Mark Clark [00:00:00]:
Hey, everyone, Mark Clark here. Hopefully your holiday season is going awesome. We are excited for this episode. We're diving into Matthew chapter six and looking at Jesus powerful message on living in humility, which is such a needed thing for all of our lives to flourish. It is about true righteousness. Not the kind that's all just showy, but true righteousness. And Jesus challenges us to live a faith that's real, that's raw faith, that's not just practiced in secret, not practiced in a way for attention or recognition, but one that has genuine love for God. Like, who are you when nobody's looking, Right? So we're going to explore why true discipleship of Jesus, why following his ways in the world means giving, praying and even sacrificing without expecting applause at all.
Mark Clark [00:00:51]:
Which in a culture like ours, where everything's done online and social media for the accolades, is such an alternative way to live your life. Let's get ready for some deep, honest talk about integrity and finding purpose in the unseen moments in life. This is Sermon on the Mount, part 4. Be careful. This is the text for today, chapter 6, verse 1. He's going to get into a whole bunch of ways that you and I, totally counterintuitive, totally unnatural ways that we're supposed to follow him in the world, which completely challenge everything about our life. So he said, be careful in the Greek. This is beware.
Mark Clark [00:01:28]:
It's a warning, Jesus, for those of you who are exploring Christianity. I'm glad that you're here. Maybe you're an atheist, maybe you're a Muslim, maybe you're Buddhist, maybe you're New Age, maybe you're agnostic, maybe you're a Hindu, whatever. Super glad you're here. Super glad you're part of baseline exploring Jesus. Awesome. Here's the thing you're gonna get with Jesus. He's gonna be very upfront and clear about stuff.
Mark Clark [00:01:53]:
He's not like us. We like to sugarcoat stuff. We like to fool you and go, dee Dee, look at me. Look at over here. Oh, now you're Christian. You're like, wait, what? Jesus goes, guys, I want to tell you right up front, beware in the Greek, beware. Like achtung in the German. Right? You've seen that.
Mark Clark [00:02:12]:
Like, hey, I want to be really clear upfront what this is going to be. This is going to be difficult. There is a cost to this. The way that you live your life right now, it's going to have to change the way that you do sexuality. It's going to have to change the way that. That you do. Money, as he's gonna talk about, is gonna have to change the way that you do. Family is gonna have to change the way that you do.
Mark Clark [00:02:33]:
Work is gonna have to change. Beware. Beware. I'm telling you right up front. And here's what I think. I think sometimes so many people deconstruct or deconvert out of their faith and leave the faith when they hit 18, 19 because they were fooled into becoming a Christian and they didn't realize the cost, and they went, okay, now I'm rethinking this because the weight is too heavy because we dropped the bar so low. We just. This magical thing, and you're in.
Mark Clark [00:03:03]:
And Jesus goes, beware. Like, it's the opposite to how we start. We lower the bar like this, and then we say, carry on with your life. Jesus goes, I want to begin with beware. Beware. Beware. Because he's going to kick against our natural inclination to do things. He's going to say, you should do money this way, you should do these things this way.
Mark Clark [00:03:27]:
And you can't. He's going to go on to say, you can't even live a life of a humble brag where you're trying to inspire people and say, look, I do money this way, I do righteous this way. He's going to go against all of that, and he's going to say, here's my fear. He says, beware not to practice your righteousness in front of others. So I don't want you to be like the Pharisees. I don't want you to be like the religious people who are in it, so that other people see. I want you to have something that's real about your faith, where you actually walk with the God of the universe as a personal relationship, not so that other people think you're righteous and religious. So last week, Dr.
Mark Clark [00:04:09]:
Timothy Keller, one of the guys that kind of has inspired me over the years, he was a pastor in New York City. He passed away. And I was watching a video of someone this week, and they said, Tim Keller and I. He said to all the young pastors out there, he probably had one last message. And he goes, here's what I think the last message was. He goes, we were emailing back and forth about Luke chapter 10, where Jesus. The disciples come to Jesus and they say to him, we're really excited because the demons pay attention to us when we use your name. Jesus says to them, don't be excited that demons listen to you because of my name.
Mark Clark [00:04:47]:
Be excited that Your name is written in heaven. And this guy goes, listen, here's what I think Tim Keller would be excited about. He wants you to know Jesus as your savior versus being successful. He wants you to have Jesus as savior versus you being successful in life, being successful in ministry. See, practicing your righteousness in front of people, it's all about get results, do stuff. And he's going, no, no, here's the most important thing about your life. Do you know him, like really know him when nobody else is looking? I'm not talking about do you know him for the hour you're here in church? I'm not talking about, do you know him? Like, do you do religious things so that other people see it? He's gonna say, do you have a private life where you actually know and walk with the God of the universe? And then he says, of course. This.
Mark Clark [00:05:36]:
Practicing your righteousness in front of others. These were the Pharisees, these were the outside people who would do something one way and they would say, I believe this, but they really wouldn't live it. They were hypocrites, right? That's literally what the word hypocrite means. A Pharisee, a play actor, someone who pretends they do things. David Kinnaman, who's this researcher, talked about the idea there are three top reasons people don't like coming to church. One of them is because the sexual ethic of the church. The second one is judgmental and narrow mindedness of the church. And the third one is hypocrisy.
Mark Clark [00:06:09]:
The fact that the church is full of people who say they believe something, but they actually act in a completely different way. They are hypocrites. And you know that these aren't just religious people. So those of you who are exploring Christianity, that's not just church people, that's all of us, right? We're all hypocrites in some way. How many times I saw people and they're like smoking cigarettes all the time and like, they don't even take, like chain smokers. They don't even take it out to eat. You know those people? And then they'll look at you and you'll pour a little sugar in your coffee and they'll be like, hey, that's gonna give me cancer, bro. And you're like, dude, you broke a sweat just cutting your meat.
Mark Clark [00:06:48]:
You're telling me this little bit of sugar in my coffee is gonna give me cancer? There's people like this all over culture, right? There's people who go, hey, you can't tell me What I can do with my body, but I can tell you what you're supposed to do with the environment. You realize how ironic that is. And we could go through all kinds of progressive and all the everybody is a hypocrite, live this way. But I think this, and this is why people stay away from the church. And Jesus says, don't be those people, the hypocritical people. Who's the person that's actually scariest that we can actually fool? The person we could fool the most is ourselves, actually. So Jesus is like, don't deceive other people. Don't have your righteousness be out there for the world to be seen by people.
Mark Clark [00:07:36]:
But you don't actually believe it. But also don't deceive yourself into thinking you're righteous because you might think you know God, but you actually don't. I remember a bunch of years ago, I had played drums a few times with my band. I had this band in high school. Hopefully none of the recordings are anywhere but. And I like, I drummed for a few times. So I was like, you know, so I remember showing up to youth group one night and there was no drummer, didn't show up. And so I was like, well, I know how to drum.
Mark Clark [00:08:07]:
I've drummed like four times. So I got up with these drumsticks, I got in the kit and they started, you know, playing whatever worship song we were playing, you know, Pharaoh, Pharaoh, whatever we were doing. And I'm sitting there on the drum set and I'm like, and I mean, the band's up there and they're just looking back at me like, bro, what is going on back there? Right? People were losing their faith, leaving. It was crazy. So when I got done, I'm like, yo, so is that good? They're like, no. And I needed like, I needed like an intervention of people to come into my life and go, bro, you are not a good drummer. Stop. Never get on that drum kit again.
Mark Clark [00:08:47]:
But that's what you need. This is what Jesus is doing. Be careful. That's such a nice way of saying it. Beware ach tong. It's like, guys, you are self deceived. You think you're a good drummer, you think you have righteousness, but you don't. And I'm here waving my arms, trying to get your attention, saying, do not think that you know the God of the universe because you do righteous things.
Mark Clark [00:09:13]:
Because you don't watch rated R movies and you don't say certain words doesn't mean you're Going to heaven when you die. That's just you acting righteous to be seen by people. He's going to flip everything upside down. Our whole cultural way of thinking that we're important, he's going to flip upside down. He's going to tell us the secret life is the only life. It's not the life where you get seen by anybody. That's actually important. Who are these righteous people in front of others? Have you ever felt that hypocrisy in yourself where you start to judge other people because they're not as righteous as you? Maybe there are people who say the Book of Revelations, which actually totally does bug me though, because it's not called the Book of Revelations.
Mark Clark [00:10:06]:
All you need to do is open up your Bible. It's just singular. It's the Book of Revelation. Any other than that? I don't judge you, but you get a little bit of Bible college in you. You learn a. You learn a word and some theology and all of a sudden you're like the best, right? I had a buddy, he took one year of Bible college and he thought he was the best Bible translator in the world. He came home to his wife, no joke, he said, we will no longer read the NIV translation. She said, why? Because it's not right.
Mark Clark [00:10:42]:
And he thought through one year of Bible college, he knew how to translate the Bible. We showed up to their house to do a Bible study. We all pull out. Our NIV said, we don't read that here. I'm like, what do you read, the Greek? Shut up and pass me the niv. You got a little bit of theology and you think you know what you're talking about. That's the danger. Beware of your righteousness.
Mark Clark [00:11:07]:
You think you're so good. You think you're theologically inclined. You think you know stuff and you start to judge other people. But that's when you begin to be lost. Because what is a self righteous way to carry on yourself? Listen, do you know, I had one person that I know said this great term. He was in this conference and he was up front and he took, you know, Battleship, the game Battleship. He gave it to an audience member and he looked at the thing and he goes, okay, E4. And the guy's like, hit.
Mark Clark [00:11:38]:
Okay, D5. Hit. C1. Hit. The guy's like, why? He's like, do you know why I keep hitting your battleships? Why? Because I know where they are, because I put them there. And then he said this. Do you know all that Satan needs to do to destroy you? He Already knows what you get, what takes you off track. All he needs to do is come back at that stuff.
Mark Clark [00:12:00]:
It's different for all of you. He knows the ships, so all he needs. He doesn't even need to kill you. He wants to. That used to be my baptism talk, by the way. At village, we used to get out front of the Pacific Ocean to baptize 60 people. And I say, listen, nobody wants this to happen. Satan wants to kill you and your family right now.
Mark Clark [00:12:18]:
Thank God you're here. And then baptize you in the name of the Father and Son, the Holy Spirit, because that's literally what the Bible says. He's a liar. He's a murderer from the beginning. And he doesn't want your testimony to go out. So he will come at you and try to tempt you when you're hungry and you're tired and you're scared. He will do all these things to isolate you because he already knows what's going to take you off track. He wants to destroy you and he knows where your battleships are.
Mark Clark [00:12:40]:
So what does he need to do? He just needs to distract you. If he can't destroy you, he's going to distract you. And you know how he's going to distract you? He's not going to distract you. The ways you think. Here's what you think. The obvious ways. Oh, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to get them to join this crazy cult.
Mark Clark [00:12:57]:
Too obvious, man. He doesn't need to do that. How many of you, if you grew up in the church, you just walk in, you're like, oh, those are witches. I'll leave. All right. If they're like in cauldrons and it's an oak. Hello. Welcome to the occult meeting.
Mark Clark [00:13:10]:
We need your blood. You'd be like, ah, probably not joining this. There's way better ways to distract you. Religion. Get you to talk about in your small group, stuff that does not matter, and do it for three months. Not one thing that your unbelieving neighbor cares about. I'll get them to talk about that. I'll just get all the Christians, forget the occult.
Mark Clark [00:13:40]:
They can just hang out together and they can talk about stuff that sounds really right. And I'll get them so distracted they'll never reach anybody. This is what he does. I remember speaking at a conference and I got to. And I was the last speaker. And all these Bible scholars had preached at the conference. And so they got up and they said, let's get into the historical data of Isaiah's Pre Babylonian context, the Hebrew word hachalachah is hashemahala. And they give these one hour lectures.
Mark Clark [00:14:11]:
And I watched. That's not actually a Hebrew word. Don't look that up on the Internet. And I watched them from the balcony do these hour lectures. And I looked down at 1,000 pastors asleep. The whole conference. The whole conference. So then I was last, and I got up, and I probably shouldn't have said it, and I didn't really mean it like it sounded, but I said, when we're in here parsing Hebrew verbs, all the people standing out at the bus stop are dying and going to hell, and we're wasting our time.
Mark Clark [00:14:44]:
I was not invited back. And in fact, they put all the sermons on the website. And mine was up there, but you couldn't click it. It was gray. All the rest of them were green. Mine was gray. It was like. I tried to listen again.
Mark Clark [00:15:04]:
Anyway, point being, just because you're busy doing religious things doesn't mean you're not distracted. That's what he's talking about in verse one. You can do all these practices of religious people to be seen. If you do, you'll have no reward, will come back for your Father in heaven. You'll have no reward for that because you're doing public life. And then he goes into this example. So he goes, I want you to be scared. I want you to be aware.
Mark Clark [00:15:31]:
But I want. I don't want you to do religious things on the outside. So when you give. So he starts to talk about money. So if I'm not supposed to be someone who says something on the outside and doesn't do it on the inside, here's my fear. I shouldn't be a pastor who gets up and tells you to give 10% of your money to the church. If I don't give 10% of my money to the church, period. This is why the book of James says, don't aspire to be a teacher.
Mark Clark [00:15:58]:
Because when you aspire to be a teacher, then God's gonna hold you accountable for what you teach. Which means, because I get up and teach the Bible every couple weeks, everything I say to you, God's gonna go, so why didn't you do that? And I'm like, cause it's so much easier to tell other people to. So if I'm gonna get up and tell you give 10% of your money, I'm gonna give 10% of my money to the church. If I'm gonna tell you to give me the Accelerate campaign like I did for six Weeks. Then I'm gonna give money to accelerate. I'm not gonna ask you to do something that I'm not gonna do to the best of my ability before God. That's the way it is. And that's because I'm trying to listen to Jesus and say, okay, what do you want me to do? Cause here's the thing.
Mark Clark [00:16:39]:
I've known pastors who've been really. There was a pastor I knew, he was tough on everybody under him about their sexual life. He'd say, you shouldn't post that. You shouldn't talk like that. You shouldn't be involved in that music video. You shouldn't do this. He was the most conservative person I knew in regard to sexuality. And it was only five years later that he found out that he was cheating on his wife and his kids for years.
Mark Clark [00:17:01]:
You say one thing so that you look externally this way, but you're not actually that. And it's terrifying. And you know why it happens? Because Christianity, over time, can become just something you're really good at. A hobby, in his case, a job. And you become really good at the job that you start to be. To manipulate Christianity without knowing Christ. There's a difference. I was talking to a guy the other day, and he told me that he was hanging out with this church staff.
Mark Clark [00:17:34]:
And this church, I won't tell you the name. It's kind of a church that's. It's a little wonky. It's kind of funny. They do weird things. So it's kind of a church that we make fun of. Like, we're like all those crazy people that. Wonky people.
Mark Clark [00:17:45]:
Ah. And they're kind of the butt of our joke sometimes. So he tells me, you know, I hung out with their staff for two days, and you know what their staff talked about the whole time I was with them, I'm like, what? He said, they talked about God. And that's just so different because most people on church staffs, we talk about results, we talk about ministry, we talk about mission, we talk about stuff. He goes, no, no, no, Mark. It wasn't any of that. They were talking about God. Like, they were.
Mark Clark [00:18:23]:
Like they were jacked up about what God was saying and doing and how he is, and it was crazy. They just. He goes, I've never seen anything like it. And I'm like, oh, it's so much harder to make fun of them now. This is what he's talking about. You can have the external mechanics and pragmatism of ministry and Christianity, or you can have Jesus. And so he gives these two examples of a life that either is externally on point, but internally a mess. And he goes, okay, let me give you two examples of a way that I want you to live like this, the secret life.
Mark Clark [00:19:00]:
And he goes, the first one is, when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets to be honored by others truly tell you they've received the reward in full. So first off, give to the needy. I love this. Jesus says, you sh. I mean, here's a word. Say this word together when you know what? I'd much rather it say G. That means he assumes it. He assumes that you don't keep your money to yourself, that you give it to the needy.
Mark Clark [00:19:43]:
And here's what I love. I want to be someone, man. I want to be as generous as I can be. I don't have a lot of dough, but I'm going to try to be as generous as I can be. You should try to be as generous as you can, because Jesus commands it. When, not if. You understand a command doesn't care how you feel, right? Like when Moses walks down and goes, do not murder. It's not like, oh, sorry, I just kind of was feeling it.
Mark Clark [00:20:09]:
No, don't murder and give to the needy. But I don't feel like it. It doesn't matter. I'm commanding it of your life. I want you to organize your money around Kingdom stuff. This could look like. And this is what inspires me about it. Because every time I say no to my kids, because we.
Mark Clark [00:20:31]:
So here's what we do as a family. This can look like external stuff, like global mission organizations outside the church. We as a family support one. My friend has a ministry in Uganda, Africa. We sponsor and support 5Kids. We build them home, we go visit them. We give them their food, their water, their education, all that as a family. And when we do that, you know what? I love that every time I have to say no to my kids for something, like if we're driving to Starbucks and they're like, can I get something? And I go, no, you can't get something.
Mark Clark [00:21:01]:
They're like, come on, give me a licky pop. Or whatever they want. Those dumb candy pops. I say, no. And they say, why? I say, because I can't afford it. It's not in the budget. And every time that they cry, you know what the beautiful reality of that noise is? It means somebody else is getting taken care of. It's the most beautiful sound in the world listening to those little girls cry because it reminds them that there's more important things in the universe than money.
Mark Clark [00:21:27]:
And every time I say, you can get a water. No, no, not a bottle from the tap. And then every time you drink from the tap at Starbucks and it tastes like metal, you remember that poor kids are being taken care of. It's beautiful. That's what he's talking about. Do you have a heart to give to the needy, to not hoard your money so that you can be a consumer of just products that you throw out in five years? And you know nothing. You haven't organized your money. You're just consuming a bunch of stuff.
Mark Clark [00:22:03]:
He goes, I want you to do that globally. I want you to do that locally through the church. That's why we give 10% of our money to the local church. So Bayside. Why? Because through Bayside, we support local mission, Global mission, Compassion, Convoy of Hope, kids stuff, women who are going through things, youth ministries, kids ministries, men's ministries. It's all money that comes to staff and support ministry that's actually happening. This is what he's talking about. I want you to be people who are generous.
Mark Clark [00:22:28]:
The only way you can solve greed, which is what Jesus talks about far more than some of the immorality stuff that we always talk about. He constantly talks about greed. Now, here's the problem with greed. You know, when you've committed immorality, but, like, when you wake up beside someone who's not your spouse, you're like, that's pretty clear. But when do you become greedy? The antidote, the solution to greed is generosity. And if you're not generous, it means you're enslaved. And what I mean by that is I remember hearing the story of a few years ago of a guy, and he was trying to illustrate the difference between living generously and living in scarcity. Some of you believe.
Mark Clark [00:23:10]:
You're like, I gotta hold. I gotta put away a lot more money. I gotta put away money. I gotta put away money. I gotta make sure I got all my. You got more, more money than anyone could ever do. I'll just put it away. I just keep putting it away.
Mark Clark [00:23:18]:
And he gave this illustration about this village that had this monkey problem. There was monkeys everywhere, and they're stealing stuff and ruining the huts. And so the guy said, I know what to do. And he went out and he grabbed a coconut and he cut a little hole in the coconut, and he put a chain on it, and he chained it to a tree, and he put it down, he took some raisins, and he put raisins in the coconut. And the little monkey went screaming down and stuck his hand inside that coconut. And he grabbed the raisins and then he goes. And he couldn't get his hand out because the hole wasn't big enough. But he wouldn't let go of those raisins, man.
Mark Clark [00:23:49]:
And so the guy would just walk up and put a bag over his head because he was enslaved, because he couldn't open his hand and let the raisins go. Some of you literally are enslaved to money. And the only way out is to open your hand. You got to become generous. You gotta be able to feel the blessing of God as you give to ministry, to mission. This is what he's trying to say. And when you do it, when you do it, don't go out and tell the world about it. When you do it, don't go, hey, look at me.
Mark Clark [00:24:17]:
Everybody listen what AW Tozer said years ago. He said the man of pseudo faith will fight for his verbal creed, but refuse flatly to allow himself to get into a predicament where his future must depend upon that creed being true. He always provides himself with secondary ways of escape so he will have a way out if the roof caves in. What we need very badly these days is a company of Christians who are prepared to trust God as completely now as they know they must do at the last day that we would so understand the need. And then, I mean, he says, here's when you're. When you're generous, here's the relationship. Because some of you are like, yeah, but what's the return on investment? Like the finance people, what's the point? If you do, you get a reward in full, not here, but in heaven. And this is a beautiful thing that starts to take place.
Mark Clark [00:25:29]:
Randy Alcorn puts it this way. He says, now in this life is our window of opportunity. Not to divest ourselves of money, but to invest it in heaven. We don't have to have everything taken from us. We can give it before disaster or death strike. Now is our chance to give what we can't keep, to gain what we can't lose. Because what happens when you give, and this is what starts to mess with us now is there's rewards in heaven. When we start now, we're like, wait a minute.
Mark Clark [00:26:06]:
That's not the version of Christianity I know. The version of Christianity that I know. Here's what Jesus pushes up against. He pushes up against this version where all we need to talk about is going to heaven. When you die and when you get to heaven, it's just a disembodied spirit world where everyone's floating around and everyone's equal and everything's the same. But the reality is, Jesus constantly talks about rewards. You're going to be given this reward, and you're going to be given this reward. Remember that scene in Gladiator? What you do in life will echo in eternity, right? Have you seen this movie? Right? What you do in life will echo in eternity.
Mark Clark [00:26:43]:
And then the men are like, yeah. And they just run into Death, right? He's like, hey, listen, we're all gonna go fight these hordes and they're all gonna kill us. They're like, what? He's like, but what you do in life will echo in eternity. And they're like, all right. They just run and get their heads cut off. That's reality. That's what Jesus is saying. Everything you do generously in the 85 years you've got in the planet moves into your experience of how eternity is going to be.
Mark Clark [00:27:10]:
There are gonna be levels of experience in heaven, which is why every passage in the Bible that talks about judgment doesn't just talk about your faith. It talks about what you did with your life. Matthew 25, John, chapter 5, Romans, chapter 2, Revelation 21. It opens the books and goes, what did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? Because your experience is going to be different than your experience. It's going to be different than your experience because there's gonna be rewards, there's gonna be treasures. There's gonna be a kind of experience. I can't explain it. So when you give, you're not divesting acorn, alcorn, saying away.
Mark Clark [00:27:51]:
You're investing in what your experience of heaven is gonna be like. That's the point. And so he says, I want you to do this in secret. Not. I don't want you to trumpet things around. I want you to do it in absolute secrecy. I find it hard to illustrate this for you because the minute I try to illustrate it for you, my reward gets taken. So just trust me.
Mark Clark [00:28:21]:
I've done a lot of great stuff in secret. I mean, even the Uganda thing, the fact that I said that. I don't get this anymore. Thank me later. But when you give to the needy, do not. I love this. When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Like, I remember when I first read this, as a new Christian, I'm like, oh my gosh, why is he.
Mark Clark [00:28:47]:
My left hand can't know what my right hand is doing. I'm giving so secretively that even I don't know what I'm doing. Why? Because the minute I start to register my generosity, my self importance and my self righteousness starts to take hold of me. So somehow I gotta get to a place where I'm giving and then I'm forgetting about it so I'm not keeping track so that when the next time comes I don't go, oh, I already gave too much. Isn't this crazy? This is a crazy teaching. You guys who are like type A people, like who still have blackberries, you're like, I don't understand what he's talking about. I need to keep a registered record of everything. And that's good and that's wonderful.
Mark Clark [00:29:28]:
He's saying, but just make sure it doesn't kill your generosity. Make sure it doesn't feed in to your self importance secrecy so that your giving may be done in secret. This goes against everything we feel. I remember when I first, the first church I ever came into, the pastor, he was interesting. He had a parking space and it had a big title on it saying senior pastor. And he would come in and drive in, it was the closest one to the door. He'd just kind of walk around. Literally.
Mark Clark [00:30:08]:
I was driving by him one day and it was in Toronto and there was snow piled up to the sign and I saw him dusting the sign off, I was like, wow. And he'd sit on stage and tap his hand and watch everybody and it's like, bro, this is the opposite to secret. What does a life look like, man, that's completely. Your righteousness is so secret. This is the challenge of our time. If you get rewarded, if every time you do your devos you post about it, if every time you do a good thing, you put it on social media, if every time you do something, something you tell somebody, at least somebody, the question is this, what is going to be left to reward you with? Think of that question as you leave here. What is going to be left to reward me with? If I told everybody everything, God's not going to have any reward for me because I told I already got the reward, right? People come up, hey, good sermon. I'm like, don't say that.
Mark Clark [00:31:14]:
Reward dead. Reward dead. Don't say it. If you say it, I lose the reward. Don't be done in secret. To be done in secret. To be done in secret. He talks about giving, giving, giving and then he talks about really quick.
Mark Clark [00:31:35]:
I'll land these last two points. He says, the second illustration is when you pray. I talked about this a couple weeks ago. But when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who do it with all the fancy words, because if you do that, they get the reward in full. I just. You're out in the street corners. You want to be seen by other people. He goes, here's what I want you to do in your prayer life, by the way.
Mark Clark [00:31:55]:
Prayer. Powerful, powerful, powerful thing. Some of you are looking for power, and you don't understand. You're going to get it through prayer. You're going to get it through a prayer life. Karl Barth said, you want to know the posture of revolution? I mean, today we're talking a lot about revolution, right? How do we revolt against the culture? How do we revolt against this? Karl Barth said, the posture of revolution for a Christian is folded hands. That's where the power is. And so your prayer life.
Mark Clark [00:32:19]:
And then he goes, I love this. He says, go into your room and close the door. You know what this Greek word is? Now we're gonna talk about Greek words for 12 minutes. No, I'm just kidding. But the Greek word here, it's wonderful. You know what it is? See, we lose this in our translations. Your room, you're like, all right, my bedroom. This was literally the room in the house in the Greek where the family would store their treasure.
Mark Clark [00:32:50]:
And here's what he's trying to say. I love this. He's trying to go, guys, the treasure is the praying. Forget the results. The fact that you went to the room and prayed, that's the treasure, that's the gold. You got to experience God. Something about you changed. You got the treasure versus going in and going, give me.
Mark Clark [00:33:15]:
Let me hit you with a list of things that I want, a list of expectations that I have for you to do this and to do this and to do this. Every great revival throughout history has begun with the power of prayer. Every single one of them. But can I tell you something? Prayer. How many of us struggle with a prayer life? I won't get you to raise your hand because I'm hoping you'd all say in some degree, yes, because prayer takes learning. And here's the funny thing about prayer. It's harder sometimes the deeper you go. It's like falling in love.
Mark Clark [00:33:49]:
I was probably a better prayer when I was 18 years old, and I would just come. I had just come to Christ, and he was alive and well to me. And he was doing things around me like crazy. Now that I'm a pastor, it's a little more formalized and it's like. I can tell you one thing. It is easier for me to preach a 30 minute sermon than it is to pray for 30 minutes. Here's the great thing as weird, okay, so when I'm preaching, I can go on some weird rants, but I've never forgotten that I'm preaching. I've never been up here and been like, oh, shoot, yeah, there's a congregation there.
Mark Clark [00:34:26]:
I should talk about something. What are they doing here? Am I preaching right now? That's never happened to me in my life. But I forget. I'm praying all the time. I'm like, okay, Lord, I really love. I really love my kids. And I really hope that. When was that golf game on? I forget when that golf game was on.
Mark Clark [00:34:46]:
Did he book that? I forget if he booked that or. Oh, yeah, yeah. So anyways, Lord, that the kids. That the kids would always, always love. Am I supposed to pick up groceries later? I don't know if I'm supposed to pick up groceries there. Praying is that crazy thing, man. And he's going, it's got to be in secret. It's got.
Mark Clark [00:35:03]:
You get the treasure of prayer. You go, you go into the room and then, and then the Father and he ends like this. I love this. He says, close the door and pray to your father, who is unseen. Fascinating. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. Here's the crazy thing. He says that the Father does stuff.
Mark Clark [00:35:26]:
He's unseen, he's secret. Here's the crazy thing about that. God has decided, have you ever gone? Why doesn't God, like, show himself? It's fascinating that he doesn't, right? Like, it's not like every time the sun comes up, God's like, hey, what's up? Morning. Doesn't do that. He's silent, he's unseen. Every time you drive up to Tahoe and you see the mountains and the trees, every time you go to Yosemite and you're like, in awe of the beauty, he doesn't go, that was me. Isn't that weird? Why doesn't he do that? Why doesn't he take credit for it more? Have you ever gone? God, all these things are happening in my life and I don't know why. And I don't know why.
Mark Clark [00:36:13]:
Can you tell me? Can you tell me? Can you tell me? And he doesn't say anything. Nowhere in the Bible does it tell us the reason why God is unseen and quiet and does stuff in secret. Until here it says he does that to be a model for us. Live your life in secret. But I thought we were supposed to influence. I thought we were supposed to be out there and public see how Jesus just totally messes with you. And he goes, oh, all the things you thought. You're so cute.
Mark Clark [00:36:57]:
So, Father, I do pray that we would be the kind of people who understand the beauty of a life in secret, the beauty of a life of giving, the beauty of a life of prayer. And I pray even in this moment, as we for the next five minutes respond to you, not me, but you and the beauty of your gospel, the fact that you lived a perfect life in our place and gave your whole life on a cross for our sin, that we would in this moment respond in worship and in giving. And that we would be generous because you were generous and we would worship you from the depths of our soul versus a religious thing in order to bring you glory. And that you would, in this next few minutes change us. That we wouldn't. We wouldn't go any. This is a moment where we are responding to you, responding to the work of God through worship and giving so that we can see the mission of Jesus done at this church. That you would drop in this moment and change us in awe us.
Mark Clark [00:38:11]:
In your good name we pray. Amen.