The Heart God Hears

It's there in Mark 11, verse 20, that Mark says this, that as they were passing by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered from the root.

And being reminded, Peter said to Jesus, Rabbi, look, the fig tree which you cursed has withered.

And Jesus said to them, have faith in God.

Truly, I say to you that whoever says to this mountain, be lifted 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.

For this reason, I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you will receive them and they will be granted to you.

And whenever you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone so that your Father who is in heaven also will forgive you your transgressions.

But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions.

Now, this is an interesting text, right? We have fruitless fig trees.

We have flying foothills.

We have faith and forgiveness all happening in this text.

But maybe more than that, the promises in this text, especially the promises in verses 23 and 24, they sound a bit like blank check promises.

Like the kind of promises you might hear if you were listening to someone who was a prosperity gospel preacher or a proponent of the word faith movement.

Name it and claim it.

Believe it and you will receive it.

Is that what Jesus is promoting in this passage? Is this a blank check promise passage on prayer? Also, the timing of this being inserted into the narrative at this point during Passion Week, it just seems a little bit out of place.

So, what are we to make of this passage? Is this passage telling us that God is obligated, like some sort of cosmic genie, to give us whatever we ask for, whatever we want, that He will fulfill all of our material wishes? That if we want more money or a better job or a bigger house or a fancier car, or maybe we just want a life that is worry-free, free of headache, free of sickness, free of trial.

Are these verses implying that that is how we are to pray? And that if we ask for those things, if we can just muster up enough faith that God is obligated to grant us our requests? Well, spoiler alert, the answer to that question is no, that's not what this passage is teaching.

But then how are we to understand this passage? Well, that's what I'm excited to unpack with you today as we look at this text.

Now, as we come to this passage this morning, Mark chapter 11, 22 to 26, we will include verses 20 and 21 in our discussion.

We're actually going to spend a bit of time introducing this passage so that as we orient ourselves to the text, we come to it with a proper framework.

And then we will spend time closer to the second half of the message actually working through these verses one at a time.

So we have four introductory questions that we're going to ask about this text in order to, again, orient ourselves so that as we come to the specific interpretation in each verse, we're making sure that we've answered some of the big questions that this text causes us to ask.

So we'll start with those four introductory questions.

Those are technically not my outline for this morning.

That will come later in answer to the fourth of these four questions.