"Moving Mountains", Matthew 21:18-21

Matthew chapter 21, starting in verse 18, hear the word of the

Lord. In the morning as he was returning to the city, he, this is about Jesus, 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 whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith.

And the Lord has his blessing to the reading of his holy word. Well, what obstacles are in the way of you achieving what you want to achieve?

Well, starting my senior year in high school and into college, I wanted to be an athlete. Now, my biggest obstacle really was that I hadn't begun earlier.

If you want to do something like that, you should begin much younger than 18. So I didn't have those years of conditioning behind me.

So I tried to hurry to develop it. And my first track season in my last year of high school, if the coach had us running an interval workout for track, it's like you sprint short distances and then rest by jogging or walking maybe a little bit in between.

I would then run long distances after practice to get that in. If we had to run long distance,

I would do some other kind of extra running. So I basically added an extra workout after every workout. I was a weird guy for high school, wasn't

I? So I was trying to do the impossible, make up for years of athletic conditioning in a short period of time.

Now when the coach found out about it, he just told me to stop. I just wear myself out. It would take time.

And finally, when I did get some conditioning, speaking of obstacles, I got to the point where I was jumping over literal obstacles.

Running the steeplechase, about a two -mile race with these sturdy barriers. You hit them, you go down, they don't go down.

And this water pit every lap, get your shoes wet. Now what obstacles are in your way?

Of course, that depends on what you want to achieve. If you want to be healthy and strong, you may have the obstacles of some kind of chronic sickness, some weakness.

People will pay doctors a lot of money to remove those obstacles of poor health out of their way, even though we all know that eventually there will come a mountain of sickness that no doctor or drug will be able to move.

I once spoke to a paralyzed man who was desperate for some kind of stem cell therapy that he hoped, or I think it was stem cell, it was something like that, that he hoped would enable him to walk again.

What he sought was illegal in the U .S., and so he was trying to get money to go to China to go get it there.

I thought, it's probably illegal here because it doesn't work, and I was thinking to myself, you're pinning all your hopes on a cure that probably doesn't exist, at least not among people.

Now, some want a healthy family, a vibrant love life, but there are issues in the way.

Maybe troublesome family members, broken relationships. Sometimes there are so many issues and such a long history of disappointments and betrayals that it's like a mountain of grief that's just sitting there between you and the goal of a happy family.

Some may read books, try to figure the technique how to get rid of it, go to counseling, work on communication to try to resolve the problems in the family, but those things that keep getting in the way, keep getting in the way.

The promised cures don't seem to work out. Some young people think that their biggest obstacle to happiness is that they are single, but if you run into a relationship, if you rush into a relationship that turns out bad, you wish you could go back to the good old days when you were single.

Some young people's real obstacle is that they're just too obsessed and impatient with getting into a relationship.

Now, maybe you want to make a lot of money, but business conditions, they're not the best, there's unnecessary expenses, labor problems, problems with your employees, problems getting customers, and so you want to solve those problems.

Maybe you need to work harder, that'll do it, or maybe you take some special knowledge, you gain the right technique, get those obstacles out of the way.

You could go back to school, get an MBA, Masters of Business Administration, or hire someone who has and consult with them how to increase efficiency.

Or if the problem is not enough customers, maybe you need to work on marketing, get your name out there, perhaps make some contract with a marketing company.

You want to remove this obstacle in the way of your business success.

Maybe business school or consulting firms will give you the solution. Churches sometimes think the same way, you know, the biggest mountain they think that needs moving is their low attendance and they just need more feet coming through the door and they can think just like businesses, consult with the marketing gurus, advertise, right?

And there's not necessarily anything wrong with that, but it can also be, you know, motivated by the same kind of immaturity and impatience as the teenager is desperate for a relationship.

It's just rooted in lack of faith sometimes. But the fact is that there are obstacles to the growth of God's church,

God's kingdom on earth, and there are major, sometimes seemingly immovable obstacles.

Here the Lord Jesus deals with those in what to many is a very difficult and controversial passage.

You know, maybe some of you take some phrases and it makes a great poster on the wall, but some parts of this passage are overlooked, overlooked by some of the best of our preachers around today.

They just don't want to touch this passage. And other parts are misused and abused and twisted for our own purposes by some of the worst preachers and teachers around today.

Here the Lord Jesus deals with the obstacles to God's kingdom. We see that in three parts.

First, no fruit, and then no future, and finally, no failure.

He's arrived at Jerusalem. He's hailed as the conquering son of David, that means the Messiah. He's been paraded into the city by this massive crowd begging him to save now, which means

Hosanna, save now, by political means they mean, by the sword. And he's come to the temple and found it to be about business rather than God, and he tries to take care of that, at least a little bit.

And he wakes up, probably the next day, he's hungry for breakfast. He sees a fig tree, and thinks to himself, here's an apparently, you know, from a distance, it's an apparently healthy looking tree.

It's full of leaves, and so it should have some kind of fruit, even though it's early in the season, there should be some kind of fruit on it.

And so he goes to it, he looks around at it, searching the branches for something to pluck off, but he can't find a thing.

It looks in every way, from a distance, like a good fig tree. But when you get up close, upon further inspection, it lacks the fruit that the tree exists to produce.

Only leaves, notice those two words there, only leaves, nothing that a person can eat.

The tree promises, but it doesn't deliver. All of those things that people look to, to overcome their obstacles, whatever it is, athletic training, doctors and medicines, counseling for families, that ideal relationship, you're just sure is the answer, it's right around the corner if you can only find him or her.

Business schools, marketing experts, they all can look so promising.

And like fig trees, some of them really do produce some fruit. But it's one of the most frustrating things, you know, to pin all your hopes on one of those things, to be hungry for something from them.

And you go, they look so good from a distance, the relationship, the counseling, the marketing, whatever it is, the business, looks so good from a distance.

But then you get up close, and there's empty, there's nothing there.

Looking healthy and good from a distance, but providing you with nothing that you need.

I wonder sometimes how that paralyzed man is doing now. Has he wasted his money to go around the world to get a therapy that almost certainly will not work?

Has he crashed into frustration and depression? I don't know, I haven't heard.

It's frustrating when something that looks so good and seems to offer so much turns out to have nothing that you need.

It could be the relationship you thought was the answer or the success, you know, in your business that you worked so hard for, the relationship turned out bad, the

MBA or marketing didn't deliver the goods, or maybe the relationship is fine. Maybe your business is booming, but it just isn't giving you the life you expected.

Jesus was hungry, and he expected the fig tree to give him something, but it doesn't.

Nothing. Only leaves, it says. Now, this is an acted parable.

The fig tree, you know, fig trees in that part of the world, they're lush, green trees that produce a lot of shade and fruit, and so they're perfect for a desert -like area.

It's popular to eat from them and just to sit under them. For the shade. And it was, in the

Old Testament, the fig tree was one of the pictures of Israel and of the promised land itself.

You know, not only is the land of Israel in the Old Testament called the land of milk and honey, it's also called the land of fig trees.

It was a symbol of God's blessing. And the prophet Jeremiah in chapter 8, verse 13, says that, when

I would gather them, this is the Lord speaking, when I would gather them, my people, is here.

The Lord Jesus has come to gather Israel. But it says in Jeremiah, when

I would gather them, there are no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree. God says in Jeremiah that at the time when he comes to call his people to himself, they will be bearing no fruit.

And the result, it says in Jeremiah, even the leaves are withered. Well, here,

Jesus comes looking for fruit. He's come to Jerusalem to gather his people and he finds the tree,

Israel, with no fruit. This is an active parable showing that what Jeremiah foresaw is now fulfilled.

Jesus has come to Jerusalem, to the temple itself, and found no fruit. Only a dead religion.

A tree that promises fruit but provides none is a symbol of dead religion, a religion without godliness.

It has, you know, he's gone to the temple where he should have found prayer.

He should have found worship. But he found only business. He's seen that this religion is not producing the kind of hearts and lives that God wants.

Dead religion produces no good fruit. And dead churches also produce no good fruit.

Jesus comes to his people expecting to see the fruit of changed lives, that people with hearts that yearn for the

Lord, to worship him and to know him, and we know him from his word. And so one of the fruits that he is especially looking for is a real desire to know the word, to know him through his word, and to live by it.

To be hungry to hear it, particularly hear it accurately taught and preached, and then to put it into practice, to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our

God. And this is why we remind ourselves every month with the Lord's Supper of our church covenant so that we can examine ourselves to see whether we are producing the fruit the

Lord is looking for. Walking together in Christian love, we go through it like that, inspect ourselves.

Is there fruit there? Is there growth? Is there progress? It don't have to be perfection, but is there something growing, something alive?

And that's only possible if instead of a dead religion, we have a living faith in our heart.

We really know the Lord, and even if we're very imperfect following him, we grieve when we don't follow him well, and we yearn to do better.

Jesus comes to us expecting to find fruit, change lives coming from changed hearts that now love him, but to some lives that look so good from a distance, he comes up close and finds no fruit.

It's the same with the people that Jesus will be dealing with harshly in the next couple of chapters, particularly chapter 23, which is kind of looming ahead of us.

If you don't know what's in Matthew 23, you're going to be startled. The hypocrites.

From a distance, they look like spiritually healthy living believers.

They look like they should be producing fruit. They go to church, they have their

Bibles out, they have plaques on their wall with Bible verses on them, they dress right, they know how to sound like a believer, to speak

Christian -ese. Everything looks like they have a living faith, but if you get up close to them, start looking for fruit, you won't find any.

That's one reason why such people often like to stay away from situations where people will get too close. They'll prefer churches where they can kind of come and go for the show, say some superficial words to each other, get lost in the crowd, keep people that's at a distance, be seen but not known, because if you get too close, you'll catch on, that they aren't really bearing any fruit.

They don't want to know the Lord or his word, and so they don't really want to read it or really to hear it, even if their eyes pass over it every day as part of a discipline they put themselves through, they don't really want to submit to it.

They don't really want to be part of evangelism, and so they'll find some excuse not to be involved in that.

The tree here is the picture of hypocritical religion that looks great from a distance, but when you get up close and you look up at the limbs, you see there's no fruit.

Here, Jesus has come to gather his people, but instead of a living faith that produces fruit, the fruit in keeping with repentance, walking humbly with their

God, he finds them empty, only leaves, in verse 19, looking green, but no fruit.

What do you do with a fruit tree that has no fruit? You give it no future.

Remember, dead religion has no fruit and no future.

Instead, it gets a curse. Jesus curses the fig tree.

He says to it, may no fruit ever come from you again. Now because it didn't bear fruit when the

Lord came to it, it has no future, and the fig tree withered at once, it says right there. Just as in Jeremiah chapter 8, verse 13, when he saw when the

Lord comes to his people looking for fruit and he finds none, even the leaves will wither.

You know, before, the tree looked healthy and productive. Now he's going to make sure that that tree looks to the casual observer according to what it really is.

It's fruitless, so it's dead as far as bearing anything edible goes, so he makes sure it will look as dead on the outside as it really is on the inside.

So he speaks the curse on its future and immediately starts to wither, drying up, leaves shriveling, turning from green to brown, and leaves falling off, blowing away in the wind.

And soon, there's nothing left but the skeleton of a tree, some branches, bare, dead for all to see.

Now it's just food for termites or for some farmer to come around and chop it down, turn it into firewood.

It bore no fruit, and so it has no future. Now, as an acted parable, this is first about Israel and the old law in the temple worship.

Jesus came to them as their king, expecting to find fruit, change lives, loving God, and so loving other people, especially caring about justice, being a witness to the unbelievers who are outside of Israel.

Instead, they filled the court of the Gentiles, just for those people, they filled it with a marketplace, you know, that court around the temple.

They turned it into a big mall. They cared more for business than worship. They were fruitless.

And now he says they have no future. He'll get specific in chapter 24, where he says what's going to happen to that temple, but for now, in this acted parable, he shows that their faithlessness will bring a curse.

Dead religion in Christian churches will earn the same curse. If Israel's fruitlessness earned them judgment, how much more then will ours?

And people from some denominations, particularly some very old ones, insist that, you know, that God will never forsake their church.

They'll take that promise from Matthew chapter 16, where Jesus says that, you know, he will build his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

And they'll say that their church is that church that Jesus is building, and that it goes all the way back to the early church, and it can never be forsaken or defeated.

But God is no more bound to Christian churches with a long pedigree, an institutional line that supposedly goes back so far.

He's no longer bound to that than he was bound to Israel with an even longer pedigree.

He will always have a people, that's true, but to some institutions that call themselves churches, he can say to them, may no fruit ever come from you again.

People come up to churches expecting to find fruit. They made so much about Mary that Muhammad assumed that, you know, he heard about all the stuff about Mary and the worship of Mary and saw, you know, statues and pictures of Mary worshiped, that he assumed when he actually also heard about the

Trinity, three persons and one God, he assumed that the Trinity was Father, Mother, Mary, and Son, Jesus.

That's what he thought the Trinity was. And so he wasn't one to being a Christian, even though there were a lot of so -called

Christians around. They were coming into his area. They had been spreading there. Eventually, the movement he founded, of course,

Islam, would wipe most Christians out of the Middle East and North Africa that had been their homeland, right?

That's where Christianity comes from, is the Middle East. It was as though the Lord had seen the fruitlessness.

That's all like in the 600s, right, if I remember right. So it's like 500, 600 years after Christ, and the church had just degenerated, as though the

Lord had seen their fruitlessness and the idolatry that was now being called

Christian worship and the false doctrine and the false practices of those churches, as though the

Lord had seen that and pronounced a curse. May no fruit ever come from you again.

So the church there withered away and was swept away by Islam. Now, well over 1 ,000 years later, an

Indian lawyer, a Hindu living in South Africa, began to be interested in Christianity.

He read his Bible, particularly interested in the Sermon on the Mount from Jesus and studying

Christ. He started attending church, and this is South Africa, days of apartheid.

And white considered, you know, he's Indian, they considered him, you know, black, so they treated him like that.

And he reportedly tried to visit one white church in South Africa, and an Englishman met him at the door and barred him and rudely asked, where do you think you're going, kafir?

That's an offensive racial slur. So we have our own kind of version here, okay?

And the man, a seeker, replied, I'd like to attend worship here. And the

Englishman snarled back at him, there's no room for kafirs in this church. Get out of here, I'll have my assistants throw you down the steps.

The man was Gandhi, the founder of modern India, and he never became a

Christian after that. And today, while Christianity has grown enormously in Korea and in China, it's still a small minority in India, only about 2 % of the population.

When the church bears no fruit, it has no future. When we bear no fruit, we have no future.

And the same could happen here in this country. Just this past week, a Pew Research Center study found that the percentage of Americans saying that they were, you know, completely unaffiliated with any faith, they don't call themselves

Christians, they don't call themselves anything, has increased by 5 % in just about five years, from 15 % in 2007 to 20 % today.

Now, that's an astounding increase in such a short period of time. So at this rate, it's not hard, the math is very easy, okay, with the percentage of unbelievers increasing by 1 percentage point a year, which means if this continues, no one will be a believer in the

US in 80 years. Do we have a future? If we don't have fruit, we won't have a future.

And Jesus shows that dramatically here by withering the fig tree. It was green and good -looking, and now it's brown, it's dry, it's just dead wood.

When the disciples saw that, well, they were amazed. It was an incredible demonstration of power to be able to just say the words and start to see this tree wither away right in front of their eyes.

That's power. People love power. They love it so much that the disciples don't even, you know, they don't even bother to ask about what they should really be interested in.

You know, they should be asking about, hey, what does this mean? Why did you curse this fig tree? How is this like Israel?

Jesus, does Israel have a future? Are you telling us something about the end times? Are you solving for us dispensationalism right here in this parable?

They should ask things like that. Or is this curse on Israel? Do they have no future?

Are they never to bear fruit again? In verse 20, they're too impressed with the mechanics of how, how, you know, that's not what they ask.

How did you do this? They don't ask what it means. How, Jesus, have you withered this fig tree?

They're too impressed by that to ask the big questions. And that's the way people naturally are. People are impressed with power and they want it.

A few years ago, we had someone visit our Wednesday evening prayer meeting and insisting that what we need was power.

And we had open before us, ironically, 2 Timothy 3 about the magicians in Pharaoh's court who were opposing

Moses. You know, they're called Janus and Jambres, the magicians in Pharaoh's court. And they were able actually to reproduce some of the same miracles that Moses did.

They had some power. They just didn't have grace and truth. But the disciples here, like people everywhere, are naturally impressed with displays of supernatural power.

And the common now modern response, at least amongst sophisticated people, is to say, you know, well, just don't be.

Don't care about power. But that's really not the way Jesus responds here.

We need to understand the Bible teaches us that there is supernatural power.

It's either good from God or it's evil from Satan. Especially when we're coming up to Halloween in two and a half weeks, you know, people will play with Satan's power, just symbols of it, that kind of thing, as if it's funny or if it's not serious, just a children's play thing to toy with.

And the Christian really shouldn't do that. Not because we don't believe it is real, but precisely because we do believe it is real.

You don't just play with something that you know is dangerous, right?

No one's amused with a kid that dresses up like a Taliban terrorist, you know, like that, or a hijacker with a box cutter.

We think that's...you take that seriously. That's disgusting. You don't want to be associated with that. You know that's real.

And then we should be the same way with Satan's power. You know it's real. We have a better power, but, you know, there is real demonic power, and we shouldn't be involved with it, either seriously or playing with symbols of it.

Now, other things about Halloween, just dressing up as anything, that's all right. I don't care about that. You get candy, they play, that's fine.

But here, they are impressed with the power that Jesus displays and ask how they can do the same.

Teach us the technique. That seems to be what they're asking here. But that is...and that's the context for the next three verses that are some of the most abused verses in the whole

Bible. Okay, this is quite a Sunday. For the Psalm, we read probably the most controversial, offensive verse in the entire

Bible. And now we're reading from here, from the Gospels, some of the most abused and twisted verses from the entire

Bible. So we're just getting it. We're getting the extremes today. There are some popular false teachers out there that have made these three verses, you know, sort of the foundation of their teaching, telling people that in these verses are the promise that you can have whatever you want.

You can get any obstacle that is in your way, get it out of the way, to getting your best life now.

This is it. This is the promise. You just believe it and you speak it into being.

You know, whatever it is, promise for health, for wealth, anything you want, just believe it.

Don't doubt and say it. And this can look very convincing to those of us who believe the

Bible is God's inspired word. Jesus, after all, begins this, you notice, with truly, and he's assuring us, this is true.

He's telling us to believe and not doubt and then speak. This is the way now they portray it, and speak to whatever mountain we want, move, the mountain of sickness, or of debt, or of family, or relationship problems, and it will be moved.

Believe and say, name it and claim it. That's why they're called the word of faith movement.

Now, but there's a few problems with that, at least three that I thought of. First, pay attention to the context, right?

And the way Matthew portrays it, you can't miss because it says, truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to this fig tree.

Remember that? So, these three verses here are connected with what happened to that fig tree.

Pay attention to the context. They're asking how Jesus was able to wither that fig tree to bring judgment on this, what is this symbol for Israel, or it could be for any dead religion, that had no fruit and so got no future.

What Jesus says here is explaining how judgment comes on the fruitless.

The mountains that can be moved, then, are those that are standing in the way of the kingdom of God, of bearing fruit, being of godliness, growing in this earth.

This is not about us, you know, whatever mountains in the way of getting that Rolls Royce we've always wanted, or that multibillion dollar business empire, that nice mansion, standing in my way of getting it.

Get that moved. No. Second, have faith. They say, have faith.

Yes, have faith. But faith in what? You know, the word of faith people like Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagen, who died a few years ago, even

Joel Osteen to kind of a lesser extent, they tell us to have faith. Basically, they don't bring it out right, but what they're implying is have faith in ourselves.

In other words, decide what you want. I decide what I want. And we have faith that our words, our words, have the power, can come to pass, that we can get what we want.

It's faith in us. But Jesus here is telling us to have faith in God.

In verse 21, if you have faith, and we can understand the words are implied here, have faith in God.

If you have faith in God and do not doubt who? Ourselves, my own wishes? No. Doubt God.

Then you can speak to a mountain and it will be taken up. In verse 22, you will receive what you asked for in prayer if you have faith.

What, in what you want? No, in God. Of course, to have faith in God, you have to know that what you're asking for is

God's will. Does God want this removed or not? If you don't know, having faith then means trusting

God. Whatever it is he wants for you. And so you have to pray, just as the

Lord Jesus does, just a few days, days, two, three, maybe four at the most, days from when he said this.

Understand? A few days from when he says this, he prays, not my will, but yours be done.

Now that, contrary to what these word of faith people say, they'll say, oh, that's immature, that's unbelief, that's doubt, that's why you're not getting what you want.

Contrary to that, that is praying that, not my will, but yours be done, is actually the most mature belief.

It's saying, I believe that what God wants for me is right and best, even if it's different than what

I want right now. Third, I'm not sure

I have the right number of fingers there. Third, finally we know that the word of faith people, come on, let's be serious.

Let's be real world about this. We know they're blowing smoke, because they don't really practice it either, do they? Right? They say that they take these words literally, that they believe them.

Really? Then let's put them to the test. Let's see them tell a mountain to be moved and thrown into the sea.

It's easy to solve. Just do what you say you believe this is literally about, and we'll believe it.

That'll just settle the discussion right there. Just do what you say this passage gives you the power to do.

You know, take Grandfather Mountain in Western North Carolina, put it right off the coast of Emerald Isle.

Just do it, and that'll settle it. We'll believe you then. We'll say you're right all along. Of course, they can't, because giving us a promise, whatever, to move, so we literally talk about moving mountains, or to always be healthy, or move mountains of cash into my bank account, which is what it's usually about.

And it may make them individually wealthy, because they'll get people to give to them to tell them these things.

But to think that's what Jesus was literally talking about here, he's no more talking about that than he was earlier talking about camels literally going through the eyes of needles.

So then, but I don't want to leave you with impression, well, then this is just kind of meaningless. This is just kind of a feel -good verse that doesn't have any application.

That's not true either. This should not just be avoided. What was he talking about?

Well, he's already shown that those with no fruit have no future. They're obstacles.

That is, churches, this religion, whatever it could be, they're obstacles to the advance of the kingdom of God.

And so they will be removed. Now he teaches us that the kingdom of God, that he is bringing in here, these last three verses, the kingdom that he has brought on earth, the church he is building, you know, that dead religion has no future.

The church he is building has no failure. The movement

Jesus has come to build has no failure, because every mountain in its way will be moved out of the way.

Remember the symbolism of Isaiah chapter 40, verse 4, repeated in Luke chapter 3, verse 5? Every mountain and hill will be made low.

Here Jesus has encountered, he's an obstacle to the kingdom of God, a tree, symbolizing Israel, or any dead religion for that matter, with no fruit.

It has no future. The disciples are amazed. They ask, how did you do that? But it's not just about, you know, kind of using supernatural power.

It's about how to speak judgment on this tree. Picturing those who have the word of God and yet produce no fruit.

How do you judge and remove obstacles to the growth of God's kingdom?

Sure, the disciples, they probably only cared about the power. But Jesus cares to tell them about the kingdom.

That for it, there will be no failure. We believe in spiritual power.

We believe in supernatural power. It's not for us just to get all the little fun things we might want, you know, the nice cars and houses.

Spiritual power is for the kingdom of God. And so this is here, he's now bringing, he's coming in the last few days, he's bringing together all the teachings from earlier in this gospel.

Remember, seek first the kingdom. The kingdom, as he said in chapter 13, is like yeast in a lump of dough.

It might start out small, but it will grow through the whole thing. Or like a tree begins from the tiniest seed, but then it grows so big.

You know, the birds build their nest in it. Jesus will build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

He has given us the power to bind and to loose, he says, when we're making disciples.

Now, that doesn't, now what does this mean in light of all of that?

Like the fruitless fig tree, we will sometimes encounter disappointments, obstacles, mountains in the way of the growth of the kingdom of God.

It could be something that we just think is just too big for us to move.

You know, at the hoedown about a month ago, Mary invited a kid who used to come to Jim Jr. To come to Jim now, now he's a teenager, he's in that age.

And so he said he'd like to, but his father won't let him because his father doesn't want him to play with black kids.

Understand that racism has been an obstacle individually to this church, in particular, but to the kingdom of God in this area, among people advancing.

And as more kids grow up with these racist parents who claim to be Christians, take them to church but didn't teach them racism at home.

They're turning out like, kind of like Gandhi. Seeing that churches are fruitless and have no future.

Some of them will probably turn into those growing numbers of unbelievers we have in our country.

And that problem of racism seems so big and so entrenched. It's just beyond our power to solve, just give up.

We don't want to deal with it, we only think about it. But here Jesus says that we can move it out of the way of his kingdom.

And even the biggest obstacles can be uprooted and removed. It could be the mountain of, another thing

I think I find whenever I go out, disinterest in spiritual things. So many churches but so little interest in the

Bible and God's word and just in spiritual things. It's just a boredom with God's word.

It's a lack of delight, we heard about that in Sunday school. It could be greed, the mountain there is, this obstacle of living for money, living for things, living for bread or pay alone.

It could be the mountain of eroticism, the pornography that's on the internet, so easy to obtain now, this obsession with sexuality.

And it seems that the clucks on the state line is either having a lot more of it lately, or it's just more open about it, judging by their sign who passed by.

It could be the mountain of false assurance distributed to people whose lives, they bear no fruit, but they've been told that they have the fire insurance.

They have a future, they've been told even though they have no fruit. And so it makes it so hard to break through to people like that.

Or it could be the mountain of religion, just respectable and moral, but with no fruit.

And it leaves people still just being self -centered individuals, proud of their religion, but unhumbled by the gospel, that it took the blood of Jesus to give them life.

They're still addicted to the old wine, not willing to break out of the tradition to follow God's word.

These are just some, I think, of the mountains that we are confronted with.

Or there are obstacles to the kingdom of God, right here. And they can seem so overwhelming.

And we're so few people, and we're so weak in ourselves, none of us are very powerful or very rich. What can we do about it?

Do we have any future? Or will we be stopped by these mountains? To that, the

Lord Jesus gives us this promise, have faith in God.

And tell those mountains, get out of the way. Neither racism, nor materialism, nor lethargy, nor eroticism, nor traditionalism can stop the progress of God's kingdom.

If we bear fruit, we love God, we have a future.

And we cannot fail, even if the percentage of people who claim to be Christians continues to plummet, and church attendance becomes just a rare thing.

You end up in the next generation being one of those rare, rare individuals that still go to church.

Even here, that's the way it is. Have faith in God. Do not doubt.

Do not doubt, as Martin Luther wrote, he must win the battle.

Have faith in God. Bear fruit, and you'll have a future.