Mark Clark [00:00:00]:
Hey, everyone.
Mark Clark [00:00:00]:
Mark Clark here, listening to the Mark Clark podcast. We're super excited. This is a part of the Thrive Podcast network, but also a big. I am a huge fan of everything that World Vision is doing, and World Vision is a ministry that for me, obviously, I saw as a kid. But recently, what we did with World Vision, this is brilliant. For those of you who are church leaders, we did this thing called Chosen. Now, not to be confused with the show the Chosen, this is different. This is where so often when you're supporting kids in developing countries, what you'll do is, like, you'll choose them out of a bunch of photos, and then you'll be like, hey, I'm giving my 40 bucks a month.
Mark Clark [00:00:39]:
But this is something where you take a photo, you say some stuff about your family, and then they take those photos to the country, and then the kid chooses you based on your photo, which is awesome. We did it as a church, and it was something like a thousand kids got sponsored through this amazing initiative. So go check it out. WorldVision.com they have something called the Chosen, or you can just Google Chosen World Vision and sponsor a kid. It would be super awesome for you to do it. Our church has seen the impact of it. Our family did it, too. We grabbed.
Mark Clark [00:01:11]:
We just grabbed by this whole vision, and we were like, okay, we want to do this to support one or two kids through World Vision, and our family loves it. So anyway, jump into that World Vision. Okay, guys, listen. We are in the second sermon, the second week of the masterclass on life. And this sermon is called Amazing Grace. And it's based on First Corinthians, chapter one, verse two to three. And here's what it's about.
Mark Clark [00:01:32]:
Paul calls us to a life of.
Mark Clark [00:01:34]:
Holiness, courage, and grace. And I'll share why true success in life isn't about always winning, but about giving a good account of yourself. So good so even when you fail. And this is why grace changes everything. So this one is for anyone who's tired of trying to hold it all together. Let's jump into episode two on the masterclass of life.
Mark Clark [00:01:55]:
This is week two of masterclass. First Corinthians, if you have a Bible. First Corinthians, chapter one. We did one verse last week, and so I think we're gonn hit verse two today, which is fantastic. It's gonna be great. We won't be as long in Corinthians, I promise you, as we are in Matthew. It will pick up steam. But Paul hit something right in.
Mark Clark [00:02:13]:
These introductory verses are really important. As we think about our life in general. Last week we talked about the idea that the apostle Paul, right out of the gate introduced himself. He said, paul, by the will of God, set aside as an apostle of Jesus Christ. We talked about the idea that, you know, God is in complete control and you are not. And God uses anybody, no matter who they are, to do amazing things in the world. And you might have left last week going, man, I'm just like, I'm down. Like, I wanted to leave thinking, like, victoriously about my life.
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I wanted to go and go, yo, man, I'm a slayer. And instead of that, I left last.
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Week and I went, I'm a sinner.
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And I didn't feel victorious in my life like the New age movement tells me to. Well, let me be honest with you. That's a good thing. And I'll tell you why it's a good thing. Because when people look at you in New age movements and positive thinking movements, and they tell you that the definitive issue in your life is that you take control of your life and you're a victor and don't think like a loser and project your own future and it's all in your hands and take it back yourself. These are. You're a CEO, you're a winner. You're gonna make it rain.
Mark Clark [00:03:18]:
All right, this is what Tony Robbins literally sits in things and gets you chanting to yourself and to a group of people that you paid ten grand to be there. And this is what he's telling you. Your future's in your. You gotta speak life. You're gonna be a CEO. You're not a loser. And then here's the problem. Life actually comes in and destroys you, and you think it's your fault.
Mark Clark [00:03:38]:
This is what religion does to you. And the Apostle Paul comes out of the gate and he says, listen to me. Let me give you a far better paradigm for life. I was watching. You know me. I'm not a huge sports guy. I don't give a lot of sports metaphors or analogies. I got a couple maybe today, depending on how far we get.
Mark Clark [00:03:54]:
But the first, I'm a golfer, all right? I don't watch football. I think football. I don't even understand what's going on with that. I know people are jocke about football. People love their football. They loved it. But I'm not a huge sports guy. I watch a couple different sports.
Mark Clark [00:04:06]:
One of the ones I do is golf. I love golf. And I follow Tiger Woods. He's been my favorite since I've been 16. I know he's had his problems. We'll talk about that another time. So, Tiger woods in 2008. Tiger woods, it is said to be maybe the greatest US Open in history.
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He's playing, he's up against a guy named Rocco Mediate. They go into the final 18 holes, and on Sunday they play 18 holes. And the reality is, nobody knew this at the time, but Tiger woods was literally playing golf on a broken leg. And there were times when his caddy, Stevie could hear his leg actually crack and the bones rubbing up against the other bones as he swung. And he was limping around the course and he said, I am going to win this U.S. open no matter what. And he goes up on Sunday against 46 year old Rocco Mediate. No one had ever heard of the guy before, nor has anyone really talked about him that much since, other than this exact moment in his life, the pinnacle moment in his life when he was going to play Tiger woods for the US Open in 2008.
Mark Clark [00:05:10]:
And so they show up Sunday and they play 18 holes, and by the end of it, Tiger woods is forced on the 18th hole to drain a birdie putt on a par five. No one else drains that putt. He drives it into the bunker, plays it out short, hits it on in the green and drains a 20 footer to force a playoff. Rocco Media is standing, looking at a TV. So they have to play a whole 18 holes again. And so on Monday, the U.S. open was the only tournament at the time. You have to do a full 18 holes.
Mark Clark [00:05:37]:
So Tiger has to walk on a broken leg and do another 18 holes. He plays 18 holes still. @ the end of it, they're tied. They need to go and play more holes. All right, Rocco Mediate, 46, walking around, he's got buttons all over his hat. He actually is wearing his name tag so people know who he is when he arrives at the golf course and they let him into play. All right, so he's playing against Tiger Woods. Up against it.
Mark Clark [00:06:00]:
Up, up against it. He gets the, the final hole. And I was watching a documentary on this. They get to the hole, the playoff hole, sudden death hole. Tiger's in for birdie, and he's got a birdie putt. It's about a 30 footer. And the guy's filming Rocco and he says to him, and Rocco says, you know, there are great players and there.
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Are good players, and great players do good things and normal players do normal things.
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And then it cuts to the putt that he has to continue the sudden death.
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And he putts it and it goes.
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And it breezes by the hole and it cuts back. And the guy says, so what are you? Are you a great player or are.
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You a normal player?
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And the ball breezes by the hole.
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And it cuts back to Rocco, and he says, I'm a normal player. And he said, but I did my best.
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And then Bob Costas, one of the.
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Announcers, looks into the screen and he.
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Says something that philosophically, I think, is.
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One of the most profound things you and I have to understand.
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He says this. He says, in a Cinderella story, it is not necessary that the underdog wins. What matters is that they give a.
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Good account of themself.
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Listen to me. When it comes to your life, the world is a very broken place. And what's gonna happen is you're not always gonna win. You're not always gonna have the money. Your situation in life, no matter how much you try to take ownership of it and speak life and positive, think the corruption of the world around you is gonna mean. Some of you have faced marriages in decline. Some of them have ended. You have ended in a divorce.
Mark Clark [00:07:28]:
You're sitting there, you feel bad about it. You feel like you lost. Let me tell you something. It is not important in life that you always win. What is important is that you give a good account of yourself when you lose the money. And your kids look at you and they go, where's the money coming from? Listen. It's not important that you win, but that in that moment, you give a good account of yourself. When your friendships decline, when you make that massive mistake, when the thing you did, you couldn't speak life no matter what you tried, the world beat up on you and a disaster happened like happens in all of our lives.
Mark Clark [00:08:02]:
Here's what the gospel comes along and tells you. It is not essential that you always win in life. What matters is when you're up against it, you give a good account of yourself. And the apostle Paul says, listen, I'm the kind of guy who actually killed Christians. What could God ever do with me? And he takes them. And he writes 13 letters of the New Testament and founds a movement that changes the world. God will sometimes take the suffering and the awfulness of your life, no matter what New Age philosophy tells you. You want to talk about your first lesson of masterclass? Understand, God will use you, not because of you, but in spite of you.
Mark Clark [00:08:38]:
And for some of us, he entrusts awfulness and suffering so that it can impact other people. That's the reality. Some of us have it in us because we're strong enough that God sees us fit to bear on suffering so that the rest of the world can actually be influenced. I'm reading a manuscript by a woman right now who wants me to give a quote for her book. She lost her 21 year old son 10 days after he was married. He gets married and he dies. 21, losing your own kid, there's nothing worse than that. There's no pain greater than that.
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And some of you have gone through that. And you know what she does now?
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She works for her city's police department. That when somebody loses a child, she's the first one at the door to walk in the door and tell them.
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This is what happened to your child.
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And I've been through it. I know it.
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There's something power. God will take your suffering and use it to do something amazing if you let him. You don't always have to win in life. Do not take the pressure of religion and philosophy that tells you you always gotta be a winner or you're a loser. Take the philosophy that says no, no, no, when life just gets destroyed around you. The point is not that you have.
Mark Clark [00:09:49]:
To win every time, but you gotta give a good account of yourself.
Mark Clark [00:09:54]:
And the apostle Paul comes out of the gate and he says in verse one, Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus and our brother Sosthenes. And then he says in verse two, how does he start this? He says to the church of God. So here's the idea of the church, the word church is the word ekklesia. And some of you who are exploring spirituality, here's what you gotta understand. God's calling you to be part of a people. And the word ekklesia was used at the time for the body politic. It was a group of people that would come together and decide the rules and the laws and debate discussion in the secular world about politics and understanding. And what he says is what is most important is not the body politic of a nation, not the body politic of just deciding rules and laws.
Mark Clark [00:10:38]:
All that's important. But it's the church of God. That's the question. Because here's the thing, you and I, here's the lie we begin to believe because we're on Twitter and we're on Facebook, we're on Instagram and we watch Fox News 24 hours a day and we watch CNN 24 hours a day. And we begin to think that the most important things that happen are political things that happen and nation state Decisions and what Trump decides and what Trudeau decides to. These are the most important issues of our time. This is history. This is what matters in life.
Mark Clark [00:11:06]:
And we begin to think that the body politic, in regard to worldly, earthly realities is the most important thing. And the Bible comes along and goes, that is a distraction, because you and I can solve all the temporal problems in the world and start to define ourselves by the things of the world. But what we fail to understand is the real issue is underneath, the real issue is spiritual. That's why he says, yes, belonging to decision making and influence around ecclesia is important, but it's the ecclesia of God. It's the question of your spiritual life that you and I have to start to understand. That if you want to solve, for instance, violence, if you want to solve the abuse of women, if you want to solve the drug trade, you know what you do, you know what you do. You don't just create laws. That's great.
Mark Clark [00:11:50]:
That's important. That's worldly. Temporal realities, where we're solving things, you gotta get underneath to what people, not what they do, but what they want to do. Which means this. You want to change a city in regard to the abuse of women, drug trade, and violence. What do you have to do? You have to reach the men with the gospel of Jesus and change them from the inside so that they. Because it's men that will destroy a culture. They're the ones with the influence.
Mark Clark [00:12:18]:
They're the ones who drive a culture for good or ill. And you want to solve cultural issues. Give men something to die for that's bigger than themselves, bigger than their drug problem, bigger than gang brotherhood. Give them Jesus and say, listen, you need to live for a bigger vision than yourself. I got a buddy, he was a heroin addict, a coke addict, going down a very bad road. You know what saved him? It wasn't all little principles for his life. Those helped. It wasn't him just trying to be a better person.
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He met Jesus. Jesus changed not only what he did, but what he wanted to do. And now the guy is clean, has a great wife, has a great family. By God's grace, the problem is not solved by simply solving external realities and temporal things. This is why Jesus, in Mark 2, he walks in and the guy's on the mat and he's paralyzed. And Jesus shows up and he goes, oh, I know what you want. And they're like, thank God you're here. Let's deal with our friend.
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And Jesus walks up and what does he say? To him, he doesn't walk up and go, be healed. Walk. He goes, your sins are forgiven. And the guy's like, I don't want my sins forgiven, bro. I wanna walk. And Jesus is like, what's the point of making you walk if all you're gonna do is live the rest of your life and then die and go to a crisis? Eternity. Here's what I wanna do.
Mark Clark [00:13:35]:
I wanna solve your spiritual problem first.
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Because walking, that's great. You get another 30 years, and then.
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You got a deeper problem to answer.
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Who are you? Look at what he says. The church. Here's the key word of God. Meaning what? The definitive issue of your life is your relation. Listen to me, it's very important. The definitive. You're here, you're seeking, you're wondering, what are the priorities of my life? What do I do with my identity? Here's the question Paul just raised. He said, what is the definitive issue in regard to relationship of your life? The definitive issue is how you relate to, not to the things of the world, but how you relate to God, the church of God.
Mark Clark [00:14:14]:
That is the central question of your life. If God exists, do I or do I not relate to him and how do I do it? Here's what happens. You live in a world that wants to define your identity by so many things. You turn on the car commercial, it says, here's the definitive question of your life. How is your life in relationship to things, to shiny things? Because that's what's gonna be definitive for your identity. You turn on the beer commercial and it says how your identity is built on your relation to hot girls having a fun time and pub time with the boys. You turn on the life insurance commercial, and the life insurance commercial says, your definitive issue in life is how you relate to, you know, your retirement and your kids, and they play really sappy music and they show you raising your kid and giving your daughter away and making sure your life is intact. The shampoo and the food commercials are saying, the definitive issue of your life is how you relate to your body.
Mark Clark [00:15:16]:
And the Bible comes along and just over and over and over again says all of those things are temporal. All of those things. Listen, the only issue you've got to decide right out of the bat that defines how you view all of those things is do you or do you not relate to the God of the universe yet? The church, the rulership, the meaning, the rules. Not of life, not of cars, not of things, not of your body, not of your money, not of your retirement, not of you Walking your daughter down the aisle because we're so sentimental and sappy. I gotta make sure I get my first house. And I'm cutting the ribbon for my first house. Cause this matters. More than anything, this matters.
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You're a joke, man. You're really believing that? You really believe that? You know what that is? You know, the ancient Israelites used to live in Babylon, and they would take the Babylonian definitions of reality. The empire that they existed within would define for them what really mattered. And they just chew it up and they'd live in it. And God would say, knock it off. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to take Sabbath, even though everyone's gonna hate you because of it. I want you to eat this and not eat that.
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I want you to circumcise your kids, even though the Babylonians think it's weird. I want you to be different and set apart from the empires that you exist within. Do not be the product of the empire that you live in. This is what Paul's saying to the church.
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I know you live in Corinth. I know you live in Canada. I know you live in Surrey and Langley and Calgary.
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I know what they define for you. When you turn on the radio and you listen to the podcast. That is not the definitive issue of your life. They will tell you it is. How much you make your reputation, how good you are at this. No, no, no. What I'm asking you is, do you relate to God yet? My favorite author. Who's my favorite author?
Mark Clark [00:16:58]:
For those of you who are part of Village Church.
Mark Clark [00:17:00]:
C.S. lewis. Yo. Welcome to the party. Okay, so at least 59 times a year, I quote C.S. lewis. So he wrote this book called the Screwtape Letters. All right, so Screwtape Letters is this Uncle Demon.
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And he's writing to his nephew Demon, who's a been, which might be some of you. And the new Christian, he wants him to lose his faith. And so the uncle Demon has all these strategies. And the young demon, he's stupid. So he thinks, oh, I know what the best thing could be. I've got this new Christian on my hands.
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He's 30 years old. I know what'll happen.
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What if he dies? Then we win. And the Uncle Demon writes him a letter, and he says this to him. Don't let him die. He says this. If he dies now, you lose him. If he survives, there's always hope. The enemy, meaning God has guarded him from you through the first great wave of temptations. But if only he can be kept alive.
Mark Clark [00:17:51]:
Think about this for your own life. You have time itself for your ally. The long, dull, monotonous years of middle aged prosperity or middle aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather for us to corrode his soul. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the drabness which we create in their lives, and the resentment with which we teach them to respond to it. All this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition. If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, think about this in your own life. Our position is even stronger. Prosperity knits a man to the world.
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He feels that he's finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth, which is just what we want.
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You will notice that the young are generally less unwilling to die than the middle aged and the old.
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The truth is that the enemy, having oddly destined these mere animals to life.
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In his own eternal, has guarded them.
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Pretty effectively from the danger of feeling at home anywhere else. That is why we must often wish long life to our patients. 70 years is not a day too much for the difficult task of unraveling their souls from heaven and building up a firm attachment to the earth. Be very careful. We want prosperity, we want to live a long life. And the devil goes, take it. Cause it just gives you all the opportunity to knit yourself to the world and not want to do the very thing that you have to do in order to find life. Which is not what the New age movement will tell you, which is find yourself, go inside yourself, dig down deep.
Mark Clark [00:19:46]:
It's to what Jesus says, Don't find yourself what? Lose yourself, die to yourself. Because that's the only way you ever gain. That's the only way you get God. That's the definitive question of your life. If you have too many things in this world where you look at them and you say, I wanna hold onto this, you will never do the thing necessary that God is calling you to do. You will never sacrifice. If Aaron and I moved from Toronto to Vancouver in 2004, we left everybody we knew, our parents, our family, our friends, everybody. And we moved across here to live here for two years.
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Surprise, we're still here. We left everybody we knew to come across to Vancouver and live here now. What would have happened if we would have stayed there? Because we thought to ourself, you Know what? It's nice to have the grandkids around, the grandparents. We love that. We love that. I see a thing going around on Facebook right now. Grandparents are the most important thing in the world. You gotta be around your kids.
Mark Clark [00:20:48]:
God bless you. 100% amazing. But it better not be at the cost of the mission. So you can live your little life, your little quaint life and have your little Christmases for your 75 years and keep your kids from moving to do what Jesus is calling them to do in the world.
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Don't knit yourself to the world and become a product of weak.
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I mean, look at the world, man. If you have money, if you have success, if you have prosperity, you've made.
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And Paul goes, I walked away from it.
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You know what Paul gave up.
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He was in prison, he was beaten. He ultimately died for this.
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You follow a guy who was crucified and killed because he walked away from every earthly thing you can imagine to sacrifice his life for you.
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So here's the question you begin to ask yourself. Can I do the thing? You know that I talked about the Matrix last week? Can I do that thing?
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The red pill, green pill?
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When Morpheus stands in front of Neo, he says, you're gonna come down the rabbit hole. But if he had too many things in his Earth, he never would have done it. He would've said, you know what the casualty is gonna be?
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Truth. I'll live in the own comfort. I don't even wanna go down the.
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Rabbit hole and figure this out.
Mark Clark [00:21:57]:
You watch Heat, you know the movie Heat, when De Niro looks at Pacino.
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And he says, here's the discipline of being a robber. Not that I'm giving you a metaphor for being a bank robber, but he says.
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He says, do not tie yourself to anything in this world that you can't walk away from in 30 seconds flat if you sense the heat coming around the corner. That's the discipline. And the reality is, you and I, we have too many of those things to be able to hear. When Paul says, here's the reality of how I want you to define your life. It's not by the beer commercials or the insurance or the grandkids or the nice car. It's that. Look at what he says in verse one. Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle.
Mark Clark [00:22:38]:
Can you put your name into verse one, Mike? Called by the will of God to be a lawyer. Michelle, called by the will of God to be a nurse for the glory of Jesus Christ. Janice, called by the will of God by the Will of God to be a homemaker, if we're allowed to do that anymore, to the glory of Christ. Dave. Called by the will of God to be a financial planner. Do you even think like that or do you go called by the will of me. Called by the will of money. Called by the will of body image.
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Called by the will of my friends. Called by the will of what's comfortable.
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And Paul's gone. You have got it all wrong. You have to figure out what your priorities are in life. And then look at this Last comment on 2a, which is the first four words.
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To the church. To the church of God. Some of you sitting here right now because you're new and you're exploring Christianity, here's what you're thinking right now. The word church scares me because I'm not a good enough person to ever belong to something called a church or to be the people of God. And here's what you've gotta understand.
Mark Clark [00:23:54]:
Paul just blew all of that up as an ex murderer. And he says, no, no, no, you don't understand. Nobody's good enough.
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Some of you feel uncomfortable.
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You're like, I would never. Here's what you gotta know. God, if you're listening to my voice right now, if you're sitting at one of our sites, all right, maybe you're.
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Even listening to this on podcasts, because.
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We have 2 million podcasts a year.
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So maybe you're doing construction right now, or you're jogging, or you're sitting at home making something and you're listening to this. Listen, if you're hearing my voice right now, you're in one of the rooms of one of our. Whatever it is. If you're listening to my voice right now, here's the grace God is given you. He's already hunting you down. That's why you're listening to this. Of course you're not worthy, but the fact that you've got this far in this message, and it might be because you're just in the middle seat and you want to get out, but you can't because you feel weird because you're Canadian, it's okay. You can get up and just say, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
Mark Clark [00:24:46]:
Sorry, bunch of jokes. Listen.
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If that's your reality, here's what you gotta know. He's hunting you down. Because look what he just said in verse one. By the will of God, he's the first mover on you. And if you're even hearing this or pondering this, he hunts you down. Now here's How I know? He hunts us down. Okay, so golf analogy, sports story number two. So I'm golfing in Phoenix with my friends.
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Once a year, we go on this little guy's trip. We go down with four guys. My buddy has a place in Phoenix.
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So we go down there four or five days, we play golf.
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Okay, so we're playing golf in Phoenix and we team up. There's only three of us.
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Our other buddy hadn't got there yet.
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So we team up with this guy who we don't know. He's on the driving range. His name is Ethan, and he's trying to be a professional golfer. And he's really good. He just destroyed. He's young, he's small, he's like my size. But he kills a ball 320 yards of the three wood.
Mark Clark [00:25:43]:
And we're just, like, doing our best.
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So we start telling him about Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:25:47]:
Hole four. Hole five. I'm a pastor. You gotta know about Jesus, man.
Mark Clark [00:25:50]:
Yeah, no, I'm an atheist. I've never been to church.
Mark Clark [00:25:51]:
I've never even considered Christianity. No, no, no.
Mark Clark [00:25:53]:
So we're going, we're going, we're going. So, come on, man, you gotta believe. You gotta, you know, you gotta give Jesus the chance. Oh, no. Yeah.
Mark Clark [00:25:59]:
I don't believe in any of that stuff. Okay, fine.
Mark Clark [00:26:01]:
So we get to the back nine, and my buddy. Let's call him Lou. Cause that's his name. Lou's a terrible golfer. Okay, so Lou Louis slices a ball into the woods. And he goes into the woods and he pulls out. He finds his ball, but he also pulls out a ball. And the ball on it says Sweet Baby Jesus on the ball.
Mark Clark [00:26:26]:
Okay? Someone has gone to a computer and printed the words Sweet Baby Jesus onto a golf ball. Okay? And Lou finds it in a forest in Phoenix on the ninth hole while we're talking to Ethan about Jesus. So he goes, oh, look, Ethan. It's a. Look at the ball. It's a sign. Sweet Baby Jesus. And Ethan's like, that's ridiculous.
Mark Clark [00:26:51]:
Come on. So I get on the next tee and Lou throws me Sweet Baby Jesus ball. I put it on the tee. Whew. I hit it. Now, usually I hit it perfect. This particular time, pulled it, hooked it way up 200ft up into a cliff.
Mark Clark [00:27:10]:
With massive rock, cliffs, trees.
Mark Clark [00:27:13]:
And there's one tree up there. And the ball hits the tree and bounces 100ft this way. Lands in the middle of the fairway. Ethan goes, wow, I'd never seen that before. Maybe. Maybe this Jesus thing's legit. So I said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I get up for my second shot, which usually is perfect.
Mark Clark [00:27:35]:
Boom. Hit an iron. Boom. Slices off to the right, and there's a creek and there's rocks. Sweet baby Jesus hits the rocks, bounces up 50ft in the air, and drops down right in the middle of the fairway. Now, Ethan's half converted, right? He's like, holy. I've never seen that in my life. What are you.
Mark Clark [00:27:56]:
What the heck just happened? I'm like, this is the Lord. I serve, bro. Let's go. So he's like, that's crazy. That's crazy. Whatever. So we go up to the 17th hole. It's a par three.
Mark Clark [00:28:10]:
It's 230 yards downhill. And so we all hit our irons. I put sweet baby Jesus away. We're on the green, and Lou, because he's so terrible, he gets his club and pulls his funeral. And he hits like he doesn't. We're all hitting irons, but he hits, like, this big, like, hybrid or three wood something.
Mark Clark [00:28:27]:
Because he hits a short, and everybody else.
Mark Clark [00:28:29]:
So he goes, boom. And he pulls it back into the.
Mark Clark [00:28:32]:
Into the. Into the pond. So we're on this par three, and I said, lou, you need some help, bro? Sweet baby Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:28:39]:
And Ethan says, if this ball goes in the hole, I will believe. So Lou puts it on the tee, gets his hybrid out.
Mark Clark [00:28:55]:
I'm not kidding you. It was the sweetest contact I've ever seen in my life. The ball's in the air, starts to draw a little bit, which Lou never does. This is above him, man. This is. And it lands four feet from the hole and starts to roll. Three feet, two feet, one foot edges the cup, ends up a foot and a half from the hole. Ethan's jaw hits the ground, and he says, there may be something to this.
Mark Clark [00:29:42]:
Now.
Mark Clark [00:29:42]:
Now, here's what God does to hunt you down.
Mark Clark [00:29:49]:
He will put a ball in a.
Mark Clark [00:29:50]:
Field and use the worst golfer in.
Mark Clark [00:29:53]:
The greater Vancouver area to blow people away, to show that he is powerful and he is good and you are not. All right? That's how much God will hunt you down. God will use nonsense to hunt you down, to at least make you think so none of us are worthy, but he will come after you. And now it's your decision to do what Ethan is still pondering, and we.
Mark Clark [00:30:21]:
Stay in touch with him.
Mark Clark [00:30:23]:
And you might actually be listening to this. So, Ethan, let's go to do what.
Mark Clark [00:30:31]:
Ethan failed to do, which is he said, I don't believe yet. I've Seen the evidence, but I choose not to believe.
Mark Clark [00:30:37]:
Why?
Mark Clark [00:30:38]:
Probably cause he's scared like you. The reason you don't believe isn't so much because you don't philosophically think this is legit. You're probably a coward. You're probably afraid of what your co workers will say if you come back and say, I've become a Christian. You're probably afraid of what your girlfriend would say or your parents next time you have to gather and go, no, I've actually given my life. You're probably afraid.
Mark Clark [00:31:05]:
You know?
Mark Clark [00:31:05]:
Wilt Chamberlain, third sports analogy, 1962. Wilt Chamberlain was one of the greatest players of all time. He had 100 points in a game. The one thing Wilt Chamberlain couldn't do was free throw. So there was a guy back then who had the greatest percentage in free throws. And you know how he would do a free throw like this? Underhand.
Mark Clark [00:31:27]:
It's actually the greatest way to throw.
Mark Clark [00:31:29]:
A free throw is underhand. And so Wilt Chamberlain in 1962 changed how he did free throws from this to this. And his percentages went way up. And then he switched back.
Mark Clark [00:31:42]:
You know why?
Mark Clark [00:31:43]:
Cause it looked funny. He's a coward. He didn't want to look like a goof. So he changed what was right. He ignored what was right and went back to what was wrong because he was afraid what people would think. That's you, man. That's me. The gospel's all about, I'm Paul, and.
Mark Clark [00:32:07]:
It'S gonna take courage to follow Jesus because I'm gonna get beat up. I'm gonna be hurt. It's gonna be hard. Which is what the next verse of the second half of verse two is about. The church of God that is in Corinth. To those underline this word sanctified in Christ Jesus called to be saints. The word sanctify in the Greek is hagios. It means holy.
Mark Clark [00:32:29]:
It means set apart. It means different. It means that you're not like the world. That when it comes to the ethical realities of life, that the church people who believed in Jesus, they need to be vastly different from the world. This is one of the big themes all the way through. And that's why he hits it right in verse two. Have you met people who. They're like, I have something really important in my life.
Mark Clark [00:32:50]:
It's the highest priority in my life. So every time you talk to them, it comes out so quick, and you're like, okay, this is. Is clearly the priority of their life.
Mark Clark [00:32:55]:
I remember there was a church that.
Mark Clark [00:32:58]:
I worked at A while ago, there.
Mark Clark [00:32:59]:
Was this woman, and every time I saw her, she would talk about her sons. All right, I've never met her sons, but she would just rave about her sons.
Mark Clark [00:33:06]:
My sons do this. My sons do this. My sons are this my sons. And I'm like, I don't know them. I don't care. I just want to get out of this conversation. We're 20 minutes in every time. So it's one of these people where you avoid them.
Mark Clark [00:33:17]:
You're like. Even though I was working there and I'm just a minister to them, I've never done this to any of you, but I would see them coming from far away and I'd just be like. And I kind of go, oh, yes, I'm praying over here. I don't know what's happening. Just to avoid her. Cause I wouldn't want to get stuck in a 20 minute conversation about sons I never met. Huge priority for her. Anyway, one day it was my birthday.
Mark Clark [00:33:39]:
And I'm like, I got control of this conversation. It's gonna be done in two minutes. Cause it's gonna be about me now.
Mark Clark [00:33:45]:
Cause it's my birthday. I got something to say, I got something to lead with. It's my birthday. Gone. Can't make that about anybody but me. Not kidding you. She walks up to me, I go, hey, it's my birthday. August 15th, baby.
Mark Clark [00:33:59]:
She's like, it's my son's birthday today. I'm like, no, no, that cannot be a thing. My God, help me. Huge priority for her every day. You know, if something's a priority for someone, they just immediately start talking about. Here's Paul, verse 2. What does he hit? Holiness. Cause your problem in mine is holiness.
Mark Clark [00:34:29]:
Being set apart, being different. In a culture that wants to define sexuality, like this money, like this. Success, like this fame, like this. Corinth. They were very corrupt. You and I are very corrupt. And he says, I'm calling you to be saints. I don't want you.
Mark Clark [00:34:44]:
Are you so weak that you just do the things of the world that you sleep around with, whoever. That you go to, the clubs, that you drink, whatever, that you sit on social media when your kid's trying to spend time with you? Are you actually that weak? Because the church is called to be vastly different than the world we exist within. This is gonna be a massive theme all the way through as he hits over and over and over again all these issues. Let me be real with you folks for a second. As an 18 year old convert to Christianity, I did everything you can Imagine someone would do the drugs, the partying, the we don't know whose girlfriend that is. And on a given night we don't really care. All right? That was life. And then we become a Christian and I'm like, what is the one thing that stands out to an 18 year old kid who's done everything under the sun that kids do when they don't have Jesus, now they've become a Christian, what's going to really stand out? The sexual ethic.
Mark Clark [00:35:33]:
And I'm reading the Bible and it's saying you can only have sex with one person once you get married for the rest of your life. And I was like Skywalker, when he finds out Vader's his father, it's like, no, right? I was like, this can't be a thing. This is the one thing I wish wasn't true. Don't put that in the Bible. And I'm reading the Bible and it's saying, hey, listen, the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God. So I, as an 18 year old kid, what would be the easiest thing for me to do? Just go, lord, I'm struggling. Like half the people I now counsel when they're getting married and I do premarital counseling, I'm struggling. Knock it off.
Mark Clark [00:36:14]:
You're struggling, you're weak. That's your problem. I don't do many marriages now, I don't know why no one invites me to do them. But don't give me, you're struggling, you are wearing weak. So I start dating Erin. I'm Erin's first boyfriend. She never had a boyfriend before. I'm 18 years old, full of hormones, she's not ugly.
Mark Clark [00:36:40]:
So what did I do in that scene? What am I gonna do? I'm like, I can't, I can't, I can't. And my buddies are like, I will. And to be honest with you, her first boyfriend.
Mark Clark [00:36:55]:
And she would tell you this, she would have done it, she would have, she offered in moments of weakness. And I stopped it because that's the call of a man. I'll never blame the girl, but she wore the tidies. Go home, take a shower, Friggin week. How is that possible? I tell you that because I want to tell you this. Some of you sit there and you go, sanctification ain't for me, man. There's no way I could ever be holy. There's no way I could ever have the strength.
Mark Clark [00:37:40]:
If an 18 year old version of Mark Clark can discipline himself out of reverence and fear for the one who died for me, who laid down rules about what is best for my flourishing. You can too. Believe me, I am not the example.
Mark Clark [00:38:00]:
I am the example of the regular Joe who actually did a miraculous feat. And some of you, this ain't that miraculous. It is. I'm not saying we were perfect.
Mark Clark [00:38:16]:
But the discipline had to come from what it came from the resource that I had. Notice what he says? He doesn't say, you're gonna be sanctified.
Mark Clark [00:38:26]:
He says to those who are already sanctified. Meaning, you wanna know where you're gonna get the power to be other, to be different, to be holy. If you're a believer in Jesus, that's in the past. You already have it now. Live out who you are. That's the point. But some of you don't believe that you're that yet. You don't believe you have the resource.
Mark Clark [00:38:48]:
You believe things about you that aren't true.
Mark Clark [00:38:51]:
And the apostle Paul comes along, he goes, no, no, no, you have the power. You have the power. Here's the problem. Sexuality in our culture has become like other things, religion. Remember last, last week I talked about the power of religion goes away when it becomes privatized. And that's why you don't live in power. Because it's gone from this really momentous.
Mark Clark [00:39:12]:
Beautiful, societal changing civilization setting thing to.
Mark Clark [00:39:16]:
You and God and your own little private life. And that's why no one around you believes it. Terry Eagleton, who's a social critic, points out in his book the Death of God. He says, listen, religion always follows the exact same path as sex and art.
Mark Clark [00:39:29]:
You'll notice something about art. Art used to be about society.
Mark Clark [00:39:33]:
It used to be about monarchs and war and great accomplishments. Now art is about self expression. I stick a pencil and an apple and I go boom.
Mark Clark [00:39:42]:
Art, it's about me.
Mark Clark [00:39:44]:
It's about Mark Clark doing art for you. That's not what art was about. Same thing with sexuality.
Mark Clark [00:39:50]:
Sexuality used to be about society as a whole. For the good of the family, for what society actually meant and how to run civilization. Now, what is sexuality?
Mark Clark [00:39:59]:
It's about my own self expression.
Mark Clark [00:40:01]:
Expression. It's about me. It's about what I believe and what I wanna do as an individual. And the minute you say that, you are reading the prompter man of a culture feeding you a script and you have fallen into a lie. Sexuality ain't about you. It's about what is good. This is why it's right back in Genesis 2. God's in a garden, there's a world around there's animals looking.
Mark Clark [00:40:27]:
And he goes, hey, you two have sex, but you're here. Yeah, but there's a horse looking at me. It's okay. It's good for him. Be fruitful and multiply. This ain't no private thing, your little self expression about how you feel in a given moment. Because holiness is not about how you feel in a given moment. Or I'm falling every single time when.
Mark Clark [00:40:58]:
That temptation hit me when I was 18 years old.
Mark Clark [00:41:00]:
It's not about how you feel. It's about what is now expected, given.
Mark Clark [00:41:05]:
Who you are, if you know him. So here's where the power goes. Terry Eagleton says this society becomes secular not when it despises religion, but when it is no longer agitated by it. You know what I think? You can bemoan the secularization of society all that you want. Here's what I think the problem in this room is. Society's turning secular not because it's despising what you believe. It's because it's not agitated by what you believe, because you never give it a reason to. You never tell anybody at work about Jesus, so nobody dislikes you.
Mark Clark [00:41:39]:
Nobody cares. It's become irrelevant. It's not that it's offensive. It's that nobody even cares about it.
Mark Clark [00:41:45]:
No one's agitated by your life because your life isn't sanctified.
Mark Clark [00:41:51]:
It's not set apart. It's not different. And then he ends like this. Verse 3. Listen.
Mark Clark [00:41:57]:
Together with all those in every place.
Mark Clark [00:41:59]:
Who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Mark Clark [00:42:01]:
Grace to you and peace from God.
Mark Clark [00:42:03]:
Our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Mark Clark [00:42:04]:
The word grace. You could define the way God relates.
Mark Clark [00:42:09]:
To the world by the word grace.
Mark Clark [00:42:10]:
And the word grace.
Mark Clark [00:42:11]:
Here's where I want to land the plane. The word grace corrupts every New Age.
Mark Clark [00:42:15]:
System, every karma system, every religious system. Because grace basically says you get what you don't deserve.
Mark Clark [00:42:22]:
Karma says you get what you deserve.
Mark Clark [00:42:24]:
You do a good thing and the universe brings it back to you. You do a bad thing and the universe brings it back to you. Grace comes along and says you get.
Mark Clark [00:42:31]:
What you don't deserve.
Mark Clark [00:42:32]:
Meaning sometimes. The Christian story would say, sometimes things that really seem logical and normal are actually wrong. And what's right is what's upside down and backwards that you would never, ever think worked. And I'm gonna give you my last sports analogy.
Mark Clark [00:42:48]:
Moneyball.
Mark Clark [00:42:49]:
For those of you who've read the book by Michael Lewis or seen the movie with Brad Pitt, Moneyball all they're approaching baseball in one particular way. You go and you find the big hitters with the big muscles. And that's what history tells you. You gotta find those guys who are gonna sell season tickets. You gotta do this, you gotta do that. Billy Beane, the GM of the Oakland A's in 2001 and 2002, changes, buys into the philosophy. An economist named Bill James and says, we don't have the money. The New York Yankees have $115 million and we have 39 million.
Mark Clark [00:43:19]:
It's a game that's already going toward the rich and we're not going to have good players. So here's what we need to do. We need to toss out all the thinking that you would think would be normal things in front of your eyes seem like the right way. Find big hitters, get big home runs, sell tickets. He says all of that thinking is medieval in baseball. Here's all we need to do. We need to spend our $39 million to buy wins. The way you buy wins is that you have to buy runs.
Mark Clark [00:43:45]:
And so we're going to take all these terrible players that are worth 200,000 each. We're going to look at their on base percentages, we're going to get them on base and we're going to get them home. And that's how we're going to win games. Because we can't afford to win games in the classic medieval way. And everyone said, Billy Beane, you're crazy. All of the guys in the room, they're classic scouts. They said, this will not work. We need to find the muscles.
Mark Clark [00:44:05]:
We need to find the guy with the good looking girlfriend. We need to find the guys with confidence. And Billy Beane's like, you're thinking. You don't even understand what the problem is. We need to do this and play it exactly like this. Everyone said, you're nuts. This will not work.
Mark Clark [00:44:18]:
2002, Oakland A's, they start to play and they're terrible.
Mark Clark [00:44:21]:
The coach and the manager will not.
Mark Clark [00:44:23]:
Play them the way the GM Billy Beanes them to.
Mark Clark [00:44:25]:
Finally, he actually does.
Mark Clark [00:44:27]:
And they start winning and winning and winning. I'm gonna show you a clip of what actually happened that year. And so they go on to win the 20th game. They break the record. No one's been able to match it. Because sometimes you're looking at the problem wrong. You're going after all the same ideas that the world will tell you. You solve your life this way, you.
Mark Clark [00:44:49]:
Got a soul problem.
Mark Clark [00:44:50]:
Here's what to do.
Mark Clark [00:44:52]:
Work harder. Take it into your own hands. Do this. Find the big, bulky players and hit home runs and sell tickets.
Mark Clark [00:45:00]:
You don't even know what the problem is. You gotta look at this upside down, which is why verse three starts out.
Mark Clark [00:45:07]:
And he says, let me. Before I start telling you all about your life and your theology being wrong.
Mark Clark [00:45:12]:
And your life being wrong, let me bring in the concept of grace, which is that everything's upside down and backwards. And what God has done in Jesus Christ is exactly what y' all didn't deserve. But he did it anyway. That is what's gonna actually solve your soul. Let me give you a final example before I pray for you. Might be a little controversial, but it's kind of what we do here. Let me tell you what's sad. I was thinking about this the other day.
Mark Clark [00:45:48]:
When I grew up, when I was in high school, I would see a lot of pregnant teenagers, but I don't see a lot of pregnant teenagers in our church or in South Surrey at all. You want to know why that is? Because they abort them. I looked up the stats. South Surrey and parts of Vancouver are the highest levels of abortions in Canada. And I can guarantee you there's been abortions in these rooms at our own church. People hide. They're afraid. When I grew up, probably one of eight girls in high school was pregnant.
Mark Clark [00:46:28]:
My ex girlfriend had a baby just after me. Wasn't mine. You don't see that anymore because they get rid of them. Now you find yourself in that scenario. Here's what New Age philosophy and religion will tell you. It's your fault. You are the center of the universe. It is your fault.
Mark Clark [00:46:55]:
And you should be crushed. You should be ashamed, and you should feel guilty. Sometimes people in church feel that way. You know, you read the Old Testament and it's like, listen, you take a life. Psalm 119 says, God starts to stitch us together in our mother's womb. So to do that is to take a life. And according to Old Testament, you take.
Mark Clark [00:47:13]:
A life, your life is taken. You get stoned in the street, you take a life. That's what religion will do to you.
Mark Clark [00:47:25]:
That's why he starts in verse three and says, let me posit in a whole other concept, grace, which is this. According to the Old Testament, you've ever murdered someone, you deserve to be stoned in the street. But Jesus got stoned for you. Jesus took the wrath of God on himself and was killed so that you wouldn't have to be. And there's freedom and no shame and no guilt, because that is now no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ. That's why Paul starts this whole letter by going, let's get something very straight as I hold you accountable for your money life, your political life, your sex life, your philosophy life. I do it with grace because I'm a recipient of it myself. And you need to actually follow it because it's the only thing that won't crush you.
Mark Clark [00:48:19]:
You.