A Judgment on Jerusalem

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I know that some of you are already wondering about the bowls of Snickers bars that I put at the entrances. If you’re watching online, I wish I knew how to send them to you telepathically, but I don’t. But I put bowls of Snickers bars out here and they are not to keep you from getting antsy if I go long tonight.

I thought they were a fun little reminder of what we’re going to talk about tonight. The story that we’re going to look at tonight, when I read it in Mark chapter 11, it makes me think of a series of commercials that Snickers put out several years ago. And that’s why I put the Snickers bars out for you.

I also picked, I guess, the most church appropriate one I could find. And so I’ve asked Brother Jack, for those of you who are not familiar with these commercials, I asked Brother Jack to play this video for you so you could see what I’m talking about. Marsha, what happened?

Peter hit me in the nose with a football. I can’t go to the desk like this. Well, I’m sure it was an accident, sweetheart.

An eye for an eye. That’s what Dad always says. I never said that, honey.

Shut up! Time to teach Peter a lesson. Marsha, eat a Snickers.

Why? You get a little hostile when you’re hungry. Better?

Better. Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. Jan, this isn’t about you.

It never is! All right. There you go.

So Snickers put out a whole series of those commercials a few years ago, and the idea was eat a Snickers when you’re hungry. You heard the commercial. You get a little hostile. As a matter of fact, we use this phrase at my house, you know, does somebody need a Snickers?

Or, you know, I’ve said, especially like around election time, I’ve used the phrase, I wish everybody would just have a Snickers and chill out. There’s this idea that we get hostile when we’re hungry. We get stressed out, we get angry.

Hangry is the word we use at home, a mixture of hungry and angry, and it certainly happens to me. The reason I bring this up is because, as I said, the story we’re going to look at reminds me of this, and it seems to be people’s explanation for why Jesus acts the way He does. As a matter of fact, what we’re going to look at tonight is really three events, but they’re all tied together in one.

And I’ll just tell you, Jesus goes and curses a fig tree on the way into Jerusalem. He goes in and cleans house in the temple. And then on the way back, the next day, I should say, the disciples discover that the fig tree has withered.

And honestly, I’ve never thought too much about the fig tree episode. We read through it, and it doesn’t seem to be all that important on the surface of things, but God didn’t put anything in His Word that wasn’t important for some reason or another. But I wouldn’t have thought too much about it, except there’s been kind of a ruckus recently.

I don’t know how recently it happened, but it’s gotten back around to me recently that an anchor on CNN made the statement, as we all know, Jesus wasn’t perfect and didn’t claim to be, and then he went on to make his point. This caused outrage among Christians who watch CNN, both of them. And, sorry, just seeing if y’all are awake.

And then in the course of this outrage, there was a man who has some atheist YouTube channel who commented and said, oh, so you think Jesus is perfect? And he put together this whole video outlining the reasons why he thinks the Bible shows that Jesus was a jerk. His word, not mine, okay?

And he says that the incident with the fig tree is a big part of that. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of times that this fig tree incident is used to try to poke holes in the gospel narratives. Either to poke holes in the idea that Jesus was perfect because they look at this and say this was a temper tantrum that Jesus threw.

He was hungry. He was angry. And so he threw a temper tantrum and killed a defenseless fig tree because he was grumpy.

Or they poke at the timeline between Matthew and Mark. I don’t know if we’ll have time to get into it tonight in much detail, but I spelled it out for you in the handout. The reasons why the Mark and Matthew issue with the timeline of when the fig tree withered and when they found it is really not that big of an issue.

But they will use this story to try to, people will try to use this story to poke holes in the reliability of the Gospels and the deity of Jesus Christ. And so that made me sit up and take notice of the fig tree issue and study why he did this. So tonight we’re going to be in Mark chapter 11. Some of you have already started turning there.

If you haven’t, join me in Mark chapter 11. We’re going to start in verse 11 where we left off this morning and go through verse 26. If you can’t find it or don’t have your Bible with you, it’ll be on the screen up here behind me.

And if you would, stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. So here’s what Mark has to say about the incident with the fig tree and then the temple. Starting in verse 11.

And Jesus went into Jerusalem and into the temple. So when he had looked around at all things, as the hour was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve. So that leaves off from where we were this morning talking about the triumphal entry that Sunday morning.

Sunday night, he goes back out of Jerusalem to Bethany. It was about a mile or two out to Bethany. And he stayed there with his friends and supporters.

Verse 12 says, Now the next day, so that’s Monday, when they had come out from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing from afar a fig tree having leaves, he went to see if perhaps he would find something on it. When he came to it, he found nothing.

Nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. In response, Jesus said to it, Let no one eat fruit from you ever again. And this is part of the argument that people make.

Jesus cursed the fig tree, and it wasn’t even fig season. And yet he gets angry at this tree and curses it. But there’s a reason for it.

It says, and the disciples heard it. His disciples heard it. Verse 15, so they came to Jerusalem.

Then Jesus went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold dubs. And he would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple. Then he taught, saying to them, is it not written, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of thieves.

And the scribes and chief priests heard it and sought how they might destroy him. For they feared him because all the people were astonished at his teaching. When evening had come, he went out of the city.

Now in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter, remembering, said to him, Rabbi, look, the fig tree which you cursed has withered away. So Jesus answered and said to them, Have faith in God.

For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, Be removed and be cast into the sea and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he said will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them and you will have them. And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him that your Father in heaven may also forgive your trespasses.

But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses. And you may be seated. There’s a lot of material here to cover.

And I don’t know if I will be able to do it justice in the time that we have tonight. And so hopefully the notes that I’ve provided for you will suffice if there’s anything that I don’t get to. And we can always sort out some of the details in a Stump the Preacher session if we need to.

But Jesus had an important reason for everything He did, including what He did on this Monday after the triumphal entry when He goes into Jerusalem, He curses the fig tree, He goes in and cleanses the temple, and then He takes His disciples back the same way on Tuesday where they encounter the fig tree having withered. He had an important reason for everything he did. And him going into Jerusalem on Monday was for the purpose of challenging the spiritual corruption that he found there.

Jesus went into Jerusalem specifically to challenge the spiritual corruption. As a matter of fact, we read in verse 11 that at the end of the triumphal entry, as he goes into Jerusalem, he goes in and he looks around. I believe it says he He looked around at the temple and all the things.

He looked into the temple. And when he had looked, he went. .

. I think he was probably doing some reconnaissance. Now, from a God standpoint, he knows everything.

From a human standpoint, he’s going and checking things out. How all that works, I don’t understand. I just know they’re both taught in Scripture.

He knew what was going on in the temple. And he was determined to go there and to confront the corruption of the religious leaders and of the merchants and everybody else that was making merchandise of the temple. If you remember back to what I said to you this morning with the triumphal entry, he was making a confrontation inevitable.

And even more so when he goes back the next day specifically to call out the wicked practices that were taking place in the house of the Lord. You go to verses 15 and 16, it says, They came to Jerusalem, he went into the temple, and began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves, and he would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple. Now, if you’ve spent much time in church at all, you’re probably a little more comfortable with the story of Jesus overturning the tables in the temple because we hear it talked about more often.

As a matter of fact, last Sunday night I mentioned to you that we were going to discuss these two sets of events tonight, and I heard from people, you know, I understand the temple thing. It’s the fig tree I’m curious about. So we kind of understand the issue of the temple.

But if you’re new to this, just to be clear, why was Jesus so angry? First of all, this is the second time that Jesus has cleansed the temple. There’s an incident that’s recorded in John chapter 2 that I believe took place early in his ministry.

And this that’s recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke is referring to an incident right before his crucifixion. So he’s already told them to stop doing this once before, and they’ve gone right back to doing the things that he’s talking about. What are they doing?

They’re buying and selling in the temple, which in and of itself is not that big of a deal. And by the way, this passage is not a proof text against selling t-shirts for the church or letting kids do fundraisers. That’s not what this is talking about. These people were taking advantage of worshipers because when you came to the temple, You had to offer your offerings in certain currency that they didn’t necessarily carry with them around the various parts of the Roman Empire.

They had to exchange currency and kind of predatory rates of exchange these merchants were imposing. You had to have certain animals. And it’s hard to travel with animals.

And so we’ll just buy it at the temple. And just like you think, well, I’ll buy my bottle of water at the movies and it’s $18, right? Because they’ve got you over a barrel.

These people were taking advantage of the worshipers, and they were not looking at the temple as a place for worship, as a house of worship. They were looking at the temple as their cash cow, something that they could use to extort every bit of money out of the worshipers that they could. It’d be like if we started putting up a turnstile at the doors and started charging you to come in, and maybe charge you every time you go to the restroom, and put a little meter on the coffee machine where you have to pay per cup.

And we started telling you that your relationship with God depends on this, and we’re going to sell it to you. That’s what they were doing. Part of the problem here is that they were far more focused on making money than anything to do with worship.

And that was what disgusted Jesus. And he had it. And so once again, he flips over their tables, and he runs them out.

I like what I’ve heard somebody say before, that when somebody asks you what would Jesus do, remind them that making a whip and turning over tables is within the realm of possibilities here. that wasn’t his default response, but when it was right, he was willing to do it. And we still might look at this and say, yeah, but wasn’t there a different way to handle this?

Notice in verse 17, it says, then he taught, saying to them, is it not written, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of thieves. When he says that, he’s quoting a prophecy from Isaiah about God gathering the Gentiles. Isaiah, even though it was written to the Jewish people, deals quite often with the idea of God gathering people who were from outside the covenant, who were from outside of Israel, and especially the Messiah coming and bringing light and hope and salvation to the Gentiles.

And one of the places it does this is in Isaiah 56. Let me read you part of what it says in Isaiah 56, talking about this gathering of the Gentiles. It says, also the sons of the foreigner who joined themselves to the Lord to serve him and to love the name of the Lord to be his servants.

Everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath and holds fast my covenant, even them 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 nations.

The Lord God who gathers the outcasts of Israel says, yet I will gather to him others besides those who are gathered to him. There was this mindset that you had to be born into the nation of Israel. It all came down to where you came from and who you came from in order to be right with God.

And yet the Old Testament prophets said, no, he is going to graft in people from every nation, tribe, and tongue. He is going to bring the Gentiles. He is going to bring the people from the wrong backgrounds and bring them to worship him on his mountain, in his house, and make it a house of prayer for all nations.

And that is specifically what Jesus says they are not allowing to happen. And here’s what you need to understand. Here’s what makes it clearer in my mind why Jesus was angry.

When we understand that the temple complex was divided into different parts, and who you were determined where you could go and worship in the temple complex. There was the holy of holies, where only the high priest could go, and only at certain times of the year. There was the holy place, where only the priests could go.

There was the court of the women that was set aside for the women to worship. There was also the court of the Gentiles, which is the place in the temple complex where those from outside of Israel could come and worship the God of Israel. And these people had set up their market in the court of the Gentiles.

This place that had been set aside so that people from outside could come in and worship the true God. They didn’t care about that. They said, let’s turn it into a marketplace and let’s extort all the money we can.

And maybe they were still able to come in and worship or try to anyway. But I don’t know. I’m easily distracted.

Anybody else suffer from that? Okay. I mean, sometimes you’ll even be in church and it’s easy to lose focus because somebody just came in or somebody just came out or somebody sneezed or something.

Oh my goodness. I’ve never been in a Middle Eastern market, but I’ve watched lots of episodes of Bizarre Foods where they go to Middle Eastern markets and they’re loud and they’re chaotic. Imagine that going on in the background of your church service.

And I believe part of the reason that Jesus was angry is that the spiritual corruption of the religious and political and everybody else leaders in Jerusalem, that corruption was preventing people from walking with the Lord. They had set up a place where they could earn money, where they could get rich, and they didn’t care who they had to alienate from God to do it. And Jesus came to put a stop to it.

When you realize that these merchants were standing between people and God, And they were doing it with the approval of the temple leadership, and maybe even a kickback to the temple leadership. And they were keeping people away from God. You can kind of understand why Jesus got so angry.

By the way, I think Jesus is probably angry when that stuff goes on today. We ought to be angry when that goes on today. Not just money, but when we see any roadblocks being put up that keep people away from God, that prevent people from being able to come to God, whatever that may be, it ought to make us angry.

So Jesus went to Jerusalem to challenge the spiritual corruption there. He wasn’t just throwing a hissy fit. And the emptiness of the fig tree provides a picture of Israel’s spiritual condition.

Now, I believe the story of the fig tree really happened, but I think it’s organized. I think the material is organized in such a way to make a point. And that’s part of the issue.

Matthew tells the story all at once, the story of the fig tree, before going back to talk about what happened at the temple. Because he’s making a point and emphasizing faith and prayer, what Jesus talks about after the fig tree is discovered. I don’t think Matthew is meant in that section to be chronological. I think he’s talking thematically.

He’s covering a theme. And when I think about this, for whatever reason, the first thing that pops to mind is telling my wife about the trip I made to Nashville a couple years ago how awful it ended up being. How was your trip?

I got air sick on the way there. I got air sick on the way back. I realized while I was there, I had brought the wrong kind of charger and my phone was dead.

So I had to drive all over Nashville without GPS, trying to find a place to buy a charger. Now, do any of you think there, wait a minute, he flew into Nashville, then he flew out of Nashville, then he’s driving around Nashville. How does that work?

No, you understand I’m talking about the flight and the flight, and then I go back and fill in what happened in the middle. I think that’s what Matthew’s doing here. Jesus curses the fig tree.

They find the fig tree withered. It didn’t take months. It happened overnight.

It happened immediately. As a matter of fact, I’d say the fig tree withered immediately. They just didn’t stick around to look at it, and they saw it the next day.

And in the meantime, he went to the temple. So Matthew organizes it that way because he wants to emphasize before he gets back to the temple, he wants to emphasize the issue of prayer and faith and all of that. Mark mentions that, but I think Mark takes the story chronologically, says he curses the fig tree, he goes to the temple, they discover the fig tree the next day, and then Jesus talks about the prayer and the faith, but by putting the temple story where it goes in between the two parts of the fig tree story, I think he’s connecting the two, because that fig tree is a picture of Israel’s spiritual condition.

So we know from verse 13 that figs were not in season at the time. And yet Jesus cursed the tree for not having any figs. In verse 14, in response, Jesus said to it, let no one eat fruit from you ever again.

And his disciples heard it. So to modern readers like us, this seems unreasonable that he is upset with the fig tree for doing something that the fig tree cannot do. It’s not even fig season.

But if we realize a few things about the world that they lived in, I found out this week their climate where they lived, it allowed for there to be two or three fig harvests a year. So where we might be lucky to get fruit off of a tree or vegetables out of the garden for just a short time once each year, they had figs at various times throughout the year. And if you’ve ever been in a mountainous area, you know that weird things happen with climate.

On our honeymoon, we went to Santa Fe, and in October, it was weird. You’re in the middle of town in the square in Santa Fe, and it felt like it was summer. You go out of town a little ways and it felt like fall.

Beautiful leaves changing colors and all that. You go up to the top of the mountains and it’s like winter. All of this in the same afternoon.

And so this tree, it wasn’t unusual, was what I’m saying. It’s not unusual for weird things to happen with plants in the mountains. And here they were on the Mount of Olives.

It was probably not all that unusual for a fig tree in some area of the mountain to be operating on a different season than others on the other side of the mountain. And what I did not understand is that a full cover of leaves like what is described in the Gospels was something that signaled the presence of figs. That if it had this full leaf cover, I mean, it says it was full of leaves.

If it had this full leaf cover, that’s a sign. I don’t know if you’ve ever. .

. There’s not a Krispy Kreme here in town, is there? No.

Okay, if you’ve seen them in the city, they have the sign that says donuts are ready now. You’re driving down I-240, you hop off the highway real quick because the donuts are ready. These leaves, this heavy leaf cover, is the flashing neon sign that says, hey, there are figs here.

And yet Jesus walks over to the tree and there are no figs. So the tree was advertising fruit, but it had none. So for Jesus to curse this tree, this lion tree, was not a temper tantrum.

He was making a statement. See, this tree appeared to be full of life. It appeared to be bearing fruit, and it wasn’t.

And so he said, okay, nobody’s ever going to have fruit from you again. The tree appeared to be full of life and full of fruit, but it was empty. Jerusalem also appeared to be full of life and bearing fruit.

Look at all the activity that was going on in the temple. It looked like it was bustling and full of life, but it was empty. Even though the people were busy with religious activities and law and festivals, and especially that week they were getting ready for the Passover, they were really busy.

But in reality, they were empty. They were separated from God. They were devoid of any kind of spiritual life.

The people were the fig tree. The people of Jerusalem that put on such a show. The people in the temple who put on such a show of trying to be godly and in fact trying to be more godly than everybody else.

But inside, they couldn’t have been deader. Just like the Pharisees that Jesus called whitewashed tombs full of dead men’s bones. What that means is you look pretty on the outside, but everything on the inside is just dead.

And so this fig tree, understand when I say this, that it became a symbol for the people of Israel. I’m not saying Mark made it up as a symbol. I’m saying it really happened.

And Jesus used it as a symbol. And Mark makes sure we understand that symbol, that it happens on both sides of the temple story so that we understand it’s about more than the fig tree. It’s about the deadness of Israel.

They were just as dead as that fig tree. And it’s evident from their behavior at the temple, from the fact that they didn’t care who they cheated, they didn’t care who they alienated from the temple as long as they got what they were after. It was evident that they were devoid of spiritual life, but we see it show up again as well over and over and over in the coming week in their rejection of the Messiah.

As we studied this morning, Jesus made it abundantly clear to the people of Jerusalem that He was coming as the Messiah, and they rejected Him over and over and over again. because for all their pretense, from all their appearance of being godly, when God was doing something right under their nose, they were so fleshly and so worldly that they couldn’t see it right in front of them. So Jesus’ dealings with the temple and Jesus’ dealings with the fig tree are not a man out of control.

They’re a picture of a man. I know, God, He’s God. But they’re a picture of a man who is making a statement to these people about why they need Him to come as the Messiah because they are dead and separated from God.

And Jesus is not. He was not then and He is not now interested in the appearance of spiritual life. He’s interested in producing it for real. He was not interested in how busy they looked at the temple.

He was not interested in how busy they appeared to be at keeping the feasts and the rituals in spite of all that they were doing. Jesus came and He rebuked the spiritual deadness of the people in the temple. And he solidified the physical deadness of the tree.

I mean, it was not bearing fruit. And so he just helped it along. It was acting dead.

So he just helped it along. And we see that this, what he’s doing is he’s declaring that he has come as Messiah to bring judgment. And one thing that popped out at me about this passage is the way that judgment worked in the temple and the way it worked in the fig tree.

Just like in the temple, sometimes judgment means coming and rebuking our sins. And just like with the fig tree, sometimes judgment means handing us over to it. If the fig tree wanted to act dead, he’s going to let it act dead.

I thought about this story this week as I was listening to the news on the radio in my truck driving around town. And it’s hard to do to listen to the news and see the direction that our culture is going, that our nation is going. And folks, I know when you hear that, you think those are words about our political system.

I’m talking about our culture and who we are as a people. and I thought to myself, why has God not judged us yet? Why has God not taken his belt off yet?

In particular, I heard a story of a woman who was arrested in Great Britain for praying silently across the street from an abortion clinic. She was arrested for just being out there and praying. I heard that and I thought, why has God not taken the belt off?

And I realized, I think back to Romans chapter one, we studied at the end of last year. And sometimes for God to bring his judgment is to take the belt off and straighten us out. Sometimes the judgment of God is just to hand us over to the sin that we’ve embraced.

And I think the week leading up to the crucifixion, Jesus did both. I would like to get into the stuff about the prayer and the faith, but may have to do that another time. What I want you to understand out of this, most of all, is that Jesus was not impressed by the appearance of life at the temple or in the fig tree.

What Jesus is looking for is real life, a real connection to God. And the only way we can have that is through him. Not by being good, not by going to church, not by doing all the religious things and checking all the boxes, but recognizing how far we have fallen away from God and recognizing that Jesus Christ suffered, bled, and died to pay for that sin so that we could be reconciled to a holy God.