Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
Open up your bibles to Ephesians 3. And what we've been doing is kind of going through this book, verse by verse, this extremely powerful book for a series of months. And as we go into Ephesians 3, I just wanted to kind of set it up, because as I was thinking about this text and you. I was thinking about the two guys in Luke 24 who are walking on their way to Emmaus from Jerusalem. They knew Jesus, they loved Jesus, they walked with Jesus. But then they're kind of. They're down, they're hopeless because Jesus has been crucified. And they're walking along and Jesus comes alongside of them incognito.
Mark Clark [00:00:40]:
They don't know that it's him. And they begin to talk, and he begins to say, what happened? And what are you thinking about? And they say, well, you know, Jesus was here. Don't you know anything? Like, didn't you hear what happened? He got crucified. And Jesus said, no, I never really heard about it. Tell me about it. So they kind of talk, and then he sits down with them and it says that he. He opened up, they sat and they broke bread, and he opened up the Scriptures and he told them that all of the scriptures had to do with him. And then he disappears.
Mark Clark [00:01:06]:
All right? And they look at each other and they're like, man, weren't our hearts burning as he told us about the Scriptures? And it says, their eyes were open. And so here's the tension. And the challenge for us is, are we people? And this tends to happen where we'll come to church and we'll worship God and the Scriptures will be open, and maybe we write notes and we kind of engage and we listen and we sit with our hands crossed and we kind of get this thing, and maybe our hearts even burn within us. But then we kind of walk out of here. And when we do that, man, it's like the 110 steps to the car. Somewhere between here and then we kind of this idea that he has risen and he's alive and he offers us new life. It just kind of dies. It dries up, and it becomes hard Monday morning to get out of bed.
Mark Clark [00:02:03]:
And so what is that? And what the Bible would say that is, it's because we don't necessarily have our life connected to the purpose for why we were made, the reason for our existence. And so some of you are new to church, you're skeptical. You're maybe been invited by a friend. I hope we have a church that feels free to invite people to church. All right. I hope that we don't kind of look inwardly at our life and realize that we have no friends that don't know Jesus and that we bring them and that they would. You would. If you're one of those people, recognize.
Mark Clark [00:02:41]:
And this is one of the big questions that you've gotta be working through in your life. What's the purpose? Why was I put here? Why was I crafted? Why am I on this planet? And so the Apostle Paul is gonna answer that question today. And so pick it up. In chapter three, verse one, Paul says this. For this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles. So remember, we talked about this last week, that Paul is this pastor of this church in Ephesus, right? He planted it, and he's sharing his own heart with his people. All right? And I talked about this last week that, you know, and I shared, and everyone kind of went, oh, my goodness. Like, I just kind of.
Mark Clark [00:03:18]:
Paul was, you know, you know, laying out his own life, saying, hey, man, ministry's hard. I'm bleeding for you. So I shared some illustrations, and everyone's, like, calling me up. They're like, oh, my goodness. Cancel our meeting. All right? You're too busy. I don't want to, you know, call in my house. Hey, remember that dinner that was set up? Don't worry about it.
Mark Clark [00:03:33]:
You're just too busy. You're taking. You know, you didn't put your kids to bed in four days. Oh, my goodness. All right, listen, chill out, all right? Church, it's cool. I'm not burning out. My family's not like, who's my daddy? That man. All right? Don't worry, all right? My kids are still meeting Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:03:52]:
We still pray. We still. It's all good. You don't have to. All right? Everybody's canceling meetings. I'm gonna be bored for, like, the next two years. I'm like, I got nothing to do. I love you.
Mark Clark [00:04:02]:
You're my people. I want to meet with you. I want to serve you the best that I can. All right? So don't worry about that. I want to hear your stories. And so here's Paul, and he's saying, here is my heart. I went to prison for you. And what Paul did is he went to these cities.
Mark Clark [00:04:18]:
And we kind of take a cue from this in regard to our own strategy. And what Paul would do is he would plant these churches. So if you read Acts, chapter 19, Paul spent three years planting the church in Ephesus, and he would go to these cities and he would say, let's plant a church in these influential cities that would then flow out to the culture around them. So when you read your Bible, it's the book of Romans and the book of Colossians and the book of First Thessalonians and the book of Philippians, and these are all cities that the Apostle Paul went into. And he said, how do you change a culture? You plant gospel centered churches in these influential cities. And then all of that information that change, that influence will flow downstream. All right, Tim Keller, a pastor of a church in New York City, talks about this all the time. Now we need to be planting campuses and churches in these greater city areas, these urban areas that will actually influence, because that's where culture is created versus where it's consumed.
Mark Clark [00:05:18]:
Culture's created around the major urban centers, and then it's consumed on the plains. No one's looking at Saskatoon and going, I want to dress like that. All right. No one's doing that. All right? Saskatoon is looking to Vancouver and saying, where is culture? Where are the media hubs? Where's the paper hubs, where's the movies? All of that. And so what Paul did is he went to these very influential cities. And so this is a piece of our heart that we have one campus right now. We want to plant other campuses.
Mark Clark [00:05:49]:
We plan to plant a campus in 2013 to continue to push ourselves, to continue to plant all over the gva. And then who knows? I don't know where it goes from there. Wherever God leads us. But this is what Paul's heart was. This is how you change people. You plant churches, you plant campuses. They're gonna reach people with the gospel of Jesus, raise up leaders. And that's what he did.
Mark Clark [00:06:11]:
And so he says, for this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming verse two, that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you. Here's the key. He says, I have experienced the grace of God. I have experienced the love and the salvation of Jesus. And now I, I need that to flow out to you, to other people. This was my life. Change was for you. That's what he's saying.
Mark Clark [00:06:42]:
Some of us struggle with this, some of us. It just stops with, I felt the love of God, I felt the grace of God. And now we kind of keep it to ourself and we don't bless other people. We don't look at it like, I need to kind of go out of myself, bless other people. It Kind of stops with you and your family. And Paul's going, man, this is bigger than you. It's bigger than your family. It's bigger than your job.
Mark Clark [00:07:05]:
That we need to, as he says in 2 Corinthians 5, that we're agents of reconciliation everywhere we go, that the reason he saved you is to bring him glory and then to use it for other people. But what happens is, is we get, especially those of you who might have been raised in the church, all right, we get terrified. We don't know how to share our faith. We don't know how to tell people about Jesus. And so we kind of get locked up. And there's a bunch of reasons for this. One of them is just the intimidation factor, man. You think when Paul says, be an evangelist, you picture that as when you go into the grocery store, you're supposed to be out front with a bullhorn going, except Jesus, accept Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:07:47]:
Everyone's like, look at that guy. All right? That every time you go into a store, the clerk has to come to Jesus. And that intimidates you. And so what you do is you go the other direction and you say, well, I'm not gonna do that. I'm terrified of that. And the reality is, unless you have the gift of evangelism, which many people do, and they'll go in and someone will accept Christ as they're buying their lettuce, all right, that happens. Some of you, I mean, you probably just mess it up worse, all right? You get so nervous and be like, okay, let me tell you about Jesus. What he did was right, and he'd freak out.
Mark Clark [00:08:20]:
And the person, you would leave them worse off, all right? They'd be like, I wanna become a Mormon. That chick sounding crazy. All right, all right. So that's kind of what happens. So we get intimidated by that. We don't know what to do with that. So let me just say, let me give you a bite sized thing to do. One person this week, you pray, you ask the Lord about one person that you could speak to about Jesus this week.
Mark Clark [00:08:42]:
And I'll tell you something, he'll answer it. So if you don't want it, I mean, just don't, don't. Because he'll answer it every time, right? Lord, give me the. And it'll happen. Someone will crash into your car. They're like, hmm, I'm hopeless. What do I do? Do you know? Answers? He'll give you that opportunity. I mean, I don't know.
Mark Clark [00:09:03]:
It just happened. And so the question becomes, we get a little scared we don't really know what to do with those opportunities. And so the question is, how can you use your influence? It's a co worker, it's a family member, it's a friend. One that you get to tell your story, that you could talk about the grace and the love of God and what he's done in your own life. One person this week. The second reason we find this difficult is because, as the Bible says, we're sinful, which means that we're really all about our reputation. We're very selfish, we're very self involved. We don't want people to criticize us.
Mark Clark [00:09:38]:
We don't want people not to like us. We care more about the opinions of men than the opinions of God. And so we struggle to share our faith. We struggle to be vulnerable with people. And so we kind of get very tunnel vision, all right? We're just about us, the world around us. Paul's saying, he showed me the grace for you. And we go, he showed me the grace for me. It's tunnel vision.
Mark Clark [00:09:57]:
Men know all about this, all right? Men have tunnel vision. That's how we function. We have categories in our brain and we can only do one thing at a time, all right? There's no multitasking in a man's life, even if that task is a person. Like, I. Yesterday my wife went down to Seattle and she was shopping for Christmas. And so I had all three girls and 18 months, four and six, and we're in Indigo and I bring them there and, you know, they're reading because they're all brilliant and they're all reading Tolstoy and I'm kind of sitting around and so I get talking with this guy and we just start going, hey, how's it going? And what's going on in life? And da, da, da, da, da, da. And man, I'm just tunnel vision. Like, I can't.
Mark Clark [00:10:37]:
I don't know. Like at one point, one of the ladies who works there, she's like, here's your baby, sir. Oh, right, yeah. She was on the other side of the store. Oh, perfect. What are you doing for the next 10 minutes? You want to. All right, tunnel vision. Focus.
Mark Clark [00:10:58]:
This is what guys do. And so, I mean, it's just an illustration of how we all function. We're all about our life, we're all about succeeding. We're all about our paying the mortgage. We're all about our kids. We're all about these things in life. Who's got time for telling people about Jesus? Who's got time like the apostle Paul says to me, man, the grace of God was for you. It was for you.
Mark Clark [00:11:18]:
It was for me to experience and then give away. Give it away, but we keep it. And so he's charging us, be a steward of God's grace that was given to me for you. And then verse three, how the mystery was made known to me by Revelation, as I have written briefly. Now, here's what he means. He comes back to this theme as we've been talking about. The mystery, the Mysterion, that's the word he uses. And so when we read that word, we gotta understand there's a lot of mysteries in life, all right? Women are a mystery to men in every way.
Mark Clark [00:12:04]:
Sometimes I feel like, man, you're just setting us up for failure, all right? My wife, she called me this week. She said, hey, I would like to go out for dinner. Why don't you plan it? I'm open for anything. Let's just go for a night's dinner. I said, okay, perfect. How about we do this? How about someone comes over, watches the kids, and then we go here, we do some appetizing. We do some salads here. Then we move over here.
Mark Clark [00:12:28]:
Then we go, and we can invite these people out. And then we can do this. And it's perfect. She goes, fine. What? That's the dumbest idea I've heard all week. How did we go from you're an open book to that's the dumbest? It's tracking right back to Adam and Eve. It's like, here, you want this? That was the dumbest idea I have ever seen a man do. Right there.
Mark Clark [00:13:05]:
Now I got a pain in childbirth. What's wrong with you? You're the one what? Listen, women are an absolute mystery we cannot figure out. Men are a mystery to women. They can't understand how we could possibly not see that thing in the fridge? Well, five minutes I've been there like this. She'll just walk in like, bam. What? That wasn't there. 100%. That was not there.
Mark Clark [00:13:46]:
That's mysterious, all right? That's just men and women. Mystery, all right? Lots of mysteries going on, all right? Between men and women. Here's what the apostle Paul means by the word mystery. Here's what he's doing. He's challenging the religion of the city of Ephesus. What they did is they believed in the mystery cults. They believed that when you want happiness, you want fulfillment, you want the secret of life. It was called Gnosticism.
Mark Clark [00:14:14]:
Gnosis. You go after special knowledge. That's a Greek word for knowledge. You go after special knowledge. That's going to be the mystery and that the mystery of life. And so what he's doing, and this is what we don't often understand when we read our Bibles. We don't see when he uses a word. When Paul says mystery, he is violently deconstructing the idols of the culture that he's living in, the false worldview that this culture had laid on its people.
Mark Clark [00:14:40]:
And the reality is, is me and you, we live in a reality that's the exact same, all right? We. We live in a reality that has a worldview. And it's constantly pushing you and spending a lot of money for you to buy in and be brainwashed into its mystery religions to say, this is how relationships are supposed to work. This is how sex is supposed to work. This is how money's supposed to work. And they'll put it on billboards. And every time you turn on the TV and you're comings and you're goings and you're waking and you're sleeping, you will get pummeled by the constant message of our culture. Here's the religion, here's the worldview.
Mark Clark [00:15:19]:
And Paul is coming up against that entire thing and saying, let me just deconstruct this. Let me challenge it. That this mystery religion is false. And so what we do is we. I mean, this is why. Listen, this is why you sometimes find the Bible boring. Because you don't understand how powerful and crazy it is with every word. That every word, like you'll read mystery, and you're like, mystery.
Mark Clark [00:15:46]:
What's going on? And he's going, man, mystery. I'm deconstructing the worldview. You want to talk about why I ended up in prison? It's because I challenged the mystery religion. It's because I challenged the worldview. See, you think Paul's speaking Christianese, all right? You think Paul, when he goes Jesus is Lord. It's like, eh. It's just Paul being Christianese. You know, he's just building up this thing.
Mark Clark [00:16:10]:
This is what we do, right? We come up with our own language, right? I was talking to a Christian leader the other day. He was like, praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. I'm like, what? What, What? It's like a couple Praise the Lord's awesome.
Mark Clark [00:16:23]:
But it's like, I got up today, Praise the Lord. I got in my car, Praise the Lord. Got to Starbucks. Praise the Lord. Drank my coffee. Praise the Lord talking to you. Praise the Lord. Gonna go back for a nap later.
Mark Clark [00:16:30]:
Praise the Lord. I'm like, are you a Martian? Who talks like this? We come up with this entire construct of vocabulary, right? We talk about the, you know, we get a hedge of protection. What a hedge, right? I mean, where do we come up with these kind of things? I heard one kind of comedian guy, he's like, hedge, Can't God do better than a hedge? It's like, you put a hedge of protection around you, Satan's like, oh, watch out, there's some Fernando. It's like, what about like a steel wall? I pray, a steel wall of protection around this guy, a hedge. So we come up with it. We do this stuff, right? Jesus is Lord. We think Paul's going, Jesus is Lord. Unless it's just Christian.
Mark Clark [00:17:29]:
He's just sitting around, Jesus is Lord. You know what he's doing? He's saying this, Jesus is Lord. Therefore Caesar is not what you end up dying for that, you end up going to prison for that. Because Caesar made very clear he had printed on all his money, Caesar is Lord. Caesar is Lord. Caesar's the redeemer, Caesar's the savior, Caesar brings peace. And Paul, every time going, you live in an empire that wants to convince you that sex is this way, money is this way, relationships are this way, marriage should be defined like this. How do you function in that culture? And as someone who has a completely alternative vision of reality, a guy named Brian Walsh, who's a sociologist, says this.
Mark Clark [00:18:10]:
Empires maintain their sovereignty not only by establishing a monopoly on markets, political structures and military might, but also by monopolizing the imagination of their subjects. Captive people are not really subjects of the empire until their imagination has been taken captive. Here's what Paul's saying. If you can't dream of life otherwise, if you can't get past what that poster, alright, on the side of La Senza is telling you about what it means to be a woman. You haven't experienced the freedom of Jesus because your imagination has been taken captive. You can't go, let me break out of this. And Paul's going, man, you need Jesus to come and shock you and wake you up and give you an entire new sense of reality, all new paradigms. This is why in chapter five, he's gonna go awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you.
Mark Clark [00:19:14]:
He's saying, man, some of us have just absolutely fallen asleep at the wheel of our own lives and you need Jesus to come and wake you up because you're Thinking empire you have bought in. All you're doing is reading the prompter. You are a subject. You just read the prompter of the culture that you live in. You sing their songs. You worship what they worship and tell you to worship. And Paul's going, let me give you an alternative vision of reality. You want the mystery.
Mark Clark [00:19:43]:
You want the true mysterion. See, some of you are here and you're like, what's the meaning of life? How do I get free? What was I built for? What was I put on this planet for? Paul's about to break it out right now. He's saying, listen, wake up and face the question you've been avoiding. Why do you exist? What are you built for? What are you here for? The gospel writer John does the same thing at the beginning of his gospel. In Chapter one, he says, in the beginning was the word. The Greek word for word is the word logos. It's where we get logic or reason or purpose. And the Greek philosophers of that time would use the word logos to talk about what is the purpose of our life? What is the reason we were made.
Mark Clark [00:20:33]:
All these philosophers would look and they would say, look at the fish. The fish is sitting in the water, and how does it get free? How does it experience true freedom? It submits to its environment. It moves through the. It's got its little fins, and that's freedom. What does that mean for us? Is there something we need to comply with? Is there something we need to submit to in order to be truly free? And all the philosophers during that time were asking that question. The great men and women throughout history were asking that question. Voltaire, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Plato, they're all going, what is the meaning and the purpose of life? What do we need to submit to to truly be free? Now, here's what all those guys would also say about people like me and you and the people who are living at their time. They would say, the problem is the regular Joe on the street is too busy to answer the fundamental questions of life that you and me are too busy trying to pay our mortgage, trying to work really hard, trying to get our kids through school to answer the question of what is the meaning and the purpose of life? What is the mysterion? What is the logos? When I pull back the veil, what am I here for? Who's got the time for that? And all of those great thinkers knew that we didn't.
Mark Clark [00:21:47]:
And it's an irony, because, man, if I came up to you and I said, hey, would you like to go out for Coffee after the church today. Your first question would be like, what's the reason? Why do you want to. I don't understand. You know, you gotta put your kids to bed, don't. You got four days and put your kids to bed. Don't want to take up your time. What's the reason? It's an irony. Because, man, you want a justification for that hour, but you can't justify your own life.
Mark Clark [00:22:17]:
You want a reason to sit down for coffee, but you don't know the reason you exist. You don't know what you were made for. And the gospel writer John says, in the beginning was the Word, the Logos, the reason. And then he says this same thing that Paul says here. Look at what Paul does. He gives us the answer in verse 4. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ. Here's what the gospel writer John says.
Mark Clark [00:22:43]:
In the beginning was the Word, the Logos, the reason, the purpose. And verse 14, he says, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. You know what these guys are saying? What's the reason? What's the purpose for everything? It's a person. Now, here's. This is a bombshell in the world of philosophy. Why? Because everyone was saying, the purpose and the reason. The Logos, the mysterion is a principle. It's an abstraction.
Mark Clark [00:23:20]:
It's an idea. It's following these 10 rules to a better life, right? It's Deepak Chopra. It's, read my book and do these little spiritual tests and these exams and walk like this and do that, and listen to these commandments and listen to these rules, and then you will have fullness of life. And the New Testament comes along and goes, let me blow all that up. It's none of that. It's a person, and his name is Jesus. You want to know why you're built? It's to know him. It's to connect to him.
Mark Clark [00:23:53]:
It's to love him, it's to walk with him. And what we do, he brings the fullness of our life. And what we do. Listen, we have the silliest trade in history because what we do is we trade that out for relationships with people. I mean, man, I've preached and I'm gonna continue to preach this. There was a guy, I was at a wedding the other day, and he said, you know, doing my speech. And Mark, I know you're not gonna like this, but I'm gonna say it anyway. And he looked to his wife, he said, you complete me, and I Went.
Mark Clark [00:24:26]:
And the reason is. Listen to why. This is terrifying. You've got to track with this. Jerry Maguire theology is going to ruin you. Here's why. All right. Oh, you were thinking Austin Powers.
Mark Clark [00:24:38]:
All right, that goes back to Jerry Maguire. All right? This isn't like. You complete me. Mini me. All right, this is all right. Some of the room got that one. This is Jerry Maguire. All right.
Mark Clark [00:24:49]:
You complete me. All right, we look to. So here's what we do. The text is saying, jesus completes you. All right? What we do is we trade that out to let this person. All right? Let this person complete me. Now, here's why this is dangerous. Because two things will happen.
Mark Clark [00:25:05]:
They will continuously disappoint you, and you will ruin them. Because only God was meant to bear that weight. So here's what. You complete me. You complete me. So every time you let me down, I'm. I'm dead and you complete me. So why are you letting me down? Why are you making mistakes? And you know what'll happen? This person, if you look to them to complete you, they're gonna pick up a hobby real quick.
Mark Clark [00:25:33]:
They're gonna start cutting Fern. Why? Because the weight that you're putting on me, I can't bear it. Why? Because God was the only one ever created. So listen, ladies, one of your idols, as I talk to you, is codependence. You need a man to define you. And you go from relationship to relationship to relationship. And what do I do? I don't know who I am. I'm defined by what he gives me.
Mark Clark [00:26:05]:
It's co. Dependence. It's an idol. You're trying to trade out the glory, the satisfaction of what it is to know Christ. For these guys, this is what we do. We trade it out for the dumbest things. Let me illustrate it this way. Last year, we went to Disney World, and I.
Mark Clark [00:26:28]:
So my daughter Sienna, we walk in, she's like. I mean, we're in Disney World, all right? We got two years salary down on this thing, all right? So we walk in and she goes, I need sunglasses. So we go up to one of those things. I'm like, here, Minnie Mouse sunglasses. Boom. Take them out here, put these on, puts them on. They got the little Minnie mouth flip open. She's.
Mark Clark [00:26:47]:
Here's what happened. All she wanted to do all day was stare at these sunglasses. $5 pair of plastic sunglasses. She's in her stroller going. I'm like, look, there's Dumbo. Let's go over here. There's my Little World or whatever. It's called those Little People.
Mark Clark [00:27:06]:
Let's go over there. What's it called? Small World, Tiny World, Whatever. Tunnel vision. Let's go over here. Look, there's Minnie Mouse. But she's right there. And you got her plastic on your glasses. Look at the glory.
Mark Clark [00:27:32]:
Look at the princesses. She wants to meet. Look, there's Ariel. Go meet her. Go meet her. Hi, Sienna. You're trading out the glory of the castles and the princesses and all this stuff for a silly pair of sunglasses? Plastic. Minnie Mouse.
Mark Clark [00:27:49]:
Dumb. This is what we do. We trade out. CS Lewis said, we are content, listen, with money and sex and power and relationships. What we do is we're like kids that are content making mud pies in a slum when what is being offered us is a holiday at sea. And so what Paul is doing is, he's saying, listen, the reason for your existence is a person, and his name is Jesus. Now, what happens culturally is people look in and they say, christianity isn't freedom, it's oppression, Right? So my family, my friends, when I came to know Christ, would come talk with them. It was, ma', am, you don't understand.
Mark Clark [00:28:40]:
If you become a Christian, all you're doing is you're oppressing because everyone just looks the same, thinks the same. You all follow the same rules. So it's not about your freedom, it's about your oppression. And Nietzsche said this about Christianity. He said, the problem with Christianity is all it is is about oppression. All it is is about taking people's freedom, not giving them freedom. And so the question on the table is, how do we get free? Paul's answer is, you meet Jesus. Now there's this tension.
Mark Clark [00:29:05]:
Is it really true? Is it really true that Christianity takes people's freedom instead of oppress or oppresses people instead of giving people freedom? Here's an illustration by a guy named Tim Keller in his book the Reason for God. He writes about the movie I, Robot, which nobody's seen. But. See, here's the picture to me, if you'd walked up to me when I was 16 years old, before I know Jesus, and I'm throwing rocks through people's cars to steal money to get drugs and living this life and that life and the other life. If you would have walked up to me and said, here's Jesus, do you want freedom? I would have gone, man, I'm free. I don't need that, man. You're oppressed. You all think the same, look the same, act the same.
Mark Clark [00:29:57]:
That's not freedom. So I had this critique, and here's what Keller says. There's this robot called Sonny. And his design program had set him up to lead this rebellion against some robots. And then he succeeds, and he says, I don't know what to do with my life now. The reason I existed is over. I've defeated these robot rebellion. And then he looks to Will Smith, and Will Smith says this.
Mark Clark [00:30:21]:
I guess you'll have to find your own way like the rest of us. That's what it means to be free. And here's what that's preaching, that if there is a set of divine directives that are given to you from your maker, then by default, you're just a robot. If there's anything that you ever have to submit to, if there's anything that you gotta walk in, if there's anything that the designer said, walk this way, function this way. I want you to live like this. Then you are oppressed, you're not free. Because the definition of freedom culture is you get to do whatever you want whenever you want. And the Bible comes at us and goes, no, no, no.
Mark Clark [00:31:06]:
Jesus made you to function so that true freedom looks like walking with him. See, that's the difference. When my wife was away, I had all three kids last night. And we're walking around, it's pitch black, it's raining, and we're going through a parking lot. And I got baby here, I got my daughter here, I got the other one there. And I'm walking like this. And I'm giving them directives. Go left, go right.
Mark Clark [00:31:29]:
Stop. Don't go anywhere. Stop. Go left, right. Why? Because there's cars going, all right? There's danger. My wife would be horrified to hear this story right now, by the way. But why am I giving them those directives? So that they could be oppressed. So they can flourish, so they can have life.
Mark Clark [00:31:50]:
And so God has set it up. The mystery, the meaning, the reason, the purpose of all of life. He's saying, it's not a directive, it's not a principle. It's not. See, religion would say, the purpose of all of life is to follow me, is to do what I tell you to do. Here's the rules. Here's the commandments. Go to this pilgrimage.
Mark Clark [00:32:10]:
Do this. And everyone said, well, yes, that is exploitative. That is oppressive. But here's the beautiful thing that Paul's saying. He goes, that's not how it is with this God. See, he says, the mystery of Christ. John says, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. We beheld his glory, glory of the only Begotten.
Mark Clark [00:32:27]:
What does Christianity say? It says it didn't just sit a God static telling you what you have to do. Because that's one way that's exploitative, that's dehumanizing. That's you move, you move, you move. Christianity goes. This God moved. This God came and he got exploited for you, he got beaten for you. There's a guy named Robert Wright, he wrote a book years ago, he's definitely not a Christian guy. And he says this in his book the Evolution of God.
Mark Clark [00:33:02]:
He says, we can be pretty sure the crucifixion happened in part because it made so little theological sense. As the iconic Christian verse John 3:16 puts it, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. And as powerfully as these words ring now, imagine their impact in the ancient world. Throughout history, gods had been beings to whom you made sacrifices. Now here was a God that not only demanded no ritual sacrifices from you, but himself made sacrifices, indeed the ultimate sacrifice for you. All of humanity's sins, including yours, could be wiped off the ledger by God's self sacrificing redemption. He moved. This is the craziest thing in the history of philosophy.
Mark Clark [00:33:52]:
It's like, what do you mean? He came, he suffered, he wept, cried, he got beaten, he got exploited so that you wouldn't have to see. Here's when people come in and tell you Christianity is going to put you in a box. You're all going to look the same, you're all going to act the same. It's really oppressive, it's really going to take your freedoms. They don't understand how Christianity functions. You see, you compare Christianity, here's the distinctive about Christianity, you compare it to any other religion. Islam is basically still centered in the same culture that it began in in the Middle East. It's the same with Hinduism, the same with Buddhism, same with Confucianism.
Mark Clark [00:34:31]:
Christianity, is it centered to a culture? No. It started out as Jewish, then it became Greek, then it became northern European, then it went to North America, now it's gone to Asia, Latin America and Africa. That's now where Christianity has moved. Right? Christianity. This is not the face of Christianity in the world. Should be so lucky. This isn't it. Christianity is now African, Latin American, Asian.
Mark Clark [00:35:08]:
That's Christianity. And it goes into those cultures and it adapts and it thrives and it flourishes. Why? Because it doesn't oppress your culture. It sets your culture free. If you go into those countries in Africa where Christianity is flourishing, it doesn't look like this, man. They gather for eight hours. They're not looking at their watch going, hey, buddy, you're going three minutes over. Let's wrap it up.
Mark Clark [00:35:38]:
I actually know a guy who planted a church, and his church, it was about 100 people, would sit in the gym that he was in and he would preach. And there was one guy in the audience, sense of entitlement, that if he preached too long, he would stand up, turn his chair around, facing the back wall, and sit down in protest. That's insane. See, that's not African Christianity, man. It's tribal drums, all right. People, drums. It's tribal drums, all right? It's colorful clothing. They're dancing just like you guys.
Mark Clark [00:36:27]:
Looks just like you guys. They got soul. It looks different than it looks here. It's not Anglo Saxon. See, it sets a culture free because Christianity is able to adapt because it wants to set a culture free. It doesn't want to come in and restrict worship. It doesn't want to come in and limit. It wants to set people free.
Mark Clark [00:36:55]:
So here's the thing. The answer to the mystery, the answer to the question, the logos, the reason, the mysterion, the purpose of your life is a person. And his name is Jesus. Here's my quick question. Do you know him? That's what the question. That's what the text is raising. Do you know Jesus? You might be here. You're checking Christianity out.
Mark Clark [00:37:15]:
Great. Here's what Christianity would say to you. Do you know Jesus? He came for you. He died for you. He suffered for you. He rose again for you so that you might have new life. Do you know him? Have you ever given your life to him? And some of you are like, man, this sounds really intense. This sounds really up front.
Mark Clark [00:37:30]:
Are you trying to convert me? Yes. Yes. Why? Because as one writer has said, hell is hot and forever is a long time. And you might think that's dumb and ancient. I don't care. That's what the text says. It's what Jesus taught over and over and over and over and over again. Now, here's what Paul's doing.
Mark Clark [00:38:02]:
Paul is coming at these people and he's preaching this message and he's deconstructing the gods of their heart. He's saying, you're involved in all this mystery religion. This is the way that you function. This is the way that you have meaning in your life. And I'm coming at you, and I'm saying, the mystery is actually Christ. So let me deconstruct your idols. Listen, you and I sitting Here we got all kind. We talk about this often.
Mark Clark [00:38:27]:
We have gods in our hearts. We have things in our hearts that we put above God. It might be money, it might be the relationship we're in. It might be our kids, it might be our. Whatever it is, these things that we put above God. And Paul's coming and he's saying, here. Here's why you're not flourishing, even if you're a Christian, because you're not really dealing with the gods in your heart. You've made one movement, and there's two that are necessary.
Mark Clark [00:38:48]:
The movement you've made is toward God. But what you haven't done is you haven't dealt with all of the things in your life that you need to repent of and walk away from. So you'll come forward and receive Jesus and put your hand up. But then you'll go home, and a month later, you'll still be wrestling with all these demons and all these idols and all these gods of your heart because they haven't been deconstructed yet. And Paul says, you gotta do both, or else you'll always be in bondage if you don't deconstruct those gods, if you don't. Listen, let me illustrate it to you this way. I used to smoke, all right? And I love smoking, all right? I'm telling you, I would still smoke if you could be a Baptist pastor and smoke without judgment. I just love this morning and the coffee and the.
Mark Clark [00:39:35]:
After the steak and the whole thing. I still walk by. People say it's like Toucan Sam or something. All right, I'll just turn around, be like, what's up? How you guys doing? I'm just standing here. All right? I mean, that was it, man. This is my thing. I just loved it. And then, so how was I ever going to stop? I mean, because you could try to stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.
Mark Clark [00:40:01]:
But that doesn't work, all right? The government put stuff on the packs, all right? Those of you who smoke, you know this. It's like, don't smoke. Why? Because you're gonna. And they'll put a picture of a brain cancer disease kind of falling out and some guy's teeth that are all rotting doesn't do any. You just walk into the store, you're like, oh, can a pack of players, please? No, no, no, not the donkey teeth. The brain cancer ones. Right? Like you don't care. Yeah, give me lung cancer there.
Mark Clark [00:40:28]:
Yeah, those ones. Those are fine. I mean, my dad died of lung cancer when he was 47. And that wasn't enough to make me stop because I had this God of pleasure. So how was I ever going to get rid of it? I met a girl and she said I was stinky. I couldn't smell it. But sooner or later, my love for her trumped this. See, here's what needs to happen.
Mark Clark [00:41:08]:
You can try, try, try to deal with your porn, to deal with your codependency, to deal with these things that we just keep pounding away at these things. It's all going to be law. It's all going to be putting pictures of. Of dying brains on packages trying to get you to stop. Here's what you gotta do. You gotta love something that trumps this. And then when you start to move toward him, that's the only motivation you're ever gonna have to ever stop doing that. A guy named Thomas Chalmers, who was a great theologian back in the 18th century, he wrote this.
Mark Clark [00:41:42]:
This is pretty heavy, but it's extremely important. He says this. It is seldom that any of our tastes are made to disappear by mere force of reasoning or determination. But what cannot be thus destroyed may be dispossessed. The heart is such that the only way to dispossess it of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one. The youth ceases to idolize pleasure, but it is because the idol of wealth has become the stronger. The love of money ceases to have mastery over the citizen because they are drawn into the world of politics. So he is now lorded over by a love of power.
Mark Clark [00:42:27]:
So the way to disengage the heart from the positive love of one great object is to fasten it in positive to another. Then it is not about exposing the worthlessness of the old affection, but by exposing the worth and excellence of the new one. The only way you're ever gonna deal with that sin is because you gotta dispossess it. Because you love something more than you love it. And this is why people who try to become Christians just because they're afraid of hell rarely stick. Because heaven is full of people who aren't afraid of hell. It's afraid of people who love God positively. Now we're in a position to understand this last big point that Paul wants to raise.
Mark Clark [00:43:17]:
And it's this. Verse 2. Assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, here's the thing. It is essential that we understand what grace is about. Grace is the center story of the New Testament, and it's all about undeserved favor toward us. And the problem is, is that we wrestle it and make it into other things. We make it this passive thing. We make it this excuse, this is how we've twisted grace.
Mark Clark [00:43:47]:
That we need to wrestle it back is we think grace means we can do whatever we want and God doesn't care. It has historically, theologically, never been that. As if God is some old senile man who's sitting over here just waving at us. He go ahead, and we're like, sneaking around him, all right? We're fooling him. And look at all the grace. Look at all the grace he just lavishes it. I can do whatever I want. And the apostle Paul never saw it that way.
Mark Clark [00:44:13]:
You know what grace is in the Apostle Paul's mind? It's a weapon. It's a weapon to kill your sin. Remember a couple of verses ago, he's talking about how Jesus came and killed the hostility. It's a war word. It's grace that gives you the ability, because it's true, to actually wage war on your sin. That instead of sitting around and going, boy, I struggle with this. Let's go. Okay, yes, you struggle with it, but let's make war against it.
Mark Clark [00:44:40]:
Let's make war against our sin. Because here's what Paul's going to do in six, in chapter six, he's going to say that you and I, we're living in a very dangerous situation, that there is a spiritual war going on around us, and we got to bring that back to the rest. And this is why this has been a big metaphor for us as we've gone, is the issue of war. Because Paul says, you are in a spiritual war, not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. And here's what Jesus said. He said Satan was a murderer from the beginning. So let me say something crazy to you, all right? Just between me and you, it would delight Satan very much to kill you. That's the war we're in.
Mark Clark [00:45:27]:
That's the risk that we're running right now. Kill any one of you who loves Jesus, anybody who wants to advance the kingdom of God, anybody who wants to bring glory to God and love other people, he would rather. He wants to kill you. That's the war. And grace goes, don't become this passive. I don't know how to deal with my sin. I'm just kind of chugging along. It's a war word that says, man, God has given you the ability.
Mark Clark [00:45:54]:
This is how Paul uses it. In Romans 6, he says, what Are you supposed to continue in sin so that grace may increase? No. Don't you know that those who have died to sin no longer walk in it or live in it? That the sphere of grace means you're free from the sin that you got to go to war to kill? Here's the picture. And this is why we're constantly coming back to this as a church. Because sometimes I talk to you and I feel like you've got this theology of cheap grace where you abuse him, you abuse what he's done to you, and you think it's given you a right not to make war, but to just walk however you want to walk and he'll deal with it. There's an image in Nehemiah, chapter nine, chapter four, and I want to end with it because it's an image of people who have a choice to either be afraid or go to war. And I want to address it in this moment specifically to the men. Could you guys stand? All the men standing? There is sin among us.
Mark Clark [00:47:43]:
There is passivity, there is fear. We get afraid that we don't want to deal with our sin because if we do, what does that mean? I'm going to be exposed. People are going to hear about my weaknesses. What if I need accountability? And God says, even you young guys, you might not be married. You got to train for this. God says, we got a church to build. We got families to love and to serve as leaders. And what we immediately think about is our fear.
Mark Clark [00:48:26]:
And in Nehemiah, God had said, build something. I want you to build. And they were all scared. They didn't know what to do. They didn't want to go to war to fight their sin. They didn't want to go there because what if, what if, what if? And so here's how Nehemiah addresses the men in Judah. It was said, the strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There is too much rubble by ourselves, we will not be able to rebuild the wall by ourselves.
Mark Clark [00:49:00]:
We will not be able to build a strong family by ourselves. We cannot build the church. We can't go where God is calling us to go by ourselves. I'm fearful. I'm giving myself excuses. I'm not seeing myself as me before God, as responsible. I'm blaming. But what about my co workers? What about my spouse? What about my kids? What about my mom? What about my dad? They caused this in me.
Mark Clark [00:49:26]:
And I'm scared to build. I'm scared to move. And our enemies said they will know or sea till we come among them and kill them and stop the work. At that time, the Jews who lived near them came from all directions and said to us 10 times, you must return to us. So in the lowest, listen to what Nehemiah does. So in the lowest parts of the space, behind the wall, in open places, I stationed the people by their clans with their swords, their spears and their bows. And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and. And to the officials and to the rest of the people, do not be afraid of them.
Mark Clark [00:50:11]:
Remember the Lord who is great and awesome and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives and your homes. That we are called to fight because it will affect. It will influence our brothers, our sisters, our girlfriends, our wives, our daughters, our homes, our cities, our church. And Nehemiah sets this out as the vision. He goes, you know what religion would do? It would crush you and make you terrified. Grace, though, can free you up and empower you. Grace can say, I'm going to go to war against my sin for the glory of God and the good of people. Now I can be myself.
Mark Clark [00:51:04]:
I can take the forgiveness of Christ over me. Should you continue in sin so that grace may increase? By no means do you not know. Those who have died to sin do not live and walk in it anymore because they're called to build. Ladies, would you stand and join us? Father, I pray in this moment, as we prepare hearts and minds and lives to leave this place, to see the image of grace as he's spoken of it here, that he's a steward of God's grace for you, that we would see that not as a passive word that puts us to sleep and makes us abuse it cheaply, but something that empowers us to kill the sin, to make the war that you've called us to, and that now, in this moment, as we do communion and we look to what you did for us, that you came and for fought for us. You came and bled out for us. You came and got beaten and exploited and died for us. That the men and the women in this room would take the bread if they know you and dip it in the cup and remember and realize that all of that has to do with their sin and that they would, in this moment, actually confess sin to you, that this moment would be sacred and that they would deal very honestly and say, I want to leave this place different. I'm not jumping through a hoop here.
Mark Clark [00:52:52]:
I want my sin to be buried and I don't want to walk in this anymore. And I got the courage to get guys and gals around me to be accountable, to pray for me, to love me, because grace tells me I can do that versus getting crushed and judged. I pray for those who don't know you in this room that while communion is not for them and they can let it go, that in this moment, if they trust you, if they repent of sin and put their full faith and trust in what you have done for them, that the table is open to them because they've been given new life in this moment. And that your scriptures say that angels rejoice if one one sinner repents. I pray there is one. In Jesus. Great name we pray. Amen.