For many people today, the only way we will regard someone else
as loving is if they unconditionally affirm
everything about us. Total acceptance, no judgement,
only support. Of course, no one wants to be
friends with someone who criticizes everything they do,
but the demand for unconditional acceptance actually blocks out
some of the most important ways in which someone else can love
you. Love seeks the good of the
beloved, and very often we harm ourselves.
We're self deceived. We often live in a hall of
mirrors built by our own distorted desires.
When someone who loves you sees that, what will they do?
Two things. First, they're going to try to
help you see what they see. They're going to try to help you
see what's wrong. Even though it's risky, Even
though it's uncomfortable, Even though you might not like it,
Even though you and your anger might end your friendship over
it. If they really love you, they'll
try to show you what they see. And then second, they're going
to try to help you change. They don't want to leave you in
that trap, that deception, that hall of mirrors built by your
own desire. They want to help you find a way
out. Imagine you have a close friend
who is wasting away through a drug addiction.
You're deeply grieved by what you see.
Every time you see them, they're diminished.
They're doing worse and worse, physically, emotionally,
spiritually. You can watch them fall apart in
real time. What does love want for them?
Love wants freedom from addiction.
Love wants their flourishing, which means love will seek to
wake them up to what they are doing to themselves, Love will
seek to wake them up to how bad their situation really is.
Love will pronounce judgement, and love will seek to bring
change. Often we think of anger and love
as opposites, but anger isn't necessarily the opposite of
love. Hatred is.
Anger can be constructive, and hatred can take the form of
indifference. The least loving thing you can
do for someone who is evidently harming themselves is not care,
not bother, not try to change anything with them.
If someone is destroying themselves, love will get angry.
Love will stand against the lie that deceives the desire that
enslaves the sin that destroys. Love will stand against the sin
for the good of the Sinner. What happens when Jesus meets
people who are self deceived? People who think they're doing
everything God wants but are doing precisely the opposite?
He loves them, and his love expresses itself in constructive
anger. His love leads him to pronounce
judgement, His love leads him to warn of coming consequences, and
his love leads him to point the way to true life with God, a
life that only he can give. This morning we continue our
series in Mark's Gospel with Chapter 11, verses 12 to 25.
If you don't have a Bible, you can raise your hand and somebody
will bring you on. This passage is one of the most
dramatic incidents in the gospel.
If your view of Jesus is that he sits around wearing a kind of
soft robe and has a little glowing Halo over his head and
it cuddles lambs, you're about to meet a very different Jesus.
Please follow along. As I read Mark 11 verses 12 to
25, on the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was
hungry, and seeing in the distance a fig tree and leaf, he
went to see if he could find anything on it.
When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was
not the season for figs. And he said to it, May no one
ever eat fruit from you again. And his disciples heard it, and
they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and
began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the
temple. And he overturned the tables of
the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.
And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the
temple. And he was teaching them and
saying to them, Is it not written?
My house shall be called a House of prayer for all the nations,
But you have made it a den of robbers.
And the chief priests and the scribes heard it, and were
seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all
the crowd was astonished at his teaching.
And when evening came they went out of the city.
As they passed by in the morning they saw the fig tree withered
away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said to
him, Rabbi, look, the fig tree that you cursed has withered.
And Jesus answered them, Have faith in God.
Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain be taken
up and thrown into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart, but
believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done
for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever
you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will
be yours. And whenever you stand praying,
forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your
Father also who is in heaven, may forgive you your trespasses.
Last week we considered Jesus's approach to the city of
Jerusalem. This is a, a climactic moment
that the whole gospel has been building up to.
He's predicted it. He's resolutely pursued it.
He came to Jerusalem and then, as we saw in verse 11, he just
entered the temple, surveyed the scene, and left.
We saw that was an advance notice of his evaluating
everything taking place there with a view to future action.
Our chapter shows us the action he takes.
The main point of our passage is simple.
Jesus judges false worship and blesses true faith.
There are two parts of our passage.
To put it most simply, in verses 12 to 21, Jesus is cursing of
the fig tree and his disruption in the temple.
Interpret each other. Each sheds light on the other.
And then in verses 22 to 25, Jesus teaches on the nature of
true faith. One of the most revealing tests
of faith is prayer, and so this whole passage is a contrast
between false worship and true faith.
The sermon will have two points, false worship, true faith.
The first point will be much longer than the second point.
One, false worship. We'll see how Jesus judges false
worship in all of verses 12 to 21, beginning with verses 12 to
14. Looking out with me at those
verses. On the following day when they
came from Bethany, he was hungry, and seeing in the
distance a fig tree and leaf, he went to see if he could find
anything on it. When he came to it, he found
nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.
And he said to it, may no one ever eat fruit from you again.
And his disciples heard it. This is a strange episode.
It has bothered many readers. Some have given it as a an
excuse, a reason rather, for not believing in Jesus, for being an
atheist. Is Jesus just being petty,
spiteful? If it wasn't the season for
figs, why was Jesus looking for figs?
And why did he have to kill the poor tree?
What good did that do? There are two important keys
that help us understand Jesus's strange actions.
The 1st is that he is performing a prophetic sign act.
Jesus is more than a prophet, but he is a prophet, and
sometimes prophets perform actions that have symbolic
significance. You can think of it as a parable
in actions rather than a parable in words.
One famous example in the Old Testament, in Ezekiel chapter 4,
the Lord has the prophet Ezekiel build a sandbox sized model of
the city of Jerusalem and then lie on his side facing it for a
very long time. It's to symbolize the siege
that's going to take place. You build up a mound against it
to breach the city and bring in an army.
Ezekiel lying there is symbolizing a foreign army
coming in and attacking the city.
It's a warning, a future judgment coming against
Jerusalem. The Lord commissions his prophet
to depict that in his actions. The Old Testament prophets also
often use the metaphor of looking for fruit, but not
finding any to describe the Lord's displeasure with his
people's disobedience. Consider Jeremiah 813.
When I would gather them, declares the Lord, there are no
grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree.
Even the leaves are withered, and what I gave them has passed
away from them. So in our passage, Jesus is
genuinely hungry. He's drawn to the fig tree by
its appearance. He can see its leaves from far
away. That's a promising sign.
Where you see leaves, you expect fruit.
But Jesus found no fruit. The appearance deceived.
The tree had leaves, but no fruit.
And so Jesus made an example of it.
He pronounced a curse on it in the hearing of his disciples.
What is Jesus teaching his disciples?
Leaves without fruit brings judgement.
In our whole passage, Jesus is fulfilling the role of the Lord
who comes to inspect and evaluate his people's fruit.
Just as the Lord went looking for fruit in the lives of the
people of Israel, so Jesus comes looking for fruit in the lives
of His people. The Lord has given His people
His law, His covenant, His temple, His sacrifices.
He has dwelt among them and provided for them and protected
them. He's done everything you can ask
for in order to bring about a fruitful harvest of
righteousness. But what does He find?
No fruit. The second key to understanding
Jesus cursing of the fig tree is the structure of the passage and
the structure of Jesus actions. We we have to not consider this
episode in isolation. Instead it's like the bread in a
sandwich. Jesus is cursing the fig tree
forms a bracket around his action in the temple.
So here in verses 12 to 14, he inspects and curses the fig
tree. Then he previews divine judgment
in the temple. Then after that, in verses 20
and 21, look at those verses. We'll come back to the temple
part, verses 20 and 21. As they passed by in the
morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots.
And Peter remembered and said to him, Rabbi, look, the fig tree
that you cursed has withered. So the disciples see that the
fig tree Jesus cursed is completely dead.
His curse proved effective. Fig tree, temple fig tree, The
fig tree and the temple interpret each other.
The condition of the fig tree pictures the spiritual condition
of the temple. What's that condition?
When you look at it, you see all kinds of promise of religious
activity, sacrifices being offered, prayers being made,
people coming with the intention of worshipping God.
What's the real condition? Leaves without fruit, promise
without substance, appearance without reality, and the fate of
the fig tree pictures the final end of the temple.
Jesus Himself will prophecy in chapter 13 that the temple will
be totally destroyed. Notice how in verse 20 it says
the fig tree withered away to its roots.
Why does Mark include that detail?
It reminds us it's a picture and a preview of what Jesus is going
to say just two chapters later. But about the temple, the very
beginning of chapter 13, do you see these great buildings?
There will not be left here, 1 stone upon another that will not
be thrown down. Just as the fig tree withered
away to its roots, so the temple would be destroyed all the way
to its foundations by cursing the fig tree.
Jesus is publicly announcing that the time for Israel's
divine inspection has come, and they fail the inspection.
Jesus doesn't find the fruit he's looking for, He finds none.
For many of us, it is car inspection season.
In order to renew your registration, you have to go get
an inspection done. Upload the results to the DMV
and there you go. Best case scenario, at that
inspection, your car's totally fine.
You walk in, they look at it, you walk out, do nothing.
Next best scenario, maybe they discover something tiny, They
just come right out and say, hey, we got to fix this one
thing, It's going to be 100 bucks.
Is that OK? Yeah, sure.
Fine, no big deal. You wait another 15 minutes,
you're gone. Only $100 lighter.
One friend I talked to this week once went to a car inspection
and the report was you need a whole new engine.
Ouch. When you submit to God's
inspection of your life, it will reveal bigger problems than you
bargained for. You might come to God's Word
hoping for a clean sheet or or at best a little minor
adjustment. 15 minutes, no big deal.
Very often through God's Word, he will reveal to you, yeah,
what what you need is more like a whole new engine.
One sign that you are really doing business with the living
God is that you come away thinking I'm a lot worse than I
thought. God's Word reveals problems you
didn't know you had. God's Word and Spirit together
convict you that sins you knew about but didn't.
They were that big of a deal or a bigger deal than you thought.
You hope to come out of the inspection with a clean sheet.
God gives you news. It's a lot harder to bear,
spiritually speaking, if you're not a believer in Jesus.
You really do need a whole new engine.
You need a new heart. You need a whole new self.
You need to be transformed totally from within, and that is
out of your power to do. Only God can do that.
And the good news is He can do that.
God can change you as deep as your problem is.
You might think, oh, I just have some kind of minor relational
issues or, Oh yeah, some bad habits.
But Scripture reveals ourselves to us and shows that our
problems go all the way in. They go all the way down.
Our wills are fundamentally distorted.
Our wills are enslaved to sin. Our minds, our thoughts, our
affections, they're all set on the wrong objects.
Our hearts are like a compass that points in exactly the wrong
direction. You can't fix yourself.
You can't give yourself a new engine.
But God can give you a new you. If you're not a believer in
Jesus and you want to know what God thinks about you and what he
can do about it, you have to be prepared to acknowledge 2 truths
#1 your problem is worse than you think #2 God can do more
than you think. You can't save yourself and you
can't fix yourself, but God can transform you from within.
The fig tree that Jesus cursed looked good from a distance but
bad up close. Brothers and sisters, members of
Trinity Baptist Church, don't settle for a way of following
Jesus that looks good from a distance but bad up close.
That won't serve you. That won't serve your eternal
joy in him. And it's not the fruit Jesus is
looking for. Jesus is looking for fruit that
is good all the way down. Jesus is looking for fruit that
survives the closest scrutiny. Many of us have had the
disappointment of meeting someone who has a good
reputation, or respecting or admiring someone from afar, then
getting closer to them and discovering, yeah, they don't
look as good up close as they do from far away.
Brothers and sisters, depending on God's grace, doggedly pursue
the kind of spiritual fruit that looks better and better the
closer someone gets to it. In our passage, Jesus holds
people to account, and he is himself the Lord who will hold
each of us to account. He's looking for fruit.
He's looking for the fruit of real faith.
He's looking for the fruit of true worship.
He's looking for real devotion to him that shows itself in
obedience to him. There will come a final
inspection day for each of us. The fig tree and temple are a
preview. Of that final day of judgement
when God will inspect your whole life with everlasting
consequences. On that day, there will be no
place to hide from God's accountability.
This summer, for the first time ever, Christian and I have
planted a garden. We put a fence around it.
Fence posts, little mesh covering about head high.
We planted all kinds of good stuff.
Cucumbers, heirloom tomatoes, squash, herbs, bell Peppers.
We were diligent to water it and we saw some good signs of early
growth. We even had cucumbers that were
getting huge and we were starting to harvest them and eat
them. We had dozens of tomatoes
ripening on the vine. There was promise.
What fruit do we get from our garden?
Not nothing, but not much. The fruit our garden delivered
did not at all live up to the promise of its early growth.
What happened? One day Kristen went out in the
morning to inspect the garden and instead of seeing huge
cucumbers and dozens of ripening tomatoes, she saw that they had
all been devoured. Every last one.
So who do you blame for the failure of our garden?
I see at least three sources of blame.
Number one, first time gardeners.
I'm sure there's things we could have done better.
Planted better seeds, better timing.
You know, known the acidity of our soil.
Do I know the acidity of our soil?
I do not. I have no idea.
I'm sorry, first time gardeners. Another source to blame is the
weather. We saw old timer N Carolinians
who've been gardening here for 40 years saying this is the
hottest, wettest summer they'd ever seen and it completely
wrecked their garden. OK, so maybe that was some of
it, but you know who gets the most blame?
Deer. That's the culprit.
It's the only animal that could have jumped over the fence.
Oh OK, I guess a head high fence isn't high enough.
Good to know. Learn that one the hard way.
It's the only animal that could have come in and in one
gluttonous binge, devoured all of the fruit and vegetables in
our garden in one night. Yeah, I blame the deer.
The deer get the most blame. If only I could curse the deer
and carry out my judgement upon it.
Don't talk to me about how deer are cute.
Don't try to feed them. They are vermin.
Here's the thing. I can blame my poor garden on
the deer, but when the final day of inspection comes, there will
be no one else to blame. There will be no one you can
offload onto and say well, but this person, the Lord will
evaluate you. You will stand before him.
That's the ultimate accountability, and it should
make us quake and tremble. If you're not a believer in
Jesus, you should have a sense of conviction.
You should have a sense of fear. You should have a sense that,
yeah, I, I can't measure up before God if he's just going to
look at me unsparingly, unstintingly examine everything
I've done, thought said you will not pass that test.
There's no way to pass that test.
You cannot pass that test. And the good news is God sent
his eternal Son into the world to pass the test for you.
Jesus became Incarnate. Live the perfect life, total
righteousness, pure worship, total devotion to his heavenly
Father. He lived a perfect life and He
died the death that we all deserve.
He paid for the sins of all those who would turn and trust
in Him. On the cross, He suffered God's
wrath. On the cross, He endured final
judgment. On the cross.
He got the punishment, the blame, the wrath we deserve, so
that if you believe in Him, there's none left for you.
The good news is, Jesus took the test.
Jesus passed. Jesus took all the consequences
for the way you had failed the test, none leftover for you.
Just trust in Him. And he proved it by rising from
the dead. He proved it by entering into a
life on the far side of judgments, a life that death
can't touch, a life that's suffering can't touch, A life
that He holds out a sheriff to all who believe in Him.
What fruit is Jesus looking for in your life?
First and foremost, he is looking for you to believe in
Him, to trust in Him, to receive salvation from Him.
And when you do, he begins to bear fruit in you.
You receive through union with Him a whole new power, His own
power to bear fruit for God. You receive the Spirit, his own
Spirit who renews you and transforms you from within.
You're not left on yourself to kind of hoe your own spiritual
garden and hope some fruit comes.
God's own power is at work to bear fruit in you.
Jesus is looking for faith that works through love.
He's looking for devotion to him that leads to service to others.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself and prayerfully
consider with other believers to discern whether you're bearing
that kind of fruit. Do you love Jesus?
Do you love to worship Him in the gathering of his people?
Do you pray privately? Do you love to obey God's
commands? Do you love God's people in
tangible ways? Have you seen growth in
overcoming sin in the last three years?
Are you more concerned to please God or avoid embarrassment?
If you are trusting in Christ, you've got a sensitive
conscience that's convicting you of sin all the time.
And it's hard to see this kind of fruit in your life, even if
you try to get other believers to discuss it and pray together
and get encouragement. If you struggle to see the
reality of fruit in your life and you are trusting in Jesus,
remember first John 320. Whenever our heart condemns us,
God is greater than our heart, and He knows everything.
Sometimes what God knows about you is better than what you can
see in you. So all of that is on the bread
part of our passage, the bread part of the sandwich in verses
12 to 21. Now we need to turn to the meat
in the middle. What did Jesus do in the temple,
verses 15 and 16? And they came to Jerusalem, and
he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and
those who bought in the temple. And he overturned the tables of
the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.
And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the
temple. This was the season of the feast
of the Passover, when there'd be huge numbers of pilgrims coming
into Jerusalem for the festival, and the temple would have been
unusually busy, just a hive of activity.
The historian Josephus reports that at one Passover, around the
time of Jesus, over a quarter million lambs were sacrificed.
So all of this activity in the temple was legitimate.
It was ordained by God. If there were, there were
sacrifices that needed to be carried out in a temple tax that
needed to be paid. So, So what about the buying and
selling? They were buying and selling
sacrificial animals. That's what that's what the
doves were. Animals that ancient Israelites
would offer in the temple had to be completely unblemished.
There's always a risk. If you're coming from far away,
you start off with an unblemished animal, but what if
it gets hurt on the way? What if it gets damaged or sick?
Now you've brought an animal you can't offer.
So it made sense that people would be able to purchase
animals for sacrifice in Jerusalem.
There's nothing wrong with buying and selling animals in
itself. What about the money changing?
That's because the pilgrims each had to pay a temple tax.
That tax was ordained by God. Now in Jesus day, in order to
have the tax paid in a stable currency, the authorities had
determined that all the temple tax needed to be paid in what
was called a Tyrion Drachma, a silver coin from the city of
Tyre. Which meant that lots of
pilgrims coming from different places had to exchange their
local currency for Tyrion drachmas to pay the temple tax.
Now of course the money changers would have made a profit on the
exchange, something like 4 to 8%, but the process wasn't
inherently wrong in itself. So then what is Jesus's problem?
If the buying and selling is not sinful, if the money changing
isn't sinful, what provokes him to take such drastic action?
It's not what's happening, it's where it's happening.
All this was taking place in the temple.
It was probably happening in a large outdoor pavilion that was
called the Court of the Gentiles.
It was called that not because it was expressly for gentiles,
but because it's the only part of the temple complex that
Gentiles were allowed access to. Non Jews could come to that part
and still part of the temple. So Jesus problem is that they
are allowing commerce into a place that should be totally
dedicated to worship. Why can't they do all this
legitimate activity right outside the temple complex?
Can't they find somewhere else for it?
The fact that they do it in the temple is a sign of upside down
priorities. They're in a sense, substituting
commerce for worship. They're putting something that
doesn't belong in worship into the place of worship.
What are you tempted to substitute for worshiping God?
And I don't just mean coming to church, because coming to church
is not the only time we worship God.
Paul calls us in Romans 12 to give our bodies as a living
sacrifice to God that involves our whole life as one of
worship. What are you tempted to
substitute, to let creep in and crowd out?
Worshipping God could be studies, work, leisure,
relationships, entertainment. The only way to bear the fruit
Jesus is looking for is to dedicate your life to
worshipping Him. So what's Jesus doing here?
He's interrupting everything. He's stopping the whole game.
He's shutting it down, however briefly.
And look how the authorities respond.
Verse 18. The chief priests and the
scribes heard it and we're seeking a way to destroy him,
for they feared him because all the crowd was astonished at his
teaching. So Jesus action made a big
splash. It further alienated the
authorities from him. They took it as a confrontation,
they took it as a rebuke, which it was.
The people were appreciative, they were listening to Jesus
hanging on his words, but the authorities took it as an
opposition to them, which it very much was.
That's important to recognize here, that Jesus action in the
temple is not based only on what he sees in the temple when he
gets there. Throughout Mark's gospel, from
the very beginning, Jesus has been calling on people to repent
and believe in him. Some people have, but many have
rejected him. And the religious leaders based
in Jerusalem have been especially united and consistent
in their opposition to him. After all, Jesus has already
predicted that they're going to kill him.
So the misplaced priorities here in the temple are one tip of a
huge iceberg. That iceberg is their false
worship. It's their failure to repent and
believe in Jesus as the Messiah. It's their self-confidence that
they're doing what God requires while all along they're doing
the very opposites. There's a warning here for us.
It is possible to practice very respectable looking religion
that is at its core, false worship.
It is possible to put on an impressive religious event that
thousands of people come to that is at its core, false worship.
It is possible to take every religious box and even have an
intense practice of private devotion.
That is at its core, false worship.
God's Word defines what counts as worship, and as we'll see,
Jesus appeals to God's Word to show them what they should have
been doing. So because of the people's false
worship, Jesus has determined in advance to judge them.
That's why he curses the fig tree.
That's why he warns of Jerusalem's coming destruction 2
chapters later. So his disruption of the temple
is bringing it to a halt is a preview of its coming judgment
in verse 16. He didn't he, he didn't allow
anybody to carry anything anywhere.
What does that mean? It means all the sacrifices
would have been brought to a halt, whatever was in process.
Nope, stop. No sacrifices right now the
whole thing comes grinding shut. What's that a picture of?
It served as a picture of the coming judgement that'll fall in
70 AD when the whole temple will cease for good.
Now in verse 17, Jesus tells the crowds why he's doing this.
Verse 17 And he was teaching them and saying to them, Is it
not written? My house shall be called the
House of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a
den of robbers. It says he was teaching.
So presumably he was kind of sitting there teaching whoever
would come in kind of an extended way.
And in His teaching, Jesus alludes to two passages from the
Old Testament prophets. The first one is Isaiah 56,
verse 7, which we heard Jacqueline read a little bit
ago. In the context, the Lord is
pointing to the fulfillment of His purposes for His temple.
It was meant to be a place where all the nations can come and
worship. But here the court of the
Gentiles, the nations, is clogged with commerce.
It's a picture of Israel's failure to be a light to the
nations. Their failure of worship caused
a failure of witness. False worship will hinder others
from coming to know the true God, but God is going to fulfill
His purpose to raise up a House of prayer for all nations.
That house will not be a physical house.
Instead, it will be all those who are united to Christ by
faith. All who are united to Christ by
faith will be God's House of prayer.
Indwell by His Spirit and lifting up petitions to Him,
calling on Him, his Father. Don't be no more temple
sacrifice because Christ's sacrifice is the only one we
need and the and God's House of prayer won't be a building but a
people because He now dwells among and dwells within his
people. Through the passage that Jesus
cites is from Jeremiah 7 verse 11.
In the whole context in Jeremiah 7, the Lord is warning His
people that they cannot live lives of injustice and
wickedness and then come take refuge in His temple.
Consider just the 2 verses before the one Jesus cites,
verses 9:00 and 10:00. Will you steal, murder, commit
adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to be all and go after
other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand
before me in this house which is called by my name, and say We
are delivered, only to go on doing all these abominations?
So in the very next verse, when Jeremiah calls the temple a den
of robbers and says that that's what they've made it, when Jesus
quotes those words, he isn't saying that the commercial
activity itself is robbery. Instead, he's saying that the
religious leaders of his day are like the people in Jeremiah's
day. A robber's den is the place you
retreat to for safety and planning and scheming between
wicked missions. It's a hideout.
It's a shelter. So the problem is not just
what's happening in the temple. An even bigger problem is how
they're treating the rest of their lives and then retreating
to the temple. The problem is hypocrisy.
It's religious show without substance, its leaves without
fruit. They're committing sin and
wickedness and then treating the temple like a hideout.
Kids in the congregation, when you play tag, what happens when
you are on base? Simple, Nobody can touch you.
You're safe. You cannot be harmed, you cannot
be tagged. The religious leaders in Jesus
Day were treating the temple like base, like they could go do
whatever they wanted, they could live however they wanted, they
could disobey God. But if they came back to the
temple, well, not even God himself can touch them.
They've got the temple, they've got sacrifices.
They're good, they're safe, they're on base.
But that's not how repentance works.
That's not the fruit God is looking for.
He's looking for a change that goes all the way down into the
heart and shows itself in every part of your life.
And that's implicitly what Jesus is calling the people to by his
judgement on the temple. He's saying your religion has
been outward. It needs to be inward.
It has been a show. It needs to become repentance.
He's saying there's going to be no more bass, no more hideout.
You're not going to be able to use the temple like this.
You need to repent. Repent of false worship.
Repent of empty religion. Repent of looking better from
far away than you do up close. Repentance begins when you
submit to God's inspection. He says it's worse than I
thought. I believe him if he says I need
a new engine, I need a new engine.
There's no other mechanic you go to for a second opinion when
it's God himself telling you you need a new engine.
Repentance begins when you stop shifting blame.
Repentance begins when you stop trying to punish yourself or
devise your own means of atonement or self improvement.
And instead trust the all sufficient sacrifice that God
has provided. Jesus judges false worship and
he is the judge judged in our place who cause you to repent
and trust in him to be delivered from judgement.
Second, more briefly, true faith.
True faith. That's the theme of Jesus
teaching in verses 22 to 25. Remember that in verses 20 and
21, the disciples see that the fig tree Jesus cursed has
completely died. Peter remarks on that.
Rabbi, look, the fig tree that you cursed has withered.
Jesus responds to verse 22. Jesus answered them.
Have faith in God. Now Jesus is going to give all
sorts of detailed application flowing from this about prayer,
but this is a thesis. This is the heading, Have faith
in God. What's the root of the
difference between the false worship Jesus, Jesus judges and
the true fruit that he's seeking?
It's faith. It's trust in God's power and
character. It's trust in God's Word and
promises. All the fruit Jesus seeks comes
from faith. Only by faith can you bear the
fruit that Jesus requires. But Jesus also has a specific
application of faith in minds. In the rest of this passage, he
really teaches about prayer. So Peter marvels that Jesus's
word proved so effective. Jesus word accomplished
something miraculous. Nobody came and sprayed Roundup,
you know, dumped out a whole gallon of it on the fig tree so
that it would die, right? I mean, Roundup is supposed to
kill only bugs, but you know what I mean.
Some toxic chemical, just pouring it all out.
It was only by Jesus's word it proved effective.
Now Jesus is about to tell Peter that that kind of power isn't
limited to his words. It's also available through
prayer, verses 23 and 24. Truly I say to you, whoever says
to this mountain be taken up and thrown into the sea, and does
not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will
come to pass, it will be done for him.
Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that
you have received it and it will be yours.
Now, with a passage like this, it is important to be clear
about both what the text is saying and what it isn't saying.
Jesus is drawing an analogy between the power of his words
to accomplish the miraculous and the power of God available in
answer to our prayers to do the miraculous.
He isn't saying that our words have the power to do what his
words do. His point is not identity, but
analogy. He is not saying that if you
walk right out there to that little plot behind the, you
know, music room and you say die flowers, the flowers will just
wither. That's not his point.
His point is not that we should go to the nearest mountain we
can find and say up with you, right?
He's not founding a mountain removal society.
That's not his aim. Jesus is using hyperbole and
he's using an illustration, the saying about the mountain.
The point of it is that God, in answer to our prayers, will work
even greater marvels than what Peter just saw.
Peter, you think it's impressive that a fig tree withered?
You will see greater, more marvelous, more miraculous
things in answer to your prayers.
They'll be as bigger than a fig tree withering than as if you
said to this mountain dump into the sea.
Jesus is saying that prayer is a supernatural act in which
faithful human words can call down divine power.
He isn't saying that prayer is some kind of magic power we can
wield at will to accomplish all of our desires.
Now in verse 24, when Jesus says believe that you have received
it, he's not playing tricks with time or teaching some kind of
like, you know, Zen saying Instead he's using a past tense
to describe a future coming answer to prayer because it's so
certain. It's as if you've already
received it. It's like when Paul says in
Romans 830 those whom he justified he also glorified.
So Jesus main point is that God answers prayer.
So you should have faith, you should ask, you should believe
and not doubt. You should trust that God
answers prayer. But even with all that in mind,
does it mean that God will, without exception, give us
everything we ever asked for in prayer?
The wording of Jesus promise can make it sound like that, but for
a number of reasons, the answer has to be no.
The main point of the passage is that God does answer prayer.
That doesn't mean he's a magic genie who grants your every
wish. For one thing, Jesus himself,
starting in his passage, gives us several conditions that limit
and define the kind of petitions God will grant in our own
passage. He says that prayer must be in
faith. He says it must not be
undermined by doubt. As we'll see in verse 25, the
kind of prayer God answers is prayed by one who forgives.
If you don't forgive others, God will not answer your prayers to
forgive your sins. We could generalize from that to
say that harboring unrepentant sin is a great way to get your
prayers not answered by God. Prayer expresses dependence on
God. Prayer expresses trust in God.
If you are harboring unrepentant sin, you are not depending on
God. We're trusting in Him.
Unrepentant sin contradicts that.
More broadly, based on the witness of all of Scripture, we
need to realize that God grants petitions that are in accord
with His revealed moral will for all of us, and ultimately, His
answers to prayer are governed by His hidden will of decree.
That's why we pray if it is your will.
Another reason why we shouldn't treat prayer as a kind of
infallible gimmick is that Jesus himself did not get everything
he asked for in prayer. Just three chapters later, in
Mark 14 in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prays 3 times
that the cup of God's wrath would be taken from him.
It was not. What was God's answer?
It wasn't to remove the cup, but to grant Jesus to endure the cup
for our sake. Prayer is not a set of commands
we issue to God. God is not a genie who grants
our every request. And yet, through prayer, God
works miracles. Through prayer, God accomplishes
marvels. In answering prayer, God changes
us in ways we cannot change ourselves.
He transforms bitterness into forgiveness.
He transforms the selfish into humble servants.
He grants grace to endure trials far beyond anything you could in
your own strength. He saves people.
He turns persecutors into preachers.
He does marvelous things in answer to prayer.
What's the greatest thing you could ever ask God to do for
you? It's to grant you to be with Him
in His presence and see Him face to face forever, what
theologians call the Beatific vision.
Because seeing God in perfect, intimate fellowship forever will
make you perfectly happy forever.
That's the greatest thing you could ever ask for.
Guess what? He's already promised it to you.
Whatever you ask for in prayer, that is not answered in the way
you would hope or think or expect or desire.
Keep this in mind, Heaven is your worst case scenario.
Whatever God withholds, if you're in Christ, He will one
day give you the greatest thing you could ever ask for.
My friend Travis, who visited this church a few times before
he moved out of the area, is working on a book on prayer and
I was borrowing some of his material there.
Credit where credit is due. He was encouraging me this week
with those reflections. All answers to prayer are
instances of divine power in response to our request invading
earth. The power isn't ours, it's
God's. And yet prayer is how we get it.
So pray. Pray persistently.
Pray boldly. True faith is dependence on God
that expresses itself in prayer. Prayer is faith's breath,
faith's pulse. Where there is faith, there will
be prayer. Where there is no prayer, there
is no faith. If you want to bear the fruit
Jesus is looking for, then abide in Him by praying for it.
As a congregation, we want to be a House of prayer.
This place is not a House of prayer, though we're grateful we
can put it to work for these purposes.
Praise the Lord, It's the people who are a House of prayer.
That's one reason we devote ourselves to prayer in our
corporate gatherings. We try to be deliberate about
modeling a full range of different types of biblical
prayer, from confession and lament to praise and thanks to
petition. Those petitions are especially
focused in the pastoral prayer and in our Sunday night service.
This is why prayer is itself the main focus of our Sunday evening
service. Let me just say, if you're
interested in joining the church and you haven't started
regularly attending our 5:00 PM service on Sundays, I'd
encourage you to start coming. We expect members to regularly
come to that, mainly so that we can be a House of prayer all
together, not only a House of prayer, but a House of prayer
for all nations. If you're not sure what to pray
for, consider biblical models. You can use Paul's prayers as
models. You can use the Lord's Prayer,
which we've prayed together as a model.
Meditate on each of those petitions.
Apply it to specifics in your life.
When you pray for your own forgiveness, ask not only what
sins do I need forgiven, what sins in others do I need to
forgive? That brings us back to the last
verse of our passage, verse 25. And whenever you stand praying,
forgive if you have anything against anyone, so that your
Father also who is in heaven, may forgive you.
Your trespasses, say you're praying privately.
A sin someone else is committed against you comes to mind.
What you should immediately do is forgive them from the heart,
even though they're not there to ask forgiveness or seek
reconciliation. That inward forgiveness is an
attitude. It's being resolved not to make
the other person pay for their sin.
It's being resolved not to hold it against them, not to take
vengeance or extract any cost from them.
Now what about Jesus warning in verse 25?
Is he saying that our forgiveness of others earns
God's forgiveness of sins? Not at all.
He's saying your willingness to forgive others is a test of
whether your faith is real. If you know you're a Sinner and
you know the miracle of God forgiving your sins, you'll
realize how much smaller a thing it is for you to forgive others.
God's forgiveness of you will change your heart and make you
willing to forgive. If you don't forgive others, you
show that you do not know what it means to have your sins
forgiven. So here Jesus gives us a
categorical command to forgive those who sin against you.
The only alternative is bitterness, resentment, as one
person put it. Resentment is like drinking
poison and expecting the other person to die.
There are two different aspects or stages to forgiveness.
Jesus is focused here just on the first one.
Tim Keller has a fantastic discussion of this book in his
This in his book Forgive, which may be a giveaway tonight.
The first stage of forgiveness is what we've been discussing.
It's personal, it's inward, it's an attitude.
Jesus says you have to do it always and for everyone.
But the second stage is reconciliation.
Reconciliation cannot take place from your side unless you've
already forgiven the person. The reconciliation also depends
on the other person you are responsible to forgive.
Both parties are responsible to reconcile, which means if both
parties aren't willing to reconcile, but only one is,
reconciliation is not going to happen.
It's not always possible. Even if you forgive as you must,
the other party is not always willing to do what it takes to
reconcile. So in these verses, Jesus
teaches about real faith. It contrasts with false worship
in that real faith gives birth to genuine fruit, fruit of a
changed heart, fruit of depending on God and prayer,
fruit of being willing to forgive.
True faith is praying faith. True faith is forgiving faith.
False worship sets God's power against you.
True faith receives God's power working for you.
False worship brings down divine judgment.
Faithful prayer draws down divine power.
When God looks at your life, which one does he see?
False worship or true faith? When Christ comes again for your
final inspection, what will he find?
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you
for your loving compassion and warning us of the consequences
of our sin. Father, we praise you for your
forgiveness by which you cast our sins into the depths of the
sea, like a mountain moving from its place and disappearing
forever. Father, we pray that you would
grant us real faith. Faith that praise, faith that
forgives, faith that bears fruit, by your powerful Spirit
at work within us, 'cause the fruit you seek to be born in
Jesus name, Amen.