SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at our Bibles to Matthew chapter 21, verses 12 through 22.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 21, 12 through 22.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has ridden into town on a donkey.
SPEAKER_00: The people have cut palm branches and laid them and their cloaks on the ground as he rides into Jerusalem for his final week.
SPEAKER_00: And as soon as he does, he enters into the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And we have our passage, which is one of my very favorite passages in all of Scripture because there are very some very curious things going on.
SPEAKER_00: You've got the sick and the lame and the broken who are made healthy.
SPEAKER_00: And you've got a healthy seeming fig tree that is made to be broken.
SPEAKER_00: You've got the children and the uneducated getting it right, and the religious professionals getting it all wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And we meet all kinds of various people.
SPEAKER_00: We meet, we encounter Jesus, of course, the religious professionals, the chief priests, scribes, and even the disciples.
SPEAKER_00: We'll lump them into that category.
SPEAKER_00: We meet the children who are calling out praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We meet the lame and the blind.
SPEAKER_00: We meet a fig tree, and we learn lots of different things.
SPEAKER_00: The passage uses all these different characters in order to shape for us a narrative and a story whose main plot is this.
SPEAKER_00: The belief that we need is a gift from God.
SPEAKER_00: It's not something that we earn through doing right things.
SPEAKER_00: It's not something that we can get through being really good.
SPEAKER_00: We're keeping rules or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00: The belief that we need is a gift.
SPEAKER_00: So let's look together at God's word, Matthew chapter 21, verses 12 through 22.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.
SPEAKER_00: He said to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you've made it a den of robbers.
SPEAKER_00: And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them.
SPEAKER_00: But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant.
SPEAKER_00: And they said to him, Do you hear what these are saying?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to them, Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Have you never read out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise?
SPEAKER_00: And leaving them he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.
SPEAKER_00: In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry.
SPEAKER_00: And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves.
SPEAKER_00: And he said to it, May no fruit ever come from you again.
SPEAKER_00: And the fig tree withered at once.
SPEAKER_00: When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, How did the fig tree wither at once?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus answered them, Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, Be taken up and thrown into the sea, it will happen.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever ask in prayer you'll receive if you have faith.
SPEAKER_00: God's holy, inspired, and inerrant word.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: King Jesus, we celebrate this day that you rode into Jerusalem knowing that in a few days' time you would be crucified.
SPEAKER_00: For our sake.
SPEAKER_00: We celebrate that because there's no greater demonstration of love.
SPEAKER_00: And that we can know you because of it.
SPEAKER_00: So we pray today that as we think about all the different ways that we make a mess of things in our lives, but the way that you delight to take our messes and make them beautiful, expressions of your mercy and love.
SPEAKER_00: We pray that we would hear what your word would have us say.
SPEAKER_00: We pray it in Jesus' name, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the story is told of a young girl whose mother dies very early on in her life, and so she develops a beautiful relationship with her father.
SPEAKER_00: They enjoy doing all kinds of things together.
SPEAKER_00: They are together at every possible moment and as a result form this really sweet and intimate bond.
SPEAKER_00: Until the day comes where the father marries another woman who has two daughters of her own.
SPEAKER_00: And the day happens when the father passes away, leaving the daughter under the care of her stepmother, who turns out to be a very wicked person.
SPEAKER_00: And the sisters, the stepsisters, turn out to be very wicked people too.
SPEAKER_00: And no matter how many right things the daughter does, she's treated as a slave of the house.
SPEAKER_00: She's treated very poorly.
SPEAKER_00: And no matter how many, how much kindness she pours upon these imposters, they don't show kindness in return.
SPEAKER_00: No amount of good things win their favor.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, the name of the story is Cinderella.
SPEAKER_00: And I think many times we think about our efforts to be good, like the story of Cinderella.
SPEAKER_00: I think many times, many people in this room, in this city, believe that if we are kind enough and if we are good enough, then maybe we'll be able to win God's approval.
SPEAKER_00: That if we keep the rules just right, if we do just enough good, if we are right most of the time, then maybe, just maybe, the great ogre in the sky who's terribly upset with us because of sin will look on us and approve of all the work we've done and so be happy with us.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, that's not true.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's not how our relationship with God works at all.
SPEAKER_00: Our relationship with God isn't based on all the right things that we do piled up on this side.
SPEAKER_00: So if all the right things that we do piled up on this side will outweigh all the bad things that we've done over here, so maybe hope upon hope that at the end of the day, at the end of our years, God will see those good things and be happy with us.
SPEAKER_00: No, that's not the story at all.
SPEAKER_00: Because if we believe that that's how God relates to us, then we have a real problem when we read this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Because this passage, neon light blinks to us that the belief that we need isn't something that we can earn.
SPEAKER_00: It's a gift entirely given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But see, the problem is that we often are really good at making terrible messes of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We're really good at taking the good gifts that God's given us and making a terrible mess.
SPEAKER_00: And the messes that are made by the people in this passage are really descriptive about the kinds of messes that we make in our own lives.
SPEAKER_00: Let's listen to the uh to the first mess that's made in verse 12, the mess of keeping rules.
SPEAKER_00: Now, all the rule followers in the room will bristle a little bit by me saying that.
SPEAKER_00: But so I'll just go ahead and tell you what I mean by keeping rules is at the expense of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you can feel better.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: As Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seeds of those who sold pigeons.
SPEAKER_00: Now, it's not looking good for Jesus right now.
SPEAKER_00: He's he's he's lived three years publicly talking about his impending death on and off, and now he's come into this, come into the temple, and he's taken his anger and wrath out of everybody who seems to be keeping all the right rules.
SPEAKER_00: If we've read the Old Testament at all, we understand that God requires tremendous sacrifice in order to have fellowship with him.
SPEAKER_00: Daily sacrifice, weekly sacrifice, monthly sacrifice, seasonal sacrifice, annual sacrifice, over and over and over and over, God was requiring sacrifices.
SPEAKER_00: And so, where were you to get the uh get the animals to sacrifice?
SPEAKER_00: Around the temple.
SPEAKER_00: So technically, these people weren't doing anything terribly wrong.
SPEAKER_00: They were keeping the rules.
SPEAKER_00: But then Jesus, what he says next, uh uh gives us a clue as to what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: He says, My house is to be called a house of prayer, but you've made it a den of robbers.
SPEAKER_00: Now we need to understand something about Israel's purpose and the construction of the temple in order to make sense of what he says.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember Israel's purpose, the way that God, the reason God saved Israel, he says, I'm gonna bless you to be a blessing, so that in you all the nations of the world would be blessed, so that he strategically placed them at the geographical crossroads where they were, which is why they still fight over that land mass today.
SPEAKER_00: Strategically placed them at this crossroads so that as people would come through that were from other nations, they would see, my, how these people are different.
SPEAKER_00: Their God must be different and come to know and love him.
SPEAKER_00: And in order to support that, God instructed the people of Israel to build the temple with an outer court for the Gentiles to come and pray.
SPEAKER_00: This outer court was the largest space of the temple by far.
SPEAKER_00: And it's where everybody from all the nations could come and pray to God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this week that Jesus comes into Jerusalem is Passover, and Jewish historians would estimate that at the time of Passover, around 250,000 lambs were sold in this court alone.
SPEAKER_00: Not to mention the pigeons that are talked about in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Think about the zoo-like conditions in this court.
SPEAKER_00: How is anyone able to pray?
SPEAKER_00: And they say, well, it's not our fault that they can't pray.
SPEAKER_00: We're keeping the rules.
SPEAKER_00: That's their problem.
SPEAKER_00: And yet what they're doing is that they're keeping the rules at the expense of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody who is away from us today, and there's a lot of folks of us on spring break have taken a road trip, know exactly what I'm talking about, and I bet everybody else in this room does too.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember when you were little?
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you had a sibling, or perhaps you've experienced this in your adulthood, and uh you went on a road trip with your family, and in the back seat you sat with your brother or sister, or brothers or sisters, or whoever it was, and about seven minutes into the road trip, you uh you began to fight, and you hear this in the front seat.
SPEAKER_00: You hear this, stop touching me! No, quit getting on my side.
SPEAKER_00: And so, what did your parent do?
SPEAKER_00: See, this is the benefit of not going on spring break.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to put up with this.
SPEAKER_00: It's the only one.
SPEAKER_00: And so, what do your parents do?
SPEAKER_00: Your parents turn around and say, now you listen here.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that line right there?
SPEAKER_00: That's where your seat starts, stops, and your sister's seat starts.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you cross that line.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody knows the rules.
SPEAKER_00: Turn back around.
SPEAKER_00: 17 seconds later.
SPEAKER_00: Quit touching me.
SPEAKER_00: He's on my side.
SPEAKER_00: And you turn around, you whip your head around, and you see that I'm not on the side.
SPEAKER_00: See, look, I have my hand right up to the line.
SPEAKER_00: You kept the rule, but you missed the intent.
SPEAKER_00: They're keeping the rules, but they're missing the heart behind it, behind the righteousness behind it.
SPEAKER_00: And we can do the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's not our problem that they can't worship.
SPEAKER_00: It's not our problem that our neighbors behave this way.
SPEAKER_00: It's not our problem that they struggle when we behave this way.
SPEAKER_00: It's not our problem that we cause a brother to stumble.
SPEAKER_00: We're keeping the rules.
SPEAKER_00: We can also make a mess of things by being right.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to what happens next.
SPEAKER_00: The blind, verse 14, and the lame come to him in the temple, and he healed them.
SPEAKER_00: But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant.
SPEAKER_00: And they said to him, Do you hear what these are saying?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Have you never read out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you prepared praise?
SPEAKER_00: And so he leaves.
SPEAKER_00: Now we need to understand something about the chief priests and the scribes.
SPEAKER_00: They were part of a very particular class of people who spoke God's word on God's behalf to God's people.
SPEAKER_00: And so they were looked at with great reverence and they had great authority.
SPEAKER_00: And they had very particular ideas about who the promised Messiah was and what he was to look like and how he was to come and what that was to mean for the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And so when Jesus comes, and he's not the guy that they think he ought to be, and the text says when they saw him doing the wonderful things that he did, they became indignant.
SPEAKER_00: You know what that word means?
SPEAKER_00: They were personally affronted.
SPEAKER_00: Why'd they get so personally affronted?
SPEAKER_00: Because they're used to being right.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes being right gets in the way of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: And we can also make a mess of things by being really good.
SPEAKER_00: You say, well, hang on a second.
SPEAKER_00: How can you make a mess out of things by doing good things?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jesus tells us by introducing us to a poor fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 18, in the morning as he was returning to the city, he became hungry.
SPEAKER_00: And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but leaves.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in other books of the Bible, other gospel accounts, it gives us another added little phrase there, especially in the book of Mark.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Because it was not the season for figs.
SPEAKER_00: And he said to the fig tree, May no fruit ever come from you again.
SPEAKER_00: And the fig tree withered at once.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's really looking bad for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We can understand him getting upset with people and overturning tables, but a poor fig tree?
SPEAKER_00: Like, what's going on?
SPEAKER_00: Especially it's not even the season for figs.
SPEAKER_00: It seems like you're being a little bit of a religious fanatic.
SPEAKER_00: What's happening?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we need to understand that the fig tree serves as an illustration for all that's happening in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: We have fig trees around Birmingham, you know what they look like.
SPEAKER_00: In the springtime, they start to leaf out, and they also produce the little nodules that will eventually become figs.
SPEAKER_00: And they grow and grow and grow, and around the middle of July, late July, they become ripe.
SPEAKER_00: Same sort of idea here.
SPEAKER_00: But as Jesus passes by it, and all the leaf and show of the tree, but no little fruit nodules on it indicating show good things outside, but no real fruit developing inside, he curses it.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Well, because it's just like the temple.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of really good things happening, a lot of show, a lot of really good rules being kept, a lot of people doing, keep being right, doing really right things, but no fruit.
SPEAKER_00: No real heart change.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, no, being good isn't enough.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what's scary, because being good's pretty easy.
SPEAKER_00: It really is.
SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
SPEAKER_00: It's easy not to overdrink too often.
SPEAKER_00: It's easy not to conduct your business unethically.
SPEAKER_00: It's easy to be mostly kind most of the time.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know most of you, and so I know that you're mostly kind most of the time.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's easy to sort of behave and do good, and then it's easy to begin to think that because we do all those things, that God's gonna have to accept us.
SPEAKER_00: But the problem with being good, if we think that's what's gonna save us, is that we never do it to benefit God or for other people.
SPEAKER_00: It's always for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Because we begin to think that I'm the kind of person that helps the proverbial little old lady across the street.
SPEAKER_00: And if I'm the kind of person that helps the little proverbial little old lady across the street, then I must be very good and God must accept me.
SPEAKER_00: But the problem is being good and even being really good is never good enough.
SPEAKER_00: This week I saw an article on ESPN about LeBron James and all the accomplishments he had.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason the article caught my eye is that it said something the title was something like MBA experts weigh in on how he can what it'll take for him to be the best player of all time.
SPEAKER_00: I thought, well, this will be interesting.
SPEAKER_00: So I wrote the list down.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, I took a picture of the page, and I thought I'd just read some of the things that it said.
SPEAKER_00: Keep in mind, two-time NBA champ, three-time NBA final MVP, 14-time All-Star.
SPEAKER_00: This is what else he needs to do.
SPEAKER_00: One guy says he needs more titles.
SPEAKER_00: Another person says, put together three straight championships.
SPEAKER_00: Another person, he needs at least one more title while winning finals MVP.
SPEAKER_00: That plus an MVP might get him there.
SPEAKER_00: 100 points a game.
SPEAKER_00: Pass Kareem Abdul Jabbar in scoring and win three more titles.
SPEAKER_00: Win more MBA championships.
SPEAKER_00: Win another title for Cleveland.
SPEAKER_00: Shoot threes.
SPEAKER_00: NBA's all-time leading scorer in two more titles.
SPEAKER_00: Rings strengthened the general public perception.
SPEAKER_00: So every ring he can help helps his case.
SPEAKER_00: Beat the Warriors.
SPEAKER_00: Multiple championships or show he can win a title without an elite supporting cast.
SPEAKER_00: Really show he can elevate his teammates, not just carry them.
SPEAKER_00: Win one more championship with the Cavs and win championships with three teams, play at a high level until 40.
SPEAKER_00: That's ridiculous.
SPEAKER_00: It's like that's a stupid article.
SPEAKER_00: Who?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's never enough.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's never gonna be enough.
SPEAKER_00: And some of us, and many of us in our city live our lives this way.
SPEAKER_00: We think if we can just do enough, if we can just be kind, if we can just give enough away, if we can be just generous enough with our time, if we can just be whatever, a good enough member at our church, then surely that counts for something, God.
SPEAKER_00: No, it doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the good news.
SPEAKER_00: The good news is that the belief that we need is a free gift of God.
SPEAKER_00: And we learn it in the disciples' question.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to what they say.
SPEAKER_00: When the disciples saw it, that is the fig tree withered, they marveled.
SPEAKER_00: Well, of course, you would too.
SPEAKER_00: We would too.
SPEAKER_00: How did the fig tree wither at once?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus answered them, Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, be taken up and thrown into the sea, it will happen.
SPEAKER_00: And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith.
SPEAKER_00: The belief that we need is both simultaneously free and costly.
SPEAKER_00: It is free in the sense that in the sense that Jesus provides what we cannot provide for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples, when they ask the question, how did that fig tree wither at once?
SPEAKER_00: They're asking a really good question.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus seems to take them off this really obscure path, but we won't be confused by it, because it makes sense once you think about it.
SPEAKER_00: He begins to talk about faith and mountains and uprooting mountains and casting them into sea and whatever you ask in prayer, what does that have to do with a fig tree?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is saying this.
SPEAKER_00: The man who just entered into the temple and threatened all the religious leaders that if they don't bear fruit in keeping with repentance, they're in danger of losing their life.
SPEAKER_00: What Jesus is meaning is this.
SPEAKER_00: If you see that your life is like this fig tree, and it's not bearing any spiritual fruit, then you can pray and God will remove whatever obstacle it is in your life that keeps you from bearing spiritual fruit, even if it's as large as a mountain, and you will bear fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Many people have wrongly used this passage to prove physical healing.
SPEAKER_00: This passage is not about physical healing.
SPEAKER_00: There are other passages in Scripture about physical healing.
SPEAKER_00: This passage is about spiritual healing.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is saying if you are fearful that your life looks dangerously like this fig tree or like the people in the temple, always getting all the rules right, always doing the right things, always being really good, but no real heart change, then you can pray to God, and he will remove whatever it is in your heart that keeps you from bearing fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And he is faithful to do it.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it says.
SPEAKER_00: The last verse.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you ask in prayer, you'll receive it if you have faith.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when he says, whatever you ask in prayer, you've got to remember, it's like when you go to a restaurant, and the server comes up to you and says, How was everything?
SPEAKER_00: They don't mean the drive over the parking lot lighting and everything else like that.
SPEAKER_00: They mean your food at the restaurant.
SPEAKER_00: How was everything here?
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus is saying.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever, in the context of spiritual healing, you ask in prayer, in faith, you will receive.
SPEAKER_00: But it's it's free in that sense.
SPEAKER_00: But it's also very costly.
SPEAKER_00: It's costly both to you and to God.
SPEAKER_00: It's costly to you because you're going to have to give up every remnant of your former aspect of life.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to ripping a mountain out so that it leaves a cavity and the roots of the mountain are ripped out would leave a tremendous void.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to be painful to rip out the things in your life that are preventing you from bearing spiritual fruit.
SPEAKER_00: It will hurt.
SPEAKER_00: But God promises, even in this passage, that he will not waste that hurt and that he's good for his word.
SPEAKER_00: Because when the disciples said, My, look how the fig tree withered, they said something far more profound than they could possibly imagine.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus, by cursing the fig tree, is showing that those who do not bear fruit bear the curse of God, is providing a foreshadowing of what will happen to him in just five days' time, when he will be cursed by God for our lack of bearing fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And when we begin to see that cost, then we begin to realize we don't have to keep the rules.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to do right things.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to be right for God to love us.
SPEAKER_00: It's not, it doesn't work that way.
SPEAKER_00: The belief that we need is a gift.
SPEAKER_00: And the beautiful thing is God delights to take our mess and make beauty out of it.
SPEAKER_00: I've told this before, but when I was young, I made, I took a piece of sandstone about this big.
SPEAKER_00: And it was black and tan.
SPEAKER_00: And I took a piece of sandpaper in art class.
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember what grade I was in.
SPEAKER_00: And I just sort of rubbed it around over the rock, and then I bored a hole into it.
SPEAKER_00: And so I fashioned it into well, a rock with a hole into it.
SPEAKER_00: And I gave it to my grandmother.
SPEAKER_00: And she put it on her entry hall table and kept it there until she passed away.
SPEAKER_00: It was a rock.
SPEAKER_00: It was worthless.
SPEAKER_00: It meant nothing.
SPEAKER_00: It was a mess.
SPEAKER_00: But because she was beautiful, she made it beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what happens with our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the real beauty of the story of Cinderella isn't the altruistic efforts of this poor little girl, although it's admirable.
SPEAKER_00: The real beauty isn't the love that the father shares with his daughter, although it's lovely.
SPEAKER_00: It's the love of the prince.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the second half of the love of the prince.
SPEAKER_00: When he pursues one that does not belong, and he clothes her in royal gowns, and he makes her his own.
SPEAKER_00: So we can stop trying to make peace with God by being right or by keeping the rules or by being really good.
SPEAKER_00: And you can lay it all down at the foot of the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus has already done it for you and received the gift of God in him.