Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
First Corinthians, chapter six. So if you got a Bible, go there. This is masterclass number something. I don't even know what number we're on now. 20 something of masterclass where we wanted to frame it. And first and First Corinthians, a great book to do it, because Paul is dealing with a jacked up church, a church that like, can't even function properly. And that's village church, so welcome to the party. But they were a church that was, I mean, very similar to Vancouver, Surrey, Calgary, Coquitlam, Langley, where it's people who lived these kinds of lives.
Mark Clark [00:00:41]:
They were getting hammered all the time, sleeping with whomever they wanted, they're involved in business. It was a port city. And so there was lots of stuff happening. Lots of trade, lots of commerce, lots of art. And these people had lived these crazy lives. And then they'd come to know Jesus. And now it was like, what are we going to do? How do I be a Christian and not just remain the same kind of person I was, but then just believe some different stuff? And this is what Paul's trying to hit on over and over and over again in the letter. And he's trying to come at them and say, you've got some stuff messed up, you've overlearned some things, you've misunderstood some things.
Mark Clark [00:01:16]:
And I came to you and I taught you about all these things, but now you've misunderstood it and you've messed it up. And I need to sit you down and say, no, that's not what I actually said. So I don't know if that's been you in life. It's certainly been me in life, especially if you've raised kids. Those of you with kids know that this actually happens. This is kind of like Paul with the church. Remember a couple chapters ago, he said, I'm like your spiritual father. This happened to me this week.
Mark Clark [00:01:37]:
I got three daughters, 12, 10 and 8. And my oldest two had gone with me and saw Captain Marvel, the movie and Girl Power. And we had a great time. It was awesome. And they loved it. And they're like, oh, I could watch the movie over and over again. It was great. And then we were talking to my wife and my youngest daughter, who's 8, and we said, you know, we should do it.
Mark Clark [00:01:58]:
And they said, oh, I can't believe. Because now you're all talking to us. So we want to go to it too. So I'm like. So we talked and yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, so we went. And so we go Friday all of us go. We go out for dinner, we sit down.
Mark Clark [00:02:09]:
And within the first 35 minutes, I look over and my youngest is curled up in a ball and kind of just watching the movie, like, through hiding, freaked out fingers. And I'm like, uh, oh. And then I looked over my wife, who's giving me these looks like. And every time something, like, bad happens, there's, like a violent thing or some green man shows up. At one point, there was a couple swear words, and, like, this swear word comes out. And then my wife just. And I'm like, oh, I didn't remember that. I'm sorry.
Mark Clark [00:02:41]:
And remember what it was like to watch a movie? And then you'd watch it with, like, your grandparents or something. And the movie completely changed. It was like that sex scene was definitely not in there before. And now, hi, Grandma. And so it was like that. But now everything bad that happened, I could just feel this, like, hateful energy coming at me from my wife. And she, like, turned her shoulder and her leg would, like, come over the side of her, and she'd just turn away from me. I'm like, oh, my gosh.
Mark Clark [00:03:08]:
So within 30 minutes, my kid's basically crying about all the green monsters. And so I'm like, well, no, don't worry. Don't worry about them. They're funny. It's like, this is not funny. It's just so intense. I'm like. And so within 30 to 35 minutes, they left.
Mark Clark [00:03:24]:
And so all they do is. She goes, okay, we're leaving. So they got up and they left. I'm like, what do you mean? This cannot be good for my marriage. And I'm like, where are you going? She's like, well, there's games outside. So they go outside, play games, and the movie ends, and we all sit down, and my kid, my two older kids are like, oh, that wasn't that awesome? She was like, no, we had to leave. And then they looked and they're like, yeah, well, dad said it was fine for Bella. And I'm like, what? No.
Mark Clark [00:03:47]:
What? No, no, I didn't. My kids almost. They have it out for me. That's just like, what they do. They wake up in the morning, how can we just mess dad up and get him in trouble? And so they just sat down and went, it was Dad's fault. He said Captain Marvel was fine. Young children, like, what are you talking about? You guys are nuts. I just sit everybody down and say, that's not what I said.
Mark Clark [00:04:09]:
You misunderstood some things. This is constantly what Paul's doing with this church? There's such a jacked up church. He came, he sat with them, he taught them theology, he taught them how they should live their life. He moves on. He's doing some other church planting. And he looks back and the Corinthians are all messed up again. They're sleeping with each other, they're having orgies, they're getting hammered at communion. And he's like, what the.
Mark Clark [00:04:27]:
I thought I sat you all down and said, you can't do any of this stuff. So now he writes first and second Corinthians. And then people do recognize. Most scholars recognize there's probably a third or fourth Corinthians as well. But those letters might be gone. They might be part of First 2 Corinthians. We're not really sure they've been buried somewhere because he had to write back to them so often because they were so jacked up and messed up. This is basically what's the background behind the verses we're gonna hit today.
Mark Clark [00:04:53]:
So we did chapter six, verses one to eleven, over the last couple weeks where he had this list of vices or list of sins that he's saying, you can't do these things or you're not part of the kingdom. And now he comes to this and he says verse, and he starts off like this. He says, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. So here's what you gotta understand the reason. This is in quotes here and then here and here, what he's doing. What's hard about this is in Greek, there's no such thing as quotation marks. So sometimes what happens in letters is we're reading through 1 Corinthians, and scholars have to do a lot of technical work, linguistical work, because sometimes he'll say something, and you're not really sure. We're gonna see this in later chapters, too.
Mark Clark [00:05:34]:
So just store this away in your brain. We're not really sure whether he's actually teaching this or whether he's quoting something that they're saying. And he's going to actually now create a rebuttal about it. And so because there's no quotes, there's no like, hey, now, I'm gonna stop in Greek and I'm gonna quote what you've said, and then I'm gonna rebut it. We have to kind of do the linguistical work and realize, okay, he says this, but is that really what he's teaching or is he quoting what they're saying? And in this case, these all things are Lawful for me. He's quoting a famous thing that the Corinthians are saying, and it's bad teaching. And they're basically saying, look, here's the reality. We were messed up.
Mark Clark [00:06:10]:
We became Christians, and we think now everything is lawful for us. And so they've overlearned grace. They've become the kinds of people who basically say, I can do whatever I want with my body, with my sex life, with my money, with my family, it doesn't really matter. As long as I believe that Jesus Christ was God, believe Jesus died for my sins. I believe the Bible's true. I can go on and do whatever I want with my life. Absolute freedom to do whatever I want. And of course, I was in young adult ministry long enough to know that there is a massive movement within modern Christianity to live exactly like the Corinthians were living.
Mark Clark [00:06:46]:
Everything was lawful for me. I can do anything I want. Young adults would come to me all the time and they'd say, I can do whatever I want. But don't worry, Mark, I have good theology. I believe Jesus is God. I believe he died for my sins. I said a prayer at summer camp when I was 10 years old. Don't worry me about what I do with my body and my time and my sex life and my money and my family.
Mark Clark [00:07:03]:
Don't worry about any of that. I'll just go ahead and do whatever I want. Liberal view of behavior, belief and belonging and ethics and the value of your life. And so they were taking a very liberal view of how they were gonna live their life. I have these beliefs. And what happens is, is there's a progressive kind of modernistic Christianity. It looks very similar to what the Corinthians were dealing with, where what we do is we progress as society, we move on. It's 2019.
Mark Clark [00:07:28]:
I don't need to pay attention to ancient old documents that tell me to live a certain way and do a certain thing. That's all just old nonsense. We've progressed beyond that now. We can. Anything is lawful for me. All things are lawful for me. I'm good. I'm loose.
Mark Clark [00:07:41]:
I can do whatever I want as long as I believe these things. And so what started to happen is that's happened within modern Christianity to the point where not only behavior has started to change, but belief has started to change, theology has started to change. We've got to a place. There's been a movement the last probably 100, 150 years, but very popular within modern, specifically Western Christianity, where we've tried to make Christianity more palatable. And so we've started to reform some of the doctrines and theology of Christianity to say, hey, let's change those. And now let's believe these things, because nobody really wants to believe that stuff anymore. So we gotta believe these things, and everything's lawful. So what we've started to do is not only behaviorally, but theologically.
Mark Clark [00:08:19]:
And so there's a list of things that. One writer has called it a new kind of Christianity, where we come along and we say, here's the doctrines that people used to believe, but we don't believe those anymore. So there's a list of them. And usually it's. It's all the same kind of stuff. The Bible's not really true. The only scriptures that are true are the ones that adapt to modern life. Hell isn't a real thing anymore.
Mark Clark [00:08:39]:
God's not really judgmental. Everybody's gonna go to heaven when they die. It doesn't matter what religion you are. Everyone's gonna go to heaven. God's not a God of judgment. He's gonna save everybody. The Bible's not legit. The parts that we like are legit, but we gotta change those.
Mark Clark [00:08:57]:
Miracles aren't real. They're symbolic. Sexuality is fluid. Marriage is whatever. Absolutes are wrong. They're modernistic Hierarchies are wrong. Anything with authority is wrong. Preaching is bad because it's authoritative and it's absolute.
Mark Clark [00:09:10]:
And absolutism is really just a modernistic framework. And so we can't believe in absolutes anymore. So we just believe in subjective reality and relativistic morality. And preaching is wrong because it's kind of authoritative and all authorities are bad. So what we need to do is just come together, dialogue. Your views are the same as my views. We should all just sit together, hold hands, pray, go through a prayer labyrinth, light up some incense, and we're all good. We should all just hang out together.
Mark Clark [00:09:33]:
All of these kind of authoritative structures are wrong. They're bad. We should get rid of them. And the future of Christianity is just us in our relativistic reality saying to ourselves, what I believe is right, what you believe is right. That's really what happens. Everything is lawful for me. And so even filtering down to, we don't need God anymore because I'm God, because what I believe about ethics and morality and theology, that's. That's really the only measure, the only measure of what's true and what's right, of course, culturally is what you believe in your heart.
Mark Clark [00:10:01]:
Doesn't matter what your Body is hinting at you. Doesn't matter what society needs. What you feel in your heart at this moment is all that matters. And that's how you should go. So you don't even need God. God gets pushed out of the realm. And now you and I can just believe what we want because there's no need for God anymore. Here's what one writer has said.
Mark Clark [00:10:16]:
This is a quote. We don't have to talk about sin anymore because sin is a given. What we're all longing for is good news, not bad news. The cross, as explained in this classic biblical theology, is divine child abuse. God didn't punish Jesus for us. Hell is just an image. It's a bad story. It's not real.
Mark Clark [00:10:37]:
Everyone in the end experiences God's love in his presence and that's the end of it. Now here's what we have to understand about this kind of movement. The first thing we gotta understand is the kind of leaders and people who write and preach and lead these movements are pretty well. And here's one thing that Paul wants us to understand, that you have to be very self aware of where your theology and where your behavior came from. You don't wanna be just a cliche product of modernistic ideas if all you're doing is basically just being a product of the time you were born. And that's precisely what this kind of theology does and practice does, is it says, cause almost every leader, almost every writer, almost every preacher that preaches these kinds of things, you can almost profile them exactly down to how they grew up. And 99% of them, nine out of 10 of the men and women who write and preach these things grew up in a very conservative fundamentalist church. That was probably, that was very removed, as they explained it themselves, very removed from the culture that they lived within.
Mark Clark [00:11:32]:
And so what happens is they distort Christianity. They overreact to a conservative upbringing in a church that had nothing to do with the world. All right? They would just sit around, they would have no music with rhythms or beats. Everybody would just. It was boring. Christianity was boring. It was just doctrinal. And so what they do is they overreact and they say all these things that I learned, they're all garbage.
Mark Clark [00:11:54]:
We should reform them because I'm bored with them. That's pretty well what it is. It's a boring with orthodox historical Christianity. So now let's reform it. And what we gotta understand is one of the guiding principles behind reforming Christianity in the modernistic framework is the belief that absolutism is bad, hierarchies are bad, absolute truth is bad. And that what we do, you need to do is actually respond to it and be postmodern and basically say there are no absolutes. But what we have to understand is absolutism. And what they believe is absolutism is the thing that drove modern everything.
Mark Clark [00:12:29]:
Modern history, modern technology, modern politics. And now we're at a place where we need to reject all absolutes. But the reality is, Richard Bauckham, who's a scholar in Oxford, talks about that absolutism is actually not what drove us to where we are today. What drove us to where we are today is more what Paul's talking about, which is the idea of freedom and autonomy, which is now what I wanna talk about. Richard Bachman, his book called God and the Crisis of Freedom. He says what is most characteristic of the modern reality is the pursuit of freedom and the quest for human autonomy, which basically says, I'm me, I don't need God, I'm myself. My sexuality's mine, my money's mine. The way I wanna do, family is mine.
Mark Clark [00:13:13]:
You have no bearing. The scriptures have no bearing on my life at all to tell me anything. Cause I'm an autonomous human being who gets to function as I wanna function. And here's Paul's critique. All things are lawful for me. That's what you think. You're an autonomous human being. You're totally free to do whatever you want.
Mark Clark [00:13:29]:
And he comes along, he says, no, no, no, not all things are helpful. Now we're gonna talk about the fact that these people were living out their sin too. But the first point is the point about autonomy and freedom and the fact that you're going after this as your ultimate guide in life. And be very careful, because the scriptures come at you and they offer one major critique. And one of the major critiques is this verse 19. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own. That is a massive critique on a heart that goes after autonomy and freedom as if it's defined as you get to be and who be who you are. You get to do what you want, and it's all based on you.
Mark Clark [00:14:07]:
He goes, don't you understand you're not your own? Meaning this. You know what the worst thing for somebody who just wants to be free and wants to live their life exactly as they wanna live it is something that's gonna come over top of them and say, you can't live like that anymore. Which is precisely the question you have to ask when considering Christianity. Are you gonna let the Scriptures actually come over your life and say, no, this is the way you need to live versus you just get to live however you want? That is one of the major questions about considering Christianity in the modern world. So if you're here at Village, we're glad you're here. We are a church for you. You're considering Christianity, you're wondering about it. One of the main things you're gonna have to wrestle with.
Mark Clark [00:14:42]:
Cause I don't wanna give you a light pitch where it's like, hey, don't just say this little magical mantra and you'll go to heaven when you die. And you don't need to worry about anything else. That's a dualism that has nothing to do with Christianity. That's modern Christianity. We kind of did this thing. We're like, hey, just say this prayer and your soul will go to heaven when you die. He's gonna critique that in a second. But you've gotta understand, you're not gonna be able to be your own anymore.
Mark Clark [00:15:03]:
The scriptures are now, which is God's communication to us about what he thinks and what he expects of our lives. This will now have to be the authority over your life because you're not your own. So nothing's worse than if all you want is autonomy and all you want is freedom for yourself, the thing that drives all of us, for the Scriptures to come along and go, you're not your own anymore. You actually have to submit to something else. And you don't get to just ask questions about what's good for you. You have to ask questions about what's good for everybody else. Because sometimes what's good for you is not good for everybody else. And the question of sacrifice and having a bigger picture in your life is going, what's actually gonna be good for other people? That's the cruciform cross ethic of Jesus that every Christian has to consider sometimes.
Mark Clark [00:15:47]:
What's good for me, what feels good in this moment, this month, this year, isn't something I'm called to do because I'm not my own. What's worse for autonomy, let me just give you this example, than having children. All they do is take your autonomy. That's what they're born to do. They come out and they go, let me ruin your life. Let me ruin. Let me ruin what you want to do on a Friday night. Let me ruin that.
Mark Clark [00:16:15]:
Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna Come out. I'm gonna suckle milk from you. All right? So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna destroy your body. All right? Right? Women, you know that, right? A baby comes out and just goes, let me destroy your emotions. Let me destroy your hair. Let me destroy your body.
Mark Clark [00:16:33]:
I was gonna say something else. Your body. Let me destroy your life. Let me just derail your timelines. Your social life will suck. I will destroy your sex life with your husband. I will destroy your money. I'll take your money.
Mark Clark [00:16:51]:
I will take up your space. I will take everything from you. That's having kids. You're not your own anymore. Your kid's like, nah, I need you. I don't care about your marriage. I'm here now, right? That's why married people love to go away, right? When they have kids, they're like, crap. I get to go to a hotel for three days and that's like the biggest vacation a young family has.
Mark Clark [00:17:19]:
It's like, my gosh, I get to go away. Which means I can just lay in bed till 10. I can have sex whenever I'm just in the middle of the day. That's still a thing, right? Just like, hotel. I can eat my dinner at like 7 or 8, rather than 4:30. Life is good, baby. That's what going to a hotel for a younger, that's what it's like. It's freedom.
Mark Clark [00:17:46]:
It's life. When you have kids, you are not your own anymore. Your body's mine, your money's mine, your house is mine. And they just take and they take anyway. I love children. I'm just saying, like working out of a deep resentment here. The point is you don't get to live your own life when you have kids. Well, Christianity is kind of like.
Mark Clark [00:18:12]:
It's kind of like having kids in the sense where you're responsible. Responsibility becomes far bigger than what you want to do in a given moment. What you want to believe, how you want to live is now not something that you just get to go, well, my spirit says this, so this is what I need to do. There's a bigger consideration, which is the authority of the scriptures, the non autonomy of the church, and the reality of your life. To say you belong to something bigger. There's actually a narrative above you to actually say you are not your own. And so you've got to figure this out. Kierkegaard said it's actually ironic that the modern person goes after freedom and they think that freedom is having full autonomy in their life where they get to do whatever they want.
Mark Clark [00:18:56]:
They get to define their own sexuality. They get to define anything they want. And Kierkegaard says, what could be a bigger slavery to the human person other than actually being enslaved to how you feel in a particular moment? Because how you feel in a particular moment, it will be the ultimate slavery. What you need to do is submit to something that transcends how you feel, because how you feel is very elusive, and it changes with the day and the circumstance and who you meet in the book you read. Be very careful to trust how you feel in a particular moment. Autonomy and freedom is a scary filter to let drive your life. Now, here's the other thing. The other problem is they were using their supposed freedom not to do stuff for the kingdom, but they had over learned grace to such a point where they were doing whatever they wanted.
Mark Clark [00:19:47]:
They were living however they wanted. They were saying, this food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food. So they were having this naturalistic, animalistic, almost evolutionary view of life. A naturalistic evolutionary view of life. We're just animals. Food is food. It doesn't matter. God will destroy both.
Mark Clark [00:20:07]:
And they're kind of just going along with this attitude that life is what it is, I can do whatever I want. And because food is just food, sex is just sex. My body's just my body. So don't try to tell me what to do with my life. It's all gonna go away. And they overlearned the concept of grace. So much so because Paul had come to them and he'd said, look, you're not saved by what you do. You're not saved by your good works.
Mark Clark [00:20:36]:
That's religion. You're not saved by climbing a mountain. And God says, you're such a good person, now I'm gonna save you. You're saved because by grace, the undeserved, unmerited favor of God in your life, he sent Jesus to die on your behalf on a cross, took the wrath of God on himself, rose again to give you life. And they had overlearned that and started to live out of that liberty and say, well, now it frees me up to. To sin so I can do now. Not that anybody at all our locations has ever felt this. All right? So I'm saying not this is your life, but it is, is that I understand grace so much.
Mark Clark [00:21:09]:
It now frees me up to do whatever I want because all those sins get covered by the cross of Christ. Now I can live however I want because I'm forgiven. You overlearned Grace and stepped into a situation that Diedrich Bonhoeffer calls cheap grace. You so learned the concept of grace and that you started to sin and feel a liberty in sinning and saying, it's just my body, it's just my actions. Food is for food, sex is for sex, the body's whatever. It doesn't really matter. I'm just gonna go on with my life and live however I want because everything is lawful for me. And he comes at them and he says, no, no, no, hold on.
Mark Clark [00:21:40]:
No, no, no. You can't view life like that because the reality is. Okay, so when we were back in the Rosemary Heights days, we went through the gospel, we preached through the Gospel of Mark. Believe it or not, we preached the whole Gospel of Mark. I think it only took us about a year and a half. It was beautiful. Took us three and a half years to get through Matthew a couple years later. And most of you were here and kind of worked through your life through that.
Mark Clark [00:22:02]:
People died, and we had new families grow out of that time, and we have a whole new church since we started Matthew. But when we did Mark, it was really kind of quick year and a half. And we got to this place in the Gospel of Mark where there were these people coming to Jesus, these religious leaders, and they would ask him questions about, hey, if a woman. Theological questions, if a woman, you know, had seven. Had married seven brothers, who's gonna be her husband in the resurrection? And then they say they'd ask political questions, who is, you know, I'm supposed to give my taxes to Caesar and so on. And they would go through. And there was a particular point in that series where we stopped and we said there were these. One writer I had read talked about the games we play with God and some of the games that we play.
Mark Clark [00:22:40]:
And we went through. We listed out the different games that we play with God. So some of them were there. It's the first game that we play is that God wouldn't call me to do that particular thing because God wants me to be happy. And so we believe this about our life. This is a game that we play. God would never call me to do this because he wants me to be happy in life. And so the safest place to be, we said, you know, if some of you grew up in church and people told you, they sat you down in Sunday school, they said, listen, the safest place to be is in the center of the will of God.
Mark Clark [00:23:06]:
Now, someone had told me that when I first entered the church and I was 19, I was like, that doesn't make any sense to me because every time I was reading the Bible, sitting there, smoking my pack of cigarettes or smoking weed or whatever, and I was reading the Bible, I would see these guys. They would come to know Jesus, and then their life, all of a sudden, wasn't safe anymore. And then everyone is telling me, don't worry. The safest place for you, Mark, is in the center of the will of God. I'm like, that didn't work out for John the Baptist very well. All right. John the Baptist goes to prison. And Jesus, he's like, hey.
Mark Clark [00:23:33]:
He sends his disciples out. He's like, hey, can I get out of here someday? And Jesus, like, just tell John the Baptist, and he cites Isaiah 30:5. You know, you have all these people, and I'm gonna set. You know, if you're crippled, you're gonna run around like a deer. And if you're blind, you're gonna see again. And he goes through this list. And of course, the famous climax to Isaiah 35 is, and if you're in prison, you're gonna be set free. And Jesus doesn't say that part.
Mark Clark [00:23:59]:
He says, you're gonna leap around like a deer. You're gonna see again. And then he says, he inserts this thing. He goes, and those of you who are not offended by me will get into the kingdom. And the people have to go back and go, okay, John the Baptist, I know your question is, are you gonna get out of prison? And here's his answer. The people will jump around like deers. And people who don't hear can hear again. He's like, oh, I know where this is going.
Mark Clark [00:24:19]:
The prisoners are gonna be set free. And then he goes, and what did he say next? What did he say next? Oh, yeah, blessed are those who aren't offended by me. What? He deletes a part about prisoners getting free because he says, john the Baptist, you're gonna die now. Safest place to be is in the center of the will of God. You're gonna get your head cut off. Read the Apostle Paul. I got beaten this many times. I got shipwrecked this many times.
Mark Clark [00:24:41]:
And it's only when I became a Christian that any of this nonsense started to happen in my life. That's the pitch of Christianity. All right? So you start to. So I started realizing, okay, that doesn't make any sense, because God cares more. Listen to me. And we said this during the series. God cares more about your holiness than he does about your happiness. As crazy as that is.
Mark Clark [00:24:58]:
New Age philosophy Will tell you, all that matters is your happiness. Christianity comes along and goes, no, all that matters is your holiness. It's gonna last much longer. It's much more important. So that first game dies. The second game that we played, we listened, was we try to cut a deal with God and we say, I know you want me to do this. I know you want me to do that, but what if I did this instead? Now, think about this for your own life. God calls you.
Mark Clark [00:25:20]:
This is the example we gave. God calls you to become. Sell everything you've got and become a missionary in Uganda. Here's the game that you play with God. Ooh, that sounds awful. That sounds bad. So here's what I'm gonna do instead. What if I go to Bible college and start serving at summer camp? And then God goes, oh, wow, that's a good deal.
Mark Clark [00:25:38]:
And then he calls together Jesus and the Holy Spirit and they have a little huddle and they say, hey, we wanted Tom to go to Uganda. I know, but he said he'd probably do a better job at summer camp and going to Bible college. What do we think? And Jesus and the Holy Spirit goes, that's a great idea. It's a good trade. And then he comes back and goes, good trade. You can do that. Now that's a game you play by the. And it's a ridiculous game, but we play it.
Mark Clark [00:25:58]:
Hey, God, I know you're telling me, I don't really wanna do that. What if I did this and I just did it 10 times better? What if I spent a bunch of money on a mission trip one time for, like, you know, two weeks, kinda got it tasty, and then I came back and made some money so other people could go do it. What about that? And God's like, you know what? That's a way better idea. I don't know what I was thinking. You're smarter than me. That's a game that we play. All right. Okay.
Mark Clark [00:26:23]:
Now, the third game we listed was the distraction game, which. The distraction game is when God calls you to holiness, and you do what the leaders in mark were doing, which is he's calling you to holiness. And the leaders come along and they go, okay, I understand you're calling me to holiness. I understand you're trying to get rid of this addiction. I understand you're trying to get me to stop sleeping around. I understand you're trying to get me to be more generous. I understand you're trying to get me to do these things in my life, but all those things sound really hard so here's what I want to do. What if a woman marries seven brothers who will be her husband in the resurrection? Distract Jesus with a theology question.
Mark Clark [00:26:58]:
Here's what you do. You distract yourself with politics. That's what you do. All right, so Jesus is saying, I'm putting my finger on sin in your life. And you're going, what about Trump? I don't like Trump. Thinking you're doing good and all you're doing is distracting the question and moving it away from your own holiness to politics. Because you don't wanna deal with what God is telling you to deal with, which is your life. You're not gonna solve the world on your Twitter account, by the way.
Mark Clark [00:27:34]:
You're gonna solve the world when you actually have the courage and power enough to get rid and kill the sin that Jesus put his finger on and said, you better deal with that. And we go, bernie, over here. What about theology? What about politics? Should we give our taxes to Caesar or not? Hey, Jesus, if you get distracted, maybe you won't put your. I remember I was doing a skeptics forum in a coffee shop one time, and a guy in front of the whole coffee shop argued that the way we get morality is through the evolutionary development, hundred thousand years, a million years of decoding in our brain that actually gives us morality. Because I had argued that God had put it there. And I said, yeah, yeah, it's really good. So the strong kill the weak. They destroy the weak.
Mark Clark [00:28:13]:
And that's been embedded in your brain in regard to morality over hundreds of thousands of millions of years. Yes, that's how we got morality. I said, great. So the Holocaust is a beautiful part of just natural humanity where the strong killed the weak. Make sure that you put African Americans in the cotton fields because you can benefit from their slavery. 9, 11 is just a beautiful, natural part of reality where the strong are killing the weak in order to get ahead. It's all so beautiful. It's all so nice, isn't it? And he stopped and he goes.
Mark Clark [00:28:41]:
And then he admitted to the whole coffee shop that, yes, he would have to say those things are beautiful. He would have to say, those part is just naturally part of human development. And he started to realize the flaw in his own worldview. And afterwards, when I talked to him, which is great, by the way, that's how you wanna do evangelism. If you're taking notes, make sure that people resent you and hate you in a group of many people. But afterwards, he admitted to me that the reason he had come to that Reality and reason he wanted to debate those things was because there was things in his life, moral, ethical issues in his life, that God was starting to put his finger on. And he didn't want to deal with those. So it was easier to talk about philosophy.
Mark Clark [00:29:20]:
That's what you do. You distract. Now, all of that to say the fourth game is the one that's relevant here. The fourth game we play is we misunderstand what grace means, we misinterpret what grace means, and we say, here's the definition of grace. The definition of grace will now be that God doesn't care because he already saved me. He doesn't care what I do with my life. I can do whatever I want with my life. Rather than the historical reality, which is undeserved favor in Jesus Christ, that calls you to a new life.
Mark Clark [00:29:50]:
And so what Paul's doing is he's saying, don't play the game of don't worry, grace covers me. I can do whatever I want. Don't worry. Food is just food. My life is just life. It doesn't matter. Cause I'm going to heaven when I die anyway. And he reforms all of that.
Mark Clark [00:30:04]:
And he goes, that is not the Christian worldview. I know some of you grew up with this idea that God is just going to destroy things and nothing matters. He comes along and he says, listen, the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. He's trying to give an elevated view of the body. Go back to a couple weeks ago when we said the body doesn't matter, just going to heaven when I die matters. That's not Christianity, by the way. You realize the whole theology of Christianity is built on the resurrection. This is what he says.
Mark Clark [00:30:31]:
God raised the Lord and will raise us. The point of Christianity is not that you go to heaven when you die. It's that in the end you get raised up as a physical new creation, which means everything you do with your body counts. Now, that's his point. What you do in the physical world matters a ton. Now this is why this is critical. This is why this is subject to. In regard to the modern world that we live in.
Mark Clark [00:30:56]:
Here's the crazy irony. Here's the crazy irony. When you go to a magazine rack and you see women on there, when you're standing in the line in the grocery store and you see women on there, here's the reality. We as a culture hate the body. And here's what I mean by that. It's a crazy irony. We obsess about the body, right? We obsess about it. I can't even take my kids.
Mark Clark [00:31:20]:
I go to Grandview Court, you got La Sens there. You got a girl in a lingerie and she's like. And her whole body's. And she's half covered. And I'm there with three daughters. I'm like, oh my gosh, sometimes I wish we just lived in Saudi Arabia. All right, just like this right here. And we could just.
Mark Clark [00:31:37]:
Or Abbotsford, we just moved to Abbotsford. And cover them all up head to toe in denim. And then we could just, hey, don't worry, don't worry. And there's a sexual thing. And what we think is we love the body, we elevate the body, we worship the body. In fact, the opposite is true. See, when you airbrush a body to make it look perfect, when you only put 21 year old girls on the front in lingerie, when all you do is reform it and change it and change it in airbrushing and worship this particular absent when you do that. Here's what you're saying.
Mark Clark [00:32:10]:
We don't like the body. We actually need to airbrush it, we need to change it, we need to adapt it, we need to present it in this way and ignore what naturally happens to the body is the deepest hatred for the body. Christianity comes along into a culture that actually hates the body and says, the body can't tell me my sexuality, the body can't tell me who I'm married to. The body is nothing. All that matters is what I feel. And what I feel in this moment is that. See, that's the kind of Christianity that you got pitched. All that matters is your body's gonna go away and you're gonna go to heaven when you die.
Mark Clark [00:32:43]:
And so that's all that needs to matter. Your spiritual life is all that matters. Saving souls is all that matters. Paul would go, what? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Your soul and your body are so integrated. He says this, he's gonna raise up all his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take, listen to this, the members of Christ which you are, and make them members of a prostitute. So in that culture, in the church, they were actually sleeping with prostitutes, they were sleeping with other people.
Mark Clark [00:33:14]:
And he's saying, you belong to Christ, you can't belong to Christ. And then ethically just go around and sleep with everybody. It doesn't work. He says the two things aren't even logical. It would be like if I'M saying I'm one with Aaron. And then we're one, and we're kind of walking along, and we're always together. All right, like, picture, like, one person with two heads, all right? And we're one person walking around. It's a weird image.
Mark Clark [00:33:35]:
All right, but just roll me here. And then let's say I wanted to go over here and wanted to do this bad thing. I wanted to maybe go sleep with that person. She would be there to say, no, no, no, you don't get to do that. We're gonna go over here. And what he's saying is, if you're actually members of Christ, there's not actually a category that you're one with Christ and you have two heads and he lets you go sleep around with prostitutes. That logic doesn't make sense. Ergo, the question is, are you actually members of Christ if that's how you live your life? That's the scary part of the list.
Mark Clark [00:34:08]:
That's the scary part of where he's going. He's saying, if you're a member of Christ, you never go see where I'm prostitutes. Because here's what happens. Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? This is crazy. For as it is written, and he quotes Genesis 2, the two will become one flesh. Listen, every time. This is why, and this is something that we all need to deeply reflect on. Freedom Session goes through with people their pat.
Mark Clark [00:34:35]:
They take an index of their past sexual relationships. Because in Christianity, when you physically sleep with someone, there's no such thing as just a physical sleeping with. When you sleep with someone, there is a spiritual emotional connection where you become more one with that person in such a way. And so there's an index where you go through everyone that you've slept with, everyone that you've done sexual things with, you go through, and you actually write down their names and you pray the blood of Jesus over and to break any kind of tie or unity that you've had with those people. That's what he's trying to say. He's saying, don't you understand? You can't just throw your body around. Food is for the stomach. Sex is.
Mark Clark [00:35:13]:
It's all a body's like. No, no. You're an integrated whole. Your spiritual and your physical all collides together to make this massive thing where it's all connected to you, which is why some of you. And here's the one practical thing you need to take out. If the philosophy is not. You're not skeptic, you're not wondering. And you're a Christian.
Mark Clark [00:35:31]:
You're coming. Here's maybe the thing you need to go home and do is actually go home. You don't have to show your spouse this you don't have to do today where you write down the names of everybody you've been sexual with in the past and you pray the blood of Jesus over it to break any bonds, any unity, any oneness that has happened to you and that person. And then you can burn that list and throw it away. No one ever sees it. But the reality is you need to be conscious. You need to understand that every time you slept with someone, it was you becoming one with them. It was more than just a physical transaction because we're integrated wholes, we're psychosomatic people.
Mark Clark [00:36:03]:
There's more to it. And so Paul's going, don't you understand that? Don't you get it? That your mind, your emotions, when you become one with someone, there's a thing that happens, it's all connected. Your body, your brain, everything's connected. So much. So remember that story I told a couple years ago where the guy came into the doctor and he was perfectly fine like a month or so ago. And then he came into the doctor, he was dying, and he was dying on the table and they couldn't figure out what to do with him. And then finally he was like three or four days away from death. He had declined so quickly that he told the doctor, I didn't tell my family this, but here's the reality.
Mark Clark [00:36:38]:
This is told the opening story of a book called the God Shaped Brain. You can go read it. The guy says, hey, I didn't tell anybody this, but a witch actually put a spell over me about a month ago and she put a frog in my stomach. And when she put the frog in my stomach, that's why my health has declined and I'm done. This is why I'm dying. Cause she cast a spell on me. And the doctor went, I know what to do, don't worry. And he left the hospital.
Mark Clark [00:37:01]:
He went out to a little pond locally and he. And he brought the frog into the hospital and he put it in a bag. And the family's like, what are you doing? He's like, don't worry. He walks into the room and he says, we're doing surgery. We're going to get this frog out. And so he puts the guy in a local anesthetic so he's still awake, and he pretends to cut open his Stomach, puts some numbing stuff on his stomach and he pulls a frog out and he puts it in the bag. And he holds the frog in the bag. He says, don't worry, I got it.
Mark Clark [00:37:27]:
Within three days, the guy was perfectly healthy again. Think about that. Why is that? Because your brain is so powerful, it's connected to everything that's going on in your body. The point is, Paul's going. Don't you understand? There's no such thing as just a physical transaction. You can't just sleep with whomever you want. You can't just watch whatever you want. You can't just smoke whatever you want.
Mark Clark [00:37:52]:
You can't just take whatever you want. You can't just live this way and think if your spiritual life is still intact. It's not. There's one of two things that has happened if that is how you live. You either are breaking away and misunderstanding and abusing grace and it's become cheap grace and you're sinning under the reality of Jesus Christ and you're saying, well, don't worry, he died for my sin anyway, so I'll just pile it up. Or you're not actually a member of Christ at all. You don't really know him. And what's the solution to that? He says, the two will become one flesh.
Mark Clark [00:38:21]:
Now, all of this is just an image for where he really wants to go, which is this. But who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. He says, you wanna understand what the solution is? He says, flee from second. So he says, first off, he says, the solution to your reality is that you need to be joined with Jesus. Meaning the main question of Christianity is not becoming like Christ, Christ likeness. It's becoming having a union with Christ of which Christ likeness is derivative. It flows down. It's a result of being one with Christ.
Mark Clark [00:38:55]:
But Christ likeness is impossible without union with Christ. His whole point is you actually want to understand whether you're a member of Christ. Here's the question, are you joined to the Lord or not? Do you have union with Christ? Is your heart, is your affections? And here's the concern. Jonathan Edwards saw thousands and thousands of people during the Great Awakening come to Jesus under his. But here's what his problem was. He said, I don't know whether their lives are actually been changed or not at all at the level of their affections. He said, the affections are different than the mind and different than the heart. If all you've done is you've experienced God and your heart feels better, you might not Know him.
Mark Clark [00:39:30]:
And if all you've done is your mental space has reasoned yourself into believing in God, you may not know him. He says, it's the heart and the mind together that create this something called affections, with an A, where your actual loves and your desires get changed. And he goes, that's the sign of true conversion. The sign of false conversion is someone who just got converted in their heart or just got converted in their mind, but their affections never got changed. And he says, and we have tons of biblical examples of this just to leave you. On a scary note, think of King Saul. King Saul was a guy who would do bad things. And then he would say this.
Mark Clark [00:40:05]:
I feel bad about it, so I repent. Lord, silly me, I'm so dumb. I can't believe I did it. I can't believe I did it. I can't believe I did it. But he would never stop committing the sins that he would always repent of. And he's not an example of someone who had true conversion. It's Jimmy swaggart in the 80s going, I got caught with a prostitute.
Mark Clark [00:40:23]:
I'm sorry. And he's crying on stage, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And then a year later, he's caught again in a car with a prostitute, same sin. It's King Saul. And Edwards looked and he said, if that is somebody's reality, out of the thousands of people who are coming to Christ, if that's someone's reality, here's the question I have. Did they actually experience true conversion or not? Or did just their feelings get converted? Because here's the scary thing, you know, your feelings can get converted with no union with God. Your feelings can be converted. Think of the question of the Book of Job.
Mark Clark [00:41:00]:
What does Satan walk into chapter one of Job and say to God, I wanna go at Job, because here's what I think. Now think about this for your life. He goes, here's what I think. I think Job is interested in you, Lord. I think he has faith in you. I think he has a relationship with you because of what it's going to do and what it does for him. It's not a love for you. It's a love of self and things that are beneficial for him.
Mark Clark [00:41:28]:
And if I can take away all the things that are beneficial for him, I wonder if faith still happens. And so that's what the whole book of Job is. Take away his health, take away his kids, take away his money. Leave him the one thing he doesn't want left behind, which is a nagging Wife who goes, why don't you just curse God and die? He's like, why didn't you take her first thing out of the gate? You could have just taken her. I would have been good. All right. But here's the question of Job. Does Job actually.
Mark Clark [00:41:53]:
Is he in it for himself? Because if he is, that's worthless faith. That's the whole thesis of Job. Are you in this for you or because you actually have an affection for God? Because one's true conversion and one's not. Think about that. Did you come to Christ for some benefit for you when you were a kid? Do you really know him? Have you been joined to him? Or do you just believe some doctrines for self benefit? This is the question of the text. Are you actually joined with God or not? That's what I want to leave you with. He does all this ethical stuff, all this body stuff, all this resurrection stuff to land it here. And here's the question, are you joined with Him? And how can you be joined with Him? That you come to a place in your life where you repent of sin, you trust that Jesus died and rose again for you, and you say to yourself, I'm gonna receive that.
Mark Clark [00:42:58]:
Not. Not because it's good for me, of course it is. But because I'm so overwhelmed with the awe of who he is that I have nothing to do other than give my life to him. Because he's good. Because he's good. I wanna be joined with him. It's like when you got married. You didn't get married just because you looked and you went, you know what? This is.
Mark Clark [00:43:23]:
I think this is gonna benefit me one point or two points. Yeah, there could have been some benefits. But you didn't marry that girl because she got you out of some scenario like going to hell when you die. That's sometimes what drove you to Christ. You didn't marry her because of that. Why did you marry her because you loved her? You actually had affection for her and said, I want to give my life to this person. Because they give me delight, they give me joy. It's not just duty.
Mark Clark [00:43:58]:
You've been joined with him. Father, I pray that this is the echo in our brain. Do I actually know you? Have I been joined with you? Do I have union with you? That filters down to everything else about my life. I pray that's true about our church. I pray that's true about people who are here just even they're skeptics and they're wondering about Christianity. They're here exploring that you in this moment, Holy Spirit would grab them and understand that in the person, the work of Jesus, you want to draw them to yourself, into a union with you that goes way beyond doing something out of selflessness. But it's all about how good you are, how beautiful you are. And you would change us at the level of our very affections, not just our brains and not just our emotions and how we feel.
Mark Clark [00:44:45]:
We pray that you do that work among us for the sake of your glory, for the sake of the mission of our lives. In Jesus good name we pray. Amen.