirit of power and of giftedness and of teaching, but he is also Paul. Jesus says he will reprove us, rebuke us. The Holy Spirit is like an American physician. You ever go to an American doctor and you say, I got a sore place here on my arm, really hurts. What's the first thing he'll do?
Push on it?
He pushed on it. He says, does that hurt? You say, yes, it hurts. That's why I'm here. I told you it hurts.
Does he quit? He does not quit. He said, what if I do this?
How about if I punch it like that? If I kick it, does that hurt?
He keeps exploring the parameters of your pain.
That is exactly what the Holy Spirit does. And it is one of the reasons that so many people think they are open to the Holy Spirit. And they are. Actually, Paul says, grieve not the Holy Spirit. When we refuse the pain of. Of the conviction of the Holy Spirit, we grieve one of his greatest works in our lives.
So one Sunday at a church I pastored some years ago, I preached on finances.
And this guy met me in the lobby and he was mad, he was cranked, and he said, I'm never coming back to this church ever again. All you ever preach on is money, money, money, money, and I'm leaving.
You know it.
I thought, wow, do I do that?
You know, I could have just blown that off. But I thought, do I do that? Am I that preacher that's always preaching on money? So I went back through my log. You keep a preaching log, all the sermons you preach. I went back through my log, and in the previous three years, I had preached on finances once a year, three times in three years.
He said, that's all you ever preach on. And I want now, if I had it back, I would say to him, that's not all I ever preach on. It's all you ever hear.
The Holy Spirit moves in and probes us. And that point of pain, that sentence, that phrase, that, that thing where it's things in the. You heard people say. They said to you, pastor, you stepped on My toes, you step. No, no, I did not. Somebody did.
And that is the. That is the probing conviction of the Holy Spirit. When we refuse to hear that we cannot make progress in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Look, I'm a straight out, 100 proof, tongues talking Pentecostal without apology, having said that, that I believe in the gifts of the Spirit, all the gifts, all the gifts present in the church, all the gifts present today.
Nothing happened to the gifts of the Spirit.
Having said that, if you seek the power of the Holy Spirit in your life just for the gifts, that's like putting electricity in your house because you think the switch plates are pretty.
The point is not the gifts of the Spirit. They are great, but they're all for somebody else. The point of the Holy Spirit above all things is holiness of heart and life. And it's not theoretical. There's no such thing as the theory of holiness. There's no such thing as the theory of love. It's practical. It's how you treat people.
Many years ago, my wife and I had a youth camp. We ran it for 18 years. Every summer we rented a small college, we'd have thousands of kids. It was just a one week thing. Every summer for 18 years.
One year we had this kid who came and he was wild as a March hare. He was. He, you know, somebody said, you ever hear anybody say this? There's no such thing as a bad boy. You ever heard that? Well, yes, there is, though. This kid was making us all crazy. He was big and strong. He dominated everybody and yelling all the time, getting in struggles.
The night he got saved, he came to the altar. I mean, there's some people that get saved, you know, they get saved. I'm not saying they're not saved, but they're saved. There are other people that get saved.
He got saved. He got the whole nine yards saved. Baptized in the Holy Spirit, sanctified. He got the whole thing. And he got up from that altar, he looked different, his voice sounded different. It was. We were just thrilled. Went back to the boys dorm and he was. We were the group of boys. I was in the room and we were all just talking about. He was laying in the bottom bunk. Two little pipsqueak seventh graders were chasing each other in the hall. And one of them had a glass of water. The other one had thrown water on him and he was going to throw. So one of the little boys dashed into the room and. And that other boy went in and threw the water at him and missed the little boy and hit that big Boy right in the face with that water, and we all just froze. He tear this child up.
We just froze. And he looked at that little kid and he said, now, you don't need to be doing that. Go back to your room.
And I said, there's a God in Israel.
There is a God in Israel.
That big boy made more progress in his relationship with another human being than many Christians make in their lifetime.
The issue is not giftedness. The issue is not anointing. The issue is how do we live in community to be filled with the Holy Spirit? If it doesn't have effect in the way we treat each other, then what spirit have we received?
So we ask people all the time, have you received the Holy Spirit? Have you received. Sometimes the question is simply misunderstood.
I heard about two guys from Michigan that were driving through Georgia, where I live now, and that's in the United States.
And they were driving through Georgia on their way from Michigan down to Florida. They drove into a little town and they saw this sign, welcome to. You know. And the one guy read it out loud, welcome to Dahlonega. And the other guy said, oh, I don't think that's the way you say that.
He said, no, I think it is. It's Dahlonega. He said, no. I said, I happen to be an expert in Native American language. And the emphasis would be on the third syllable. It would be Dalanega. And he said, well, I don't know anything about Native American language, but you say it Dahlonega. And they got into an argument. Finally, they put down a big bet wager.
Evidently, they were not Christian, from Michigan. And they put down a big bet, went into a place in town, pulled in, went in, talked to the guy behind the counter, and they said, we have a bet on about how you say the name of this place, and we want you to settle it. We just want you to say the name, say it gently, say it regular, but don't just say it the way you always say it. And that's gonna settle our bet. And he said, you just want me to say the name of this place? They said, that's right. He said, dairy Queen.
So you can think that you have asked the question, have you received the Holy Spirit since you first believed? And people may say, yes, I've received the Holy Spirit because I had an experience with the Holy Spirit. I've received the Holy Spirit because of empowerment that's happened in my life. But Paul says that it is a matter of going on. Do you live in the process of receiving the Holy Spirit. So the question actually is not comprehensible. When we say, have you received the Holy Spirit? The question is actually complicated to articulate. Have you once received. Are you continuing to receive? Are you living in the state of receptiveness to the power of the Holy Spirit?
And that question is much more difficult and painful to answer. Are you living in the spirit of receiving the Holy Spirit? How do we relate to each other in our families, in our. In church?
I talked to this lady.
You know, the ministry, it just challenges your faith in humanity sometimes.
So I talked to this lady and she said, After 35 years, I'm leaving my church. She said, I'm leaving. I said, why in the world? What has happened? Oh, I thought she was going to say, our pastor has done this horrible thing. This has happened something terrible. She said, we always had a choir and one person leading. And she said, now they have eight people on the platform. They have a worship team. She said, what can a worship team even mean?
And she said, I'm leaving the church.
I said, wow, I don't blame you. That is huge. That's huge. A worship team. Eight people instead of one. No wonder you're leaving the church. The sarcasm was wasted on her.
She said, I know, I know.
Finally I said, sister, will you please listen to what I'm saying?
That's the silliest thing I've ever heard of in my life. That they have one person leading worship or eight people leading worship, or acquire. Or not acquire. Or acquire in their robes or acquire.
What a stupid thing.
What a stupid thing that is. But if I had asked her five minutes. Here's the point. If I had asked her five minutes before the worship service, have you received the Holy Spirit? She would have said, oh, yes, praise God.
But she wasn't receiving the Holy Spirit in that issue.
Do you see the issue I'm talking about there? How we live and relate to each other in our marriages, in our homes, in our families, in church.
What does it mean to be a Christian in church? Now, I'm going to free you up this morning. I'm going to help you if you don't get anything else. If you will receive what I'm going to say now, I'm going to make you happier in church. One thing. We're going to do it right now. You will be a happier churchgoer if you will just listen to this one thing. Are you ready? Everybody get ready. Here it is.
You don't have to have opinion about everything.
Free at last.
Praise God Almighty. Free at last.
People Rush up to you in the parking lot. Have you heard about. You can say, no, I haven't. Let me give you the second verse of that hymn.
I don't care.
I don't care.
It is.
It is fundamental to practical Christianity, theoretical Christianity, the theory. You talk about the theory of canoeing all you want to, but. But there has to be some point where you get on the lake, where you have to get in the canoe, that. That's what Paul is writing about in Ephesians. And isn't it fascinating when we come to the end of the. Of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, the. This same church is mentioned again. And what does God say? You have lost your first love.
So Paul senses from the beginning, the issue at Ephesus is love.
Do you love one another? Do you act in love? Do you speak in love? Have you quit doing things that hurt other people? Because you love God and you love people? And are you now doing the positive things, saying the positive things, living in the positive way that build up and edify and encourage others because of love?
Now he comes to the sort of the.
The piece de resistance of this whole passage, and he says, be ye not drunk with wine in which is excess, but be being filled with the Holy Spirit. And then he talks about how that works in a almost theoretical Christianity. Singing, making melody in your hearts to the Lord. Great, great. You can almost hear everybody in the church say, oh, that's good. So real Christianity being filled with the Holy Spirit, that's about worship and singing and. And rejoicing in the Lord. And you can almost feel it. Everybody in the church is saying, oh, I. I love this kind of Christianity. And then he says, and submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
Then we come to the issue about relationship, human relationships. He spends the next chapter and a half talking about how that works in human relationships. How bosses and employees relate, how husbands and wives relate, how parents and children relate. He says the whole thing is living in mutual submission.
And he uses this wonderful word, submission.
Now, there are words which have a greater impact emotionally, connotatively, than they do in terms of a dictionary. Submission is one of those, at least in the Christian church. I can walk into any marriage conference in America and I can say, today I'm going to be speaking on submission.
And the air will crackle with electricity because about a third of the people in the room say, yeah, now he's gonna straighten her out.
And about a third of the people in the room say, oh, here it comes.
Here it comes. I Knew he'd stick it to me sooner or later.
A third of the people in the room have no idea why. They just feel they're saying what, what, what it is because I believe a perfectly valid theoretical Christian reality.
Submission has been largely hijacked mostly by male teachers, has been misapprehended and therefore mistaught, which causes an unnecessary knee jerk reaction largely by female listeners. And it's Ephesians 5 and 22.
Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord. Every man in the place say hallelujah.
Ladies. If that's your husband's favorite verse in the Bible, you got to understand it's delectable.
Here's what happens.
Some guy goes off to the men's conference with your men's fellowship, lost as a ball in high wheats. Just a selfish pig. And his wife and kids are at home praying. Oh God, save daddy. Oh God, save my husband. Fill him or kill him, we don't care.
And he goes off to the men's conference and he gets saved. He receives Christ as his savior and he's born again. Now I'm asking you, is he saved? No, that's not a trick question. Is he saved?
Yes, he's saved. Is there a gap between saved and walking? In sanctified holy submission to the Lord Jesus Christ. Is there a gap between salvation and this bizarre notice called maturity?
Is there a gap? Yes, he's saved. But he's the same selfish pig he was when he got saved. Just a saved pig.
Now he goes home and he announces that he's saved. Everybody's happy, thank God, Daddy's saved. Nobody wants Daddy to go to hell. He's saved. Great. He's saved. But it doesn't take them two weeks to realize he. He's the same selfish swine he was when he left. Only now he's going to bend them backward over the word of God. He gets this arch. If you. If you oppose me on this, you're not opposing me, you're opposing God.
So what does it mean? Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord. Okay, the problem verse is the next verse.
Submitting yourselves to each other in the fear of God. So Paul says this is about mutual submission.
Now what does submission even mean? Let's deal with that for a minute.
Let's suppose this is a classroom and I'm your professor and I say on the last day of class, I want you to submit a term paper to me. 30 pages, double spaced, bibliography, footnotes, everything. You work all semester, you get it perfect. It's perfectly prepared.
You put it in your briefcase, you take it to class with you. You have it, it's in your possession. And I stand up and say, all right, I told you judgment day was coming. Submit your term paper.
You can do one thing and fail that course.
Just don't turn it in. You got it? Fine. Good for you. You keep it in your briefcase and go home with it. You fail.
So let's take out the word submit and put in a more.
An easier one syllable word. When he says, submit your term paper to me, he means what?
Say it out loud. Give it to me.
So Paul says, the essence of practical Christianity, of life in the spirit, is giving yourselves to each other in the fear of God.
Then he deals with family relationships, children, teenagers, parents, bosses, everything. Everything in terms of giving, to live in mutual submission to one another.
So the issue in marriage is not who's in charge here.
The issue in marriage is a race to outgive each other.
So the husband says, it's the opening day of deer season.
You can call her. Me gone.
I haven't missed an opening day in 25 years, and I'm going.
So the wife says, baby, please don't go. Two of the kids have got diphtheria.
The tape back man is coming for the car.
Please don't leave. He says, I'm the head of the household. Listen to me, guys, that's not King Jesus, that's King Kong.
She senses his lack of submission. And it will energize her. Her lack of submission.
Giving yourselves to one another. Now the problem is who's supposed to lead the way? In submission, Paul mentions the wives first. Many men will say, paul says, Paul mentioned the wives. Wives, submit yourselves unto the Lord. Yes.
However, Paul was not only a brilliant writer, he was a brilliant student of human nature. He knew if he didn't mention the wives first, the husbands wouldn't listen.
So he says, wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord. And all the men say, that's hallelujah.
And then he says, and husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. And now he changes the verb. If A equals B, then B equals A. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.
So, yes, guys, you are the head of your household. Girls, we're not voting on this. The husband is the head of the household as Christ is the head of the church. But how did Christ become the head of the church? He didn't ascend to the pinnacle of the temple and say, all right, down. Worship me. You dogs, or I'll melt you like wax.
He didn't become the head of the church by ascending to the pinnacle of the temple. He became the head of the church by ascending to the cross.
Which means the head of the household has to be the most crucified person in the family.
I never get an amen on that. I don't.
Yes, you're the head of the household now. How does it work?
Take it. Don't worry about marriage for a minute. How does it work in family? How does it work? How can I be submitted to my children and be the head of the household?
So here's. See, take it out of the theory. The theory of Christianity won't work for us here.
So here's a dad. He's watching the Atlanta Braves. They're playing the New York Philistines.
No, it's the Yankees. And you can use any adjective that makes you feel good with it. All right, so the Braves. It's the last inning, the bottom of the night. There's a Yankee on every base. Two outs, the count is three. Two. One pitch.
One pitch. And the Philistines go down to defeat.
And so he looks over his shoulder and his 5 year old is playing with a priceless Ming vase that his wife inherited from her great grandmother. And he says, now, Johnny, put that vase up. You know you're not supposed to have that. He turns back to the game and smash.
The vase is destroyed.
Now he jumps up, grabs Johnny and spanks him all over the house. And he says to himself that that was a biblical spanking. Spare the rod and spoil the child. Sin is bound in the heart of the child, but the rod driveth it forth, right? But here's the problem. You cannot con a kid. And Johnny knows exactly why he got the spanking. He didn't get the spanking because he played with the vice or because he disobeyed his father or because he broke it.
He got to spanking because he dared to be inconvenient.
He got between his dad and the ball game and that's why he got the spanking. So how can I be the head of my household, lead with authority and be submitted to that little boy? I say, all right, let me take that vise away from you and put it up on a shelf where you can't reach it. There's no reason in the world that a little boy wants to play with a Ming vise. Let me turn this TV off. The Braves are going to figure out some way to lose this anyway. So let me turn this off, you run upstairs and get your bat and ball, because the real ball game is in the backyard.
Now, I've made a command decision in submission to a child over whom I have authority.
That's the contradiction of giving and submission and authority. And it's never. It's never theoretical. It's never theoretical. You can't reduce it all to Robert's Rules of Order. You can't make. You can't make it work in laws. That's why marriage seminars often are not only not productive, they may be counterproductive. So you go to some marriage seminar and there 19 ways that a woman can be submitted to her husband and she learns the rules.
Then one day they have a fight at breakfast, they have an argument at breakfast, and he leaves for work. Let me tell you something, girls. You need to hear this.
Men have no computer chip for the retention of arguments. They can't remember arguments. It's God's little trick on women.
Women, however, can remember arguments for like decades.
So all day she's thinking about that argument. She remembers that way that his eyebrow went up when he's the corner of his mouth that begged for the palm of her hand. She.
She thinks, you ever see a really angry woman unload a dishwasher?
She's putting those plates in like a Frisbee war, vacuuming the carpet. Looks like Japanese bayonet practice.
The husband's at work all day. He's forgotten it.
He's completely forgotten it. He's not faking.
He's forgotten it. He has a horrible day. Horrible day at work. Everything that could go wrong goes wrong. Puts overhead cam on upside down.
His female boss yells at him, customers are mad. He barks his knuckle on something. He's bleeding. He drives up in his driveway and he says, home.
A man's home is his castle.
And he knows inside is comfort and love and supper. Everything that makes a man's life worth living.
And he throws the door open and there's his wife washing dishes. And he says, I'm home.
Give me a kiss.
And she glares at him. That argument hanging in the air between them.
His hair in his eyes, sweat stains on his blue shirt, grease on his hands. And she's thinking, give you a kiss. Not on your best day.
But she says to him, you want a kiss? I'm going to give you a kiss. And I want you to know why. I want you to know who the Christian in this home is.
And if there's one thing I've learned, it's wives. Submit yourselves Unto your husbands as unto the Lord. So you want your kiss. Here's your kiss. She stomps across the kitchen floor and kisses him one there. I hope you're happy.
That's obedience, but it's not submission.
Or she can look at him and say, look at him, big old dumb thing.
He's so stupid, he doesn't even know I'm mad at him.
He's not faking. He doesn't know his hand is bleeding. He's discouraged, he's disheartened. He wishes to God his mother was here and she's not here, so I'll have to help.
She runs across the kitchen floor, she grabs him by both ears and bends him backward over the dining room table and Class A rings his chimes.
Now she submitted.
Now she submitted.
I talked to so many second generation people in Spearfield World University. President two different Spearfield universities, 16 years.
Do you know who I spent most of the counseling with? People that I had to do most of the counseling with second and third generation Pentecostals and Charismatics because they lived and grew up in the gap between theoretical Christianity and practical reality.
They're hurt, wounded, because they hear their dad stand up in church and give a word of prophecy and then talk to their mother in the car on the way home like she was a dog.
And they're wounded because they fell into the gap between theoretical and practical Christianity.
The issue then is how we live in community, in marriage, with our children, with our parents.
Children, listen, the first commandment is good, you know, children will honor your parents for this is it'll be well with you. Live a long life. Yes, but that makes it a command.
What is the spirit of the way you treat your parents? Ever.
You ever see this family come into a restaurant and there's three of them, mother, father and a little boy about nine, and they sit at a table for four and about five or ten minutes later the teenage boy comes in.
I'm not with these people.
They kidnapped me.
And he sits at the table and kind of turns his chair away a little bit and he sits like this.
And the other three are talking, laughing. He sits like this or looks at his phone and he thinks that he is making the statement, I'm not with this. He's making a statement of separation. What he doesn't know is everybody in the restaurant is saying, doesn't he look like his dad?
If he would submit himself, if he would give himself into the bosom of that family, if he would walk with them and sit at the table and sit, say to everybody, this is my family.
I belong here. The little fat lady, she changed my diapers.
The bald headed guy, he's not just my dad, he's my future.
And the little nine year old biting on his arm, that's my brother.
We're genetically connected.
What he doesn't know is he. That would make him so much more attractive and charming because he has moved from theoretical Christianity to the practical application of the Holy Spirit in the family into which God has placed him.
And that's the way it works in church, in family, in marriage. It is about living in mutual submission, giving ourselves to each other.
Quit griping and complaining about everything.
Quit gossiping. What, how, what is the deal in church with gossip?
That that's not somehow acceptable? That's not. There's no exemption granted. Yes, yes, gossip is a terrible sin. But it's okay in church?
No, it's. It's a sin.
Why can't we get gossip stopped in a church?
I'll tell you why. It's because we care more about our friendship with people than we care about their eternal destination.
Somebody. I've seen people stand in the parking lot of a church and just pour acidic, malignant gossip into somebody else's ear. And they'll stand there, I know, Bob. I know how you feel.
I know, I know. Then they get in the car with the wife and say, oh, Bob has lost his mind.
Why don't they say anything to Bob?
Why don't they say it right that minute? You know why? Because they want Bob to like him.
I've been thinking about printing some bumper stickers.
I've got an idea for bumper stickers. Pastor Terry, I believe we can sell thousands of them. I want you to say, friends don't let friends drive demon possessed.
I think, no, I think we can sell them.
Why won't we just say no? You're not going to say that stuff to me. You're not going to pour it into my ear. And let me tell you something else. I challenge you in the name of Jesus. You need to let the Holy Ghost get this stuff out of your mind and out of your mouth because you are in sin and not in the spirit. You have fallen into the gap between the baptism of the Holy Spirit and. And the holiness of the Lord in community.
I can tell you how to stop gossip.
I'm going to tell you right now. When somebody starts gossiping to you, bend over, get your body at a kind of awkward angle so you look a little weird and cock your neck back and put Your hands out like this and roll your eyes around and flap your fingers and go. Repent.
It may not stop them from gossiping, but they won't come to you anymore.
Life in the spirit. That's the reason that God puts us in churches and families.
He says, yes, Theoretical Christianity, yes. Salvation, yes, you're saved. If you were to die right now, you'd be in heaven. Yes, you've been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Yes, I'll give you gifts and empowerments. Yes, there'll be signs and wonders and miracles. But now comes the real part. I'm going to put you in church with people that are just as weird as you are.
And you're going to have to figure out what life in the spirit means in community with folks.
That's why God puts us in families.
I talked to this boy the other day.
He said, I'm adopted. I've been raised in a family. He said, Dr. Rutland, my adopted family is just so weird.
And I said, yes, I know what you're saying. But I said, you don't know how weird the family was that put you up for adoption. You may have escaped.
We live in community.
We live with each other.
We have to relate to one another.
What we have to do is take the power of the Holy Spirit and somehow or another incarnate that into the way. Some practical, practical.
How do we talk to each other? How do we give? How do we share? How do we live sensitive to the Holy Spirit?
It's not always fun.
I went to a grocery store the other day.
It's a weird kind of foreign owned grocery store. And I didn't like it. I didn't know how to do everything.
You had to take your own bags.
What kind of a grocery store? You have to carry your bags to the grocery store? No, that should be included. And I had to bag my groceries and everything. It was. I just didn't. I was feeling uncomfortable.
And then the little girl at the cash register there, she. She was about 12.
And I felt she was rude to me. I thought she was rude to me. And so I gave her right back to her.
Just gave it right back to her. I got out to the car. I'm driving out of the parking lot.
You ever try to argue with God and he won't answer you?
I said, lord, she was rude to me. He said, mm, Sitting right in the front seat with me. He said, mm. I said, no, Lord, she was rude and I'm old and she should treat me with respect.
He said, mm.
I said, did you hear what she said, I said, okay, I'll go back and apologize.
Turned the car around, went back, went in the parking lot, got out, went inside. Young lady was still there. I said, young lady, I came through here a minute ago, and I'm afraid I was rude to you, and I apologize. She said, whatever.
And I laughed. And I heard the Lord laugh. He said, isn't that funny? I said, well, you kind of.
I'm getting it.
Look, life in the Spirit is all about moving beyond the theoretical.
Yes, you can have theology. Yes, you can study theology. You can have a PhD in apologetics and be rude and selfish and insensitive, or you can learn that the whole thing, Christianity is all about being in community with people, family, people around you. How you act, how you talk, how you think, how you give, how you give.
That's one of the signs of the Spirit, is generosity.
I wish you could stand up here. You all don't pass the plates in here, but a lot of churches pass. I wish you could stand up here and watch the plates pass through a congregation. You can see people saying, oh, there you go. There's your dollar. I hope you're happy.
I think to myself, I bet the Lord is thrilled with that.
Not just in church.
Lady died in one of my very first churches.
Lovely lady. I mean, a princess of the king. She was a. But her husband came to church maybe four or five times a year. Tough guy.
I went to the viewing, and he was standing at the head of the coffin. And the coffin was draped in a blanket of roses. I never saw anything like it. It went over the whole coffin right down to the floor. I said, howard, this is beautiful. Did you buy this? He said, yes, I did.
He said, you know, Marguerite always used to say to me, buy me some roses. Buy me. Won't you buy me flowers? And he said, I'm. I'm just not into that kind of thing. You know me. I'm not into that. He said, well, I'm. I'm making it up to her now.
No, I'm. Make it up to her now.
Make it up to her now. Give her the roses. Now.
You pull up to a stop sign in downtown Dallas, and there's a wino on the street corner selling little rose buds in plastic tubes. You ever see that?
And she says, oh, buy me a rose.
You say, no, I'm not doing this. She doesn't need a lecture on the socioeconomic implications of alcoholism, just wants a rose.
Lower the window and call him over. Come here, my good man.
My beautiful wife wants a rose. And I'm not going to buy her one. I'm going to buy all you've got.
Go over there and get all your roses and put them in her arms, bless them both, give her a bouquet of roses and get him enough Thunderbird to make it through the winter.
Life.
Life is filled with opportunities to give and to celebrate the weird humanity in which we live and to walk. And in practical Christianity, real Christianity.
I for one, I for one want to be free of theoretical Christianity. The theory of Canoe makes no sense, but it may make more sense than the theory of Christianity.
Christianity is about being out on the sea of humanity and living in generous, gracious, spirit filled, loving submission.
And thus saith the Lord.
[00:49:02] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on
[email protected] 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.
