Mark Clark [00:00:00]:
Hey, everyone. Mark here. Welcome to the Mark Clark Podcast, brought to you by the Thrive Podcast Network, which is a whole network of podcasts that have a whole lot of great things for you and your life. So go check it out. We have a marriage podcast with one of our pastors, Kevin Thompson, an awesome podcast called Change the Odds, and it delves into everything in regard to relationships. So go check that one out. We are tackling Jesus powerful teaching in Matthew 5 today about living with integrity and honesty. It's a really important conversation in our culture that we live in today where there's a lot of things like fake news and people lying all the time about everything.
Mark Clark [00:00:36]:
Imagine a world where people's yes actually means yes. This is about more than words. It's about being people of character in a world that desperately needs truth and truthful people and people that they trust. So we will dive into what it looks like to live in truth, how Jesus challenges our culture's spin on honesty, and why being trustworthy in the smallest of things reflects God's power in a powerful way to change the world. Let's jump in. Sermon on the Mount, Part 3, Matthew, Chapter 5. Jesus is going to talk about this topic of being people of integrity, character, truth. Who are the kinds of people who get to a place? And I love this text because it's so subversive.
Mark Clark [00:01:17]:
Remember the context Jesus has been talking about. You've heard that it was said, you know, don't, don't commit adultery, but even if you've done it, in your heart, you're already guilty of it. You've heard that it was said, do not murder. But even if you've hate your brother in your heart, you're already guilty of it. And so if you're new to church and you're exploring Christianity, this is a great series for you because you get to see the revolution, the Jesus that has these expectations for a kind of life that is completely alternative to the way that we live. And so just let me read the whole text and put it in front of you, and then we'll just start to unpack it concept by concept. So Matthew chapter 5. Listen to these words again.
Mark Clark [00:01:52]:
You have heard that it was said to the people long ago. Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you've made. So picture Jesus now. He's going through all these things that these thousands of people are listening to him. They've heard all these teachers say these different things. But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all either by heaven, for it is God's throne, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply yes or no.
Mark Clark [00:02:28]:
Anything beyond this comes from the evil one. Fascinating text, because it start off. And we might say to ourselves, in the midst of all the craziness of our world, why do we care about this? The murder, the wars, the abuses, the awfulness that's happening all over the world? Why do we care about this thing that seems so small, what we do with our words? Being people of truth versus people of being able to say whatever we want in character? Why does this matter? And I would say it matters because the point of the Sermon on the Mount is if you actually did these things, there would be no wars, there would be no abuses, there would be no social injustice. All the things that we think are more important than just being people who can say yes. And people trust us. It gets down to the weeds of if we were actually these people, though. So Martyn Lloyd Jones has said this, and I think he's right. He says the whole fabric of society rests upon trust, and trust is based upon honesty and truthfulness.
Mark Clark [00:03:35]:
We are not only to speak the truth, but we are to live the truth. We are to be people who are true to our word, who keep our promises, and who honor our commitments. So in a world like ours, of fake news and politicians who lie and media who lie, everyone lies to everybody all the time. And everyone just kind of says, well, that's just the way it is. Oh, how did you get rich in real estate? Oh, you know, I kind of lie a little bit, but that's just kind of understood in the industry, right? We kind of justify these things in our life. And Jesus says, what if? What if in a world like ours, which is defined by people that nobody really trusts, like, you know, every time you watch the news, it doesn't matter what channel it is, it doesn't matter what Twitter, you always kind of. You have this hermeneutic of suspicion when they're saying something. You're like, I don't think that's actually accurate.
Mark Clark [00:04:29]:
Like, I think they've got a bent on this, or they're kind of coming at this from the right, or they're coming at this from the left, or they have an agenda, or you're always suspicious, right? Imagine this is Jesus vision. Imagine there's a group of people in the world who the rest of the world could really trust. That's my people. That's what Jesus is saying. My vision for the church is that it's a group of people in the world that the world can look to and go, I know, I know you guys aren't perfect. I know you fumble a lot of stuff. I know the world's a mess and it never gives us the straight goods, but we know the church is the group of people that we can come to and go, okay, come on, this is truth here. This is integrity here.
Mark Clark [00:05:21]:
These people, they're people of character, and they will tell me what is what, even if it's uncomfortable, even if it might not always go well for them. It's a place of integrity, character, and truth. That's Jesus vision to get you to a place in your life where nobody makes you swear on anything. If you're the kind of person who, every time you talk, someone goes, come on, prove it. You should probably go, ah, maybe something wrong with the way I live. Nobody trusts me. I golf with this guy. When we go golfing, every time he gives us a score, the other three players look at each other and go, I don't think so.
Mark Clark [00:06:01]:
Okay, bro. He was in the forest for a while and he always finds his ball in there. It comes out a different color than it went in. But whatever. If you become the. Imagine we can become the kinds of people where the world looked and went. Those people, there's no need to question their life. That's what Jesus is talking about.
Mark Clark [00:06:26]:
Okay, let's get into it. So context is this. He's in the Sermon on the Mount. He's talking about, I want your righteousness to surpass that of the righteousness, the Pharisees and the scribes. So your righteous chapter 5, verse 20, which is the center of the whole Sermon on the Mount. I want your righteousness to surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees, meaning their righteousness is external. It's. They look a certain way and sound a certain way.
Mark Clark [00:06:51]:
I need you to actually be righteous internally. I need you to actually, inside, where nobody can see it, be the kinds of people who love and worship me, who follow me and aren't legalistic. And so he says this again. You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, do not break your oath. And he starts to talk about it. So here's the first thing. This isn't actually in the Bible, okay? He's talking about the teachers and the rabbis and the scribes and teachings that they did at the Time. And so he says, you've heard that it was said and there's no real Bible verse that just says this.
Mark Clark [00:07:25]:
You do not break your oath or fill the Lord. And there's some ideas of it, but basically the idea is these scribes and these Pharisees and these different rabbis walking around the first century have created this theology for your life. And you're all confused by it because they're teaching, they're misapplying the Bible. So he wants to try to come in. Like, how many of you have been in a situation where you've just, you've heard like, the application of the teaching of the Bible and gone like, eh, this doesn't feel right. Right? Like that's what he's talking about. Like, I remember walking into a church and this guy was getting up, he was preaching a sermon. It was like when Jesus was walking into Jerusalem and he gets a donkey and the guy's like, and we're all donkeys.
Mark Clark [00:08:03]:
I'm like, nah, I don't think that's a good application of this text. I don't think that's what it's about. So. And you remember in the 80s, like, everyone got all jacked up and thought it was the end of the world. Every Christian TV show you were on, it was like, it's the end of the world. Well, why? Because computers. That spells 666. And then it was Y2K.
Mark Clark [00:08:22]:
When I first became a Christian, right? It was just before Y2K. So the first church I ever walked. Remember, guys, you remember Y2K? Remember? What's gonna happen to Y2K? The computers were gonna shut down because someone forgot to put in a little, a little thing in the computer. And so all computers, all Internet, it was all gonna shut down. So planes were gonna just start free falling from the sky, all the computers. Your air conditioning wasn't gonna work. Everyone's gonna die. The hospitals would freak out.
Mark Clark [00:08:46]:
So the church I was a part of, they just taught. And they were like, look, Y2K, it's in the Bible. It's in Isaiah 43. So you should all go get canned goods and big guns. And that was Canada. So that was a big deal because there were no guns. We're like, where are the guns? All right, you gotta get in your bunkers. It's the end of the world and the rapture's gonna happen and all this stuff.
Mark Clark [00:09:06]:
And then that ticked by. I was just watching a movie at the time. I'm like, 1159, 1159, 1159. Oh, my gosh. Kick. All right, that was good. Pass the Doritos. Whatever.
Mark Clark [00:09:18]:
Like, it was like. That's literally. But everyone saw it in their Bible, and this is what we can do. If we don't study the Bible properly, then we can mess it up, right? If we don't understand the genre and the context and the paragraphs and the sentences and what's actually been going on, people get into the Bible, they do wacky things, right? There's a classic story about the guy saying, I'm just gonna open my Bible and do whatever it says. Boom. And Judas hung himself. All right, let's do it again. That wasn't good.
Mark Clark [00:09:45]:
Boom. Whatever. Go and do likewise. No, no, no. Whatever you do, do it quickly. Me, I don't like it. So that's what people do. They misapply the Bible.
Mark Clark [00:09:58]:
They misunderstand the Bible. So here's Jesus, and he's saying, listen, I want to get you the true teaching. Don't listen to what these guys are doing about breaking your oaths and fulfilling these vows. I'm going to actually tell you what God really thinks about these things. And so he says, do not break your oath and fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made. What does that mean? Do not break your oath. Well, this was an oral culture, not a written culture, right? So in that culture, they wouldn't, like, write things down like we write things down. Most of them couldn't read.
Mark Clark [00:10:32]:
Most of them couldn't write. And so when you kind of. When you had to make trades or do something or buy a house or do a business deal, you didn't have documents that you were writing everything down on. In our culture, of course, lots of documents. You guys know, every time you go try to buy anything, there's 35 pages that you have to do, right? Why do you have to give your signature to buy a used car 35 times? Do you know why that is? Because nobody follows the Sermon on the Mount. Because every single one of those signatures is something that somebody learned because it was a loophole from people who were trying to steal and connive and not be truthful. So every time you're signing something, it's because the world has figured out a million ways to be people where their yes is not their yes and their no is not their no. They're scoundrels.
Mark Clark [00:11:24]:
They're always looking for an angle. And so in that culture, you had oaths. And those oaths would be a public declaration that people would gather to hear, and it would be binding. It Kind of like a wedding. But even a wedding we sign now, right? But a wedding, back then when you got up in front of a group of people and said, I am going to give a vow, an oath that I'm gonna marry this girl. Now in our culture, it's just become sappy. This is why, like, when I do weddings, I'm like, oh, my gosh, here we go. I don't wanna do the traditional vows.
Mark Clark [00:11:57]:
I wrote my own vows. Sally, I've loved you since we were. And it's like, oh, bro, shut up. You know, whatever. So. But even then, you go and you sign a document because people can say, I was there when he read his vows to Sally. But in our culture, that doesn't matter. Well, in that culture, if you publicly set an oath, it locked you in.
Mark Clark [00:12:24]:
You were locked into that oath, and so you had to do it. And so what had happened was they had started to come up with all kinds of games in order to play so that they didn't have to be bound by their oath. So they started to say, well, okay, yeah, I'll do a business deal with you. I swear. I swear on the heavens. Because if they said, I swear to God, that was binding. That was like, who? Right? Like, even when I was growing up, I grew up as a non Christian man. I grew up in a world where God.
Mark Clark [00:13:02]:
I kissed. I kissed her. I kissed her. You know, we're all like, whatever, bro. You didn't kiss her. And he's like, I swear on the Holy Bible. And we were like, boom. He kissed her, right? Like, you swear in a stack of Bibles you did that.
Mark Clark [00:13:20]:
And then if they did that, it was on. Like, that was all we needed. That's what they would do. They would say, I swear. But instead of saying, I swear to God, which was binding, they said, hmm, what else could I swear on? That if someone called me out later, I could say, well, I never swore to God. Well, I swear. I swear by heaven that I'll show up, I'll give you that money back. Or, I swear by the earth.
Mark Clark [00:13:50]:
Actually, no, you know, I swear by Jerusalem. I'll be there. I'll be there. And then when he didn't show, ah, he only swore by Jerusalem. That's. I had my fingers crossed, right? I was gonna try to be there, Joey, but don't hold me completely accountable, because I only swore by earth. I didn't swear to God. And so they had taken this system of oaths.
Mark Clark [00:14:19]:
They made it super complex, and it had become completely corrupt. And so is Jesus saying, I don't want you to ever do an oath. I don't want you to ever go to court and swear. There's some streams of Christianity that have taken that right. The Quakers and some of the Anabaptist philosophy says they can never take an oath because Jesus says you're not allowed to take an oath. Can you never go to court and swear an oath? That's not what he's saying. He's saying, there's a corruption that I want to try to save you from. There's a corruption where you've started.
Mark Clark [00:14:54]:
So here's what John Stott says. He says, Jesus is not here condemning all oaths, for he himself took an oath when he was questioned by the high priest in Matthew 26. Rather, he is condemning the misuse of oaths, which had become a way of avoiding the obligation to tell the truth. And so they had come up with all these little phrases to get them out of certain things. And they're playing a game. If I can say, I said this, and then I can get away with that. And so they started using external words. You ever done this? Are you good with words? Do you manipulate people and things? Jesus is gonna teach against this later in chapter six.
Mark Clark [00:15:35]:
Remember when he starts to teach on prayer and he's like, you know those Pharisees that go up in front of everybody and they use their big words and they try to impress everybody in the way that they pray so that everyone will think they're righteous. And so instead of just going, father, thank you, they'll say, oh, this soteriological, eschatological reality of my ecclesiological. And they're trying to impress everybody. I heard this one guy, he'd gone out at a conference and thousands of people there, and he was trying to kind of give this image of God. And he's like, God, we know that Satan is trying to attack us. He's like a great octopus who's trying to attack us with his eight testicles. And that's totally not what he meant. But we do that.
Mark Clark [00:16:36]:
We try to get all wordy with people and look so righteous. And so we use certain words to impress and to do certain things as if they're magical. And Jesus goes, my goodness, guys, you gotta understand something. You've done all this stuff by heaven, by earth, by Jerusalem. Here's the problem. God is in all of those places. So the idea that you didn't swear to God. No, no, no, you did, because he's in heaven.
Mark Clark [00:17:09]:
He's on earth. He Owns Jerusalem. He's everywhere. You can't escape him. And so if you think that you can act one way when you come to church, but there's certain things you can and cannot say in church, like testicle like that, then you've already shown yourself to have a sacred secular divide that God doesn't have, because he's here, but he's also in your kitchen. And you don't get to just be righteous here. You don't get to act a certain way in church because God is in church and he's at the bus stop, and he's with you at work, because there is no divide. And so Jesus is like, how could you think you could be the kind of people who would bust all of this up? When you tell someone you're gonna be there, Jesus is saying, then you be there.
Mark Clark [00:18:09]:
When you tell someone you're gonna pray for them, you pray for them. When you tell your kid you're gonna fix his bike, then you do it. Why? Because God is everywhere. And you're always with every word, swearing on a stack of Bibles. There is no level of honesty. Every word is fully observed. Think about that. Every moment of your life, every word.
Mark Clark [00:18:38]:
Like, imagine this. Imagine tomorrow a camera crew decided to follow you around, and next week they were gonna put a TV show on, like the Truman Show. And 30 million people were gonna tune in and watch your life. How would you talk? Oh, hello, Tom. Boy, I love everyone. Oh, poor person that I walk past every day. Would you like some money now? I love you, honey. You do such a great job.
Mark Clark [00:19:16]:
Well, I love you, too. And look, you cleaned up the dishes. Unbelievable. He's saying, don't you understand? Every single day of your life is being viewed by billions of creatures called angels. That every moment of your life is on broadcast to God. That every moment of your life, there is a great cloud of witnesses. Hebrews 12 says, that's watching you. It's creeping you out a little bit right now.
Mark Clark [00:19:47]:
You're like, wow, I didn't need to hear that. Your whole life, there's no hiding. There's no sacred space. There's no secular space. So I came up with this idea this week that I immediately went, oh. So I'm sitting around with my kids and we're chatting and we're watching some show. And I said, guys, without even thinking, I go, guys, you should invent an app that's like a lie detector app that you could put your thumb on your phone and immediately tell by the heart rhythms whether someone's lying. And My kids went, whoo.
Mark Clark [00:20:25]:
And immediately when it came out of my mouth, I'm like, I don't want that app to exist. Why am I saying this? Why would I want that app to exist? How is that going to do me any good? Think about that. My daughters could walk up to me and go, am I your favorite daughter? Erin could be like, do you find her pretty? This isn't going to go well for me. Our whole life before God is one big lie detector. Ott man, he's watching you, and he's the only audience that matters. There is an audience of one. And now this, of course, is where this gets complicated, too, because you and I both know. Let me give you a little bit of an aside.
Mark Clark [00:21:24]:
You and I both know we can't kind of be actually 100% honest. Right? Like, because my kids, as we're raising to be honest people, they talked to me the other day. They're like, you know, so. And so they sent me this thing, and I just said, oh, that's terrible. And they. And so and so put on a. They dressed up, and they sent me a photo, and they said, what do you think? I'm like, no, that looks terrible. Don't ever wear that again.
Mark Clark [00:21:52]:
You know, it doesn't make your face look good. I'm like, yeah. And they're like, well, we have to tell them the truth. Yeah, but not if you ever want to have friends or have a job. And this is where it gets complicated. This is where the jazz begins. How honest, really do we need to be in this world? And here's the thing about it. We know that it's very important to not look people in the face and just tell them exactly what we're thinking, because we could be wrong.
Mark Clark [00:22:27]:
So here's the principle. There is a difference between being a promise. There's a difference between a promise and being polite. God wants you to be someone where in your promises, you are totally accurate in what you're saying and doing. But there's a level at which you can just be polite in society and you don't have to tell everyone exactly. Like, this is one of the things. You know, Andrew talks about this often, coming from Ireland, which is a little bit more reserved. He talks about when I moved to America.
Mark Clark [00:23:04]:
He's like, man, Americans, they just jump right into it. He's just like, I'll be in the line at the bank. And it's like, how are you? Well, I'll tell you how I am. And they kind of tell you everything. And Andrew's like, oh, my goodness, I didn't want to know all that. There's a level of politeness. And so here's the other layer of this that I find fascinating, what Jesus is honing in on here. Here's the mistake they've made.
Mark Clark [00:23:31]:
They think what is important is the question of profanity versus perjury. Think about that for a second. The question of profanity versus the question of perjury. Meaning they think, what is important? And this is a scary mistake that we make. They think what is important is just the words that I say. Now think about how in conservative circles, we get like, my wife grew up in the church, and this becomes the priority. There's a certain list of words you're allowed to say and a certain list of words you're not allowed to say. And so we get to a point where we can.
Mark Clark [00:24:14]:
And I showed one of my daughters a couple years ago. I showed her this movie, and it was the first kind of introduction to, like, a More. It was an action movie, but a little more mature. So there was gonna be some, you know, a couple swears and there's some F bombs. So I said, listen, I know all we've been watching is, you know, some stuff, but now it's time to graduate a little bit. And so there's gonna be some F words in this. I don't ever want you repeating these words. She goes, dad, I wouldn't even ever think them.
Mark Clark [00:24:42]:
Oh, little angel. And so here's what we tend to do, is we prioritize profanity and say there's certain words you can say and not say. And this is exactly the mistake they made. I say certain things. I don't say certain things, but at the same time, I'm lying, I'm stealing. I have no character, but at least I'm not swearing. And Jesus comes along and goes, you don't get it. You've totally messed up the order.
Mark Clark [00:25:14]:
Yes, of course you shouldn't use profanity, because everything's gonna reflect back on who you are. But the priority is the kind of person you are. Are you the person behind the scenes that's a liar and a thief and someone who has no character? You have no integrity. And so he says this, but I tell you, do not swear an oath, meaning I want you to get to the place in your life where you don't need to swear an oath, where nobody wants you to because they trust you. And here's the big thing. Do not swear by your head or cannot make even one hair White or black, all you need to say is simply yes or no. I love it, man. Can you imagine? We were a group of people that.
Mark Clark [00:25:56]:
That's. That's where we got to like that was it that. That is our reputation. Why is this important? Because guys listen. The same mouth that speaks the gospel is the same mouth that talks every single day and makes promises and either breaks them or lives up to them. The same person. If I. If I question your golf score, why would I care what you think about eternal things if you don't tell me the truth at work? Why would I listen to you when you want to talk to me about God and the Bible and the place of my own soul? See, every word that you speak, you're seeding in a kind of credibility that is then gonna come later when you wanna tell someone.
Mark Clark [00:27:01]:
By the way, now, I need to talk to you about Jesus. And that's why your character matters, because it goes back. Listen, there's this guy, Tommy Cool. I'm gonna put his. I'm gonna put his picture up on the screen. This is Tommy Cool, okay? Tommy Kuhl is a golfer, and he's been golfing hard since he was 2 years old, doing everything he can to be successful. This week, he was playing in one of the golf tournaments around America where if you do well, then you can go to the U.S. open, right? U.S.
Mark Clark [00:27:35]:
open. Most important golf tournament in this country. And so he was trying to get into the US Open. He went to this golf course and he shot 62, the round of his career, career round, probably broke the course record. And he got into the US Open. Tommy Cool did. It was unbelievable. Then he woke up the next morning and he had this conviction.
Mark Clark [00:27:55]:
And the conviction was the course a couple weeks before had done something called aerating the greens, which means they punch holes in the greens in order for them to grow. And by the time they got to the tournament, there was still a bunch of aerated kind of small little holes in the green as they played. And Tommy realized that what he'd been doing all day was fixing the aerated divots, which is illegal. Nobody noticed. But he woke up convicted, and he went to the people and he said, listen, I know I shot 62 career. I'm going to the US Open. But for the whole day, I was fixing the aerated holes. They weren't divots.
Mark Clark [00:28:41]:
They were aeration holes. And I didn't realize it. And then I realized this morning, and I couldn't live with myself, so I had to tell you. And they disqualified Them. It's a dumb rule. But here's the thing about Tommy Kuhl. The next time he looks somebody in the face and says something, they're going to believe it. The next time he has to look his kids in the future, his wife and say something, they're probably not going to question Tommy Cool man.
Mark Clark [00:29:18]:
Because that guy disqualified himself from his ultimate dream because of integrity. I don't know whether that's what we would do. There's times Ray told me a story the other day about this conference that he was at Christian conference and one of the speakers came in and he told this crazy story about India and this and this and all this crazy. And then he left. And then another conference speaker came in. It was the next day and the conference speaker got up and he told the story. But this time it happened to him. And a lady walked up to him and said this fascinating coincidence, the exact same thing that happened to you happened to the speaker yesterday.
Mark Clark [00:30:07]:
And right there all the credibility collapsed because we have to believe that people are telling us the truth. And the minute you start telling stories that aren't true or a comedian, what's the ultimate violation for a comedian to steal a joke? You steal a joke and pun it off as your own idea. You'll be done as a comic. Because even in that world, integrity matters. Do you say is your yes your yes. And this is actually getting more complicated. Here's what I think is the beautiful thing of this vision. You know, we live in a world right now.
Mark Clark [00:30:49]:
Remember a couple months ago I talked about ChatGPT and a lot of you hadn't heard of it. And I said, as time goes on, there'll be more hands that go up and more hands that go up. So now artificial intelligence is at a point. This is recent, this is like the last two weeks. Here's what artificial intelligence now does. If you haven't all spoken for any time on the Internet, like they put any audio of your voice on the Internet, AI can take your audio and make you say whatever it wants. So here's what's happening now. They're taking people and AI takes their voice and makes them call their parents and say, I've been abducted.
Mark Clark [00:31:23]:
I need you to send money. One of the biggest podcasters in the world, a two and a half hour podcast was put online with him interviewing someone and it wasn't him. He's like, I've never done this interview in my life. AI created a two hour interview just because of all the words that he's put out. It could Construct. This is the world you and I are living in now. A world of untruth, of synthetic reality that Jesus is going, how refreshing is it going to be to have a people whose yes is yes and their no is no? Guys in a world of AI and fake news and chatgpt and deep fakes, a people that you can trust. This is where the church is gonna shine in a beautiful way.
Mark Clark [00:32:25]:
Now, why do we lie? Why do we become the kinds of people who our yes isn't our yes and our no isn't our no. It's not because we're evil people sitting, twisting our mustache in a corner going, how do I take over the world? E. It's not that. Here's my theory about why we try to manipulate and lie, which is exactly what he says here. You can't actually make your. You can't make even one hair on your head white or black. You have no control over these things. You know why we lie? Because we're trying to control everything.
Mark Clark [00:32:57]:
We think we have a better story to tell and a better end result than God does. So we try to manipulate the end and we try to manipulate what actually happens. So I remember I was driving to the dump one day with my buddy and I kind of made this commitment. And I don't mean to sound self righteous, but I kind of made this commitment a few years ago. And when I become a Christian, like I'm gonna try to be someone who just doesn't lie. I have other sins, but just doesn't lie and just see where my life turns out as an experiment. Because lying to me is just so 80s. Like, who's lying anymore? What a bunch of losers to lie.
Mark Clark [00:33:33]:
Just figure out how your life's gonna work if you think something, if you do something, just live up to it, Fess up to it. So I'm driving to the dump and I got all this stuff. But if it's just wood in your back, then you don't pay for it. You just drive in. But if there's a bunch of garbage. So as we pull up, my buddy goes, hey, listen, just say it's all wood. And so I said, sure, sure, sure. And I pull up and I said, it's half wood, and then it's half a ton of other stuff.
Mark Clark [00:33:58]:
And we drive away. He's like, what are you doing? That's gonna cost you 200 bucks. And he tells this story all the time to make fun of me at parties. And every time he tells it, I love it because it shows people. I want to Figure out where my life ends up if I don't lie. If every time I get to the dump, I tell them exactly what's in the back every time, where will your life end up? Because I can't make my hair white or black. I can't. I have no control.
Mark Clark [00:34:31]:
It's exactly it what Kevin's book's about. Stay in your lane. You can't do God's job. Okay, let me end and then pray for you. He says anything beyond this, anything beyond being somebody who just says yes or no comes from the evil one. You know what's so fascinating about him saying that? He's saying when you tell a lie, it's not some cute little white lie to get through life. It is evil. Like when you think about Satan, when you think about the demonic.
Mark Clark [00:35:01]:
If I say that, okay, guys, we demonic. You think about, like, the. You know, you wake up and there's a foggy mirror, you know, in your bathroom. It's like, you know, oh, my goodness. No, no. The demonic is when you lie. Lying is Satan's native tongue. It's exactly what he knows how to do.
Mark Clark [00:35:26]:
It's exactly what he does. And every time you do it, you capitulate with him and you become an agent of evil in the world, not just some neutral thing. Now, to say all that, I bet a bunch of us are feeling kind of guilty right now. You're like, oh, well, I walked in here feeling good, and now I feel like a loser. So let me tell you the good news. Jesus Christ went to the cross for a whole bunch of liars like you and me. Jesus Christ went to the cross and took your legitimate punishment that you should get for all the white lies you've ever told. And he took them on himself and he became a liar for you so that you could become his righteousness.
Mark Clark [00:36:25]:
That's what Martin Luther called the great exchange. He took your sin so that you could take his righteousness. He rose again from death. Now here's a beautiful image. Some of us are like, yeah, but I still do all those lies that I've told. All those lies. You know, when. When you.
Mark Clark [00:36:43]:
When I do marriage counseling with couples that have experience adultery, oftentimes they'll say, it's not so much the adultery piece, it's the lying. It's the years of lying. It's every day she came home and pretended things were okay. It's every time that he. It's the lying that destroyed my soul. And so some of us have done those lies. And we walk in here As a liar. And we're like, here's the beautiful thing about the gospel.
Mark Clark [00:37:10]:
I told this story at Thrive, and I'll tell it for you as I pray for you. There was a story I read recently where this woman said she would see visions of Jesus. And everyone in the town thought she was crazy and said, oh, no, I always see Jesus. He comes and talks to me. And so the local bishop of the local church said, okay, let's just prove her wrong. So he walks up to her and he says, okay, lady, here's the deal. Next time Jesus comes to visit you, you ask him to tell you what the sins that I spoke in my last confession, what were they? He'll know. And if he tells you and you've got it right, we'll know that you get visions of Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:37:47]:
She said, okay, I'll do that. So a couple of weeks later, this bishop sees the woman walking around, and the town kind of gathers around. He says, okay, did you see Jesus? Oh, yeah, I saw a vision of Jesus. Okay, come here. Come here. Did you ask him what my sins were that I confessed last week? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And what did he say? And she grabbed the bishop's hand and she looked him straight in the eye and she said this.
Mark Clark [00:38:10]:
He said these words I can't remember. Here's the beauty of the gospel. It's not only that your sins are forgiven, it's that they're forgotten. Isaiah says, your sins get removed as far as the east is from the west, and he remembers them no more. So you came in here as a liar. Understand? Jesus died for that and rose again so that you can begin a new life tomorrow, a new identity tomorrow. So let me pray to that end. Father, thank you for this revolutionary teaching.
Mark Clark [00:39:01]:
Thank you for a vision for our life that is vastly different than the vision the world gives us. Let us be people of truth, integrity, and character so clearly and so powerfully that the world looks at your people and says they are people whose yes is yes and their no is no. And there are people that I aspire to be like. And there are people that walk as if they're forgiven and that their sins are forgotten because you are good and the story is about you and not us trying to control all things. I pray that we walk boldly this week in light of that reality. And if there's people here right now that just need, like, a special. A special prayer over them because of things they've maybe said or done that they're feeling convicted about, I just pray in this moment they would just. Just lift their hand up and just let me pray for them.
Mark Clark [00:40:06]:
Father. Special grace on those with the courage to lift up their hand. Every single one of us in this room, if we're dead honest, has things in our life. We should all be lifting our hands. Special grace, Lord, on us who are clinging to the reality of the gospel versus religion. And let us so be empowered by that truth that we become people of truth that the world sees and takes refuge in. In Jesus good name we pray. Amen.