Mark Clark [00:00:00]:
Hey everyone, Mark Clark here on the Mark Clark podcast. What an interesting name for somebody like me to have a podcast on. Anyways, hey, listen, it is the Christmas season and if you want to be able to tell someone, hey, I bought you a great Christmas gift, you might want to buy them my next book. I know that's not a shameless plug. It's just a plug for something I'm super excited about. It might be the best thing I've ever written. I love it. It's called the Problem of Life.
Mark Clark [00:00:24]:
And you can go over to Amazon and actually pick it up right now, pre order it, and then it will be on your porch on February, February 18, so you can tell that, hey someone, I bought you this and it's going to be here February 18th. The problem of Life. I'm super excited about it. It deals with every issue and challenge that we have in a way to flourish and find identity and purpose and joy in the midst of a world that's constantly trying to take those things. Deals with all of those issues, even suffering and death, but also how to find true joy and happiness and chase the longing that we all have in our lives toward God. It's an awesome book. Super fun. Today we're talking about Matthew 6, where Jesus teaches about real treasure, which is an honest conversation, the of treasure that actually lasts forever.
Mark Clark [00:01:06]:
So this message is for anyone who has felt the pull of materialism or is caught up in the race to just accumulate more. And Jesus flips that thinking all on his head and he invites us to invest in eternal things that truly matter. So if you're ready to rethink your priorities and discover a purpose that goes way beyond the here and now. This episode is for you or someone you could share it with. So let's jump into this Sermon on the Mount, part five. Matthew chapter six says this. I love this. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moths and vermin destroy and where thieves break in and steal.
Mark Clark [00:01:43]:
But store up for yourselves treasures where in heaven where moths and vermins do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So great teaching right there. And you know, I could spend 40 minutes talking about three words in those sentences and we'll see how we do. And then he gives this interesting little pivot, which is kind of confusing and hopefully we'll have enough time to explain it. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your Eyes are unhealthy.
Mark Clark [00:02:23]:
Your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness? What? All right, verse 24, then he comes back again. No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and what money? All right, so here's Jesus being super practical, and he's saying, here's the big idea of the text. Live your life in a way that treasures eternal things versus temporal things. That's how you're gonna win at life. Treasure and build up things that are gonna last eternally versus temporally.
Mark Clark [00:03:11]:
That's how you're gonna win at life. And if your functioning question is, how do I win at life? It's like, if you're a dad, right? It's like everything's about a competition, and you wanna know how to win, right? Me and my buddies will compete about everything. It's just like, I don't know, we'll just be sitting backstage, we'll just be placing bets on somebody saying something just to say, we won, right? We're dads. We're trying to win at stuff all the time. I know this men's ministry. They were doing some baptisms and they were baptizing guys, and the guys would stay under the water in competition with the other guys to see who could stay under longer, right? Just like I gotta. These guys were dying, but they refused to tap out. All right, so you want to win at life.
Mark Clark [00:03:53]:
Here's what Jesus says. Invest and prioritize eternal things, not just temporal things. That's the idea. So remember what he's been talking about so far in chapter 6, verses 1 to 18? He's been talking about the private life of all of us. You know, pray in private, fast in private, give in private. Now he's moving on to the public life, and he starts talking about food and money and clothing and ambition and anxiety. So if the original section was about the religious life, this section is about kind of the secular life, the everyday life. And what he's going to try to say is, I want those two things to team up.
Mark Clark [00:04:36]:
I don't want you to be one person in the dark and somebody else out in the open. I want your secular and your religious life to actually team up, because it's all the same. And I remember when I first started coming to church, people loved their little religious language. And I walked into church when I was 18, 19 years old, and Everyone would. They go, oh, hey, come join our fellowship. And I'm like, what is this, the Lord of the Rings? I don't understand what you're talking about right now. Right? So, oh, we have a Lord, we pray, a hedge of protection. I'm like, a hedge? What is it, a bush? It doesn't seem very hard to get through.
Mark Clark [00:05:09]:
I don't understand what this is all about, right? It's like all this Christiany language that we use. Oh, sister, oh, brother, oh, oh, the Lord is with us. And they use all this vernacular, but I knew some of them, and I knew that they were greedy, but they wouldn't sat there, oh, Lord is so good, and he's got a hedge of protection. Or about you, whatever. But it was like, I know what you do with your money. You're greedy, right? And I'm like, this public life and this private life were separate things. And this is what Jesus is trying to come at us about. He's trying to say, make sure that's not the case.
Mark Clark [00:05:48]:
Make sure who you are in the dark is who you are in the light. Right? Don't become a religious hypocrite who compartmentalizes your life into a religious life and a private life and a secular life and all of that. So a few weeks ago, Kurt was preaching, and I was sitting in the service, one of the services, and he said, you know, open up some passage. So I took my phone out and I opened up my YouVersion app, which, you know, Bible app on my phone, and I had transferred my phone over from Canadian to an American phone, and this has just happened. So I hadn't opened all my apps, kind of like reset. And so I open up the YouVersion app, and I realize, like, okay, there's, you know, this asking me to, like, hey, do you like this app? And punch in your info and sign in for your first time. We're glad you're here. We're glad you like the Bible.
Mark Clark [00:06:44]:
And I'm like, okay, well, you know, clearly it's not the first time I've read the Bible on my phone, but, okay, I'll sign up and whatever. And so I type in all my info. Takes me five minutes. No idea what Kurt's talking about. And. And then I come back up, and I go through the service and, da, da, da. So I get this DM on Instagram, this direct message a couple days later. And this guy, this woman's like, hey, I was sitting above you in church, and I saw you open your YouVersion Bible app, and I noticed You've never opened that app before, and you're our pastor.
Mark Clark [00:07:19]:
And I have to say, it made me feel better about myself because I don't open the Bible on my phone either. And I'm like, what? Wait, no, no, no. That's not what happened. What? So then I'm like, no, it's not the first time I've opened up my Bible. What are you talking about? And then I got, like, super defensive because I wanted to, you know, And I realized why I was defensive, because I want you to know that, like, who I am in public is who I'm really trying to be in the dark. It really is. I really do love the Bible. I don't just pretend to love it when you see me and then don't read it ever again.
Mark Clark [00:07:55]:
But this lady was jacked up that her pastor was a sinner like her. All right. It's like, gosh. All right. So you can't compartmentalize your life. That's a big idea. You can't have a private life, public life. I remember reading a story about a gangster who had come to know Jesus, and this guy led him to Christ, and years later, he's like, hey, what are you doing now? He's like, well, I'm a gangster still.
Mark Clark [00:08:16]:
He's like, what are you talking about? He's like, well, I know all these lawyers, and they became Christians, so they continue to be lawyers, so I continue to be a gangster. He's like, no, you can't be killing and trading drugs around as a Christian, bro. He's like, oh, shoot. Sorry. So some of us are in that mode, right? We want to become a Christianized version of what we already are and what we are determined to remain. Just add Jesus to me and my beliefs about some things. Let me vote different and think of a couple different thoughts, and that's enough for me. So Jesus is gonna push back against all of that.
Mark Clark [00:08:53]:
And here's what he starts to talk about first in your notes. Here we go. Question of treasure. There are two treasures you could have. There are two treasures you could have. And he starts talking about it, and he says, do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth. These are possessions. Fancy cars, fancy clothes, nice houses, all your boats, all the stuff that we kind of build up.
Mark Clark [00:09:18]:
And he said, now. Immediately, all the poor people in the room are like, awesome. This sermon is not for me. It's for all these rich jerks, right? Especially all the broke college kids and the people who are, you know, mortgage broke, and they don't have any Money. And so they don't store up because they can't afford it. And they're like, oh, go get them, Mark. I love when Jesus, you know, calls out all these rich people. No, no, no, no, no.
Mark Clark [00:09:43]:
This is about you all, you poor people, too, all right? Because he's talking about what? That's where he goes with this. So you can have a. You can be super rich and have your heart far from God, or super rich and have your fart. Your far. You're fart close to God. All right? You can do that. That's going to make some kind of top 10 list somewhere, guaranteed. Kevin's over there.
Mark Clark [00:10:16]:
He's already texting people. Scrub it from the Internet. So you can be super rich and have your heart close to God, or you can have your heart far from God or we're never gonna recover. Let's just pray. Father, we thank you. Gosh. Or you can be super rich and have your heart very far from God or have your heart very close to God. That's the question.
Mark Clark [00:10:46]:
So this is a question about all of us. It's about every single person in this room. Rich, poor, whatever. Because it's a heart issue. And the question is, think about where you spend your time, your energy, your money. Is it on this life or is it on the next life? That's the question. Because he's saying, I don't want you to build up your treasures on Earth where Mars and Vermont destroy and where thieves break in, but store up yourselves treasures in heaven. This is the goal.
Mark Clark [00:11:13]:
So what do you spend your time, your money, your energy on? Is it stuff for Earth or stuff in heaven? That's the ultimate question for life. Ultimately, at the end of this service, I want to give you guys a chance to come to know Jesus. Some of you are here. You're just here celebrating Father's Day or maybe you're new to church or whatever. I'm glad you're here. This is the ultimate question of your life. Are you investing into your eternal future or are you just focused on the stuff on this earth? This is the ultimate rebellion, right? For Jesus to go, I want you to care not about all the treasures on Earth, only it's for you to be the rebel. It's one of the hardest teachings in the world.
Mark Clark [00:11:58]:
This is where you know all the movies that we watch and we see ourself in the rebel, right? We're like. We watch Star Wars. We're like, we want to become part of the Rebel alliance and defeat, you know, Darth Vader. We're always Luke Skywalker. When we watch those stories, right? When we're watching Hunger Games, we're going to fight the man. But the reality is, what Jesus is saying is, no, no, no, you picture yourself as Luke Skywalker, but you know who you are? You're Darth Vader, who loves the comfort of the Death Star. You love the comforts of life. You don't want to give up the comforts of Earth.
Mark Clark [00:12:35]:
The treasures on Earth, all the bling, all the comfies, all the great stuff on Earth just to go to heaven. What's that about? And he goes, guys, you don't understand. You ain't Luke Skywalker running around giving up all of your stuff so you can fight the man. You're Darth Vader saying, nobody touch what makes me comfortable. And Jesus challenges all of us and goes, you gotta displace your heart from the place of comfort and possessions and put it on eternal things, because all of this stuff is going to burn. All of it. Now here's what's so hard about this. Our whole life is inundated with the opposite message to what Jesus just said.
Mark Clark [00:13:19]:
This is what's beautiful about Jesus the rebel. He's going, every time you open up Instagram and scroll, what is it? It's good looking people with lots of money doing crazy cool stuff. Hey, I'm at the Amalfi Coast. Look at me and my family. You're like, I've never been in an Amalfi Coast. I gotta look up what that is. How did she get. Why is she somewhere every three weeks? This is insane, right? Or it's the Kardashians doing this and this family and this.
Mark Clark [00:13:53]:
It's beautiful people doing fun, beautiful expensive things. You don't scroll Instagram and see ugly people doing boring things in destroyed houses that don't look nice. It's always aesthetically perfect. Oh, look at my new white magnolia house. Ah. You'll never say, ah, I want this, I want this. That when your heart starts to obsess over that world, your whole mind and being and time and energy and talent is spent on trying to get treasures on Earth versus treasures in heaven. And this is the ultimate fear.
Mark Clark [00:14:32]:
And so Jesus says, here's what I want you to do. I want you to store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moths and vermin do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. If ultimately your joy and your happiness and your identity and your meaning in life come from all the possessions and all the things that kind of give you some pleasure, For a few minutes. Then that pleasure will be ever elusive because it's going to go away. You know that 99% of crimes in America revolve around money? 99% of crimes revolve around money because that's what drives people's lives, and they'll do anything for it. And here's what Jesus is saying. If your whole identity, if all of your happiness is derived from possessions, you're very vulnerable. Because at any moment, you can lose them, right? You can get that thing that you saved up for, like, we all know this cycle, right? You save up for months to get that brand new computer or whatever.
Mark Clark [00:15:31]:
And just fast forward five years, it's sitting in a dumpster somewhere, and you're like, oh, that old computer, that's a piece of garbage. Or it's holding open the door, or it's in some storage unit that you'll never look at again, right? Jesus is going, don't you understand? You put all your value in these things. They just get old. The clothes you used to, you know, you save up all this money, so you get the best clothes. And then you look back at pictures of yourself and what do you do? You laugh at how you looked. You're like, who would wear that? What an idiot. You saved up weeks to buy that 10 years ago. Jesus is going, man, you gotta be careful because people can steal your stuff.
Mark Clark [00:16:12]:
Have you ever had stuff stolen? I walked. I was in my apartment years ago. We had Sienna, our first kid. And I looked out the window and I saw my doors of my car open. And I'm like, what's going on? And I see two people rummaging around in my car, little lights on. So I'm like. I shoot down and I run. I see these two girls and they jump into my car and they just start running away.
Mark Clark [00:16:41]:
And so I'm running down the street after these girls, and then they stopped. And then I felt bad because they were girls. I was like, oh, I don't know what to do now. Now I feel bad. They seem like they need my stuff, and they're like, oh, I'm sorry. I'm like, that's fine. All right. So I left.
Mark Clark [00:16:55]:
And I was like, my gosh. I remember a couple months after that, I got a phone call. I walked outside, my car was gone, and I got a. I got a. I was like, I called the cops. I'm like, my car's been stolen or whatever. And I got a phone call a couple days later. They said, okay, we found your car.
Mark Clark [00:17:11]:
Are these your Human remains in the backseat. No, no, no joke. I was like, you know what, keep it, it's fine. And they said, I don't know what it is, man. There's like, there's a funeral home bag with some cremation stuff in the backseat. I'm like, I just burned the car. I don't even care about the car anymore. Right? That's just what it is.
Mark Clark [00:17:36]:
It's like these things can go away so easy. They can be stolen. You think about hoarders. You've watched the show Hoarders. It's just brutal. They just hoard, hoard, hoard, hoard, hoard. The personal storage unit business is a $30 billion a year business. Just in the US alone.
Mark Clark [00:17:55]:
30. I looked up some of the stats. So it's personal storage. This is when you rent out a storage unit and you put stuff in there and you never go back to it, ever. You just. In 20 years, I don't want, you're going to hire someone to go in and empty it. Personal storage. 30 million people in America have personal storage.
Mark Clark [00:18:22]:
30 million, that's the population of Canada. That means statistically one in 14 people that you meet has a big room that they just have so much stuff they don't know what to do with and they just go, I don't put it in that room. And we'll deal with it one day. And you will never deal with it. It'll be a nuclear explosion and it'll just. And that'll be it. And that's what Jesus is talking about. He's saying, we store up all these possessions to ourself.
Mark Clark [00:18:55]:
But the problem is it's not the right way of thinking because you're investing in the wrong things. You're thinking temporally versus eternally. He wants you to think about this and you're thinking about this. He wants you to think about eternal heavenly rewards. And you're thinking. So temporally, all you can think about is Earth. All you can think about is this 85 years that you've been given on this planet and making it the best you could possibly be, the best comfort you could possibly be. It'd be like this.
Mark Clark [00:19:27]:
How many of you have taken like a flight overseas somewhere, right? So let's say you got an eight hour flight somewhere and there's some stuff you can do. You settle in a little bit, right? You put some slippers on, you kind of watch a movie, read a little bit, whatever, and you got your eight hour flight. So imagine you're sitting there on an eight hour Flight. And the guy beside you starts to put up curtains. And, you know, he's. I don't know, he's weird, but whatever, continue on. And then he just starts kind of painting the side of the plane. You know, he's got a window seat and he puts up a picture of his family and he just starts to settle in.
Mark Clark [00:20:07]:
He starts to build some stuff. He'd be like, bro, what are you doing? He's like, got some curtains going. And he's like, I'm settling in, bro. Cause this, this is it. This is life right here. It's like, bro, five hours, this plane ride is gonna be over. You've invested all this time. This ain't our home, man.
Mark Clark [00:20:22]:
What are you doing? That's what we do. That's what we're doing. This plane ride, guys, it's going to be over soon for all of us. At some point, happy Father's Day, right? At some point, you're all going to die. The plane ride is going to be over. The plane will land. And you spend your whole time putting up pictures and getting your. This eight hours figured out and haven't thought about, what about when the plane lands? What about the rest of time? Not the 80 years, the 80 billion that follow it.
Mark Clark [00:21:04]:
That's what he wants you to think about. I want your 80 billion to be awesome. I want you to build up treasures not here, but in heaven. Every day of our lives should be preparing for our last day. So what does that look like? It means you gotta start thinking about your character on Earth. Because what you do here is gonna feed into this, right? So I read this story this week. Guy's sitting on a boat, and he slides a letter over to a woman in the boat. And he says, would you come to bed with me tonight for $10,000? And she says, writes on the note.
Mark Clark [00:21:48]:
Yes, slides it back. So they get up, they leave the boat, and they go up to the room and they're all chilling out and kind of talking. And he goes, hey, let me ask you a question. Would you have come up to my room for $10? And she goes, what kind of woman do you think that I am? And his line back was, well, we know what kind of woman you are. Now we're just trying to figure out the price. That is us. We will trade out our character for money. Money, possessions, things that make the earthly 80 great and will sell out our souls at times for those things.
Mark Clark [00:22:40]:
That's what Jesus is trying to say. He's going, hey, look, don't be the kind of person who people can look at and go, okay, I know what kind of person I've got here. Now I just gotta figure out the price. It's the kind of person who so values not the things of earth, but the things of God himself. And so now he gives this analogy. He says this. The eye is the lamp of the body. What? If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
Mark Clark [00:23:15]:
But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness? Yay. Here's what he's trying to say. Here's what he's trying to say. Just follow this logic. So there's lights coming into this room, and they're coming into your eyes. And the fact that you let the light in affects your body in a way where if you stood up, you would be able to navigate around the room. But if you closed your eyes and light wasn't getting in, you'd knock into the aisles and you'd fall and trip and hurt yourself and whatever.
Mark Clark [00:23:47]:
So your light, what's coming in, is directly connected to how it's connected to how you're navigating around and how you're getting through life. So here's what he's trying to say. Later, In Luke, chapter 11, he says a very similar thing. He says, the eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is dark, your whole body is dark. But then he says this, so watch out for greed. So he's saying the same thing, and he's doing the same thing that he's doing in this passage. He's connecting it to money.
Mark Clark [00:24:21]:
So here's what he's trying to say. He's trying to say that greed and materialism has the effect of blinding you spiritually and distorting the way you see all of life. Because people can be telling you the truth about something, but greed is the one thing you kind of want to go, oh, like, I'll tell you this. I've been a pastor for 20 years. People have come to me and confessed every sin imaginable, right? I'll say, hey, Pastor, can I come and, you know, meet with you? And, you know, as a pastor, it's hard because people come to you and you can tell. They think that you're magical. Like, they think you're going to do a magic wand over their life and go. And it'll be like, good.
Mark Clark [00:25:01]:
But you want to do your best. So they'll come in and they'll confess lust they'll confess pride, arrogance, everything. And 20 years of list. I've sat with people. Confess, confess. Not one time has anybody come in and said, pastor, I'm too greedy. I'm materialistic. I think I'm materialistic because that's a hard one to kind of grab ahold of.
Mark Clark [00:25:28]:
When do you become greedy? When do you become materialistic? And this is what Jesus is trying to say. The crazy thing about it is materialism will blind you to the sin of materialism. It'll blind you to the ultimate questions. It will actually blind you from connecting to God himself because you're comfortable. I was reading the story of a missionary the other day. He said something that really stood out to me. He said, 95% of Christians in my experience will pass the test of persecution. He said, when I see Christians out in the mission field, this guy's from, like, Nicaragua or something.
Mark Clark [00:26:06]:
He's like, they can pass the test of persecution, but 95% of them that I've seen cannot pass the test of prosperity because we get too much, and then we don't cry out to God. We don't see anymore. We don't, like, really see, really feel what we need to feel clearly in a way that understands. So here's what he's trying to say. Do you love God or gold more? God or gold more? I got a buddy, he went to Jerusalem. This is years ago. And he's like, flew all the way to Jerusalem. And he went to the Wailing Wall.
Mark Clark [00:26:47]:
And he went to the Wailing Wall. And of course, the Wailing Wall, in tradition is like, you go there and you write down your prayer on a little piece of paper, and you fold it up and you stick it into the Wailing Wall. And then whatever you put in there, you know, he believed that it's going to happen, it's going to come true. I got my moment. I've spent, you know, thousands of dollars, fly all the way to this magical place. I'm going to put in my prayer, and this is going to happen. So ask yourself, if you had that moment and this was really a thing, what would you put in there? So he came home and we said, well, what did you fold up? What did you put in there? He goes, oh, what I've always wanted. I prayed that I would get a million dollars.
Mark Clark [00:27:30]:
Funny thing is, he became a multimillionaire like, 10 years later. So maybe it does work. And we're like, book that ticket, honey. A million dollars. So you have this one moment where you can pray anything you want. Your eternal salvation, the growth and the flourishing of your kids, your city, to reach as many people as possible. You love and serve the poor. Justice to be done, the kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.
Mark Clark [00:28:02]:
You got all those things you could do and you go, I want a million dollars. Do you like gold or God more? That's the question. That's what he's trying to get at. I read this analogy this week. So you get on a plane. You get on a plane. 290 passengers jump on a plane and they're flying. And it's CEOs up in first class and it's, you know, sports stars and big investors, guys who own crypto, whatever.
Mark Clark [00:28:31]:
So they're all up there. And then there's a missionary kid and he's just flying home to his parents. And they serve, you know, in Africa somewhere, and they love Jesus and they serve people, whatever. And the plane goes down and they're all standing before God. The credit cards are gone, the second homes are gone, the cool clothes are gone. And they're all equal before God. And all they go in with is what's in their hearts at the end of the day, that's all you're going to go in with. There's no like, yeah, but look at all my social media followers, Lord.
Mark Clark [00:29:17]:
Look at my cool clothes. I got a Gucci bag. You got your heart and what's in it, and that's it. So the question that's gonna be pounding right now in you is if I sift through all my stuff, am I addicted to the stuff? Do I see clearly? Do I feel clearly? Or has this stuff muddled my priorities so I can't even feel anymore? And I don't know what I don't know. That's the scary part. That's what Jesus is trying to say. Sometimes we don't know what we don't know. Now here's the beautiful part about this.
Mark Clark [00:29:53]:
He's talking about treasures in heaven. So. And he says, you know, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So heart's the issue. But when he starts talking about treasures in heaven, just take a minute and think about the fact that, um, heaven is not gonna be what some of us were pitched it as little kids. Because if there's treasures there, you know what that means? It means that your experience. What's your name? Michelle. Michelle.
Mark Clark [00:30:21]:
Michelle's experience. What's your name? Dan. Dan is gonna be different than Dan's. Isn't that interesting? Because, Michelle, you're gonna have a Whole bunch of try. You did stuff Dan didn't do, and Dan did stuff you didn't do. Let's be fair and equal, right? So you're gonna have certain treasures and experiences of the glory of God and pleasures, and then Dan's gonna have certain. And everything is gonna be meted out exactly to your individual lives. It will not be the same for everybody in this room.
Mark Clark [00:30:51]:
Now, this starts to play with our minds because what we are taught as kids, when I say heaven, especially for those of you who are new to the church, maybe you're here and you're exploring Christianity, you're exploring Jesus. We're glad you're here. When I say heaven to you, you picture, like, a big apple store of just, like, glass and white. There's a lot of white and there's clouds. There might be babies and diapers. And there's like. And there's a lot of singing. And we're kind of disembodied spirits, like, we've gone to heaven.
Mark Clark [00:31:30]:
But that's not what the Bible actually says at all. The Bible says at the end of time, heaven is going to come down to earth, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and there will be resurrection. There will be physical reality again, guys, in the end, we're not going to where God is. God is coming down to where we are, and he's gonna resurrect, and you're gonna be physical again. There's no Apple Store. There's colors, and there's. Your feet are in soil, and there's beauty and there's education. And, you know, Randy Alcorn wrote this book called Heaven years ago.
Mark Clark [00:32:10]:
And he goes through all these amazing questions. Will there be space travel? Will there be entertainment? Will there be, you know, art and complexity and things to learn and things to do? And that seems to be what the New Testament alludes. To. Jesus says, I gave you five bucks. You turned it into ten. I'm going to put you as a ruler over this many cities. And he says, I give you 10 bucks, you buried it. I'm not going to put you over many cities at all, because you're not good at what you do.
Mark Clark [00:32:33]:
And there's like, this. Not you, sir. I'm sure you're perfectly fine. There's going to be a different experience for everybody. And so for those of you who are like, you're like, I can't. Like, I can't get jacked up about the classic views of heaven because, you know, it's like, heaven. Okay, sounds good. That's because you've been told you're going to become a spirit.
Mark Clark [00:32:58]:
And you have. You're a physical creature. And you don't have any appetite to become a spirit. Your appetite is to be physical. Telling you to go to a spirit world is like saying, I want you to develop an appetite to eat sand. That's not how you were made. You were made to be physical. That's why Jesus resurrection is the prototype for the new heaven and the new earth and the physical creation of the beauty and the glory and the wonder of what heaven is gonna be.
Mark Clark [00:33:24]:
So some of you find your place with David Lloyd George, who said this. When I was a boy, the thought of heaven used to frighten me more than the thought of hell. I pictured heaven as a place where time would be a perpetual Sunday church service. Hey, laugh at that. It's pretty good. With perpetual church services and preaching and music from which there would be no escape. And he said, that's hell to me. I don't want to sit around and sing for the next 6 trillion years.
Mark Clark [00:34:04]:
And that's not the image. The Bible gives it all, guys. There's kings and different structures and things that are happening at the gates. And then the creation. We're back to Eden. That's why renewal, restoration, Re. Re. Re.
Mark Clark [00:34:18]:
Everything's re. Gotta re in front of it. That's because it's going back to a physical world that's then maximized. If it was just go to a spirit world when you die. You realize in that structure, God lost the story because he made us physical. Then sin and death came in. And if God just said, okay, now I'm going to change the rules and everything's spiritual now. He lost, and that's why he doesn't do that.
Mark Clark [00:34:45]:
Jesus Christ comes as a physical person to die on a cross to defeat Satan's sin and death so everything can be restored. Re. Go. Going back. Remember, rewind. Culturally, some of you are like, what's that? I don't understand. Be kind. Rewind, right? You have to get the movie back to the beginning before you return it to Blockbuster.
Mark Clark [00:35:12]:
My kids will be like, I don't know what that analogy means, Daddy. All right, shut up, kids. All right, and here's the last movement. And then I want to pray for us, and then I want us to respond in worship. Actually, Jesus asked the most important question you can be asked. No one can serve two masters. Either you hate the one and love the other, or you be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot now, it's interesting right here, it says the word money in the Greek.
Mark Clark [00:35:44]:
It's the word mammon. It's the God of money. So it's not just about money. It's about what you worship. That's what he's talking about. He's talking about your spiritual state. Do you worship the pagan God? He's saying of money. It's an issue of some of us.
Mark Clark [00:36:05]:
We don't worship money. We worship beauty or success or getting a promotion at work or our family. Our family being perfect. And he's saying, what's the one thing. Remember Lord of the Rings? Can't get through a sermon without Lord of the Rings reference at some point. Remember in Lord of the Rings when Gollum. What did Gollum call the ring? My what? Precious. My precious.
Mark Clark [00:36:43]:
So my kids and I went to watch Return of the King when it came back out in theaters a little bit ago. And I'm watching him do that and I'm realizing. And I read the books years ago, I'm realizing, you know, every person who gets the ring at some point calls it their precious. It's not just Gollum. Bilbo does when he owns it, Frodo does. Everyone who holds the ring at some point in that story ends up getting so addicted to it that they call it their precious. And that's you and me. Beauty, fame, success, your family.
Mark Clark [00:37:20]:
It's so precious to me that if I lost it. If you want to know what your idol is, what your mammon is, because you're like, I don't care about money. Whatever. You want to know what it is? Ask yourself this question. If you lost it, you'd be so devastated, you don't even know how life could go on. That's your precious. And the only way to truly go. I mean, the question is, how do you then go to this heaven that I just described 5 minutes ago? How do I go there? It's your heart has to come off of whatever you're worshiping and move it to here.
Mark Clark [00:37:55]:
That's it. That's the only way in your heart has to come off of worshiping beauty or sex or family or marriage or work or whatever, and move it from that addiction over to Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect life in your place, who died on the cross giving up all the glory and possessions of heaven, all the money of heaven, all the comfort of heaven, and came down and gave it all up to die for you in your place so that you could then go to heaven one day so that you could experience a love And a pleasure that you can only dream of. Pastor Ray tonight is at the memorial service for a pastor friend of his that he loved very dearly. And I watched a video of him a couple weeks ago and he was on his stage on a Sunday and he was doing a memorial service basically while he was alive. They knew, you know, any day he was going to pass away and so they took that day as a church and he would. The guy was up on stage and he was talking and he was just sharing about life and whatever and they just did it that day. By the next day, the guy died. And I already knew that when I was watching the video.
Mark Clark [00:39:09]:
And you know what I didn't do when I was watching him on stage with his wife talk about what really matters in life, What I didn't do one time, I didn't go, man, that guy's got a great shirt on. I wonder where he got it, man, I bet he loves that shirt. I bet he's thinking right now about how much he just loves this shirt. I bet he's like, I just love wearing this shirt up here. It's so great, this shirt. He doesn't care about any of this because he knows he is a day away from meeting Jesus. Every single one of us is in the same situation. When I was 18 years old, I said, okay, I'm not going to worship being cool anymore.
Mark Clark [00:39:48]:
I'm not going to worship being successful anymore. I'm not going to worship all the things an 18 year old kid worships. I get to repent of all that stuff and give my life to Jesus. And it changed everything about my life. And I want to give us that opportunity. So here's what we're going to do a little bit different. This isn't the end of the service. I want to respond in worship with.
Mark Clark [00:40:05]:
It's one of my favorite songs on the planet. And I want you to just think of the words as we sing them. And then I wanna come back out and give you an opportunity to meet Jesus and I wanna pray for you. But we're just gonna take. It's like a three, four minute song. We're gonna respond to this amazing passage. This is the word of God preached to us. This is God.
Mark Clark [00:40:23]:
I mean, sometimes I'm like meeting with people, they're like, man, I wish I knew what God said about this issue. I'm like, you know, I really do too. I wish you wrote it down somewhere. That's why, by the way, Bayside gets up and preaches the Bible every week. It's not for something to do. It's because God wrote what he thinks about everything down in the book. And then we just get to explain it to you. And this is what he thinks about your soul.
Mark Clark [00:40:53]:
And he wants you to go to heaven and be close to Him. So let's stand up together and let's worship and respond to the word of God and the beauty of the gospel.