We come to Mark chapter 11. I should say we come back to Mark chapter 11 today. I have studied and practiced and taught homiletics for a long time. That's the art of, the craft of putting together sermons and delivering them, and I would gladly take a manuscript or a transcription or a recording of the one that you're about to hear, and I could use it in one of my homiletics classes. I would put it near the beginning and say, this is the before version. Now let me show you how to do it right, because I'm going to start up, I think, an uplifting and joyful sermon, but I'm not going to finish it, and I don't really have a Nice wrap-up for it. So, prepare yourself for a sudden stop, but we will finish it, and I think you will be blessed for what we glean from God's Word. Today in our journey through Mark, it's going to bring us to something that you probably aren't expecting. In the midst of these pictures of profound judgment on the apostate system of Judaism and on the temple itself, comes a lesson on prayer. which, in a sense, you could lift from its very context, put it almost anywhere else in the New Testament, and it would stand just fine. So it's going to take a little bit of thinking to see why this lesson on prayer is here where it is, but it will be a great blessing to you when you understand what Jesus taught His disciples. Now, it's very important in this portion of Mark, or any of the other Gospels, to remember the sequence of events. We're up to the last week of Jesus' life. The first three and a half years took nine chapters, ten chapters, and now the last week takes six chapters, because it's very important. Jesus entered... I'm sorry, I didn't know that was there. Jesus entered Jerusalem on Sunday. Some say Monday. That doesn't really make any difference. It could be Sunday. It could be Monday. Either way, it works out. But He came into this so-called triumphal entry. people shouting, "'Hosanna to the Son of David.'" You know, we're worshiping the Savior, we're talking about the King, the Messiah who has come. Then He went into the temple, He looked around, and then He left, and that night He went to the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in Bethany on the other side of the Mount of Olives where He spent the nights during that On the way into town the next day, he cursed a fig tree. Remember that? And I said, save that for later because we're going to come back to it today. After cursing the fig tree, he went in and he cleared the temple. And those two are very much related. They're both pictures of God's utter judgment on the apostasy of His beloved people, Israel. After clearing out the outer court of the temple, Jesus did several things in the temple that afternoon and maybe even into that evening, and Mark doesn't record those, but then they went back to Bethany again. The next morning, when they passed by that fig tree that he had cursed, Peter commented on it. And right then, they stopped, and Jesus gave a lesson on faith and prayer that we will see in a few moments. And that's where we're going to come today. Now, we're going to be moving ahead a new day. Some parables have been spoken. He's encountered opposition in the temple. He has declared His authority, etc. When he did that, Jesus said something that was very, very strong. Matthew records it because Matthew is the one who wrote mainly for the Jews. And I want to read you what Jesus had said, probably the night before what we're going to see today, or the afternoon before what we're going to see today. Now, try to imagine what you would have understood this to mean if you were one of the 12. As you came into town that day, you saw Jesus curse a fig tree and instantly the tree went from beautiful green leaves to ready to be burned. No transition, just instant, total destruction. Then you've seen Jesus walk in and you've seen Him clear out the outer court of the temple. a picture of the coming judgment. You've seen Jesus stand up to challenge after challenge from the relentless but spiritually bankrupt leaders of the Jews who were not only not glad that Jesus had arrived, they were scurrying off to their little dark corners to continue to hone their plan to murder Him. So the context has a lot to do with God's plans for Israel. The Messiah has been announced when He entered into Jerusalem, the city where He will one day reign. Matthew has recorded more of what this is than what Mark had done, but after the clearing of the Temple and all of that, I want you to see what Jesus said the night before what we're going to see today. Matthew 21, verses 42 through 44, Jesus said to them, Did you never read in the Scriptures? You don't want the Son of God starting a question with, did you never read? You're about to get a Bible lesson probably that you would rather not hear, but that's what He says. Did you never read in the Scriptures? And then He quotes from Psalm 118. The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief cornerstone. This came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing the fruit of it. And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust." Is there any doubt that he was talking about judgment? that the clearing the temple, the cursing the fig tree, and all the other things that He had done. You see, fruit is always an indicator of salvation and of genuine faith, and He says, look, I'm ripping away from you what you think you have, and I'm giving it to the ones who will produce the fruit. That's a pretty strong word. He had described months earlier in the parable of the soils, how the good soil is proven to be good by the fact that it bears fruit. It yields a crop. And he went on to explain that the good soil is the person in whom the seed of God's Word takes root and grows. So he says, didn't you ever read your Bible? Don't you understand this? I'm talking about you. It'll only be two days later, after the lesson of the fig tree. Jesus will sit around the table with His men after the Passover meal, and He will say to them, among other things, another metaphor on the same theme, "'I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.'" The fig tree, the vine, they both are shown to be good by the fruit that they bear. And so this fig tree is illustrating several truths about Israel and about believers. cursing the tree and cleansing the temple. They are linked, and they're both, obviously, for our edification because they're recorded forever in God's Word. So as I said last Lord's Day, we need to put together this complete passage even though we haven't fit it into one sermon. Cursed the fig tree. He went into the temple and cleared out the stuff there. He did some other things. He came back. Then the next morning, he taught a lesson about the fig tree, and we're trying to put all that together. I'm going to swing and miss again on actually finishing this. But here's where we're going. It's about Israel, figs, and prayer. Remember last time I said, remember this for later? Well, this time we begin with, remember yesterday, verses 19 through 21, and then the lesson, is your faith strong? So, let's start out with Jesus saying, in essence, remember yesterday. Now, you're a more advanced group than the disciples. So I trust that you really can remember all the way back, not just yesterday, but to seven days ago when we saw what Jesus did on His way into Jerusalem on the morning after the triumphal entry. But somebody may have forgotten, so let's look at it. Mark 11, verses 12 through 14. On the next day, the day after the triumphal entry, When they had left Bethany, he became hungry. Seeing at a distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if perhaps he would find anything on it. And when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, may no one ever eat fruit from you again. and His disciples were listening. Now, I explained to you that fig trees, I understand, produce figs and leaves simultaneously. Most fruit trees, they leaf out and then they blossom, or they blossom and they leaf out, and then comes the fruit. Figs come simultaneously. Even though it's not the season for figs, like to harvest the plump, ripe figs, you can still get the fruit of the immature figs, and it's edible, and you can pluck from it and and eat it. No fruit on this tree, nothing but leaves." And so Jesus says, "'May no one ever eat fruit from you again.'" Now His disciples were listening. It doesn't say it in the text, but they had to be thinking, why is He talking to a tree? Jesus doesn't talk to trees. What's going on here? Well, Matthew is the one who includes the detail that not only were they listening, but that the fig tree withered completely at once, in an instant. No slow dying, no time to say, ah, it's looking a little brown around the edges of the leaves. All the leaves are gone and the tree is ready to be burned. That's a pretty dramatic visual aid. And the disciples see the fig tree curse, they're hearing what Jesus is saying, and I'll bet they're thinking, okay, what do you want us to learn from that? And Jesus is heading down the path, walking off into Jerusalem, no explanation. They've had all day and all night to think about it before the next morning. They've seen him go into Jerusalem. They've seen him start overturning the tables with the money changers, letting out the animals that were being sold for exorbitant prices to rip off the people who had come for the Passover. It was all a matter of money-making on the part of the corrupt priesthood and those that they sold the franchises to. They'd heard him talk about, you're turning my house, which is supposed to be a house of prayer, into a robber's den. He quoted from Jeremiah. He quoted from Isaiah. It had been quite a momentous day. Review last week's sermon if you need to. Now we're told what happens next. Mark, remember, put it in sequence. Curse the tree, clear the temple, come back the next morning and talk about the tree. Matthew doesn't do it that way. Mark 11, 19 through 21. We pick it up where we left off. When evening came, they would go out of the city." So they didn't spend the nights in the city, spent the nights at the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. As they were passing by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots up. And being reminded, Peter said to him, "'Rabbi, look, the fig tree which you cursed has withered.'" Now, he knew that. Peter knew that. Jesus knew that. They'd all seen the fig tree already withered in a moment. But Peter's saying, okay, Lord, there has to be more here. Now there's a lot of symbolism connected with that tree. That fig tree had many leaves. It looked beautiful from afar. It looked promising. That's a picture of Israel as a nation that had this impressive display of religion and all of the priesthood and all the sacrifices and all of that and the beautiful temple, but no spiritual fruit. And that fig tree had no fruit, so there was no spiritual fruit. It's picturing no spiritual fruit coming from the leaders of the Jews. That fig tree was barren. Their religion had become barren. It was far from the Scriptures. It was as bad as any cult or false religion anywhere. Matter of fact, it was worse because it was empty, done in the name of the true God. So as the fig tree was cursed, so was the nation. God was picturing through what Jesus did there that He is turning away from His beloved Israel for her unbelief. That became apparent, Jesus illustrated it again when He cleared out the temple, and ultimately it was fulfilled in the coming days and years, which took all the way until A.D. 70, when the temple would be destroyed and the Jews scattered until 1948 A.D. Now that fig tree had withered from the roots. That's a picture of the fact that Jesus is saying, what you are doing is all corrupt. We're not here to prune and trim and fertilize. We are here to uproot, judge, and replace. And from that moment after Jesus went to the cross, what, three days after this, two days after this, depending on how you count, when He was crucified. Then He was buried. He was resurrected. Eventually He ascended to the Father with Jesus' death. Everything that took place in that sacrificial system in that temple from that moment on was irrelevant. It was being replaced with something brand new. The fig tree is cursed. The nation of Israel is cursed. in the great faithfulness of God, even though that whole system has been cursed and uprooted and replaced, God has preserved His people Israel. Why? Because He has promises yet to fulfill to them. And their curse will be reversed. God will restore Israel spiritually. She will one day embrace her Messiah and her Savior, but just not now. Now, it's pretty easy for us to sit in our ivory towers 20 centuries later and say, oh, how awful they were. And I think we would be remiss if we didn't say, Lord, what's here for me? How can I make this personal? Does the fig tree in any way picture you? Obviously, ask the people who are seeing what we're doing this morning, they would say, you're religious. Why, you get up on Sunday morning, you make yourself look presentable, you go to church. Why, you have all the external marks of the people who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. There's even a cross on the building in which you worship. Well, that tree was also full of leaves and nothing good was being produced by it. Is there fruit in our lives to match our outward appearance? We would be silly if we didn't ask that question. Do we hate our sin profoundly and run to our Savior daily? Do we fight the good fight of the faith by standing up for truth when it is assaulted? Do we do battle to remain moral in an immoral world that wants to take us down? Do we make hard decisions moment by moment to conform our lives to the fruit of the Spirit? You read that list of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians chapter 5, and that's not some mystical, magical, hyper-spiritual thing. When you read the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, listen, you have a choice every moment of every day to bear that fruit by the power of the Holy Spirit, which that passage promises you will be enabled to do, or you can ignore it. It's our choice. It's your choice. I can give you a personal and perhaps not too deep illustration. You know, a couple of years ago, this month, I slipped and fell on a steep hill and I injured my leg. And the doctors told me, well, The good news is that there will be a full recovery. The bad news is this is just about the worst thing you can do to a leg and still recover from it. And I remember sitting in that doctor's office, and I was thinking about all the things I was going to do. I planned to baptize some people three days later. I planned to preach. I had all these different things. I had a trip planned, right, Mike? I had a lot of things I was planning to do, and I was looking at that leg with my kneecap down about an inch and a half lower than it belonged, and hearing about the surgery and the four months, and I just started thinking of all these things. And in God's wonderful grace, I began to think of the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience. I got down to number four and I thought, you know, this is going to take a lot of patience. And I prayed right there, Lord, teach me to walk in your patience. There's nothing quite as spiritually uplifting as it requiring 20 minutes to get dressed, and usually a helper. That's teaching you patience, but you have a choice. You can choose to act patiently, or you can get all frazzled about it, in which case you're miserable and everybody around you is miserable, and you're just as bad off as you were, except you wasted time. You understand that? You can make a choice to exercise the joy that belongs to you in the Lord Jesus Christ, or you can whine, complain, mope, and make yourself miserable. You have a choice in every relationship, with every person you see, every time, whether you will practice love or not. It's your momentary decision whether to practice self-control or not. Do you understand? People have a right to look at the tree that is you. Collectively look at the tree that is us and say, where's the fruit? Now this is a strong passage, very strong message about fruit and lack of it, about phony faith. But embedded right in the middle of this is this remarkably refreshing lesson on faith and prayer. So I want you to join me for a breath of fresh air. It is in the midst of all the lingering smells and the settling dust from the outer court of the temple where Jesus has just cleaned things up. But I want us to move along in our text. So remember yesterday? The cursing of the fig tree. Today, is your faith strong? We come to this other subject, this personal lesson from the miraculous death of that tree. It's next morning. Come with me to verses 20 and 21 again. We just saw them. But, as they were passing by in the morning, they saw the fig tree wither from the roots up, and being reminded, Peter said to him, when they're all together, Peter's almost always the one who's flapping his jaws, Peter spoke on behalf of the 12 of them, the fig tree which you cursed has withered." And I can imagine Jesus saying that and grabbing the sleeve of Jesus's… Peter saying that to Jesus and then grabbing the sleeve and saying, don't walk away this time. We want to know about this tree. They saw it wither in an instant, nothing said. Now, like I said, it's not… at first really obvious why you find this teaching on prayer at this point. It's right in the middle of apostasy and judgment. God is turning His back temporarily on Israel, and that's a big deal. So why do you stop for a lesson on faith and prayer? We're in the midst of unfolding prophecy. Later this night, probably, is when Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives and spoke the Olivet Discourse all about the things to come and referencing the book of Daniel and His second coming and what's going to lead up to that and what's going to follow immediately after that. And we've already seen the Messianic stuff in the words spoken at the triumphal entry. Why now this lesson on prayer? Well, I suggest to you, it's for the benefit of the disciples. This and the Olivet Discourse and the stuff around the table was Jesus alone with the Twelve. Everything else was very public. This is private. This is just for them. Now, obviously, it's for us, too, because it's recorded in the Scriptures. But remember that for about the year leading up to this, Jesus has been concentrating on training the Twelve for the ministries that He's going to entrust to them after His death and resurrection and ascension. It's going to be profoundly different for them to carry on without Jesus present. Therein lies the reason for this lesson on prayer. And He's going to reinforce it. that night after the Passover meal as well. You're probably familiar with the words of 2 Corinthians 5, 6, and 7, the context of talking about us either being present in this body or absent from this body and present with the Lord. He says in 2 Corinthians 5, 6, and 7, therefore being always of good courage and knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. Here's the key phrase, for we walk by faith, not by sight. If you will, the disciples had been able to walk by sight. They had Jesus in their sights. It didn't take a lot of faith. Well, it did take faith. I'm not saying they had no faith, but I'm saying they had Jesus present. For three plus years, they'd been with Him almost nonstop, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but soon He's going away. they needed to learn to trust Him in a totally different way. No longer could they just blurt out their questions while they're walking along. No longer could they have a lively discussion around the meal of the day. They would no longer be able to watch Him do spectacular miracles. That's why Jesus inserts this lesson on faith and prayer at this point. As they walked along, they see the tree. It's withered. Peter speaks up, Lord, hey, see that tree? It withered. And I'm sure He's saying, what's up with that? Come on, tell us, Jesus. You can imagine the twelve had probably talked about the tree, after they saw it instantly wither. As I say, I picture the scene in my mind, Jesus says, no longer will anyone eat fruit from you. And the tree goes, and suddenly it's completely brown and done. And I can just see Peter saying, well, Lord, what's the significance? Lord? Lord? As Jesus is walking away, it had to be baffling for them. They probably discussed it. Probably they figured out that, in combination with clearing out the temple, that they were connected. Surely they must have thought that, but what else? Now, they were familiar with prayer. Praying, as a matter of fact, several times a day, that was part of the normal, regular life of any devout Jew. Jesus had taught a lot about prayer during His ministry. We read a lot of it in the Sermon on the Mount and in several of His parables as well. But you've got to admit, being in the presence of Jesus must have restrained the sense of urgency for their prayer lives during those times that they were with Him. But in a matter of days, they're going to go from having Jesus present all the time to not present at all. They need to learn to live like believers in all the generations to come would have to live by faith. not by sight. They're going to have to trust what God has given them. They're going to need to depend solely on prayer to access God's power to provide for their needs. So that's the connection we need to make. They had seen the tree wither. That was a demonstration of the power of God, the power of God in judgment. They saw Jesus clear the temple like everything else He'd done. He did that by the power of the Holy Spirit who enabled Him for all things. And surely they realized that if any one of them had tried to do what Jesus did in the temple, they would have been arrested. They probably would have been stoned. Jesus did it with such power, with such authority, nobody stopped Him. They wanted to know how to display the kind of power that God wanted them to display. How do we access that? So I want you to look at the text. And then I'm going to start to show you the amazing and powerful lessons that you can draw from Jesus' words here. And I'm going to leave you hanging right in the middle of it, but you can pray and we will pick it up next time. But Matthew 11, 22 through 25, that's the main body of this section here. And Jesus answered, saying to them, okay, answered what? answered right after Peter said, Rabbi, look, the tree withered. Now, I would expect in the words about to come out of Jesus' mouth, I would expect to hear words like leaves, branches, figs, something like that. But Jesus answered, saying to them, have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, be taken up and cast into the sea and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. Therefore, I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them and they will be granted you. Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions." There's some great stuff there. Before we dive into it, though, let me comment on the next verse. Notice in the New America Standard, as I read it to you, it is in brackets. That means something. Mark 11.26 says, "'But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions.'" Now, putting it in brackets means that there's something squirrelly about the text from which that is taken. If you have the New International Version, and I said, Mark 11.26, you're looking at your Bible and saying, what? Don't have one. All you have is a footnote at the end of verse 25 that says, some manuscripts add words similar to Matthew 6.15. If you have the old American Standard Version, I doubt anyone does, the most literal translation ever done in English, it has it in italics. That was their version of putting it in brackets, meaning there's not a Greek text to back that up. If you have the King James Version, it includes it without any comment, just as part of the text. If you have the New King James Version, it includes verse 26, but it puts a footnote on it that says, some manuscripts omit it. Now that's with a presupposition behind it. It should be there, but somebody took it out. The ESV, the Growing in Popularity English Standard Version, ends verse 25 with a footnote that says, some manuscripts add verse 26. What's going on there? Alright, before we get into the lessons on prayer, this is a classic example of the value of the discipline we call textual criticism. Textual criticism doesn't mean that you criticize the words of the Bible. Textual criticism is the area of study almost 100% devoted to the New Testament. It's devoted to comparing and evaluating the thousands of manuscripts that we have of all or parts of the New Testament. Now the Old Testament text was very well protected, guarded, superintended. It was only among the Jews. But the New Testament was written over a span of a few decades, several different authors writing in different places, and it was distributed, different books differently. Some books sent off this way, some sent off that way, some sent off there, some carried over here, copied there, or sent to a different place after. where it had been copied. So, you might be rooting around in northern Egypt and you find a manuscript of a book of the New Testament. I might be rooting around in Italy, I'd love to do that someday, and I find a manuscript of that same book. Somebody else might be rooting around somewhere in Iraq and find a place that hasn't been bombed to smithereens and you find a manuscript of that same book and we get together and we say, This is incredible. They agree more than 99%. That's true of all the manuscripts. It's that little percentage. What about when they disagree? And you're reading through yours, and you have verse 26, and the other two of us don't. Majority rule, right? Two don't. One does. We win. Now, that's not necessarily the way it goes, but when there is variation between manuscripts, there are principles for helping you decide what the original most likely said. One of those principles is, older is better than newer. If your manuscript was copied in the 3rd century and my manuscript was copied in the 12th century, that's 900 years of it passing through many, many hands and being copied many times. So, everything else being the same, take the older versus the newer. But, sometimes that's not the only factor. Another logical way to take it is, shorter is better than longer. Why is that? Well... no scribe would ever intentionally omit anything, never knowingly omit anything, but he could add something by way of clarification. So we even know of cases where we have a manuscript that has just these words, and then later on we find a manuscript that has these words with a marginal note, and then we find later a manuscript that has the original words with the marginal note now having been subsumed into the text. That's called conflation. Things get added together. The King James Version, it's a very, very good translation of the Bible. Sometimes when I say I'm not a fan of the King James, people think I'm sub-spiritual. That's not the issue. I don't happen to speak in Elizabethan pronouns and verb forms, and I don't think you do either, so let's use something that's more close to us. But if you read something like the New King James Note, why would they say, some manuscripts or some translations omit this. Well, they're making the presupposition that the manuscript that was used for the King James in the New Testament is the one and only best one, but it's actually a very late one, and it has a number of conflations. So, to some people who think the King James is the thing, if you don't have something and you omit it, you're altering, tampering with the Word of God, and that's not the case. But older is better than newer. Shorter is better than longer. Here's another one for you. Difficult is better than easy. Really? Why is that? Well, again, no scribe would ever knowingly make something more difficult to understand. It's far easier to understand why they would add something to simplify or modify something to sound more natural. Now, there are other specific guidelines, but trust me, even though I talk about textual criticism, We have about 99% agreement on everything anyway, and then when you apply sound principles of textual criticism, we know with spectacular certainty what the inspired words of the New Testament is, and same with the Old Testament. Now, why is verse 26 here? Well, verse 25 is almost identical to Matthew 16, 14, which was very well known. It was part of the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew was written before Mark. You'll hear a lot of people say Mark was written before Matthew, and that is absolutely true as long as you don't pay attention to any evidence. Matthew was written first. Mark was written after Matthew. A lot of people already knew Matthew. They loved the Sermon on the Mount. They knew what Jesus taught about prayer. So, since Mark 11.25 is virtually identical to Matthew 16.14, it's not at all a surprise that what's in Matthew 16.15 came to be written as Mark 11.26. There's not anything theologically wrong with Mark 11.26. It just doesn't belong there. Isn't that spiritual goose bump stuff? It's not. I know that. But there's plenty of meat here in verses 22 through 25. Look again how it starts. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, be taken up and cast into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him." Now, you wouldn't believe how much ink and bandwidth has been wasted on which mountain and which sea. Duh! They're standing on the Mount of Olives! This mountain, the Mount of Olives, this sea, well, what sea? Now, that's a really difficult theological issue. If you're on the top of the Mount of Olives and you have a clear view, you can see all the way to the Dead Sea. So we could be talking about the Dead Sea. Ah, but if you turn around from certain places around Jerusalem, you can see all the way to the Mediterranean Sea on one of those spectacularly clear days. And you know what? It doesn't matter what mountain and it doesn't matter what sea because it's a figure of speech. What he's saying is hyperbole. Hyperbole is where you overstate something to make a point. You say something absurd to make a point. Like I've told you a million times, don't exaggerate. You get it. You understand what hyperbole is. It's like a proverbial statement. What does throwing a mountain into the sea picture? Something impossible. Only one person could pick up a mountain and throw it into the sea, and he never did because he didn't do silly miracles just for the sake of doing something without any purpose to it. Ancient Jewish literature uses the phrase, rooter up of mountains, as a metaphor for a great spiritual leader or a great teacher. In other literature, moving mountains is a metaphor for the action of people who accomplish feats or who solve problems that seem to be impossible. So what Jesus is saying is, I want you to know that you have power available to you through faith in me. If you sincerely believe what I say, without doubting, you will see the great power of God at work. So, mountain-moving faith is when you believe exactly what God says, and you unselfishly want what God wills, so that when it's done, He gets the glory. You have mountain-moving faith when you realize that God is not limited by your sin. He's not limited by the silliness of man. So, the obvious qualifier here on answered faith is believe. Have faith in God. Now, you can ask for anything you want. Now understand, God is not obligated to grant your every wish. He's not a genie that leaps out of his bottle and says, yes, my master, what can I do for you? No, He's God. We're not. Another way I've described it is that God is not a cosmic vending machines. Aren't vending machines great inventions? I mean, you don't have to have a store open. You don't need to have somebody there. You can walk up to the vending machine anytime. You put in the right amount of money, and you push the right buttons, and you get what you want. I mean, you put in the right amount of money, and you push C22, and it's a Snickers. You know, C23, that's a Milky Way. D19 is Doritos. You can get whatever you want if you just, you know, do the right combination of things with the right amount of money. Well, a lot of people think of prayer like that. Well, the Bible says, if I believe, ask anything I want and I'll get it. I asked for anything I want and I didn't get it. Must have pushed a button wrong. Now, that's not it. Next time we'll see about what is it when it doesn't happen the way you want. But to believe, to have faith, is to put all your trust in God. Make sure that you are desiring what God wants to do. The disciples had already seen the impossible. Why? Remember the day Peter walked on water? The demons had been made subject to them when Jesus made it so. The blind were seeing. The lame leaped for joy. The mute ones spoke and praised God. He says, believe in God. Have faith in God. Ask believing. Believing means wanting what God wants for His glory. It means you don't give up in despair when you don't see immediate results. It means you keep on praying fervently, trusting God to get Himself glory in the manner that He answers your prayer. Now listen, I have no qualms about praying for a sick person to get well. I don't like my friends being sick. I have no problems asking God to spare the life of someone who has received a terminal diagnosis. I have no problem with that whatsoever. And you know what? Sometimes the sick don't get well. Sometimes they get well in the spectacular way. People still die. Look, does that mean that you define God by whether He did your bidding or not? He says, have faith in God. Trust Him. The prayer of faith is not motivated by selfish or sinful desires, and it never wants to put God to the test. True faith asks for what God wants. Therefore, our prayers, our being part of that, that's part of the process of doing anything that God chooses to do, even if it seems impossible. There is a qualification here attached to getting positive answers to prayer. It's believing. You're asking for what God wants. And we have a really good idea of what God wants. Things that are true, lovely, right, beautiful, just, holy. Adjust your prayers that way other than, Lord, this hurts. Make it go away. I don't like this. Fix it. Humble yourself before God. Now there are other places in the Bible, New Testament, that tell you that there are certain things that will accompany praying with genuine faith. It is prayer that is according to God's will. So that means we need to search the Scriptures to know what God's will is, right? It is prayer that is in Jesus' name. By the way, in Jesus' name is not a code phrase for signing off now. It means asking according to the wonderful, matchless name of Jesus, all that He is and all that He stands for and all that He wants. That's praying in Jesus' name, whether you say the words or not. Oh, and by the way, it's not a flippant thing. Go look at Matthew 6. It's asking, seeking, knocking. In other words, continuing, steadfastly. It's also, in other ways that Jesus described it, persisting. Because you know what? Remember those two spiritual laws? One, God is God. Two, I'm not. I don't always know in advance what God intends to do. A friend told me years ago that when he was a brand new believer, one of the first things he was convicted about was his own kind of disorganized, haphazard way of doing things. And he knew it was affecting his job, and he wanted it to be a good testimony. So he prayed, Lord, help me to get organized. Got up the next morning, went to work, and his secretary quit. Well, you know what? I guess that wasn't the right one to help him be organized. Maybe he needed to do something about it. Prayer is the lesser one asking the greater one for help. Have faith in God. There's no power in your faith. The power is in your God. I'll pick up and launch into that one a little more next time. Oh, we have a lot more from this text about how to pray in genuine faith. Let's pray now. Father, I thank You for Your faithfulness. I trust that You fill in our minds around and beyond what has been said by this faltering mouth today. But Father, teach us to pray. We know that that includes praying that Your kingdom come, praying that Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, praying that we each would walk in spiritual wisdom and understanding, praying that we would cast all of our cares upon You because we know that You care for us Praying always because there is never a time not appropriate for prayer. Praying in the midst of every circumstances, every circumstance and all things that might happen to us. Praying in spite of those things that happen to us to turn our hearts toward you. So have Your way with us, we pray. Teach us to pray for that matter. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.