Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
And so we dig into this week in and week out. Rob dug into it last week. He hit verse 17. And in that, it said, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And so I think as we come into verse 18 and 19, we gotta understand the impact of a statement like that, that Christ, God in the flesh would dwell in your hearts. How amazing a statement that is, how powerful that is. See, that's become really normative for us, right? We hear that since we were little kids, right, that you'd invite Jesus into your heart and you'd invite Jesus in your. Where does Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:00:35]:
If he lives in my heart, my daughter's like, what do you mean? My physical, like, beating heart and my flesh. And so we get this language and it kind of becomes normal to us. But you got to realize the impact of language like this, that in the ancient world, you would go to the presence of the gods and the goddesses that you worship. You would go to their temples, you would go to worship them. You would bring your sacrifices to them. Sometimes your grain or your money or your kids or whatever. And even in the Old Testament, they had these temples and the priests would go in and they'd tie a rope around the priest once a year because if he fell dead, they could drag him out. You entered into what was called the Shekinah glory, the presence of God.
Mark Clark [00:01:13]:
And what he's saying is in the New Testament, in the reality of Jesus, in the New Covenant, that you get filled. Christ, God in the flesh dwells in you. That's the difference. And so God doesn't dwell in this building, all right? This isn't that way. We bring, in a sense, we bring our temples, all right, that are filled with God to the church, and they all collide together in the context of gathering and worship. God doesn't dwell in buildings made with human hands. There was last night. There's still glitter on the ground because there was a little princess and pony show here, all right? Little girls were dancing around.
Mark Clark [00:01:49]:
It's not that they came in here and went, shekinah. All right? The glory of God has touched me as I walked into the Bell Center. All right, all right. This place is used for everything. It's that Christ dwells in you. You bring your temples here to worship. And so the impact of this idea in the marketplace of religious ideas is you get God indwelling you. And out of that comes what Paul's gonna talk about here in verse 18, he says this, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, listen.
Mark Clark [00:02:19]:
May have strength, all right? That's the first concept we have to hit on today. Strength. We have made a virtue of weakness. And Paul says, I want you to be strong. And so some of us over sentimentalize Christianity where we want to make everything super spiritual. And so if someone's struggling with sin, somebody has a, we just come, we say, hey, Pastor, you know, I'm really struggling. I'm on a journey, right? We've created all this language to dismiss the responsibility of godliness and holiness in us. And so people come, oh, Pastor, you know, I'm cheating on my wife.
Mark Clark [00:02:53]:
I'm just struggling with it. I'm on a journey. Can you pray for me? Yes, I will pray for you. And I'll also do something else. Stop it. Grow up. Your problem is, is you're weak. And many of you need to hear this.
Mark Clark [00:03:07]:
Your issue is not simply you're on a journey, you're struggling with sin. The issue is you're weak and he wants you to be strong. The issue is you're immature and he wants you to be mature. The issue is, is that you are a boy and God's calling you to be a man. You are a girl, and God is calling you to be a woman. That you've got to shut up and listen to what God is calling you to do instead of yappy, yappy, yappy, yappy, yappy. I'll tell God what I'm going to do. I'll tell all the people around me what I'm going to do.
Mark Clark [00:03:41]:
No, God wants to grow you. God wants you to be strong. He doesn't want us to make a virtue out of being weak and pathetic. And so he says, I want you to be strong. I want you to grow. I know pastors that I'll sit with and they'll say, I got the hardest
Speaker B [00:03:58]:
job in the world. I'm a pastor. I got the hardest job in the world. I'm a martyr. I say, well, what do you mean you got the hardest job? What does that look like? Oh, you know, there's people who write me emails.
Mark Clark [00:04:07]:
They think the worship music was too
Speaker B [00:04:09]:
loud and they didn't like the sermon and they don't like the new ministry decision I made.
Mark Clark [00:04:16]:
And I'm really torn up about it. I mean, this is the hardest job in the world. What? You follow a guy who died, put your cup on and get in the game. Be willing to take a nasty email, for Pete's sake. This is the kingdom of God. I just delete all of them. It's like, I didn't, like, delete don't care. I didn't, like, delete.
Mark Clark [00:04:43]:
Don't care. I didn't delete. Lots of churches you go, I don't care. What does it look like to be strong? What does it look like to grow? What does it look like to stop being lazy? It means we got to work out.
Speaker B [00:04:58]:
It means.
Mark Clark [00:04:59]:
I mean, how do you get strong in life? How do you get physically strong? You got a diet, right? You. You gotta exercise, right? You have to pump weights.
Speaker B [00:05:07]:
So I'm told, All right?
Mark Clark [00:05:09]:
To get muscles. That's what you need to do, right? You need to start disciplining. What does that look like in the Christian life? It means you gotta get into the Scriptures. You gotta get reading. Not, you know, a chapter a day keeps the devil away kind of reading, but deep. Eat this book. Rhythmic reading of the Scriptures that speak to you and teach you and that you get a prayer life and. And you get the disciplines of fasting, and you get in a community group, and you start growing in Christ.
Mark Clark [00:05:35]:
This is what we're talking about. Maturity. What we're talking about is not leaving you where you're at right now. And some of us say, well, it's really hard to start getting into those things. It is very difficult to get into those things. It's hard to become a prayer. Especially in our modern age, where we just wanna tweet and text and wonder what's going on on Facebook and what does it look like to actually do the things that God's asking us to do so that we can grow and mature? It's hard. It's hard to ever start working out.
Mark Clark [00:06:01]:
It's hard to ever start eating right. It's hard to ever start exercising. I know in high school, I exercised a few times. I took this weightlifting class, and I wanted the first day to pump my own weight. I wanted to lift because all the guys were doing it. They were like my own weight. So they were pumping their own weight. I got 110.
Speaker B [00:06:16]:
I got to pump this.
Mark Clark [00:06:16]:
So I pumped it. I pumped 110. And then I couldn't lift my arms for, like, three days after that. All right? Because it's hard to start. It's hard to start working out. It's hard to start disciplining yourself. It's hard to start praying. It's hard to start reading scripture.
Mark Clark [00:06:33]:
I get it. But this is what God has called us to. This is the way that we actually grow. And it scares me when some of you come up to me and you say, I never understood the Scriptures until I came to village and I would hear you teaching. And now I get the scriptures and this saved my faith and all of that. That's really good. And I understand you're trying to be encouraging, but what scares me about it is you should not depend on this 50 minutes for your own Christian life. You should learn how to feed yourself, right? You should not depend on me feeding you for 50 minutes out of the Scriptures.
Mark Clark [00:07:07]:
That's not how you're going to win the war. That's not how you're going to go to battle. And why Paul is saying you need to be strong is because this is a battle. Your enemy is Satan, sin and death. And the only way you're going to kill hostility, the, the only way you're going to grow, the only way you're going to be able to defeat Satan and sin and death and temptation is if you're actually feeding yourself and growing yourself. And so he wants us to be strong. And it's not for lack of Bibles that you're not reading the scriptures. We have tons of Bibles.
Mark Clark [00:07:37]:
We have more access to Bibles than we've ever had. We got King James and ESV and NASB and NLT and Bibles for pastors and Bibles for left handed women and Bibles for men who like war and army. We got everything, all kinds of different. It's not for lack of that. We got lots of Bibles, but we're still parched because. And then we wonder why we're not strong. And see what he wants is strength. And then he says what I want is power.
Mark Clark [00:08:09]:
Verse 20. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us, he wants us to have power. He wants us to have strength. This is why Jesus, when he went in and found disciples, he would call them and he would disciple them. And he discipled them for three years. Why don't, when you come to know Christ, you just disappear and go into heaven? Because you need to be developed, you need to mature, you need to strengthen. He wants to disciple you because he's looking for people who he can trust with his power. He's looking for people that he can entrust with strength because he's saying if I'm going to work in the world, if I'm going to do something in the world, what is the character of the people that I'm investing my spirit in, my power, in my strength in? Who are they? Are they whack jobs? Are they crazy? Do they preach in $30,000 suits to poor people, do they buy $60,000 toilet seats like one famous woman preacher did and justified it because she, you know, you have a warm bum.
Mark Clark [00:09:12]:
All right, do you have private jets? What's the character of the people that I give my power and strength to? And so when Jesus goes and he calls disciples, he says, man, you're all full of sin. You're all full of idols. And so I need to work on you over the period of three years. That's why you don't just disappear. And so, Matthew, I'm going to call
Speaker B [00:09:33]:
you away from your tax booth.
Mark Clark [00:09:36]:
And his tax booth wasn't just a nice story of a guy doing taxes. He was caught in idolatry. He loved money, he loved success and cheating, and he would rip people off. Tax collectors were the worst. They would rip everybody off. And you knew, you know, back in the day in Vancouver, in the airport, you would get through the airport, and then you would come to a particular
Speaker B [00:09:57]:
place and you'd have to pay more
Mark Clark [00:09:59]:
money to get through the airport. You have to pay a tax, alright? And that was always an awkward moment because the guy behind the booth was like, taking your money and smiling, and
Speaker B [00:10:09]:
you're just like, you're a jerk.
Mark Clark [00:10:10]:
I want to punch you in the throat. And that's what tax collectors were like. It was like they could. The Roman Empire said, you can charge people whatever you want over above, we want $2, but you can charge them whatever you want. So that every time you went and paid them four, you knew two was going to their pocket. So these guys were rich and they were idolatrous, and they were greedy and they were cowards. And when Jesus calls Matthew away from the tax booth, he's calling him away not just from a little booth, he's calling him away from his sinful lifestyle and the idols that are so built up in his heart. And he's saying, I want you to be strong.
Mark Clark [00:10:42]:
I want to give you power, but I need you to come away from that so I can disciple you. And Matthew, if you read the book of Matthew, he puts his conversion story in chapter nine, right in the middle of a whole bunch of healing stories. Because Matthew's saying, my conversion is a healing, healing. Jesus called me away from something so that he could empower me and entrust me so I could grow and be strong and go forward and actually succeed at the mission he gave me. And so here's the thing. If we're not growing, all right, if we're not growing in strength, we're not going to be able to accomplish anything that we've been unpacking the last bunch of weeks about going to war, planting churches, being on mission, killing sin. Some of you are like, yeah, but I became a Christian three months ago. I know I was hitting the club.
Mark Clark [00:11:26]:
I know I was sleeping around, but I'm a Christian for three months now. I'm going to go back and save all my friends over and over and over and over again. I've seen people who get too amped up too quickly to go back and save all their friends. And the reason Paul says in First Timothy 3 and Titus 1 that the character of an elder should be that he's not a new believer because Satan will kill him. Some of you, you have outward strength. That's good. You're starting to go to Bible studies. You're coming to church.
Mark Clark [00:11:55]:
That's good. But your inward strength has just started and you're not ready to go back out. You're not ready. You will die out there. You will get killed. You try to be a light to the world. You will get reformed if you don't grow first. I was talking to a church planter a week ago.
Mark Clark [00:12:11]:
He said he planted a church. It was a failed attempt. It was two years. And he called another guy up from a city that helped him plant this church. And the church failed. They had like 20, 30 people after two years. And the guy who he came up to pastor and be an elder alongside of him left the faith, walked away from Christ because he wasn't strong enough. He wasn't ready.
Mark Clark [00:12:31]:
This is why Paul is saying, you need to be strong. You need to mature. You need to grow up in Christ. This is why in verse 19, he says, to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Here's what he's saying. You need to be filled because you're not full yet. Why would you need to be filled? And the reason you're not full yet, in my experience is because we have this version of Christianity where many of you made a decision when you were a kid at Bible camp or VBS or whatever it was, where you had the little bracelet in red and black and white. And you said it because the option was you want to go to hell.
Mark Clark [00:13:15]:
And you said, is there another option? And they say, well, yes, you believe in Jesus. Okay, I'll take that option because I don't want to go to hell. And when you're six years old, that's all that matters. And it hasn't been followed up by anything, any kind of growth, any kind of discipleship. You're weak, you're immature, you're shallow. And he says, you need to be filled up. It's like a bucket. And some of you in this room are filled up higher than others.
Mark Clark [00:13:42]:
But he's saying, listen to, to the Christian life. There's a measurement going. It's not just enough that you have him, it's good. But now you need to be filled by him. Now you need to be growing in him, now you need to be maturing in him. And some of you have stopped at, well, I good, I think I'm going to heaven. I'm justified, I'm ready to go. And he's going, no, this is never the Christian story.
Mark Clark [00:14:06]:
You need to be filled. And he says in chapter five, do not get drunk on wine, but be filled with the spirit.
Speaker B [00:14:13]:
Some of you are low, some of you are high.
Mark Clark [00:14:16]:
The Christian life is all about how do I actually grow, how do I get filled, how do I move forward. Paul, over and over and over again gets angry at churches that remain immature. And he'll start to talk to them, First Corinthians, other places, and he'll say, I wish I could tell you about the character and the nature of God. But the minute I start to you tell, teach you about it, I realize that you're too immature. You're still sucking on milk when you should be eating meat. He tells him, it's like you're a 40 year old man sitting at a restaurant sucking on a bottle. It doesn't make any sense. You're still in the kiddie pool, which is never a good thing.
Mark Clark [00:14:53]:
Men. A couple months ago, literally, I went, I have three daughters and my wife, we went swimming. She went in with the girls to the change room. I, I came out. Well, my kids go in the kiddie pool, so I thought they were going to be out in two seconds. So I went in the kiddie pool. I'm sitting there and they took forever. And I just started playing with the duckies and hanging out.
Mark Clark [00:15:17]:
All of a sudden I started looking around, all these women are looking at me, right? The guys are on the walkie talkies that work there, like, who's the perv? Who's the pervasive?
Speaker B [00:15:28]:
I'm like, what's going on? Hey guys, it's warmer in here.
Mark Clark [00:15:34]:
These kids are peeing all over the place. Finally, my family comes out after 15 minutes older. Gentlemen, don't go in the kiddie pool. It's not appropriate at any level, unless you got kids coming. And so Paul says, this is the version of you as you're a 40 year old man and you're sitting in the kiddie pool. And I wish I could tell you, I wish I could tell you about the nature of God. I wish I could mature you, but you're so weak and you're so immature and you don't have strength. Some of you who are parents know this, that when you sit with your young children and you start to kind of go down a deep road, you start to realize, wait a minute, I don't know if I'm getting caught here because we're gonna kinda get over their head, all right? Like I'm starting to explain complex ethical decisions to my 6 year old.
Mark Clark [00:16:21]:
Things start going poorly. A couple weeks ago when I came back from New York, I had this picture of New York. It was an old picture and it had the World Trade Center. And then I had me a picture of me and no World Trade center, just the Freedom Tower being built. And so my 6 year old looked and she said, well, where did those buildings go? Now this is a woman, this is a girl with anxiety already, all right? She starts to, you know, you tell her something about something, she won't do that again, all right? So she, she's like, where did the buildings go? And I start into 9 11. Well, honey, you know, the planes went into the buildings.
Speaker B [00:16:56]:
What, what do you mean planes? Went into the, uh.
Mark Clark [00:16:59]:
Oh, I've started something I can't pull back on now. So were there people in the planes?
Speaker B [00:17:08]:
Uh, yes.
Mark Clark [00:17:12]:
Can we talk about something else now? So was it an accident? No, see, there's this thing called jihad.
Speaker B [00:17:20]:
All right, all right, now listen.
Mark Clark [00:17:23]:
Actually, it starts way back. There's, there's Abraham, all right, and he's got two sons. Paul's going, man, I wish I could, I wish, I wish, I wish I could explain certain things to you, but you're too young. You don't get it. And so he says, I hope everybody moves forward. I hope everyone gets filled. Because the reality is you are either growing or shrinking at every moment. Your life is not static.
Mark Clark [00:17:49]:
You are either growing in Christ or shrinking at every moment. And so if you're anything like me,
Speaker B [00:17:54]:
here's what begins to happen at this moment.
Mark Clark [00:17:56]:
You hear all of this stuff about
Speaker B [00:17:58]:
strength and power and you start to
Mark Clark [00:18:00]:
go, man, I became a Christian, you know, six months ago, or I became
Speaker B [00:18:04]:
a Christian five years ago or 15 years ago, whatever it was, and you
Mark Clark [00:18:08]:
start to go, man, but the monotony of my own life.
Speaker B [00:18:12]:
Is this all there is?
Mark Clark [00:18:13]:
Like, this language, this flying language? Christ is in you. You have strength, you have power.
Speaker B [00:18:22]:
And then you start to go, man, I just don't feel that. Like, I can't pay my bills. I mean, I'm reading the text. I'm reading acts.
Mark Clark [00:18:36]:
If you're anything like me.
Speaker B [00:18:37]:
And I'm like, man, these guys are.
Mark Clark [00:18:39]:
These guys are killing it. They're preaching, and thousands of people are coming to Christ. They're raising people from the dead. Paul blows on a napkin and a bunch of dudes get healed just by passing it around. These guys are on fire. And then I look at my life, like, there's a disconnect. Where's the power? Why can't I walk in this? Some of you are like, man, I read all of that and I get inspired. But then I come back to my own life.
Speaker B [00:19:07]:
I can barely pay the bills. My job stinks, My boss is dumb, My marriage is hurting, My kids are off the rails. My community group is boring.
Mark Clark [00:19:21]:
My prayers are just all me asking God for stuff. Most exciting part of my week is watching the Bachelor.
Speaker B [00:19:32]:
I'm sick. I'm sick, and you are. If that's your reality. What. Where is this? And see, what he's saying is, you want to know what the difference is? Is that there's measures to this thing.
Mark Clark [00:19:53]:
It's not just black and white. It's.
Speaker B [00:19:56]:
Some of you aren't filled up.
Mark Clark [00:19:59]:
Some of you are on a drip.
Speaker B [00:20:00]:
Some of you are just dried out
Mark Clark [00:20:02]:
because you're not walking in him. You're not maturing, you're not learning, you're not sacrificing. Well, I can't grow. Why can't I grow? Because you just live this safe, comfortable, monotonous life. You do the same thing every week. You think you read the Book of Acts. What are they doing? They've left everything they know they're on mission. And if God doesn't show up, they.
Mark Clark [00:20:20]:
They're all gonna look really dumb. Do you ever put yourself in those scenarios? Because it's when you do that you grow. It's when you do that you find yourself totally filled up to be able to function in a way that is Christ filled. But if you're just living your life
Speaker B [00:20:36]:
with no sacrifice, you don't give anything, you don't serve.
Mark Clark [00:20:43]:
You don't put yourself in uncomfortable situations. You don't listen to what God might have for you. And then you ask the really weird
Speaker B [00:20:49]:
question, why can't I grow? You got to put yourself in those scenarios, you got to pray, you got to get in community, you got to sacrifice. Some of you need to step up and be baptized. They're doing baptisms next Sunday. Some of you believed in Jesus, never been baptized. And we were at the men's retreat. We listened to these testimonies.
Mark Clark [00:21:11]:
Two out of the three video testimonies
Speaker B [00:21:13]:
that we watched were guys that said, man, I was just going along in life. I didn't know what to do. And then I got baptized and something lit up, something took notice. And when I got baptized, when I went public with this thing, that's when I began to grow. That's when I got in the game. That's when things started to change. That's when I started to live in strength and power. And some of you are hiding, some
Mark Clark [00:21:35]:
of you are afraid, some of you are cowards.
Speaker B [00:21:39]:
He's saying, you need to be strong, you need to mature, you need to grow up.
Mark Clark [00:21:44]:
And he says the reason for the strength. Look at the rest of verse 18. He says, to comprehend. He says, I want you to know, right? To comprehend, to grasp this verse 19. To know the love of Christ, I want you to know. And the biblical word for know. It's not the way we use it. We'll just kind of mental assent.
Mark Clark [00:22:08]:
He's saying, I want you to know it experientially, to know it biblically. This is like action. Adam knew Eve, all right. Yeah, that's. Yeah, all right. He knew her sexually, intimately, personally. That knowing Christ would become something that is so emotional to you that there's an actual emotional investment that your heart is in this thing. That's what he means by knowing him, right? Not knowing him.
Mark Clark [00:22:38]:
Like, I know Tiger Woods. I know Tiger Woods. I know his stats. I know he wins. I could watch him all day. But if he walked into a coffee shop, he wouldn't go, yo, what's up, Clark?
Speaker B [00:22:48]:
How's it going? Cause he doesn't know me.
Mark Clark [00:22:50]:
I don't know him. He's not talking about that kind of know where it's a one way he's going. God is knowable. He knows you. You can know him. And now you get personally invested in it. Cause you know him like you know a spouse. Listen, how do you know a spouse? You get jacked up when your spouse is honored, and you get ruined when your spouse is dis.
Mark Clark [00:23:13]:
Dishonored. That's what begins to happen biblically. All right? When God is honored and worshiped, you get pumped because you're invested in him. But when he gets dishonored your heart just starts to break, all right? It's like me with my wife, all right? Anybody talks negatively about Aaron, all right, I get squirrely, all right? She did this. She did. No, she didn't. She killed a man. I don't.
Mark Clark [00:23:37]:
He deserved it. All right? That's what happens. That's what you do with your spouse. You just. You just defend them because you love them and you want to. And you love when they get honored and you hate it when they get despised. The Psalmist in Psalm 119 says this. Rivers of water run down my eyes because the people don't keep your law.
Mark Clark [00:23:58]:
Rivers of water run down my eyes because the people do not keep your law. I look around at the sin and. And the brokenness because I know you, I'm invested in you, and I care. I start weeping. If you have never felt a broken
Speaker B [00:24:15]:
heart for the sin and the brokenness around you.
Mark Clark [00:24:18]:
Do you know him?
Speaker B [00:24:23]:
And then he says this to comprehend. Now here's what you gotta underline.
Mark Clark [00:24:29]:
With all the saints.
Speaker B [00:24:32]:
All right?
Mark Clark [00:24:32]:
With all the saints. If I was a Pentecostal black preacher. All right, I just get you chanting that right now. All right? With all the saints, all right, we just do that. But I'm not.
Speaker B [00:24:44]:
So we won't.
Mark Clark [00:24:47]:
Because you just be like, that's all the saints.
Speaker B [00:24:48]:
It's all the saints. What's going on? So it's embarrassing for you.
Mark Clark [00:24:57]:
So here's the reality. With all the saints, here's what you have to get. What he's saying is you cannot comprehend the love of Christ outside of the community of faith, the church. He's saying the only way you're going to comprehend this is with all the saints. So there's a movement that has happened where everyone is critical of the church, everyone is negative about the church. There's actually a movement statistically not among young people, but among 45 to 55 year olds in Canada where 45 to 55 year olds are abandoning the church in large quantities. And you probably know people like this and they use really spiritual language like, well, I sick of the politics and I'm sick of the hypocrisy, and I'm burned out. So I'm going to sit here on a Sunday morning with no community, with me and my wife and.
Mark Clark [00:25:51]:
And we're just gonna talk to each other about God and do a devo. And that's church. Because where two or more are gathered, that text is about church discipline. And that's not a church. See, this is why the book of Hebrews, right from the first century, people were tempted to remove themselves from the context of the church to do life. And the writer of the book of Hebrews says, do not be like those who refuse to gather together. See, what is at the heart of that isn't all this religious language about hypocrisy and burnout and politics. It's that they're selfish and they're sinful and they need to repent.
Mark Clark [00:26:28]:
Because life is easier when you just gather with people you like and know. But the church is about gathering with people you don't like, who will grate against you, who will push you where the gospel confronts you, where people that you listen. I, I know the church is not full of people you like. I get it. Of course they're hypocritical. They might not even know Jesus. And it's hard to submit yourself to leadership and it's hard to be in community with people that aren't just like you. You know what the easiest and the dumbest thing in the world is for you to surround yourself with a bunch of people just like you.
Mark Clark [00:27:08]:
So all you 20 year olds sit around, how are we gonna solve these problems?
Speaker B [00:27:11]:
I don't know.
Mark Clark [00:27:11]:
Let's go ask my 20 year old friend. I know there's 50 year olds out there, but hey, I'm sure we can figure it out. Let's google it together. And all the 50 year olds sit around and they hang out with the same age and the same stage. What are we gonna do about this?
Speaker B [00:27:23]:
I don't know.
Mark Clark [00:27:24]:
What do we got? I don't know. I don't know. And we just kind of recapitulate this sin over and over. Cause all we're doing is hanging out with the people we like. With all the saints goes, you get together in a room, young people, stop going to your friends for advice.
Speaker B [00:27:39]:
Go find a 40 year old, a
Mark Clark [00:27:40]:
50 year old, a 60 year old,
Speaker B [00:27:42]:
and then do this. Shut up and let them talk and listen. Because I know they're old, all right,
Mark Clark [00:27:52]:
I know that they were around before
Speaker B [00:27:53]:
the Internet, but they're smarter than you.
Mark Clark [00:27:59]:
With all the saints, what does it mean to get together with people who grate against you? What does it mean to actually get in community, have people speak against you, God, call out, be accountable, love you. That's what it means to be the church. And it's extremely hard to be the church. It's extremely hard to be part of a community and move forward. It's just easier to be with the people you like. But don't do what's easy. We talked about this at the men's retreat. The idea that when God created Adam, he did this really weird thing where he told him, adam, your job is to fill the earth and subdue it and actually take the ground and cultivate it.
Mark Clark [00:28:38]:
Take Eden and move it out into the wild. And then when Adam sinned, he said, by the way, I'm cursing the ground, meaning I'm cursing the very thing I told you to cultivate. Which means what? That the life of a man is actually hard. I know you ladies are like, give me a break, man. It's easy to be a man. All right, Listen. It's not all right. Because God cursed the very ground that he told us to work on.
Mark Clark [00:29:09]:
And so work kicks against us. Our wives kick against us, our kids kick against us. And God did that so that you could continuously be reminded of the gospel, that you cannot do this without him.
Speaker B [00:29:24]:
And the same thing is true about community.
Mark Clark [00:29:27]:
You get in communion with people, you gather with the saints, and they're gonna kick against you, and they're gonna remind you how sinful you are. They're gonna remind you how disjointed you are. They're gonna remind you that not all your ideas are perfect ideas. And what that's doing is it's preaching the gospel to you in a way that can't happen with you and your friend in a grocery store going, hey, this is the church. Really? How much does that cost you monetarily?
Speaker B [00:29:53]:
How much church discipline is in that grocery store meeting? How many elders you got there?
Mark Clark [00:29:59]:
Cause that's the structure of the church
Speaker B [00:30:01]:
in the New Testament.
Mark Clark [00:30:04]:
And so he says, it would be
Speaker B [00:30:06]:
a sin to pull yourself out of
Mark Clark [00:30:08]:
the context of community, of the context of the church.
Speaker B [00:30:11]:
What is your church family?
Mark Clark [00:30:13]:
Is this it is village church, your church family, where you've gathered with all the saints? Is this where you're committing? Good. Then step up and commit. Like we say, if you've been here for three weeks, you better be doing something.
Speaker B [00:30:27]:
All right?
Mark Clark [00:30:27]:
You don't need to be a theologian
Speaker B [00:30:29]:
to shake people's hands at the door. You just need to be good looking. If you're not, that you can do setup. We have a place for everybody here. Just kidding, of course. All right.
Mark Clark [00:30:52]:
To comprehend with all the saints.
Speaker B [00:31:00]:
So Pastor Paul, who's the lead pastor at South Delta, a mentor of mine, our mother church that planted us, I meet with him every week for lunch, pour into each other.
Mark Clark [00:31:11]:
He pours into me.
Speaker B [00:31:13]:
As Rob announced last week, almost two
Mark Clark [00:31:15]:
weeks ago, now lost his 21 year
Speaker B [00:31:17]:
old son, Taylor got killed.
Mark Clark [00:31:21]:
The pain, the agony of that,
Speaker B [00:31:25]:
how do you do that outside of the community of the saints? Because now what happens is the community of the saints gather around him and they love him and they pray for him and they cook for him and they care for him and his family. See, that's what you get when you get the church.
Mark Clark [00:31:42]:
You don't think Paul has seen the politics and the hypocrisy and the burnout and if he detached himself years ago
Speaker B [00:31:50]:
from that, then how do you walk through this? So you're gonna be tempted, cause it's the cool thing to beat up on the church, to abandon the church. He's going, community of saints, this is what it is.
Mark Clark [00:32:04]:
And when you start to critique the
Speaker B [00:32:05]:
church, realize that you're critiquing the bride of Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:32:12]:
And if what's true about me going
Speaker B [00:32:13]:
squirrely is true, be careful when you
Mark Clark [00:32:20]:
write your blog and your book and hold that conference, all right, about how bad the church is, how offline the church is. Jesus going, that's my wife, I'm going to get squirrely on you.
Speaker B [00:32:32]:
I will defend her to the death. May have strength to comprehend with all the saints. What is the breadth and length and height and depth? He's saying the vastness of the love of God. Height, length, breadth, depth. This is like my daughter going,
Mark Clark [00:32:56]:
I
Speaker B [00:32:56]:
love you this much, daddy, I love you this much. That's what Paul's doing here. The length and the breadth and it's just the vastness of the love of God. And listen, some of you this morning just need to hear that, that you are loved.
Mark Clark [00:33:13]:
All right?
Speaker B [00:33:13]:
Some of you walked in here and you think, there's no way I'm loved
Mark Clark [00:33:17]:
because you don't know the sexual sin I'm involved in.
Speaker B [00:33:19]:
There's no way I'm loved because you
Mark Clark [00:33:20]:
don't know the monetary greed that I'm involved in. I'm a cheater, I'm a liar, I've
Speaker B [00:33:23]:
been to jail before. And Paul's going, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ, that you are loved. Now here's the thing about that love. We don't want to keep you where you're at, alright? So you come in here with all that mess, good. But God doesn't want to keep you where you're at. God wants to grow you.
Mark Clark [00:33:48]:
He loves you too much to keep you exactly where you are. And so he wants to move you forward. He wants to grow you. He Loves you too much to keep you there. So you say, can I bring my friend who's got this really sinful lifestyle? Can I bring my friend? Yes. We're going to love them, we're going to welcome them, and then we're going to challenge them to repent and change. Just like all of us in this room who are greedy and disobey our parents and all of these things.
Speaker B [00:34:13]:
Because God would never want you to stay the same.
Mark Clark [00:34:16]:
But our tendency is to go, yeah, but staying the same, that's what's comfortable. You know that babies, they don't want
Speaker B [00:34:23]:
to come out of that womb, right?
Mark Clark [00:34:25]:
They're up there, it's warm up there, it's cozy, it's liquidy up there. They don't want to come out. They don't want to come out in here, get slapped around, choked out, kissed by strange, ugly people. They don't. And so they want to stay up there. They want to be. They want to be warm. And the body just starts to force them out.
Mark Clark [00:34:52]:
Get out. And you talk to women who are
Speaker B [00:34:56]:
just at their wits end, like, just get out. Just want it out. Just want it out.
Mark Clark [00:35:07]:
See, God doesn't want to leave you
Speaker B [00:35:10]:
because, man, here's what every single one of us would do. We'd stay up there, man, liquidy warm. We'd stay up there. We don't want to grow.
Mark Clark [00:35:18]:
We don't want to be stretched. We don't want to change. We don't want anyone to challenge us. I'm here, I'm comfortable.
Speaker B [00:35:23]:
I got this thing right in the gospels. Get out. You got a life to live.
Mark Clark [00:35:29]:
You got to grow up. And the first while might be tough,
Speaker B [00:35:36]:
but the point would be that you would grow in Christ. And he says that you would know the love of Christ. So let me end by talking about the love of Christ for a second.
Mark Clark [00:35:50]:
I don't want you to dump your
Speaker B [00:35:52]:
ideas of the word love into this text, because here's what we do. What do we mean by love?
Mark Clark [00:36:02]:
What we mean by love is that
Speaker B [00:36:04]:
that person over there? Picture Charlie and Tracy walking along the beach, and Charlie says to Tracy, I love you. What does he mean? He probably means like what Rose says to Jack in Titanic. I wrote a sequel
Mark Clark [00:36:26]:
when she says,
Speaker B [00:36:28]:
jack, I've known you for two days and I can't live without you. My heart is yours. My heart will go on.
Mark Clark [00:36:38]:
All right? I need you. Why? Because you're Leonardo dicaprio. That's why I need you. All right? You're not too muscly, but there's something about you, just this. It factor about you that I love. You're gorgeous. The way you talk, the way you walk, the way you got this. So I love you after two days.
Mark Clark [00:36:59]:
I love you. Now, here's the problem. You dump in the love of Christ. You read John 3:16, where God so loved the world that he gave his only son. And you dump that into that because you've watched too many movies, read too many novels. You'll get it completely wrong. Because what that means is it's dependent
Speaker B [00:37:18]:
on you being so cute. And you're saying to yourself, well, I'm cute.
Mark Clark [00:37:25]:
I mean, I do that. I'm a good looking guy. I mean, I'm a little pale in the off season, but I'm a good, generally speaking, good looking guy, all right? I do good things for God, all right? I try to not do these bad things. I don't watch the Walking Dead, even though I really want to, because it's ungodly. All right? I don't. I only swear when I get in a really tough spot and I'm really tired and it comes out and it's. It's a sin, all right? And then I repent of it. But it's a bad moment.
Mark Clark [00:37:47]:
I quit smoking, which I love. You owe me love.
Speaker B [00:37:55]:
See, that's how we think we're cute.
Mark Clark [00:37:58]:
We're Leo.
Speaker B [00:38:00]:
Of course God loves us. Isn't that what he does?
Mark Clark [00:38:05]:
Doesn't he love us? Isn't that who he is?
Speaker B [00:38:11]:
See, that's not hard to explain to our culture. The love of God. That's not a scandal. Of course God loves us. Everybody's love.
Mark Clark [00:38:18]:
I'm love.
Speaker B [00:38:18]:
God's love, everybody.
Mark Clark [00:38:20]:
The love is going to solve everything. All we need is love. Pass the pipe. Everybody's love, everything. That's the solution. Everything. Of course God is love. You don't have to convince modern Western people that God is love.
Mark Clark [00:38:32]:
But that's not the concept of love in the Bible at all. See, the concept of love in the Bible is. Here's. Go back to Charlie and Tracy. Here's what Charlie didn't mean when he
Speaker B [00:38:42]:
told Tracy he loved her. Your breath stinks. Your hair is totally greasy. Your personality is disgusting. But I love you. That's not what he meant. But that's what God means. See, here's what the Bible says.
Speaker B [00:39:03]:
While we were sinners, Christ died for us. See, the love of Christ emanates from who he is, not from who you are. He doesn't love you because you're Leo. You're not Leo, you're calm.
Mark Clark [00:39:27]:
That's.
Speaker B [00:39:27]:
You're gonna have to go watch it again.
Mark Clark [00:39:31]:
You're the sinister evil.
Speaker B [00:39:36]:
See, that's what the Bible says. You're not God's friend, you're God's enemy. Don't fool yourself into believing that you're good. You're not good, you're evil.
Mark Clark [00:39:54]:
You can't do good.
Speaker B [00:39:58]:
John 3 says, whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life. But the wrath of God remains on him. Why? Because you deserve it. Because your breast stinks and your hair is greasy. And he has no reason to love you because you kick against him every single day. Every single day you wake up and you choose sin over Jesus. I'm not talking about your past, I'm talking today.
Speaker B [00:40:40]:
And yet if you don't believe in Jesus, his wrath legitimately remains on you. If you do believe in Jesus, as John was talking about earlier, it lands on him, you come under him, the wrath hits him and you get eternal life. That's what the Bible means when it says, for God so loved the world. See, the word world in John's gospel, it's not a bunch of people. It's a word used for the wickedness of people. There's the world and then there's God's will. And the love of God. The love of Christ is supposed to blow you away because it doesn't start with you.
Speaker B [00:41:24]:
Because if it did, then as you went forward, it would all be dependent on how good you can work and perform and do for Him. But it emanates from him. It starts with him and what he's done for you. And there's a world of difference between those two approaches. Father, it's my prayer that the reality of the beauty of the Gospel would change hearts. That the beauty of your much deserved
Mark Clark [00:41:54]:
wrath
Speaker B [00:41:56]:
coming down on your Son instead of us would cause us to believe in you and get eternal life. For the hearts in this room who have not made that decision, that they would do that, that they would trust you, that they would come to know you, that they would not view themself as the great good reason why you love us, because they deserve it. But they would recognize that in Jesus we get what we don't deserve. And that they would come to know you and receive you. And that you would dwell in their hearts and give them strength to mature and be filled with the fullness of God, for the glory of God. And even in this moment, as we respond in song and in giving, they would all come from a place
Mark Clark [00:42:55]:
of
Speaker B [00:42:55]:
getting filled, of getting a greater measure of you. And that we would leave here. Grown instead of static, changed instead of hard. Do that work. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.