Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
First Corinthians, chapter 15. We have a few weeks to go left in First Corinthians, chapter 15, chapter 16. Chapter 15 is this crazy passage that deals with the foundational, most important question of all of life. It deals with the question of heaven, hell, and the fate of everyone who ever lived. And it undergirds basically everything you do with your life. And what I mean by that is there was a philosopher and a writer named Albert Camus, and he talked about the idea that if you had been on trial and you knew that you were going to be killed, and they said, okay, you know the death penalty for you. And they said, hey, listen, you're gonna be killed in about half an hour, but what do you really like in life? And you said, oh, I really like. I don't know, some music, some album, whatever.
Mark Clark [00:00:49]:
And he says, okay, I'll put that on for you. And he puts on the music album. And you're sitting there and you're listening to it, and you're saying, why are you doing this? And he said, well, because I want you to enjoy your last half. And what Camus and other philosophers said is you wouldn't enjoy that music as much. And you probably wouldn't enjoy that half an hour. Cause you know that in half an hour, you're gonna die. And then Camus said, look, that's all of life. The reality is we all know we're gonna die.
Mark Clark [00:01:12]:
And so it ruins life for us unless we can understand a bigger picture, unless there's actually a bigger story going on in the world than we think, unless there's something deeper, unless there's something more profound. Ernest Becker, who. Who was a philosopher, says this. All the analysis in the world doesn't allow the person to find out who he is and why he is here and why he has to die and how he can make his life a triumph. It is when psychology pretends to be able to answer this, when it offers itself as a full explanation of human unhappiness, that it becomes a fraud. And it makes the situation of modern man an impasse for. From which he cannot escape. Literally.
Mark Clark [00:01:56]:
What we believe is that you need a biblical. Here's what the Apostle Paul's about to end the whole book of 1 Corinthians. You need a biblical worldview to be able to understand why you're here, why you die, what happens when you die, what is the fate of everyone who's ever lived, and what is all that based on. And what we're going to find is if you don't have a biblical worldview, then it's meaningless. Then we don't understand that life becomes meaningless. It colors everything about your life. But if you have in your heart and in your mind what Paul unpacks here, it changes everything. It changes how you live, it changes how you die.
Mark Clark [00:02:28]:
It changes how you're married. It changes how you spend money. It changes what you do with your sex life. It changes what you do with your work life. It changes everything about you. But you have to have this clear. And so here's what he's gonna do over a couple weeks. We're gonna unpack this.
Mark Clark [00:02:40]:
And so listen to 1 Corinthians, chapter one. He's about to explain the foundational reality of all of life. How does eternal life happen and what eternal life will actually be? How does eternal life happen and what eternal life will be? How it's gonna happen through the life, death, resurrection of Jesus. What is it going to be? It's going to be a life with Jesus, a risen life that we can't even imagine. Take away all the ideas that you have about heaven, about the ideas of a disembodied bliss where you're floating around on a cloud. Take away those ideas because you're gonna begin to realize the reason you can't get excited about that is, is because you weren't made to be a disembodied spirit. You were made to be physical. And trying to get an appetite to be a disembodied spirit is like trying to get an appetite for sand.
Mark Clark [00:03:26]:
It's not the way you were designed. And so what God has done is he's written a story where he actually restores and redeems all of humankind in such a way that there's actually re physicality. There's a new heaven and a new earth and a resurrected earth and the embodiment of people again. That's what the new creation actually looks like. But in order to get there, you have to understand who Jesus is and what he's done. So here's what the apostle Paul does. He starts out in chapter 15 in verse 1, and he says this. Now, I would remind you, brothers, now he says this.
Mark Clark [00:03:59]:
This is a good thing for you and I to take with us. I would remind you. He shifts to the most important thing you could ever talk about, your eternal soul and the fulfillment of it in this life and the next life, and how you actually get to that which is undergirding all of our. And he says, I wanna remind you of something. Now, you and I sometimes need reminders in life because we're efficient people, we're productive people, and we're constantly thinking about what's next and we move on and we go and we go and we go. I do this five o' clock every Sunday morning. I'm in the shower. Don't think about that too long.
Mark Clark [00:04:34]:
And I'm praying for you. And every time I'm praying for you in the shower at five o' clock in the morning on a Sunday, I'm always constantly kind of praying, God, do something in their life this week. Do change their life, change their marriage. Change who they are. Let them understand more, let them repent, let them hear you. Let people who don't know you give their life to you. There's all of that. But when the day is done, I don't tend to say, thank you, Lord, for that marriage I prayed for today.
Mark Clark [00:05:00]:
Thank you, Lord, for that couple that received Christ. Thank you, Lord, that that guy got freed up of money. Thank you that, that. I don't tend to thank him because I'm constantly pushing forward, right? I'm always looking forward to the next thing. God, do this. God, do this, grow this, save this. Let us plant a church in this city, whatever. And oftentimes we need to stop and just.
Mark Clark [00:05:17]:
There's over and over and over again the Bible. God goes, can you stop and erect a statue in this area so that when you pass by it, you're reminded of what I did. Remember what I did. Remember what I did. Read through the book of Deuteronomy. It's always, remember, remember, remember, remember. I know, Mark, you're constantly going for more and more and more. But the reality is, remember the over 1600 people that have been baptized at your church in the last 10 years.
Mark Clark [00:05:41]:
1600 in Canada. That's insane, right? That's God. Yeah, give it up. That's Jesus. Moving at such a time as this, through you telling your friends and family.
Mark Clark [00:05:54]:
About Jesus, remind, remember, remember what I've done.
Mark Clark [00:06:00]:
And sometimes we just need to stop. Think about this is what Jesus says in Revelation 3, when the church has drifted from believing in him, from loving him. And he says, remember your first love. Remember what it was like when you first became a Christian. Remember what it's like to treasure me above everything. Remember your marriage. Remember when you started dating and how fun it was and exciting it was and great it was. And then 10 years into your marriage, 15 years in, you're struggling, you're having difficulty.
Mark Clark [00:06:27]:
Oftentimes when people come for marriage counseling, I'll look at them, I'll say, remember. Remember when you dated? Remember what it was like? Why did you get involved with this woman to begin with? Why did you get involved with this guy to begin with? What was the dating like? And all of a sudden, they start reflecting on their past and they begin realizing, man, if we could just get back to those basics. And this is what Paul's trying to do. In the midst of all the pressure, Corinthians. In the midst of all the pressure, Canadians, all right. In Vancouver and Calgary, amidst all the pressure, I want to remind you of the most important thing, because you're going to feel pressure all the time. The world's going to crush you. The world's going to tempt you, the world's going to squeeze you.
Mark Clark [00:07:05]:
And now I'm going to tell you the most important thing, But I need you to constantly remember it. I need you to bring it to mind in the midst of every scenario. And so he says, I'm reminding you of this because you've drifted. It's far too easy to have mission drift, to have theological drift. If you mail it in, your life starts to drift. You have to remember, you have to come back over and over and over again. And so he says, I would remind you this, brothers of the gospel. This is the good news.
Mark Clark [00:07:32]:
This is the euangelion. This is what the whole rest of. That's the Greek word not. You're not. Like, what English word was that? That was bizarre, right? That's what the Greek word is for gospel, you, Angelion. And it means good news. And the rest of this passage is going to be about it. So I'll come back to it.
Mark Clark [00:07:47]:
And he says, I preached to you. Now, this word preach is the word caruso. It means. It means to. To. To proclaim, to exhort. It was like a town crier back in the day where they would come in and they would deliver news, all right? And this is what this person did. They would say, you.
Mark Clark [00:08:02]:
You see, in today's world, we have, like. We have hard news. Like, there's a war going on, A king has become. Someone's been voted in. And then we have soft news, which is like, hey, here's six ways to better dating, and here's how to destroy anxiety in your life, right? You've read those, Cosmopolitan magazine. That's soft news, all right? But hard news is like, here's what's going on, and here's the reality. In the ancient time, there would be a town crier, a Caruso, who would come into town and he'd proclaim, but he never did. Soft news.
Mark Clark [00:08:33]:
He'd never go, you know, I just want to tell you what the people.
Mark Clark [00:08:36]:
In Athens are wearing in the fashion.
Mark Clark [00:08:38]:
Industry this month, all right? That's not how you would function in the ancient world. That's not what Caruso did. He didn't give. Here's six tips to being a better grandfather. That's not what he did. He came in and gave hard news. Here's what happened. This King Caesar's won a victory.
Mark Clark [00:08:52]:
And Paul is saying, my job as a preacher was to come to you and give you hard news, give you really good, beautiful news based on an event that actually happened. And here's why I bring that up, because I think what has happened in the church, many Protestant churches in Canada and in our city in the last 50 or 60 years is we have begun to be defined by soft news. We have made the hard good news of the gospel, which is an event that took place about Jesus. And we've made it about, can I come to church and get six tips to relieve my anxiety? Can I get seven tips about how to be a better parent?
Mark Clark [00:09:33]:
All right?
Mark Clark [00:09:34]:
And we've turned the hard news into soft news. We've turned the good news into good advice, right? Come here. I'll tell you how to do this. I'll do that. And Paul's going, that's not my job, man. My job's to tell you about an event that took place, and then you're supposed to adjust your life in light of that event. That's my job. So if you look at me or as a preacher, Mark, and you go, you know what? I don't like this guy.
Mark Clark [00:09:59]:
I don't like his tone. I don't like his shoes. Look, it's irrelevant, because the reality is I'm a weatherman, all right? And all I'm doing is saying, hey, listen, guys, I'm doing my best to teach the Bible. I'm doing my best to tell you that rain's coming. Which in Vancouver is not, you know, not too much of a prophecy, right? Just rain's always coming. So my job is to say rain's coming. And you, here's the problem with the modern world. They look at the preacher and they go, I don't like his whatever.
Mark Clark [00:10:35]:
I don't like his tone. I don't like his whatever. But you're missing the point. You can do that, but the rain's still coming, and you have to figure out how to adjust. It's like me getting up my only job is to get up and say, listen, there's been an accident in the tunnel. You don't go, well, you know what, I just don't like your tone. It's like, dude, shut up. Take a different route to go where you're going.
Mark Clark [00:11:00]:
That's what I'm telling you. Adjust your life in light of what I said. That's what he's saying. He's saying, listen, I wanna give you good news and here's the reality. Many churches are trying to get you to do what New age philosophy tells you to do. Let me give you some good advice about how to deal with this worry in your life. So you have anxiety in your life. Let me tell you how to relieve your anxiety.
Mark Clark [00:11:25]:
All right?
Mark Clark [00:11:26]:
What you need to do is you need to think positive thoughts. And what you need to do is. And this is kind of the new age movement, this is the self help, positive thinking movement and what they tell us to do. But here's what Paul's about to say. He's about to say that's not the solution that a Christian is actually looking for. Because a Christian's solution to anxiety is found here in the gospel, that the life, death, resurrection of Jesus is true. And that's what literally 58 verses in chapter 15 are all about, the resurrection. His whole message is going to be about that Jesus didn't stay dead, but he rose from the dead.
Mark Clark [00:12:00]:
And if that's true, if Christ died, if Christ rose from the dead, then, then there's ways to deal with your anxiety, there's ways to deal with your fears, but they're different than positive thinking. Positive thinking is escapism. The Christian answer is no. The fact that Jesus rose from the dead means you're gonna worry different. It means you're gonna have anxiety different. Like for me, okay, today, I'm going on a plane tonight, 10:30, flying to Australia. All right. I got the great privilege to be able to go speak in Australia all week at a conference at a guy's church next Sunday.
Mark Clark [00:12:33]:
So great. The village church gets behind us, investing in the global church, not just our local church, but being able to go. We want to bless a gospel movement around the world. So I get these little opportunities to go and do these things. So Australia, my whole family's getting on a plane 10:30 tonight, flying 16 hours over the Pacific Ocean. I'm not a great flyer, as I've told you. I hate it. All right? I'm anxious about it, I'm worried about it.
Mark Clark [00:12:58]:
I'm like, what am I doing at 3 o' clock in the morning over the Pacific. This is insane. Why don't I just ride a bike there or take a train there? Something you can't. So I looked into it. So I'm anxious about it. So what's my answer? Positive thinking. My answer is, jesus Christ rose from the dead. You understand what I'm getting at?
Mark Clark [00:13:27]:
Now?
Mark Clark [00:13:28]:
Here's what that means, though it doesn't mean, as the prosperity gospel would say, jesus Christ rose from the dead, ergo, my plane won't crash. That's not what I said to you. Here's the reality. Here's what Paul's about to unpack for 58 verses, that if the resurrection is true, it's not gonna save me from dying.
Mark Clark [00:13:53]:
It means I'm safe and dying.
Mark Clark [00:13:59]:
You understand the difference? See, if all life is about is good advice, if all of life is about is you thinking positively, see, all that is is temporal solutions to temporal problems. And Paul and Christianity is trying to answer a far vaster question than your next 80 years. They're asking the question of your next 80 million, and then your next 80 million after that. Where is this all going with? What does it all look like? And what is the actual solution to your problem? And then he says this. So I preached to you a carruzo. I gave you good news, a proclamation of something. That's not good advice, it's news. And I'll get back to what that is.
Mark Clark [00:14:37]:
And then he says, which you received, I love this. In which you stand and by which you are being saved. It's interesting. It's a participle. It means, it's not that you were saved in the past, that's great. It's not that you will be saved in the future, that's great. It's that you're being saved in the present, right? And then he says, if you hold fast now, here, so. So what's gonna happen? You're being saved.
Mark Clark [00:15:04]:
Saved from sin, saved from the wrath of God, saved from hell. All of these things are what Jesus came and died and rose again for. So he's saving you from those things, right? You are being saved. But notice, it's not complete yet.
Mark Clark [00:15:18]:
It's progressive. And if you want to know why you sin and yet you love God and you want to follow him in your life. But you just can't beat that sin.
Mark Clark [00:15:28]:
Of lust or greed or gossip.
Mark Clark [00:15:33]:
It's because of this right here. It's because it's not over for you. You're not in heaven yet, man. You're not complete. We are in the throes of what theologians call the now and the not yet. We are in the throes of, you.
Mark Clark [00:15:47]:
Have the spirit and it's crying out.
Mark Clark [00:15:49]:
As Romans 8 says, in travail and groaning. But the world and its brokenness and its temptations and its fears presses in on you.
Mark Clark [00:15:57]:
That's why you love God. But you still fall. Now, it's not an excuse. Romans 6 says, you're no longer a slave to sin. Like, categorically, you've moved from sinner to saint. But it's progressive. It's the parable where Jesus says, the wheat and the tares, they grow up. And they say, well, let's get rid of the weeds.
Mark Clark [00:16:17]:
Let's get rid of the tares so the wheat can grow. And he goes, no, no, no, let them both grow together, because there will come a time when it gets harvested. But you wanna know why? There's still pain and sickness and temptation and death. You wanna know why? Because let them grow together. There's wheat and there's tares. Together.
Mark Clark [00:16:34]:
We're in a great moment in history.
Mark Clark [00:16:36]:
More people are eating, more people are educated, more. There's beautiful, amazing things happening around the world. And yet over the last hundred years, we've killed 100 million people. The Holocaust was 80 years ago.
Mark Clark [00:16:50]:
Let them grow together. There will come a day where everything will be sifted.
Mark Clark [00:16:54]:
But you want to know what your tension is? It's right here.
Mark Clark [00:16:56]:
It's the fact that you're being saved.
Mark Clark [00:16:58]:
Progressively, right now, it's happening to you. If you've trusted in Christ, there's a progression, but you're not perfect. And so he says, all that's gonna happen, you're gonna be saved. You're gonna go to be with Jesus versus being in the context of judgment. That's going to happen. And then there's this, though, if that's a big word. I mean, when the Bible starts saying, you can have the greatest pleasure and delight for eternity, if you better go, all right, if I was sleeping, I wanna wake up now. If.
Mark Clark [00:17:29]:
What? If what? You could have $3 billion right now. Okay, if. All right, I'm gonna pay attention. If says this, you hold fast.
Mark Clark [00:17:41]:
That's fascinating.
Mark Clark [00:17:43]:
Hold fast to the word. Wait, I thought I just had to go home, go forward at summer camp, say a mantra, and then I was good to go for the rest of my life, no matter what I did. He pushes back a little bit and goes, what? What? No, no, I'm saying you gotta hold fast. You gotta. You gotta get to the end. It's easy to start something. He's saying, you gotta get to the end of that. You gotta hold fast to the word.
Mark Clark [00:18:19]:
You gotta.
Mark Clark [00:18:19]:
You gotta.
Mark Clark [00:18:20]:
We can all start things as we've talked about many times. Any dummy, anybody in this room, not that any of you are dummies, can start a marriage. We've all gone to those weddings. We're like, these fools. I can't believe these fools are getting married. Cause anybody can put a dress on and get their friend to hide behind a tree and take photos of them for, you know, for their engagement and pretend that they're surprised. Anybody can do that. Oh, Joey's there.
Mark Clark [00:18:52]:
All right. Anyone could do that. Anybody could put a white dress on, a tuxedo on, and line their buddies.
Mark Clark [00:18:58]:
Up and have a party. But can you get to the end, man?
Mark Clark [00:19:04]:
My wife and I, we got married and we dated for five years, which I do not recommend.
Mark Clark [00:19:11]:
She's just so handsy.
Mark Clark [00:19:17]:
And it was like, tough, man. And then we got. But then it was great. And everyone's like, it's great. It's perfect. I wanna marry this girl. I wanna marry this guy. It's perfect.
Mark Clark [00:19:27]:
And then six, not six months in was the first time she used the divorce word. Six months is the last time she used it. Cause I put my foot down. Yeah, Leadership. All right, so. All right, so I was like, we don't use that word. But she. She used that word.
Mark Clark [00:19:43]:
I'm like, why? She's like, I don't like your tone. I don't like the way you put food on a plate. I don't like the way you sleep. Right. And I'm like, what? So six months in, we're talking about ending this, man. What are you talking about now? We're great. We have a great relationship now. But still, this woman is not perfect.
Mark Clark [00:20:05]:
And I'm not perfect. She still gets mad at me, all right, Because I'm better than I used to be at those things. I know how to clean right. I know how to sleep right. I know how to do all these things right now. Gosh, I know how to do all those things right now. But I still. Hey, you gotta tone with the kids.
Mark Clark [00:20:25]:
You got hair in the sink. It's like, I'm literally shaving right now. How does this bother you? You came in the bathroom. I was shaving, and you look at me and say, there's hair in the sink? Yeah, I'm right in the middle of shaving. How can this bother you? You're crazy. My wife, she ain't Perfect. She's so single minded.
Mark Clark [00:20:58]:
She won't see the sermon because we'll be in Australia.
Mark Clark [00:21:00]:
So don't worry about it. Just don't send it to her. She's so. She's so single minded, all right, that she.
Mark Clark [00:21:07]:
Last night I was out in my office sermon prepping, feeling good, Dee Dee Dee, you know, listening to music, and I had this song in my head. It's like, you know, And I went.
Mark Clark [00:21:15]:
Inside the house, and she's there, and.
Mark Clark [00:21:17]:
She'S trying to pack, you know, get everything ready for Australia, and she's getting dinner ready. And the house is like home alone, right? The opening scene of Home Alone. Not like the later parts.
Mark Clark [00:21:26]:
It's like, there's chaos, there's people. Her parents are in town, there's friends over, Two dogs running around the house. All right? I'm outside prepping sermon, so I come in and I'm just, like, in a good mood. I'm like, I just grab her, all right?
Mark Clark [00:21:38]:
And I just start to dance with her, right? I'm just like.
Mark Clark [00:21:42]:
You know, I'm just like, man, I'm in the. I'm drinking Pacino, all right? At this point, doing a tango, all right?
Mark Clark [00:21:49]:
So I'm in the zone. And what do you think she's doing? She's like. So my daughter, my oldest daughter goes, ooh.
Mark Clark [00:21:59]:
And she kind of comes up in.
Mark Clark [00:22:00]:
Between us and starts dancing. And I'm like, yeah, this is. This is great.
Mark Clark [00:22:03]:
And my wife interprets that as, oh, she's cutting in and can take over now and looks over. I'm like, what do you mean she's cutting in? She just wants to be part of it. She's like, I have to cook dinner, and she's walking away from me. I'm trying to enjoy a moment, and she's got stuff to do. I'm like, babe, what do you. She goes, we go to Australia tomorrow, fool. I'm like, babe, it's full flip flops and some T shirts. It's classic husband, right? This is the stupidest line.
Mark Clark [00:22:34]:
I've done it for 20 years. Babe, we're going somewhere. It's a couple pairs of shorts and a T shirt. What's the big deal? We're gonna show up. We're gonna be like Queen Elizabeth. All right? It's gonna be like nine luggages. My kids are all, like, decked out. They got this thing around their neck.
Mark Clark [00:22:51]:
They're all like, where are they all gonna. We got shoe. We got a suitcase for her shoes. It's like, we're in Australia. I don't even know they wear shoes. Anyway, point is, how are the two of us gonna get to the end? What's the point? Because we covenanted ourself to something that transcends how we feel in a given moment.
Mark Clark [00:23:22]:
We covenanted ourselves to something that transcends our circumstances financially or when one's bugging the other one or whatever that's. You gotta hold fast.
Mark Clark [00:23:34]:
You gotta get to the end. You gotta grab ahold of this person and no matter what. And so you. You hold fast. He says, this is how you're gonna be saved. How are you gonna be saved? You know, hold fast to the end. To what? To the Word. To the biblical message of the Gospel, of what the Bible describes for you.
Mark Clark [00:23:55]:
God himself arrived in the person of Jesus and exposed everything. It's like when you're watching a movie and you wish the director. It's like you're watching Inception or something, a Rear Window Hitchcock or something, and you wish that the director could come out and explain it to you, right? And say, this is what I meant. Because everyone's having debates about what it all means, all right? And that's what happened with God. Every humanity was like, what's happening? What's happening? And then he stepped out, he came behind the curtain in the person of Jesus, and he says, here's how I want you to live your life. Go read the Sermon on the Mount. Go read it as. I mean, his whole life is exegeting God and what he wants for us.
Mark Clark [00:24:30]:
You look at the Sermon on the Mount, there's all these crazy things.
Mark Clark [00:24:32]:
There's. You can't.
Mark Clark [00:24:33]:
You have to think about this, okay? High school student, all right? Think about this. Jesus says, bless those who persecute you. Pray for those who persecute you. Pray, love your enemies. That's crazy, because now you're at high school and you're getting bullied. Now you're at high school and you don't like that guy and he's a jerk to you in the locker room or whatever. What do you do? Jesus goes, if you follow me, if you pay attention to the Word, to what I describe, then you gotta treat them different than you would the world would treat them or your natural would treat them, okay?
Mark Clark [00:25:08]:
So then you continue on the Sermon on the Mount.
Mark Clark [00:25:10]:
College kids, he says, do not lust after a woman. For it's better to go to heaven with two eyeballs than to go. To go to heaven with no eyeballs than to go to hell with two eyeballs. He's saying, it's better that you can't lust after a woman. All right, college guys, read the Sermon on the Mount. Try to figure out, what does that mean? I gotta hold fast. Not to my feelings in a given moment, not to the cultural pressure, not to the world. But I gotta hold fast to the Word.
Mark Clark [00:25:37]:
What does the world's word say? Gotta pluck my eyeballs out. I gotta do whatever I need to do. So I'm not defined by lust. Businessmen, business, women. Jesus says in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, just in case you get too haughty about the college kids, you go, yeah, those lusty college kids better listen to Jesus. Jesus says that you can't serve both God and money and do not build treasures up on earth that will be rusted and will be destroyed and will be stolen. Build your treasures up in heaven. You can't serve both God and money at the same time.
Mark Clark [00:26:07]:
There's a choice you have to make. You can't do both. What he says that's holding fast to the Word. It has a trillion applications to your life. But he says you're being saved if you hold fast to the Word, not what you make up, not some religion that you put together based on a cultural moment and. And feelings of this way or that way or whatever. You hold fast to the Word. And then he says, I preached to.
Mark Clark [00:26:33]:
You unless you believed in vain. Now you're being saved. How do you get saved? You believe in the Gospel. You hold fast to the Word. Think about this.
Mark Clark [00:26:44]:
The world will try to erode you.
Mark Clark [00:26:47]:
Destroy you in every way. It's when I was down, if you watch. I watched a documentary on Navy seals.
Mark Clark [00:26:58]:
And Hell Week and how they try to break these people down so they're.
Mark Clark [00:27:02]:
Gonna become Navy SEALs and not become Navy SEALs.
Mark Clark [00:27:04]:
And the reality is, when you watch.
Mark Clark [00:27:07]:
Them try to break them down and.
Mark Clark [00:27:08]:
You see if they can hold fast and you see if they can get.
Mark Clark [00:27:10]:
To the end of Hell Week, one of the things that they point out is they're not doing it physically.
Mark Clark [00:27:16]:
If they've got to Hell Week, they're already physically fit.
Mark Clark [00:27:19]:
The men and women are good physically. Question's not physical. It's mental.
Mark Clark [00:27:22]:
Mental. Can they get through the mental game of staying awake for 48 hours in the rain? Can they get through the mental game? The mental game is the harder game, right? I mean, I was at the men's conference I was speaking at last week, and they got. At the beginning of it, they got us to hold, which is not my style, but they're like hey, hold all the men's hands. All right? And so everyone's holding hands, but it was kind of like they wanted it to be a manly thing. So, like, holding hands like this up in the air like that. And some guys got my hand clenched him like this, like, arms raised. And then they said, can you just hold it there? And then the guy starts talking. I'm like, okay, bro.
Mark Clark [00:27:57]:
Like, my arm's getting tired. And he's like, oh, yeah. And he's talking. He's talking. And then he says, okay. And a guy came around and he tried to kind of unclench our arm or whatever. That part wasn't the hard part. You know what the hardest part of this? Doing this for 10 minutes was? It wasn't when a guy came and.
Mark Clark [00:28:10]:
Tried to do this.
Mark Clark [00:28:10]:
Physically, I'm very buff.
Mark Clark [00:28:11]:
I was fine.
Mark Clark [00:28:15]:
Literally, you're laughing. So anyways, that wasn't the hard part, the physical part.
Mark Clark [00:28:22]:
It was when he started to go like this. Wouldn't it feel so good to put your arm down right now? Don't you feel the muscles in your arms are just tearing? And they just. Just put it down. Just put it down.
Mark Clark [00:28:33]:
Just take it down and put it down. Forget. See, that was the hard part. It was the mental game. The mental game is the thing that's gonna destroy your life. And so what do you do in the midst of the mental game? What do you do in the midst of the storm? You hold fast to the word. You hold fast to the thing that transcends any moment you've got, any difficult moment, any cultural moment.
Mark Clark [00:28:58]:
And so he says this. I gave you the gospel, which we're gonna find out what that is. Here's what he says. And this is the text for our time left. All I'm gonna do is unpack the gospel for you, which is the most beautiful thing and should be the most beautiful thing in your life. That never has a bottom. It never has a finishing point. It never has a conclusion regarding its application.
Mark Clark [00:29:21]:
We never move on from the gospel. And this is why we know it. Cause he says it's of first importance. He says, I deliver to you what is of first importance. What's the main thing?
Mark Clark [00:29:29]:
What's the core of the core?
Mark Clark [00:29:31]:
What is the thing above all things? It's not your spiritual gifts. It's not the prayer of Jabez. It's not some thing about the end times. It's not some politics. It's not global mission. It's not worship music. It's of first importance, the gospel.
Mark Clark [00:29:44]:
So I'm gonna tell you now. He says what the gospel is. This is the text. When people say, mark, you talk a lot about the gospel. When we were doing our church planting days in 2009, and we started meeting in my house, 16 people, and we started talking about what our church is gonna be based on, there was a lot of options. And what we said right off the bat is it was gonna be based on the gospel. And what we meant by that so that we didn't have mission drift. So then they said, well, what's the gospel? And I said, here we go first.
Mark Clark [00:30:16]:
Corinthians 15 is one of the texts you can go to to see the gospel in a nutshell. And it has a bunch of components. I delivered to you what I also received. God gave this to me.
Mark Clark [00:30:27]:
I didn't create it. I didn't make it up.
Mark Clark [00:30:29]:
And then he says that Christ. Okay, stop.
Mark Clark [00:30:32]:
The first thing that the gospel is.
Mark Clark [00:30:35]:
Is it's what theologians call Christological. That's issue number one. If you're taking notes, it's about Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:30:41]:
Which sounds really simple, but we have to understand what the church's temptation is. If I tell you about Christ and you get bored, my temptation is to stop boring you. So I start talking about other things to. To keep you entertained. What he says is, if you wanna get to the hub of the hub of the hub, the center of the center of the center, the first importance, the most important thing in your life, it's that it's about Christ. Which means that, take modern worship music. Sometimes what it does is it drifts and becomes about God generically, right? And so what he says is. So you'd sing worship songs and you're singing them, but you literally, after you're done with the lyrics, you could literally sing that song in any Buddhist temple in our city and no one would know any different.
Mark Clark [00:31:31]:
Why? Because you're just talking about God generically, about a being, about a spirit, about a generic spirituality. That's not what Christianity is. It's not generic Christianity. It's very specifically Christological. It's about Jesus Christ, the person in the work of Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, who became a human being 2,000 years ago, lived a perfect life in your place because you could not do it, died on a cross for your sin instead of you. Because of you, and for you took the wrath of God on himself so that it would be satisfied in him rather than be pushed on you. It's about. And then rose again.
Mark Clark [00:32:08]:
As we're going to see, it's about Jesus, it's not about God. See, what matters about words is what you fill them with. That's what Christianity believes. And you could say, oh, good, I got my friend to believe in God. All right, I got my friend, we had enough coffees over Tuesdays and they finally believe in God. But that's not enough. That's not the job. Because what do they mean by God? What Christianity does, It comes along and says, what you mean by a word matters.
Mark Clark [00:32:33]:
We gotta take a word and we gotta fill it in with meaning. Right? You know, okay, so I'm going to speak in Australia. So somebody came up and told me, dude, some of the words you say in Canada, you can't say in Australia because they're literally like swear words. So you. I. I know a buddy who got on a stage and he preached and he kept using this particular word that I won't even tell you what it is. Cause you'll go Google it. And it just means something normal to us, but to Australia, it's something very dirty.
Mark Clark [00:33:01]:
And he's preaching and he just kept saying it over and over and over again. And finally someone from the front just stop saying that, right? Because words mean different things to different cultures. So literally last night I was like, I googled words that you can say in America that you cannot say in Australia. And a whole list of words came up. I'm like, oh, lucky I didn't say that illustration. Cause that word doesn't mean that. It means that. That's crazy.
Mark Clark [00:33:28]:
Because what matters is what you fill. That's the meaning. So Paul in Acts, chapter nine, when he says, I met Jesus on the road to N Damascus and I went away for three years to rethink my.
Mark Clark [00:33:38]:
Theology and then explain it and come out of the woodwork and start basically Christianity and start these different churches, I think what he goes away and rethinks is not necessarily Jesus. He rethinks what he means by God and he starts to fill in his concept of God with the person and the work of Jesus Christ. And that's why you go on and you read his life. And he has such an understanding that Jesus is God.
Mark Clark [00:34:05]:
That in the face and the work.
Mark Clark [00:34:07]:
Of Jesus, God himself has been exegeted to us from this other side of the veil. He has shown us who he is.
Mark Clark [00:34:15]:
And so it's about Jesus. It's about now what about Jesus? Secondly, he died, right? It's about the death of Jesus, right? So against Islam, for instance, that believes Jesus kind of swooned in and out. This says, Jesus Actually died, Then what did he die for? He died for our sins, right? This is the reality. You had sin that separated you from God. And Jesus is the one who bridged that gap.
Mark Clark [00:34:45]:
And this is the beautiful part, is.
Mark Clark [00:34:47]:
That you know, when you get the.
Mark Clark [00:34:49]:
Gospel, and here's what I want you to understand, because sometimes we don't understand this. Cause sometimes we think, well, if you understand the gospel and you believe in the gospel, then you get to go to heaven when you die. That's not actually what the explanation of the Bible is.
Mark Clark [00:35:01]:
You see, he died for your sins. So your sin is the thing that separated you from God. You know what you get when you believe the gospel?
Mark Clark [00:35:08]:
It's not that you go to heaven when you die.
Mark Clark [00:35:10]:
You get God.
Mark Clark [00:35:13]:
Isn't that beautiful? You actually get God.
Mark Clark [00:35:18]:
Look at what 1 Peter 3 says.
Mark Clark [00:35:19]:
I love this text.
Mark Clark [00:35:21]:
For Christ also suffered once for all for sins. Suffered once for sins, the righteous, for the unrighteous, that he might what, bring.
Mark Clark [00:35:29]:
Us to God, not bring us to heaven. Some of you think that the gospel is just about how to get to heaven when you die. It's actually about how you get God in the end. One writer has said this. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven. It's a way to get people to God. It's a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don't want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel.
Mark Clark [00:36:03]:
That's the reality. Do you treasure God above everything? That's why when we baptize people, we don't only ask them, do you take Jesus as Lord? Everyone wants, you know, salvation. You don't just take him as Savior. No one wants to go to hell. We ask, do you take him as treasure? Do you actually cherish him above everything? And as I've talked to you about before, the Resurrection, you can believe the Resurrection cognitively in your brain. Satan knows that Jesus rose from the dead, but it doesn't mean he's saved.
Mark Clark [00:36:40]:
It doesn't save him because.
Mark Clark [00:36:41]:
Because he knows something cognitively, but he doesn't treasure it above everything else in the universe. He doesn't cherish it as the most valuable treasure.
Mark Clark [00:36:52]:
And so we get God. That's the thing. You're supposed to be jacked about, by the way. You're supposed to be like, ah, I got God. I got back to God. My sins separated me from God, and.
Mark Clark [00:37:03]:
Now I got God again through the person and the work of Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:37:06]:
So Christ died for our sins. And then he says, in accordance with the Scriptures. All right, so you have this sense of this was a climax to an earlier story. This was a biblical story that was going along where God created people, there was sin, he chose Israel, he chose Abraham. And through this people, I'm going to redeem. And then Jesus was the climax to that people, the Israel story, which is why he chooses 12 disciples. Why does he choose 12 disciples? How many tribes of Israel were there? 12. Beautiful.
Mark Clark [00:37:38]:
You're like, okay, I've read my Bible before. I think, all right, I don't know if he's trying to trick me. And there was 13, like a hidden one. All right, 12. He goes to the waters of baptism, and then he goes out into the wilderness for 40 days. What did Israel do? They came up through the waters of the Red Sea and they went out into the wilderness for 40 years. He's representing their story as a climax of a I'm Israel in person, succeeding where they failed, doing the ultimate sacrifice. I'm the true temple.
Mark Clark [00:38:08]:
I'm the true bread. I'm the true light. I'm the true and better Abraham. I'm the true and better Isaac. I'm the true and better Job. I'm the true and better Esther. I'm the true and better Jonah, who doesn't go into the whale for three days. But he comes up.
Mark Clark [00:38:20]:
All of it. It's all about an earlier story. That was the Bible all pointing to him as my little. I read my kids the Jesus storybook Bible and the little motto on the. It'll. Sometimes every story whispers his name. It doesn't matter if you're in Noah.
Mark Clark [00:38:34]:
It doesn't matter if you're in Jonah. It doesn't matter if you're in the prophets.
Mark Clark [00:38:38]:
It doesn't matter where you are in the story.
Mark Clark [00:38:40]:
Jesus is gurgling underneath because it was all according to the scriptures. It's all a story that kind of bloomed out. And then he burst out and he started a new world. Two thousand years ago, he started a new world.
Mark Clark [00:38:54]:
He reversed. And as Lewis says, death itself began to work backwards. Remember when Aslan gets up off the table and the table is cracked and death itself begins to work backwards. And that's what this is about. It's not just about the cross. It's not just about the death. It's not just about the scriptures. But that he was raised right.
Mark Clark [00:39:13]:
So fifthly, it's not just about his death. It's about his resurrection. He didn't stay dead. He rose again. Now that's the gospel in a Nutshell, that's the good news.
Mark Clark [00:39:26]:
But then the beautiful part is he says this. You have to make it personal. What I also received, have you received it for yourself? Have you taken the reality of the resurrection and actually gone? I'm gonna take this into my own soul. Because it's the thing that solves all your problems, by the way. It's the thing that solves your worry. It's the thing, it's the thing that destroyed. Listen, you know, I'll give you this image and then I'll pray for us. You know, like when you're buying something at a store and you walk out and someone says, hey, you know, are you stealing that?
Mark Clark [00:40:06]:
Or you're out in the street, so, hey, are you a security guard or something at the door? And what do you show them to show them that you're not stealing it? The receipt, right? You show them, hey, this was paid in full.
Mark Clark [00:40:17]:
This is done.
Mark Clark [00:40:17]:
Look, I got a receipt.
Mark Clark [00:40:20]:
So here's what the gospel says. The resurrection of Jesus is your receipt. Meaning it's the thing that when the world and the flesh and the devil want to come at you and accuse you, when they want to destroy you.
Mark Clark [00:40:39]:
The thing that you have to remind.
Mark Clark [00:40:41]:
Yourself of, the receipt you have to hold is that the resurrection of Jesus, Jesus is true. Because here's what's gonna go through your mind.
Mark Clark [00:40:48]:
You're gonna come into church, you can see a pretty girl, a good looking woman, whatever, and you're gonna look at her and look a little too long, or you're gonna think about something when you're sitting in your seats that's gossipy or negative or greedy, and you're gonna go, my gosh, I'm in church. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. And then an accuser is gonna come, Satan himself, your own soul, the world, they're gonna look at you and say, you're not worthy, right? You're not good enough. Why would God ever love you? What have you ever done so that God would actually love you? Do you think you're actually lovable? Don't you understand how broken you are? Don't you understand how messed up you are? Don't you understand you're not worthy to be in church? Don't you understand you're not worthy of God's love? Don't you know? And the thing that you got to.
Mark Clark [00:41:35]:
Pull out is the resurrection of Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:41:37]:
This is the proof historically that God did something about all those lies.
Mark Clark [00:41:45]:
And he says, no, no, you were never worthy. That's Why I had to come and do this for you. Religion will tell you do things so God loves you.
Mark Clark [00:41:55]:
You perform for God, and he'll look at you, you know, you do your devotions enough. He'll look at you and go, okay, they did the devotions. 85, 86, 87, 88. Oh, if he gets to 90, I'm gonna save him. 89, 90, boom. I'm so excited.
Mark Clark [00:42:11]:
But if you get to 89, sorry you didn't get in, because that's you. You've been reading the Bible, the scriptures.
Mark Clark [00:42:19]:
As if they're about you your whole life. If I could just be like David, then maybe I could make some victories in my life.
Mark Clark [00:42:28]:
And he just said, no, no, the scriptures are about him.
Mark Clark [00:42:32]:
The Bible's not about you.
Mark Clark [00:42:33]:
It's about him. It's not about what you do for him.
Mark Clark [00:42:36]:
It's about what he's done for you. It's not about you performing for him. It's about his performance for you over and over and over again. That David story is not if you could just get enough courage, you could slay the giants in your life. It's about the fact that Jesus Christ, like David, a representative from Israel, came into the valley and went against your enemy and destroyed him while you. You were sitting up in the hills, scared, terrified because you didn't want to fight Goliath, hiding behind a rock, hoping that someone else would fight it and impute that victory to you, even though you did nothing.
Mark Clark [00:43:10]:
That's what the Bible's about. That's what the gospel's about. And it frees you from every anxiety and every worry and every fear of your life, because it's not esoteric teaching. It's not Buddhism. It's not philosophy. It's not. It's not New Age. It's not about paths to get to a certain state of enlightenment.
Mark Clark [00:43:27]:
It's a historical moment about something that actually happened. And then the question is, what are.
Mark Clark [00:43:33]:
You gonna do now? There's a crash in the tunnel. Rain is coming. I'm just telling you what happened.
Mark Clark [00:43:41]:
Have you made it personal? Have you received it into your own soul? Father, I pray those of us who have not, that right now, in this room, in these rooms, across these sites, that we would just forget about the distractions around us and hone in on the beauty of the Gospel and that it would shake us and warm us and get our souls to actually fly to you, that Jesus would look like such a treasure that right now people would repent of sin and actually put their faith and trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ on their behalf, the death, the resurrection, that they would know that when they do that they begin this process as Paul talks about, about being saved unto the end. The Spirit comes as we repent and believe and fills us and seals us for the day of redemption. Let that be the reality even in this room. And if there are people who actually make that decision today, that as they leave these sites, they would talk to the amazing lead pastors that are on these sites, these amazing leaders who are leading these sites, they would talk to the prayer teams, they would talk to the connect desk, whatever, that this wouldn't be just distraction like when we leave an event, whatever, all that, just forget about all that.
Mark Clark [00:45:05]:
This is not an event. This is, is a moment with you.
Mark Clark [00:45:07]:
And I pray that people who actually come to Christ in this moment, that would actually focus in on it and tell somebody so that we can love and serve and disciple them, see them baptized, see them transformed, see you begin to work in them as you did in me over 20 years ago when I had the courage enough to say, I'll let you take leave leadership in my life versus me. I'm the center of the universe and that needs to change. And I was so overwhelmed by the beauty and the treasure of the gospel and what you have done in Jesus that I couldn't help but give my life to you. Do that among us, in Jesus great name we pray. Amen.