Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
Hey everyone, Mark here. Welcome to the Mark Clark Podcast. Hopefully you are doing awesome. Okay, so today we're talking about how you actually hear God. All right? Do you hear him through feelings? Do you hear him through signs? Through the Bible, Paul's answers in Ephesians brings clarity and grounding, especially if you've ever felt unsure or confused about direction or discernment in your life. We're super excited to be in this series on the book of Ephesians, and hopefully this episode really helps you in your life and make sure you share it with a friend, share it on social. Let's get the word out about how the Bible is changing our life, y'all. All right, let's get into it.
Mark Clark [00:00:41]:
If you have a Bible, open it up to Ephesians chapter 1. We are breezing through Ephesians very quickly. We've covered 12 verses over the course of 2, 3 months, I think. And so we're kind of rocking, but today we're really going to rock. We are going to cover the first half of verse 13. So we're really pumped about that. So let me set it up by reading to you verse 11. If you have a Bible, open to Ephesians 1.
Mark Clark [00:01:06]:
If you don't have a Bible, you don't own one, grab one at our Connect desk, take it home with you. It's our gift to you. So here we go. We gotta get to work. Ephesians chapter 1, starting in verse 11 to set up the first bit of verse 13. All right. In him, meaning in Jesus, we talked about this a few weeks ago, we have obtained an inheritance. And we talked about the exclusivity of the message of Christianity, that it's only in Jesus that we ever obtain an inheritance.
Mark Clark [00:01:30]:
It's not through other religions, it's not through ourselves, it's not through self-help, it's not through anything else but in Jesus. He alone is the one through whom we obtain an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will. And we talked about how all things, good things and bad things, are ultimately working under the counsel of the will of God because God is absolutely sovereign over all things. Nothing happens with God going, "Oh, I dropped it. I didn't know that was happening. I was working over in Africa. I came back and something bad happened. I didn't notice that." That doesn't happen.
Mark Clark [00:02:05]:
All right, God is sovereign. Everything that happens goes through the Father's hand. He anoints it. He allows it. All right, so everything works to the counsel of His will so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory. So we who hope in Christ, who give our lives to Jesus as at least One person did at the 8:45 this morning saying, "Let me respond to the message of the Gospel by hoping in Jesus, by putting my trust and my hope in Him." Meaning, the word "hope," it's that there's got to be more than just my 76 years on this planet. There's got to be something bigger than we're just kind of a rock hurling through the universe and it's cold and it's dead and there's nobody there. There's got to be hope.
Mark Clark [00:02:51]:
That's what Christianity is. It builds hope in. And the only hope is that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, that the tomb is empty. Jesus rose so that he can offer us new life. That's hope. That makes, that builds, that puts steel in your spine. You can walk in that hope. You don't even have to fear death in that hope.
Mark Clark [00:03:12]:
That's constantly what the gospel is pushing us toward. If you hope in Christ, It changes everything about the way you live. And so he's saying the first, those of us who are the first to hope in Christ, to trust in Him, might be to the praise of His glory. All the gospel, the entire Scriptures, all of life is to the praise of the glory of God. It's not to the praise of ourselves. It's all about God, pointing toward God, to the praise of His glory. That's even why He made you. That's why we exist, to reflect back and to reflect to the glory of God, to live to the glory of God, which is His His holiness, His righteousness, His weight, that you would feel the weight of God on your life, and then you would cause others to feel the weight of God in their life.
Mark Clark [00:03:55]:
So we live to the praise of the glory of God, not, which is so much easier, living to the praise of the glory of who? Yourself. We live to the praise of the glory of God. Everything we do, he constantly hits this over and over and over again. So, and now verse 13, in Him you also, when you heard The word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, the good news, the message that God who made the world and created you became a human being because you were sinful and you could never please him. So he came and he lived a perfect life in your place. He died on the cross, shed his blood, not just for the sake of it, but for your sins so that you can be forgiven, rose again from the dead and offers us eternal life if we repent of sin and trust in Him. He's saying when you heard that message, the good news, the Gospel— that's what the word Gospel is. It's the good news.
Mark Clark [00:04:54]:
The euangelion in Greek. It was when a king would go out and win a war, and they would come back and they would announce, we won a war. A victory has been won. It's news. It's a report. It's not asking you to come in and help out, figure out what is the Gospel message. It's a report. It's just saying this is what happened.
Mark Clark [00:05:14]:
All right, it's like turning on the news and seeing there's a traffic jam. You didn't have anything to do with it. You just turned on the news and you heard it. And now the question is, how do you respond to the news? I'm going to take a different route because there's a traffic jam. I'm going to stay home because there's a traffic jam. The whole question of Christianity is this is news. He died for your sins. He rose again.
Mark Clark [00:05:37]:
That's the proclamation. That's the announcement. What are you going to do with that news? And so he says, "The word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and you—" So you heard the word of truth and you believed in him. Your response to hearing the word of truth is that you believe in him. And so I just want to stay on that half of verse 13 and unpack that this morning. And some of you say, "That's crazy. Why would we spend this long in one half?" Because this verse was just killing me this week. It just kept beating me up.
Mark Clark [00:06:08]:
It woke me up. It was just like, man, Here's the question on the table this morning: What do you do with what you hear? Alright, we come here every Sunday and we hear stuff. We hear sermons, we hear songs, we hear each other talk. He's saying, here's what you do with the word that you heard. You heard the word of truth, and the question becomes, what do you do with it? He says what caused you to have salvation was you believed in Him. You trusted in Him. You gave your life to Him. What do you do with what you hear? I think we're in a very dangerous place if all we do is gather as the church and hear a bunch of stuff and never say to ourselves, what do I do with what I hear? When I hear the Gospel, what do I do with it? Does it land on my heart? Do I turn cold to it? Do I actually do anything with what I hear week in and week out? Or do I just come and do I hear? And I might be more sensitive to this this week because I had a lesson in people not hearing properly.
Mark Clark [00:07:15]:
All right, there's a guy from the province newspaper who came. They wanted to do an article on Village, so he came and he did an interview with me. So we sat for an hour. He's like, what's your church about? What's the message of Christianity? I was like, boom, boom, boom, existence of God, gospel this, Jesus that, God came this. And he's like, okay. And so I said, and then he repeated back to me what I said. And I'm like, what? That's not what I said at all. I'm like, you know, Jesus is about— he says, count the cost, follow me, leave your mother and father.
Mark Clark [00:07:47]:
If your dad dies, so be it. Do you really love me? Do you really follow me? Don't go back to his funeral and bury him. Pick up your cross, follow me, die to self. And he goes, okay, let me just write that down. So what you're saying is Christianity is a religion that helps people feel comfortable. What? I'm like, no, man, this is not about comfort. This is not about some faith system where we all come together with our Kleenex boxes and we cry on cue and sing prom songs to Jesus with hummingbirds sucking pollen out of the worship slides. I said, man, sometimes Man, sometimes we put brick and mortar up there.
Mark Clark [00:08:35]:
We put blood and guts. He's like, whoa, real blood? I'm like, uh-oh, I'm bad for the media. So listen, when you read that article, man, I don't know what it's gonna say, but I might be the worst person for media to do an interview. He wants to kill everybody. All right. I'm just quoting Jesus. But here's the problem. I think we're in danger if we never stop and ask the question, how do I hear and what do I do with what I actually hear week in and week out? Because here's what terrifies me.
Mark Clark [00:09:08]:
We can have a whole bunch of people here, and there are many people in our culture and there are many people in our churches who live their faith vicariously through other people. And so they will come to Village Church and they'll say, Village Church preaches the Bible, therefore I go there. I must believe the Bible. I must live a righteous life. This must mean that I follow God, that I love God. And part of the problem is that it's not the case. Is that sometimes the church— this is an epidemic in churches. Here's the danger that terrifies me.
Mark Clark [00:09:39]:
Is that sometimes church, rather than being the place where you gather to get rebuked, corrected, encouraged through the Scriptures, worship God, transform your life, deal with sin, repent, come to the cross, Instead of church being that, for many of us in our culture, church functions more like a crack house. Alright, and what I mean by that is you come to get a drug. You come to get an experience, to get high, and you engage in it. And so, you come and you worship through song and you get an emotional high, and then you hear a sermon and you're like, "Yeah, this is like revitalizing my faith." faith, and then you go out of here and by Monday you crash because you don't have a faith that is your own. So what do you do? Well, I got 7 days till Sunday. What am I going to do? Oh, maybe I'll just listen to a podcast of my favorite preacher, or maybe 2 or 3, or maybe I'll go buy that new worship CD and I'll listen to that in my car over and over and over again. I got to go read some Twitter accounts. What's Lecrae saying on Twitter? And you pull from Christian subculture, and all you're doing is you're giving yourself a hit because it's a drug.
Mark Clark [00:11:02]:
And none of those things are wrong, but it's that they're covering up a faith for you that doesn't exist. But I listened to 3 Mark Driscoll sermons this week! Haha! So? I memorized the new Hillsong album. What? That means you have a relationship with Jesus? No, you're hitting the crack pipe for a faith that doesn't exist. So here's the question. What do you do with what you hear? But what do you actually hear from week in and week out? Because this is Paul's concern. You heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and my hope is that you guys, you trusted in it and you believed in him. That's what he says. You heard and then you believed in him and it resulted in your salvation.
Mark Clark [00:12:09]:
So what do you do with what you hear? How do you function? Do you do anything? So here's— go over to Mark chapter 4. Mark chapter 4 is a story that Jesus told all about what people like you and me do with hearing. When the message goes out, what do we do? So he told this parable. It's a very famous parable. Most of you probably know it. It's the parable of the sower. Jesus told about 30 parables in his ministry. None of them were meant to cause us to go, "Eee, that's a nice story." They were always meant to absolutely challenge and dismantle your entire paradigm of life and leave you in the balance going, "Where am I in the story? Who am I in the story?" And so Jesus, just like Paul, spent a lot of time— this is one of the longest parables in the Gospels because his question was, how do you hear? What do you do with what you hear? Do you just hear some stuff and then go on with your life with a shallowed-out faith that is nothing but tapping into Christian subculture to keep the high going? Because here's what the Bible constantly says.
Mark Clark [00:13:21]:
You want to know what you're supposed to thirst after? Thirst after like a dying deer? Not the latest cool sermon, not the latest worship CD. You're supposed to pine and yearn after Him. You know what you're supposed to go after first and foremost in your life, you're supposed to seek the most? Not a high, not a spiritual moment. Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. It's telling you, pine after Him, go after Him. Not the results of Him, not the gifts of Him. There's a world of difference between going after Him and the things that He gives us. We tend to elevate gift above giver.
Mark Clark [00:14:01]:
And so Jesus is going to make sure that his hearers, all of you, begin to see yourself in the story that he tells. So here's what he says. Chapter 4, verse 1. Again, he began to teach beside the sea, and a very large crowd gathered about him. All right, this guy is preaching. Crowds have gathered. He's got 3 services going. All right? There's a crowd! And they want to hear what he has to say.
Mark Clark [00:14:33]:
And for Jesus, it's not good enough. He doesn't go, "Man, I got a crowd going. Check it out!" He goes, "Let me tell a story that's going to cut them all down and make them look inside themselves and say, 'Where am I in life?'" A very large crowd gathered about him. So that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea. I wish this is how church was for us. Then I could always be in a boat. And the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land, and he was teaching them many things in parables. And in his teaching he said to them, listen, So the reason in your Bible that's got an exclamation mark is because in the Greek it's emphatic.
Mark Clark [00:15:20]:
He's saying, "Listen! This is a warning story. This is a warning." Do we listen to warnings? When the Bible instructs us of things, those instructions are about warning us that if you do not follow what you're about to hear, You will end up getting burned in the end. That's why the Bible, when it comes to us with the Ten Commandments and with, "Hey, do this and do that," we go, "Oh, boy." You know, it's not about your begrudging submission to God, that, "Oh, I better follow God or He's gonna, you know, curse me." It's, "This is what is best for human life and flourishing, so listen." So instruction ends up being warning. If you follow it, good things. If you don't follow it, bad things. It's like when I was 18 years old, I didn't know how to cook Kraft Dinner. All right, that's a sad commentary. And I read on the side of the box the instructions on how to cook Kraft Dinner, and I said, forget it, I don't like these instructions.
Mark Clark [00:16:22]:
Ah, I'm gonna do it my own way. And I took it and I opened up the box and I poured the dry noodles into a bowl. And I took the bowl and I put it in the microwave. I closed the microwave and I put on 7 minutes, and then I went downstairs and had a shower. Shower. Alright, so I'm in the shower, in the zone, good things are happening, and then my alarm starts going off in my house. I'm like, why is there an alarm going off? Doesn't seem to make any sense. 7 minutes, dry noodles in the microwave, that sounds normal.
Mark Clark [00:16:57]:
And I got out and the microwave had blown up and there was flames. Going all over my kitchen. I went and I opened up this all-white microwave turned black, and I looked in and this bowl had gone all black, and all the noodles had turned black and stacked up on each other, and I touched them and they all turned to dust. And I had to throw out my microwave. Rear, rear! Alarms going off. Warning! Idiot! Listen! I'm instructing you! So the Bible has a lot of instructions. It's got a lot of instructions for people who get up and preach and teach the Word of God as well. The Bible says, the book of James says, "I don't want many of you to be preachers and teachers because if you do, you're going to be judged more harshly." Jesus says, "If you lead these little ones astray and you preach and teach things that aren't for them, you might as well tie a millstone around your neck and throw yourself into the water because you're going to be judged." Alright, so me as a preacher and a teacher, I feel that weight.
Mark Clark [00:18:00]:
Alright, like in this moment, in this room, what I feel is that life and death is at stake every single time. And so there's a warning, there's a weight on me as a preacher, so much so that it affects the way I live my life. Like Monday is my Sabbath day. That's the day I hang out with my kids, have fun, joke around, because Saturday, by By about 3 or 4 o'clock, my whole mind and my heart begins to shift. And my wife can see it. She just knocks on my head. I'm like, "Beep! You're not there anymore." Because my whole life begins to shift toward this moment. What has God laid on my heart to communicate to you? Because heaven and hell is in the balance every single week.
Mark Clark [00:18:45]:
And so that's the warning. That's the pressure. That's the weight on me. And nobody can bear that for me. The nature of the gig. So that's on me. Mark 4 is about the warning and the weight that is on you as the listener. That's what Jesus is about to say.
Mark Clark [00:19:05]:
So he says, "Listen." So those of you who are half asleep right now, wake up! Listen! You're about to hear Jesus. 'A sower went out to sow, and as he sowed—' So culturally, he's got this sack around his waist, he's picking up, and he's throwing seed around, all right? And he's a little nearsighted because he throws it all over the place, all right? 'As he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it.' Now, you got to start seeing yourself in the story. Lord, help me to see myself in the story. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Verse 5. Other seed fell on rocky ground where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up. Since it had no depth of soil, when the sun rose, it scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding 30-fold and 60-fold and 100-fold.
Mark Clark [00:20:14]:
And he said, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. All right. So he's saying there's hearing. All right. And then there's hearing. You track it with that? There's hearing. And then there's hearing. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Mark Clark [00:20:33]:
Really hear, really perceive, really understand what's actually at stake. So, here's what he says. Verse 10, "And when he was alone, those around him, with the 12, asked him about the parables." This is awesome. They've been with him for years, and they still don't understand Jesus when he teaches. Right, he says some stuff, and they're like, "Brrr, awesome story, didn't have a clue." "Would you mind explaining this to us?" I mean, this, gives me a lot of encouragement, alright, as a preacher. Because man, I'm telling you, I know you're looking at me and smiling, but you're not hearing much. And I know this because I talk to you guys after, alright? And it's like, I gave everything I had to communicate as best as possible, and that's not what I said at all! Like, I remember I was preaching at a church a while ago, and I got up and I said, this whole church, I was supposed to preach on mission and vision. You're supposed to go out and reach your friends for Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:21:47]:
And I said, some of you are just way too distracted by end-time theology and the rapture, alright? Your whole theology is built on getting out of here. But here's what you need to do. You need to set aside left behind for a while, and left behind for kids, and left behind for women, and left behind for women, kids, and all of these offshoots, and start getting a theology that says, "I want to be the salt and light of the world. I don't want to go." In John chapter 17 where Jesus says, "Father, I pray that you would not take them out of the world, but that you would keep them from the evil one." That we would not get sucked up, but that we would live, and our money, and our time, and our lives to see our friends, and our family come to know Jesus. And man, I had these people, it was awesome! And they were like, "Woo-hoo!" And then, I'm not kidding you, the worship leader got up, got on the piano, started playing the keys, and said, "Lord, life is quite a ride, but it's nothing like the ride of the rapture." That was 30 seconds ago. So, I mean, it encourages me that Jesus has people like that. All right, he tells a story, no one understands it. So Jesus, explain it to us.
Mark Clark [00:23:17]:
What did you say up there? Okay guys, let me explain. Verse 11, to you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything is in parables so that They may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven. Here's what he's saying. There's two kinds of people, and there's two kinds of people in this room, and history is divided up between two kinds of people. People who hear the gospel, see and understand, and turn are forgiven, and those who hear the gospel and go cold and hard to it. And every time the word of God is preached, those two things happen, even in this room. Either your heart gets hard or your heart gets softened and you turn to Jesus, which usually means when I talk to people after messages, it sounds something like this. Oh my goodness, that changed my life.
Mark Clark [00:24:05]:
Next person, that was the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Because when the word of God goes out, it always either creates life and perception and understanding where people turn and are forgiven, Or it creates hardened hearts that go, you know, I'm good. And here's what's at stake in this room. I talked to my nanny last night on the phone. She's getting older. She said, Mark, I haven't got out of bed in 3 or 4 days. And I just started— it's so disheartening to me. I mean, this is my nanny.
Mark Clark [00:24:38]:
She helped raise me. She's failing. She's dying. And I thought about the fragility of our lives, how fragile we all are, how we come to the table and we never think that we're the person who's going to get sick. We always perceive ourselves to be absolutely invincible, especially if you're young. You're invincible. You can't see a time when you don't exist in the world. You can't see a time where you die.
Mark Clark [00:25:01]:
You're never gonna be the one in a car accident. You never perceive yourself to be the one who gets Alzheimer's or cancer or a tumor. You never— it's never you. No bad is ever gonna befall you. But we're so fragile, and how we respond to the gospel is everything in light of that fragility. What do you do with what you hear? And that's what Paul's trying to get at in Ephesians 1. So Jesus says, okay, let me explain to you 4 kinds of people. First, verse 13, do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? Are you guys dumb? That's what he's saying.
Mark Clark [00:25:40]:
Do you not understand this? Like, how easy was this? I told a story about soil and birds and choking. What isn't clear about this? I chose the wrong guys. I mean, Jesus always just gets a cut-in before he— it's like, are you guys dumb? All right, let me explain it. He's harsh with these guys. He's trying to disciple them. Jesus didn't go to the University of Jerusalem and pick out the top 12 PhDs and say, you're going to be my disciples. That would have been easier, because they would have been like, yeah, I exegeted that parable perfect. He got fishermen who were like, "Duh! Never heard of story." He's like, "All right, so you guys are dumb, so now let me explain it to you." Verse 14, "The sower sows the word." All right, he throws the word out.
Mark Clark [00:26:36]:
So in this room, We throw the word out. And these are the ones along the path where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. So this is some of you. The word goes out and your response is, I don't need God. I don't really care about Jesus. I don't like the gospel. I don't know.
Mark Clark [00:27:03]:
I can just live my life I find by myself. Or the seed lands for a minute, but then it gets plucked up. Alright, so this is like me when I explained last week about how when I was 9 years old and I went to summer camp and I believed in Jesus, rah rah, and then I came home and it never changed anything. I came home and just the friends around and I just, you know, I came back and just started back into the same life, doing drugs, grabbing rocks and throwing them through car windows to steal money. All right, beating up people who would just look at me the wrong way. I didn't beat them up, my friends did. Look at me, I just slapped them in the neck and kind of ran away. But they— my friends beat up the guys who would look at us.
Mark Clark [00:27:45]:
That was my crew, that's how we rolled. And so that's how we kind of functioned. And so the gospel landed for a second, but then it got snatched away. It fell on my heart and my mind, it fell for a second, and then it got snatched away. Snatched up and trampled on by men. And that's some of you. And Jesus is saying there'll be a whole bunch of people where that's what happens. The word goes out and it lands on them and either their heart turns cold to it or they grab it for a second and then it gets snatched up.
Mark Clark [00:28:15]:
That's some of you. Verse 16, and these are the ones sown on rocky ground, the ones who when they hear the word immediately receive it with joy. This is a lot of people in this room. You think back to your childhood, you think back to your teen years, you received it with joy. You're like, yeah, God, Christianity, yes, I'm excited. And they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while, then When tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. This is the person, this is like in the Gospel of Mark, this is Peter. If you've read the Gospels, no one is more excitable than Peter.
Mark Clark [00:29:14]:
Peter, he receives Jesus with joy. He is amped up. He is ready to go. All right, Peter, this is the guy who was sitting, standing in the boat and he sees Jesus on the beach and he gets so amped up and excited that he rips off all of his clothes awkwardly for everybody else around, nakedly, and jumps into the water just to swim and to get close to Jesus. He was pumped, he was amped. This is the Peter who said, when they're sitting around at the Last Supper and Jesus says, "You know what, you're gonna deny me," And Peter goes, "I will never deny you. I will go to the death." And the same night, a little poor girl who means nothing and nobody cares about her walks up to him and says, "Don't you know Jesus?" He goes, "No, I never heard of him." They receive it with joy. They're excited about it.
Mark Clark [00:30:11]:
Some of you are there. You accepted Jesus, you pray, You read the Scriptures, you attended church, you started serving, but then it became too hard. I got people in my family like this. They became Christians, they started leading worship, they started being counselors at summer camp, leading other people to Christ, and then they fell away. Why? Because the cost when you're 18 versus the cost when you're 8 are far different. Right? Like, the cost of discipleship when you're 8 years old is like, "Don't steal jelly beans." It's like, "Okay, I'll follow you." But when you're 18, man, it's like, you gotta die to self, to all of these passions and all of these things that you feel are, "I want to go and do this, I want to go do that." And the Lord's over here going, "Where are you going?" And so there's a million different reasons why these people, why the second Second category, why they fall away. But what Jesus— the major category that he says here is the reason is, is they have no root in themselves. It hasn't gone deep enough.
Mark Clark [00:31:20]:
And so what happens is, at the first sign of trouble, you get knocked over, you fall away. You don't have any root. Your faith remained way too shallow. So hear the warning, those of you in this room who have a shallow faith. You're totally shallow. You have no root in yourself. It doesn't go down. So when the storm hits, you're gonna get knocked out.
Mark Clark [00:31:48]:
The warning is trying to spur you on to go deeper. I talked to one set of parents a short time ago who came up to me after a service, and they were bawling their eyes out, and they said, my son and daughter loved God so much so that they were going to be pastors. And they came out to Trinity Western University to study, and they took a few classes there, and they lost their faith. Alright, this isn't the best promo for TWU. We love it, alright? But people— this particular couple went there and they took one hermeneutics course, alright, which is introductory to interpreting the Bible, and one intro to philosophy, and intro to science, and they said, "Oh my goodness!" Why did they fall away? Because their faith was set up in such a way that they said, "You need science or God." And they went, "Ah! Well, if I need to choose science and Descartes and Rudolf Bultmann, or I need to choose Jesus, well, Jesus is so old school. Rudolf Bultmann, he's the man!" Redaction criticism. Don't you know that the Bible's not really written by the Bible? There's all these people who wrote it. So I'm going with this because they took one intro course.
Mark Clark [00:33:02]:
They got no root in themselves. They had nothing. They had such a simple faith that one intro to philosophy course blew them up. Jesus is going, you'll get a trial, and if you don't know, if your faith isn't deep enough, it'll kill you. See, what trials do to shallow people who have no root in themselves is it takes away their faith. So the exhortation is get deep. Because what trials and persecution do to people who are of faith, to the fourth category that Jesus is going to talk about, it deepens them. And so oftentimes what happens is Satan will use trials and persecutions and negative things to steal your faith, and if you're shallow, it'll work.
Mark Clark [00:33:53]:
But Jesus uses trial and persecution to deepen you, to make you stronger, so that you actually rejoice in Christ more when there's difficult times. Like, listen, when do you guys rejoice the deepest? When do you push into Jesus the most? When everything's fine and everything's good, or when you go through difficulty? When you have nothing else to rely on but him. When, if he doesn't come through for me, I'm gonna look really silly. That tends to be the time I'm pushing into him. Like I remember a time I used to take people down to downtown Eastside and do worship services for all the drug addicts, this place called Potter's House. And they would lead worship, I would preach, but we'd hang out with these people and eat with them and hang out. And just build relationships with them. So one day we're sitting there, and all the musicians were in the back doing something, and they said, "Okay, buddy, the worship service has gotta start." And all these people are sitting there waiting, just staring at me.
Mark Clark [00:34:53]:
I'm like, "Sorry, what?" They're like, "Yeah, come on, get up. There's a guitar. Go, go, go lead worship. We gotta get going with this." I'm like, "Um, not my thing. Don't know how to do that." They're like, "Do it!" I'm like, "Uh." So listen. I had nothing. All right, I'm gonna look dumb. So what do I do? I start pressing into Jesus, probably the first time I prayed all day.
Mark Clark [00:35:17]:
Jesus helped me out, and I picked up my guitar and I sat down, and I knew 4 chords from when I was a teenager. And I started playing these chords, and then I started singing. I just started saying some words, stringing them together, trying to rhyme them. At the end, I just sang, man. And all of a sudden, man, it started to come together. I'm picking, I just start killing it. These people are just watching. They were probably hungry, but watching.
Mark Clark [00:36:01]:
Killing it. Everything's rhyming. Man, I'm like Bob Dylan up here. I just got in this zone. I don't know what happened, but all I know is I hit that last note and the place erupted in applause. It's like, "What?" And all the people came out of the back, they're like, "What happened?" I'm like, "I don't know." They're like, "Do it again." I'm like, "No." Leaving on a high note. Everybody in there thinks I'm brilliant. I used up my 4 notes.
Mark Clark [00:36:28]:
I gotta go. In that moment, man, I had nothing. I was gonna look absolutely silly. So all I had to do was just push into Him, push into Him, push into Him. First time I prayed all day, 'cause that's what happens when difficulty arises, right? Like my wife, when she was pregnant with our first daughter, I got a phone call. She was 8 months pregnant. She got hit by a car walking across the road and the car hit into her stomach and she fell on the ground. All right, you better believe that in that moment I was pushing into him far deeper than I had to any moment all day.
Mark Clark [00:37:08]:
And I went and I, you know, hey, what happened? She's crying. We just want to hear a heartbeat. We just want to hear a heartbeat. So we went into this walk-in doctor. He said, don't worry about it. I can usually hear the heartbeat with my stethoscope. You don't need any Doppler radar. Don't worry about it.
Mark Clark [00:37:22]:
And he sat and he put it in. He's listening. It's like the longest minute. They just took it off. He's like, yeah, I can't hear anything. I'm like, you're an idiot! Why would you tell me you can with your stethoscope? Because he goes, oh, sometimes I can't hear it with the stethoscope. You better go down and listen with the Doppler. So we drive down to Children's.
Mark Clark [00:37:44]:
Come on, just give me a heartbeat, give me a heartbeat, give me a heartbeat, give me a heartbeat. Praying, praying, praying, pushing in, and then boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Okay, because in those moments of trial, in those moments of difficulty, of persecution, if your faith is not rooted and deep, it'll kill you. But if your faith is rooted and deep, you'll push deeper into Jesus. This is why the Apostle Paul, when he's like, God, I got this thorn in my flesh and I need you to take it away from me, God says, I'm not going to take it away from you. I'm gonna leave it there. Why? Because in your weakness, my power is made perfect. Because you're gonna push into me, you're gonna go deeper with me.
Mark Clark [00:38:29]:
It's not gonna ruin your faith because you're rooted. But if you're not rooted, it'll kill you. So Jesus says, be very careful. And then there's a third scenario, verse 18: And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word— realize he keeps He keeps talking about people who hear the word, hear the word, hear the word. That's all four. Hearing the word, hearing the word, hearing the word. And what do they do? But the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word.
Mark Clark [00:39:15]:
There's all these people in this room and in our culture who are interested in spiritual conversation, who are interested in God, but the reality is their deepest interests lie way outside of God. It's about making money, having relationships, building up business, having a family. God becomes second, third area. And he's saying those are things of this world that will actually draw you—your safety, your comfort—they will draw you away from Jesus, not push you deeper into him. And so in the Gospel of Mark, this is the rich young ruler who's got a whole bunch of money, and he comes to Jesus and he asks this profound question: "What do I need to do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus, seeing the idolatry of his heart, that he loved money, Jesus goes, "I want you to sell everything and give everything you got to the poor." And what is his response? "No way." The desires to go after worldly things keep us from following Jesus. The cares of the world. And here's why this one's so dangerous and so subtle in every single one of our lives. Because it's a slow choking.
Mark Clark [00:40:33]:
Realize what he said. They're gonna choke you. All right, choking isn't you fell off a cliff all of a sudden. It's not that one day you wake up and you go, "You know what? I take the things of this world over God. I like money more than prayer. I like my relationships more than I like Jesus." You don't wake up. It's a choking. It means that over slowly, you don't even recognize it.
Mark Clark [00:40:59]:
Here's what's dangerous about it. It's so subtle. You don't even know it. It's that 2 years down the road, you wake up and you realize, you know, you haven't picked up your Bible in 2 years. You haven't been with God's people in 2 years. You haven't prayed in 2 years. You don't love Jesus anymore, but you never knew it. It's like what C.S.
Mark Clark [00:41:14]:
Lewis talks about, the pathway to hell. It's not some cliff that you just fall off. It's a slow, subtle road without immediate quick turns. It's just easy. You glide down it. You don't even know. He's saying it's choking you. So be very careful how the deceitfulness of our hearts, when we go after the things of this world, actually keep us from Him.
Mark Clark [00:41:36]:
And then He says, final thing, final thing, but those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit. Some of us, we stopped at stage 2. I believe! I accept the word! I said a prayer! I came to the front! I got baptized! Awesome. Did your life bear any fruit? He's saying scenario 4 is you hear it, you receive it, you say, I'm a sinner, I need Jesus, I accept Jesus into my life, I repent of my sin, but now I bear fruit 30, 60, and 100-fold. That saying a prayer where you accept Jesus into your life isn't the end of something, it's the beginning of something. You come to a place where you say, I need him. So here's how Luke ends his version of this parable. He says this: "Be careful, then, how you hear." How do you hear in this room? Is church a crack house? How do you hear? And what do you do with what you hear? See, some of you, this story just messed you up.
Mark Clark [00:43:13]:
Some of you, this, this story just flipped you because now you're sitting there going, I'm not sure where I am. It's exactly what the story is supposed to do. It's supposed to produce in you a crisis of faith where you go, am I 1, 2, 3? Am I sure I'm 4? But here's what this story is meant to do. It's meant to give you assurance that if you hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit, you know. You know. There's an assurance of your salvation in Jesus. That's the beautiful thing about the simplicity of the historic Christian message. It's that you are justified by grace alone through faith alone in the finished work of Jesus alone, not a bunch of additives, that the gospel is what God has done for you so that you can be saved, not about what you can do for Him to impress Him.
Mark Clark [00:44:17]:
That's why He came down, because you could never climb up. He had to come down in the person of Jesus, show up and say, let me do what you can never do. There's an assurance. Let me close by reading you a blog that I read this week from one of the ladies who was sitting in the theater in Denver. She went to the theater with her two daughters. Here's what she says: So I was there with them, fidgeting in my seat, some 40 or 50 feet away from the man with the gun. It's still a bit surreal, but I do know that when the seemingly endless shooting started, as my girls were struggling from whatever gas or chemical had been released, and we figured out what was happening, we hit the floor. I threw myself on top of my 14-year-old, who was on the end of the row, straight up the aisle from the shooter.
Mark Clark [00:45:17]:
In that moment, as the rapid-fire shots continued, I truly thought I was going to die, and I realized that I was ready. I have put my faith and trust in Jesus Christ as the Redeemer of my soul, and there wasn't the slightest doubt that I would be received into heaven. Not because of any good thing that I have done, but because of His merciful nature and the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. If we don't take a second to ask the question, do I know? Am I assured? How do I hear the gospel? Then I think we're in a very dangerous place where this 40, 50 minutes every week will be nothing more than you listening to something and then saying, what am I going to get at Wendy's later? That's an extremely dangerous place to be because you have simply bought into the shallowed-out ridiculous form of Christianity that the Western world has pitched you. So I want us all to close our eyes, and I can see you, so close them. I want us all to think about a few questions in closing. Who would have thought such things are at stake in this room week in and week out? How are you hearing? Which scenario are you? Is your heart just unmoved? All right, my heart was unmoved for a long time. Do you have this moment you can point to years ago and but no moments to follow it up? Are you someone that said, "Yeah, I'll follow Jesus," but the cares of this world have crowded out Jesus as the most important thing? I want to give you a minute to think through which soil you are.
Mark Clark [00:47:57]:
And if you find yourself in any of the first three, the point of the story is you would repent, believe in Him, receive, and ask by His grace to begin to bear fruit so that there is an assurance of your faith and your salvation. And for those of you who don't know Jesus, this would be a moment where you can receive Him. Hear the word, and don't just hear it, but take it, receive it, Accept it and walk out of here saying, "I want to bear fruit for God." Father, I want us to be a group of good hearers who listen, who accept, who bear fruit, who have an assurance. Father, I pray that you would make every person in this room in that fourth category that Jesus says, because the other three are not categories of salvation at all. They're beginnings of something great. That end with tragedy. I pray by your grace now as we worship in response to your word that we would not be men and women who just hear the word, but that we would be doers that we would stop trusting in ourselves and the cares of this world and people and money, stuff, silly things of this world that we trade out. That instead of being intimate and close and real with you, we take all this momentary shallow joy in these flickers of something Let us find our deepest joy and our deepest contentment in being in Christ and living our life to the praise of your glory.
Mark Clark [00:50:26]:
In Christ's name, amen.