Praying in Faith

Beloved, when we get on our knees and we cry out to God and we give Him the concerns of our heart, the first thing we can know for sure, He hears it.

The second thing we know for sure is He answers it. Dr. R.C. Sproul takes us back to the Gospel of Mark chapter 11 to show us what Jesus meant when He said, Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

Here's R.C. Last week, if you recall, we looked at the cursing of the fig tree and Jesus' cleansing of the temple in Jerusalem, and we considered the parallel between the fig tree and the temple that both in fact on the outside claim to be fruitful and productive, but in fact were barren. The fig tree of figs, the temple of godliness. And immediately after the disciples see that the fig tree had withered to its roots, Jesus responds to their questions as we read in verse 22, Jesus answered and said to them, Have faith in God. This is an imperative, a command from our Lord to His disciples and by extension towards us.

Let me just comment at the outset. To put our trust in God is not a religious option that we choose to do in order to be spiritual or to have some kind of personal relationship with Jesus. Trusting God is the obligation of every creature made in His image. It is a moral and ethical command as well as a spiritual duty because not to trust God is to impugn the integrity of His Word, His promises, and His character. What possible justification could there be that any creature of an eternal omnipotent God would have the audacity not to trust the Word of their Creator? So Jesus casts this instruction in the form of a command, have faith, that is have trust.

The next part is not so easy. I ask myself as I read this text, self, let me see. Why did Jesus at this point after the cursing of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple give this imperative, give this command to His disciples? What's the connection here? Why did He say, have faith? Well, maybe the answer is found in what follows when He said, I say to you, 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 whatever he says. Now one possible reason for the connection here is this, that the disciples are amazed at the power of Jesus to speak to a fig tree, and as a result of that negative admonishment, the fig tree withers and dies. And maybe they're saying to Jesus, what kind of power is that? And maybe Jesus is saying here, well, it's the power of faith.

If you think that it's something that I can say to a fig tree that no one should ever eat of it again and it withers and dies, let me tell you that if you really have genuine faith, you can say to this mountain, be moved and cast into the middle of the sea, and it will happen. And so perhaps what Jesus is trying to instruct His disciples in at this point is the relationship between faith and power. And I'll explore that a bit in a moment, but there is another possibility to explain why Jesus gives this command to have faith immediately after the episodes of the tree and the temple, that the problem with the fig tree, dear friends, and the problem with the temple was a problem of infidelity, of faithlessness.

The temple, which was supposed to be God's tabernacle where people focused their faith and trust in Him, had become a den of thieves, and it became a monument, dear friends, not to fidelity but to unbelief. And in nature, the fig tree that was to be obedient to its Creator, to bear figs in season when it had the blossoms in their fullness, it also failed in its faithfulness to its Creator. And so it could be the faithlessness of the tree, the faithlessness of the people in the temple that provoked Jesus to this command. It may be something altogether that I haven't thought about, but I believe it's one of these two things, and I'm not sure which, and we can wait until heaven to get the answer, but either one would have sound biblical application to our lives to date. Now what is also problematic about this text is when Jesus said, If a person says to the mountain, Be removed and be cast into the sea, 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, Whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them. Now the occasion for this obviously was again as Jesus had departed from Jerusalem, going back to the Mount of Olives, and from that viewpoint one could look out over the landscape and see the Herodian fortress that was built by King Herod the Great. And even to this day, the ruins are apparent there in the landscape, and for Herod to build that tremendous fortress, again demonstrating his unprecedented building skills in the ancient world, he had his slaves actually dig out a hill and move the dirt from that hill to become the foundation and support structure for this fortress.

In literal terms and engineering terms, Herod the Great moved the mountain to build his fortress. And so the people were aware of that prodigious feat of Herod the Great, and Jesus takes advantage of it here and says, I say to you, you can say to that mountain, be cast into the sea, and if you believe it, it will happen. Then He goes on to say, if you pray, believing whatever you pray for, you will have.

Now you know, dear friends, that there is a whole theology that has permeated the Christian world in our day that is based almost exclusively on this particular text. The Word of Faith movement in our day and the movement that teaches what we call name it and claim it or some forms of faith healing say all you have to do to change the external world around you is to believe it, to claim it, and it will be so. Now it's not surprising to me, dear friends, that this kind of movement has emerged at a time in our culture where the New Age movement at the same time has permeated the secular world. Now one of the primary functions of that movement of the New Age is the assumption that we can by using the focus of our imagination, imaging properly, and projecting our images outwardly can actually change the world around us. Visualize world peace. That's all you have to do is sort of focus on world peace, and we're going to get world peace.

My favorite parody of that is the statement, visualize world, W-H-I-R-L-E-D, PEAS, P-E-A-S. And if you look at that long enough, you're going to see PEAS flying around in a cycle. What is at the root of New Age and in many corresponding Christian religious movements in our time that have been far more influenced by New Age thinking than Christians realize is at bottom magic, where abracadabra, mind over matter, we can change the world around ourselves. And here's the biblical justification. Jesus said if you believe strong enough, you can make mountains go into the sea, and whatever you believe, if you believe it truly, you will have it. Now what's wrong with this picture?

Well here's the problem. In the New Testament, Jesus as well as the apostles, not to mention the Old Testament teaching, gives us a wealth of instruction about prayer, about the power of prayer, about the importance of when we pray to pray, trusting God who is the one who listens to our prayer and trusting God for the answers to those prayers. And so any particular terse, aphoristic statement like this has to be understood in the light of all of the teaching of prayer in the New Testament, all of the qualifications that the New Testament gives about what God listens to in our prayers.

If we just lift this verse out of this particular context and ignore the rest of the teaching of the New Testament, you get into this magical business of name it and claim it. Another text similar to it is that if any two of you agree on any one thing, it shall be done for you. How many of us agree that we'd like to see a cure that we'd like to see a cure for all kinds of cancer by tomorrow morning? Well, that takes care of that.

What else would you like to fix? Now again, those statements about any two people agreeing also have to be understood in light of what else the Bible teaches us about prayer, that we are to pray according to the will of God. What does that mean? That means that we are not to pray for unethical gain. Believe it or not, a few years ago I saw a man interviewed on a national talk show who had built a brothel in the desert in Nevada, and he gave his testimony and he gave his testimony on national television. He said, when I started this enterprise, I dedicated it to God. And I said, God, if you will prosper me in this illicit industry, I will give you ten percent of my earnings.

And what do you think has happened? God has made this a very successful enterprise. Now God is in the prostitution business.

And the only thing that was stranger than this man's teaching was that he actually seemed to believe it. You don't ask God to prosper you in unethical endeavors. But this is the problem that we have. Now what is Jesus saying about the relationship between faith and answer to prayer? Beloved, when we get on our knees and we cry out to God and we give Him the concerns of our heart, first thing we can know for sure, He hears it. Second thing we know for sure is He answers it.

And His answers are always perfect. But we have this idea that if He doesn't do what we ask Him to do, our prayers are not answered. No. Just like Jesus agonizing, perspiring drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane pleaded with the Father that that cup may pass from Him, and the Father answered Him. And the answer was no.

The answer was no. And what was Jesus' answer to the Father's answer? Jesus' answer was yes.

If you say no to My request, I say yes to what you want Me to do. That's what the prayer of faith is. The prayer of faith is trusting God. It's not magic. Now we also have to understand that there are many, many promises that are given to us in Scripture that when we pray with respect to those promises, it is our duty to pray believing that the answer will come.

Let me give you an example. Many years ago, I had a woman visit me when I was working in a church. She was driven by unrelieved guilt feelings for a sin that she had committed in the past. And she says, I'm paralyzed by this guilt.

What can I do? And I said, Well, the only possible cure I know of for guilt is forgiveness, and the only necessary condition I know of forgiveness is repentance. And what you need to do is that you need to confess this sin to God, repent of it, and ask for His forgiveness. And she became instantly irritated. She said, I thought you were a theologian.

I said, And? She was looking for some technical, academic, sophisticated answer to her moral dilemma, something that she could not expect to find from people in her prayer group. She says, Don't you realize that I've asked God fifty times to forgive me for this sin, and I'm still overwhelmed by my guilt? I said, Well, you've prayed fifty times. It won't hurt you to pray one more time. Only this time I'd like to ask you to pray for something different from what you've been praying for. And she said, What? I'd like you to ask God to forgive you for your arrogance. What?

What do you mean arrogance? I've been the most contrite, penitent person that I know. I've humbly debased myself before God fifty times begging Him for my forgiveness. I said, Well, let's back up from this for a second. What does God say?

I'm going to read the text. It says, If you confess your sin, God is faithful and just to forgive you of that sin and to cleanse you of all unrighteousness. Is that what God says?

Yes. And you have confessed your sin, but you don't feel forgiven because you don't believe that God spoke the truth. Maybe everybody else can get rid of their guilt by confession and repentance, but not you.

You have to go to the rack fifty times. You have to pay for your sin, never mind the atonement of your Savior. Don't you see how arrogant that is to think that you require something more than the forgiving grace of God? That's what I'm talking about, praying in faith. If God says, If you do A, and I will do this, if you confess your sins, I will forgive you of your sins, then you trust God and you confess your sins. There's no reason for anybody in this room to be going through life paralyzed by unrelieved guilt. Why don't you trade that guilt in for forgiveness?

That's what the gospel is all about. I mentioned several years ago to this congregation the experience I had thirty years ago from a very prosperous psychiatrist who was very serious when he offered me at that time a hundred thousand dollars if I would join his practice. And he was serious.

Thirty years ago, a hundred thousand dollars is a good salary. And I said, Why in the world do you want me to where? I said, I don't know anything about psychiatry. He said, R.C., ninety percent of the patients that come to my practice are people dealing with unresolved guilt. They don't need a psychiatrist.

They need a priest. And you understand forgiveness. You understand guilt. That's why I need somebody like you in my practice.

Isn't that incredible? We are a nation of such guilt-ridden people, and the usual cure that the preachers tell you is, Oh, you're not guilty. Don't worry about it. That's the kind of thing that the false prophets taught in the Old Testament. Jeremiah said, They heal the wounds of the daughter of Zion slightly.

That doesn't help. When you're guilty, denying your guilt will never relieve your soul. The only cure is forgiveness. And the prayer of faith trusts the God of grace to forgive us of our sins when we ask Him. You know, I'm a Protestant who knows what he's protesting. When Luther at the time of the Reformation left the Roman Catholic Church, he got rid of the sacrament of penance, but he didn't get rid of the confessional.

You know why? Because he knew that the people needed somebody to say to them in the name of Jesus, te absolvo, you're forgiven because our grasp of the grace of forgiveness is so weak. Trust God is what Jesus said. One of my favorite all-time illustrations. You've heard it before if you've been around much. It comes from Jim Boice. He told the story of the explorer who fell off the side of a cliff, two thousand feet to the bottom of the chasm. And as he started to fall, he reached out and he grabbed a slender twig that was coming out of the side of the mountain, and he held onto it, and the roots were starting to pool free from the earth. And in his desperation, he screamed to heaven, saying, Is there anybody up there who can help me? And then this voice came from heaven, Yes, I can help you.

Trust me. Let go of the branch. The man looked down again into the abyss, looked back up to heaven and said, Is there anybody else up there? I love that story because sometimes, dear friends, that's what Christian faith is.

It means hanging on by your fingernails when everything seems to be against us, when the only one left to trust is our Creator and our Redeemer. Then quickly, 25, Whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him. Your Father in heaven may also forgive you. Your trespasses, if you do not forgive, your Father in heaven will not forgive your trespasses.

Very quickly, and I hate to go over this fast because I'm going to say something that you may find completely outrageous. I don't believe that this text or any text in the New Testament teaches that it is our moral obligation to forgive people who have sinned against us unilaterally without their repentance. If you look through the whole teaching of Scripture about confronting your brother if they've sinned against you, the whole structure of church discipline, the whole right and privilege that Christians are given whereby they have the right to seek restitution as we heard this morning in the Word of God, that it doesn't mean that if somebody harms you that you have to say, I forgive you, never mind, go ahead. We may do that, but the point here is the analogy between our forgiving and God's forgiving us. God doesn't just forgive us unilaterally. God requires repentance. But when we repent as I've just labored to you, He does forgive. And what is in view here in other times when Jesus teaches, where we have been forgiven through the grace of God when we repent, somebody injures us, somebody offends us, they apologize, they confess their sin, we won't forgive it. We hold the grudge. We hold it against them.

We want vengeance. If that's our spirit, that's what we can expect from God. The point that Jesus makes if you look at the whole teaching of forgiveness and repentance here is that every Christian is to be standing ready at any moment to forgive fully and finally any offense, real or imagined, against us if the person who have violated us repents.

That's Dr. R.C. Sproul with an in-depth look at Mark chapter 11, verses 20 through 25. Jesus dealt with several important issues in these verses, and it's our privilege to walk through them verse by verse with Dr. Sproul. Each Sunday here on Renewing Your Mind, we're working our way through the entirety of Mark's Gospel, and our resource offered today is a great help as you study there at home. When you give a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries, we'll be happy to provide you with the digital download of Dr. Sproul's 400-page commentary on the Gospel of Mark. You can go online to request it at renewingyourmind.org. Again, that's renewingyourmind.org. I hope you've enjoyed this sermon series over the past few months. You can also point friends and family to it by sharing this message on Facebook, on Twitter, or by email. Just look for the share button at the top of the page at renewingyourmind.org. Renewing Your Mind is the listener-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries, and I hope you'll join us again next Sunday as we continue this series from Mark's Gospel.