Upset Over a Tree


Sermon by Derek Thomas on September 28, 2005 Mark 11:12-24

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Wednesday Evening

September 28, 2005

Mark 11:12-25

“Upset Over a Tree”

Dr. Derek W.H. Thomas

Turn with me now, if you would, to the Gospel of Mark once
again. We began last Wednesday…we began in Mark 11, and we were looking
together at the triumphal entry as Jesus and His disciples come from the region
of Bethphage and Bethany to the Mount of Olives. And Jesus gave instructions for
a colt to be brought to Him, and we saw something of the significance of Jesus’
riding in this almost comical fashion on a colt, on a donkey, into Jerusalem.

Well, as we shall see, Jesus and the disciples each
evening, it seems, go back to Bethany. Bethany is the place where Mary and
Martha and Lazarus, whom He has just raised from the dead, live. It was His
home from home; it was the place He resided when He came down to Jerusalem, and
it seems to be there that He spends the evenings in the last week of His life.
We pick up the reading tonight in Mark 11, at verse 12, and we’ll be reading
through to the end of verse 25. And let’s hear now the word of God. Before we
do, let’s pray.

Our Father, again we bow in Your presence. We are
always in need of the instruction of Your word. We are by nature like lost and
erring sheep, and we need the direction and comfort of the Scriptures to guide
us, to rebuke us, to instruct us, to furnish us with a knowledge of Your will
and of Your purpose for us. Now bless us, we pray, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

“On the next day, when they had left Bethany, He became hungry.
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. He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you
again!” And His disciples were listening.

“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 moneychangers and the seats of those who were selling doves; and
He would not permit anyone to carry merchandise through the temple. 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.’ 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.

“When evening came, they would go out of the city.

“As they were passing by in the morning, they saw the fig tree
withered from the roots up. Being reminded, Peter said to Him, ‘Rabbi, look,
the fig tree which You cursed has withered.’ And Jesus answered saying to them,
‘Have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken
up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that
what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. Therefore I say to you,
all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and
they will be granted you. Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have
anything against anyone; so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive
you your transgressions.’ [And then, verse 26, which isn’t in all of your
copies and translations of the Scriptures — one of the disputable texts] — But
if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your
transgressions.”

Amen, and may God add His blessing now to the reading of
His holy and inerrant word.

Well, this story which begins with the cursing of
the fig tree has been the source of some fairly critical assessments of Jesus.
Now, the twentieth century philosopher, Bertrand Russell, said, “I cannot myself
feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ
stands quite as high as some people known to me in history.” T. W. Manson, the
famous critic of the New Testament, speaks of this story as “a story of
miraculous power wasted in the interest of ill temper.” A. M. Hunter, another
New Testament scholar of note — liberal, to boot! — speaks of this passage as
“frankly incredible.” William Barclay, author of the famous series of
commentaries on the New Testament …the story, he says, just doesn’t ring
true. Another says about the story that it is “irrational and revolting.”
(Obviously a tree hugger!) And even J. B. Philips, whom I usually like and
respect, speaks of Jesus’ “venting His feeling of frustration and despair upon
the fig tree.” Oh, my! What are we going to do with this story? All of this
over a tree…!

It looks as though Jesus is coming back now from
Bethany on the Monday morning, and having ridden into Jerusalem on a Sunday,
gone back to Bethany. Now, overtaken with pangs of hunger — Bethany is only a
couple of miles away (of course they’re on foot, remember), it’s a couple of
miles outside of Jerusalem, and Jesus is hungry and sees the fig tree. We don’t
know what size of a tree. Fig trees can grow to a pretty large size, at least
10, 12, maybe 15 feet.

It’s Passover time, remember, so that makes it late
March, early April, and the tree is full of leaves and at least the expectation
is that perhaps there might be some early figs. Now, figs don’t come into
season until late August-September — that’s when you would pick figs — but figs
begin to grow in that bulbous form of theirs over winter, and at least by May
some kind of edible fruit…it’s not quite the fig and sweet, sometimes a little
juicy, especially if it’s picked fresh — but by at least mid-May or late May
there would be something there that would be edible. This is not May. This is
late March and early April, and in all likelihood (despite some commentators who
want to try and say that there could possibly have been figs on this tree) there
probably never was any possibility of figs on this tree.

Jesus is perhaps at best creating now an expectation
and interest on the part of the disciples in order that this tree be utilized as
a parable, and for the life of me, I don’t understand why people get bent out of
shape for using a tree as a parable. If the tree had feelings, I’m sure the tree
would be honored to be used as a parable in the interest of the kingdom of God!
But what is going on here? What is this story all about?

I want us to look at it along three lines of
thought, and let’s take it along the journey itself, the journey into Jerusalem,
the visit to the temple mount, and then the journey back the next day.

I. The journey to Jerusalem.

In the first place, then, along the road from
Bethany. Bethany, as I have just suggested, is about two miles or so from
Jerusalem, and Jesus is hungry. Creating now this expectation or anticipation
in the eyes and ears of His disciples of perhaps something edible in this tree,
and using it now as an object lesson, because here is a tree that’s full of
leaves, at least purporting and looking to all intents and purposes as though it
might contain fruit, but in actual reality it does not; and seeing this fig tree
as the perfect symbol now for Israel, for Jerusalem, for the Jews — full of
leaves and purporting to be in possession of so much, in reality to be devoid of
fruit.

Together with the olive and the vine, the fig tree
is employed in the Old Testament over and over again by some of the great
prophets: Isaiah, Hosea…all of them use the fig tree as symbolic, as depicting
the nation of Israel. And just as Israel is called a vine, she’s also referred
to as a fig tree. It was a fig tree in the Garden of Eden, not an apple tree as
we often think. But it was fig leaves that they employed, and quite possibly
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that Adam and Eve were prohibited to
eat from was quite possibly a fig tree.

Israel is just like this fig tree, sprouting leaves
but bearing no fruit; no fruit unto repentance. It is the promise of something
without the consequent practice of something. It is to say one thing and do
another.

I’m reminded of the story that Billy Graham told,
and it has been repeated, I’m sure, many times. When Billy Graham is on board
an airplane and there’s a man (it was in the days before September 11, I’m sure)
— but a man was behaving badly, because in all likelihood he was drunk. And the
flight attendant (or the stewardess, as she would then have been called) saying
to the man in no uncertain terms to sit down. And as he sits down, he catches a
glimpse of the person who’s sitting behind him, namely Dr. Graham. And saying to
Dr. Graham as he puts out his hand to shake Graham’s hand, saying to him that he
had changed his life ten years ago! Of saying a great deal, but in actual
practice failing to bring forth the fruit that is necessary. This is an acted
parable of what Jesus now thinks of Israel, of the lack of fruit that would be
evident in the city of Jerusalem in this very week. It’s a prelude to what Jesus
will actually do in the temple precincts itself. It is something that is going
to be cursed. Within days Jerusalem will call for Jesus’ crucifixion. They’re
waiting for Messiah, but when Messiah comes they reject Him.

Oh, there’s a lesson for us, too, I’m sure. It’s
one thing to call ourselves Christians, and it’s one thing to bear the name of
Jesus Christ, but it’s another thing altogether to reveal and disclose those
consequent fruits that Jesus looks for in our lives.

II. Travel to the Temple.

Well, in the second place (and of which this story
is just the prelude), we follow now Jesus and the disciples as they move from
the Mount of Olives region and down into the valley below, and up Mount Zion and
into the very precincts of the temple.

This is the third temple. There was Solomon’s
temple, you remember; and then there came the temple that was built in the time
of Haggai and others, the so-called Zerubbabel temple which existed for around
500 years and was, in the period just before Jesus was born, in a state of some
disrepair. And Herod the Great, who died in 4 B.C., began this monumental
building project of constructing the temple like as if it had never been done
before, on gigantic architectural design.

Now, the size and dimensions of Herod’s temple are
impressive indeed. The temple was of course made up of four quite distinct
parts. The outer part was the Court of the Gentiles, and it measured around 500
by 325 yards (that’s 35 acres; it was an enormous piece of ground), and then
surrounded by columns that were 35 feet high. And according to Josephus, it
would take three men holding their hands together in order to encircle each of
those columns.

Standing freely within this court were three other
divisions of the temple: the Court of Women; and the Court of Israel into which
only circumcised Jews could go; and then of course the Holy of Holies itself,
where only the high priest could go, and that only once a year and that with all
of the ceremonial and cultic ritual that we’ve been looking at in part in the
Book of Leviticus of late. And in this large expanse of 35 acres, throngs of
people would gather.

This is Passover. If Josephus is to be believed–and
he’s not always to be believed; he has a tendency to exaggerate–but if he is to
be believed, there could be somewhere in the region of two million people and
more, upwards, coming now into the city of Jerusalem. Every male of twenty years
and older was required to pay the price, the shekel price, for Passover.

They would have to bring the ceremonial sacrificial
lambs for the slaughter. Josephus says that in A.D. 66, over 255,000 lambs were
sacrificed at Passover. There’s a graphic, a blood-curdling description, as you
can imagine the smell of 255,000 slaughtered lambs and the rivers of blood that
went down from the temple precincts, down into the Kidron Valley below,
requiring some enormously complicated design work to get all of that away from
the people and from the city.

Much easier, of course, to bring money to the outer
courts of the temple and buy the lamb on the spot than to carry this lamb…for
the diaspora Jews who would come hundreds of miles away taking several days,
sometimes several weeks in order to get there. Much easier, much more
convenient…the American Express version of Passover: You come into the Court
of the Gentiles and swipe your card and get your lamb, and no problems here
about the lamb having lost an ear along the way and therefore not being suitable
for sacrifice. You can imagine what took place: price gouging. You know all
about it!

These merchants could charge whatever they wanted,
because there was religious obligation on the purchase of these lambs. They
could charge double or triple the going rate for a lamb, because they had no
alternative now. They couldn’t go back home, finding out that the price…I
mean, when you’re at the baseball game and you want a hotdog it’s too late then
to say let’s go home and bring one here. You’ve got to pay that $10 for
something that you could cook yourself for 50 cents! Well, that’s what’s taking
place here, and it’s taking place on a gigantic scale.

And then there’s the shekel money, the half-shekel
that had to be paid for every male from thirty years and upwards. Cressius, for
example, says that when Jerusalem was ransacked in the middle of the first
century, he took with him the equivalent in today’s currency from the temple ten
million dollars. That’s a lot of money. There was a lot of money being
exchanged.

Now, the reason of course why the money was being
exchanged was that the half-shekel had to be paid in a certain currency. You
couldn’t use Roman currency. You couldn’t use Roman currency because it bore
the image of the emperor and was inherently idolatrous, so you had to use the
Tyrian coinage.

Well, for the merchants this was manna from heaven,
because there was a rate of exchange! Not only could they price-gouge the price
of the lamb, but they could also charge exorbitant rates to exchange the Roman
coinage for the Tyrian coinage. There’s buying and selling and merchandising on
a scale that is beyond even our imagination here; the noise, the bustle, was
deafening.

And Jesus now overturns the tables and drives them
out. It’s not clear whether this was on a fairly small scale in one corner of
the Court of the Gentiles, which perhaps it was. I think the Roman soldiers
would have probably got involved had it been on a larger scale than that, but
the Court of the Gentiles was meant to be a house of prayer for all the
nations. [He’s quoting here…Mark is quoting there from Isaiah 56:7.]

That was the purpose of the outer court of the
temple. It was to be a house of prayer for the Gentiles, for those who are
seeking the true faith; that they could come at least to the outer courts of the
temple and there to engage in the solemnity and the reverence and the sense of
the presence of God, and to bow their knees and to engage in prayer to the
heavenly Father. And instead it’s a mall; it’s worse than that, it’s a
marketplace for commerce and making money, and price gouging has taken over. And
the temple is desecrated, and the holiness…the holiness of Jesus takes
over, that the Lamb of Passover who is Jesus becomes now the Lion of the tribe
of Judah.

There’s a place somewhere in one of C.S. Lewis’
books, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where the Lamb changes at one
point into the Lion, and that’s almost what’s taking place here as Jesus drives
out these money changers, because the temple precincts and the worship of God
has become a Barnum and Bailey Circus.

And, my friends, I need not tell you that in the
church of Jesus Christ as you survey what is happening in our own time in the
early twenty-first century, that there is much of what we see here in the Court
of the Gentiles true of the modern church also, where the church has lost its
sense of worship and dignity and reverence, and the sense of the presence of
God, and of place being given to the word of God, to prayer; and instead, it’s
about commercialization, and it’s about entertainment, and it’s about noise,
cacophony; and it’s about man and pleasing man, and finding the inner strength
that lies within ourselves, and all about externals and no heart involvement.
And it seems to me that there’s something here of which, if Jesus were to come
into the modern church in our time, that He’d come with a whip of cords and
drive out the entertainers and remove the soft plush seating and remind us
afresh of what the purpose of worship really is: the bowing in the presence of
the majesty and the glory of God.

It’s one of the great blessings, and it is an
enormous blessing, this prayer meeting. It’s like an oasis in the midst of a
desert, and in all of my travels to come back and witness something that is
always the same and never seems to change…and long may it continue for the
glory of God, that we might seek God’s face.

And do you see what Jesus is saying here, at least
in part? That the Court of the Gentiles was meant to be a house of prayer for
the nations–for the nations–and there is a sense in which the Gentiles
are being prevented by the merchandising activity here from coming and beholding
and sensing the presence of God. And you know what Paul says in I Corinthians
14? That there’s a sense in which, when an unbeliever comes into your midst, he
says, and he’s talking in the context of speaking about tongues and prophecy and
other things, but one of the things that is true about worship is that an
unbeliever should come into the midst of the people worshiping God and say, “God
is in this place. God is in this place.” And these Gentiles were being
prevented in doing that.

III. The return

Well, then, in the third place–on the road
now, they leave again in verse 19. When evening comes they leave and they go out
of the city, and then in the morning (in verse 20) they’re coming back again
along the road, Jesus and the disciples, and they pass by this poor benighted
tree again and this tree now is described as withered away to its roots. [Just
an interesting side remark here on verse 21: It’s Peter who speaks. And remember
here the tradition that the Gospel of Mark is actually Peter’s gospel, and Mark
is actually recording here Peter’s words, because Peter by tradition is almost
dictating much of the material of the Gospel of Mark to John Mark.] And Peter
remembered and said to Him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that You cursed has
withered.” (And all those New Testament critics are crying all around the base
of it!)

Well, what is it here? Because there’s something
deeply, deeply significant here.
This isn’t a casual remark. Jesus didn’t
do this as a piece of spite, or pique, or a temper tantrum. Jesus was teaching a
very profound lesson here, and what is that?

Do you remember back in verse 16 we read, “He would
not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple”? It’s sometimes thought
that the temple precincts had become a sort of thorough-way, like a
thoroughfare, a shortcut from the inner part of the city to the Mount of Olives,
and they would cross through the Court of the Gentiles on their way, perhaps,
out of the city and home to the Mount of Olives, and they’d be carrying their
shopping bags with them as they went. And that may be true, but perhaps that’s
not quite what Mark is intending us to see here. But, rather, what He’s doing
is He’s actually preventing the sacrifices from taking place, because, in
driving out the money changers and overturning the tables, the whole ritual of
Passover cannot take place for some of these worshipers.

And it’s as though Jesus is pronouncing now a curse,
or at least pronouncing the beginning of the end for the very temple and its
sacrifices; as though this is some kind of enacted parable for what actually
will become true: that the days of the temple and the days of the sacrifices of
lambs and of blood that is slain on these altars (of which we sang in a
rendition of a hymn by Isaac Watts at the beginning of our prayer meeting this
evening)…that those days are numbered because the true Israel has come, the
true sacrifice is here, the Lamb of God is here to be slain.

You remember how, in John’s earlier account…and
there may well have been two cleansings of the temple, and John has a similar
account of a cleansing of the temple back in the second chapter of John’s
Gospel, at a much earlier period in Jesus’ ministry…and do you remember He
spoke then of “destroying this temple”, and in three days building it again?
They never forgot that. Even at His trial that was brought up against Him again:
that He was an insurrectionist, that His mission was to destroy the temple and
the cultures and the nation of Israel. And in a sense, He had come to do just
that, to bring to its fulfillment and its culmination all of that which Passover
and the sacrifices and the ritual of temple worship had always been pointing to,
namely, Himself as the Lamb of God who is slain on behalf of the sins of God’s
people.

And here He is by this fig tree that is now withered
from its very roots, as though this fig tree representing Israel is saying,
‘Israel’s days are finished, and the true Israel is to emerge: the Israel which
is Christ’s, and the Israel which is Christ’s people, Jew and Gentile, who have
faith in Jesus Christ, the Israel of God.’ And it seems as though Jesus is
saying that true religion is approaching God through faith in Jesus Christ.
That’s why He seems to say in verse 22 now, “Have faith in God.” There are some
surprising things that are going to happen in the days that are just about to
transpire. You will see some astonishing things. You will see Jesus being nailed
to a tree and killed and buried, and raised again. Have faith in God, He’s
saying to the disciples.

And now, as though two examples of the kind of
fruit is evidently missing in the courts of the temple, He says to His disciples
there are two things that should emerge from you as a consequence of faith in
God, faith in Me.

One is prayer…one is prayer. And He talks
about prayer with great faith, of mountains being taken up and thrown and cast
into the sea — believing prayer. Not that Jesus is saying here the “name it and
claim it” kind of prayer; not “believe that God is going to give you a Mercedes
Benz and He will give you a Mercedes Benz.” Not that kind. Look at verse 23.
You are to believe that what He says will come to pass! Yes, what He
says will come to pass, and what does He say? That which is promised in His
word. Yes, prayer according to the will of God. Believe that; believe that
every promise that God has actually made will come true.

And the second thing that He says is a forgiving
heart: a willingness to forgive others that otherwise will be an impediment to
your prayers.
That’s the kind of fruit He wants us to bring and to bear. Why
is Jesus saying that here? Because if you retain a stubborn, bitter heart, an
unwillingness to forgive others no matter what they’ve done to you, then you’re
just as phony as those who are in the Court of the Gentiles in the temple in
Jerusalem. You’re no better than them. That’s why.

Well, may God bless this word to our hearts. Let’s
pray together.

Father, we are once again thankful and grateful
to You for Your word, and especially tonight again for the revelation of Jesus
as the fulfillment of all of that which Scripture speaks. We thank You for the
gift of faith, and we pray tonight that You would fill us with faith in
believing all that You have promised to us. Make us men and women of prayer. We
want people to think about us here in First Presbyterian Church as men and women
who love a place of prayer, who love to pray. And we pray, O Lord, give us the
grace of forgiveness and remove from us the impediment of a bitter heart. And
all of this we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Please stand. Receive the Lord’s
benediction.

Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

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