Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
Passage. This week's fascinating, but I wanna give it to you. So what I really wanna do is actually hone in and give you almost a short reflection, a short sermon. I know that's not a thing here, but something that's really tight and it's around one or two verses and it's a very powerful thing that I think is important for all of our lives. So if you got a Bible, 1 Corinthians, chapter 15 is where we are and we're in these last two chapters and they take us a little bit because chapter 15 really hu. Hones in on some of the most essential questions of existence. And what Paul hits today in 1 Corinthians 15, I wanna give it to you almost as a gift. Like this is a verse, one verse, a powerful part of the Bible that we're all gonna need.
Mark Clark [00:00:52]:
And what I mean by that is.
Mark Clark [00:00:53]:
I have a friend who she had. Her and her husband had a baby and the baby was struggling for the first couple months of its life and then they had to say goodbye to it and bury it. A two month old baby. I've had other friends who've had similar scenarios. I have a pastor friend whose son at 21 years old was murdered. That was a few years ago. Actually. The pastor, who is the senior pastor of the church that we planted Village Church out of, that I worked alongside of for six years, had his son murdered a few years ago in Langley.
Mark Clark [00:01:26]:
And you.
Mark Clark [00:01:28]:
Life.
Mark Clark [00:01:29]:
Life is destructive. Life can be heavy. It's terrible. And one of the things about it that's so terrible is death. Death is this seemingly final word in our lives and all of us go through it, all of us go through difficult things. And I want to give you this verse because this verse helps us when death occurs or when destruction occurs, or when pain occurs in our life. What is it that's gonna get you up in the morning? And the thing that Paul gives us is this powerful idea. But if you don't believe the idea.
Mark Clark [00:02:02]:
It'S like a few months ago I was preaching at a church on the.
Mark Clark [00:02:06]:
Resurrection and they wanted me to come and speak on the resurrection and kind of give a defense of it. I was telling you about this before and at the end of the sermon.
Mark Clark [00:02:12]:
I looked at them and all I said, great, you can believe everything I've.
Mark Clark [00:02:15]:
Just said for 45 minutes. But Satan knows that the resurrection happened and it still doesn't save him because he doesn't trust to it. He doesn't treasure it above everything else.
Mark Clark [00:02:26]:
He doesn't hold onto it.
Mark Clark [00:02:27]:
And say, this is my life. This is what I want to define me.
Mark Clark [00:02:31]:
And I think that's true about pain and suffering and death in our life.
Mark Clark [00:02:34]:
If we don't understand what I'm going to explain to you today from this verse. So it's one verse is really what I want to hone in on, and it's verse 20. And it's literally, for me, going through anything in your life, if this verse is true, it changes everything.
Mark Clark [00:02:53]:
And so some of you, you might, like, need this verse right now or.
Mark Clark [00:02:58]:
Have needed it in the past.
Mark Clark [00:02:59]:
Others of you haven't needed it yet. But I can guarantee that you will.
Mark Clark [00:03:04]:
At some point in your life. Because death and pain is just a part of every single one of our lives.
Mark Clark [00:03:10]:
Paul says this, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead if he has the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. And so he hones in on this idea. If Christ has been raised, he's the first fruits. We'll come back to this concept of those who have fallen asleep. And this idea of fallen asleep is a biblical way of talking about our death. And he says people have died, and statistically, every single one of us, every human being, is going to die. Someone sent me this encouraging text recently. They did some data on how old I was, and they said, if I live to 85, which I have good genes, my grandfather's presently 97 years old, and my other grandfather died when he was 96.
Mark Clark [00:03:55]:
So I'll probably outlive most of you, which is great. Said this, if I live to 85 years old, I have 2,392 Saturdays left in my life.
Mark Clark [00:04:10]:
Think about that for a second.
Mark Clark [00:04:11]:
Now, some of you are like, well, I do not have that many. If that's how many you have, I do not have that many.
Mark Clark [00:04:17]:
And that's true. 2,392 weekends left in my life. Think about that.
Mark Clark [00:04:27]:
2,300. That's it. That's all I have. The only amount of Saturdays I've got left in my life. The question is, how many do you have? And you can calculate that out and.
Mark Clark [00:04:38]:
Depress yourself if you want.
Mark Clark [00:04:39]:
But the point is, every single one.
Mark Clark [00:04:41]:
Of us is going to face death and tragedy.
Mark Clark [00:04:44]:
And here's what Paul says. There are those who have fallen asleep. There are those who have actually died. And Jesus is the first fruits of those who can rise again from this death. And the reason he can do that is because of what Paul goes on to say. For as in Adam, all die, so also in Christ shall be all shall be made alive, but each in his own order. Christ the first fruits, then at his coming, those who belong to Christ. And then he talks about Jesus defeating what is very true about our life experience.
Mark Clark [00:05:16]:
He says then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father, after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. And so here's what Paul says. Death is literally the greatest enemy you and I have. And you feel it experientially in your life. You know it, it's painful, it's awful. They say one of the things about it is that you have a loved one maybe and the thing that you miss the most once you've lost them is their presence.
Mark Clark [00:05:53]:
That at one point they sat across the kitchen table from you and that is no longer the case.
Mark Clark [00:06:00]:
You shared a bed and that is.
Mark Clark [00:06:02]:
No longer the case. They were in the living room with you talking and their presence is now gone. And the awfulness of death. My father passed away when I was 15 years old.
Mark Clark [00:06:14]:
Al came into my life when I was about 10.
Mark Clark [00:06:17]:
He really became my father in any way. That is a good definition of the word. And he passed away in 2010, the second, third service of village church ever got a phone call in the morning, hey, Al Pastor, I've had these. We've all had people in our life pass away and it's awful and it's painful and it really is. This description that they are death is an enemy is a great biblical description. This is where the Bible's beautiful because it's so real, it's just so raw. It just goes, look, what is death experientially to you? And you have experienced pain, raise your hand in this room if you have lost sin someone over the last year or two at all the sites. I want everybody to participate just so we can look around.
Mark Clark [00:07:01]:
Raise your hand up high if you've lost someone you love in the last.
Mark Clark [00:07:04]:
Year or two years.
Mark Clark [00:07:06]:
All right, look around you. Look at the people at all the sites. Look at the reality of death and pain in our lives. It's just real and it's an enemy and it feels awful. And the reason it feels awful is a great pointer to the existence of God. Because if we are just animals and our cognitive faculties have only been wired through animalistic instinct, then the death of someone in our life wouldn't feel like an enemy. It would just feel very natural. It would feel like something that just happens.
Mark Clark [00:07:35]:
It doesn't matter. You move on with your life. But something about you feels like it's not right. It feels like an injustice. It feels like the universe is disjointed. And the only way that you know that something is disjointed is if you have something to compare it to. And as CS Lewis pointed out years ago, I don't. When I was an atheist, he said, what bothered me was the fact that evil, suffering and death bothered me.
Mark Clark [00:07:59]:
Because what was I comparing the universe to? If I said, I don't like death, I don't like that. It affects me in negative ways. And the reality is it is an enemy. And this is the beautiful part of the biblical story is it cast Jesus as this one who comes and fights for us and destroys an actual enemy. He destroys an enemy. This is beautiful because he's like the. This is a good story, right? All of us know good stories. There was a book, seven Basic Plots.
Mark Clark [00:08:32]:
I've explained this book before Christopher Booker, and he talks about the idea there's only really seven stories we tell there and back again, comedy, tragedy, overcoming the monster, which is every horror story, every told.
Mark Clark [00:08:45]:
Beowulf is the same as, you know.
Mark Clark [00:08:48]:
Friday the 13th is the same as Jaws is the same as, you know.
Mark Clark [00:08:51]:
Nightmare on Elm Street. Every story kind of functions around archetypes.
Mark Clark [00:08:56]:
And the reality is this is an overcoming the monster story. But this is also a there and back again story where Jesus comes from heaven. Like, think about all the stories we love. It's about a knight rescuing a princess. This is literally what this is. Actually the biblical story is the story of a knight who comes and rescues his bride, right? That's the image of Christ. And the church is. The church is the bride of Christ and needed the knight, the prince, to come and rescue us.
Mark Clark [00:09:23]:
Now here's the crazy part. We don't tend to see a story like that. And the prince comes and fights the duel and destroys Satan's sin. Death itself comes and does all the work himself. He doesn't tend to fight all the dragons. And then. And then the princess gets saved. And then she goes, nah, it's okay, don't worry about it.
Mark Clark [00:09:40]:
I've got another guy I'm working on. That tends not to happen. She tends to fall in love with the one who saved her, who rescued her. And here's the thing about the biblical story, it's got teeth to it. It talks about the idea of an enemy. It talks about the idea that we needed saving. And here's the beautiful part about that.
Mark Clark [00:09:57]:
I was Reading a blog from a Christian writer about a movie that he went and saw. He went and saw where the Wild Things Are. And it was an old children's book, of course, and he went and saw it and he didn't, like all the Christians were freaking out about it, saying.
Mark Clark [00:10:11]:
It'S too, it's too drastic for kids, it's too scary for kids with these.
Mark Clark [00:10:16]:
Big, you know, jumping around monsters and all this stuff.
Mark Clark [00:10:18]:
And he wrote this article in response.
Mark Clark [00:10:20]:
To it and I love what he said. His name's Russell Moore. He said this.
Mark Clark [00:10:23]:
Children, it turns out, aren't as naive.
Mark Clark [00:10:25]:
About evil as we assume they are.
Mark Clark [00:10:27]:
Children seem to have a built in.
Mark Clark [00:10:29]:
Craving for monsters and dragons and wild things. The world around them is scary and they know it intuitively.
Mark Clark [00:10:36]:
There's a wildness out there. I'm amazed though by the way some.
Mark Clark [00:10:39]:
Christians react to things like this.
Mark Clark [00:10:42]:
They furrow their brow because Max the character screams at his mother and bites her. Even though this is hardly glorified in the movie. They wag their heads at how dark the idea of this wild world is. Of course it is dark. The universe is dark. That's why we need the light of Galilee. Too many of our Bible study curriculum for children declaw the Bible, taking out all the snakes and dragons and wildness. We reduce the Bible to a set of ethical guidelines and a text of how gentle and kind Jesus is.
Mark Clark [00:11:17]:
The problem is our kids know there are monsters out there. God put that awareness in them.
Mark Clark [00:11:24]:
They're looking for a sheep herding dragon slayer, the one who can put all the wild things under his feet. You want to build something into your own soul.
Mark Clark [00:11:38]:
Don't ignore the reality of the wildness of creation, the reality of death, pain, suffering, Satan, his temptation. When I was just speaking in Australia, I'm speaking in front of 600 leaders and they're like, what do you want to tell us? And I'm like, listen, here's what I want to tell you. And they're all, you know, a guy gets up there and does some stuff and everybody's laughing and they're all gah, gah, gah, you know. And I go, what do you want to tell us? I'm like, satan wants to kill you. And they're all like, all right. Repenting of sin and crying and going home because he's a thief and a liar and a murderer and he has been from the beginning. And he would love to kill the 600 leaders that are gathering in this room. That's what he wants to do.
Mark Clark [00:12:24]:
And there's no pretending that that's not true. And there's no putting your kids to bed at night and they go, daddy, are there monsters? Don't lie to them and say there's not. There are, there are demons, there is sin, there is temptation, there is destruction, there is death that wants to destroy. Now I'm not saying you say this to your kid at 3 years old every night. Now, good night, Tommy. It's like, right? I'm telling you, you build in the reality of the wild things that are there in the world because then and only then do we begin to cherish the one who overcame all of that stuff, Jesus. And this is what I want. My job as a preacher and a pastor is to make you love Jesus more than you did coming in here every week.
Mark Clark [00:13:22]:
And this is the point. This is all you take. I want you to cherish and be in awe of the person and the work of Christ because of this victory that he did. He conquered death for you. And as much as I want you, I mean I put my daughter, my 8 year old daughter, my youngest daughter, a sleepover with her friend last night.
Mark Clark [00:13:44]:
And I'm putting them both to bed.
Mark Clark [00:13:46]:
Got these two little beds that go.
Mark Clark [00:13:47]:
Out and I'm in the bed with them and my daughter looks at me, she's like, do Valley Girl. Valley Girl is this impression that I do to get my daughter's love. And basically these two girls love it. They just stare at me, do Valley Girl. Now I get trade offs because I say, you give me a kiss. Then I do Valley Girl.
Mark Clark [00:14:10]:
She's like, oh daddy, daddy.
Mark Clark [00:14:11]:
And then I get a big smoosh. Mmm. And I hold it for as long as I can. And then I do Valley Girl. So I'm teaching my kids about, you know, religion. You do good things and then you get love. So.
Mark Clark [00:14:25]:
Get my big kiss.
Mark Clark [00:14:27]:
And then I go into this whole valley girl.
Mark Clark [00:14:29]:
I go to the mall, okay.
Mark Clark [00:14:30]:
And I'm at the mall with my.
Mark Clark [00:14:31]:
Friends and then we go to. And then I called up Brittany because.
Mark Clark [00:14:34]:
Brittany is like the whitest girl name in the world. And I said, hello, Britney, do you.
Mark Clark [00:14:37]:
Want to come to the mall with me? And she's like, no, I'm like, I.
Mark Clark [00:14:39]:
Don'T even like malls. And I'm like, why don't you like malls?
Mark Clark [00:14:41]:
So anyway, she comes over, we play some checkers for a little bit and then we called Sarah because Sarah's always want to go. Anyways, so they went to bed at night, okay, goodnight. Click.
Mark Clark [00:14:49]:
And they go and they laugh and I'M their hero. And I do it every time because it makes me feel good about my life and I get the love of an 8 year old. And I want to be these little girls heroes. And so I have to work for it and work for it and work for it. And so I do it.
Mark Clark [00:15:06]:
But the point is, I don't want to be their hero.
Mark Clark [00:15:10]:
I want to point them to my hero. Because there's going to come a day where I die. Now, check this. This is even heavier and deeper and darker. There's gonna come a day when both those girls die and I don't wanna be their hero. And hopefully it's when they're 85 years old. I want them to cherish Jesus above everything else. I want him to be your hero so that you can face your own death and the death of your spouse and the death of your kids and the death of your mom and the death of your aunt and the death of your grandparents or whatever.
Mark Clark [00:15:49]:
If you don't get this, you will be hopeless and you won't be able to get up in the morning because.
Mark Clark [00:15:54]:
Then this is the end. This is it.
Mark Clark [00:15:56]:
We die. It's over.
Mark Clark [00:15:57]:
But if Jesus has defeated death, if in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, then he's the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep, that you can have a different hero. And that hero is Jesus. And he's gonna pull you away from all the other heroes in your life that destroy you. And they will destroy you. I got this invitation to speak at.
Mark Clark [00:16:21]:
This conference last year.
Mark Clark [00:16:23]:
And when I read who was going.
Mark Clark [00:16:25]:
To be at the conference, I started.
Mark Clark [00:16:28]:
Getting jacked because one of the speakers.
Mark Clark [00:16:30]:
Was a guy named Tim Keller.
Mark Clark [00:16:34]:
Okay?
Mark Clark [00:16:34]:
Now, for those of you who don't.
Mark Clark [00:16:36]:
Know who Tim Keller is, as my friend would say, I have Matthew, Mark.
Mark Clark [00:16:40]:
Luke, and Tim, okay? Tim.
Mark Clark [00:16:42]:
Tim is a hero, all right? Like, you just study the words. He's the smartest human being on the planet, the smartest Christian on the planet. He's just read every word and you.
Mark Clark [00:16:54]:
Just copy it and you just pretend you made it up.
Mark Clark [00:16:56]:
All right? That's Tim Keller to me, with church.
Mark Clark [00:16:59]:
Planting and theology and philosophy and all of it, okay? It's like Tim.
Mark Clark [00:17:03]:
And now Tim Keller and I are gonna be speaking at the same conference. Here's what I loved about that, all right? I'd read every book Tim Keller has written. I've memorized every listen. And now I'm gonna be at the same conference as Tim Keller. But here's what I'm jacked about. Not that I'm gonna get to sit.
Mark Clark [00:17:20]:
Under the teachings of Tim Keller.
Mark Clark [00:17:22]:
Not that I'm gonna get to speak, you know, alongside of Tim Keller.
Mark Clark [00:17:26]:
It's that I'm gonna get to prepare, reach to Tim Keller.
Mark Clark [00:17:32]:
And he's gonna sit in the audience.
Mark Clark [00:17:33]:
And I've already see it in my mind. You're me sitting there, giving me five speakers in whatever. And then all of a sudden, I'm gonna stand up and he's gonna look up. With all his baldness and his large hands, he's gonna lean over the. He's gonna hone in on the wisest words he's ever heard. The spirit's gonna drop with unction in the place and the glory of God and Shekinah is gonna. I mean, he is gonna be so blown away, his life's gonna be changed. He's gonna walk right up to me and put that big mitt on my shoulder and just look me in the face and say, that was the greatest moment of my life.
Mark Clark [00:18:28]:
But then that conference got canceled and I'm never gonna talk to Tim Keller in my life.
Mark Clark [00:18:39]:
And I was destroyed inside because my.
Mark Clark [00:18:43]:
Hero wasn't gonna get a new hero. Now here's the thing, man, you have heroes in your life that let you down over and over. You have idols, you have things in your life that let you down over and over again. Some of you, your hero is beauty. Some of you, your hero is intelligence. Some of you is that everybody thinks you're smart.
Mark Clark [00:19:06]:
Some of you, it's your work, whatever, you have these idols, you have these things that. My point is this, every single one of those heroes in your life take something from you, you have to sacrifice to them. If it's work, you have to sacrifice your family and your time and your energy. If it's your beauty, and that's where you get all your meaning, that you have to sacrifice your mentality and your money to make sure you're always beautiful right up until the bitter end. Whatever it is, if it's accomplishment, it all costs something.
Mark Clark [00:19:44]:
But when your hero is Jesus, who came from afar and slayed the ultimate enemy, he's the only one who sacrifices for you. He doesn't take from you. He sacrifices for you. He gives his life for you. And if all of that is true, if this is true, if Christ has been raised, then, man, you can get up in the morning. I've been following this little girl, Ava, and she's in Chicago now. It's this pastor who this eight year old girl, same age as my Bella, fell off a golf cart and hit her head. Here's a picture of Ava looking just like a.
Mark Clark [00:20:30]:
Just a couple months ago, just being a normal kid. And then this is a picture of her now. She fell off a golf cart, hit her head, and she hasn't talked since. They don't even know if she's conscious. She's conscious in the sense that she feels pain. She cries a lot. And that father, that pastor father sits in that room away from home and that mom every day. And I sit there and I say to myself, how is he going? And he posts almost every day.
Mark Clark [00:21:00]:
How is.
Mark Clark [00:21:01]:
How is he going to get through the next day, the next week, the next month? They don't know if Eva would be like this, maybe for the next decade or more.
Mark Clark [00:21:11]:
What do you do? How do you get up in the morning and face that? And every time I read him, he does this thing at the end where he says, talitha kum, which is the Aramaic where Jesus walked up to the dead little girl and said, talitha cum in English. It's translated like, little lamb, arise, get up. And at the end of this dad's post, every time he writes that, and he says, because this is the only thing that can get me up in the morning. If this isn't true, if Christ has not been raised and he can't raise my little girl and heal her, I don't know where my hope is going to come from. That's the point of all of this. If Christ has been raised from the dead now, he has defeated death. And it has everything to do with now because it says he's the first fruits, which means first fruits was this image of you would look to the harvest and the wheat would, like, give its first thing would come out, and you go, okay, great.
Mark Clark [00:22:13]:
That means all the other harvest is going to come.
Mark Clark [00:22:15]:
This means that Jesus is only the first one to be raised from the dead, but that for everybody who's in Christ, it's a are all of our futures, which is beautiful because that means death isn't the end. Everything bad's gonna come. Untrue. This is the biblical story for you. You don't have to die under the.
Mark Clark [00:22:34]:
Weight because Jesus Christ came, died for your sin, rose again, and it was only the first one. Every single person who's in Christ is going to be raised from the dead. And then there's this beautiful future where it's not a disembodied state, It's a rephysicality where there's going to be this continuity with the Old life and the old world and then a discontinuity, because it's going to be a new world, and it's going to be like a party.
Mark Clark [00:23:02]:
It's not going to be a disembodied spirit world. We're all floating around.
Mark Clark [00:23:05]:
It's going to be a physical reality, a resurrected reality, a resurrected earth.
Mark Clark [00:23:09]:
There's going to be a continuity in the sense, you know, when Jesus came and he appeared to the disciples, he saw the marks in his hands, and yet he could walk through walls. He would just appear out of nowhere. Why? Because he entered into some kind of physical reality that's vastly different than what we experience now, and yet similar in the sense. It's gonna be like a surprise party where we show up to what's called heaven in the Bible, this new creation. And it's gonna be like, oh, my gosh, this is so different, and yet this is. Feels so right. And it's like something I know.
Mark Clark [00:23:42]:
And so Jesus comes and he does this work that we then hold onto. There's this part in Lord of the Rings where Samwise Gamgee, in the book, not the movie, is, like, destroyed. And he's at the end of his self and he's like. Just wants to go back to the Shire, and there's too much evil. He's seen too many things, and he's done. And he's like, I have no hope left. And I'll leave you with these words as we reflect on the hope of Christ in the midst of death.
Mark Clark [00:24:13]:
He says.
Mark Clark [00:24:14]:
Tolkien says this. Samwise crawled from the hiding place and looked out. By the way, Tim Keller would love this quote.
Mark Clark [00:24:25]:
Samwise crawled from the hiding place and looked out.
Mark Clark [00:24:29]:
The land seemed full of creaking and cracking and sly noises. So he's in a terrible, terrible situation. He wants to go back home, just like many of us feel day to day. And then he says this. Tolkien says this. There, peeping among the cloud rack above a dark tor high up in the mountain, Sam saw a white star twinkle. The beauty of it smote his heart. And as he looked up out of the forsaken land, return to him was hope for like a shaft, clear and cold.
Mark Clark [00:25:09]:
The thought pierced him that in the end, the shadow was only a small and passing thing. There was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself down. And putting away all fear, he cast himself into a deep, untroubled sleep. The only way he actually had hope to keep going was because he saw the sparkling, shining Star. And he went, all right, I'll keep going. Listen to how the Bible ends. Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it.
Mark Clark [00:25:55]:
From his presence, earth and sky fled away. And no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne. And books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. Listen to this. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books according to what they had done.
Mark Clark [00:26:25]:
And the sea gave up the dead.
Mark Clark [00:26:27]:
Who were in it.
Mark Clark [00:26:28]:
Death and Hades gave up the dead.
Mark Clark [00:26:30]:
Who were in them. And they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of Fire. This is the second death, the Lake of Fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into it. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first earth. And the first heaven had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
Mark Clark [00:27:09]:
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people. And God himself will be with them as their God. Listen. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. If that's not true, how do we even face life? How do you face the pain and the destruction that you are going to.
Mark Clark [00:27:46]:
Face guaranteed in life?
Mark Clark [00:27:50]:
But if that's true, and there is.
Mark Clark [00:27:52]:
A place where there's no more pain and no more death, where death itself.
Mark Clark [00:27:56]:
Has actually been destroyed, don't you want to go there? Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life and the. And some of us, even in this moment, need to trust to him. Because that pining and the yearning to go to an existence where there is no pain and there is no and the enemy has literally been destroyed. And Father, I do ask and pray that in this moment, as we worship, we would do so in response to the fact that you came from heaven, fought the fight that we could never fight ourself, defeated Satan's sin and death in principle and death in the future will be totally eradicated. Not because of our work. If we just focused on ourselves, death would reign forever. But Jesus, you defeated it and then you presented it back to your Father.
Mark Clark [00:28:57]:
This is what I accomplished. This is what I'VE overcome, I bring.
Mark Clark [00:29:02]:
It back to you. And now we as human beings are called to live in light of that victory. Not our victory, not the victory of religion, not the victory of a pathway.
Mark Clark [00:29:17]:
Of religion and thought and consciousness and good deeds, but a life that takes.
Mark Clark [00:29:25]:
Money and sex and family and what.
Mark Clark [00:29:28]:
We do with our jobs, what we do with our time and orients all of those things.
Mark Clark [00:29:34]:
In light of this victory, who can.
Mark Clark [00:29:39]:
Look in the face of the death.
Mark Clark [00:29:41]:
Of our loved ones? And for some of us, we've got.
Mark Clark [00:29:45]:
Diagnosis where we're going to be thinking.
Mark Clark [00:29:48]:
About our own death soon. And as depressing as all of this is, it's just reality. And as I say, at the bedside of people who are passing away, I'm right behind you. Because in the scope of eternity, time is going by so fast. It's just all of our realities, and yet there's this beam, this shaft of light that twinkles and goes. There is someone who defeated this. There's someone who reversed it and can reverse it for you so you don't have to fear. Let us hold on to that reality that you were only the first fruits.
Mark Clark [00:30:31]:
And what was true about you can then be true about us, if we trust you. And let us worship in light of that reality. Thank you, Jesus. Let us treasure you more because of these words. Let you be the hero of our life versus the things that take from us. And let us respond, because that's true. In Jesus great name we pray. Amen.