When You've Stopped Praying Bold Prayers // Matthew 21:18-22

Two Cities Church, my name is Carlos and I'm your friend. So grateful to be here. I want to welcome all of the campuses right now that are tuning in with us, and of course, I'm so grateful for your pastors and for you. You may not know this if you're new to Two Cities, but you played a large role in a church being established in the city of Miami, and for that, I just want to thank you. Thank you. There is a church in the 305, as we like to call it, because in part of the faithfulness, the generosity, and the counsel that we have received from Two Cities. So thank you. Come on, let's give it up to the Lord. Now before I read the passage that we're going to take a look at today, here's what I want to acknowledge. This passage can be a challenge to both skeptics and followers of Jesus alike, because Jesus is going to make this incredible claim about having a kind of faith that moves mountains. If you're not a follower of Jesus, maybe you hear that and you say to yourself, I've never seen that. How can it be true? Maybe you're more like me and you grew up in the church and you've heard about mountain moving faith. I grew up in Venezuela. We used to sing this little song about faith moving mountains. We would go like, esa montaña se moverá, and we'd dance. I grew up in that kind of church. That's happening at Two Cities, coming soon, okay? And so I would hear about mountain moving faith, but even as a 12-year-old, I would realize that, hey, there are mountains that people are praying for that are not moving. There are prayers that have gone unanswered. How do we make sense of that? How do we make sense of this promise?

Is faith more like the force in Star Wars? Sometimes I would hear a preacher say, you know what, the reason the miracle hasn't happened is because you didn't have enough faith. So is faith an energy that we have to muster up, sort of like, and if I have it, then I achieve it? Let's take a look at what Jesus says here in Matthew 21, starting in verse 18. The text says this, early in the morning, as he was returning to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a lone fig tree by the road, he went up to it and found nothing on it except leaves. And he said to it, may no fruit ever come from you again. At once, the fig tree withered. When the disciples saw it, they were amazed and said, how did the fig tree wither so quickly? Jesus answered them, truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you tell this mountain, be lifted up and thrown into the sea, it will be done. And if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. Would you pray with me for a moment? Heavenly Father, I pray, by the power of your Holy Spirit, that you would have your way among us and that you would conform us to be more like Christ. In Jesus' name, amen. What is the kind of faith that Jesus is talking about here in Matthew 21? Friends, wherever you are on your journey of faith, listen. Here's what I want you to see. Here's my sermon in a sentence. God wants you, He wants us to cultivate a faith that believes Him for the impossible. God wants us to cultivate a faith that believes Him for the impossible. The question is then, how do we cultivate mountain-moving faith? I want to show you three moves that we must make. Here's the first one if you're taking down notes. The first move that we must make in order to cultivate mountain-moving faith is we must reject pretend Christianity.

Reject pretend Christianity. Watch this one more time here in verse 18, early in the morning, as he was returning to the city, Jesus was hungry. Seeing a lone fig tree by the road, he went up to it and he found nothing on it except leaves and he said to it, may no fruit ever come from you again. And at once, the fig tree withered. This particular scene in the gospel of Matthew takes place right after Jesus goes into the temple of Jerusalem, in Jerusalem, where he drives out these money changers who were extorting people that had come to worship God. If you've read the New Testament, then you know this is the most visible display of anger that Jesus demonstrates in the New Testament. Right after he drives out these money changers, he comes out and he's hungry and he wants something to eat and what we find in the text is that he performs a destructive miracle. Did you notice that? Most of the miracles in the New Testament are what? They're restorative. It's Jesus healing the lame. He's restoring sight to the blind. He's raising somebody from the dead. Why is it that here in the New Testament, there's only two of these, why is it that he performs a destructive miracle? Here's the reason. The reason is because the fig tree didn't have any fruit and if you do a deep dive on this particular text, what you'll find is that when a fig tree starts displaying leaves, that's the moment where we know that a fig tree will produce fruit or the fruit would be on its way. And so Jesus, who was fully God, but also as we find out in the text, he was fully human. He was hungry. He goes up to this particular fig tree and all that he sees is what? Leaves.

Leaves and no fruit. The tree has nothing to show for it. It's just pure false advertising. The tree's putting on a show. So what's Jesus doing here? Do you see where he's going? He's about to give the disciples a very powerful object lesson about pretend Christianity. Here's the lesson that he's trying to teach them. Pretend faith is dead faith. In fact, I'd say it like this. One of the greatest dangers, perhaps the greatest danger to your relationship with Jesus is pretending you have one. You can sing the songs. You can know the language, but still, you can be dead, spiritually dead inside. So this passage is a warning to you. Don't you see what's happening? If you step into first century reality, the people of Israel were spiritually hungry. They had been under Roman oppression for years. They lost hope that a Savior, that a Messiah would come and save them. They had been under Roman oppression for years. They lost hope that a Savior, that a Messiah was coming. But you know what they still had? They still had the temple. And maybe they thought, if we could just go to the temple, maybe I could encounter the presence and the power of God. But when they get there, what they encounter is a beautiful building with all of these ornate structures and really tall. columns. An incredible design etched onto the ceilings and the walls. It had all of the trappings of religion, but it was dead on the inside. And not only dead, the priest had corrupted the worship of God with this kind of pretend, fake faith.

Jesus is angry because maybe the greatest danger to someone's relationship with God is pretending that they actually have one. And you know this, don't you? Sometimes the same thing can happen in our lives and in the church. We can be like that fig tree. It's a bunch of leaves. You put on a show, but there's no visible fruit. There's no fruit to show for. You can look one way on the outside. You can project an image of a kind of Christian who is alive with God while you know that there's no fruit in your life. We can pretend to be men of God on Sunday and we live like atheists at work on Monday and at home. You could be a woman who's so caught up in the culture of Christianity and you can attend every event and be at every gathering and read all of the things while still have no fruit in your life, no intimacy with God. You could be a student that grows up in the church and learns to almost Christian code switch at church. Do you know what I'm talking about? You know exactly what to say and what moment to say it in the church. But the moment you go to school and you step outside of this building, you know that there is no real relationship. You are faking it. Jesus is warning you. First of all, it's not only a warning, it's an invitation. It's like, hey, I don't want to save the pretend you. The pretend you cannot experience mountain-moving faith. Therefore, take off your mask and let the real Jesus come and minister to you. Friends, don't you want mountain-moving faith? The only way we're going to get there is if we reject pretend Christianity. By the way, pretend Christianity is not just dangerous for you, is it? It also hurts the witness of the church. That's why when I talk to somebody who maybe doesn't know God and they tell me the reason they don't go to church, they say something like, hey, I don't go to church because they're a bunch of… You've gotten that too. They're talking about pretend faith. Now, of course, you know what we say, hey, there's room for one more. You're not fully consistent in your life. And yet, at the end of the day, friends, God wants you to experience the real thing, mountain-moving faith. That's the first step. The first move we must make is reject pretend Christianity. Listen, are you pretending? Are you here? Are you putting on a show? Are you putting on a show? Here's the second move. Listen, if you're taking down notes, we not only reject pretend Christianity, but number two, we embrace wholehearted trust in God. Everybody say,

wholehearted. Look at the text here in verse 20. When the disciples saw it, the tree, they were amazed and said, how did the fig tree wither so quickly? Jesus answered them, truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you tell this mountain, be lifted up and thrown into the sea, it will be done. One way of reading this text is by trying to take it as a technique to manipulate God to get to do things for you. Preachers have used this text sometimes to treat God As if though he was a genie who just wants to grant you wishes. Some people may look at this text and say, you know what, if you just muster up enough internal energy, then the mountain will move. The problem with that is if you take that interpretation, everything depends on the intensity of your faith. Everything rises and falls on you. So if you don't get the healing, it means you didn't have enough what? Faith. You didn't get the child that you prayed for? Oh, you must not have enough faith, right? You didn't get the job? You must not have enough faith. This kind of theology is harmful. It's harmful because it produces Christians who are filled with guilt and shame. They simply do not know whether they've mustered up enough faith in their own heart and in their own life. But friends, listen, I want you to hear this. Faith is not a force. Faith is not a force that makes reality change. Faith is not the same thing as manifesting your thoughts. Faith is wholehearted trust in the God who can change things. Wholehearted trust in the God who can change things. It's trusting in the character of God, in the promises of God.

In fact, let me show it to you this way. I want you to imagine, maybe for some of you, spiritual warriors. Maybe you're the kind of person that if people were to describe you, you're like, dude, that's a person with really strong faith. I want you to imagine that right here on this stage, there was a broken chair. Let's say that you had really strong faith that this broken chair was going to hold you up. Does it matter that you have intense faith on a broken chair? You can talk back to me. No! You're going to be on the floor. Now, let's say on the other side, let's say you have weak faith on a really strong chair, that the chair is going to hold you up. But you're just a little weak. You don't have that strength, that intensity that other people have. Does it really matter? Will the chair hold you up? You see where I'm going with this? The main point of faith is not your own intensity. It's where you place that faith. It's the object of your faith that matters most. Friends, listen, we don't have faith in our faith. We have faith in God. Don't place your trust on your own internal capacity. Place your trust in the God who can do the impossible. That's part of what we're learning on this text. We have to ask ourselves, when we approach a text like this, with such astounding promises, we have to ask ourselves the question, is my faith based on the Word of God, the character of God, and the promises of God, or is my faith just based on my idea, on my own imagination? We have faith in God, not in faith.

But then Jesus takes it up to another level, and here's what he says. He adds the phrase, if you have faith and do not doubt, then you'll be able to talk to that mountain. There's two words for doubt in the Greek New Testament. This particular word, it's the same word that's used in James 1, where we learn that we should ask for wisdom and pray with it with faith, not being double-minded. This is the idea of doubt that Jesus is conveying here in this text. He's talking about a kind of internal hesitation, that he doesn't want you and I to pray with this kind of double-mindedness, this insecurity about who he is and what he's able to do. Dude, he's saying, I don't want you to lack confidence in me when you pray. Now, I wanna say something about this because when I was growing up in the church, I didn't know how to wrestle with having questions and the idea of doubt. I grew up in a beautiful church, but one of the things that I encountered is that anytime I brought up genuine questions, I kinda got the stiff arm. The stiff arm of like, you gotta have faith. You gotta have faith. And I'm like, dude, I have faith. You have fear. And praise God, we don't have to be afraid of questions in the Christian life. Somebody say, amen. Listen, you don't have to check your brain out at the door. At any campus today, listen, I don't want you to come in thinking, okay, I have to not ask questions of Jesus.

Friends, if you do any history, if you do any reading, what you'll find is that there is a millennia of intellectual tradition that has shaped even the morality of the West that came from Christian thinkers. It was Christians who established some of the greatest universities in the world that had some of the greatest scientists on earth. Do you know this? We don't have to be afraid of questions. And yet at the same time, we live in a day and age where it feels like we've swung the pendulum. And now the idea of being a Christian who is always doubting can be seen as a form of spiritual and intellectual virtue. Haven't you found that people now romanticize doubt? And so Christians could talk about doubt like this. Yeah, bro, Jesus is so cool with your doubts. And it's, yeah, you're doubting all the time. Ah, Jesus, he's okay with that. And they'll say, why don't you take a look at John chapter 20? There, you're gonna find Thomas the doubter. You're gonna find Thomas the doubter. And it's true. You can bring your questions and your doubts to Jesus. But do you know what he also says in John chapter 20? Do you know how he ends that passage? He says this, blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. Friends, it's possible to hide behind the idea of doubt

so that you don't land strongly on clear biblical convictions. And it is true. Wherever you are today, listen to me. God welcomes your doubts, but he is attracted to faith. He welcomes your doubts, but he is attracted to faith. If you've always been in a season of doubt, listen, God doesn't want you to stay there. I've had seasons, even as a pastor, listen to me, of crippling doubt, where I have prayed that prayer, Lord, help my unbelief. But he does not want you and me to stay in that place. He wants to move us to a place of wholehearted trust. Abandoned in the character and the promises of God. Now, maybe you find yourself in that place of great doubt. Part of what I'm praying for you today is that God would remind you that he's got so much more for you. He's got so much more for us. I pray that God will increase your faith. Increase your faith. And when I mean increase your faith, here's what I mean. That he will increase your assurance and confidence in the promises of God. That he will, listen, increase your reliance and your resting on the gospel of Jesus Christ. That he will increase your consistency and obedience. That he will increase your clarity on the object

of our faith. Friends, God wants you and me to cultivate mountain-moving faith. And the way we do that, For one is we reject the mask of pretend Christianity. We embrace wholehearted trust in God. And then number three, listen, he tells us how to do it. What does it look like? Number three, he wants us to pray for the impossible. When is the last time you prayed for the impossible? Look at the text with me. Here's the last verse. And if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. Prayer is the visible representation of faith. In the New Testament, faith is not just understood in your brain. When Jesus encounters people in the New Testament, the centurion, for instance, do you know what the text says? It says that Jesus saw his faith. He didn't hear it, he saw it. Faith has to be shown, faith has to be demonstrated. We don't earn our way to Jesus with our works, but we demonstrate that he's real by the way that we live. And the primary way that you demonstrate whether or not you have faith in your life is, listen, is through prayer. Prayer is a visible representation of faith, faith that prays with boldness. And so when Matthew uses that metaphor of moving mountains,

that's a Semitic metaphor that essentially means impossible things. But Jesus invites you and me to pray for impossible mountains to be moved. Now, listen, I'm not talking about the kind of prayers. Sometimes people hear this kind of message and they're just like, they just wanna increase their material possessions. God, give me that Ferrari, I believe. Is that what he's talking about here? No, no, because Matthew 21 is part of a larger context. Jesus already taught his disciples how to pray in Matthew 6, the Lord's Prayer. He teaches us that when we pray, we align our heart to the will of the Father, to the kingdom of God. We pray for the things that please the heart of God, for the kingdom of God, kingdom-oriented dreams. And it still includes your daily needs. It includes the desires of your heart. And we also learn that God likes persistent prayer. All of this is found in the greatest sermon that Jesus ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount. And maybe you hear that, you hear, pray for impossible prayers. You're watching this at one of the campuses. You're like, Carlos, listen, I have faith in Christ, but something happened along the way and I just kinda stopped praying bold prayers. And maybe the reason that you stopped praying this way

is because when you prayed an impossible prayer, God said no. Friends, I want you to know that I've lived through that same experience of praying for the sickness of a loved one. To go away with faith, with people. And God still said no. I don't know the no's that you have gotten in your life, but here's what I know. The enemy wants you to remain in a place of prayerlessness so that you don't get yeses on the other side. Part of what I've been praying for you is that maybe for some of you, if you've gotten no's and it's broken your heart, maybe there's been a sense of a fracturing of your faith. Friends, God wants to renew that in you today. God wants to lift you from that place of faithlessness and prayerlessness and once again to come back to this place of wholehearted faith. I remember when I was going through that kind of a journey in my own life and I would ask myself the questions, God, I serve you, I love you, I give, I do all of these things that you've asked me to do. Why are you not coming through on this promise? And through the tears, through the doubts and through the pain, listen, God took me to the place where I had to ask myself the question, where does my help come from? I lift my eyes unto the hills. And in those places of pain, you know what, Jesus, that he met me with his truth. One of the truths that I learned is this, that God is for me, but life is not about me. Friends, you know this, right? God is for you, but life is not about you.

I read the New Testament and I saw that even Paul did not get some of his prayers answered. You know that, right? Listen, the Bible, this is not false advertising. People suffer here. You know this. John the Baptist, he didn't get his prayer answered. He was beheaded for his faith, but friends, all of the men and women of the Bible, what you see in men and women of the Bible who have mountain-moving faith is that even when they get a no, they're still praying. They're still praying because God is still good and he's still on his throne. And there are many yeses that have yet to be answered. And so, friend, let me ask you, have you stopped praying impossible prayers? This is what God wants for you. Maybe today what you need to do is you need to begin to once again pray for impossible things. For God to move a mountain, and I don't know what kind of mountains you've brought in here with you today at all of our campuses, listen. Maybe there's the mountain of a broken relationship that needs to be restored, but it feels impossible. Maybe it's that prodigal child that you've stopped praying for because it just feels impossible. It's the forgiveness for the hurt that somebody else has caused you that feels impossible. What are the mountains that you've brought in here today that you need to pray about? There's the mountain of seeing the city. Love Jesus for God's power to come down in such a way that every heart will be transformed. That is an impossible prayer. Friends, wherever you are today, I want to invite you. I want you to see that Jesus is inviting us to lift up our eyes, take them off of ourselves, and behold this great God of impossible things. See, the reason we can approach him, the reason we can pray these prayers is because God already moved the greatest mountain, didn't he?

What is the greatest mountain? It was the mountain of sin and death and the grave. The mountain of your sin and mine, the things that we have done, the things that we have thought, the shame that we can carry because of the things that we've done or the things that have happened to us. It says in the text, in the Scriptures, that nails were driven through his hands, and he was hoisted up onto a cross, and a crown of thorns was put on his head, and that he shed his blood so that all of that sin and all of that shame would be wiped away clean so that you and I could become sons and daughters. And when the disciples had lost all hope, Sunday came, and the greatest mountain of all was moved because Jesus rose again. And friends, let's pray. Listen, before you clap, hold on, if you believe in the resurrected Jesus, if you believe in the God who did the impossible, then why wouldn't you come to him with impossible prayers? Why would you come to him with a half heart? Don't you see? We live this life by faith. Do you believe this? Do you believe in the risen savior? It's he who wants you and me to cultivate mountain moving faith for the impossible. A.W. Tozer, he was a famous writer. He says this, unbelief says some other time, but not now. Some other place, but not here. Some other people, but not us. Here's a paraphrase of then what he says about faith. It says, anything he did anywhere else, he can do here. Anything he did any other time, he can do now. And anything he ever did for other people, he can do for us. Do you believe this? Friends, here's what we're going to do now.

We're going to pray for impossible things. At every campus in just a moment, I'm going to invite you to come to the kneelers, wherever they may be, and we are going to exercise, to put into practice what God is teaching us in this text, because listen, he wants to cultivate in you the kind of faith that believes him for impossible things. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for the promises that you have given us, Lord. Right now, by faith, we receive them and we say yes and amen to what you have said. I want to pray specifically for any person who is listening to this message that feels like their faith has been fractured. Friend, maybe it was you who got a very difficult note in your prayer life, and today, listen, God wants to restore your faith in him. Heavenly Father, I pray in the name of Jesus. If that's you, I want you to receive it. In the name of Jesus, I pray for those whose faith has been broken. God, that you today would restore their hearts once again. I pray that today they would experience the love of the Father, inviting them to come back home with a wholehearted faith. God, I pray for those who are here and at all the campuses who maybe they've just been pretending. Friend, if that's you, I want to invite you to take off your mask, turn from your sin, and embrace real faith in Christ. Then finally, Lord, we bring our mountains to you, these impossible prayers, Lord. Father, please increase our confidence in you. Give us boldness to pray impossible prayers for ourselves, for our families, for this church, for this city, and for our world. We declare now, we believe in your power. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. I'm

going to turn around you now. God, thank you for being with us. We thank you for being with us. We that we are together today with you are