A Prophet, a Priest, and a Judge

There is a story of a zoo that was well known for the wide variety of animals that it kept.

But one day, the gorilla at this zoo died. The zookeepers put their heads together and ordered a new gorilla from Gorillas ‘R’ Us. But after they clicked “Buy,” they realized it would be some time before the new gorilla arrived via UPS.

Of course, the zoo couldn’t be closed during the wait, but the gorilla had been a big draw, bringing visitors to the zoo from all around the countryside. And folks would be upset if they got there and couldn’t see a gorilla.

So, one of the zookeepers had an idea.

They hired a man to wear a gorilla suit and sit in the gorilla enclosure during the zoo’s open hours. What could possibly go wrong?!

Well, as it turns out the man who got the job didn’t know much about gorillas, and in his efforts to earn his paychecks, he got a little too rambunctious.

In all the excitement of his antics, he got a little too close to the wall of the gorilla enclosure, and he tripped and fell into the lion’s exhibit.

When the man in the gorilla suit saw where he was, he became understandably frightened, and he began screaming for help.

And then the lion spoke: “Hey, shut up, will ya? You’re gonna get us both fired.”

Pastor jokes and Dad jokes. Pretty much the same things.

Anyway, I tell you that little story to get you thinking about people who pretend to be what they’re not. We know those kinds of people as hypocrites.

Jesus had a lot to say about hypocrisy and about hypocrites, and in today’s installment of the series “The Road to the Cross,” we’re going to look at a couple of events that took place on the Tuesday before Jesus was crucified.

Last week, we started our look at a few select incidents from Holy Week by talking about Jesus’ “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem on what we know as Palm Sunday.

You might recall that I said this was a sort of presentation. Riding into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey, with the people shouting “Hosanna” and laying palm branches at His feet, Jesus was presenting Himself as the true King of Israel.

You might recall that I said Jesus entered the city on the same date the Jewish people had been commanded to bring their unblemished lambs in to begin inspection for the Passover sacrifice later in the week.

And the fact that He came into Jerusalem on that particular date symbolized that He was also presenting Himself as the spotless lamb whose sacrifice would cause God’s judgment for sin to pass over those who put their faith in Jesus.

Today, as we look at two events that took place on that Tuesday, we’re going to see that Jesus was now presenting Himself as the prophet greater than Moses who had been promised in the Old Testament, as the Great High Priest, and as the Righteous Judge.

Now, these were all important roles that great men had filled in Israel in Old Testament times.

Prophets represented God to man and brought His word to mankind. Priests represented man to God and stood between them as covenant mediators. And judges brought justice, protection, and deliverance for the people.

But throughout the Old Testament, what the nation of Israel had seen in its great leaders was that they were imperfect.

Kings subjugated their people and followed after idols. Prophets had moments when their faith failed them and they acted without God’s authority — or, as in the case of Jonah, ran from their prophetic calling.

Priests placed heavy burdens upon the people and had to have their own sins dealt with before they could seek atonement for the people’s sins.

Judges could be bloodthirsty and sometimes were ruled, as in the case of Sampson, by their lusts.

One of the things we see in the Gospels is that Jesus shows Himself to be the perfect standard for all of these roles.

He is the servant king, the faithful prophet, the sinless priest, and the righteous judge. He is the one who will perfectly fulfill all of these roles in the Kingdom of Heaven.

And much of what happened during the week before His crucifixion was to reveal the genuineness of His claim to be Israel’s Savior, indeed the Savior of the world.

What we see taking place on that Tuesday pits the genuineness of Jesus against the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of Israel, the fruitfulness of Jesus against the fruitlessness of the nation that was constituted by God’s chosen people.

Turn with me to Mark, chapter 11.

We’re going to look at verses 12 through 21 today. While you’re turning there, let me remind you of the warning I gave you last week.

Attempting to reconcile the Gospel accounts of the last week of Jesus’ ministry is fraught with difficulties.

The Jews measured days differently than we do. Indeed, they were even split amongst themselves as to whether a new day started at sunrise or sunset.

Their calendar was different than ours. They used certain figures of speech to talk about the passing of time that sound to us like literal measures of time, rather than idioms.

And finally, though the gospels contain a historical record of Jesus’ time on earth, they were not written as histories.

Their purpose wasn’t so much to present a precise chronological account of what Jesus DID as it was to present a precise account of who Jesus WAS and who He IS.

We’re going to look at the account of this day in the Gospel of Mark today, but Matthew also records the same events. The reason I’m repeating the warning again today is that Matthew puts the three things we’ll talk about today in a different order than Mark does.

I believe the account in Mark is chronological and that the account in Matthew is thematic.

Matthew’s account obscures what I believe is the correct chronological order of events, because he is pursuing the theme of Jesus being the GREATER King, the GREATER Priest, the GREATER Prophet — the fulfillment of what God had promised to Israel.

And those are themes that we’ll be looking at today. But I want us to concentrate on Mark’s account, because the chronology of events helps us to see how everything is connected and understand Jesus’ great lesson on that Tuesday.

Let’s pick up in verse 12 of Mark, chapter 11.

Mark 11:12–21 NASB95

12 On the next day, when they had left Bethany, He became hungry. 13 Seeing at a distance a fig tree in leaf, He went to see if perhaps He would find anything on it; and when He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. 14 He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again!” And His disciples were listening. 15 Then they came to Jerusalem. And He entered the temple and began to drive out those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves; 16 and He would not permit anyone to carry merchandise through the temple. 17 And He began to teach and say 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 robbers’ den.” 18 The chief priests and the scribes heard this, and began seeking how to destroy Him; for they were afraid of Him, for the whole crowd was astonished at His teaching. 19 When evening came, they would go out of the city. 20 As they were passing by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots up. 21 Being reminded, Peter said to Him, “Rabbi, look, the fig tree which You cursed has withered.”

What we see here are the accounts of two basic events that took place that Tuesday: the cursing of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple.

But the event with the fig tree is split into two halves that serve as bookends for the event of the cleansing of the temple. That bookending is called a chiasm.

And when we see chiasms in Hebrew literature, the main idea, the most important point, is what appears between the bookends. In this case, that’s the cleansing of the temple.

So, let’s look at that part of this passage first.

We see in verse 15 that Jesus and His disciples had come into Jerusalem and entered the temple.

Now, the temple was arranged into various areas that only certain people could enter. The first area upon entering the temple complex was the court of the Gentiles, where all who feared God could come and worship.

Beyond that was the Court of the Women, and only Jews who had made themselves ritually pure could enter there. Beyond that was the Hall of Israelites, which only Jewish men could enter.

Beyond that was the Hall of Priests, which only Jewish priests could enter. And beyond that was the Holy of Holies, which only the High Priest could enter and then only one time of year, on the Day of Atonement.

And what we see in this passage is that Jesus and His find people buying and selling inside the entrance to the temple, in other words, within the Court of the Gentiles.

Jewish historians of the time have recorded that the Chief Priest, Caiaphas, had allowed that space to be used for the business that went along with temple sacrifices and tithes.

There would have been people there selling doves and other animals for sacrifice. Others would have been there exchanging Greek and Roman coins so they could pay the half-shekel temple tax that was used to pay the temple’s expenses. This tax had to be paid in the Jewish currency.

And none of these business dealings was sinful. Indeed, they were all necessary for the proper worship that God had demanded of the Jews.

The problem was that all this was happening INSIDE the temple, rather than outside of it. In fact, a similar marketplace was located nearby, and so we must wonder why Caiaphas had even thought this new arrangement was necessary.

The problem Jesus had with the temple marketplace was that it took place INSIDE the temple, in the only place where God-fearing Gentiles could go to properly worship.

Warren Wiersbe put it this way: “The Court of the Gentiles should have been a place for praying, but it was instead a place for preying and paying.”

God had required that Israel’s temple include a place for Gentiles to come and worship, because He had always desired to bring Gentiles into a relationship with Him.

But the Jewish leaders, by turning the Court of the Gentiles into a marketplace, had made it almost impossible for the Gentiles to pursue that relationship.

And instead of the temple being a place consecrated as holy unto God, it was now a robbers’ den.

Not only were the people often being swindled when they changed their money or paid for their sacrificial animals, the Jewish religious leaders were also robbing the Gentiles of a chance to literally come to God.

The religious leaders had corrupted God’s temple.

Those same religious leaders were the ones who condemned Jesus for ministering to Gentiles and tax collectors and prostitutes and lepers. They would be the ones who would falsely charge Him with blasphemy and condemn Him to death on the following Friday.

And they CLAIMED the highest regard for the temple. They CLAIMED to worship and adore the God who dwelt there in the Holy of Holies.

But what Jesus saw when He entered the temple that day tore away the mask of hypocrisy the religious leaders wore.

They were defiling the temple they professed to love. They were defiling the God they professed to worship.

Just like the guy in the gorilla suit, they were pretending to be something they were not.

And so, Jesus flipped over the tables and knocked down the booths, cleansing what the religious leaders had defiled.

In doing so, He was essentially saying that the temple belonged to Him and not them. He was asserting His own authority over the temple as the great High Priest.

Jesus did what the priests of Israel had failed to do — to keep the temple holy and to allow God-fearing people from all nations to come and worship there.

So, what went on in the temple that day was the central event that Mark wants us to notice.

The bookends to that event — in other words, the two parts of the cursing of the fig tree — they serve as an object lesson used by Jesus to direct attention to the temple cleansing and to help us understand the greater lesson He was teaching.

In the Old Testament, prophets often used such object lessons to highlight and explain the prophecies they’d received from God.

So, by using such an object lesson Himself in the context of having cleansed the temple, Jesus is presenting Himself as the prophet greater than Moses, who had been promised in the Old Testament.

Let’s take a look at the object lesson.

Back in verse 12, we see that Jesus and His disciples have left Bethany, on the way to Jerusalem. He was hungry, and he saw a fig tree in leaf, but there were no figs on it.

What you need to know about fig trees is that the leaves and the fruit grow at the same time. In fact, small, barely-edible fig buds appear on the tree even before the leaves do.

And since there were leaves on the tree, one would have expected to see little green figs on it, too, even though it wasn’t the season for ripe figs. But this tree had only leaves.

Like that guy in the gorilla suit, the fig tree LOOKED like a fig tree, but it wasn’t ACTING like a fig tree.

And so, knowing what He was about to do in the temple and seeing an opportunity to use an object lesson to reinforce and explain what He was going to do, Jesus cursed the fig tree.

And, now, skipping down to verse 20, we see the conclusion of this object lesson.

Walking back to Jerusalem the next morning, the disciples noticed the tree again. But now, they saw that it had withered from the roots up. Now it was dead.

The roots of a tree give that tree its nourishment. And in this object lesson, the religious leaders of Israel would have been represented by the fig tree’s roots. They were responsible for providing spiritual nourishment to the people.

But they had failed in that regard, both by defiling the temple where the people came to worship and by rejecting Jesus as their Messiah.

And in the act of cursing the tree, Jesus was making it clear that He was the Righteous Judge who was bringing judgment upon the nation that had rejected Him.

He had unmasked their hypocrisy, and now He was proclaiming His judgment for it.

The hypocrisy of the religious leaders who claimed to love God, while rejecting His Son, had infected the very people they were to have nourished spiritually.

And all of them would experience the curse of spiritual death because of their unbelief.

So, why is this important to us?

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy for us to delude ourselves into thinking we’re actual gorillas when we’re only wearing gorilla suits.

It’s all too easy for us to take the title, “Christian,” without actually ACTING like a Christian or even necessarily BEING a Christian.

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day believed they were entitled to the kingdom of heaven because of their Jewish lineage and heritage.

They believed that going to the temple, paying the temple tax, making their sacrifices, and keeping the commandments earned them a place in heaven.

Similarly, today’s churches are full of people who think they’re saved because they grew up in a church or because they prayed some prayer or took some class as a kid.

Today’s churches are full of people who believe in God but have not put their faith in Jesus Christ. Today’s churches are full of people who have put their faith in everything BUT Jesus.

They might believe He existed, and maybe they even believe that He died for their sins and rose again on the third day.

But they never taken the step of truly turning to Him in faith that only His sacrificial death and supernatural resurrection can reconcile them to God.

They’re still holding onto the false hope that somehow they can be good enough to stand in the presence of a perfectly holy and righteous God in their own righteousness.

Today’s churches are full of people calling themselves Christians who do not show any of the fruits of salvation. They know all ABOUT Jesus, but they’ve never come to KNOW Jesus.

Are you wearing a gorilla suit? Is your fig tree in full leaf but without any fruit? Have you made yourself LOOK like a Christian without ever becoming a follower of Christ?

If so, your mask may fool your family and friends. It may fool the rest of the world. It might even fool the church. But it will never fool Jesus.

He sees past the mask into your heart. And He knows those who belong to Him.

The question you need to answer today is this: DO you belong to Him? Or are you simply pretending to be something you are not?