Figs and Faith

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Don Filcek; Matthew 21:18-22 Figs and Faith

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called
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Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in. The pastor here, and welcome.
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I'm glad that you're here. And thanks for attending our very last outdoor service of the year here. It served us well.
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How many of you are glad that we've had this space to be able to meet? It's been a blessing to us, really a gift from God in a sense.
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I think back over the history and what this would have looked like back when we were at their storefront. We were packed in this tiny space.
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I don't know how we would have handled all of this. When we were at the elementary school, we would have been kicked out of there for sure, and we would have struggled.
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God brought us through to the point where we have our own facility. We have this nice, beautiful outdoor space available for us, and so just very grateful for that.
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I just want to point this out. There may be a couple of surprises, a couple of surprise nice weather
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Sunday mornings, but we are committed after this week, starting next week, to being inside moving forward.
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And that's the plan indefinitely over the course of the wintertime, the remainder of the fall, and then into winter.
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And so we're encouraging everyone to read the recommendations on the doors and to spread out as much as possible during the two services that we're going to have indoors.
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And please be patient and understanding with those who would like to maintain distance. I recognize that everybody's at different places, and what
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I encourage us to do is to enter into discussions with one another. I know that there are some churches that are putting on wristbands, and a green wristband means give me a hug, and a red wristband means keep your distance, and all that kind of stuff.
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We're a little bit more family than that. And that's not to disparage those other churches, it's just to say the way that I'd like us to lean into this.
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Talk with one another. Say, is this okay, or is it not okay? And then be all right with the response, and be okay to assert and say,
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I'd rather keep my distance right now for my own personal reasons, or whatever it might be. But we're a family, and so we interact with one another, and we talk with one another.
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And so we're going to have, again, some different opportunities, as Spencer was saying, to continue to move forward.
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We are also, and everybody take note of this, we are changing the service times for a particular reason. A couple of reasons, really.
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But we're going to be changing the service times next Sunday. There's going to be a 9 a .m. service, and a 10 .30
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service, not an 11 o 'clock service, but a 9 to 10, and then a 10 .30 to 11 .30
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service. So take note of that. I know you're here at 9, so nothing changes for you if you just come at the same time next week.
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But if you happen to be one who would flip -flop between the services, then note that the second service is at 10 .30.
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That's to make for less time between the two services, for the purpose of making it easier for those who are serving in one service and attending the other, to not have that hour of time of taking care of kids or doing whatever in between the two services and all of that.
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And so an hour between is a lot to ask of people who are serving in kids' ministry, one service, and then seeking to attend the other.
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They're kind of like, how many of you notice that, like, hour is like, do I go home during that time or not during that time? Some of you, that's like a turnaround of like 15 minutes at home before you, you know.
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So that's why we're doing that. And this morning, we're going to dive into a text, and I love it that we're able to just go through the book of Matthew.
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It's a bizarre text, a strange text of Scripture. As a matter of fact, the section of Scripture that we're looking at may be new to many of you because it isn't a topic of many sermons.
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My hunch is that the vast majority of this church have never heard a sermon on this particular passage.
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As a matter of fact, just for kicks, I looked up, how many of you ever heard of the name John Piper? John Piper had a very lengthy, long ministry as the pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church.
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I have a compilation of all of his sermons that he's ever written. By the way,
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I don't read his sermons before I preach on a passage just because I don't want to, I don't want to inadvertently copy him, and he's much wiser than me, so that would make sense, right?
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So I write my own stuff. But at the same time, I looked it up this week just out of curiosity, and he's never even preached this passage, so I was kind of surprised by that.
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But yeah, Pastor John Piper had never preached on the passage we're looking at. And really, I would suggest to you that only by going through the book of Matthew, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, would we ever really bring this one up to the forefront.
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If I was picking my favorite topics, cursing fig trees is not high on my list.
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That's not a topic that's just like, whoa, that's close to my heart. So I want to convey two things before we read this text this morning, two things that I think are very vital for us to understand and to wrap our minds around.
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The first is that what we're encountering here, scholars call an enacted parable.
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He's doing something that is to teach, intentionally doing something that has a message to us in the things that are done, an enacted parable.
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He's not teaching a parable with his mouth. He's showing a parable with what he's doing. This is shown, by the way, by the placement of the event in proximity to the animosity of the religious leaders around him.
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What he's conveying has something to do with the circumstances that just happened in our text last week and things that will happen in the text next week.
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So last week, he was corrected by the scribes and the chief priests who wanted him to silence little children who in the temple were calling him
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Messiah, Hosanna, save now to the son of David, they're shouting. And the religious leaders didn't like him getting all of that praise, and so they were like, hey, silence these kids.
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And then next week, the religious leaders are going to challenge his authority directly, saying with what authority are you doing these things?
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In other words, what gives you the right is the challenge of the religious leaders. And so here in the middle, he enacts a parable that is about much more than just merely breakfast at the face level.
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And it's certainly not merely about second breakfast either. So open your
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Bibles if you're not already there to Matthew chapter 21, verses 18 through 22. Again, Matthew 21, 18 through 22, navigate over there in your own device.
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And we're going to read God's holy and precious word. Again, it's a strange word, and it is a word that has the power to transform us.
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When we understand it, when we take it on, we believe it is true, we take on the message that Jesus wants to tell us, we can walk out of here transformed by this.
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So again, Matthew 21, 17 through 22, or 18 through 22. In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry.
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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.
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And the fig tree withered at once. When the disciples saw it, they marveled saying, how did the fig tree wither at once?
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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.
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And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith. Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word that gives us hope, that gives us challenge, that ultimately drives down into our hearts to even determine where is the fruit in our lives, if there is any.
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Father, that gives us these pauses and these moments to consider where we stand in relationship to Jesus Christ.
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So Father, I pray that you would meet us here in this place through your word. Meet us here through the community of your people.
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Meet us here in the opportunity that we have even now to sing songs of praise to you. And Father, I just pray that for everyone here who has asked
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Jesus Christ to be their Lord and Savior, that this would be a morning of celebration, a morning of delight and joy, of coming together to be united as a church in this gathering.
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And Father, I pray for us in the coming weeks as we think about going back inside and I know that there's some trepidation and there's some fear, there's some concern, there's some curiosity about the way that all that's going to go.
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I pray that you would be with us as a church, that you would continue to put your hand of protection on us here in this community.
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We want to love well. We want to serve others well. We want to serve each other well. And so Father, I pray that that would be a reality in this fall and in this winter, this very strange time of our lives.
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Father, we give it all over to you. And even now, I just am so thankful for the chance in this gathering to praise you in Jesus' name.
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Amen. I encourage you, like normal, to get comfortable and re -find your place in your
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Bibles, Matthew 21, 18 through 22. And yeah, let's dive in and see what
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God has for us here. Just to start off and set a little bit of the context here, we need to remember that Jesus woke up this morning, that is going on here in this text, in the city of Bethany, just a little, a few miles east of Jerusalem.
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Remember, they had to walk everywhere, so it's going to take them a little bit while to get back in the city. But remembering that he had a little bit of a crazy evening the evening before this.
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The day before, he cleansed the temple in the evening. He healed some people who were blind and lame there, really identifying pretty publicly who he is.
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And then he had a mild confrontation with the religious leaders, where it ended with him quoting scripture, dropping the mic, and heading out of town that evening for rest.
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And then we pick up the story here the next morning. He's heading back into the very busy and bustling city of Jerusalem.
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Now, when I say busy and bustling, this city is packed. It is packed to the gills this week.
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It's Passover week, and some estimate that there would be over, even in the ancient time, there would be over 500 ,000 visitors to the city.
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Not residents, not everybody, that's visitors to the city, about 500 ,000 people traveling into Jerusalem this week to celebrate the
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Passover. And so on the way into town, it says in the text that Jesus is hungry on the way into the city.
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Now, even just that is worth pausing for just a second and taking a drink. It's worth pausing and noting that Jesus was hungry.
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That provides me comfort to some degree. I don't know, sometimes I look at scripture a little bit weird, but I just look at it and I see in the words, the details, the things that ...
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Sometimes it's just a little novel thing, but it's something that gives me comfort. Jesus relates with our human experience all the way down to the common experience of being hungry.
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Any of you ever been hungry before? A little bit here and there, okay? So if you've experienced hunger, I mean, Jesus knows what that feeling is like in your gut.
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He knows what that shake is like when you're a little hypoglycemic and you know you just need something right away. You ever get that way?
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He was human like us. I want to give you just a little glimpse of theology here for just a moment.
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Jesus was not God and took on a human suit. He was human with a human soul while simultaneously being
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God in flesh. It wasn't like the material part of Jesus was human, but the immaterial part was
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God. No, he was fully human, body and soul, experiencing internally as well as externally the things that we experience as humans.
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And in this text, he was looking for some breakfast. So he looked around for a
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Denny's, but the lines were long. I mean, 500 ,000 people in the city, and it's like, I mean, this is like an hour and a half wait for a
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Grand Slam at Denny's. So he's like, this isn't going to happen. So he heads over to Cafe Fig Tree, according to the text.
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All alongside the road there, there would have been just random trees, and he finds this random fig tree there.
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Some of the other gospel accounts give a little bit of an indication that it may have been a step or two off the road.
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It was a little bit further off the road. It wasn't just right on the road, and he just looked at it on the way by. He had to go off the road just a little ways to get to this tree, and we can tell the time of the year it was because of the designation of this week.
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It's Passover week. So we know that this is in the springtime, and so it's quite likely that this fig tree that it encounters is a bit ahead of itself because it already has leaves on it.
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The fact that it's described as having leaves shows something of a reasonable expectation of Jesus that he should find a fig there.
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Jesus is not expecting something of this tree that it ought not to be able to provide. A fig tree with leaves,
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I didn't understand this, I did a little research this week. A fig tree with leaves will have fruit on it if it has leaves already.
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If it's going to be productive in that harvest season, in that season, and it has leaves on it, then it's going to have figs.
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In other words, fig fruit develops alongside of the leaves, unlike apples where they develop later.
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In other words, the tree flowers first. Any of you ever seen a red bud? You know what I say when I say a red bud? It's actually purple.
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I don't know why they call it a red bud, but the buds on it are purple in the spring. We've got a couple in our yard, and a beautiful tree.
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Flowers first, then the leaves come out later. That's like a fig tree. It flowers, pollinates, the fruit starts to develop alongside of the trees.
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Are you getting what I'm saying there? This is important, and it seems like a detail that we could easily overlook, but it matters.
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This is important because this is what scholars call an enacted parable, and the parable ties in closely with expectation.
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It ties in closely with a reasonable expectation on the part of Jesus that this tree has leaves, therefore it will have fruit.
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Well, Jesus, the expectation really is built out of hunger here. He's hungry, so he goes to the fig tree that is advertising its fruit by its leaves.
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But when he gets to the tree, what does he find? No fruit. The reason it doesn't have fruit is unclear in the text.
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It doesn't say whether somebody had come through and scavenged all the fruit off of it, or it was an unhealthy tree, or whatever, but that Jesus expects it to have fruit is clear in the text.
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He expects this tree to be bearing fruit, and he immediately, it says immediately, just right in the text, like boom, he immediately curses the tree according to verse 19 saying, may no fruit ever come from you again.
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And as Matthew has it, the fig tree withered. Now Mark has this as a two -part miracle, and the reason
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I sometimes will tell you what other gospel accounts say is because you're going to encounter it at some point in your life, and you're going to go,
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Don was a bozo, like he said that this all happened immediately, and then Mark has it happening a little bit different.
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So Mark has a two -part miracle. He has this cursing happening on this day, and the disciples the next day encountering the fig tree and going,
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Whoa, what in the world happened here? But it's possible, and I say this, it's very important, because you're going to encounter these eyewitness events that are recorded for us in the synoptic gospels.
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And Matthew, Mark, and Luke are the synoptic gospels. They're the ones that put the same eyes on some of the same stories, and they have varying accounts that give different details.
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What's really important is that you think in terms of all of these accounts can be reconciled, and we actually understand better what happened once we put
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Mark with Matthew and bring the two together into one common story. And you can understand how one person looking at it from one way shares certain details and another from the other.
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So it's possible to reconcile Mark and Matthew's account with the possibility that there's time that occurs between verse 19 and 20.
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So the time between the fig tree being withered and the disciples realizing that it was withered by the mouth of Jesus, meaning that Jesus did this thing on one day, and the tree did indeed wither at once as Mark records, but the disciples didn't see it until the next day, and then they marveled, and that's what
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Mark records for us. So this, of course, just simply requires that Jesus went off the path to the fig tree on his own.
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The disciples kind of continue on. He says, I'll catch up with you here in a second. And then they overhear him curse the fig tree.
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The next day they walk by the same tree and see it happen. So the details of the timing, you know, that might lose you at some of the points when
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I talk about the details as if, you know, you're going, does that really matter? But my hunch is that that's not the most confusing thing in this passage anyways.
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I have the feeling that there's another question that's on your mind. Why in the world is Jesus cursing a fig tree?
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Anybody? Anybody with me on that? Is that, why would he do that?
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Is he just that hungry that he's, is he hangry? Is this a, is this an instance of severe hangriness on Jesus' part?
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Or is he just that vindictive? You give me what I want or else. Is that what this is about?
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In this curse, there was a miraculous transformation of this fig tree, and it was not for the good.
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Do you see that in the text? It was not good for the fig tree. The Lord is the
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Lord of all creation. He calms storms. He casts out demons. He heals broken bodies.
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He multiplies food and feeds thousands. He destroys a fig tree with his words.
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Isn't that just like my Jesus? Is it?
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Is it like your Jesus? It's the Jesus that we have recorded in Scripture for us.
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Not a common passage to teach on, not a common passage to preach on. Why would we want to avoid talking about this?
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I have a hunch that you can think of some motivations of why we wouldn't specialize in this text, why we would want to specialize in other texts.
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But we, this is the one that we kind of, a type of text that we would like to skip over from time to time.
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By the way, I don't know if you noticed, it doesn't seem very echo friendly here to curse a fig tree, put it out of commission.
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So just take a moment to consider that you got to get the right frame of mind to understand that this is an enacted parable, that he's doing something intentionally to teach something.
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This is the Jesus who would not make bread for himself during his 40 days of fasting and temptation in the wilderness as he was being tempted by Satan earlier in Matthew.
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This man is not so driven by his hunger that he would smite a tree that doesn't produce food for him on the spot.
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That is not what this message is about. It's just not, this is not some selfish desire for breakfast or for fruit that's on Jesus's heart here.
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But let me just suggest to you that it is indeed about fruit. This is a passage that is about fruit.
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You see, this tree is guilty and it's being judged.
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And that judgment is an enacted parable for all that's been going on and swirling in the life of Jesus here at the start of his final week of life, the conflict that he's having with the religious leaders.
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This tree is guilty of false advertising. Do you see it?
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Leaves but no fruit. The scribes are guilty of false advertising.
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All leaves in bluster and show, but no fruit. The Pharisees are guilty of false advertising.
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The chief priests are guilty of false advertising. And beware because the list gets all the way to the point where it gets down to our hearts, doesn't it?
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Could we, could we here in Madawan, could we sitting here be guilty of false advertising?
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Leaves, all kinds of show, all kinds of externals, but really no fruit.
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Could that be us? And here's our first place to pause and consider our own lives in the passage, isn't it?
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Are we sending out leaves with no fruit? Are we like that cursed fig tree that puts on a good show?
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Do we dress the part? Do we talk the talk? And yes, I would even say, you know, you say, contrasting, talk the talk with walking the walk.
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Well, you need to walk the walk, but I would suggest to you that many walk the walk for false motives. Walking the walk, looking the part, doing the things.
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We could be guilty of walking the walk around our church friends and doing something completely different somewhere else, couldn't we, right?
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And I want to say that walking the walk isn't the point, fruiting the fruit is the point.
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If I can use that as a verb, fruiting the fruit is the point. And that's really the question for all of us this morning.
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Is there fruit? Is there fruit? Fruit like this, and I don't think it's an unintentional metaphor.
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It's used all throughout scripture, but I love, I love, I love the evidence is that the
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Spirit is alive in you are declared to be fruit. What kind of fruit? The doing of things,
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I would suggest to you it's about a category of life, an attitude of a stance towards others, a stance towards God, a stance towards the world around us.
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It's things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self -control.
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That kind of fruit, fruit is an intentional metaphor. Is there fruit of obedience to God out of a love for Him in you?
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Do you see it coming out of you? Do you see it shining to the world around you? Or is it possible that there's just leaves of religious actions?
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Leaves of religious duty? Leaves of doing? Is there just a routine of self -serving really at the end of the day without the helpful offer of genuine service to others?
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Now, I don't want to take the metaphor too far, and maybe I will here in just a moment, but I just suggest to you this interesting part of this illustration.
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Leaves are helpful to a plant, are they not? These trees around us die without their leaves.
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If they don't have leaves in the summertime, they die off and they're no longer there, and they rot.
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So leaves are indeed important, but fruit is beneficial to others.
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Fruit serves the world. That's why fruit is an apt metaphor for the good things that a life connected to God will produce.
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Leaves are not the metaphor. Fruit is. Do you see what
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I'm saying? Leaves that serve us, leaves that serve the plant, are not the point.
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The fruit that serves others is the point. Anybody who walks down to Schultz's or drives to Schultz's and ...
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I mean, get those doughnuts while you're there, but go pick some apples too, and when you're out there, what are you picking? You're not picking leaves.
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You don't go down to Schultz's and get yourself a bushel of leaves. You go down to Schultz's and get a bushel of what?
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Those crunchy good apples, right? You go to your orchard to get apples. You go to get the fruit.
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But if we're honest, so much of our religious life is taken up by producing leaves. Leaves as a metaphor for what serves us.
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Leaves as a metaphor of this direction, toward me. It's not all bad.
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It's just not the point. What kind of things do we do that serve ourselves? We have our Bible studies, and our community groups, and Christian friends, and our personal quiet time.
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All good things. Don't get me wrong. Any plant that wants to survive needs leaves. We need to take in something spiritually for energy for ourselves, do we not?
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Do you see what I'm saying? You need some of that. You absolutely do, but it cannot end with that.
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That's not the end game of the Christian life, is having Bible studies, and reading your
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Bible, and praying, and just going off and living your own life in isolation. That can never be the point.
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It's about fruit. A life that is truly connected to God will produce some fruit.
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Without any fruit, it is not reasonable to assume you are connected to the vine, or to the root, who is
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Jesus Christ. A life connected to him, hear me church, a life connected to him will produce fruit.
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It will produce fruit that yields benefit to others around us. Note again that all of the fruit of the
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Spirit are manifestations of character traits that are of significant benefit to others around us.
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Think this through, think this through. Love for others, joy that is contagious, peace in relationship to others, patience.
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Patience is not applied in myself, patience is toward others. Patience is all the cars, and the other people driving them, and that traffic jam.
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Without them, I don't need to exercise patience. If I always get my own way when I want it, and there's no other people in the way, that's not patience.
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Kindness toward others, goodness, a value of goodness that benefits others, gentleness toward others, faithfulness in relationship to others, self -control, without which community always falters if we do not have self -control.
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Self -control, even though it looks so inwardly, at the end of the day, is a manifestation that benefits society and culture around us.
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So here at the start of this text, Jesus enacts a parable of judgment. He isn't just angry at fig trees, he isn't just hangry, he certainly isn't so hungry that he just smites the tree in vindictiveness.
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But lest you feel sorry for the fig tree, some of you read it and you're moved for the fig tree, just in honesty, you're just like, man, that's unfair, poor tree.
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But let me up the ante here for a minute. The metaphor for his judgment is not poor fig trees, that's not the object of this metaphor.
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Instead, the object of this lesson is religious people who use the name of his
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Father for their own agenda. They are not truly connected in any humble way to the
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Almighty God. Instead, they are satisfied to do religious things without bearing any fruit in the service of his
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Heavenly Father. They are not connected to the Lord. They are all leaves and no fruit.
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And a day is coming when they will be withered by the very voice of Jesus, who is the righteous judge.
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So we need to consider this enacted parable and seriously ask ourselves, where do we stand in relationship to God?
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What fruit do you see in your life? I personally have used the passages about fruit to help just listen to his spirit about speaking into my life.
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Am I of the faith? Am I truly connected to God? And I've seen some evidences over the years that have given me encouragement.
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I can tell you that as a young man when I was in my college days and just coming out of college, I was a bit of a loaf, that's just the truth.
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I couldn't get up in the morning, right around the phase that I had a young family, I was working at Western Michigan University with international students, so I just figured if they're not getting up until 10 or 11,
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I'm not either. So a lot of life happens with college students later in the evening, so I was like, I'll just do that.
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And I was challenged at one point to kind of, and by the way, coupled to that was absolutely just a wreck of a quiet time, just not getting together with God and his word in any way, shape, or form.
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And when I thought of it as a duty, when I thought of it as an obligation, when I thought of it as something that I had to do, it was a struggle.
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It was hard. And then I went to a men's retreat up at Camp Barakel, and the speaker, for whatever reason,
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God used the messages over that weekend to grab a hold of my heart and say, you need to step up in your family.
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You need to be up in the morning praying for them. You need to be up in the morning. And God grabbed a hold of my life in a way that I don't think
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I ever could have myself. And since then, I've had a pretty consistent quiet time, and that self -control has been something that I can look back on and say,
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God did that for me. Do you have those things in your life that you can look at and say, God broke through?
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Not me pulling myself up by the bootstraps and making stuff happen. You know what
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I'm saying? You can produce all kinds of leaves that way, but you won't produce fruit. Fruit is the work of the
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Spirit of God in your life. Do you see it? Do you see his work? I'd encourage you to do the heavy lifting of getting alone sometime this week and asking
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God, show me where the fruit is. Show me what you're doing in my life to give me encouragement, to give me strength to be able to launch out and serve in stronger and more powerful ways because I'm trusting in you.
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We need to take this seriously. What fruit do you see in your life? When I look at the list of fruit, by the way,
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I can become discouraged right away. I have a long way to go in some of these, and I think you can identify those too.
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I struggle with patience. I struggle with gentleness. But ask the Lord to show you fruit, and if you see none, if you get alone with God and you say, you know what?
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In honesty, I'm just struggling to find anything here that God has done in my life, where God has transformed me, where God is changing me by his
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Spirit, then the answer to that is come back to the cross and ask for him to cover you and to come in and clean house.
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Religious people try to manufacture fruit and all they get is leaves. People connected to Christ get both leaves and fruit because of their vital connection to God through faith in Jesus Christ.
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Hear me carefully, church. The application to this text is not go make fruit. Instead, the application should be go make sure you are connected to Christ through faith.
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You see it? Not go get busy making fruit. Go make sure you are vitally connected to him through his
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Spirit that dwells within you. Faith is vital, as we see in the remainder of this text.
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Regardless of the timing, the disciples were astonished at the fig tree withered at the very command of Jesus.
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The power of his voice to enact change in this world. He goes into teacher mode in verse 21, explaining to them, they're astonished and in wonder.
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He says, I tell you the truth, truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you also will do things like what has been done to this fig tree, but further you're going to be able to move mountains.
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Moving mountains was a proverbial phrase even in Jesus' time. He borrowed this from his culture. He didn't invent this phrase.
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We still use it and we use it as a generic term, not for literally moving physical mountains, but for doing impossible things.
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Now I think Jesus means literally like that kind of impossible thing could be done by a person of faith if God is in it and desires it, but Jesus is telling his disciples here that faith has power because faith connects us to an almighty
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God. If Jesus and God are the object of your faith, then sky's the limit because they're limitless in their power.
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I find it interesting that there's a couple of examples of ... He says, you'll do things like cursing this fig tree.
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How many of you think that's a little bit of an intimidating power? Do you know what I'm saying? You're going to curse things and they're going to die.
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What? Is that a power that you see exercised? But you actually do.
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If you're a student of the word, you might even be able to come up with at least one example in your mind. I'll give you two. I find it interesting that there's examples of miraculous cursings happening in scripture in the
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New Testament. With Ananias and Sapphira in Acts chapter five, the couple lies to the church about a financial donation.
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They say, we've given this much and they've actually given this much. Peter says to Sapphira, Ananias, her husband, has already died.
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He says to Sapphira, the feet of those who carried your husband out the door, who carried your husband, are at the door and they will carry you out as well.
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It says in the text of scripture in Acts five, at his proclamation, she fell dead. And they came in and carried her body out to the fear and awe of the entire church.
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How many of you, that would create a little fear and awe in you if that parable, that living active lesson were to happen in our midst?
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Like, what? I mean, even reading about it is like, gives me chills. It's like, whoa, this is serious stuff. In Acts 13, when the gospel was being brought to the island of Cyprus, there was a proconsul, an evil man who was a counselor to the leader on the island of Crete, I mean,
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Cyprus, rather. And he's an evil counselor who's constantly whispering witchcraft and evil into the ear of the head guy.
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Paul's trying to share the gospel with him and this guy's getting in the way. So he says, be blind and the guy is blind instantly to demonstrate the power of God.
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I believe that these are fruits of this type of miracle here that Jesus is saying his followers will do. And they did it.
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But verse 22 is one of those passages that needs to be dealt with carefully. You can look at it in the text there real quick.
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Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith. And the tricky part of trying to teach on this this morning is to keep both the promise as strong as it is, while delineating the nature of the faith that seasons are asking.
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You see, I'm not here to dumb down the blank check nature of this. Does it look like a blank check to you in verse 22 when you read it?
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Does it look like a blank? How many? Raise your hand if that looks like a blank check. If you ask for it, you will receive it if you ask in faith.
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Does that look like a blank check? I mean, go ahead and raise your hand. Go ahead and leave them up for a second so I can actually see what
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I'm dealing with. Okay. So I think for most of us, it looks like a blank check. Sky's the limit on what God can do. And it is a blank check.
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It is. Those of you who raised your hand, you got it right. Sky's the limit on what God can do for those who ask.
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We serve a good, good, good Father. He is loving, and He loves to give good gifts to His children.
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Anybody glad for that? He's good, and He loves to give good gifts. But hear me carefully.
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The second part of that that needs to balance this blank check is that the only ink that will write on the blank check given to you by God is an ink called faith.
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It's the only thing that can fill out that check is faith. You can't write on this check with ink called selfish motives.
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You can't write and fill out this check with ink called my agenda. You can't write on this check with my timing or my reputation.
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Further, you cannot write on this check with, I doubt God wants this, or I don't think
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God can do this. You can't fill out this check with, I'm not sure God is really good.
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The ink won't stick. The only ink that sticks to this check is faith, pure and simple.
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So that the final application in this text is ask for big things and ask for little things, and ask for them in faith.
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Ask in the same faith that Jesus asked. Jesus asked in the Garden of Gethsemane, let this cup pass from me.
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But ask with a faith and a trust that says, I trust you, Father, to get this right.
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Because the truth is this, when you write that check out with faith, when you fill it out, you actually will be okay with whatever the answer is anyway.
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A prayer of faith ends with, not my will, but yours be done. So there are three practical things for all of us to do with this text this week.
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The first, check yourself for fruit. Is there anything that the Spirit of God is growing in me that benefits the world?
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That's the question that I encourage you to go out from here with a will to answer, a commitment to answer that question.
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Do I see things that God is producing in me? Not that I'm producing myself, things that God is doing in me and through me to benefit the world around me.
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If so, then the application is just pure and simple. Ask yourself that question. Go through that process. If you see it, praise
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God for it. Rejoice and give him the glory and give him the thanks. But if not, then my encouragement to you is to come back to the cross to make sure the connections are solid.
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Just like last week when we were struggling up in the soundboard to get the video projectors to work and the nine o 'clock service, we never ended up getting and we ended up printing up sheets at the last minute.
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What do you do first when something doesn't work, when something electronic doesn't work? I'll make sure it's plugged in, right?
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I hope we did. Do we do that, David? I don't know if we even did that. Ah, that's what it was. It wasn't even plugged. No, I'm just kidding.
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But you check the connections, right? You check the places that it's all connected and you make sure that those connections are solid.
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Are you connected rightly to God through faith in Jesus Christ and in him alone?
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Are you trusting in something else? Are you trusting in God? The second thing is ask
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God for the big and little things. Be a person of prayer. Talk to him between meetings. Talk to him before you post that thing on social media.
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Talk to him about your children. Talk to him about your parents. Talk to him about your relationships. Talk to him about your finances.
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Talk to him about the things that are on your heart. If COVID is on your heart, then talk to him about that. Talk to him and let him know what you desire.
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And the last thing, always make sure that when you're talking to him, you're talking to him with a heart of faith, a faith that trusts that he is good, a faith that trusts that he is great, a faith that trusts that he is
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God. And with this spirit, let's come to communion together in community this morning.
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If you've seen signs of his fruit in your life, then I encourage you to come to communion to celebrate the work of God in your life.
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Our faith springs from the very thing that God has demonstrated to us in the cross of Christ. There at the cross, we see most clearly that he is indeed for us.
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He died for us. So come to communion as an act of faith building this morning.
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Remember his loving kindness toward us. On what basis do I come to God believing that he loves me and that he will give me what is good?
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Why would I think that? It's because I have seen it in his body broken in place of mine.
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I have seen it in his blood shed to cover my sins. It's not a blind faith that's just like, well, I hope he's good.
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I've seen his goodness. I've seen his kindness. And we come back to communion every week to remember his immense love poured out on us.
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While I was still a sinner, Christ died for me.
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While we were sinners, Christ died for us. So now let's go out from here to live bearing fruit as we stay connected to him firmly by faith.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the hope that we have in Jesus Christ. I pray that this would be a week of genuine soul searching and just that you would be faithful to anyone who would come to you and say, show me where there's fruit.
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Show me where there is something that the spirit of God is doing in me. And Father, if this is a movement of recognizing that we're not fully connected to you by faith, maybe there's some here who maybe have been kicking it around the church for a while and at the end of the day, at the end of really searching, they find that there's only ever really been leaves.
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So Father, I pray that this week would be a week of salvation, a week of coming to the cross and realizing, like I haven't been transformed.
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I've been trying to transform myself. So Father, if there's anybody like that, I pray that maybe even today would be a day of salvation where they would say,
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I just don't see it. I look at this text and I realize I'm like that fig tree, worthy of being withered because I've been false advertising all of this time.
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But then Father, for those who are in and they come to see the work that you've done in their lives and your spirit bears witness with their spirit that they're your children, then
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I just pray that you would encourage them in this time of communion as they get a chance to remember and reflect in gratitude and thankfulness to you.