Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
To First Corinthians, chapter six. That's where we are in this series on. We're going through the masterclass, asking all these massive questions about God, your life, salvation, sexuality, how to work, what to do with money and family. And really 1 Corinthians, a great book to do that because Paul covers all of these things and much more through the master class of life. And so what we're doing today is part two of what Paul started last week, which was a list in chapter six about vices or sins. And he talks about the idea of there's people, there's behaviors that when they come to define your life, they don't get into the kingdom of God. He says, and so this is a section. If you've only been here a few weeks and you've been saying, hey, you know, there's lots of talk about sin and behavior.
Mark Clark [00:00:46]:
And I thought the church was not about that. I thought it was about what you believe. There are three components that we talk about as a church about discipleship. There's belief, belonging, behavior. Belief, of course, is doctrine, the idea of thinking right and biblically and theologically accurate. And then there's belonging, which is the idea of belonging to a family, belonging to a church, belong to a community. And then there's behavior. There's the idea of what you do with your life, praxis, how you actually function in the world.
Mark Clark [00:01:11]:
And this section in First Corinthians in the masterclass, he keeps hitting on behavior. He's not gonna always be hitting on behavior. He gets into some. He moves into some theology in a few chapters, but this section is particularly on behavior. And so what we're talking about this idea that once you kind of experience the redemption of Jesus in your life, we once you've experienced Jesus setting you free, he has these expectations. There's a trickle down effect to your beliefs and the things that you've experienced in Jesus that has to function down to your life. Because we don't believe in compartmentalization where you say, now I believe these things and now I move on with my life like this. If Jesus really is God and came and died on a cross and lived a perfect life in your place and set you free and gave you the Spirit, if you repent and believe in what he's done in the cross and in the resurrection for you rather than in your own religion and what you can do, if that's all true, and then it has to trickle down to the actual way you function in life.
Mark Clark [00:02:05]:
It's what God expects of Us. And that's the tension that Paul's facing. It's almost like the Exodus story, which Paul is a Jew. It would have been in the background of his life, very potently. I watched. I was telling you guys a few weeks ago, I watched Prince of Egypt with my kids. And there's this powerful moment where, of course, Moses comes up and he parts the Red Sea, and then they go through. And that's what the Exodus story is.
Mark Clark [00:02:27]:
And it's the background of every good Jew is they would think through the Exodus story. And so the reality is, what happens after they. They go through the waters of deliverance. They get out to the other side. And what happens, that's when God, Moses, comes down the mountain with the Ten Commandments and says, now, here's how to live. So I've delivered you, and now here's how to live. That's a very important order. It's not, here's, get your life perfect in order, and then I'll deliver you, then I'll save you.
Mark Clark [00:02:52]:
It's, you've already experienced the deliverance of Jesus. Now here's an expectation on your life. And so Paul is going through all of these different expectations, and he's saying, listen, this is powerful. He's talking about the idea of not inheriting the kingdom of God, right? Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? What is that phrase? It's like what every Jew is waiting for. The time when God would bring about salvation and purpose and meaning and power in the world. Defeat sin, set people free. And he's saying, this stuff has already happened in your life, which means, I'm gonna lay out vices for you. I'm gonna lay out expectations for you.
Mark Clark [00:03:28]:
Because if you've experienced salvation in Jesus, I expect it to affect more than just how you vote. And you pray once a week. It's way more powerful than that. It goes. It orbits down to every single aspect of your life. Not showing up to church once a week, not saying a prayer before a meal. Not just, hey, make sure that I have these values and not those values anymore. And that means I'm a Christian.
Mark Clark [00:03:49]:
He's going, you've experienced the kingdom, and the Kingdom means power in your life. The Kingdom means transformation. The kingdom means deliverance. And so when you've come through the Red Sea, now I'm standing, and Moses comes down the mountain, he says, here's how to live. Here's the Decalogue, here's the Ten Commandments, here's actually how to function because you've been saved, because you've been set free. This doesn't save you. Jesus has saved you. But now here's an expectation on your life.
Mark Clark [00:04:13]:
And that's what Paul's doing for the first couple chapters. Like, here's what it means to be in Jesus. Here's what it means, what the cross did. It's not your own wisdom, it's the cross. But now there's an outworking of it on your life that actually means that you need to experience freedom. And some of you, you live in this. Like, he's going through this list, right? Sexual immorality, idolatry, adulterers. You live in these sins, and you can't even imagine a world where you're not enslaved to these sins anymore, where this isn't a part of your life.
Mark Clark [00:04:40]:
And he's saying, well, that's exactly what sin does. It makes you begin to think that this is normal and you can't experience your life any differently. You begin to think that living for the weekend is normal. David Foster Wallace, who is this brilliant philosopher, I've read his address to a bunch of college students. Years ago, he got up and he did a speech called this is Water. And he talked about the idea that your slavery is like a fish in water, where you don't even know it. You, as you sit here right now across all of these sites and listening to this Bible study, whatever you might think, oh, I'm free. But you're enslaved to all these sins.
Mark Clark [00:05:13]:
You can't even think of life different. You can't think of life normal. And it's because you framed normal different than the way God does, because you don't even know what it looks like to experience the kind of freedom. And David Foster Wallace looked at these college students. He says, look, you're all enslaved, but you don't even know it. You're enslaved to your own pleasure. You're enslaved to your own delight. And you keep thinking, because you're so smart, I don't wanna be enslaved to anything.
Mark Clark [00:05:33]:
I'm so free. I'm an individual. But the reality is you're enslaved to your own passions for your own pleasure. And that's actually the worst freedom, because it feels so right. And he gives the image at the beginning where, of course, the speech is called this is Water. And one, two fish are swimming in the water, and another big fish kind of swims by them. And he looks to them, he says, hey, guys, and how's the water? And he swims away, and the two Fish look to each other and go, what the heck is water? And that's because they don't even know they're in it. And Paul is pushing against your life, and he's saying, listen, you don't even know the kind of slavery you live in.
Mark Clark [00:06:09]:
So now I wanna give you freedom. Now I want you to experience the kingdom of God in your life, where it gives meaning and purpose and power to your life. Now, he's obviously hitting all these ethical issues. He's hitting moral questions. He's hitting questions about what do you do with your life? How do you actually live your life? And he says, okay, here's how to do sexuality, here's how to do money, here's how to do any. And we're hit a few of those things. But before we hit the rest of his list, he has 10 things, 10 vices that he's trying to say, don't live in these things. Don't live in these patterns.
Mark Clark [00:06:37]:
I was reading a book called. It's a very. It's fascinating book. It's a book that a lot of people, a lot of scholars credit with shaping their worldview. It's by a guy named Richard Hayes. He's a professor at Duke University. It's called the Moral Vision of the New Testament. And the idea is, when you're talking about.
Mark Clark [00:06:52]:
About ethical questions, and here's what I'd rather do for you, instead of having you be people who are dependent on pastors and blogs and tweets of other people to figure out every single moralistic issue in your life, I'd rather give you a framework. It's kind of like giving someone a fish versus teaching them to fish. I'd rather give you a framework to saying, here's how to think through moral ethical issues in your life at all. Choose the issue. Sexuality, abortion, violence, marriage and divorce, whatever it is. And Richard Hayes says there's three lenses through which you get them really stable in your life, and then you can think through the ethical issues of your life and think through. You can apply these. So he says the first one is community.
Mark Clark [00:07:32]:
All right? He says every issue you think through in the context of Christianity, you need to think through it ethically, through the reality of community. You can't think through ethical issues of your life based on just you in a room by yourself, how you feel. You ate pizza last night, so now your worldview on sexuality is this. Or you had this conversation, so now your view of money is this. It's not the way it can be. You're not an individual, because the gospel says you become part of a family. So all your ethical thinking has to be done in the context of community, which kind of sucks, because that means people are gonna push up against you. They're gonna call you out on things, right? And so this happened to me in Bible college.
Mark Clark [00:08:08]:
I had two best friends. We'd been best friends for a couple years, and we used to go to this prayer room and pray together all the time. And I was living a life that probably wasn't in line with where I wanted to live. I was doing a few things that were wrong. And we went into the prayer room one day, and just before we prayed, the two guys, my two best buddies, looked at me and they said, hey, Mark, you're not living really how you're supposed to. And they called it out of me. Now, I don't know about you, but when people call things out on me, I'm not exactly like, oh, thank you. Now I'll change my life, all right? I tend.
Mark Clark [00:08:37]:
I get defensive. I'm kind of like a cornered rat. And so I just started to slash out on them, and they're like, you know, this is what I'm like, yeah, what's wrong with you? And I start going at them. And there was probably more swearing in that prayer room that day than had been in the prayer room previously. But the reality was, is that I didn't like being called out of something. But here's the thing. They were right. Right.
Mark Clark [00:08:57]:
They were right in my life, and I had to change some things about me. As much as it sucked to be pushed back on by community, see, if you live in isolation from people around you, to take the Scriptures into your life and say, listen, here's what I'm seeing in your life. I'm seeing this proclivity. I'm seeing this sin. I'm seeing this tendency. You need to actually repent. You need to change. If you don't have that, then no one's ever really gonna be able to call you out in life.
Mark Clark [00:09:18]:
He says the second lens that you have to view everything through is the cross. The cross is the definitive lens through which you see every ethical issue. The fact that Jesus Christ, who is God, came, died on a cross, got beaten, got scourged, got punished, suffered immensely for the sin of the world. This becomes the paradigm for all obedience in regard to Christianity in your life. This is the example. This is the paradigm, the lens for faithfulness in the world to God in the scriptures. And so when you think about your own moral life and what you're gonna do with it, you gotta think of it in a cruciform pattern. When I'm making these decisions, does the cross inform how I'm making these decisions with my money? If Jesus was rich and had everything and gave up everything and became poor and suffered so that I might become spiritually rich, what does that mean about my generosity? That's using the cross, and there's a million applications to this.
Mark Clark [00:10:13]:
Paul in Ephesians 5 uses it in regard to marriage. He says, men, husbands, you need to love your wives. Like what? Like Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. He uses the cross as the paradigm for, for husbandry, for what it looks like to actually serve your spouse. Which means, husbands, you need to be thinking. If you just been going after it, you've been working hard and you're like, yeah, I'll stop later, I gotta get the money now, we'll do vacation later, we'll do this later, we'll do that. And you keep putting it off. You put off the counseling, you put off the conversation.
Mark Clark [00:10:43]:
He's saying, no, no husbands, you need to actually love your wife like Christ loved the church. You need to give up your own passions, you need to give up your own pleasure, you need to give up your own delight at certain times and actually love and serve your wife like Jesus did in the context of the cross. So here's what Richard Hayes says. He says our actions in life are therefore to be judged not by their calculable efficacy in producing desirable results, but by their correspondence to Jesus. Example. Now that messes me up because what it basically says is the cross becomes the example through which meaning you gotta give up your vision of the good life. You gotta give up your ease, your comfort for the good of the world. And Hayes says this example then becomes the example about how you're gonna live your life as opposed to results oriented things.
Mark Clark [00:11:39]:
Which messes me up because as the guy trying to help lead along with amazing other leaders, the organization called Village Church, what I tend to go after my personality type is to go after results. I go after what works. What is going to cause us to plant more churches, what is going to cause more people to come to Jesus? What are we gonna do to get more leaders? And I'm just look at results, results, results. What he just said is your life is actually not judged based on just results. It's based on how well you followed the example of Jesus, maybe even more so than the results. So that means the ends don't justify the means. It means that if you're doing business and you're saying to yourself, well, I just want good results so I can give money to the kingdom and. But in the process, you're being a jerk to people, you're destroying people, you're using people as a tool and you're mean spirited and you're just walking around like you're all that.
Mark Clark [00:12:29]:
He's saying you're not doing it in the way of the cross, ergo, you're wrong. Think about that. It means the way you do your marriage and your money and your work, all of it needs to be cruciform in its pattern so that you can actually follow the example of Jesus. And so he's challenging us in all these things. And he's saying, listen, you have to have a cross shaped reality in your ethic. You have to have community. And then he says, the last one Hayes says is he says you need to view all questions through the context of new creation meaning. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul says, the old is gone, the new has come.
Mark Clark [00:13:04]:
You are a new creation in the present. Which means the church is the group of people in the present that exists to show the world, here's the wisdom of God, here's the morals of God, here's the obedience of God, here's what God thinks about this. All of that is a new creation reality. You don't have to wait till the future to become a new creation. It's already a power in your life. And Richard Hayes says the church embodies the power of the resurrection in a not yet redeemed world. And he says, so the cross was this apocalyptic event which created the power of the Spirit to come into your life so that you can have the power. Now here's the interesting thing that Hayes says.
Mark Clark [00:13:41]:
He says, notice what's not on this list that most people would challenge me on. He says, what's not on the list is love. And he said, I don't put love forward as one of the key lenses of how to deal with ethics. He says, for a few reasons. First, it's inferred in the cross. Secondly, because love in our culture, it's become a word that we kind of, it just means acceptance and it doesn't mean what the Bible actually packs into the word agape and phileo and all of these amazing covenant words. We've kind of, we've just made it what feels good. And so the word love isn't actually a great lens because it's not really the way that the Bible uses the word love.
Mark Clark [00:14:18]:
In modern times, it's inferred in the cross. And then he says, but there's another reason, and it's because he says as much as we make about love in the New Testament. He says, read the Gospel of Mark twice the word love is used, and they're both just quotes from the Old Testament. He said, read the book of Hebrews, read the book of Revelation. And he said, read the book of Acts. Love is almost non existent. Maybe two to three love references in Mark, Acts, Hebrews and Revelation together. And I'm trying to give you an ethic for the whole New Testament.
Mark Clark [00:14:47]:
He says, do you know in the Book of Acts, the word love, noun or verb, is never used in the Book of Acts? Now we can do a whole theology on this. Okay, well, it's not about love. That's not his point. He says it's because when Luke is framing the mission of the church, he's saying, listen, my key issue is not love, it's power. That's why in Acts chapter one, verse eight, he says, the Spirit is gonna come on you and propel you out to mission. Meaning, listen, I think some people trade the power of God to change you, to transform you, to do, meaning, purposeful things in your life, give you the joy, the delight, the killing of sin, which we're gonna be talking about today. This is why he gives the list. We've traded out all of that power.
Mark Clark [00:15:29]:
The book of Acts is focused on power, the power of the Spirit. You submit to Jesus, here's what he's gonna do. He's gonna transform. He's gonna change not only what you do, but what you want to do for the mission of the world. And we've traded it for love, which just means let's sit around, eat cookies, be non confrontational, journey with people, and that's it. And that's a bad trade. It's a trade to our detriment. Because literally what the book of Acts would then say to you is, listen, if your buddy's going to the strip club like we talked about last week, you don't go, you know what, I'm just gonna journey with my bro.
Mark Clark [00:16:01]:
And he, it's like, you gotta sit your bro down and go knock it off. Repent of sin rather than letting him die in that sin from an ethic that you call love because you don't even know what the word means Biblically. You sit down with your girlfriend and she's sitting there, she can't get rid of this gossip, she pines after her friend's husband, all the time. And you're sitting around giggling about it, going, ah, I just passed another glass. It's so cute. No, you need to sit her down and go, sin is a lion in your life that will kill you and derail your life, which is why you need to kill it. How are you gonna kill it? The power of new creation, the power of the spirit. You gotta love Jesus more than you love the sin.
Mark Clark [00:16:45]:
Thomas Chalmers, he said, the only thing that's gonna work, and Luke would agree with this in regard to Acts, the only thing that's gonna work is. Is the expulsive power of a new affection. You have to love something more than you love the strip club, more than you love the gossip, more than you love the pining after your friend's husband. You need to love something that's gonna get rid of that. You can't just dismantle an idol. It needs to be replaced in your life. What are you gonna replace it with? You gotta replace it with the love of Jesus. You gotta replace it with the power of the spirit.
Mark Clark [00:17:13]:
This is what Paul's trying to do. He's saying, you're already here. You're part of a new creation, so stop acting. He says, the old has gone, the new has come. So stop acting like you're just sitting around with no power. I don't know. I'm trying to defeat this sin. I'm trying to do this.
Mark Clark [00:17:27]:
He's going, you have the spirit in light of the cross. You're already a new creation, so now you gotta live in it. And so he says all of that as a background. And he says, listen, you gotta. And this is why he's giving this list. And so he starts the list in chapter six, verse nine. Do you not know the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? And we hit all these last week. Do not be deceived.
Mark Clark [00:17:48]:
Neither the sexually immoral talked about that last week. Anything outside the context of marriage between male and female. Then he says, nor idolaters, people who worship anything more than God. Nor adulterers, people who cheat on their spouse in any form. Then he says this. Nor men who practice homosexuality. Now, that's a tough one. It's a difficult one in the context of modern reality.
Mark Clark [00:18:10]:
I looked into every form of this. I read as much as I could on this in regard to. I read Greek, so I was able to go into the Greek, read every commentary, read every footnote I could to try to make this say not what it says, but the reality is it just says what it says, and it's why people who are translating very good Greek scholars who are translating the Bible in 2019 still allow this verse to say what it says, because there's no way around it. It simply is saying, listen, this is sin. It's sex outside of the context of a man and a woman, in the context of marriage. And that's just what it is. And so the reality is, is he says, listen, I've already given you this paradigm for sexuality in the garden, male and female. And all of this is based on creation theology.
Mark Clark [00:18:55]:
There's this great article by an Old Testament scholar talking about how all sexual sin is based on the paradigm of Genesis 1:3. Go back and read Genesis 1:3, where God creates all these binary realities. Light, dark, land, water. And the climax of those binary realities are male and female. And he puts them in the garden. And he says, listen, this is sexuality. This is always the way it will work. Even the way he created us in regard to our bodies is there's a fit, right? There's a male and there's a female and there's a sexual fit.
Mark Clark [00:19:27]:
And he says, this is built into creation. There's a pointer, there's a hinter, even in the way that you're physical, to the way things are supposed to be. And then at last, all the way to the end of the Bible when Jesus comes back for his bride, the church, and there's a marriage, supper of the Lamb. And so all of that imagery from Genesis 1, 2 and 3 fits all the way to Revelation 22. And it sits there as this. Here's the way it's supposed to be reality. And it's all built in the creation story. And people push back and they say, yeah, but you're making it a bigger sin than other things.
Mark Clark [00:19:59]:
It's not true. Yes. The church has tended to look at this sin and say. And make a big deal of it. Say it. And by inference, people say, well, you've made it a bigger deal than other things. That's not what Paul's doing. Paul.
Mark Clark [00:20:11]:
And what I'm trying to do is put this in the framework of all the other sins. He doesn't say it's. Look at the. It's all in the same list. Thieves, greedy, drunkards. He's saying it's all in the same list. There's no elevation of one sin above the other one. He's saying, it's just as bad as being a drunkard.
Mark Clark [00:20:27]:
And so I know a lot of Christians who sit around and drink way too much, and they Judge homosexuality and go, oh, homosexual. I can't believe. Possibly another one. And he puts it in the same list. And so the minute. Now, here's the thing. If you want to say, okay, this is just a cultural thing, it doesn't really mean that anymore. We've kind of moved.
Mark Clark [00:20:50]:
We've progressively come to a culture where we can't hold onto this anymore. You can say that, but exegetically, if you're trying to be honest, that means that we have to do the same thing with this. And we have to do the same thing with this. And we have to do the same thing with this. It means that we start to go down the road where we say, now I can't call out drunkards anymore. I can't call out the greedy anymore. Because we've said this stuff is just cultural. But the reality is, he's saying, no, no, no, we can't violate the text like that.
Mark Clark [00:21:16]:
The reality is, it's all built into this list. He's saying, listen, this is all built on creation. It's not a cultural moment. Because one culture might come to think thievery is okay, doesn't mean you go back and rewrite the Bible. See, here's the thing. There's lots of things in the Bible that I would love to rewrite or rethink, right? Not to say this one, but there's ideas that I would be like, but my job isn't to write the Bible, right? My job's to come under the Bible and then explain it to you. So my job isn't to come up with what God thinks about stuff. If it was, I would change.
Mark Clark [00:21:50]:
I would change. I mean, one of the verses I wrestle with the most, there's a verse in Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, you've heard that it was said, do not commit adultery. But I say to you, if you lust after somebody who's not your spouse, you've already committed adultery. I'm like, man, I would change that. Cause, you know, hard, that is, right? Those of you who are married, you know how hard you. It is very hard to go through. And he says, you should pluck out your eyeballs and go to heaven before going to hell and living a life of lust. And I'm like, man, that is tough.
Mark Clark [00:22:20]:
Especially in our culture. When we were in Dubai a couple weeks ago, we went to this, like, traditional. Went out to the desert with the kids and went on the camels and then went to this dinner. And we're sitting at this dinner, and after the dinner was over, you Know, the girls are kind of sitting over here talking, and then they're all kind of looking. And then part of the dinner was this guy, he came out to juggle and breathe fire. And he came out and this guy was like, cut from a rock. All right. He was like, he was like, thin out like this and every.
Mark Clark [00:22:49]:
Like, he had like 12 pack and his pecs, and he's tan like an Egyptian. And he's like. And he comes down, he's got all this, and he's like. He's breathing fire and throwing it around. And I noticed that my wife, she went from, like chatting with the girls over here, all of a sudden she's like this. And I'm not joking, Two, three minutes in, she's clapping, she's like, yeah. Everybody else was dead quiet. It was kind of awkward, actually.
Mark Clark [00:23:15]:
It was like, this guy's like. And there's 400 people and they're just watching. She's like, woo, Right? And it was like 10 minutes where I couldn't even get her attention. I'm like, hey, babe, I'm over here. She's like, what? Yeah. Woo. That's tough. All right.
Mark Clark [00:23:32]:
That's just. That's just. There's stuff in the Bible that I just cut out. The lust. That's crazy in our culture. It's crazy. It's just reality. But then it's there.
Mark Clark [00:23:40]:
And there's stuff Paul's gonna say in a few chapters in First Corinthians. He's gonna say women should wear head coverings in church and shouldn't talk. And if they have a question, they should go home and ask their husband what that's like. I'm like, I don't. Now we're gonna find out that that's really not what he's saying. Because there's all kinds of culture reference points. But the reality is, I just want to delete that from my Bible. I just take it out.
Mark Clark [00:24:03]:
It's easier. I don't have to explain it. I don't have to get up in 2019, go, hey, ladies, get a covering on. Walk in like this. Hello. I'm mute. All right, okay. So I just don't want just be so easy.
Mark Clark [00:24:15]:
There's so many things in the Bible that I would change if I wrote it. But my job's not to write it. My job's to submit to it. My job's to figure out how this actually plays out in life and do my best to explain it to you and call you to the kind of life that God calls us. All to. And so he says, listen, this isn't some old thing that's kind of done. The reality is, is he's saying, there's sexuality. There's the way I've set it up.
Mark Clark [00:24:42]:
And if you don't feel the Bible push against you every once in a while, it probably means you're not actually reading the Bible. Probably means you're creating God in your own image. If you don't feel the Bible grayed up against you, if you don't feel the Bible tell you yes, it's gonna hurt. Sometimes there needs to be sacrifice in your life that if you're geared. All this is in the context of lawsuits. Remember, he said there's gonna be times when you have to die to yourself in regard to lawsuits and not fight for your own justice. And what feels right and what he's now getting into is he's saying, maybe there's other areas in our life which are gonna be very similar. We feel like we need to fight for it because it feels right.
Mark Clark [00:25:15]:
But there's things that we have to die to come back to the paradigm of the cross, where Jesus is dying to self, where he's going into the garden, and he's saying, for the good of my 90 million years and 10 billion years in the future, I'm gonna suffer right now. I'm gonna sweat blood. I'm gonna do the mission. I don't even want to. It doesn't feel good. Father, I wish that you would take this mission from me. Some of us, in regard to our sexuality and lusts and things outside of the context of marriage, those are things that we're gonna want to do and feel. And there are things in the paradigm of Christianity that have to die.
Mark Clark [00:25:47]:
And so he says, listen, you go after lawsuits all the time. You get off to die to yourself. And there's areas of thievery, all right? So he goes on, he says, thieves. All right? Now, when I was growing up, I was a little punk kid, and thievery is my life, all right? I didn't have any money. So I grew up in a small town. I didn't have wealthy parents. And so I would just go into 7:11 in the middle of August with a big winter coat on, and I would just pack stuff I would leave there. You know, I'd go in skinny and leave fat because I would just pack bags of chips and Slurpees and all kinds.
Mark Clark [00:26:22]:
I mean, that was my life. Every day we'd be in the store doing that. I used to. In order to Get. I started doing drugs when I was about grade eight or nine, and I didn't have any money, and so I had to steal the money to get the drugs. And so I would get big rocks and we would go to a parking lot and we throw rocks through a window and then go in and steal all their money and go buy drugs. And I would go into my buddy's mom's purses and steal their money and go buy drugs. I mean, I was a little thief, all right? And then I came to know Jesus, and Jesus changed.
Mark Clark [00:26:52]:
Not what I do, but what I want to do. And I stopped being a thief. This is what Paul's saying. Some of you live this kind of life now. Most of you at Village Church, let's be honest, are probably not going to go into 711 and steal stuff, all right? That's probably not going to be your reality. And so you might say, well, this is not applicable to me. It is applicable to you. Cause there's lots of white collar thievery that you guys are involved in.
Mark Clark [00:27:13]:
There's lots of tax evasion. There's lots of ways where you are stealing from what is somebody else's to make it your own. And he says, people who live in the kingdom aren't thieves. They repent of thievery. They stop stealing, and they make their money honestly. This is what he's saying. He's saying this is the moral reality of what we expect people to do who actually love Jesus, who actually follow Jesus. And so if that is you, he's saying, you gotta repent, you gotta stop.
Mark Clark [00:27:40]:
He says, okay, ignore the greedy, maybe the biggest sin at Village Church. And notice how close it is to this. All right? Do not make this more than this. You are greedy. You want more. You want more stuff. You want more square footage. You wanna own more.
Mark Clark [00:28:00]:
You covet shiny things. And here's the problem with greed. It's so insidious. It's like, okay, it's like, go back to adultery. You know, if you've committed adultery, there's no real question. It's just you're in a bed, you wake up and that woman's not your wife. There's no, like, I wonder if adultery happened. It's just.
Mark Clark [00:28:22]:
There's no scale. It happened, right? It happened. You committed adultery. But when do you become greedy? Because that's not. You can't wake up and look over at the shiny new thing and go, I'm greedy. I wasn't yesterday, but now I am. It happened. Remember, these aren't just like, you did it once or you're tempted to it.
Mark Clark [00:28:47]:
This is an unrepentant lifestyle that you live in, in pride and say, this is. And some of you are so far gone greedy, you don't even know it. And he says, listen, you live your life in such a way that you're greedy, that you go after things, that you violate people. You don't even know it yet. He says, those aren't Kingdom people at all. Kingdom people aren't greedy. And you know what the antidote to your greed is? Generosity. I saw.
Mark Clark [00:29:12]:
When I was in Uganda, I watched a group of us go and all of us want more. Of course, we all want a little bit more. We want one a little more comfortable. We all want a little bit more think through retirement. We all want a little bit more comfort. The car's breaking down to this, the that. And we go there and we see these kids with nothing. And then I see this amazing team start to just be generous.
Mark Clark [00:29:32]:
We walk into your house, five grand to build you a new house. Okay, done. I'll figure it out. I'll take another job. I'll go do this, I'll go do that. Hey, let's call up my buddy. He sponsors this kid. Let's FaceTime this house.
Mark Clark [00:29:43]:
Look at this house. Will you sponsor this kid for 40 bucks a month? Yeah. I'm glad to do it. Okay, here's the thing. His house is falling down. Oh, so you're gonna build him a new one. It's five grand, right? He's right here. You can tell him yourself.
Mark Clark [00:29:57]:
Right? Hey, kid, gonna buy a new house. All right, Later. Click. All right. Beautiful. Forced generosity. Beautiful, right? But that's the only way to stop being greedy. You gotta give it up.
Mark Clark [00:30:13]:
You gotta let it go. Right? That's how we're gonna build a 30 million dollar building, by the way, which is coming in a couple weeks. Is the only way we're gonna build a $30 million is stop being so greedy. You gotta be generous. You gotta go Kingdom, you gotta go legacy, you gotta go the next 50 years. And when I'm long gone, what's gonna happen? People are gonna be reached for Jesus because I didn't hoard. I didn't keep it to myself. Because that is not life giving.
Mark Clark [00:30:37]:
And you will shrivel and die because you become like what you were worship. And if you worship money, you will become a shriveled human being. The opposite of new creation. Listen, there's that. You know that story, and I probably told it years ago, but with the monkey and the monkey. How do you catch a monkey? How do you catch a monkey? And these people were trying to catch this monkey in this village, and this guy walked in, he realized how to catch a monkey. It's easy, he said. He took a coconut and he cut a little hole out of it, and he put some nuts inside the coconut, and he just put.
Mark Clark [00:31:06]:
Put the coconut down, and he wenched the coconut to the ground. And the monkeys came running down the tree, and they shoved their hand in the coconut, and they grab the nuts inside the coconut, and then they. They can't get their fist out. They can't get their fist out of the coconut. They can't. They don't go anywhere. And then they just walk up, put a bag over them. Why? Because they weren't gonna let go of those nuts.
Mark Clark [00:31:25]:
They were just. They were gonna hold that and not let go of them. All it would have done to be free is to just let go. You can run away, but you won't because you want more and you're enslaved to it. He says, these are not people of the kingdom. That's what people do in the world. They hoard their money. They always want more.
Mark Clark [00:31:45]:
And they haven't experienced the freedom in Jesus to say, I give it away. Paul says in Philippians 4, I know what to do with lots because I've been rich before, and I know what to do with little because I've been poor before, and I have contentment in Jesus Christ in a way that nothing in this world. He says in Philippians 3, he says, Listen, you can have all the things of the world. He goes, I was. I was the smartest guy born of the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised on the eighth day in regard to righteousness, Noah, second to none, all of that stuff. And then he said, now I see all of that as rubbish because I caught the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. He says, listen, you can have all that reputation, success, businesses, square footage. You can have all of that.
Mark Clark [00:32:22]:
But if you don't get Jesus, you've lost. That's his point. He's saying, all of us come to a place, we just want more. We want more comfort, more ease, more. Listen, here's the question. Would you take. If Jesus said to you, listen, in this life, my desire is not that you go after gift, but giver, and you get more of God and more of God and more of God. What if he said to you, here's the reality.
Mark Clark [00:32:47]:
You're gonna live your 85 years. Here's what I'm gonna give you, you're gonna get the house. You want the car, you want the comfort. You want all the tech gadgets. You want all that? Because all the tech. Every. The thing about greed, it doesn't feel like sin. It's fascinating that God uses blood as the sacrifice for sin, because blood is the kind of thing, not only does it symbolize life, but blood makes us throw up when we see it.
Mark Clark [00:33:07]:
How many of you, like, you can't even. You can't even look at blood, all right? And then you're like. Like, I got buddies who are like, big, stacked up dudes. I see blood, they're like, all right. And they fall over. Cause their little kids got a. Like, blood makes us puke, makes us throw up. Here's the beautiful thing about that.
Mark Clark [00:33:21]:
It's because that's how God views all these sins. I want to throw up. I want to puke. That's how they make you feel. Now, what if God said, I'm going to give you everything you want? And then in your Life, in your 86 years, you're going to get 10% of me that you could have got. You're still going to go to heaven when you die, but you get 10% of me. What you would have got. You get comfort, you get ease, you get square footage, you get shiny things, you get all of that.
Mark Clark [00:33:43]:
And you get to go to heaven when you die, and you get 10% of me. Or we could flip it around, and you get trial, you get pain, you get suffering, but you get 90% of me in this life, and you get to go to heaven when you die. What are you gonna do? I was reading Spurgeon this week. He said, you know what? The best gift that God can give me, he said, is health. And he said, it's second only to suffering and trial. Because when I'm in the midst of suffering and trial, that's when I depend on him and get more of him than I do when things are good. So what would you choose? It's a fascinating question. That's what greed goes to the heart of.
Mark Clark [00:34:20]:
And he says, these are not my people, he says, nor drunkards. Ken already hit in this couple weeks ago, so won't bother hitting it. But the point is people who are dependent on becoming drunk to alter their state, to give them joy, he says, these aren't people of the kingdom. And this is a very interesting one because it can be a trap, right? Solomon talks about this. That wine is a snake. It's a viper. It can catch you. And he says, by the way I have these conversations with people, like, yeah, you know.
Mark Clark [00:34:54]:
Cause I say, hey, getting drunk, what's wrong? Not. Alcohol is not an evil in and of itself. Well, yeah, but it's the same as other drugs, like coffee. And they're like, it's all the same anyway. So it doesn't really matter because coffee, you know, you drink coffee in the morning and you're addicted to it, which you all are, as I am. But the reality is, think about, ask police officers, ask judges, how many families have been derailed, how many car wrecks have happened, how much abuse has happened in their homes because of coffee versus alcohol, Right? Alcohol. This is why alcohol is a viper. This is where most abuse happens in homes.
Mark Clark [00:35:40]:
This is where most just wreckage all over the place. And Paul's going, this ain't my people. Nothing wrong with it. But drunkenness is a problem. And he says, because those aren't kingdom people, because they're showing the world I'm just like you. And I don't get my joy and my satisfaction from Jesus. And then he says, no revilers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. Listen, the point is, we need to put all of this to death.
Mark Clark [00:36:06]:
It's called mortification. The Puritans called it the mortification of sin, the killing of it, the death of it. Sin is a lion and it needs to be dragged out in the street and shot. And if you're not every day John Owen says, if you aren't killing sin, sin will be killing you. If you aren't going after these things in your own heart and your own life every single day, they will destroy you. There are certain apps that some of you need to delete on your phone today that feed in to these sins. And remember the earlier list. Sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery.
Mark Clark [00:36:42]:
Some of you, you have apps on your phone that lead you to lust after men and women. Jesus says it is better to enter heaven with two eyeballs plucked out of your brain, then two enter hell with two good eyeballs. Some of you have apps that you need to delete today. And that is the definition of you plucking out your eyeballs. Now, it's not just lust. Some of you need to delete apps on your phone that lead you to materialism, that lead you to greed, that leads you to order cheap and useless consumer goods every day of your life. To feed some gap that you have in your life, you need to delete it. Some of you have apps on your phone that lead you to gossip more to think Negative things.
Mark Clark [00:37:22]:
This is Christianity in the modern world. This ain't literally. He was a rabbinical teacher. He was being hyperbolic. He didn't mean you actually pluck your eyeballs out. He means you take the things out of your life out into the street and you shoot them dead or they will kill you. The mortification of sin. It's part of what we do.
Mark Clark [00:37:43]:
It's part of what we're called to do. And then he says, now here's the beauty of it. Cause some of you are like, man, this is depressing. All this is a long list of stuff I do all the time. And he's saying, I'm not going to heaven. Great. This is where the beautiful reality of the gospel comes in. And such were some of you.
Mark Clark [00:38:04]:
But this is the. John Stott, one of the best exegetes, preachers ever to live, died a few years ago. Said this is the best word in the Bible. Feels weird to say that. Cause it's the word, but. But. Cause it's a shift. Like, you ever been to the doctor? And he goes, hey, here's the diagnosis.
Mark Clark [00:38:27]:
It's not good. You have cancer. That's all bad news. And then there's this word, this pivot. But we can do something about it. That's life. And he says, but you were washed. This is beautiful.
Mark Clark [00:38:44]:
He gives three images. This was all of you, by the way. Paul knows that he was a murderer. He killed the first Christian, by the way. For those of you who are new and don't know who Paul is and think he's some choir boy who's a moralistic thinker who's just going, hey, guys. Basically, hey, you should be. Every good thing about life, money, sex, hey, it's all gone. Be a Christian.
Mark Clark [00:39:01]:
We're all like, is there another religion? How's Mormonism? Heard you can get a lot of wives and you have many planets and lots of sex. Sounds good. He says, but you were washed. He says, this was me. I shot the first. I killed the first Christians. I murdered them. I wasn't a perfect.
Mark Clark [00:39:24]:
Think of Moses. He looked left and right, first degree murdered, killed a guy and buried him in the ground. And such were some of you. All of those things. And such were some of you. But now you're a Christian and you're in the church and you're in Corinth, and you're my people and you're on mission in the world, and this stuff isn't defining your life anymore. And there's been a pivot and a shift and yes, you might dabble in it and struggle with it, but you're not defined by it because you've come out of it and now you're washed. He gives that image of washing because sin is dirty and it keeps you from God.
Mark Clark [00:39:56]:
And he says, listen, this is why we love baptism so much, right? 1500 baptisms in nine years as a church. It's crazy. This is why. It's not because we're Baptist. It's because baptism is the image that the New Testament gives for someone who's believed in Jesus, and they come through the waters of the Red Sea like Israel did. And now it's a Christian image where we come through the waters of baptism and we're washed and we come out the other side. You know, in the. In the first century, in the second century and the third century, they used to do it naked, all right? When you became a Christian, you would go.
Mark Clark [00:40:24]:
You would come up in your. In your robes, and you take off your robes in front of the community, and you'd be buck naked, and then you go down into the water, and they would keep you there, and you'd come up. We don't do it anymore. Cause it'd be awkward for Instagram photos down at the ocean, but they used to do that, all right? And then. And you'd come up clean. He's saying, you're washed. Something new has happened. All that sin.
Mark Clark [00:40:46]:
Listen to me. For those of you feeling guilty right now, listen to me. All that sin, it's been washed away as far as the east is from the West. Not only the sins you have done, but the sins that have been done to you. That's the doctrine of expiation. It's not only sins that you have done toward God that have kept you. It's the sins that have been done to you. Some of you have been abused.
Mark Clark [00:41:07]:
Statistically in these rooms, a high percentage of you have been sexually abused. And some of you feel dirty. And you've been Christians for 20, 30 years. Here's what he just said. You've been washed clean as far. This is not who you are. All of it's gone. Not because of you, though.
Mark Clark [00:41:29]:
Not because of your work, but because of his work for you on the cross in the Resurrection, he accomplished something where you. You know the song, you get washed in the blood of the Lamb, and then he says you were sanctified. That's not. See, justification, which is this justification is when you've repented and you've put your faith in Jesus, you get justified. A right relationship in the courtroom, it's a forensic term. In the courtroom of God, it's a once for all accomplishment that happens and you're justified by faith. It's the doctrine of the church that's an instantaneous once for all thing. You don't need it to happen multiple times.
Mark Clark [00:42:07]:
But sanctification, that's the ongoing. It's the word hagios, holy, other, set apart. It's based on Leviticus, you know, be holy. Therefore, because I am holy, it's, you are being set apart continuously as you build toward heaven in your life. Now, here's the key and here's what I want you to hear. And then I'll pray for you. See, some of you feel guilty right now. Some of you feel like, I don't know if I'm going to heaven when I die, because I look at that sin.
Mark Clark [00:42:31]:
Listen, it's because this. I read a quote by Tim Keller last night. I thought it was fascinating. He said this. He said, the problem is this many of us are trying to feel justified by our sanctification. We're trying to feel right before God in the courtroom where he declares us righteous in Christ and gives us the clothed clothes of Christ. Then he sees us when we're in. He sees Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:43:00]:
That's a declaration. That's once for all. When you put your faith in Christ and Keller says, listen, some of you feel like, oh, I need to earn it. I need to earn my justification by not doing this sexually or not being greedy or not stealing anymore. And then I'll earn my just. That's religion. What you need to do is not try to feel justified by being sanctified, but live out your sanctification through your justification. The fact that you're justified before God means coming back to my point about acts, that you actually have the power to get holy.
Mark Clark [00:43:36]:
You have the power because you're justified, not because you're trying to earn justification. How do you do that? In the name of the Lord Jesus, through the spirit of our God. There's a trinitarian thing, Jesus, spirit, God. He's saying all of this. It's through this power right here. You know what's fascinating? In the book of Acts and in the book of John, Jesus says, I gotta get outta here, but it's gonna be good for you. Now think about that. All the disciples are like, I'm confused.
Mark Clark [00:44:05]:
How could it be good for you that you leave? All we've known is you. You're teaching your life for three and a half years. And now he says, I Gotta go. I'm gonna crucified, I'm gonna resurrect, I'm go up to heaven. But it's gonna be good for you because you're gonna get the comforter, you're gonna get the spirit. Okay, that can't be good. I don't understand it. Here's why it's good, because Jesus was a localized person.
Mark Clark [00:44:27]:
He couldn't be. Cause here's where life change happens. Where does your life change happen? On the inside. How does the inside happen? The spirit has to come inside. It's not by the outside. See, Jesus was a teacher. He could come in and teach them the ways of the kingdom. He was a localized person who would say, here's how to live, here's how to live, here's how to live.
Mark Clark [00:44:44]:
But he couldn't get inside of them and change what they wanted to do. And life change and spiritual growth is an inside out job. It's not outside in. And so he says, listen, the Spirit of God is gonna drop on you. And that's how all of this stuff is gonna die in your life. I can sit here and tell it to you and say, here's the example, here's what to shoot for. But all that's gonna do is crush you. So I'm gonna go now and one's gonna come inside of you to change not what you do, but what you want to do to change what you delight in.
Mark Clark [00:45:14]:
And that's how you're gonna have life change. The same offer is on offer to every single one of us who are dying right now. Under the weight of that list, you will have spiritual growth by the power of the Spirit that comes through trust in Christ. Father, I do pray that that is the reality of our life. That when we look at it, and we want the transformation and we don't wanna be greedy and we don't wanna be caught in these vices. And we, and we understand why Paul's giving this list, that we would understand that, that life change is not gonna be by trying harder, just trying to live under principles and do better and do better and earn and earn and earn. It's the power of the cross, the power of the resurrection, and the inward work of the Spirit of sanctification. Because we've already been justified.
Mark Clark [00:45:57]:
That's gonna do that work. Some in these rooms need to be justified first. They need to actually right now trust in Christ and what he's done and say I receive it. I believe in Jesus, in the cross, in the resurrection, in my heart, that God raised him from the dead. For my sin, for my salvation, for my relationship with God, and then to live out of that by the power of the Spirit. That you would do that miraculous work among us as churches, as congregations stretch from Surrey to Calgary. That you would do that work among us and that we then be able to go on mission, living not just in love, yes, of course, beautifully, but in power, out of the godliness that comes out of killing sin and rising to new life. In Jesus good name we pray.
Mark Clark [00:46:46]:
Amen.