Because of Christ, that old covenant religion was cast into the deepest seas and replaced by something so much better: the fount of Living Water! Jesus’ faith unleashed His Kingdom of salvation upon the world by putting away the types and shadows that came before. That is what this verse is trying to get at and that is why its true interpretation cannot be attacked by the moths and rust of materialism.

INTRODUCTION
If you have been a Christian for any length of time you have probably heard someone say: “if you have enough faith, then you can move mountains.” This, of course, sounds pretty epic until you nearly burst a blood vessel in your forehead trying to move a small ant hill in your back yard. It is then that you realize something. Either, you don’t have enough faith to move anything or you come to see that you have misunderstood this passage and need to relearn what it means. Today, I want to help you with the latter.
Here is the text in its immediate context.
18 Now in the morning, when He was returning to the city, He became hungry. 19 Seeing a lone fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it except leaves only; and He said to it, “No longer shall there ever be any fruit from you.” And at once the fig tree withered. 20 Seeing this, the disciples were amazed and asked, “How did the fig tree wither all at once?” 21 And Jesus answered and said to them, “Truly I say to 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 say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will happen. 22 And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.” – Matthew 21:18-22
As you can see, Jesus’ point is couched in a pretty specific context. He is teaching His disciples why and how He cursed a specific tree and rendered it barren forever. He was not vying for a regular spot on the TBN miracle hour where He teaches carnal Christians to actualize their materialistic fantasies. He was not saying: “Hey Christian, if you just believe super hard on this you can move whatever metaphorical mountain is standing in your way.”
If that were the case, we could join in with the prophets of Baal, trying to figure out which spiritual convulsion, faith cut, or liver-shiver of sincerity will get the fire to drop from heaven. If we say this prayer, sow this seed, or really really really believe, then that mountain of sickness will run away, that apex promotion will fall in my lap, and that zenith sports car I have always wanted will show up in my driveway.
Even though our flesh would certainly crave such a sensate and self-centered interpretation, this could not be further from what Jesus is actually saying. This passage, at least not directly, is not about you and the things you want! This passage is about Jesus and what He wants!
To understand all of this, let us discuss the two main ideas in the passage. What does it mean that He cursed the fig tree? And what does it mean to speak to a mountain and throw it into the sea?
CURSING FRUITLESSNESS
In Matthew 21, Jesus comes to Jerusalem, a fruitless mountain city that offered Him only leaves (Mt. 21:8). After that, He goes to the high point of the city, the temple mount, where fruit for God should have been present but all He found was rot and decay (Mt. 21:12-17). So, on the next morning, when Jesus curses a rotten tree, at the base of a mountain, because it would not bear any fruit, we should begin to pick up what Jesus is laying down.
Jerusalem is not only a city that is compared to a garden vineyard in Isaiah (Isaiah 5), but its residents are compared to various kinds of figs in Jeremiah (24). More than that, it’s temple was intentionally decorated to look like the garden of Eden (See for example 1 Kings 6:18, 29, 32, 35; 7:18-20). By these facts alone, we can see Jerusalem’s purpose was to be fruitful and to multiply good fruit for God, not the poison berries of Sodom. But, by the time Christ visits the city in Matthew 21, something had gone terribly wrong!
In Matthew 21, Jesus came to a city that no longer looked like a garden but a wilderness. He came to a temple that was no longer producing fruit for God, giving life to its people, but was withered in total corruption (Mt. 21:12-13). He came to a people that looked just like that barren fig tree rotting along the road, and by cursing that tree, He was showcasing what He was about to do to them.
Just like the withering tree, Jerusalem was about to be chopped down and thrown into the fire of God’s wrath. That is not a matter of opinion or poetic interpretation, that actually occurred 40 years later when Rome burned the city to the ground. They sieged it, they invaded it, and they turned the withered city into a pile of hot ash without a single stone left upon another (Matthew 24:1-2).
CASTING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN
It is clear from the passage that the disciples were amazed at Jesus’ behavior and likely did not see the connection He was making with Jerusalem. This is not an uncommon occurrence, since the disciples misunderstand the significance and meaning of so much of what Jesus is talking about and doing in the Gospels. There are countless times His disciples are left scratching their heads in total confusion and this time is no different. So, in order to help them understand, Jesus does what He often does elsewhere; He illustrates His main point with a secondary example so that the disciples will finally get it.
Notice the example Jesus provides.
21 And Jesus answered and said to them, “Truly I say to 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 say to THIS mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will happen. (emphasis mine)
By sharing this example, Jesus is not taking a break from His main point in order to establish a very disconnected word of faith / prosperity theology. He is not ignoring the disciples question so that He can empower future charlatans with ammunition to abuse God’s people. Instead, it is quite clear from the context that Jesus is making His main point even stronger with a good illustration. He has showcased Jerusalem’s downfall with the image of a fig tree. Now He will talk about it in terms of a mountain.
Why?
FIRST
Because Jerusalem was literally a city on top of a mountain. It was surrounded by valleys on all sides and to get into the city you would need to go up from every direction. Furthermore, the temple was at the highest point and pinnacle of that mountain which meant that you could see it for miles and miles looming over the horizon.
Thus, as Jesus stood speaking to His disciples about the downfall of fruitless Jerusalem, that cursed mountain would have been looming largely over them. It would have been an obvious point that Jesus was making for anyone standing in that valley.  Especially to this group, whose destination was that very mountain city.
SECOND
Jesus does not promise, if you speak to “a mountain” then it will leap off the land and into the water, like Mount Everest canon-calling into the Indian Ocean”. He also does not promise if you say to “any old mountain-like problem” it will fall into a Mariana-trnech-like-hole. No! He stands at the foot of a very specific mountain that all of them were looking at, and traveling towards, and says “Even if you say to THIS mountain”. By using the near demonstrative pronoun, it could not be more clear what Jesus is referring to.
He has a very specific mountain in view that will be destroyed and tossed into the sea. That brings us to our third point.
THIRD
It is a matter of historical record that the Romans surrounded the city of Jerusalem in AD 70 and leveled its top like a blown off volcano. They built ramps up to the city, came in, and tore down every building, especially the Jewish temple and razed the city to the ground. But, not only that, they killed most of the surviving males, and they took nearly 100,000 others into slavery back to Rome. Along with the women, children, and others, they carried every item of value left in the city, placed the spoils on their ships, and cast off back to Rome. The mountain of Jerusalem had very much been cast into the sea, just as Jesus predicted.
CONCLUSION
In Matthew 21, Jesus is not speaking about the kind of name it and claim it faith that charlatans use to justify their extravagant lifestyles. He is not teaching about the kind of faith you need to have the material, emotional, mental, or relational things you want. He is talking about something infinitely better.
Standing between every Christian and their God was the apostate mountain of Jerusalem. That system of temples, priests, feasts, and sacrifices was the temporary placeholder that was meant to prepare the world for the unveiling of Christ. Now that Christ had come, it was time to put away that old mountain that has fallen into disrepair. In Matthew 21, Jesus is talking about the kind of faith that led Him to put away the old covenantal realities so that the new and better covenant would come!
When Jesus was lifted up and nailed to a mountain cross, He signaled a new era in human history. Instead of people going to Jerusalem to meet with God, now they would come to Christ (John 14:6). Instead of traveling to a distant temple, He made us into walking, talking, temples (1 Cor. 3:16). Instead of looking for fruit in the old covenant religion, He makes us bear fruit for His new covenant kingdom (Jn 15; Gal 5:22). Instead of old Jerusalem offering the starving world bitter withered leaves, He makes the New Jerusalem church to offer life-giving leaves and fruit for the healing of the nations (Rev. 22:2).
Because of Christ, that old covenant religion was cast into the deepest seas and replaced by something so much better: the fount of Living Water! Jesus’ faith unleashed His Kingdom of salvation upon the world by putting away the types and shadows that came before. That is what this verse is trying to get at and that is why its true interpretation cannot be attacked by the moths and rust of materialism.
APPLICATION
When you come to a verse like this, read the context. Do not assume that it automagically applies to you in the basest sense. Do not use a verse like this to muster up big comical faith. Do not believe that God is just waiting on you to reach a certain level of sincerity before He will answer your prayers. Have faith! Pray big prayers! Yes and amen!  But, also realize that Jesus is not giving you an blank check to satisfy your carnal wishlist. He has done something infinitely better. He removed the mountain of dead religion standing between you and God and He made it possible for you to know the LORD through Him.
Enjoy that truth and leave the mountains to Jesus.
Kendall Lankford is the Lead Teaching Pastor at The Shepherd’s Church in Chelmsford, Mass. This article is used with permission.
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The new denomination, besides not affirming same-sex marriage or ordination of LGBTQ individuals, will have a strong emphasis on church planting and feature a flexible organizational model meant to foster theological alignment and efficient decision-making, according to leaders with the Alliance of Reformed Churches.

On New Year’s Day, 43 congregations of the Reformed Church in America split from the national denomination, one of the oldest Protestant bodies in the United States, in part over theological differences regarding same-sex marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ clergy.
The departure of the theologically conservative congregations to the new group, the Alliance of Reformed Churches, leaves some who remain in the Reformed Church in America (RCA) concerned for the denomination’s survival. Before the split, the nearly 400-year-old denomination had fewer than 200,000 members and 1,000 churches.
At least 125 churches from various denominations are in conversation with Alliance of Reformed Churches leaders about joining.
“Realistically, it’s a large group of conservative churches that are also providing a lot of income to the denomination. I really think the mass exodus of all these conservative churches is going to throw the RCA into a really difficult financial situation,” said Steven Rodriguez, an RCA church planter in Brockport, New York. “I doubt the RCA will be financially sustainable for much longer.”
The Alliance of Reformed Churches (ARC) logo. (Courtesy image)
The move follows the RCA General Synod’s October decision to adopt measures for “grace-filled separation” with departing churches and to appoint a team to develop a restructuring plan for those that remain.
The new denomination, besides not affirming same-sex marriage or ordination of LGBTQ individuals, will have a strong emphasis on church planting and feature a flexible organizational model meant to foster theological alignment and efficient decision-making, according to leaders with the Alliance of Reformed Churches.
“We have a passion for this remnant of believers to become a part of reformation and revival in the Northern Hemisphere,” said Tim Vink, the new denomination’s director of spiritual leadership and outreach. “Part of our strategic thinking is designing things for the 21st century that allows a multiplication of gospel-saturated churches and a multiplication of disciples.”
Other conservative-leaning churches in the RCA, as well as those in the Presbyterian Church in Canada, Christian Reformed Church in North America and Presbyterian Church in America, are also discerning whether to join the Alliance of Reformed Churches (ARC), according to Vink.
Other groups, such as the Kingdom Network, a group of five churches in Indiana and Illinois, have formed and expect to absorb conservative churches leaving the RCA.
Vink said the new alignment will promote growth. “We want to be a safe landing pad for churches in the near term, but in the long term, want to be a serious launching pad for the church, in mission, to the world,” he said.
The launch of ARC is part of a larger realignment within North American Protestantism. The last two decades have seen conservative Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Lutherans form their own denominations over LGBTQ inclusion and sexuality, and the United Methodists are scheduled to consider a denominational split in the fall.
A theologically and politically diverse denomination that dates to the arrival of Dutch settlers in Manhattan in the 1620s, the RCA has been debating sexuality and LGBTQ inclusion since the 1970s. In 2018, the RCA’s General Synod formed a team charged with discerning whether the RCA should stay together, restructure or separate. The team ultimately suggested a path involving all three avenues, but the meeting to vote on the team’s proposals was delayed for 16 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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No one remembers the furniture in the throne room. They remember the king on the throne. This is the end of all the enemies of God. They are destined to be a means for the exaltation of Jesus to the place of highest prominence. Do you want to know the purpose of human history? It is designed by the Father, as the master interior designer, to exalt his Son to the place of highest prominence (Eph. 1:9–10).

The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”Psalm 110:1
I always say that my biggest influences are three Johns and three Toms—John Owen, John Calvin, John Calvin, Thomas Watson, Thomas Brooks, and Thomas Boston. And even though I’d like to say of the six, my biggest influence is John Calvin, it is really John Owen. I wish I could say that I’ve read or planned to read the collected works of all six, but my forty-five years tell me that I must choose. And so I’ve begun the gradual and daily reading of one of them. I chose John Owen.
Out of all of them, Owen stands above the rest as a Christ-maximalist. But he arrived there being a thorough-going Trinitarian. And by that, I mean that he was no Christo-monist. He did not decide to focus on Jesus because it was cool, trendy, or hip. He didn’t hop on the Christo-centric bandwagon because he read about it in a popular book by a platformed1 author. Instead, Owen is thoroughly Trinitarian in his thought, as all good Christian theologians have and should be. But as he pondered the Trinity, he found that there is a Christ-centrality woven into the godhead. The Father is most enamored with his Son. And the Holy Spirit is heaven-bent on glorifying and extolling the person and work of the Son.2 And so, Owen is theologically bent on Christo-centrism, not because he is committed to Christ over the other members of the Trinity, but because he is thoroughly Trinitarian in all his theology.
For example, I have four sons. I have never thought that they should be just like me, though, inevitably, they will bear my likeness, for better and for worse (I’ve warned them about this). But I want them all to be the kind of men that I would be honored to call a friend. And that is all what they currently are—noble men who you and I would be honored to know, honored to call friends. And yet, if you were friends to my sons, you would only know them as they are. But if you knew them, and knew what I had to say about them, you would love them more than if you only knew them without knowing what I had to say about them.
To know a man is one thing; to hear what his father has to say about him is quite another. And this is because a father’s love for his sons, a father’s bestowal of fatherly honor, is an addition to a son’s glory, no matter how great that son’s glory may be. And in this, I think we arrive at some of the beauty behind our trinitarian theology. It is one thing to know the Son. It is an additional thing, an additive and greater thing, to hear the Father gush over his Son.
The Greatest Psalm
The book of Psalms is the most quoted Old Testament book in the Bible. Psalm 110 is the most quoted chapter of the Old Testament in the New Testament. Psalm 110:1 is the most quoted Old Testament verse quoted in the New Testament. Jesus, Paul, the author of Hebrews, and Peter all chose Psalm 110:1 to speak clearly and definitively about the person and work of Jesus, the Christ. And it is a psalm that has become even dearer to me over the past few years.
I’ve made it a personal practice to spend time daily in the psalms and learn to sing as many of them as possible from memory. Aside from the benefits of meditating on God’s Word and singing it back to him in praise, I noticed something consistent throughout Christian history, something begun from the earliest days recorded in Acts. Whenever we read of Christians imprisoned for their faith, we find them often spending their time of imprisonment in prayer and singing psalms. I thought to myself, “If I’m ever imprisoned for my faith (and I’d like to live my life in such a way as this might be possible), I don’t know any psalms to sing.” And so I decided I would learn some psalms by heart, in case I ever had to gladden the walls of a prison cell.
And that, of course, led me to decide where to start with 150 to choose from. And so I asked myself, “Which psalms did Jesus and apostles think were most important?” Clearly, the psalm at the top of the list is Psalm 110. So I started there. Not a week goes by that I don’t sing Psalm 110 a few times. And I say that because this devotion is not just born out of the academic fact of its prodigious use in the New Testament but also out of its frequent place in my life.
And to return to the emphasis of John Owen, few verses in the entire Bible tell us of what the Father thinks of the Son. And in meditating on Psalm 110:1, we have the opportunity to join our heavenly Father in his delight in his Son.
Psalm 110:1 was a mystery to the Jewish scholars who studied it before the incarnation. How could there be a “lord” who sat at the right hand of “the LORD” who was also a greater king than King David, a king that even David would call Lord? The general consensus was that this was a reference to the coming Messiah. And they were right. Jesus (as well as Peter, Paul, and the author of Hebrews after him) unequivocally teaches that he is the mysterious Lord that David wrote about in Psalm 110:1. So, to use New Testament divine familial nouns to describe what is going on in Psalm 110:1 is to say, “The Father said to the Son, “sit here at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” In this brief and profound verse, we see two things that God the Father says about God the Son.
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