Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
So if you got a Bible, First Corinthians, Chapter one is where we're gonna be. We're gonna actually finish chapter one today. And. And really what we talked about last week was this idea of the foolishness of leaders, then the foolishness of the message of the cross, the moronic nature of it, the silliness of it, the upside down reality of it. And then this week, and real. And what we talked about was that. That Paul said, you can live your life by the law Gospel of the philosophy of the world and intelligence and technology. And you think that that's gonna solve all your problems, or you can do it by the Logos, the logic of the cross.
Mark Clark [00:00:37]:
And we talked about the idea that Jesus came and he died on a cross for you because of you. And instead of, you took the wrath of God on himself, the sin of the world on himself, your sin on himself. And really, this is a beautiful message because if you're just left, there's two ways you can live your life. Paul said, you. You can be left to yourself, where you have to kind of atone for your own sin. You have to figure out, even if you go through the Bible, we see that Jesus, remember Shiloh, sang that Avril song. And it's basically kind of a reworking of almost Jonah when he's in the whale and he's dying, and he writes a poem and he says, I'm choking in here in these weeds and I'm dying, and God, would you deliver me? And for Jonah, God said, okay, yes, I will deliver you when you look to me and say, take this cup from me. Yes, I delivered you out of that.
Mark Clark [00:01:20]:
But then Jesus comes along and he says, take this cup from me. I'm gonna d. Can you deliver me? And God says, no, because he did that in our place. And so you have two ways of. You can. You can live your life by the philosophy of the world, just left to yourself and naturalism, or you can do it by the logic and the meaning of the cross. And so you have those two options in your life. And that word Logos, we said the Greeks were constantly debating about it for thousands of years.
Mark Clark [00:01:46]:
They were trying to figure out what is the logic, what is the thing that holds the whole universe together? What is the meaning of life? And they were debating it, and Paul entered in that conversation. Here's the meaning of life, here's the meaning of everything. The reason that's important and the reason the Greeks debated about it, and the reason it's important for the masterclass of life as we try to figure out where to found our life on is because literally, it's the way to figure out true happiness, true fulfillment, true joy, is to figure out what is the logic of the universe. Now, the reason you have to figure that out is because it means that we were designed a particular way. And if you're designed for something, then the only way that's gonna. You're gonna actually flourish. The only way you're gonna be joyous, the only way you're gonna find meaning in life is if you figure out what you were designed for. So you can fit into kind of like a puzzle piece.
Mark Clark [00:02:26]:
Like if you went over to a friend's house and they had a coffee maker, and they were using a coffee maker as a doorstop, or they were trying to, you know, cook a steak on a space heater, you would be like, my gosh, that's not what a space heater was designed for. It's not what steak was designed for. And it's gonna be dangerous and it's gonna be awful. Right? It's like when I tried to, you know, cut up cabbage and cut up the red peppers and thought they were tomatoes and lettuce to put them on hamburgers. It's not. Not how what cabbage was designed for. All right? Sitting on your burger, red peppers, that's not what they were designed for. And so things are gonna taste bad, and it's gonna possibly be dangerous for you.
Mark Clark [00:03:00]:
The reality is, if you're living your life in something the way that you weren't designed, it's gonna be dangerous for you. And it's not gonna be for your ultimate fulfillment and your ultimate joy. And so the apostle Paul comes along and goes, I gotta actually lay out for you what the true joy is, what reality is. And so he says this. First Corinthians, chapter one. We talked about this last time. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. That's gonna be the basic thesis of what he talks about today as he lays out these ideas.
Mark Clark [00:03:31]:
But now he talks about right off the bat, he says, for Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. This was the idea that we talked about last time. A stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, meaning we. We stumble over it. This is literally the word scandalon, meaning it's gonna scandalize you. You aren't gonna like it. If you're looking for signs and wonders and power, and you're not gonna like. It's gonna be Foolishness to you, if all you're looking for is what is the most logical thing.
Mark Clark [00:03:58]:
And he says, but to those who are called, which we'll get to both Jews and Greeks, the power of. It's the power of God. The reality is you start to actually love it. And it's the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men. The weakness of God is stronger than men. And then he says this for consider. Now let's just stop right there, full stop.
Mark Clark [00:04:16]:
The word consider. Here's the beautiful thing about this word. He says, okay, you've got the cross, you've got the logic of God, it's all upside down, it's all backwards. Now think on and reflect on your life for a second. Consider. When you stop and you consider things, you begin to realize some of you don't have any time to stop and consider. You don't wonder about what is your place in the world, what is the meaning of life. You're just go, go, go, go, go.
Mark Clark [00:04:42]:
You work, you raise a family, you try to define reality for yourself. And Paul says, actually, here's what I want you to do. I want you to consider something. If I said to you, let's meet for a meeting for 15 minutes after church, let's meet at 1 o', clock, I want to talk to you for 15 minutes, what would you say your call to me would be? Why? What's the purpose? You want a justification for that meeting. You don't want to just walk into the meeting blind. You don't want to just. You'd be like, what is the purpose of. But the reality is, Paul would say you have to be very careful because a lot of you are going through life without having answered the foundational questions of life.
Mark Clark [00:05:19]:
Origin, meaning, morality, destiny. Where are you going? What are you actually doing anything for? Meaning. You want justification for a 15 minute meeting in your life, you want justification for everything. And yet you don't have justification for your own existence. You don't know why you're here, you don't know where you came from, you don't know what your purpose is. And so he says, how about you become the kinds of people who actually stop and consider for a moment, consider yourself, consider who you are. And last week he did what we called the critique of pure reason, where he said, you can't just reason your way to figuring out what your purpose in the universe. You can't.
Mark Clark [00:05:58]:
The reality is it actually goes against logic and reason. So we need something else. And we've talked about this before Stephen Jay Gould, who's an evolutionary philosopher and biologist, pointed out that science by itself, reason, rationale, by itself, can't actually get you to adjudicate the question of God's existence because it's physics. And so the scientific world deals with the physical realm, and it can't answer the question of a metaphysical God who. Who transcends nature. And so the reality is you need something more than logic. You need something to actually transcend logic and enter in. It's not your.
Mark Clark [00:06:37]:
Your rationale, your reason, your cognitive faculties are not enough to figure out if God exists. And so what did you need? You needed the foolishness of God to actually. You needed not logic, not rationale. You needed revelation. You needed God himself to come down in the person of Jesus and say, look, I exist, I'm here. There's no way you can reasonably rationally get yourself logically to me. So I've turned logic on its head and I've come down and I've broken into history in order to show you everything about what you're built for. It's almost like.
Mark Clark [00:07:13]:
Have you guys seen the movie Inception? All right, so Inception, when it came in a couple years ago, it's this course this messed up movie where you're in a dream and then you're in dream within a dream. And then you pop out of one dream and then you got. And you gotta figure out whether. And then by the end of the movie, you know, Leonardo DiCaprio gets back to his two little kids, and he's got this little spinner and he spins it on the table and to figure out whether he's in a dream or not a dream, and it's gonna topple over, you know, if he's not in a dream and it's spinning. And then you see Leo kind of walk to his kids, and then the camera zooms in on the thing spinning, and you're waiting to see a topple to make sure he's back in reality. And then the camera does what? Cut. And it does not show you whether he's. And you're sitting there and you say, was he in a dream? Is he still in level one? Does it need to pop out? Is this reality? What's going on here? And everyone debated it, and that's why he went back and saw it three times and tried to figure out what.
Mark Clark [00:08:02]:
The walls are closing in. Is he a dream? What is he? I don't understand. Is all of life a dream? I don't even know if I'm in a dream. Right now. And so you're all messed up and everyone's freaking out and everyone's debating it. And then Christopher Nolan gets interviewed six months after the movie comes out. And finally we have the author. Finally we have the guy who wrote the movie, directed the movie.
Mark Clark [00:08:19]:
He's gonna tell us reality. And they said, he's a dream or is he not a dream? And he did the classic artist thing. I don't know. What do you think? No, I don't know. It's what you think. It's like, what are you talking about? That's not what we want. What we want is the author to step on stage and tell us, here's the mystery, here's the answer, here's what it's all about. And in Christianity, Jesus, the author showed up to say, here's reality, let me tell it to you.
Mark Clark [00:08:45]:
Here's what to do with your sex life, here's what to do with your family, here's what to do with work, here's what to do with your money. And Jesus literally showed up and showed us all of those things. He said, here's what to do. Now the question is, what are you gonna do with that?
Mark Clark [00:09:00]:
Now you can choose to reject Jesus version.
Mark Clark [00:09:03]:
You can choose to be a Muslim, a Hindu, an atheist, an agnostic, whatever you wanna do. But the reality is Jesus actually showed up and he actually explained, he exegeted to us, here is what raising kids about, here's what marriage is about, here's what your life is about. And so reason actually get us there. Now, the reason we might reject Christianity, the reason we might reject the foolishness of God, the foolishness of the cross, is because it's actually really hard to swallow. It's hard to swallow the concept of a God becoming human and dying for us because that looks like a defeat and we like victorious things. So it's actually really hard to swallow. But here's the beautiful part of it. If you don't want to take your life in the version of the cross, then all you've got is your reason and rationale and naturalism.
Mark Clark [00:09:53]:
And Ernest Becker, who's a great psychologist in 1970s, wrote a book called the Denial of Death, Pulitzer Prize winning book. And he says this. All the analysis in the world doesn't allow the person to find out who he is and why he is here on earth, why he has to die and how he can make his life a triumph. It is when psychology pretends to do this, when it offers itself as a full explanation of human unhappiness, that it becomes a fraud that makes the situation of modern man an impasse from which he cannot escape. Meaning we look at the cross and it offends our reason. It looks stupid to us. When I first became a Christian, the reality is I would believe in Jesus and I take my Bible to school and I would explain it to people and they would just blink at me. They'd be like, what are we doing here? I don't understand.
Mark Clark [00:10:44]:
Why don't we just go out and smoke drugs and steal again and go sleep with girls? I mean, we're 17, we're 18 years old. What are we doing here? We need to go out and do this with our life. It's silly. I would sit with my Bible and I would eat dinner with my family. And then I'd say, okay, I gotta go to church now. And I grabbed my Bible and they go, what are you doing? You're part of a cult. This is stupid. This is silly.
Mark Clark [00:11:05]:
And the reality is everyone thinks that it's foolish, right? Everything. It's ridiculous. Christianity is ridiculous. I can't believe it. Da, da. Until they don't. Until. Until it becomes.
Mark Clark [00:11:17]:
Listen, my buddy Brian, we were really good buddies until he thought everything I did, the way I was living my life, the way I was just defining my life by the cross versus the wisdom of the world, was stupid. And you make fun of me. Until the day he slept with a girl and he realized that he thinks she might have hiv. And he ends up in my basement crying, saying, I wish I did life like you. See, it was stupid. Until people's life. A girlfriend of mine, she actually aborted her child. See, it was foolish.
Mark Clark [00:11:54]:
Until she needed someone to hold her and give her hope and help her get through the psychological trauma of that. See, it was stupid. My high school would literally, I'd sit out in my Bible smoking a pack of cigarettes. Hey, everybody, let me tell you about Jesus. They go, ahah, that's silly. That's dumb. And then there was the day that our buddy, he used to sit three desks over for me. A really good guy, actually.
Mark Clark [00:12:21]:
When my father passed away and people were wondering what was wrong with me, why I was so sad, started making fun of me in class. He stood up and he called all them out and said, you don't make fun of Mark. He's my boy now. Even though I never talked to him before. Cause he was like a gangster. He's like, all of you are a joke. All of you are ridiculous. Never talk to him again or me and my brothers will beat the crap out of you.
Mark Clark [00:12:42]:
All right? He stood up for me. I was like, wow, this guy's legit. And four weeks later, took his life. And that desk is sitting empty, and everyone at my school is walking around like zombies, wondering, what is the meaning of life? And all of a sudden, this foolishness wasn't foolish anymore. They needed something to hold onto. And this is where Paul comes out of the gate and he says, do not just trust to your own logic. Do not trust to something like that. See, half of the people, when I tell them about Jesus, they just laugh.
Mark Clark [00:13:14]:
And they'd go on to the next party. But some, and this is what today's about. Some would believe and they would cherish and they'd be in awe. Some would actually say, this is something I wanna define my life by.
Mark Clark [00:13:27]:
Is that you? Or are you the kind of person. Here's my fear that we are at a point in 2018 that we don't even. We try to do something. We've created a third category. We what people are now in the modern vernacular, calling apatheist, which means they are. I was reading in the Atlantic 2003, there was a published article in the Atlantic, and it said this. Recently, someone asked me about my religion. Atheist, I was about to say, but I stopped myself.
Mark Clark [00:13:58]:
I used to call myself an atheist. I said, and I still don't believe in God. But the larger truth is that it's been years since I really cared about one way or the other. I'm. That was when it hit me, an apatheist. I'm apathetic to the question. I don't even care. I don't.
Mark Clark [00:14:16]:
I don't. And Paul would say to you, if that's you, like, I just go, I'm a realtor. I'm a soccer mom. I'm a teacher. I'm a nurse. I'm a businessman. I'm a student. And I'm just going through life.
Mark Clark [00:14:27]:
And I don't need to answer the question of God. I don't need to answer the question of meaning. I don't need to question where I came from. And Paul would say, you are weak and scared. Why are you afraid? Choose a side. Don't be that guy who just kind of coasts through life with no opinions, never plants his flag anywhere. No one likes that guy. I actually played golf a few weeks ago with my three buddies, and we played this game called Wolf.
Mark Clark [00:14:54]:
And so for those of you who are golfers, if you've played wolf before, wolf is a game where you get up and it's a different person every hole. And you drive the ball. And once you've driven the ball, then you. And then you watch the second guy drive the ball. And then you can choose whether you're gonna take him as your partner or one of the two other guys, knowing that they're good. And then you're gonna go. And then you're gonna try to get a point, because you're gonna choose the best guy in the foursome. So, I mean, strategically, you always choose.
Mark Clark [00:15:19]:
There's one guy. He's just the best golfer of the four of us. So I always choose him. It's like, we're gonna get a point. Cause he's good. And so we would just do that. And we were gaining points. But this fourth guy that we were playing with was so nice.
Mark Clark [00:15:29]:
He's actually a pastor. So he's one of these pastors, like.
Mark Clark [00:15:31]:
Who cares about people and has, like, a heart.
Mark Clark [00:15:35]:
And he's like. And he was so caring that he would never choose anybody. Because to choose one of us would make the other two feel bad about themselves. So he would just choose himself. Even though he was terrible. So he'd just choose himself. He didn't even come close to winning. And by the time we're all sitting, we're just laughing at him.
Mark Clark [00:15:53]:
We're like, what's your problem? Here's the thing. He never wanted any of us to feel bad about ourselves. But he lost horribly. But we all liked him, I guess, in the end. But he didn't want to offend anyone. Because if he chose him, that means I'd feel bad about myself. The reality is this. Don't be the coward who doesn't choose.
Mark Clark [00:16:10]:
Choose a side. You gotta understand. Paul is telling you, you cannot coast through your life. Consider your life.
Mark Clark [00:16:27]:
And then he says this second thing. He says, consider your calling.
Mark Clark [00:16:34]:
Here's what's crazy. Remember what he's done so far. He said, the foolishness of leaders, the stupidity of it, the dumbness of it, the moronic nature of it. Then he's saying, the foolishness and moronic nature and the silliness of the cross. And now he says, what's a third example that I could give? Oh, here's one. Oh, our egos need to be held in check. Let's talk about. He just turns and he looks at the church and he goes, let's talk about you.
Mark Clark [00:17:05]:
You're dumb. So the foolishness of the cross, the foolishness of leaders. And then he says, actually, let's just talk about you. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many of you were powerful. Right? These words here, dynamis, where we get dynamite, noble birth, eugenicy. It's where we get eugenics. Or your genes.
Mark Clark [00:17:32]:
Look at you guys. If I want to use an example of how God is so upside down and backwards that he wants to get all the glory and look really good. And so he does everything upside down, he defies reason and by using leaders. But make sure you don't elevate those leaders. Cause leaders are stupid and silly and dumb, and they're gonna fail you. And then the cross is upside down and backwards and silly. And now let's talk about you. And he looks at the people and he says, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards.
Mark Clark [00:18:04]:
This is a way. He's literally. In verse 28, he says, look at God chose what is low and despised in the world. And then he says this. Things that are not. You know what that word, that phrase in the Greek is Things that are not. It is actually the most contemptible phrase in Greek culture for a thing. It was the most.
Mark Clark [00:18:30]:
It was like what you'd use for a slave or a dirty person, Someone that you hate, someone who's totally despised. I was trying to think of, like, a modern version of this Greek phrase. And it's like, I was doing marriage counseling one time with this couple, and he looked at her in the midst of a fight, and he said, you know what? You're a piece of crap. That's what he said to her. He didn't, of course, use the word crap.
Mark Clark [00:18:53]:
I'm saying that because you're good Christian people.
Mark Clark [00:18:57]:
And I thought, my gosh, that's like, maybe the worst thing you can say to another human being. Right? You are a piece of, like, that's awful. That's terrible. And the reality is, is it's almost like Paul, this is the most terrible verbiage in Greek culture that he could use and says, hey, listen, here's the. So this is really good for your ego. But he's basically saying, remember, these are descriptions of who you. Now, I know. You know, most churches are like, don't worry about it.
Mark Clark [00:19:30]:
You're the best. Just do your best. Your best life. You're gonna get it. And Paul comes out of the gate and he goes, you know what your identity is?
Mark Clark [00:19:38]:
You're so dumb, useless.
Mark Clark [00:19:42]:
You're a thing that is not. You're a thing that is not.
Mark Clark [00:19:46]:
Now, it shouldn't thus surprise you when.
Mark Clark [00:19:49]:
You look at the modern world and.
Mark Clark [00:19:51]:
They make Fun of Christians when they make fun of. When Bill Maher makes fun and laughs at Christianity.
Mark Clark [00:19:55]:
When your friends, when media laughs at Christianity.
Mark Clark [00:19:58]:
It's always been that way.
Mark Clark [00:19:59]:
178 AD Celsus, who is a philosopher, he wrote these words about Christians. He said, let no cultured person draw near to Christianity. None wise, none sensible. Only if a man is ignorant. If anybody's a fool, let him come boldly to become a Christian. We see them in their houses, their wool dresses, cobblers.
Mark Clark [00:20:22]:
It's like they live in Abbotsford.
Mark Clark [00:20:23]:
The worst, the vulgarest, the most uneducated persons, he says. And then he says this. They're like a swarm of bats or ants creeping out of their nests, or frogs holding a symposium around a swamp, or worms convening in mud. This is what a guy writes about Christians 140 years after Jesus. That's what he says. So you and I, here's the thing. You and I, we come together at church, we put on Sunday's Best. We get together, we sing worship songs, we open our Bible, we pray for each other, we encourage each other.
Mark Clark [00:21:01]:
You know what the world looks in and sees? A bunch of frogs calling a symposium in a swamp. A bunch of ants, rats. What he calls worms convening in mud. That's a church service. That's what you should invite people to.
Mark Clark [00:21:22]:
That's what people think we're doing here. It should not surprise you that the world looks at everything Christianity is and actually says, this is a joke. It makes fun of it. It's not rational. But here's what he says. You are the most despised people in the world. You guys are a joke.
Mark Clark [00:21:44]:
You're brutal. You're not of noble birth.
Mark Clark [00:21:47]:
You're kind of.
Mark Clark [00:21:48]:
You're not powerful.
Mark Clark [00:21:52]:
But you know God, and that's messed up. You can't say I came from a good family, and that's why I know God. You can't say I'm powerful, and that's why God uses me. You only say I'm a disaster, I'm a wreck.
Mark Clark [00:22:06]:
And some of you are like, yeah, no, but I am very powerful. I run a business. I actually have a really good family. I'm actually have a lot of money. And some of you do, and some of you look like you're of noble birth and look like you're powerful. But here's the crazy thing. I'm your pastor and I know that.
Mark Clark [00:22:19]:
You'Re actually not those things because the thing behind the thing is I do your marriage counseling. And I see even those of you who are powerful. You're dumb. You say really dumb things to your spouse. You don't raise your kids right. You make massive mistakes in business. I was counseling a few years ago, one of the richest people I know, and he looked at his wife and.
Mark Clark [00:22:42]:
He'S like, hey, listen, you're not running the kids, right? You're not running our house, right. I think I'm gonna bring in somebody to look at and evaluate our kids. Cause I don't think they're right. They're two years old. I don't think you're doing a good job. I don't think they're right. I'm gonna bring someone in and they're gonna tell you what to do. I'm like, wow, you may be the.
Mark Clark [00:22:57]:
Dumbest human being I've ever met in my life.
Mark Clark [00:22:59]:
Because not even the poorest person in the world is going to say that to his wife. If he's smart, that's a way to shut down a lot of stuff for a decade. Oh, you're powerful, you're of noble birth.
Mark Clark [00:23:17]:
But you're foolish. You, I'm talking about, you are foolish. You are so desperately in need of God, it's mind boggling. You are so desperately in need of the grace of Jesus. This is why. Listen, this is why it's ridiculous when people look into the church and go, I don't want to become a Christian because it's full of hypocrites.
Mark Clark [00:23:40]:
I don't want to come to church.
Mark Clark [00:23:41]:
Because it's full of hypocrites. It's full of hypocrites.
Mark Clark [00:23:43]:
You know what Paul just said? Of course it is. Look at it. You're the foolish in the world. You're the weak in the world. You're the low.
Mark Clark [00:23:58]:
You're the despised.
Mark Clark [00:24:00]:
I know this is doing nothing for.
Mark Clark [00:24:01]:
Your ego right now. I know, I'm sorry.
Mark Clark [00:24:07]:
But don't look in at the church. If you're here and you're exploring Christianity, go wild.
Mark Clark [00:24:11]:
There's hypocrites.
Mark Clark [00:24:12]:
Of course there is. Listen, I'm getting on a plane in.
Mark Clark [00:24:16]:
A few hours and I'm going to this gathering of leaders so I can become a better leader. I'm going there two and a half days to learn. And when I land, I'm hoping to be able to travel to a jail and visit a guy who used to come to our church. And I journeyed with him and I married him and I walked with him and I would sit in the coffee shops and laugh with him and. And you can look and go, oh.
Mark Clark [00:24:44]:
Hypocrites people in the church who. If you're a follower of Jesus, why would you ever end up in prison? And you miss it. Because it's people like that, you see. He comes to know Jesus and values and cherishes and is in awe of the cross and what it is, precisely because he's the kind of guy who goes to jail, not in spite of it.
Mark Clark [00:25:14]:
Because people who believe in Jesus are foolish and weak and despised and low because they recognize in themself. They say, man, I mean, have you ever seen.
Mark Clark [00:25:25]:
Have you ever thought about the kinds.
Mark Clark [00:25:27]:
Of people Jesus actually hung out with?
Mark Clark [00:25:31]:
Like, think about the people.
Mark Clark [00:25:33]:
I wrote a list. Tax collectors, lepers. Zacchaeus, who is 3ft tall. Like, picture Jesus was walking around with a circus.
Mark Clark [00:25:49]:
He's walking around Galilee. He's got a three foot taller. He's got a prostitute. Tax collectors, lepers. This is the early church. They're walking around Galilee. It's like the greatest Showman. There's probably a bearded lady, a tattooed face.
Mark Clark [00:26:02]:
Jesus walking with. It's just like, when the mama know. I'm gonna shut your mouth. Hey, hey, this is me. Whoa. Run down the bullet. It's my skin, right? That's a.
Mark Clark [00:26:17]:
From Greatest Showman. Go watch it later.
Mark Clark [00:26:19]:
It's almost like Jesus is walking around with a circus of crazy people. Like, if there was a poster for the early church, it would literally be Jesus, like standing with all. It's like Zacchaeus was prostitute. Like, yeah, I'm cheap, all right. There's like a leper. Like, there's all. This is the crew. Jesus walked around.
Mark Clark [00:26:42]:
He didn't go down to the University of Jerusalem and pick the top 12 master's students and say, we're going to change the world, man. He picked these people. Nonsense. Traveling circus, greatest showman. And he said, come here.
Mark Clark [00:27:01]:
Why does he do it? Because here's the thing.
Mark Clark [00:27:06]:
Look at this.
Mark Clark [00:27:07]:
This is beautiful.
Mark Clark [00:27:08]:
If you've become a Christian at all.
Mark Clark [00:27:11]:
Here'S the reality behind the reality and why it actually ever happened to you. You might say, I believed in Jesus at this moment, or I did this, or I do that. Here's what he says. God chose. God chose. God chose.
Mark Clark [00:27:30]:
Wow. But I thought I chose. I thought I was. You know why he does that? You know why? He's the one who chooses. You know why? Ephesians 1 says, you're saved but by the grace of God through faith. And even that is a gift of God, that even your faith to believe in Jesus was given to you as a gift by God. You Know why? So that no one will boast. That's his whole point, right? That's the whole point of this.
Mark Clark [00:27:53]:
This passage is. He says, so that this is the word Host Day. In Greek, it means, what's the purpose of this? So that no human being might boast. So that you can never say, the reason I became a Christian was because I was so smart. Again, this is Paul's second critique of pure reason. And he says, smarts, intelligence, noble birth, power never could have got you, Jesus. You had to come to the end of yourself so that when you became a Christian, the thing behind the thing, it was God pursuing you, pursuing you, pursuing you, as the old guys used to call him, the Hound of Heaven. Why? So that you can never look at someone and say, hey, I figured this out myself.
Mark Clark [00:28:33]:
I was so smart. I used art and technology and my intelligence, and I figured out there's a God in the world. And then I did this. And he goes, no, no, no, you don't understand. God was pursuing you when you were off doing your own thing. You were an enemy of Jesus when he died for you. And he pursued you and pursued you and he saved you and he chose you so that at the end of your life, you stand in the presence of God and you say, I can't boast in anything that I did. No intelligence, no.
Mark Clark [00:28:57]:
No birth, no power. I only boast in you. You're the one who chose me so that you might live a life of pure gratitude in the present time. That's his point. When I was down in California a few weeks ago with my kids, I was literally. They had gone in. I was sitting on the beach, and the waves were super crazy. They were, like, built up.
Mark Clark [00:29:19]:
And you couldn't really go in the water because there was this massive undertow in a way that the locals said, we haven't seen this in 10 years. And so we're sitting there, and I'm reading my book, and I see this guy, and he runs across the beach, and he looks back, he's got his son, and he says something to me. He's like. And I'm like, I don't understand. And so I just keep reading my book, and he goes over a hill, and I can't see anything. And then after about three minutes, I'm like. His face kind of looked a little like, emergency.
Mark Clark [00:29:46]:
And I was like, hmm, maybe I.
Mark Clark [00:29:48]:
Should wait a couple more minutes and just see what happens. And so I sat and I waited. And then I'm like, maybe I should go help him. Was he Talking to his son or.
Mark Clark [00:29:55]:
Was he talking to me?
Mark Clark [00:29:56]:
And I stood up and I walked.
Mark Clark [00:29:57]:
Over this hill and I see this.
Mark Clark [00:30:00]:
Guy and he has these two probably.
Mark Clark [00:30:03]:
60 year old people, a woman and a man.
Mark Clark [00:30:06]:
And he's dragged them up on the.
Mark Clark [00:30:08]:
Sand and he's dripping wet, and they're dripping wet.
Mark Clark [00:30:12]:
And he literally had gone in, they had. Walking along the beach, the water had grabbed them, pulled them into the water.
Mark Clark [00:30:20]:
And they were drowning in the undertow.
Mark Clark [00:30:23]:
And I'm sitting there reading my book and the guy's like, help me. I'm like.
Mark Clark [00:30:29]:
Maybe in a bit.
Mark Clark [00:30:30]:
What?
Mark Clark [00:30:30]:
There's hell.
Mark Clark [00:30:30]:
Oh, what's going on? So I get over this thing. I see this. These people are laid out, they're dripping wet. And he's sitting there, he's like panting. And I'm like, my gosh, he just saved their life. Now here's the crazy thing. What do you think's gonna happen? I'm thinking, these people are gonna write this guy a check.
Mark Clark [00:30:47]:
He just changed their life.
Mark Clark [00:30:49]:
They get up and they're like, oh, man, my camera's broken. And then they pull up their pants and they literally went, whoop, Crazy times. And they walked down the beach. And this guy's sitting there, like, panting. He has no energy left. And I'm like. And he just looks up and he.
Mark Clark [00:31:07]:
Just shakes his head and he walks away.
Mark Clark [00:31:10]:
And I'm like, look at these. There's no gratitude here at all for what this guy did. They're just going through life. These entitled, I mean, people just, oh, my camera's broken. I can't believe it. Just keeps walking. And I'm sitting there going, man, this. This is like 90% of Christians that I know.
Mark Clark [00:31:26]:
God chose, God saved, God moved. And we just whistle our way through life and go, that was a close one. Can I get a new camera? Lord, can't you put more money in my bank account? Can't you heal me this one time? Can't you do this with my. Can't you do this? Hey, it's not enough what you've done. And I live in no gratitude at all. I just go through life.
Mark Clark [00:31:48]:
He says, this is why he does it this way, so that no one can boast in the presence of God at all. And so he says, the reality is this. We are the kinds of people, you and me, that God saves not because of us, but in spite of us. Not because we are good, but because he's good.
Mark Clark [00:32:05]:
He took the foolish things of the world, the weak things of the world, the despised, the low.
Mark Clark [00:32:10]:
Listen, my wife was speaking at the women's conference this week. It was, I listened to her talk and it was pretty funny. She got up and she had like the booklet of all the speakers that were speaking at this thing and she read the profiles. That's how she started. She's like so and so successful businesswoman. So and so started this movement of thousands of people who've come to Christ. So and so the director of women's ministry and teacher extraordinary so and so starter of this business. And then she's like, literally she reads.
Mark Clark [00:32:41]:
Her own profile in the book and.
Mark Clark [00:32:43]:
She'S like Erin Clark does insta stories.
Mark Clark [00:32:49]:
She's like why am I up here on this stage? All these people have done some crazy stuff in their life. And then of course she speaks and God used it and women are connecting with it and being set free from anxiety and feeling the pressures of the world around them and so on and so on. All these amazing things happen using who.
Mark Clark [00:33:07]:
Just foolish weakness despise. Lo, don't tell her I said that, but that's who she is. I'm working on her, but that's who she is. Presently. God takes the nonsense of the world. He takes a church that started eight years ago with 16 people and a 29 year old kid in a hoodie with Tourette's. Man, why we don't do anything interesting.
Mark Clark [00:33:42]:
We don't anything spectacular here.
Mark Clark [00:33:44]:
We just teach through the Bible, verse by verse. We don't do any special music. A bunch we don't sing Michael Jackson, you know, we don't bring in helicopters and wrestle tigers on stage. Kind of boring. Got a guy chatting with you, usually at you. There's nothing special.
Mark Clark [00:34:07]:
I mean we did church in the park. It was one of these beautiful moments where 45 people are signed up to.
Mark Clark [00:34:14]:
Be baptized and 80 people got baptized in August.
Mark Clark [00:34:17]:
People coming to Jesus, people getting baptized, My daughter on the spot. The spirit speaks to my daughter, my 12 year old daughter and she walks up and gets baptized and she's crying in my arms. One of the most beautiful days in the history of our church and one of the most beautiful days of my life. Right? Let's be honest, you baptize your kid and you know what I felt like at 9 o' clock that morning just.
Mark Clark [00:34:44]:
Before I got in my car? Like this. I'll show you a picture.
Mark Clark [00:34:54]:
You see that eyeball? It's fully diseased. I had been away and smoke had entered my eye and an allergic reaction happened. My eyeball felt like there was glass in it and sand Scratching everything in my body. Woke up that morning at 5am and.
Mark Clark [00:35:14]:
Went, dude, call it in, bro.
Mark Clark [00:35:16]:
It's church in the park.
Mark Clark [00:35:17]:
No one's even gonna notice. Just stay home, Stay in bed.
Mark Clark [00:35:22]:
Put an old sermon on yourself up on the LED wall. Do not leave the house. You know when you're sick, all your energy is going toward that one thing, like, heal the eyeball. Heal the eyeball. You look like a Cyclops. Figure it out. Pain. I just wanted to stay home because nothing great was gonna happen that day.
Mark Clark [00:35:45]:
And I stood in the little truck.
Mark Clark [00:35:47]:
Behind the stage and I had my eyeball and I'm like, if I get up there with this, people are gonna start running and thinking I got leprosy, so I gotta do something. So I preached in my sunglasses. And none of you knew.
Mark Clark [00:35:59]:
God used.
Mark Clark [00:36:00]:
That nonsense that day. Nonsense. Low, despised ridiculousness. Because here's Paul's whole point. You can't boast in yourself. You can't boast in your life. You can't boast in who you are. That's not the way it works.
Mark Clark [00:36:19]:
When I go back home, I see old friends. They don't understand what's going on in my life. They're like, dude, so you know, we haven't tracked with you. What's going on? I'm like, oh, you know, I just, you know, I'm a pastor of a church. Like, a pastor.
Mark Clark [00:36:31]:
How are you a pastor? They let pastors, like, just smoke weed and. Dude, that's crazy.
Mark Clark [00:36:36]:
These days I'm like, actually, some denominations probably do. No, I don't do that stuff anymore.
Mark Clark [00:36:43]:
What do you mean?
Mark Clark [00:36:43]:
What do you do now? I don't understand. I go back, people see me frozen in time. They see this kid on a skateboard and baggy pants and five bucks to his name, swearing like a sailor.
Mark Clark [00:37:00]:
A pastor?
Mark Clark [00:37:01]:
That doesn't make any sense. What do you got, like 30 people in your church?
Mark Clark [00:37:04]:
Yeah.
Mark Clark [00:37:04]:
No, a couple more than that.
Mark Clark [00:37:08]:
Why? How? I don't know.
Mark Clark [00:37:11]:
Because God uses the despised, silly, stupid, lowly things of the world to do great things. Why? Because it makes him look good versus you looking good. If he saves. And if we baptize 80 people with my eyeball falling out, he. He looks good.
Mark Clark [00:37:29]:
I don't look good and you don't look good. He looks good.
Mark Clark [00:37:33]:
See, here's what you need. Here's the answer to the deepest longings of your life. It's not logic. It's not rationale. It's not technology. The critique of pure reason, part two, is that you needed revelation.
Mark Clark [00:37:50]:
It's not about. Here's what one writer says. The source of salvation is not what one knows. That's what everyone's gonna tell you. It's all about what you know. So if your marriage is a disaster, get a podcast and figure it out. If you need your money figured out, just get an account at. Every answer to every problem is logical.
Mark Clark [00:38:09]:
And one writer says, no, no, it is not what one possesses, for example, wisdom or knowledge. But who has redeemed you? Who has become your Lord? That is the question. Not what you know, who you know.
Mark Clark [00:38:25]:
And then the question is, do you actually experience it? Do you actually experience him or not? Remember that scene in Good Will Hunting? I don't know if you've seen it. It's years old. Will is kind of this, like this young kid. He knows everything. He has a photographic memory. He's brilliant. And he goes to the psychologist and he picks his life apart and talks about his dead wife and talks about all these different things. And he looks at him.
Mark Clark [00:38:58]:
The psychologist takes him out and they meet in this bench later on. And he looks at me. I thought about what you said to me about my painting. Stayed up half the night thinking about it. And then something occurred to me and I fell into a deep sleep. And I haven't thought about you since. You know what occurred to me? You're just a kid. You don't have the slightest idea of what you're talking about.
Mark Clark [00:39:25]:
You've never been out of Boston, right? So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny. On every art book ever written. Michelangelo. You know a lot about him, him and the Pope. Political aspirations, sexual orientation, the works, right? But I bet you couldn't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel to look up at that beautiful ceiling, to see that if I asked you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me. Once more into the night, dear friends. But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your hand as he gasps his last breath looking to you for help.
Mark Clark [00:40:10]:
If I asked about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. Maybe you've even been laid a few times. You'd give me a syllabus of your personal favorites. But you don't know what it's like to look into a woman and be truly vulnerable. To feel that. To feel like God put an angel on earth that could rescue you from the depths of hell. And for you to be her angel sitting up in a hospital bed all through the night. Because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term visiting hours don't apply to you.
Mark Clark [00:40:45]:
And you're there for her through anything. Through cancer, you're an orphan. Right? You think I know anything about how hard your life has been because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? But you see a painting of mine and you rip my life apart. But I don't care about any of that because I can't learn anything from you that I can't read in some book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. And I'm fascinated. I'm in. But you don't want to do that, do you, sport? You're terrified of what you might say.
Mark Clark [00:41:29]:
You're moved, chief. And he walks away. And Will's whole life gets changed because he realizes this. For all of your knowledge, you have no experience. Here's what I'm terrified about. In this room. For all of your knowledge, you don't actually know God at all. Because you have not come to a place where you recognize that you are low and despised and worthless.
Mark Clark [00:42:00]:
You're walking in your own power and trying to boast in your own accomplishments. Step number one is you have to embrace your own ridiculousness and realize you don't even experience him, which means you don't know him. You need to embrace how dumb you are. Can you leave church today and just champion that? Just be like, I am the foolish nonsense of the world, man. You meet someone at a coffee shop. I'm dumb. How are you doing? I'm dumb. It's really ridiculously foolish and stupid.
Mark Clark [00:42:32]:
I'm dumb. I'm despised.
Mark Clark [00:42:34]:
You gotta embrace it.
Mark Clark [00:42:36]:
I'll leave you with this. My buddy this week, he walked into a coffee shop and a girlfriend of ours walked in, and he was sitting there working, and she came up and they started chatting, and he goes. She goes, oh, I'm here to meet my grandfather. And he's like, oh, your grandfather?
Mark Clark [00:42:55]:
He had a major impact on my.
Mark Clark [00:42:56]:
Life 20 years ago. And she's like, oh, really?
Mark Clark [00:42:59]:
Yeah, yeah. And she's like, well, he's sitting right over there.
Mark Clark [00:43:02]:
Oh, my goodness. I want to go say thank you to him.
Mark Clark [00:43:05]:
He impacted. He was my alpha leader.
Mark Clark [00:43:07]:
He was an amazing man.
Mark Clark [00:43:08]:
Great.
Mark Clark [00:43:08]:
Cool. She's like, now he's struggling with Alzheimer's a little bit, so. So he's probably not gonna remember you. That's okay. That's okay. And remember, my grandma passed away about 10 years ago, so this is his new wife. Oh, that's fine. That's Fine.
Mark Clark [00:43:20]:
It's fine. I just wanna go thank him. And so he gets up and walks.
Mark Clark [00:43:23]:
Over, and she gets busy with the.
Mark Clark [00:43:25]:
Kids, and the kids start complaining they want a cookie or whatever. So she goes and starts hanging out. This is this week. And he walks up to this couple, and he grabs the guy by the shoulders.
Mark Clark [00:43:35]:
Hello, Dave. And he just rubbing his.
Mark Clark [00:43:38]:
Dave, Dave, you have had such huge impact on my life.
Mark Clark [00:43:44]:
Remember, I'm Danny.
Mark Clark [00:43:45]:
I'm Danny.
Mark Clark [00:43:45]:
Remember me? You massively impacted my life.
Mark Clark [00:43:48]:
And the guy's looking at him like, what? And his wife looks and goes, I don't think. He's like, no, no, no, I know.
Mark Clark [00:43:53]:
I know.
Mark Clark [00:43:53]:
You don't know me, Danny.
Mark Clark [00:43:55]:
I know you don't. It's fine that you don't remember me.
Mark Clark [00:43:58]:
It's fine that you don't remember me, Dave.
Mark Clark [00:43:59]:
It's fine. I'm Danny. You impacted me so much. I just want. And the guy goes, I don't remember.
Mark Clark [00:44:04]:
He's like, I know, I know.
Mark Clark [00:44:05]:
It's okay. So I go, it doesn't really matter because I just want to tell you, you helped me through a really tough time. And they just sat there blinking at.
Mark Clark [00:44:13]:
Him like, what is going on right now?
Mark Clark [00:44:16]:
And he's crying, talking about how they got. And this lasts for four straight minutes until the girl turns up from her kids and sees that ain't her grandfather and walks over. And this guy's like, you don't understand. And then she grabs him. Now there's like this chain of grabbing and rubbing.
Mark Clark [00:44:42]:
All right?
Mark Clark [00:44:43]:
And she's like. She's trying to, like, get his attention. And he's like, listen, this is what you did. You helped me through this time, my life. Remember we did Alpha? And the couple's like, what's Alpha? And he's like, don't worry. I know you don't remember. It's okay. And finally she's like, I'm sorry.
Mark Clark [00:45:01]:
I'm sorry.
Mark Clark [00:45:02]:
He's got the wrong people. I'm really sorry.
Mark Clark [00:45:04]:
And they're like.
Mark Clark [00:45:06]:
And people around the coffee shop actually had heard the setup and never interrupted him and just laughed the whole time at him. All right, now here's the point. I'll pray for you spiritually. That's you groping your way through life, being dumb. Good thing your salvation is not based on you. Father, we are very grateful that we.
Mark Clark [00:45:36]:
Got chosen by you, in spite of us, not because of us. And that our salvation is based on you, not us. So that we can't boast. Jesus, I pray for the humility if there are people in this room and these, these campuses, these locations that don't actually know you because they haven't had the humility. Humility. Because they've been trusting in their own science and their own selves and their own naturalism and their own thoughts and their own ideas and their cognitive realities and their life and their boasting and.
Mark Clark [00:46:01]:
Their power and their money and their prestige and their comfort and their families. I pray that you would cut through all of that right now in such.
Mark Clark [00:46:08]:
A way to humble them so that.
Mark Clark [00:46:10]:
They grab ahold of you and they.
Mark Clark [00:46:11]:
Recognize that they are the low, despised.
Mark Clark [00:46:13]:
Things of the world.
Mark Clark [00:46:14]:
But when God saves people like that, you get the glory and we do not. And that's the way you planned it. Let that change us at the core of our being. Not only what we do, but what we want to do. And let us bring glory to you in all things. And as we move on now to all the other issues that Paul starts into in chapter two, all the other topics of Masterclass that hit our life, let all of the last stuff of the last nine weeks about Jesus and the cross be foundational so that we move forward with nothing other than that in our eyes, in our hearts, living for you. In Jesus great name we pray. Amen.