Ep. 90: The Temple and the Fig Tree
CLICK HERE for the corresponding blog post in Yeshua Adored
MATTHEW 21:12-22, MARK 11:15-26, LUKE 19:45-48
We know how often his nights had been spent in lonely prayer and surely that would have been the case with the first night in Passion week. We can then understand that exhaustion and hunger which the next morning made him eager for the fruit on the fig tree on his way to the city. It was very early in the morning of the second day in Passion week when Jesus and his disciples left Bethany.
In the fresh, crisp, spring air, after the exhaustion of that night. He hungered. By the roadside, a solitary tree grew in the rocky soil. He saw it far off and it stood out, with its wide-spreading mantle of green against the sky. It was not the season for figs but the tree, covered with leaves, attracted his attention. It is a well-known fact that in that region the fruit appears before the leaves and that this fig tree was advanced, as it was in leaf, which is quite unusual at that season on the Mount of Olives.
The old fruit would, of course, have been edible, but in the present case, there was neither old nor new fruit, but leaves only. It was evidently a barren fig tree ready to be hewn down. We think of the parable of the barren fig tree, which he had so lately spoken. To him, this fig tree, with its luxuriant mantle of leaves, must have recalled, with great vividness, the scene of the previous day. Israel was that barren fig tree and the leaves only covered their nakedness, as they had that of our first parents after their Fall. And the judgment, symbolically spoken in the parable, must be symbolically executed in this leafy fig tree, barren when searched for fruit by the Master. It seems that not only symbolically but in reality that Jesus’ Word should have laid it low.
Matthew’s account has it that, on Jesus’ word, the fig tree immediately withered away, though Mark said that it was only the next morning, when they again passed by, that they noticed the fig tree had withered from its very roots. It was the suddenness and completeness of the judgment that had been proclaimed recently, which now struck Peter, rather than its symbolic meaning. It was the storm and earthquake rather than the still small voice which impressed the disciples. He noticed that the fig tree had withered in consequence of, rather than by the Word of Christ.
The same symbolism of judgment was to be directed towards the Temple itself. On the previous afternoon, when Jesus had come to it, the services were probably over and the sanctuary comparatively empty of worshippers. When we examined the first cleansing of the Temple, at the beginning of his ministry, enough has been said to explain the character of that wicked traffic, the profits of which went to the leaders of the priesthood, as also how popular indignation was roused alike against this trade and the traders.
Here he proclaims the transformation of ‘the House of Prayer’ into ‘a den of robbers’. If, when beginning to do the ‘business’ of his Father and for the first time publicly presenting himself as Messiah, it was fitting he should take such authority and first ‘cleanse the Temple’ of the greedy intruders who, under the guise of being God’s chief priests, profaned his House. Much more was this appropriate now, at the close of his work, when, as King. He had entered his City and publicly claimed authority.
At the first, it had been for teaching and warning, now it was in symbolic judgment. Now the Temple authorities did not create so much of a fuss to turn the people against him. The contest had reached quite another stage. They heard what he said in their condemnation and with bitter hatred in their hearts sought for some means to destroy him. But fear of the people restrained their violence. For the people marvelled at his Words, astonished at those new and blessed truths. All was so different to the ‘usual offerings’!
By his authority, the Temple was cleansed of the unholy, thievish traffic which a corrupt priesthood carried on and so, for the time, was restored to the solemn service of God. That purified House now became the scene of Jesus’ teaching, when he spoke those words of blessed truth and of comfort concerning the Father, thus truly achieving the prophetic promise of a House of Prayer for all the nations.
And as those crooks and thieves were driven from the Temple, then came the poor sufferers, the blind and the lame, to get healing to body and soul. And the boys that gathered about their fathers and looked in turn from their faces of rapt wonderment and enthusiasm to the godlike face of Jesus and then on those healed sufferers, took up the echoes of the welcome at his entrance into Jerusalem as they burst into ‘Hosanna to the Son of David.’
It rang through the courts and porches of the Temple, this Children’s Hosanna. But once more in their impotent anger, the authorities sought to betray him into silencing those children’s voices. But the undimmed mirror of his soul only reflected the light. Not from the great, the wise, nor the learned, but ‘out of the mouth of babes and sucklings’ has he perfected praise. And this, also, is the music of the Gospel.
This is an extract from the book, Jesus : Life and Times, available for £10 here (Finalist for Academic Book of the year at 2023 CRT awards)