A Living Corpse, Pt. 2

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very gardener knows the difference between a plant that’s growing and a plant that’s just… green.  One looks good, while other is actually producing something. Pastor Nick Gatzke reveals a powerful lesson taken from an unusual encounter between Jesus and a fig tree. Discover what you need to know about how to cultivate a genuinely fruitful life

Please follow with me as we read Mark 11, starting at verse 12, going through verse 25. This is what it says. It says, “on the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. But when he, being Jesus, came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. But he said to it, “may no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.”

“And they came to Jerusalem and he entered the temple and he began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple. And he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a den of robbers.””

“And the chief priests and the scribes heard it, and they were seeking a way to destroy him. For they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. And when evening came, they went out of the city. And as they passed by in the morning, he saw the fig tree. They saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. And Peter remembered and he said to him, “Rabbi, look, the fig tree that you cursed has withered.” And Jesus answered them, “have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, be taken up and thrown into the sea and does not doubt in his heart, but believes what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone so that your father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.””

The temple looked alive on the outside, but it was decaying from the inside out. The attendance was high, maybe an all-time high. And when people come, it must mean that things are successful, right? The finances were strong and the temple was on sure footing. And from a distance, everything looked healthy on the outside. But on the inside, it did not produce what it was supposed to produce. It was like a man who walked up to a fig tree and saw some lush green leaves, but upon further inspection, the tree had no fruit. You see, death on the inside will sooner or later lead to death on the outside.

The cursing of the fig tree is this living parable and a prophecy of the temple. And it says in verse 20, if you look at it with me, that the next day they passed by in the morning and they saw the fig tree withered away from its roots. And Peter remembered and he said to him, “Rabbi, look, the fig tree that you cursed has withered.” Death on the inside led to death on the outside. And as the temple wasn’t fulfilling its intended purpose, the result for it would be the same of the Holy of Holies would eventually be torn in two. And the temple itself would be decimated in just about 60 years. And just as a fruitless fig tree was withered away all the way from the roots, so too the temple system would be completely and utterly destroyed.

So what? What does Jesus showing that the temple had become empty, a dying practice of religion, what does it have to do with us today? Well, the principle behind it actually provides us both with warnings and with opportunities. There’s a warning here to the church. Because just like the temple, a church can look really good on the outside, be rotting away on the inside.

There can be excitement, there can be lively music, there can be a lot of people, a lot of programs, even inspiring messages, all the while internal decay is present that ultimately leads to death. What is that internal decay? Well, internal decay can be a lack of the gospel.

It can be a lack of teaching God’s word, the Bible, and good theology. And as we’ll talk about in a moment, it’s a lack of prayer. There have been plenty of false teachers and pastors and churches that look really good, but they’re actually living corpses spiritually. So just be careful. Be careful for our church, but be careful for certain types of churches. Churches that we sense something is wrong about. Churches who say, oh, they believe different things, but it’s not that big of a deal. People are coming. The show is good, so it must be okay. Not the case. Because death on the inside ultimately leads to death on the outside.

There’s a warning here for us as individuals. Because I think you can imagine what it is like to appear to be thriving on the outside, but really decaying on the inside. Many of us have experienced that emotionally or even physically. But the warning here for us is spiritually. For a while, a person can appear to be one of God’s children to follow King Jesus while still internally living in rebellion against him. We can do the right things. We can go to church. We can treat people well. We can give money to God. But still, on the inside, we can simultaneously live in persistent sin against him that we don’t want to give up. Or maybe we’ve stopped trying to follow Jesus faithfully with our mind and our heart. And on the outside, we just go through the motions. Or perhaps you’ve yet to truly surrender your will and hand over the keys of your life to him. We can look really good on the outside, but have massive decay on the outside.

Is that you? Are you the leafy fig tree who looks good from a distance, but is actually rotting away spiritually on the inside? If so, the warning is for you. Because as you see in Mark 11, what begins as a lack of fruit ultimately leads to spiritual death. But friends, this is where the opportunity arises. Because as Jesus points to the end of the temple, he shows us that he will be the one that ultimately replaces the place where people meet God. He replaces it with the person of himself.

No longer would God’s people need to travel to make a sacrifice to him or to pray to him or to be near to him. Jesus becomes the place where we meet God. He becomes the sacrifice that appeases God’s wrath for our sin. He becomes the way that you experience the nearness of God. And you have access to him not by going to Jerusalem, but you have access to him simply by faith in him. And beyond that, you see that God then, takes what has been destroyed and begins to build a new spiritual temple.

Not one with an outer court for the Gentiles and a separate court for the women and an inner court for the Jews and a holy of holies. Actually, Ephesians chapter two tells us something about what this temple looks like. It’s about a particular group of people. He says, “Through him, we, we all both have access in one spirit to the father so that you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and the members of the household of God in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him, you also are being built together. into the dwelling place for God by the spirit.” So in a very real way, God is building a group of people in local congregations all over the world, even this group of people into a holy temple and a dwelling place for himself by his spirit. Now that puts a lot. of emphasis on what it means to be a part of a local church.

And if you’re not careful, the real preacher in me is about to come out. But you don’t go to church. You don’t come to listen or to sing. You don’t just come to be inspired by messages from the Bible. You come to participate in something that God is building in which he himself dwells. And so we take it with commitment and seriousness and joy and honor because God is here. Beyond that, there’s an opportunity for you to not just be part of a temple that is being built, but in 1 Corinthians 6, it says, “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own. You were bought with a price”… to glorify God in your body. Your body, your physical body becomes the very place where the spirit of God dwells through your faith in Jesus Christ.

You don’t go to God. God comes to you. And he comes to you through faith. In Jesus. And so what is the sign that the temple of your body is truly a temple that is fruitful to God? I mean, we’ve seen a fruitless temple that dies. Jesus cursed it. We want to make sure that if our body is the temple, that it’s a fruitful one.

How’s that fruit displayed? Well, in the temple that Jesus condemned, Part of the reason he condemned it was because it was no longer a place of prayer, but rather a den of thieves. After he cursed the fig tree, he shifts the focus of the disciples back to that idea of faith and of prayer. Look at verse 21. “Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look, the fig tree that you cursed has withered.” And Jesus answered them, “have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain be taken up and thrown into the sea and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. And therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive that you, and if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.””

Now we start to see how all of these things come together. Faith in Jesus leads to a fruitful spiritual life and prayer is evidence of it. Faith in Jesus leads to a fruitful spiritual life and prayer is the evidence of it. Of course it is. How could it be any other way? Prayer is the expression of faith. Prayer is an expression of our dependence on God. And when God’s people pray in line with God’s desires, he answers those prayers. When God’s people exercise faith and God will do what he seeks out to do, God answers those prayers. When God’s people forgive each other, when God meets them in this place of prayerful desire and forgiveness, and displays faith in God, or that displays faith in God, the God who forgives them, well, then he will indeed forgive their sins as well.

Faith, it’s faith. Faith in Jesus leads to a fruitful spiritual life. And prayer is an evidence of that faith. You want to have a fruitful spiritual life? It comes through faith, and that’s it. And you say, “wow”, Pastor Nick, that sounds really overly simplistic. Faith, that’s it? It sounds simplistic, but in the complexities of life, it is anything but simple. Faith in Jesus. forgive you. Faith in God’s provision for your family. Faith that his care for you will be enough when you are ill. Faith that he will protect your children. Faith that when you are overcome with guilt and shame, that God’s grace is enough for you. Faith that when I’m so angry at that person and I feel like there is no way toward reconciliation, that the gospel of Jesus Christ is more powerful than my anger. And the list goes on. And prayer is the evidence of faith. So have faith and pray.

In closing, Watchman Nee describes of a preaching mission to an island off of the South China coast. And there were seven people ministering in the group, including a 16-year-old new convert that he calls Brother Wu. The island is fairly large, containing about 6,000 homes. And there was an old schoolmate of theirs who was the headmaster of the village school, but he refused to house the group when he discovered that they had come to preach the gospel. And so they found lodging with a Chinese herbalist who’d become their first convert. And preaching seemed to be quite fruitless there on the island. And he discovered that it was because of the dedication of the people to an idol that they called Ta Wang.

They were convinced of his power because on the day of his yearly festival and parade, each year the weather was nearly perfect.Every year. When is the procession this year? Young Wu asked, a group that had gathered to hear them preach. And they said, it is fixed for January 11th at 8 a.m. in the morning. Then said the new convert, “I promise you that it will certainly rain on the 11th.” And at that, there was an outburst and cries from the crowd. “That’s enough. We don’t want to hear any more of your preaching. If there is rain on the 11th, then your God is God.”

Watchman, when he had been elsewhere in the village, when the confrontation had taken place, but upon being informed about it, he saw the situation was very serious. He saw the group to come together in prayer. And on the morning of the 11th, there was not a cloud in the sky, but during the grace for breakfast, the sprinkles began to fall and those were followed by a heavy rain. The worshipers of the idol, Ta Wang were so upset that they had placed it in a sedan chair and carried it outdoors, hoping it would stop the rain. And then the rain only increased. And after a short distance, the carriers of the idol slipped and stumbled in the mud, falling and dropping the idol and fracturing its jaw and its left arm. Not its right arm, its left arm. A number of young people turned to Christ as a result of the rain coming in answer to prayer. But the elders of the village made divination and said that the wrong day had been chosen. The proper day for the procession should have been the 14th, not the 11th. And when Nee and his friends heard this, they again went to God in prayer, asking for rain on the 14th and for clear days of preaching until then. That afternoon, the sky cleared and the good days that followed, there were 30 converts.

And on the crucial test day, Nee says, “the 14th broke, another perfect day, and we had good meetings. And as evening approached, we met again at the appointed hour. We quietly brought the matter to the Lord’s remembrance.” And not a minute late, his answer came with torrential downpour and floods as before.

The power of the idol over the islanders was broken. The enemy was defeated. Believing prayer had brought a great victory. Conversions followed. The impact upon the servants of God who had witnessed his power would continue to enrich their Christian service from that time on. That is the type of thing that God does when his people pray. Faith in Jesus leads to a fruitful spiritual life and prayer. is the evidence of it.

So let’s pray even now. Father, we desire fruit in our lives. Help us to be people solely dependent upon you. Help us to have faith applied in all of the circumstances and help us to grow in confident believing prayer that you would continue to do your work in this way in us and through us. In your mighty name we pray, amen.

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This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy, but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wordin