Mark 11:20 In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig-tree withered from the roots. 21 Peter remembered and said to Jesus, "Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!" 22 "Have faith in God," Jesus answered. 23 "I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25 And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.
Introduction
For me, verses 22-25 are the most difficult verses to interpret that I’ve encountered in the book of Mark so far. They raise so many questions. We didn’t have time to go through them all last time, so I limited my comments just to what I believe is the main thrust of the verses, namely, to deal with the quesiton of how prayers are going to be answered once the Temple is gone. It used to be that God said, “If you come to my Temple and pray, I’ll answer your prayers.” Now it’s simply, “If you have faith, I will answer your prayers.” I think that’s the main purpose. But there’s a lot more to this passage than that. Let’s start with verse 23.
23 "I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.
When I was in elementary school, I walked to school and back every day (thankfully, it was only uphill in one direction). We lived about a mile from the school, and most of that mile was one, long straight shot on Darley Avenue. We lived at the foot of the flatirons in Boulder, which, when you look at them straight on, don’t look like foothills. They look like a massive, steep mountain-especially to a little first grader. So for about a half an hour every afternoon, walking home from school, I had nothing to look at but a giant mountain in front of me. And I knew that Jesus said if I had faith I could move a mountain. I wanted to make sure that I had genuine faith, so very often, as I walked home from school, I would ask God to move that mountain. I would try my hardest to convince myself that it really was going to happen, then I would watch to see if it would budge or twitch or move in any way. To my knowledge, it never worked a single time much to my dismay. Finally, after countless failed attempts, I gave up. I finally decided, if the requirement is that I have to be convinced it will for sure happen, after so many failed attempts, I would never be able to convince myself of that, so I gave up. I haven’t prayed for a literal mountain to be moved in over 45 years.
Is that bad? Should I have kept trying? Does God want us to ask him to move literal mountains? And if not, then what are we supposed to do with this passage? If it’s some kind of figurative mountain, what does that mean?
I think we can safely say that Jesus’ purpose here was not to get us to be constantly reshuffling the mountians. I say that because when you see the outworking of the Apostles living out what Jesus taught in the book of Acts, they do a lot of amazing miracles, but they never move a mountain. Nor was it done in the OT. Moses, Elisha, Elisha—none of them moved a mountain. Not even Jesus moved one. It would have been an impressive way to prove his deity, but not even Jesus did that.
Not only that, but in 1 Corinthians 13 Paul puts mountain moving faith in the category of the most farfetched things possible.
1 Corinthians 13:2 If I … know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
No one but Jesus has all knowledge or understands all mysteries. Paul is just coming up with the most extreme language possible to make the point that no amount of giftedness means anything without love. And in that list, he mentions having so much faith that you could move mountains.
Jesus says with even a mustard seed’s worth of faith anyone could move a mountain, and Paul speaks of it as a farfetched, ridiculous extreme. The only way that makes sense is if Jesus is speaking metaphorically, and Paul is talking about moving literal mountains.
So, for those reasons I’m convinced Jesus isn’t calling us to try to make literal mountains throw themselves into the sea. So then what is it? And why does Jesus say “this mountain,” instead of just saying, “a mountain”? He says “this mountain” but the text doesn’t specify any particular mountain that he’s pointing to.
Into the Sea = Judgment
Can you think of any mountains in the Bible that get thrown into the sea? The only one I can think of is in Revelation 8.
Revelation 8:8 The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea.
John takes Jesus’ language about a mountain being thrown into the sea and places it in a context of judgment.
Revelation 18:21 Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea, and said: "With such violence the great city of Babylon will be thrown down, never to be found again.
So something being cast into the sea sounds like divine judgment. And that’s consistent with the rest of Scripture.
Jeremiah 51:63 When you finish reading this scroll, tie a stone to it and throw it into the Euphrates. 64 Then say, 'So will Babylon sink to rise no more because of the disaster I will bring upon her. And her people will fall.' "
How about if we look in the book of Mark—how is the sea used by Mark? When the demons begged Jesus not to send them to the Abyss, where did they end up? The sea. What did Jesus say would happen to people who caused believers to turn away? They’d be better of to have a millstone tied around their neck and thrown where? Into the sea.
So it seems to be connected to judgment. Does that fit the immediate context? What’s in the immediate context? It’s all about God’s judgment on the Temple. Jesus miraculously destroyed a fig tree and ransacked the Temple as illustrations of the coming judgment. That’s what comes right before these verses. And right after these verses Jesus tells a parable about how the owner of the vineyard is going to come and kill the tenants and give the vineyard to others. So yeah, the immediate context is all about judgment.
A lot of commentators say casting a mountain into the sea is nothing but a figure of speech to describe the impossible—like putting a camel through the eye of a needle. That’s possible, but I think there is a pretty good sized mountain of evidence that it’s more than that. I think the judgment context is unavoidable.
Jesus has just done something very scary. He has physically ransacked the Temple, and now he’s facing the death penalty—and they aren’t one bit concerned with due process. The most powerful men in the nation have decided to kill Jesus. Jesus’ followers were already afraid on the approach to Jerusalem; you can imagine how they felt now. It would be terrifying.
And Jesus says, “Have faith in God. You saw my power. You saw what I did to the fig tree. If you trust God, you’ll be able to not only do what I’ve done, but more.” In Matthew’s account, that’s how he says it.
Matthew 21:21 Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig-tree, but also you can say to this mountain, `Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done.
If the fig tree represents Jerusalem, it seems the mountain represents something bigger and scarier than Jerusalem. In Jeremiah 51 it’s Babylon that gets dunked. And in Revelation 18 it’s also Babylon.
Revelation 18:21 Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea, and said: "With such violence the great city of Babylon will be thrown down, never to be found again.
Literal Babylon was long gone by John’s time, so this is figurative. Babylon stands for the whole, world-wide, anti-God system of evil that fights against God and persecutes the people of God.
When you read through the book of Acts, you don’t see the Apostles of the church moving literal mountains. But you do see them confronting the centers of power in the world and, against all odds, prevailing against them. I believe that’s the kind of thing Jesus was promising here. You’re a little nervous about the Sanhedrin coming after me? If you have faith in God, you will be able to come up against the Sanhedrin, Caesar, Rome, Babylon—the whole evil world system and cast them into the sea.
And one other bit of support for that interpretation: The language of moving a mountain was associated with the restoration of the Temple after it was destroyed the first time. Zerubbabel (who was a descendent of David) led the effort to rebuild the Temple after the exile. He’s such a strong figure that at the time, people were wondering, “Is this THE Davidic king—the Messiah?” When he started the impossible project of rebuilding the Temple, he faced some major opposition. And overcoming that opposition was referred to as moving a mountain.
Zechariah 4:6 … "This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: 'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the Lord Almighty. 7 "What are you, O mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become level ground.
The Davidic king will be so empowered by the Holy Spirit that the mountain of difficulty in rebuilding the Temple will be moved out of his way. Now Jesus is talking to his disciples and telling them they will be the new Temple, and in the process of being built into that Temple they will have the same mighty power from the Spirit of God to accomplish the task in face of opposition as Zerubbabel did in his day.
So when Jesus says, “This mountain,” but doesn’t specify any particular physical mountain, it makes sense. It means the mountain at hand right now—the mountain of opposition from Jerusalem /Babylon, the mountain of difficulty involved in becoming the new Temple of God—you’ll have power to prevail over that mountain. Another possibility is that by “this” mountain Jesus was referring to the mountain they were standing on at the time which was, mostly likely, the Mount of Olives, which plays a significant role in end times prophecy. Zechariah 14:4 says the Messiah will stand on the Mount of Olives and then Rule the world. At that time the mountain will be split in two in order to provide a way of escape for God’s people. There is no reference to being thrown into the sea, but the idea of the mountain being removed to enable the preservation of the people of God is the same.
The point is, God will provide the power for his people to prevail, but it would require faith, because God’s judgment on the Temple wouldn’t happen later that day. Or later that month or year. It wouldn’t happen for another 40 years. And in the meantime, Jesus’ followers would face some very rough times of persecution. The victory would be theirs, and they had to keep believing that because it wouldn’t seem that way at all while they were being brutalized and killed at the hands of the oppressors. The mountain would end up in the sea, but only in God’s timeline, which tends to stretch a lot longer than ours.
Faith and God’s Will
So I think that’s what the mountain means. Another hard question I had in studying this passage had to do with the meaning of faith.
Normally faith is either trusting God so that you aren’t afraid, or believing truths about God—believing that he is powerful or that he is good, etc. But here, it seems to be not believing something about God, but believing that what you ask for will happen.
23 if he … believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.
24 … believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
That raises a number of questions. The most obvious—what if the thing you’re praying for isn’t God’s plan? And what about Jesus’ prayers that weren’t answered?
Mark 14:35 Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. 36 "Abba, Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."
When Jesus prayed, his display of faith was to say that he believed God could do anything—he has unlimited power—but the question of whether he would do it was an open question. So when we pray, should we say, “If it be your will”? That’s how Jesus prayed, but how can that be reconciled with this passage here in ch.11? If I say, “God, do this if it be your will,” that word “if” means maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. Maybe God will say yes, maybe he won’t. If I think maybe he won’t, then I can’t also say that I know for sure it will happen. But this passage says,
23 if he … believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.
24 … believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
That doesn’t seem to leave any room for “if it be your will,” or any other kind of “if.” In v.22 Jesus begins by saying Have faith in God, but the next two verses sound more like having faith in our own faith. Just convince yourself it will happen and it will happen. So which is it? When we pray, should our posture be one of submission “God, whatever you want is fine with me”? or should it be one of dictating the outcome, “God, I know for a fact that you’re going to do this.” What are the roles of our will and God’s will in prayer?
If it’s something God has promised to do, then we can be certain it will happen in God’s timing (which might not be until the Second Coming). But what about things God hasn’t made a promise about?
Aggressive Submissiveness
I don’t have all the answers on this. Prayer is a mystery in a lot of ways, but as I’ve studied this subject throughout the gospel, my conclusion is that what God wants from us is what I’ll call aggressive submissiveness. Here’s what I mean by that:
Submissiveness
On the one hand, we are to have a submissive posture before God. Jesus exemplified that when he said, “Not what I will but what you will.” If I want one thing but God’s plan is something different, I’d much rather God do what he has planned than what I want. Obviously, God is smarter than me, holier than me, better than me in every way, so if there is a conflict between what I want and what he has planned, clearly it’s better in every way that his plan happen rather than what I thought I wanted.
The worst curse imaginable would be for God to start saying yes to my prayers when those prayers are for things that wouldn’t be best. What if God would have said yes to Jesus’ prayer that the cup pass from him? No cross, no redemption—not good. I can think of lots of things I begged God for that now I’m so glad he didn’t grant.
We have to have a submissive posture before God because we understand that it’s possible to ask amiss, to use the language of James 4.
James 4:3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
Even if you have good motives for what you ask for, and you know it’s something God desires (like someone’s salvation), still, it may not be God’s plan. We know God desires that all men would be saved, but we know that’s not his plan.
Living with a submissive posture to God’s will is the very definition of what it means to be one of his children in the book of Mark.
Mark 3:35 Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother.
A child of God is someone who does God’s will.
Aggressive
None of that is anything new—we all understand that much. But that’s not all there is to it. There’s another side—the aggressive side. God wants us to take a submissive posture, but not a passive posture.
During Mark’s time, there was a lot of debate among various religions on the subject of whether the gods were able to do the impossible. Some religions said yes, God can do anything including that which violates the laws of nature. Others argued that the gods had to work within the natural course of things.
Mark takes a strong stand in that debate in his Gospel. Numerous times in the gospel he says all things are possible for God. And he gives plenty of examples of Jesus doing things way outside the bounds of natural processes.
But here’s the interesting thing: within that big debate, one of the major voices were the Stoics, who argued in favor of a strong determist point of view. Determinism is the belief that whatever God has decreed is going to happen, it’s set in stone, therefore it’s ridiculous to pray for one thing or another thing to happen. What’s going to happen is already determined, it can’t change, therefore the only rational posture for us to take is a passive one. Whatever God’s going to do, he’s going to do. Nothing I do or say has any impact on outcomes.
So where does Mark land on that debate? The Christian view is that God is indeed in full control of everything. He is sovereign, and predestination is a reality. However, the Bible also teaches that our actions and decisions and prayers do indeed have an impact on outcomes. How those two truths go together is a mystery. It’s a tension that we can’t fully understand.
Some of our Calvinist friends don’t want to deal with any tension—they don’t want anything that doesn’t fit easily inside their brains, so they just ignore what the Bible says about human free will and our role in determining outcomes and focus only on God’s sovereignty. So they become determinists. It doesn’t matter what we do or say, God’s going to do what he’s going to do, so those kind of people don’t pray with any passion if they pray at all, they don’t evangelize much, no real passion for much of anything except arguing against Arminians online.
Other people err on the other side. They also don’t want to deal with any tension or difficulty, and they want things to fit easily inside their heads, so they focus only on free will of man and ignore what the Bible says about God’s sovereignty and predestination. Those people don’t really pray all that hard either, because they think everything is up to them. They don’t pray much for people’s salvation because that’s out of God’s hands—it’s up to the individual.
But the biblical view of prayer takes both sides of this great mystery and brings them together. We pray hard because 1) God has absolute power to answer those prayers, and 2) our prayers have an effect on outcomes—so that things will go one way if we pray and the other way if we don’t. You can see that balance everywhere you look in the Bible.
I mentioned Mark 3:35. Jesus said you are a child of God if you do the will of God—carry it out. He didn’t say a child of God is one who sits around and waits for God’s will to happen. We don’t passively wait for it; we get out there and do it. We make it happen in our little context. There are times when God puts something in our heart and he wants us to put our head down and plow forward and get it done, and if we bog ourselves down with constant second-guessing, we will run out of steam before we get it done.
You can just flop your Bible open at random and you’ll see a passage showing that God wants us to have a submissive posture toward him and his will. But how many passages teach that we should sit around and be passive or indifferent about what happens? I can’t think of any. Just the opposite. My Bible talks about wrestling with God in prayer. I open the Scriptures and see God answered Elijah’s prayers when he prayed earnestly. (James 5:17) I see Jesus praying all night, with loud cries and tears, sweating drops of blood. I read about the persistent widow, whose request is granted only after persistent, incessant, nonstop pleading.
And it’s after a season of that kind of prayer that you see situations where the person praying comes away with a sense of certainty that the request will be granted. Like Elijah, who, after such urgent, intensive, extended pleading and earnest pleas, he finally gets up and tells Ahab, “I realize it hasn’t rained in 3 years, but you’d better hit the road right now so you don’t get stuck in the mud because of the deluge that’s about to happen.” Sometimes, only after a season of extremely intensive prayer, God responds by allowing the person to know that the prayer is granted. I talked about that in some detail in the sermon on James 5:16 titled “The Prayer of Faith.”
Hyperbole
I believe Jesus stated this promise the way he did in this passage to pull us away from the error of determinism and passivity in our prayers. I think that’s the main reason Jesus uses hyperbole in his teaching—to pull that which is out of balance back into balance. Hyperbole is when something that’s not an absolute is stated as if it were. Jesus used that in the Sermon on the Mount.
Matthew 5:22 … anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. … anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.
He doesn’t mention any exceptions—just throws it out there as if it were absolute. Is it absolute? Is it true that everyone who ever calls someone a fool goes to hell? No—Jesus called the Pharisees fools. Clearly there are exceptions. So why does Jesus state it in such an absolute way? Because when he says something extreme like that—something we know has to have exceptions, but he says it in an absolute way, that forces us to stop and think hard about what are the exceptions exactly. We naturally think it’s fine to call people fools, and no one would ever go to hell for doing that. And if someone did go to hell for calling someone a fool, that would be a rare exception. And Jesus states it this way to pull us back into balance to where we realize, No, going to hell for calling people fools is the rule, and if someone calls someone a fool in a righteous way—that’s the exception. We think this is the rare exception and Jesus says, “No, that’s the rule. The other side is the exception.”
But when we drift way off to the left side of the road, if Jesus just gives us a little tug, we might scoot over a few feet but we’ll still be way off the road. So he has to stand way over 100 ft to the right side of the road and call to us so that we’ll move over enough to finally get onto the road where we should be.
Matthew 5:42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
That sounds like an absolute, but elsewhere in the Bible we read things like, “If a man won’t work, neither let him eat.” So there are times when we should say no to those who ask. But Jesus states this is absolute terms to jar us into realizing that saying yes should be the rule and saying no should be the exception instead of the other way around.
So in this case, I think Jesus is doing the same thing. To keep us from drifting too far over into passivity in our prayers, he gives us a verse like this where he defines faith as believe we’re going to get what we ask for to pull us over in that direction. Do we still say, “Nevertheless your will be done?” Yes. Do we still subordinate our will to God’s? Of course. But not to the point of becoming passive and indifferent. God wants us to have strong desires, to pray hard, to bang on the door of heaven, and to move over in the direction of greater confidence that God will indeed say yes to our prayers.
Is this an absolute? Should we try to get to where we’re certain God will say yes to every prayer? No. But I think Jesus does want us to pull us farther in the direction of being confident in God’s positive responsiveness to our prayers rather than becoming pessimistic or indifferent. He wants us to think of God’s eagerness to say yes. He wants us to see God through the lens of passages like Isaiah 65:24 Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear. Sometimes he literally can’t wait to answer our prayers.
Especially when we are praying about ministry related things. Our work as the new Temple. The work of the gospel. We spend a lot of time praying for physical health, but why? “God let this pain go away” Why? “Heal me so that I can get out there and do what you’ve called me to do”? That’s a great prayer. That’s like Peter’s mother-in-law. The moment she was healed, she immediately used her new strength to serve. Or blind Bartimaeus. He used his new sight to follow Jesus. But “Heal me just because I don’t like being sick”? That’s a focus on our will rather than on God’s kingdom.
When God makes it clear he has called us to do something, we shouldn’t let the limits of nature set the boundaries of our prayers. If we need something that goes beyond the bounds of the normal course of things, if it’s for the purposes of carrying out God’s work, pray for it—and do so with the kind of optimistic confidence that is fitting given the omnipotence of God, and the passion he has for his own glory.
Again, I think the book of Acts is such a great guide to show us what this means. When Jesus says ask anything and it will happen, does that mean we should ask for riches or constant comfort and ease? No, Jesus has already made it clear that to follow him means to suffer. And that exactly what we see all through the book of Acts—the church suffering.
But we also see them accomplishing miraculous, awesome things and turning the world upside down as the church exploded from a mustard seed to a giant tree.
Forgiveness
Now, with all this judgment imagery, it would be easy to get carried away, wouldn’t it? Jesus shows the power to destroy the tree, ransack the Temple, pronounce doom on the religious leadership and that unbelieving generation of Israel. Then he tells the disciples they can have that same kind of power—consigning Babylon to the Abyss. The disciples start rolling up their sleaves and Jesus says, “Hold on. Before you start calling too much fire down from heaven, let me add this:
25 And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.
You saw me kill that tree and overturn those tables, and I will empower you to join me in my war against evil, but you need to understand, everything you do must come out of a soft, forgiving heart. Don’t go off half-cocked pronouncing judgment on everyone who opposes you. If you hold bitterness or anger or disdain in your heart toward them, God won’t forgive your sins. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem he pronounced curses on them, but before he did that, he wept. He cried and wailed loudly and said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem … how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” (Matthew 23:37) Only after that did he say, “Look, your house is left to you desolate.” (Matthew 23:38) None of this can be done out of personal animosity.
Normally, when oppressed groups seek justice, they do it with a vengeance. We see that in our society right now. The rioters feel like they have been oppressed, and they have one goal—gain power so they can become the oppressors. They aren’t saying, “Just give us equal rights so we can have peace and harmony.” They’re saying, “We want to see dead cops!” That’s the natural, fallen, human heart.
But for us, when we’re oppressed and cry out for justice, what we desire most is reconciliation with our oppressors. If they need to be punished, so be it. But we would much prefer that they come to repentance so we can embrace them as our brothers and sisters. That must be our attitude when we pray for those mountains to be cast into the sea.
Summary
Casting a mountain into the sea is a judgment image, which fits the context of judgment on the Temple. The mountain most likely represents the centers of power that will hinder the process of rebuilding the new Temple, which is the people of God. The promise is that followers of Christ will be able to stand against those powers and ultimately prevail if they have faith (victory won’t be any time soon, and in the meantime there will be persecution). The absolute nature of the promise is hyperbole designed to pull us farther in the direction of optimism and confidence in God’s eagerness to answer our prayers—especially ministry-related prayers to overcome opposition against the kingdom of God. We must pray with aggressive submission. Ultimately we subordinate our wills to God’s, but we shouldn’t become passive or indifferent. We should pray with passion. And when we pray against those power centers, we must do so with a soft, forgiving heart; not a vengeful one.
