Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
First Corinthians, chapter eight is where we are. And. And we're going to try to hit the whole chapter today, actually. And so I know that just blew your mind. You're like, there's no possible way that's possible. We'll see. There's a few succinct points that we could probably get to and that Paul makes in Rome. First Corinthians, chapter 8.
Mark Clark [00:00:21]:
So let me just read the text for you, have it be a backdrop for us, and then I'll unpack it probably in two or three stages. So here's what Paul says. He says now, concerning food offered to idols, we know that all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he's known by God. Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence and that there is no God but one. For although there may be so called gods in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things are, from whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
Mark Clark [00:01:13]:
He just took Old Testament passage from Deuteronomy that's called the Shema. The Jews would say every day was a monotheistic chant about and statement about there's only one God and Israel is his people. And he reformed it amazingly and he put Jesus in. In the center of it. It's like the apostle Paul as a Jew went away after meeting Jesus and not only rethought Jesus, but rethought God, took the most monotheistic passage in the Old Testament and stuck Jesus in the center of it and said, now that I've seen Jesus, I'm actually rethinking who God is and he's putting Jesus in the middle of it. Verse 7. However, not all possess this knowledge, but some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weakened, is defiled. Food will not commend us to God.
Mark Clark [00:01:57]:
We're no worse off if we do not E and no better off if we do. But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged? But if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols. And so by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed. The brother for whom Christ died, thus sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience. When it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble. Okay, so what is he talking about? The first thing he talks about is this idea of food sacrificed to idols.
Mark Clark [00:02:37]:
And he says this now concerning food offered to idols. Now, you and I would go, that's a weird. Because back in chapter seven, verse one, he said, let me now in the book, start answering the questions that you wrote me about. And the Corinthians had written him a whole bunch of questions of stuff they were trying to work through in their life, things that they were trying to figure out which aren't necessary. One of them was this. Now, that's kind of crazy, because you and I were. We would not. In the modern time, we have a lot of questions about faith.
Mark Clark [00:03:02]:
We wouldn't put this on our list. Probably we'd put, you know, is it okay to divorce? Is it. What about. What about women in ministry? What about speaking in tongues? What about miracles? What about, can I? Am I allowed to drive a Porsche if I'm a Christian? How much square footage is too much? And I can still follow Jesus? All of these questions might be our questions, but he's saying, one of the key questions that you asked me is food offered to idols. Now, for you and I, we may not understand what that's about, but it was a big deal to them as a culture. So let me explain that so we can understand what all this has to do with us. In that culture, they believed that because there was a God for everything, right? There was a God of war, a God of travel, a God of sex, a God of love, a God of crops, a guy. Everything had a God.
Mark Clark [00:03:47]:
Poseidon was in the water. If you needed love in your life, you would give a sacrifice to Aphrodite and hope that she brings you a husband or whatever. So that was their world. And they believed that one of the main way that evil spirits and demons in paganism entered you. Cause they were always trying to invade human beings. And one of the ways they invaded human beings was through food. So if you went and you got a burger, and that burger had demons in it, and you ate the burger, then the burger, you'd have demons in you, you'd have evil spirits in you. So that's what they believed.
Mark Clark [00:04:18]:
So what would happen is, is you'd go and you would sacrifice the meat to an idol. You'd say you'd dedicate the meat, and you'd sacrifice something, and then the demons wouldn't be allowed to go inside the meat, and it would protect you from them invading your body. That was the thinking at the time. So what happened was these people then became Christians, and they had to figure out what to do with all this meat. Because really, any meat that you had, you go to barbecue, you go to a buddy's house, anything. It was all stuff that was offered to idols. And so there was different people struggling with it. There was three different responses that could have been made.
Mark Clark [00:04:51]:
One of the responses was, hey, there's still demons in the meat, so I'm not gonna eat meat at all. That was one group within the Corinthian Church. Then there was the group that said, man, I know there's probably not demons in this stuff, but I can't eat this meat. Because I equate it with my old life. I equate it with my life before I became a Christian. My pagan world. And so just by eating meat alone, even if there isn't demons in it, the reality is, I think about my life back then. I had a buddy in college.
Mark Clark [00:05:20]:
He was hugely into drugs. And one of our new. And he became a Christian. And one of our New Testament professors came out, said, you should be hanging out with all of your friends before you were ever a Christian. You need to go back to them now that you're a Christian, and you need to hang out with them. And he sat with me and cried in a room and said, you know, I don't feel like I'm ready enough. I still feel like I'm too weak. I can't re Engage my friends yet because if I go back there, I'm gonna start doing drugs.
Mark Clark [00:05:42]:
I know what. I'm not strong enough. There was those kind of people, legitimate. They were like, man, I don't know if I can eat meat sacrificed to idols. They. Because it's gonna remind me of my old life. That was camp number two, and camp number three was a camp that said, forget it. Who cares? There's no demons in the meat.
Mark Clark [00:05:55]:
It doesn't matter. Just move on with your life. Eat whatever you want and go and live for God or whatever. And the reality is, there was those two poles. And so a big. One of the big themes that we're gonna talk about is this is. These were the kind of the two poles they were living in. The two poles that you and I live in every day.
Mark Clark [00:06:10]:
Legalism and license. Legalism is this is how half of you live. All right? Is legalistically meaning you think you were raised in a church setting maybe, where you think that the things that you do. And we talk about this often. Cause Paul talks about this often. Cause he's constantly addressing it. The things that you do are what is gonna save you. And so if you don't watch these kind of movies and these kind of shows.
Mark Clark [00:06:33]:
If you attend church this much, if you only cuss inside of your head and not outside saying things, if you do all of these. If you saved yourself for marriage to. If you've never been drunk, if you've never done drugs, if you didn't go to the party when you graduated high school that everyone was drinking at and you went to the Christian party, that was dry. All of those things. Those things are gonna be the things that save you. That's legalism. It says that you can control God. I'll come back to that in a second.
Mark Clark [00:07:01]:
Some of you grew up in settings where. And here's the reality, of course, License is the opposite. License is I'm not gonna trust God's word. I don't believe that God has what is best in mind for me. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take back myself and I'm just gonna do what I want. Forget the Bible. It's old school. It doesn't really matter.
Mark Clark [00:07:20]:
Hasn't it progressed? It's kind of. It's not a real thing. I'm gonna do what I wanna do with sex, with money, with relationships, with whatever, with my theology. Maybe I read the Bible and it says, Jesus is the only way. And I don't like that. Maybe it says that hell is real and I don't like that. So what you've started to do is you live in license. Those are the two poles that we live in.
Mark Clark [00:07:40]:
Half the room live here. Half the room lives here. And it's partly because of the way you grew up, right? Some of you grew up in extremely legalistic homes where it was you could only. I mean, I was talking to my wife about this. Cause she grew up in a Christian home, right? Very Baptist, conservative Christian home. And it was like, literally, as a child, she couldn't watch My Little Pony. All right? Because there was demons in it, right? And there was magic that would come through the television screen and, like, you know, affect her life if she watched little ponies run around. All right? That was the world she grew up in.
Mark Clark [00:08:11]:
And so it was, know this, know this, know this, but do this and do that and don't do this and don't do this. We go to church nine times a week. We do this, and we got it all sorted out as a family. And what starts to happen here is we love to control God. We love to manipulate God. And here's what this mentality says. It says that 90% of your salvation is based on the cross of Christ. 90% of your salvation is based on what God has done for you.
Mark Clark [00:08:36]:
But you gotta top it up a little bit. So 10% is you. You get to control. You get to manipulate God's affections for you by what you do. And so if you do good things, then you get saved. And then here's what starts to happen. You start to make this normative for everybody else. So now this has to be everyone else's reality, and this is your life.
Mark Clark [00:08:56]:
All right? Some of you grew up in that, and that's where you live. Now. Here's what starts to happen. What do we do? We start to react. So those of you who grew up here in a legalistic home, you start to come over here toward license. You actually get a Bible and you read it and you realize, wait a minute, Jesus drank wine in the Last Supper. My parents said, I could never do that. Let's come over here.
Mark Clark [00:09:17]:
And all of a sudden it's, let's party. Let's get hammered. Jesus loved to drink wine. Jesus loved to party, forgetting the fact that every time he drank wine and every time he went to a party, people came into the kingdom. And you haven't told anybody about Jesus in a decade. So, all right, I'm jacked up. So you got legalism. Some of you grew up here.
Mark Clark [00:09:39]:
And what you start to do is you start to react to it, and you move over toward license. You move over to, you can do whatever you want. I don't. The Bible never tells. I got freedom, baby. And what I'm gonna do with my freedom is I got liberty in Christ, and I can do what I want. I can live like I want. I can believe whatever I want.
Mark Clark [00:09:54]:
That's license. Now, some of you grew up in the opposite extreme. You. You grew up in super liberal homes, secular homes, that were just like, you know what? Here's the thing, son. Make sure you just have protection on and go nuts, all right? Just go crazy with the girls. And your mom sat you down, said, here's the pill, go crazy, enjoy high school and don't worry about it. And there was never any restrictions on your life at all. There wasn't any idea of authority or anything.
Mark Clark [00:10:21]:
And so that's the world you grew up in. And then you became a Christian. And here's what started to happen to you. You started to set up boundaries, a boundary set model for your life where you said, well, I can't do those things anymore, I can't equate myself. And you started to move this way and you start to move toward legalism and you start to say, well, you can't do this and you can't do this, and you can't do this because that was your reality and now you're reacting. So here's the thing, we start to either move from license to legalism or legalism to license. That tends to be the rhythm of our life. And even on a given day, we tend to go between those two poles.
Mark Clark [00:10:59]:
And literally this week my kids said something to me that illustrate. So my daughter Hayden looked at me this week and she said, dad, you're sometimes not a good parent. And I'm like, okay, my 10 year old's lecturing me on parent, give it to me, I wanna hear this. And she said this to me, she said, dad, here's the thing. Sometimes you get really mad about stuff that you shouldn't be mad about, right? You get jacked up and you, you go off the rails about stuff that really doesn't matter. And then she goes, and then sometimes you laugh with us about stuff that you should be serious about. Like you don't get us in trouble for stuff that you probably should. Now all of that's based on what mom thinks, right? But anyways, not what's like true in reality, just what their mom says and overhears them and they overhear her saying, you shouldn't have laughed, you know.
Mark Clark [00:11:48]:
But my youngest daughter, when I'm trying to like kiss her and she looks at me, she's like, daddy, don't you know. And I just look and her face is so cute. All I want to do is just laugh. So I just start laughing, all right? And she's like, daddy, don't laugh. I'm like, bah. And then we're all laughing at her and I probably shouldn't do that. So my 10 year old says, dad, sometimes you're too jacked up about stuff, all right? And sometimes you're not jacked up enough about stuff. That is literally what Paul's talking about.
Mark Clark [00:12:16]:
Sometimes within Christianity, some of you live in a camp where you're too jacked up about stuff. You've created all these rules and they're not biblical rules, they're just your rules. And you've created Them other times you don't have enough restriction around, you don't have enough boundary. You just live in total liberty and license. And here's what Paul does. He blows all of that up in this passage where he says, specifically in verse 8, 9, food will not condemn us to God, commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do it, not eat it, and no better off if we do that. Some things are relative to the person.
Mark Clark [00:12:54]:
Now, I know we don't like to talk about that within Christianity, cause everything's black and white and post modernity is the enemy. But here's where, if you're a seeker, if you're someone exploring God, here's where Christianity is beautiful to you because maybe you're a product of postmodern culture and you love relativism and you love the idea that not everything is always black and white and not everything is exactly the way you know, in little boxes and right and wrong. There are moments within Christianity, though the Bible is very black and white about a lot of things. There are moments within Christianity where it starts to flex and become gray and say, you know what? The Bible gives us a lot of things, really clearly. It talks about extramarital affairs and says those are wrong. Murders, wrong, theft is wrong. Jesus is the only way. Hell is real.
Mark Clark [00:13:39]:
The resurrection actually happened. The Bible's true, all of those things. Those are not gray areas. Those are black and white. That's Christianity. That's the foundation of it. Jesus Christ came, historically, died. It's not some pithy little poem about history and some, you know, Jesus rose from the dead in your heart.
Mark Clark [00:13:54]:
None of that nonsense. It's all real, it's all true. But then there are things, behaviors, theologies, things that are a little more gray. And Paul says, listen, be careful to get all jacked up and project what you think is dogmatically true on other people. Because the reality is for some people, they can eat meat and it doesn't affect their conscience or put in. They can eat meat and fill it in with the thing that is comparable to what eating meat to them was for some people, like my daughter, literally this week or three weeks ago, stopped eating. She became a vegetarian. Now the reason she did this, she's 10 years old, is we were watching the old Survivor, like, you know, we go through the Survivor series and she went back and watched the second season of Survivor.
Mark Clark [00:14:38]:
So Australia, in one of the scenes, there's a pig running around and they literally stab the pig right on tv. And then five minutes later, they're frying it up and eating bacon. And my daughter watched that, and she loves animals. And she's like, oh, oh, I can't do this. I'm done eating meat. I can't eat anything with a face. I can't eat anything with a name. And she signed a contract with her friend where they can't eat meat all the way till October.
Mark Clark [00:15:05]:
And if one of them does, they pay each other. They don't have any money. I don't know what they're betting on. They're gonna have to borrow it from me. But they made a bet, all right, about what they do. So she is now a vegetarian. She hasn't eaten meat in a month. All right? Now, what I said to her is, I said, that's great, honey.
Mark Clark [00:15:20]:
That's great. But here's what I don't want you to do. So here's. See, listen to this. Okay, first major point. Second major point that Paul talks about concerning food offers to idols. He's about to give them a great theological point. He's about to say, here's what's right about food offers to idols.
Mark Clark [00:15:34]:
Now, Paul, for the most part, would fit into that third camp that I talked about, which is, demons aren't really in the meat. Don't worry about it. Just move on with your life. But for some reason, he doesn't just say that. So they've raised this question to him, and he doesn't just go, now, let me just tell you the truth. He pauses and he pivots for a second. And it's beautiful. Cause he says, this seems like he interrupts himself.
Mark Clark [00:15:57]:
You ask me about food offered to idols. I'm gonna tell you the answer. But then he brings up something that seems random. We know that all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge pops up, but love builds up. So you have knowledge and you have love. And he says, you know, before I answer you and give you a theological, philosophical thing to live by, before I project all my authority on you as an apostle, let me remind you about something. That the narrative of everything that we do needs to be defined not by always what's right, but love.
Mark Clark [00:16:36]:
Now think about that in your conversations. So I looked to Hayden and I said, I know you've become a vegetarian, but here's what I don't want you to be. I don't want you to become one of those vegetarians. Now, what's one of those. You all know what I'm talking about. The vegetarians. That now they've figured it out, they're gonna project it on you because it's right. Right? What do they say? It's like, you don't have to hang out with a vegetarian, atheist, or someone doing CrossFit very long because they're gonna tell you exactly that they're those things.
Mark Clark [00:17:03]:
All right? Woo. CrossFit was tough today, man. Whoa. CrossFit. CrossFit. It's like, I'm a vegetarian. What are you eating that for? I'm an atheist. You want to debate it? Those are three kinds of people.
Mark Clark [00:17:13]:
They don't just keep it inside, all right? They want the world to know. And I said, hayden, be a vegetarian your whole life. I love it. It's great. But when Daddy's sinking his teeth into a big burger and eating some bacon in the morning, don't get in my face. Don't bug me. Don't be one of them, all right? Cause some things are right and some things are wrong and some things are preference. This is what he's trying to say.
Mark Clark [00:17:37]:
But he says, before you get into that world where I'm going to start solving all this for you, he says, love. He says this knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something he does not yet know as he ought to know, and he's telling them as you interact about these things. Let me remind you that love has to be the main paradigm out of which you function. Even if you think you know. Now think about that for a second. Some of you think about modern examples of this. Okay? I wrote down a couple of examples.
Mark Clark [00:18:11]:
Okay? Some of you know, you know that there's nothing wrong with your kids going trick or treating during Halloween. You know that you've done the work. You know that there's not real demons that are gonna attach themselves to your children just because they go get a candy bar. You know that, all right? You've done all that work. You know it. Cause you're smart and you went and studied it. But how do you interact with people who think that it's a real problem? Do you write them off or do you understand that love builds up and knowledge destroys? How do you interact? See, some of you know that Justin Trudeau is the greatest prime minister that Canada has ever had. You know that you've got the data to prove it, and you share it all over Facebook every third day.
Mark Clark [00:19:08]:
You know it. And some of you know that he's the worst prime minister we've ever had in the history of any country ever. You know it like you know it. You have proof and you share it every other Day on social media. You know it. The question is, do you hang out with anybody who believes the opposite to you? How do you interact with them on social media when they don't know what you know? That's what he's saying. Some of you know that it is wrong to vaccinate your child. You know it.
Mark Clark [00:19:51]:
That's what the data says. And you're gonna bring it up. Every conversation. You can bring it up in the parking lot at school. You're gonna talk to all the other moms and dads about it. Cause you know, and some of you know that it's absolutely essential you know it. So how do you interact with people who disagree with you? How do you interact with the other side? That's what he's saying. Some of you, you guys know, man, you know, cooking, you know theology, you know, Star wars, the whatever.
Mark Clark [00:20:22]:
Take your pick of your thing, you're schooled in it, and then you're hanging out with other people and they don't know, what do you do? He says, love. Before I answer the doctrinal question, love is the thing that has to define your life. Because sometimes being right isn't the point. Right. Sometimes being right needs to be trumped by a reality of love. Now here's what I mean. So a few weeks ago, I was traveling, I was speaking at a conference at church. And all the pastors of this.
Mark Clark [00:20:51]:
Well, a bunch of the pastors of this church, we were sitting around the fire after. It was 10 o' clock at night, we're all sitting around, all the wives, there's 20 people. And the guy kind of sets it up and he says, we have Mark Clark here, you know, let's ask him questions about leadership and philosophy and theology and ministry. Let's just hit him with stuff. So we started to go about all these things. What about this? What about that? We started to go. And this one guy, things started to get. I could tell he was getting jacked up.
Mark Clark [00:21:15]:
And he starts to talk about racism and he starts to talk about slavery and he starts to talk about Israel and he starts to talk about Romans 9, 11. And he starts talking about all these things and he's jacked. And I'm listening to him talk and I'm saying to myself, this guy is dead wrong about what he's saying. He's just wrong. All right, but he's, but. And I, and I wrote a master's thesis on this topic, okay? Like, I studied Greek for three years. I know every foot, I know every major writer who, who's Written any article on this issue. I could quote E.P.
Mark Clark [00:21:49]:
sanders versus Kazeman, all right, versus Van Harnack. Or I could use words like Helzgeschitzka that he's never heard before. I could have destroyed him in front of his wife and everybody and it would have been fun. Some of you thought, I just swore I didn't. It's a German word. Look it up later, all right? And I could have just destroyed him in front of everybody. And I said nothing as he yelled at me and got jacked up. Because I saw in that moment, here's what I discerned.
Mark Clark [00:22:20]:
This is not about that. There's a thing behind the thing. And if I destroy him on knowledge, on information right now, it's not going to solve anything. Because what this guy actually needs is to be loved. That's his point. Some of you, you're all worried about being right all the time. And Paul goes, Let me just pause before I tell you, by the way, before I, you know, as Paul, the brilliant order, the brilliant writer, the brilliant theologian, before I tell you the answer. He says, you understand, love is the thing that drives any of this.
Mark Clark [00:22:54]:
But if anyone loves God, he's known by God. Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence. That's kind of what he's saying, right? And he's saying there's no God but one. For although there may be so called gods in heaven and earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, it's very interesting. He kind of keeps confirming this. And what he means by it isn't so much that everything has a demon behind it or whatever he's saying. You know, it's interesting if you go back to Exodus 20, the Ten Commandments, God says he shall have no other gods before me. It's almost like he's functionally saying, you're gonna have other gods in your life.
Mark Clark [00:23:29]:
You're gonna have things that are important, important to you. Family, money, exercise, you know, whatever you're gonna have. Lord, you're things. But the reality is you have to. You shall have no other gods before me. There's nothing else that should rise above me in regard to its importance to your heart and to your life and to your mind. Yet for us, there is one God, the Father, for whom all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we are all things and through whom we exist. He's.
Mark Clark [00:23:55]:
He's trying to put Jesus in that central point of creational monotheism. Where Jesus actually created things. However, not all possess this knowledge. Not all possess this. Not all know Jesus. Not all have your politics. Not everybody has your theology. So here's the thing.
Mark Clark [00:24:11]:
Can you die to your politics so that people can hear about Jesus? That's what he's trying to say. Do you understand? Not everybody knows. And so what are you going to do? Become just a political person? There's people who constantly come up to me like, we need to stand for this issue. You need to get up on the stage and do this. We need to do this politically as a church. And I'm going, no. Why? Because the other side, the minute you pick a side, the other side can't hear you. And my job is to not get up here and riff your politics vicariously through me as a puppet.
Mark Clark [00:24:46]:
My job is to be a minister of the gospel so both sides, licentious and legalist, can repent and believe in Jesus. That's the point. And this is what Paul's saying. Some people, not all people, possess this knowledge. So what are you gonna do when you meet someone who doesn't think like you? Can you sacrifice so that they actually understand Jesus? Because God is glorified. When we're the kinds of people who don't fall into legalism and we don't fall into licentiousness, we fall into saying, the cross is my identity. So much so that when you make those two mistakes, legalism and licentiousness, God is not glorified. God doesn't.
Mark Clark [00:25:28]:
God doesn't get any glory for that. Which is why he wants to save you from both of those pitfalls. It's like a marriage. If you were to say, think about the legalist. The legalist is so dogmatic about things. They're all about the data. And so you covenanted yourself. You covenanted.
Mark Clark [00:25:45]:
You shall stay in that covenant for life. You covenant. Don't you know what a covenant is? A covenant, you know, I say in every. Every wedding, this is a covenant, not a contract. A covenant is eternal. It's. No, it's. It's never to be broken.
Mark Clark [00:25:57]:
It's never to be renegotiated. Okay, fine, great. Because I'm a legalist. That's what you want. Don't all you single people dream about, didn't you when you were a little girl, if you're married right now, didn't you dream about, oh, I can't wait to put that white dress on one day and I'll just covenant myself to some guy who's a schmuck and I'll just long for the day of my death. I just can't wait for that day. I can't wait for that day. Since I was a little girl, I've been waiting for this day.
Mark Clark [00:26:22]:
This great day. Will. I will legally bind myself to a moron and then just plead with the Lord that my life end early. Yes. I love covenant, right? And you guys, you were like, yeah, I was a little boy. I was hoping to covenant tie myself to a woman who would remind me every day of what's wrong with me and complain and tell me every morning why I'm a disaster. Oh, since I was a little kid in the ball field, that's what I always hoped for. I will grab a hold of this covenant come hell or high water, and I will pray that the Lord ends my days early.
Mark Clark [00:26:56]:
Thank you, Lord. I was faithful to this woman. That's what we all dreamed about when we were little kids. That's the legalist. That's how they view life. Is that how you want your marriage? Does your marriage. Do people get drawn to that? No, Just like people don't get drawn to the God behind legalism, the people who don't know him. Don't go, that's what I want.
Mark Clark [00:27:19]:
That's what I want. Duty, duty, duty. God's gonna strip all of my joy away, which is why they became licensed anyway. But then what about the license side? You want a marriage where there are no boundaries. You want a marriage where your husband just does whatever he wants, where your wife does whatever she wants and she comes home at the end of the day and tells you about it. You want that. You don't want that either, because both of those are pitfalls. Marriage doesn't.
Mark Clark [00:27:47]:
Nobody's drawn to marriage in both those distortions. And this is what he's saying about God. He's saying, religion will kill you and licentiousness will kill you. Nobody's gonna be drawn to the God behind either of those things. No one's gonna go, yes, this is what I want. But the funny thing is, both of those things are exactly who we've always been as human beings. Go back to. We don't have time to go there, but go read Genesis 2 and Genesis 3 this afternoon.
Mark Clark [00:28:13]:
Here's Adam and Eve, right? They get made. They get put in a garden. Hey, be fruitful, multiply. Fill the earth, subdue it. Naked people. Amazing. Let's go. Let's do this.
Mark Clark [00:28:22]:
And then what happens? God says, I put a tree in the middle. It's a tree of knowledge, of Good and evil. I put it in there. I don't want you to eat from it. I don't want you to eat from it. And he. And why people always ask why he even put the tree in the first place. Here's my theory.
Mark Clark [00:28:37]:
Theory that I was reading from one writer. That he puts the tree in the garden so that there's obedience before there's sin. It's beautiful, actually. You can serve me and be obedient to me as God before there's any sin in the world. Because I told you there's a tree and I don't want you to eat from it. Now what happens? The serpent comes up in three and. And says, hey, you gonna eat from it? And the woman goes, no, no, no. Eve goes, no, no, no, I'm not gonna eat from it.
Mark Clark [00:29:01]:
Cause he told me not to eat from it. And then she says this and not to touch it. Now that's crazy. Cause she just did the work of what? She did the work of a legalist. She added something God said, don't eat from it. She goes, I shouldn't eat from it and I'm not allowed to touch it. See, my kids have never added. Like never in my life did I say, I'm going out.
Mark Clark [00:29:27]:
The babysitter's got you. You guys go to bed by 9.9O'. Clock. Never have they said, guys, I think we should go at 8. We should be good girls. Daddy said 9. I think we need to move it up an hour. Never in the history of time have my kids added more rules.
Mark Clark [00:29:45]:
But we do. Cause we want to control. We want to feel it. We want to say we're not sure of God. He's so static. He's so out there. We're not really sure. How do I control his affections to me? How do I make it so that I know? Well, here's what I'll do.
Mark Clark [00:29:58]:
I'll add. I'll add a rule. It means this, it means this. It means this. And the serpent then says, if you eat of it, here's the problem. You will then see. Your eyes will be open and you will know good and evil. Okay? So Eve, all right, she's the legalist who adds a rule.
Mark Clark [00:30:19]:
The Satan comes along and he lies. And he says, you know what? You know what the problem is? God's trying to keep you from joy. He's trying to something that you deserve. Knowledge of Good and evil he's gonna keep from you. He doesn't want you to have it. This is where some of you live, man. You look at the Bible and you go, it's trying to kill my joy, man. It's saying I gotta have sex with one.
Mark Clark [00:30:43]:
I've gotta save myself or marry, have sex with one person for the rest of my life. I gotta give my money away. I gotta save, sacrifice my money. I can't just do whatever I want with my house or my time or my life. You know what God is? He's a robber of my joy. So I will start to manage my own life because he does not know what's best for me. That's what those of you who are living in license, that's how you function. Both of these problems are the same problem.
Mark Clark [00:31:07]:
You don't trust God at his word. The legalist doesn't trust God at his word. The licentious person doesn't trust God at his word. You try to either do the same or the sin of the serpent who comes along and says, ah, da da da, da. Don't you know, you can totally see, you'll be enlightened. Your life will be so much better. You'll have so much joy. See, some of you, this is the definitive question of your life.
Mark Clark [00:31:30]:
The reason in John, chapter 10, verse 10, Jesus comes along and he says, the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. But I have come to give you life and life to the what? To the full. All right, everybody here at all the sites, this room right here, just said the word full really loud. And. And so he came to give life and life to the full meaning our soul. If you're here and you're exploring, here's what you, our soul constantly is looking for. Everything you do is motivated by finding fulfillment, finding joy, finding satisfaction, finding pleasure. That's what drives all of us.
Mark Clark [00:32:06]:
That's what drives everything we do. Now think about Jesus saying, I am that pleasure. I. All of you, you look to all different things. Some of you look to a relationship. Here's where all my meaning's gonna come from. Here's where all my joy's gonna come. Here's where all my delight and pleasure are gonna come from.
Mark Clark [00:32:21]:
It's a relationship with this woman or this man. I'm gonna get married, I'm gonna date, I'm gonna do this. It's a sexual relationship. It's money, it's a career. It's. Some of you, I mean, this is Vancouver and Calgary. All right, so we've made a sport out of ourselves in these two provinces. Some of you, your meaning and purpose comes from what? Looking good, man.
Mark Clark [00:32:42]:
You get the chiseled body and bronze it up. Oh, yeah, you want people looking at those muscles and that perfection. All right, so you work tirelessly every day so that everyone can look at you and what's up, player? What's up? And you get all the meaning and the joy from looking good and chiseled and bronzed. That's where you get your meaning. That's where you get your joy. That's what you want. You want people to look at you and nothing wrong with being fit. But the reality is, are you getting your identity from that? Cause Jesus is like, you look to all of these things.
Mark Clark [00:33:15]:
I'm the only one who's gonna give you meaning and joy in the end. I'm the only one who can do it. And you guys are on a treadmill and you're trying to find purpose and meaning in something that is vacuous in the end, if you don't have me. So do I believe you can have a good marriage without knowing Jesus Christ? Sure. I think there's general grace. You can have a good marriage. Could you have a good sex life in the context of that marriage without knowing Jesus Christ? Sure. But here's what you can't.
Mark Clark [00:33:44]:
You can't know, like the fullness of oneness that Genesis 1 talks about. You can't know that outside of Jesus. Can you have kids that are apt to morality that will do good things? Sure, you can have kids that do well without Jesus Christ in your life. But here's what you'll probably never get. You'll never get kids that delight in the duty, who delight in obedience because their hearts don't know him. There's a kind of fullness that you can't have without the maker of all things being the center of your soul. That's what he's trying to say. And some of you have tried to live that life and tried to find it in this and find it in that and find it in politics and find it in whatever.
Mark Clark [00:34:27]:
And he's saying, you can't have that. The fullness actually only happens in Christ. That's his point. So some of you. He goes on and makes this point. In the end, he says, we're no worse off if we do. We're no worse off if we don't. But take care that this right of yours, this freedom, this liberty that you have does not somehow become a stumbling.
Mark Clark [00:34:57]:
And here's final major issue. Get her new color not become a stumb. Oh, no. That was a big expectation. Okay. A stumbling block. Here we go to the weak. Here's here's the crazy thing about Christianity.
Mark Clark [00:35:14]:
Here's what's nuts. If you're here exploring. We have to ask different questions in the world because the. See, we tend to live in kind of this, like, individual spirituality world where every decision is just about you and whether it's sin or not for you. What he just said was, the problem with being a Christian is you have another thing to think about that the world doesn't have to think about. And it's not only is it sin or a problem for as an individual, is it a problem for someone else. See, this is where we get the rub against. Because.
Mark Clark [00:35:53]:
Against us. Because. Okay, so think about the things that you do. How does what you do affect other people? Is the next layer to Christianity, meaning when you're thinking about your social media world? All right, when you're posting that picture, here's what Paul just said. You have to think about whether what you're posting causes another person who's weak to actually fall over it. Scandalizo is this word right here. A stumbling block. A scandal that makes them trip and hit their face on the ground is what you do in your life.
Mark Clark [00:36:30]:
And he ends it with it, too. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble. I have to care about this. Nobody else does. So when you post that picture of your bronzed up, perfect body in a bikini at the beach, ask yourself the question, who am I making stumble? And I'm not talking about men. Forget men. Which women am I making stumble? When you post that picture of your brand new car and your eighth vacation to Hawaii this month and the perfection of your child who just got valedictorian and she's perfect on her little horse and she got prize number one, and you're perfect. Whatever.
Mark Clark [00:37:21]:
I'm just miserable at this point, all right? I'm just scrolling in my brain through all of the crap. Wait, before you post that, I want you to ask a question. Don't hear me saying any of that's wrong. I posted a picture of my girl and a pony winning first place before. All right? Because she's better than everybody else. Okay, so I posted that before. I get it. Not saying it would be legalistic of me to say you can't post that.
Mark Clark [00:37:50]:
That's not my point. My point is ask the question of your own heart. What is the motive of me posting this right now? Cause you could post that kind of stuff and be inspiring. You could be really have a pure heart. I try to evaluate every time I do, how's this gonna help? And if it's going to cause someone to stumble, and I don't mean just lusting. I'm talking about covenanting. Your car, your wife, your family, your situation, your job, whatever it is, ask yourself the question, is what I'm about to do going to make somebody stumble? If it is, ask whether you're supposed to do it at all. That's his point.
Mark Clark [00:38:33]:
You got bigger questions to ask in your life than just, hey, should I do this now? It's like the preachers and sneakers thing. Some of you seen preachers and sneakers, right? It's this Instagram account that had, like, no followers, and then all of a sudden, it has, like, 150,000 followers because it's pictures of preachers wearing sneakers. And then the price of those sneakers beside them. And some of These sneakers are $5,000 US and they're sitting in front of their church with their $4000 jacket and their $5000 shoes, and they're asking them for money. Now, my point is, and I understand guys get book deals and they're buying. People give them these shoes so that they can have an Instagram lifestyle page. That's not what I'm. What I'm asking is, what is your life projecting out to other people? Ask the question whether you're gonna make someone else stumble, fall, be scandalized by your life.
Mark Clark [00:39:33]:
So here's what one writer says. Paul knew he was right about the insignificance of idols and the fact that there was nothing sinful about eating meat sacrificed to them. But rather than trying to make a point, he wanted to make a difference. He didn't want to lose the right to disciple a weaker believer by leading him into sin. He didn't push for his point of view. Instead, he willingly limited his freedom for the sake of the weaker brother and sister who were still trying to figure out what that freedom was all about. Would you limit yours ever? I know that you're free to fill in the blank. I know you're free to play Texas hold' Em because the Bible doesn't tell you not to.
Mark Clark [00:40:32]:
But when your uncle, who's got a gambling addiction asks you not to when you're on the family vacation, what are you going to do? Hey, I got freedom, baby. I can do what I want. I got freedom in Christ. Don't project your problems on me, bro. Paul says, you haven't understood the gospel. Can you give up your freedom? And who's the example of it? Jesus had all the money and glory and power and freedom in the world and gave it up and came down so that we might get free. Father, as we think about not only beliefs through this series, but behavior, this is a big one. In the midst of our desperate ability to understand, driven by the Spirit, how we be the kinds of people defined by the cross and the freedom it brings, how do we then live out that freedom in the world in relationship to the world, in relationship to fellow believers and what they're dealing with and struggling with? Help to give us wisdom in the everyday realities.
Mark Clark [00:41:47]:
Because ultimately what we want is to project to the world and to people that, as one writer has said, you are most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in you. And sometimes our lives do not project satisfaction. They don't project that you are where we get our meaning and our fullness. We tend to project that. We try to get that meaning and fullness from everything else around, everything else the world has to offer. And we look no different. Help us to know that the gospel, the message about the perfect Christ who came and died in our place and rose again for sin and salvation, that that message in our heart and mind is actually the only thing that can deconstruct both legalism and license and the fact that we move between those two poles. Holy Spirit, speak.
Mark Clark [00:42:42]:
Change us on the spot. Let us reorient not only what we believe, but our very praxis, our very way of being, being so that we, the church, show the world just by what we do and what we're satisfied in, that we are truly human. We are human in a new kind of way that we never would have ever expected before we met the living God in the person of Jesus. We pray you would do that work among us. In your good name we pray. Amen.