Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
Hey everyone, Mark here. Welcome to the Mark Clark Podcast. Today is a sermon called The Dumbest Generation. Yes, the title is intentionally provocative because in Ephesians 1, Paul prays for wisdom and revelation, and he exposes a hard truth that information doesn't equal understanding, that we may be incredibly informed as a generation, as a culture, and yet still deeply confused. I don't know if you felt that in your life. I certainly have. As information continues to double and double and double in the world in what we know. But is it creating satisfaction in our life? Is it creating wisdom? Is it creating the right kind of knowledge? That's what we're talking about in this episode.
Mark Clark [00:00:44]:
It challenges how we think in an age of endless content. All right, let's get into it. Hopefully you enjoy the episode.
Rob [00:00:51]:
If you are new, we've been in the book of Ephesians for about 3 months and we're in chapter 1 and we're coming up on verse 17 today. So we're excited about that. We've just been rocking through this thing. All right. And here's the reason that it's taken us so long, because the first 14 verses of this book are literally in the Greek one long sentence. So the Apostle Paul has written this thing just kind of taking a deep breath and then just going, "Vroom!" He's just laid out a whole bunch of massive ideas about our lives and salvation and God and how it all works. And so let me just kind of build up to a few of the things that he had said, moving up to the verse we're going to deal with today. He talked about, as we talked about a couple weeks ago, that all of our lives should be lived to the glory of God.
Rob [00:01:40]:
And so we said that everything about our life is not really about our life. It's about the way that we were set up was so that the God of the universe would actually be a part of every single little aspect of our life. So God needs to be infused into your sex life. Don't block him out of that. All right, now some of you are like, "Eee!" All right, but because you're like, "Well, he's not a part of my sex life." sex life. And so what needs to happen is he needs to become a part of it, because he has said, I created man, I created woman, they're supposed to get married, have sex in the context of covenant marriage, and that's it, exclusively. All right, so that's God becoming part of your sex life, calling you out to that kind of life, versus I'm going to define my marriage on how good my partner is. All right, on performance.
Rob [00:02:33]:
And the gospel goes, you know, that's not how you function if God's a part of your life. You don't function based on judging people by their performance. Because if you did it right, all right, if you didn't sleep with anyone until you were married, you wouldn't know anyway. All right, are they good? Don't know. All right, so, so God's a part of your sex life. Now, you don't want to block God from, uh, your— the way you raise your kids. All right, you don't want to block God from the way you do your job. And so infusing Jesus Christ into everything is the way that you live life to the full.
Rob [00:03:09]:
And so the reality is is if you— your marriage— now, this might actually not play out today or tomorrow, but over the time, you stretch it out a decade from now, your marriage without Jesus Christ will be less. All right? Your job will be less. Your kids' lives will be less without Jesus Christ. So we live our life to the praise of his glorious grace, not to the praise of our own selves. Secondly, Paul has said, as Rob talked about last week, Verse 15. Paul has said that we get saved by our faith, okay, in Jesus Christ, meaning our relational trust, that we would depend, put our faith, put our trust in the finished work of Jesus on our behalf, like we've been singing about. He came, he lived a perfect life, went to the cross, died for our sin, rose again. And so here's what Paul says in verse 15.
Rob [00:04:03]:
Look at this. He says, because I have heard your faith in the Lord Jesus that what saves you is your faith. Alright, so here's what he's saying: you're not saved by saving the whales, alright, or fighting for the whales, or eating Chick-fil-A, alright, alright, or going on their Facebook thing and I'm gonna save humanity, like, moving on, alright, alright, that's not how you're saved! You can become a deacon, an elder, a village church. You can, you can do everything in your power to be something on the outside, but the reality is, is he's saying here, here's what matters: that you have a personal faith in Jesus, that you walk with him, that this isn't about— because as we say here constantly, You could have been born in the church, all right? And some of you, I mean, I'm looking at some of the ladies, I'm like, that's an option, all right? There's a lot of ladies running around here with really big stomachs, and at any moment, bam, are you gonna have a baby on your back, all right? I'm just saying. So, all right, that kid, listen, that kid can grow up to go, I was born in the church. So you can be born in the church, all right? You can serve in the church, you can give to the church, you can be an elder in the church. And listen to me, you can still You'll wake up in hell because you didn't have faith in Jesus. You never trusted Jesus.
Rob [00:05:41]:
You played a game. And what the Apostle Paul says is, here's the danger, because some of you have Christian family and Christian friends that want you to look and act and function a particular way about certain things. And here's where it's going to go in your life if you just start playing the game. This is what the Apostle Paul says in one of his other letters, that you will trade out actual godliness for the appearance of godliness. And that is an extremely dangerous place to go. Now here's why it's dangerous. Um, so this week, the former youth pastor of— so this Pastor Rob, he worked, he was an elder at a church in Saskatoon, and this week it's all over the Saskatoon News, all over the Toronto The former youth pastor who was there when Rob was there as an elder this week got arrested for trying to have sex with a 15-year-old boy that he found on the internet. And what they found out was that he has been HIV positive for a lot of years.
Rob [00:06:42]:
So here's a guy, a pastor, working all over Canada, the United States with youth, who's got HIV from I don't know what, and now he's trying to sleep with 15-year-old boys in their house. How does that happen? Because you're playing a game, man. I'm a pastor. I can't look at my own sin. I can't try to get myself to get any accountability. I can't tell people about my tendency and my temptation towards sleeping with little boys. So I hide it and I play a game. Hey kids, what's going on? Love Jesus! Right? That's trading out actual, heartfelt, authentic godliness for the appearance of godliness, and that's where it goes.
Rob [00:07:33]:
You don't have any accountability. You're not looking into your own heart saying, man, I'm evil, what am I going to do about this? And so it's never checked. Okay, so the Apostle Paul has said you live for the glory of God, that you're only saved through faith in Jesus, and then he says Here's how that all comes about. It's the work of the Holy Spirit that actually produces this in you. And so in verse 13, he says, you believe the truth of the gospel of your salvation and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. That the work, as I talked about a couple weeks ago, of your salvation is the work of the Holy Spirit in you. That's what draws you to Jesus. Now some of you, if you're like me, You believed in agnosticism, atheism, you were skeptical.
Rob [00:08:19]:
Before I ever started coming to the church, I was skeptical about Christianity. I didn't believe any of this nonsense. And the reason wasn't Jesus. Some of you like Jesus, that's not the issue. The reason is believing what Christianity actually teaches, right? Because it's crazy. And so the reality is, is without the work of the Holy Spirit, Without that work, Him working in you to some degree, it's going to be very difficult for any of you to actually believe this stuff. Like, let's take a step back and see what the Bible teaches for a second, all right? Because some of you might have been buried in it a little long. Uh, let's step back.
Rob [00:08:58]:
Um, there's a Creator God, all right? Now, you've never seen Him. He doesn't talk to you. He's invisible. He lives in heaven. Alright, now Christianity steps it up a little, goes, uh, okay, there's not just one, okay, there is one, but there's three. But so there's three and there's one at the same time. When my kids come to me and say, Daddy, how is there one God but three? I usually sit them down Okay kids, who wants McDonald's? That's it, that's all I got. You got something better, let me know.
Rob [00:09:44]:
Um, and so my kids go, yay, we run McDonald's to this day. Um, so then this creator God who's free 3 and 1 at the same time, right? Eternally one, yet eternally distinct from the 3, um, creates the world. He starts by creating light. Now check this for a second. He creates light before he creates the sun. What? How did he create light? Let there be light without creating sun and stars? McDonald's. So then this God creates people and octopuses and octopi, whatever, and people and a talking snake. Say what? Um, and he puts them in this garden and they sin against him.
Rob [00:10:40]:
And then he says, here's my plan to redeem all of creation back to myself. I'm gonna come, born of a virgin, 14-year-old girl who's totally born into the Middle East 2,000 years ago. I'm going to live a perfect life, and then I'm going to die a crucifixion death, horrible suffering, and then I'm going to rise from the dead, and then I'm going to float in— now this is Christian— then he floats into heaven, and then promises that he's going to come back, all right, riding a white horse with a sword coming out of his mouth and a tattoo on his thigh. And then he says, in the meantime, Dunk some people in some water and drink my blood to remember me. That's easy to believe, right? Like, we couldn't pick that apart as stupid. No, we couldn't, because that just makes all the sense in the world. You need the Holy Spirit to make you believe that because it's crazy. And so Paul's going, how do you believe it? The work of the Holy Spirit.
Rob [00:11:48]:
And so when I, when I started coming into the church, I started thinking through, is it more logical to believe in God or not believe in God? And I had to start positing the existence of God because what really kind of messed me up was I was reading stuff about Holocaust, reading something about evil and suffering, and I was coming to the conclusion that it's really actually hard to— where did I get this idea that evil and suffering are bad? Without positing a God, it doesn't make sense because I don't really have a moral construct to say these things are evil and bad. So the fact that I pine for justice, pine for beauty, look for the world to be different, right? Because I had this evolutionary kind of theory come my way, if that was true, Why do I care? Why do I care if anything's different? Shouldn't I just accept the way things are? So the Holy Spirit, whatever you're walking in here with, grabs you and starts to shape you and challenge you and transform you. So I had this happen last week. My cousin married a guy named Matt. Love Matt, he's a great guy. Matt's a hardcore atheist guy, and so he posted on his Facebook the idea that— so here's what his Facebook post said.— so the Aurora shootings, a guy comes in, you know, shoots 70 people, kills 12. Where was God? And so Matt posted a letter from God, and the letter from God was saying this: Where was I during this horrible tragedy? I was the same place I have been for every massacre and every problem that's ever happened throughout history. I don't exist.
Rob [00:13:27]:
Now, I'm up at a camp preaching live your adventure, so I got a decision to make. Do I say nothing and Christmas dinner is pleasant, and it's just like pasta cranberries, that's a nice turkey, how was your flight, very well, see you next year? Or I can say something and blow up Christmas. So do I take the pleasant for you Nah. So here's what I said. So here's what I said, on his Facebook page. What moral construct are you citing in order to deduce that such massacres are actually bad, evil, or wrong? Without an absolute moral law, we can't definitively say such things are evil. This is just nature working itself out according to evolutionary progress, right? The strong kill the weak. The strong kill the weak! Who cares? It's a lion eating a squirrel! I don't know if they eat squirrels, but that's all it is! The strong kill the weak, man! What are you mad about? What are you upset about? This is how it rolls! Without God, there's no absolute moral framework from which to be upset at these atrocities.
Rob [00:14:48]:
The fact that the shootings/evil bother you, and that you have a category called evil at all, raises the question about the existence of God. And his response was, Facebook's really hard to have these conversations, let's have it in person. I was like, then why did you start it on Facebook? You're like, hey, I'm God, I don't exist, bam! You started it, so let's have it in person. Go to Luke 17. Because this whole scenario reminded me of a story in the Bible where this plays out. It's just this visible picture of the hypocrisy of humankind. So Luke 17, here's Jesus. He meets up with a bunch of lepers.
Rob [00:15:37]:
So lepers are guys who— it was a horrible disease. You would lose the feeling in your body, your limbs would just start falling off, and you were excluded from the community. It's horrible. Alright, so here's what happens. They walk up to Jesus in Luke 17:13, and they say, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. When he saw them, he said to them, go and show yourself to the priest. And as they went, they were cleansed. Then one of them— so they get healed while they're walking.
Rob [00:16:06]:
Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Thank you, Jesus, for healing me. Now here's Jesus' question, verse 17: Were not 10 cleansed? Where are the 9? Was not— was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? You see what he's saying? Here's what we do as humankind. Everything's going well, who gets the credit? This guy. There's money in the bank, the house is going well, the kids are going well, everyone's healthy. Humankind, we're awesome! You know, we got to Mars. Let's praise ourselves. We got a camera to Mars and we celebrate as humankind.
Rob [00:16:58]:
Kind. These 9 guys, things are going good, I'm just walking, I'm going home. Hey, let's go thank God for this. Thank God for what, man? We're just walking, cool, everything's good. Guy goes and shoots up a bunch of people in the theater. Where's God? What happened to blaming us? I thought we were the men, right? So listen, when things are good, we pat ourselves on the back. When we get cancer, we go, where's God? God in all of this? The hypocrisy of humankind. And so constantly what happens in our life is we tend to want to gravitate toward— when the good things happen, I'm to blame.
Rob [00:17:43]:
When bad things happen, I'm not to blame. And this is how we function— listen— until the Holy Spirit transforms us, until the Holy Spirit changes the furniture in your mind. You can't think any other way. You would never believe any of this without the Spirit's work in your life. So here's another thing Paul says in— back to Ephesians 1— about the Holy Spirit. Here's what the Holy Spirit does. He brings— verse 14— who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it. Here's what he's saying: if you believed in Jesus, and you're filled with the Spirit, there's a guarantee.
Rob [00:18:24]:
You get locked in, you get secured. So here's the beauty of Christianity: that Jesus doesn't lose Christians. You get guaranteed— the Holy Spirit from heaven comes into your life and guarantees your salvation until you can take possession of it. This is what he said. There's a guarantee. Now some of you are like, yeah, but don't I own my own salvation? No, the Holy Spirit locks you in. And that's a good thing, because you would not want to be in charge of your salvation. You barely got here today.
Rob [00:18:53]:
You're a wreck. And if you were in charge of your own salvation, you'd fumble it. I would. So the Holy Spirit locks you in. Now, some of you are sitting here like, "Man, I came with my friend. Are you trying to convert me to Christianity?" Yes. Here's why. Because we want you to experience the joy and beauty and the grace of Jesus Christ in heaven and not go to hell.
Rob [00:19:27]:
Because hell is a horrible place with terrible torture, and it's hot, and forever is an extremely long time, and you've been duped by a culture that's made a caricature both of hell and Satan so you don't fear him when you should. And some of you say, well, I got all the time in the world. I'll debate Christianity, I'll think it through, I'm just weighing the options. You don't. There's a woman in the foyer last week who came up to me and she said, my friend's a believer in Jesus, she loves God, her husband doesn't known him, been inviting him to church for years, never come. She started coming to Village 3 or 4 months ago. Finally he came 3 weeks ago and he loved it. And on the way home he talked about it.
Rob [00:20:22]:
And then 2 weeks ago he came again and he loved it, and they were talking about it on the way home. And then last week He didn't come because he got on a motorcycle, got hit by a car, and died. See, some of you think tomorrow's a sure bet. No. So I want to give you the opportunity right now to trust Jesus, because to be honest with Some of you, I don't know if you're going to make it to the end of this sermon. Some of you need to get courage to give your life to Jesus right now. It takes courage to follow Jesus. It takes courage to put your faith in Jesus.
Rob [00:21:13]:
Because here's what happens. Your friends and your family go, "You're dumb!" "You did what?" Everything about this takes courage. To face the temptation after you become a Christian, to live your life while you're a Christian— all kinds of courage. So I'm gonna pray right now, and if you're sitting here and you've never repented of your sin and you've never trusted in the sacrifice of Jesus for you, then you can do that right now and then have the courage to let me know about it. Fill out a Connect Card, come up to me after, tell me, let me pray for you. We want to disciple you. We want to celebrate. The Bible says that angels rejoice in heaven when one sinner repents.
Rob [00:21:59]:
One. Father, I pray in this moment, in the midst of everything we could be thinking about, that you would be real to us. That we would weigh our life very clearly out. And understand what is at stake in this moment, that you would cause these people, if they don't know you, to give their life to you, to put their faith and their trust in the Lord Jesus. And you confirm to us that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that you raised him from the dead, that we will be saved and secure in life. And I pray even in this moment that people would make that decision and that angels would rejoice because of it. That we wouldn't keep putting it off because we're lazy and we're afraid. Confront us.
Rob [00:22:56]:
Change us. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so that's intro. All right, pick it up in verse 16. I do not cease to give thanks for you. This is the Apostle Paul to this church. I do not cease to give thanks for you, Village Church. I do not cease to give thanks for you.
Rob [00:23:28]:
You guys are amazing. You are the most amazing church I've ever seen I've ever seen in my life. You have more passion to reach your neighbors, your friends, your families for Jesus than I've ever seen. A church our size should have 5, 6 full-time pastors. We have 2. Why? Because we take a long time to hire people? Yes. But also because you do the work! You're cheap labor! And that's what the Bible says is supposed to happen! That the saints are equipped for the work of ministry, that you love, you serve one another, you give money so we can be on mission and reach people for Jesus, disciple people well, use technology, that you serve, you give of your time. And when somebody comes— man, I thank God for you.
Rob [00:24:25]:
When someone calls me up and they say, I need someone to 'cause I'm in a pool with my kids, that I can call one of you up and you'd go. Not every church functions like that. And so Paul's going, I give thanks. I give thanks to God for you, everything you do. And what we say here is, if this is your third week and you're not serving, start. Because you're like a founding member. You're 3 weeks? Awesome. If you haven't found something to do, we will help you, because we believe this is what God has for you.
Rob [00:25:03]:
The church is not walking in here, listening to something, singing some songs, and walking back out again. There's no sacrifice in that for any that do that. And Christianity is all about, as we're going to see right at the end of this message, It's all about sacrifice. I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I pray for you, said the Apostle Paul, that the Lord, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of— now listen to two things— may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. Here's what he said. We live in a culture that loves knowledge, right? We like information, we like facts. He's saying here's what's more important than knowledge: wisdom.
Rob [00:25:53]:
We live in a generation that has more access to more knowledge than any other generation before us. We are the smartest. Like, remember, remember there was a time when I was growing up when I could hear a song and I'd be like, man, who sings that song? And then that would be the end. Right? And you'd be like, who does it? And then you have to— is it Sean? Is the DJ gonna say it? Yeah. Ah, man! And then I'd sit in my house and I'd wait to hit the record when the song came on the radio. Remember that? Remember when if you wanted to watch a television show, you'd have to be home? You have to like look at the newspaper and go, "Is that true? Oh my gosh, I gotta go, man!" That's insane! But now you just— you want to know a song? You just Shazam it on your app. You just— okay, that's your song. You just sing into it.
Rob [00:26:58]:
You're like, "Ah, sitting around." How old is Saddam Hussein? Remember? Like, We'd just sit in a room and just be like this. I don't know. How old was Samus Aran when he died? I don't know. Now we can find that out in 30 seconds. That's knowledge. I don't know where that one came from. That's knowledge. Not even close to wisdom.
Rob [00:27:31]:
We have the most knowledge as a generation of any generation, and we might be the dumbest generation. There's a guy who wrote a book. His name is Mark Fowler. He wrote a book called The Dumbest Generation, and it's about mine. He did studies, talked to tons and tons of people. Hey, here's some basic information. What's the significance of 1776? Who created the first electric light bulb? Who's the Prime Minister of Britain? Nobody knows. Nobody knows.
Rob [00:28:06]:
So here's what he says: We've entered the information age, traveled the information superhighway, spawned a knowledge economy, undergone the digital revolution, converted manual workers into knowledge workers. We've promoted a creative class. And yet, while teens and young adults have absorbed digital tools into their lives, young people today are no more learned and skillful than their predecessors, no more knowledgeable, fluent, up-to-date, or inquisitive except in the materials of youth culture. They don't know any more history or civics, economics or science, literature or current events, They also read less on their own. Think of how many things you must do in order not to know the year 1776, or the British Prime Minister, or the Fifth Amendment. You must forget the lessons of school: history class, social studies, government, geography, English class, philosophy, art history. You must care nothing for current events, elections, foreign policy. No newspaper, no political magazine, No CNN, and your friends must act the same way, never letting that historical fact or current event slip into the conversation.
Rob [00:29:23]:
Young people are not only not interested in world realities, they're actively cut off from them. Think about our entertainment. It's just toilet humor. It's dumb. It's crass. It's ridiculous. That's our form of entertainment as a generation. Knowledge, ideas, lowest common denominator.
Rob [00:29:50]:
And the Apostle Paul's going, man, I got a vision for this generation. And I agree with it. It's that you would trade out dumb for wise. And that you would pine after— man, I want my kids to grow up going, hey, how can I bring the healing love of Jesus to my generation and be wise? As Paul says in Philippians, that you would shine out as light in a crooked and perverse generation. That that's what my kids would do. That that's what the young people and the older people of our church would do. We would seek after wisdom. Because the Bible goes, man, wisdom is the way to run your life.
Rob [00:30:38]:
Wisdom is the way to get friends. Wisdom is the way to, you know, run your job. Wisdom is what you need in the center of your marriage. Not knowledge. And there's— he says the knowledge may give you a wisdom, a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. And what he means by that is not knowledge in the sense sense of I know about God. It's that I know God. It's the way the Bible uses the word knowledge.
Rob [00:31:02]:
Adam and Eve knew each other. There's an intimacy. There's a, there's a personal relationship there. Knowledge of him, knowledge of God. Because listen, I know I can ask you information questions. I know you've been to Sunday school and you can tell me that stuff. That's not the question. It's actually terrifying to me when I talk to my kids.
Rob [00:31:21]:
I talked to Sienna, my, uh, my 3-year-old, my 5-year-old the other day, and I said, Sienna, Who's the man in the Bible in the boat with all the animals? And she's like, Jesus, because that's what we answer at Sunday school, man. Sunday school taught you that Jesus is the answer to everything. I'm like, no, baby, Noah. Oh yeah, sorry. All right, now here's what's terrifying about that Is this ever going to be real for my kids? Are they ever going to really know him, walk with him, love him, serve him? Or is this going to be because this is daddy's job? You ever looked at pastor's kids before? That laugh actually just scared me right there. It's a couple of you being like, "Mm-hmm." What? All of you? Uh-oh. Because the minute I see and feel that my kids are not going to know Jesus because I do this, I'm walking. I walk away from this job in a second.
Rob [00:32:44]:
If it's going to adversely affect my kids, that they wouldn't know Jesus. One of you can give me a job. Knowledge. And then he says the spirit of wisdom. Now, in the Bible, constantly pushes us toward wisdom, and constantly in the scriptures when it talks about wisdom It says wisdom begins in a really weird place. Where does wisdom begin in the scriptures? Proverbs chapter 1. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. What? See, in modern day, we don't even have a category for this.
Rob [00:33:27]:
We're like, why would I ever fear God, right? Isn't God just the guy who kind of, you know, sits back and winks at my little sins? And, you know, he He kind of affirms my fragile self-esteem and walks me on the beach so there's only one set of footprints instead of two? Going through difficult times? Isn't that God? Isn't that God? Why would I ever fear that? Why? You can't. You wouldn't. But the scriptures go, fear him. Meaning, is Jesus good? Yes. But he's not safe. So the other day, um, remember thunder and lightning thing, right? So I came home, I was at a meeting, and supposedly unbeknownst to me, my kids freaked out at the thunder and lightning. Yeah, they're crying. Yeah, oh my goodness, the lightning's gonna come here! And my wife spent an hour saying, don't worry, girls.
Rob [00:34:28]:
Thunder lightning can't get you, never affect you. Okay, okay. Finally went down to sleep. I wake up in the morning, we're sitting up in breakfast. Did you see that thunder lightning? Yes. You know, if you go out in the lightning, it can hit you and burn you up. You're like, what? I said, fuck, fuck. No, but because here's the thing.
Rob [00:34:55]:
I want them to fear lightning! Or else they're gonna be walking around next time with golf clubs up in the air running around! No, I'm serious! Why wouldn't you have a reverence for lightning? Thank you! Was I right? Yes! Of course you have to fear it! It's lightning! So here's what we've done with God. We've made him— we've shriveled him down. We don't need to fear him. Don't get afraid of him, kids. Don't worry about it. He's just your pal. And we've taken any historical definition of grace, which is by undeserved favor, God through Jesus Christ reconciles sinful, wretched people to himself, and we've turned it into You can do whatever you want and he doesn't care. Of course you're never gonna fear that.
Rob [00:35:55]:
The Bible goes, by the way, the beginning of wisdom is that you fear him because he's an all-consuming fire and his main point is to try to make you holy and obedient to him. You better be afraid. Now here's the other thing he says. So wisdom, and then he says revelation. Here's the thing about revelation. It says revelation in the knowledge of him. Here's what God's revealed to us, and we gotta get this very clear. He's revealed himself to us.
Rob [00:36:32]:
He has not revealed every answer to every question that you have, and there's a world of difference is some of us approach God with this sense of entitlement that he needs to answer every question I have before I move. So I'm like, who am I supposed to talk to on the bus? Uh, which coffee shop am I supposed to go to? You're supposed to reveal all these things to me, Lord. Who am I supposed to marry? As if our hope is that God's like, marry Christopher. Some of you just took that as a sign. That's why I came to church, right there. No! I just chose a name! So the point is that we don't— you better show me this, you better show me that before I ever make make a move. That's not faith. That's expecting God to do things that he's never going to do for you.
Rob [00:37:38]:
Listen, read Acts chapter 1. They come to Jesus and say, Jesus, is this the time that you're going to restore the kingdom to Israel? He goes, not for you to know the times and the seasons. Here's the reality: God's not going to answer every question you've got because you're not God. He reveals not all this information that you've ever wanted to know. He reveals self, which is far more glorious. So why did somebody go in and shoot up all those people in Aurora? Why? You know what his answer sometimes is? Nothing. Because I'm God and you're you, and I'm good, something far more glorious. The knowledge of me, being in relationship with me.
Rob [00:38:28]:
Now, here's one final big idea that Paul has. He doesn't want to leave all of this in just static no man's land. He wants to bring this into your life. And so here's how he does it. Verse 18: Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened. So he's saying all of our hearts have eyes on them, and some of your eyes are dull Some of your eyes are closed. You don't know Jesus. And he's saying, my prayer is that your eyes will be opened, the eyes of your heart, that you may know— not, not in the future, right? Some of you are like, man, I know my transformation is going to come, but it's when I die and go to heaven.
Rob [00:39:04]:
He's saying, no, no, that you may know now in the present what is the hope to which he's called you. Hope, big word. Where's the hope? What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe? So it's not just that God is powerful, it's that the power is toward us to change your life, to totally and utterly transform you. Some of you sitting here, you got secret sin that nobody in this room and nobody in your life knows about. God wants to get in there and change it. He wants to kill the sin and make you alive in Jesus. He's got a power toward us. It's not just he's powerful, it's he's got a power toward us.
Rob [00:39:52]:
He wants to apply it to us. Now, what's all that based on? How is he going to change our life? Because some of you are like, man, there's a gap in my life between what I know to be true, what I see in the scriptures, and what I actually experience. So where does that come from? He says this: what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead. Here's what the Bible is saying to you. You want to know where to get your power from to change? It's from the historical reality that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, that the tomb is empty. This is God's public proof that He can change your life. So some of you are like, "Yeah, but like, I'm addicted to pornography and that's just my lot in life." God's going, "No, it's not! I raised Jesus from the dead!" "I'm an alcoholic, that's my identity." "No, it's not! I raised Jesus from the dead!" That's the power! "My marriage is broken, it's almost over, we're signing papers, it's done." "No, it's not! I rose Jesus from the dead!" You tracking with that? A guy got up from death, and you don't think I can change your life? Now sometimes, but of course those ancients, they believed everything Paul said. Yeah, this guy raised from the dead, that was pre-science, man.
Rob [00:41:21]:
Now we know better. All those ancients, they were wrong to believe in that. That's not true. That's what C.S. Lewis calls chronological snobbery. We'll just later in life, we'll look into that. They found it very difficult to believe in resurrection from the dead. In miracles at all.
Rob [00:41:37]:
Read the Christmas story. Mary comes to Joseph, I'm pregnant. He doesn't just go, oh, okay, this is God's baby, cool, what are we gonna start doing? You know what he does? He goes, Joseph, I had one baby, and I wasn't involved in this. Even to the point when she says, no, God impregnated me, he goes, you're crazy and I'm divorcing you. And an angel has to show up and go, Joseph, here's what happened. He goes, okay, now I believe. The resurrection is the power to change your life right here, right now. So let me close by giving you an image from John chapter 21 that captures this.
Rob [00:42:38]:
And I want to leave you with this because some of you need to hear this right now. In John 21, Jesus has been crucified. He's risen from the dead. He's walking along the beach, and Peter, the Apostle Peter, is sitting out fishing. And he sees Jesus, and he jumps in, and they all sit and have breakfast on the beach— resurrection breakfast. And Jesus sits with them, and then they have this conversation. He says this in John 21, verse 18: Peter, I say to you, When you were young— he pictures him as a little boy— when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted. But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.
Rob [00:43:34]:
Speaking about the fact that historically Peter was crucified. This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God. And after saying this, he said to him, 'Follow me. You're gonna die a horrible death. Follow me.' So Peter's now wrestling. Okay, discipleship means horrible suffering, dying for Jesus. Okay, okay, I'm grasping that. Then they keep walking.
Rob [00:44:03]:
Now check out what he does. Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved. That's John, right? He's writing the book, so he's like, the disciple whom Jesus loved. He was following them, the one who had been reclining at table close to him and had said, Lord, who is it that is going to betray you? Verse 21, listen to this. We do this all the time. When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, Lord, What about this man? Here's what he's doing. Uh, I hear that it's suffering, I hear that it's hard, I hear there's a cost, I hear I gotta give my time and my life and my money and my family and everything, but that's for everyone, right? Discipleship's fully equitable and fair, right? Tell me what's gonna happen to him. I'm gonna suffer, I got that.
Rob [00:44:54]:
What about him? Jesus said to him, "If it's my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?" Here's what Jesus is saying to all of us in this room. This isn't fair. Discipleship's not fair. Some people are gonna flourish! And your life's gonna stink. Some of you, like John, you're gonna live until you're 100, as John did, probably over 90, sitting on an island by himself in exile. And some of you are gonna do that. You're gonna live to your 100 and die of happiness in an old age home playing checkers. But some of you are going to die when you're 40 and suffer immensely.
Rob [00:45:58]:
And here's what Jesus is saying: if this is true, if I'm sitting having breakfast with you, having risen from the dead, it's okay. You don't need to be afraid. Whether you're John or whether you're Peter, I got up from death, and if you trust me, you don't need to fear anything. That's why the early church, they weren't afraid. Once they believed in Jesus, once they saw him risen from the dead, they didn't care about Roman swords anymore. They went to the gladiatorial arenas and got eaten by lions. They aren't afraid anymore. And Paul's saying, here's the power towards you.
Rob [00:46:50]:
You don't even need to fear cancer. Because remember a couple weeks ago we talked about John 8? If you believe in me, you won't even die. We're like, well, that's not really true because we all die. What Jesus said, he's saying you die within your life so quickly. It's like you're dead. There's no like, there's no stop button. You're in the presence of Jesus no matter what happens to you. So who cares about what you do with your money? You can give it away.
Rob [00:47:17]:
You can be generous. Who cares about your empire? Who cares about your reputation? He rose from the dead. Isn't that all that matters? This week I stood with a woman in the ICU. Me is she looked down at her 18-year-old son who'd gotten in a bike accident, and they told her he wasn't going to make it through the night. And he's doing better now. They go to our church. And she looked at me as we prayed and said, the only thing I got is the reality that Jesus Christ is in control of this. Without that, I got nothing.
Rob [00:47:53]:
Here's the foundation under that: that he's actually alive. That's where the power comes from. Father, it is my prayer that my life would be resourced by the historical, actual, factual reality that Paul says here, that you actually rose from the dead. And no matter how my life turns out, whether I'm 100 years old or die at 30, that I would take to heart The very profound idea that if this is true, if you are really risen, then I don't need to fear. Then it doesn't matter that life isn't fair. Because in the end, all of death gets turned into glory if we're in you. And for those of us who are just not walking in that power at all, I pray for courage in their heart today, that they would experience that life change. In Jesus' name, amen.