The Fig Tree and the Temple

Today on Renewing Your Mind. We read the next day 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. But when He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And thereupon when Jesus found only leaves, no figs, He cursed the fig tree, saying, Let no one ever eat fruit from you again. The passage that I just read to you, as I'm sure you can imagine, is one that has been quite vexing over the centuries for scholars because on the surface it seems that Jesus overreacts to this poor innocent fig tree for not bearing figs when it wasn't even the season for figs. The late Bertrand Russell who wrote the book Attacking Christianity, saying, Why I am not a Christian, included this narrative as one of the reasons that he gave for repudiating Christianity because he said this incident displays Jesus as a man who expresses vindictive fury to an innocent plant, manifesting behavior that is not consistent with even a righteous man, let alone the Son of God. And even Christian scholars who are more sanguine in their evaluation of Jesus are perplexed by this story.

Some have said that this incident represents a terrific waste of supernatural power, and it challenges our thinking to imagine why Jesus reacted in such a manner. Well, those who believe in the sinlessness of Jesus and in the inspiration of the New Testament text have come to the defense of our Lord and tried to explain this somewhat bizarre incident in terms of some of the dimensions of the growing of figs. The fig season is in the fall in Palestine. Yet in the spring the fig trees that are dormant will send out little knobs or buds of what's called pagim, and these pagim are not real figs, but they are the subsurface for the production of figs. And after these little knobs have been set forth, then a growth of foliage follows from it, and people who are weary and hungry travelers from time to time will pluck these pagim from the fig trees and eat them. Even though they're not fully developed figs, they were edible. And so the commentators say that what happened here was that these knobs that should have been present were not present, and so Jesus was angry because there were leaves but no budding pagim.

Well, I don't think that's the answer either. This morning, if you've been worried about this text all your life, I am going to solve the mystery for you. One of the special treats that I had in seminary, which there were few, was having the opportunity to take a course from a man who was in his mid-eighties at the time who was one of the most distinguished archeologists of the twentieth century. Dr. James Calso had been an associate of William Foxwell Albright, who was to archaeology what Einstein was to physics in the twentieth century, and also an associate of John Bright, and had this elective course in the customs and geography of Palestine from old Dr. Calso, who was perhaps the greatest living expert on the customs of that nation. And when we looked at this text, Dr. Calso explained it this way, that in Palestine there is a clearly defined season for figs, and the vast majority of species of figs grow within that season. However, there were a few rare species of fig trees that bore fruit out of the normal fig season. And he said the final test of whether one could expect figs from a fig tree was not what time of year it was, but whether or not the foliage of the tree was in full bloom. And so Jesus, knowing the customs and culture of Palestine even better than Dr. Calso, saw this fig tree in full bloom, which would say clearly that figs, not just pagim and little knobs, but real figs would be present on it. He turned aside to satisfy His hunger from these figs. But instead of finding an exotic fig tree bearing delicious figs out of season, He found a tree that was barren.

So why did He curse it? Because Jesus, among other things, was a prophet, and one of the most graphic forms of prophetic communication that we find in the Old Testament was the object lesson, where the prophet would take something from nature or something from an ordinary use as Amos did with a plumb line and use that object to communicate the truth of God. And so here Jesus finds an object that displays the sin the sin of hypocrisy. It had all of the outward appearance of fruit, but it was empty.

It was barren. And if you follow the teaching of Jesus through His earthly ministry, you can see the severity with which our Lord regularly denounced the particular sin of hypocrisy. This was His basic critique of the Pharisees of the day. How many times, particularly in Matthew's Gospel, do we hear Jesus saying, Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You're like whited sepulchers, beautiful, pristine on the outside, but inside filled with dead men's bones. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

You claim the outside of the plate, but underneath it's filled with filth. And several occasions Jesus chastened the religious leaders of His day for their show of spirituality, their show of righteousness, righteousness but with the absence of fruit. Now that should be a lesson to us in our own day. Several years ago when our friend Archie Parrish was the international director of Evangelism Explosion, he asked me to write a book to help his workers in that field because they had compiled over decades the responses that people gave to the diagnostic questions of the Christian faith, and they kept track, and they compiled the top ten objections that people raised against Christianity. And so Archie came to me, and he said, Would you write a book giving an answer to these top ten objections?

And so I did, and the title of the book was simply, Objections Answered. But one of the top ten objections that they discovered in their ministry over the years was the objection that the church is filled with hypocrites. And because people were watching the lives of church members throughout the week, they were turned off to Christianity because they said Christians are hypocrites. Well, one friend of mine when he heard that complaint that the church is filled with hypocrites responded by saying, Well, there's always room for one more.

And here's where the problem is, dear friends. What the church is full of is sinners. In fact, I don't know of any other organization in the world that requires that you be a sinner in order to join it. But the church is an organization of sinners. Now here's where our logic gets a little muddled. All hypocrites are sinners, are sinners, but not all sinners are hypocrites.

Let me say it again. All hypocrites are sinners, but not all sinners are hypocrites. Hypocrisy is one of many sins. And it's unfair of our critics to say, Well, so-and-so is a professing Christian, and we saw him sin during the week. Therefore, he's a hypocrite.

Not necessarily so. If I claim not to do something and then you see me do it, then I'm guilty of hypocrisy. So we need to draw that clear distinction there. However, having said that, in defense of Christians who by their fallen nature continue to sin even after embracing the Savior, we still need to be very careful to avoid the pernicious sin of hypocrisy. Paul himself was aware of this when he said, The Gentiles blaspheme because of us. They see us talking the talk and not walking the walk. Now the other side of this coin is something we in the church need to be very sensitive to. Why is it that sometimes we feel like we have to pretend that we've achieved a higher level of sanctification than we really have? Because we create pressure in the church. We create a level of expectation to Christians.

We assume that they're going to behave at a certain level of purity, which in many cases, dear friends, is completely unrealistic. We know that conversion does not cure all of our sin, and that the process of sanctification is something that takes our entire lives. And there are no two people in this room this morning who are at the same point in their spiritual growth. There are no two people in this room this morning who came into the Christian faith with the exact same amount of baggage from the world. The Christian faith is the same. That's why we are called to be patient with one another, to have that kind of love that covers a multitude of sins.

Yes, we have to discipline when gross and heinous sin manifests itself in our midst, when public scandal besmirches the dignity of the church. But in the meantime, we're a fellowship of sinners. As one person said it, we're one beggar and we're to find bread. I like the bumper stickers.

I don't usually like Christian bumper stickers, but I like the one that says, God is not finished with me yet. And so let's not pressure each other to become play actors, to pretend that we're more pious than we are. But in any case, the point that Jesus is making here is not so much addressing the problem of hypocrisy within His church. Rather there's a direct link in this narrative between the cursing of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple. That's why Mark interjects the cleansing of the temple between the cursing and then the discovery of the death of the fig tree the following day. Let's look at what happens in the temple. So they came to Jerusalem, and 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 doves. You know what, folks?

I have to tell you this. I believe it was Christmas Day. Fox News had a presentation on religion in America, and a very, very famous preacher was featured in this program.

And I didn't get to see the whole thing, but I saw this. I came in, and I looked at this preacher, and he was saying with great gusto and great emphasis, I don't care who you are. I don't care what you've done or who you've done it with. God is not angry with you. I finally found a formula for how to have a fifteen thousand member church. All I have to do is tell people it doesn't matter what you do, you never have to worry about the wrath of God. But I can't find that in my Bible. We do provoke God to anger, and we saw that the people of Jesus' day provoked our Lord to righteous indignation. He came into the temple, the house of God, and was furious with what He found there.

He cared what these people were doing. Think about the Herodian temple, one of the wonders of the ancient world. It was divided into four parts, the court of the Gentiles, which was the largest part, the court of the women, the court of the Jews, and the holy of holies. Now the court of the Gentiles was the largest part of the temple complex. It was 500 by 350 yards. Think five football fields by three and a half football fields. The space of the court of the Gentiles occupied thirty-five acres.

That's a big church, thirty-five acres just for one quarter of the building. And in the court of the Gentiles, what was going on was that the Sadducees and the Sanhedrin had turned the court of the Gentiles basically into a stockyard for commercial purposes. One of the most lucrative sources of revenue for the Sanhedrin was the sale of animals for sacrifice. You can imagine that on the occasion for the celebration of Passover, which was a feast of obligation for every Jew, the Jews streamed into Jerusalem from all quarters of the ancient world, from all of the provinces, and when they came for Passover, they had two problems. The one is that they weren't going to travel great distances carrying a sheep for the sacrifice. It was much more convenient for them to buy that sheep after they arrived in Jerusalem so that they could prepare then for Passover. But then the other problem they had if they wanted to buy these animals in Jerusalem, they were using currency that was not in use in Jerusalem. And just like when we go abroad, if we want to go to Holland or Paris or whatever, we have to exchange our dollars for euros, and whenever we exchange our dollars for euros, there's always some kind of tariff added to it in that whole process of money changing. So when the pilgrim came to Jerusalem, he had to buy an animal, but he didn't have the right kind of money to buy the animal, so the first thing he had to do was go to the money-changing tables, exchange his money for the Jerusalem money, and then go and buy the animals.

Now the animals were sold for a premium because the people needed them, and the exchange rates were extortionary. And so here is the church, the exquisite building of the temple that had been dedicated to the glory of God, and Jesus said, My Father's house was built to be a house of prayer, and you've turned it into a den of thieves. The whole purpose of my church has been warped and distorted and turned into corruption. And so our Lord, as the other gospels tell us, made a whip of cords and went over and kicked over the tables, drove the money changers and the animals out of the temple, cleansing it. Now notice what else Jesus says here.

Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, for all nations? This incident doesn't take place in the Holy of Holies. It doesn't take place in the Jewish segment of the temple.

It doesn't take place in the women's court. It takes place in the court of the Gentiles. And the court of the Gentiles was part of the structure of the temple because way back at the time of Abraham, God called Abraham to be a blessing to all the nations, and Israel had the mission of proclaiming the truth of God, not just to themselves, but to all people. And so in the design of the temple, there was a place for the non-Jew to congregate on the outer edges to be sure, but still to be included in the church of God. Now in popular Jewish expectancy, the Jews who hated the Gentiles had the hope that when the Messiah would come, He would cleanse the temple of all Gentiles, get rid of them once and for all. But when Jesus comes, He cleanses the temple for the Gentiles. This place is for people, not for sheep, not for goats, not for rams. In the year A.D. 66, during the coming of the Roman armies against Jerusalem, the Jewish historian Josephus said that in that year, two hundred and fifty-five thousand lambs were slaughtered in Jerusalem during the Passover. Can you imagine that?

Two hundred and fifty-five thousand. You see what a huge enterprise, what a huge business was going on there. But Jesus said, the temple is barren. And on the morrow when He goes back towards Bethany, the disciples look, and they see that tree that Jesus had cursed, and they saw that it had shriveled up at its roots. It had been cursed, and it was worthy only of being cast into the fire. It would never bring forth fruit again.

The only possible use of it would be for firewood. Do you see the connection? The object lesson of the tree goes to Israel, and the symbol of the Old Testament for Israel was Israel was called God's fig tree, and now the fig tree is cursed, and so is the nation, because the heart of their worship was an exercise in hypocrisy. He who has ears to hear the Word of God, let them hear. Jesus said, I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. An important call for each of us to abide in Christ. We're glad you've joined us for the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind.

Each week Dr. R.C. Sproul continues his verse-by-verse series through the Gospel of Mark. And as we spend time with each verse, we're discovering the depth of God's love for His people, even in stark warnings like we heard today. As you continue your own study of the Gospel of Mark, I hope you'll contact us today to request a very helpful resource.

It's Dr. Sproul's commentary on Mark. It's nearly 400 pages, and with your donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries, we will be glad to send it your way. You can make your request and give your gift on our website at renewingyourmind.org. Before we go today, let me remind you that Ligonier has produced thousands of resources to help you study the Bible, to gain a better understanding of theology and what it means to have a Christian worldview. When you download our free app to your phone or tablet, you'll have access to a huge virtual library of helpful study tools.

You'll find it by searching Ligonier in your app store. When Jesus made the fig tree wither and die, He taught the disciples an important lesson, but He also demonstrated that He has authority over all of His creation. I hope you'll join us again next Sunday as we continue the sermon series from Mark's Gospel here on Renewing Your Mind. .