Palm Sunday (Mark 11:1-26)

Scripture Introduction:

Jesus, Messiah. What does that mean? To those living during the time of Jesus it would have meant something like this. And we’ve seen throughout that the disciples seem to mostly share this view. This comes from the Psalm of Solomon:

21 Behold, O Lord, and raise up unto them their king, the son of David, at the time known to you, O God, in order that he may reign over Israel your servant. 22 And gird him with strength, that he may shatter unrighteous rulers, and that he may purge Jerusalem from gentiles who trample (her) down to destruction. 23 Wisely, righteously he shall thrust out sinners from (the) inheritance; he shall destroy the arrogance of the sinner as a potter's jar. 24 With a rod of iron he shall shatter all their substance; he shall destroy the godless nations with the word of his mouth. Psalm of Solomon

It’s expected that when the Messiah comes into his kingdom he is going to set things right. He is going to overthrow Gentiles and take up his throne in Jerusalem. And from here he will work to destroy all the godless nations. In our text this morning we see what is often titled the triumphal entry. It’s Jesus coming into His kingdom but what happens once he gets to Jerusalem has to be quite unexpected.

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Sermon Introduction:

That’s not quite what they expected, is it? First, it is very anti-climactic. Jesus gets there and nobody is in town. And so they leave for the morning. Secondly, his first action is to curse a fig tree. Now this little episode has been a cause for many atheistic folk to mock the Lord. They view it as if Jesus is just hangry and takes it out on a poor helpless fig tree which shouldn’t have been bearing fruit anyways.

Here are the words of famed atheist Bertrand Russell:

I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history.

It even befuddled more conservative scholars such as T.W. Manson (no kin to Charlie, I assume) who has said this:

It is a tale of miraculous power wasted in the service of ill-temper (for the supernatural energy employed to blast the unfortunate tree might have bene more usefully expended in forcing a crop of figs out of season); as it stands it is simply incredible.

So what is this? Is Jesus just hangry? What does this cursing of the fig tree have to do with anything in this passage? And it’s really everything. That’s what I hope to explain this morning. I can’t really give you three neat bullet points in this sermon. Today I really only get to make one massive point. So what I’m going to do is walk through the text and explain it. I’m going to make one point and then apply it. Here is, I believe, the point of this entire passage:

The King is coming to judge the fruitless religious leaders.

Now there are plenty of passages of Scripture which speak to the faithless, the naturalist, the worlding, the unbeliever, the ones who openly deny Christ. But here Jesus is talking directly to the religious professors among us. He’s talking to those who profess to be following God.

In this text Messiah is coming to town and he isn’t pleased with what he finds. He is coming to judge the fruitless religious leaders. Now what I want to do is place that statement in its context and then work towards applying it.

I. The King is coming

In the first eleven verses we see Jesus riding into Jerusalem. The King is coming.

Zechariah 9:9

Jesus is fulfilling that passage. A few places I want to draw your attention so we see what is going on here.

1) No one has sat. This was the practice of a king. The Mishnah (I believe) said that kings ought to ride on horses, donkeys, that have never been ridden on before. This is symbolically the action of a King.

2) His sovereign rule. We also see in this passage Jesus’ sovereign rule. Now it’s quite possible that Jesus had already made these arrangements. Or it’s possible that He is just being God and this is displaying his omniscience. Either way what is going on here is meant to show the sovereign rule of Jesus. The Lord needs this colt and so the owners give it up. He is going to fulfill Zechariah 9:9 and ride into Jerusalem on this unbridled colt.

Now again we have to mention that this is another one of those places where the people who are saying Hosanna, Hosanna, probably aren’t fully aware of what they are saying. As is typical in the gospel of Mark they likely have the “who” question correct but on the what. They are most likely thinking he is going to come into Jerusalem and start his military campaign or something of the sort.

And so here is the scene. Jesus is coming into his kingdom. Celebration all around. They get to Jerusalem. NOTHING.

What is happening? King taking inventory. He looks around and then they leave. That’s a bit anticlimactic but it picks up in full force the next morning.

II. Judging the religious leaders

Jesus is hungry. This shows his full humanity. He sees a fig tree with leaves.

-should have figs. At least early figs. It’s advertising health. Advertising food. But nothing on it.

-Wasn’t the season for figs (Then why does it get cursed)

Lots of explanation for it. Maybe what Mark means is that it wasn’t the season for fully ripe figs but it was the season for the early figs. Well, that’s great but the text doesn’t say that.

The point and we’ll see this in a second is that this fig tree is advertising a lie. It is telling folks that it has fruit and that it is ready for harvest (again even if the early figs). But when Jesus gets there it has nothing. It’s being a big hypocrite. Outwardly it looks beautiful. Inwardly it must be rotten to the core.

It is not by accident that Mark sandwiches the cleansing of the temple between discussion of this fig tree. It’s symbolic. It’s a living parable. Mark loves these sandwiches and the meat in the sandwich is the cleansing of the temple.

The fig tree is just like the Jewish temple. Outwardly it looks beautiful. But inwardly it is rotten to the core.

Now remember what we would expect to see when Messiah comes to town. We’d expect him to drive the Gentiles out. To encourage the religious leaders. To set up a kingdom and start taking it to the Romans. But what he does here is the exact opposite. He instead takes it to the religious leaders because they have blocked Gentiles from worshipping.

What should be happening?

Not a marketplace. They’ve turned it into a place of business. Transactions. Money exchanges. Convenient temple worship. It all seems so logical. Such a good idea.

But its turning a place of prayer into a place of business. There isn’t fruit being produced. I don’t know if I can say it any better than Jonathan Parnell has:

The co-op for commerce was a problem, but that wasn’t the only thing, or even the main thing, that Jesus was addressing. The real fiasco was how out of sync Israel’s worship was with what Isaiah 56 prophesied. Jesus quotes a portion of that vision from Isaiah 56: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations.”

The context of Isaiah 56 tells us more. According to Isaiah’s vision, eunuchs would keep God’s covenant (Isaiah 56:4), and foreigners would join themselves to him (Isaiah 56:6), and the outcasts would be gathered with his people (Isaiah 56:8). But Jesus approached a temple pulsing with buying and selling. The court of the Gentiles, the place designed all along for foreigners to congregate, for the nations to seek the Lord, was overrun with opportunists trying to turn a profit. And the Jewish leaders had let this happen.

Their economic drive, and their false security in the temple as an emblem of blessing (Jeremiah 7:3–11), had crowded out space for the nations to draw near, and therefore Jesus was driving them out. The great sadness of this scene wasn’t so much the rows of product and price-gouging, but that all this left no room for the Gentiles and outcasts to come to God. This place of worship should have prefigured the hope of God’s restored creation — a day when “all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and say: ‘Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob’” (Isaiah 2:2–3).

In other words what was supposed to be a lighthouse was turned into a business. And so many people were harmed because of this. This is why Jesus overturned the temple. This is why he sat opposite of it.

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Can I tell you how I wrestled with the sermon for this week? I thought about picking up our series on Luke 5. Had I done that we would have heard a story about a man with leprosy and how Jesus touched him and healed him.

When I think about Palm Sunday that’s the type of stuff I think of. I think of Jesus coming into His Kingdom. There is a line in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ that gets me every time. I don’t think I’ve ever watched that part without getting a little misty eyed (Okay, full-on snot crying). It’s when he’s carrying the cross, blood all over him, stumbles….he’s right there by Mary…and says, “see, mother, I make all things new.” Gets me every time. That’s what it means for Messiah to come into his kingdom.

So I wanted to talk about Jesus healing a guy of leprosy. Restoring. Making all things new. I didn’t want to talk about Jesus sitting against the temple. I didn’t want to talk about Jesus coming into his kingdom and cursing a fig tree. I want to talk about how Jesus is BUILDING his kingdom. This passage seemed so destructive…But I couldn’t get away from it.

But then it hit me. Jesus’ healing of leprosy is DESTRUCTIVE to leprosy. His healing of the man was death to leprosy. And in the same way next week we’re going to proclaim that Jesus has put death in it’s grave. His resurrection is death to death! It’s destructive to death. There is ALWAYS two sides to this coin. So his cursing the fig tree, overturning the tables in the temple, isn’t ONLY destructive. It….like the healing of the man with leprosy…is both. It’s DESTRUCTIVE to a dead religious system. It’s CONSTRUCTIVE to a real vibrant union with the God of the universe.

When Jesus turns his back to the temple….when he curses the fig tree…when he overturns the tables…do you know what he’s doing? Do you know what he’s doing for you?

In Matthew 23 Jesus pronounces 7 woes against the Pharisees. It’s really against that whole dead religious system. This is why he is cursing the fig tree.

They tied up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders. They shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces

First, Jesus spoke of the Pharisees shutting the door to heaven in the face of others. They taught a system where you had to work for your salvation. Religion that was based upon your own personal performance. You’ve got to be good enough. You’ve got to match up. You’ve got to do all this stuff in order to be accepted by God. Jesus stands with his back to this….”I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the gate. I am the door.” By grace, through faith. Come to me all you who are weary and I will give you rest.

Make themselves the gatekeepers for whether or not you can have a relationship with God. Rather than pointing to Jesus—rather than working to give people hope, grace, love, etc. they shut the door to the kingdom. He’s overturning this.

2. He’s overturning a self-protecting system that’s more concerned about protecting itself than it is speaking for and rescuing the vulnerable. He’s overturning the sham that the Pharisees had made the temple. A place of business…a place to further themselves…keeping those fig leaves on. Here is why this is a grace. You might be one of those Pharisees. You’re actually kind of scared…scared of being exposed, scared of everything falling apart, scared of losing things you hold precious and valuable…and so you’ve been laboring and wearing yourself out. Jesus is saying, you don’t have to keep dressing up that which is fallen and broken. I’m building something entirely new. Trust me. And to those who have been harmed by people in their efforts to sew up those fig leaves, Jesus sees that pain. He’s redeeming that too.

3. There is a section in Matthew 23 that’s a little hard to follow it’s about them swearing by the temple and swearing by the gold. It’s kind of confusing because we don’t really understand the argument that’s taking place there. Let me tell you what’s happening there, though. The Pharisees are using fine sounding religious words in order to perpetuate their abuse of people. They are rationalizing away how they can rob widows and call it doing it for the glory of God. They are using good words to do bad things. We can use scriptural words that talk about building up the church, doing things for the glory of God, we can put fine sounding Christian terms on things—but inwardly what we really have is arrogance, coercion, aggressiveness. We are using Jesus’ precious words to build up our own rickety kingdoms and then at the end of it say, “all glory be to God”.

These words of Diane Langberg are striking:

There is no human being we will ever meet, no matter how wounded, disordered, or evil, no matter their theology, style of worship, or ways of thinking, who was not created by the God we love. Any culture—nation, denomination, city, church, or family—that leads us to treat someone otherwise is seducing us to behave in ways that break the heart of our God….He never dehumanized us, though we had dehumanized ourselves by rejecting him who made us. He entered into our categories with truth and grace as the eternal and finite and the holy entered the sinful. We are to do the same in his name.

But I want to close by looking at Matthew 23:37-39. Jesus is calling the Pharisees off the ledge. He is graciously holding their hearts up to them…he’s holding up a mirror…and saying, “will you drop the sham? Will you stop playing? Will you sacrifice this little bit of power that you think you have—will you sacrifice that idea you have of building your own little kingdom—will you lay that down and trust me?

Jesus is coming into his kingdom this morning. He’s coming in and he’s cursing a fig tree and he’s overturning tables. Here is the question for us, then. Will this action be our rescue or our demise? When he flips things over are we shouting, “no my religion!! No my protection!! No look at everything I’ve built!!!” Or are we saying with relief….finally, now I can see Jesus. Now all this stuff isn’t in the way anymore.” If you’re anything like me it’s probably a mixture of the two. Jesus’ blood covers the Pharisee in all of us, the self-atoning, system-abusing, soul-shrinking legalist. His blood covers those among us who broken by the system, hurting, vulnerable, who’ve been abused, and the whole thing has just gotten muddy. You don’t know who you are anymore. You’ve been wrecked by others, you’ve wrecked yourself, you’ve been sinned against—you’ve responded sinfully, and the whole thing is just a big jumbled mess…I don’t know if I’m the bad guy, the victim, or who or what I am. His blood covers all of it. His blood heals what others have wrecked.

Close with the story of Malchus?

Close with gracious invitation of Jesus.