Leaves Without Fruit: What Jesus Sees Inside the Temple

All right. Well, hey, welcome everybody. My name is Ryan. I'm the youth pastor here at Journey. These are the shoes John was talking about. That's right. It's funny because, you know, sometimes you get stuck in weekends as a youth pastor. And last year I preached on the 4th of July, which was on a Sunday. And so my wife bought these shoes for that. I was like, when am I ever going to wear them again? Here we are. You know, so this looks like my weekend. Well, not to date myself, but I grew up spending a lot of time in a store called Blockbuster. Now, I know here in Bend we're still familiar because we have the last one, which is great. But this was a video store, and when I first started going there were these things called VHS. And even my kids were like, dad, what's that?

And I'm like, oh man, yep, getting up there now. But I did, I would go there because I had friends who worked there that were older than me. And so I would go and hang out just to wait for them to get off their shift, and I would roam the aisles, I would look at video games, read through player guides, all of these things, and I remember the day that Blockbuster came to my town, I lived in a small little town, and it came, and I was like, yes, and so I would go and rent movies, and our family would do this, and we'd do family movie nights, because before Blockbuster came in, we only had what was called Fillmore Video. Now, this place was great, but they were a small, independent-owned video store, which meant that they had like two copies of new releases. So if you wanted to see that next big blockbuster, man, you had to be there on time

before everyone else to get it. So now that Blockbuster was here, we could get those movies whenever we wanted. And it just became a very familiar store for me. Now, after high school, I had another friend who worked at that location in my hometown. I was going to college and turning for the church and my parents signed up for this new kind of offer that they started, which was called Unlimited Rentals. For a monthly subscription, you can have as many movies as you wanted. And believe me, I took advantage of my parents' subscription. I would go in there and then just start roaming the aisles and renting movies and then watching them, coming back sometimes the same day to rent. I know, I was young and had lots of free time. But here's the thing, I remember one day I went in and my friend was working and her boss was on break.

And she goes, hey, do you wanna work here? And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, let's get a shirt and we'll pretend you work here. And I was like, yes, I do. So she got me a blockbuster shirt, made me a name tag, and I went behind the counter and what do you know, a customer comes in. And they come in, they go, hey, I'm looking for this movie. Now, by this time, I knew where everything was in that store. So I'm walking, I'm like, let me help you. I'll show you, it's right over here on aisle four. You know, and I take them over there and I'm explaining the different movies, explaining the movie they're about to rent, giving them my own critical, you know, view of the film. Also then I come back thinking like, my job is done. You know, I've already lived this dream of being a blockbuster employee. And I get back behind the counter. She goes, well, our new employee is gonna check you out.

I'm like, I'm gonna what? So she has me go to the computer and just walks me through this checkout process and I do it. And at that point I'm like, I gotta get out of here because if your boss comes and you get fired, I'm gonna feel really bad. So I left. Now here's the thing, even though I looked like a Blockbuster employee, even though I had the knowledge of everything about that store, I wasn't an employee. I had none of the benefits, right? I wasn't getting paid by Blockbuster. I wasn't a part of their team, their staff, I would get no check. You see, there are times in all of our lives when we want people to look at us a certain way. We want people to see this perception that we've built of ourselves, but the truth is

on the inside, it's not who we are. So even though I look like an employee, I had knowledge of being an employee, I wasn't. There's a disconnect. Now, as we've been going through the gospel of Mark, we've seen time and time again where where Jesus talks about this exact thing, where we appear on the outside in a way that's not how we are on the inside. And Jesus, as we've seen throughout this gospel, cares more about what's on the heart than what we perceive to others. Now, before we jump into today's passage, I wanna give us some context of what's happening here because it's important. So we are coming to Jesus' last week of ministry.

So he's been with his disciples for now three years, and he's coming to Jerusalem for the last time. This is called the triumphal entry, right? Where Jesus comes into Jerusalem, people have heard about the miracles, his resurrections of Lazarus and all this stuff. And so now they're proclaiming, they're lining the streets as he comes into town saying hosanna, which means savior, rescuer. They're laying coats down and palm branches. So it's like this massive parade as Jesus enters the city. And that's the week that Jesus is beginning. This week that's going to eventually lead up to his betrayal, his arrest, his death, and his resurrection. Now what we'll see as we begin this passage is that Jesus, even though he came into Jerusalem,

he's not staying in Jerusalem. He's staying up in the hills of Bethany, which is about two miles outside the city. So let's dive in, and we're going to begin by reading Mark 11, 12 to 25, and we're going to read it all up front, and then we're going to break it down together. So it starts in verse 12, on the following day, when they came from Bethany, he, Jesus, was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree and leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, may no one ever eat fruit from you again. And his disciples heard this.

And they came to Jerusalem and he entered the temple and 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. 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 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 they passed by in the morning.

they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. And 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. 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 of your trespasses.

Now thank you for sitting through, that's a long chunk. Sometimes we break it up, but today it was so important to see it all together. But now we'll kind of dive into the text a little bit and kind of see what this means for us. Now, if I'm being honest, I had to study this a lot, because I am not a botanist and nor do I know fig trees very well, but now I feel like an expert. So I know a lot about fig trees, more than I think I need to know, which hopefully some day during coffee, I'll just bring this information up and bless someone. Now, Jesus says that he, as he's approaching the city, right, they're coming from Bethany, he's hungry. I love that, Jesus is relatable. He gets hungry and he sees a fig tree in leaf from a distance. There's nothing like seeing something that you were like, I'm hungry for that like or if you're like after service, I'm going to the pancake house, you know

But then you get there and they're closed and like no Like you feel right like that disappointment, so here's Jesus He sees this fig tree and it's in leaf which means that he's expecting there to be fruit and when he goes He says there's nothing but leaves now mark adds this kind of note that says it was not the season for figs And this is the line that really kind of gets us because a lot of people we have personified the fig tree to be this like innocent thing and then we're like wow this poor fig tree gets cursed and withered all because it wasn't the season for figs but as I investigated I learned the seasons and rhythms of fig trees so from March to April fig trees would begin to grow what's called knops or in the Hebrew they're known as

pagim and these pagim were these little fruits and as soon as these started growing leaves would would begin to grow from the same place and the fruit the the fig tree leaves were really big and soft and so you'd be able to see them but they would grow at the same time now these little nops would be unripened until about June July the summertime and that's when they get sweet and delicious and that's when they would harvest figs for all the different things and so they would have multiple seasons of figs and so So when Mark here is saying like it wasn't the season for figs, what Mark was telling us is it wasn't time for the figs to be ripe. So he wasn't saying, oh, there shouldn't be any figs on this tree. Instead he's saying, no, this would be normally the time when those green little knops would

be there. Now, even though we think like, oh, unripe fruit, not good. If you've ever bitten to an unripe fruit and you're like, oh, that's a rock, like you know, right? The fruit tells you, it is not time to eat me. these figs, these unripened figs, they actually could be eaten. And by the natives, many of them would. So because they were just around, fig trees were plentiful throughout Israel, that they would just find them and eat them even before the harvest. We actually see in Scripture where people would eat these unripened figs. Hosea 910 talks about how they would eat them, so even before the season of harvest. But when he gets there, they're not even these knops on in the tree, it is just leaves.

Which means that this tree will bear no fruit. Come fig harvest season, there will be no figs to harvest. So we now can come to this conclusion about why did Jesus even curse this fig tree to begin with? Why not just let it go? Well, we see that in scripture, the fig tree has actually been used a lot. Actually, the first time that we see the fig tree mentioned is in Genesis 3 where you know Adam and Eve they eat the forbidden fruit and they're like we're naked so what does it say it happens they pick the fig leaves they knit them together and they wear them throughout scripture the fig tree is used as a sign of abundance and blessing and it's also

used as a sign of judgment so for example Jeremiah 8 13 uses the idea of figs in judgment he says when I would gather them declares the Lord there There are no grapes on the vine nor figs on the fig tree. Even the leaves are withered and what I have gave them has passed away." So Jeremiah is talking about how Israel is going to be taken over by Babylon because they are not bearing the fruit that God intended them to bear. So we see that this tree can represent more than just the tree itself. And Mark uses this encounter of the fig tree and he puts it at a specific place in his gospel right before and right after the cleansing of the temple. tells us that Jesus wants us to build this connection between a tree that

looks like it has everything going for it, that it looks like it's gonna be fruitful and yet it's not. So we see the tree and what it's supposed to represent. Now we're gonna come to the temple. So Jesus it says as they came to Jerusalem he enters the temple and 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. Now I know all of you spent all morning studying Leviticus and Deuteronomy and the temple rituals and sacrifices and no, I know that's a hard one to work through but this is the kind of stuff that helps us understand

why Jesus is doing what he's doing. You see we come into the temple and we see him flipping tables and telling people not to buy and sell things, and yet, what they were doing was actually biblical. They were doing the things that they were commanded to do in the law. You see, this is the time of Passover, meaning that thousands of people are journeying to Jerusalem to make their sacrifices. Now, unlike now, they couldn't just hop in a minivan, throw their goats in the back or lambs in the back and drive to Jerusalem. They had to caravan down. Not everyone could bring their livestock or their sacrifices to the temple. And if you were poor, some of the sacrifices you were offered if you couldn't afford a lamb would be pigeons or doves.

Now, I don't know about you, but it's hard to keep those things contained. You can imagine getting halfway to Jerusalem. Hmm, it's the last time we let our kids carry the doves. You know, like, so they provided sacrifices sacrifices for the people who were traveling there, and they knew that they would be there. They also had money changers, because one of the commandments in the Old Testament was that you were not to offer these coins with images of idols on them, and whose face was stamped over all the coins that were in circulation? Yes, these are the Roman governments. And so they would exchange them for the closest thing that they had to a shekel. And so they would help people exchange this money so they can put that money in the offering.

So they could offer that as a holy sacrifice to God. So now in context, we're like, well, why was Jesus so upset? Why did he go in and disrupt something that was commanded in the scriptures? Well, to help us understand that, I wanna first give us a visual of the temple because a lot of us, we don't have the temple to study or to look at. So the temple consisted of four divisions. And this temple was immense and it was grand. I mean, this thing was beautiful. And so here are the four divisions that it was made up of. The first one, the most important was the Holy of Holies. And this was at the center of the temple.

This was a place where only the high priest could enter once a year for the offering the sacrifices for all of Israel. Now, this is how serious they took it. They would tie a rope around that high priest Because when he passed the curtain, if he was not holy, dead. And I just wonder how long it took him to think about tying a rope around that guy. Like how many people had to go in and we're like we lost another one. We gotta come up with a better system. And so they would. And so here's this most holy of holy place. This is where the Spirit of God would reside in the temple. That's why it was set apart. But then there was another court. It was called the Court of Israel. And now here, only circumcised Jewish males

were allowed to be in this part of the court. Then you had another court outside of that called the Court of Women. And this is where Jewish women could be, but they were still divided yet from the Court of Israel and of the Holy of Holies. Then you had, outside of these courts, was the largest court, which was the Court of the Gentiles. Now, just to give you an idea, this 35 acres of space. That's a lot. But it was surrounded by these massive, beautiful Corinthian pillars. And so you just have this kind of majestic courtyard, this beautiful area. Just to give you an idea of like how big it was, it said it would take three grown men holding hands to be able to wrap around one pillar. And this thing is lined with it.

So, the last thing in here is that they wanted to make sure that even though Gentiles had a place to come in and offer sacrifices and worship, that they would never come to the place of the Holy Sanctuary. That was the first three that I mentioned. And so what they did was they built a wall, a five-foot wall, around the sanctuary. and on it in repeated intervals was a phrase in Greek, Latin, and Aramaic, and this is what it said, no foreigner may enter within the railing and enclosure that surround the temple. Anyone apprehend shall have himself to blame for his consequent death.

Over and over. So you can imagine being a Gentile, a non-Jew, coming into this place of worship, seeing this grand temple, being like, I've heard about this Yahweh, like I want to see what it's about. And then you see this wall surrounding the sanctuary, giving them this warning, if you cross this, you'll only have yourself to blame for your death. Very welcoming. But this was so serious that even the Roman guards who would have been present in the court of Gentiles, they obeyed and respected this edict. So now that we have our kind of mental visual of the temple, we have an understanding of this, I wanna give you some of the business side of the temple, and this will tie into why Jesus was so upset.

The temple, during this time, was a business. They were making money. They were selling animals. You wanna know how much? Well, according to Josephus, in his writings, he records that the temple operations for an event like Passover would sacrifice 255,000 lambs. Some of the other church fathers in early writings describing the sacrificial time of Passover, said that it was almost unbearable because the amount of blood and constant smell of the burnt offerings. And so you can imagine that this, this temple that God designed to be a place of worship, a place where all people can give him glory

has now become focused on money, on profit, on getting people through as much as they can. And it's here, it's in the court of the Gentiles. That's where Jesus disrupts everything. And what I love about Jesus is that he doesn't just come in and flip tables, you know, which he could have. He could have just flipped the tables, stopped the operation and walked out. But he doesn't. It says then he began to teach them. And who's them? The Gentiles. He begins to proclaim to them, and he uses two Old Testament passages. The first is Isaiah 56, seven, which is these I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices

will be accepted on my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. The second is Jeremiah 7, 11. Has his house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord. So Jesus is making two really big points here for them. One, the temple is supposed to be the house of prayer for all people. And when you look around, you see division. You see barriers, people with limited access to God. And then he calls out the religious leaders who are running this show. And he says, you have made this a den of robbers.

The den is the stake house where you put all your loot, all your money. He's calling out the corruption that has taken place in his home. You see, the temple stopped bearing fruit. The temple was always supposed to be a place where all nations, all people would be able to come and discover and encounter a living God, but instead it became a barrier between the non-Jews and God. Now, part of this trip to the temple was expected of the Messiah. Actually, a lot of people in the Old Testament,

the prophets, they believed that man, this Messiah was going to restore and cleanse the temple. But how people in the modern time interpreted that was that Jesus would come and kick out the Gentiles. that He would take away every influence that they had on the temple and restore it once again. But Jesus defies expectation and reminds them that no, no, no, God's plan has always been about the redemption of all people. So even though the temple and all its grandeur, all its beauty on the outside, it was divided, corrupt, and off mission on the inside. The dependence was no longer on God. The dependence of the temple was on the chief priests and the scribes, it was on

themselves. The temple was fruitless like the fig tree. And what happened to the fig tree? It withered. What happened to the temple? Well, 40 years later it was destroyed. And to this day has not been rebuilt. Then the next day they're on the way back to Jerusalem. And Peter sees the fig tree all withered and and destroyed. He's like, Jesus, look! The tree you cursed is gone. And this is how Jesus answers them, right? Jesus could have said, yep, that's right. Mess with me? Gone. That's not what Jesus does.

He stops and He answers them. And He starts talking about faith. Prayer and forgiveness. Have faith in God. Man, pray without doubting because you know who you're praying to. When you ask, ask in faith because you know that the one you're asking can do all things. That what is impossible for you is possible for Him. And remember to forgive because you have been forgiven much. You see Jesus is reminding them of the true purpose of our calling. That is we have a hope and a God who loves us, who wants to redeem us, who wants us

to be holy. And I know what you're thinking, here we are 2,000 years later and we still struggle with this tension and perception versus reality. We struggle with looking one way on the outside and being something completely different on the inside. I don't know how many of you have ever tried to find a place to rent or a home to buy. But we have this thing called the internet now, right? And we pull it up and we go to Redfin or any of these sites and we start scrolling through them like, oh, that's a great house. And we start going through, we're like, yeah, this is good, the pictures look great. And she's like, we're gonna go see this house. And two years ago, when I was moving to Bend, this was our story. We sold our house in 24 hours, and we're like, this is gonna be easy. Eight months later, we finally close on the house here.

I can't tell you how many homes we saw. And some of them were great, and we put offers that didn't work, but some, some, we saw the photos and we're like, this is exactly what we want. And then we get there, and we start touring the inside, And we're like, oh, yep, that's a DIY project. Yeah, that doesn't look legal. Yep, that's mold. You know what I mean? Like all of a sudden, you start seeing the little things. You get on the inside and you see, well, this is not how it looked from the outside. Same with anything on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist. My wife and I bought like three tables, thinking like, that's the one. And then we go and we buy them. Like, that's not the one. Like we had to stop buying tables on Facebook Marketplace. You see, we need to remember that all of us, man, when we give our lives to Jesus,

we become the new temple. 1 Corinthians 3, 16 says this, don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? This is huge. We are now at the temple, a place that was set apart, designed specifically brick by brick For God to put His Spirit in and now God says, I am giving you the Holy Spirit, the third part of the Trinity. I think we forget about this. That the God who spoke all things into creation, the God who is all powerful, all knowing, all present, the God who has the ability to forgive all sins, that God lives in you when you have Jesus.

So when we have the Holy Spirit, we have access to the fruit of His Spirit. that fruit, that love, the joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control, all of those things we have. Now here's the thing with the fruit of the Spirit. Sometimes we call them fruits. And we think that we can pick and choose. Like some of us, we wake up and we're like, today I'm gonna live with a little bit more love. Today I'm gonna focus on the peace aspect. If you have kids, it's patience all the time. And kindness and goodness is all of them. But here's the thing about the fruit of the Spirit singular, when you have the Holy Spirit, He gives you all of these. You have access to all of them.

And all of them will be challenged by this world. But you are a temple. You are a temple that has the Holy Spirit in it, meaning that fruit is always there, always accessible to you. That means there is no moment you cannot love. No moment you can't find joy. No moment you can't find peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And man, this is where the world will get us though. The world's gonna try to tell us that we are divided, that we have to live into the differences of who we are because these are the things that will really define us. And yet, Jesus said, no, you were never meant to be divided. Galatians 3, 28, Paul reminds his audience that neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free,

There's no male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus. Man, when Jesus reformed the temple, He meant to reform the church and the world. And He did that by saying, you will no longer, these things no longer divide you, separate you. Rather, you are one in Christ. Our temples can be what the temple that was built was always intended to be, which is a witness to all nations. No matter who they are or where they come from, meaning that tomorrow when you're at your barbecues or fireworks shows or friends or families, you have an opportunity. You have an opportunity to be a witness, to point to the one who's changed your life and who could change theirs.

And when we recognize this, we will begin to see the fruit of the work of God happening in our lives. But we do live in a world with barriers. Romans 1 21 to 23 Says for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened claiming to be wise They became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things Church we live in a world right now that is exchanging the glory of the immortal God for the pleasures of this world We are living in a time where they're saying,

look, yeah, sure, you know there's a God, but don't follow Him. Rather, follow us. Follow these things. Do what you wanna do. Live the way you wanna live. Do those things, but when we do that, we're exchanging the glory of God for the things of this world. When we do that, we become fig trees with beautiful leaves and no fruit. But unlike the fig tree, we still have hope and we are a part of that hope. See it starts with us. It starts with the church. Now we have to be honest with ourselves. We have to be willing to truly look at our lives and say, is there fruit or not?

And I get it. We come into this place and we don't want to do that. We just want to look good like, hey, yes, we love Jesus. Now I've worked for churches in California, Washington, and now Oregon. I worked for churches of a few hundred to five thousand. Doesn't matter where you are, the one thing that I see over and over again is that there are people who show up feeling like they have to play a role in church. But that's not the temple that God created. He called us to be authentic and so when I came to Journey, I found a core value here that had resonated with me like never before. One of our core values here at Journey is relentlessly real.

There's something different when you come to a place that says we want you to come as you are. Meaning that when you walk through these doors, you don't have to put on a smile if you were just fighting in the parking lot. It means that if you've had a hard weekend battling demonic oppression or addiction or whatever it is, that you can come into this place and find hope, find people who are going to pray with you, not people who are going to judge you. You're gonna find people who are going to empty out that spirit that's in their temple and pray it upon you. You see, sometimes we think that being real means that we have to put up a facade and we don't. If we're gonna be a church that Jesus has called us to be, This is something we have to live out.

It means confessing things that we never wanted to confess. It means sharing things that maybe we thought we would never have to share. But when we do that, we take away a foothold of the enemy. When we can admit, here are my addictions, here are my struggles, here are the things that have been oppressing my mind, then we can find hope and liberation. Then we can find freedom in Jesus. And it starts with being relentlessly real. And I understand that we find ourselves in seasons of life where we feel defeated, crushed, empty. There's some of you who are here today, that's you. You're filling those things. And for whatever reason, you found yourself here a journey. And it's in these seasons that we think we have nothing to offer God, nothing to offer

His church, right? We see it. People are like, I just, I can't, I'm done. Too much is going on right now. I can't be there. I can't show up on Sundays. Man, that's a lie. I wanna encourage you this morning that it's often in those times that God will do his greatest works in your lives. I mean, think about it. We see it through scripture. We read it all the time. The greatest heroes of the faith had some of the worst struggles. The greatest king, the most anointed one, was a murderer. There are people who go through really hard times, But it's that dependence that we say, God, I'm putting my dependence on you and not on me. I'm letting go of control and giving it over to you.

When we do that, that is when we see God do some amazing things in our lives. Because when we give God control, others will see it. Second Corinthians 12.9 says this, as Paul was saying, he said, but he said to me, talking about God, my grace is sufficient for you, For my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all more gladly about my weakness so that the power of Christ may rest upon me." I don't like this verse. I don't like it because it means that I have to be vulnerable. It means that God wants to work in the areas of my life that I'm uncomfortable with. I want God to work through my strengths.

I want God to use the things I like to do. But what Paul is saying is, it's those areas, it's in those times, it's in those seasons when we feel empty, when we feel like we don't have it all together, that God says, I will work through you. So Paul says, I acknowledge that when God works through that area, that I will boast all the more because God is the one doing the work in my life. And it is God who produces the fruit in our lives, not us. I don't wanna be a fruitless victory. I want my life to bring glory to Jesus, which means I need to be reminded, we need to be reminded that our bodies are not our own. We are temples and hosts to a holy God,

a holy God who wants to transform our lives to bear fruit. So Journey Church, I wanna encourage you today, be that temple, be that temple that's filled with the Spirit, a Spirit that cannot be defeated, a spirit that cannot be overcome, a spirit that empowers, restores, heals, forgives, a spirit that can do the impossible. Today, whether you've been watching online or you're sitting here and you found yourself here because maybe you were invited and you haven't made that decision to accept Jesus as your savior, I wanna give you that opportunity.

You see, there's some people in here you know God, But the Bible doesn't say for those who know God will be saved, it says for those who believe, those who've accepted Jesus, the grace that he's offered, those will be saved. What happens when we die? As a believer, I know exactly what happens. I get to be with my father. But if you're here today and you struggle with that question, what's gonna happen? Well, right now you can have the answer. You can give your life to Jesus. And there's no magic words, it has nothing to do with me. It's simply you choosing to accept and believe that Jesus was who he said he was, that he was the son of God. He lived the perfect life.

He died on the cross and was raised again. That's it. Jesus says you believe that and eternal life is yours. You're a part of this family. Now this is what I love about that message is that God says once you believe, Once you accept nothing, nothing can separate you from me. Nothing. No addiction, no relationship, no past, no hurt, no failure, no sin. Nothing can separate you from my love ever again. So right now, I just wanna ask, if you're in here right now and you've never accepted Jesus and you want to, put your hand up. Just raise it nice and high.

This just lets me know that you want to receive Jesus, that you want to live into that eternal family. And then we'll celebrate with you and then we'll pray for you. And if you're watching online and you've never made that decision, let us know right in the comments, I want to receive Jesus. And one of our hosts will connect with you. Now, this isn't a moment to pressure you or make you feel uncomfortable. The reason why everyone's still looking is because it's not a shameful thing to give your life to Jesus is actually a glorious thing. It says that in heaven the angels celebrate the whole party whenever one person comes to give their life to Christ.

I wanna thank you for coming here tonight or today and I wanna encourage you, for those of you who are believers, for those of you who've given your life to Jesus, let's be the temples God created us to be. Let's lay down the things that have been barriers our lives to live for him and let's bear fruit. I'm gonna pray and then we're gonna continue on and worship. Dear Jesus, Lord we just thank you for who you are. Lord we thank you for your sacrifice. We thank you that you lived a perfect life and yet laid it down so that we could be restored to you. And then Lord you didn't just leave us helpless, no you gave us your spirit. Can you put a holy God within our holy temples Lord and allowing us to now be the witness that

You always wanted us to be. May we not be content with just knowing you. May we strive so that the world will know you. Jesus, may we hunger and thirst for righteousness. May we live lives that bring you glory. May we not become fruitless fig trees. But Jesus, may we be the sons and daughters that you created us to be. And I pray this in your holy name, amen.