Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

If you have your Bibles let me invite you to open with me to the book of Mark chapter 11:12-21.

Lets begin in verse 12 and then lets pray for understanding.

Mark 11:12–21 (ESV)

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.”

Lets Pray

If you have been following along with us in our study of the gospel of Mark… you may have recognized in this passage yet another occasion of the sandwiching technique.

If you haven’t been with us let me briefly explain.

Mark uses a literary structure where he sandwiches material in order to make a point.

The two outer stories share the same theme and like two pieces of bread on the outside they compliment whats in the middle.

The entire book is in fact one giant sandwhich.

In Mark chapter 1, at Jesus’ baptism, The skies tear open and a voice from heaven declares Jesus to be the Son of God.

At the End of the Gospel… Jesus dies on a cross… and at his death the veil in the temple tears open and at the same time one of the Roman soldiers declares, “surely this was the Son of God”

Everything in the middle proves this point.. Jesus really is the Son of God.

In this case, however, its a much smaller, much simpler sandwich that starts with a fig tree and ends with a fig tree.

You can see the structure on the screen.

A. Jesus Rebukes a Fig Tree

B. Jesus Rebukes the Temple

A. The Fig Tree Withers

The Fig tree story is meant to help us understand the temple story and the temple story is meant to help us understand the fig tree story…

So lets begin with the fig tree.

What in the world is going on here?

Imagine overhearing this and watching this from the perspective of the disciples....

Jesus has said some crazy stuff in the past… but this was particularly odd.

Jesus sees a fig tree in leaf…

So he sees a fig tree that externally looks like it should be a tree that produces fruit… but upon closer examination Jesus discovers that it is fruitless.

Then Jesus rebukes the tree

in fact, he curses the tree to never be fruitful again.

It seems a little out of character for Jesus…

I mean, If I had that kind of temperament I’d pretty much be cursing everything I ever tried to grow in my backyard.

In fact, I have some blue berry bushes and a lemon tree that I would have cursed about three years in a row now cause they have not produced anything.

If you were to walk up on me declaring over a tree that it should never bear fruit again, you would have some questions for my current mental state.

Is Jesus simply demonstrating the emotion that many of us might call “hangry”?

Is he hungry/angry and thus taking it out on this tree?

Or is there more going on here??

The story just kinds of moves on from the fig tree incident to… and honestly it won’t make much sense until we circle back around at the end.

The story transitions immediately from the rebuke of the fig tree, to Jesus’ entrance into the temple.

Mark 11:15 (ESV)

15 And they came to Jerusalem.

And he entered the temple.....

Now let me pause here to set the scene… because I think its important that you visualize what Jesus was walking in to.

I’ll throw up a picture representing just the physical magnitude of the temple that Jesus and his disciples were entering into.

Listen to one commentator’s description of what Jesus would have been entering.

The temple consisted of four divisions.

The first and largest division was the court of the Gentiles.

It was 500 yards long by 325 yards wide.

This means that the temple court was thirty five acres in land area.

And enclosing this portico were rows of columns 35 feet tall and so massive that it took three persons with hands joined together to surround one of them at the base.

In this large court, merchants sold sheep and doves for sacrifice and they exchanged foreign currencies.

Many people made pilgrimages to come and sacrifice to the one true God…, but instead of bringing an animal with them… they brought money to purchase an animal without blemish when they arrived.... but money could not be used in the temple if it had images of false gods or Roman leaders on it.

The coins had to be pure an unmarked with pagan images… so money exchanges were also set up.

all of this was of course overseen by the Sadducees and the Sanhedrin… the Jewish religious leaders

The enormity of this operation is beyond a few tables and a heard of sheep.

In A.D. 66 Josephus comments that on passover that year… 255,600 lambs were sacrificed.

This is when Jesus was entering the temple.

It was passover week so the hustle and bustle would have been overwhelming.

This is the temple that Jesus was entering… it was a massive spectacle of epic proportions designed to point the world to the glory of the one true God.

And here enters… the one true God in the flesh…

Again, whats the deal with Jesus?

Did he just wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?

First the fig tree…

And now Jesus enters into the most sacred space in all of Judaism and in all of the world… and he completely loses his cool.

Jesus enters the temple… and he begins to

drive people out

he begins to overturn tables of money changers.

This is unlike anything we have ever seen from Jesus.

We have seen him get intense a couple times with his words, but this is the first time we have seen such a physical reaction to something such as flipping over tables.

John tells us that Jesus literally came in there with a whip to drive out the animals waiting to be sold and sacrificed.

This is what we should want to know when we come to this text....

Why was Jesus so mad?

After all the stupidity we have seen from the disciples over the last several chapters, why in the world was Jesus this provoked to this level of anger when he entered the temple in Jersualem?

We should certainly want to know what kinds of behavior and what kids of attitudes would infuriate Jesus to this degree and we should be warned by it?

So here is our path forward for the rest of our time together.

In order to really get at what outraged Jesus.

We need to look at several things.

We get a little more clarity in verse 17 when Jesus begins to teach.

Just like we underestimate the physical magnitude of the temple as 21st century readers… we also underestimate the theological magnitude of the temple in the Biblical story.

Jesus quotes from Isaiah 56 and he points to two very significant purposes for which the temple was built.

#1 The Temple Was Built for Drawing Near to the Presence of God

Jesus says that it was to be a place of prayer.

It was to be a place where people could draw near to the presence of God.

A few weeks ago, we noted that the story of the Bible is a story about two kingdoms…

The Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Man...

But that is not the only thread you could use to tell the Biblical story…

The story of the Bible could also be told as the story of God’s Presence and God’s People.

The Garden of Eden was a temple of sorts for Adam and Eve.