Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
Hey everyone, Mark here.
Mark Clark [00:00:04]:
Welcome to the Mark Clark Podcast.
Mark Clark [00:00:05]:
Hopefully you are doing awesome. In Ephesians 1, which is this new series that we launched a couple of weeks ago, and we're dropping sermons from the whole book of Ephesians, Paul says something radical, that Christianity isn't primarily about behavior or performance, but about adoption, being brought into God's family and being given a new identity. So if you struggle with belonging, worth, or feeling like you have to earn God's approval, this passage changes the conversation. Conversation entirely. We are super excited about this one. It's all about identity and what God's doing in your life. Let's get into it.
Mark Clark [00:00:41]:
Okay, let's, uh, let's pick it up in verse 3 just to set the context for what we're looking at today. Um, here, here's the thing. Paul in the book of Ephesians really does this massive epic thing. Like, he tells this an epic, huge, 30,000-foot story about the universe. And the reason he does that is because he wants to fit everything that's important about our lives, who we are, our conversion, our life before him, in the context of the larger picture of what God is doing in the universe. Because you gotta see yourself in light of the bigger picture, or else what begins to happen is you begin to chafe You begin to think things are unfair. You begin to not understand maybe the plan that's going on. It's like in business world, it's called silos, politics, and turf wars, where you get tunnel vision and you think your life and your ministry and your family and your job are the most important thing, are the only thing that matters.
Mark Clark [00:01:41]:
And when that happens, you begin to misunderstand what the boss is trying to do. All right, so if you work at a business and you got the little cubicle and you think the world revolves around your cubicle and what you do,, and you're not going to understand when the boss has to make decisions. Because listen, there's 30 other departments, alright? And your little department isn't the end of the world. And you think the boss is an idiot! And he's like, "No, I'm trying to do 30 departments. You're important, but you're a little piece of the bigger picture." And so this is why Paul's going, "Look, let me unpack salvation for you in the book of Ephesians, but in that, I got to unpack the larger story of the entire universe." So you see yourself in light of that backdrop. All right, so he picks it up in verse 3. He says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." This universal, this Lord, right? This is not the Galilean peasant who wears a dress and gets beat up by everybody. This is the Lord, all right? The all-sovereign, the one that holds the universe in his right hand, the one who is completely providential, ruling Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:02:43]:
All right, sword out of his mouth, fiery eyes. All right, Jesus, cosmic Jesus, he's the Lord. And so he says, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. So we talked about that last week. We unpacked election and we said that the whole point of election, the fact that God chooses us, is it's this great weapon against all of the things that kill the church. You know what kills the church? Your pride. That's what kills the church. Your gossip.
Mark Clark [00:03:19]:
All of us walking with a swagger thinking we earned this. We're the man. So I can talk down to people. I can judge those outside the church. I can judge those inside the church. I can talk about people. I can have a swagger. I'm proud, therefore that person does things wrongly.
Mark Clark [00:03:37]:
And so this pride begins to build up. And what he wants to do right in verse 4, right off the beginning, He wants to cut the knees out from all of us and go, by the way, if you know Jesus, guess who's to blame for it? God is. All right, not you. So right off the bat, He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. He's trying to eliminate all the boast that comes from human beings. He's trying to say, I moved first. I came to you. Every system of religion and worldview in the world wants us to build a tower to God.
Mark Clark [00:04:12]:
Right?
Mark Clark [00:04:12]:
This is right from Genesis 11 when humankind said, "Let us build a tower to God." And they tried to get to God. They tried to earn it. They tried to make it so that God said, "Oh, you're such a good person. Now I love you. Now I save you." That's how every religion in the world works. The gospel is going to say, "No, Jesus came down to us. He chose us. He moved first.
Mark Clark [00:04:31]:
You didn't move first. He moved first." That's what Jesus does. And in His ministry, He came to shut down the entire religious system of ways that people try to connect with God. You read You read the Gospels constantly, the stories that come out of there are Him saying, "Guys, shut down the system of religion. You are trying to build your way to God. You're trying to jump through these hoops." That's why here we don't preach religion. We don't tell you you've got to jump through a bunch of hoops in order to come here. We don't tell you you've got to look a certain way.
Mark Clark [00:05:00]:
We don't tell you you've got to dress a certain way. I'm not up here in a robe like a Jedi. We don't do that because this isn't about that. This is about, as we're going to see in verse 5, This is about relationship and not religion. So as you're reading the Gospels and you get to John chapter 2 and Jesus comes to this place called Cana and there's this great wedding, and in the wedding there's— everyone runs out of wine and he takes all these 6 stone water pots and he fills them up, fill them up with water, and then he turns them all to wine so the party can continue. We look at that and we think, oh, Jesus likes to party. That's not the point of the passage. All right? Oh, look at Jesus, he can do miracles.
Mark Clark [00:05:43]:
That's again not the point of the passage. That's what people think it's about. Read the story, John chapter 2. John tells us right off the bat what those 6 stone water pots were used for. He says they were used for the purification religious rites, meaning Jesus is saying what you guys have used as a ritual and as a religion to clean your hands, to connect with the God of the universe, I'm superseding it. I'm bringing about new wine. I'm bringing about a new way to connect to God, and it has nothing to do with these religious systems that you've created. That's a grenade that explodes, alright? This isn't just a nice little story about Jesus at a wedding and how polite He was.
Mark Clark [00:06:25]:
This is about, I'm changing. I'm telling humanity, stop doing religion. It's not the way to connect to God. And I remember I was in Israel, And I had the privilege of standing in the city of Cana. Our guide brought us there, and there was a massive stone water pot. And he brought us there because, you know, that's what tourists do, and they want to come to Cana and see a stone water pot. All right, so that's what he does. He brings all the Christians to the stone water pot.
Mark Clark [00:06:50]:
And so I pulled out my Bible and said, "Okay, here's what this passage is about. Here are these stone water pots, religion. Jesus supersedes, bringing about a new life." And he was sitting there, And he came up to me after, he's like, "Let me tell you something. I've brought hundreds of Christian groups through this place, and they all talk about, 'Isn't Jesus great because He does miracles?' and, 'Isn't Jesus great because He likes to party?' But never have I heard that what He was really doing with these water pots was saying the religious purification rite is over, and now you can connect to God through me, not in the context of religion, but relationship. Here's my Jewish guide." going, "Tell me more!" "All right, Abraham, I will." All right, that was his name. I called him Avi. And so people gotta understand, this is what Jesus is doing. He's bringing the grenade.
Mark Clark [00:07:44]:
He's shutting down. Stop trying to connect through religion. And so this is what Paul means now. Look at verse 5. So He chose us in Him to be blameless, holy and blameless before Him. We'll come back to that. In love, He predestined us for what? For adoption, for adoption through Jesus Christ. What is adoption about? It's a relational term.
Mark Clark [00:08:10]:
It's the fact that one of the problems, the main problem with humanity is that we're living in such a way where we do not have a Heavenly Father. We do not have a Father. We cannot call God our Father. Every other religious system in the world says, "Hey, you can get God as Lord, you can get Him as Ruler, you can get Him as Boss." Christianity comes along and goes, "You get adopted through Jesus Christ into a family, and you get to call Him Father." And this is what the biblical story is about. One writer, a guy by the name of J.I. Packer, put it this way: "What is a Christian? That can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is a Christian is one who has God as his Father." Father. A Christian is one who has God as his Father. Now, we gotta let that land on us, how crazy that is, that you get to relate to God as a Father.
Mark Clark [00:08:59]:
Like, the God of the universe who made everything, who is all-sovereign, right? He knows about planets you never heard of, and he made them just with going, "Blah, planet." All right? He's powerful, and he gets to be your dad. Like your dad, like some of you grew up in really good homes. Think about what you got to do with your dad. You got to love your dad. Your dad protected you. Your dad provided for you. Your dad defended you. Your dad loved you.
Mark Clark [00:09:28]:
Your dad affirmed you. You got to crawl up in your daddy's lap and tell him what you wanted and talk to him as a human being. That's relationship. And what the gospel is about is it's about saying this isn't about religion, it's about relationship. You get adopted. That's a relational term. You get to have God as Father. This is why Jesus, when he taught us to pray, he said, "Our Father who art in heaven." You get to call God your Father.
Mark Clark [00:09:51]:
And for many of us, if you've been a Christian a long time, that just drops on you and it's not powerful. But culturally, that is extremely radical, extremely powerful to be able to call God Father. And so it's Father's Day. So we, as we look to God as Father, we think about what about our own fathers? What is earthly fatherhood about? The Bible constantly comes in and critiques our ideas of fathers, constantly challenges us. Our culture will never challenge what it means to be a father. It will never lay it out. It will never call men to anything because it's absolutely terrified to do so. The Bible doesn't even hesitate.
Mark Clark [00:10:28]:
It goes, "Man, if you're married fathers, you gotta lead." And I feel, "Oh, no, that means women aren't equal." No, totally equal. Both made, Adam and Eve, in the image of God. But listen, They're different. Men and women, here's something crazy, West Coasters, check this now. Men and women are different. Holla! That's crazy. All right, it's just reality. All right, I sit down for a meal, I say, honey, this is the best meal you have ever made.
Mark Clark [00:11:05]:
And all the guys in the room went, well, he was trying to be nice. And all the women in the room went, "So she's a horrible cook." Alright, that's what— I mean, I sit down with my wife, I say, "Hey, this is the best meal you ever made." She goes, "So what about 8 years of garbage?" Alright, she's hearing things I'm not meaning to say. Alright, that's just different. You function differently. You hear differently. You think differently. Not wrong, just different. And the Bible was saying, hey, we got a culture where men are failing.
Mark Clark [00:11:41]:
Husbands, fathers are failing. Statistically, about 33% of children now in the US are born without a father's name on the birth certificate. 33%. How low can we put the bar that we can't even get the guy's name on the birth certificate? So culturally speaking, Our culture does not demand anything from a man, and many of you grew up in situations like myself where you did not have a father who loved you, cared for you, defended, provided for you. A deadbeat father. My father couldn't keep a job, made my mom sell all her stuff to be able to provide for us. Finally, they got divorced. He wouldn't come and see us.
Mark Clark [00:12:25]:
Never even told me that he had cancer. The hospital had to call me and say, by the way, your dad is dying. You might want to come and see him. And by the next day, he was dead. Dead, didn't have the guts to tell his 15-year-old son he was dying so I could actually say goodbye to him. I mean, just deadbeat! And many of you have fathers like that. Here's the beauty of the Gospel. It comes along and says in Jesus Christ, you get a Father.
Mark Clark [00:12:51]:
You get a Heavenly Father who loves and provides and protects and listens and loves. That through Jesus, you get adopted into a family that cares about you. You get a Father to look over you, to affirm— this is one of the most powerful things we have to offer both men and women in our culture today, is that they get a father in Jesus. Because the Scriptures will never hesitate to call the guys out to say, listen, I'm not going to pull any punches. I'm calling you to lead. I'm calling you to serve. I'm calling you to lay down your life. So as you learn from your heavenly Father about what it means to then be an earthly father, As you get adopted into the family, I mean, you gotta become like your dad, right? Like my kids, they put my shoes on and they walk around the house and they pretend to be like me.
Mark Clark [00:13:43]:
Right, little boys, when their dads are pushing the lawnmower, they'll have a little lawnmower with bubbles coming out, right? I was shaving by the time I was 5, 'cause I was in my bathtub and I had the suds on my face and I was doing these. All right, I'm shaving my face 'cause I saw my dad doing that. Do we imitate our heavenly Father and then say, what does it mean to actually be a good earthly father? What does it mean to love and to lead and to serve well? And culturally speaking, we'll never do this, but the Bible— and people come to realize that the Bible's just right about this. Like, I was doing counseling a few weeks ago with a couple Both of them total atheists, don't believe in God. They came to me for counseling. I don't know why, but I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to talk to you as a Bible-believing Christian. I'm going to talk to you as a pastor. I'm like, okay.
Mark Clark [00:14:36]:
So we get into this 2, 3 weeks. She's like, yeah, I used to go to church when I was a kid, but I left it because it was all chauvinistic and it put down women and all this stuff. Oh, what do you mean? Oh, it talked about male leadership in the home and blah, blah. I said, yeah, okay. So about 3 sessions into this, I said, you realize that most of the problems in your relationship right now have to do with that he's a child who's 38 years old, right? And you realize that most of your problems come back to the fact that he doesn't know how to be a father and he doesn't know how to lead you, right? And she looked down at the floor and she looked up at me and she said, I have to agree with you. He's supposed to lead me and he's not. What happened to all your secularism? What happened to all your philosophy 3 meetings ago? The Bible goes, this is just the way it is. Serve, love, wash feet, give your life.
Mark Clark [00:15:24]:
That's fatherhood. Psychologists say that one of the great things that kids need from their fathers is affirmation. So I've dealt for about 15 years, I've been in formal ministry, and I've hung out with youth, I've hung out with junior high, I've hung out with young adult, I've hung out with men, I've hung out with older men, all right, meaning anyone over 40. I've spent some time in a lot of counseling, a lot of prayer, a lot of discipleship, and what I've seen consistently is this father wound, what psychologists call a father wound, where because of the neglect, because of the bad leadership, because a father was not pouring in and affirming their kid, we're walking around, we're afraid to take responsibility, We're absolutely suffering as a culture. One of the deepest things a person needs is affirmation. This is one of the most beautiful things. You look at Jesus' baptism and the Father looks down at Him. Read Mark chapter 1, and He says, "You are My beloved Son." I mean, here's Jesus going into this ministry.
Mark Clark [00:16:32]:
He's gonna go forward. He's nervous about it. I have this vocation. I gotta preach. I gotta lead. I gotta serve. I gotta heal people. And right off the bat, before he does anything, his Father says, "You are my beloved Son." Read the text.
Mark Clark [00:16:44]:
He's not talking to the people. He doesn't say, "This is my beloved Son." He says, "You." Even in the text, it's not even clear if anyone else heard it. The Father is saying to the Son, "I affirm you. You are my beloved Son. In you I am well pleased." Affirmation. One of the deepest longings of the human soul from a father is to be affirmed. I read a story this week of a young teenage girl who went out to a party and she wore a fishnet dress that you could see through, walked by her dad. Her dad was gardening, looked up and said, have fun, honey.
Mark Clark [00:17:20]:
She got in the car, went to the party, went into the bathroom, changed into a sweater and jeans and came out crying. And everyone said, why didn't you put that nice dress on? You sat on— she said, I was just trying to see if my dad even noticed me, whether he would affirm me. Whether he would tell me to go back and change. A woman by the name of Megan Meeker wrote a book about fathers and daughters, and this is what he says— this is what she says: I have watched daughters talk to fathers. When you come in the room, they change. Everything about them changes— their eyes, their mouths, their gestures, their body language. Daughters are never lukewarm in the presence of their fathers. They watch you intensely.
Mark Clark [00:18:03]:
They hang on your words, and they hope for your attention, and they wait for it in frustration or in despair. They need a gesture of approval, affirmation— you are my beloved— and a nod of encouragement, or even simple eye contact to let them know you care and are willing to help. If you fully understood just how profoundly you can influence your daughter's life, you would be terrified, overwhelmed, or both. Boyfriends, brothers, even husbands can't shape her character the way that you do. You will influence her entire life because she gives you an authority she gives to no other man. Daughters to fathers, many of you are good men, but you are good men who have been totally mocked by a culture that ridicules your authority. That makes fun of you, that thinks you're an idiot. Watch every sitcom on television.
Mark Clark [00:19:07]:
Who's the idiot? It's not the all kid, right? The kid's brilliant. The kid's saving the world every episode. It's not the mom. Forget that. No, no, no network's going there. You imagine a show where the fathers had to clean up the mess of the mother every episode? Picketing every week. Every episode, the father's dumb and him and his friend mess something up and the mom and the kids got to clean it up. Situational comedy definition: the situation is brought about by a dumb dad.
Mark Clark [00:19:51]:
And everyone else has to solve it. Your authority is mocked, you're denied your importance, there's all kinds of confusion about the definition of what your role and your job is. It means this: you're a success if you can make money, provide a nice home, let your kids go to a private school. You're a success, which then gives you the opportunity to be absolutely absent. From their life. Because that's the definition of a successful father. The Bible pushes against, goes, what does it mean to— what do you expect from a heavenly Father? How do we become good earthly fathers? Eternal stuff, not temporal stuff. Do you raise your kids in the ways of Jesus? Do you teach them what it means to follow Him? Do you teach them the Bible? Do you show them how to pray? Do you show them how to share their faith? You were made for a reason.
Mark Clark [00:20:47]:
Your sons, your daughters are looking to you for something they can't get from their mom. And they're gonna enter into power struggles with you. I don't know if any of you have experienced this, all right, where your kid will push against you. You know what that is? That's your kid saying, Am I worth the fight? I mean, they're going to flail, they're going to cry, they're going to call you a meanie. I don't know, that just might be my life getting worked out here in public. That's them saying, am I worth the fight? Are you strong enough to handle me? And you got to make sure that the answer to that question is yes. And so he says adoption, that we get adopted into a family through Christ, meaning the— what does adoption mean? It means you don't have parents and someone else takes you on. So I was at a gala this week of an adoption agency in British Columbia, and they showed this video of all these kids who are sitting in these orphanages.
Mark Clark [00:22:03]:
They don't have parents. They're neglected and they need adoption. Kids getting beat, getting laid out on these— the cribs are up here and the kids are laying on the ground sleeping, sitting on potties all day because no one wants to change them and they haven't learned to go to the bathroom yet, so they'll sit there all day. And all these kids that need to be adopted, need to be cared for. And I think there's a piece of this in the Christian community that needs to actually echo through. What does it look like for us to take a theology where we get adopted by the God of the universe and that flows out of our life where we get a heart for this, not just if you're someone who can't have kids, but even above and beyond that, that we would adopt other kids as God has adopted us, that that would be a part of what we do. And we would look to the Scriptures and look to guys like Moses adopted, Esther adopted, Jesus adopted by Joseph who was not his biological father, and how that actually flows down. But then even deeper than that, I was, I was watching this video, I was thinking, man, that's just all of us.
Mark Clark [00:23:07]:
That's what this text is saying, that even if you have parents, spiritually speaking, you're just on the ground. All right, you're lost, you're far from God, you're neglected spiritually. You're looking for someone by his grace to come in and adopt you, because spiritually you are a mess. And so that's what verse 4 is about. It's saying, man, God adopted you. He chose, You didn't adopt him. Adopted kids don't sit in the orphanage and say, "I want them." By His grace, He decided to come into that place and say, "I will take you. I will make you my son.
Mark Clark [00:23:49]:
I will make you my daughter." And you could have the greatest parents in the world, but the reality is, is spiritually you still need a father. You are still an absolute orphan without parents. I don't care what kind of parents you have. And this is where Jesus' teachings are constantly going, how— what is your position before God? Like, if you have a Bible, flip over to Mark chapter 10. One of the great teachings of Jesus is what is your posture supposed to be in front of God? Are you an adult who has everything together, who walks up to God and says, "Yeah, how can you use me? I got some skills"? What Jesus says is, "No, you need to be— your posture in front of God, your position before him needs to be that you're a child. You're an absolute orphan who needs to be adopted by a gracious God." All right, so here's what he lays down. If you look at Mark chapter 10, pick it up in verse 13, it says, and they were bringing children to him that he might touch them to heal them. And the disciples rebuked them.
Mark Clark [00:24:56]:
The disciples rebuked these kids from coming to Jesus because their whole mindset is, I'm bringing in the kingdom. This is something very serious. I got God in a box. All right, we're trying to figure him out. We're bringing in the kingdom of God. This is Jesus, God in the flesh. You little kids are wasting our time. We're busy here.
Mark Clark [00:25:16]:
And so Jesus' response is this, verse 14. When Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, Let the children come to me. Do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, this is to all of us, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. What is he saying? He's saying your heart, your mind needs to come into the kingdom of God, not like you're an adult who's got all this stuff together and all this stuff to offer, but as a kid, an orphan. Who needs adoption. And here's the great piece of that. I mean, we look at that text and we go, okay, so what he's saying is we need to come to him with, you know, simplicity of heart, and we're all very innocent, and we're all like, you know, dumb like kids are.
Mark Clark [00:26:05]:
Not my kids, some kids are dumb. And we need to come at him with all kinds of this simplicity. All right, that's probably part of the text, but here's what else he's saying. In contrast to what the disciples are doing, this kind of kingdom mindset of, oh, discipleship is this real serious thing. I think he's saying, look at these kids. Discipleship is this sense of adventure. Like following Jesus is supposed to be— you ever watched a kid? Think of what he's saying. We've all got to be like kids.
Mark Clark [00:26:36]:
Watch a kid. Everything in life is an adventure. Right? Everything. You watch a boy, everything's a fight with a pirate. All right, or girls, you know, they're jumping around in fairyland, whatever. That's my girls. All right, they're all fairies, they're all princesses. Everybody's fighting each other.
Mark Clark [00:26:55]:
Everybody's doing some epic battle. Everybody's swept into this cosmic fight. It's beautiful. Do you have fun in discipleship? Do you have any epicness about your discipleship at all? Are you a kid or are you just boring? Jesus is going, "Hey guys, your form of discipleship and kingdom, putting me to sleep. Absolutely killing me with how boring you guys are." And he rebukes them. That's legit. He's indignant. He's angry that they've shriveled God down and shriveled Christianity down to boring, monotonous adult stuff.
Mark Clark [00:27:47]:
And he's saying, man, where's the fire? Where's the adventure? Where's the child spirit in this? And this is what happens. The church shrivels everything down And then all the adventurers, all the risk-takers, all the entrepreneurs, all the alpha males, all the alpha females, anybody who likes risk and adventure leaves. And what we're left with, no offense, are people who are nice and people who wear nice clothes and tuck in their shirts and have manners. And then you go back to the Bible, say, look at these guys, look at these guys who are starting this thing. Moses, man, he killed guys. Where's the killers? Don't put up your hand. But honestly, Where are the murderers who get redeemed and saved by Jesus? Paul, murderer. Jesus gets murdered.
Mark Clark [00:29:09]:
John the Baptist. If John the Baptist walked in here right now, half of you would run out the back doors. Culturally speaking, we know John the Baptist was part of a tribe who would dress up in camel's hair, eat locusts and honey. He came in. He had his hair in 6 long dreadlocks that were tied around his waist in a sack. That's a disciple. But we go clean living. We go Christianity is becoming a better person.
Mark Clark [00:29:47]:
Someone with manners. The Gospel's about getting manners. Being nice, being polite, having it all together. Jesus is going, "This is about lions, not lambs." What is it like to be a kid again? What is it like to approach your discipleship with abandon, absolute abandon, absolute risk? My kids, they don't think ahead 5 minutes. My— I took a picture of my 1-year-old. She climbed up on top of our stove the other day, and my wife was cooking, and she thought I was standing beside her, and she went, "Hey, Mark." "Ah! You're Bella." My kids don't think— I mean, they're risky. They take risks. This is an adventure.
Mark Clark [00:30:43]:
My kids don't care what people think. We care what everybody thinks. All we think about when we're worshipping God, praising God, out and about in our life is, "What do people think of me?" My kids, they're in a grocery store, they don't care. We'll be standing in line, they'll say, "That guy smells like mothballs." Shh! But we grow up. We grow up and Christianity becomes this boring, shriveled-down— no wonder statistically 2-3% go to church. When they grow up and they become— in BC, when they grow up, they become 18, they scram to get out of here. Because it's boring, it's shriveled down, it's monotonous. It's not a message of sacrifice or serving or give my life for anything.
Mark Clark [00:31:47]:
It's just normal. And then we wonder on Father's Day where— you know how many wives and daughters and sons will go to church today without their husbands and their fathers? Their fathers will stay at home and watch golf or go out with their buddies or watch football because the message that's preached, the aesthetics, the community, the songs, they're not about adventure. They're not about taking risks. They're not about laying down your life. They're not about sacrifice. They're about being Nice! And everything's pink and there's flowers. And men die. My mom, who's 63 years old, she went down to a church in Florida and she loved her time there because when she got there they said, "Who's new?" And she put up her hand and they brought her a loaf of bread.
Mark Clark [00:33:06]:
What? It's so nice. Everyone was so nice. I remember One lady, I can't remember her name, she— there's a quote she said, "When we come into church, we should not be seated by nice people. We should be seated by people with whips and flares." Because what are we entering into here? What is this? I remember going to a church and I was sitting there at the end of it and they said, "Hey, at the end of our worship time together, I want you to grab the hand of the person across the aisle from you and we're all going to hold hands as a church and we're going to sing a song." song. Listen, the last thing any man wants to do is hold another man's hand. Honest. Come on. Why? Where do we come up with this stuff? Or we say, "Hey men, we want to gather around you.
Mark Clark [00:34:26]:
We want to pray for you. Come up here. Let's get a prayer mushroom. Come on, get in closer. Get in really close." Because every man wants a guy right here. "Hey, how you doing? Good, thank you. going I'm to pray for you." Okay. I'm comfortable right here, I like this.
Mark Clark [00:34:49]:
Where'd the adventure— where's the— if a church loses the adventure spirit, then it dies. If a church loses that child spirit, the, if you come to me you gotta be a kid, you gotta not care, you gotta be risky, you gotta climb up on ovens, without thinking ahead. You gotta do some moves that you might fail, it might flop, alright, but it's part of it. Where's the adventure? Where's the risk? Jesus is saying part of your adoption is that you're a child, not a full-grown adult. So be a child for the kingdom of God. Be an adventurer. Follow me to the places everyone else is telling you not to. Alright, back to Ephesians 1.
Mark Clark [00:35:44]:
We're adopted as kids. Here's the thing about adoption. It wasn't just that you got adopted. In that culture, you got adopted unto something. You got adopted, you came into the family, and part of your responsibility was to then take that family and actually bring the impact, bring the identity of that family out into the world. And so that's why he says, man, if you've been adopted by the Heavenly Father, look at verse 4. He chose us for what? To sit around and argue about some abstract doctrine? No, that we should be holy and blameless, that you should become like the Father. You should become like the Father who adopted you.
Mark Clark [00:36:26]:
Again, you're pushing the lawnmower, the little kids pushing it beside you. You're shaving, you're becoming, you're becoming like your dad. Are you just happy being adopted? Are you just happy going, man, I got a Heavenly Father now? Are you going, man, I want to become like Him? That's why you got chosen, to be holy and to be blameless, to become like your Heavenly Father. Now, how do we do that? Verse 7: In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. The way that we become like our Heavenly Father is that we live out the reality of redemption. Literally, the word redeem, it's mentioned 150 times in the Bible. It comes from the idea of Israel living in Egypt and God coming and redeeming them. It means to be bought back.
Mark Clark [00:37:25]:
And in the Bible it's saying you get bought back from the slave market of your own sin, your own selfishness, your own safety, your own security, your own comfort. The fact that many of you are half done your life and all you've done is driven around the cul-de-sac of your own safety and security and sin your entire life. And what he's saying here is you get saved unto something. You get saved unto becoming holy and blameless. Some of you are believing the lie that the Israelites believed when they came out of Egypt and God was trying to bring them to the Promised Land. And what did they say? They said, "We had a bit of trial, we had a bit of temptation," and they gave up. And they said, "Man, let's just go back to Egypt. Let's go back." And some of you are there.
Mark Clark [00:38:14]:
"Let's go back to my sin. Let's go back to my comfort." Let's go back to this other place because, man, Egypt's gonna take care of us. The sin was far more pleasurable than God will ever be, and you begin to believe that lie. And so you function in a way where you say, man, my life is easier without God in it. Forget redemption. I want to go back to Egypt. I want to do money this way because it's far better for me, and God's old-fashioned. I want to do relationships this way because it's far better for me, in God's old fashion.
Mark Clark [00:38:45]:
And Paul's going, man, you gotta live out of what it means to be redeemed. What does it mean to be bought back? So you left that place and you're coming into a new place. How does that happen? Is it through your own effort? Is it through you just mustering up enough courage? No, he says this, it's through his blood. Those of you who are new, what that means is that Jesus Christ is God. He became a human being. He shed His blood. He died on a cross for your sins. He shed His blood.
Mark Clark [00:39:15]:
He took the wrath of God onto Himself so that you wouldn't have to bear it, so that you could come in behind Him and He would take the blow for you. Through His blood is the way that we get redeemed. Through His blood is the way that we get changed. We have seen it over and over and over again, people getting their lives actually transformed and changed. We're not talking about you get to go to heaven when you die. Is that part of it? Yes. But Paul's gospel here is, man, it's about here and now. It's about your life right here as you live it, being transformed away from whoever you were.
Mark Clark [00:39:58]:
We, we just seen this. I was talking to— 2 weeks ago we did a baptism. Down at White Rock Beach. There were 55 people baptized. It was an amazing scene to see hundreds of people on the pier looking down, watching these people be baptized. And I talked to one guy, he's like, "Man, one of those 55 people that were baptized, we've been praying for that person for 10 years. For 10 years we've been crying out to God because I was in a community group with their father who was just bleeding." seeing that that kid who was totally off the rails would come back around, and we prayed for 10 years for that. And now look at them.
Mark Clark [00:40:41]:
They're going public. That's not anything that can happen outside of the power of Jesus. Changing a life, transforming a life, that's not them and their skills and their talent We had a guy— a guy told me this week that there's a friend that he knows comes to our church, and I don't know who it is, but the friend that he knows that comes to our church, he works at the liquor store. And this guy came in to buy liquor the other day, and he was totally hammered. And he came in, he didn't even have enough money to buy what he was looking for. And as the guy left, the guy behind the counter kind of mustered up enough courage and said, "Hey, man, just so you know, God loves you and He thinks you're awesome." And the guy looked at him totally sober-minded, and he goes, "Thanks, I really needed to hear that more than you could ever imagine." And as the guy walked out, the guy goes, "Village Church, 8:45, 10:30, 12:15." All right, not the drunk guy, the other guy, all right? And then he said he showed up to church a couple weeks ago and he saw the guy sober. Listen, I don't know who you are. If that's you, man, the reason you're here is because God is hunting you down.
Mark Clark [00:41:58]:
He wants to redeem you. He wants to take you from the Egypt of your life and do something else. New creation, new heart, new mind, new life, new hope, new identity, all through the blood. It's not through you and how good you are. You're a mess. We all are. That's why He had to come down and save us, redeem us. And here's the beauty of this.
Mark Clark [00:42:27]:
I mean, we look at this, we're like, "Oh, the blood. Isn't that all ancient?" You know, all of these ancient ideas of paganism where you would have to appease the gods through all kinds of sacrifices. Like, I remember when I was in India, We got up to the top of this mountain and we were praising God. We were sitting around with a guitar around this fire and we were reading out scriptures to each other, talking about how awesome it was that God came and saved us, singing songs to Jesus. And there was a guy who journeyed with us for those 2 weeks to the top of that mountain. Actually, he carried my backpack because it got too heavy for me. And he'd done it a ton of times. He was fine.
Mark Clark [00:43:04]:
And he carried my backpack and we talked all the way up there. And when we got up there, we were singing songs, we were praising. And he was about 100 yards off offering sacrifices to his god, the monkey god, and saying, "Hey, you know, help me out. I'm giving you these sacrifices. I'm doing this." And I talked to him. I said, "Why do you do that?" "It's to appease. It's what the gods command of us." And in Jesus, we see everything gets changed. You see, all those ancient gods said, "If you want my wrath to be appeased, you better give me the blood of your son, of your daughter, of your lambs." You better give me your money.
Mark Clark [00:43:35]:
You better give me your grain. You better give me all these sacrifices so that my wrath gets turned away. And while the Trinity boggles the mind, here it's extremely helpful because what we see is that God himself comes himself and he does not ask for your kid. The Father sends his own kid. He doesn't ask for your blood. He comes and sheds his own. Through the blood so that we could get a Father through the shedding of the blood of the Son. That's the offer that's on the table for all of us.
Mark Clark [00:44:13]:
Redemption, which is not some abstract theological— I got freed from some imaginary sin. It's the real sin, the sin that messes you up, that messes up your family, that causes disaster after disaster. Disaster after disaster in your life. That's what he will save you from. That's what it's all about. And my prayer is that we would embrace that form of redemption and not some cognitive, abstract, theological idea. We would actually live out the redemption he has purchased through his blood. So let me pray for all of us to that end.
Mark Clark [00:44:47]:
Father, on this day where we celebrate fathers, you are the greatest. You are the good Father. You are the Father that loves. You are the Father that protects. You are the Father that defends. You are the Father that affirms. And for those of us, like myself, who do not have any earthly father, through Jesus we get You. And You are the best Father.
Mark Clark [00:45:13]:
You are the Father who can raise us, who can love us, who can show us what it means to be a man, to be a woman, to be a follower of Christ that has adventure, in our heart. And I pray for those people here who have never known what Paul mentions here, redemption, who have never known freedom in Christ, that they would give their lives to you even in this moment, that they would stop trusting in themselves and begin to trust in the blood that was shed for them. That on this Father's Day they would get a father, a true father, maybe for the first time, and that all of this would go toward holiness and blamelessness. There are many things that your scriptures tell us we've been redeemed from. I pray that we would live those things out. In the power of the name of Christ. Amen.