• You can’t judge a book by its cover. That goes both ways.
• A book with a tattered cover may be so because it has been often read.
• Yet it may be so because it is often tossed aside and abused.
• Ill. Two ranchers were in the city bank to get an extension of their loans.
• One was wearing the finest boots, high dollar jeans, a new Stetson hat and a belt buckle the size of a breakfast plate at Denny’s.
• The other was wearing worn and dirty boots, tattered jeans and hat so weather you could not identify the brand.
• The fancy rancher asked the rugged fellow, “How much land do you have?”
• The rancher answered, “Oh, about 30,000 acres.”
• The fancy rancher responded, “Oh, a small place. Mine, I can jump in my pick up and it takes me from sun up to sun down to drive across it.”
• The rugged rancher said, “I know what you mean. I used to have a pickup like that.”
• Today as we continue our study in Mark, we are going to look at Mark 11:12-19 and see that you cannot tell a book by its cover.
• It will involve a fig tree, the Temple and, hopefully, we will see something about our lives.
• Let’s pray.
Mar 11:12 On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry.
• Jesus had arrived in Jerusalem with a triumphant entry, riding on the colt of a donkey.
• He inspected the temple, and Matthew tells us of confrontation there.
• Mark mentions that Jesus inspected the temple and went to Bethany for rest.
• On this day, the day after their arival, Jesus and the disciples got up and went straight to Jerusalem before breakfast, apparently. Jesus was hungry.
Mar 11:13 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.
• This is an interesting scripture.
• At first reading, you ask, “Why did Jesus expect figs on a fig tree out of season?”
• The answer was because it was fully leafed out.
• In that area, the fig buds appeared as the first shoots of leaves appear.
• Typically, when the tree was fully leafed, there were an abundance of figs.
• It apparently was in a protected ravine, had plenty of moisture and was shielded by the Mount of Olives from the harsh winds. Lots of sun, protected from the cold.
• Such fig trees, according to Gill, are known to fruit earlier than the orchard figs.
• Jesus was the creator and sustainer of all things, including this tree.
• He knew the tree was barren. He had a point to make.
Mar 11:14 And he said to it, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard it.
• Either you have to say that Jesus had a harsh temper and had no patience with agriculture, or Jesus was proclaiming a principle.
• Jesus pronounces a curse on the fig tree.
• I believe Jesus did all this for the behalf the disciples and for us readers.Let’s continue.
Mar 11:15 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.
• Now the Gentile readers are given a glimpse of Hebrew worship.
• Two enterprises were occurring in the outer grounds of the Temple.
• First, animals were available for purchase for sacrifice for those who brought no animals or were merchants that did not raise animals.
• At first, this served a useful purpose and was a blessing to many people.
• However, Josephus indicates in his writings that the priests began to reject the animals that were bought and forced people to purchase “sanctified” animals at a premium.
• It became a lucrative business.
• Second, for offerings, Roman coins, which was the common currency of the day, was not acceptable.
• The Roman government allowed the Temple to make its own coins and the money-exchange was set up to trade Roman coins for Temple coins so the offerings would supposedly be more acceptable to God.
• However, over a period, the changers found they could profit greatly from the exchange by charging interest and fees.
• Some people depict Jesus as a smallish, weak looking character who only talked of love.
• Yet the strength and stamina that He demonstrates as the tears through the vendors’ tables shows us that He was strong, powerful and difficult to challenge. See…
Mar 11:16 And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.
• Basically, Jesus singlehandedly stopped the vendor activity. He virtually shut down the stock market of their day.
Mar 11:17 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."
• Jesus quoted a portion of Isaiah 56:7, saying that the purpose of the Temple was to be a house of prayer.
• He clearly states that the worship was replaced by wickedness.
Mar 11:18 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.
• The chief priests and scribes were not happy with what Jesus did.
• They believed Jesus failed to understand the problems they had solved with the system.
• So many times we hear, “Well there’s more to it that you understand.”
• When this would appear to be the case, when we substitute worship for activity, our solutions are not small steps away from God but giant leaps.
• Look at what the leaders were focused upon.
• They were mostly interested in keeping their activity going smoothly while keeping the approval from the people.
• The people seemed to favor Jesus’ teachings and activities, and this gave the leaders pause in destroying Jesus.
Mar 11:19 And when evening came they went out of the city.
• At the end of the day, the activity ended and Jesus and His disciples headed back to Bethany.
• I want us to look at three brief things this story reveals.
I. The Prophetical.
• I want us to look at the theology of the fig tree before we move on to application.
• The fig tree represented the worship of the day.
• “The religious system of the day had plenty of leaves but no fruit. Its surface piety was seen the tithes and prayers and fasts, in the ritual purity that kept out women, lepers, blind beggars and those possessed with demons. The foliage of the religious leaders offered much promise but no fulfillment. As the figless tree could not satisfy Jesus’ appetite, so the religious system could not satisfy the spiritual hunger of the people.” (Rodney Cooper, Holman New Testament Commentary: Mark, 187.)
• When Jesus got to the fig tree, He searched the leaves for fruit and found none.
• The deemed the tree as “hypocritical”, full of promise but unable to deliver.
• Is that not exactly what He found when He arrived at the Temple, also.
• All show, no fruit. Expectation, but no victory. Promise but no salvation.
• What did Jesus say about the tree? He pronounced a curse that its days of hypocrisy were over.
• In that He showed that the temple form of worship was soon ending because it had become more show than worship.
• Even more than that, I believe He was indicating that Israel’s days of God’s favor were coming to an end.
• The baton was being passed. The Church was going to rise.
• Shortly after Jesus was crucified, Titus destroyed the Temple, plowed Temple Hill and worship with animal sacrifices ceased.
• You see, a greater sacrifice had been given, that of Jesus Christ.
• Hebrews chapter 10 makes it clear that Jesus was not only a better sacrifice than annual sacrifices of animals, He was the perfect sacrifice for sin once and for all.
• Heb 10:10-12 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God,
• The miracle of the fig tree, the only miracle of Jesus that displayed a curse, was a prophecy of the ending worship leaves of promise in the Jewish Temple.
II. The Practical.
• The leaders did not like Jesus’ message or methods.
• They saw it as evil because evil had tinted their vision.
• They couldn’t see righteousness if it wrecked the booths of profit in the Temple.
• They couldn’t hear righteousness if it taught in their very presence.
• Because it did, and they sought to destroy it.
• This should serve as an example and warning to us all.
• When our motives are wrong, mark my word, our eyes are distorted.
• It wasn’t that these priests, rabbis and scribes were wicked, evil people to the core.
• They had obeyed their callings, were committed to the Temple, spent time in the Word, given up a secular life to live on of piety.
• Their problem was that they were focused on the wrong priorites.
• We are not vaccinated against that same tendency.
• We must always be looking at ourselves, our motives, and mostly keep our focus on God, or we will begin to major on the minors and become critical of those who are majoring on the major.
• Sometimes we seek resolutions to our problems outside of God’s design and they seem neutral, but will ultimately end in wickedness.
• We might even say, “Well, there’s a lot more to it than appears. We have been at this a long time and we understand how to do it best.”
• But if our eyes are not on the righteous Jesus and our hearts are not tuned to His heart, we have gone off course a long time ago.
• We are full of leaves and are bearing no fruit.
• And still today, fruitlessness brings judgment.
III. The Promise
• Yet Jesus did not leave us “treeless”.
• Just as He was a better sacrifice, He left us with a better system to produce fruit, if we will only not distort it.
• It’s called the Church.
• He promised, “…on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Ref. Matthew 16:18.
• He said this Church will be His body, His presence in the world (Ref. Romans 12:5).
• He said He would be with us through His Spirit, living inside us to give us power (Ref. Hebrews 13:5, John 14:16, 26, Galatians 2:20).
• And He promised if we live through the power and leadership He provides, we will produce fruit (Ref. John 15:1-5).
• But then again, it has to be God’s plan, God’s way. His strength and His leadership.
• But we have the promise if we get that right, we will produce fruit for Him, or, more accurately, He will produce fruit in us.
• Don’t be like the religious leaders of that day.
• Don’t set your rules, your conditions, your expectations for God. Don’t think He will bargain with you and you can serve Him on your terms.
• If you do, you will find your life full of leaves, but have no fruit.
• But when you do, the story is completely different.
• 2Peter 1:3-4 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
• That is so much better than being outwardly acceptable and inwardly rotten.
• Ill. There was once a man who made free use of Christian vocabulary. He talked about the blessing of the Almighty and the Christian confessions which would become the pillars of the new government. He assumed the earnestness of a man weighed down by historic responsibility. He handed out pious stories to the press, especially to the church papers. He showed his tattered Bible and declared that he drew the strength for his great work from it as scores of pious people welcomed him as a man sent from God. Indeed, Adolf Hitler was a master of outward religiosity--with no inward reality! (Today in the Word, June 3, 1989.)
