In Mark 11: 12-25, on his way into the Temple, Our Lord Jesus Christ wished to pick some fruit from a fig tree. But there were only leaves on this tree… and Jesus cursed it, and the tree withered. It was dead when He and His disciples next saw it.
This incident has puzzled many Bible readers (including me) over the centuries; but in fact it was part of something much bigger.
After he cursed the tree, Jesus entered the Temple and cleaned house, overturning the tables of the money-changers and the merchants, smacking them with a makeshift whip, and condemning the Temple as a house of prayer transformed into a den of thieves. What ever happened to that meek and mild Jesus that we thought we knew?
This 10-minute sermon by Brandon Robbins explains the critical significance of this action by Our Lord. “Finally I get this!” my wife exclaimed, after she watched it.
Really, it’s rather brilliant–and at the same time, clear and understandable. I wondered why I hadn’t seen it myself.
The Holy Spirit showed this to me a few years ago when I was beginning to connect the O.T. and the N.T in my reading. The fig tree is a representation of the Jewish people; they who rejected their Messiah- why?- because it was not yet their time- the Gentiles had to be allowed in, and after a lot of things happened, (Romans 9, 10,11 explains it pretty well) the Gentiles would be grafted in, the Jewish people would be grafted back in to their natural place (tree), and in the end, “…all Israel will be saved”. The Holy Spirit has shown me so many wonderful things- not leaving me in the dark wondering what they are all about. I dearly love the Scriptures and all their revelations.
Some years ago, I came to understand at least part of this, pretty much when I had come to an impasse, as regards my faith. It was like a light had come on. Since then, I have become much more interested in the OT than I had been before, and I came to see that the threads of events were consistent, from the earliest times up through the writing of NT, and are still alive today. In many ways, this was as significant as when I first began to consider myself a Christian, way back in my teens.
In earlier times, I looked upon the OT, mostly, as history. Good foundation, but I didn’t realize that this was not dead history. My opinion has shifted dramatically. Everything in scripture was included for very good reason.
Do you find it frustrating when customer service reps serving the US, barely speak English? Is it distressing to see nations rising against one another? Indeed, but the roots of these things go back to Genesis 10 and 11. These events are still relevant today.
The Fig Tree incident had not made sense, until I saw this video, and now it makes perfect sense. It wasn’t Jesus in a bad mood; He was making a point, and the explanation regarding the Court of the Gentiles makes perfect sense of it, now. This, like all of scripture, was a significant event.
Bible study is wonderfully rewarding.
But also: History is never dead. Whether it’s Churchill or Livy or Herodotus.
The thing that makes the Bible different is its brigade of authors. All those writers, over all those years… and yet the message is coherent. It couldn’t possibly have happened without God’s direction.
Amen. That is one of the clues that should awaken anybody.