Mark Clark [00:00:00]:
Hey, everyone. Mark Clark here. Welcome to the Mark Clark Podcast. We are part of a larger network of podcasts. So this one is brought to you by the Thrive Podcast Network. And it's got a lot of great shows on it. And one of those shows is the Thrive Leadership Podcast. And it is the idea that we have so many great thinkers and interviews and content about leadership and how to be a leader today, mostly driven by Ray Johnson and things that he has to say and leaders that he's interviewing.
Mark Clark [00:00:30]:
If you want to jump over to thrive podcastnetwork.com you can look at all the podcasts we have to offer and go download the Thrive Leadership Podcast. Today we're diving into some pretty epic concepts in Matthew's gospel. Ask, seek, knock. You've probably heard that before. Jesus tells us to pray boldly with the belief that God, our good Father, loves us deeply. So we're gonna tackle the golden rule, the classic idea of treating others the way that you wanna be treated. And it's a reminder that God's openness invites us to not only come as, but to treat others with that same grace. So if you're ready to explore the freedom found in these teachings.
Mark Clark [00:01:10]:
Super excited about this one. Let's jump into the Sermon on the Mount, Part 7. So here's Jesus. He starts this. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you'll find. Knock and he. And right here we're gonna start with this.
Mark Clark [00:01:22]:
Jesus says a crazy thing, and sometimes I just want us to, like, see and hear these things. Was fresh ears and eyes that, like, read this as if you've never heard it before. I remember as a new Christian, I opened the Bible for the first time and I started reading stuff like this, and it rocked my life because, I mean, think about how crazy this concept is. Jesus looks at human beings and he says, I want you to ask. Now think about that for a second. Because if you're in just the pagan philosophy of predeterminism, then the gods have already decided what is going to happen. And there's no need to do this very thing that he commands us to do, which is to ask. And here's the thing that kind of blows me away about it is he doesn't.
Mark Clark [00:02:13]:
God doesn't have to say this to us. He doesn't have. What God is saying is, listen, the way things work is, I want you to come to me and ask stuff. It's not just, I'm gonna go about doing stuff in the universe and you have no say in it, which is crazy. He's giving us some part to play here in the way things unfold in history. Like, just let that just kind of wash over you for a second. Because when I look at my life, I think to myself, why is he doing this? I'm probably, like, not smart enough and good enough and powerful. Like, I am mistake ridden to the nth degree.
Mark Clark [00:02:57]:
Like, I'm the. Like, literally. So in 20 years of driving, I have never run out of gas in my life. This week, two days ago, I'm driving my truck and I see it's on empty. But I know exactly what that means. It means I can continue to drive for at least half a day before I pull into the gas station. And so I'm driving and I go pick up my daughter from the mall with her friend. And we get in the car and we're driving.
Mark Clark [00:03:28]:
And this has never happened to me in the history of my time. And I'm like, oh my gosh, what's happening? And my daughter's like, what are you doing? She's like, look at the gas gauge. You're so dumb. How did you think you were gonna get all the way to the mall, pick me up? How dumb are you? And I'm. And then I'm outside of the car and I'm. And I'm pouring the gas. So I get my wife and she comes down and I go out and I get the thing and it's half of my day now, and I'm pouring the tank of gas into my truck and this car drives by and it stops and all these like 15 year olds pop their heads and they're like, hey, Pastor Mark, need some help? And they were coming to my house. A whole truckload of them were coming to my house.
Mark Clark [00:04:15]:
And here I am, just the idiot on the side of the road. I'm like, ah, yes, I need your help. But for far more reasons than that at that point. So this. Are you kidding me? I'm the last guy. Lord, you should be saying, I want you to come and ask. I should not have a part to play in what happens in the universe. And yet he says, that's exactly how I want you to think.
Mark Clark [00:04:42]:
I want you to pray. I want you to seek me out. Because you, yeah, you're not perfect. Which is actually what he goes on to say next in the next part of the passage, if you got your notes, he goes, which one of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, even though you are what evil. If you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven be able to do it? Jesus just said, even though you guys are a bunch of morons, even though you're a complete disaster, you don't know how to put gas in your car, you don't know your wife's love language, you fumble the ball every day. You take too much time off work, you're getting in trouble, your life's a wreck. Even you can do some good stuff a little bit. Even you morons can do it.
Mark Clark [00:05:43]:
Like, even you're like, you give good gifts. Think about the gifts that you've given your children. I mean, I don't have. I'm an 80s kid, so it's like, my parents birthed me. And then, like, that was it. It was like, figure it out. I was like, a giraffe, right? Just popped out and it's like, I don't know, Figure it out. And the giraffe just kept moving.
Mark Clark [00:06:03]:
I'm like, what? What's going on? I got on a bike and took off, and I just came back. When the lights went out at night, my parents had no idea where I was. Oh, there's a trailer on wheels. Sure, I'll come in there for some candy, right? It's like, zero. But the gifts that we go out of our way to give our children, the gifts were so good. We're extravagant. We surprised them. My oldest daughter, Sienna, she had a birthday last year.
Mark Clark [00:06:29]:
It was like she wanted a cat. And my wife is terrified of cats. Terrified of cats. Like, she has this weird, like, since she was a kid, she has nightmares of them wrapping themselves around her face so she, like, can't be around a cat. My daughter wanted cats to finally convinced Aaron just let her get a cat. And so it was her birthday, and we presented this cat to her. I mean, we presented, like, the certificate. She could go buy one.
Mark Clark [00:06:53]:
It wasn't like, in a box, you know, here. It was like, here's that. You can get a cat. And she started to ball. And then we had this party for it. It was a surprise party. It was like Amazing Race. And we're all over the.
Mark Clark [00:07:04]:
Like, he's going, even you, Mark Clark, can do that. Even you know how to give good gifts. So how much more he says, is your heavenly father. Even you guys. Even you guys, who fumble your life every single day, like, you guys don't know any. You don't. You just figured out WI fi like, five years ago. Like, you just realized the Earth isn't flat.
Mark Clark [00:07:34]:
And some of you still think it is, right? He's going, you guys, you thought this sun revolved around the Earth, guys. And you all just figured that out like 10 seconds ago in the history of time, even you guys, I. I want. I realize we, we have dropped to a new level of stupidity this week. I was scrolling social media and I saw this picture. You've probably seen the video of the woman on the plane. And she. She's convinced she's sitting beside a lizard, a lizard person.
Mark Clark [00:08:08]:
And so she's like, that man is not real. And he's got like a green hoodie on. And she's like, yeah, he's not real. And the plane's looking at. And she's like, that's not real. She's off. And instead of just going, ah, it's kind of funny, the Internet that went, I want to see a picture of them. Because we're surrounded by lizard people, and the whole stream is, there's lizard people among us and they're around us and they control things and they're lizardy and they have eyes and there's actual lizard people.
Mark Clark [00:08:34]:
And I'm like, or she took an Ambien and had a drink. You bunch of morons. There's no lizard people. Even, Even you guys, even though you're stupid, can give good gifts. And if you can do that with all. And imagine. And then he does the analogy how good and beautiful and awesome your heavenly Father is. He's so good, guys.
Mark Clark [00:09:12]:
He gives you gifts. James says, every good and perfect gift comes down from heaven for you. It's a gift. The fact that you are alive today is a gift. Do you realize he didn't kill you last night? You should just be like, ah, this is crazy. I'm alive. I'm in church. I don't know what tomorrow holds, but.
Mark Clark [00:09:36]:
But that is a gift. And he's going, this is how good he is. Cause here's what's really important. I was reading this Puritan theologian the other day, and he said, in kids ministry, what's really important is don't just tell the kids that God is powerful, that he's majestic. Tell them that he's good and that's what Jesus is doing for all of us. He's going, the great the power of attraction versus obedience. It's not that he's just your king, it's that he's your father. It's not just he's powerful and he's all knowing he's good, and that should attract You.
Mark Clark [00:10:08]:
That is the best defense for God, by the way. You realize the mall doesn't try to convince you, it tries to woo you. The mall doesn't reason with you. It dazzles you. It gets your gut and it says, of course you need a new one. Your old one's so old, it's not reasoning you. It's hitting you at a whole different part of you. It's hitting your gut, your affections.
Mark Clark [00:10:39]:
This is what Jesus is doing. We spend all our time in the church trying to tell everybody, convince God's real, Convince God's real. And that's great, that's awesome. But you gotta convince people that he's good and that he's beautiful and that he's wonderful and they should be attracted to God. If you are here right now and you are considering Christianity, he's real, but he's wonderful. He's a good father. And it's an attraction away from whatever your version of God might have been growing up to the real. Like, this week, the biggest thing that happened in social media was the invention or the launch of Instagram Threads.
Mark Clark [00:11:20]:
Right? How many people in this room signed up for threads this week? Right, okay, yeah, Few of us. So by next week, I'll ask and half of you'll have done it. So Instagram threads is Instagram's version of Twitter. It's its answer to Twitter. 96 million people joined it in five days. It's the fastest growing anything ever invented. It took two, three years for that many people to sign up for everything else. It took five days for 96 million people to sign up for Instagram threads.
Mark Clark [00:11:54]:
And you know what everyone's talking about when they're over there? They're like, I just love how it's not Twitter. And everyone's like, what do you mean? Well, because Twitter's so negative, Twitter's so down, it's critical, it's nasty, it's like the worst of humankind has. And it's true. There's like a hermeneutic on Twitter that when you read it, you just want to think negative and then respond negatively and criticize. And Threads. Everyone naively's going, let's just keep this a happy, nice place, right? And for the 20 seconds that it exists, it might do that. And that's the point. I want you to be drawn, not away from, like, fear of God.
Mark Clark [00:12:28]:
I want you to be attracted as a positive affection away from your old life toward a good God, a father in heaven who doesn't want to snuff you. He wants to look at you and say, you know what kind of relationship I want to have with you? I want to have the kind of relationship where you can ask, where you can come and you can plead with me. This is how good he is. He's not the kind of father who looks at you and walks you into Toys R Us and says, hey, kids, look at all this wonderful stuff. Look at all of this. What do you like, Tommy? I like it all, Papa. Well, too bad. Get in the car, you get nothing.
Mark Clark [00:13:07]:
He's not that kind of father. And notice that word father, though. This is a very important one. You know, every conversation you have is on the basis of something. It's on the basis of relationship. You don't walk up to people on the street and say, hey, can you just do this for me? They'd be like, what are you talking, get away from me. You're a stranger. Like, every time I go to Disneyland, I almost mistake because all the women look the same, they all dress the same.
Mark Clark [00:13:40]:
And when I'm looking for my wife from the back, I can't figure people out. And so I've almost hugged women before that weren't my wife. I was like, hey, honey. Ah, right? And if I did that, it'd be like, ah, purse hit, run away. Why? Because everything we do is on the basis of a relationship. I don't have any relationship with this person, so of course they're gonna slap me. But my wife's not gonna slap me once in a while, but she's not going to slap me in that scenario because I know her. So what's the basis of you asking? You have to have him as father first.
Mark Clark [00:14:20]:
You have to have a relationship with this God that he's talking about. Do you, do you know him as father? Have you trusted your life to Jesus and moved from a place where you have antagonism between you and God, but now in Jesus Christ, that antagonism has been removed and you have become a child of God who has a good father, who then says, I want you to ask, you know, in Islam, you can never, ever, ever, ever, ever call God father. This is what we got to hear this stuff in, like a fresh way. And we got to go, my gosh, I can't believe Jesus Christ is allowing us to call God father. And then not only that, based on that relationship, I get to ask him for stuff. As, as one writer has said, nobody in a king's kingdom can wake him up at 2 o'clock in the morning and ask him for something. Unless his own son jumps up on the bed and shakes the king awake and he this is a massive invitation for all of us. So are you asking or have you kind of grown tired of it? It's gotten old.
Mark Clark [00:15:31]:
I don't hear answers to my prayers anyway, so I've stopped asking. He goes, I want you to ask. I want you to actually impact the way things move forward. Revelation, chapter eight, if you read it, has this great image where the prayers of the saints go up and the angels take them in a bowl and then they turn the bowl over and those and the thunder and lightning come down to the earth and the image is. It's the prayers of the saints coming back down and impacting what actually happens on earth. That's the reason you ask. And some of you are like, no, no, I believe God has predetermined all things and he doesn't care what I think. Okay, then he predetermined all things, basing it on the fact that you were going to ask.
Mark Clark [00:16:21]:
Problem solved. Let's move on. Ask, ask, plead, beg, believe. This is what he's asking us to do. And some of you are like, yeah, but it's a crazy thing that he's doing because he's going, I'm gonna give you a little bit of power now. He always has the option. Here's the three answers God gives. Yes, no, and later he can say no.
Mark Clark [00:16:49]:
God always has a veto, which is a good thing because giving a five year old a whole bunch of power is a pretty dangerous thing, right? If I gave a genie to my five, you know, when my kid was five, I want puppy dogs and ice cream. The whole world would just be puppy dogs and ice cream. That's it. So he doesn't give us like, I remember Hayden, my middle daughter, we were five years old, we were going across Nexus, which was like a special card we had to come across to the States. And when you have a Nexus pass, everything has to be legit. Like, I have two bananas in my car. Or like, you'll be banned from America for life. And so we were like, serious.
Mark Clark [00:17:23]:
And we got, we lecture all our kids. Do not say anything stupid. We give things. And they're like, okay, are you all their kids? And literally Hayden goes, no, these aren't my parents. We're like, shut up. And the person's like, sorry, what'd you say? I'm like, nothing, Nothing. She said nothing. She's muted.
Mark Clark [00:17:43]:
Imagine God giving all of us wacky kids power. Like Revelation 8 kind of power. It's crazy that Jesus is saying this. It should just be like, don't worry about it. God's got it figured out. But he doesn't. He's going, I want you. I want you to ask.
Mark Clark [00:18:04]:
Look at this crazy verse. This one popped at me this week. But as many. This is John, chapter one. But as many as received him, meaning as many have become Christians, received Jesus. To them, he gave what power. That is crazy. Guys, we have a superpower, and it's called prayer.
Mark Clark [00:18:31]:
And most of us ain't using it. We're just going, oh, what's six steps to a Better Pragmatic Strategy? So I can. Whatever. And you haven't even started praying yet. The power. If I started going around this room going, tell me stories about answers to prayer, maybe some faith would be welled up in this room to start asking more, right? Like, I remember our family. I came together and secretly, my kids looked at us one day and they went, we desire to go to the continent of Africa. We knew some people running a mission organization in Uganda, and we were like, man, it'd be fun to go there.
Mark Clark [00:19:11]:
But it was like 10 grand to go there. Something. It was just too much money. We didn't have it at the time. Lowly pastor job. And so we said, we had a pizza and prayer night. We said, okay, girls, we're just gonna come together, we're gonna eat some pizza, we're gonna pray. They said, well, what's this gonna do? Okay, this is what we're trying to teach you guys.
Mark Clark [00:19:28]:
All right? So we ate some pizza and we prayed. Lord, if you want us to ever go to Uganda, please make it clear. Make it clear. Literally, I'm not joking you. Seven days later, someone at our church that was connected with the mission organization, we didn't even know them. Called up somebody that knew us and said, we were praying the other day, and we just have it in our heart. We have a lot of money, and we want to send Mark and his family to Uganda so they could check out this mission organization that we're a part of. Seven days now.
Mark Clark [00:19:58]:
Some of you are like, okay, I got BMW. This is the stuff that happens, man. We know. This is what happens. There's a guy named Mark Batterson. He's a friend of mine. He's a pastor in Washington, D.C. he writes books on all this.
Mark Clark [00:20:14]:
A lot of books. He wrote a book about encircling your children with prayer. And the last story he tells in that book, I always love reading it. Here's what the last story he tells in that book Is he says he had started to get a lot of asthma when he was, when he was a little kid. I think he was like 13. And he ends up in the hospital and like it's going really bad. And he says this. Our family started attending Calvary Church when I was in the eighth grade.
Mark Clark [00:20:42]:
It was already a megachurch with thousands of members. But the lead pastor had an amazing memory for names and faces. If he met you once, he would remember your name forever. Despite the size of the church, he had a hospitable spirit that gave him an air of accessibility. Maybe that's why my parents felt like they could call him. At 2:00 in the morning after my doctor issued a code blue and a half dozen nurses came rushing into my ICU room, I thought I was taking my last breath. My mom stayed by my side while my dad figured out the number for our pastor. In less than 10 minutes he was at my bedside in his black double breasted superman suit that I would later swear that he slept in.
Mark Clark [00:21:28]:
He was a large man with big hands. They looked more like meat hooks than hands. And when he prayed for someone, his hands would envelop that person's head like a skull cap. When he laid his hands on my head, I remember thinking there is no way God isn't going to answer his prayer. He had a familiarity with God that was disarming. He had a faith in God that was reassuring. He could have called a staff member to make the visit. He didn't.
Mark Clark [00:22:02]:
He could have waited till morning. He didn't. He sacrificed a night's sleep to pray for a 13 year old kid who was fighting for his life. Now check this. Little did he know that this 13 year old kid would one day marry his daughter. Little did he know that this 13 year old kid would one day give him his first grandchild. A colicky baby named Parker. There's no way he could have ever known.
Mark Clark [00:22:33]:
But that is the glorious mystery of prayer. You never completely know who you're praying for and who is praying for you. You never know how or when God will answer your prayers. But you can be sure of this. Your prayers will shape the destiny of your family for generations to come. And if you're willing to interrupt your sleep cycle, if you're willing to get on your knees and, and intercede for your family, God will answer your prayers long after you are long gone. That, that is why God says ask and you have power to do so. That kid's like, my goodness, God is going to actually answer this guy's prayers.
Mark Clark [00:23:22]:
It's a beautiful thing. We have something different than the rest of the world has, guys. Like, if you're a high school student and some tragedy happens in your high school and all the other kids just kind of sit around and go, I'm sorry. And sit in dead silence and say nothing, you know what? You have. You can go, can I pray for you? If your marriage is falling apart and you're trying to figure out a podcast and pragmatics, and that's. That's where most people stop. No. You have a superpower.
Mark Clark [00:23:55]:
You have a superpower that you can tap into. And here's the thing. It pushes against everything that our world is saying matters. And if you're willing to look uncool, prayer can change your life and the lives of the people around you. Because your job, as Paul says in Galatians, one, is not to please man, but who, God? And you shouldn't care what people. I remember speaking at this conference a few years ago, and at the end of it, they're like, that's not what we told you to speak on. I'm like, I know, but I don't listen to you. God told me to speak on this.
Mark Clark [00:24:31]:
And they're like, you're not coming back. I don't care. I barely wanted to be here to begin with. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. There was a whole council, and they said, you can't preach. You shouldn't have said any of that stuff. You know what happened? There was a lineup of people after.
Mark Clark [00:24:51]:
And one person after the next walked up to me crying, saying, you don't understand what you just said. How it changed my life. There was one guy. So the council man says, wrong message. The lineup said something different. Cause I asked God what he wanted me to say, and he said, say all this. Or I said all this. This one guy walked up to me.
Mark Clark [00:25:11]:
He's like, dude, I was walking by this church. He's like, I've been in ministry for 10 years of my life. And he goes, I wrote a resignation paper last week to leave ministry and go into accounting. He's like, I've been. I can't do this anymore. The people. He goes, I was walking by the church, and I heard you yelling. I was like, what? That is offensive.
Mark Clark [00:25:37]:
And he said, I walked into the building. And he goes, I grabbed a name tag off a hook. He's like, this isn't even my name. I'm like, really, Sarah? So he's like, okay. And I walked in here and I heard what you said, and I'm deleting my resignation letter when I get home because there was two minutes of what you said that changed the whole direction of my life. That's because I listened and asked rather than listening to what man was going to tell me what to say and do. That's the tension of your life when you ask. Okay, now the second point of the sermon.
Mark Clark [00:26:18]:
Seek. So now. So we're going to be askers, right? We're going to ask and we're going to believe. And the second thing we're going to do is we're going to seek. Are you a seeker? And here's what I mean by it. Here's what I mean by it. Not like, I don't know Jesus. And I'm.
Mark Clark [00:26:43]:
That too. What I'm talking about is even those of you who go, well, I found Jesus, okay? I was talking to someone the other day about leadership, and I said, the difference between a good leader and a great leader is a great leader is curious. Eternally. They ask a lot of questions. So, oh, well, I found Jesus. That's not what I asked. Do you continue to seek him? Because there is infinitely more of Jesus that you could get? So I found him. Isn't that's the start of a journey? Now the question is, how deep do you want? How much do you want of him? That's the seeking.
Mark Clark [00:27:19]:
It's like Psalm 42. As the deer pants for water, so my soul, what longs for you, not your stuff, not results in my life, not blessing. That's gift above giver my soul. I love the image of the deer panting for water too. Because picture this skinny deer and he needs water. And he's looking around the forest and he can't find water. And he's panting for it. His tongue's out and he's thirsty.
Mark Clark [00:28:06]:
And that little hoof sitting by the stream side, panting, my soul longs. You know what the Hebrew word for long is? Lust. I lust for what? More of you. More of you. That's a crazy idea. Like, do you seek him? Do you go, I don't have enough of Jesus yet. I gotta keep going after it. More.
Mark Clark [00:28:42]:
I want more. If you look historically through time, there are people that just. They just go after it, man. Right? It's. It's Moses going, I want to see your face. Yeah, yeah, I know. I have the Ten Commandments. Most of us would be happy.
Mark Clark [00:28:59]:
We're like, we got the Ten Commandments forever. Forever for time. I will be known as the man who walked down with the ten Commandments. Take these ten Commandments. But he goes, I want to see your face. Peter is like, yeah, I got to hang out with Jesus for three years. But man, for like five minutes he was over there and I was here. And I wanted to get from here to there, so I wanted to try to walk on water to get more of him.
Mark Clark [00:29:29]:
That's great. In two seconds he's gonna remember that thing. James, John. And they're sitting and Peter in the top of the transfiguration in Mark, chapter nine, and Jesus and Elijah and they all glow and all this crazy stuff. And what do they say? Can we just set up a tent and just stay here? I mean, the crazy thing is Peter's married, so he's going, I don't know, my family could figure it out. I just want to be here forever, right? The text says his mother in law might have been the reason. He's like, you know, let's just. I know what she's thinking when I get down, let's stick up here for the rest of time.
Mark Clark [00:30:08]:
But Peter saw and tasted how good it was and he goes, I just want this for the rest of time. So you got Moses just groaning and lusting for more of God. You got Peter, you got the disciples. Romans 8 tells us that creation is groaning. Everything is aw Tozer would pray for three hours a day. There's someone groaning. And here's the problem with my life. I don't see much groaning.
Mark Clark [00:30:47]:
I don't like hang out with people that I go, man, they have this angst filled yearning for more of Jesus. So much so that they're like, they just want more of him. We talk about God a lot, especially people in ministry. We talk about results and strategies and things and reaching the world for Christ and all these wonderful things. But I actually find it pretty rare to hang out with people and they're like, this is what I learned about God this week. Not, not like ministry God. He spoke to me. He.
Mark Clark [00:31:28]:
He did a thing. So are you a seeker? And then he says, you're gonna knock. And now at that point, the song hits your brain, right? Ask, seek, knock. Ask, seek, knock. Ask, seek, knock. And he says, I want you to knock. I want you to. I want you to.
Mark Clark [00:31:48]:
Hey, can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do this? And some of you are like, yeah, but yeah, remember that. See, here's the beautiful thing about knocking. You want, you want the thing that's on the other side, but there's a recognition that God is God and you Are you? And if he answers no, because some of you right now, you go, okay, asking, knock, done. All three. It's been a no. He always has a veto. You don't. And that's a good thing because he knows way more than you know.
Mark Clark [00:32:19]:
Right? When I was in grade seven, I started listening to Garth Brooks, right? Any Garth Brooks fans? Remember that song? Remember that song? Unanswered Prayers. Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers. Remember, when you're talking, I was like Elvis. Anyway, listen, the story of that is I prayed and this is happening. And then he sees some. And he prayed to be with some girl, and then he, you know, he marries some other girl. And then he sees a girl at a football game, and he's like, thank God that sometimes he doesn't answer the prayer as a yes. Which has happened, I'm sure, in your life, right? It's like, I junior high, Lord, please let me marry Catherine.
Mark Clark [00:33:08]:
I'll do anything. Just let me marry Catherine. Look how pretty she is. Look how pretty she is. And then you're married and you moved on 20 years, and you looked her up on Facebook and you're like, oh, dear Lord Jesus, thank you. On high. Sometimes I thank God because he knows. He knows what is best for you.
Mark Clark [00:33:42]:
So you don't have, like, all the power in the world for the asking, the seeking, knocking, but he's inviting you to do so because he wants you to get more of him. More of him. More of him. Okay, last thing to hit is the most important part of this text and what I was supposed to be preaching on, which is verse 12, which is 1 of the most important things Jesus ever taught on. So in everything, do to others. This is called the Golden Rule. Do to others what you would have them do to you. Live life like that.
Mark Clark [00:34:20]:
And this is connected, actually, this word. So is the word therefore. And it's connected to last week's sermon that Kurt preached about judging and not judging. And he's saying you gotta treat people the way you would want to be treated, even if they're people that you naturally would want to judge. So you can judge. You can have ideas about people that you disagree with. You can be in the audience and be like, oh, man, those progressives, the way that they're just doing whatever, 40 genders, it's not right. That's fine.
Mark Clark [00:35:00]:
You live in a country that lets you have any idea you want to have. The question is how you treat them. Yeah, but I don't like those conservatives, conservative people. Two genders, archaic Traditional. You can have any idea you want. How do you treat them? That's what he's saying. Treat people the way you would want to be treated. Put that into your marriage.
Mark Clark [00:35:31]:
Treat your spouse the way you would want them to treat you. Put it into your friendships. Treat them the way you would want. How would you want to be treated? With respect. With the default setting being. Okay, maybe I had a good motive here. All the different ways that you would ever treat somebody else, you'd want them to treat you, treat them like that. That's the big golden rule principle that he's saying.
Mark Clark [00:35:55]:
It comes right off of the power to be able to pray. The power. Because the Jesus way is the only way we can attract the world to the good Father. See, the world is so sick and tired of people treating each other in a way that's nasty, violent. And if we. If the church actually became the group of people who treated people the way that they wanted to be treated, people would actually come to know Jesus. Jesus, in this teaching, says, which one of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, we'll give him a snake. Every human father and every divine father would never give you a scorpion when you ask for a fish.
Mark Clark [00:37:02]:
They would never give you a stone when you ask for bread. But it did happen once. Jesus Christ came to earth and he got instead of what he deserved, which is bread and a fish and nurture, he got a stone. He got the punishment of the cross that you and I deserved. He took the justice that was supposed to fall on all of us so that we might get food.