Mark Rutland

Good evening.

Good evening.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

What a wonderful and extravagant introduction.

It just grieves me that my wife wasn't here to hear that.

I think it could have helped her so much.

Thank you.

That was so nice.

Thank you very much.

What a joy to be back here at this great church.

Every time I come, I find myself inspired to do more for God and to be a part of this even for tonight.

Now, your pastor has a wonderful gift of totally and completely humbling, no humiliating guest speakers.

Jack Hayford was yesterday morning.

Senator Rick Santorum, who came within a hair's breadth of the presidency, was last night.

Max Lucado is tomorrow night.

And I am preaching opposite the national championship.

There's only nine men in the audience tonight.

I preached in Indianapolis on Sunday morning at a church there, and sometimes when the Spirit moves me, I pray in Spanish.

I love Spanish.

I love to pray in Spanish.

So in Spanish, I praise you is tealamo.

So afterward, this guy came up to me and he said, I am offended that you prayed for Alabama in.

I said, Well, let me ask you something, friend.

You live right here in Indianapolis.

I said, Are you cheering for the Colts?

He said, I sure am.

I said, Well, put not your trust in luck.

Well, it's great to be here.

I want to uh just give you uh two brief things, if you will, as there's a product table out there in the lobby, and you can go there and I wish you well and spend yourself into bankruptcy.

But uh but there are two things that you might want to know.

This this card here, if you would like a free MP3 download, uh the most listened to and requested sermon I've ever preached in my life is a message called Power Not Power.

If you would like a free MP3 download of Power Not Power, just go out there to the table and pick up this blue card and you can have a free MP3 download of that.

If you have no clue what a free MP3 download is, pick up one of these cards and take it to your grandchild, and they will help you.

I've got a new book that'll be out at the end of this month.

I wanted desperately, your pastor has endorsed this book, and and I wanted desperately to premiere this book tonight.

I just thought this would be a great place.

The publisher was so narrow-minded about the ink drawing.

I I felt that was a minimal request.

But uh, there is a card also at that table.

It's a book about turnaround leadership, and the title is Relaunch.

If you would like this card, go to the table and that will show you how to do a pre-order on relaunch.

And I hope you will enjoy it and that it'll be blessed to you.

Now, if you have your Bibles, if you'll take those and turn, if you will, please, to the gospel according to Luke.

Now, look, folks, I don't know that you can appreciate how both intimidating and exhilarating it is for a guest to preach at Gateway.

You what you want to do when you come to Gateway, and any guest speaker that denies this is is in himself in deception.

But what you want to do is flex your muscles.

You come to Gateway, you want to preach.

I mean, this is a huge church, you want to preach a huge sermon.

You want to come out with something, I mean big.

Well, I don't have that for you tonight.

This is a simple little pastoral message.

It it's not a message exclusively for women.

Uh I'm happy for the men in the audience to listen.

But I just knew that there were gonna be 10,000 football widows in this house tonight.

And so I want to preach tonight on after the angels leave.

After the angels leave.

Luke chapter 2, I'm gonna begin reading at verse 26.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

And in the sixth month, Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin, espoused to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David.

And the virgin's name was Mary.

And the angel came in unto her and said, Hail, thou who art highly favored, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women.

And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered in her mind what manner of greeting this should be.

And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God.

And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.

And he shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?

No, in the biblical sense, I'm a virgin, in other words.

And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee.

Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

And behold, thy cousin Elizabeth also hath conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month with her who was called Baron.

For with God nothing shall be impossible.

And Mary said, Behold, the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word.

And the angel departed from her.

Put your hands on your Bible, if you will, and let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you for this moment, this exact moment, and for the knowledge that you are with us in this place and usward in this place.

Now, O Lord, I pray that you will clear away every obstruction to divine communication, both in the speaker and in the listener.

Rush in over the threshold of our souls and enter in by your might into the inner person of every listener.

That when we leave here tonight, we will say one to another, surely the Lord hath spoken unto us.

In Jesus' mighty name, the strong Son of God.

Amen.

It was absolutely incredible.

It was incredible.

I thought to myself, did they show these clips to the boys before they married these girls?

Because they are in for a rough ride.

I mean young women who absolutely, they're on steroids or something.

How many of you have ever seen any of these clips?

It's unbelievable.

They go crazy, they're screaming at everybody, and they're tearing things, and they're, and just horrible, just horrible in preparation for their wedding day.

It occurred to me that they have so fastened their gaze, the center of their of their emotional selves, on that moment.

It is so huge, it looms so huge to them that it has caused them to be totally overwrought that every kind of wicked diva demon in the entire universe invades them because this is their one moment on the stage.

This is them.

They are the star.

Every other person in the church, in the wedding party, every person is just a prop.

They are the bride, and the ghost of Godzilla invades them.

And then it occurred to me, but what about when the wedding's over?

What about when all the cake is gone and the honeymoon's over, and it's the second Tuesday of the third month after the wedding?

They've looked at the photos, they've played the film.

Now all of that is gone.

Nobody cares anymore.

Now there's just dirty dishes.

And she wakes up and there's this guy in her bed, in her life.

And he turns over and says, I love you, and his breath.

She says, What have I done?

I believe that we have created an element of our culture, which is about the explosion.

It's about the celebration, it's about the the exciting moment, and that we have fed ourselves on it to such an extent that we have an addiction for the great thing.

That the day, today, today, get up and go to work, has become not only drudgery, but actually the enemy.

Unfortunately, it is my observation, and I'm not.

Look, I'm an equal opportunity preacher.

Before the night's over, I will offend you all.

Some of you just aren't gonna like this, but you know, I ain't running for nothing in Texas.

I believe that the broader evangelical community, and and more particularly the spirit-filled community, has fed some of that inside the body of Christ.

Now look, what about what about this girl, Mary?

What about this girl?

What was she like before this angel came?

Her life was normal, whatever normal means.

At least it was regular, and she was a teenager by all accounts.

Basically, uh in that culture, probably 14, 15, 16 years old, engaged to an older man who could afford a bride, and and she wasn't sitting there waiting for the angels to arrive.

We have to, sometimes we're looking back on the New Testament in the vague misapprehension that these people were looking forward at the New Testament.

That that Mary got up that morning and said, Luke chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

They weren't operating on a script, it wasn't a nativity play.

She wasn't waiting for the angel to come.

It was just life.

She wasn't standing to the side waiting for God to swoop in and change everything.

We know God is there in real life, in small things, in relationships.

Can we think for one moment that Mary had absolutely no relationship with God before the arrival of Gabriel?

That's absurd.

I don't know.

There was some reason that she was chosen.

Hail to thee, thou hast found favor with God.

Of course, we're we're not into crass Mariology, but in our attempt to avoid that, we've almost pitched the Virgin Mary onto the rubbish heap of history.

There was some reason that this girl was chosen.

Of course, the sovereign will of God is not to be questioned, nor can it be fully explained.

But there was something about Mary herself that figured in the equation.

We can see something of it in her submission to God's will.

We can see her say, Be it unto me according to thy word.

What a simple statement of submission.

I preached at a large convention of Roman Catholic women one time, and I said that the perfect model of baptism in the Holy Spirit is actually the Virgin Mary.

That which you receive by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit will be Jesus within you, and that which you bring forth will be Jesus.

How do you receive that?

You say, Be it unto me according to thy word.

So the Virgin Mary was prepared.

She didn't learn submission to the will of God in that moment.

She answered, What meek, humble submission is that?

Be it unto me according to thy word.

I find it awkward to stand up here in front of all of you and admit to the level of carnality that I bring to this story.

But I know if it had been me, I just know myself, I would have said, you know, this is all well and good.

But I have a few questions.

Are you going with me to my dad?

The Holy Spirit will overshadow you and you'll get pregnant, out of wedlock.

This is not working for me.

Am I the only one that just said, you know, could we think through this a minute?

And this little teenage girl says, whatever God wills.

There was something about her that causes her to find favor with God.

What does this say?

What does she say to everyone else?

What does she say to everybody else?

Look, here's the challenge of the story.

We read over it and we miss it.

The challenge of the story is the last line.

And the angel departed from her.

What does she say to everybody else?

What does she say to her father?

What does she say to her mother?

I seem to be pregnant here, not to worry, it's God's.

I mean, these people, here's the issue.

She's the only one that's seen the angel.

That's that's a that's a huge issue.

Joseph has to deal with this.

See, when the angel goes away, life goes back to normal, whatever normal is.

When the angel disappears, then you have to do life.

This girl, who was just an ordinary girl in a small, out-of-the-way village on the shoulder of the Roman Empire in an occupied country on the edge of poverty, living an insignificant life in an insignificant village, suddenly had the invasion of the supernatural.

But when the angel goes away, she's still in Nazareth.

She's still who she is, she's still engaged, she's still having to face everybody.

This is a huge issue in the body of Christ.

Is that we want to live from angel to angel, metaphorically speaking.

We want to live from supernatural peak to supernatural peak.

But between the angels, there's life.

This is one of the real problems of the whole mixture of nature and supernature in the whole New Testament.

The natural and the supernatural.

Look at the other appearances of the angels in the Nativity story.

What about when the angels appear to the shepherds?

Think about this.

The angels appear in the sky, but the shepherds are on the ground.

Their eyes are on heaven, but their feet are on the ground.

In a flock of sheep.

They're in a flock of sheep.

Do you understand the implications of that?

Have you ever thought about it?

One of the guys says to the others, hey, look up there, oh man.

Oh, angels.

Do you understand?

This is not a small issue in the body of Christ.

Is that we have to live life.

Real life.

Now it doesn't mean that we blow off or refuse to believe in the supernatural, the miraculous, the wonderful invasion of the Holy Spirit, the presence of an angel, the exciting, thrilling things that happen.

It means that they can turn us into Bradzilla.

They can make us manipulative.

They can make us manipulative.

I've got a word for you tonight.

You don't have to tell everybody everything that God tells you.

There are people who live, who live with, God told me, God said to me, on the tip of their tongue all the time.

God told me, really?

Everything?

God told me to wear this red tie tonight.

Really?

Did he?

Red?

Are you sure?

Could he have said blue?

It's it's it's a real issue, and we can we can fall into the trap of using the Lord revealed to me, God said to me, in order to lend credibility to our own opinions, which is highly manipulative, or validity to our product.

You know, in the last 15 or 20 years, I have heard Jesus write some of the worst music.

I just think, Lord, you cannot write music.

You've got to stop.

No, every now and again, I'm a university president.

I'm surrounded by young adult Christians, and every now and again in chapel, some kid sits down on the guitar, you know, on the with his guitar, and he sits down on a stool, he says, the Lord gave me this last night in the door.

Oh God, no.

You have written another bad song.

Just just sing! Just sing, we'll decide whether God gave it to you or not.

And then I just want to say, the Lord told me to preach this message tonight.

I think.

No, I'm not at all sure of that.

No, I I just want to say this is this has become such a sticking point, not only in the body of Christ, but with those outside the body who observe us.

Listen to this verse of scripture.

You ever heard this before?

And Mary pondered these things in her heart.

Ponder more, talk less.

Rule number one.

If an angel appears to you in your room tonight, before he leaves, ask him, can I tell this?

Because that's very, very important.

As far as we can tell from scripture, Mary never tells anybody about the angel.

As far as we can tell from scripture.

She doesn't go in and say anything, she just lives it out.

There can come that moment where the angel disappears.

This is the huge mixture of the natural and the supernatural.

The selection of God for this young girl.

That wasn't random.

That wasn't random.

God and Gabriel didn't appear on the stage, and God say, okay, Gabriel, who do we have tonight?

Gabriel reach in, you know, turn the thing.

Mary of Nazareth, come on down.

This is the divine selection of the God who spoke light into existence, and yet it happens alone in a room.

That just, is it just me or am I the only one that thinks sometimes, God, you don't do your plans well?

Why not make it big?

You know, why not make it big?

Call her up on the stage in front of everybody and say, this will be the mother of my son.

Why talk to her alone?

Why talk to her alone?

Because listen to this.

The most supernatural things that will ever happen in your life are the most intimate things.

We want these, we are uh we are addicted to these flamboyant miracles.

When what God says is, I will send the angel when you need one.

I'll send the angel that you need when you need him.

I'll send the angel, the supernatural moment.

You understand it's a metaphor.

The supernatural experience, the miracle.

I will give that miracle to you.

When you need it, it will appear.

But you can't live waiting for the angel to appear.

I'm believing God for increased revenue this year in my life.

Good.

Get a flaming job.

Kids at school say to me, Mr.

President, will you pray with me to be able to get an A this year?

I need an A in algebra this year.

Will you pray with me?

I will pray with you that you will study.

Then you do all that you do, and then at that moment there is this eruption of the supernatural into your life.

Great, welcome it.

But but let it be as naturally supernatural as possible.

It's true in all of life.

I always say to the students at the university, don't tell us you're anointed.

We will decide.

Anybody that says anointed on their business card isn't.

You don't have to tidy up the gifts of the Spirit.

We tidy up the gifts in in order to lend validity to them.

We don't have to change the way we talk in order to.

Why can't we give a word of prophecy in like our own voice?

Why does that have to sound weird?

You know?

Why can't we why can't we be naturally supernatural?

Why can't we let the angel appear as God wills and then get up the next day and go to the well and draw water?

This is the challenge for us.

Being sensitive to God's direction, open to the angels, if you will, but not using it to leverage others, not using it to manipulate or control, and not waiting for it to happen, but believing that God is in me this day.

God is in me this day.

When we first started in the ministry, Allison and I just poor as church mice.

I mean, what am I saying?

We were church mice.

She had three kids under the age of five.

We were poor, trying to get a ministry started.

Poor little girl, she was working her brains out, and she had a wonderful, wonderful vision.

I cannot tell you for sure, I don't know what other people mean when they say visions, so I'm always a little reluctant to use that kind of terminology when I'm not confident.

But as far as I know, I've never had what I would call a vision, you know, where the wall goes away and I see something else.

But one day, Alison had a vision.

She had a baby, a toddler, a five-year-old.

All three of them were crying, two of them are sick, she's trying to cook, her husband's gone out of the country on some mission trip, struggling to hold it all together.

And she was in the kitchen and she said, All of a sudden, Mark, it was as if the wall went away.

It was as if that side of the kitchen disappeared.

And she said, I saw grandstands that were going up in every direction, all around.

Thousands and thousands of people, all in these grandstands.

And she said, I realized they were all looking at me, and then they all stood up and began to cheer.

Come on, Allison, you can make it.

Come on, Allison, we're with you, you can do it.

And she said, Then it all just went away.

And she said, somehow it sanctified my kitchen.

To know that I was compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses that were all cheering for me.

But when the vision went away, the kitchen was still there.

But God is on your side, He's with you, there are angels around you.

The supernatural is a part of our lives, but the natural life, your life, your marriage, when the wedding's over, the deadbeat you married is still there.

Weddings, weddings freak girls out.

What is up with that?

But when the wedding is over, God's presence in your marriage is what makes it supernaturally natural.

The gifts of the Spirit, ministry, life.

We don't have to live our lives waiting for an angel to appear.

And when the angel departs, God has not left.

God has not left.

The angels sang to the shepherds and then disappeared.

Everything was changed, but nothing was changed.

The Son of God had appeared.

The light from heaven, they would never forget it.

I do not believe for one moment that even on their deathbed, those shepherds didn't say, You should have been there that night.

You should have been there that night.

But when the angels were gone, the sheep were still there.

Believe God.

Believe God.

His martial resources of supernatural power are yours.

And at his sovereign will and perfect timing, he invades your life with the miraculous power and the angel appears.

When he appears, let him find you being and doing who you ought.

And when he's gone, remember that God is with us yet.

Well, let's pray.

Heavenly Father, I humbly ask you, Lord, that you would take this simple little message and somehow make it deep within somebody's life.

Maybe somebody who just is saying to themselves, why don't I ever see an angel?

Why don't I get the miracle?

Why doesn't the healing happen to me?

Why don't the angels sing to me?

Let them see, God, that you're with them.

That the hosts of heaven are cheering for them.

That they're more with them than against them.

Let them see that, God.

And those who have seen angels, who have had the most spectacular miracles imaginable, make them to know that when that miracle is over, that you go on with them in life.

That we don't have to live from angel to angel.

But God, who never changes, is with us always.

I believe you for this, Lord.

I'm asking you for it.

That when we leave here tonight, we will know the Lord is on our side.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.