Cursing the Fig Tree and Cleansing the Temple

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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Well, if you have your Bibles, I would invite you to turn to Mark 11 and we're going to start in verse 12 and read down to the end of the chapter.

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And I want to say from the outset that we're going to be looking at several different events in this narrative, but I do believe there is a thread which holds it all together which as you know is often my goal is to show connection points so that we don't get in the habit of reading one text without seeing how it applies to all the texts that are around it.

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If we don't get to everything tonight, that's fine, but at least I'd like to be able to read it.

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And you'll remember last time we were here we looked at the triumphal entry, which was Jesus coming into Jerusalem, that was verses 1 to 11, well tonight we're going to look beginning at verse 12 and this is the cursing of the fig tree.

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So let's begin by reading. It says, On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry.

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And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it.

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And when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.

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And he said to it, May no one ever eat fruit from you again. And his disciples heard it.

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And verse 15, And they came to Jerusalem, and he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple.

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And he overturned the tables of the money changers and seats of those who sold pigeons. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.

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And he was teaching them and saying to them, Is it not written, My house shall be a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers.

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And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching.

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And when evening came, he went out of the city. So just pause for a moment, understand that was

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Monday, so this is the day after the triumphal entry.

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Okay, would you go check? Thank you, thank you, Herman. So if we think of the triumphal entry on Sunday, this would be

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Monday. And now we are to Tuesday, and that's verse 20.

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So verse 20 is Tuesday, and it says, As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots.

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And Peter remembered and said to him, Rabbi, look, the fig tree that you cursed has withered.

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And Jesus answered them, Have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain,

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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.

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Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

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And whenever you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.

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It says, And they came again to Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him.

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And they said to him, By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?

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Jesus said to them, I will ask you one question. Answer me, and I will tell you by what authority

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I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man?

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Answer me. And they discussed it with one another, saying, If we say from heaven, he will say,

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Why did you not believe him? But shall we say from man? They were afraid of the people, for they all held that John really was a prophet.

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So they answered Jesus, We do not know. And Jesus said to them,

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Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.

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And so that ends the eleventh chapter. And so, there are four things tonight that I want us to consider.

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But right before we do, just to point this out, immediately following this, as we'll see if you look in chapter 12, immediately following this, we arrive at Jesus giving the parable of the tenants.

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And that will play into the understanding of what's going on here, because Jesus is going to describe the tenants as those who've been given the master's property and who have forfeited it by their behavior, and it's turned over to other tenants.

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And so that is what we're going to be looking at in our next study, but I just wanted to point out that that's where we are in this discussion.

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So, you know, I'm a little,

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I'm just kind of wondering what I should do, because my original intention tonight was to look at verses 12 all the way down to 33 to show the connection points.

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And I know that we don't have a big group on Wednesday night anyway, but being as it's only a few of us, I'm just going to teach what

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I planned on teaching, talk about what I planned on talking about. We'll see how far we get. And if we don't finish it up tonight, we'll finish it up next time.

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But the big thing that I wanted to point out tonight as we begin is this whole situation with Jesus cursing the fig tree, because this is actually one of the classic apologetic passages that is used in opposition to the scripture, and by I say apologetic passages, what

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I mean is apologists have had to come to, have had to write on this subject because many people use this to attack the

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Bible. They would use this to attack Christ. In fact, I brought with me tonight a section from the book,

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Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell. Are you familiar with who that is? He was a very famous atheist writer, and he said,

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Why I Am Not a Christian, that was the title of the book, but this is a section of that, and this is what he says.

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He says, There is a serious defect in my mind in Christ's moral character.

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He says Christ had a serious moral defect. This is, again, not my words.

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This is his words. He said, and he pointed out like the sending the demon into the pigs, you know, why would you punish the pigs?

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They didn't do anything, right? So that's a moral defect, but this particular narrative is one that Bertrand Russell has cited as a problem with Christ's character.

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Here's what he says. Speaking of the story of the fig tree, he says, This is a very curious story because it was not the right time of year for figs, and who could really blame the tree?

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I cannot myself feel that either in matter of wisdom or in matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history.

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I think I should put Buddha or Socrates above him in those respects. So Russell's argument is that Christ demonstrates in this text a moral failure, that he demonstrates a moral character flaw because he goes to get figs off of a tree.

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It's not the season for figs, and when he sees that there's no figs, he curses the fig tree, and therefore

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Christ has done a violence against an innocent plant.

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That was what R .C. Sproul used that phrase, and I must admit it was Sproul who cited Russell and caused me to go look up this quote because he mentioned it, and I thought it was interesting, so I looked up the entire quote and read it.

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But the idea of an innocent plant, Christ is punishing an innocent plant, and in that regard he is unjust.

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And so it does go into the hand of many people who want to find some failure in Christ.

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All good? Thank you, brothers. So as I was saying, we began with the cursing of the fig tree, and do you know who

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Bertrand Russell is? Atheist, writer. Why I'm not a

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Christian? Right. Yes. Yeah, we were just talking about that. Well he said this text proved to him that Jesus had a moral character flaw because he was willing to destroy a plant when it wasn't producing, but it wasn't the season to produce.

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And therefore Christ expressed, and I just read the quote to them from his writings, that he would consider

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Buddha or Socrates to be better men than Jesus based on this story because Jesus allowed his passion to overtake him.

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Now of course we disagree, but I just, the reason why I'm bringing this up is because this story, the story of the fig tree, is, as I've said, a classic case in apologetic study.

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Because I don't care what apologetics website you go to, whether it's karm .org or gotquestions .org,

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any of these other, where they specialize in answering questions that are about the Bible, you're going to find an article about this passage because somebody is going to be challenging the

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Bible and challenging Christ himself. And what I find interesting is, if you don't believe that Jesus is who he said he was, why do you believe he had the power to curse a tree and have it die anyway?

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So you're kind of, as they say, cutting off your nose to spite your face, you know, if you say

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Jesus cursed the tree and it died, therefore he's not God in the flesh, how did he curse the tree and anything happen anyway?

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I mean, so that doesn't even make sense. On its face, that kind of is laughable.

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But it is an important question because I must admit, while I would never take the dire approach of Bertrand Russell, I have asked the question, why would

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Jesus be upset if it wasn't the season of figs, why would he be upset if there were no figs?

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It would be like being upset for the leaves to fall in the autumn when it's natural that leaves fall in the autumn.

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And so it does raise a question. And my point is not to agree with Bertrand Russell, but I must admit it does produce in our mind the question of why.

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And I've read several different attempts to explain this reasoning, but I do think the answer is in the text itself.

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And here's the...based on what I've seen. And again,

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I am not a horticulturalist and I'm not a fig expert, but I can read and I can study and I can see where things make sense.

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And so here is the point that's in the text. It says, in verse 12, it says, on the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry and seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf.

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That is the key word. And the reason why that is the key word, because according to what

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I have read, fig trees produce fruits before leaves.

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Therefore, if you see a fig tree with its leaf, you would expect to find the fruit.

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And there were trees that would produce fruit early in the season. And based upon when this is, we know because it's how close it is to Passover and everything, when it is, early springtime.

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This would have been, even though it was not the season, seeing the leaves would have indicated fruit on the tree.

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So even though it wasn't the season, if you saw the leaves, you would think this is an early budding or an early production.

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And I'll give you a quote here. This is from Pliny the Elder. This is a historical source, older historical source.

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It says, he noted in his Naturalis Historia that the fig tree stands out as a tree that produces fruit before leaves.

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The presence of leaves makes it intelligible to Mark's readers why Jesus went to the tree searching for something to eat.

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So I do think that helps us to understand why he pointed out that it had leaves.

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In fact, he says that twice. Notice in the text, it says, in seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it.

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When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves for it was not the season for figs.

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So he finds it with the leaves but no figs. And therein lies its, it's not producing as it should.

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It's not producing as would be expected, even though it was out of season. Now, is that the perfect answer?

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I don't know, because again, I'm not a fig expert. I'm basing this on the reading. But the fact that he points to the leaves twice, the fact that Jesus seems to have expected to find figs even though it was out of season, that satisfies my curiosity enough to come to the conclusion that I think that's okay.

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Do you have another thought on that? He's omniscient, he's omniscient, so he knows all, so he would, if it was just a matter of his leaves, and so it should be there, and I read that this week, too.

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He knows all things, so it wouldn't be, you know, strange to think that he sees this, but it's like a learning time for his disciples,

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I think. Yeah, and we're going to see that later, how this, I think this connects to more of that, yeah.

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The whole thing, if you think about it, this is the only miracle in the

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New Testament that's of destruction rather than healing or something like that, so it's a one -off on the whole thing of miracles in the

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New Testament, that he curses his fig tree.

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Yeah, it's the only time, it is, it's the only time where anything that he does a miracle and it seems to be a negative miracle.

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He takes away life rather than giving it, yeah. So, as I said, it does connect, and what's interesting, too, is in Mark's gospel, we have it, this sandwiches in the cleansing of the temple, because we have this,

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Jesus curses the tree, then we're going to read the temple is purged, and then we come back the next day and find out that it's, the tree has withered, but in Matthew's gospel, it's all one story, he doesn't say that there's something in between, and so I think

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Mark is connecting it to the purging of the temple, which is kind of what, where you're going.

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Yeah, no, and so that's my point, there is a bigger object lesson here, obviously, there's going to be more that he's going to tie in to this, but as far as the,

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I do think that it helps to kind of understand why the satisfaction of, why the apostles even would see it, and there's no fruit, but the no fruit, of course, is going to tie into the, tie into the, yeah, well, into Israel.

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Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaking. Oh, okay, so he, he speaks in it, and it, and the power goes out, it takes, you know, you can see his power, you know,

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Mm -hmm. Yeah.

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Mm -hmm.

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Yeah. Yeah, Christ has chosen this tree for a reason, yeah, and it's going to be the object lesson, for sure.

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So, that starts the, the narrative, and then it ends in 20 to 25, sandwiched in between it is the narrative of the, of the, the temple.

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So, verse 15 says, and they came to Jerusalem, and he entered the temple, and he began to drive out those who sold, and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers, and the seats of those who sold pigeons.

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This, this might be one of the most famous stories in the

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Bible, in that everybody knows this story. In fact, it's, it, there are people who will use this, stop, there were people who will use this as a, as a excuse for angry outbursts.

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Well, Jesus got mad and turned over tables, therefore, if I get mad and knock my wife's, you know, plate off, or whatever, if I get mad at my wife and, and, and throw the table down, it's just,

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Jesus got mad too. And so, people have misused this text as a way to, to cover up their own misbehavior.

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But it does teach us something. There is something called righteous indignation.

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There are times where things should arouse in us more than just the, the mediocre sense of, no, there are times where things get us, they, they, they, they, they are visceral, they are gut -wrenchingly bad, and this is what is being seen.

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Jesus goes in, and, and I've often thought of sort of the vision, the, the temple is massive, and this was taking place in the court of the

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Gentiles, which is, if you can imagine, about five football fields, that's about how big this area is, so it's not a small place.

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And, and Jesus goes in, he sees this happening, and what, what's happening is all these people are, are, are coming, they're, they're making their pilgrimage, and they're making sacrifice, they're not bringing the sacrifices with them, they're bringing money with them, and they're going to buy the sacrifice when they get there, and use it to, to make their sacrifice.

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I mean, the sacrifice is had to meet certain standards, if they bring a, if they bring a sacrifice with them, it might not meet the standard, so if they go there, they know they're going to buy one that's, that qualifies, and they're bringing money from different places, they're going to have to make an exchange, and this is why you see the term here, money changers, this is people who exchange the money, so ordinarily, that comes with a fee as well.

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It's just like if you were to go to South America, or Europe, or somewhere, and you took your dollar, and traded it in for a euro, or something else, you're going to pay an exchange rate, well, this is happening here, and so there is a lot of money changing hands, this is why later in the same gospel, we're going to see that, the question about paying taxes to Caesar, because there's money in people's hands,

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Jesus, well, whose face is on this, Caesar, right, this is Caesar's money, it ultimately came from him, and it's his, you know, pay to him what belongs to him, but the point is, this is a market, and it's in what is ostensibly

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God's house, now, the temple represented God's presence among his people, in the

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Old Covenant time, during the time of the wilderness, there was the tabernacle, which was a mobile tent, but it represented

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God, and it was God's physical manifestation of his presence in the Holy of Holies, and then, of course, with the temple built with Solomon, and then that temple was destroyed, was later rebuilt, the

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Rebel Temple, and then that temple sort of fell into disrepair when being used during the time of the

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Maccabees, it was used as a fort, and there were times battles, and the Statue of Jupiter was set up inside of it, remember the

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Maccabees come in and cut the head of the statue off, so there's all of these things have happened, well, Herod had built this massive temple, and this is

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Herod's temple, and if you've ever heard the phrase, Second Temple Judaism, you ever heard that phrase?

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Second Temple Judaism is an actual, is an area of study that scholars will enter into when they're trying to figure out how things were happening at the time of Christ, because they call that Second Temple Judaism, because the things that are happening at the time of Christ are much different than the time of Solomon, I mean, think about it, there were no

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Pharisees, there were no Sadducees, there were no Romans at that time, so much has changed, and therefore a lot of the behavior and even religious experience of the people had changed at this time, this

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Second Temple Judaism time, and so this is what Christ is entering into, he's entering into this bizarre, if you will, not bizarre like B -I -Z, but like a fair, where all these things are taking place, and he is outraged, he quotes scriptures, it is is it not written, my house will be called a house of prayer, and I love this, for all the nations, standing in the court of the

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Gentiles for all the nations, I think there's something to be said for that, this is God's house but you have made it a den of robbers, and as I said about the fig tree, there is also an apologetic issue here, and the apologetic issue here, and you know this is just the way

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I study things, and I study, you know, what are the questions that people ask, and one of the questions people ask about this text is, well what about John's gospel, because in John's gospel, this event happens at a different time in Jesus's ministry,

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Matthew and Luke have this story at the same time as Mark, and all three of them say it happened on the same week as the cross, in fact a lot of people believe this is what created the impetus because Jesus is creating a lot of enemies here, he's going through, he's taking people's finances away, or he's making it hard, you know, he's knocking tables over, he's creating a scene, and he's establishing himself as an enemy of commerce, and boy if you want to see yourself become an enemy of people, become an enemy of their pocketbook, right, so that's a reality, but in John's gospel,

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John's gospel puts this in the first time

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Jesus goes for Passover, John has three Passovers, and this is his first one, this is right after the wedding at Canaan, if you read

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John's gospel, it's in John, I have it here, John 2, so in John 2, 13 to 25, it's almost the same story, but in a much different time, so we have to come to some conclusions, we have to consider a few options, one option is that John is just completely out of order, like he's not concerned with ordering things in chronology, and certainly that's possible, that John is just not concerned with chronology, story's just about the same, just he put it at a different time, and it's not a chronological issue, many scholars though take issue with that, because it would, because of the, again, three

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Passovers, this is the first one, it would seemingly put it so far out of place that it would be very odd, the other place where a lot of scholars land, and I'm sympathetic to this position, is that Jesus did this twice, that he did it once early in his ministry, and that there was a, this was like, this is what sort of kicked off his relationship, his difficult relationship with the

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Pharisees and the Sadducees, and then he did it again three years later, as it sort of bookended his ministry, as he cleansed the temple once, and then he cleansed the temple a second time prior to the cross, and again,

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I am sympathetic to that position, I think that position holds a lot of weight, a lot of godly men hold that, it's so interesting though, when you read the two accounts, they're so close, it's like the exact same thing happened twice, there are a few small differences, but anyhow,

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Andy, what are your thoughts on that? I mean, have you, yeah, I mean, yeah, like I said, I think that's reasonable, it's just, you know, like I said,

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John's gospel being so different than the other gospels, it is strange that he's the only one who puts this first one in, but then again, he's the only one who puts a bunch of things in, there's a lot of things that happen in John's gospel that we don't read in the other accounts, so certainly not out of order to say there was likely two cleansings.

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Mike, you've heard that, I'm sure, right? Yeah, and you guys have heard that, that's most likely, very likely the answer, and again,

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I'm not willing to say absolutely, I'm just, I'm pretty sure, yeah, I think that's the best way to satisfy it, and here's something,

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I was thinking about this today, as I was sitting in my office, I was reading, and I got to thinking about the difference between apologetics within the body and apologetics outside the body.

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You all know apologetics is a big part of what I do, and when

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I say what I do, it's, I just, I always study with the mind of, what is the question? Like, that's, when

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I'm reading, what's the question? What is the, what's the battle here? And the five of us, and well, eight of us, the five adults and the three kids in the room, we can be satisfied, yeah, okay, it happened twice, and I think that's most likely the answer, like I said,

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I'm very sympathetic to that. It's more difficult when you're, when you're, when you're having somebody who's attacking the scripture, and you're giving that answer, because it sounds like it's an escape hatch.

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I'm not saying it, and please, this is one of those things, it's hard to say, because I, I'm not in any way impugning scripture or the integrity of the writers,

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I'm just saying it's, it sounds like an easy answer. Well, it just happened twice, but, because, because here's where I, here's what

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I'm saying, the five, feeding of the 5 ,000, the feeding of the 4 ,000, that's, Mark's gospel says it happens twice.

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He did it once, 4 ,000, once, you know, once there were seven baskets full, once there was 12 baskets full, right? So, like, totally different accounts, but it's the same thing.

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That gives me even more confidence that, hey, this probably happened twice, too. There's probably a lot of things in Jesus's ministry.

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I think he gave two sermons on the mount. Not two, but it was the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5, and then in Luke's gospel, it's almost the same sermon, but it's in a different place.

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So, we call that the sermon on the plane, because he wasn't on a mountain in Luke's gospel. He was on a plane, and, but it's almost the same story, almost the same sermon.

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So, is it possible that Jesus went from place to place and gave a very similar sermon? Yeah. So, it's a little easier for us, but when we're, when you're struggling with people who are just anti -Scripture and anti -Bible, sometimes these answers are not very satisfying to them, but guess what?

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They're not gonna be satisfied with anything. They already don't believe the Bible. Bertrand Russell is not going to be satisfied over this plant, because he says, that's an innocent plant, and Jesus attacked an innocent plant, like a plant can be guilty or innocent, right?

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So, this is like, I hope I'm not boring you guys, but these are just thoughts that I have when

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I'm thinking, like, like, how would I, how would I address this with somebody who's attacking it? Okay, well, here's the reasoning.

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Here's, here's where we come to these conclusions, and, and yeah. So, so, cleansing of the, cleansing of the temple ends in verse 19.

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Oh, I'm sorry, we skipped a part. He says, and the chief priests and scribes heard it, and we're seeking a way to destroy it.

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Verse 18 is very key. That's why I said, I think this is, this is what is kicking off the cross, right? The cross is only a couple days away, and what's, what's kicking it off?

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This is, this is how we can, this is how we can get it. He has now made enemies. He had all these people, just two days ago, all these people saying,

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Hosanna in the name of Jesus, Son of David, Hosanna in the highest, right? All these people have, but now we've got people who are willing to see this man be attacked, because he has attacked their money.

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He's attacked their, their commerce. And it also says they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching.

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See, he didn't, not everybody hated Jesus. Some people loved him. Some people were, you know,

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Hosanna, but the, but they hated him, and they wanted to stir up hatred against him.

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Verse 19, they go back out of the city. So Jesus went in the first day, looked around, right?

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Went out, then he went in, cursed the fig tree, went in and cursed, or cleansed the temple.

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Now he's gone out again. Now we're on Tuesday. It's not far, but I can't,

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I don't remember the exact miles, but yeah, yes, it's, for me, it'd be a long walk, but for Jesus, probably not that long, not a big deal.

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You know, we did the fair, or the parade walk, and I was so, you know, I thought, oh, it had to have been two, three miles.

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It was 1 .3 miles. Jennifer had it on her watch. That's all it was, and I'm, I even said on the parade route on the way back,

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I said, Jesus did this all the time, and I'm about to fall over.

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Yeah, yeah, so, but no, yeah, just definitely not too far. All right, so now we're back at verse 20.

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This is where Matthew's gospel starts the story. In Matthew 21, 18, it says, in the morning as he's returning from the city, he became hungry, seeing the fig tree in the wayside.

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So Matthew's gospel puts it all together, but in Mark, we've had the fig tree, we've now had the cleansing of the temple, now we have the fig tree.

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Again, it says, as they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away by its root, or to its root, and Peter said,

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Rabbi, look, the fig tree you cursed has withered, which is, which is seemingly a surprise, like he hasn't seen

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Jesus do all kinds of other things, but wow, look, this, it worked, and Jesus answered him, have faith in God.

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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.

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Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you've received it, and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your father who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.

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There, there is not a passage in the Bible that has been more misapplied in regard to the health and wealth movement than verses 23 to 24, and I have to say this,

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I at least can understand why folks have struggled with it, because on its face, again, just without reading any of the context or anything, it does seem as if Jesus is describing prayer almost like a magic word, like a person who says, if you just say abracadabra, it'll all be yours, right?

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That's, that's the, that's the way it seems that it is. We know that's not the case, but if we take a step back and say, okay, how old is the health and wealth movement?

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Well, it's less than 100 years old. In fact, the Pentecostal movement is just a little over 100 years old.

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It was began in the early 1900s, and so we're now in 2023, you know, so we're looking at, you know,

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I think it was 1906 when Azusa happened, but then it was certain things were happening in the late 1800s, so we could say

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Pentecostalism as a movement is a century and some change, but Pentecostalism is not the same as the health and wealth movement.

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The health and wealth movement are sometimes referred to as positive confession, or the name it and claim it movement is, goes back to mid -century, mid -20th century teachings, positive confession teachings,

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Faith, you need to sit down, sweetie, positive confession teachings. Norman Vincent Peale, people like that, were teaching these things, these positive confession things, and these teachings have permeated the church, and how many of you have ever been talking to someone, you say, oh,

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I'm feeling sick, oh, don't speak that over yourself, don't, don't, don't, don't confess that about yourself, right, because they're saying you can, you can create by your words, or you can destroy by your words, and they'll go to the fig tree.

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See, Jesus spoke to the fig tree, and it cursed it, and therefore you have the power, and the

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Bible does say that the power of life and death is in the tongue, and you have the power to do this with your tongue.

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Totally divorcing the fact that this is the Son of God, God in the flesh, who's doing this, but as I said, and again,

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I didn't mean to be so much in apologetics tonight, but this is one of those times where we have to say, okay, what does it mean then?

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If that's not, if they're wrong, and I'm fully convinced they are, based upon a litany of scriptures, moreover,

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I would say the entire thrust of Scripture is that prayer is always subject to God's will.

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Even Jesus, when we, when we, when he taught us to pray, he says, pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

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The night before he went to the cross, he said, nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done, right?

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So these are important phrases that remind us about the limitations of our will in prayer.

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We can't simply say because we want something to happen, I mean, how many of us have had people in our lives who were, who were ill or sick or hurting, and we prayed fervently, and yet God chose a different direction.

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We know that is God's prerogative, not ours, to do that, and I'll never forget,

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I was standing right outside, right outside that Andy's class, right over there, and we were praying for a young girl who had cancer in our church, and I asked everyone, we were having a, we were having a fundraiser to raise money to send her to Texas to get a treatment that she needed, and I had a microphone, so I prayed,

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God, if it be your will, please heal this child. After I prayed, a man walked up to me, and he chastised me publicly for, for praying.

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He said, God has already healed her. I've already confessed her healing. You don't need to pray for her healing.

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You only need to thank God that she's already healed, and he,

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I mean, he, he was aggressive to the point that I had to excuse myself before I started turning over tables, but he was wrong.

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He was deadly wrong, and his behavior was outrageous, and it was not in keeping with what

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I believe the Bible teaches about prayer or confession or anything else, but we do have to deal with this text, so what does this text teach us?

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Well, this text does have an interesting placement among the other narrative, and that is the narrative of the cursing or the cleansing of the temple, and much like the, the plant, the fig tree had leaves but no fruit, one could also make the argument that Jerusalem had the vestiges of religion but without the fruit thereof.

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Yes, there was hypocrisy there, and I, as I was preparing for tonight,

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I actually did look up, and I, because I had remembered that in the

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Old Testament, Israel is often compared to a fig tree. Hosea chapter 9 verse 10 is,

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Israel is compared to the first fruit of the fig tree. Jeremiah 24 is all about the exiles being good or bad figs, and that's the comparison there, and then the result of false teachers in Israel is compared to a fig tree with no figs in Jeremiah 8 13, so those are just a few times where fig trees are used as examples of God's people being either fruitless or bad fruit, and, and how many times did

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Jesus compare our works with fruit? You know, the tree is known by the fruit it bears, and so is there, is there meaning in this fig tree example in relation to the cleansing of the temple?

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Well, the text doesn't say it explicitly. What the text does tell us explicitly is

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Jesus uses this as an object lesson for prayer and trusting God, and that's what we can say explicitly is in the text, but there is also the implication in the text that what we see here is a fruitless tree that is cursed and a fruitless religious system that's temple is about to be destroyed within the next generation, and we're going to see that, as I said,

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I think you guys had stepped out, but the next thing we're going to read in chapter 12 is the parable of the tenants, the parable of the tenants who have the field and they mistreat the, the servants of the, and then the son of the, of the, the owner, and then finally he takes it away from those tenants and gives it to other tenants, right?

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Why? Because they are fruitless tenants, right? They're, they're, they're misbehaving, and so I think there is something to be said for that in regard to the illustration of the, of the tree, but ultimately the call in this text is a call to faith.

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That's what's missing in Jerusalem, and so Jesus tells them to have faith in God.

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That's verse 22. When Peter says, look, rabbi, the, the, the, the, the tree you cursed is, is, is withered, and he said, yeah, have faith in God, have faith in God, and then he goes into this example.

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I tell you, whoever says the mountain be taken, thrown up in the sea, and there's some things that have been understood about that.

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Apparently there was an actual event that occurred at that time in history where, I think it was

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Herod himself who had had land excavated, and almost an entire mountain had been moved, and so some people think that Jesus is actually pointing to that event and saying, you know,

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Herod could do this with his hands. God can do this with your faith, right? God, so this is, wasn't just something that Jesus came up with out of nowhere.

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It may have had a physical connection to something that actually did occur, or all of this land being moved for the building of the temple.

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But either way, when he says that we are to have faith in God, that doesn't mean that have faith in God and you can have everything you want, or have faith in God and every one of your prayers is going to always be answered in the affirmative, but rather if we trust in the

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Lord that God will do what is right, then we can be comforted and when we pray,

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God is never not listening. He doesn't always answer yes.

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That's the reality, but God is always there. And so we're out of time and we're over time now, so I'm not going to get into verse 27 and we'll address some more of this later, but ultimately

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I do think verses 23 and 24 are a little hard. I'm not going to lie,

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I think because it does seem to be that just ask for what you want, you can have it if you believe hard enough.

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But let us not ever fall into a trap of misunderstanding that. And I'll leave you with this story and then we'll close.

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One of the greatest saints I ever knew, and I know Andy, you would know her,

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Miss Jackie, Sybil Taylor. She was in a wheelchair.

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She had been injured when she was a child. She had been in a wheelchair ever since she was 12 years old.

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Her husband and her had a wonderful relationship until she passed away. I said throughout her life she had had people who had come to her.

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And this is a saint, when I use that word, I mean I know we're all saints, but I mean this is just a godly woman.

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Loved the Lord and she said throughout her life she had had people tell her if you just believed hard enough you could get up out of that wheelchair.

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And that's where I think the misuse of this text can come and can become a spear to the heart of people who are truly faithful and yet God has chosen that they remain in whatever condition they're in as part of his purpose for them.

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Johnny Erickson Tada broke her neck in a swimming accident and she remains to this day a paraplegic.

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And she praises God as she writes books and does things with only with the use of her mouth explaining that God has used this for a purpose in her life that would have been so much greater than her having the use of her arms and legs.

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And so we have to we have to be very careful not to take this text and apply it in such a way that it always means the affirmative of whatever we ask.

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Any thoughts? You know what's funny about that Mike?

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I have heard I've heard teachers say, I mean I've got video, I've actually got audio of this because I've talked about it on my podcast.

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One guy said I've been sick in 20 years. I've placed my faith in Jesus, I've never been sick. So there are some who boast of that level of you know nothing's ever happened to me.

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And then you have other guys like I talked about the other day who've got splints on their fingers and eyeglasses on and you wonder why.

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If you believe you can have anything just name it and claim it. And here's where this really rubs me is just a few years ago, the head of Bethel Church, Bill Johnson, he stated, you know, there's no reason why

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Christians should ever get sick. There's no reason blah, blah, blah. I mean, you know, we have faith, right?

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His wife got cancer and died. Now that's a shame and I'm sad. I'm always sad to hear anybody gets cancer.

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But when people came back and said, Well, hey, wait a minute. You said people got mad at the people saying it.

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Now I understand there may be a time where you give them a break for a little while. But at the same time, you're gonna have to pay the piper at some point because you're the one who said, and then he can

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Well, I never said yes, you did. You wrote it in your book. We all read it. And that's where the danger comes, is when you say never gonna get sick, and then you get sick.

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So yeah, it's out there. There are guys who say I never get sick until they do. And then the Oh, absolutely.

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Dangerous. Bill Johnson's one of those dangerous false prophets in a live today. And that's why, you know, the stuff they're putting out of Bethel is is dangerous stuff.

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Yeah, that took me out from Pentecostal.

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Yeah, you know, because they believe it's just, I mean, yeah.

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See, you can see you sick. It's because you know, I'm not faithful. Oh, you said on your life.

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Yeah, it's a it's a sin in your life. You're sinning. Yeah, you know. Yeah, that's that's one thing.

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You're right. They'll say if you're sick or something's happening, it's because you brought this on yourself, either by unbelief or some specific sin.

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Well, we're way over time. So brother, Andy, we pray for us. Father, again, we thank you for the truth that it teaches us and pray,

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Lord, help us, give us understanding and sometimes difficult, but Lord, one, help us to love you with all our hearts.

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What's the trust to help us to bear with this truth as it is keep us safe until we meet again.