Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
Ephesians, chapter three. All right, here's what Paul does. Pick it up in verse nine. We unpacked all of verse nine last week. But this thing he says at the end, I wanna start off with it this morning. He says, and to bring to light for everyone, what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages? And then he says this in God, who created all things. So here's what he's trying to do. Here's what he's setting up.
Mark Clark [00:00:26]:
He's saying. He's trying to give you a worldview where he is saying God created all things, so he's coming against all the worldview that pumps at us something different that. That we kind of evolved out of nothing there. Nobody times nothing equals everything is kind of the worldview, the gospel that our culture pumps at us. And whatever Mr. Nyman told you in grade 12, science. All right, I'm just working on my stuff. Whatever he pumped to you, Paul is saying something different.
Mark Clark [00:00:58]:
He's saying all this culture has this worldview where you came from. Nothing, Nobody times nothing. Equ equals everything. And he's going, no, God created all things. Nobody times nothing equals everything is not an equation you're supposed to build your life on. Because ultimately, where that leads you is to a place where there is no morality, there is purposelessness to my existence in the universe. And literally that does nothing for you. When you were hung over a toilet bowl puking your guts out because you're going through chemo, there is no answer for you in that worldview, or if you lose a child or if you lose a spouse.
Mark Clark [00:01:39]:
And what he's saying is, God created everything. The universe, he created it, he crafted it. So right from the beginning, he's trying to say, look, he's big, he's epic, he's grand. And then he says in verse 10, so that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known. So he created all things. He has manifold wisdom. Therefore, you are not God. Therefore the food chain is Him.
Mark Clark [00:02:10]:
And then you. You serve him. You're obedient to Him. And constantly. What we have to do is come
Speaker B [00:02:17]:
back to this in our life and
Mark Clark [00:02:18]:
remind ourselves who is in charge. And the fact that we're not. And he is. It's an issue of obedience. And for many of us, this is
Speaker B [00:02:27]:
the issue on the table.
Mark Clark [00:02:28]:
Are you someone who is willing to be obedient to what God has called you to do in 2013? As I have wrestled with God, as I've prayed, as I've been reading the scriptures, and he has given me this kind of image and vision for Village in 2013. A piece of that vision has to do with obedience. I do not want you to sit here and listen to these sermons and sing songs and jot down some notes and have a few laughs and. And then leave here and do nothing with it. That is not what we're doing here. We are not here. So Christians have something to do for an hour and a half on a Sunday morning. That is not why we exist.
Mark Clark [00:03:08]:
I want you to take what you hear and to be obedient, to say to yourself, I want to serve God. He's the creator of all things. He has manifold wisdom. I'm not the one in control. This is an issue of obedience. And some of you have never given your life to Jesus. You've never become a Christian because you aren't ready to bow a knee to anybody. It's not Jesus in particular that you have a problem with.
Mark Clark [00:03:33]:
In fact, maybe in the marketplace of ideas, Jesus is someone that you would give your life to. Out of all the different options, he seems to resonate with you the most. The issue is not that you don't want to bow a knee to Jesus. The issue is you don't want to bow a knee to anybody. And to be a person of faith, to come to faith in Jesus, your heart, your mind, has to be ready to bow a knee to Christ, to say, he is God. He created all things. He has manifold wisdom. And I do not.
Speaker B [00:04:02]:
And this is why Jesus constantly talked about obedience. If you look In Matthew, chapter seven,
Mark Clark [00:04:07]:
Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is teaching. He goes in verse 21, not everyone
Speaker B [00:04:11]:
who says to me, lord will enter the kingdom of heaven. There's a lot of people who say Lord. There's a lot of people who say, lord, I go to church, I sing songs, I do my devos.
Mark Clark [00:04:20]:
I say, lord, Lord.
Speaker B [00:04:21]:
He goes, not everybody who says to me, lord will enter the kingdom of heaven.
Mark Clark [00:04:24]:
Well, then who does?
Speaker B [00:04:25]:
But the one who does the will of my Father, who is in heaven,
Mark Clark [00:04:29]:
who does the will of my Father.
Speaker B [00:04:32]:
Listen, I want you guys to be
Mark Clark [00:04:36]:
people who
Speaker B [00:04:38]:
do stuff for the kingdom of God.
Mark Clark [00:04:41]:
Don't just hear it. It's dangerous to just hear it. The book of James says you are worse off if you hear something and you go away and don't do it. You will be held responsible for stuff that you hear and don't go and do. Therefore, it would be better off if you weren't sitting here right now. But you are too late. All right? You're Here. And God is gonna hold you responsible for everything you hear.
Mark Clark [00:05:14]:
So the question is, do you do the will of the father or do you not do it? That's what God has on the table. Do you hear his voice when he says, move there, give that serve there, talk to that person? Or are you scared and terrified? Do you do what he asks you? That's what a father cares about. When I look at my kids this week, I said, sienna, I want you to brush your teeth. She said, okay. And she held her toothbrush and stared at me. I said, do it. She said, I can hear you. All right, look, that's not what makes a father jump up and down and be excited.
Mark Clark [00:05:50]:
I know my kids can hear me. That's not the issue. What do they do with what they hear? That's the question. So she sat there, mmm. I said, brush your teeth.
Speaker B [00:05:57]:
Mmm.
Mark Clark [00:06:01]:
I need toothpaste.
Speaker B [00:06:02]:
Fine, put toothpaste on it.
Mark Clark [00:06:03]:
Hmm. Do it. And then she went like this, and she pulled it away from me and all the toothpaste went in her hair. I was like, da.
Speaker B [00:06:13]:
And then she, like, scooping it out.
Mark Clark [00:06:20]:
Then he says this, Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man
Speaker B [00:06:28]:
who built his house on the rock.
Mark Clark [00:06:30]:
See, the question. Here's what Jesus is comparing at the
Speaker B [00:06:32]:
end of the Sermon on the Mount. He's not comparing a Christian with a non Christian. He's comparing two people who read their Bible, go to church, buy Christian things, and one of them just hears stuff, and the other one does stuff with what he hears.
Mark Clark [00:06:45]:
And he's saying the man, the woman who does things. Obedience. Where you say it's God who's in control. It's God who's epic and not me. He's the one I gotta submit to. He's the one I gotta be obedient to. He's the one I actually have to live this life out for.
Speaker B [00:07:05]:
The difference between just knowledge, knowledge, knowledge and actually doing stuff with what you hear.
Mark Clark [00:07:10]:
Practical. For the last bunch of years, my
Speaker B [00:07:14]:
advisor at Regent College has asked me to come down and teach a Pauline theology course with him. And so I'd go down one day, we'd do a three hour thing with all of these students and a couple. And, you know, we'd get into Romans and we'd be picking apart Greek words, and it was awesome. But then one day I had this moment where I went down there and I looked out at these students and we're sitting there cracking open the Greek and participles, and is This a, you know, a past indicative. Dee dee dee. Subjunctive pluperfect. Yeah, this is awesome.
Mark Clark [00:07:40]:
All right, we're rolling with this.
Speaker B [00:07:41]:
And all of a sudden I looked up and something happened. I realized my heart didn't beat for this anymore. And don't be too flattered by this, but here's what I realized. You're why I wake up in the morning.
Mark Clark [00:07:57]:
But what I mean by that is.
Speaker B [00:08:00]:
What I mean by that is hearing your stories, hearing you come to faith, come to Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:08:06]:
Fixing your marriage, starting to walk with him, getting disciple, becoming leaders. It's watching the church, all right? Do the will of the Father rather than just know stuff, rather than just sitting around with these guys, just cracking open Greek pluperfects. I'm going, let's see a life that's changed. And what Jesus is saying is, listen, being right is not good enough. Being exegetically correct is not good enough. What do you do? Do you follow the will of God? Can you hear his voice at all? He's got.
Speaker B [00:08:44]:
What does it mean to be the kind of people that recognize that it's God who created all things, it's God who made everything. It's that the Big Bang didn't. If that's how this thing happened, it didn't just come out of nothing. That if something begins to exist, it has to have a cause. That the reason you have morality stitched into you is because God made you in his image. And he said the reason it makes you sick that a woman in India
Mark Clark [00:09:15]:
was raped to death
Speaker B [00:09:19]:
is not because
Mark Clark [00:09:21]:
you evolved developmentally out of nothing. All right? Because you wouldn't care. She's not part of your tribe. She has nothing to do with you. You shouldn't care about that. And you wouldn't. But you've got this heart, why? Inside of you. You've got this angst that says there's a way the universe is supposed to be.
Mark Clark [00:09:38]:
And when I see children in a classroom who are shifting or a woman who is raped to death, my heart goes, man, this is not the way it's supposed to be. And there's this angst for something different because you're comparing the way the universe
Speaker B [00:09:51]:
is with something because it was built inside your heart, that God put it there so that you would have far more meaning to your life than eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die. And so Paul, for three chapters, has been saying this. Listen, I know our tendency is to just jump to, what does this have to do with me? And I read my Bible and I just wanna know, what does it have
Mark Clark [00:10:12]:
to do with me?
Speaker B [00:10:13]:
But Paul, for three chapters, has been unpacking who God is, right?
Mark Clark [00:10:16]:
A.W.
Speaker B [00:10:17]:
tozer said, the most important thing about a person is what they think about when they think about God. And so what Paul constantly says is,
Mark Clark [00:10:24]:
you gotta figure out who God is
Speaker B [00:10:25]:
in your mind first. We're gonna get to the application.
Mark Clark [00:10:28]:
There's a whole bunch of applications, but you gotta figure out who he is. What has he done? Is he big? Is he sovereign?
Speaker B [00:10:33]:
So a guy named Tim Chester wrote a book, you can change, and he
Mark Clark [00:10:36]:
points out three or four things.
Speaker B [00:10:37]:
He says, here's who God is, and here's what it has to do with us. All right? So let me explain a few of them for you.
Mark Clark [00:10:42]:
He says this.
Speaker B [00:10:43]:
The first one is this.
Mark Clark [00:10:44]:
And Paul has been talking about these all the way through the book of Ephesians. He says this first. God is great, so we don't have to be in control. God is great, so we don't have
Speaker B [00:10:57]:
to be in control. Here's what he means by that.
Mark Clark [00:11:00]:
Paul has been saying all the way through the book of Ephesians, God is so huge. God is so grand. He is so epic. He is sovereign. He's in control. Made all things. He chose you before the foundations of the world. God is so great, therefore you are.
Mark Clark [00:11:15]:
You constantly try to wrestle control from him, but the reality is he's the one in control. So you can live like that. Like, you just gotta.
Speaker B [00:11:21]:
You.
Mark Clark [00:11:22]:
We just gotta all let her out.
Speaker B [00:11:23]:
Just, ah, right now. If I made you do that, it'd feel like Oprah's life class or something.
Mark Clark [00:11:27]:
So don't do that. But it's like you just gotta feel this weight, this burden. Go, man. If he is great, then I'm not in control,
Speaker B [00:11:38]:
okay? So this afternoon, I'm gonna take my three girls and we're driving down to Seattle so we can go to the American Girl store, right? All right? True story. This is a store where they're gonna bring their dolls in there, all right? And they're gonna get their hair done, all right? Not the kids, the dolls, all right? And they get their nails done and
Mark Clark [00:12:03]:
they get a little pedicure deal, okay? It's crazy. And I'm in there and just feeling the entire time it's creepy. You got all these dolls looking at you.
Speaker B [00:12:15]:
You're gonna buy me. It's Gonna cost you $250, all right?
Mark Clark [00:12:19]:
You get your hairdresser. So we're going down there to do that this afternoon. Going down to Seattle Sleeping over.
Speaker B [00:12:24]:
The girls are doing that. So here's what's happening.
Mark Clark [00:12:26]:
I'm gonna be in the car and
Speaker B [00:12:27]:
I'm gonna be driving. Now, here's what my kids don't do. They don't sit in their chairs and say, daddy, let me drive. Right?
Mark Clark [00:12:35]:
They don't try to wrestle the steering wheel out of my hands. Why?
Speaker B [00:12:39]:
Because I'm great,
Mark Clark [00:12:44]:
right? Meaning, listen, the analogy.
Speaker B [00:12:46]:
All right?
Mark Clark [00:12:47]:
Go with this for a second. I'm great. Meaning I am large. I am in charge. That's funny. I didn't mean to say that. I am large and in charge. I.
Mark Clark [00:12:58]:
I'm in control. I got a mind. I know where I'm going. I have driving. I'm their father, all right? And their father. A father is great, all right? A father is in control. He knows what he's doing. I've got the steering wheel.
Mark Clark [00:13:12]:
I know where I'm going. They're not trying to wrestle control out of my hands. They know I've got a place to go, that I'm going somewhere, all right? They would be dumb to try to go, daddy, let me just try to. All right? That would crash. Knowing that God is great filters down to our life in such a way that says, who do you think you
Speaker B [00:13:34]:
are to try to control your circumstances?
Mark Clark [00:13:36]:
When a few years ago, I had
Speaker B [00:13:38]:
four years of information on a computer,
Mark Clark [00:13:40]:
Sermons and papers and church development stuff,
Speaker B [00:13:42]:
and my computer crashed and it was all gone in a second.
Mark Clark [00:13:45]:
And yes, I cried like a baby. I cried and I screamed to the heavens and I said, no.
Speaker B [00:13:53]:
Who was I talking to? What was I really saying in that moment of despair? I was saying, you don't know what's best for me.
Mark Clark [00:14:02]:
No. Why did you let this happen? You don't know. If this hadn't crashed, this is the way I would have played this. This never crashes. I always get my information. I know what's best for me.
Speaker B [00:14:16]:
You don't.
Mark Clark [00:14:19]:
And constantly Ephesians say, how big is he?
Speaker B [00:14:22]:
You try to wrestle this out of his hands constantly, and it will ruin your life every time you try to do it. And we wonder why we're defined by stress, defined by anger, defined by anxiety. Ladies, why? Because every time your life is defined by anger, defined by frustration, defined by anxiety. Here's what the Apostle Paul would say. You're not believing this. You're not believing that he created all things and he has manifold wisdom. And you don't. He has manifold wisdom.
Mark Clark [00:15:05]:
He knows how big is God in your world. If you look at the universe, let
Speaker B [00:15:15]:
me illustrate it this way, if you
Mark Clark [00:15:16]:
were to travel at the speed of
Speaker B [00:15:18]:
light, 186,000 miles per second, seven times around planet Earth in a second.
Mark Clark [00:15:25]:
If you were to travel that fast,
Speaker B [00:15:28]:
it would take you four years to reach the nearest star to planet Earth. Four years to reach the nearest star. You know when you look up into the heavens and you see for two or three months of the year, you can see stars here and they're up there. And you look up and you see
Mark Clark [00:15:47]:
those beautiful stars, man, those things.
Speaker B [00:15:49]:
It would take you four years to reach the nearest one at 186,000 miles a second.
Mark Clark [00:15:59]:
It would take you 100,000 years at that speed to reach the end of our galaxy. We are one galaxy in what scientists
Speaker B [00:16:07]:
say there's probably 100 billion galaxies in the universe. And Genesis says, and God made the stars also. He is very big and you are very small. And the greater he is, the bigger he is, the more meticulously sovereign he is. Then you can begin to rest in. He's got control. And I'm not going to question his sovereignty every time something goes wrong. I'm not going to try to wrestle the wheel away from a father who is great.
Speaker B [00:16:46]:
Secondly, Tim Chester says God is glorious and therefore we do not have to fear others. Here's what he means by that. Much of our sin in our life is because we fear other people. The Bible calls it the fear of man. Meaning you fear rejection. You fear that people are gonna judge you. You fear that your reputation's gonna be slammed.
Mark Clark [00:17:14]:
And so that defines what you do.
Speaker B [00:17:16]:
You always need something from other people. Your spouse, your parents, your friends, and it absolutely paralyzes you.
Mark Clark [00:17:23]:
And so if you look at your
Speaker B [00:17:24]:
life and you realize you're so busy, why are you so busy in your life? It's because you're over committed. Why you over committed? Because you can't say no. Why can't you ever say no to anybody? Because you want everybody to like you. You're addicted to that.
Mark Clark [00:17:43]:
I'm so busy, I can't stop. I don't know where to stop. I can't. I don't have any margin in my life. Why?
Speaker B [00:17:48]:
Because I can never say no to anybody. Why? Because I want everyone to like me. It's fear of man. You're defined by what people say about you. You're defined by how much they like you, if they don't like you.
Mark Clark [00:18:02]:
It's the reason when you're sitting in
Speaker B [00:18:03]:
a coffee shop and someone walks into the coffee shop and they look like
Mark Clark [00:18:07]:
they need prayer, they look like they need a friend. They look like they need a hug. They look like they need someone to talk to. That you will not say anything to them, even if you feel it. You're sitting there on your computer, you got your earphones in. He comes in, he's crying, his life's devastating, and God pushes on. You go, pray for that guy. Go put your hand on him and go.
Mark Clark [00:18:25]:
I'm trying to be obedient to the will of the Father. I am trying to be different than every other Surrey person, Vancouver person, Abbotsford person, whatever it is. I'm trying to be different than every single one of them in this coffee shop because I belong to an alternative kingdom that calls me to be different and stand out. And I won't do it because I'm afraid of man.
Speaker B [00:18:48]:
I'm afraid of my reputation. I'm afraid of what other people may think of me and what it might do to my business if it gets around. And so we live out of fear constantly. We need the approval of people. The solution to the fear of man, the Bible says, is the fear of God. That if you. Some of you are like, why would
Mark Clark [00:19:14]:
I ever fear God?
Speaker B [00:19:15]:
He's like, my uncle, he's just a buddy.
Mark Clark [00:19:18]:
I fear God. He's just a cool. He just winks at me and all my sin. Ding. Glad you're on my team. That's the vision of God we have. Why would you ever fear him?
Speaker B [00:19:29]:
But the Bible goes, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Mark Clark [00:19:37]:
I have. The more you get a fear for the God that we're talking about, right? The God who puts Israel into exile, the God who lays down wrath on unrepentant, sinful nations all the way through the Bible. All right? But then we get to Jesus and he's all love and he's all grace, really. It's not till Jesus that you get an unpacked theology of hell.
Speaker B [00:20:04]:
It's not until you begin to realize, maybe I should fear this God that your heart will ever stop fearing people. Because now your motivation will be man. I don't care in this coffee shop what that guy thinks about me.
Mark Clark [00:20:16]:
I don't fear him. I fear the one that called me to do it, and I'm being disobedient. The solution to the fear of man is an absolute fear of God that says, I respect you, I worship you. I care about what you think rather than what man thinks. And that's why I can have people who come in A few weeks ago, a kite came in. Grown man said, because of the sickness that I've had, because of the surgeries that I've had, I can't control it. I was sitting in church a couple weeks ago and I peed myself in church. And I'm sorry.
Mark Clark [00:20:54]:
I was like, what? What has to happen in a man's heart to put aside all of his pride and say, I am totally finished. I have nothing, I have no reputation. I don't care what people think of me. So much so all of God is Jesus. God is so gracious. You watching those testimony videos a few weeks ago?
Speaker B [00:21:15]:
People laying out their mess, laying out
Mark Clark [00:21:18]:
their problems, laying out their sicknesses, laying out their weaknesses. They've never met you. Why would they do that?
Speaker B [00:21:26]:
Do you know why? Because they don't care what you think. They're not afraid of you and they're not afraid of your opinion about them. All they care about is what God called them to do and what God thinks about them. And so Paul constantly going, God is glorious. And if God is so glorious, then who cares what other people think of you? This is what obedience is.
Mark Clark [00:21:56]:
All right.
Speaker B [00:21:56]:
Thirdly, he says God is good. And we talk about this often. And if God is so good, you don't need to look elsewhere for joy, for satisfaction, for fulfillment. We talk about this all the time, so I won't spend too long in it. But this idea that Jesus is my all satisfying desire and therefore I don't need to find it in money and fame and the square footage of my house. I don't need to define my identity by any of those things. I know people who are extremely rich and who give it all up and move down to some third world country to serve poor people and church planters and give money away. How can they do that? Because like Jesus talks about in the kingdom of God, he says the kingdom of God, Matthew 13 is like a man who, when he found a treasure in a field in joy, he went and sold all that he had and he went and he bought that field.
Speaker B [00:22:46]:
Why? Because once I've got this joy for Jesus, once I realize that God is actually good, that he's alright. This isn't just some begrudging submission thing.
Mark Clark [00:22:55]:
I actually like God. I like Jesus. I find joy in Jesus. And if my joy's there, then it's not in the relationship. I'm trying to get joy from the money. I'm trying to get joy from the reputation, the job, whatever it is. We're out scrambling, trying to get joy. And if it's true that Jesus Christ is all satisfying.
Mark Clark [00:23:14]:
Then we're not gonna be people like that who scramble around trying to get joy. Here, here, here, here. This is why Jesus. In John chapter four, there's a great story where the Samaritan woman is drinking. Jesus pulls up to a well, sits down, and she says, well, hello, sir. Can I get you a drink of water?
Speaker B [00:23:30]:
And Jesus just starts kinda.
Mark Clark [00:23:31]:
I love it. He kinda starts to get a little sassy. He's like,
Speaker B [00:23:36]:
you know, if I drink that water, I'm gonna get thirsty again. I only drink water that wells up to eternal life. And she's like, what? So you don't want any? You know why he's saying that to her? This water that you drink, you're going to get thirsty again. This water that you drink. And then he says this to her, go fetch your husband. And she says, well, sir, I don't have a husband. And he says, you're right, you don't. You've had five.
Speaker B [00:24:16]:
And the man you're living with right now is not your husband. What is he doing? He's trying to get in on her, as he would be to any person in this room that you have tried.
Mark Clark [00:24:29]:
You have jumped around from relationship to relationship to job to job to get satisfaction. And he's saying, that's the. That stuff is always going to leave you thirsty.
Speaker B [00:24:41]:
The only thing that will fully satisfy is the water that leads to eternal life. That's what he's trying to do. And he's saying it to all of us, that we have all these desires. And so C.S. lewis said, who was a scholar at Oxford, he was an atheist for much of his life. And they came to know Jesus. He said, there have been times when I think that we do not desire heaven. All that we desire are these things and these things and these earthly things.
Speaker B [00:25:04]:
But then he says, but more often, I find myself wondering whether in our heart of hearts we ever desired anything else. It's the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want. We desire heaven, we desire perfection. But what we do is we trade that out and think, let me try to get it in this and in this and in and in this and in this. And Jesus would say, you will always get thirsty for that until you realize, God is good. God is better. And not just better. He's better than everything else.
Speaker B [00:25:43]:
And then fourthly, finally he says, God is gracious, so we don't have to prove ourselves. God saved us by his grace, not by our performance. And therefore, listen, you and I, it's an epidemic. When you and I sit in our bed at night and we stare at the ceiling because someone criticized us, you know where that comes from? When not enough people liked your Facebook status that you thought was gonna kill, and you thought you were gonna get 20 and you got three, and one guy goes, that was stupid. And you're like, Do you know why? In your heart, in your mind, do you know why you stare at your ceiling at night when people criticize you? When people made fun of you at work or school? Do you know why? Because you're living from a place of deep insecurity. Because you function in a way of performance. You need everybody to like you. You need to perform for them.
Speaker B [00:26:39]:
You need to impress them. What somebody who understands their identity in Jesus Christ understands is, I am so loved by God that I'm so secure in Jesus Christ that I don't need people to like me. I don't care what people think about me, because my meaning doesn't come from my performance.
Mark Clark [00:27:02]:
That's religion that says, I'll obey God to get stuff. And if my life isn't perfect, it must be because I was bad. And it's so critical to me that everybody thinks that I'm good, that I'm a good person. That is critical to me because I'm living in performance.
Speaker B [00:27:18]:
And the gospel says, by the way, you're not a good person, but God saved you anyway because he's good. And then you get free to go. Okay, I don't care what people think of me. Like, listen, as a pastor, why do I lie? So what?
Mark Clark [00:27:41]:
Why?
Speaker B [00:27:41]:
When someone comes up to me here at the front and says, hey, are you working on that thing I emailed you about? I say, mm hmm. And I have no idea what they're talking about. Why do I do that? I mean, I don't do it a ton. I'm just disqualifying myself here. I'm just. Because in that moment, I care more about myself and my reputation than I do about Jesus. In that moment, I care more about what that person thinks about me than what God has called me to do. And what Paul would say is, know in your heart that God is gracious.
Speaker B [00:28:25]:
He doesn't define you based on your performance in front of him, but on what he has performed for you in the person and work of Jesus. And that changes your life. And so he says this in God, who created all things, the manifold wisdom of God. That's who God is. Now he says, why is all that important verse 10. So that through the church, alright, now some of you are like, what does the word church mean?
Mark Clark [00:28:54]:
All right, When I grew up, I
Speaker B [00:28:55]:
didn't start going to church until I was. I walked in a church when I was 19 years old, other than when I was a really little kid and a yellow bus came in front of my house and there was a guy standing at the end with jujubes. And I ran up the stairs and the doors closed and he took me to a church. All right, that was crazy right there. But I was in church that time. And then, all right, when he dropped
Mark Clark [00:29:16]:
me off and my mom freaked out,
Speaker B [00:29:18]:
I didn't get back into a church
Mark Clark [00:29:19]:
until I was 19.
Speaker B [00:29:21]:
So when I. So growing up, I thought church was a building, right? We still talk about that. I'm gonna go to church. I'm gonna go to church.
Mark Clark [00:29:27]:
But literally, what he's saying here is the word church.
Speaker B [00:29:29]:
It's ecclesia, means exodus, called out ones,
Mark Clark [00:29:32]:
the gathered ones, the people of God who love Jesus. And some of you grew up in the church. All right, the people of God, you grew up in that.
Speaker B [00:29:41]:
And you made a decision for Christ,
Mark Clark [00:29:42]:
and you're four or five years old, and that's great.
Speaker B [00:29:44]:
You've been walking with him ever since. Some of you, later in life, you made a decision to come to know Jesus. Some of you are still trying to figure out whether you want to become part of the church. The way that happens is you repent of sin, you turn from your own
Mark Clark [00:29:58]:
sin, your own selfishness, and you give
Speaker B [00:30:00]:
your life and you trust Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:30:02]:
You put your love and trust in
Speaker B [00:30:04]:
what Jesus has done for you on the cross and dying for your sins and in the resurrection to give you new life.
Mark Clark [00:30:09]:
And all of that comes together.
Speaker B [00:30:11]:
This is what Paul says in Ephesians 2.
Mark Clark [00:30:14]:
He says in verse 8, by grace
Speaker B [00:30:16]:
you have been saved through faith.
Mark Clark [00:30:18]:
And so some of you are like,
Speaker B [00:30:19]:
yeah, but I can't really come to know Jesus yet. I can't put faith in him because my faith is so low that it wouldn't save me.
Mark Clark [00:30:25]:
Like, I still have doubts, I still have questions. I still haven't figured out every nuance of every single.
Speaker B [00:30:31]:
That's okay.
Mark Clark [00:30:31]:
He's not saying, and this is important, he's not saying that you are saved by the breadth and the strength and the character of your faith. He's saying, we get saved by the strength and the bread and the accomplishment and the character of the one we put our faith in. That's the difference between religion and the gospel. That What Jesus has done for us is so powerful. It's like when we fall off a cliff and we grab ahold of a branch sticking out of the side of a cliff. What's important at that moment is that that branch has deep roots that go deep into that rock and we grab ahold of it. That's what you're doing when you believe in Jesus. You're saying, look at what he's accomplished.
Mark Clark [00:31:12]:
Look at how great and grand he is. And then you give your life to him and you're walking in the Holy Spirit. You gather, you start working out your budget. You serve. You read the Bible. You read the scriptures, you're part of the church. You're un mission to reach your friends and your family for Jesus. That's what being part of the church is.
Mark Clark [00:31:32]:
You get baptized, all right? And some people go, oh, you don't
Speaker B [00:31:35]:
need to be baptized in order to be a Christian.
Mark Clark [00:31:36]:
That's true. Technically, yes. You can get to heaven without being baptized. Absolutely. But I love the argument because every other person in the Bible gets baptized when they believe in Jesus. There was not a first century Christian who was not baptized. All right? But people go and they say, look at the guy who hung on the cross beside Jesus.
Speaker B [00:31:53]:
Jesus said he was gonna be in paradise. Ah, he was on a cross. All right, just let's back up here for a second. No option.
Mark Clark [00:32:06]:
And I'm sure if he had the option, he would have gone, no, I'm not gonna do that. Because I love that we ask questions of bare necessity. What's the skin of my teeth version of Christianity? Look at the guy on the cross. Here's the thing about interpreting the Bible. Don't make the exception to the rule. The rule. You get everybody else, all through acts, everybody's baptized. Guy on the cross.
Mark Clark [00:32:32]:
God also spoke through a donkey. And we don't make that like, hey, kitty, why can't you talk? It says it right here in numbers. Animals can talk. Go. Don't make the exception to the rule. The rule. You could get a verse that says anything. So baptize.
Mark Clark [00:32:59]:
That's how you become part of the church. You publicly proclaim faith in Jesus. And then Jesus says, here's the mission of the church in Matthew 28, to go. And that word go doesn't mean like, go find another country.
Speaker B [00:33:14]:
It's actually passive. In the Greek, it means as you go.
Mark Clark [00:33:18]:
As you go, as a teacher, as
Speaker B [00:33:19]:
a nurse, as a stay at home
Mark Clark [00:33:22]:
mom, as someone in the office, as
Speaker B [00:33:23]:
you run your own business, as your
Mark Clark [00:33:25]:
doctor, whatever it is, as you go, you are to make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. And recognize there's a difference between just teaching people all that I commanded you. You could use a bullhorn and go, Jesus said, there, I'm making disciples. He says, teach them to observe all
Speaker B [00:33:46]:
that I commanded you.
Mark Clark [00:33:47]:
How do you take a person and make sure they actually start living this stuff out? That's the Great commission. That they would walk in the spirit and be praying and doing the disciplines and reading the Scriptures and gathering and worshiping God. That literally the mission of the church is to take people from nothing that knows nothing and build them and disciple them into leaders. A disciple is a follower, is a learner. And Jesus is saying, it is your job to make disciples out of everybody. So picture it like what you would do with your child. What do you do with a kid. You take them and they know nothing.
Mark Clark [00:34:24]:
And you take them and you say, okay, how do I get, I got a six year old, a four year old and an almost two year old. How do I get these three girls to become disciples of Jesus? All right, I gotta clear out all the nonsense of all the church history and all this stuff because they don't care about that.
Speaker B [00:34:40]:
That's when they're seven and eight and
Mark Clark [00:34:43]:
we start a little seminary downstairs. I'm just getting them to clear out the base and clear out the nonsensical. I want you to love Jesus Christ. I want you to glory in Jesus Christ so that when you're asleep at night and you get scared, I want you to call on Jesus. So that's what you're doing. Yesterday I walked upstairs and on the whiteboard, my six year old daughter had written this. All right? I took a picture of it because I wanted to show you, all right?
Speaker B [00:35:15]:
And I sat her down and I said, honey, you're not a good speller. No, I didn't really say that.
Mark Clark [00:35:29]:
What I. This, this is what you want. The co worker, all right, the fellow nurse, the mom on the soccer field, the person in the coffee, whatever it is, this is where you want them to start make disciples. How does that start?
Speaker B [00:35:53]:
You clear away the nonsense and you get them to focus on Jesus. You clear all the, take it all off the table and then you put
Mark Clark [00:36:00]:
Jesus and you go deal with him.
Speaker B [00:36:02]:
I want you to love him, I want you to see him, I want you to glory in him. I want you to write up on your whiteboard and then you start discipling them and you do. What do we do with kids?
Mark Clark [00:36:13]:
I Want to teach you how to pray.
Speaker B [00:36:16]:
And so you start teaching them how to pray, and they fumble it and
Mark Clark [00:36:20]:
they pray for the craziest stuff. That's okay. This is what it's about. You're gonna be talking about some of this stuff in community group this week. If you haven't joined a community group, make sure you're in one. This is what it's about. It's unpacking all of this. What does that look like? Do you remember the first time you prayed in public? That's terrifying.
Speaker B [00:36:42]:
What does it mean to teach your kid how to pray? My kids pray the food gets cold because they thank God for hippos and grass and erasers and everything. So I just eat.
Mark Clark [00:37:08]:
What am I going to do? Cold. And this is the call.
Speaker B [00:37:15]:
Here's what he's saying. Look at verse 10. This is what it's about. He says in verse 10. This is the purpose of the church.
Mark Clark [00:37:22]:
We all need to grasp this and
Speaker B [00:37:25]:
put this as a hook so that
Mark Clark [00:37:27]:
through the church, the manifold wisdom of God. Listen. Might now be known. That is the call of this church to make known God to people who don't know him. That's the mission. We are not here so that Christians have something to do on a Sunday morning for an hour and a half. We are here so that people would meet Jesus. We are here so that people who don't know him start to know Him.
Mark Clark [00:38:01]:
That's why we exist. When we were 16, people meeting in my townhouse. That's why we existed, to reach people who don't know Jesus, who are not part of the church. To be a church. Yes, for church people, in the sense of we're disciplining, we're preaching the gospel, we're growing people. But for unchurched people, in the sense that you're never gonna come here and I'm gonna be wearing a collar with a dress and praying in King James. It's for people who need to know, who don't know. And so when we were 50 people meeting in a gymnasium, it was about, how do we reach the people who don't know? And some of you are those people.
Mark Clark [00:38:47]:
And last week, we had our biggest Sunday ever. We had 2,200 people between both campuses here in three years from 16. And we glory in that, and we praise God for that. That's his work. That's not our work. He's doing something. We're trying to hold on.
Speaker B [00:39:03]:
But here's the thing. Listen to this. It's a drop in the bucket. We're In a city of almost 500,000 people, just in this city. Forget the surrounding districts. It's a drop in the bucket. And if we think we've arrived, he's going, you want to know what your mission is? To make him known to a whole bunch of people who don't. There's 500,000 people out there that don't know Jesus.
Speaker B [00:39:41]:
What are you doing about it? He says, the purpose is to make God known in every way in your life. Some of you, I don't have enough faith. I don't have all my questions figured out. I'm a skeptic. I can't believe all this. You need to come back to realize your little bit of faith will save you because you're putting it in a great savior. The issue is not you. And you go through the Bible and you're going to see constantly people who doubted and had questions, constantly people who didn't have it all figured out.
Speaker B [00:40:30]:
You go to Thomas, and Thomas said, I don't believe it. They came to Thomas.
Mark Clark [00:40:33]:
They said, thomas, he's resurrected. We saw him with our own eyes. These are his bros. These are people. He hung with his for three years.
Speaker B [00:40:38]:
And you go, I don't believe it.
Mark Clark [00:40:40]:
I need to see the hole in
Speaker B [00:40:41]:
his side and the hole in his
Mark Clark [00:40:42]:
hands till I believe it. Then Jesus shows up. Thomas goes, okay, he's a doubter. Joseph, right? We talked about this at Christmas. Don't worry. You know, Joseph's ready to go, hey, I divorce you.
Speaker B [00:40:54]:
Why do you divorce me?
Mark Clark [00:40:55]:
Because I don't believe that you're pregnant by the Holy Spirit.
Speaker B [00:40:58]:
What, do you think I'm dumb? Don't worry, Joseph. The Holy Spirit impregnated me. Oh, okay.
Mark Clark [00:41:04]:
Sweet
Speaker B [00:41:07]:
Joseph's like, forget that. He needs an angel to show up and marry her and call his name, Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:41:13]:
Okay, Now, I believe there's doubters like you, skeptics like you in the Great Commission. Jesus is there telling the church, this is your mission, make disciples. And then he ascends into heaven. And the text actually says. And there were some who doubted what? He's floating.
Speaker B [00:41:33]:
It's like, I got a buddy who can do that.
Mark Clark [00:41:39]:
He's floating. What are you doubting for? But that's okay. So you got a whole bunch of people that you can connect with if
Speaker B [00:41:49]:
you're a skeptic, if you're a doubter. All right, how do we make known the manifold wisdom of God? We be the church. We be the church in such a way that we live. Here's what John, chapter one Says, I want to put this challenge out to you in closing.
Mark Clark [00:42:11]:
All right?
Speaker B [00:42:12]:
I need us as a church to grasp this. John, chapter one says, the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Here's the vision that we would be a church full of two things at the same time, grace and truth. Now here's the challenge. There are a lot of people in a lot of churches that go, we're really good at grace. All right? Grace is just everywhere. You know, call people to anything. Everything's grace.
Speaker B [00:42:41]:
Everyone's just included and everyone's lovey dovey and everything's grace. And what they start to say is, oh, the Bible doesn't really say that. And Bible doesn't really say this. And don't worry, you know, Jesus didn't really walk on water, it's just really shallow. And he got on the other side of the boat and he went, eee. You know, and so don't worry about all that literal stuff. It's just, let's be grace and let's hang out and let's eat meals together. Grace, grace, grace.
Speaker B [00:43:03]:
Here's what gets sacrificed. Truth. And then there are other churches and people that are all about truth.
Mark Clark [00:43:12]:
We pound the truth, we foam at the mouth about the truth. And there's six people listening to it because we're the only ones who get it.
Speaker B [00:43:20]:
But we got the Bible and there's no grace. And no one can invite their friends and no one can come in because they're sinners and you gotta be Mother Teresa before you even get in here. And so there's no grace, but there's only truth. Here's the challenge. How do we become a church and a people full of grace and truth at the same time? I mean, we get pounded for this, right?
Mark Clark [00:43:51]:
That.
Speaker B [00:43:51]:
I'll get up and I'll say, gender roles, all right, are not something that was in Greco Roman ancient culture.
Mark Clark [00:43:58]:
But God actually established men as leaders in their home forever. That's how he built this thing. Because Paul doesn't argue from some cultural idea. He also argues from Adam and Eve in the text. We got pounded for that.
Speaker B [00:44:12]:
How dare you call men out as leaders.
Mark Clark [00:44:14]:
Yes, we will. Because I don't want a generation of men sitting downstairs looking at porn on their computer when the real wife is upstairs in their bedroom, flesh and blood, and you're downstairs looking at a computer screen. We want to call men to put down the video game consoles and learn how to love a woman, serve her, lead her, love her.
Speaker B [00:44:42]:
Well, you can't do that because that's truth. But you got to have more grace. Okay? See, the grace and the truth get messy. That's when the church gets really messy. Because we want to give truth, but we want to give it with grace. So some of you, you're in here, you got sin nobody knows about. Was this a truth church? That's gonna go, what sin?
Mark Clark [00:45:10]:
I can see that sin in you. I'm bringing it down on you. I'm judging you.
Speaker B [00:45:14]:
That's what happens sometimes in truth churches. But we want to be grace. We want to say no. You know what? Sometimes we just need to love and hug and cry with and pray for. See, grace and truth churches are messy places because it means that not everything's fair all the time.
Mark Clark [00:45:41]:
Right?
Speaker B [00:45:41]:
We've been talking about this. We kind of live in a world where we always have to be fair. You feel this as parents, If I do one thing for one child, I
Mark Clark [00:45:47]:
have to do it for all the children.
Speaker B [00:45:49]:
You know what? As a church, we don't even try to necessarily be fair to everybody. Jesus wasn't fair. We talked about this a couple weeks ago. Jesus would heal one guy, but not another guy.
Mark Clark [00:45:58]:
He would feed all these people, but then he wouldn't feed all these people. He told one guy, you gotta sell
Speaker B [00:46:03]:
everything you've got, and then, and only then can you come into the kingdom of God. And then the guy beside him on the cross goes, yeah, I don't need anything from you. I'll see you in five. Jesus wasn't fair. He applied different things to different people. Grace and truth, that's where those things collide,
Mark Clark [00:46:22]:
right?
Speaker B [00:46:23]:
We will tell some of you, you can serve in the security ministry. And out in the parking lot, awesome. Put a T shirt on you. But we don't want you 100 yards from village Kids.
Mark Clark [00:46:35]:
But why not?
Speaker B [00:46:38]:
We have no verses. It's just because we're not fair. That's the messiness.
Mark Clark [00:46:49]:
But shouldn't there be a policy?
Speaker B [00:46:53]:
It's the messiness of grace. We hire people at Village Church that have no formal ministry training. And then I got guys come up to me, say, don't you know I have a master's degree in theology. I can parse Hebrew verbs. And you hired Rob. He can't parse English verbs.
Mark Clark [00:47:16]:
He used to be an insurance broker, don't you know? Look what I've got. I know that's not fair. You're right.
Speaker B [00:47:26]:
It's not. Some of you, we asked you to move services, to move campuses. Go down to the Rosemary Heights campus. That's not Fair? Don't you know my family has a rhythm? We meet at the same time every week for lunch, the same place. You gonna bite into my family time? That's not fair. I know. We know, but we do it anyway. Last week I got up and I said that there's two legitimate reasons for divorce, adultery and abandonment.
Speaker B [00:48:11]:
And that if you divorce and get remarried, biblically speaking, you're an adulterer and you need to repent. And there's great grace and great forgiveness, but you need to repent of sin. And in our culture, people get mad about that.
Mark Clark [00:48:26]:
How dare you say that in a culture like ours?
Speaker B [00:48:32]:
And then they download the sermon for their kids when they're old enough to get married. Some of you sitting here need to hear grace right now. There is something in your life that you have done leading up to this day that is secret to everybody. And you're scared to be in a church because of judgment. You need to know that we want to be for you, full of grace and hug you and cry with you and love you and support you. Then there are those of you who need to hear truth, because your entire life you've been babied, and all the people around you dodge and are afraid of you. And all they give you is grace, and all they give you is don't worry about it. And all they give you is hugs.
Speaker B [00:49:30]:
And they enable you. And you surround yourself with enablers. And what you need to understand is the Bible will not enable you.
Mark Clark [00:49:37]:
It will cut you to the core
Speaker B [00:49:39]:
with truth and call you out and say, you need to repent of sin. And so can I bring my friend
Mark Clark [00:49:46]:
who struggles with this and this brokenness and this sin? Absolutely. They can come here and they're gonna get loved and hugged and invited, and then they're gonna be told to repent
Speaker B [00:49:56]:
because they're sinful like the rest of us. And they're not gonna get special treatment. And they might say, well, that's not fair. And we'll say, I know some of you in this moment need to hear the grace of the gospel. You're not accepted by God because of what you've done or the brokenness or the mistake you've made. You lay that at the feet of Jesus, you get accepted because of what he's done for you. And some of you need to hear the hard truth that you need to knock off what you're doing, repent of sin, and get the power of Jesus to change your life. And, Father, it's my prayer that the hearts that need to hear grace and the hearts that need to hear truth would be tuned in in this moment.
Speaker B [00:50:42]:
That as we worship you, as we sing out of response and reflection to whatever you're doing with us in this moment, that it would be meaningful and life changing and as we give our resources to the advancement of the gospel in our city, that you would bless those and multiply them. That in this moment people would come to know Jesus in this moment, people would give their life, they would repent of sin and trust in Christ. And they would become the kinds of people who then get a heart and a mind to make you known. Do that work. We trust you and ask for your power to move in Jesus name. Amen.