Inspection Time (Mark 11:12-25)

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

Mark 11:12–25

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.

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,

Ezekiel 4 · chapter mention

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,

Isaiah 56:7

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.

Jeremiah 7:11

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.