Well, it is for me this evening, a bit of a sad moment; this is my last sermon before you from Mark. Next Sunday, I preach the final service of our Urban Ministry Conference and then my time as the evening preacher here at Tenth is done. When I knew that that was coming, I had thought some weeks ago of trying to finish all of Mark in several big gulps, and figured that wasn't possible for me and would not be helpful for you. Robert Poland was sitting beside me; he said that Mark is very skilled in this Gospel with abrupt endings; very often the stories in Mark end very abruptly and then he moves on.
A Mark-ian Ending
So I'm going to have a "Mark-ian" ending to my preaching, rather abrupt here in Chapter 11. It has truly been, for me, a tremendous honor to be in this position, and I know in my heart I have benefited more from the truths of Mark than anyone who has sat before me. I've been very thankful for just a renewal of enthusiasm for the depths and practicality of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, you can turn there in Mark 11. Religion can be a very dangerous thing because it's very possible for religion to be very active and seemingly healthy and very busy but not involve God at all.
And that really is the warning of this passage; this passage really is a judgment, a warning, and a call to commitment. I would ask you this evening: if you had to describe what it means to forsake God, what would that look like? What would it look like for you? If you had to describe what it means to follow God by faith, what would that look like in your description? There is a surprising sort of picture of forsaking God in this passage. You will find there, in verse 12, that we find Jesus coming from Bethany and He's 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 is not the season for figs. And He said to it, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard it." Now it may be confusing to you. You may think that Jesus just had the season mixed up and didn't really know when fig trees actually had figs, and that's why the fig tree didn't have fruit on it, and this whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense.
What you understand is that Jesus is actually, in this moment, acting out a prophetic parable of judgment. He knows exactly what season it is, and He is using the occasion of His hunger to point to this judgment that was to come on the house of God. If you are familiar in the Old Testament, that image of Israel as a fig tree is a picture of Israel's status before God, and the barrenness of the fig tree is a picture of God's judgment on Israel, and that's exactly what you have here. Christ is predicting what is to come, like this tree that is not yet in its final harvest, but will not bear fruit; and so Christ judges it because of that.
In the same way, the House of God is not yet in its final moment of harvest, but will not bear fruit because of where it is in relationship to God, and judgment will be brought down on the people of God. That's what that sort of confusing incident is about; it's Christ, literally, in this moment, not speaking a prophetic parable, but literally acting out that parable in front of His disciples. What you see next, in the passage, is the reason for that judgment. It really is a very shocking moment; maybe more shocking than we think; because what happens here, both for the people who are in the Temple and what they're doing, and for Jesus and His response, is profoundly deeper than just the Temple.
This moment is not just about a physical place; it's not just about religious tradition and religious form; in fact, this incident is not at all about external religion. And if you make it just about the place of the Temple and just about external religion, you miss, first of all, the heinousness of what is happening there, and the righteousness and extent of the anger of Jesus. This is about a functional forsaking of God; this is about abandoning His honor; this is about a radical forsaking of His plan.
This is a form of religion that does not involve the One who was meant to be the focus of that religion. Maybe you could entitle this paragraph: "God has left the building." What's going on here? Well, essentially, the court of the Temple has been turned into what we would probably call a bit of a farmer's market. And this place of holy assembly that acknowledges the centrality of God, and the glory of God, and the necessity of His forgiveness for redemption, this place that is meant to have God at the center rather becomes a place of business and commerce.
This Passage Is About the Heart
And whatever would be the reasons for that, clearly that thing depicts what is in the hearts of these people. This passage is about the heart; it looks back at those Old Testament statements that were made like this, "This people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." (Isa 29:13, Matt 15:8) You could not possibly have your heart in the right place; you could not possibly have a heart of humble worship of God; you could not possibly be zealous for His honor; you could not possibly come as a true worshiper and participate in what Jesus found in the Temple.
This is a desecration of the holy honor of God that is meant to be the central motivator of every human being who ever lived. Because at the center of all of our motives, at the center of all of our thoughts, at the center of all of our desires, is meant to be the honor and glory of God; that is meant to be the principal motivator of all we do. And worship reminds us of His glory; worship is designed to put that before our face again; worship is meant to remind us that we are not at the center of the world, that God is.
And when you do this to the Temple, worship loses its distinctiveness; it loses its 'warning-ness;' it loses its glory. Because I need to, again, to come to God's house; I need to gather with God's people; I need to be reminded again of His honor and His glory because my heart is fickle, and my heart wanders, and I begin to pursue glories that are not His; that's all of our struggles. And how sad it is when religion doesn't point you anymore to the glory of God, when it becomes man-driven and man-centered.
This is an outrageous desecration of the honor of God. Listen, that is never just about a place; that is always about the heart! Does the glory of God reign and rule in your heart? I love what I read as a call to worship in Psalm 84, listen to these words: Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise! Blessed are those whose strength is in you, (now listen to what is says next) in whose heart are the highways to Zion...(in whose heart are the roads to Jerusalem.) My heart is so taken up by God and His glory that it's as if there's a map in my heart that leads me to the Temple in Jerusalem because there's nothing my heart would rather do than to worship God; my heart is actually a GPS that, again and again, pulls me to God, pulls me to His presence, pulls me to His worship.
What a beautiful phrase, "...in whose hearts are the highways to Zion." Is there a map in your heart that keeps leading you to worship God? There's a second thing that is radical here in this moment, that the place where this neofarmers' market was set up was the court of the Gentiles. That court was the one place where a Gentile could be in the Temple; that court stood as an announcement of the ultimate purpose of God: that God, somehow, some way, was going to bring His grace to the nations. You could argue, it was a missionary court; and so not only am I backing away from God's honor, I'm turning my back on His plan because I've taken that place that God had reserved for the nations, and I'm taking it as my place to do with it what I want.
And here's the point: if in your heart you have abandoned God's honor with your life, you will always forsake His plan; that's the way it works. If your heart is not ruled by God's honor, your heart ultimately will forsake His plan. And this place that God had reserved for a wonderful and specific purpose had been robbed of its sanctity, had been robbed of its purpose, had been stolen for other purposes. Look what Jesus says, "Is it not written my house shall be called a house of prayer for (what, what does it say there?) all the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers."
Now what we get next is an illustration of how bad it became, how bad it actually was. Notice what it says next in verse 18, "And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, (now listen to what it says; you don't want to miss this) because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching." Now, what a window into the heart of the religious leaders of this day; it doesn't say that they were upset with what Christ did in the Temple, in some kind of formal disagreement with the theology that He was expressing at that moment.
Why the Pharisees Wanted Him Dead
It doesn't say that they thought, at that moment, that He was a blasphemer; at least there, there would be a bit of purity of motive of heart. What is the reason that the Pharisees and Scribes wanted to get Christ? Because, they were afraid that the crowds were going to follow Him; and in the crowd following Him, they would lose their positions of prominence and power. It had nothing to do with God's honor; it had nothing to do with God's plan; it was selfish preservation of religio-political position.
If Christ wins, we lose; forget the truth of the moment. Shocking! Now listen, there is clear teaching throughout all of Scripture that this war between God's glory and my glory, this war between God's plan and my plan, was not only a battle fought in the Old Testament and the New Testament; it was not just a battle of the religious leaders of that day; that's a war fought on the turf of all of our hearts. And it's possible, in our hearts, that our religious observance is not what we think it is.
Forsaking God doesn't always mean you become an atheist. Forsaking God doesn't mean you forsake the House of God and the people of God, maybe not. Perhaps it means that, all week long, I'm giving myself to functional forms of idolatry no matter how subtle they are that are about created glory and personal glory and not the glory of God; and because of that, I'm stepping outside of His plan again and again. Yet I come on Sunday, and I throw back my head, and I sing hymns, and I sort of listen to the sermon, and I put some money in the plate.
I'm honoring God with my lips, but actually the way I live my life demonstrates my heart is far from Him. And so, in my thought life, I don't stay inside of the boundaries of His plan because my heart is not ruled by His glory. In my relationships to people, I don't stay inside of His plan; I'm not that loving, serving, giving, humble, patient person that He's called me to be, because His glory doesn't rule my heart at that moment, the glory of being right and being in control does. This passage should be a huge warning to us because the themes of heart that are revealed here, that are why the Temple became what it was, are clearly themes of struggle for us all.
Well, the passage doubles back to the fig tree again, "As they passed by in the morning, (verse 20) 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.'" We should be saying, reverently, "Well, duh! Have we not seen the awesome power of this Messiah?" "And Jesus answered them, 'Have faith in God.'" Jesus is essentially saying, "Peter, why are you surprised? You should not be surprised at this point." And there is this call to have faith in God.
What does it mean to have faith in God? Well, faith in God, first of all, faith in God means my life is an acknowledgment of His existence. I don't have this mechanical, physical, for us scientific, view of the world, just some kind of physical cause-and-effect view of the world, because I really do believe in the power of God. I do really acknowledge His existence. Knowledge and existence, I already said it, means I believe in His power. Jesus says this, "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."
Now, Christ is not actually meaning that you and I will be given the power of God just to displace mountains at will. If you're in Vermont and the mountains bother you and you want it to be flat, don't pray for that; that's not what Jesus is saying. He's giving us this "beyondcategories example" of the power of God that He is willing, by grace, to unleash upon His people; that's what that is about. And then He says, "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."
Name It and Claim It, Distorted
Oh my, has that verse ever been distorted! Name it and (this is sad that you could finish that)... What we have done with this is just violence. Listen, if you're acknowledging God's existence then you acknowledge His glory and honor; you acknowledge His plan; and in prayer, you're asking things that are consistent with and inside of His will. And when you do that, He will deliver what you ask. He finds great delight in fulfilling the true needs of His people, needs that He has defined. There's a little phrase in here that we have to face - "and does not doubt."
Faith is acknowledging God's existence; faith is acknowledging His power and His willingness to unleash His power for His people; faith also recognizes that belief is a battle, it's a war. And I fight the doubt that so often greets me. But faith also is not just this vertical acknowledgement of God; faith calls us to something that's horizontal. He says this, "When you stand praying, forgive. If you have anything against anyone so that your Father who also is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses."
It's impossible for faith just to be a vertical exercise because faith is not just something you think; faith is not just something you do with your mouth and prayer; faith is something you live with your life, and Jesus makes that connection--how inconsistent it would be to seek your Father's forgiveness and live in unforgiveness of your neighbor. John says it this way in 1st John, "How can you say you love God who you can't see if you don't love your brother who you can see?" Do you live a life that acknowledges God's existence?
Do you live as if you really do believe in His covenantal willingness to unleash His power for your redemptive welfare? Do you live as a good soldier in the war of faith, resisting doubt, resisting bringing God into the court of your judgment? And are you as consistent in your celebration of His forgiveness as you are in living a life a forgiveness of others? This passage is a warning to us of the fact that forsaking God may not be a matter of location; it is always a matter of the heart. And that faith, at its center, acknowledges God's existence and His power and embraces the calling of spiritual warfare every day.
Now for this, brothers and sisters, for what we've talked about this evening, we need grace. Jesus lived in every moment in His life for His Father's honor. Jesus gave His life for the purpose of His Father's plan so that, in our struggle with confusing our glory with His, in our struggle with loving His plan more than our own, we would have the grace we need. Jesus lived the life that you could not live so that He could forgive and rescue you and me in the midst of our struggle. There's grace for the struggle.
May we, with singleness of heart, love His glory more than our own. May we, in very practical ways, love His plan more than our own. And may we live like we believe a God of power and willingness has invaded our lives by His grace; and there's hope for us. Let's pray: Lord, thank you for the inescapable confrontation of the Gospel of Mark that puts in our faces the identity of Jesus and Your plan of redemption in ways that are inescapable and that, in very, very clear ways, call us to follow You by faith.
Thank you for the warnings of Mark. Thank you for the encouragement of Mark. But we would thank you most of all for Mark's Messiah--the Lord Jesus Who meets us in our struggle, Who imparts to us righteousness that we could not have achieved, Who blesses us with forgiveness and Who enables us, by power, to follow You by faith. Thank you! In Jesus's name, Amen.
