Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
And so First Corinthians, chapter one. And he's gonna talk about the two most foolish ideas and how you're gonna define your life by them. Next week, he gets into a third one, but the first one is this. It's the foolishness of what we do with leaders. All right? So last week, we talked about this a bit, but it's gonna actually build kind of into the ultimate foolishness that he talks about. And if you're exploring Christianity, if you're wondering about the masterclass of life, you know, you're sitting saying, I need to figure out leadership in my life. I need to figure out what I believe about the universe and what the center of my whole life should be. This is what Paul talks about.
Mark Clark [00:00:38]:
So he talks, first of all about the foolishness of leadership, the silliness of what we tend to do with leadership. And he talked last week about this idea, and even Pastor Ken talked about it. He says this community in Corinth has this kind of tribal mindset where they say, I follow Paul. And then some of them are like, I follow Apollos, which is a really cool guy. I like his genes. I like his voice. I like his style. I follow Apollos.
Mark Clark [00:01:02]:
And then some people were following Cephas, who was Peter. Oh, I think Peter. He walked with Jesus closely. And then some people are saying, I follow Christ. So he's saying, listen, all you guys are going around and you're saying this leader and that leader and that. And you're actually creating tribalism, which is total silliness. And this is an issue that actually happens today, where people identify themselves with the leader. And the problem is almost like celebrity pastor syndrome, all right? People identify themselves with people.
Mark Clark [00:01:28]:
And the problem. When I was away at this conference that I did a couple weeks ago, I was in California and speaking at this conference, and at one point, I was standing there ready to go out, and this group of girls came into the backstage, all right? And they were like. They were all like. And all giggly and whatnot. I'm like, what is going on right now? Is someone here? And they're like, yeah, we're here to see you. Can you, like, sign our sign? And I'm like, oh, hey, cool, cool. So then the one girl's like, can I take your picture? And then the leader that was behind, she's like, well, why don't I take your camera and take your picture together with him so that it's less weird, all right? Cause if all you do is take his picture, that's kind of odd. Like, we're just backstage and I'm like, what's up? I have to do this for my.
Mark Clark [00:02:15]:
Muscles to look big. So I'm like, what's up, players?
Mark Clark [00:02:17]:
All right.
Mark Clark [00:02:18]:
So that's what I do.
Mark Clark [00:02:19]:
So like, so the reality is I actually, outside of the conference, I'll show you a picture of it. They created these massive heads that are like 2ft tall of everyone speaking at the conference. And you would stand there and take a picture with these really big heads. And so literally there was a picture in my head, it was this big. And my daughters dropped me off at the end. Of course, that's very symbolic of leaders. Like, hey, look at you, you got a problem, you got a big head. So then they just played into it.
Mark Clark [00:02:48]:
And my daughters actually, as they dropped me off, they stood there. I didn't even know these things were there. And they got a picture with daddy's massive two foot head. And I'm like, if my daughters end up screwed up, I'm bringing it right back to this moment right here, the day they stood there. So the reality is people actually look at this stuff and they're like, hey, it's all about leaders. It's all about. And the problem with that is you begin to live vicariously through leaders. You begin to identify yourself with leaders, and then you don't have a faith of your own.
Mark Clark [00:03:16]:
You create this kind of celebrity syndrome in life where you wanna follow a person. And the problem with that is it's twofold. One of the problems is if you trust yourself to a leader, that leader will inevitably fail you. And if your whole faith is based on that leader, then you're gonna be a gon show. Because the reality is your whole faith was based on what they say, what they teach, what they do. And if you know something about leadership, usually they fail because they're imperfect people. Right? And the problem is, is I read this a long time ago, I can't remember who said it. Those who you idolize, one day you will demonize.
Mark Clark [00:03:50]:
And the reality is the people who build leaders up and they identify, the problem is that leader's gonna let them down because they're completely imperfect. We've seen this all celebrity pastors in the last three or four years. A ton of them have actually failed out, right? People who are running churches of 35,000 people in the US in the last two or three years. We've watched them go down in Chicago, in Seattle, in Nashville, in Florida, everywhere. Where you see these pastors and, and they get these massive stages and These big names, and everybody follows them because the human heart cannot take worship. The only person who can take worship is God. And when people decide to worship a leader, they decide to define themself by a human person. That person crumbles.
Mark Clark [00:04:33]:
They fall apart. I watched a guy recently, a guy who fell apart running a church of 35,000 people and sexually became a disaster. And now the church is going through massive problems. He's been disqualified for ministry. My buddy's church, actually, their pastor. Thousands of people in this church, everyone loved this guy. And he ends up in a hot tub with him and his best friend, and the wives are topless and they're taking selfies of themselves. And he's there with the ladies and they're topless.
Mark Clark [00:05:05]:
And it's like, what? Okay, what? And so then he. The church fired him, and he ends up starting a church 15 minutes down the road. And he did it at this horse Track. And so 1,000 people show up to the first service of this guy's new church. And the worship pastor goes up and he's like, hey, listen, Joe is on therapy today. He's not here. And everyone's like, oh, boo. And then he rides out on a horse named Therapy, and he gets off of it and he starts.
Mark Clark [00:05:38]:
It's a gong show, all right? Christians can be such gong shows. And this is what actually happens to leaders is they get too much obsession. People like them too much and they fall apart because the reality is it's gonna be bad for you as a follower and them as a leader because their actual. Their egos can't handle it. And so the reality is they're mistake driven. I make a ton of mistakes. If you wanna. If you think I'm perfect, go hang out with my wife.
Mark Clark [00:06:04]:
Go hang out with my family. There's actually a. Last night, I was sitting around and I was talking about Hawaii to someone, and they said, well, yeah, Hawaii's like two or three hours you know, behind us. I'm like, no, it's not. It's only an hour. It's only ever an hour. It's never longer than that. Blah, blah.
Mark Clark [00:06:19]:
And they're like, no, we got in this massive fight, and finally someone just googled it. And I was wrong. There's actually a hashtag trending that my friend started on Facebook, which is my most hated hashtag, which is markiswrong. All right? So shut up, all right? I don't want any of you doing that, all right? It's the dumbest hashtag ever invented. It's the Dumbest social epidemic. And if I ever see anybody on it, your membership is cut. All right? Because the reality is I'm not wrong. I'm usually right.
Mark Clark [00:06:48]:
But we were talking about movies and she was like, I don't like this hashtag, Mark is wrong. And then another guy came in, he goes, I like this hashtag, Mark is wrong. He actually worked for us, worked in the past. After this, it was bad. And so Mark is wrong. That's not it. But the reality is I am wrong constantly. And so leaders can't actually handle it.
Mark Clark [00:07:10]:
And so here's the reality. There's actually a debate within the church about how to preach. I'll give this as an example in regard to leadership. And there's a lot of people, you know, we, as a church, we preach verse by verse through biblical books and then we pull those meanings out for you. I was reading a guy runs a church of 35,000 people, speaks at conferences all over the place. I was reading an article, an interview with him this week, and he actually said this. He said, verse by verse, preaching through books of the Bible is cheating. It's cheating because that would be easy.
Mark Clark [00:07:42]:
That isn't how you grow people. Now, the reality is, of course, that comes out of a very seeker oriented 90s version model where you do topical sermons and you do all these different things and, and you hit felt needs. And you don't want to teach people the Bible because they can't handle it. They don't even understand it. And so you just have to talk to them about topical things, about being a better dad and being a better you and how to handle your money. And then they'll come in droves and they'll show up. And he's got this philosophy on. Now.
Mark Clark [00:08:11]:
The reality is we don't do that. And the reason we preach this through biblical books, verse by verse. The reason we're three and a half years in the book of Matthew, the reason we're seven, eight weeks in the, in the, in the, in the book of First Corinthians and we're, you know, what, 14 verses in. The reason we do that is because here's the thing, I, as a leader, don't trust myself. I want to teach you God's ideas, not mine. This is why I just wanna go through biblical books and let them. Meaning this means we're gonna hit weird stuff that I would never put on the agenda to actually preach through. That's why it's not cheating.
Mark Clark [00:08:43]:
It's the opposite to cheating. The reality is, my job is to teach you about God's ideas, not my ideas. And that is everything that actually pushes against a pastoral syndrome, that we all start to worship leaders. And I'm like, no, God gets to set the agenda now. Over and over and over. So here's the thing. Here's the other reason you shouldn't worship leaders.
Mark Clark [00:09:02]:
Then we'll move on to the second foolish thing.
Mark Clark [00:09:04]:
The second reason you shouldn't worship leaders.
Mark Clark [00:09:06]:
Is because Jesus is just better. You understand that?
Mark Clark [00:09:12]:
He's better than any leader. This is true about every sin problem.
Mark Clark [00:09:16]:
You have in your life.
Mark Clark [00:09:18]:
That the reason you drink too much is all right? The reason you wanna cheat on money.
Mark Clark [00:09:24]:
The reason you wanna be a swinger.
Mark Clark [00:09:26]:
Because you're not satisfied in your marriage. All right?
Mark Clark [00:09:28]:
Which rumor is there's some swingers among us as a church.
Mark Clark [00:09:31]:
Knock it off.
Mark Clark [00:09:34]:
Some of you are like, watch a.
Mark Clark [00:09:35]:
Swinger look it up later, all right?
Mark Clark [00:09:38]:
Go back to the pineapples, all right?
Mark Clark [00:09:41]:
The reality is this, man. The reason we sin is because Jesus ain't enough for our soul. We think he's not. Because here's what we've been pitched. We've been pitched a version of Christianity that says you should obey Jesus kind of against what you want to do. Because out of some vague obligation. And so you should pay attention. So we.
Mark Clark [00:10:03]:
It's like. It's like when my kids go to McDonald's. I drove them to McDonald's on the way home from youth group, and they said, I want a McFlurry. And I said, no, you're getting a McSalad. What they want is the McFlurry because the McFlurry tastes good. But they know they should eat the salad because it's good for them. That's how many of you were pitched Christianity. You want the world.
Mark Clark [00:10:23]:
You want the things of the world because that's gonna give you delight and that's gonna give you pleasure. But you know, you should have Jesus. And the reality is the gospel comes at us and goes, no, no, no, you don't understand. It's not that you should have Jesus cause he's good for you. But the actual things of the world are good. It's that Jesus is good. He's the McFlurry man, right? He actually tastes his. You delight in him.
Mark Clark [00:10:50]:
Taste and see that the Lord is what good that you can. You don't have to follow Jesus out of some vague obligation. I gotta eat this salad. It tastes like garbage, but I know it's good for me. That's how some of you think About Christianity. I know it's good for me, so I better take Jesus. But, man, this ain't fun. You haven't understood Christianity yet.
Mark Clark [00:11:12]:
You haven't let it get a hold of your soul. You haven't let it get ahead of not only the things that you do, but what you want to do, the things you actually delight in. And so he says, don't follow these leaders. Why? Because they're never gonna satisfy you. Jesus is better than all of them. And listen, this is why. So when I was asked to speak at.
Mark Clark [00:11:33]:
At Bayside, so a couple weeks ago.
Mark Clark [00:11:35]:
Sacramento, 19,000 people go to this church. So there I am, and they asked me, unpack the resurrection from a defensive apologetic mode, convince people that this is actually a reality that they need to believe. And so there are 45 minutes with an apologetic on the Resurrection about how historically it makes the most sense that there needs to be an empty tomb. You need to find the book. The Roman Empire knew how to kill people. There are 40 minutes of this, and people are like, in. And then I stopped at the end and I said, here's the problem, though. A bunch of you can believe this.
Mark Clark [00:12:06]:
You can give intellectual assent, which is what we're gonna talk about, Intellectual assent to the idea. You can believe that Jesus Christ really rose from the dead historically and believe all the nine points I just said. But here's the problem. Believing that happened doesn't save you. The devil knows that the tomb is empty. What actually saves you is that you delight in it, that you cherish it above every other truth in the universe, that you actually love it and you hold onto it and you apply it to every part of your life. Listen, the devil can go, dude, I'll give you an apologetic on the resurrection. I know that Jesus rose from the dead.
Mark Clark [00:12:44]:
It's not salvific for him. When the church gets up and says, justification by faith. That word, faith. It's not just an intellectual assessment that you believe an idea. It's that you cherish that idea above everything that you actually go following and believing in. This is the most important thing about my life. And it actually causes great. So here's the reality.
Mark Clark [00:13:09]:
Once you cherish Jesus Christ above everything because Jesus is better, here's what you're not gonna need. A pastor with skinny jeans, cool lights.
Mark Clark [00:13:18]:
Great music, cool hair, tattoos.
Mark Clark [00:13:23]:
You. You're not gonna need that leader anymore. Man, of course we have leaders. Leadership's a good thing. I'm not. I'm not banking. Nothing happens without a leader, right? Civil rights, Protestant Reformation, the Abolition of slavery. It's Martin Luther King Jr.
Mark Clark [00:13:39]:
It's Martin Luther. It's William Wilberfor. You need a leader to drive stuff. That's not worth it. We're not anti leadership. It's saying when the leader. When you love the leader more than you love the leader behind the leader, whose name is Jesus. That's the problem.
Mark Clark [00:13:53]:
So the first foolish idea is that you actually create leadership in your life that you worship. Now here's the second big foolish idea.
Mark Clark [00:14:01]:
That we're gonna spend the rest of the time on. Paul says there's another kind of foolishness, and that's the foolishness of the cross. It's the foolishness of the message. So here's what Paul says.
Mark Clark [00:14:11]:
For Christ, verse 17 did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. And not with words of eloquence, not with words. Words, okay? That's an important word of eloquent wisdom, right? This is the first issue. He says, I'm gonna preach a message. And what's the content of the message gonna be? I didn't come with words of eloquent wisdom, less the cross. This is the issue of Christ. Be emptied of its power, for the word of the cross is folly.
Mark Clark [00:14:51]:
So here's the two issues in life.
Mark Clark [00:14:53]:
This is the word logos, all right? It was literally the word that philosophers worshiped. It's that you ask the question, what was the logos of the universe? What was the logic? What was the reason? What was the thing that held the whole universe together? And Paul is now gonna compare two kinds of things and he's gonna say, listen, there's two kinds of ways you can live. There's words of eloquent wisdom or there's words of the cross. Now he focuses on the cross because he says that's the core of our message. Now, the problem with that is that most modern preaching doesn't focus on the cross. It focuses on you and your needs. And whatever the cultural thing in the moment is that we'll talk about those things. And.
Mark Clark [00:15:37]:
But over and over and over again, Paul comes along, he goes, listen, do you want to know what my message was? The message was the foolishness of the cross, the silliness of the concept that God himself became a human being, went on a cross, shed his blood, died for sin, died instead of you, for you, and because of you, rose again. That's the whole content of the message of not only preaching, but of your life. And when it becomes about something else, then you've lost the center of Christianity. So if you're here and you're exploring the masterclass of life, and you're going, what's the center of the center of the thing? Paul goes, it's the foolishness of this.
Mark Clark [00:16:09]:
Message, the message of the cross.
Mark Clark [00:16:11]:
Now, Charles Spurgeon, who was a preacher back in the day in England, had a church, one of the first megachurches ever. 10,000 people. He's called the Prince of Preachers. People recognize Spurgeon as the Prince of Preachers.
Mark Clark [00:16:23]:
All right?
Mark Clark [00:16:23]:
He was the man. Here's what he said. The motto of all true servants of God must be, we preach Christ and him crucified. A sermon without Christ in it is like a loaf of bread without any flavor in it. No Christ in your sermon, sir? Then go home and never preach again until you have something worth preaching. A sermon without Christ as its beginning, middle and end is a mistake in conception and a crime in execution. However grand the language, it will be merely much ado about nothing if Christ be not there. And I mean by Christ, not merely his example and the ethical precepts of his teaching, but his atoning blood, his wondrous satisfaction made of human sin.
Mark Clark [00:17:10]:
And the grand doctrine of believe and live, that's the reality. Your life, the content of your life. And I get to talk to a lot of young preachers and upcoming leaders. The reality is, if that's you planning a church preaching, your temptation is gonna be. You can see all these faces, and here's when they're honed into you, when you're talking about them, and that's addictive. And when you turn and you start talking about the reality of the cross, they start to zone out. Do not give into that temptation. This is what the message is.
Mark Clark [00:17:47]:
And Paul says, I didn't come with eloquent words. I wasn't a great preacher. Have you ever seen Billy Graham preach? Billy Graham's got four sermons in his bag, and he still reads them all. He just gets up.
Mark Clark [00:18:00]:
He's like, you come to the Lord.
Mark Clark [00:18:01]:
And use the bread. He just says this stuff. I don't know what accent that is. Whatever. And, you know, he just says, he's the most simplistic. He's got charisma. But it's so simple. And people can.
Mark Clark [00:18:12]:
This is what Paul's saying. I didn't come with eloquent words. See, here's the two kinds of lives we can have. The first kind of life is so you have this Logos. What is the center of the universe? This is why John1 says, in the beginning was the Word, Word's Logos, all right? Because the debates among Greeks were, what is the thing that held the world together? What is the thing that gave it meaning? It was Logos. And so he says, okay, what is in the beginning was the Logos, the word? And then he says the word became flesh and dwelt among us. He says that the thing that holds the universe together, the thing that gets meaning to everything, is not a principle. It's not religion, it's a person.
Mark Clark [00:18:52]:
And his name is Jesus. Here's the reality. Some of us in this room live our lives. So here's two kinds of people. You're either gonna live your life as someone defined by eloquent wisdom. Now, here's what I mean by that. Over and over and over again, Paul uses the word wisdom, all right? He says the wisdom of the wise, the wisdom of the wise, over and over. Because this word wisdom is the word sophia.
Mark Clark [00:19:19]:
And so he starts to use it and he starts to say, what do you actually agree with? What is the thing that defines your life over and over and over again? Wisdom. Wisdom, Sophia of the world. You have options. You can believe in wisdom, Sophia, philosophy. Here's where we're at as a modern culture. This word sophia has become our God. You and me define our lives by if we could just solve it intellectually, then we solve the problem of our soul. So let's get more technology, more intellect, more.
Mark Clark [00:19:54]:
And we start to think that reason, eloquent wisdom, is actually the solution to all of our problems. This is the post enlightenment world that you and I live in. And the reality. If we just get a podcast, how do we fix our marriage? Just listen to a podcast, get more.
Mark Clark [00:20:10]:
Information, and apply it.
Mark Clark [00:20:11]:
We're gonna figure everything out in culture if we just intellectually figure it out. A bunch of years ago, there's A.
Mark Clark [00:20:16]:
German philosopher, 1700s, his name is Manuel Kant.
Mark Clark [00:20:19]:
He wrote a Critique of Pure Reason. It's recognized as one of the greatest philosophical works ever. A Critique of Pure Reason. And here's what he says, and you and I need to hear this in.
Mark Clark [00:20:28]:
Our culture because you and I are addicted to reason and philosophy. And we think that that's what solves all of our problems.
Mark Clark [00:20:36]:
We think we're gonna figure out the.
Mark Clark [00:20:37]:
Universe if we just use our minds.
Mark Clark [00:20:39]:
And we use our reason.
Mark Clark [00:20:40]:
And long before Immanuel Kant gave a critique of pure reason. Here's the Apostle Paul, and he is saying, do not.
Mark Clark [00:20:46]:
And this is what's scary. He's saying, do not trust your rationale and your logic and your mind. Because the reality Is it can fool you. What's weird about this is you and I, as we sit here right now, all that we do, all that we trust to is our mind and our rationale and our reason and our son. All right? That's what we believe in. We believe in Sophia, we believe in wisdom. We believe in intellect. We believe this is the answer to everything.
Mark Clark [00:21:11]:
And Paul's about to say, do you know you actually can't trust it sometimes? Which is scary for us because it's all we know. But you know that 500 years ago, we thought the sun actually revolved around the earth, right? You know that we used to think that the Earth was flat. We used to think that California was an island and it was not connected to the mainland. There's a whole bunch of things that we used to think as people. And over and over and over again, we've had to adapt. And so what Paul is saying, be very careful to try to answer metaphysical questions using your intellect. Because, listen, if you're someone who says, I believe I'm gonna figure out the question of God simply using my reason and my rationale. The problem is, over and over and.
Mark Clark [00:21:59]:
Over again, you've been wrong.
Mark Clark [00:22:02]:
And through history, people have never come at the question of God like that. It's very new, it's very post enlightenment, 2 or 300 years old, that you and I would think if we can't understand something, it might not be true.
Mark Clark [00:22:15]:
Charles Terrell talks about this in his book A Secular Age.
Mark Clark [00:22:17]:
He says, when it comes to the issue of suffering, all through history, people would recognize, I don't know enough to.
Mark Clark [00:22:23]:
Understand how there might be suffering in the world.
Mark Clark [00:22:26]:
So you look at Habakkuk, you look at Job, you look at Plato, you look at Socrates, these guys are writing and they're like, you look at suffering, I can't figure out. It doesn't mean like, we think, hey, there's suffering that I can't figure out. Therefore, there's no God. The only people who ever started doing that was over the last few hundred years when we trusted to our intellect so much that we thought we could figure out suffering. We thought we could figure out every moment of suffering. And Charles Taylor says, be very careful. Because you look back at the ancients, they say, well, if there's suffering in something I can't figure out, it doesn't mean that God doesn't exist. It means that I must not be smart enough.
Mark Clark [00:22:58]:
But what's happened to us is the intellect has become our God.
Mark Clark [00:23:01]:
And the reality is, you gotta understand There are times where you need to be humble and go, I don't actually CS Lewis, who was an atheist and came to believe in Christ, he was a naturalist and atheist. And here's what bugged him. He started thinking about why he even has logic at all. And he said this.
Mark Clark [00:23:18]:
Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind, in that case. Nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen for physical or chemical reasons to arrange themselves in a certain way, that gives me as a byproduct the sensation I call thought. But if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to atheism and therefore have no reason to be an atheist or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought. So I can never use thought to disbelieve in God. If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of action, atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.
Mark Clark [00:24:07]:
The pure naturalist evolutionary position on thought doesn't work because those are just atoms in your brain. You wouldn't ever fully say, okay, now I am self conscious, which has been a problem for atheists for a long time. And so what we've got to understand is we can't come at this question and say we've done some intellectual work, ergo there is no God. Darwin figured out that we are connected to animals, ergo there's no such thing as God. That literally is a violation of a sphere. The world of physics and science cannot ask the question of a metaphysical entity. If you're dealing with soil and you're looking at animals, you can't go, therefore here's a massive job. Even if you full evolution was true, even if just take it full carte blanche, it can't.
Mark Clark [00:24:58]:
It has nothing to do with the question of the existence of God at all. It's silly. And this is why people critique people like Dawkins and Hitchens all the time, because they're saying they're, they're doing physical work, physics work, and then they're asking the question of metaphysics. And this is what Immanuel Kant, the Apostle Paul, is saying, be very careful.
Mark Clark [00:25:14]:
To trust to eloquent wisdom because it.
Mark Clark [00:25:17]:
Will let you down.
Mark Clark [00:25:18]:
Because here's what God's going to do, he says, for Jews demand signs and Greeks Seek wisdom. All right, again, says this Sophia, we seek that. But here's the problem with it. Verse 19. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. And the discernment of the discerning, I will thwart. That's what's terrifying. You can't trust your reason, man.
Mark Clark [00:26:00]:
There's actually deeper realities to the universe than you can get to through using your brain. That should basically, in our seats right now, we should be kind of freaking out because what else do we really have? He says your other option is to not be defined simply by the words of eloquent wisdom. Your other option is to be defined by the cross, not given to philosophies of the world. He actually says, now here's the crazy part, when we start trusting ourselves to the cross. The silly part about it is that he actually uses the Greek word moronic. And he says it's foolishness to believe in the cross, that the cross for the word of the cross is folly.
Mark Clark [00:26:54]:
That word right there is the word for moron.
Mark Clark [00:27:00]:
You realize when you define your life by Christianity, everyone's gonna think you're stupid. That's what he's saying. And you better figure out courage to deal with it if you're gonna define your life. Because everyone's gonna say the cross is silly.
Mark Clark [00:27:15]:
The cross is silly to people who worship intelligence and reason. Even from the Jewish perspective, someone who died on a cross was under the curse of God. This is why Richard Dawkins denies Christianity. This is why Christopher Hitchens did. This is why Sam Harris did. This is why Daniel Dennis. This is why universities move away from theism because they look at the cross and they say it's stupid. I was like that.
Mark Clark [00:27:41]:
I would go, I was a kid and I'd go over to my grandfather's house and he'd have this big Bible sitting on his table right when we walked in the door. And I'd laugh, stupid things, bunch of stories about miracles and how God exists. And then we gather and my 80 year old grandfather would pray in King James and I'd roll my eyes and go, this is foolish, this is ridiculous, this is dumb. This was the silliest thing. This is what my mindset was until.
Mark Clark [00:28:12]:
It became the most beautiful thing in the world to me when I was 18. Why did I reject it? Because I was perishing. And that's why you do too. He is not afraid to tell you what your spiritual state is. The reason you reject it is not because you're smarter than everybody. It's because the concept of an accountable God who's going to define reality for you is against what you want for yourself, because your soul is perishing. See, here's the thing. Everything, if you believe the Bible, every worldview thinks the cross is foolishness.
Mark Clark [00:28:58]:
Everywhere. Hinduism thinks the cross is foolishness because there's hundreds of millions of gods. Why would you believe in one God coming to die? Judaism says it's foolishness because Jesus isn't the Messiah, that's a failed Messiah. Atheism says it's foolishness because God's not even a thing.
Mark Clark [00:29:19]:
Secularism, all of these worldviews actually, look at Christian. Islam says it's silly. He didn't even really die.
Mark Clark [00:29:25]:
He just passed out on the cross.
Mark Clark [00:29:28]:
The reality is people reject it.
Mark Clark [00:29:35]:
How is it ever gonna become beautiful for you? Because the spirit of God is gonna do something where you're gonna move from a perishing reality to this reality right here. You're gonna be someone who's being saved by belief in the finished work of what the cross accomplished. And here's what's gonna happen. The world is gonna look at that and say it's stupid. Think about all the things in your life that once you start getting into the Bible, you'll be like, okay, I gotta change. Because the reality is it's gonna be a supernatural act of God. It's not gonna be you that does it. You know, Spurgeon used to pull all the preaching guys out, the seminary students, and put them in a cemetery.
Mark Clark [00:30:24]:
And he used to say, you've prepped your sermons right? Preach to these tombstones, because that's what Sunday's gonna be like. No offense to you, but it's totally true. You guys. Or tombstones. And he says, what is your hope, man?
Mark Clark [00:30:39]:
Preach your sermon to these graves. And what's gonna happen? Nothing. Unless the spirit of God shows up and makes these bones live, takes perishing and moves it to being saved. That is your hope. That is your hope. When your daughter is a gong show and you can see it on Instagram and you don't know what to do with her, when your son is looking at porn and smoking weed, when your parents are getting divorced, when your marriage is falling apart, what is your hope? That you can figure out some intellectual thing, a little switch that can fix it? No, it's that the God of the universe shows up in power to create transformation. That is your hope. That the spirit drops on deadness and makes it live.
Mark Clark [00:31:28]:
But that doesn't sound intellectual, because I'm not in control. Of it. Precisely. And that's why it's dumb. That's why it's moronic. That's why the whole thing is the foolishness of God. Over and over and over again. This is what Paul's trying to say.
Mark Clark [00:31:42]:
What is your hope? That you start to then think through all of life, through the biblical authority, and then the world's gonna start to push against you because you're gonna go, okay, well, okay, so I believe in the cross now. You're so stupid. Okay, what does that mean about your sexuality? It means that I should have one partner when I get married in my whole life. The world pushes against it. No, my variety's the spice of life. Just do whatever you want. So now you start applying the cross to your sexuality and you start saying, no, no, no, I'm made for one person, male and female. In the garden, gender, right? We've got people very confused.
Mark Clark [00:32:19]:
And so now the church needs to figure out, what are we gonna believe? Are we just gonna believe whatever's being thrown at us from the cultural moment? Whoever thought that Genesis 1 would become the most controversial Bible verse of a generation, he made them male and female. The Bible comes out and goes, listen, there are binary realities, right? There are male and female. That's the thing. Because all the way through Genesis, he makes light and dark, land and water, male, female. He's doing a rhythm here. And so the reality is, as you and I begin to go, okay, I get to now apply the cross to the conversation about gender. And I have to now understand that, yes, of course we're gonna walk and love and lean into everybody who's going through any kind of dysphoria and any kind of confusion. But the reality is, is the culture has now come along and said, your sex is what you're born with, but your gender is what you choose to be later in life.
Mark Clark [00:33:14]:
And God comes along, he goes, no, no, I made them male and female. Of course there's people that are confused about a lot of things. And we're on spectrum sexually, everybody, in regard to brokenness and confused. I get all that. And we need to be pastoral and loving and walk through. But it doesn't mean that the church just takes the cultural narrative, reads the teleprompter and folds in the face of reality. Because now the cross has to define it for you. And people are going to look, God, but that's stupid.
Mark Clark [00:33:43]:
And you go, yeah, I know it's.
Mark Clark [00:33:48]:
Moronic, but that's what God calls me to. And now I'm raising three Girls.
Mark Clark [00:33:55]:
What am I supposed to do with them? Well, things of the world, man. Just let them do the thing. They're gonna grow up. They're gonna go to this, they're gonna do that. I got friends. Their daughters got married at 19. I got three daughters. I'm like, man, I want them married at 19.
Mark Clark [00:34:08]:
People are like, that's. That's stupid. Why would you want your daughters married at 19? They got to be out there. They got to figure their life out. They got to get their educa. I'm like, dude, if they're going to skip the club scene, if they're going to skip dressing up like a kitty cat for Halloween, right? If they're going to skip trying drugs because they actually find a husband that they love and they get married at 19 and start popping out babies by 20. Listen, you think the world's got family figured out? You're a moron. The world.
Mark Clark [00:34:40]:
You think they. Oh, yeah. Cause families are flourishing so much better than they were 300 years ago. We cracked it. Hey, guys, live with your parents in your basement till you're 35, wearing jogging pants, playing Halo. You're gonna really contribute to society. We figured that out. Morons.
Mark Clark [00:35:05]:
Oh, the Bible's so dumb. It defines sexuality like this. It defines family like this. It says, hey, by the way, when you get money, you should be generous with it. You shouldn't hold it in. You should actually give it to people who need it. The Bible comes. When does life begin? Figure we're on controversial topics, might just keep going.
Mark Clark [00:35:27]:
When does life begin? The Bible goes, okay, I knitted you together in your mother's womb. So you take the life of a child in the womb. That's murder according to the Bible. So the reality is. Oh, but that's stupid. That's silly.
Mark Clark [00:35:44]:
You know what's fascinating to me as I watch Meghan Markle, she's pregnant with Prince, Whatever.
Mark Clark [00:35:51]:
Harry, William.
Mark Clark [00:35:52]:
I don't know which one.
Mark Clark [00:35:53]:
Probably.
Mark Clark [00:35:53]:
Hopefully not Williams.
Mark Clark [00:35:56]:
Prince William's baby or Harry's baby. And they're walking around, and the world is like, my gosh, look what's in there. There's a royal baby in there. It's gonna be a prince or a duke or a king or whatever. I don't know what it'll be. Or a queen. I don't know. Oh, it's so important, this thing growing inside of Meghan Markle.
Mark Clark [00:36:15]:
Cause it's got royal blood. Now imagine she just showed up. She's like, no, we were. We were busy.
Mark Clark [00:36:21]:
We got rid of it.
Mark Clark [00:36:24]:
The World would be like, what are you talking about? That was royal blood in there. That was an important thing. Fascinating.
Mark Clark [00:36:35]:
The Bible comes along and goes, you realize you're going to look stupid. You better have courage. You better realize the cross must define everything about your life. Lastly, he says there's two kinds of people in the end. Look at these two kinds of people. First, they're the Jews, the religious people. And what do they do? They demand signs. First flaw of people is you actually love experiences.
Mark Clark [00:37:21]:
Give me more experiences. Lord, give me. There's a whole movement, charismatic movement, that just wants more experiences. They want healings, they want prosperity, they want feathers that fall from the ceiling, they want gold teeth. And this can go really bad.
Mark Clark [00:37:39]:
I know one movement. Down in the States, they actually were.
Mark Clark [00:37:41]:
Teaching their students to go and do something they call grave soaking, where they go out to a cemetery and they lay down on graves in order to suck up the anointing of past dead.
Mark Clark [00:37:53]:
Christians who left their anointing and didn't really live it out. So they were gonna suck it up.
Mark Clark [00:37:58]:
This is on YouTube.
Mark Clark [00:38:01]:
Moronic. Well, we're on the topic, but give me more experiences. And the problem with this is it's an anti intellectual movement because it's all experiential and subjective and you can never question it. God told me this. There was a ministry locally a bunch of years ago where a guy would kick people in the stomach to heal them, pull them up on stage and just go, hey, what's up? God told me that kicking heals people. Hey, grandma. Boom, healed. Now what are you supposed to do? You question it and what is it?
Mark Clark [00:38:38]:
Hey, God told me it's purely subjective.
Mark Clark [00:38:40]:
And you're like, well, did God tell you? Did you eat a bad hot dog? I don't know the difference. That's the problem. This is why we have a Bible to go, don't kick people. We look for signs. Give me more experience. I'm addicted to it. And when life falls apart, I need to come to another worship service. I need another sermon, I need another Rowling light show.
Mark Clark [00:39:06]:
I need miracles in my life at every moment. Because if I don't have miracles, then I'm not gonna believe. And here's the Jews demanding a sign. Give me a sign or I won't believe.
Mark Clark [00:39:17]:
And some of you are right in that spot. You won't believe. And you don't even know what it means to believe.
Mark Clark [00:39:23]:
I had friends who disagreed with me going to get a bachelor's degree and.
Mark Clark [00:39:28]:
A master's degree in biblical theology because.
Mark Clark [00:39:31]:
What it should be to understand the Bible is just you and Jesus. You don't need any history, you don't need any context, you don't need to study Greek, you don't need anything to understand the Bible and be a leader and teach people, you just need you and Jesus, you two can hang out, God's gonna tell you what to say, he's gonna give you all kinds of experiences and that's it. And people were opposed to me going to Bible college and getting a master's degree in theology because I would learn some stuff. This is the anti intellectual movement of.
Mark Clark [00:39:55]:
The over charismatic movement. I'm not talking about normal charismatic, I'm talking about the over charismatic movement that pushes against the cross and says I.
Mark Clark [00:40:04]:
Don'T need cross, I want signs, I want miracles now or I won't believe.
Mark Clark [00:40:14]:
And then there's the second group, the Greeks. And what do they want? Wisdom. Just give me reason, just give me rationale. The rationalist movement and there's modern day versions of this. It's all doctrine, it's all theology, it's no experiences.
Mark Clark [00:40:33]:
By the way, both of these groups.
Mark Clark [00:40:35]:
Hate me because when I hang out with the ultra charismatics, I say, guys, you gotta pull a Bible out once in a while and you gotta teach theology and draw people to the cross of Christ and what he's done for them and teach people doctrine and help them understand how to think. But man, I love how they want to feel him, they want to experience him in the everyday. And then you got the ultra rationalist movement. It's all about doctrine, it's all about theology. And the reason they hate me is because I go, God still raises people from the dead, you know, God still does miracles. No, not according to the etymology of Romans chapter. You know what's fascinating? You see this rationalist movement over and over and over again. They take the experience away and say it's not important.
Mark Clark [00:41:35]:
Find yourself in one of these two extremes. Repent. Which one are you? Close your eyes with me as we pray. Cause here's what Paul says. I want you to take the awful risk, to trust God and be saved by his silliness, or to keep up with your pretensions, your intelligence and you will perish in the end. That's it. Father, I pray that we have the courage to find ourself text. Are we the people seeking after eloquent wisdom versus the cross? Are we people seeking out signs and wonders because the cross doesn't do it for us in the master class of life as we seek out reality and truth for our lives.
Mark Clark [00:42:27]:
How to define what we believe about God, ourselves, salvation, sexuality, the Bible. As we live in the midst of confusion, I pray that we would hear truth from you very clearly. That the cross needs to be the filter through which we experience everything about life, through which we think about everything about life, from our money to how we do family to how we work, everything in between. That the temptation is to go after the things that may be more glittery. But at the center of Christianity is you dying bloodily on a cross in our place. That if we are guilty of any of the sins that I've talked about here today, and I'm guilty of a bunch, the beautiful message is I died for those. If you've ever taken a life, I died for that. To give you new life.
Mark Clark [00:43:27]:
If you've ever been a rationalist, if you've ever done things sexually that are outside the way that I designed you, if you're greedy with your money, if you define success wrong, I died for that. To give you new life and new definitions and new power. And I pray that we would leave here today actually empowered and encouraged to tell people what Paul says here, that the cross is the definition of reality and you would change lives through that. In Jesus good name we pray. Amen.