Mark 11:12-26 Sermon
Notes
Transcript
A Parallel World that We Should Shut the Door To
A Parallel World that We Should Shut the Door To
Mark 11:12-25
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[b] 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.”
Pray
John R.W. Stott, the 20th century Anglican theologian said:
Hypocrisy is Hideous. What cancer is to the body, hypocrisy is to the church. It is a killing agent. Unfortunately, hypocrisy is also addictive. And even though Jesus reserved His most severe words of condemnation for the hypocrite, we still seem to prefer that lifestyle to truth and authenticity.
There is a parallel world that the church can find itself straddling if we are not careful. In John 17, Jesus says that we are not of this world because we have been given over to Christ, yet the church, then and now, has continued to straddle the line with one foot being in love with this place, the world, and the other foot in the heavenly realm.
The church is the only place where blatant hypocrisy largely goes unchecked. If you think about your marriage, if you have one foot in and one foot out, there are ramifications. It may not lead to divorce, but it will definitely lead to a strain between you and your spouse that you will feel. If you are working for someone at an hourly rate and you are trying to also work for someone else during the same time, and your boss finds out you may be fired. In church, many people come in, shake hands, sing songs, listen to the message and leave just as bad as when they arrived but with a higher social credit score because other people have seen you in church. You can build trust, you can gain business and grow your kingdom all the while never having a heart that is truly changed and inside you are just as dead as you were when you walked in.
John Stott had another great quote about this game we play with ourselves:
How few of us live one life and live it in the open! We are tempted to wear a different mask and play a different role according to each occasion. This is not reality but play-acting, which is the essence of hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is knowing the rules of the game, saying you are playing the game well, telling others that they are not following the rules all the while you have just found another way to cheat.
This is where we find ourselves in the text today. Jesus, as we read last week, rode into Jerusalem on a donkey to present that His Kingdom had come. He is King of the Jews and King of the Kings. If we can pick up on the last verses from last week:
Mark 11:11
“And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.”
Jesus surveyed what was happening in this place that was supposed to be the place where people came to meet and worship God. What Jesus finds is a beautiful Temple with wicked things happening behind it’s walls. From the outside it looked spectacular and I’m sure it was a great scene with several hundred thousand people flooding into this place, but what he didn’t see was the fruit of those who were supposed to be worshipping the Lord.
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.
On a first pass through of this text, it is confusing. Jesus is hungry, He goes to a tree that is out of season for fruit, it doesn’t have any, so it seems Jesus gets mad and curses it. This is the only miracle that we see from Jesus where He does not create but destroys.
To give a bit more context for us today, we have to go to other sources to see about fig trees. Most fig trees blossom and provide their fruit in the fall, but there is a variety of fig tree that produce fruit twice a year in Spring and Fall. Since the tree that Jesus is seeing is in leaf, there was a good chance that it would have figs, as it was one of the few that might contain the fruit that He desired. Most fig trees at this time of late March would have just been twigs with no leaves. Just like when we might see a peach tree before Spring had fully ended or before the buds come on, we would not expect any fruit, but because it was in leaf this particular tree among all the dead ones might have fruit.
This is a foreshadowing of what is to come. Among all of the nations of the earth, Israel was the only tree that had life and the Temple was the heart of the people. This was supposed to be the place of truth and knowledge and wisdom.
James R. Edwards, an American New Testament scholar says this about the fig tree:
The leafy fig tree, with all its promise of fruit, is as deceptive as the temple, which, despite its religious commerce and activity, is really an outlaws’ hideout (v. 17). The curse of the fig tree is a symbol of God’s judgment of the temple.18
This opens the door to what is coming next from Jesus.
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.
To fully understand this part of the text, you have to understand the Temple. The Temple in the time of Jesus was called the Herodian Temple because it was rebuilt by King Herod. This is the largest Temple that Israel had ever had. The temple grounds spanned 36 acres. The inner part of the Temple was the Temple Mount where the sanctuary and the inner courts were but surrounding it was this open space which was the Gentile courts. It was an open area where people bought and sold things. When people came into the temple each year for Passover they would have to bring a sacrifice. It was obligatory to travel to Jerusalem for the Passover to offer your sacrifice. If someone had to travel a long distance they would not want to carry or keep a live animal on the journey so, as a convenience, people would sell them in the temple. This created a problem, when these Jews from other nations arrived they couldn’t use the money that they use in their land so, like us when we travel to another country, they had to exchange their currency. There were tables set up to do that and would charge an outrageous exchange rate for the people. Then when the people went to buy the animal to sacrifice, the sellers would mark up the price of the animal 10-20 times the value to take advantage of these people that could not bring their sacrifice from their own land.
To put this in a modern context, when Krysta and I went to Switzerland in August, I had forgotten to pack hair gel. I normally just wear a hat, but because the trip was through her work I had to dress up several nights and fix my hair. After we arrived and got checked into the hotel, I decided to go out in this foreign place and visit one of the shops that I had seen on our earlier tour. I went in and ask for hair gel and the lady gave me a bottle and I said, “Great!” I didn’t ask questions and she rang me up and the gel was $45 dollars. I was shocked. As the week went on I found that there were places a little further down from the tourist area that I could have bought items cheaper.
The text mentions turning over the seats of those who sold pigeons. If you are not familiar with the sacrifices that were allowed to be made I would encourage you to read Leviticus for a better context, but one of the sacrifices that you were able to make if you were poor was a pair of young pigeons. These extortioners at the temple were capitalizing off of the poor by putting an outrageous convenience fee on the sacrifices for the poor.
This angers our Lord. There should be no barriers to entry to the Father. Their hearts were so hardened that they thought just because of who they were, they were in the kingdom and could do anything that they wanted. They thought their birthright made them right with God.
I was watching a new western the other night with the family. There was a young, cowardly man wielding a pistol in the heart of town shooting up signs and causing a ruckus when the bar owner comes out and tells him to stop his rude behavior and what do you think his response was? “Don’t you know who my daddy is?” Instead of the power and authority of his father causing him to be kind and do good, he did evil and justified his actions. This is what is happening with the offspring of Abraham taking advantage of the people streaming in for Passover.
Jesus also forbids them from bringing anything through the temple. You might think, that is a bit extreme. One commentator said that the temple was so big that they would pass through it as a short cut through the city. The temple was no longer a sacred space where people drew near to God, it was a place of commerce and of rote religiosity.
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.”
This Temple was supposed to be an oasis in the desert. A place where people from all nations could come and find rest in the one true God. The gentiles didn’t have temples to God in their own lands, where else would they go to seek Him? What Jesus quotes here is out of Isaiah 56. It is worth reading this whole section because it gives hope to all of those who feel like they are outside of God’s salvation.
56 Thus says the LORD: “Keep justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my righteousness be revealed. 2 Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.” 3 Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say, “The LORD will surely separate me from his people”; and let not the eunuch say, “Behold, I am a dry tree.” 4 For thus says the LORD: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, 5 I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. 6 “And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant—7 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.” 8 The Lord GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares, “I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered.”
God was always the God of all nations but the Jews whose hearts were hardened thought that they were the only chosen people. They had the heart of Jonah to the Ninevites where he said that he didn’t want to go and warn them because He knew that God’s lovingkindness would turn them from their wicked ways and they would repent. The Jews believed in God’s salvation for them but not for others.
Do we as a church, with all of our blessings that God has bestowed on us, really want to see those blessings on EVERYBODY else? Do we want to see it for family members that have caused us so much pain? Do we want to see it for the person that has made a shipwreck of their life? Here is one that might be hard. Do we want to see it for Hamas? If they all turned to follow Christ today, could we forgive them of the killing of the children and innocent people that the hatred of their hearts caused or do we put up a barrier of entry. Because the Jews thought of themselves individually, not their God but their pedigree, higher than all the other nations, their self-righteousness made the temple, what Jesus called a “den of thieves”. Jesus, here, quotes Jeremiah 7, where the prophet Jeremiah shares a word from the Lord in the temple against the Jews of his day because of their hypocrisy of sacrificing to other gods that they had not known and then went into the Temple to praise God.
Jesus is calling out the rank hypocrisy of what they are doing. The Israelites were worshipping the wrong God. They were worshipping themselves and their own god that they had set up that had it’s own rules and thatgod did not allow others in. In fact, that god gave them power to rule over the people. When we put ourselves in the seat of God, the world around us suffers because we make terrible gods. The religious leaders of that day loved this power. They loved having authority over the people because when you are god then no one can come against you and you decided who is worthy and who is not.
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.
Do you want to hear some bad news church? We are all hypocrites to some degree or another.
The wonderful news is that, if we are living in light of the Word that God has revealed to us, we are faced with truth. At that point we have a choice to make. Are we going to fight against what the Lord has clearly shown us as something wrong or are we going to turn from our sin and be conformed to the renewing of our mind. God is calling us to a fully open heart so that He can mold and shape it to what He wants it to be and sometimes that results in changing our entire world. The chief priests and the scribes were faced with this appeal to their hearts from Jesus. Think about this act of righteous indignation from Jesus. This temple encompasses 36 acres of land and Jesus singlehandedly comes in and turns over who knows how many tables and drives out people from the area, not permitting anyone to carry merchandise through the temple…by himself and no one stops Him. Can you imagine the shear strength and stamina of one man doing that. It is almost a miracle in and of itself. This is not a quiet event and then to hear the prophetic words from Jesus quoting, what the religious rulers would have known, from Isaiah and Jeremiah. They had a choice at this moment. We have a choice. We can rethink our life and how we are living or we can do what the religious elites wanted to do, get rid of the voice that was calling them to repent.
If you are here today and you hear His voice calling you to change your behavior and draw closer to Him and you are a true believer in Christ, do not continue on in your sin. Submit that hidden part of your heart to Him. He is faithful to bring you more joy than you can manufacture on your own. If you are here and you don’t know him and you are tempted to tune me out because you like your sin and your power, know something before you completely stop listening, there will be a time when Jesus says “enough”. We see what happened to the fig tree in this next verse.
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.”
This cursing from Jesus took away all life from the tree. So much so that it was down to its root disintegrated. This is a harsh example of the judgment of Jesus. The Jews were so interested in looking at the proverbial leaves of their fig tree that they forgot that the purpose of their tree was to bear fruit. I wonder how many of us like the beauty of our lives and we miss the fruit? How many of us like what we think we have built and like how well we are put together on the outside while inwardly scoffing at those that don’t look as put together as we are? Scripture warns us about this in Psalm 95 and again in Hebrews 3:7–11 “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ””
If you know the truth and you have tried to turn it and manipulate it for your own gain and not the growth of the Kingdom, repent.
Do not harden your heart to Him. He is Good. His lovingkindness will show you more love than you can possibly ever know. He is faithful to be with you and to bless others through you. The church is called to be an authentic body where we share joys and pains. Some of you may think, “I’m not going to be that open to tell anyone the secrets of my life.” You are doing yourself a great disservice by hiding your sin. Imagine for a second if you broke your foot, but your nervous system did not send a pain signal to your brain about the injury. What would happen? You would keep walking on the foot causing more damage. Pain signals are good, boy do they hurt but the hurt leads you to get help. If you look great on the outside but are dying a death of a thousand cuts on the inside from sin that you are hiding, know that you are missing so many blessings that the Lord has for you and He is calling you out of your hypocrisy and into a life of full service to Him.