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One thing I love about this time of year is that we have the opportunity to enjoy God's creation in ways that we don't during the winter. During the winter, I hurry to go across the street from a warm place in my office to the warm place of my house.
And I told Rihanna that when the kids get older and are in school, on those below-zero days, I'm going to work from home, as many of you do. The winter is not a time to spend much time outside. Even when we ice fish, we're in a small space that we keep warm.
But the summer is the opposite. During the summer, I, and I'm sure you, do not want to spend too much time inside. It is too nice, especially in the north where we live. When you're stuck inside, the beautiful day is calling for you to enjoy.
There is something about the brightness of summer that should give us an extra closeness to God. He, the Creator of a beautiful creation, and the One who made this world to enjoy, He created this world as a playground for us to enjoy.
It is good to enjoy God's creation. In fact, just this past week, Keith and I went up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and we saw the beauty that is there. We are to enjoy creation, and we are to enjoy creation in the right way.
If we enjoy creation without thinking about God, this is a problem. As you do chores in the field, as you go for a walk, as you ride a bike, or go for a drive, we should be thinking, what a beautiful place that God created.
During Jesus' time on earth, He enjoyed the very creation that He made. This is remarkable to think about. Colossians 1 .16 says that all things were created through Him and for Him. When God became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, Jesus in His humanity enjoyed the creation that He made.
We see this in the Gospels as He goes through His ministry. Early on in His ministry in Mark 1 .35, we learn that while it was still dark, Jesus departed and went out to a desolate place. And there, He prayed.
Later on in Mark 6 .46, after Jesus fed the thousands, we read that He went up on a mountain to pray. We read this twice in the Gospels, but we can be sure that this was something He did on a regular basis.
He found time in His busy schedule to go to a quiet place to pray. One of the ways you can reflect Jesus is by doing what He did while He was on earth. Go out into God's creation and talk to God. I personally love going for walks, enjoying nature, and talking to God.
I find it easier to commune with God when I am surrounded by the beauty that He made. The summer is a great time for this. This is a great time of year to make your prayer life more vibrant. To have a vibrant prayer life is of utmost importance for the Christian.
You should be using the acronym ACTS. Adoration. Confession. Thanksgiving. And supplication, which means requests. Bringing these prayers before God as you go through your days. Every healthy Christian you meet has this in common.
An active prayer life. A vibrant prayer life. Every strong Christian has this. And every one of these people would tell you that they wish they had more of it. What every Christian must understand is that God works greatly through one who has strong faith in Him.
This morning as we continue our sermon series through Matthew, Jesus explains this to His disciples. As our church desires to make a great impact in our area and beyond, we must understand that God desires for us to have faith to truly make a difference.
Without faith, it's impossible to please God. Without faith, it's impossible to be used by God. So this time, I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew 21. We will be looking at verses 18 -22.
And if you're using one of those red Bibles, it's on page 982. This sermon is titled, The Power of Jesus' Name. And I will begin by reading the text. Matthew 21, verses 18 -22. In the morning, as He was returning to the city, He became hungry.
And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, He went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And He said to it, May no fruit ever come from you again. And the fig tree withered at once. When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, how did the fig tree wither at once?
And Jesus answered them, Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, be taken up and thrown into the sea, it will happen.
And whenever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith. Here's our big idea. What this text is calling you to do. Understand the world-shaking life that God has planned for you. Understand the world-shaking life that God has planned for you.
And we're going to see one discipline how in this text that we will see as we go through it. But before we jump in, let me give you a little recap of where we were one Sunday ago. We looked at verses 13 through 17 of chapter 21.
And in these verses, we saw the story of Jesus cleansing the temple. What I explain is that this is a side of Jesus that people don't often want to believe about Him. Josh talked about praying certain prayers.
We're not accustomed to doing that. Jesus drives people out of the temple. He prepared a whip and He drove them out. What is amazing about Jesus is that His demeanor is always right where it should be, depending on the situation that He is in.
When people dishonored His Father in the temple, He overturned their tables and drove them out. And some might say this was too harsh, but this is exactly what was right based on the heinous sin that these people were taking part in.
They turned the temple into a marketplace. But once these people were driven out of the temple, Jesus' demeanor changed immediately as the blind and the lame came to Him. He treated them with kindness and He healed them.
This is who Jesus is and this is who we are called to be. We are called to be like Him. We are called to be righteously angry, which most of the time will be self-controlled. And we are also called to be kind to people who truly care for others.
And as you do this, you will be like Jesus. This is what He did. This is who He is. Now this leads us back to our text that we've already read, but now we're going to zero in on. Let's begin by focusing on verse 18 where we read that in the morning as He was returning to the city, He became hungry.
What we saw last week in verse 17 is that after Jesus drove out those buying and selling in the temple, He went to a nearby village called Bethany. What verse 18 tells us is that once morning came, Jesus returned to Jerusalem and as He returned, He became hungry.
What Jesus is going to do is use this time of hunger that He has to make a point. And He's trying to make a point to His disciples. Let's see this in verse 19. The beginning of verse 19, And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, He went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves.
So He goes to a fig tree, which would have been very common in this region in Palestine. And figs are fruit that you can find here in some stores, but it's not common like it is in Europe and the region of Palestine where these trees are in abundance.
And as He approaches the fig tree, Jesus finds a tree with leaves, but no food. This of course does not catch Jesus by surprise. He knows what He's doing. He and His disciples are at the time of day when they would normally eat.
And in an effort to get food, He uses the fig tree to teach an important lesson. And let's see what He does here in 2nd Adam verse 19. He said to it, the fig tree, May no fruit ever come from you again.
And the fig tree withered at once. So He goes to this fig tree that fails to do what it's supposed to do, namely bear fruit, and He puts this tree in a worse place than it's already been. It withers right before them.
He says to it, may no fruit ever come from you again. Now there are times where we might get frustrated with something and in our anger, place a curse on something. Have you ever done that? A man tries to fix his old car and realizes that this old car is giving him a ton of trouble.
And as he tries to fix it, he might say, I'm done with you. You're never going to be driven again. But as a man does this, the car does not enter a cursed state. The car will probably be driven again.
But look at what Jesus does here. He curses the fig tree and immediately it is truly cursed. As Jesus places this curse on the tree, the tree does not just stay in a barren state. The tree withers as the end of v. 19 tells us.
As you might imagine, the disciples have quite the reaction as they see this. Let's see their reaction in v. 20. When the disciples saw it, they marveled saying, how did the fig tree wither at once? Now you would think this would not cause the disciples to marvel because at this point in Jesus' ministry, they have already seen Him do numerous miracles.
At this point, we are in the last week of Jesus' life. They've been with Him for over three years. And you'd think, okay, well, He just did another miracle. No big deal. That's not what the text says.
They marveled. And this makes me think of how we view the world we live in. As I mentioned in the introduction, we live in an incredible world. We have mountains, hills, valleys, oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, rocky areas, grassy areas.
And in the night sky, you see majesty as you look at the stars. Our response should not be, oh, I've seen that before. No big deal. We should always be amazed. It's a wonder. At every turn around us. And it's screaming at us to give praise to the One who made it.
So the disciples here, as they see yet another miracle from Jesus, have the appropriate response. They marvel at Jesus as He tells the fig tree to wither. And at once, it does precisely what He tells it to do.
There's power here. The creation listens to Him. Now, Jesus has a point for doing all of this. He doesn't just want to show off His power to the disciples. He wants to show them what His power means for them.
Let's read what Jesus says in verses 21 -22. And Jesus answered them, Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, be taken up and thrown into the sea, it will happen.
And He tells them, whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith. This is fascinating how Jesus ties these two pieces together. In verse 19, He shows His power by causing the fig tree to wither in a moment.
Jesus can do what He wants and He shows this. He commands the fig tree to do something and it does it. And what you must understand is that there's power in Jesus Christ. This is what Jesus wants His disciples and you and I to understand.
In Christ, you have enormous power. You have far more power than you can imagine. We'll get to heaven one day and we'll see. My prayer did that? Really? We must understand this. Now, what Jesus says here in verse 21 might sound familiar.
Jesus said this same thing in Matthew 17, 20. There He said to His disciples, truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you.
Now, what Jesus is saying here and what this implies in chapter 17 and states explicitly in our text is that this ability to do incredible things is done through faith in the power of Christ. As Jesus says in verse 22 of our text, whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith.
Now, it is obvious that what Jesus is communicating in chapter 17 and in our text is not to be taken literal, but rather figurative. He's not telling you that if you have strong faith, you can make the cliffs on one side of the St. Croix River move together to the other side of the St. Croix River.
He's not saying that. The moving mountains that results from faith is figurative. In other words, faith in Christ can accomplish big things in this world. Jesus tells you God's designed for you in your journey of faith.
Everyone in this room who is a genuine Christian is living in the life of faith. Jesus is teaching you to live this life well. In the parallel passage in chapter 17, Jesus compares faith to a mustard seed.
Jesus already talked about mustard seeds earlier in Matthew. And this is not something that we were familiar with, just like the fig tree. But mustard seeds were prevalent in Israel. And in Matthew 13, 31, Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field.
When we looked at this passage last summer, what we learned is that the mustard seed was the smallest of all seeds in the garden. But what is amazing about these small, tiny seeds, these little seeds, is that they grow to be so big that it grows to be like this big bush that looks like a tree.
And it's the biggest bush in the garden, even though it starts out as the smallest seed. So a mustard seed starts out small, but continues to grow, and it grows until it is impressive. And this is why Jesus compares the journey of faith in a believer's life to a mustard seed.
This is what your life should be like. When you come to faith in Christ, your faith starts out small. You're a baby. But it's not God's design for you to stay there. Your faith should grow big over time like mustard seeds do.
It does not happen overnight, but it is God's design that you see your faith grow over time. The result of continued growing is that you become a man or woman of strong faith. Once again, Jesus is using a figure of speech here, and what he says is that if you have faith that is growing, then you can say move from here to there and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you.
That's what he says in chapter 17. Nothing will be impossible. He uses this image of moving a mountain in chapter 17 and also in verse 21 of our text to communicate this. What you and I must understand is that if you exercise faith, great things can happen in your life and in the lives of others.
If you live a life of faith, of growing faith, God will do remarkable things in your midst. He will work in you and in others and you will have lived a life that counts. You will have lived a life where you are useful to God.
It's an amazing thing to be useful to God. Otherwise, why are we here? If you don't live by faith, what difference will you ultimately make in this world that God created? What difference will you make in this grand story that he is writing?
The life absent of faith will not make a difference that is deep and lasting. The tragedy of not living a life of faith, of full faith, is that one actually misses out on life. Jesus said in John 10 .10, I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.
The tragedy of not living a life full of faith is that one misses out. Life is a great journey. It is a great adventure. And the true adventure that is taking place in this world is not what the media focuses on.
It's what's happening in places like this and in small churches in Ukraine and all over the world. That's where the action is truly happening. Where God is working. I remember reading The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer a number of years ago.
And one thing he said in that book is that the only reason history continues from century to century is for the sake of the elect. The Creator is writing a grand story and the saints are characters in this grand story.
It is through their lives that God is working. It is through their lives that wonderful things are happening. It is through their lives that things are happening that make a difference for eternity. Your work in this life through the life of faith outlasts the life that you live.
There's people who've been dead for a long time and their life in some sense continues through their influence. When unbelievers miss the life of faith, they miss out on everything even though they are deceived into thinking they are truly the ones living to the fullest.
You hear that phrase? Living to the fullest. And what they mean by this is they want life to be a thrill. They want to taste what this life is about. They want to experience the pleasure of life. In the 19th century, there was a Scottish pastor by the name of Robert Murray McShane.
He wrote a letter to a young man who had recently gone astray from his home and more importantly, from the Lord. And this is what McShane said to this young boy. He wrote, I fancy few boys were ever happier in an unconverted state than I was.
No sorrow clouded my brow. No tears filled my eyes unless over some nice storybook so that I know that you say quite true when you say that you are happy as you are. But ah, is not this just the saddest thing of all that you should be happy while you are a child of wrath?
That you should smile and eat and drink and be merry and sleep sound when this very night you may be in hell? Happy while unforgiven? A terrible happiness. It is like the Hindu widow who sits upon the funeral pile with her dead husband and sings songs of joy when they are setting fire to the wood with which she is to be burned.
Yes, you may be quite happy in this way till you die, my boy. But when you look back from hell, you will say it was a miserable kind of happiness. Now, do you think it would not give you more happiness to be forgiven?
To be able to put on Jesus and say, God's anger is turned away. Would you not be happier at work and happier in the house and happier in your bed? I can assure you, from all that ever I have felt of it, the pleasures of being forgiven are as superior to the pleasures of an unforgiven man as heaven is higher than hell.
The peace of being forgiven reminds me of the calm blue sky which no earthly clamors can disturb. It lightens all labors, sweetens every morsel of bread, and makes a sick bed all soft and downy. Yeah, it takes away the scowl of death.
That's from a 19th century pastor. And what McShane is saying is that the happiness of an unbeliever is not true happiness. And one day in hell, the unbeliever will realize this. But to be forgiven in Christ is true joy, knowing that no punishment awaits, but only glory.
When you are forgiven and counted as God's child, life is truly worth living. You can truly enjoy what life is all about. This is the grand position of a genuine believer. But even though a child of God is in this place, it can be that at times, believers don't exercise faith.
And we miss out on this grand experience of living the life of faith, of closely following the Lord. And when this faith is not exercised as one goes through the life of faith, what happens is that a believer misses out on the promises that are yours in Christ.
A believer misses out on the grand adventure. Believers can be in a malaise if you're not careful. As one author writes, throughout the ages, believers often have failed to receive God's promised joy, freedom, forgiveness, guidance, fruitfulness, protection, wisdom, and countless other blessings simply because like those disciples who could not cast out a demon, they have not persisted in prayer.
That's what we miss out on. We sang about that today. The peace we often forfeit, take it to the Lord in prayer. When you pray, what you are doing is exercising faith. When we talk about faith, we are talking about living according to what the Bible says.
Trusting that God's blessing follows as we live out His Word. And faith is also a life saturated in prayer. Over the last couple months, we have had a delightful woman join us who is a prayer warrior, Linda Owen.
Sorry to bring attention to you, Linda. But what I and you have seen Linda do is reach out to people in the church so that she can pray with them. She understands that to live a life of obedience to God, to see God work in others, prayer is vital.
The Lord calls you to live a life of complete dependence on Him. It means living according to His Word, and it means praying the way the Bible tells you and I to pray. And God knows this about us. We don't know how to pray.
We come into the journey of faith not really knowing how to pray. Romans 8, 26 says, we do not know what to pray for as we ought. We know this from our experience. We start out in our journey of faith not really knowing how to pray.
We need to learn. We need to learn what prayers God answers and what prayers He doesn't answer. There was a 17th century Puritan by the name of Tom and Manton who once said that when you pray, show God His handwriting.
In other words, pray the Bible. So how do you pray? You need to pray for what God has promised. For example, He promises to give power courage, wisdom, joy, peace, and growth and holiness, to name a few, if we will just ask Him.
You can also pray for other things like for a loved one to be saved or for someone you care about to grow spiritually. These prayers and requests in His wisdom, sometimes He doesn't answer them. But if you pray for these things for lots of people, you're going to see it show up in people's lives.
But there's no question that as you call on Him, you will see Him work. And what you must understand is that the world that matters, the kingdom world where God is working for eternity is run by prayer.
Prayer is the fuel that runs the engine. Everyone here who knows Christ is here because someone prayed for you to know Christ. You are seeing growth in your life. Because you or others prayed for that to happen.
To truly make a difference in this world, you need faith. And if you want to be useless to God, then be faithless. In the parallel text in chapter 17, what we saw is that the disciples were useless to God because they acted the wrong way.
They did not trust in the power of Christ to cast out the demon that this little boy had. And guess what happens? The demon stayed. The kid remained in this place of misery. And how many times does something not happen in your or my life or the lives of others because we don't live by faith?
And how many times does nothing happen because prayer is lacking? How many times do you fail because you're not really trusting the Lord, but you're trusting yourself or putting your trust somewhere you shouldn't?
And I understand that we need medical physicians. This is just kind of an aside here. But sometimes people are on every different kind of medication. It's like, do you really need every single medication?
Yes, there are times when it's an absolute need. But sometimes I see people trust doctors more than they trust the Lord. Are we taking our prayers to the Lord to say, Lord, would you heal me of this? And he might not.
But we need to go to faith and prayer and ask Him for help. And there's so many areas in our life where we do that. Where we put our trust in the wrong places. The Christian life is one of living out what God's Word says.
It is a life of dependence on God through prayer. The Bible makes it very clear from Genesis to Revelation that if you do things God's way, you will see God work in your life. When you believe what the Word says and live it, then God is glorified in your life.
And you experience the blessing of His closeness to you. When you are walking closely with Him, He uses you to be a force in this world. I mentioned Robert Murray McShane. One of his friends said of him after his death that he was a mighty weapon in the hand of God.
Will people describe you that way? Ask yourself that. If you listen to what your sinful nature says, to what the world says, to what the devil says, and live that way, what Jesus thinks about you in those times is that you're faithless.
He said that to the disciples. He told them that you are faithless and corrupt in Matthew 17, 17. It was a rebuke that they needed to hear. He's telling them, don't stay in this place. You need to grow.
You need to trust me. He loves us too much to leave us where we are. We need to take the training wheels off. He calls for your faith to be like a mustard seed. A faith that grows over time. It is so sad to see Christians who stay in the same place year after year.
A decade goes by and you ask, was there any growth? Are you going in the right direction? Ask yourself that. It's not, as one author has said, it's not the perfection of your life. It's the direction of your life.
Are you going in the right direction? And as we look at our journey of the life of faith, we should be able to look back and see progress. A couple of weeks back, Brianna and I went on a date to celebrate our wedding anniversary.
It was nice to get a break from the kids. We were actually able to have a conversation, which if you have young kids, you know what that's like. And on this date, we reminisced about the last eight years.
And we were talking about one of the trips we went on. And I did something on that trip that I regret. And I remember feeling embarrassed of who I once was in that first year of marriage, even though at the time, not really knowing there was an immaturity there.
But now looking back saying, man, I did that. And you can look back at your life. As you grow, you look back and you say, I'm glad I don't do that anymore. And this happens as God works in your life. And he does this through the power of his spirit as we rest on the word of God, as we pray.
During this process, he works in your life. He calls you to have a growing faith like a mustard seed. And when you do this, the Lord can and will do amazing things through you. Figuratively speaking, you will move mountains.
You will be useful to God. And when your life is over, God will be pleased with the way that you lived and others will have benefited from your life. What's interesting about reading through the stories of the kings of Israel in the Old Testament, the author whose writing is inspired by the Holy Spirit gives an accurate pronouncement of a particular king's life.
The author's pronouncement on that person's life is God's pronouncement. Most of the kings that the author writes about, he says that they did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. And in fact, the northern kingdom, it's all of them, pretty much.
They did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. But then you get to a couple of kings, two kings in particular in the kingdom of Judah, Hezekiah and Josiah. In 2 Kings 18, verses 3 and 5, the author writes this about Hezekiah.
He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord according to all that David his father had done. He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him.
That's a powerful pronouncement on his life, his faithful life. Then 2 Kings 22, verses 1 and 2, says this concerning Josiah. Remember, Josiah was the guy who found the law? The book of the law? Oh yeah, there's this book.
We should be following it. Josiah was 8 years old when he began to reign. A little bit young, huh? He reigned 31 years in Jerusalem. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the way of David his father and did not turn aside to the right or to the left.
God's view of Hezekiah and Josiah was a very good one. They did great things for God through faith as they reigned in Jerusalem, as they carried out the tasks that God had given them. And as God gives his pronouncement on your life, what is he going to say?
We should think about this every day to inspire us to live in such a way where his assessment of our life is one where God, knowing our faults, knowing the sins that we've committed, even knowing that, will say, this man or woman was faithful to me.
This person did what I told them to do. This person had faith and did not doubt. It was a person who prayed. It was a person who was used by me to do great things, to move mountains. To live a life full of faith is the only way to live.
In this way, you will be useful to God as you make use of this great power that you have in Jesus' name. Remember what Jesus said in verse 22? Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith.
And in the parallel passage in chapter 17, he says nothing will be impossible for you. Think about that. Jesus is telling us this. We should make use of this power that we have in Christ as we rely on Him, as we live our lives with Him every step of the way by our side.
So understand the world-shaking life that God has planned for you. In this text, we've seen one discipline how. Here's the one discipline how. By striving to build a pattern of faith over doubt, striving to build a pattern of faith over doubt.
We all struggle with doubt. But kill that sin in your life day by day and grow in faith. Ephesians 3 .20 says that we are able to do far more than you can ask or imagine through His power at work in you.
In this text this morning, this is what Jesus is communicating. You can do great things through His power. You can, figuratively speaking, move mountains as you live by faith. By God's grace, may a life full of faith be the story of our lives.
Now next Sunday, we will look at an interesting conversation that Jesus has with the leaders in Jerusalem. And in this conversation, He puts them in a corner that they can't get out of. And we'll see how He does this next Sunday.
But this time, let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, this is the life that you call us to. That image of Jesus outside the boat and Peter in the boat and Jesus calling to Him, Come to Me. He wants them to walk all the way across that water to Him.
To trust Him that much. To believe that He can do what He says He can do. And today we saw Him. He tells the fig tree to wither and it withers. The Lord can do great things. And this is a reminder that we needed today, Lord, to hear this in our lives.
With whatever each person in this room is facing, everybody's facing different issues. And, Lord, our issues are small compared to what the people of Ukraine are facing. And we pray for the Ukrainians in our midst in this room, Lord, that You, through Your power, that You would do great things in their life.
We pray for the safety of the loved one, Lord, who is fighting in the war as well. And we pray, Lord, for Your light to shine in the midst of this darkness that has come upon this nation. And we pray, Lord, for You to do great things in our midst and everyone in this room, right where they are at, whatever issue they're facing.
And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.