Mark Clark [00:00:00]:
The Mark Clark Podcast is brought to you by the Thrive Podcast Network. I am just literally one pod on a whole amazing family of pods. Let me read a couple of them to you. Am I Doing This Right? This is with Morgan May Treuil and Leslie Johnston. A great podcast, especially if you're a woman out there, A young woman out there. Talk about all things cultural, but guys love it too. I love it. I listen to it all the time.
Mark Clark [00:00:28]:
And it is amazing. Pod talk about cultural issues. There's another called the Bible Study with host Curt Harlow and Dena Davidson, and they kill it and they just go verse by verse through books of the Bible and then of course, change the odds with my buddy Kevin Thompson, which is all things marriage, relationships, psychology. It's a great pod. So just jump on Spotify or Apple Pods and subscribe to all of those podcasts or go to thrivepodcastnetwork.com and you can look at all them. Okay, we are jumping into a brand new sermon series. Has been summer, so we've been a little spotty all over the place, but we're jumping back into it. Every single week you are getting a new sermon and we are going to jump into the book of First Corinthians under this, this title called Masterclass.
Mark Clark [00:01:16]:
Okay, so what this is, we're kicking off the brand new series. If you've ever felt like life is.
Mark Clark [00:01:21]:
Messy, that culture is confusing, I. I.
Mark Clark [00:01:24]:
Can guarantee we're in that world right now.
Mark Clark [00:01:27]:
Or your own feelings lead you astray.
Mark Clark [00:01:29]:
Into weird relationships or things you've done or mistakes you've made, man, you are not alone. And the apostle Paul has something to say about all of it and so much more. First Corinthians is a book that hits everything from sex and business to politics and faith. And it will challenge how you see life itself.
Mark Clark [00:01:47]:
So lean in.
Mark Clark [00:01:48]:
This could change everything for you. We're super excited about it. Let's jump into this brand new series, a masterclass on life.
Mark Clark [00:01:56]:
What you begin to understand is that Paul hits everything. And here's why. First Corinthians is the best book to do a masterclass, because it's literally a book that hits every single topic you can imagine. And the reason it does is because it was written to a city called Corinth that was such a mess and a disaster in so many ways. Corinthians was a place where they sexually. There was actually a poet coined a phrase to Corinthianize or Corinthenzo, and what it meant was to be a fornicator, meaning corinth was a place where sex was rampant. Anybody would have sex with anyone, anytime, anywhere, and there was no restrictions. And everyone kind of lived similarly to our culture, where it was like, you do whatever you want.
Mark Clark [00:02:39]:
We don't have any say in what you do. We're never gonna tell you you did anything wrong. You do you, we'll do us. And the Apostle Paul says, this can be a devastating reality if you're not very careful. And. And so he's constantly speaking into issues of sexuality and greed and idolatry, the things that actually drive our life in many ways. And that's what First Corinthians actually is all about. It's people gone wild.
Mark Clark [00:03:03]:
And it's literally a crazy culture where the Apostle Paul goes, oh, my goodness. You're living in a city where everyone's defined by money and sexuality. And it's almost the opposite problem that the Gospel of Matthew is written to. The Gospel of Matthew is written to people who were pretty religious and conservative, and they, you know, they. They. They went to Bible study every week, and they homeschooled their kids and wrote their own textbooks and said that, you know, we rode around on dinosaurs and they. They love. They lived in Abbotsford and, you know, rode horses and had denim dresses and made their own butter, and that was kind of what they did.
Mark Clark [00:03:39]:
And. And Matthew had to write to them and go, hey, you religious freaks who think that you've got everything's figured out because you go to church and you do all the right things, by the way, you might not actually know God at all. All right, that was three and a half years in Matthew. Now, Corinthians is almost the opposite problem. It's not religious people. It's people who are so jacked up that they've lived in a city that's so immoral. They've had sexual practices that are a disaster, business practices that are disaster, family practices that are disaster, and then they've become Christians, and. And they just continue to do the same thing.
Mark Clark [00:04:13]:
So it's a city gone wild, but then it becomes Christians gone wild because they're like, well, I'm just gonna continue to do and be who I am, but now I'm gonna be a Christian. And the apostle, like, there's a story I read recently about a gangster who'd actually been a gangster his whole life, and then he became a Christian. And then two years after, the guy who actually led him to Christ showed up, and he's like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm a gangster. And he's like, how is that possible? You became a Christian? He's like, no, I'm a Christian gangster. There's Christian plumbers, there's Christian businessmen, there's Christian. He's like, what? I still whack guys. I just pray about it. All right? And so the guy's like, no, no, no, listen.
Mark Clark [00:04:47]:
Here's the fundamental problem that you and I have. We think there can be Christian porn stars, Christian businessmen, Christian this, Christian that. Listen, they're camping because here's the fundamental problem. And they fa. And Paul faced it in Corinth to this church gone wild. He's saying, you cannot listen to me. First point of masterclass, if you're a Christian or if you're exploring Christianity, is that you can't just become a Christianized version of what you already are and are determined to remain. Something about Christianity changes you to the core of your being.
Mark Clark [00:05:16]:
And Paul is gonna say, you cannot just go along functioning, but then just have some different beliefs and it not affect everything else. And so Corinthians comes along and goes, I'm gonna talk about your belief. I'm gonna talk about behavior. I'm gonna talk about belonging. I'm gonna talk about everything under the sun, from politics to business to sex to parenting to all of it. And it's all gonna be driven by a worldview. And you and I have to understand, if you're exploring spirituality, we're glad you're here, because this is gonna set you up to be able to go, okay, we've hit everything under the sun, and now I can either accept it and follow it, or I can reject it. And so the Apostle Paul starts laying out these things and saying, listen, if you wanna be truly human, if you wanna be human in a different way, then you have to understand that your fundamental posture needs to be in the world, but not of it.
Mark Clark [00:06:02]:
This is what Jesus said to the church, that. That you need to be in the world. Yes, you need to live in Corinth and live in Vancouver and live in Calgary, these places that are exactly like Corinth, who've defined these things. You need to be in the world. Don't escape from it. Don't run from it. You need to be in the world. But here's the tension.
Mark Clark [00:06:19]:
You can't be of it. And so the Apostle Paul says, listen, you gotta actually begin to function in a way where you become stronger than the world around you rather than weaker, which is oftentimes what we see when I meet with. See, here's what the Apostle Paul Says if you're the kind of person who just takes the spirit of the age, the zeitgeist, the cultural moment, and you just do what you feel in a given moment, everyone around you might applaud you, but the reality behind the reality is that you're weak. You are a disaster if you're someone that just follows your feelings and you're actually weak. Because what the apostle Paul wants to do is call you to be stronger than everybody else around you, which is gonna be harder. And this is the key, is that you listen. Let me tell you what the easiest thing to do in the world. When I meet with guys who've cheated on their wives, all right, they come to me and they say, I just couldn't do it anymore, so I cheated multiple people, whatever.
Mark Clark [00:07:08]:
Here's the reality of what the apostle Paul would say. I know the world around you kind of applauds it. I know they think it's cool when you sleep around away from your wife, away from your family obligations. But the reality is you're pathetic and. And weak and cowardice. Because here's what's harder. It's so easy to sleep with whoever you want. You know that, right? That's the easy route.
Mark Clark [00:07:31]:
The measure of a man has historically always been not the amount of people he can sleep with, but his self mastery, the discipline to not do what is easy. Listen, it is easy. There was a day where I looked down. I was living in an apartment, I looked down and I saw my car was getting robbed. I ran down to my car, I opened the door, all my stuff was all over the place. I'm like, oh my gosh, my stuff's getting stolen. And I looked and I saw two 18, 19 year old girls running away. And I ran after them and I stopped them in a field.
Mark Clark [00:08:04]:
And I'm like, listen, you just stole all the stuff from my car. And they were so drunk, they're like, yeah, we needed some money. And I'm like, well, don't do it that way. And I took back my stuff. I said, I'm gonna call the cops. And they started moving toward me and they were like, you smell good, you smell good. I'm like, what? What's going on? And they're like, we'll sleep with you right now in this field. Just don't call the cops.
Mark Clark [00:08:25]:
Come on, you're sexy. Let me sleep with you. And I'm like, all right, thanks, but no thanks. Now listen, here's how easy it is to cheat on your wife. Here's how easy it is you can sleep with people who are robbing you. They're willing. That's how ridiculous our culture is. The measure of a person is the mastery to stick it out for 70 years to the same person.
Mark Clark [00:08:52]:
Anything else is weakness. It's pathetic. It's cowardice. It's not truly human. And the world has defined humanity for you and said, it's okay. God defines humanity, right in Genesis 2. And he says, no, no. Man leaves his mother and father, gets united to his wife, and the two become one flesh.
Mark Clark [00:09:12]:
That's a forever thing, no matter what. That's the way God defines it. And the apostle Paul's gonna say, you gotta figure out how you can exist in Corinth with these definitions, but actually be someone who transcends it. That's gonna be the challenge. And so he lays down these challenges and he says, listen, the worst thing you can do is follow your feelings. The worst thing you can do. Your feelings are not a good indicator of what you should do in a given moment. You've gotta figure out how to transcend your feelings and tap into something that actually transcends and is something more authoritative than your feelings.
Mark Clark [00:09:43]:
And some people say, no, no, no how you feel. Just go with that. You do you. And Paul goes, man, that can be a disaster. Listen, two weeks ago, my family and I were going on our last little three or four days away as a family summer vacation. It's wrapping up, it's ending. Fall's coming, busy season. Let's go away for three or four days as a family.
Mark Clark [00:10:01]:
So in my brain, because I'm me, I think, okay, we'll get on the road at 7am we'll be up there. It's a four or five hour drive. We'll be chilling on the beach by noon, whatever, right? So I tell my kids that my wife was away at the time, and she came home on a Sunday night. She's like, okay, I got a lot of work to do tomorrow. And I'm like, oh, well, let's, you know, should we get on the road? She's like, yeah, listen, it's gonna be 12, at least 12 in the afternoon before we get on the road. I have, you know, because in my brain I'm like, let's just get up and go. She has to plan meals. She's gotta figure out for the kids.
Mark Clark [00:10:33]:
She's gotta do everything, but everything's structured. She's still gotta shop. And I'm like. And I'm like, yeah, of course, honey. And in my brain, I'm kind of Boiling. Cause I'm like, I just want to get on the road and get there. And she's like, I know you probably are, you know, but this is the reality. I'm like, yeah, it's fine, baby.
Mark Clark [00:10:46]:
So we wake up in the morning and she's already been up for an hour. And I come out, you know, I do my morning, hey, good morning, my mom, little kissy kissy, boo boo. And I could just feel it like, I don't know if you've ever experienced this. It was like a vibe. It was like the I hate you vibe. Like, just stay away from me. I'm kind of in the zone. I'm not in the mood for your kissy stuff.
Mark Clark [00:11:05]:
And so I was like, okay. So I just start talking, making coffee. Hey, everyone. So it's really nice at 9 o' clock in the morning. Hey, everybody's good. Everybody good? And there was just these one word answers. I don't know if your wife's ever done this. It was like, no, whatever.
Mark Clark [00:11:20]:
All right? And I'm like, all right. So starting to get a vibe. And so then I start to get angry and my feelings start to start to boil. And I'm like, oh, man. I should tell her I don't like being treated like this. I should tell her I should not be. I don't like being treated like this. I'm like, just bury it, just bury it.
Mark Clark [00:11:37]:
Just bury it. And so she continues on with the one word answers. And the kids are all laid out. And then I got the coffee here and I asked her this really nice question. I'm being a nice guy. And she gives me some one word answer and I just go, you know what my brain says? You know what? This is how you feel. You need to tell her about it. All right? So I said, you know what? I'm gonna call up and cancel this trip.
Mark Clark [00:11:58]:
And my kids go, no, daddy, what are you talking. I said, I'm gonna cancel it. Cause everyone's in a bad mood. And then I said these words. I'll never forget them because she won't let me. I don't wanna go away with mise. What? Those words came out of my mouth. And as they're traveling midair, I'm like, this is the worst thing I've said in a decade.
Mark Clark [00:12:28]:
All right? This is awful. And I'm trying to like. And they land in the house. And like. Like, she's like doing this. And I got. What did you say to me? And the kids are like. And they all kind of cowered in Silence.
Mark Clark [00:12:46]:
All right, this is great. Listen. But that's how I felt. See, sometimes how you feel is not a good indicator of what you should do. You need to go, my gosh, I got a covenant here. I got to think about the next 30 years of my life. I should probably not do this, say this, follow this impulse. We have a culture telling you to follow every impulse you have.
Mark Clark [00:13:09]:
And the gospel's gonna come along and be very careful. And say, be very careful to not follow the impulses. Cause they can get you in a lot of trouble. Here's the other thing that the Apostle Paul's gonna do as he lays out First Corinthians as our manual for a masterclass on life. What's beautiful about that is this every good story. If you read Donna Miller's book on branding and story. If you read Christopher Booker's book on the seven basic plots, what they talk about is every great story has a particular protagonist who gets offered a problem that they need to actually take care of. And when they decide to take care of the problem, a mentor of some sort comes into the story to help them.
Mark Clark [00:13:46]:
Picture Gandalf and Lord of the rings, Rocky's coach, Mr. Miyagi and karate Kid over and over and over. Get Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. There's a mentor that comes in and says, I'm gonna teach you the way to do it. Here's the beautiful thing about Christianity. If you're exploring it. If I just gave you a masterclass on life and said, just go by your feelings, go by whatever, do whatever you want, there'd be no authoritative story to tell you. Here's who your teacher is going to be.
Mark Clark [00:14:09]:
The instructor in this masterclass is the Bible. Here's the beautiful thing that Christianity does. It doesn't leave you to just think up stuff. It gives you a master. It gives you Jesus to go. Here's. I'm gonna tell you how to think. I'm gonna tell you how to behave.
Mark Clark [00:14:26]:
I'm gonna tell you how to belong. I'm gonna tell you who God is. I'm gonna tell you what's. I'm not gonna leave you alone. I here. If you're a secularist, and you're here. If you're a naturalist, if you're an atheist, you have no instructor. When I was 15 years old and my father died, I was raised in an agnostic home.
Mark Clark [00:14:42]:
My father passed away. I'm 15 years old. He's 47. I'm standing in the funeral looking over his casket with a Thousand worldview questions, and nobody had any answers for me. My parents couldn't put me to bed at night and answer the questions of origins and. And meaning and morality and destiny and what the point of evil was. They couldn't answer any of these things for me because there was no authoritative story. The Bible comes along and goes, I'm gonna be your instructor now.
Mark Clark [00:15:09]:
I'm gonna teach you. And so the Apostle Paul writes this letter and says, I'm gonna teach you some things about God and philosophy and business and sexuality, and you can do one of two things with it. And if you think about your life, there's one of two problems. Either you've misunderstood the teachings of the Bible and Jesus, or you've chosen to reject them. Every problem you have comes down to one of those two things. And as we explore over the next weeks and months and however long it takes to unpack this masterclass, constantly come back to the question, which one is me? Have I misunderstood the message of Christianity or do I understand it and I choose to reject it? So here's how it starts. First Corinthians, chapter one. Paul is going to unpack, and we're gonna do one verse today.
Mark Clark [00:15:53]:
We're gonna go far quicker than that. Most days likely, trust me. But we're only doing one verse today because we need to meet our instructor. All right? So he says this. Remember, he started this church in Corinth. He spent 18 months there. You can read in Acts, chapter 18. He started 18 months there, and he planted this church.
Mark Clark [00:16:13]:
And the reason he planted the church is because if I wanna have impact, I gotta plant these Gospel center churches in all of these cities. So he plants a church in Philippi and Thessalonica and Rome and all of these cities. And Corinth was a major influential city because he said, if I want to change the world, then I got to plant these churches in places where people are, where there's education and media and influence in these cities so that I can reach. And this was the same thing. When we started Village Church. It was the inspiration of the Apostle Paul that there was strategy. My heart was to reach a nation. My heart was to see people transformed, to change politics, to change education, to change media.
Mark Clark [00:16:53]:
How are you going to do that? Go out and protest at the law courts? Write law books yourself? Go out and hope that you can change media yourself? No, no, no. It's that you reach lawyers and doctors and nurses and teachers and students, and they go on. It's a long game. It's the next 10 or 20 or 30 years of how we can impact Canada because you, as a lawyer or a doctor or a nurse or a student, have been changed by the reality of Jesus Christ. And so it changes what you do. It changes how you think. It changes how you do your job. And then these spheres of life start to actually get transformed.
Mark Clark [00:17:27]:
See, there's people who come to me and they say, why don't you speak out on this issue? Why don't you get, you know, speak out on this and speak out on that? Listen, my job, like the Apostle Paul, isn't to just speak out on issue after issue. It's to take people in every sphere of life. Maybe you're in education, maybe you're in politics. Maybe you're in media. Maybe you're in the arts. Maybe whatever you are, you're a business owner, you're a student. The reality is, my job is to get you to meet Jesus. And then you're gonna take that and let it change everything about the way you do life and the way you do politics and the way you do media and all of it.
Mark Clark [00:18:03]:
And this is what the Apostle Paul did, and this is what drove us. We're like, let's plan a church to reach our nation and change people. And so we had every problem that he had, right when we started our church, we had financial problem our first year, our budget. This was in 2010. We started our church eight years ago, for those of you new, 16 people in my house. And it was financial problems. Our budget was $50,000. Didn't know what to do.
Mark Clark [00:18:24]:
We had demonic problems. We've had people, parents. As we were trying to launch our church, out of the 16 of us there, three of our parents died in the nine months that we gathered in order to launch our church. My stepdad passed away. Two other moms passed away in the core launch team. And you start to go, my gosh, is this worth it? And then you begin to see, eight years later, the thousands of people that have come, that come to our church, the people who've come to know Jesus, the fact that we're, you know, thousands of people across four sites and two provinces, about to be five sites. The people's lives have been changed. The marriages, the addictions, the kids that are.
Mark Clark [00:19:03]:
And you start to go, it's worth it, because it's eternity versus the temporal. And the Apostle Paul starts this church, and he says, I want to reach people. I want to use technology. I want to actually have people come to know Jesus. And so he writes a letter that's his technology at the time, just like us, we use technology. We use video. Those of you who are new to the church, we have video sermons. That's how you engage with the material.
Mark Clark [00:19:28]:
All right? With the sermons, they're video. Because we want to try to leverage the moment that we have. I was sitting with a senator this week who was. I sat down for lunch with someone, and he came and joined us. 81 years old, used to be in Brian Mulroney's cabinet. And he looked at me and he said, okay, you're young and you're whatever, but what happens when. Of course, everybody loves to ask this question, which freaks me out all the time, right? What happens when you get hit by a bus? I'm like, I don't take buses. I walk around in a bubble suit so that everyone's chill.
Mark Clark [00:19:57]:
But the reality is, I said, man, we're raising up people, raising up leaders, whatever. But the reality is, I'm not gonna bury the heart and message and passion that Jesus has given me, because he's gonna ask me at the end of the day, what did I do with the 15 minutes that I had? And so we're gonna try to leverage technology the way the Apostle Paul did in order to reach as many people as possible with the time that God has given to us. He's like, man, I'm in. The reality is this. You and I are part of a movement that wants to plant churches and reach people for Jesus. Because when Paul planted this church in Corinth, it wasn't so a bunch of Christians could sit around. It was so that those Christians could actually get on mission and reach people who didn't know him yet. Which is why day, you know, in year two, when we got up and everyone's like, we have to go to two services.
Mark Clark [00:20:42]:
It's too packed in here. Everyone's like, no, we shouldn't do it, because I'm Miss. My friend Jody. It was like, no, we are going to plant two churches because we didn't start a church for you to have more friends. We started a church because every day people die and go to hell, and we want to reach them. So we're going to two services. If you want to go to some other church, go ahead. We grew by 50 people in a week just by going to.
Mark Clark [00:21:00]:
Well, the person who challenged me left. So 49 people in a week. All right? We grew by just by doing that. It's called extension. It's called, let's not just be localized. Let's actually extend out. This is what the Apostle Paul did. This was his driving heart.
Mark Clark [00:21:13]:
This is why he planted in Corinth, spent 18 months there, and then he moved on. This, I connect with this because he wasn't a great pastor. He probably yelled too much and had a short fuse at times. But this is why you all have local pastors. Surrey, Langley, North Langley, South Calgary. Of pastors who are, love you, Shepherd. You care for your families. That's what they're there for.
Mark Clark [00:21:34]:
Not so much me. Don't get mad at me if I don't know your name. Like the lady who sat in the foyer one day and said, standing beside her husband, hey, Pastor Mark, what's my name? And I'm like, oh, man, I forget some of my kids names half the time. I'm like, sarah. Cause that's pretty, you know, for a white girl, you know, your name's Sarah or Aaron or Lisa. All right, so I'm like, so I like Sarah. And then she's like, mm, mm. And then her husband's like, he goes to talk and she's like, no, don't tell him.
Mark Clark [00:22:10]:
And I sat there and I'm like, am I supposed to go down the list of white girl names right now? I don't know what I'm supposed to do in this moment. So it was awkward for about five minutes and then they walked away and they never told me. I'm serious. I'm like, God, listen, man, I'm not gonna be able to slide down the fire pole every time you have a problem. Know everybody's name, know everything about you. That's why we have these local pastors who love you and care for you and develop you as leaders and so on. Like, the AAPostle Paul spent 18 months in a place, raised up leaders, and then left to go plant the next thing. That's kind of the apostolic network leader call of what he does.
Mark Clark [00:22:45]:
And so he plants this church in order to reach people, as many people as. And so here's what he said. Paul. Okay, stop right there. That's verse one word, one, Paul. Okay, so here's Paul and he says, let me start the masterclass by introducing the instructor. And he says, I'm Paul. Now, some of you, if you're new to church, you might be like, oh, you know, the writer of the Bible.
Mark Clark [00:23:08]:
He must be a really, like saint guy. He must be a Christian his whole life. You know, grew up in the choir, just a really good guy, nice guy. But the reality is you don't know the apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul was a disaster. He was a very Religious guy, very smart. People say that he would have been famous even if he didn't write the Bible. He was so smart, philosophically, with a writing skill.
Mark Clark [00:23:30]:
He was versed in Hebrew and Gentile culture, in pagan culture, which is why God called him to be a Jewish apostle to the Gentiles, to take a Jewish message to the Gentiles that he saw in the person, in the work of Jesus Christ. This was the fulfillment of Israel's story. But now I'm gonna go tell Gentiles about it. And so he was so smart, he did that. But the reality was he was a Shamite Pharisee who actually had. Was so zealous. But zeal to a Shamite Pharisee was through a knife. And he was actually a terrorist.
Mark Clark [00:23:59]:
He oversaw the killing of the first Christian, Stephen. In Acts, chapter eight, they laid their cloaks at the feet of a man named Saul, who's Paul. The reality is the Apostle Paul was a murderer. So some of you, if you're sitting here right now, here's what you gotta take from that first word. Some of you sitting here think God could never use me because you don't know what I've done in the last year of my life. You don't know what I look at when nobody's looking. You don't know the disaster of what I think about. Listen, the Apostle Paul was a disaster.
Mark Clark [00:24:28]:
His life, he was a murderer. And yet God used him. Not because of him, but in spite of him. And you've got to be able to understand, no matter how bad you've been to this day, as you sit in that seat and listen to me, the reality is today is a new. Today's a new start. Tomorrow's a new start to what God can do in your life. Believe that people around you are not going to tell you that the Apostle Paul. You have murdered someone.
Mark Clark [00:24:55]:
Raise your hand across the sites if you've ever murdered anyone. All right, Cheapers. Okay, Ushers will chat later. You're already ahead of the Apostle Paul, man. You're already ahead of him. The reality is, I mean, you guys know my story. I don't need to sift through my story. But I didn't walk to church.
Mark Clark [00:25:16]:
I was 19. The drugs, the partying. I once stole money from my best friend's mom's purse. Same guy, I stole his girlfriend. A few months later, his mom. I stole money from her purse in order to buy drugs. I once smoked drugs, so laced with something and cheap, I thought I was gonna actually die. Totally bend out, went crazy.
Mark Clark [00:25:37]:
I come from a family where my father was a deadbeat father, left our family. His sister, my aunt, was a schizophrenic who took her own life. And that blood runs through my veins. And I think about it often when I think about the struggle with my own mental illness. Tourette syndrome, obsessive components, the habits, the things I've done, the things that I fight every day. I was talking to my buddy the other day, and he was reading a story, and he's like, boy, it'd be tough to ever deal with mental illness, eh? I mean, it's so nice that we don't know what that's like. And I'm like, are you serious? Do you even know me? And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're.
Mark Clark [00:26:12]:
You know, you're. I can't even tell with you. I'm like, yeah. Because I fight it every day to not be. You understand what my high school life was like growing up, I was a smoker. I used to stand outside my high school because I believe that if people were talking about bad things and I didn't do certain things, that those bad things would happen to me and my family. So I'd have to go down on my knees like this for that thing not to happen. Well, it got so obsessive.
Mark Clark [00:26:36]:
I'd be sitting out for a smoke. I'd be going down on my knees 10, 12 times in the conversation. I would grow up in Trump. I'd grow into these big wet patches from the snow. I'm like, hey, players. Hey, girls, do you like me? And they're like, hey, it's me, boy. All right? And so the reality is, you don't think that the things I deal with on a mental level, some days I sit there, listen. During our church plant stage, there's all these different habits that I collect through time.
Mark Clark [00:27:06]:
And during our church planting days, I remember there was so much stress and strain on my life. The habit that I was doing at the time is I would kiss the air like this. All right, okay. That's really not cool when you're planting a church. And so we would gather the 16 people in our house, I'd be like, hey, we're gonna storm the gates of hell, all right? We're gonna. We're gonna reach people for Jesus, all right? We're gonna take the Bible and we're gonna slay it for the. All right? And everyone just staring at me like, this guy is mental. What is wrong with him, right? There's moments where I'm like, why aren't I just still a cashier at Michael's? It'd just be so much easier with my stupid things that I do.
Mark Clark [00:27:46]:
All right? I should just be. I was a church janitor for three years. That's a good job for me because the toilet doesn't care what habits I have. But when I gotta get up here and twitch around and do whatever, listen, I begin to think, oh, my goodness. And then I begin to realize, if you have been affected at all in a positive way because of anything I've ever said ever, it's not because of me, but in spite of me. Paul the murderer. And some of you don't even know what is locked inside of you in regard to potential. You have no idea.
Mark Clark [00:28:26]:
And this series is gonna go. Try it. You have no idea what could happen. Paul, he says, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. Called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus and our brother Sosthenes to the church of God that is in Corinth, verse 2. So he says, the church. Some of you, you're like, yeah, I don't want anything to do with church. Apostle Paul's this gives an invitation in two ways.
Mark Clark [00:28:59]:
First, it says you need to become something part of something way bigger than yourself. Because if all you do is follow you in isolation and solitary individualism, like Western culture will tell you, you will end up corrupt and you will end up in a bad place because you're your own God. That's the ultimate slavery. That's what Soren Kierkegaard said. There's people who say, oh, you follow the Bible, that's oppressive. No, no, I'll tell you what's oppressive. When you're a slave to your own feelings and nobody has authority to come in and challenge you at all. That's the ultimate slavery.
Mark Clark [00:29:24]:
You don't even know it, but you're just a slave to what you feel in a given moment. What Paul would say is, you become part of a church and the text now has authority over you. The Word behind the word, and the community around you now has authority over you. See, when I first came to church when I was 18, 19, I didn't want anything to do with the church because that was a community that could keep me accountable. That's what I didn't want because I was too cool for that. I'd spent two years just reading the Bible. I walked into church and it was all these people who judged me. All right? I was a chain smoker and so they would look at me and they would say, they walked up to Aaron and said, you cannot date him because he's not a Christian and you're gonna be unequally yoked.
Mark Clark [00:29:58]:
I hated that judgment. The fact that I loved Jesus, but I smoked made them judge me. The fact that I wouldn't hold hands across the aisle because I didn't want to touch another dude at that moment in my life and kind of get into it with them, all right? It wasn't my style as a 19 year old kid. People judge me. He's not godly enough. He's not actually a Christian. He's not this, he's not that. When the pastor, when I decided, when I felt a call to go into ministry in my life and the pastor called me into his office and he said, you will fail in ministry, but here's a Greek New Testament goodbye, you will never get a job in ministry.
Mark Clark [00:30:33]:
For all those reasons, I resented the church. I didn't want to be part of the church. But all those experiences were exactly what I needed because they kept me sharp, where I needed to be, what I needed to do. They pushed me, they inspired me. The reality is you need the church. Even if you're an atheist, you're an agnostic, you're a Buddhist, whatever religion you are, and you're exploring a masterclass for your life, the church comes in and challenges you and you don't get to just exist and believe whatever the heck you want to believe. The text goes, this is who God is. This is what salvation is.
Mark Clark [00:31:15]:
This is what family is. Now be challenged by it. See, in this masterclass, the reality is this. Paul is gonna come at you and he's gonna cut and it's gonna be like surgery. It's gonna bring life to you. It's not gonna kill you, but it's gonna hurt. So if you show up to church to be stroked, this is not the series for you. Because Paul's gonna go, forget your ego, man.
Mark Clark [00:31:40]:
Do you understand what God has for you? The church, the community? The ecclesia is the word. The called out people. These are the people who are gonna rub up against you and challenge you. Are you gonna get through it or are you gonna be one of those people? I haven't gone to church in 10 years because they're hypocrites and they judged me. You're weak. You follow a guy who died on a cross because the church was religion killed him. He go, you know what? I can be part of Israel right now.
Mark Clark [00:32:11]:
All right?
Mark Clark [00:32:11]:
There was that One leader who did a couple bad things. I'm out. Grow up. The church is the group of people who will rub up against you, challenge you, and change you if you let it. The second thing the church does that I needed and I didn't know that I needed when I was 20. Listen, if I hadn't had the church when my wife and I moved out here, 23 years old, we were just full of pee and vinegar and nothing could ever affect us. We didn't need anybody in our life. Listen, once we got church, community, what happened? Do you think I ever needed the church? Yeah, when my nine month pregnant wife got hit by a car.
Mark Clark [00:32:45]:
When the car actually hit into her stomach with my firstborn and we weren't sure whether the child actually died nine months pregnant. Walking across the street, a car hits her in the stomach. We go to a local guy, he's like, don't worry about it. Let's put in these, puts it under there. Oh, can't hear a heartbeat. I'm like, why are we doing this? He's like, you better go to a real hospital and get like a Doppler. I'm like, why did we stop here and do this thing? So we get down. You don't think I needed the church then? You don't think I needed the church when my wife has hit 6, 7, 8 surgeries since having our kids.
Mark Clark [00:33:16]:
The church shows up with meals for a month. The church loves the church supports. In your moment, you might think you don't need community. You might think you're an individual. Paul says the church becomes the place where there's actually love, family, they'll carry you. You're not an individual. You're not as strong as you think you are. And so Paul says, I'm called, Listen.
Mark Clark [00:33:49]:
Listen to these words. I'm called by the will of God. If you have a, if you have a Bible, underline that. By the will of God. You know what's beautiful about that? He's saying, here's what's not going to happen. Tony Robbins is wrong. Oprah's wrong, Rhonda Byrne is wrong. Eckhart Tolle is wrong.
Mark Clark [00:34:11]:
Here's what's going to happen in the universe. No matter how much you think positively and speak positively, the will of God's going to get done, not your will. If you're in control of the universe by your words, I'm terrified. Cause you're a disaster and your desires are narcissistic and self serving at every moment. The Apostle Paul says, you wanna know what's getting done. In my life, I was called to be an apostle not by my own will, but by the will of God. That's what he says. Because if it was my own will, I never would have called myself to this.
Mark Clark [00:34:49]:
Think about the amount of times you would choose pain, loss and suffering if it was up to you. But pain, loss and suffering is sometimes exactly what you need. Because the point of your life is not to become happy. It's to be conformed to the image of his son. That's the will of God for your life. You know that. Romans 8. And so the reality is this.
Mark Clark [00:35:09]:
How often would you choose the things that have actually shaped you into the person you are today? Rarely would you choose the things that actually hurt you, the things that cause you pain. But those are the things. See, God is so much smarter than you. On his worst day, he's so much smarter than you and what he's doing in life. I look back at my life and I am so glad the will of God was getting done versus my own will. Because over and over I think about my parents divorce when my mom and dad divorce when I'm 8 or 9 years old. I would never choose that in my life. But it's the only reason that I end up at summer camp at 10 years old and hear the message of the gospel for the first time.
Mark Clark [00:35:48]:
And it roots a seed in my heart. So that when I'm 17, 18 years old, and Chris Watt walks into woodworking class, something about me recognizes this. That divorce, if they don't get divorced and I don't go to summer camp, I don't end up if in school, I don't end up taking guitar class because I didn't want to take any other course. And the only course left was guitar. And my mom's like, don't take guitar. That's crazy. I'm like, sounds easy. And I end up sitting beside a guy named Rob.
Mark Clark [00:36:17]:
And Rob invites me to Bayfair Baptist Church over and over and over again. And finally I go and I show up to Bayfair and I meet Aaron and I meet Brad, and I meet Brad, and I get my wife out of the deal. And I get Brad and Brad telling me that I'm going the wrong direction in my life and I need to go to Bible college. And I said, that's ridiculous. And they said, you gotta go to Bible college. So without walking into woodworking class, I don't end up at Bayfair. I don't end up at Bible college. I don't End up moving to Vancouver in order to get a master's degree so that I can go to England.
Mark Clark [00:36:50]:
I don't do that. I don't end up planting village church in 2010. And none of you are sitting here. And any good that's happened at all in your life through Village Church in the Middle ministry here doesn't even exist in your life. Unless my parents get divorced when I'm eight. You understand that, thank God, he's in charge. That out of loss and devastation comes redemption and transformation and change and apostleship. And you begin to think back to your life.
Mark Clark [00:37:25]:
And on your deathbed, you're gonna look back and go, man, I know that. I thought that even in my salvation, I was choosing God. I get to choose Jesus. I gotta choose him. And on your deathbed, the veil will be pulled back. You go, my gosh, he was hunting me down the whole time. That experience was to set up. This was to set up.
Mark Clark [00:37:45]:
This, was to set up this. Because the reality in the universe is the will of God is the thing that's getting done. Will. And one person likes it. Listen, he ends the verse like this. I'm an apostle. Of what? Christ Jesus. Listen, this might be your first week and maybe your last at this point.
Mark Clark [00:38:12]:
Cause you're like, oh, I thought this was gonna feel nice. Feels like I'm getting cut open. I don't know whose voice that is. But anyways, listen, he's laying out for you the most important thing. And so if this is your last week, I want you to hear this most important thing. All of this hovers around the person and the work of Christ Jesus. That's his point. He is the definitive event and person in all of history.
Mark Clark [00:38:42]:
And you need to decide what to do with him. And let me tell you something. A lot of you sitting here, if you're new, might go, you know, it's great. I've heard about Jesus. He lived a. There was sin. Humankind was made in the image of God. Sin came in Israel was established.
Mark Clark [00:38:57]:
Jesus comes as a fulfillment of their story, dies on a cross, gets the sin mounted up on him, is a substitute in your place, rises from death to give you life. I've heard that. I understand that conceptually, but. But. And that's good that you believe that. And that's true for you. But what's true for me is to not believe any of that. To believe this, to believe this, to believe that, and everybody's fine, and we're both right.
Mark Clark [00:39:18]:
And the reality is that is. Let me tell you something. Something that your friends won't tell you and your family won't tell you. If you take that approach to the massive questions of life, if you take the approach that you're right and he's right and everybody's right, I'll tell you what your family, your friends don't want to tell you. You're wrong. You're dead wrong. It's not even logically possible that both you're right and Christianity is right. We could both be wrong, but there's no way we're both right.
Mark Clark [00:39:47]:
Not possible. Metaphysical pluralism is not a thing we cannot. And some of you look and you go, yeah, but you know the reason I reject Christianity, then fine, I understand. I gotta make a decision about what I'm gonna do with this Christ Jesus person that he's putting forward. But the reality is, I look at the Christians around me and all they do is just believe a bunch of stuff. But their life doesn't actually live it out. They don't act Christian, they just think Christian. Ergo, I don't really think I need it.
Mark Clark [00:40:12]:
And here's what I would say to you. Look at me for a second. Here's what I would say to you. Ignore their life, ignore their failures, because they are a product of, of what secularism has done to Christianity. Secularism didn't kill Christianity. No, no, no. Here's what secularism did. It privatized, made it so that it's a sphere of Christians lives versus the thing that overthrows their whole life.
Mark Clark [00:40:46]:
It means they do sex like this, money like this, family like this, work like this. And then they do Christianity over here and it kills everything that Christianity is. Because Christianity is meant to be total truth, as Francis Schaeffer said, over top of all those spheres of life. And what you're looking at is a pseudo Christian who hasn't figured that out yet. Do not look to Christians to figure out Christianity. Look to Jesus. That's what Apostle Paul is saying to you. Look to Christ Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:41:18]:
That's the one I'm an apostle of. And he is perfect in every way and will never let you down, will teach you, will take away your shame and your guilt and the awfulness of your life. Now here's the challenge, and I'll close with this. Some of you, you will reject Christianity and reject what the Apostle Paul's laying out in this masterclass right off the bat in the first verse because you have way too much to lose, which is simply cowardice. You don't wanna go down the rabbit hole to figure out whether maybe you're living in the matrix and there's some pill, you know, masterclass like, hey, you wanna take this? Or just live in the comfort of your situation? And some of you are like, I'd just rather live in the comfort of my situation. Cause I know if I go down the rabbit hole and find out that Jesus Christ is real, then he now overtakes everything about my life, which is scary. Cause it means my money, my sex life. Forget that.
Mark Clark [00:42:10]:
I'd rather stay in the comfort of the my situation right now. And that's cowardice. Be very careful to not hold on to things that cause you not to understand truth. Because when you take the approach that that's good for you, but what I believe is good for me, the casualty is truth. The only thing you're doing is you're trading out truth for comfort. And that's a very dangerous place to be. And so the first idea of the masterclass is, do you actually have the courage to enter into the the of rest rabbit hole and go down as far as it'll go to see where this takes you in regard to business and philosophy and God, or do you want to walk away?