The Fig Tree & The Temple
Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 19 viewsNotes
Transcript
Mark 11:12-21
Mark 11:12-21
12 On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. 13 And seeing in the distance a fig tree in 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. 14 And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.
15 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. 16 And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17 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.” 18 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. 19 And when evening came they went out of the city.
20 As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. 21 And Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.”
In the land of Egypt before the final plague on Egypt, The LORD spoke with Moses and Aaron telling them all that had to be done in preparation for the first Passover -
11 In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover. 12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord.
The people needed to be ready to leave Egypt immediately, The Lord commanded that the people prepare only unleavened bread to eat, so that they could prepare it in haste.
The Lord commanded the people of Israel to remember this each year at Passover. Each family had to cleanse their house of all leaven before the start of the Passover festival
19 For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land.
this ritual is called Bedikat Chametz and is still practiced by Jews around the world at Passover.
Roughly 1500 years after the first passover, Jesus enters Jerusalem as Passover approaches to perform Bedikat Chametz in His own house. He cleanses the temple of leaven. Not the kind of leaven used to make bread rise, but another kind, a kind mentioned in Luke 12:1
1 In the meantime, when so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one another, he began to say to his disciples first, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
from Greek hupokrisis ‘acting of a theatrical part’, from hupokrinesthai ‘play a part, pretend’,
There’s so much packed into this passage.
The key to understanding it is to follow Mark’s leading: The fig tree and the temple cleansing in this passage are inextricably linked. These two narratives are part of what is known as a Markan Sandwich. We’ve looked at several already in our study through Mark’s gospel. It’s a little motif that Mark uses in His gospel; a little A-B-A sequence. Fig tree, Temple, Fig tree. Every time he does this, he wants us to interpret A through B and B through A. The two intertwined stories explain each other. So the cursing of the fig tree isn’t just some random moment captured by Mark, it’s the lens through which we’re supposed to look to understand the encounter at the temple. The fig tree is the temple, the temple is the fig tree.
OFFENSE TAKEN
Many have struggled with this passage because, well, Jesus just isn’t being very Jesus’y. He gets angry, he curses a fig tree and it withers.
Bertrand Russell, an atheist Philosopher in the last century wrote a book called ‘Why I am not a Christian.’ He actually mentions this account of the cursing of the fig tree as one of his reasons for not being a Christian.
“Jesus was a man who expressed vindictive fury towards an innocent plant, manifesting behaviour that is not consistent with even a righteous man let alone the son of God.’ - Bertrand Russell
Even many who are more sympathetic to Christianity have struggled with this miracle, arguably the only destructive miracle in Jesus’s ministry. Feeling that Jesus is displaying a level of petulance here, like he cursed the fig tree in frustration, or a fit of anger.
Some in more recent times have struggled with this passage because Jesus kills a living thing, a tree, which had done nothing wrong except to have no figs when it wasn’t even the season for figs.
Well let’s handle the question of why Jesus approached the tree looking for fruit in the first place. The text says that he was hungry. Jesus had an appetite like you and I according to his human nature - He went to the fig tree looking for something to eat. But surely he knew it wasn’t the season for figs?! Why approach this fig tree?
There are a number of theories on this question. There are a variety of species of fig tree in Israel, and there were many fig trees in the area around Bethany at Jesus’s time. The fig harvest was in Autumn, not at the time of Passover. One theory is that though there are no figs on the trees at that time of year they do produce little buds called Paggim around the time of Passover that are edible, they’re not particularly tasty and so perhaps Jesus was looking for these ‘Paggim’ to eat, and he found none.
Another theory taught by a Professor Kelso, an expert in Ancient Palestinian history, is that though it’s true that there was a distinct fig season in the Autumn, there are a few rare species that bore fruit out of season. So the final test of whether a tree had fruit or not wasn’t so much what time of year it was but whether the foliage was in bloom. And so Jesus, having this local knowledge of fig trees saw the tree in leaf and went to check it for fruit.
It makes the most sense that Jesus at least expected that there might be some fruit on the tree to approach it in the first place, what gave him this expectancy? The presence of folliage. But the outer appearance of the tree was deceptive, there was no fruit, nothing edible for him to eat and He curses the tree saying ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again.’
Later the disciples find the tree the next day they see that it had withered away to it’s roots. This is to say that Jesus’s curse had a supernatural and fully realised outcome.
So was it wrong for Him to kill this fig tree? Well - J.C Ryle makes the point that we have no more right to object to the fig tree’s demise than we do about the daily offering of a lamb under the mosaic law, and the lamb is a conscious animal, not a plant. What justifies the slaughter of the innocent lamb is that the act of the killing pointed towards something important, something great - the coming of the lamb of God. And in the same way, the withering of the fig tree isn’t just a random act of petulance on Christ’s part. He is a Prophet and this is His ‘object lesson miracle’, just as Jeremiah had his yoke, and Amos His plumbline so Christ has the fig tree as His object lesson. These object lessons in the Old testament are nearly always concerning coming judgement, and the fig tree is no different - it is a pronouncement of judgement and destruction upon the temple, why? Because of hypocrisy.
The prophets had often used the fig tree as a symbol of judgment (Isa 34:4; Jer 29:17; Hos 2:12; 9:10; Joel 1:7; Mic 7:1). In a scathing denunciation of Judah, Jeremiah says, “There will be no figs on the tree, and their leaves will wither” (8:13) - J Edwards
The temple was just like the fig tree - it had the appearance of fruitfulness from the outside. During Jesus’s time the 3rd temple was still being constructed and it was massive. It towered over the whole of the city. When the Jewish Roman historian Josephus saw the temple in AD 66 he said that it could be seen for miles around because it was plated with Gold on every side, and when the sun rose in the morning the light would give off an otherwordly glare. But despite all this enticing outward beauty, when the Lord of the temple came to inspect His vine, He found no fruit on it but instead found idolatry and evil of every kind.
The Jewish Talmud calls the temple priests of Jesus’s time ‘Son’s of Eli’ - meaning that they likened them to Hophni and Phineas, the crooked Apostate priests who slept with prostitiutes and defiled the house of the Lord.
Josephus the Historian even says that Annas and Caiaphas, the High Priests at Jesus’s time would send their men round to beat the lower priests into giving their tithes if they didn’t pay, some of those priests apparently starved to death.
And so Jesus enters into the temple, into the court of the Gentiles, and what does He find? Money changers, people buying and selling doves for the offering, He sees extortion, greed, he sees everything but worship.
It’s all well and good having the outward appearance of holiness - solid enough doctrine, member of a church, gives to charity, but what about the inner life, the hidden life? Is there a real holiness in our lives when no one is looking? Christ didn’t just inspect the outer temple, He entered in. He will do the same with you, and what will He find?
He drives all of them out of the temple, not just the sellers but the buyers too, he overturns their tables and their seats, he chucks them all out and won’t allow anyone to even carry something through the temple!
Notice - Jesus didn’t enter into a dialogue with them, He didn’t try to gentle broach the issue at hand without causing any offence, He is enraged. He makes a noise, He makes a fuss, He condemns what they are doing in no uncertain terms and throws them all out of the house of God. This is how you deal with apostasy in God’s house, this is how you deal with sin, you purge it, you don’t get it a pillow and ask it to sit down for a chat.
And Jesus accomplishes what he set out to do without much pushback. We often overestimate the trouble that will come from actually taking a stand for truth. Nearly always the trouble is far worse when we compromise - A la C of E Bishops.
This is true both in attempting to reform the visible church and also in attempting to reform our own lives.
And so Jesus performs Bedikat Chametz on His own house before the Passover - He cleanses the temple of the leaven of the corrupt Jewish leaders which is hypocrisy.
We read that the chief priests and scribes heard about it and they sought to destroy him, for they feared Him. The leaders would rather do murder than repent. From this moment they actively began plotting to kill Jesus. Their response to having their sin exposed is the exact same response of every natural, carnal human being on the planet - rage and hatred.
19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.
Only those who are living by the truth - that is, living according to God’s word will love the light. For them, having their sin exposed by the light of the Holy Spirit doesn’t produce rage it produces repentance and sanctification.
Just as Jesus the light of the world entered into the temple on that day and drove out the idolators, He is still cleansing temples today.
1 cor 6:19
19 Or 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,
When Christ comes into your life you become a temple, a temple of the Holy Spirit. And through the power of the Holy Spirit your temple must be cleansed of all idolatry. And we must avoid in our own lives the same trap of hypocrisy, of play acting, that the Jewish leaders fell into, of putting out leaves but having no fruit of the Spirit. Because one day the Lord will return and inspect each of our lives for fruit.
Just as Jesus’s curse upon the fig tree was borne out when it withered and died so too did his curse upon the temple. In AD 70, just 40 years or so after Jesus’s death and resurrection the Roman army sacked Jerusalem and utterly destroyed the temple, and it has never been rebuilt.
When Christ cleansed the temple that day he stood in the court of the gentiles and said - ‘is it not written, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’. Many thought that when the Messiah came he would cleanse the temple OF the gentiles, but instead Christ cleansed the temple FOR the gentiles. He threw open a way of salvation to the whole world, to people of every tribe tongue and nation, and He is the way, He is the gate, He is our salvation.