I want to speak to you this evening,
beginning in Mark chapter 11, if you have
your Bible or another device, and I'm going
to go from there to 2 Kings chapter
19 or 20, 2 Kings 20, starting in
Mark 11, and I want to talk to
you about praying beyond fig trees to mountains.
Praying beyond fig trees to mountains.
Mark chapter 11, beginning at verse 22.
So Jesus answered and said to them, have
faith in God, for assuredly, that means truly,
it means without any doubt, it means take
notice, it means like, it's not like God
has to say I'm telling you this is
true, because He can't lie, but for the
sake of emphasis, He says assuredly I tell
you, in other words, take note of this.
That whoever says to this mountain, be removed
and be cast into the sea, and does
not doubt in his heart, but believes that
those things he says will be done, he
will have whatever he says.
Therefore I say to you, whatever things you
ask when you pray, believe that you receive
them and you will have them.
Now the story begins with Jesus and His
disciples leaving Bethany and going up into Jerusalem.
As they're going into Jerusalem, Jesus Christ approaches
a fig tree.
Now the writer, Mark, who writes this, whether
he had a personal encounter or he got
the story from somebody else, writes it from
his perspective.
It says, and seeing a fig tree afar
off, having leaves, he went to it to
see if perhaps he would find something on
it.
When he came to it, he found nothing
but leaves, for it was not the season
for figs.
And in response, Jesus said to it, let
no one eat fruit from you ever again.
And it speaks on a multiplicity of levels,
and I have spoken on some of them
here in the past.
But one of the levels that it speaks
to my heart as I read it again,
they're coming from Bethany into Jerusalem.
It's assumed, and we know it's true, that
they're heading into the temple for the sole
purpose of worshiping God.
And the fig tree represents that which stands
between where we are, our journey, and when
we finally get to the place where, in
a sense, God is.
We're locked in.
We've come there to worship.
We've come there to meet with God.
And on the way to church, how many
people have been diverted from coming to church
from time to time?
You've met a fig tree along the way.
You know, it's that game that was being
on that night, and it was only going
to be played, and it was a once
a year thing, and you knew you should
have been going to the temple to worship
God.
But a fig tree, it could be that
girl.
It could be that guy.
It could be that relationship.
It could be...it's a myriad of things.
Somebody calls you right as you're about to
go to church and says, hey, I bought
a new car.
Do you want to come over to my
house and see it?
So all these fig trees, and there's many
as probably as you can imagine in your
mind that kind of stand between us and
where God is, or where the worship of
God really is.
And these fig trees offer us satisfaction, but
they are barren.
Now Jesus is omniscient.
It means He's the Son of God.
He knows all things.
He knows it's not the season of figs,
and He knows, He has to know, that
there are no figs on this particular tree.
But for the sake of argument, He goes
to the tree as almost like an illustration.
And the tree is a deceptive tree.
It has an image in a sense of
satisfying, but it does not satisfy.
Just as our brother shared tonight from Africa
when he talked about all the things out
there that he was doing that were drawing
him away from God that offered satisfaction but
produced no satisfaction in them.
And as Christians, we start out, and we're
going to encounter a lot of fig trees
along the way.
These are things that we embraced maybe in
our lives that maybe offered us satisfaction of
some sort.
And maybe we believed it for a season
only to get kind of close to it,
and once you get close to it, you
realize it really doesn't satisfy.
And it could be a myriad.
It could be all kinds of things.
I know you have things coming in your
mind right now that really offered you life.
It could have been education.
It could have been, I don't know, it
could be anything.
But when you get close to it, you
find out it's really deceptive.
It's sort of what your life is called
to be in God.
And Jesus takes authority over this deceptive fig
tree.
So this is where it all begins.
He says, let no one eat fruit from
you ever.
So the disciples heard Him take authority over
this fig tree.
Just as you and I have to do
in our own lives.
If there's something maybe that offered you satisfaction
and still tempts you again today, as Isaac
shared in his song, we have the right
to take authority over these things and say,
I will not eat fruit.
You will not deceive me again.
You will not convince me that you're going
to satisfy me.
I don't care how glossy you look.
I don't care how big your smile is.
I don't care how sweet you smile or
whatever it is that's offering you satisfaction or
how good you taste.
You will not deceive me again.
I will not be taken by you again.
I'm going to Jerusalem.
I'm going to the temple.
I'm going to meet with God, and I'm
going to establish or walk in a living
relationship with God.
So they go into the temple, and Jesus
overthrows the temple, the tables, and the money
changers and such like, makes a declaration that
my house shall be called a house of
prayer.
They go back into Bethany.
The next morning now, they're heading back into
the temple again.
And when the evening had come, He went
out of the city, and the morning as
they passed by, verse 20 of Mark 11,
they saw the fig tree dried up from
the roots.
And Peter, remembering, said to them, Rabbi, look,
the fig tree which you cursed has withered
away.
And so Peter's excited over this little victory.
I mean, it is really a little victory,
isn't it?
It's one little tree that offered a deceptive
fruit.
Jesus takes authority over it.
And when you look in the Bible, it's
like, Rabbi, capital R, look, exclamation point, Rabbi,
look, like, wow, the kingdom of God has
come.
The fig tree has died, you know what
I mean?
And we're like that, aren't we, sometimes?
We get victory over alcohol, and we say,
yes, the fig tree died, I've got the
victory.
And immediately, and Jesus doesn't even address the
fig tree, which is really interesting.
They're all excited about it, but He immediately
redirects their focus to the mountain.
Isn't it amazing?
So He answered and said, so He says,
Rabbi, look, the fig tree which you cursed
has withered away.
So Jesus then answered and said to them,
have faith in God, for assuredly, or truly,
I say to you, whoever says to this
mountain, be removed and cast into the sea
and does not doubt in his heart, but
believes that those things he says will be
done, he will have whatever he says.
Therefore I say to you, whatever things you
ask when you pray, believe that you receive
them and you will have them.
I found myself sitting here tonight during the
worship and saying, God, would you give me
an anointing of faith again, deeper than I've
ever known?
In the book of Revelation, there was a
church called Laodicea, and they had been more
or less waylaid by their own fig trees.
They said, we're rich and increased with goods
and have need of nothing, and a society
like this can do that to you.
You know, compared to the rest of the
world, we are rich.
We are increased with goods, and there's the
people all over the world, if they had
what we had tonight, they'd say, I have
need of nothing.
And we can forget, though, that the calling
on our lives is higher than this, and
not just to rejoice over the fig trees
that we've gotten the victory over, but there
are mountains now in our society.
There are mountains that we're facing that can't
be moved by human effort, but they can
only be moved by faith in the revealed
will and the revealed word of God.
And I found myself sitting here saying, Lord,
if the church of Laodicea needed an eye
salve anointing, would you anoint my eyes again?
Would you give me the ability to see
beyond what I have?
I've seen some great things in the past,
and thank God for those things.
I've had fig tree victories in my life,
and I have seen a few mountains move,
but I thank God the need of this
hour is so incredibly great.
And you don't tease your people.
You don't just say these words to fill
in a couple of paragraphs in the Bible.
He's not a God who can lie, and
He doesn't put something out in front of
us that's unattainable.
And so when I read the Scriptures of
God, this is attainable.
There is a kind of prayer, if we
have faith in God, that can move mountains.
There's a kind of an intercession at the
throne of God, like with Esther when she
went before the king that can actually reverse
the decree of death and make it into
a law of life.
There is a power in God.
It's all through the Scriptures.
It's there.
But God, maybe I'm blind to it.
Maybe I can't see it the way I
once did, and I can't anoint my own
eyes.
I can read the Bible from now until
I die of old age, but I can't
anoint my own eyes.
God has to anoint my eyes.
And I was praying tonight, and I said,
God, I don't care if you have to
make mud with spit again and put it
on my eyes as you did the blind
man.
I don't care if you've got to speak
to me and say, see, I don't care
how you do it, but I'm asking you
to anoint my eyes, oh God, to be
able to see this truth, to be able
to realize this truth in my own life.
I don't want to just be reading it
and preaching it.
I want to live this.
We're living in an age with mountains.
We have mountains of incredible evil.
It's even taking a hold of our children
and our schools and our society is turning
dark, and the ways of God are in
danger of almost being eradicated in this generation.
There is a mountain to be spoken to
in this generation.
Have faith in God.
He said, assuredly, I say to you, whoever
says to this mountain, be removed and be
cast into the sea and doesn't doubt in
his heart, but believes that the things that
he says will happen, he will have whatever
he says.
He says, therefore, I say to you, whatever
things you ask when you pray, believe that
you receive them and you will have them.
I don't want to live my life at
the fig tree level anymore.
I don't want to be, you know, how
many Christians here tonight say, I'm just so
tired of praying about fig trees in my
life.
And that being my only, I got victory
over this fig tree and I defeated the
deception of that fig tree.
And so our whole life is just about
ourselves and things that we thought were going
to satisfy us and we found out they
couldn't and we, we prayed and we, they
were defeated.
And so we're just like a fig tree
testimony in the house of God, but there's
so few mountain movers left anymore.
I don't want to just be a fig
tree Christian.
I want to be a Christian that God
can use to move a mountain because mountains
need to be moved again in our generation
by the power of God.
And they can only be moved by the
power of God.
And so Jesus was saying to his own
disciples, I want to talk to you, I
want you to have faith and I want
you to ask for things that are bigger
than your own needs.
You see, because it was the fig tree
represented my needs.
They assumed he was hungry.
So it's about me and my needs.
And he says, I want to give you
a faith that's bigger than just your own
needs because the mountain was not about, it's
not about me anymore.
It's about others that are captivated on this
mountain of deception.
And that's what Jerusalem actually was.
It was a mountain of religious deception that
actually hated God and was about to crucify
his son.
It was deceiving people into thinking that even
religious observance could satisfy when it couldn't or
bring the people into eternal life when it
wasn't going to.
It was a mountain that needed to be
moved and needed to be cast into the
sea.
And of course in AD 70 it was
removed and it was cast into the sea
of the nations of this world.
And so we ask a question to ourselves,
will God answer if I pray really big
prayers?
You know, a lot of people are afraid
to pray big prayers because if they don't
get answered, it's almost like, well, I'm going
to lose confidence in God.
Or maybe God will find some secret flaw
in me and there's a reason why he's
not answering my prayer.
And so rather than run the risk, we
don't step out on that limb because we
don't want to be disappointed.
We don't want to be let down.
So we just are constantly standing against the
things that are trying to deceive us.
And we're not praying about the things that
are deceiving the whole society around us.
It's way bigger than me now.
It's way bigger than you.
We're living in an age where this generation
is being taken captive by darkness.
And these are mountains now that need to
be moved and cast into the sea.
In 2 Kings chapter 20, I want to
answer the question, what will God do if
I pray and can he answer in a
really big way?
This story answers that question.
In those days, Hezekiah was sick and near
death, 2 Kings 20 verse 1, and Isaiah
the prophet and son of Amoz went to
him and said, thus says the Lord, set
your house in order for you shall die
and not live.
Then he turned his face toward the wall
and prayed to the Lord saying, remember now,
O Lord, I pray how I have walked
before you in truth and with a loyal
heart and have done which was good in
your sight.
And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
And it happened before Isaiah had gone out
into the middle court that the word of
the Lord came to him saying, return and
tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people, thus
saith the Lord, the God of David, your
father, I have heard your prayer.
I've seen your tears and surely I will
heal you.
On the third day, you'll go up to
the house of the Lord and I will
add to your days 15 years and I
will deliver you in this city from the
hand of the king of Assyria.
And I will defend this city for my
own sake and for the sake of my
servant, David.
Then Isaiah said, take a lump of figs.
So they took it and laid it on
the boil and he recovered.
And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, what is the
sign that the Lord will heal me and
that I shall go up to the house
of the Lord on the third day?
It's amazing.
Like God just said to Hezekiah, I'm going
to heal you on the third day.
You're going to be back in the house
of the Lord again and I'm going to
give you 15 more years and I'm going
to give you a victory over your enemies.
And if I was God and Hezekiah said
to me, what is the sign?
I would have said, well, wait three days
and you'll have your sign.
You'll be in the house of the Lord.
But Isaiah said, this is the sign to
you, verse nine from the Lord, that the
Lord will do the thing which he has
spoken.
Shall the shadow go forward 10 degrees or
go backward 10 degrees?
And Hezekiah answered, it's an easy thing for
the shadow to go down 10 degrees.
No, but let the shadow go backward 10
degrees.
So Isaiah the prophet cried out to the
Lord and he brought the shadow 10 degrees
backward by which it had gone down on
the sundial of Ahaz.
This is an absolute, you see, the point
being, you know, when it says in the
scripture, second Timothy chapter three, verses 16 and
17, where Paul, the apostle says, all scripture
is inspired by God and is profitable for
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and
righteousness.
Now, keep in mind when Paul wrote that,
there was not much, if any, of the
New Testament at this particular point.
So he's actually making reference to much of
this you find even in the Old Testament.
And so when Hezekiah prayed that prayer and
Isaiah came back to him, God answered his
prayer and actually what he did 10 degrees
backwards is turning time backwards 20 minutes.
I want you to think about that for
a moment.
God turned time backwards.
It's as if right now it's 825 and
if I prayed that prayer, it's like suddenly
it's 805 and God turned it back.
God turned it back everywhere.
He reversed time, which proves that He's the
Lord over time.
So there's really, bottom line, there's no limitations
to God.
He can reverse time.
Now, in order to reverse time, He had
to suspend the laws of the universe.
The whole universe is moving together in an
outward fashion like this.
You can go to the museum of the
Astronomy Museum in New York and you can
see a whole thing about this.
The whole universe is moving outward this way.
And so in order to reverse time for
20 minutes, He had to actually back it
up.
He had to suspend the laws of gravity.
If you stop spinning the world for just
a fraction of a second, the law of
gravity has to be suspended because we would
just simply fly off the world and into
space.
The oceans would overflow their borders, mountains would
crumble and fall, there would be all kinds
of calamity and catastrophe in the universe.
It's not just stopping planet Earth from rotating,
He has to stop everything at the same
time.
How powerful is God?
That's the question.
What will God do in response to one
man's prayer?
You remember the story of Joshua fighting and
he was winning a battle and he wanted
the battle to be finished and he spoke
to the sun and said, stand still and
spoke to the moon and said, stay over
there and for a full day, the rotation
of the earth stopped.
For a full day, the laws again of
gravity were suspended because somebody prayed and had
the courage and faith to believe that God
can do exceedingly above all that we ask
or are even able to think.
Have faith in God, Jesus said, looking to
the mountain.
And you know in comparison to what God
did for Hezekiah and God did for Joshua,
the mountain is actually a small thing, isn't
it?
In comparison to these, He suspended the movement
of the universe.
If God can do that, surely He can
move the mountains in our generation.
Surely He can cause our hearts to begin
to believe again that He can do exceedingly
above and beyond all we can even ask
or think.
Can we in our time, can you, can
I move beyond our fig trees, our small
deceptions to mountains, those things that captivate entire
societies and whole generations?
I say yes, I say yes with all
my heart.
I say God, I yield my body as
a living sacrifice to You.
Use it in whatever way You will, but
oh God, move mountains in this generation.
Oh God, do what only You can do,
turn back, as You can turn the universe
back, You can turn back this tide of
sin in America, in our generation.
You can push this whole agenda into the
sea and cause it to dissipate from our
borders.
You can send a spiritual awakening into the
nation and cause people to go to their
knees in their shopping centers and in parks
and in their apartment buildings and in churches
and everywhere.
God Almighty, move this mountain in our generation.
That is the cry of my heart, and
that has to be the cry of the
heart of every person who's listening online tonight,
and every person who's in this sanctuary, God,
use my life for something bigger than cursing
fig trees.
Use my life for something that's going to
make a difference in my society, a difference
in my neighborhood, a difference in my family,
a difference in my church, a difference in
my city.
Oh God, use my life, and there's no
limit by age or gender or ability.
I feel like Caleb when he was an
old man.
He said, my strength is the same as
it's always been, and I've been 40 years
in this wilderness traveling around because of unbelief,
and I'm done with this.
And he goes and he says, give me
the mountain with the giants, the sons of
Anak.
I want that one, the one that they
said couldn't be defeated.
Give me that mountain in this generation.
Have faith in God for whoever says to
this mountain, be thou removed and be thou
cast into the sea, and shall not doubt
in his heart, but believes that the things
he says will be done, he will have
whatsoever he says.
Therefore I say to you, whenever you stand
praying, believe that you shall receive, and you
shall have the things that you ask for.
Do we dare to believe it in our
generation?
Do we dare to step past the fig
tree and look at the mountain?
I love that.
I love the fact that Jesus was not
teasing his disciples.
He was speaking a reality.
And when we begin to pray that way,
you'd be amazed, even in this room, what
can be moved in this generation through your
life.
You'd be amazed when you begin to pray
with faith and God begins to cause you
to move in a certain direction, the things
of darkness.
Don't forget, this is a spiritual war.
We're not fighting against flesh and blood.
We're fighting against powers and principalities of darkness.
The Bible says that our prayers, we don't
war like people war in this world.
We have power to pull down strongholds.
We have power to cast down arguments and
every high thing that exalts itself against the
knowledge of God.
We have power with God.
We have power at the throne of God.
Let the world laugh all they want because
I know one thing, the devils are not
laughing.
They know this to be true because they've
seen this.
They've been around long enough to see what
happens when one man or one woman begins
to pray and begins to believe in God.
It all begins by removing the mountain of
sin that's in your own life.
Whatever it is that hinders you from becoming
the man or woman that God has called
you to be.
Whatever it is in your home, whatever it
is in your heart, that's your first mountain.
That's the first thing you've got to have
faith in God and believe that when Jesus
Christ died on that cross 2,000 years
ago, he took the punishment for your sin
upon himself.
You have to believe that he took your
place on that cross.
Believe that he loves you and wants to
call you back to himself and confess him
with your mouth as your Lord and Savior.
Then the mountain of sin moves away from
you and a whole new realm of eternal
life and abundant life starts opening up before
you and God can now take your life
and use your life for his glory.
And so I want to pray a prayer
tonight and I want to encourage those that
are here in the sanctuary to pray with
me for the sake of those who are
online, that you need to get this mountain
of sin out of your life tonight.
And I want to challenge you to pray
like you've never prayed before.
And you open your heart to God and
get this mountain of unbelief out of your
heart and out of your life.
Now Father, in Jesus' name, I take authority
over every hindering spirit that will try to
stop any man or woman listening online tonight
from opening their heart to the salvation that's
freely offered through Jesus Christ.
This is the first mountain I want to
pray against tonight.
I command this mountain in Jesus' name to
be moved and to be cast into the
midst of the sea.
We command tonight every obstacle to get out
of the way of every man or woman,
no matter how addicted or depressed they might
be, who wants to surrender their life to
Jesus Christ.
Satan, we resist you in the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
And we command you to open your doors
and loose your prisoners.
You can't have these people anymore, because we
stand believing in the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ that your power is broken, your
deception is broken, your lies are broken, and
you must let these people go.
This mountain of people that are going to
cast you and all of your wicked works
into the midst of the sea.
Now those that are listening online, I'm going
to ask you to pray with me right
now, right from the bottom of your heart.
Pray these words, Lord Jesus Christ, thank you
for loving me.
Thank you for paying the price for my
sin, for dying in my place, that I
might be forgiven.
I open my heart to you tonight, and
I invite you to come into my life,
to be my Lord, and my God, and
my Savior.
I confess you as the Son of God,
and my God, from this day forward, I'm
going to live for you, and I'm going
to believe you, that my life can make
a difference, because you told me so, and
because your presence is now inside of me.
I believe that I am a child of
God.
The Holy Spirit will help me, and heaven
will be my home, and I believe it
with all my heart tonight, in Jesus' name.
Now if you just prayed that from your
heart tonight online, I want you to do
this right away.
Text the word decided to 51,000 on
your cell phone, decided to 51,000.
Do that as your very first act of
faith, having come to Christ.
Don't hesitate to do it, just do it.
I decided, that's what you're saying, I decided,
and you're telling us.
It's important to confess, you're telling somebody at
Times Square Church in New York City, I
have decided to follow Jesus.
I have decided to let God use my
life to make a difference in my generation.
I've decided to go with God, wherever that's
going to lead me, that's where I'm going
to go.
So do it now, do it as an
act of faith, and let us help you
get started in your walk with God.
Now prepare for communion.
We're going to celebrate tonight the sacrifice of
Jesus Christ on the cross that made a
way for your redemption, and made a way
for you to be a man or woman
of faith so that your life can actually
count for great good in your home, your
community, at your own table.
You watch what God will do, you watch
what he'll do for your family.
Now that this, your relationship is back together
with God, you watch what God will do
now.
You watch the mountains that will begin to
move, things you thought were impossible.
Matter of fact, can I remind you again
tonight that he can turn back time, things
you thought you lost, he can turn it
back again and bring it back to you,
relationships, children, just things that you thought could
never be restored, maybe your own sanity, whatever,
he can turn time back.
That's who God is.
He did it for Hezekiah, why would he
not do it for you?
You watch what God will do.
I'm not making an idle promise to you
tonight, what I tell you is true.
You watch what God will do.