Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
All right, Ephesians chapter three. We are going to do our best to finish up the entire chapter, wrap it up so that post sex, God and gardening, we can start into Ephesians chapter four. And so we're going to be at the end of this sermon, halfway through the book of Ephesians. Let's give it up for me.
Mark Clark [00:00:20]:
Yeah.
Mark Clark [00:00:23]:
All right. So we're doing our best. We're 36 weeks in into this. All right, 36 weeks into the book of Ephesians, and we're gonna hit chapter three. I almost didn't finish the chapter. All right. At the nine.
Mark Clark [00:00:35]:
And then everyone's like. So we had to push through and get there.
Mark Clark [00:00:38]:
So we'll see what happens. All right, pick it up in verse 19. Here we go. And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. So here's what we need to do. We need to sit on this theme that we've talked about the last two weeks. We need a little bit more discussion of it before we put a bow on it. It's the theme of the love of Christ.
Mark Clark [00:00:56]:
Some of you, you hear that language and it's too soft, it's too easy. That God loves you, all right, no matter who you are, no matter what you've done. The love of Christ, verse 19. That you would know it. All right? Now, we talked about this last week, that it's not the idea of you loving God. It's not the idea of you loving other people. Those things are all very important. It's.
Mark Clark [00:01:20]:
It's the idea of God loving you. And we talked about the basis of his love for you is not because you're cute. It's not because you're good. It's not because you do all these kind of things in the marketplace of religious ideas. That's what will constantly be preached at you. That if you're a really good person, it's like courting and dating, then God will love you. So if you say your prayers and you do a pilgrimage and you go deep inside of yourself, then you and God can talk. That is not the gospel.
Mark Clark [00:01:48]:
It's that you were sinful when Christ came and died for you. It's that you were running away from God and God came and he did this thing in Jesus Christ for you when you weren't beautiful, when you weren't perfect. And so this idea of the love of God is not necessarily that you're a good person. See, this is how we kind of function in our marriage, relationships, in our friendships. If the person isn't Giving back to me, I stop loving them. It's the way that your boss looks at you. If you're not producing, I stop loving you. Right? That's how we tend to think about love.
Mark Clark [00:02:19]:
But the Bible's going, no, no, that's not the way it works. See, in Greek, thought there was four different kinds of love. I did Greek for three years at college, so I need to use it
Mark Clark [00:02:29]:
once in a while.
Mark Clark [00:02:30]:
All right, so here's the deal. Four different Greek words for love. The first one is storge, it means affection, alright? Meaning I could like you, I have affection towards you, you're an interesting person, all right? The second one is phileo, that's friendship, love, all right, so Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, all right? Where you like somebody, your brothers, you hang out, you play squash a lot together.
Mark Clark [00:02:53]:
I don't know if anyone plays squash
Mark Clark [00:02:54]:
anymore, but you do those things together. You play chess, you play cards, you hang out, you watch movies, all right? That's phileo. That's kind of this friendship kind of love that you have. And then there's Eros, alright, which is erotic love, all right? It's the lust kind of love where,
Mark Clark [00:03:08]:
oh, that guy's hot, all right.
Mark Clark [00:03:09]:
Oh, that girl's hot, all right? It's this kind of erotic love that you have. And then there's agape. And that's what Paul uses here. It's a deeper kind of love. It's a covenantal love. It's not conditional on how you act and how you perform. It's like marriage love, where even if you don't perform for me day in and day out, I'm still gonna love you. It's the way that your dog loves you, all right? You could forget your dog out in the rain for a week and he'd still come in, lick you up, all right? You give him a little food and he's good to go.
Mark Clark [00:03:39]:
So the idea of unconditional non consumeristic love, and we understand that in our human experience it is actually hard to love people like this because we tend to want to love people for what they can give us. We tend to have a consumeristic version of love. And Paul is challenging that whole idea because that's the whole way that Ephesus, the city of Ephesus as this pagan city in Asia Minor function. And the Roman Empire pumped these ideas just like me. And you get pumped through media and through billboards that you love people based on how they perform for you. And the Roman Empire was the same. Caesar was Lord Caesar Provided peace. Caesar provided salvation.
Mark Clark [00:04:21]:
Caesar loved you. If you loved Caesar back. And so you would go to the cheap flicks on Tuesday night and you would pinch incense to Caesar and you would say, caesar, Caesar is Lord. And all the way through, Paul is going, don't think like that. Jesus is Lord and therefore Caesar is not. Jesus loves you not based on what you can produce for him, but because he is by definition, love. He came and did for you when you could do nothing for him. And it's extremely difficult in human relations to love like that.
Mark Clark [00:04:50]:
I'm not like that, all right? Jesus has to do something supernatural to love people like that. Because you and I, there was this. I did young adult ministry for six years at the church that I worked at before we planted village. And young adults are awesome, all right? I love you guys, but sometimes they're very hard to love, all right? Sometimes you're just. You're unlovable, all right? Because there's this guy, and he used to come to church and love God and want to worship God and grow deeper. And so I'd spend time with him, discipling him and loving him, teaching him the scriptures and how to live and how to think. And then I would get a phone call.
Mark Clark [00:05:24]:
Hey, man, I'm totally hammered. Can you pick me up at my buddy's house? I'm like, dude, it's 11 o' clock in the morning.
Mark Clark [00:05:32]:
Are you just waking up?
Mark Clark [00:05:34]:
Yeah, man. All right? I woke up early today, all right?
Mark Clark [00:05:38]:
So I would go to the house and I'd walk in and there was all these people just scattered all over the place, hammered, drunk, all right? There was dishes piled up in this sink, all right? There was. Bathroom was disgusting, all these people. And so take them, you know, throw them in the shower, bring him out for breakfast, sit him down, beat him for the cause of Christ, all right? And then say, clean up your life. He'd say, I'm there, baby. I'm there.
Mark Clark [00:06:03]:
I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna change my life.
Mark Clark [00:06:05]:
All right? And two weeks later, man, he was up there.
Mark Clark [00:06:07]:
He was worshiping the Lord Jesus on high.
Mark Clark [00:06:09]:
Got the hands up, you know, a
Mark Clark [00:06:11]:
week later, hey, man, scorning if you come pick me up.
Mark Clark [00:06:14]:
What? You're dumb, all right? I'm so sick of this. And so you kind of with me. You get one shot, all right? And then it's like, man, you're dumb. Suck it up. Moving on. But Jesus continued to pursue this kid, continued to love him, continued to pour out grace on him. See, this is how we tend to function right.
Mark Clark [00:06:35]:
You made one mistake. What? You're divorced and remarried.
Mark Clark [00:06:38]:
I'm writing you off because the Bible says,
Mark Clark [00:06:42]:
oh, man, you got pregnant before you're married. I'm not talking with you. And what we forget is, this was us. See, if you've been a Christian a long time, you tend to forget that, man. But by the grace of God, that. That's where you're walking. When did Jesus die?
Mark Clark [00:07:05]:
When you cleaned up your life, you
Mark Clark [00:07:06]:
were perfect for him. He came and he died when you were his enemy.
Mark Clark [00:07:10]:
His enemy. That's your posture right now, sitting in your seat. If you don't know Jesus, you're not his friend, you're his enemy.
Mark Clark [00:07:20]:
That's what Romans 5 says. And so this love of Christ that he shows you is an amazing thing because the reality is you don't actually deserve it. Now, how do we experience the love of God? There's all kinds of ways the Bible talks about the love of God for us. There's one particular way that Paul's concerned with. If you flip over to chapter five. I touched on this last week, but I gotta just mete it out a little bit more this morning. Cause here's the problem. You begin to so understand, all right? Modern Christianity will so preach at you
Mark Clark [00:07:54]:
the love of God. The love of God.
Mark Clark [00:07:56]:
The love of Christ. The love of Christ, that you start to get that into your bones.
Mark Clark [00:07:59]:
And then what happens is you so
Mark Clark [00:08:02]:
understand the love of God and that
Mark Clark [00:08:04]:
you actually start to abuse the love of God. And grace becomes cheap for you because you think that, hey, God's just happy to have me on his team so I can function. Listen, historically, this is never how the Bible talked about love or grace. But I can just do whatever I want and God will be happy with me because I so. God so loves me, I can just do it. And so there's this discipleship, gets sucked out of your life. This actually caring about righteousness and godliness and holiness gets sucked out of your life because you so understand the doctrine of the love of God. And so Paul cuts in on you.
Mark Clark [00:08:41]:
And in chapter five, he says, verse 24. Now, as the church submits to Christ, verse 23, as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. Now, as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Oops. Okay, so we'll talk about that one, all right, in the next series, all right, we'll talk about that one in the sex. In the sex day, all right? Sex day.
Mark Clark [00:09:04]:
That's not the good word for it right there.
Mark Clark [00:09:08]:
The sex week. We'll talk about that. But this idea that Christ is the head, all right, that Christ loves you as leader, and one of the hardest things that we struggle with in our life is to submit to Christ. That's the point. Our culture has an extremely difficult time submitting to anything. We tend to come at this and redefine everything. So right now, we're in the midst of redefining marriage, redefining love, redefining every kind of aspect of our life. And the reason is, it's not because we're more sinful than we used to be.
Mark Clark [00:09:45]:
It's not because our culture has become more secularized than it used to be or more evil. It's.
Mark Clark [00:09:50]:
It's because people find it difficult to submit to Christ.
Mark Clark [00:09:55]:
Submit to the Scriptures, as the Scriptures say. This is the way to do life. All right, how do I come under the text and let it define what marriage is for me rather than taking a poll? That is an extremely difficult thing. So what we tend to do is let's poll the culture. The culture will tell us what it thinks is right and wrong, and then we'll put that into place as if that's the best way to figure it out. All right? Because if that is the best way to figure it out, let's go back 50 years and go down to the south and do a poll about black people. And what they will say is, black people are slaves.
Mark Clark [00:10:34]:
You don't love Jesus, I'll stab you.
Mark Clark [00:10:36]:
All right? That tends to be all right. You tend to. All right, let's go to Afghanistan and ask them, all right, what they think about women in education. And then let's poll the culture, figure out what everybody thinks. And then let's say that's right and wrong, and that's the way to define it. And what the text saying. What does it look like to submit yourself to the Scriptures? What does it mean to submit yourself to Christ in the way that you think and act and function in such a way that you go, wait a
Mark Clark [00:11:03]:
minute, he gets to be the boss. He gets to set the tone.
Mark Clark [00:11:06]:
He gets to say, and so now
Mark Clark [00:11:08]:
we begin to function in life.
Mark Clark [00:11:09]:
And that becomes actually a really difficult challenge. And if you flip over in your Bible, go back a few books to Luke chapter five.
Mark Clark [00:11:16]:
If you're not familiar with your Bible, it's just back a few books.
Mark Clark [00:11:19]:
Luke, chapter five. There's this great story that challenges us in the way that we actually relate to Jesus as boss, as Lord, rather
Mark Clark [00:11:28]:
Than as friend, all right?
Mark Clark [00:11:31]:
Jesus comes and it's interesting cause culturally a rabbi would never choose students. All right? At that time, pupils chose a rabbi. They said, I want to sit under a particular rabbi. I want to get close to that rabbi. I want to. They used to say, I want to wear the dust of that particular rabbi. I want him to wear off on me. And so it's very authoritative for Jesus to come in and flip that and say, I'm not going to let you choose me.
Mark Clark [00:11:59]:
I'm going to go and choose you. I'm going to call you away from your tax booth, call you away from sin, call you away from the idols of your life and call you to follow me. The question is, are you going to be able to. So there's this interesting story of Peter. Pick it up in verse one of Luke 5. On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, these people were pining for it. He was standing by the lake of Gennesaret and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, I love that.
Mark Clark [00:12:32]:
All right?
Mark Clark [00:12:33]:
So Peter comes over here, he's washing his nets and Jesus just jumps into his boat.
Mark Clark [00:12:36]:
He goes, all right, let me hijack this thing.
Mark Clark [00:12:39]:
Jumps into his boat, which was Simon's. He asked him to put it out a little from the land, all right, Push me out. The people are cramping my style. Just let's push out into the water. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. Culturally speaking, this is such an image of the lordship of Jesus. Culturally speaking, when you were a rabbi, a preacher, a teacher, you, you would sit and everybody else would stand, all right? That's the way I wish it still was, to be honest with you, all right? Because then I wouldn't have to look out at your faces going,
Mark Clark [00:13:10]:
all right?
Mark Clark [00:13:13]:
And he. So it says this. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. And Simon answered, master, we toiled all night and took nothing. Hey, here's what I want you to do. I want you to do this with your life.
Mark Clark [00:13:29]:
Jesus, let's get into an argument, all right? I've toiled all night, all right? Don't you know anything?
Mark Clark [00:13:35]:
Hey, I want you to move your
Mark Clark [00:13:37]:
whole family to Saudi Arabia, alright, and become a missionary there. Jesus, don't you understand? How about I, instead of that, help out of the worship team, all right? And then the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit say, pull it together. All right? We told him to go to Saudi Arabia, but he's offered the worship team. What do you think? Yeah, that sounds good to me. I mean, but you said it was Saudi Arabia. I know, but he offered. Okay, let's do that. All right?
Mark Clark [00:14:02]:
Let's cut a deal, because we're all
Mark Clark [00:14:04]:
equals here, all right?
Mark Clark [00:14:06]:
That's not the way this works. So Peter starts arguing with Jesus, like
Mark Clark [00:14:10]:
each of us have, and he goes,
Mark Clark [00:14:12]:
all right, but as your word, at your word, I will let down the nets.
Mark Clark [00:14:16]:
All right? I don't think anything's going to happen, but okay. And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and
Mark Clark [00:14:23]:
their nets were breaking.
Mark Clark [00:14:25]:
They signaled to their partners. I love this. They have business partners in their other boat to come and help them. And they came in and filled both the boats so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he
Mark Clark [00:14:37]:
fell down at Jesus knees, saying, depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of
Mark Clark [00:14:48]:
fish that they had taken. And so also were James and John, son of Zebedee. They were fishermen who were partners with Simon. They have a business partnership. And Jesus said to Simon, do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching men.
Mark Clark [00:15:02]:
And when they had brought their boats
Mark Clark [00:15:04]:
to land, they left everything and followed him. See, there's a couple ways you can read the story. You could read it like, you know,
Mark Clark [00:15:11]:
Peter came to a part where he
Mark Clark [00:15:12]:
said, hey, I'm so sinful. He went down as he said, depart from me. All right, I'm so sinful. You're so holy. And that's part of it, but I think part of it is this. This was Peter's livelihood. He was a fisherman. This is how he made money.
Mark Clark [00:15:26]:
And when those nets got filled up, here's what he began to think about. I just hit the lottery. I am going to recruit Jesus. He just made me a whole bunch of money. Wait till Deborah, my wife, finds out about this. That new boat we've been looking at, man, Jesus is going to pour down these gifts, and we're going to be that rv. Oh, it's going to be good. Business is about to get good for me.
Mark Clark [00:16:04]:
And then he realizes, wait a minute. Jesus isn't the guy who comes into our life to fill our boats up with fish. Jesus is the guy who says, hey, leave the fish, leave the security, leave the family. Leave everything that is comforting to you and follow me. I'm not here, all right, to make your business better.
Mark Clark [00:16:29]:
We're not partners. And so Peter comes to a place where he goes, oh, my goodness.
Mark Clark [00:16:34]:
Here's what's going to have to happen in this clash of kingdoms. One of two things.
Mark Clark [00:16:39]:
Either I am going to have to
Mark Clark [00:16:41]:
leave everything, or Jesus is going to have to leave me. Depart from me. And don't take all my stuff. Don't take all my security. And see, this is what happens to us. Jesus dies. Even though he trained up Peter for three years, he comes back from the dead, and where does he find Peter? What's Peter doing fishing? John 21. Jesus walks along the beach, and Peter's out fishing again.
Mark Clark [00:17:09]:
What are you doing?
Mark Clark [00:17:11]:
I went back to the familiar.
Mark Clark [00:17:13]:
I went back to what I know. I went back to what is easy. I went back to the security. Get out of there. Do you love my sheep? Go and feed them. Feed my lambs.
Mark Clark [00:17:24]:
Feed my sheep.
Mark Clark [00:17:24]:
I'm calling you away from all of
Mark Clark [00:17:26]:
the comfort, all of the ease, all of the security. And I'm calling you to follow me. Jesus is the leader. Jesus is the boss. All right, back over. Ephesians 19. To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, meaning this. Listen, here's what you gotta hear, because you're a West coast, very educated culture, all right? If I was preaching this to a different culture, I probably wouldn't come as hard in on this.
Mark Clark [00:17:53]:
But here's what Paul's trying to say. All of you, you got your degrees,
Mark Clark [00:17:56]:
you got your education, all right?
Mark Clark [00:17:57]:
Some of you went to private school. I went to public school. I can still read, which is awesome.
Mark Clark [00:18:03]:
But some of you, you're very educated. In the Western world since the Enlightenment, we believe that knowledge is the solution
Mark Clark [00:18:10]:
to all of our problems. So if we can just find the solution, if we can do more scientific
Mark Clark [00:18:13]:
inquiry, if we can do more archaeological
Mark Clark [00:18:15]:
inquiry, if we can do these things, we will solve all of our problems. And obviously, it's not working, as we
Mark Clark [00:18:22]:
try to heal ourself, solve all the issues of the world by what we know. So if I could just study more. If we can. But here's the thing that Paul is saying.
Mark Clark [00:18:31]:
You are so small, you think you know so much that you put God on trial. But the reality of God surpasses your knowledge.
Mark Clark [00:18:42]:
You will never attain enough knowledge to be smarter than him. He. He is smarter than you, bigger than you, vaster than you on your best day and on his worst day. But we tend to come at this and go, hey, man, God's So antiquated. He's so old, right? So the Pope, right?
Mark Clark [00:19:01]:
New Pope.
Mark Clark [00:19:01]:
Couple weeks ago, you turn on the news, everybody was talking about how old the church is, how outdated the church is. Oh, the Pope. Can you believe he doesn't believe in abortion? He doesn't even believe in same sex marriage? He, he. My goodness, the Pope is Catholic. Holy smokes. Hold the phone, Piers Morgan. The Pope is Catholic. You mean the Pope doesn't get to hang with you? God is so old.
Mark Clark [00:19:29]:
God is so outdated. He's like that kid who's got the high top Reeboks and the tie dyed shirt and he doesn't fit in. He just wants to fit in. He wants to be cool,
Mark Clark [00:19:42]:
don't you know? And Paul's going, what are you putting God on trial for?
Mark Clark [00:19:48]:
You think you're smarter than him? You think you're morally superior to what
Mark Clark [00:19:51]:
he laid down here?
Mark Clark [00:19:53]:
Do you understand that we just got
Mark Clark [00:19:54]:
to the moon 50 years ago? Do you know that until 2001 there
Mark Clark [00:20:02]:
was a flat earth society? That's how dumb we are. There were people. Listen, we've been to space, we've taken video and people actually still think the earth is.
Mark Clark [00:20:25]:
There are people in this room or your grandparents who fought in a war against a guy who killed 6 million people for being Jewish. Historically, that was two seconds ago. The most educated, pompous culture on the planet. Education isn't going to solve us. Paul's saying he surpasses knowledge. How are we ever going to get to know him? How are you ever going to get to know somebody who surpasses knowledge? You get to know him by going. Even though mathematically grace doesn't make sense, I trust in it. And I believe even though the idea of a God dying for my sin and rising from the dead doesn't make any sense rationally at times.
Mark Clark [00:21:23]:
And we're going to explore why historically it does actually make a lot of sense over the next Friday and Sunday. Even though, man, this kind of grates against how I would think about this. I trust in this. Even though it surpasses knowledge. See, here's what he's trying to say. He's trying to say the gospel is so deep that you can never get to the end of its application for your life. Like some of you come at the gospel, the message of Christianity, where God came and lived a perfect life and
Mark Clark [00:21:54]:
died for you and Rose again.
Mark Clark [00:21:54]:
You think, well, well that's just a
Mark Clark [00:21:56]:
story about how I can go to
Mark Clark [00:21:57]:
heaven when I die. And Paul's going, man, this applies to everything. This applies to your money. This applies to your relationships.
Mark Clark [00:22:04]:
This applies to every walk of life. It's not the ABCs of Christianity, as
Mark Clark [00:22:09]:
Tim Keller talks about. It's the.
Mark Clark [00:22:10]:
A disease. Actually, the cross in the resurrection functions, if you come back to it. It applies to everything, all right? There are rape victims who come in and talk to me, and I only have the gospel, all right? Telling them to just, hey, perk up and try to forget about it doesn't work. It's. Listen that Jesus not only died for your sin, but he died for the sins that have been committed against you. Well, that's hopeful.
Mark Clark [00:22:35]:
There's.
Mark Clark [00:22:35]:
Every aspect of life has the cross. Some of you, you have parental strife, all right? You're in your 30s, your 40s, your parents and you. You haven't talked in a long time.
Mark Clark [00:22:51]:
There's a lot of you that I've
Mark Clark [00:22:52]:
spoken to where there's this strife familially in your family, where your parents kind of have cut you off and you don't really. Well, how do I deal with that? What does the gospel have to say to that? It's not just, hey, one day you're
Mark Clark [00:23:04]:
gonna die and go to heaven, so don't worry about it. You start going deep into what the cross and the resurrection is about. Listen, Jesus on the cross, what's going on? The Father pours sin on him and turns his face away. And in that moment, Jesus gets cut out of the family. See, every time in the Gospels, Jesus addresses God. He calls him Father. Father. Father.
Mark Clark [00:23:30]:
Father. Except once on the cross, he says, my God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Eloi. Eloi.
Mark Clark [00:23:42]:
God, I'm calling you God because in that moment, you're cut off from the family. And some of you are like man. But my identity is in my parents liking me. I met with somebody this week. She said, I come to know Jesus, but no one in my family buys in.
Mark Clark [00:23:58]:
They don't want me baptized. They don't even support this decision. If your identity is so wrapped up in that, then maybe you don't end up following Jesus. Or maybe the cross speaks to you and goes. You follow one who is kicked out of the family. See, that's how the cross applies to you. I remember being in. We took a trip, a family trip to Florida.
Mark Clark [00:24:29]:
It was myself and Erin and her brother and her sister and her parents. And we all went and we rented this house. This was a couple of years ago. And we all spent a week in Florida together. And there came a particular point in the weekend Where Erin's brother and her started to kind of grate up against each other. And then it kind of exploded in this moment. Some of you know this. All right, I just air my family business out, but all of you have been here.
Mark Clark [00:24:56]:
All right? So it kind of exploded. And so Aaron's dad said, okay, guys, it's time as a family that we all sit down and we have a
Mark Clark [00:25:05]:
meeting and hash all this stuff out,
Mark Clark [00:25:07]:
because there's all these feelings in the background, all these things that causes this to explode.
Mark Clark [00:25:12]:
And then we showed up to the
Mark Clark [00:25:14]:
meeting, and it was her brother and her sister and the spouses and me and Aaron. And her dad wasn't there.
Mark Clark [00:25:19]:
I was like, where'd he go?
Mark Clark [00:25:20]:
She said, oh. He said, we got to figure it out ourselves.
Mark Clark [00:25:22]:
I'm like, can I go with him? I want to go golfing.
Mark Clark [00:25:27]:
So we started to talk, and Aaron's
Mark Clark [00:25:30]:
like, what's your deal?
Mark Clark [00:25:31]:
Like, what do you have against me? And they started talking about these things.
Mark Clark [00:25:37]:
Fifteen years ago at our wedding, you
Mark Clark [00:25:39]:
didn't come and do your hair with us. Okay.
Mark Clark [00:25:48]:
When you were dating Mark.
Mark Clark [00:25:50]:
You mean in the 80s? Yeah. You didn't come out to visit us enough. This is why you exploded. That was 15 years ago. And then in this moment, I learned something very deep about the gospel, that Erin looked at her brother and she said, this is between you and God. My identity isn't in. Of course I make mistakes. Of course I've wronged you.
Mark Clark [00:26:25]:
But listen, my identity isn't in any of this stuff. My identity is in the death and
Mark Clark [00:26:30]:
resurrection, and my identity is in Jesus. I don't let this stuff affect me. Don't put your burden on me. I'm not going to wear this. I am not going to let you project this nonsense, me, and let it affect my identity.
Mark Clark [00:26:49]:
Of course I wronged you.
Mark Clark [00:26:51]:
Give it up.
Mark Clark [00:26:53]:
And some of you let people project on you. Some of you let people pile up garbage on you from the past.
Mark Clark [00:27:01]:
You did this. You said this.
Mark Clark [00:27:05]:
And the gospel goes, come to me, all you who are weary and. And heavy burdened from other people's stuff, and I will give you rest. See, your identity is so rooted in Jesus. See, this is where the surpassing worth. This is where this surpasses even knowledge
Mark Clark [00:27:25]:
at the idea that the gospel is
Mark Clark [00:27:27]:
about all of these different aspects of your life.
Mark Clark [00:27:30]:
It's about your money. It's about sex. It's about your relationship with people. It's about your family strife. The gospel, the hope, is not found in good advice. It's found in the good news of the cross and resurrection. And when you go deep, you begin
Mark Clark [00:27:44]:
realizing what God has provided for you. All right, into verse 20. Now, to him who is able to do. I love this.
Mark Clark [00:27:54]:
All right to do far more.
Mark Clark [00:27:57]:
Paul is saying, the God of Christianity is a doer, all right?
Mark Clark [00:28:02]:
Meaning he's not one of the ancient gods of old who just spoke from clouds and says, here's what I want you to say. Here's how I want you to behave. Here's what I want. The rules I want you to keep. He's not a New Age God where it's saying you gotta go inside of yourself and find your inner true beauty. All that stuff he's going, he does stuff. He's not disconnected. You gotta feel the hope of that.
Mark Clark [00:28:27]:
He's not apathetic towards you. He does. So I remember this. I got a phone call a couple
Mark Clark [00:28:34]:
years ago from a couple.
Mark Clark [00:28:36]:
They said, we need you to come
Mark Clark [00:28:37]:
to our house right now. And so I came. I showed up, I sat down, I said, what happened?
Mark Clark [00:28:41]:
She was sitting over here smoking like a chimney.
Mark Clark [00:28:43]:
He was sitting over here. And I said, what happened? She said, he hit me. And I said, what?
Mark Clark [00:28:47]:
You hit her?
Mark Clark [00:28:49]:
He said, I'm sorry, baby.
Mark Clark [00:28:50]:
I love you. I love you, I love you.
Mark Clark [00:28:51]:
And then I'll never forget what she said. She looked at me and she said, talk is cheap. I want you to do. I want you to show me. Here's the beautiful thing about the God that we see in Jesus Christ. He's not just a God. He says, live like this, do this, do this.
Mark Clark [00:29:11]:
I'm from a cloud, and I'm telling you, the God we see in Jesus
Mark Clark [00:29:16]:
Christ comes and actually does something about evil.
Mark Clark [00:29:18]:
He shows up, he rolls up his
Mark Clark [00:29:21]:
sleeves, comes down in the person of Jesus incarnates.
Mark Clark [00:29:25]:
Literally. The word is he took on meat, all right? Carne is the word, meat. He meated himself up, all right? Put on some meat. He came down, all right? Took on flesh, came down, walked among us, had friends just like you. And then he lost them to death. He lost one of his best friends, Lazarus, and he died. It's the only passage in the Bible. It's the shortest verse in the Bible.
Mark Clark [00:29:51]:
Says Jesus wept, Jesus felt pain. Why? Because he wanted to enter in. He wanted to fully come down. See, he's the God who does stuff.
Mark Clark [00:30:00]:
He's the God who works tirelessly for
Mark Clark [00:30:03]:
33 years and goes to the cross and dies for you.
Mark Clark [00:30:06]:
He does something about evil. He's the God who does. He's not the God. He's not the apathetic God. He's not the distant God. He's not the dead God of 1960s 70s philosophy. He's the God who rolls up his sleeves, gets involved and does stuff. And so when we're all struggling with evil, all right, we got to realize God is not involved.
Mark Clark [00:30:26]:
God is upholding the word, the world, the universe. By the word of his power. God is integrated into the system. And we say, oh, look at all the evil in the world. How do you know that God, because he's defined by love and so involved, isn't actually withholding 99.9% of evil? How do you know the universe? See, here's the problem. Philosophically, we all talk about the problem of evil. But if God is a doer, what about the philosophical problem of good? Meaning, why is the universe so good? Why is there music? Why is there art that connects to your soul? Why is there sex? Why are there all these beautiful, wonderful things? How do you know the universe couldn't be 100% more evil than it is?
Mark Clark [00:31:11]:
Because, see, the text is going, God's a doer.
Mark Clark [00:31:14]:
He does, he's involved. A few weeks ago we talked about
Mark Clark [00:31:19]:
one of my mentors, the lead pastor of South Delta, the church out of which we planted village that he lost his son. His son, 21 years old, died, wrong place, wrong time.
Mark Clark [00:31:30]:
And we look at that, we go,
Mark Clark [00:31:31]:
man, that's just messed up. What do the scriptures have to say
Mark Clark [00:31:35]:
to us about this?
Mark Clark [00:31:36]:
What do we do? And the scriptures go, look, I can't tell you what the reason is for that, but I can tell you what the reason isn't. It's not because he doesn't care. How do I know he does? How do I know he cares? Because he came in the person of Jesus. He rolled up his sleeves, he got involved. The God who moves, the God who flexes. See, that's why you need to bring him stuff. Cause he's the God who is all powerful and can move and give life when we ask him. Alright then Paul says this now to him who is able to do, to
Mark Clark [00:32:16]:
do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think everything you can bring him, he can do far more
Mark Clark [00:32:22]:
than that, according to the power at work within us.
Mark Clark [00:32:26]:
Here's what he's saying, that the power doesn't come from you, but it does come through you. How? He's talked about this for three chapters. It's Christ who dwells in you. It's the Holy Spirit coming, dropping on you and doing a powerful thing in You. This is how a Christian has power. They have power because the spirit, not your own spirit, but the spirit outside, God's spirit comes into you, fills you and gives you power. This is different than New Age philosophy. It's that through faith in Jesus, you get this power.
Mark Clark [00:32:56]:
And then you begin to look at Acts chapter 2. How did the early church function in power? The Spirit dropped on them. They started to function. And what did everybody say? Listen, everyone looked at them in Acts Chapter two and said, you guys are all drunk. And Peter's like, what are you talking about? It's only nine in the morning.
Mark Clark [00:33:14]:
We're not drunk. Why did they say that? Because they were rolling around on the ground, laughing, stumbling around into each other. No, because there'd been such a change in their life. There'd been such a transformation in their life that everyone went, are you hammered?
Mark Clark [00:33:33]:
See, this happened to me, right? Became a believer when I was 17.
Mark Clark [00:33:38]:
Had all these ways of functioning in
Mark Clark [00:33:40]:
the world, had ways of thinking about God and every little detail of life. And then Jesus saved me. And then I found myself a few
Mark Clark [00:33:48]:
weeks later, after sitting, reading the scriptures, figuring out how to think about these
Mark Clark [00:33:51]:
things, standing in a garage with 40 of my friends on a Friday night
Mark Clark [00:33:55]:
and then pounding me with cool.
Mark Clark [00:33:56]:
What about this? What about that?
Mark Clark [00:33:58]:
What about faith?
Mark Clark [00:33:58]:
What about God? What about heaven? What about hell? And there I am kind of talking, and my body says, okay, so what you're telling me is if I don't believe in Jesus, but I'm a good person and I do this and I help old ladies and I. Where do I go? Do I go to heaven or hell? And then I just, can I open up the scriptures, I go, hell?
Mark Clark [00:34:13]:
He's like, what?
Mark Clark [00:34:14]:
What are you talking.
Mark Clark [00:34:15]:
I don't understand.
Mark Clark [00:34:15]:
What, are you drunk? No, But the way that I think
Mark Clark [00:34:31]:
has changed, but so much so that I'm convinced you're hammered. So my friends would come to me, hey, Mark, we should do this, this, this, this, this, this, this. Remember all these things we used to do? And then I'd say, no, I can't do that anymore. I gave my life to Jesus. I don't do any of that stuff anymore. Are you on drugs again? What's. I don't see. This is what's going on.
Mark Clark [00:34:51]:
The power at work within us makes
Mark Clark [00:34:54]:
us into the kinds of people.
Mark Clark [00:34:55]:
So here's the question. Is anyone around you looking at you going, are you drunk? In the good spiritual way, right? Not the.
Mark Clark [00:35:06]:
Is anyone around you going, man, there's something so different about your life. You don't fit in here anymore. Something different about how you think, how you function, how you live.
Mark Clark [00:35:21]:
Or is no one asking? Because no one even notices. You're not even a blip on anyone's radar. He's going, man. He has the power to change you. Now, for those of you who are exploring Christianity, change is an extremely scary thing. And here are the stakes. You give your life to Jesus. He will change you.
Mark Clark [00:35:44]:
He will come in. I'm not talking about putting up wallpaper. He will gut the bathroom and throw it out and renew it. He'll do a whole new house. He'll knock down the house. He'll start over and he'll rebuild you. This is one of the scariest things about entering into Christianity because we as human beings tend not to love change, alright? We don't tend to wake up in the morning and go, I love change. I'm going to change everything today.
Mark Clark [00:36:06]:
It doesn't happen. I watch married couples, I do a lot of premarital counseling, and I watch the discussion of change. All right, you got a girl, you got a boy. And she's telling me all about his weaknesses, but she's not concerned because she's looking at me going, give me a year. All right? And he's over there clueless.
Mark Clark [00:36:33]:
But we, all right, we know what her plan is with him. He has no clue. So what's gonna happen is, all right, she is going to want to change him and try to kind of make that happen, and then it's gonna explode and there's gonna be tension. All right? This happened to me right when I got married. I had a particular way of functioning. And then three or four months in, I was putting on my jacket to go out. My wife said, where you going? I said, I'm going out with my friends. She's like, really? No.
Mark Clark [00:37:09]:
Where are you going? For the fourth night in a row?
Mark Clark [00:37:11]:
You watching Lord of the Rings for the fifth time? How'd you know? What do you want me to do?
Mark Clark [00:37:21]:
I don't know. Stay home. You're married now.
Mark Clark [00:37:26]:
Oh, what are we going to do if I stay home? Watch the Wedding Planner. Okay. See, change takes time to figure out how do I begin to function in this particular way instead of this particular way? And then there's this unconditional love. Jesus wants to come in and in his power actually change you and do something unbelievably different in you and your fear is legitimate. If your fear is, I'm afraid he's going to actually change me. He will. All right, verse 21, wrapping up the chapter. He says this to him, meaning, God be glory.
Mark Clark [00:38:33]:
Look at this phrase in the church. Here's the mistake that we make. Paul is saying, where is God glorified? He's glorified in the church. The church is the word ecclesia, the called out people of God. It's through these people and their life that God is glorified in all things. Now, notice what he's not saying.
Mark Clark [00:39:01]:
He's not saying that the world out there is able to glorify God. And so we make a mistake when we come at people who don't know Jesus, who don't have redeemed hearts, who aren't in the church, and say, hey, I want you to live in such a way that you will glorify God. How could we expect that of people when they don't know Jesus? So we come at them with all of our paradigms. You're supposed to function like this. You're supposed to live like this.
Mark Clark [00:39:34]:
Really? Is that fair? Go over to 1 Corinthians, chapter 5. Paul deals with this. See, here's what we do. We want people who don't know Jesus to glorify God. We want them to act Christian. And so the answer to all of
Mark Clark [00:39:51]:
our problems is, let's get prayer in school. All right? So that kids can recite a prayer externally, but not actually know Jesus. And have a whole culture of people who have an exoskeleton of they think they're Christian and then they die and go to hell. But I said the Lord's Prayer. I knew it just before I sang oh, Canada.
Mark Clark [00:40:14]:
But you were raised in the church, taught in the church, got married in the church, served in the church, died
Mark Clark [00:40:18]:
in the church, had your funeral in
Mark Clark [00:40:19]:
the church, and woke up in hell. Why? Because you didn't actually know Jesus. But I could say the Lord's Prayer.
Mark Clark [00:40:23]:
Great.
Mark Clark [00:40:25]:
See, here's what Paul has to say. First Corinthians, chapter 5. He's dealing with a whole bunch of sexual immorality in the church. And here's what he says. This might be a surprising passage for some of you. Verse 8. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. And we're like, yeah, of course, my buddy who doesn't know Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:40:48]:
I don't equate with him. I don't hang out with him anymore.
Mark Clark [00:40:50]:
I know Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:40:51]:
Now, Paul would say this, no, no, not at all.
Mark Clark [00:40:55]:
Meaning the sexually immoral of this world,
Mark Clark [00:40:59]:
or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters.
Mark Clark [00:41:02]:
Since Then you would need to get out of the world. I don't mean don't hang out with people who don't know Christ, who are sexually immoral. Of course they're sexually immoral. They're groping around in the dark. Of course they function like that. If I was asking you not to hang out with them, I'd be telling you, hey, let's all just get raptured and read a lot of left behind and get out of here. Make that the whole point of your theology. Just to get out of the world and leave it unto itself.
Mark Clark [00:41:33]:
Paul goes, this isn't what I'm asking. Verse 11.
Mark Clark [00:41:37]:
But now I am writing to you
Mark Clark [00:41:39]:
not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother. If he is guilty of sexual immorality
Mark Clark [00:41:45]:
or greed,
Mark Clark [00:41:48]:
we tend to highlight. Hey, who, who in the church is sexually immoral?
Mark Clark [00:41:53]:
Who in the church is greedy.
Mark Clark [00:41:59]:
Or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, swindler, not even to eat with such a one. Listen to what he says. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. That's not your job. You know Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, he says, you are to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. These two images, salt was a preservation image. They didn't have fridges, so you'd take
Mark Clark [00:42:36]:
a piece of meat and you'd fill
Mark Clark [00:42:37]:
it with salt so it would be preserved. And light was obviously this penetrative image that would go into darkness. And John Stott in his Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount says this. When you think about darkness and meat,
Mark Clark [00:42:51]:
you don't look at a piece of
Mark Clark [00:42:53]:
meat that's gone rotten and go bad.
Mark Clark [00:42:55]:
Meat,
Mark Clark [00:42:57]:
silly meat, roast beef, meat gone bad.
Mark Clark [00:43:00]:
Why did you go bad? You don't walk into a room and go darkness bad. You've gone dark in this room. That's what a room does, that's what meat does.
Mark Clark [00:43:14]:
And John Stott Sundays, you ask one question. Where's the light? If a culture goes bad, the question is, where's the salt that was supposed to preserve it? See, that's what Jesus is laying down on the Sermon on the Mount. That's your job not to sit way over here and judge it. Look at them. Can you believe they act that way? Yes, I can. Because they're not dumb, they're blind. They don't know him. Alright, last thing, verse 21.
Mark Clark [00:44:02]:
To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout love this phrase we can unpack this for the next 50 minutes. Let's just kidding.
Mark Clark [00:44:12]:
Throughout.
Mark Clark [00:44:13]:
Listen. All generations, all generations, all generations, forever and ever, Amen. He wraps this thing up with this hopeful thing.
Mark Clark [00:44:24]:
This is true about all generations, all generations, all generations. Meaning. Meaning this is the beauty of village church, having a whole bunch of young people. We got like 300 little babies running around, all right? And then we got older people as well, like people who are like 50, all right? It's crazy,
Mark Clark [00:44:46]:
all right?
Mark Clark [00:44:46]:
We got people all over the spectrum. That's what we love. And we need not to isolate ourselves into these little pockets. All right? We talked about this couple weeks ago, but you younger people need to take the older people out for coffee and shut your mouth and just listen as they have wisdom for you. And you older people need to take these younger people out and you need to develop them into disciples of Jesus because they are the hope. They're going to be the influencers. They presently already are. All right? You look at what happened a couple years ago.
Mark Clark [00:45:16]:
The Vancouver Canucks lost and the city went all crazy and started breaking stuff. Who is that? A bunch of 60 year olds running around? No, it was a bunch of 20 somethings with no vision, no mission, nothing to die for, nothing to live for. And Paul's saying, give them a vision, give them something to live for, give them something to die for and they will change your world.
Mark Clark [00:45:42]:
But tell them to just sit around and do nothing, they'll go ballistic over a hockey game. This is for all generations. All generations. Young, old. You want to know what the greatest missionary strategy is? Long lasting missionary strategy. This is crazy what I'm about to say right now. Harvard Business Review a bunch of years ago was trying to wrestle the question of why patriarchy, meaning male leadership in
Mark Clark [00:46:11]:
the home, is still something that a bunch of people in the west actually adhere to. Harvard Business Review went and asked this
Mark Clark [00:46:18]:
question and here was the answer they came up with. Listen to this. Patriarchy always makes a comeback because its adherents put more genes and ideas into the future than do their secular counterparts. Here's what it just religious people have more babies. Conservative people, theologically, look at the Muslim
Mark Clark [00:46:49]:
world, look at the Hindu world, look
Mark Clark [00:46:50]:
at the Christian world, tend to have more children, right?
Mark Clark [00:46:55]:
You know this. If you got. I mean, there's a whole bunch of people here who have like eight kids. It's crazy. And they walk into a restaurant and everyone judges them. All right? You walk in and the place goes
Mark Clark [00:47:06]:
quiet and the person comes up. Can I seat you? Yes. We have six children, two adults Eight people in one family. We didn't make booths for that. What the Harvard Business Review is saying is you know the way, you know a long lasting missional strategy. What God told Adam and Eve, be fruitful and multiply. Put more genes into the future with the ideas of the gospel than our competition. Have a bunch of kids who love Jesus and the kids that are here, develop them into disciples so that in the next generation you have more people who love Jesus than don't.
Mark Clark [00:47:57]:
Paul goes, this is generational. I have a vision for you that you have more than just a good life to build, you have a good legacy to build. The way that's going to happen is that all age groups, all stages, as Paul's going to say, get into in Ephesians 4, start actually living out of their calling and their gifting. So whether you're 75 years old or, or whether you're 9, what is my calling by God, how has he wired me? How do I step up and start serving and giving for the glory of God? So the mission of the church goes forward. What am I gonna do with my 86 years on this planet? Paul's going, this is bigger than you and your family. This is the next family and the next generation and the next generation and the next generation and a legacy of the advancement of gospel. That's what kind of church we need to be. Why don't you stand up so I can pray for you? Father, it is my honest hope and my honest prayer that we in the church would bring glory to you.
Mark Clark [00:49:12]:
That whatever our age, whatever generation we belong to in this room, that, that it would be for your glory forever and ever.
Mark Clark [00:49:24]:
That we would build not only our good moment here on this planet, but we would think about the legacy, we would think about the next generation and
Mark Clark [00:49:33]:
the generation after that, that we would be faithful to the calling you have given to us. And now as we worship you, as we give in the context of our worship back to you, some of what you have lavished on us because you are so good. I pray that you use it for the advancement of the gospel across generations. That we would see 70 year olds come to know Jesus and be baptized. That we would see 60 year olds and 50 year olds and 40 year olds and 30 year olds and 20 year olds and little kids come to know you because we're not trying to do a generational thing in Jesus great name. We all pray together. Amen.