Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
Okay, here's why we love the book of Ephesians. It was a young church, just like us. Paul spent three years there, planting the church. There were a lot of new believers, just like many of you. And then there were a lot of Christians that have been Christians for a season. But they needed more maturity, like many of you, that you might be a mature Christian, but you actually need to get teachers to go deeper with God. And so Paul came at this church and he said, here's this amazing reality that you're living in. You live in the city of Ephesus, and this city is a very important city.
Mark Clark [00:00:38]:
And remember, we talked about Paul's strategy for changing all of Asia Minor was this idea of let's plant churches in these kind of urban centers, Rome and Thessalonica and Philippi and Corinth and Ephesus. And let see how God, when the church is planted there, when the gospel is understood there, how it's going to flow out to change the rest of the culture. And so he had no smaller vision than to change Asia Minor by planting this church in Ephesus. And so we've talked about how exciting it is for us to be part of the greater Vancouver area, to be a church in the middle of Surrey. And this. The reality that we have this exciting thing that happens in the gva, which where the entire world is looking at us saying, how are they going to do church in the new reality of today? So what I mean by that is sociologists tell us that there's three major things that are affecting our culture today. Globalization, Asianization, and urbanization. And what they mean by that is these are the three major things that are impacting the world.
Mark Clark [00:01:45]:
Globalization, the idea that we're a global village, everybody's connected, and so nothing has to be local anymore. Your blog can change the. What we do here at Village doesn't have to be focused and local. It can go bigger. So we have people who watch these sermons in Amsterdam. Hi. I don't even know how to say hi in Amsterdamian. We have people who, I don't know, they speak English.
Mark Clark [00:02:15]:
See, I'm Tylenol and all kinds of stuff. Of course they do. Then we have this idea of people watch these sermons in the Yukon and universities in Newfoundland. There's this global scene. We're a global village, and money in the economy and everything is impacting one another. So globalization and then Asianization, the idea of the growth of population among Arabs and the Chinese and Indians and how they immigrated and how that changes a culture because of the growing population and then the idea of urbanization, that everyone's moving to cities. And, you know, almost 50% of the world's population lives in cities. And this idea that these three things coming together are typified in the greater Vancouver area.
Mark Clark [00:03:07]:
So what does it look like? The world looks to us and says, how is the gospel going to interact with a culture like this? And Paul says, here's these young Christians in Asia Minor, in Ephesus. How are you going to live in the midst of a world that you live in? How are you going to bring Jesus to bear on the culture that you live in, on the city that you live in? What does that actually look like? And so he writes them this letter to say, and here at village, we have no smaller vision than that. What does it look like to change our country? Ephesus was a port city like the gva, right? Boats would come in. Philosophies, ideas, trade, money, economy was all based. And then it would ship across like it does today. It ships across Canada and North America from the things that happen here in our city. And so what does it look like to be a church on mission to see change in our entire country? And that's what Paul is saying. And then he says to these guys in verse 13, he says, so I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for.
Mark Clark [00:04:15]:
You do not lose heart. So here's the thing. There's a lot of great things happening at Village right now, all right? People are coming to know Jesus. People are getting baptized. We're planting campuses, Things are leaders are being built up, community groups are growing. But the reality is, for some of you, you live a life that is totally discouraged. All right? You've lost your job, your family member is sick. There's just a whole bunch of things that are happening in your life that are discouraging you, that have you depressed and down and with no hope.
Mark Clark [00:04:51]:
And Paul is saying, here's the word from Jesus through the apostle Paul for you, do not lose heart. Do not be discouraged. Some of you, nobody around you knows this, but you stay all day in bed watching reruns because you're depressed. But then you put on your Sunday's best and you come to church and you put a face on. But deep down in your heart of heart, and you're discouraged. You're going through difficult things. Your kids are off the rails, your marriage is a mess. And what Jesus says to you is, do not lose heart.
Mark Clark [00:05:30]:
Do not be discouraged. Trust in me. Rest in me. And then Paul in verse 14 says, for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father. He starts to pray for them in their discouragement. Do not lose heart. I know you're young. I know you have things going on, a young church.
Mark Clark [00:05:50]:
I know you got difficult things going on, but I'm praying for you. I'm interceding on, on your behalf. And you gotta understand there's people praying for you, right? There's pastors, there's elders, there's community group leaders that are praying for you in the midst of maybe discouraging times for you. And so Paul says, one of the most powerful things we can do is pray for somebody. Remember we talked about this last week, that sometimes the difference between grumbling and prayer is that grumbling is when you're talking about somebody to another person. And. And prayer is when you're talking to Jesus about another person. Instead of criticizing them, instead of tearing them down, instead of gossiping about them, you actually talk to Jesus and say, man, there's this thing about them that I don't like.
Mark Clark [00:06:35]:
And, Lord, I want you to change them. And maybe it's with your spouse and you don't admit it. All right? I'm not going to tell you to turn to your spouse and say, here's the thing I hate about you and this is what I'm praying for. But there might be those things. So secretly you pray, and secretly you ask Jesus to change them or change you so that your relationship can. And so here's Paul. He's saying, there's all this discouragement. Do not lose heart.
Mark Clark [00:06:59]:
I'm praying for you. I'm interceding on your behalf. I'm standing in the gap for you, and I'm praying and I'm coming to God. This is one of the most powerful things you can do. And for some people, they see this as a cop out. They say, oh, yeah, classic Christian phrase, I'm praying for you. But the reality is this is one of the most powerful things you can do for somebody. Because every time you do it, it announces to the world that you're not the one in control.
Mark Clark [00:07:24]:
Every time you do it, you're saying, okay, I've done what I can with this person. So that when you come to me and you say, man, my family member, I've tried for four years for them to forgive me, and they won't forgive me. And there's no reconciliation. And I don't know what to do when you tell me my friend is going to get into a whole bunch of trouble. They're going to make a big mistake. And I'm in front of them and I'm trying to hold them back. And I've said, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. I've done everything I could do.
Mark Clark [00:07:50]:
I've exhausted myself. Then what you need to do is pull back and start praying. Because when you function in that way where you're just saying, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, and you never intercede on their behalf, really what you're saying is I'm the one in control. I can change people, I can change circumstances. And it's very humbling when you come and you do what Paul does. Here I bow my knees before the Father, I take all of this and I bring it before God in prayer because I believe he's the one who can change you, not me. And there comes a point in our life when we've worked and we've worked and we've worked and we've tried. And you just need to humble yourself and admit that you can't actually do any of this.
Mark Clark [00:08:29]:
And so you bring it to God and you say, God, I pray and I plead and I intercede on their behalf. And then he says, verse 14, he calls God Father. And for some of us in this room, that's a difficult phrase because we don't like our fathers. We had horrible experiences with our fathers. And so we tend to say, let's kind of move away from God as a father. But the reality is, Paul's saying, no, he's father. And yes, we've lived in a culture where fathers are at times, failures and they like me growing up. And I've talked about my dad before he was a deadbeat dad.
Mark Clark [00:09:10]:
He divided his time between getting drunk and yelling at football games. He couldn't hold a job. And when my parents got divorced when I was eight years old, he used to come and pick me up once a quarter, bring me out, buy me a hot dog and bring me to the horse races so he could bet on horses. And I would bet on horses, too. And I got good at it. And so I'd come home and I'd just have this wad of money. I'd be like, and my mom was never happy about that. I'd show up at the house, what are you doing? Bring him to the horse races.
Mark Clark [00:09:43]:
I'm like, don't make them stop. I'm making money. Right? Our culture tends to have failed fathers. I think it's 40, 50% of kids now in the US are born into homes with no fathers. We're the first generation. My generation is the first generation to have less education than the generation before it. We're getting more lazy. If you read a book called the Demise of Guys, it's a secular book.
Mark Clark [00:10:13]:
It talks about the idea that men are just. This is why we do men's retreats. This is why we're doing a men's retreat next weekend. Because we want to talk about the idea of. All through history, men have locked arms and said, hey, I need a tribe. I need a band of brothers to kind of go lock arms and walk forward to learn to become better husbands and fathers and sons. Because our culture, there's a demise of masculinity. There's a demise of guys.
Mark Clark [00:10:41]:
And this book actually talks about one of the demise of guys is the fact that they can get sex for free. And so wherever they go, they can just. It doesn't matter. They can have sex with anybody. You know, that's kind of a new cultural reality in the last 50 or 60 years where you don't have to get married in order to have sex. And so what used to motivate a guy to actually grow up and get mature and keep a job and we was the fact that no woman would marry him unless he did those things. And if he wanted to have sex, he had to do that when he got married. So, all right, I better learn to mature and I better get a job and I better pull my life together.
Mark Clark [00:11:20]:
But now he doesn't need to. So now he's 35, living with his parents and his PJs playing PlayStation 3 because he can have sex with whomever he wants. It doesn't matter. There's no motive to grow up to get a job, to be a good man. And Paul says here, God is a father. Emulate God as father. He's the good father who defends and provides and knows every hair on your head. He's a good father.
Mark Clark [00:11:55]:
And Jesus is a great example of true masculinity, where Jesus comes and he. He has a job most of his life. For 30 years, he was a carpenter before he started preaching. He took responsibility for other people. Like many men, move away from responsibility. Like Adam. Remember when God came to Adam and he said, adam, you sinned. And he said, no, no, no.
Mark Clark [00:12:22]:
It was this woman that you gave me. It was the woman that you gave me. Ha, ha. Your fault and hers. And Jesus comes and he does the opposite. He comes and on the cross, he takes Responsibility for our sin. He takes responsibility for other people. He lays down his life for the woman that he loves.
Mark Clark [00:12:50]:
Paul goes on to call the church. The bride of Christ Jesus comes and he dies for the woman that he loves takes on the responsibility. And so we got to redeem this word, Father, by emulating God, by emulating Jesus as men. And so verse 15, this is the few verses that we're going to look at today. 15 and some of 16, he says this. For this reason I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. From whom every family. So what he's saying here is that God is meticulously sovereign, that every family name, whether your name is Hayes or Clark or Chen or Bengal or whatever your last name is, every family got their name from God.
Mark Clark [00:13:53]:
That's what. So if you flip over a few books to the book of Acts, it's the same point Paul makes in Acts 17 when he is in Athens and he's preaching. Athens was the cultural hub of that time. Athens was the place where all of the art and the philosophy would flow out from. So it was like the New York or the LA of its time. And Paul goes there and he preaches. And it says in verse 26, this is Paul preaching because they had these ideas of God being distant. Remember last time we talked about, big Canadian cultural idea of God is that he's deism, he's distant.
Mark Clark [00:14:32]:
He kind of started the world up. He spun it around and then he backed off. And many of you are deists because you were raised in that kind of Bette Midler kind of culture. From a distance, he watches us. All right, From a distance, Me. All right. And some of you kind of have that view of God where he's totally distant. Did I just like sing for a little bit there? That's crazy.
Mark Clark [00:15:01]:
Just fell asleep maybe. All right, verse 26 says, and he, meaning God, made from one man, meaning Adam, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling places. Here's what he just said. He said that you. You were born into the family that you were born into, because God willed it that way. He wanted it that way. He allotted and appointed your birth to the family, even if you don't like them, even if you hate Christmas and hate Thanksgiving, because you gotta look at crazy Uncle Joe, all right? He's saying this is your family, and he appointed it that way. Even if your dad's a drunk, even if you were born and Your parents weren't married yet, or you were born, you were conceived out of a rape, or you have a mental illness, or whatever it is, you're blind, you're deaf, whatever your scenario is, God made it that way.
Mark Clark [00:16:09]:
He's meticulously sovereign. He. He cares about you. You're special to him. That's what he's saying. He's allotted it, he appointed it, he made it happen this way. And that's why when he comes to Moses in the book of Exodus and he says, I want you, Moses, to go and preach in front of Pharaoh, and I want you to go tell Pharaoh that all the people are gonna be set free. And Moses says, I can't.
Mark Clark [00:16:32]:
I have a stutter. And God says, oh, you think this is about you? Who made the deaf and the blind? See, we got kind of a culture that goes, oh, they're mistakes. If they have a mental, they're mistakes. If they're blind, they're mistakes. God goes, who made the deaf and the blind? Is it not I? And so he is saying, every family, every person is born into the scenario they're born into because God appointed it that way. Cause God wanted it that way. Here in front of this text, all right, and in front of Ephesians 3:15, here's what crumbles. All of your prejudice and all of your racism crumbles at the idea that every race of mankind was birthed out by a father who loves it.
Mark Clark [00:17:23]:
So all of the racism in this room, all of the subtle prejudice and racist thoughts that you have, die in Jesus Christ. That's what he's saying, all right? So when you start going, yeah, you know that culture over there? Look what they do. They're pompous, they're cheap, they drive bad. Dies in Jesus Christ. I don't want to send my kids to that school. There's too many people from different dies in Jesus Christ. That's what he's saying, that if you are racist, if you are prejudiced, it's because you don't understand the gospel. And it's because you don't understand that every race came from him, from a father that loves them, and that you can't summarize God by being an Anglo Saxon, all right? White man who listens to Mumford and Sons and watches Downton Abbey, all right? That's not who God is, all right? God is reflected in the Russian and the Chinese and the black and the white and the Hispanic.
Mark Clark [00:18:30]:
You can't get him if you try to just make him in your image and so he says, every race comes from God. And if you don't understand that, if you sit in your prejudiced life, the issue is you don't understand the Gospel. And this is why Paul writes to the Galatians and he tells the story of Peter in Galatians chapter two. And he said, Peter's issue is he broke table with Gentiles. He, he had this racist, prejudiced life going on and he pulled away from them. And Paul doesn't say, oh Peter, don't you know, you know, he goes at him, he says, peter, you've misunderstood what the Gospel's all about. That in Jesus Christ all the nations come together. See, this is what we, some of you, you don't invite certain people here because, oh, they're not going to feel comfortable here.
Mark Clark [00:19:24]:
It's a myth. Yes, they will. People are people. You love them, you welcome them. We talk about Jesus, we embrace them. Of course they will. We want to build a multi ethnic church. Revelation 5, where every, every tongue and language and people group is standing in the throne worshiping the Lamb together.
Mark Clark [00:19:47]:
That's what we want to build. We want to see a whole bunch of interracial dating and marriage and a whole bunch of mixed babies running around. That's what we want to see. In Acts chapter 2, all the languages come together, all the people come together, and God gives the church this voice to be able to preach to all these different nations that are gathered. And theologians always point out that Acts chapter two, the day of Pentecost is the reversal of, of what happened at Babel, where at Babel, mankind tried to build its way up to God and God came down and he scattered them and he gave them all different languages so they couldn't communicate. And in Acts chapter two, when Jesus dies and rises from again from the grave and then the Holy Spirit drops, it's a reversal where instead of mankind trying to build his way up to God and God scattering them, God comes down to mankind and he builds, draws everybody together. This is the issue that Paul is trying to get at. Every family, every name comes from God.
Mark Clark [00:21:00]:
And then he says in Acts chapter 17, verse 27, that they should seek God in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find Him. Yet he is actually not far from each of us. Here's the thing in this room, here's what God wants. No matter what your background is, no matter who you are, God wants you to find Him. He wants you to seek after him, to find your way toward him because he's not far from you. That every person in here would find God in Jesus Christ. All right, back to Ephesians 3, from whom every family in heaven and earth is named. Every family, verse 16.
Mark Clark [00:21:45]:
That according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being. So first off, to the riches of his glory. We've talked about this often, that the idea here and throughout the entire Bible is that the real story of the Bible, the real story of your life, the real story of history is, is the glory of God. You're not the center of the story. God's own glory is the center of the story. That's what he values the most. That's what he loves the most. All right, so let me give you a couple passages that talk about this.
Mark Clark [00:22:23]:
Isaiah, chapter 53. All right, you can turn there in your Bible or to go up on the screen, 43, sorry. Isaiah 43, verse 6 and 7. Here's what, here's what Isaiah says. I will sing. To the north give up, and to the south do not withhold. Bring my sons from afar, My daughters from the end of the earth. Everyone who is called by my name, this is God speaking.
Mark Clark [00:22:48]:
Whom I created for my glory, Whom I formed and made. So why were you created for God's glory? All right, now some of us tend to think, okay, I'll love God. I'll. I'll follow God only if God is man centered. And what this text is saying is he's not man centered, He's God centered. That the most God centered person in the entire universe is God. That he loves his own glory more than he loves us. Which is great news, by the way, because if he didn't love himself and his glory more than he loved us, he would by definition be an idolater because he would put us above Him.
Mark Clark [00:23:34]:
And so he's saying, here's how I move. Here's why I made you. Here's my own glory. That you might reflect my glory out into the world. My weight, my girth might be felt in the world. All right, flip over a couple chapters to Isaiah 58. Here's what God says. Verse 9.
Mark Clark [00:23:57]:
For my name's sake, I defer my anger. For the sake of my praise, I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver. I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake. For my own sake I do it. For how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another. Why does God do what he does for his own sake.
Mark Clark [00:24:25]:
Own glory. A guy named Daniel Fuller wrote a book called the Unity of the Bible. And here's what he says. God ordained a redemptive history whose sequence fully displays his glory. The one thing God is doing in history is to show forth his mercy in such a way that the greatest number of people will, throughout eternity, delight in him with all their heart. All the events of redemptive history compose a unity in that they conjoin to bring about this one goal, this one goal of God's glory, which is a really good thing for us. Because what this is all about is when we start living for his glory, our life becomes lighter. See, if you flip Back to Ephesians 3, what Paul says is the riches of his glory.
Mark Clark [00:25:32]:
What do you mean, the riches of his glory? Well, the riches of his glory. That's not how God is experiencing his glory. It's how we're experiencing his glory. It's this. When you start to live for the glory of God as the primary motivation and purpose for everything that you do, what begins to happen is your life begins to take on a richness. Because now listen, the world is not about you. And if the world is not about you, you don't have to win that fight at work with your boss, who's dumb anyway and who could never understand how smart you are. You don't have to win that fight because it's not about you.
Mark Clark [00:26:15]:
It's not about your reputation. It's not about your glory. It's not about your weight being felt by all those in the office. When you're married, you don't have to win that fight with your spouse. Just feel that freedom breeze through your hair. You don't have to win. You can just say, okay, honey, you. Even when they're not, because it's not about you.
Mark Clark [00:26:46]:
Life isn't about you winning. Life isn't about everybody proclaiming your weight, your girth, your glory. It's about the glory of God. It's about him being the center of everything. And once we begin to live, we like he is all satisfying the riches of his glory. What riches? That. The riches of my life that actually I love God so much so that I feel richer. There's a richness, there's a satisfaction in his glory.
Mark Clark [00:27:17]:
And once I begin to experience that, then I don't need to try to get the riches of money or the riches of relationship or the riches of a job or the riches of everything that we try to find riches in. Because there's the riches of his glory that I'm totally defined by. And that. That would be the story. All right. Then he says, the riches of his glory that he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit. Now, first off, his spirit, for those of you who are new to Christianity, here's what he's saying. That Christianity is not New Age philosophy, where it's your spirit that matters.
Mark Clark [00:28:07]:
All right? We tend to come at this and go, my spirit, I need to enrich my spirit. I need to grow my spirit. I need to water my spirit. I need to beef up my spirit because I'm the hope of the world. And what he's saying is, this isn't about what does he say? Whose spirit does he say through his spirit. His spirit, meaning this? Your rescue is going to come from outside of yourself. So as much as you begin to think, man, I'm all about, I'm within this reality and I'm going to rescue myself from within. You are in no state to rescue yourself.
Mark Clark [00:28:47]:
And you have to come to a point where you just admit that and say, here's what matters. That his spirit drops on me. You are in no state to rescue yourself. You need outside help. A few months ago, I mean, my wife and I were done having kids, all right? We got three girls. They're beautiful. So I went for this procedure. She made me.
Mark Clark [00:29:21]:
So when I went, I wasn't really thinking much about. I just kind of jumped in the car, had a bunch of meetings, had a coffee, went pulled up, went in, had the procedure. During the procedure, I started getting really light headed. The doctor's like, hey, you all right, man? I'm like, no, I don't think I am. I haven't eaten. Are you supposed to eat something before this? I haven't eaten anything all day. And I just start to get totally dizzy. And so I sit in his office after.
Mark Clark [00:29:51]:
He's like, I think you just need to chill here for a little bit. Like, you have something to eat. He's like, not really. I'm like, okay. So I sit in his office for like 20 minutes. I'm like, all right, I gotta go. So I left his office. I was totally dizzy.
Mark Clark [00:30:05]:
I couldn't even. I walked in the convenience store and I grabbed a chocolate bar and I just opened it. I started eating. The lady's like, what are you doing? You gotta pay for that. Yeah, yeah. Here. And I went out to my car and I had forgotten my credit card. And so when I pulled up, I saw all these signs saying, if you don't pay.
Mark Clark [00:30:25]:
We're going to tow you crazy. And I said, oh, I'm only going to be 20 minutes. I won't pay. Don't do that, kids. So an hour and a half later, after all this stuff, I come down and I stand in front of my car and it's gone. And all the freezing started to wear off, and I'm kind of standing there. So I waddled. Back to the cafe and I ordered.
Mark Clark [00:31:00]:
I got a Powerade and a chocolate bar, and I got a soup. And I'm eating them all at the same time because I'm totally spun out. And I called Rob. I said, rob, I need help. And so he had to come and get me. And I'm eating my soup, and I went home. And then later on that day, I went, I gotta go get my car. And so I went way to the tip of Langley, all the way out.
Mark Clark [00:31:26]:
And I went out there and I got up to the place where they would have towed my car. And she said, we don't have your car. I said, what do you mean you don't have my car? I got towed from the spot. I forgot to pay. No, we don't have your car. Sorry. And I had my computer in the trunk, and they said, sorry, it was stolen. Your car must have got stolen, man.
Mark Clark [00:31:43]:
And so we looked around, we called the cops, hey, steal my car. You know, my car's stolen. And on the way back, I said to my friend, I said, hey, can you just pull into the doctor's office on our way home? I just want to check something. And we pulled in, and my car was all by itself in the parking lot with a big sign saying, move your car. I was so messed up, I stood in front of my car and couldn't see it. So here's the thing. Sometimes you need external help because everything in your mind is, I'm okay, I'm good. I can save myself.
Mark Clark [00:32:38]:
I can better myself. I'll do this myself. I'll walk out to my car. I'll drive home, even though everything's upside down and it takes God going, idiot, I'm going to veil your car from you so you can't drive home and kill someone. Waddle. See, here's what Paul's talking about. He's going, the spirit that needs to save you, the spirit that needs to fill you, the spirit that needs to empower you. It's not your own spirit, it's his spirit.
Mark Clark [00:33:18]:
And so you have to come to him and say, how can you save me from outside of myself? And that is not the gospel that is preached to our culture. It's, you got to better yourself, you got to improve yourself. You got to beef yourself up. And Paul's saying, you got to surrender yourself to Jesus and hope that he fills you. So Paul is saying, it's not about what you believe. It's not about how you act. It's not about how you feel. Feel.
Mark Clark [00:33:42]:
The question on the table in regard to a person's salvation. Listen. Is, do you have the Spirit? That's the question. It's not about. I read my Bible this much. I come to church this much. I tithe this much. I don't say these words.
Mark Clark [00:34:00]:
My kids only watch Adventures in Odyssey. I do all of these wonderful, righteous, godly things. I only read the King James Version because that's the real Bible. All of these things that we try to say, this is how I'm earning favor. This is why God is going to like me. And he's going. It's not my question. The question on the table when it comes to your salvation is, do you have the Spirit? That's all I want to know.
Mark Clark [00:34:35]:
You want to know who a Covenant member is? Do you live and function and walk in the Spirit rather than in sin? And some of you are like, oh, yeah, I know what that's all about. The Spirit, the Spirit life. I know what that's all about. The Holy Spirit. That's when I get the emotional roller coaster, the spiritual equivalent to Disneyland. That's what it means to live in the Holy Spirit. I speak like this. I howl at the moon.
Mark Clark [00:34:58]:
I'm a prophet. I speak to. Right? That's life in the Spirit, right? And Paul all the way through goes, that's not what I'm talking about. When he climaxes what a life in the Spirit looks like in Galatians 5, he says, you want to know what the fruit of the Spirit is? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. That is not what we tend to equate when we think about the spiritual life. If I'm really spiritual, if I'm living in the Holy Spirit, it must mean that I function like I do this, I do that. He's going, love. Are you defined by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control? And those start to then poke at us a little bit, because now it's, am I living by the Spirit, or do I live in sin? Do I live by the flesh as he talks about in Galatians 5? See, you can be someone who's defined by the spirit.
Mark Clark [00:36:00]:
Or you can be someone who's defined by the flesh, defined by sin. One way that you know whether you're walking in the spirit. Do those nine things define your life or not? This isn't a thing where you go, well, I got two of those. I got two out of nine. So I'm good self control. I can't really do that, but I do a lot of good loving. That's not its fruit. It's singular, it's.
Mark Clark [00:36:31]:
This is the package. Are you a person defined by these things? Do you hear from the Holy Spirit as you live your life to speak to you that you would function in self control and godliness and holiness? Are you defined by sin? Do you go outside of yourself to be gentle? Other centered? I heard a story from someone at village that a few weeks ago they were just out and about and they bumped into a person, this person, and they were talking and they just realized that this person was really depressed and kind of all over the map. And so they said, why don't you just come to our community group? And I know you're not a Christian and I know none of those things and come out to my community. So they came out to the community group and they just started living life together in a community group and meeting people. And they said, you don't know this. You don't know how depressed I was, you don't know how down I was. I was ready before I came into your community group, before I met you that day. I was ready to take my own life.
Mark Clark [00:37:35]:
Do you feel prompting of the Holy Spirit to live and move? Or is your life so full of sin that it's extremely hard to hear? Paul says to be strengthened with power through his spirit. Final phrase for this morning, in your inner being. In your inner being. What does that mean? The inner being is the seat, your pleasure of your emotions, of your thought. It's both mind and heart together. Is your inner being. It's not one or the other what we tend to do today. If you read Jonathan Edwards back in the day, during the Great Awakening, he was one of the greatest minds in Western history at all, outside even of Christian thought.
Mark Clark [00:38:40]:
But he talked about what he struggled with as all of these people came to know Jesus in the Great Awakening, he said there's basically two camps, and these two camps exist today. There was one camp where everything was emotional. Everything was. You get all emotional, you get hopped up, you come forward, there's an altar call, people come forward. Thousands of people were given their lives to Jesus having This emotional moment. And Jonathan Edwards says, what I struggled with, it was all emotion, it was all heart. And my tension is, are we giving people a false sense of security? Because when I watch them leave, there's no indication of true conversion in their life at all. But they've come forward, they've raised their hand, they've said, I believe this in this moment.
Mark Clark [00:39:23]:
And he says, what terrifies me is, did we give them a false sense of security because they came forward at that moment. Now they leave here, and even though there's no indication of actual conversion, they think they're converted because they came forward. And I'm terrified that that's what we've done. And that's some of you, all right? You were at summer camp, you said a mantra, and that's it. You've had emotional moment followed by nothing. And that was a long time ago. And then he said, on the other hand, I struggle with all the people who think it's all about their mind, the Bible people, all right, people who sleep with systematic theologies under their pillow. They say, the answer is the Bible.
Mark Clark [00:40:11]:
The answer is what you think. The answer is your mind. All those emotional people, they're weak. And he, Jonathan Edwards came and he said, it's not one or the other, it's both. And he called it not the mind, not the emotions, but the affections. That true religious conversion happens because the Holy Spirit changes your affections. What Paul calls here your inner being, or in verse 17, he calls it your heart. That the deep spiritual formation of your life comes at the level of your inner being.
Mark Clark [00:40:51]:
And here's the thing. You're in this room, every single one of us, whether you're a Christian in this room or not a Christian in this room, every single one of us is already going through a spiritual formation of our inner being. All right? Now, it can be a good direction or a bad direction. It can be one focus on Jesus or one focus on anything but Jesus. Even if you're not a Christian, you have an inner being spiritual formation that's actually taking place, informed by politics, education, billboards, everything that you exist in, you have sacred books. Even if you're a naturalist, even if you're a polytheist, even if you're a secularist, whatever your worldview is, you have sacred books, you have mentors, you have doctrine. Your inner being is being transformed. Every choice we make in life is a choice that says, is my inner being transformed to the image of Jesus or not? The Bible says there's one of two places we all end up in either hell or heaven because our souls are by definition eternal.
Mark Clark [00:41:58]:
And so every choice we make is leading us to one of those two places. C.S. lewis, who I quote quite often, he's impacted me so much. He says this. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship. Or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare all day long. We are in some degree helping each other to one or other of these destinations. There are no ordinary people.
Mark Clark [00:42:43]:
You have never talked to a mere mortal. But it is immortals with whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. Which of these two ends is your life moving toward? Which of these two ends is your inner life moving toward? Because it's moving toward one or the other. Are you living by the spirit of God? Is your inner being being transformed by the spirit of God? Verse 17, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith? Or is that not your experience at all? See, here's the thing. This is really, really hard. That we would be people defined by the spirit instead of people defined by the flesh that our inner being would be being transformed to. This is tough, especially the world that you and I exist in. How's this going for you? How's the defeat of sin going in your life? Remember in chapter two, Paul said, killing the hostility, that we're supposed to have this violent approach to our sin.
Mark Clark [00:44:02]:
Sin, how's that going? Are you winning or losing that battle? You know what's happening in this room right now? As I ask that question, Some of the guys in the room are saying, I'm losing that battle. It's going horribly. And some of the women in the room are saying, it's going fine. Because for guys, sometimes that sin is so. On the surface, it's not hard to convince a guy that he's sinful. See, we live in a culture today where it's so easy and so private. See, back in the day, in order to get access to porn, for example, you used to have to check this. Walk into one of those stores like a dirty pervert, like a dirty old man.
Mark Clark [00:44:50]:
Walk into a video store and, like, choose two or three and walk up to the counter, put your pride in your back pocket and look another man in the eye and say, I Want to rent Saving Ryan's Privates or whatever? That's what you used to have to do. You used to have to go in a convenience store and look at the woman and say, I'd like to buy that magazine. And all the women and their kids would be like, honey, come over here. The pervert's buying a magazine. Dirty old man. Now, my six year old daughter spoke into my phone the other day. You know Siri on the iPhone? She said Hong Kong. What came up was the movie Kinky Kong, all right? There's no pictures.
Mark Clark [00:45:49]:
Kinky Kong, all right. You type in Hot Cross Buns, your kids are there. That's trouble. Scary. Listen, your inner being, no one's going to hold you back from sin externally anymore. There's nothing in the world that's going to hold you back externally. It all has to be internal. It all has to come from the inner being.
Mark Clark [00:46:19]:
How's that fight going? In closing, let me read you a guy named John Flavell. He says, here are six arguments Satan uses to tempt us. Six arguments Satan uses to tempt us in sin. Because here's the thing. No matter how holy you are, temptation will never go away. Jesus was tempted all through his life. Even though he was perfect, temptation will always come at you. The question is how you respond to it.
Mark Clark [00:46:51]:
Here are six arguments Satan uses to tempt you, and I want to leave them with you to think on. The first one, John Flavell says, is the pleasure of sin. Satan says, there is pleasure to be enjoyed. Money, sex, whatever it is, there's pleasure here. Go after it. And the gospel response is, I know these pleasures are real, but I'm far more satisfied in Jesus Christ. Secondly, the secrecy of sin. This sin will never be found out.
Mark Clark [00:47:25]:
You will never be disgraced in public because of this sin. No one will ever know about this sin. The gospel response, is there ever a place I can go to sin without God seeing me? It's not as if God checks up on us every Sunday morning while we're standing here worshiping. Oh, everyone's doing great, he knows. Thirdly, the profit of sin. If you stretch your conscience a little bit, you'll gain a ton financially. You'll get ahead at work. Whatever it is, just cut this corner.
Mark Clark [00:48:01]:
The response is, what do I benefit if I gain the whole world and forfeit my soul? Fourthly, the smallness of sin. It's only a little thing. It's only a white lie. It's not a big deal. It's trivial. The response is, why would I Offend a holy God with a trivial sin. It's not worth it. Fifthly, the grace of God.
Mark Clark [00:48:26]:
God's going to pass over this. He doesn't care about this sin. He's just so glad you're on his team. Grace is all about the fact that God doesn't care what you do. And finally, the example of others. Better people than you have sinned this way. Look at that guy. Look at that guy.
Mark Clark [00:48:50]:
He's still blessed. Remember I told the story about me cheating in Bible college on the Old Testament exam? And the logic behind it was my friend said, don't worry, I know other guys who did this and their ministries are doing fine. I was like, well, that's good logic. Okay, Other people have done this. And our gospel response is, man, God didn't put those saints in the Bible. Who messed up Moses, Abraham, the Apostle, Paul. To give an example for what I'm supposed to follow, but a warning of what will happen when I let sin get the best of me. No one gets a pass in here from being tempted these six ways.
Mark Clark [00:49:40]:
How are you doing? I want you all to close your eyes and yes, I can see you. So close them. I want to ask you four questions that I want you to think on before I pray for you. Which do I want more to know God or achieve for God? Which do I want more to know God or achieve for God? Am I consistently being convicted of sin in my life? Am I aware of the sin in my life? Do I presently do any of the historic disciplines, Bible study, fast, pray, silence, solitude. Do I presently do any of the disciplines in order to grow my inner being? And lastly, when was the last time I experienced a prompting of the Holy Spirit? Father, it is my prayer that leaving this place, that your Holy Spirit would empower each and every person here to feel you, to hear from you. That you would strengthen our inner being through your spirit so that we might live lives that bring you glory, that we might go to war against our sin, That we might be able to defeat the temptation when they arise in these ways and really understand how we are to respond through the power of the Spirit. That we wouldn't believe any of the lies of the secrecy of sin and the privacy of sin and the pleasure of sin and the grace of God and the example of others. That we'd be so filled with your spirit, we'd be able to transcend and defeat and win in Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:52:16]:
Great name we pray. Amen.