Welcome to Compass Bible Church, Huntington Beach. I've already met someone; this is their first service they've ever been to here at our church. Can we give them a warm welcome? Thank you so much for joining us today. And if you open up your bulletin, you'll see that we have a Foundations Class. If you're new to our church, if you want to be connected to a meaningful fellowship here, we would love for you to join us today at one o'clock. We’ve got lunch for everybody, and we'd love to get to know you and let you get to know our church. Also in your bulletin, you may want to pull out this handout and turn in your Bible to Mark, chapter 11, where we're going to be studying the Word of God. And I'm glad that you're here today, whether you were coming from Tent City in LA or throwing scissors in the kids ministry. We're glad that you are here. You know when you go to these rehabs, and I don't know if you know this, but Huntington Beach and the cities of North Orange County, we are one of the most popular rehabilitation destinations in the United States of America. People have moved. I've met so many people from all over America who've come to where we live to rehab from drugs and alcohol, and a lot of times they're filled with this message that they need to believe in a God of their own understanding.
See, the original program of Alcoholics Anonymous talked about having an experience with God that could change your life, but over time, that got diluted down to some kind of higher power, like you get to decide what you are going to believe in and we want to see a lot of people who come to this area for rehabilitation when we want to tell them, hey, you need more than recovery. You need repentance and faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can't go back to some normal that never existed. You need to become a new creation where the old is gone, and behold, look at you. Now. The new has come, and so we want the gospel to reach those who are lost out there in the world. But I think a lot of people who go to church, they think, oh, that God of their own understanding making up your own God. And they look down on that.
When I've grown up going to church my whole life, a lot of church people make up a Jesus of their own accepting. A lot of people just make Jesus who they want him to be. You'll hear people at church all the time say, I accepted Jesus into my heart. I accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior, when? It doesn't really matter what you think about Jesus? What does Jesus think about you? Is Jesus going to accept you? That's what we should be wondering. Who is Jesus, and if he's going to judge me, if he has authority over my life. As he is the Lord of heaven and earth, then what does Jesus think about me, and am I acceptable to him? The kind of Jesus we're going to see in Mark 11:12-25 may not be the Jesus you've heard about or the Jesus that you're familiar with, but this is who Jesus actually is. So, if you're in Mark, look at Mark 11, verse 11, because we had a big weekend last weekend. It was Easter, and if you've come back from Easter, we're so glad that you came back. Some of us last week, we had three services. Some of you were here, communion service, Good Friday service, and Easter service. And we looked at Mark 11:1-11, all three services, and we never got to verse 11. Did anybody else notice that? What a failure of preaching here at this church, right? But if you look at verse 11, it's a set up verse. It says that “And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything,” he's scoping out the scene. He's in Jerusalem. He's in the temple where they worship God, and he's looking at it. “And it was already late, and he went out to Bethany with the twelve.” He went to this little town outside of the city of Jerusalem for the night. And now we're going to read what happens when Jesus comes back into Jerusalem and into the temple. And out of respect for God's Word, I want everyone to stand. I invite you to stand for the public reading of Scripture, and I encourage you to give this your full and undivided attention, because this is who Jesus is. Please follow along as I read Mark 11:12-25
On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in 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.”
That's the reading of God's Word. Please go ahead and have your seat. And I would love for you to take notes on that handout in the bulletin. And what we have here is a Markan sandwich, or at least that is what we call it. It's an intercalation of kind of two different stories woven together to be told as one. If you are taking notes, draw a line under verse 14, because the first three verses are clearly about this fig tree. And then we get verse 15 to 19, the middle, kind of the meat of the sandwich, the scene in the temple. And then you could draw a line between verse 19 and 20, because then we're back to fig tree, part two. So, the fig tree story here, the way Mark tells it, he tells it in two parts. He tells you the intro, and then he brings you back to a conclusion. But in between, he wants you to see this story of what happened in the temple. And Mark regularly does this. This is the fourth time he's done this in the Gospel of Mark. He's going to do it more times yet to come. And the reason he does this is he wants to tell you two stories that somehow make one point.
And so, let's start with the fig tree in verses 12 to 14, where Jesus appears to many people to be hangry. Have you ever been hangry before? Have you ever been so hungry that you get angry about it? That's what a lot of people think Jesus is doing here. In fact, I've heard people use this passage as a reason not to believe in Jesus because of the way that he responds to this tree in anger, telling this tree,
“may no fruit, may no one ever eat fruit from you again,” which I guess is probably the worst thing you can hear if you're a tree, is that right there. Right when you're looking for figs and you find nothing but leaves, they're like, why is Jesus so mean to this poor tree?
Well, this is not just about Jesus interacting with a physical tree in this moment, there's a much bigger story that's being told here. We've learned enough about Jesus through 11 chapters of the gospel of Mark to know that Jesus already knows there's not going to be any fruit on this tree. Jesus is making a point for his disciples. He's making a point for you here today, the fig tree is actually this very deep theme in the Scriptures, particularly in the Hebrew Scriptures. I want to give you some passages. When you hear fig tree, you're not just supposed to think some tree with fruit, or you're not just supposed to think, I guess there were fig trees there in Israel. No, you're supposed to think about the nation of Israel itself. I want to give you just a few of the verses that refer to this idea of how the fig tree goes is kind of how Israel is going. Let's go back to 1 Kings 4. I'll just put them up here on the screen. If you're taking notes, you may want to write down different verses that develop the theme of the fig tree throughout Scripture. And this is a time of prosperity in Israel, where it says Judah and Israel lived in safety from Dan, which is way up in the north, even to Beersheba, every man under his vine and under his fig tree all the days of Solomon. This is early in the reign of King Solomon, when he's going to build the temple, right when it's handed over from King David to his son, Solomon. This is the apex, the high point in the glory of the nation of Israel. And how do we describe the blessing that everybody had being a part of Israel? So, at this time, while everybody was under their own vine, everybody had, remember those days, the good old days, when everybody had their own fig tree. So this becomes a symbol, a picture of the prosperity, the blessing of Israel at the height of King Solomon's reign.
Now the prophets, they continue to talk about this. For example, in Micah, chapter 4, verse 4, when he talks about a future restoration of the kingdom of Israel, He says, “but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.” Or how about Zechariah, chapter 3, verse 10, referring to this future day, In that day, declares the Lord of hosts, every one of you will invite his neighbor to come under his vine and under his fig tree.” There will be another time of blessing on God's people in Israel, which is why it's so profound . In Habakkuk, chapter 3, verse 17 and 18, when he says, hey, “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.” Habakkuk, he's got a lot of questions, how can evil nations judge other nations? He's like, what's going on, God? But even if you're not blessing us, I'm still going to trust in you. You're the God who saves.
So, you can see when Jesus now comes, and has an interaction with a fig tree that's noticeable, that's written down for us to study. There's more than meets the eye happening here. Jesus is making a statement about how he's finding the nation of Israel at this time and how he's not finding it bearing fruit. In fact, a lot of the things that Jesus does or Jesus says, they are references to previous Scriptures. And the reason that a lot of people don't come to accurate interpretations of the life of Jesus is they don't know the Scripture that came before Jesus? Because there's actually a verse in Micah, chapter 7, verse 1, that talks about this kind of first ripe fig. So, I need everybody, if you've got a Bible, to turn it with me to Micah, chapter 7. See, it says it's not the season for figs, yet there were leaves on the tree. So that might sound confusing if you're not familiar with how the fig trees work there in Israel. And I'm encouraging everybody to go to Micah, chapter 7, if you can find that chapter. Micah, chapter 7, verse 1, talks about sometimes when the leaves would come out earlier in the season, before the full harvest of figs, there would be some fruit that would grow on the fig tree, right there, kind of when the leaves came out, before the real bunch of figs came later in the season, there would be what it calls here in Micah 7:1 “the first ripe figs.” So, that's what Jesus was looking for. Now we know Jesus already knew he wasn't going to find it, but that's this idea, and it expresses it in Micah, chapter 7, verse 1, it says, “Woe is me! For I have become as when the summer fruit has been gathered, as when the grapes have been gleaned: there is no cluster to eat, no first-ripe fig that my soul desires.” So, Jesus, by his actions, is revealing what this scripture is talking about, that I'm going to look for fruit, but it's all gone. All the fruit has already been gleaned or harvested, which actually, if you go back to Deuteronomy 24 this goes against the law of Moses. You were always supposed to leave some for the sojourner, for the widow, for the orphan. So, something that's fully gleaned like this, who should tell us there's no fruit for you, because everybody's in it for themselves.
And so, there's actually a deeper meaning to why there wouldn't be fruit around because people have taken it all for themselves, and they're not really caring about who else may need it. Go on. Let's see what this passage ends up describing here. What's the point of there being no first ripe fig on the tree? Well, verse 2, “The godly has perished from the earth, and there is no one upright among mankind; they all lie in wait for blood, and each hunts the other with a net. Their hands are on what is evil, to do it well; the prince and the judge ask for a bribe, and the great man utters the evil desire of his soul; thus they weave it together.” Oh, the problem is, there are no godly people. The word here for Godly in Micah 7, verse 2, it's related to this Hebrew word, hesed. who read through all 150 Psalms. Anybody here read all 150 Psalms? We saw this idea of God's steadfast love, his covenant with his people, his hesed, the idea of the godly man here is the person who's responded to God's covenant, the person who's received God's love, and now they're ready to pass God's love on.
They love God because he first loved us and then they loved their neighbor as themselves. Well, I'm looking around Israel here at the time of Micah, and I can't find the godly man. I can't find the man who knows the steadfast love of YHWH and loves YHWH back and loves his neighbor, I can't find him. Everybody's in it for themselves. In fact, people are willing to do evil against their fellow man. In fact, even the people who should be in authority are taking bribes and in it for themselves. It's corruption. That's what's being described. When Jesus can't find a fruit on the fig tree, he's making a statement about the nation of Israel, that Jesus, the judge, is coming in, and he has found the way that they are acting to not be acceptable. In fact, Jesus and the fig tree is kind of like a prophet who's taking an ordinary thing and making it a picture, making a point out of it. No fruit on the fig tree means. And then what does he do after that? He walks into the temple and acts like we need to clean this place up. We need to clear these people out. What you're doing in this temple is unacceptable. So, what we're getting a glimpse of now as Jesus comes into Jerusalem is what it's going to be like when Jesus comes back to Jerusalem. Jesus is coming to judge the living and the dead.
See a lot of people, they've heard the story of Jesus humbling himself to be born as a baby, that even though he was the Son of God, he became man, and he was willing to become obedient to the point of death, even a brutal death on a cross. And Jesus loved you, that's why he shed his blood for you, and he rose from the dead. That's how he offers you a new life. People have heard about that. But have you also heard that Jesus, he went up into heaven, and he's at the right hand of the Father, and he's coming back, and when he comes back, he's going to reign as king, he's going to judge the nations, and Jesus will decide in his righteousness, who's on his side and who's not? Who's going to live and who's going to die.
Let's get this down for point number one: “Get a glimpse of the coming judgment.” That's what we're seeing with the fig tree and the temple. Get a glimpse of the coming judgment. Make sure that the Jesus you believe in is the true Jesus, not a Jesus of your own accepting, not a Jesus who will accept you on your terms. No, you need to come to Jesus on his terms. And he is saying here with the fig tree, and when he comes into the temple, that what they're doing in Jerusalem is lacking. It's falling short. Go back to Mark 11 and look how he comes in there. Now in the meat of our passage, in verse 15, remember he came and he surveyed it the night before. Well, now he's coming in, and he has a clear purpose. As soon as he gets in there, it says he begins to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple. The word here for drive out is like Jesus's the same idea when he's casting out demons. The same idea when something's being thrown out. Jesus comes in and he's saying, you're buying, you're selling. I'm getting you out of here. He's flipping over tables of the money changers and the people who are taking advantage of the poor by selling pigeons. Yeah, he's saying you're going to stop doing that. In fact, it appears that they had somehow turned the temple into some kind of passageway, where maybe it was quicker to get from the Mount of Olives into the rest of the city by going through the temple. And Jesus is like, yeah, you're not carrying anything through here. You're not passing through here anymore. This temple has a purpose, and it's not what you're doing.
Somehow, Jesus pulls off a complete upheaval of a normal business day in the temple, and this was a large area, there would have been a lot of people in there. Jesus is in charge of the scene. Jesus commands everyone's attention, and pretty soon there's such a crowd listening to him teach what must have been a chaotic scene is now calm, and everyone's focused on him, and his enemies can't even get in there because so many people are astonished at the teaching of Jesus. How did he do this? I don't think anybody else could have pulled off what Jesus does here in the temple. He flips the script on another day in Jerusalem. Now, when you're looking at this circle, all the words that have to do with money, you can see they sold they bought, the money changers, they're selling the pigeons. So clearly, they had taken the worship of God and they had made it about a business plan. They were making profit. This is always what false teachers do. There's always a motive of money behind it, even supposedly they're in a nonprofit, but they're really in it for profit. That's how false teachers go.
But what you need to understand is that when Jesus goes into the temple, maybe you're not familiar with the layout of the temple, but we're talking about Herod's temple here, which is a massive area, and maybe you know the Holy of Holies, where there's that massive tapestry that separates the holy from the Holy of Holies, where God's presence is, where God's glory dwells among his people. So, nobody can go into the Holy of Holies except the high priest one day of the year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Some of the priests can go into the holy place to do their priestly duties. There are some area where only the priests can go. Then there's the court of the Jews. Then there's the court where the women who are Jews can go. And then the outer area of the temple is supposed to be the Court of the Gentiles, all the foreigners, all the people from other nations who are there to worship. They're supposed to have that outer court where they can come and they can be a part of the people of God and worship YHWH, along with the Jews. And apparently, if we're now doing business in the temple, what we have said is that we don't really care about those Gentiles coming in here. Let's make the most of this space. This is prime real estate. We can make a lot of money as people are coming to do their sacrifices and all the things they need to do in the temple. Why have that down the street? Let's just put it right here. And so, the court of the Gentiles has been hijacked for people to make money and do business. And so, Jesus says, this is not what you're supposed to be doing in this space. And the key is the teaching of Jesus, if you can look with me here in Mark 11, verse 17, he says two things. He says, “Is it not written?” Is how he introduces it. So, Jesus is going to quote two different passages here in his teaching, and because it emphasizes his teaching in verse 17 and in verse 18, the people are astonished at his teaching. I would imagine he explained these passages of Scripture, and he did more than just quote them or refer to them, and Jesus talks about Scripture like you should know it. He says, “Is it not written?” Jesus doesn't act like he's telling them something that maybe they shouldn't know. He acts like, hey, I want to bring up things that you should already know were written down. How come you're not thinking about these things? It is the tone of what he says here. And so, he quotes, first of all, this house of prayer for all the nations, that's Isaiah, chapter 56, verse 7. And then he quotes a den of robbers, that's Jeremiah 7:11. So, he starts quoting prophets and using them to explain why what they're doing in the temple is not acceptable. And so, I need everybody to go look at these passages with me. Grab your Bible, and let's go back to Isaiah 56 because if you go to the context, if you really get your eyeballs in the Bible, it will become clear why Jesus is referring to these passages, and what has made him so righteously angry, it's because of what is happening in Jerusalem is not what was said here in the Scripture. And it's already been written. They've already been warned about this in Isaiah, chapter 56; you can see in verse 7, it ends with, “for my house shall be called a house of prayer.” And then I need everybody to circle this where it says, for all nations, or for all peoples.
Some of the Gospels just say house of prayer. Mark, he has that line that's in Isaiah 56:7, for all the other nations. Okay, so it's not just that we should be praying in the temple, but we're doing business in the temple. Maybe that's the impression you've gotten before. No, it's more than that. The specific area of the temple that has been taken over for business is the area that the other nations are supposed to come and worship in; we're supposed to be praying not just like the temple is a good place to pray. No What are we supposed to be praying for? We're supposed to be praying for the people who don't know God that they would come to know God. But instead of praying for them to come and worship God and know YHWH with us. We're taking over the area where they're supposed to come and worship, and we're doing our business there. This sounds like a lot of churches I know where we're so busy doing church, we haven't got room for other people to join us. We're so busy worshiping God, we can't be praying for the people he wants to save. So, that's the issue, part of the issue here.
Let's get the whole context here, and look at verse 1 of Isaiah 56, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Keep justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my righteousness be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.’ Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people’; and let not the eunuch say, ‘Behold, I am a dry tree.’ For thus says the Lord: ‘To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. ‘And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant— these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
What is this passage about? It's about a eunuch from Ethiopia in Acts, chapter 8, who comes all the way to Jerusalem because he wants to learn more about God. And he's got this scroll, the scroll of Isaiah, and he's reading it. And the Holy Spirit sends Philip, the evangelist, to run by his chariot to ask him, “Do you understand what you're reading,” and what does the Ethiopian eunuch say? He says, “How could I understand it unless someone teaches it to me,” unless they explain it to me, we're supposed to be praying for the foreigners, praying for the eunuchs, that they could join us and become the people of God, that they would have a place right alongside the Jews. The Jews are supposed to be a light to the nations, a city on a hill that everybody could see what it's like to worship YHWH and that even others would want to come and join them in their praise. But instead of welcoming other people in, instead of praying for other people to join, they've taken over the space, and they've made that where they sell stuff. They've made it like another street in Jerusalem. They don't care about the foreigner getting saved and coming to worship YHWH.
Let's get this down for our first dash: “He is against the Gatekeeping of the Gentiles.” Jesus is against the gatekeeping of the Gentiles. He can tell they're not praying for the nations. He could tell they're not creating a space to welcome in those who want to worship YHWH with them. Now they've taken over that space for their own purpose. That's why he says, this is supposed to be a house of prayer that all the nations can come to how can they come when you're over here selling these things in their space? So, Jesus, he came to save, he came to save all peoples. He sent us on a mission to make disciples of all nations. You know, I wish that Jesus could give us a like a progress report, or some kind of report card on how we're doing as an American church. Wouldn't it be amazing if Jesus could tell us what churches are on the mission of making disciples and what churches are just going through the motions? I wonder how many churches that met across America on this Sunday morning left no room for somebody else to come and join them. They didn't pray for anybody to get saved. It says in 1 Timothy, chapter 2, verse 1 and 7, like the first order of business the church is supposed to be about as we're supposed to pray for all peoples, and specifically the thing we pray for all peoples is that they may be what, everybody? Saved. You see the Jewish people, they were supposed to represent YHWH to their neighboring nations. They have lost the plot on that, and Jesus is calling them out. Isn't this supposed to be a house of prayer for all the nations? Why aren't you guys making space for them to join us? Instead, you're doing business where they should be worshiping. That's one thing that Jesus confronts. The second thing he says is, you've made this a den of robbers.
So, flip over a little bit to the right, to Jeremiah 7:11 because that's where he is pulling that phrase from, Jeremiah chapter 7:11. He is actually quoting a sermon that Jeremiah preached in the gates of the temple, and Jeremiah preached this sermon in the gates of the temple, and they didn't listen to him. They didn't do what Jeremiah said to do. And so, King Nebuchadnezzar and the army of Babylon came in and destroyed Jerusalem, desecrated the temple, and exiled God's people. Now Jesus is showing up hundreds of years later, re-preaching Jeremiah 7 to a whole new generation, warning them you're about to get wiped out. If you don't listen to this, you're doing exactly what they did back in Jeremiah's day. You're turning the temple into a lair of bad guys. Have you ever seen a movie where the bad guys go back to their evil lair? That's what a den of robbers is. Okay? It's like the base for the bad guys and the head honchos there. You know what I mean? They've turned the temple into where the bad guys go. That's what he's saying. And he's quoting. See, Jesus is doing a prophetic work with the fig tree. He's doing a prophetic work in the temple. He's warning them that judgment is going to come upon you for the way you're conducting yourself in the household of God. And judgment always begins in the household of God.
Let's just get the context here of Jeremiah's sermon. Start with me in verse 1 of Jeremiah 7, “The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ‘Stand in the gate of the Lord's house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place.’ Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’” They're like, well, we're good. We're God's people. We go to the temple. Hey, how are you doing? I'm great. I go to the temple. It sounds like so many people, hey, are you a Christian? Yeah, I go to church. Hey, are you a Christian? Of course, I read the Bible. Hey, are you a Christian? Yeah, of course I am. I've accepted Jesus into my heart like just your closeness to these things, your familiarity with going to the temple like that, I must be fine. Then, no, that's not true. Verse 5, “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever. ‘Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, 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? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord.”
Goes on to say, “Remember Shiloh, the original place where they used to worship? Yeah, nobody's worshiping there anymore. Why? Because I destroyed it because of their hypocrisy. Jesus is re preaching this sermon in Jerusalem again. Jesus, when he walked in there to the temple, and he looked around, he saw it. He saw that it was a den of robbers. This is where the bad guys go. They go out here and do their sin, and then they come in and they say, we’re delivered, we're saved.” I wonder how many people, even at our church, that's the story of even this weekend, I'm out here sinning, and then I'm coming to church singing songs like I'm saved. And here's God saying, you don't think I'm going to see those abominations. You don't think I'm going to see what you're really up to in your sin. So many people, when they come into the temple here in Jerusalem, when they come to church today, they're putting on a mask. They're putting on a show. They're acting on the outside like they're all for God, but really, their ways are not amended and they haven't changed their deeds.
Let's get this down for our second dash: “He is against the Hypocrisy of the Religious.” He is against the hypocrisy of the religious. He looks at what's going on. Jesus knows the hearts of men, and he sees that they are doing evil, and then thinking that coming to the temple is somehow going to cancel out, or balance out, the evil in their hearts, when really they're just hypocrites and they need to amend their ways and their deeds, or judgment will come. And judgment does come. This is going to be a big theme in the last week of Jesus' life. As we go through the Gospel of Mark together as a church, this year, we're going to see that Jesus is warning Jerusalem that judgment is coming, and just a few years after Jesus dies and rises again, the Romans will come in AD 70 and they will wipe out the Jews. They will wipe out Jerusalem. It won't even be Israel for hundreds of years, because God has found the way that they are worshiping unacceptable. See, you don't get to be a hypocrite and be right with Jesus. If you are a hypocrite, it's unacceptable to him, and he's calling it out. He's judging it. That's Jesus. He's like a priest coming to make sure that the worship is clean, that the worship is pure. Do you see what's happening? We're getting to know Jesus. He came in on a donkey like a king. He talked to a fig tree like a prophet, and now he's clearing out the temple like a priest. Jesus is on a mission, and he's trying to tell you, this is what it's going to be like. You're going to have to hold up to God's standard. You can't make up your own standard.
Now go back to Mark, chapter 11, and I hope that we can hear what Jesus is saying today. We need to be praying if there's any hypocrisy here at our church, that it would be exposed, if there's any of us who have lost our mission, where we're not caring about other people coming and being saved, that we would amend our ways and our deeds. You can't think that Jesus is okay with you not caring about lost people when he came to seek and save the lost. And you can't think that Jesus is okay with you being a hypocrite where you continue in your sin and try to say you're delivered at the same time. Jesus is showing us in his day in the temple that these things are unacceptable to him.
And then we have the third scene. Here we have the other bun of our sandwich. We have in verse 20, “The next day.” Wow. What a day that must have been, watching Jesus take over the temple and teach everyone. And then now you're coming in, what's going to happen today? And as they pass by in the morning, oh, look at the fig tree. And the fig tree now is withered down to its roots. I mean, something dramatically different. This is the opposite of deja vu, where you see the same thing twice. This is like we're walking by the same tree, and what happened to that tree? In fact, Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look the fig tree that you cursed. It's withered.” I think what Peter says here often the spokesperson of the disciples. I love this from Peter, because I don't think he's necessarily surprised, like, it couldn't, like, I can't believe Jesus did that. No, I mean, we've seen Jesus do some things. I think he's just surprised in that way where it's like, wow, Jesus did that. He's surprised in that way where you believe that Jesus is God, you believe that Jesus can do marvelous and wondrous things. Nothing is too hard for the Lord. In fact, the things that he does, they're so awesome that when he does them, even though you knew he could do it, and even though maybe you even prayed and asked him to do it, when he actually does it, you're just like, wow, look at what he did. And that's kind of what's happening here. Wow. You told that tree what was up, and it it's gone. Wow. And now Jesus uses this as a teaching moment with His disciples.
In fact, we get one of the clearest instructions in the whole Gospel of Mark, based on the withered, cursed fig tree. Look at what Jesus says in verse 22. He says, “Have faith in God,” and that's an imperative. That's a command. So, if you're taking notes circle, have faith he's going to say the same thing three times in a row. Here's Jesus' application of the cursed fig tree that he could speak, and it would just wither away. That's the power that Jesus has in his words of life. And so, he's saying, yes, you should have. You should possess. The word here is to have, like a verb, like a command, have. And then the thing you have is faith in God. And then you can see the next verse, he says, verse 23 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 believe; circle believes right there. That's another command. You need to believe that what he says will come to pass. It will be done for him. “Therefore, I tell you,” verse 24, “whatever you ask in prayer, believe,” circle it again. He says, have faith, and then he says, believe and believe. Jesus actually acts like, oh, you think that's impressive that the fig trees withered. You could do those kinds of things if you have faith too. In fact, I'm going to tell you something true, and it might be hard for you to believe, but if you have faith, whatever you ask, it will be done. I mean, look at how he says it two times here. He says, if you were to say to a mountain be taken up and thrown into the sea. And you don't doubt in your heart, but you believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done. You could move mountains. You think a tree is impressive. You could move mountains, is what Jesus is saying. In fact, he says in verse 24 I tell you, hey, he's saying, you’ve got to listen to this. Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.
Point number two, let's get it down like this: “Practice the prayer of faith.” Practice the prayer of faith. This kind of prayer is not just a throwing out a suggestion God or leaving some kind of comment that maybe you'll take into consideration. No, the prayer that's described here is you're specifically asking God to do something, and even as you ask him to do it, you believe he's going to do it. This isn't the kind of way a lot of people pray, like maybe if you want to, if it kind of fits with your will, you're throwing out some idea. No, this is like God, because you're like this, because you said this, this is a promise that you made, I'm asking you to do this because of who you are, because I want your name to be hallowed, because I want your will to be done. I'm asking you to act in a way that is consistent with your character and fulfills the promises you've already made in your Scripture. And because I know who you are, and because I believe what you said when I ask you to do this. I'm going to believe that you will do it. And Jesus says, if you pray with that kind of faith, it will happen. It will happen. Now I’ve got to ask you, do you pray like that? I mean, the sad reality is these days at church, I’ve got to ask you, do you even pray? And people feel insulted when you ask that question. Everybody always prays when you ask them that question. So, I've learned to ask a secondary question, which is, what time in your day do you actually stop and pray? I'm not talking about every once in a while you're thinking about God throughout the day. I'm talking about you shut the door and your focus at that moment is just you in the secret place with the Father. And the two times I regularly hear about are right before I'm about to eat and right before I'm about to sleep. Those are the two most common times. And to be honest, in a lot of people's answers, it sounds like I'm just doing it on my way to something else. I'm asking you, when do you pray? When is it just you and God, no distractions, nobody else. And you're thinking as you go before God, this is who I'm talking to, this is what he has said. What am I going to ask him to do that is worthy of his name, that is according to his will. And when you pray, you believe that God is able, willing, and is going to actually do it. Have you learned to pray that way? There are people in this room who pray that way, and you want to know how I know that because mountains have been moved. Things that seemed impossible, things that seemed immovable, things that seemed like they would always be this way, that person would always be addicted to that drug. That person would always be that hypocritical Christian, and people prayed and that mountain got tossed into the sea.
There are people at this church. Man, sometimes I've been out with people at this church in public, and somebody they used to know will come and see them. I remember one time I was having Chinese food with a brother in Christ here at this church, and the waiter did like, a full 360 around our table, and he came and said, the brother's name. He's like, bro, is that you? And he's like, Yeah, it's me. He used to work at that restaurant, and he's like, bro, you made it. He, like, starts clapping for him right there. Like, something happened to you, man, something's different about you. Wow. And he began to share with him the gospel of Jesus Christ, that a mountain had been moved. That's the number one mountain is people who are slaves of sin can be set free. People who are always this way can be made new in Christ, and it seems impossible that they would ever be different than how they are. And yet look at them. Now that's the power that God has, the power of salvation, that when we pray for it, oh God, I hope you'll save people. No, God, I'm asking you to act so that more people will know how awesome your son Jesus is as the Lord and Savior. I'm asking you to save and then people actually get saved.
That's the kind of prayer Jesus is talking about. You're not just going to throw that prayer up driving home one day. You're going to have to learn how to pray. You're going to have to develop a practice, a habit, where you study who God is, where you learn the promises he has made, and you spend time going before God in the secret place see. What if I said, hey, we're going to stop right now. We're going to flip this into a prayer meeting right now. Go up to a stranger and start praying with them. Now, if you're new, we wouldn't expect you to pray if you're just joining us at church, but some of you have been here for years, and if I said, Let's go pray with somebody right now, you would think, well, I don't pray with other people. How long is that going to go on in your life?
If I said, today, everybody go home and pray for thirty minutes and ask God to do something like move a mountain. What's your mountain that needs to get moved? Let's go pray for thirty minutes for God to move a mountain who's like, I can't pray for thirty minutes. How long are you going to live like that? There are a lot of mountains around here that need to be thrown into the sea. There are a lot of people stuck in their sin, and they need to be saved. There are a lot of relationships where people hate each other. They're not talking to each other. The divorces are happening. Families are torn asunder. There are massive mountains in between, people who should be loving one another, and they are completely separated by their own sin. And you're not praying for any of that. You're not asking God to do anything about that if you are living a prayerless life. How long are you going to live that way? Why are you choosing a life that is weak and powerless when you could ask God to do it, and he does so. I'm asking you, do you have a practice of a prayer of faith. And then one of the mountains, look at verse 25 look at the last verse that Jesus gives here 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. This is why I bring up relationships that have been separated as one of the mountains, because he talks about, are you willing to forgive someone, if you have something against them? Are you ready to forgive them? Because if you want God to forgive you, don't you need to be ready then to forgive others?
Go over to Matthew, chapter 6, where Jesus teaches about prayer in his sermon. So, we get a little bit more detail to Jesus's teaching on prayer. Over in Matthew, chapter 6, we get an example of the kind of prayer. We get the instruction to go in your room and shut the door. And then after he teaches us about how to pray in Matthew 6:14, and 15. Jesus says, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” That's Matthew 6:14-15. He teaches us how to pray, and then he brings up this issue of forgiveness. Don't expect God to answer your prayers if you won't forgive other people who have sinned against you. Why would God forgive you for your sin? See, this is one of the mountains that can be moved If we confess our sins. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Can I get an amen from anybody on that? If you confess your sins to God, does he forgive you in the name of Jesus? The answer to that is yes, you can be saved. That mountain of sin can be moved. But then how could you say, I'm so thankful God forgave me all my sins, and then go to somebody else and say, what's your problem? Why have you sinned against me? See, we should all be the worst sinner that we know, because we can see into our own heart. We can see into our own soul. We know the evil that lies within. We know what we've said, thought, and done, and God is willing, through the blood of Jesus, to cleanse us from all of that sin. And then we're like God, thank you for forgiving me, but this other person, they really need to suffer for what they've done. I don't want to talk to them. I don't want to call them. I'm not going to reach out to them, because what they did to me. Some of us here today, hearing this word of Jesus, you need to take the log out of your own eye, and you need to be willing to forgive in the same way that you've been forgiven.
Let's get this down for our last dash: “Pass on the forgiveness you are promised.” Pass on the forgiveness you are promised. See the way Jesus says it here, it almost sounds like if you don't forgive somebody, then you won't be forgiven. It sounds almost like you have to do this work of forgiveness so that you can receive forgiveness yourself. And we know we're not saved by any work we do. We're saved by the work that Jesus did when he died on the cross and rose again. So, it can't be you have to forgive to get forgiven. No, the way that it works is, if you've really been forgiven for your sin, and you know the love of God that he would forgive you, well, then you can pass that love on to the people that have sinned against you, and you can forgive them, I guarantee you. And with this many people here at this nine o'clock service on a rainy Sunday morning in Huntington Beach, there are some family members that you're not willing to speak to. There are some old acquaintances and friends that you have written off, and I want you to hear Jesus say forgive if you're not willing to forgive them, how can you expect to be forgiven yourself? See, this is one of the mountains marriages that feel like they're on their way to divorce, families that feel like they're not getting together for the holidays, old people who used to go to church together back in the day, but now they don't even talk to each other anymore. Who do you need to forgive? Let me pray for us right now.
Father, there's so much for us to chew on. And what Jesus does this day in the temple, where he curses the fig tree and he clears out the temple. And then Peter is like, Wait, look at that tree. And he teaches them how to pray, he tells them to forgive. God, I pray that we could hear these words of Jesus. I pray that we could see Jesus for who he really is. I pray that no one here would have a Jesus of their own, accepting a Jesus who's just going to accept them, even if they're a hypocrite, even if they don't care for the people he cares for, even if they don't pray and aren't willing to forgive, it'll be fine between Jesus and me. I pray that people today could see, no, it won't. It wasn't okay that day Jesus went into Jerusalem. He called it out for what it was. They'd taken over the Court of the Gentiles. They were hypocrites, living in sin. God, please expose any hypocrisy here at our church. Let us start with me. Let it go to everybody here, if we're living one way and then coming and worshiping you another way, God, please confront that. Let Jesus confront that here at this church. Let this be a place where those who don't know Jesus are always welcome. There's always room for them. We're always praying for them to come in, and God teach us how to pray. I pray for the people here that they've not really been praying, not where they're praying with faith, not like mountains are going to move teach them how to pray. And I pray for those who need to forgive someone that as far as it depends on them, they need to be at peace with them. They need to at least reach out. They need to give it a chance. They need to open their heart up. Don't let them harden their heart today. Let them hear Jesus say, forgive, Father. I just pray that that we would all see that if we're going to follow Jesus, we have to leave some things behind. And what a joy it is to follow your Son, Jesus. So, Father, please let this be a church of Jesus followers. We pray this in his name. Amen. Let's all stand up and let's sing this song together.