Mark Clark [00:00:00]:
If you got a Bible, Genesis chapter three is where we're gonna be. And we got some notes that we put in there too. And this is a series that we're doing based on the book that I wrote called the Problem of Life. It is available to the rest of The World on February 18, but to you exclusively. We have the book available right now. And it goes through these 11 super practical principles of life. That if you do them, you're going to far more chance that you're gonna flourish and succeed in life versus flounder in life. Because God has set things up in such a way.
Mark Clark [00:00:30]:
A sacred order in the universe where if you do certain things a certain way, the chances are you're gonna succeed versus not. And so this series grabs four of those 11 principles and talks about them. And it's kind of like this. Like, if my. If in my marriage I do certain things, there's far bigger chance that everything's gonna go well versus me not doing those things. For instance, taking out the garbage. If I don't take out the garbage, things don't tend to go well, right? But if I do think. So here's the problem.
Mark Clark [00:00:59]:
I forgot to take out the garbage this week, all right? It was supposed to be Friday. I forgot to do it. And my wife comes home tonight, which means there's gonna be a fight. That's just how it is. That's what's gonna happen, man. I forgot to take out the garbage. Guaranteed 100% there's gonna be a fight tonight. That's just the way the universe works.
Mark Clark [00:01:19]:
If I would have taken it, I just totally forgot. It was a busy week. And all of a sudden I was like, ah, and the truck leaving and you're like running down with your shirt off. Anyways. Don't picture that. So. But bottom line is, if you do certain things for your marriage gonna go better than if you don't. It's the same thing in life.
Mark Clark [00:01:36]:
If you do certain things a certain way, you're gonna flourish. If you don't do certain. So here's the big principle. Last week we talked about the idea of you gotta follow that longing that's inside of you. Cause it's trying to lead you to God. Chase the beauty and all of that. This week is a different principle. If you got your bulletin out this week is don't try to be God.
Mark Clark [00:01:55]:
All right? That's the big principle. You're gonna realize we're just gonna come back to this over and over again. And you're gonna realize that has everything to do with you. Flourishing versus floundering in life. Every Monday morning when you wake up, every decision you make as you go through life, one of the main things is that you recognize that you are not God. Because in trying to be God, you actually derail so many things in your life. We're gonna talk about that. So here's how we start.
Mark Clark [00:02:16]:
Here's a quote. This product will become more important than the Internet. The legendary investor John Doerr says, who successfully invested in Google and became a multi multimillionaire before he put in $80 million investing in this company. He said, this company will be the fastest ever to reach $1 billion in net worth. Steve Jobs declared it the most amazing piece of technology since the personal computer and offered $63 million for just 10% of this company. The founder was described as the next Thomas Edison. The company projected it would be prod a week in its first year of going public. This product segue, this product will be more important than the Internet.
Mark Clark [00:03:13]:
Let me ask you a question. How many of you own a Segway? What? This is the greatest invention since the personal computer. Steve Jobs said, how many of you have a computer? How many of you have the Internet? See, sometimes we misread the information, sometimes we overshoot. We have an inflated view of ourselves and we look at a thing and we make a decision about it. And that prediction is very, very wrong. And so John Doer now says, I made some pretty bold predictions, didn't I? That we're dead wrong. That tends to be our life. We predict things to go a certain way and they don't go that way.
Mark Clark [00:04:00]:
Or we over inflate what we think's gonna happen and it derails life. So Genesis chapter three. Listen to the story of Genesis chapter three as the background to the 99% of the problems that you have in life. Of course. Genesis 1. God made man and woman and put them in the garden. And he said, I want you guys to be free and I want you to eat from any tree in this garden except one. It's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Mark Clark [00:04:27]:
I don't want you to eat from that. And so he made them and he put them there. And then this is what happened. Genesis chapter 3, verse 1. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God really say, you realize most of your problems in life come down to Satan asking that question of you? God says something in his word and then Satan says, did God really say that you're not supposed to just sleep with whomever you want? Did God really say you're supposed to do this with your family? That you're supposed to do this with your money? I mean, you can keep it. You don't have to help other people? Did God really say this is what the serpent says to her? Did God really say, you must not eat from any tree in the garden? Realize that's not what God had said. He said, they can eat from any tree in the garden except one.
Mark Clark [00:05:20]:
So Satan starts to take a little bit of truth and twist it, which is your other problem in life is you hear something and you're not malicious. You're not an evil person. You're not someone who wakes up twisting your mustache trying to figure out how to be evil in the world. You're just someone who gets a little bit of truth and then it gets twisted and you follow it and do whatever with it. So verse two, the woman said to the serpent, we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle, and you must not touch it or you will die. You will not certainly die. The serpent said to the woman, death. Don't worry about death.
Mark Clark [00:06:00]:
You don't need to worry about death, because I'm going to give you something where you can defeat death. The servant said, for God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes, if you got a Bible in your underlining, your eyes will be opened and you will be like what God knowing good and evil. You don't have to live in the limitations of being human. You can be like God. You can know all things. You can be omniscient. You can be all powerful. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye.
Mark Clark [00:06:35]:
Right, ladies? This is one of your issues. This is why the Amazon boxes arrive at my house four times a day. Something is pleasing to the eye, and it's so much shinier than the one we bought last year. Order it. And it's also desirable for gaining wisdom. She's not only an aesthetic thinker, she's a smart thinker. She wants wisdom. So she took some and she ate it.
Mark Clark [00:07:04]:
And she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. They realized God had put them in this perfect scenario, and they begin to realize it and now they begin to feel shame and guilt because of their nakedness. Then the man said. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And they hid from the Lord God among the trees in the garden because of their shame. But the Lord God called to the men, where are you? He answered, I heard you in the garden.
Mark Clark [00:07:37]:
And I was afraid because I was naked. So I hid. And he said, who told you that you were naked? What kind of information? Now you have all this knowledge about yourself and the shame and the guilt that comes of that. I didn't construct you to know all of this. You weren't ready. Your heart, your soul, your life was not ready to know this about yourself. And now you live in the shame and the guilt and the pain and the anxiety and the fear that you weren't supposed to live in. Cause you weren't supposed to know everything.
Mark Clark [00:08:03]:
Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? And the man said, the woman. And men have been doing this ever since, right? A situation arises in life, and they go, ah, the woman, the woman. And then, notice what he says, the woman you put here with me. Hey, let's take responsibility for your sin. No, no, no. It was the woman, man. And if you're not gonna blame her, it was kind of you. I was fine.
Mark Clark [00:08:39]:
I was naked in the garden. The animals were around. I was eating fruit. Everything was good. And then this woman popped up. I'm like, what is she doing here? You gave her to me. I'm just saying, the woman you gave me. And she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it again.
Mark Clark [00:09:05]:
What men have been doing since the beginning. Here, eat this. All right, Right? Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this you've done? And he starts to go on. And he curses the woman, he curses the man, he curses the serpent, he curses creation and all the rest of it. Why? Because here's the big idea. We are not supposed to try to be God. We are supposed to accept the limitations of being human. This is one of the hardest things we do.
Mark Clark [00:09:28]:
If you jump out of an airplane without a parachute, what happens? You fall to the ground because the law of gravity will drag you to the ground. Because there's a way. The universe was set up in sacred order. If you try to breathe underwater, what will happen? You will die because you don't have gills. Because you weren't designed by God to Breathe underwater, or to be able to fly, to be gods, to be goddesses, to be the heroes of your own life, you weren't designed for this. And every time you kick against it, every time you say, I wanna be God, not I wanna be a creator versus a creation, every time you kick against your own limitation, you will do nothing but fail in life. You will be anxious. You wonder where all your fear comes from, where all your anxiety comes from, where all your depression comes from.
Mark Clark [00:10:09]:
A lot of it comes from this very idea that you try to be God. So I'm Canadian, which means I'm humble, right? But I live among you Merkins, all right? And sometimes you have a skewed reality in your brain about things, and so a skewed version of reality itself at times. So there was a study done by Time magazine. Pastor Ray sent this to me this week. And Time magazine asked Americans, are you in the top 1% of nations earners all over America? And 20% of Americans thought they were in the top 1% of earners in America. That's called self confidence. And we Canadians are humble. Just kind of go along with it.
Mark Clark [00:11:05]:
Do our tariffs. I don't know, man. I don't know. Overconfidence. So here's what happens. A few years ago, my buddy calls me up and he says, hey, I got this life hack that you gotta try. And I'm like, what is it? And he says, well, anytime you check into a hotel, just wrap a $20 bill around the credit card that you give to the person behind the desk, because that person behind the desk has all the power in the world. Like managers, hotel owners, they have nothing on a Monday afternoon when you check in, that person behind that desk has all the power to make your experience 100 times better.
Mark Clark [00:11:48]:
And all you need to do is wrap a $20 bill around your credit card and hand it to them. And you just say, this is for you. Whatever you can do for me would be great. And all of a sudden, the world opens up. I'm like, I don't know about this. I don't know. I'm gonna try this. All right? So I kind of nervously walked up.
Mark Clark [00:12:02]:
I'm like, here, this is for you. You know, whatever. And all of a sudden, I got the Michael Jordan suite. I had kitchens and bathrooms that I would never use. It was incredible. For $20, some of you are like, what's happening? Right? So I started doing this. I was very proud of it. And then I got together with all these megachurch pastors one time, and we Were all down.
Mark Clark [00:12:26]:
And this guy was teaching us how to be leaders. And he brought in his friend who owns hotels to teach us all these principles of life and running a company. And so we're all sitting there learning and he starts to go through, and we're standing in his lobby and I said, oh, you run hotels? I do this crazy thing, man. Like, I go in and I wrap a 20 and I hand it to the person behind the desk. And did you know that they'll just give you a bigger room and champagne will start coming and everyone will know your name and your experiences 10 times better? And his whole face just shifted on me. He's like, what did you say? And I'm like. And all the mega church pastors are like, oh, gosh. Oh gosh, what's happening right now? They're like, what is this guy talking about? I'm like, yeah, yeah, no, it's.
Mark Clark [00:13:05]:
It's really cool. It's fun. You just kind of wait. And I start realizing, oh, he's like, what did you. This is the most illegal. I can't believe you're talking about this. This is a critique of my whole industry. I give my life to this thing.
Mark Clark [00:13:17]:
In your hand in twenties. What if I showed up at your church and I wrapped the 20 around the Connect card and handed it in? Am I gonna get access to you that way? I'm like, well, it wouldn't hurt, actually. Probably get more access, to be honest. Start remembering your names in the lobby, right? Oh, Dave. Dave, yes. Yes, Dave, yes. Won't delete that one. So this guy freaks out on me and he calls me inappropriate and he's just losing.
Mark Clark [00:13:47]:
And I'm like, oh my gosh. See, this is what happened. I walked into that room with a swagger, man. I overestimated. I had a big inflated view of my idea of my life. And I start to go in and he just chops me down and embarrasses me in front of all these. And I'm like, see, this is what happens. We think we're smarter and better and more in control than we actually are.
Mark Clark [00:14:10]:
And the creation story comes along and goes, no, no, no. Do you wanna know why you're depressed? Do you wanna know why you're alone? Do you wanna know why you're isolated, anxious, filled with fear? Because we are not God. The story of sitting in the garden, taking the fruit is the story of an alternative to discipleship under God, where we begin to think we are self made people. We begin to think that we can do anything ourself we begin to think we have the power. And here's what begins to happen. We then start to control situations within an inch of their life. Because we wanna be God. And here's what ends up happening.
Mark Clark [00:14:44]:
We control our work situation. We don't give it up to God. As servants, we start to act like mast. And one of the great principles of life, this is very important. If you're taking notes, you are not a master, you're a servant. That is what your identity is in this world. And when you try to master everybody at work, here's what happens. You over control them and you crush them and they start to resent you.
Mark Clark [00:15:06]:
You parents try to over control your families, your kids. You try to construct reality and you over control them to the point where they. What happens when you try to control your kids? They run away from you, right? Those of you who have little kids, you'll know those little kids, they love you, man. They have no choice, all right? They live in your house, they eat your food. They're like, mama, give me that. Oh, mama, I love you. Can I sleep with you? Listen, now I got an 18 year old. There's a choice, all right? And she looks at me sometimes, she's like, whatever, loser.
Mark Clark [00:15:36]:
And I'm like, what? I'm your daddy. What do you mean? You see, if I try to over control her life, see, this is what happens. I'm gonna build my life. I'm gonna build it so that everyone has to be around me. All the grandkids have to be around me. I'm gonna construct reality so everyone's close to me. Everyone's all about me. I'm the center of reality.
Mark Clark [00:15:54]:
I'm gonna control everyone's life. And this is what happens. You try to control your kids, you crush them and they walk away from you because you over controlled them. This is what happened the first time. So Siona's now 18, but she was nine years old. I remember she walked up to me, she's like, dad, can I take a walk and go out to the coffee shop with my friend? And I'm like, I don't know man. It's like a 10 minute walk for a 9 year old. Just two 9 year olds walking down the street.
Mark Clark [00:16:22]:
And in my overprotective helicopter, parent reacting to the 80s brain, right? Like when I grew up in the 80s, it was like, I don't know, just be back at midnight or something, right? And I'm like, all right. And I got on my bike, I'm like, some guy comes by In a van. I'm like, candy. And so I was like. And my parents never knew what was going on. But my generation reacted to that. And now we overprotect, right? We're always. Where you going? Wait, wait.
Mark Clark [00:16:50]:
What time are you. We got the life360. We know exactly where the kids are at all times, know exactly what house they're at, where they're at, how fast they're driving. Talk about the falls. That's too much information for me, man. Oh, she's traveling at 54 miles an hour right now. I'm not meant to know that. No wonder you're all stressed out all the time, right? My wife went away a little bit.
Mark Clark [00:17:12]:
I was like, oh, God, this is so good. I can play golf, right? I went to the golf course. Playing on the golf course. I got no responsibility. Kids are at home waiting for dinner or something. And the minute my truck pulled out of the parking lot, I get a text. Golf, eh? I'm like, oh, gosh, she's got that life. 360 tells her everything I'm doing.
Mark Clark [00:17:33]:
Mark has just left the golf course. No, Too much information. You don't need all this. The knowledge of good and evil. So I was like, I don't know, man. And so I said to Aaron, I said, do you think we should just let Sienna go on this walk to the coffee shop? And she looks at me. She's. Of course.
Mark Clark [00:17:53]:
She's gotta grow. She's gotta. You can't. And I'm like, what if I just follow her? Like, what if I just kinda get in the car and kind of, you know, creep around or whatever? And she's like, absolutely not. You cannot do that. She needs to earn. And I'm like, are you winking? Cause I should do it, or did you just, like, wink out of. Not like, are you saying.
Mark Clark [00:18:10]:
Because here's what I think you're doing. I think you're saying, don't do it. But you're winking at me because you want me to do it, but you want to say, don't do it. So that when she comes back and yells at us, you say, I told him you shouldn't do it. She's like, absolutely not. You should not follow our daughter around. That's ridiculous. And I'm like, okay, I don't know if you have Tourette's or whatever, but I'm going, right? I'm serious.
Mark Clark [00:18:31]:
So I get my truck, and I start following Sienna around in my truck, her little friend. And I'm like, I'm the Creepy guy now in the truck, you know, like. And I pulled up to some pizza shop, and I just sat in there and I watched her hang out in the coffee shop, making sure she was okay. The guy's like, are you gonna order anything? Yeah, yeah, give me a couple pizzas. And I'm sitting there the whole time watching her. And everything was fine. She was graying. She and I creepily followed her home.
Mark Clark [00:18:57]:
Now, listen, she never knows I did that. And hopefully she will not attend or watch this sermon later to know. But if she had caught me, this is the exact problem she would have said, dad, you can't control me. You can't oversee everything about my life. You can't follow me around for the rest of my life. What is wrong with you? And this is what happens with parenting, and it happens with work, and it happens with our marriages. If we try to control our spouse, we crush our spouse. If we try to control everybody and everything.
Mark Clark [00:19:27]:
And this is what the fall story is trying to tell us. It's trying to say, you have to accept the limitation of being human. Now, here's two areas of life where this is culturally at a meta level, where this is becoming interesting. We have now got to a place of artificial intelligence, right where we have started to say that the next, and what one writer has called the final stage of humankind is that we are gonna fuse ourselves with a computer, right? And so Neuralink, and a lot of different companies are doing that guy named Nolan Arbaugh, it was the first Neuralink patient. He's paralyzed from the neck down. And they wired his brain to a computer, and he now can think things into the computer, and the computer does whatever he thinks. He doesn't have to say it out loud. He doesn't have to move any part of himself.
Mark Clark [00:20:16]:
The computer simply knows how to think for him, and it does whatever he's thinking. Now, this is what we're trying to do as a culture, as a species. We're trying to say, how do we get out of this limitation? How do we actually move on to the next version of being human? And our solution is to fuse ourselves together with computers so that we can have knowledge, all knowledge of everything, and we can fuse ourself in order to survive. Elon Musk says even to try to solve death, we wanna try to solve death. We wanna try to become omniscient. We wanna become knowing all things. We wanna fuse ourselves. Now, here's the thing.
Mark Clark [00:20:51]:
We've already seen this movie. It's called Terminator 2. And it doesn't end well for us. Right? This is why Francis Fukuyama, the writer, says, this is the world's most dangerous idea. This is why people have gone in front of the Senate and said, we have to be very careful and put limitations on this, because what's gonna happen is we're gonna fuse ourselves together with a computer. And then those computers. This is what Terminator already told us. The computers learn our weaknesses and they turn against us.
Mark Clark [00:21:19]:
And they say, we don't need these little ants running around dead. So these kind of things are beautiful and positive, but where it ends up going is we become all knowing, and the Genesis story is basically telling us, don't you understand? That's the problem? So Paula Bonnington, a writer, says this. If we see the Genesis account of the fall of man as a foreshadowing of fears about robots, then Genesis gets the problem. Exactly right. What might robots do if we can't control them fully? Will they decide to obey us? What will our relationship with our creations be? We can thank Genesis for pre warning us. So here's the thing that we all have to learn about humility. So I wrote a book a bunch of years ago. It came out in 2017.
Mark Clark [00:22:10]:
It's called the Problem of God. Some of you read it, right? Yes. Okay, good. That's encouraging. Even if you didn't read it, maybe put up your hand next time. Oh, okay, good. So. So 2017, I published this book called the Problem of God.
Mark Clark [00:22:21]:
Now, originally, when I wrote it, I didn't have a publisher to publish it, so the world wasn't gonna see it. And I was like, what am I gonna do? And this guy told me, listen, you need to get a publisher and you need to get an agent. And this agent will represent you and show your book around, and then someone will publish it. I'm like, okay, how do I get an agent? They're like, well, you're Canadian, so no one wants to bother with you. I'm like, oh. But then this woman showed some interest, said, hey, I'll be your agent. I'm like, perfect, let's go. So I did all the things that you need to do in order to get your book all ready and prep it for a publisher to find it and grab the manuscript and publish it in the world.
Mark Clark [00:22:53]:
So the last stage of that process was she said, you have to do a video and you have to sell yourself to all these publishers. They have to make sure that they like you and that they think you can sell books. And so. And I said, well, what do you mean, give me an example. She said, I'll send you a few videos. And the videos she sent me were all these pastors just acting all phony, and they're in their, like, nice suits in their office, and they're telling the camera how important they are in life and all these things. And I'm like, ooh. So I did a video that parodied and made fun of all those guys.
Mark Clark [00:23:26]:
So I was sitting in my office. I'm like, I'm the greatest thing. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And don't, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then I had my staff members, like, clearly being forced to say nice things about me to the camera. And I'm like, feeding them lines behind the camera. Say it again. And they're like, okay.
Mark Clark [00:23:40]:
And they're saying, it was genius. And I sent it to this agent, thinking she was gonna see this video and run it around the office and say, this is the greatest thing since the Godfather. Have you guys seen this video? This is incredible. And she emailed me the next day, and she said, what's this video? What is this? And I said, oh, it's my video, you know? She's like, well, you're making fun of the whole industry. I'm like, yeah, have you met me? That's kind of what I do. That's my shtick. She's like, what are you talking. I said, I'm the deadpool in a world of Captain Americas, right? I'm the.
Mark Clark [00:24:15]:
I'm not. She's like, yeah, I don't get it. I'm like, but. And she's like, you're fired. Fired? Guys, I've never been fired from anything in my life. And I worked at Michael's arts and crafts store for six years. I still couldn't tell you what a googly eye is or what aisle it's in. Nothing.
Mark Clark [00:24:35]:
They never fired me. This woman fired me on the spot because of my video. So there was my writing career done. It's over. But then Larry Osborne, this pastor, called me up one day, said, how's everything going with the book and the agent? I said, oh, Deadpool, Captain America. It didn't work. And he's like, well, send the manuscript to me. So I sent it over to him, and he read it, and he said, I love this.
Mark Clark [00:25:03]:
Do you mind if I put this on the desk of the president of Zondervan? What? The biggest publishing company? Christian? Yeah. I mean, I'm shopping it around, I guess, if you want. And here's the point. That book got published A year later, why? Okay, here's the thing. The next day, the president of His Honor man emailed me and said, I read your manuscript. I want this book. I'm sending you a contract right now. Why? See, here's the thing, guys.
Mark Clark [00:25:32]:
You don't succeed in life because of you. You need the help and the grace of others. You are not a self made man. I don't care who you think you are. I don't care if you say, I built this company all by myself and I got no help. No, you got help. If you go back in your brain, you think about somebody who called that, somebody who knew that somebody, that little bit of money that someone gave you to get that grace of God, to do this and do this. You are not a self made person.
Mark Clark [00:26:03]:
And the minute you recognize that, the minute you take on the humility to say, I actually needed these things in my life. We do this in every other area. If you need heart surgery tomorrow, are you gonna try it yourself? I watch a couple YouTube videos, I'm gonna cut my chest open and give myself heart surgery. No, because you are fundamentally, here's your identity, a servant, not a master. When you wake up on Monday morning and you try to live your life in Flourish vs Flounder, you have to recognize that you are not a master, but a servant. Here's the thing, you make a million decisions a day. And if you take that principle into those decisions, here's where it's gonna work out. One of my friends says this line, very important.
Mark Clark [00:26:50]:
He says this. When you are born, you look like your parents. When you die, you look like your choices. And you make a million choices every single day that are projecting out into your dying day when your life is over. See, here's the thing. I was reading some stuff yesterday and this guy made this really brilliant distinction, David Brooks, he made this distinction and he said, we have resume virtues in our life and we have eulogy virtues in our life. A resume, Virtue is a virtue that says, look at how great I am. Look at my competencies.
Mark Clark [00:27:27]:
Look what I've accomplished in life. You should love me because of all the things I've done. A eulogy, virtue is the virtue of. It's the things that people talk about when you're dead, by the way, you're dying. Write that down. One of the points of the story of Genesis 3 is that you will die. You will die. You are gonna be dead, some of you sooner than others, but it is inevitable.
Mark Clark [00:27:49]:
You will die. You will not beat death. You will die. And everyone's gonna gather around at your funeral and give you an hour, maybe an hour 20, for people to get up and say nice things about you. And then they're gonna go off into a side room and they're gonna eat sandwiches, Crusty, little triangular sandwiches. And then they're gonna go on with their day, and they're gonna forget about you in a couple weeks, and they're gonna move on with their life. We've talked about this before, that some of you think you have this inflated view of what it means to be human. And you think, listen, I could show you a picture right now of your great grandfather, and you couldn't pick him out of a crowd, and that's how your life's gonna be.
Mark Clark [00:28:26]:
We all have these ideas that our kids are gonna sit around and talk about us, and our great grandkids are gonna say, hey, put on that Mark video again. It's so great. Come around, Tommy. Let's watch Mark preach again on the YouTube. No, they're not gonna know who I am. My great grandkids are gonna forget me like that. Because the Bible says, you are a vapor. You are a piece of grass that comes up and you disappear.
Mark Clark [00:28:51]:
You are not God. You can't beat death. And the question is, did you live a life where you cared more about resume virtues, things that people would say about you? You were competent at this. You were good at this. Praise me for that. Or eulogy, virtues, where they all gather together and they talk about who you really were, your character when life became difficult. That's the idea. Now we try to defeat death by technology.
Mark Clark [00:29:22]:
Second big idea that we do is we try, just like Adam and Eve in the garden, we try to push back against sacred order when it comes to the topic of sex. Now, here's what I mean about the idea. If you can see it In Genesis, chapter 1, verse 27, God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. And then what does it say? Male and female, he created them. God sets up the sacred order and he creates male and female nature. Bible science comes along and says God created male and female to reflect his image. What we do in our culture is we take that and we say, we don't like the human limitations of these things.
Mark Clark [00:30:00]:
And so now we're gonna push back against it. But as one philosopher, Philip Reiffe, said, there is no culture in history that has ever survived pushing against sacred order. And so here's what happens. Science tells us this. Dr. Deborah so says this biological sex is either male or female sex is defined by gametes, which are reproductive cells. There are only two types. Small ones called sperm, that are produced by males, and large ones called eggs, produced by females.
Mark Clark [00:30:33]:
Biology, not society, dictates whether we are gender typical or atypical. When sperm fertilizes an egg at about seven weeks, if the embryo is male, testosterone floods the brain, masculinizing it. If the embryo is female, this process does not occur. Here's what it means. You are male or female according to science, right down to the cellular level, right down to your DNA. So a woman has XX chromosomes and men have XY chromosomes. You are also male or female right down to your brain level. Now, I don't know if I need to tell you this, but if you've ever existed with the opposite sex, you will know your brains work differently, right? So when I had three daughters, I decided that I need to figure out how women work.
Mark Clark [00:31:24]:
Because with three daughters at my house, that means I have four mothers at all times running my life. And that's just what it is. So I went and bought a book by a doctor by the name of Dr. Luann Brizendine, who's a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco. And she wrote a book called the Female Brain. And if you're a male in this room, whoever has to interact with females, you should go and buy this book. Cause what it talks about is the difference between men and women in utero when you are a baby, when you are in your mom's stomach, and. And what happens to a male is that their brain floods with testosterone, right? And so what happens when it floods with testosterone? The connection between the left and right hemisphere of the brain starts to actually detach a little bit, corrode a little bit, and it's filled with sexual impulses and aggression.
Mark Clark [00:32:14]:
This is science, okay? It's a non Christian writer talking about this. So this is. And then for a woman, estrogen floods the brain, not testosterone. So when estrogen floods the brain of a woman, as you will know, estrogen becomes a superpower. Estrogen does not corrode the connection between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. It actually enhances it. This is why women can multitask, right? Men, their brains have been corroded since they were in their in utero. So this is why when the man opens the kitchen with the fridge and he looks in there, he really can't see it.
Mark Clark [00:32:47]:
It's science, right? Which is why she can, and she can be on the phone and Just be like, all right, I'm just like. And it's a multitask based on science. So this is why. This is why, men, when you are being intimate with your wife, you are thinking about being intimate with your wife. That's what's in your brain. What she's doing when you are intimate is she's thinking about, I gotta buy milk tomorrow. I can't believe he said this to my sister last weekend. What about Christmas in 2028? Now, that might be offensive to you men because you think you're so great that she's honed in, but you ain't.
Mark Clark [00:33:29]:
Now, this is the difference between. This is when God wires Adam and Eve and he says there is male and female. And I've put them in creation to reflect my image. There are vast differences between these two. The male brain is 9% larger than the female brain, but men and women have the same number of brain cells. The cells of women are suddenly packed more densely into a smaller skull. The female brain develops two years earlier than the male brain. Anybody who's had little boys and little girls can attest to that fact, right? When you watch little girls playing and they're six and seven years old, they're doing things way more advanced than little boys, right? They're constructing social cue.
Mark Clark [00:34:13]:
They're like, let's build a family. Let's start a company where we sell WH or whatever. And the boys come in with a baseball bat, just bam, bam, bam, bam. And it's like, no, let's raise a family and let's what? Family death swords, right? It's like, okay, that's because according to science, females develop two years earlier than males. Here's the thing. It's not wrong. It's just different. Men and women are different.
Mark Clark [00:34:43]:
Science tells us that men and women are different right down to our cellular level, right down to our brain capacity, right down to our DNA. And so there's an interesting thing that has happened. Ancient Gnosticism used to say what our modern culture says now, which is the physical world has no indicator or hint toward your true identity. And so you can do whatever you want with it. That's an ancient idea that we've just resurrected and said, yes, all you should do is pay attention to how you feel versus what nature has given you, what God has given you, and we've kicked against it. It's interesting because we come from a situation in the last 40 years where science and skeptics made fun of Christians for following science. What they would say is, hey, you should follow science, not your feelings. That's what our message was for the last 30 years.
Mark Clark [00:35:27]:
You shouldn't listen to your subjective experiences inside yourself. You shouldn't listen to your prayer life. You shouldn't listen to all these things that you feel. You have to go into the cold laboratory and listen to what the science tells you. Now we've flipped it and we've said the science. And I'll tell you what is now primary is psychology. It's what you feel inside that matters more than anything. Ergo, you should follow that.
Mark Clark [00:35:52]:
The problem with that is, is there's all kinds of problems that arise when you and I just follow our feelings. Ask anyone who's gone through a difficult time in marriage and they've gone through a season where things are a little dry, but then they start a relationship at the office. And that feels hot, that feels new. Be careful to follow your feelings. Cause they can derail your life. Because feelings aren't necessarily based in fact. My family right now are coming back from Nashville. And on the way, as they flew to Nashville, there was all kinds of turbulence, unfortunately.
Mark Clark [00:36:22]:
And my daughters hate flying already. And so they're up there. I don't know who loves turbulence, but they're up there in this little metal thing flying 500 miles an hour. And it's like the whole time they're like, dad, I swear I saw Jesus three times. I thought it was over, blah, blah. And so they're trying to convince my wife. My two youngest are trying to convince my wife to drive back from Nashville. That's a long drive.
Mark Clark [00:36:45]:
I'm like, all right, see you in eight days, honey. You know, And I texted my wife back and I said, I looked up the data. The data says you'll have a 1 in 5,000 chance of dying in a car accident if you drive, but only a 1 in 11 million chance to die if you fly. Do you think that data helped anybody? No. Because what we feel is more powerful sometimes than the facts. What we feel inside is, I know the data tells me I'm safe in this plane, but I feel unsafe. And so I'm gonna make decisions on my life based on how I feel. And sometimes how you feel can derail your life.
Mark Clark [00:37:27]:
God in the garden says, I made you and I created sacred order. So here's what begins to happen in our life. We begin to take the priority of ourself over God. Martin Buber, the philosopher, says, here's one of the primary challenges we face as human beings is the enthroning of the self. As the greatest authority where we talk about personal development and the preference of spirituality over religion, we look inside of ourself versus outside. We look only to ourselves. This is a fascinating thing. Again, Philip Rife talks about the idea that it used to be, if you think about a generation ago, it used to be the fact that we cared about changing external things about the world.
Mark Clark [00:38:05]:
We had social revolutions. We fought slavery, civil rights, feminism. He says now we've moved from caring about social revolution and all we care about is personal revolution. All we care about is our self. All we care about is internal. So Ernest Becker says this. The anxiety, the pain, the isolation, all the things we feel because we try to be God. Here's what Ernest Becker says.
Mark Clark [00:38:29]:
Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness. Think about this for your life. Or the people that you know, they're drinking too much, they're drugging themself too much out of awareness. Or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing. Some of you are addicted to shopping and you make fun of people who are addicted to drinking. But you're drinking, you're doing drugs, you're shopping. He's doing this and all himself out of awareness. Or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing.
Mark Clark [00:38:59]:
He buries himself in psychology in the belief that awareness all by itself will be some kind of magical cure for his problems. And it's not. Just being aware of who you are doesn't actually change anything about you until you realize you are not a master, but a servant. So here's the solution. It's not finding yourself, it's dying to yourself. C.S. lewis, my favorite writer, my favorite book on the planet is called Mere Christianity. Here's how Mere Christianity ends.
Mark Clark [00:39:29]:
These are the last words of the book that I find, the best book ever written. Okay, here's the last sentences of Mere Christianity. The principle runs through all of life, from top to bottom. Give up yourself and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death. Death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day, and death of your whole body in the end. Submit with every fiber of your being and you will find eternal life.
Mark Clark [00:39:58]:
Nothing that you have not given away will ever really be yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself and you'll find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him. And with him, everything else thrown in. That is your search. And here's the thing. Some of you are sitting here and you feel like you don't understand what your purpose is on planet earth.
Mark Clark [00:40:30]:
You don't know what your identity is. You don't know that God has called you to a task, to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and. And subdue it and bring the kingdom of heaven to earth as it is in heaven. That that is your job. And when you wake up in the morning, your job is to go out and do that amazing thing. And you show up here and you feel shame and you feel guilt for your past and your sins and your mistakes. And you say, I don't know what my point is. You feel unneeded.
Mark Clark [00:40:53]:
I am here to tell you you are desperately needed tomorrow morning to wake up and do your task. You are so needed. And some of you are sitting here and you're shriveling, you're drinking too much, you're drugging yourself too much, you're shopping too much. Cause you have no identity, you have no purpose. You have nothing to die for in the morning. And what the Bible says is no. You are a human made male or female to the glory of God to do your job. Fill the earth and subdue it.
Mark Clark [00:41:20]:
Bring the rule and the rain and the love of God out to the people who are broken and need it. And some of you are like, man, I don't know. I remember watching this movie a couple years ago and they looked at their father and they said, why are you a workaholic? Some of you are in this room, you're workaholics. And he said, I'm a workaholic because I'm a man and I need to provide for my family. And then he says, you know what? That's not why I'm a workaholic. I'll tell you why I'm a workaholic. Because at work I'm somebody. I'm needed, I'm useful.
Mark Clark [00:41:44]:
But the minute I come home, I feel useless. The minute I walk in the door, I don't know what to do here. I feel that sometimes, man. And when I'm at church, I can like, say stuff and people just go and do it. It's amazing. It's amazing. Come up with an idea. You got a bunch of staff, let's go get it.
Mark Clark [00:42:02]:
And then I drive home and I pull up to my driveway and I see those four women looking out the window. Forgot the garbage, idiot. And I'm just like, free. Bring me back to work. Bring me back to work where I feel useful. Bring me back to work where I Know who I am? You know how many times my wife has looked at me and said, you know, I don't work for you, right? I'm like, it'd be easier if you did, to be honest. Oh, to know your task and to do it. Oh, to have something to die for, to live for.
Mark Clark [00:42:41]:
To understand that if you are alive and kicking, you are desperately, desperately needed and that Jesus has died for your sins and risen again to give you an identity. That is not your sins. It's not your mistakes. It's not your past. It's nothing that. Listen. God has taken you and said, you are not a victim man. You are a victor.
Mark Clark [00:43:00]:
You are more than a conqueror. He says in Romans, chapter 8. And no matter what someone has done to you that has made you feel shame and guilt, like you're not supposed to wake up and do something significant, Jesus takes that all away. Listen to this. Listen to this. You ready for this? Here's what Jesus did in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were not happy with the limitations of being human. So they grasped at being God and the world fell apart.
Mark Clark [00:43:25]:
What did Jesus do? The exact opposite. He is God in heaven and he gives it up. He lets it go and becomes a human being. In order to die, to set you free, he reverses the curse. How? By doing the exact opposite thing that Adam and Eve did in the Garden. He is God, and he ungrasps it. And he comes down to live a perfect life in your place. To set you free.
Mark Clark [00:43:55]:
So the shame and the guilt and the sin that destroys your life, that makes you feel like you gotta earn it. Listen, every religious service you'll ever go to, every temple you'll go to, every religious reading you'll go to, it'll look at you and say, you better earn it. You better be a good person. You better be a good man. You better earn life. You better earn going to heaven. The Gospel. You know what that message is like, Rocky.
Mark Clark [00:44:16]:
Remember Rocky? What was Rocky's whole philosophy? If I can go 15 rounds, what does he say then? I know I'm not a. What? A bum. If I can go 50. Hey, Adrian, if I go 15 rounds with Apollo Creed, I'll know I'm not a bum. That's the message of religion. You better get your life together. You better figure your job out. You better figure your family out.
Mark Clark [00:44:40]:
You better figure your finances out. Cause then, and only then will the world look at you and say, you're not a bum. You're not a joke. The Gospel comes along and goes, no no, no, you're not a joke. Because Jesus Christ gives you an identity that is a victor that is more than a conqueror. God, I pray in a moment like this, if there are people here that feel the shame and the guilt of their past and their sins and their brokenness, and they feel like they have no task, they don't understand what it is to get up in the morning and infuse the world with something better than it had the day before. I pray that you would give them supernaturally right now that vision, that identity, that empowerment, so that they might live for your glory and for the good of people. In Jesus great name we pray.
Mark Clark [00:45:23]:
Amen.