Message preached Sunday, October 2, 2016 from Mark 11:20-24
Theme: Our Lord teaches His people the limitless potential of their prayers when prayed with faith in God.
We have been studying lately from the 11th Chapter of the Gospel of Mark; and the story it tells of Jesus’ final few days before going to the cross. It’s been a fascinating and rich portion of God’s word.
This chapter tells us about three successive visits the Lord Jesus made to the temple in the city of Jerusalem on this final week. And I can’t help but see something wonderful being told to us about our Lord in the nature of each of those three visits. On the first visit, which was on the Sunday of that week, Jesus came to the city in what we have become accustomed to call His ‘Triumphant Entry’. And on this first visit, He presented Himself to His people as their long awaited and promised King. “Behold, your King is coming to you,” the Old Testament tells the people of Israel; “… lowly and riding on a donkey …” (Zechariah 9:9). And so, He came on the first day as Israel’s promised King; and when He came, He went into the temple, and looked around at all things, and then left.
On the second visit, on Monday, we’re told that as He came again to the temple, He and His disciples saw a fig tree along the way. It was lush and green and filled with leaves—having the promise of bearing good, luscious figs. But when our Lord came looking for fruit, He found none. The fig tree was deceptive; and He cursed it, saying, “Let no one eat fruit from you ever again” (Mark 11:14). This was symbolic of His wayward people Israel. With all of the religious ceremonies and rituals, they had the outward appearance of bearing spiritual fruit. But upon examination, they were spiritually barren. He came on that Monday into the temple and threw out all the money-changers, and those who sold doves, and wouldn’t let people buy or sell in the temple any longer. He told them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a ‘den of thieves’” (v. 17). In cleansing the temple in this way—in obedience to the Old Testament prophecy about Himself in Malachi 3:1-3, He was fulfilling His role as divine ‘Priest’.
And now we come to the third day’s visit, on Wednesday. And did you know that—beginning with Mark 11:20—we come to the longest single portion in all the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) that deals with one single day’s teaching of our Lord? It goes all the way to Mark 14:2. It is a section that is filled with stories of our Lord’s teaching, and of His confrontation with the Pharisees and scribes who opposed His teaching. I suggest to you that, on this third day, our Lord highlights His ministry as a Teacher in Israel—it’s divine Prophet—who ‘forth-told’ to His people the word of God.
Three days in succession—and three divine roles: Prophet, Priest and King! He is all of these things to us. What a Savior our Lord Jesus is!
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And so; we begin today with the story of our Lord as divine Prophet—the Teacher of Israel—on this important third visit to the temple in Jerusalem on Tuesday morning. And it begins with a story of Him and His disciples once again encountering that fig tree that He had cursed the day before.
Mark tells us, in Mark 11:20-21;
Now in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter, remembering, said to Him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree which You cursed has withered away” (Mark 20-21).
And it’s interesting to note that Jesus didn’t then talk to His disciples about the unfaithfulness and spiritual barrenness of Israel at the time of His coming. Instead, He used it as a teachable moment to His faithful followers about prayer:
So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.
“And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses” (Mark 11:22-26).
Over the next couple of Sundays—if God so wills—I would like for us to talk about the instructions on prayer that our Lord gives us here. Next Sunday, I would like to concentrate on verses 25-26; and on the subject of how our forgiveness of others affects our prayers. But for this morning, I ask that we just consider what He says about the potential power of our prayers when they are prayed with sincere faith in God.
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I was talking with my wife about this passage not long ago; and she made an interesting observation. We may be living in a time when we have far less patience of waiting on God in our prayers than in any other past generation.
We live in a very remarkable time when, if you or I want something, we simply go to the internet and order it. We can sit on a chair at home, or lay on a bed or a sofa, and shop around the world for almost anything we could want. We can pick the best price, and we can choose standard delivery, or two-day delivery, or—in some cases—overnight delivery; and from almost anywhere in the world. There’s serious talk about how we are only a few years away from packages being delivered to our home by drones—dropping down to us from the sky and setting them at our front door! And if we have ordered something, we can even track where the package is, and at what time it’ll be delivered. We’ve become so used to all this that if something we’ve ordered doesn’t come when we expect it, we get anxious and complain.
We might call this an “Amazon attitude” of immediacy in our expectations. If we don’t see it immediately, we think there’s something wrong. And because of it, we—in this generation—have largely lost the kind of attitude of patient waiting on God that is essential to the prayer of faith. That attitude of patient waiting was taken for granted far more in in other generations than it is in our own. When it comes to our prayers, we can’t set the conditions—not, anyway, in the way that we can when we place orders on-line. We must trust God and submit to His sovereign plan and purposes. We must accept that His time-frame in answering our requests works according to His own wise outworking of all things. We must trust that the timing and nature of His answers to our prayers are always perfect—but not necessarily according to our own expectations. And so, sadly, if we don’t see an immediate and expected answer to our prayers—according to our “Amazon attitude”—we assume that it must be that God did not hear us. We assume that prayer doesn’t work. We assume that somethings wrong with our ‘order’.
In the light of that whole “Amazon attitude”, I have really grown to love this morning’s passage. It reminds us that we aren’t placing an order to a website, but rather are making our appeal to a divine Person. This passage confronts that whole attitude of impatience; and it teaches us to patiently trust that God has indeed heard our prayers. It affirms to us that, from heaven’s perspective, we already have the thing we have asked—if we ask in true faith and in the right condition of heart. It assures us that, when the time is right, we will see His good answer in our own experience. This passage really calls us to lift our view in our prayers from a strictly ‘under-the-sun’, ‘this-world-only’, ‘Amazon’ frame of mind—which is time-bound and temporal and mechanical; and shift our thinking toward seeing things in our prayers from the perspective of our loving and wise and good Father in heaven.
Seen from the perspective of our almighty, gracious Father, prayer then becomes a bridge by which we cross over from our temporal viewpoint and pray to One who dwells above time, and for whom all of time is but one eternal present. I believe that the instructions we receive from the Lord in this morning’s passage help us to cross that prayer-bridge from the temporal to the eternal.
In it, our Lord teaches us about the limitless potential of prayer that is prayed with faith in almighty God. Truly, the potential of our prayers to Him are as unlimited as He is.
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Now; let’s begin by considering how this passage begins. Look with me at verses 20-21; and see what it teaches us about …
1. THE POWER OF OUR LORD’S WORD.
Mark tells us that Jesus and His disciples were leaving from the place where they had spent the night—that is, most likely, in the small town of Bethany. It was early in the morning—perhaps not long after 6 am. In another Gospel—in Luke 21:38—we’re told that people were coming into the temple early in the morning to hear Jesus teach; and so, early in the morning, Jesus, the great Teacher, went out with His disciples to minister to them.
And Mark tells us, “Now in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter, remembering, said to Him, ‘Rabbi, look! The fig tree which You cursed has withered away.’” It must have been a startling sight. The day before, this fig tree was lush and green and covered with leaves. It had looked so alive—even though, in fact, it was barren. But now look at it! It was dead and dried up and withered; and not just in the leaves, but from the roots. In seeing this, Peter remembered the words that our Lord had spoken to it. And in Matthew’s Gospel (in Matthew 21:20), we’re told that all the disciples—along with Peter—marveled that the fig tree had withered away so quickly. What a contrast it was from the day before!
Our Lord Jesus—the Master Teacher—always took advantage of a teachable moment. But what’s fascinating to me is that He didn’t then go on to give a lesson on the spiritual unfaithfulness of Israel at that time. Instead, He used this opportunity to teach about prayer. And do you know why I believe He picked that moment?—and after they had seen what happened to the tree after He merely spoke to it? It’s because they were—right then—being made surprisingly aware the power and authority of the words of Jesus Himself. He was allowing them to see again—as they had seen so many times before—that He walked among them as God in human flesh; with all the authority of God, and for whom truly nothing was impossible.
I believe that this is critical to being able to understand Jesus’ teaching about prayer. The power behind the success of prayer is always found in Him. He is the one who has all-authority. Do you remember the story of how the disciples—some time before this—tried to cast an unclean spirit out of a young boy? Jesus was apart from them at the time; and they were complete failures in their attempt. They thought that if they followed all the right formulas, they could do the work of Jesus in their own power. And do you remember what Jesus told them? He came upon them and said;
“O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to Me” (Mark 9:19).
And the problem was solved as soon as they did so.
Dear brothers and sisters; you and I can stand in front of a fig tree and command all we want to that it wither; and our words will not make it dry up the next day. We have no such power; and our words have no such authority. And of course, we’re not interested in going around cursing trees anyway; but that’s hardly the point! The point is that we have no power to do the work of Jesus in and of ourselves. The power and the authority is all of Him—and we have power and authority only so long as we are attached to Him and are submitted to His will.
What a vital thing that is to prayer! That’s why I believe Jesus led them to encounter this fig tree once again. It was to teach them the power and authority of our Lord’s word. And that power and authority becomes the reason for the power and authority of our own prayers when we trust in Him.
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This withered fig tree, then—and the disciples’ marvel over seeing how it responded to the word of Jesus—was the spring-board for what our Lord wanted to teach them about prayer that is prayed in submission to His power and authority. So; let’s go on next to consider …
2. THE PRINCIPLES HE TAUGHT ON PRAYER.
The First principle I see is this: Make sure that your faith is in God when you pray. I see this in the fact that the first thing Jesus says in verse 22—as His disciples are still standing there looking at the withered tree in astonishment—is “Have faith in God.”
I see in these important words two important emphases. The first is placed on the word “have”—as if it was a command being stressed. It’s not an option for the believer. She or he is to make sure to “have” faith. And the second is the object of the action of faith—that we are to have faith “in God”.
This reminds me of a terrible monstrosity that we must be sure we avoid. It’s the whole habit some people have of having faith in “faith”. It’s the idea that faith itself has power—regardless of what our faith is in. And I hope you and I will never become guilty of embracing or believing that monstrous ‘magical’ kind of thinking. There is no power in ‘faith’ itself. Faith is only as valid, and only as powerful, as the object in which it is placed. And we must make absolutely sure our faith is in God Himself.
Making sure our faith is in God also helps guide us in our prayers so that we pray in accordance with His will. If we think that there is power in “faith” itself, we will end up praying whatever it is that we want; and, in the process, we will become increasingly frustrated that our prayers are not answered. The apostle John tells us, in 1 John 5:14-15;
Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him (1 John 5:14-15).
Faith “in God” submits to what God has already said that He wants to do—and rests upon the confidence that He will most certainly do whatever He already has said that He wants to do. So; a first principle is that we must make sure we have our faith in God when we pray—in His Person, in His power, and in His promises.
A second principle that I see—and one that might easily be missed—is this: Treat what Jesus teaches us about our prayers very seriously. I see this in the fact that Jesus next prefaces His instructions on prayer by saying, “For assuredly, I say to you …”; or, as it’s translated in the old King James version, “verily I say unto you …” Literally, in the original language, He says, “Amen, I say to you …” “Amen” means “It is true”; and Jesus is testifying to the absolute truth of what He is about to tell us.
I believe—as I’m sure you also do—that anything that Jesus says to us is important and is worthy of our full belief. But whenever He prefaces what He is about to say with the phrase, “For assuredly, I say to you”, He is meaning for us to especially trust what it is that He is about to say. And this, I believe, is particularly important in this case; because what He is about to say is truly remarkable and startling. He means for us to believe it—as hard to believe as it may seem.
I believe that one of the reasons that many of us do not pray more than we do, or because we do not pray with more conviction when we do, is because we don’t really believe—down in our deepest being—that what Jesus is about to tell us about prayer is actually true. If we did truly believe it, as He tells us to believe it, then every prayer meeting in our church would be packed to the walls! Jesus is about to call us to believe that our prayers are the greatest power human beings could exercise on earth! May God help us take very seriously—and truly take to heart—what He is about to tell us!
And that leads us to what it is that He then tells us in verse 23. He says, “For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.”
What mountain is He talking about? Most likely, it’s the Mount of Olives. And what is the sea that He is talking about? That question is a little less easy to answer; because it could be the Dead Sea to the east, or the Sea of Galilee to the north, or the Mediterranean Sea far to the west. But I suspect that which sea He was thinking of is not the point. It’s that a mountain—any mountain—could be removed and be cast into a sea by our merely speaking to it in His authority; much like Jesus Himself spoke to the fig tree.
This leads us to a third principle: Accept that His power in our prayers is without limit. And may I suggest to you that it’s not about you and me removing mountains and casting them into the sea. Quite frankly, that wouldn’t be a very productive thing to do. Rather, it’s about something far more practical and beneficial. It’s about the removal of any barriers in our lives that stand in the way of our accomplishing whatever it is that God wants us to do.
I believe Jesus is drawing this phrase from the Old Testament—from Zechariah 4:7. That was a passage that spoke of the seeming impossibility of rebuilding the old temple after the time of Israel’s captivity in Babylon. It was meant as an encouragement to the Jewish governor Zerubbabel when that passage says;
‘Who are you, O great mountain?
Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain!” (Zechariah 4:7).
Most of us will never be called by God to command a mountain to be cast into the sea. But all of us—at many points in our lives—are commanded by Him to overcome obstacles that stand in the way of our whole-hearted devotion and obedience to Him. And what Jesus is telling us is that we have—as our unlimited resource—all the power and authority of Jesus in removing those barriers by our prayers. May God help us to fully accept this as absolutely true—and act accordingly.
He tells us, though, to be on guard against something that will stand in the way. A fourth principle He gives is this: Be careful not to pray with a divided or doubtful heart. “For assuredly, I say to you,” He tells us, “whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.”
The word “doubt” here means to be ‘divided’ or to ‘waver’. You know how when you’re walking down the street and you come face to face with someone else, and how you waver back and forth trying to step around each other? To be ‘doubtful’ or ‘divided’ in our faith is to bounce back and forth that way; “I believe—and now I don’t believe—and now I believe again—now I don’t believe again.” Pastor James—in James 1:5-8—puts it this way;
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways (James 1:5-8).
To ‘waver’ is to bounce back and forth between faith in God. Let’s be careful that we do not do so—and thus, demonstrate a singular heart of trust in Him.
Next, Jesus urges another principle to us: Believe completely that what you pray for will be done. This is an important part of praying with the kind of faith that Jesus promises receive results—that we truly believe that our words are heard by God, and that what we pray for will be done.
I think here of Jesus’ promise in the Sermon on The Mount—in Matthew 7:7. He said;
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened (Matthew 7:7-8).
That’s a remarkable promise from Jesus. It’s a promise that if we ask, we will receive; and that if we seek we will find; and that if we knock it will be opened to us. It is not a promise that we will receive exactly what we ask for, or find exactly what we look for, or have the door opened to exactly what we expected. In our God’s good mercy to us, we always receive better things than we knew to ask for, or find better things that we knew to seek, or have a better door opened to us than we knew to expect. But we can take it as an assured promise that if we ask and seek and knock, we will receive and find and have the door opened.
As Jesus tells us most truthfully, “whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.” What we pray for will be done—and better than we knew to ask! Believe it!
Now; in the original language, what Jesus says speaks of the person who believes “that those things he says ‘happens’. And a final principle He gives us—a very remarkable one—is this: Know that the thing prayed for in faith is already granted. In verse 24, Jesus says, “Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.”
In the Sermon on The Mount, in Matthew 6:8, Jesus warned us against the idea of vainly and thoughtlessly repeating our prayers over and over—as if we had to pester God into giving us something; “For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.” In Isaiah 65:24, our God says of His people;
“It shall come to pass
That before they call, I will answer;
And while they are still speaking, I will hear” (Isaiah 65:24).
It’s not that some time after we pray, God gets around to answering. In His care for us above time—where, for Him, all of time is one eternal ‘now’—He answers our prayers before we even know to pray them! Jesus urges us to know this—and to pray with confidence. I often find myself praying, “Father; I am not coming to You again to ask once more, as if You did not hear me or know what I said the first time. Instead, I am coming to affirm that You already heard—and to thank You that the answer is already on the way.
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Now; I told you at the beginning of this message that my wife and I spent some time talking about it. But there was a second time we talked about these promises from Jesus—a day or so later. And if you have been paying attention to our lives for any length of time, you might guess what it is that we talked about.
For the past nine years, we have been going through the trial of my wife’s debilitating chronic illness. We have asked God many times to remove that mountain for us; and so far, she still suffers from this illness. Many of you have also being praying with us. What does this passage say to us? What’s wrong? Are we doubting? Are we not believing hard enough? Do we not have enough faith? Did God not hear?
I hope you know that if we did not have faith in our great God, my wife and I would not still be asking Him. But I believe that the test for us is to keep on trusting—in all our asking—that there truly is no limit to the power of our prayers. But we must also remember that our prayers are not to be prayed like an on-line Amazon order. Our prayers are subject to His timing and to the conditions of His sovereign will.
We both believe He has heard every prayer prayed to Him in faith on our behalf. We both believe in and expect His gracious answer with, I hope, an undivided and undoubting heart. And what’s more, I believe that—from the eternal standpoint of God—our prayer has already been answered; and it has been answered in a way that is greater than we know to pray. We will—from the standpoint of time—experience the answer. But it may not be in our lifetime. Is that a cop-out? No. A prayer answered in heaven is just as “answered” as a prayer answered on earth. And one way or the other, we expect to see an answer.
Knowing these principles from our Lord does not discourage my prayers. Rather, they make me want to pray more—and with greater confidence in our great God’s power to answer! I hope that it does the same for you.