Text: Mark 11:12-26, Title: Failure to Satisfy, Date/Place: NRBC, 6/1/08, PM
A. Opening illustration: Hypocrite: Someone who complains there is too much sex and violence on his VCR. One of the subjects I taught was physical science for learning disabled kids. It was hard to get them motivated to do much at all. One day I showed the class a video about protecting the environment. It explored all the ways that humanity was destroying the earth and the steps we needed to take to save our planet. By the end of the video, half the class was unconscious and the other half well on their way to sleepy land. It irked me so I flipped on the lights and launched into a five-minute tirade about how they should care about this subject and do something about it. At the end of my mini sermon one kid named Sam, who never passed a test the whole year, raised his hand. This was odd. Usually nothing roused Sam from his sleep in class. When called on he asked, "Mr. Smith, do you recycle?" Stammering and trying in vain to save face I had to admit that I did not. With one stupid question Sam nailed my hypocrisy. I’ve often wondered if God didn’t work through that sleepy teenager to teach me a lesson. They didn’t buy my message because I wasn’t living out the environmental message. As believers we’ve got to be careful. People won’t buy what we confess in public if we’re not conducting ourselves with integrity in private.
B. Background to passage: Remember Jesus and the disciples just got done with the Triumphal entry in a rather anti-climactic way. And they go back to Bethany. And in the text tonight, they go back to Jerusalem the next morning. Remember what the last thing Jesus did before they retired to Bethany the night before was? Jesus looked around at the temple. And when he returns to the temple the next day to live out a fiery parable before them, the account is sandwiched between this fig tree sandwich. And the latter helps interpret the former.
C. Main thought: In this text we will see the number one gripe of Jesus in the last miracle he does, and the only miracle of destruction in the gospels.
A. No fruit and no faith (v. 12-21)
1. Just as he did the day before in the temple, Jesus walked on the road toward Jerusalem and longed for something. Yesterday it was glory and honor in the temple for the God of Israel; today it was a fig to satisfy his hunger. Yesterday he found no glory, and today no figs. And so he cursed the tree. By the way a better way to understand the “not the season for figs” comment is that in the early spring the leaves and paggim come out, but don’t really mature into real fruit until the fall. But the early stage paggim are edible, and readily eaten by natives to Israel. Jesus was saying that since there were leaves but no baby fruit, it would look like nourishment might be there, but it wasn’t. So it withers and dies. Then he goes to the temple symbolically overturns tables and runs people out and makes a statement from Isa and Jer. He says that it was not to be a house to keep people out (referring to the different courts and restrictions), but to let people have access to God. Isa quote was about how the nations would come in. They had made it a den of thieves. Read Jer 7:1-15. This was not a parable about fundraisers or about budgets or church spending. Jesus said that they had made the temple a place of false refuge. The people were making form religion, embodied in the Temple, their “get out of hell free” card. They had a veneer faith with rottenness inside. Jesus was not cleansing the temple, but cursing its use, and also sealing its fate. They were presuming grace because of their heritage, tradition, chosen status, etc. They were living like one way outside, then coming to church looking all spiritual, and believing all the while that God was accepting their worship and sacrifice, when the opposite was true. And this was the one thing that Jesus decided to preach on—hypocrisy. Read Matthew 23:13-36. He was hardest against those that claimed to know him but in their lives denied it. And the message is clear: no fruit, no faith!
2. John 15:2, 5, Matt 7:16, Heb 10:26, Num 15:30-31, Deut 17:12, James 5:19-20
3. Illustration: It’s worth noting that Jesus didn’t condemn bad people. He condemned "stiff" people. We condemn the bad ones and affirm the stiff ones. Whether it was a prostitute or a tax collector or an outcast ... Jesus reached out to them. It was a motley crew of riffraff that followed Him around, and it never embarrassed Him or made Him feel uncomfortable. One of the most radical statements Jesus ever made is found in Matthew 9: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ’I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners" The evangelical minister who counts homosexuality and "wicked, sick, perverted rap music" among the contributors to society’s ills now blames his conviction for soliciting sexual favors from a borough boy on his defense attorney.
4. Oh, that we may tremble at our hypocrisy! May we weep and wail in repentance and fasting at our fakeness. Until we repent, God will not use us. Jesus hates hypocrisy more that homosexuality, more than murder, more than abortion, more than adultery, more than drunkenness, more than anger. If you know those who claim to know Christ but do not submit to Him, prioritize Him, love Him, desire Him, long for Him, sell out for Him, please warn them of their rebellion, assure them of judgment, because that is what Jesus promises. The message is not that all who fail or sin are really lost, but that when we have patterns of known sin, willful sin, or egregious sin, we should be worried. And it should cross our mind that we might not be saved. There is nothing wrong with examining ourselves to make sure that we are in the faith, that we haven’t believed in vain, that we aren’t on the broad road, that our calling and election is sure. In fact, we are commanded to do so. The world will not take us seriously unless we take our faith seriously. They will not listen to our claims until we make ourselves listen to our claims. They will not desire to have our God, if they don’t see us confronting hypocrisy. We must refuse to be the people who go to church, but whose lives reflect little of Christ, whose marriages, whose attitudes, whose finances, whose families, who’s recreation, who’s language, who’s priorities look nothing like what the bible says! We must jettison grudges, feuds, complaining, backbiting, while claiming to love Christ and our brethren. We must become discontent and fearful of lackluster, business as usual, good enough to get by Christianity. We put up with so much from so many who exhibit no faith and no fruit. God be merciful to us. We must get back to using our church covenant. And if you are here and a church member, you need to repent from pride and come repent!
B. Religion that satisfies (v. 22-26)
1. It is strange that the disciples still are amazed that what Jesus said really is happening. And when they mention it, Jesus gives an explanation about prayer and faith, which in this context seems out of place, because the stories are obviously related, but the subject matter seems so different. Here is the key to seeing continuity in the text: the temple (the sacred cow of their hypocritical faith) was thought of as sitting under a direct opening in heaven as far as prayer goes. And you and I will never understand how central the temple was, and how devastating to every part of their faith its loss would be. But suffice it to say that it would be HUGE, inestimable! But Jesus states here that authentic faith will not end with the temple’s destruction. Authentic religion is not based on a place, but upon faith, grace, and forgiveness. And His answer stresses these three aspects of real religion. Explain these three verses.
2. 2 Cor 5:15, 1 Pet 1:14-15, 4:2, Rom 6:13, 12:1, 14:7-9, 1 Cor 6:19-20, Philip 1:20-21, 1 Thess 5:10
3. Illustration: I saw a Peanuts cartoon with Lucy saying to Charlie Brown, "I hate everything. I hate everybody. I hate the whole wide world!" Charlie says, "But I thought you had inner peace." Lucy replies, "I do have inner peace. But I still have outer obnoxiousness" The Pleasures of God by Piper details the things that God is said to enjoy or take pleasure in, At one point in his ministry, Whitefield received a vicious letter accusing him of wrongdoing. His reply was brief and courteous: "I thank you heartily for your letter. As for what you and my other enemies are saying against me, I know worse things about myself than you will ever say about me. With love in Christ, George Whitefield." He didn’t try to defend himself. He was much more concerned about pleasing the Lord. Barna goes on to say that… “most Americans go to church to satisfy or please themselves, not to honor or please God.” Amazingly, few of the people that Barna’s research team interviewed said that worship is something that they do primarily for God. Instead a much larger percentage of those who attend worship services on a regular basis claim that they do so for personal benefit and pleasure. This is something that has got to change. We must forget about ourselves and concentrate on Him! He must be the primary focus of our worship.
4. Obviously there is much application here related to prayer, but remember to include the context of these verses in application. Hypocritical faith is sickening to God, but real faith is what Jesus longs to see in us. He longs to see us completely confident in Him. That our faith might not be in persuasive words of wisdom, buildings, budgets, people, church membership, goodness, but in Christ alone. He wants to see “genuine, commit your whole life no matter what the cost because Jesus is worth it” belief. He longs to see us completely dependent upon Him and His provision in all aspects of our lives. He wants us trusting in Him and His grace to sustain, provide, heal, strengthen, empower, and satisfy our every need. He desires for us to find forgiveness in Him through the cross and repentance and reliance on Him. And he also desires that we grant that same forgiveness to those in our lives that have wronged us. And even indicates that if we are unwilling to do that, that we may have never really experienced grace ourselves, for we know that God will never take back grace he has given.
A. Closing illustration: Some years ago a remarkable picture was exhibited in London. As you looked at it from a distance, you seemed to see a monk engaged in prayer, his hands clasped, his head bowed. As you can nearer, however, and examined the painting more closely, you saw that in reality he was squeezing a lemon into a punch bowl! From an atheist website. OKLAHOMA CITY -- An executive committee member of the Southern Baptist Convention was arrested on a lewdness charge for propositioning a plainclothes policeman outside a hotel, police said. Lonnie Latham, senior pastor at South Tulsa Baptist Church, was booked into Oklahoma County Jail Tuesday night on a misdemeanor charge of offering to engage in an act of lewdness, police Capt. Jeffrey Becker said. Latham was released on $500 bail Wednesday afternoon. Latham, who has spoken out against homosexuality, asked the officer to join him in his hotel room for oral sex. Latham was arrested and his 2005 Mercedes automobile was impounded, Becker said. Calls to Latham at his church were not immediately returned Wednesday. When he left jail, he said: "I was set up. I was in the area pastoring to police." Tell about the pastor to married couples from Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, TX driving three hours to have sex with what he believed was a 14-year old girl,
B. Recap
C. Invitation to commitment
