Mark Clark [00:00:01]:
If you got a Bible, Genesis chapter two is where we're gonna be. And we're gonna be delving into just high end concepts. It won't be the details of the book. It's almost like an appetizer when you go to Costco, you know, and they give you a little piece of cheese and you're like, oh yeah, that's. I should get that cheese, right? This is kind of what this series is. It's just dipping in to introduce some of the major themes of the book and really more importantly of what it means to be a human being. That's what the book's about. We're constantly talking as a culture about who we are as a human being.
Mark Clark [00:00:30]:
When you wake up in the morning, one of the deep question that you ask yourself is, who are you? What are you here to do? What is your purpose? What are you going to work for? What are you actually doing? So we're delving into the question of being human and everything that it means about beauty and sex and suffering and family and love and joy and birth and death and all of these things that we're talking about rooted. We're gonna be telling stories, we're gonna do psychology, we're gonna do philosophy. We're also gonna do some Bible based out of Genesis 1, 2 and 3. And as you can tell, I've been sick for about a week and a half. I don't think I'm contagious anymore. So the splash pad here or whatever, but I do have a cough. So as we go through this, try not to be distracted. I will do my best.
Mark Clark [00:01:09]:
But even the artwork is taken from the idea of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo, the painting of the creation of Adam. Because this really is about being human. That's what we're talking about in this series. What does it mean to actually be human? So, John Calvin, let's get started. John Calvin, one of the great theologians of the church in the 1500s, he talked about the idea. He wrote a book called the Institute of the Christian Religion. And it's said to be one of the greatest theological treatises ever written. And it's very thick and very heavy.
Mark Clark [00:01:40]:
The opening sentence to the Institutes of the Christian Religion reads like this. And this kind of frames what we're talking about in the book and in the series. Calvin says this. Our wisdom as human beings, insofar as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts. The knowledge of God and. And the knowledge of ourselves. So the two things that you're after in life is the knowledge of God and the knowledge of yourself. That's the big idea.
Mark Clark [00:02:13]:
And so oftentimes in church we do a really good job at talking about God, right? We do worship, we do Bible studies, we talk about theology, we look at sermons and we talk about the concepts of God. But oftentimes we don't do as good a job of talking about us, who we are, what are the way you're wired, who create? Are you creative? Are you just out in the universe doing whatever? What does it mean to be a human being? And here's one of the problems that we as a culture have delved into who we are without fusing it together with the question of God. So some of you are here and you're atheists, you're skeptics, you're not really sure what you believe about being human, you're not really sure what you believe about God, but you've tried to answer the question of your identity without fusing it with the question of God. And this is what we've done for the last 150 years as a. We tried to answer it from a secular atheistic perspective. And we've said, hey, go to the new age department. You know, if you go to a bookstore, the biggest section of the bookstore is always self help, right? We're constantly trying to help ourself find ourself. We're going there, we're trying to figure out who we are.
Mark Clark [00:03:16]:
In the last 150 years or so, we've tried to do it without God. We've advanced in all kinds of areas of life. We've advanced in technology, we've advanced in psychology, we've advanced in philosophy, we've tried to figure out who we are, but we're not able to find ourself. One of the main issues is that we're trying to answer the question of ourselves without actually fusing God. And this is what happens. We have done this experiment and it's failed. Let me give you some statistics on where we're at as a culture. 60% of college students meet the criteria in America for a mental health condition.
Mark Clark [00:03:52]:
60%. This is what's happening as we try to answer the question of ourselves without the question of God. 84% of Gen Z report burnout. What are they burnt out from Gen Z? What are you guys doing? Suicide rates are at an all time high in the western world, more than tripling among 15 to 24 year olds in the past two decades. The United States alone has an average of 49,000 suicides per year, which is twice the number of homicides, making suicide one of the top 10 causes of death for nearly every age group. The pandemic tripled the rate of depression in adults in all demographic groups. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health challenge, affecting 40 million adults in the United States, about 10% of the population. IQ levels are lower than a generation ago.
Mark Clark [00:04:45]:
And life expectancy in the United Kingdom has fallen in number for three years in a row. This is where we're at as we try to answer the question of being human without the question of God, where you've left to yourself. And all we are is more depressed, more anxious, more afraid, not really sure what to do with ourself. And so at the end of the day, the first thing for your notes is that this is the question of identity. Who are you? Is one of the main questions of your life. When you wake up in the morning, you're answering and asking the question, who am I? What am I put on this earth to do? What am I actually doing? Almost every story we tell is the question. Timothy Keller talked about this idea. He planted a Church in 1989 in Manhattan.
Mark Clark [00:05:28]:
He passed away about a year and a half ago. And what Timothy Keller says is, if I was planting a church again in Manhattan, most of the sermons would be about identity. Because the question of who you are is the question that underlies everything. It defends who you marry, what you do for a job, what you're doing on Monday morning when you wake up to find meaning and purpose in life. Who am I? It's one of the driving questions of most of the stories we tell. Have you guys ever seen Les Mis? Les Miserables? You know, the musical? Any big fans, Right? Yeah. It's like, what is the driving thing of that, of that story, right? It's like Jean Valjean, right at the beginning. Who am I? Who am I? I'm Jean Valjean.
Mark Clark [00:06:07]:
24601, right? And he's. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. 24601. I'm Jean Val. Jean. Oh, who am I? Right? Who am I? Is one of the driving questions of almost every story.
Mark Clark [00:06:21]:
Spider man, right? Spider man wakes up and he's like, who am I? Am I a spider? Am I a man? What am I doing? Right? And he's 16 years old, so he's neither. He's a boy. Spider boy just doesn't. But there's this question that we all have about who we are. It's a very important question to answer. And the question is, do we understand that we live. And here's the subtitle of the book. You have an option.
Mark Clark [00:06:49]:
You can either live in a world that you understand is enchanted, or you live in a world that is disenchanted, where all secularism, there's only nature, there's only the universe, there's only you. You live, you die, and nothing. Or you can begin to realize what we're talking about. So here's the first one out of the. The first principle that we talk about is this. Listen. Listen to the old ache inside of you, finding what you've always longed for. Here's the foundation.
Mark Clark [00:07:16]:
You have a longing in you. Every day you wake up, you long for something deeper than your experience. You have something in you, an ache that desires the world and the universe to be different than the way it is, right? When you wake up, how many of you desire justice in the world? How many of you wake up and go, I hate racism? It probably should be all of you. At this point, I'm just gonna assume you're lazy, right? I love racism. What? All right, you desire, you know, murder to end. You desire no tsunamis. You desire racism to go away. Why? Because in you, you have a sense.
Mark Clark [00:07:57]:
You have an ache and a longing inside of you. And the question begins, why do you have it? What is it that you're actually pining for? And here's what the biblical story would say. It would say that the reason you have a longing, it's not a wiring that went wrong in your naturalistic, animalistic upbringing. It's that God built in you. Listen, a soul, right? So here's Genesis, chapter two, verse seven. We're asking the question of what it means to be a human being. Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground. So the dust is there.
Mark Clark [00:08:34]:
He takes the dust of the ground and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And the man became a what, A living being. Literally a soul got the breath of God, got breathed into you as a human being, and now you have a soul. Listen, that's where the longing comes from, you know, you were made for a different world. You know it, and it beats in your heart every single day. Have you guys ever seen the movie Amadeus? You know about Mozart, right? Those of you who love music and Salieri who hates Amadeus, and he's his competitor, and he's always trying to figure out, how can Mozart be this brilliant? And then he says, when he looks at the writing of Mozart, of all those notes and music, he goes, I was looking at it, and it was almost like, listen to this. This is deep. It was almost like Mozart was transcribing music.
Mark Clark [00:09:32]:
It's almost like. And this is a whole philosophy of music, by the way. It's almost like music exists somewhere, and all we do is pull it from that world into the world that you and I exist within. It's almost like. And this is what the biblical story is trying to tell you. You existed in Eden, right? You were part of this perf. And what happened is it got broken and we lost it. But that still beats in your heart.
Mark Clark [00:09:58]:
You still desire for this deeper, more epic reality. So, okay, let me try to use a sports analogy so I can connect with all you Merkins. All right? So have you ever talked to somebody and they think that the NFL is scripted, right? Like, there's no possible way that the Kansas City Chiefs can win yet again. And the whole world is just, please, anything that can be done for these people not to win, right? And there's like, I was chatting with these people, and I don't know much about sports, but they were telling me, oh, definitely. There's this group of people, and they sit in a room, and they've decided who's gonna win, right? They have this script. And that's why, you know, the Kansas City Chiefs, they're gonna almost lose, and then they're gonna. All of a sudden, a referee is gonna throw in, and they're gonna win, and we're all gonna be like, no. Why do we do that? Why do we desire there to be a bigger narrative? It's because something in us doesn't agree that this is just the way things are.
Mark Clark [00:11:07]:
We pine for this more meaningful story. We pine for a deeper thing to be true, some kind of script, some kind of reality to be true. And this is because we were made in the image of God. We were given a soul, and our bodies remember it. It's, like, built into our DNA. There's like, an echo of the garden that we're like, man, I was made for another world. I was made for something deeper and far more profound than all this. It's almost like, okay, not a sports analogy, a movie analogy.
Mark Clark [00:11:39]:
Enchanted. You ever seen Enchanted Kiddos? Right, Enchanted, where the girl, she's like a princess Cinderella princess type, and she lives in an enchanted world where all the. Like, she sings to the birds, and she's like, hi, I'm doing my chores in the morning. And all the birds are like, yes, you are, dee dee dee, dee dee. And they talk to each other, and the deers come out Right? And they all. But then she gets sucked into our world, right? And she comes into this world where the birds. She tries to talk to the birds. She's like, hi, little birdie, come help me clean.
Mark Clark [00:12:14]:
And they're like. And they have, like, rabies and stuff. So it's like she lived in this enchanted world and she got sucked into a world of non enchantment. And she's trying to still live in the magical reality. This is what our situation is in this world. We belong to a world where there was no more tears or death or crying or pain. And we walked with God in the cool of the day, and everything was magical and wonderful. And then we lost it.
Mark Clark [00:12:41]:
That is the longing that you feel in your soul every single day. And God's trying to get us back there. Now, here's my analogy. Those of you who've been around Bayside for any length of time, most of you probably know this story. For those of you who are new, I'll tell it really quick. I start the whole book off with this story for a reason. So the worst day of my life, one of the worst days of my life, maybe the worst, was the day I told a woman that her husband was dead and I had the wrong guy. Now, for those of you who are new, this really did happen to me.
Mark Clark [00:13:20]:
I was 29 years old and I was working as a pastor of a church. And I went to visit this guy Dave in the hospital, and I went in and had a good chat with him on a Friday, and he wasn't doing really well, but he had a chat. He's kind of like me right now and just coughing a lot. And I went home for the weekend and hung out for a bit. And then on Monday morning, I drove back to the same hospital and I walked right past the nurses station and I just went into his room and I saw Dave. And he was kind of sitting there and he was like, he's looking out the window. He didn't look great. And as I walked up to his body, the nurse just turned me around and I said, oh, what's going on? And she said, oh, I'm really sorry.
Mark Clark [00:14:03]:
What are you doing here? I said, oh, I'm here to visit Dave. And she said, oh, I'm sorry, he passed away this morning. Now if you're taking notes, just be like, well, what's his last name? What's his social insurance number? Are we sure we're talking about the same guy here? But I didn't do any of that. I'm like, oh, he's dead. Okay? And I went back to the office, and I looked at the secretary, and I said, dave died. And I went back into my office and started to do work. Well, a couple hours later, Dave's wife Sarah was driving past the church on her way to go visit Dave with a Subway sandwich, because they'd been visiting that morning. And he said, I'm hungry for a sandwich.
Mark Clark [00:14:39]:
And so she comes into the office on her way, and the secretary comes to my office. She's like, hey, Mark, I don't think Sarah knows Dave's dead. And so I said, well, send her back. I'll tell her. And she walks back into my office, and I looked at her, I said, where are you going? She said, I'm going to visit Dave. I got a Subway sandwich. I said, I'm sorry, Dave's dead. At which point she passed out.
Mark Clark [00:15:09]:
And I sat and mourned the death of David for an hour with her. We planned his funeral. We talked about his life. She said, I can't believe it. I was there this morning with him. We were singing songs. We were chatting about life. And I'm like, I know these things happen quickly these days.
Mark Clark [00:15:29]:
This is decline quick. And then I went out to get her a glass of water. And I realized after overhearing the secretary that I'm like, wait a minute. Dave's at this hospital, right? They're like, no, no, no. They moved Dave on Saturday. I'm like, sorry, what? And so I called the other hospital and I said, I want to talk to Dave. And the nurse said, yeah, Dave's up waiting for a sandwich. And I'm like, okay.
Mark Clark [00:16:01]:
And I walked back into my office like, hey, how you doing, Sarah? Remember that thing we were talking about? Dave's not dead at all. Dave's alive. And I thought she'd be kind of happy, like she getting Dave back. She didn't see it that way. And. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. Listen.
Mark Clark [00:16:34]:
I always wondered to myself what it was like when she drove to the hospital and walked in that room. You know what it was like? Guaranteed, every smile that Dave smiled meant more every time he took a breath, every time he talked. It's almost like life got infused with more meaning than it had before. It's almost like in that moment, something epic. We were living life on a different plane. It had more meaning and purpose. It was like. It was a soulish thing.
Mark Clark [00:17:11]:
It's like now there was this question of what it all meant. What does life mean? What does breath mean? What does eternity mean? What does this conversation mean? What does me being in your presence even mean now? It's like it filled it out, it fused it with something. It's almost like, have you ever, and this is a little morbid, but have you ever had a dream where you. Where your spouse died, Right? I've had dreams where it's like in my dream Aaron dies, which is awful, and I wake up and I like, I like. It's like I appreciate her more, right? It works for me in my, like when she has a dream that I died, it's good. Cause then she like, she likes me a little more for a week, right? It's like, you're not dead. I'm like, right, See, this whole time I've been telling you, but it's like having lost them made it mean more. It's like it adds something and infuses life with something deeper and more profound.
Mark Clark [00:18:11]:
Because here's your option in life. You can either go through life and if you're here and you're a skeptic and you're wondering about God, we're glad you're here. And maybe you've gone through life and you think that this world is all there is, that all there is is life. And you live your 80 years and that's it. And you haven't answered the question of God, soul, heaven, hell, the question of your own spirit. The Bible just said you are actually missing out on the way the world is. There's a poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and here's what she said. I love this.
Mark Clark [00:18:45]:
She says, earth. If you think about it, earth in reality is crammed with heaven and every common bush is a fire with God. But she says, only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest sit round and pluck blackberries. Those are your options in life, by the way. Walk up to every bush that you see and go, eh, whatever. BlackBerry going through life. Or say, this bush is a fire with God.
Mark Clark [00:19:16]:
My day, God exists and he's giving me meaning and purpose and value in everything that happens. And the universe is far more infused with the spiritual realm than when you grow up in school, in secular school. They don't talk about this. They don't talk about the fact that God is in the universe. God made all things. You are a soul. We just go through life as if it's just whatever. The universe isn't that complicated.
Mark Clark [00:19:41]:
Let me explain why I think it is. I grew up in a non Christian world. I didn't believe in any of this. Something happened to me A few years ago, though, that made me realize that the universe is far more complicated than we think. So I'm living in my house. And I don't tell you this story to scare you. I just tell you what happened to me. And if you're a naturalist, if you're an atheist, if you're a secularist, and you're here, we're glad that you're here.
Mark Clark [00:20:05]:
But I offer you this story which is totally true. I was renting a house in Vancouver. I don't know if you've been to Vancouver. It's one of the highest markets in the world, so you can't really afford a house. You just kind of rent. And I'm renting this house with my three daughters and my wife, and we're living our life there. And there comes a point where I begin to feel, and this sounds weird, but I begin to feel like in my house there's some kind of presence, some kind of weird spiritual dynamic happening in my house. And I don't know what to do about it.
Mark Clark [00:20:39]:
In fact, I find myself scared. I find myself waking up at 2:00 in the morning, walking around my house with a baseball bat, convinced that someone's in my house night after night after night. And I begin to wonder to myself what is actually happening. There's a weird sense that I've never had this before. And then one night, I'm sitting down watching TV in my living room and I hear a chair scratch across the roof of my ceiling in my bedroom. My wife's right here and my kids are sleeping. And I run upstairs and nothing's out of place. And I begin to wonder what is going on in my house.
Mark Clark [00:21:15]:
I've seen too many horror movies. And I begin to wonder what is happening in the spiritual dynamic of my house. Now, here's the thing. I don't tell anybody because I'm afraid and I don't want anybody to freak out. Aaron knows about it and that's it. So we keep this thing secret. This goes on for about a month. Finally, one day I fly to Toronto, across the country, because I gotta go speak at this conference.
Mark Clark [00:21:40]:
And while I'm in Toronto, this pastor there, who I don't know from Adam, calls me up and goes, hey, do you wanna go for coffee? And I'm like, sure. So we go for coffee and we're sitting there talking about ministry at Starbucks and we go on for a couple hours and finally he looks at me at the end of our conversation and no joke, I was about to leave and he looks at me and says, hey, one last question before you leave. How are you liking your house? And I'm like, what do you mean? And he goes, your house. How are you liking it? And I'm like, it's fine. Why? And he goes, interesting. I get the sense that there's something demonic in it. And I'm like, what? And he said, the whole time we've been sitting here talking, God has been telling me there's something in your house. And he takes a piece of paper.
Mark Clark [00:22:39]:
No joke. He grabs a pen and he says, would you like to know where it is exactly? All right, now. Now we're talking. Then he starts to draw on the piece of paper. He says, this is your bedroom. Yes. This is your office? Yes. You have a closet that connects the two? Yes.
Mark Clark [00:23:00]:
He draws my house like the guy drew it himself in a blueprint. And then he simply says this. That's where it is, in the closet. And I immediately did not call my wife. So I'm in Toronto. What are you guys doing? So if you want to get your sweater, maybe dodge the closet. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And he says, this is where it is. Now, listen.
Mark Clark [00:23:35]:
Now, when I told the story the last service, the lady walked over me. She's like, so what did you do about it? I'm like, I moved. But anyways, we got home and moved. But here's the thing. Listen, guys, if your version of reality is. There is no sacredness, explain that story to me based on naturalistic thinking. There is no explanation. You see, the supernatural is happening all around you at every moment.
Mark Clark [00:24:08]:
The universe is far more complicated than sometimes you give it credit. Listen, life is so much more than just waking up. And you go to a job and you raise your little family and you try to make some money, and then you die. And if that's all life is to you, you miss what it means to be a human being. That God made you. He breathed his breath into you and gave you a soul. And the problem is this. That longing that you have in you, you try to fulfill it with all the wrong things.
Mark Clark [00:24:44]:
Things like money. Money. Money's gonna burn. You try to fulfill it with nicer houses and a new kitchen and your new little car and your sexual exploits. And you try to fill this gap, this hole inside of you, this longing with all of these things not realizing. No, no, no. God wired you to only find the fulfillment of those things. Listen to me in him.
Mark Clark [00:25:17]:
That's the only way. C.S. lewis, years ago, wrote and preached a Sermon called the Weight of Glory, in which he said exactly this. He said, all of you are sitting around trying to find meaning and purpose and beauty and joy in all these things. And he says this, here's the problem. We are half hearted creatures fooling about with drink. How many of you drink a little bit too much, trying to fill that hole in your soul? You wanna feel something, you wanna feel something. So you go a little bit.
Mark Clark [00:25:49]:
Yeah, let's just. Another one, another one, another one. Some of you, he goes, you're fooling around with drink, you're fooling around with sex, you're fooling around with ambition. When infinite joy, meaning offered in God, is offered to us. But like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea, God is offering you all these awesome things and you're settling. And so he says, we're far too easily pleased. The books of the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them was not in them. It only came through them.
Mark Clark [00:26:22]:
And what came through them was longing. These things, the beauty, the memory of our own past, are good images of what we really desire. But if they're mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself. They are only the scent of a flower we have not found the echo of a tune. We have not heard news from a country we have never yet visited. It's like we know the news is there and we hear it every time. You guys know, man, when you walk around and you look up at the stars and something like.
Mark Clark [00:26:55]:
My kids would say it this way, it hit different, you know that, you know when you're reading a book and it like, it's just like, oh my gosh. There was like. And then, and then I kind of transcended. I went. Something went deeper. Something happened in that moment and then it disappeared. And you're like, oh, gosh, no, no, no, I want that back. Whatever that thing was, that's the longing that God built into your soul.
Mark Clark [00:27:20]:
And it's not a mistake. It's actually trying to move you to him. Now. Here's the problem. We try to solve the problem of ourselves by ourselves versus bringing God into it. So here's what happened in the garden. If you wanna know what happened to humankind, if you're here and you're exploring and you're like, what went wrong? The Garden of Eden Adam and Eve in the garden. Here's what happened.
Mark Clark [00:27:44]:
Genesis, chapter three. The serpent said to the woman, for God knows that when you eat from it, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, your eyes will be open and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. By the way, we tossed the. We blame the women here. We're like, oh, Eve, how did you get so easily deceived? The husband was right there with her, doing what men have done ever since, which is sit back and say nothing, right? Your wife's like, hey, let's jump off this cliff. You're like, all right, let's go.
Mark Clark [00:28:32]:
It's called the Silence of Adam. And here's the thing, guys. Humankind, listen to me. Traded God for fruit. And you do it every single day of your life. You trade the joy of God for a nice new house. You trade God for the more exciting woman or man. Because the One you married 20 years ago, that's gotten stale.
Mark Clark [00:29:07]:
I mean, it was exciting at one point, but it's gotten stale. But there's a fresh one. Let's just start over. Some of you, it's the new product. Because, man, the 2022 Tesla. Lame. I want the latest Tesla, the one that can read my brain, tell me what to do in my life. We trade God for food and pleasure every single day of our life.
Mark Clark [00:29:40]:
Now, here's the thing. In order to understand ourselves, listen, here's a principle for your nose. You have to understand where we came from. One of the questions of our life, where did we come from? What is your story? My story? Most of you know my story. I won't retell it in detail, but I grew up in a home. No Christianity, no Bible, no God, no nothing. My parents divorced when I was 7 or 8 years old, and the trauma of that gave me Tourette's syndrome and obsessive compulsive disorder, which is why I tweak around and make weird noises and do all these weird habits, which was not easy growing up, by the way. In junior high, I used to have this habit.
Mark Clark [00:30:15]:
I was a smoker. Any smokers in the house? Right. Yeah. You're not admitting it. Cause you're in church yet? Yeah, so? But I used to smoke. And I grew up in Toronto, so there was a lot of snow on the ground. So one of my habits was I used to go down on my knees like this. What a weird habit, huh? Can you imagine Talking to a 16 year old kid having to smoke? You're like, hey, what's going on? I don't know.
Mark Clark [00:30:35]:
Are you going to math class today? Yeah, I am. Cool. And I did these big wet patches on my knees, right? Yeah. This guy's like, wow, what a loser I was. And I used to walk around with these patches on my knees, smoke my cigarettes, have a big chain connected to my wallet. Cause I don't want anyone stealing my $10. I'd be like my skateboard. And so I had kind of a rough upbringing.
Mark Clark [00:31:01]:
And when I was 15 years old, I got this phone call from the hospital and they said, you, dad's sick, he has lung cancer and you better come visit him because he's gonna die. And we planned, my brother and I planned to go visit him, but they called us the next morning and said, he's already gone. My dad never even told us he was sick. My mom was wonderful, raised us. When my parents got divorced, my brother started to see weird shadows. And the psychology and the trauma of their divorce messed him up, Messed me up in a different way. The thing is, that's my story, that's my upbringing. That's where I come from.
Mark Clark [00:31:35]:
And understanding me now, you're gonna understand me much better when you understand where I come from. Well, the same is true about humankind. We gotta figure out where we came from. And there's all kinds of stories. Here's your three options. Where did you come from as a human being? The first option is atheism and naturalism. And what they say is that you came from nothing. Most of you were raised in this kind of setting.
Mark Clark [00:31:56]:
You went to school and you learned. We came from animals. And here's the thing, you are a body that doesn't have a soul. That's what atheism would say. New Age philosophy would say the opposite, that you are not just a body, you are actually a soul. And you're your body. Listen to this. Doesn't matter.
Mark Clark [00:32:12]:
Your body has no indication or hint to your identity or who you are at all. So you can sleep with whomever you want. You can change your body based on what you feel inside. Because what you feel inside is now the most important thing about you. So you are a soul and your body is secondary. Naturalism would say your body is everything and your soul doesn't exist. The Bible comes along and says, no, no, no, you are an ensouled body. Your body actually matters.
Mark Clark [00:32:41]:
It's a massive hint to your identity and who you are. And God gave it to you and wired you with a soul so that you would understand that you were designed by God to run on God. And the minute you remove God from the equation, you flounder in life, it's the way you were designed. Yesterday I went to fill up my car. I was picking up my wife from the airport and I pulled my car up to the gas station. No joke, pull up my car, put the thing in, hit the clicker, sit on my phone for like five minutes. It clicks, I put it off, boom. Grab my stuff, get my truck, drive for 20 minutes, look down to the gas gauge, realize I never put any gas in the car.
Mark Clark [00:33:29]:
I just literally thought I filled up my car and it did nothing. I mean, what an idiot, right? Just like not even paying, just going through life on my phone, not even paying attention. Listen, the way your car is designed is for gasoline to run through the engine. And if it doesn't run through the engine, you actually. The car doesn't work. Humankind, the way we are built is to actually run on God with a soul. And if you don't have that as part of your life, you actually fall apart. Do you know Rodney Stark, who's a sociologist, very respected, he says this, and it's a stat that a lot of people don't believe.
Mark Clark [00:34:01]:
Rodney Stark says this. Religious people actually live about seven years longer on average than non religious people. Isn't that crazy? Isn't that crazy? Religious people, because they're able to absorb pain and suffering in life, when it comes along, it's almost like analogy to marriage. Do you know that married people live longer than single people on average? And that's not like a criticism on singleness. Singleness is awesome. But when you're married, you can absorb the difficulties of life better than when you're not married. You have someone to go through that cancer diagnosis with, right? You have someone who, when you lose your job, you're able to kind of walk with them through it. Why? Because you're able to absorb life easier.
Mark Clark [00:34:44]:
I mean, in my case, I'll probably live longer because I'm married. Aaron will probably live shorter, to be dead honest with you, because she's gotta put up with my nonsense. But here's the thing, over and over and over again, we gotta understand God has wired us to function with a soul and with him, not without him. And this is why when people come up to Jesus in the gospels and he says, do any of you have a coin. And they say, yeah. And then he says, give it to me. Whose image do you see? They say, caesar's. And he says, what? Give to Caesar that which is Caesar's.
Mark Clark [00:35:22]:
And give to what? God? That which is God's. You know what he could have done in that moment? He could have lifted up a mirror and said, whose image do you see? You're made in the image of God. Here's what I need you to do. I need you to give yourself to God. Some of you who walked in here, you haven't given yourself to God yet. And here's the problem. You're living a life where you're not enchanted. You're not out there enchanting the world the way that God asks you to do it.
Mark Clark [00:35:45]:
You know what your task is in the morning when you wake up and you feel helpless, you feel worthless. You don't know what you're supposed to do in life. You know what you gotta do? You gotta say to yourself, my job is to bring the enchantment of God into the life of the people around me. Because here's the thing. So listen. My wife, some of you, you don't know who you are, and you don't know what you're doing. And you're lost and depressed and anxious and alone. It's because you don't feel needed.
Mark Clark [00:36:10]:
The Bible just said, you are desperately needed because you're made in the image of God. My wife was in a coffee shop three weeks ago or so. She walks in the coffee shop. She gets her coffee, right? And then she goes to leave, no joke. And she hears the voice of God. And the voice of God says to her, you see that homeless guy over there? Go talk to him. And she's like, what? And she walks over to this guy, and he's sitting there twitching around in his chair. And she's used to it.
Mark Clark [00:36:40]:
Cause she hangs out with me. And she goes. Sits down and says, what's your story? And she begins to hear God speak to her. And she begins to talk to this guy. And she puts his hand on his shoulder and she prays for him. Stuff starts coming into her mind. And this guy's weeping and saying, you don't understand. This is exactly what I needed.
Mark Clark [00:37:01]:
I woke up this morning and I did this, and I did this. And listen. Jesus says this in John, chapter 10. My sheep. Listen to my voice. Listen to me. Do you ever hear the voice of Jesus? If you never hear the voice of Jesus, you might want to ask the question whether you are his sheep. See, here's the thing.
Mark Clark [00:37:16]:
Erin does not claim to hear the voice of God very often, but she's starting to. Why? Because she's recognizing it was her job to re. Enchant the world. Her job is to make the world far more meaningful. Cause here's the thing, guys. This guy came and spoke from Bulgaria. He was this Communist. He was part of this communist country, Bulgaria.
Mark Clark [00:37:42]:
And it began to corrode. No churches, no God, no nothing. And they made. Religion was abandoned and made illegal, and the whole place started to fall apart. There was no morality. Everyone began to just be hopeless. And this guy came and he gave this speech and he said, you know what's starting to happen in my country? It's not that communism has destroyed it. It's that atheism has destroyed it.
Mark Clark [00:38:04]:
And here's what's beginning to happen. The young people. He said this. The young people are starting to meet and pray. Revival is starting to break out in my country. And here's what he said. They're starting to plant churches. They're starting to worship Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:38:18]:
They're starting to pick up their Bibles. And then he says this. The reason is. Is because the young people are having a revolt of the soul against soullessness. That is what's happening. Do you guys. Do you guys kind of feel this in America right now? There's like a revolt of the soul against soullessness. That we took God and soul and spirit and heaven and hell and meaning and purpose and eternity out of the conversation.
Mark Clark [00:38:54]:
And there's a generation rebelling against it and going, no, no, no, my soul is alive and well. Guys, we're having baptisms. It's only January. This is unbelievable. People are meeting because the soul is starting to rebel. Listen, I'll leave you with this. What are you? Who are you? Are you just an animal? Are you just a spirit? No. You were made in the image of God, which means this.
Mark Clark [00:39:23]:
Listen, you've never met an ordinary person. You've never met. Listen to me. You've never met someone who will not live forever. Every single person in this room will live forever. Forever, either with God or not with him. And every interaction you have is leading people toward one of those two things. Listen, you know what the funny thing is? We as Christians in the suburbs, we love to talk about how godly the country is.
Mark Clark [00:39:53]:
Like, out in the country, the cities. Cities are full of crime and people all jammed together. Cities with all those progressive ideas. You gotta get out in the country. We gotta hang out in God's. We gotta be up in the stars and connect. Yeah. Oh, we love the suburbs.
Mark Clark [00:40:09]:
We live in an Auburn or Loomis running around on our horses. We make our own butter and we get our denim dresses and we're like, yes, we are the godly people. And the cities are full of. Full of bad because that's not where God is. Ah. Timothy Keller points out as he lived in Manhattan, Timothy Keller points out this. He says, don't you realize human beings are made in the image of God? Which means this. There is more image of God per square foot in a city than anywhere in the country.
Mark Clark [00:40:43]:
You're all sitting around Placer county trying to find God out in the bushes. He's among the people. He's among the people. His image is in the people. Every human being you've ever interacted with, I don't care how ugly they are, I don't care how dumb you think they are. Made in the image of God with a soul and will live forever. And your job is to draw that out of them. Father in heaven, I pray.
Mark Clark [00:41:17]:
I pray in this moment that we would be people who recognize our own identity and our calling on this planet to make much of you and little of us so we can flourish versus flounder in life and point every human being we've ever met to you. In Jesus great name we pray.