Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
Hey everyone, welcome to the Mark Clark Podcast. Listen, in Ephesians 2, Paul says that Jesus didn't just talk about peace, he killed hostility. I love that distinction. Hostility between us and God, between us and others, and even within ourselves. This message takes a hard look at anger, division, and how the cross dismantles them all. Hopefully enjoy this one. Make sure you share it. On social and share with a friend because we want to make sure the Bible is getting out into the world to change lives.
Mark Clark [00:00:35]:
That's what this podcast is all about. So hopefully you're enjoying it. Let's get into it.
Mark Clark [00:00:40]:
All right. Good morning. Good morning. How y'all doing? Good, good. Why you guys look so pale? All right. Uh, uh, welcome to you if you're new to Village. Um, good to have you. My name is Mark.
Mark Clark [00:00:55]:
I'm the lead pastor here at the church. Welcome if you're at the Rosemary Heights campus as well. Good to have you. We are a church that meets— one church meets in two campuses here, and then we have a video campus at Rosemary Heights. We're about 140, 150 people gather there each week. It's going really well. It's awesome. We are continuing to look for a campus pastor, so you can have that before you in prayer as we look for a guy to lead down there.
Mark Clark [00:01:20]:
Welcome. We're doing this series in Ephesians where we're unpacking kind of these these massive themes, these universal themes. Who is God? What has he done? How does he save? And so we're in Ephesians 2. So if you have a Bible, go to Ephesians 2. If you don't own a Bible and you came here as a visitor, there's Bibles on the outside. You can go on your way in, just grab one of those, take it home with you. And as you turn to Ephesians 2, let me set up what we're gonna unpack. We're basically gonna cover 1, maybe 1.5 verses today, all right? Verse 17, some of little 16, little 18, mostly 17, kind of camping ourselves there.
Mark Clark [00:01:58]:
But in order to set up what Paul unpacks in chapter 2 of Ephesians, let me just read you from the book of Jeremiah. All right, God is speaking to his people in Jeremiah chapter 2, some of the strongest language in the Old Testament, through the prophet. He says this in verse 12: Be appalled, O heavens, at this. Be shocked. Be utterly desolate, declares the Lord. So you're in church. You don't tend to hear shock very often. Be shocked, right? Be appalled.
Mark Clark [00:02:31]:
Be disgusted. It's like, hey, welcome to church. All right. Why? What would we be appalled at? What would we be disgusted at? What would the heavens just throw up about? Verse 13, for my people, have committed two evils. So some of you in here would consider yourself God's people. They have committed two evils. First, they have forsaken me. All right, we forsake him.
Mark Clark [00:03:04]:
And here's what he means. He becomes second. All right, we're living our life. We make preeminent in our life money or spouses or kids or education or reputation. A series of different things, and he becomes secondary, these people have forsaken me. All right, they have— this is what happens. We as humankind, we get focused in on what we want to get focused in on, and God becomes very fuzzy. All right, God kind of gets pushed out to the margins, and what we begin to focus on is ourself, our kids, our family, our job, our reputation, our success.
Mark Clark [00:03:44]:
And so God becomes fuzzy as we focus in. Now, let me give you a couple illustrations of how I've seen this in the last couple weeks so we kind of get this picture. So I'm in Hawaii, all right? I'm with my daughter. We're in the hot tub, all right? We're sitting there in the hot tub. I know this illustration's hard for you, but we're in the hot tub, we're hanging out, I'm kind of looking at her, and there's 15 people in this hot tub, all right? And we're hanging out, all these adults, and we're kind of talking to each other, da da da. And all of a sudden, this Japanese man runs across the deck of the pool and jumps into the hot tub and goes, "Taka taka!" All right? Now, he's under the water. We're like, "This is like one of those shows, all right? This is crazy." And we're all kind of hanging out, talking to each other. And all of a sudden, he comes up with a child.
Mark Clark [00:04:40]:
His son had gone under the water of the hot tub and the bubbles were going so much so that we couldn't see him. And we were all talking to each other so focused on our own life and our own interaction, we missed a drowning child. Now, some of you, this is exactly where you're at. You are drowning. All right? You're focusing on everything else in life and you need, and my hope is this morning is— is part of it. Someone to jump in and save you. That is part of what the gospel is about. We get focused, God becomes fuzzy, the gospel— God can save us from that, and let us not forsake him.
Mark Clark [00:05:27]:
Alright, secondly, let me give you this illustration. Because sometimes we focus in— this is part of forsaking— and we focus in on this thing, and when we're focused here, We don't realize what's going on around us when God is calling us to do something. So I was sitting again in the pool, all right, with my daughter Hayden, and she's sitting there with her life jacket on. She's floating, and I'm focused in on her. And you know this as parents, sometimes you just kind of zone out. All right, that's kind of what happens. Good parenting. So I'm watching my daughter, and she's floating, and there's a woman over here, all right, and she's speaking with an accent.
Mark Clark [00:06:04]:
I don't know where she's from. But she's talking to her daughter who's sitting there eating cookies right beside the pool. All right, and she's going, "No food in the pool, honey. No food in the pool, honey. No food in the pool, honey." And she's just saying this. And I'm kind of zoned out looking at my daughter. And all of a sudden I realize everything's kind of stopped and she's staring at me in silence and Hayden's staring at me in silence. And I kind of go, "What?" And I realize that I've been saying out loud to Hayden No food in the pool, honey.
Mark Clark [00:06:36]:
No food in the pool, honey. What? Why? That's messed up. So that's what happens. Alright, we get so zoned in, alright, on our own life, on our own stuff, All right, we just don't even realize what's going on around us. This is what God's talking about. You have forsaken me. You have become so focused on this thing that I have become fuzzy. You have pushed me to the margins.
Mark Clark [00:07:14]:
This is a great evil. Now listen, this happens to all of us. And this second point, this is a vertical. The first point is vertical. Remember we talked two weeks ago, vertical people. Now here we go, verse 13. What's the second evil? They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. Here's what he's saying is vertically, they have forsaken me, and horizontally, now this filters down to you're trying to get living water, you're trying to drink by creating cisterns for yourself that really can't hold living water at all.
Mark Clark [00:07:54]:
You're pursuing pleasure. You're pursuing joy. Going after all of these things, realizing God's over here going, "I'm the living water. I can give you joy. I can give you true contentment." But you're trying to get it through this and through this and through this. And I'm over— so this is a forsakenness. And I'm not saying you did this in your 20s. I'm saying you do this now.
Mark Clark [00:08:17]:
Every single one of us does this. We forsake God and then horizontally how it works out is we begin to pursue other things in order to make us happy. And see, here's the problem. I used to think about Christianity wrongly. Okay, so some of you might be in this exact same boat where you would view Christianity as, I follow God, I give my life to Jesus, and that's, you know, good for eternity. But then there's joy and there's pleasure and there's contentment and there's fun in this life. And I posited those things against each other. Right? All the way through high school, I would talk to my friends about Jesus, and we would talk about, "Okay, so you gotta give your life to Jesus." But here's what they would think, and some of you are probably in the same boat as we've gone through this in this series.
Mark Clark [00:09:03]:
We've been saying, "Make God preeminent. Make God first, God first, and then everything else." And you've been going, "Yeah, but how does that play out? What does that have to do with me?" And we find it very difficult because our greatest motivation in life, The greatest motivator for us is our own joy, our own happiness. All right, that is the reason you do everything. It's the reason you sat where you sat this morning. It's the reason you're married who you married, the job that you took, the schooling that you take. It's all about your pleasure and your joy. And what happens is, is we view Christianity as the opposite. We think there's God or there's joy.
Mark Clark [00:09:40]:
And so I would talk to my friends, come on, Jesus. And then they would say, well, so here's what you're telling me. You're telling me either God or pleasure and joy. Well, I know I want pleasure and joy in this life, and I know how to get it through sex, through partying, through whatever. But over here, you're saying God, and that doesn't sound very joyous. Maybe if there's heaven one day, but I'm not sure there is heaven, but I'm sure of this life. So I'm going to take this because this is not worth the risk. Are you tracking with that? That's how some of you think right now.
Mark Clark [00:10:09]:
Now, Blaise Pascal back in the day said philosophically, The opposite is true. You should always bet on God. And the reason you should always bet on God is because even if God doesn't exist, the worst-case scenario is you gave up living your life how you wanted it for 76 years, but you got eternity out of the deal. Versus the opposite, if he doesn't exist, then you lived a moral life for 76 years, and then you die, and he doesn't exist, but you never know it anyway. 'Cause you're dead. Now, I don't even think we need to go there. I think Paul would say, here's what's faulty. What's faulty is the dichotomy between joy and God.
Mark Clark [00:10:51]:
Because what God continuously in the Bible, continuously in the gospel, what we see is the Bible saying in Jesus, that is where you get joy. That God has built the universe in such a way that when you're walking with Him, when you're loving Him, that is where true joy and contentment and fulfillment and pleasure and happiness actually come from. Some of us view it as if, if I'm doing God's will, I'm going to be mopey. All right, God, if I do something and it makes me happy, I've ruined its goodness. That's how we play this. As if God wants all of us just hanging out on the east side of Vancouver, giving away all our money, being poor and suffering. Some of you in the back of your mind think that's the only way God's going to be happy with you. That's the only way that God is going to love you, bless you, care for you, is if you're mopey.
Mark Clark [00:11:54]:
And the reality is no. God's constantly after your joy. He's constantly after your pleasure. He's constantly after, but He's saying, here's the place to find it, all right? This is Psalm 37. Delight yourself in the Lord, that you're to find pleasure, joy in Him, that your exceeding joy comes through Him, your identity in Him, not the things that come from Him. Don't elevate gift above giver. Don't say, I want blessings of God, I want streets of gold, I want to be reunited with my dead grandpa. Great.
Mark Clark [00:12:29]:
All that happened in Jesus. The most important thing is you get Him. That you are to delight yourself in the Lord. That's what He's saying. And so He's saying, I've built the universe in such a way that if you follow my way of doing it, the way I've set it up, that's where you're going to have maximum joy. If you push against that, if you try to wrestle that away from Him, you're not going to experience the joy that He set out for you. All right, so I made sex to function this way. You take it away from me, you won't experience maximum joy the way I set it up.
Mark Clark [00:13:03]:
You might think you are, but you're not. I set up money this way. You do it the way I set it up, maximum joy. I built relationships this way. So Paul's going to say in chapter 5, he's going to say, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. And gave himself up for her. What's that image? Husbands, love your wives. How? Lead them, love them, sacrifice for them, lay down your life for them, provide for them, defend them.
Mark Clark [00:13:35]:
That's how Christ loves the church. Men, you do that for your wives, they will soar. Then he follows it up and he says, wives, respect your husbands. And we go, there must be something wrong in the Greek. Wait a minute. All right, we get embarrassed. We go, "Respect your husbands." I don't know what that is right there. As if there's something wrong with saying that wives should respect their husbands.
Mark Clark [00:14:11]:
No, listen. Here's why Paul says that. Because men are different than women. What? And men function out of respect. That's what men live for is— listen, it's not love. All right. Men feel love. They're fine.
Mark Clark [00:14:30]:
Listen, if a man wakes up and his wife is still there, he goes, okay, I'm good. All right. Let's move on with our day. I feel loved. I feel filled up. You love me. I get it. You're still here.
Mark Clark [00:14:45]:
And we spend all this culture. He needs to know he's loved. He needs to know he's loved. Love, love, love, love, love. Love becomes the idol. Loves becomes a preeminent thing. Everybody loving each other. That's because we're trying to focus on what women need, which is love.
Mark Clark [00:15:01]:
Absolutely. You lay down your life for your wife, you woo her, you romance her, because that's the way she's gonna soar. But when it comes to men, They need respect. They get it. You're there? We're good to go. You love me, I love you, I know, let's go. What he's lacking is respect. What he's lacking is you saying to him, "I respect you.
Mark Clark [00:15:24]:
I respect that you defend me, that you provide for me, that you love me, that you have really big muscles. I respect that about you. I respect that even though you don't make as much as that neighbor of ours, I don't care." because I respect you. That will make a man go for months. You want to know how you kill a man's spirit? Disrespect him. Disrespect him at home, disrespect him in front of people, and you'll kill him. And some women do not understand this. And they'll go along disrespecting, comments here, comments there.
Mark Clark [00:16:00]:
And Paul's saying, you want to know how to function as human beings? You want to know how to soar? Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. Wives, respect your husbands. And so God says, I've built all of this. I built marriage and relationships and sexuality and money, all this stuff in a particular way. I set up the universe in this way that if you follow it, you'll thrive and you will have joy. You will have happiness. Delight yourself in the Lord. And so we're constantly trying to posit these things against each other, and the Bible's saying, no, put them back together.
Mark Clark [00:16:45]:
We're constantly trying to wrestle this away from God. Let me show you how to do relationships. I'll show you how to do marriage. God says there's a covenant between a man and a woman. It's a covenant. A covenant is not a contract which is later changed, negotiated, or broken. It's a covenant. And we go, yeah, but you don't know my husband.
Mark Clark [00:17:08]:
So I'll just footnote this because when God threw down marriage as a covenant, he just didn't know me. I'm the exception. And God goes, you don't understand. I set it up this way for your maximum flourishing. Trust me. And so this is all part of what Paul's talking about. Vertical, vertical, all filters down to horizontal. Verse 17 then of Ephesians 2.
Mark Clark [00:17:39]:
And he came and preached peace. Now, what does he mean by peace? Because we tend to get very Canadian passivity, right? Peace is kind of like Volkswagens, hippies, salt springs. Spring Island kind of peace. All right, that's what we tend to get into. It's all passive and dee-dee-dee. Here's what he just defined how we got peace in verse 16. He said, and that he might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. I love this.
Mark Clark [00:18:14]:
Here's what he's saying. There's hostility between us and God and us and other people. All right, there's racism, there's murder, You guys, you have racist, prejudiced ideas buried deep inside your mind that you don't even talk about. You hate people. You judge people. There's hostility. Read the newspaper. Go deep inside your own heart.
Mark Clark [00:18:40]:
Hostility is everywhere in our experience. And he's saying he killed the hostility. He killed that division and that disconnect. Jesus Christ in the cross killed hostility that you have toward other people, toward other people groups, toward God, toward yourself. The hostility that we have in life, Jesus killed it. It's an aggressive image. He killed it. He killed sin.
Mark Clark [00:19:15]:
He killed Satan. He killed death. He killed hostility, men. He killed your anger. All right? I hang out with a lot of guys and we talk about life and serving our wives and following Jesus and being good men. What does the gospel mean? And here's a constant sin and struggle among men is anger. We feel angry. All right, we just freak out over nothing.
Mark Clark [00:19:48]:
We have a culture of angry men, angry about where they are in life, angry with God, angry at their wives, angry at their kids, angry at their boss. And they're just living that out. And what he's saying is Jesus killed that hostility, that you don't have to be that way. That he killed this, and then men can, instead of being angry, then here's what's beautiful about the gospel. He could take all of that energy and turn it into making you guys into missionaries that can change our cities in the power of Jesus. Instead of burning our cities down for a stupid hockey team, he can take your heart, take your mind, and turn you so that you could turn our city around for the glory of God. That's what he does with men. I had a guy in here after the 9 o'clock, came into me, tattoos everywhere, walked up to me, said, man, I'm in a gang and I got stabbed and I went into the hospital and my doctor said, "Go to Village Church." So I came because I want to find peace.
Mark Clark [00:21:03]:
So thank you. I want to find alternative community than a bunch of guys around me who are angry and want to kill other people out of that. Anger, and Jesus goes, I killed that hostility so that you can take that passion and use it to turn your city around. Ladies, he killed the hostility, the fact that you spend your time pointing out the flaws and the failures of other women. That grows out of your lack of self-esteem and your fear that other people don't like you. And so you cut other people down, you cut other women down, what they wear, how they act, how they live, because you're growing out of an identity where the hostility has not been killed. That all grows out of that. And Paul's going, Jesus killed that hostility.
Mark Clark [00:22:05]:
You don't have to live like that, judging other people to build yourself up, ladies. If your identity is so rooted in Jesus, you won't have to live that out. Vertical turns into all kinds of horizontal expressions. All right. It also turns in not only personally, but corporately as the people of God. There is a vertical expression where the people of God worship God, love Jesus, give their life to Jesus. And then what happens, Paul says, is you become corporately, horizontally, the people of God. You become the church.
Mark Clark [00:22:38]:
So here's what he says in verse 14, which Rob unpacked a little bit last week. For he himself is our peace, who has made us, meaning Jew and Gentile, both one, and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. Verse 15, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. He's saying the people of God corporately coming together, Jew, Gentile. In our culture, different Christian denominations and traditions. There's all kinds of them. There's thousands of different traditions, denominations, emphasis within Christianity. What he's saying is you are one.
Mark Clark [00:23:26]:
There needs to be unity in the body of Christ. Here's the thing, Village Church, we love Village Church, People are getting reached for Jesus here. We love it. But Village Church is not the kingdom of God. All right? There's a wider kingdom of God. There's other churches, other denominations. And I'm not calling for, you know, okay, let's abandon denominations and all become, you know, non-denominational, which is just Baptists trying to be cool anyway. But I'm not saying that.
Mark Clark [00:23:58]:
There's traditions, there's denominations, it's all fine. It's all good. But the point is, is that, listen, we're one body of Christ. And in a culture like ours, you could go to a church, a lot of churches in our city, and you're gonna hear the gospel, serve Jesus, and we'd be happy that you're there. All right? Because it's one church unified. All right? On mission. And that makes us stronger. Killing that hostility, coming together makes us stronger.
Mark Clark [00:24:31]:
To be on mission. So a guy named Leslie Newbigin, back in the day after World War II, he was a theologian, a philosopher, and he went from the Western world where he lived and he moved across to India to be a missionary. And he came back in the late '70s and he said, here's the thing, before I left there was a Christian culture and people skewed toward church. All right, people skewed toward, I get married in a church, I get buried in a church, culturally I'm in a church. If people talk about the Bible, generally people know what they're talking about. But now I've come back, I've realized that we have entered a post-Christian culture where nobody knows about that stuff anymore. And so we need to unify in light of being a post-Christian culture in order to successfully do the mission that God has us on. One church, different expressions, yes.
Mark Clark [00:25:28]:
There's all kinds of diversity in the church. All kinds of diversity. That's fine. Village Church isn't for everybody. That doesn't offend me. That's fine. If you're gonna get reached in a different kind of— there's people who walk into the office off the street, they're like, I'd like to talk to a pastor. I got some heavy counseling issues.
Mark Clark [00:25:45]:
So I bring them into a room and I say, okay, go. And they're like, when's the pastor coming? I'm like, No, you're the— I thought you were the intern. So it's not going to reach everybody. I get that, right? I mean, I got saved in the weirdest church, in a church that God, I would think God would never use this. It was orange carpet. All right. Which was really cool in 1971. Had brown pews.
Mark Clark [00:26:23]:
The pastor had white hair. He'd wear a suit. He'd sit up on the stage during the service and watch everybody. All right, he wasn't participating. He's just, what's going on? He'd tap his foot and the special singers would sing. And then they'd go out and then they'd sell their CDs in the foyer, right? Here I am, right? Baggy pants around here. Never been to a church. Walking in like, what are you selling your CDs in the foyer for? Don't you know Jesus? Throw this over.
Mark Clark [00:26:49]:
She'd just whip you. Turn the church into a marketplace. Weirdest church. I mean, that God would reach me there. Wife playing the organ. I mean, just— and God reaches me there, saves me there. All right, then I start working at a church in inner city Toronto. It was the most multiethnic church in all of North America.
Mark Clark [00:27:16]:
All right, my whole youth group was black, which was awesome because I'd go in and try to be relevant. Like, hey, what's going on, guys? They're like, whatever, Wonder Bread. All right, but you'd be preaching and you know, you get the black people in the audience who are like, amen, bring it, bring it, brother. You knew you were doing well even if you weren't killing it, right? The black ladies would be like, come on, bring it, bring it. I was like, yes. Love you. And the black choirs, oh my gosh. Black choirs, yes.
Mark Clark [00:27:50]:
White choirs, is that— I don't even know if that's supposed to happen. But black choirs, yes. Alright, now listen. This is the people of God. That's the point. Paul's saying the hostility's gone. Socioeconomic divisions, race divisions, gender divisions, you all come together. You're one people of God.
Mark Clark [00:28:20]:
And working in that church, that was like Revelation 5. That was like around the throne of the Lamb. And there were people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation worshiping the Lamb. That was the gospel made visible. It was a beautiful thing. I got dreams that we can be that church, that God has put us in positions to be able to be a church like that. Different expressions, different campuses, wherever this thing goes, that the gospel would draw people of different tribes, tongues, nations to gather together as the people of God without hostility and some of your subtle racism will have to be challenged in that. Some of our prejudices will have to be challenged in that.
Mark Clark [00:29:11]:
But this is what he's saying. The hostility's gone. The dividing walls are gone. This is the people of God working together as one people. Hostility gone. Now, here's what Paul says. He came and preached peace. Now, you and I, as people who don't know our Old Testaments all that well, don't realize that what Paul's doing here is he's alluding to an Old Testament passage in the book of Isaiah where it says that how beautiful are the feet of those who come and preach good news and preach peace.
Mark Clark [00:29:49]:
All right, now here's what this means. It's that we preach the word for good news is euangelion, all right? And it means good news, gospel, a proclamation that something has happened. And so what we would say is the gospel, we have to get this clear in our mind because there's a lot of people who think that, well, this is the gospel. And I talk to them and say, well, what is the gospel? They say, well, following Jesus and bringing in the kingdom. And I'm like, no, no, those things aren't the gospel. Those are implications of the gospel. The gospel in a nutshell is that God became a human being, died on the cross for your sins, rose again from the dead victorious over Satan, sin, and death. That in a nutshell is by itself the gospel.
Mark Clark [00:30:37]:
Then there's the question of what you do with it. But really tightly, that's the good news. And then you say, well, what do I do with news? That's what he's talking about. He preached peace. He preached the gospel. And it's all about the cross and the resurrection. So we can talk about following Jesus, being a good person, bringing in the kingdom of God, doing justice, but without the cross and the resurrection, the gospel has not been preached. And so you can talk to, read guys like Deepak Chopra, who's a very famous New Age thinker, all right? And what he'll tell you is, Go to the Sermon on the Mount because the Sermon on the Mount, though I don't like anything about Christianity, you go to the Sermon on the Mount and that's the pinnacle of Christianity.
Mark Clark [00:31:25]:
It's the only thing Christianity is about. And it's not true because if you read the Sermon on the Mount without the cross and the resurrection, you know what it does? It crushes you. And it's not meant to be taken in isolation. So you read Matthew 5 and 6 and 7 and Jesus says crazy stuff. Right? He says, you have heard that it was said, do not commit adultery. But I say unto you, if you lust after another person, you've already committed adultery in your heart. Right? So we tend to go, hey, Old Testament, that was really hard stuff. But New Testament, everything's so easy.
Mark Clark [00:32:02]:
Really? I think Jesus made it harder. It used to be, you've heard that it said, don't murder a guy. Now, if you hate a brother, you're already guilty of murder. But I didn't stab him in the neck. Doesn't matter, you hated him. So do not lust or you've already committed adultery. So what happens in your mind when I say, "Do not lust"? You start looking up at my tan and you go, "Oh, I sinned." Right? Because I said, "Do not lust." And in your mind you go there. Why? Because if all you do is read the Sermon on the Mount on the page as it is, and don't put it in the context of the entire Gospel of Matthew, it will crush you.
Mark Clark [00:32:48]:
Because the whole point of it is, by the end of chapter 7, Jesus is saying, "Your righteousness has to surpass that of the Pharisees and the scribes." Well, that's hopeless. Then you read chapter 8. Then you read chapter 9. Then you read chapter 10. Then you read chapter 12 and 13 and 14. And then he starts getting crucified. Why? Because you can never do the stuff in the Sermon on the Mount. That's why he had to come and do it for you.
Mark Clark [00:33:07]:
And then he gets crucified and he cries out, "It is finished." And then he rises again from the dead and he says, "Let me give you new life." And then right at the end, which is all very famous, the Great Commission, the last verses, he says, "Oh, by the way, go out and make disciples," which means learner. "And here's how you're going to do it. Forget Deepak Chopra. You're going to do it by baptizing people in the name of what? The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." Oh, I might need help. Through the Holy Spirit and the cross and the resurrection in order to do the Sermon on the Mount. And that's where you're supposed to go back and read chapter 5 and read chapter 6 and read chapter 7. He goes, now I've empowered you to actually do this. And without it, you're dead.
Mark Clark [00:33:48]:
And so the gospel, cross, resurrection for your sins so that you might have eternal life. Now, 30,000 feet, Jesus came to bring peace. Jesus came to bring peace. Then it comes down to our personal lives. Jesus came to bring peace. How? We live in an age of anxiety. Half of you are anxious, you're stressed, you have mortgage payments you can't pay, credit cards that you've gone over. You're stressed, you're anxious, you don't know what to do.
Mark Clark [00:34:20]:
Jesus, very practically, says he brings peace. He preaches peace to you, to your hearts. 90% of pastoral ministry is meeting with people and telling them, listen, Jesus is in control of your circumstance, of your situation. Don't let this situation kill you. Don't let the circumstance drown you. Jesus is in control. Some of you are going through cancer. You're getting hit with radiation, chemo.
Mark Clark [00:34:49]:
You've been told you have a year to live. In this room, and you're my hero because when I look at you and I talk to you and you're able to live this out still even in those moments because the cross and resurrection are true, not because Jesus is a good prophet but dead, but because he's alive because he got up. And he says, you don't even have to fear death. That's the kind of peace the cross and the resurrection gives. That kind of peace doesn't come from reading a list of laws and rules and engaging Jesus as a good, profound teacher or a prophet who laid down some system of morality. He's dead. Who cares? He can't change me, He can't transform me, I have cancer now. So what am I going to do with some good teaching? But Jesus goes, "I'm alive.
Mark Clark [00:35:58]:
I bring peace." Now, who is all this peace for? Verse 17, two kinds of people. He preaches peace, He brings peace in whose life? Two kinds of people. He came and preached peace to who? 'Peace to you who are far off and peace to those who are near.' First, those who were near. In that time, it was Jews. They followed God. They paid attention to the laws. They were near. He's saying the gospel is for you, meaning those of you who grew up in the church.
Mark Clark [00:36:31]:
All right? You grew up, your parents were Christians, they brought you to Sunday school, you went over to Camp Kwanos, whatever you did, you were a Christian. You went to summer camps, you got to— I mean, this is— This is Rob, all right? Rob, last week when he was talking, he was raised as someone who was near, all right? He was a Christian. And so he walked with God, he knew God. He thought though, and here's the problem with those of you in this camp, those of you who are near, he thought that he was saved because he didn't drink alcohol, all right? He watched only Adventures in Odyssey. And he didn't have Halloween parties, he had hallelujah parties at youth group, alright? Now, all of those things are what saved and justified him because he was near, alright? And what Paul is saying is the Gospel is for you. What you have to recognize is even if you've done all of those things, you are still a sinner. A sinner in need of the gospel of grace in your life. Because your sin, you can start to identify and justify your existence based on the fact that you were near.
Mark Clark [00:37:46]:
You could be an angel. All right. My kids, I walked in the other day to my kids and they were playing house. Now girls, this is how they play. They organize stuff. Which is awesome because I got 3 girls and I look at my friends who have boys and I'm like, oh my gosh, they're not organizing. All right. My girls, I come in, you got like 10 shoes lined up and they're cooking dinner.
Mark Clark [00:38:13]:
All right. So I come in and they're like, I'm like, hey guys, you want some donuts? And they're like, mommy said we're not allowed to have donuts. You're so moral. I said, forget what mommy said, eat some donuts. So they ate some donuts, and as I walked out, as I was walking out, I hear Hayden say to Sienna, hold on, Sienna, don't eat your donut, we have to pray. What? Awesome! Before donuts. Now here's the danger in that, right? That we think that because we're praying before donuts and we're organizing everything and we're gonna tell mommy when daddy wants us to sin, all right, that somehow we're saved because of those things. And Paul says in Philippians 3, let me tell you, I could do a whole list of those things.
Mark Clark [00:39:20]:
I was a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised on the 8th day, Pharisee of Pharisees, righteous in regard to the law, and still with all of that list, when I met Jesus, I saw the surpassing worth of knowing Christ, and I looked back to these things and saw them as a steaming pile of rubbish. Because I can do all of these things and still not know, walk, love, and serve the God of the universe at all. And I can do all of these things and still die and go to hell. But I told mommy about the donuts. But you didn't know Jesus. You trusted in the donuts. In what you did with them, what you did before, instead of going, man, none of this stuff will save me. I gotta trust in what he's done for me.
Mark Clark [00:40:19]:
Constant temptation for those who are near. And what Paul's saying is the gospel saves those of you who are near and all the sins that come with the fact that you were near. All the sins that come with all of you who were raised in the church. All the sins like when you just, you have this self-righteousness about you because you've known nothing else but Jesus your entire life. The sin of Well, I needed to be like the other kids, so let me redefine grace to mean what it never meant. See, historically, grace was that you have undeserved favor in the cross of Jesus Christ so that God can save you not because of you but in spite of you. You switch that to mean I can do whatever I want and God will still love me, so let me run out of the cage of my own religion, run toward licentiousness so that I can have some testimony years so that I can do things that everybody else got to do and I didn't get to do them. So I'm going to break out of this cage in my point of freedom and go toward them.
Mark Clark [00:41:21]:
You know what he's saying? That the gospel saves you from even that foolishness. Saves you from those, saves you those who are near. The gospel's for you, all you older brothers. And then he says, those who are far off. Some of you here, you were not raised in the church. You're like me, walked in the church first time I was 19. First time I ever did drugs, I was 10 years old. Started stealing in high school.
Mark Clark [00:42:00]:
Didn't know Jesus. Some of you, that's you. You're far off. You're far off. Your life's a mess. Maybe it's not. Maybe your life is fine and you're just trusting in yourself, but you don't know Jesus. You're far off.
Mark Clark [00:42:15]:
He's saying the gospel's for you. And some of us go, well, of course the gospel's for those people. There was a family that told me they came to Christmas Eve service last year and they brought a bunch of their non-Christian family and friends. And when they got back, they were all eating turkey and kind of hanging out. And the person said, you know, I didn't realize until tonight what he said, which was that you can become a Christian without being born into a Christian family. I didn't know that. And so some of you need to hear this. You're far off, right? You don't know God, you don't walk with God, you don't love God, but the gospel's for you.
Mark Clark [00:42:53]:
Jesus said, "I did not come to condemn the world, but to save it." And some of you resist becoming part of the church, giving your life to Jesus, because you have excuses like, "Yeah, but the church is so hypocritical. The church is so judgmental. The church is so narrow-minded, so I would never want to be part of that." Paul's saying the gospel's for you who are far off. Don't make excuses like that. Don't make excuses like, "Well, I don't want to be a Christian because I know some Christians and they're hypocritical." That doesn't get you off the hook. Of course there's a whole bunch of Christians who are hypocritical. Of course there's a bunch of people in the church that are hypocritical because there's a bunch of people in the church that aren't Christians. They claim to be Christians, but they're totally nominal.
Mark Clark [00:43:39]:
There's people in this room who are here for a million other reasons than to get their heart transformed by Jesus. They're here to make friends, boost up their real estate business, get some information for their class for a paper they're writing. Of course there's people in here who are going to disappoint you, who are going to be hypocritical, who are going to get outside these walls and live— because they don't know Jesus. And then those who do, the mistake that we make is we say, well, Aren't Christians supposed to be a bunch of moral people? Well, I can't live up to that because I'm far off. Aren't they supposed to be? I can't live up to it. No, Christianity is not about that. Christianity is about, listen, you're not moral. You can try to do all these things, but you're not moral.
Mark Clark [00:44:27]:
You need Jesus to ever have a hope in this world of ever being moral. And it needs to start with you recognizing that. See, here's the problem. Those of you who are far off, you're intimidated by Christianity. Don't be, because you know where Christianity starts? You're wretched. You don't need to be moral. You don't need to have your stuff together before you meet Jesus. That's the point.
Mark Clark [00:44:54]:
But we communicate this to people because the way we read our Bibles, right? You look at Old Testament prophets, we've talked about this before. The prophet Hosea, God comes to Hosea, He says, Hosea, I want you to speak to my people. And in order to be symbolic, I want you to marry a prostitute named Gomer. Best name in the Bible, Gomer. And the way that we read the Bible then is we say, okay, so I'm Hosea. And when I talk to you, my friend who doesn't know Jesus, you're Gomer the whore. And so now they're feeling like that, but they're looking at you going, man, I could never be that. Look at you, look at how moral you think you are.
Mark Clark [00:45:41]:
I can't live up to that. And what we'd say is, no, no, no, you're reading the Bible all wrong. The point of the Bible is you're not Hosea, you're Gomer. God is Hosea who chooses to marry you in covenant in spite Despite the fact that you're a whore. I gotta take that opportunity when I get it. Despite the fact that, man, you wake up every day and you cheat on Jesus. You choose your sin and yourself and Satan over Him every day, and yet, like Hosea marrying Gomer, He stays in covenant with you. Why? Because you're good? No, because he is.
Mark Clark [00:46:31]:
We make much of him. And so some of us look into Christianity and we say, well, it's too hypocritical, it's too judgmental, I can't be part of it. Here's the thing. I go and speak at Christian conferences and Christian schools And what happens after I speak is that people come up to me and they say, "I need to repent of this, man. I'm addicted to porn. I'm doing drugs. I don't even believe in any of this stuff anymore. I need some prayer." And then there's people who might look into those scenarios and go, "See, hypocrites.
Mark Clark [00:47:11]:
They go to Christian school. Why would there be sin at Christian school? Why would there be porn and drug addiction in Christian school?" But the flip way of looking at that is, no, listen, when the kingdom of God comes and it starts pushing on people, then all of that sin is going to rise to the top. So of course there's going to be hypocrisy. Of course there's going to be sin because the Holy Spirit's working to transform people's lives. So they're bringing all their hypocrisy, all their messed up lives to the top in order to be dealt out with. So people— and this happens at Village Church all the time. People come in, they go, "The gospel affected me. I need to confess sin.
Mark Clark [00:47:51]:
I need to come out with it." And people go, "Oh, look at Village Church, so full of sinners." You're darn right it is! Full of messed up, sinful wrecks who need Jesus. It's not 10 steps to a better life. It's one step. Repent. Let Jesus be your better life. Some of you need to come to terms with what this means practically in your life. I don't want you to walk out of here today saying, "I sang some songs, I listened to a nice sermon, and I move on with my day." Here's what I want you to do. I want you to feel the weight of what it means for those who are near and those who are far off to come to know Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:48:51]:
Some of you have sin that is hidden and dead and dormant that nobody knows about, and it's keeping you from walking in freedom. This week, needs to be a week. Today needs to be a day when you say to guys, to your wife, here's this sin I got, and I got to come clean with it, and I got to tell you about it. And this has happened here multiple times, and there's freedom and healing and reconciliation and a killing of hostility that comes with the freedom of a confession of sin. Here's what I've been doing, here's my sin, I've buried it, it's been dead, and I'm coming to you and asking for forgiveness. And wives, your response needs to be grace, love, prayer, to recognize that he is coming to see himself not as Hosea but as Gomer. Ladies, you need to be doing a lot of confessing of sin. Maybe today, maybe this week, to your spouse, to your friends, about things you've done, things you've said, stuff that's buried that's keeping you from walking with Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:50:15]:
See, this is what happens when those who are near and those who are far off meet Jesus. Confession of sin, reconciliation, walking in freedom, killing of hostility. And if you can go this week without doing that, then you have zero idea who you are because you are not in touch with your sinfulness at all. You're walking in a dream world. And you, like 1 John says, if you say to yourself, I am without sin, You're not a child of God. If you can go through a week without saying, "Forgive me for this," you don't have a clue who you are. Let me pray for you. Why don't you stand? Father, it is my prayer that this— when we come here and we do this, when we open your word, when we sing, not to just sing but to proclaim truth, to be changed by it, to give generously toward your mission so that more people might know Jesus, all of this package of stuff that we do, that this would not be wasted time because we would leave this place changed, transformed, and ready to live and act differently, not in order to be justified, but because we are, and that we would humbly lovingly pull out the stuff that we're hiding in a safe place, in a place where gospel will be preached over it, in a place, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, "Love keeps no record of wrongs," in a place where this sin and this wrong will not be held up in our face But the gospel of Jesus will be preached over it, that when he said from the cross, "It is finished," he meant it.
Mark Clark [00:52:48]:
It is finished. And on the other side is life. Let us walk in that life. Let us trust the living water instead of building broken cisterns. For ourself, trying to be justified and happy in every other expression of this world that isn't you. We repent that we do that constantly, ask forgiveness, and pray for bold, courageous, effective discipleship going out of here in respect to these things. In Jesus' name, amen.