SPEAKER_00: Matthew 21, verse 18, In the morning Jesus was returning to the city, and 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 don't 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 in the sea, it'll happen.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: When my family first moved to the DC area, we started going to Mount Vernon.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody told us we should check it out.
SPEAKER_00: We did.
SPEAKER_00: Deejer got our family an annual pass there.
SPEAKER_00: We went all the time and loved it.
SPEAKER_00: One day I came home from work and in our front yard was sitting a fig tree that my wife had purchased at Mount Vernon.
SPEAKER_00: Some people buy Christmas ornaments there, some people buy like, I don't know, Washington hats or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Deejer bought a fig tree and lovingly asked me to plant it.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, I don't, I mean, I don't know much about fig trees, but I do, or Northern Virginia, but I don't think fig trees grow here.
SPEAKER_00: And she says, George Washington had all kinds of them, and he made them grow.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, George Washington had slaves.
SPEAKER_00: And she looked at me like, mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00: So happy Father's Day.
SPEAKER_00: So I went to work.
SPEAKER_00: I became a student of fig trees, and that first fig tree met a tragic end, but it was not the last of our fig trees.
SPEAKER_00: I have learned all about them, more than you would ever want to know, but I'm happy to show you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Fig trees are hyper-aggressive trees.
SPEAKER_00: They're super finicky, also.
SPEAKER_00: They're kind of the teenager of trees, I would say.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they're very finicky.
SPEAKER_00: They have to be cared for in a certain way, and they're hyper-aggressive.
SPEAKER_00: They love, love water.
SPEAKER_00: Their roots will drive out if they feel like another tree is getting too close to it, they will drive that tree right out.
SPEAKER_00: They will entangle it with its roots and and you know, just smother it and choke it out.
SPEAKER_00: They are the most aggressive of the trees in our area, and they just slurp the water.
SPEAKER_00: They eat so much.
SPEAKER_00: And you think, why would anybody tolerate a tree like that?
SPEAKER_00: And remember, they're the teenagers of trees.
SPEAKER_00: You tolerate them because you know one day they'll bear fruit.
SPEAKER_00: One day they will be lovely, one day they will be a blessing to you.
SPEAKER_00: And when these fig trees get big, you know, if a fig tree in our area has enough sunlight and enough space, it will grow massive.
SPEAKER_00: And you can you can take a nap underneath it.
SPEAKER_00: It gives you shade and it gives you fruit for your children.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's an incredible blessing, but it is a lot of work to get there.
SPEAKER_00: It is not for nothing that fig trees become a symbol in the Bible of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: When the spies go into Israel, remember the spies have grown up in Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: They go into Israel for the first time, they come back and they're like, there is, it is a place that's flowing with milk and honey.
SPEAKER_00: You want to know how amazing it is?
SPEAKER_00: There are giant figs everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Fig trees grow all over the place in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: It becomes a tree that represents God's plan and design for Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Israel is supposed to be aggressive in the land.
SPEAKER_00: Their roots are supposed to grow deep.
SPEAKER_00: They're supposed to choke out the other nations around them.
SPEAKER_00: They're supposed to provide fruit, not just for them, but fruit for the nations of the earth can come to Israel and experience the blessings of their own relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: That is Israel in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is, of course, aware of that.
SPEAKER_00: This morning's passage can seem disjointed, though, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus looks for figs on a fig tree, doesn't find them, curses the tree, the tree dies, and then he tells you about prayer life.
SPEAKER_00: Did he just have a bad morning?
SPEAKER_00: Why is he talking about moving mountains here?
SPEAKER_00: These two stories really are one.
SPEAKER_00: It is one sermon Jesus is preaching to the disciples on prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, he says way more than is written here.
SPEAKER_00: You can combine the four gospels and get a pretty coherent understanding of what he was doing here.
SPEAKER_00: He's preaching a sermon about, really about God's judgment on Israel.
SPEAKER_00: He's using both figs and prayers to illustrate it.
SPEAKER_00: The event of the cursing of the fig tree happens before and after his visit to the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Mark gives you the clearest chronology.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus gets up in the morning.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he went triumphal entry on Sunday, the temple's closing up shop.
SPEAKER_00: He goes back to Bethany.
SPEAKER_00: The next morning he leaves, curses the fig tree, goes to the temple, cleanses the temple, drives people out.
SPEAKER_00: That evening, he goes back to the fig tree and it is withered.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew puts the whole cleansing of the temple before he introduces the fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna spend just one minute on this because I've heard from people they view this as a contradiction in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Mark says that he cursed the fig tree in the morning and came, then the temple, and then the evening, and Matthew says the fig tree was after the temple cleansing.
SPEAKER_00: Is that a contradiction?
SPEAKER_00: No, it is not a contradiction because of the verb tenses that Matthew has.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18, like I said, this is in the weeds here, but we're talking about fig tree, so we can be in the weeds.
SPEAKER_00: In the morning, as he was returning to the city, that's a past progressive verb tense.
SPEAKER_00: It's something that happens before what went before it.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way that verb tense works.
SPEAKER_00: So I could say, I'm at church this morning, eight o'clock service went well, but on my way to church, I was passing a guy driving a pickup truck.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean I passed him after church.
SPEAKER_00: It means I passed him before church on my way to something that just happened.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way Matthew is describing it.
SPEAKER_00: So it is not a contradiction.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew deliberately describes the fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: Notice verse 18, as he was returning to the city.
SPEAKER_00: Well, he returned to the city back in verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: So this already happened.
SPEAKER_00: So Matthew doesn't have them in the wrong order.
SPEAKER_00: It's super obvious in Greek.
SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit less obvious in English, but you can still put the pieces together in the morning, meaning before what just happens, he walks by the fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: So the point here is that the fig tree and the temple and the prayer are all connected.
SPEAKER_00: They're all one lesson from Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He's teaching a lesson about the temple and about God's relationship to Israel.
SPEAKER_00: He's illustrating the lesson with the fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: He's illustrating the lesson about prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And so the main point of this morning's passage is for Jesus preparing us for life without a temple.
SPEAKER_00: The fig tree and prayer are preparatory illustrations for Jesus teaching us what life in the world will be like when there is no longer a temple.
SPEAKER_00: This seems weird to us because we didn't grow up with a temple in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: I mentioned this last week.
SPEAKER_00: You can go to Israel today and you can pay money to go on what they call the tunnel tour.
SPEAKER_00: They take you under a tunnel underground and you weave along the base of the old temple mount.
SPEAKER_00: The temple mount that was there, the temple that was there in Jesus' lifetime is built on top of a mount, like that they built up with stones.
SPEAKER_00: You can go along the base of that temple mount.
SPEAKER_00: The temple is, of course, gone.
SPEAKER_00: You wind in these tunnels underground, and you can find one stone that's down there.
SPEAKER_00: They say this stone might have been in the previous temple.
SPEAKER_00: And I told you last week, a few years ago, they added a sign to it that says it's more likely it was a stone that was rejected by the builders.
SPEAKER_00: They carted it up there and the builders rejected it.
SPEAKER_00: So it's even funnier now, I think, that like there's nothing left.
SPEAKER_00: This is a world they could not have imagined.
SPEAKER_00: All they've known is a world with the temple.
SPEAKER_00: It's all they've known.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus is going to spend much of this week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, telling them the temple is going to go away.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard for them to understand.
SPEAKER_00: So he's going to illustrate it with a few points.
SPEAKER_00: First, the lesson of the figs.
SPEAKER_00: Lesson of the figs.
SPEAKER_00: The temple became a place with leaves and no fruit.
SPEAKER_00: In the morning, this is Monday of Passion Week.
SPEAKER_00: He was returning the city.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Jesus is going to be dead in four days.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to resurrect from the grave in five days.
SPEAKER_00: The temple's going to be torn down in forty years.
SPEAKER_00: That's this week.
SPEAKER_00: He was returning the city.
SPEAKER_00: He became hungry.
SPEAKER_00: Now he spent the night at Mary and Martha's house.
SPEAKER_00: You know that from John's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: If you know anything about Martha, it's that she probably served him a pretty decent breakfast.
SPEAKER_00: But he's hungry on their walk.
SPEAKER_00: He sees a fig tree by the wayside.
SPEAKER_00: This is a fig tree that's up on the top of the Mount of Olives.
SPEAKER_00: There's a tree there today, and there's a church where Jesus supposedly wept over Israel at that spot and started his journey.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, we don't know if that's the exact spot.
SPEAKER_00: It's certainly not the exact fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: There's olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane that date to Jesus' lifetime.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, olive trees can live for thousands of years.
SPEAKER_00: Fig trees cannot, but nevertheless, the church is up on top of the hill.
SPEAKER_00: It has a massive fig tree in it, so I like to pretend that's the fig tree when I look at it.
SPEAKER_00: You can see a tree like this from a long ways away, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: And again, today in Israel, there's trees like this everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Fig trees like this grow in the wild, they grow on street corners.
SPEAKER_00: All over Jerusalem, these things grow everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus sees it and he goes over to it, and he found nothing on it except leaves.
SPEAKER_00: Well, no kidding.
SPEAKER_00: This is the week of Passover.
SPEAKER_00: This is April.
SPEAKER_00: Figs don't grow in April.
SPEAKER_00: You're not going to find figs on a fig tree in April.
SPEAKER_00: You'll start to see leaves coming out.
SPEAKER_00: The leaves all fall off of a fig tree in the winter.
SPEAKER_00: They're all gone, even in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: They disappear.
SPEAKER_00: They come back out in the early spring.
SPEAKER_00: Little fruit comes out, like these little nubs of fruit, and I've read commentators that say he was looking for the early fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: You can't eat that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: It's disgusting.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus just had a big breakfast at Mary and Martha's house.
SPEAKER_00: And no, this is an illustration, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So he's looking in the tree for fruit.
SPEAKER_00: There's leaves around it.
SPEAKER_00: The tree is leafy.
SPEAKER_00: They're not the massive leaves you're going to get in the summer, but it's leafy enough to obscure what's underneath it.
SPEAKER_00: Mark says, Mark gives you the detail that they all knew it was not the season for fruit.
unknown: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: It's not reasonable to expect to find figs on a fig tree in April.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knows this, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So this is all an illustration.
SPEAKER_00: He finds nothing on it, only leaves.
SPEAKER_00: Remember why I told you fig trees are obnoxious, but I said you tolerate them because of the fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus is acting this out.
SPEAKER_00: Why would you deal with this fig tree if there's no fruit on it?
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember in Luke's gospel, Jesus tells a parable about a landowner who has a fig tree and he goes looking for fruit and there's no fruit on it?
SPEAKER_00: You know, the the my fig tree at my house, by the way, I love that thing.
SPEAKER_00: I like tuck it in at night and sing it lullabies and the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: I feel like it recognizes me.
SPEAKER_00: Says hi to me.
SPEAKER_00: Luke's gospel contains a story where Jesus says the landowner had that relationship with his tree.
SPEAKER_00: Loved the tree, but it's not given any fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And so the landowner tells the gardener, why should this tree take up the ground?
SPEAKER_00: Cut it down.
SPEAKER_00: Like it's driving out everything else.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like you have like a potted plant here.
SPEAKER_00: This thing is beating up the other trees around it, sucking all the water from the ground.
SPEAKER_00: Why would you deal with that if there's no fruit?
SPEAKER_00: Remember the gardener?
SPEAKER_00: The gardener says, Why don't we dig a trench around it?
SPEAKER_00: That'll hold the water in.
SPEAKER_00: Digging a trench will keep it from being aggressive.
SPEAKER_00: It gives you enough water.
SPEAKER_00: And if it doesn't bear fruit next year, then cut it down.
SPEAKER_00: How about that?
SPEAKER_00: And the farmer says, All right, deal.
SPEAKER_00: The point of this is that Israel is the fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: Hosea 9, verse 10 describes Israel as the fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: And it says, God comes looking for the early fruit from the fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: And he's looking for early fruit in the form of the patriarchs, Hosea 9 says.
SPEAKER_00: The Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.
SPEAKER_00: That was the first fruits of the fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: That was the early fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's not the fullness of the promise, but it's a prophecy that more fruit will come.
SPEAKER_00: The early fruit in the fruit tree just encourages you.
SPEAKER_00: It survived the winter.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the early fruit tells you.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to grow this year.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to have fruit this year.
SPEAKER_00: That's all it communicates.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the patriarchs communicated.
SPEAKER_00: The world survived the flood.
SPEAKER_00: The world survived the table of nations and the Tower of Babel.
SPEAKER_00: And God has a plan for the world.
SPEAKER_00: That's the patriarchs.
SPEAKER_00: That plan will be through Israel.
SPEAKER_00: But then Jeremiah 8, verse 13, God says, I came looking for the fruit.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't find any.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah 8, Yahweh says, I waited until the leaves withered and there was no fruit.
SPEAKER_00: That's fall.
SPEAKER_00: The leaves withered and fall.
SPEAKER_00: So Jeremiah 8 says, God waits for Israel until it's time for the leaves to fall off.
SPEAKER_00: No fruit all year.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is acting out that prophecy.
SPEAKER_00: He's there looking for fruit.
SPEAKER_00: I know it's the spring physically, but it's not spring spiritually for Israel.
SPEAKER_00: It is their fall.
SPEAKER_00: The law, Galatians says, was given to Israel to be a schoolmaster or a custodian, tutor, nanny, whatever word you want to use, it's the word for somebody who watches you until your parents get home, or watches you until you get old enough that you don't need somebody to watch you.
SPEAKER_00: That's the word used in Galatians.
SPEAKER_00: The law watched Israel until they grew up.
SPEAKER_00: And when the fullness of time, that's the language Paul uses in Galatians, when the fullness of time came, the law is fulfilled from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: Israel was cared for by the law until they grew up.
SPEAKER_00: And now they've grown up.
SPEAKER_00: They don't need a babysitter anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Now they need to man up and get to work and bear fruit.
SPEAKER_00: But there's no fruit there.
SPEAKER_00: There's no fruit.
SPEAKER_00: The fullness of time came.
SPEAKER_00: The prophecies are fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is brought to fulfillment the prophecies.
SPEAKER_00: He was from Nazareth, born in Bethlehem, the trail of tears to Egypt, called out of Egypt, so the scripture would be fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: Out of Egypt I called my son.
SPEAKER_00: He will be called a Nazarene.
SPEAKER_00: All of the scriptures have been fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: He reads the scroll in the temple and says, This is fulfilled in your hearing.
SPEAKER_00: It's not ambiguous.
SPEAKER_00: Like it's crystal clear.
SPEAKER_00: Now is the day of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Now is the time where there should be fruit on the tree.
SPEAKER_00: The Savior is there.
SPEAKER_00: He just walked into the temple yesterday with a giant crowd greeting him as their king.
SPEAKER_00: This is the day.
SPEAKER_00: This is harvest day.
SPEAKER_00: There should be fruit.
SPEAKER_00: But what did he find?
SPEAKER_00: He walks in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Does he find fruit in the temple?
SPEAKER_00: He most certainly does not.
SPEAKER_00: He finds activity in the temple, ceremony, noise, crowds, sacrifices, money changers, religious leadership, temple traffic, visible devotion, leaves everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: But you pull back the leaves, and there is no fruit.
SPEAKER_00: That's the danger of religious appearance without spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: Leaves aren't bad.
SPEAKER_00: Don't get me wrong, leaves aren't bad.
SPEAKER_00: A healthy tree has leaves, of course.
SPEAKER_00: And you can make this more New Testament oriented.
SPEAKER_00: Because we, you know, we don't have a temple system.
SPEAKER_00: So you can make this more New Testament-oriented that the leaves of the church are things like public worship and singing and giving and serving and teaching and baptism and the Lord's table and all of that.
SPEAKER_00: And they're all good.
SPEAKER_00: Those are all good.
SPEAKER_00: They're signs of spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: They're leaves.
SPEAKER_00: They're signs of health, but they are not health itself.
SPEAKER_00: Spiritual devotion is your faithfulness and your love and your charity and your prayer.
SPEAKER_00: The danger is that a person can have all the appearance of spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: The singing and the church attendance and the MacArthur study Bible in their hands and the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: Without actual spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: Those things are not fruit.
SPEAKER_00: They're leaves.
SPEAKER_00: Fruit is love, joy, peace, charity, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, goodness, self-control.
SPEAKER_00: That's spiritual fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 8.
SPEAKER_00: This has been a theme through Matthew's gospel, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 3, Roman soldiers come to John for baptism, and they ask John, what should we do now that we've repented from our sins?
SPEAKER_00: And John tells them, be content with your wages and bear fruit in keeping with repentance.
SPEAKER_00: The Romans are expected to bear fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says, you can discern somebody's spiritual life by their fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, any tree that doesn't bear good fruit is going to be cut down and thrown into the fire.
SPEAKER_00: Hello?
SPEAKER_00: Then he says, figure out what you're doing in Matthew 7.
SPEAKER_00: Either make the tree good and his fruit good, or make the, if the fruit's bad, make the tree bad.
SPEAKER_00: Like figure out what's what in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And in Matthew 21, he is just reenacting that judgment he talked about in the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_00: He's looking for fruit.
SPEAKER_00: There is no fruit in the temple, and so the whole system is going to be cut down.
SPEAKER_00: They will be condemned.
SPEAKER_00: The whole Jewish system is leaves and no fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus sees right through it.
SPEAKER_00: Other people don't necessarily see through it.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus sees through it.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was just a few months ago when he was in Jerusalem and he healed the man with the mat, and they wanted to arrest Jesus because the guy carried his mat on the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: Or before that, the man who was born blind and Jesus healed him by making mud and wiping it on his eyes, but he did it on the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: Or before that, when he was in Capernaum, remember, and he healed the man with the withered hand in the synagogue on the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus didn't lift a finger to heal the man with a withered hand, which is just one of the funniest lines.
SPEAKER_00: How do you accuse a guy of working when he doesn't move a muscle?
SPEAKER_00: But he is a healer, and he did heal, so if his job as a healer is to heal, and he healed on the Sabbath, he's working on the Sabbath, whether or not he lifted a finger.
SPEAKER_00: And so they sought to put him to death, Matthew says.
SPEAKER_00: That's Matthew 12.
SPEAKER_00: They and 13, they decided they were going to put him to death.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't like that he was corroding their leaves.
SPEAKER_00: And they had no fruit.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what happens.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, verse 19, no fruit is ever going to come from you again.
SPEAKER_00: Speaking to the fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: And it withered at once.
SPEAKER_00: Well, when the disciples saw it, and remember, when you take all the gospels together, they see it that afternoon.
SPEAKER_00: Again, Matthew's not wrong about that.
SPEAKER_00: He says, when the disciples saw it, they marveled.
SPEAKER_00: Let's move to the second point.
SPEAKER_00: The figs give way to the frauds.
SPEAKER_00: Figs become the frauds.
SPEAKER_00: The frauds is the temple without prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, this fig tree illustration is not standing alone.
SPEAKER_00: In between verse 19 and 20, Jesus went to the temple and did verses 12 through 17.
SPEAKER_00: He cleanses the temple, drives it out, gets in an argument with people there about his authority.
SPEAKER_00: He tells them a parable about a son who always says yes to his dad and doesn't do a thing his dad says.
SPEAKER_00: He compares the religious leaders to those that have killed all of the prophets from Abel to Zechariah.
SPEAKER_00: That all happens this day.
SPEAKER_00: And they walk back by the tree, and the tree is withered, and the disciples are have their minds blown.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, what in the world?
SPEAKER_00: How did the tree die in one day?
SPEAKER_00: Which is a hilarious question to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Think of what the disciples have seen.
SPEAKER_00: He walked on water.
SPEAKER_00: He rebuked the wind and the waves.
SPEAKER_00: He multiplied the fish in the loaves, the little baskets, twice.
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, Whoa, but the fig tree died in a moment.
SPEAKER_00: That's your question.
SPEAKER_00: How'd he kill the fig tree?
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
SPEAKER_00: This is his only miracle of destruction, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: All of his other miracles give life.
SPEAKER_00: If you try to chop down a fig tree to kill it, you know that's harder than it sounds too.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus immediately ends the fig tree's existence here.
SPEAKER_00: The fig tree, in between the cursing and the discovery of it, is bracketed around the temple.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus interprets the temple by the fig and the fig by the temple.
SPEAKER_00: The temple looked alive, it was the hubbub of activity, but it was dead.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what was the temple designed to be?
SPEAKER_00: Remember, it was designed to be a place for fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And when I say fruit, don't just hear me say that Israel should have been godlier than it was.
SPEAKER_00: No, when the temple was built and dedicated, 1 Kings chapter 8, Solomon prayed for it, and he tells you what the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Is supposed to be like.
SPEAKER_00: He says, if my people Israel turn back towards the temple and pray, God will hear them and answer their prayer.
SPEAKER_00: So the fruit they're supposed to have is to be a place of prayer.
SPEAKER_00: This is why Daniel opened it, Solomon says, if my people are in exile and they turn and face this place, even though they're in exile, if they face the temple and pray, you'll hear them.
SPEAKER_00: And so Daniel throws open his window and prays facing Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: If there was drought, Solomon says, and the people come to this place and pray, you will hear them.
SPEAKER_00: If there is famine, this is one King's Day, plague, war, judgment, and people turn towards God at the temple, God will hear them, Solomon said.
SPEAKER_00: And key, Solomon says, if foreigners from faraway places hear of Yahweh and make the journey to Jerusalem, they can come to this temple and pray, and you will hear from heaven, God, and answer their prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And in that way, all peoples, all places of the earth will all know that you are the true God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Solomon says.
SPEAKER_00: That's the fruit.
SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to be marked by prayer.
SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to be marked by repentance.
SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to be marked by evangelistic outreach.
SPEAKER_00: Pray, repent, preach.
SPEAKER_00: Validated by the godly living, of course, but what a contrast between what was happening in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Packed with people, animals, noise, songs, everything.
SPEAKER_00: Except prayer, except repentance, accept Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: It's so far gone.
SPEAKER_00: There's so many leaves and no fruit.
SPEAKER_00: It's only a fraud.
SPEAKER_00: God was supposed to dwell there, Solomon said.
SPEAKER_00: Don't view the temple as God's prison like he's in a holding cell there, but he was dwelling there because you could go there and meet with him.
SPEAKER_00: Now there's no room for him.
SPEAKER_00: It was supposed to draw the nations and it didn't.
SPEAKER_00: So what do you do with a fig tree that doesn't bear fruit?
SPEAKER_00: You cut it down.
SPEAKER_00: What is Jesus saying is going to happen to Israel?
SPEAKER_00: It is going to be chopped down at the roots.
SPEAKER_00: He's not impressed by the leaves.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody else who visited the temple was super impressed.
SPEAKER_00: Like it was an architectural wonder.
SPEAKER_00: I told you, it was like the size of RFK Stadium.
SPEAKER_00: This place is massive and it's shadowing, overshadowing all of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: You crest the Mount of Olives, you crest into any of the hills around it, and you're just overcome with its beauty and its grandeur with these massive pillars.
SPEAKER_00: It was amazing, and everybody was impressed.
SPEAKER_00: Except Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He was not impressed.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, a nice temple.
SPEAKER_00: Does anyone pray at it?
SPEAKER_00: It was kind of his question.
SPEAKER_00: And so this the interaction with the fig tree here, it's not primarily about agriculture.
SPEAKER_00: It's about God's judgment on Israel.
SPEAKER_00: He wants repentance, faith, holiness, love, mercy, prayer.
SPEAKER_00: He's seeing none of those things, and so it's going down.
SPEAKER_00: And remember, the same thing applies to us.
SPEAKER_00: So easy to crowd out holiness and godliness and spiritual life and all of that and lose sight of what is actual.
SPEAKER_00: What is actual godliness look like?
SPEAKER_00: You know, my wife asked me this morning, should we pray for this morning's message?
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, well, yeah, that would be super ironic if I prepared a message on having leaves at obscure fruit and don't pray for it.
SPEAKER_00: Frauds give way to fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Prayer without a temple, verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered them.
SPEAKER_00: Truly I say to you, if you have faith and you don't doubt, not only what happened to the fig tree can happen, but even if you say to this mountain, be taken up and thrown in the sea, it'll happen.
SPEAKER_00: So, first of all, let me just give you a quick little one-sentence thing here.
SPEAKER_00: What the charismatics and even kind of your stereotypical interpretation of this passage is so far off base, I don't want to waste a whole lot of time interacting with it.
SPEAKER_00: This is not about, hey, you have your own mountain in your life.
SPEAKER_00: You've got an obstacle.
SPEAKER_00: If you have enough faith, God will remove your obstacle from you.
SPEAKER_00: All things are possible with prayer.
SPEAKER_00: There might be some truthfulness to those kind of applications.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what's happening here.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples are asking Jesus, how did the fig tree die in a day?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is, I mean, I get you bugged or frustrated, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Why are the disciples asking that question at this point?
SPEAKER_00: For goodness sakes.
SPEAKER_00: The fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about the fig tree, it's about the giant temple on the mountain right in front of them.
SPEAKER_00: Again, you can't miss it.
SPEAKER_00: It's elevated above you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, it's not the fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, if you have faith, the fig tree can die in a day.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking about the fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about that monstrosity is going to get picked up and hurled into the ocean.
SPEAKER_00: Get over the fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: The temple system is going down brick by brick.
SPEAKER_00: There will be nothing left of this place.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: That's enough about judgment on the tree.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about the mountain in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: It is going to be thrown away.
SPEAKER_00: Thrown away.
SPEAKER_00: And then what?
SPEAKER_00: Then what?
SPEAKER_00: Until this point.
SPEAKER_00: The temple was there.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Jesus had exile for 400 years, so they had no temple.
SPEAKER_00: That was their exile period.
SPEAKER_00: That was judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, they grieved for it.
SPEAKER_00: They mourned for it.
SPEAKER_00: They wore black in exile with mourning because their temple was gone.
SPEAKER_00: But it's back now and bigger than ever.
SPEAKER_00: This was the promise given to this is what started the Davidic covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, David said, Can I build a temple?
SPEAKER_00: And Nathan says, Yeah, go for it.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, No, you've got too much blood in your hands.
SPEAKER_00: Your son will do it.
SPEAKER_00: So from Solomon, but even from David was the promise, all the way to present day with Jesus here on Monday of Passion Week.
SPEAKER_00: They've only known the temple.
SPEAKER_00: That's where you go to pray.
SPEAKER_00: They have the Psalms of Ascent memorized.
SPEAKER_00: They recite them every three times a year on their way to the temple.
SPEAKER_00: This is their whole system.
SPEAKER_00: It's everything to them.
SPEAKER_00: They don't have national borders, they don't have their own currency, they don't have their own king.
SPEAKER_00: They don't speak Hebrew anymore.
SPEAKER_00: They have their temple.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: And it is everything.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine telling a Jew in that time period, underneath the shadow of the temple, this is gonna be picked up and hurled into the ocean.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and then like what's next?
SPEAKER_00: How do you pray?
SPEAKER_00: Or to make it more New Testament, because we don't live in a world of the temple.
SPEAKER_00: How for three years the disciples have had Jesus with them.
SPEAKER_00: If they had a question about God or about Scripture, they could ask Jesus and they didn't hesitate to do so.
SPEAKER_00: There's been times when Jesus was praying and they would go even interrupt him.
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of frustrating.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Described in Mark's gospel that they go looking for Jesus and he's up on his special spot on the mountain praying and they go interrupt him with their urgent travel question.
SPEAKER_00: I think in our house, Deedra has a chair that she reads the Bible and prays in.
SPEAKER_00: And you know how how often she gets interrupted with a question about breakfast.
SPEAKER_00: It's like you try to tell the kids like, can you wait?
SPEAKER_00: I say the kids here.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, could you wait, like come on.
SPEAKER_00: Wait ten minutes to ask if the milk is bad.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, or figure it out yourself.
SPEAKER_00: But for years, that's with their relationship with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They can ask him anything.
SPEAKER_00: Friday, he's gonna die.
SPEAKER_00: Saturday, he'll be in Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: Sunday he'll resurrect.
SPEAKER_00: And forty days later, he will ascend into heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Then what?
SPEAKER_00: Forty years later, the temple will be thrown into the sea.
SPEAKER_00: And then what?
SPEAKER_00: How do you ask Jesus when he's not here?
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus says, I will send my spirit who will dwell in you.
SPEAKER_00: I'll send you a helper.
SPEAKER_00: And you can pray.
SPEAKER_00: You can pray to God from anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need to face Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need to face east when you pray.
SPEAKER_00: Why would you face east?
SPEAKER_00: Who are you facing?
SPEAKER_00: A grave?
SPEAKER_00: A mountain?
SPEAKER_00: A hill?
SPEAKER_00: What are you facing?
SPEAKER_00: Who are you praying to?
SPEAKER_00: The temple's in the ocean, man.
SPEAKER_00: God is in heaven and hears all prayers everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus is telling them.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be living in a world where there is no temple.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be living and praying in a world when Jesus is no longer standing in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: Then what?
SPEAKER_00: You pray to him.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I say the temple is thrown in the ocean.
SPEAKER_00: This is exactly why the New Testament uses temple language for the church.
SPEAKER_00: We are the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The temple is where God dwelled in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: In the New Testament, his spirit dwells in us.
SPEAKER_00: So understand a few things.
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, the Spirit regenerated people by giving them faith and making them a new creation, but the Spirit did not indwell or seal believers on the basis of their faith.
SPEAKER_00: That is a New Testament reality that starts 50 days after the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: So the church then is made up of people with the Spirit dwelling in them.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we have direct and immediate access to God, we can pray to Him directly because His Spirit translates our prayers and His Spirit dwells within us.
SPEAKER_00: And so, in a very real sense, God's presence on earth is through the church.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 3, verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: Do you not know that you are God's temple and God's Spirit dwells in you?
SPEAKER_00: We have union with Christ, and through our union with Christ, by the working of the Spirit, the church becomes the temple of God.
SPEAKER_00: His Spirit dwells in us.
SPEAKER_00: We are God's temple.
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 2.
SPEAKER_00: Jews and Gentiles are members of the household of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's Ephesians 2.19.
SPEAKER_00: Household is where you live.
SPEAKER_00: That's what household means.
SPEAKER_00: The temple is where God lived.
SPEAKER_00: The church is the place where God dwells on earth.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, he doesn't live in a temple built by human hands.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, the entirety of deity doesn't dwell in mankind's.
SPEAKER_00: But Christ Jesus himself is the cornerstone.
SPEAKER_00: So the whole structure grows into a holy temple of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's Ephesians 2, 19 and 20.
SPEAKER_00: The temple that Herod had, that Herod, the so-called great built, was built on top of the Temple Mount.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the Temple Mount is still there.
SPEAKER_00: It's huge.
SPEAKER_00: You can go see that today.
SPEAKER_00: The temple on top of the temple mount, the church built on top of the mount, the foundation, the cornerstone of Jesus Christ, and the preaching of the apostles and the prophets.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Peter 2, 5 says, believers are living stones built into a spiritual house.
SPEAKER_00: So God dwells in us, hears our prayers because his spirit is in us.
SPEAKER_00: We truly are the temple, the household of God on earth.
SPEAKER_00: When you start to understand that, you realize why Jesus said, It's better for you if I go away.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to have lines of people to ask Jesus a question.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to go look for him on the mountain.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to shoo the kids away because you need a moment with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He hears you everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: We come to the Father through the Son by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So we don't need an altar in Jerusalem because Christ is the final sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need a priestly system because he's our high priest.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need to face the temple because we come in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so the church then is supposed to live in this fallen world with no temple as the temple being marked by prayer.
SPEAKER_00: So again, the application is still very straightforward.
SPEAKER_00: That temple crowded out with leaves, no fruit, we as a temple of the living God should be marked by prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Prayer is not a religious accessory, it's not something optional.
SPEAKER_00: It's how we're supposed to live in this world.
SPEAKER_00: It's how we commune with God through Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's how fruitless people become fruitful.
SPEAKER_00: So, do you want to be more godly?
SPEAKER_00: Here's my prescription.
SPEAKER_00: Pray.
SPEAKER_00: You want a softer heart?
SPEAKER_00: Pray.
SPEAKER_00: You want to repent from sin?
SPEAKER_00: Pray.
SPEAKER_00: You want to resist temptation?
SPEAKER_00: Pray.
SPEAKER_00: You want to grow in love, joy, peace, kindness, gentleness, goodness, self-control?
SPEAKER_00: Pray.
SPEAKER_00: You want to be a more effective evangelist?
SPEAKER_00: Pray.
SPEAKER_00: I mean the answer is so astonishingly simple.
SPEAKER_00: It's remarkable how often we neglect it.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is preparing his disciples for life without a temple, and he's preparing them by teaching them to pray.
SPEAKER_00: This is not just something added on to the fig tree, like, uh, fig tree, that was bad.
SPEAKER_00: What's the way to make clean this up?
SPEAKER_00: Just killed a tree.
SPEAKER_00: I'll teach on prayer.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's it is the lesson.
SPEAKER_00: The fig tree illustrates a temple, prayer illustrates life without a temple.
SPEAKER_00: That's the connection in Jesus' mind.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think it's that hard to arrive there ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: This leads from figs to frauds to fruit to faith.
SPEAKER_00: He's preparing us for a life where we trust God without seeing him.
SPEAKER_00: We have a relationship with Christ without him walking with us.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith.
SPEAKER_00: Mark's account adds a little phrase at the end of that, if you have faith in God.
SPEAKER_00: Not faith in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the kind of charismatic interpretation of this is very bad.
SPEAKER_00: The idea that you can visualize something.
SPEAKER_00: If you visualize it and your faith is strong enough, you are actualizing your visualization.
SPEAKER_00: That's a very common teaching.
SPEAKER_00: That is basically paganism with Bible words.
SPEAKER_00: Like if you can visualize it and have enough faith to believe that what you're visualizing, you can achieve it.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's like a coach talking to players at halftime.
SPEAKER_00: Like, see yourself winning.
SPEAKER_00: That is not what Jesus is saying.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have faith in faith.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have faith in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have faith in yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have faith in your visualization.
SPEAKER_00: You have faith in God.
SPEAKER_00: God who hears prayers.
SPEAKER_00: God who answers prayers according not to your mind, not to your words, and not to the intensity of your faith, but God who answers prayers according to his will.
SPEAKER_00: Faith is not confidence in your own ability to create reality.
SPEAKER_00: Faith is confidence in God's ability to hear and answer prayer.
SPEAKER_00: So your faith is in God, not yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, this is faith that's not opposed to God's will.
SPEAKER_00: Anything that is God's will will come to pass.
SPEAKER_00: So when your prayer aligns with God's will, your prayers are answered.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says this elsewhere: whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith in God.
SPEAKER_00: He's not handing you a blank check for your sinful desires.
SPEAKER_00: You have to let Scripture interpret Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: 1 John 5, 14.
SPEAKER_00: This is the confidence we have towards God.
SPEAKER_00: If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us and answers us.
SPEAKER_00: James 4, 3 says He won't answer you if you're asking for something that is selfish for your own sinful ambitions and your own passions.
SPEAKER_00: So you pray in faith in God in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name is not like a phrase at the end of a prayer, like a phrase at the end of a spell that makes it effective kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: Faith in Jesus' name means in accordance with his will.
SPEAKER_00: God's will is always accomplished.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the skeptic will say, if God's will is always accomplished, why pray?
SPEAKER_00: That was my skeptic voice right there.
SPEAKER_00: Why pray?
SPEAKER_00: Flip that around.
SPEAKER_00: If God's will is not always accomplished, why pray?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if God's not going to answer his prayers according to his will, why would you bother praying to him if he doesn't answer them according to his will?
SPEAKER_00: The reason we pray is because he answers according to his will.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, his will is always going to be accomplished.
SPEAKER_00: His will is not thwarted, but you participate in him and receive the blessings of it by praying for his will.
SPEAKER_00: That's why you pray.
SPEAKER_00: This is the example from Esther, remember?
SPEAKER_00: You know, where Mordecai tells Esther, listen, if you don't speak up, relief and deliverance will arise from a different place.
SPEAKER_00: Like God's not going to let Israel get wiped off the map because you were too scared to talk to the king, I promise you.
SPEAKER_00: But you will be left out of the blessing of that.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're bold and you ask and you see what God does, you get the blessing of praying for it.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: How exciting is that?
SPEAKER_00: And Esther didn't say, well, if God's gonna do it anyway, why should I bother being brave?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: She's brave precisely because she knows what the will of God is.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus modeled this kind of prayer, didn't he?
SPEAKER_00: He goes to the Garden of Gethsemane and prays.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, Nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done.
SPEAKER_00: That's how we should pray.
SPEAKER_00: People get tied up in knots over the relationship of his divinity to his humanity in their prayers.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying that his will is God is underneath God's will is God.
SPEAKER_00: No, he's giving us a model of prayer in his humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, a human doesn't want to die, especially not with sin placed on them.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus prays this cup would pass from him.
SPEAKER_00: You would want a godly person to want the sins of the world not on him.
SPEAKER_00: So of course Jesus prays for the cup to be passed from him, but of course he submits his will to the will of the Father, but your will be done.
SPEAKER_00: That is the way we pray.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus is teaching here.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you ask in prayer, if it is accordance with the will of God, you will receive, of course, if you have faith in God, if your will is subordinate and submissive to his.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way we live in a world without a temple.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the astonishing contrast in this is remember what the disciples were expecting Jesus to do.
SPEAKER_00: He was going to go to Rome and overthrow Rome, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's what they were wanting.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the whole crowd was cheering him on for that reason.
SPEAKER_00: That's what they thought would happen.
SPEAKER_00: He came to Israel to overthrow something.
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
SPEAKER_00: They were not prepared for the fact that he was going to overthrow Israel, not Rome.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't prepared for the fact he was going to tear down the temple, not the Antonius fortress, which is where the Roman garrison was.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't condemn Caesarea Maritime, which is the Roman capital of the area, a massive city.
SPEAKER_00: That's a city where Paul's arrested and put in prison and put on trial and all that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus didn't even go there.
SPEAKER_00: Tiberius is the capital city of the Galilee region where he spent three years.
SPEAKER_00: If he ever went there, it's not recorded in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: They thought he would overthrow Rome.
SPEAKER_00: No, he overthrew the temple.
SPEAKER_00: He is the fruitful vine.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the true vine.
SPEAKER_00: Israel did not bear fruit, and it was cut off.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever abides in me, he says in John 15, verse 5, and I in him will bear much fruit.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't bear fruit, you're cut down.
SPEAKER_00: Cut down.
SPEAKER_00: The kind of prayer that sustains the church in a world without the temple is the kind of prayer that is faithful.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is saying and teaching here that Israel is going to be cut down, the temple will be thrown into the sea.
SPEAKER_00: Uprooted.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Paul teaches in Romans that the Gentiles become grafted in.
SPEAKER_00: It's very easy to graft something into a fig tree, because remember, fig trees are aggressive, and you graph something in it, it soaks it up and it sprouts.
SPEAKER_00: Gentiles become grafted in and begin to bear fruit.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul says, I'm warning you, Gentiles, I'm warning you, church.
SPEAKER_00: If God did not spare the natural branches because they didn't bear fruit, what do you think he'll do to the grafted in branch if the grafted in branch doesn't bear fruit?
SPEAKER_00: It's going to be cut down too and thrown into the fire.
SPEAKER_00: But then there's the promise that in the future, when the Lord returns, Israel will repent.
SPEAKER_00: They will look at Christ as their only son.
SPEAKER_00: They'll mourn for him as the only son who was crucified for their sins.
SPEAKER_00: They will place their faith in him, and in that day all Israel will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: The day is coming when Jewish unbelief will be turned into faith.
SPEAKER_00: This is Isaiah 36.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 36 is a wonderful promise that ties us back to Mount Vernon.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 36, the Lord will come, and in that day he will set up his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: All Israel will be saved, and every person will sit in the shade of their own fig tree, Isaiah 36 says.
SPEAKER_00: What a cool promise.
SPEAKER_00: George Washington quoted that when he said that he was not going to seek a third term.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted to go back to Mount Vernon and sit in the shade under his own fig tree and fulfill the promise for the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Kind of fun, huh?
SPEAKER_00: But George Washington does not bring in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is going to return.
SPEAKER_00: And in that day all Israel will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: The temple was judged but not ended.
SPEAKER_00: Israel was hardened but not abandoned.
SPEAKER_00: The nations are welcome, but Israel is not forgotten.
SPEAKER_00: The presence of nations in the church doesn't mean there's no more Israel in the church.
SPEAKER_00: And we live as the temple of God.
SPEAKER_00: We're joined to Christ through conversion, marked out publicly through baptism, gathered for worship as living stones.
SPEAKER_00: So I would appeal to you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be a leafy tree.
SPEAKER_00: Seek to have your life marked by prayer and the fruit of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Don't trust in buildings and programs and heritage and knowledge and reputation or visible association with holy things.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus is preparing his people to live with God in a world without a temple.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we do long for the day.
SPEAKER_00: When you bring peace to the nations, when faith becomes sight, when prayer is no longer needed, when prayer gives way to praise.
SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, Lord, we know we live in a world that is fallen.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for anyone here this morning that has never trusted you with their life.
SPEAKER_00: They've never surrendered their life to you.
SPEAKER_00: I pray this morning you would work in their heart.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that they would believe the message that you died for their sins and descended to the grave and rose from the grave and ascended into heaven and reign even now, listening to our prayers through your spirit.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that our hearts would be soft.
SPEAKER_00: We know it's costly to follow Christ in this world.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, leave us and forsake us.
SPEAKER_00: Storms rage and howl and gather.
SPEAKER_00: But you are always faithful.
SPEAKER_00: You're faithful because you hear our prayers.
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, Lord, we do pray for the day when our prayer becomes praise and our faith becomes sight.
SPEAKER_00: We ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBc.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_00: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_00: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.