Nothing But Leaves (Mark 11:12-21) | 10/20/19
Mark 11:12-21 10/20/19 | Will DuVal
This morning, we continue our study together through the Gospel of Mark this year, and we pick up in ch.11. Now, we are going to SKIP vv1-10, that is the story of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into the city of Jerusalem, that we traditionally observe in the church on Palm Sunday. I preached a sermon on that passage 3 ½ years ago here now, entitled “The King We Needed but Didn’t Want” that we will make sure to RE-post – if we can, Taylor – on our website this week; and I encourage you to go back and listen or RE-listen to it, because it provides the immediate context for this morning’s pivotal events. This is where everything starts to TURN, in Jesus’ ministry. Up to this point, Jesus has been a ROCK star. He’s been teaching and performing miracles in front of packed out crowds, and aside from the religious LEADERS, who’ve been out to get him all along, the common folks are CRAZY about Jesus. He is bigger than Beyonce (or whoever people listen to these days ). And all the hype has just CULMINATED in vv9-10, with the crowd’s shouts of praise while Jesus rides into Jerusalem: ““Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! 10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” They are READY to crown him their triumphant messianic KING.
That was on MONDAY. So how do you explain that by FRIDAY, 4 short days later, they were shouting “Crucify him! Crucify him! His blood be on us and our children”? Well, it’s primarily because of what went down in between, on TUESDAY, that we read here in vv12-21. Jesus is going to SHOCK and OFFEND his fellow 1st c. Jews. And his critique will cut them straight to the HEART. So, would you STAND with me, as you’re able, for the reading of God’s word, from
Mark 11, v11-21:
“And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve. On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. 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. 14 And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.
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. 16 And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 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.” 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. 19 And when evening came they[b] went out of the city.
20 As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. 21 And Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.””
This is the word of the Lord... Let’s pray...
Here’s your one big idea for this message this morning, ready? Write this down: “I WAS MADE TO BEAR FRUIT.” I WAS MADE TO BEAR FRUIT. Let’s be clear right up front: this story is NOT REALLY about fig trees. Some of y’all are thinking, “Of ALL the things that COULD have made Jesus really mad... A tree? Really Jesus? This is his ONLY destructive miracle in all the Gospels. The ONLY time harms anyone or anything. This poor little tree? Simply for not bearing fruit... and it wasn’t even the SEASON for bearing fruit?!” But this is a PARABLE. A real LIFE parable; the fig tree serves as a living illustration for Jesus to teach his disciples, and US, an important lesson. And the LESSON is: We were made to bear fruit.
John Mark employs one of his FAVORITE literary techniques here, called intercalation, better known as the “Markan sandwich”, whereby he takes one story, splits it into two “slices”, then adds a juicy cut of meat right in the middle, with the implication being that each of those 2 stories now AFFECTS our interpretation of the other. So, these 2 stories – Jesus’ bizarre encounter with the fig tree, and his HEATED exchange in the Temple – are inextricably linked. So let’s start with the meat in the middle, the Temple, and then work our way OUT to the bread on either side, the fig tree, okay?
vv15-19: WHY is Jesus so upset? What was it about this Temple scene that angered him so much? Well, to understand it, we’ve got to know a little about what the Temple WAS, or at least what is was INTENDED to be, in the first place. The Temple was the heart of 1st c. Judaism. And it was their HEART, because God had designed it to be the center of their WORSHIP. And it was their center of WORSHIP, because it was God’s house. That’s what Jesus calls it in v17, when he quotes God the Father, from Isaiah 56:7 – “My HOUSE shall be called a house of prayer”. Psalm 69:9 prophesies of Jesus that – “Zeal for your HOUSE will consume me, O Lord.” Now, today we obscure the significance of this by casually referring to THIS building, as God’s house. A youth volunteer catches a teenager swearing and reprimand him not to use such language in God’s house. But the New Testament NOWHERE treats a BUILDING as God’s home anymore. See, God’s actual physical presence used to reside in the Temple. Hovering over the Mercy Seat, on top of the ark of the covenant, housed in the Holy of Holies, inside the Holy Place, inside the Courtyard of the Priests, inside the Courtyard of the Israelites, inside the broader Temple structure. And the Temple was so MASSIVELY significant, because it was the seat of God’s very PRESENCE here on earth. But when Jesus breathed his last breath on the cross, we’re told that the Temple VEIL or CURTAIN, that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple, and from the WORLD, was ripped in 2 from the top down. God was effectively saying, “I’m not going to live in the Temple, or any OTHER building, for that matter, any longer” – Acts 7:48 “the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands” INSTEAD, God NOW resides in the HEARTS of his PEOPLE. 1 Corinthians 6:19 “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God” and ch.3:16-17 “You are God's temple and God's Spirit dwells in you... God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.” So the only BUILDING we hear about in the NEW Testament, is the metaphorical one built out of God’s PEOPLE: 1 Peter 2:4-5 “As you come to [Jesus], a living stone rejected by men... 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood...” And that’s why God hates our SIN so much, by the way, the sin that resides in our hearts, because God designed them to be Temples of the Holy Spirit. And our sin desecrates them. Like the money-changers and extortionist priests here in Mark 11.
They had DEFILED God’s holy Temple. Here’s how John MacArthur explains it: “[Annas and Caiaphas, the high priests] were in commiseration with the business people. They needed oil and wine and salt for the sacrifices and they needed animals. So they had these vendors and they split the profits. This place was abuzz. It was a cacophony of noises... the animals, the commotion. It was a scam of the rankest kind because if you brought a sacrifice from home, let’s say you brought a lamb without blemish and without spot from your own flock, and you brought that to the temple to give as a sacrifice, there would have to be a priest who would pass the animal. All the priest had to do was say, this animal doesn’t pass. The animal is not good enough for sacrifice and you would be required to buy an animal from the vendors inside the temple at ten times the price. Then, you would also be required to have the half shekel temple tax in a certain kind of coinage. And pilgrims came from all kinds of nations when they came in for the Passover, and if you didn’t have the right kind of coinage, you would have to exchange your coins and the mark up was, according to one historian, at least 25 percent. If you were poor, you could give a dove as a sacrifice... And doves in their economy would sell for five cents at your local town but if you bought one in the temple, they say it would be four dollars. This is perversion, prostitution, travesty, extortion, monopoly, noise, traffic; it was anything but a house of prayer.” (John MacArthur, “Nothing but Leaves,” Jan 16, 2011; https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/41-57/nothing-but-leaves)
But here’s the key phrase: Jesus says, the Temple’s supposed to be a house of prayer, v17... FOR ALL THE NATIONS. The passage from Isaiah he’s quoting says: “I will give in my house and within my walls
a monument and a name... 6 “And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord... 7 these I will bring to my holy mountain...
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.”
8 The Lord God,
who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares,
“I will gather yet others to him
besides those already gathered.”” (Isaiah 56:5-8; my emphasis)
And Jesus is so upset in Mark 11 because do you know where all this corruption, extortion, and busy distraction was happening in the Temple? It took place in the Court of the Gentiles [FORGOT TO REDRAW RED CIRCLE... ]. God gave Israel the Temple to be a center of worship NOT JUST for the Jews, but according to Isaiah 56, for the FOREIGNERS as well... for ALL peoples... so that yet others could be gathered to Him.
King Solomon, when he BUILT the Temple, prayed in 1 Kings 8: “when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a far country for your name's sake 42 (for they shall hear of your great name and your mighty hand, and of your outstretched arm), when he comes and prays toward this house, 43 hear in heaven your dwelling place and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and that they may know that this house that I have built is called by your name.” (vv41-43)
Jeff Lewis, in his book God’s Heart for the Nations, says: “one of the most ignored
themes of the Bible [is] God’s global purpose: His desire and activity of redeeming
mankind, the nations, to Himself. It involves the active pursuit of worshipers from
all the peoples of the earth who will give Him the glory due His name.” (Foreword)
So let me give you just a small SAMPLING of God’s heart for all the nations, as evidenced all THROUGHOUT his word:
We can trace the theme ALL the way back to Adam and Eve, and the first command God ever gave in the Bible: Genesis 1:28 “God blessed them, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” God wants a MULTITUDE of worshippers. He created us to bring Him glory; so more people means more worshippers means more glory.
Consider God’s calling and promise to Abraham from Genesis 12:1-3 “Now the Lord said to Abram, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, [WHY?] so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you... and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.””
Consider the most important event in all of OT history: God’s deliverance of his people Israel from slavery in Egypt. Why’d he do it? Joshua 4:23-24 “For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Red Sea... 24 so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty.” He did it so that the NATIONS would know that Yahweh is God.
And why did God give them his holy LAW? Deuteronomy 4:5-7 “See, I [Moses] have taught you statutes and rules, as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 6 Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say... ‘What great nation is there that has a god so near to it as Yahweh?’”
God’s heart for the nations is listed as the explicit reason He blessed Solomon with WISDOM (1 Kings 4:29–34), it’s why He delivered Daniel from the Lion’s den (Daniel 6:16–28), he tells us it’s why he raised up Queen Esther to save his people in (Esther 8:15–18)... even the PROPHETS, who we typically think of as sent specifically for the nation of Israel, again and again echo God’s heart for the nations. Obviously there’s JONAH, who was sent specifically TO the people of Nineveh, the Assyrians, these wicked, Godless pagans who wanted to annihilate Israel. And yet God asks, “should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left” (4:11).
God told Jeremiah that “before I even formed you in the womb... I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jer 1:5); so Jeremiah proclaims, “O Lord... to you shall the nations come
from the ends of the earth and say:
“Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies,
worthless things in which there is no profit.
20 Can man make for himself gods?
Such are not gods!”” (16:19-20) And they’ll turn to worship Yahweh instead.
That was the vision of the prophet MICAH as well: “It shall come to pass in the latter days
that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established... and peoples shall flow to it,
2 and many nations shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord...” (4:1-2)
And the prophet MALACHI: “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be[a] great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering. For my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts.” (1:11)
God’s heart for the nations is why, according to the prophet EZEKIEL, God judged and scattered and ultimately restored his people Israel from exile in Babylon: “Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. 23 And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations... And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.” (36:22-23)
SOOO many of the Psalms, some of our favorites, like Psalm 46:10 – ““Be still, and know that I am God. [We ALL know that one, right? We love that one? So we rip the first half of the verse out of context, and paint it on our trendy, artsy decorative plaques around our homes, and it becomes a personalized reminder for me to wait on God, but we MISS the whole REASON God wants us to rely on Him: it’s so that OTHERS will witness his Faithfulness. It’s so that...]
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!””
Our favorite Calls to Worship: Psalm 96:1-3 “Sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth!
...Declare his glory [WHERE?] among the nations,
his marvelous works among all the peoples!”
Our favorite Benedictions: Psalm 67:1-3 “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us [WHY?] that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you!”
And as we shift to the NEW Testament, we recognize that God’s heart for the nations is even why, Romans 11:25 - God allowed for a “partial hardening” of the hearts of his people, ISRAEL, the JEWS, so that you and I, Gentiles, could be included in his covenant promise of salvation.
It’s why Jesus went out of his way, on road trips, to detour into regions that other Jews of his day intentionally AVOIDED. Why he struck up SCANDALOUS conversations with Canaanite, and Syro-Phoenician, and Samaritan women around wells in the middle of broad daylight: so that “Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony... when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. [NO self-respecting Jew in that day would have stayed 2 HOURS much less 2 days in Samaria!] And many more believed because of his word. They said... we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”” (John 4:39-42)
That’s what 1 John 4:14 calls Jesus: “the Savior of the world”. Indeed, ALL ALONG, God had foretold a messiah NOT just for Israel, but for ALL the world:
Isaiah 42:6-7 “I will give you as a covenant for the people,
a light for the nations,
7 to open the eyes that are blind.”
Isaiah 49:6 “[You will] bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Isaiah 9:1-2 “in the latter time God has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.[b]
2 [c] The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;.”
Even NT prophets, like Simeon, upon Jesus’ birth, attested to this: “my eyes have seen your salvation
31 that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel.”” (Luke 2:30-32)
Consider how Jesus himself spoke about his mission:
In our favorite verses: John 3:16–17, ““For God so loved [WHO? Israel? Christians? The Church?] the world,[i] that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
John 12:32 “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.””
And Friends, God’s heart for the nations is the reason at West Hills we remind ourselves EVERY single WEEK of his calling on OUR lives as well, in our benediction: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19-20)
So let me be really blunt this morning: your life is not about you. That’s not why God put you here on his earth: for you. Your comfort. Your passions. Your hopes and dreams. We’re guilty, in the CHURCH even, of encouraging one another to follow your heart, pursue your dreams – when oftentimes, that’s the exact OPPOSITE of what God wants. I mean, IDEALLY if he is TRULY residing in the Temple of our hearts, and changing us from one degree of glory to the next, then over time we should be developing more of HIS heart for the lost. But until that becomes our own sanctified DEFAULT desire, we are called to chase after God’s heart, to pursue GOD’S vision, for us as His people, and for the NATIONS that he loves and desires to save: 1 Timothy 2:4 “[God] desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. ”
And friends, we can only recite Jesus’ Great Commission as our Benediction so many times: “I will go therefore and make disciples of all nations...” before we either decide to start DOING it, and get busy about the Father’s work, that He’s left us here to do, or we get sick of bold-faced lying to God in church. And we start skipping outta the service early each week, before our call to action, before our call to RESPOND to the word of God this week, practically in our lives, or frankly, we just go find another church that won’t raise the bar quite so high. A church content to just leave it at the level of principle, and never drill down to the practical, where the rubber hits the road: the application; what am I supposed to DO with this passage we just studied? A church that’s “all about grace”, by which they mean “Jesus did everything so now you don’t have to do ANYTHING.” And they make sure when they present the gospel, they never read the REST of Ephesians 2, that it’s “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works” (vv8-10). Because calling Christians to ACT, to do GOOD WORKS, can start to sound, theologically, like self-righteousness, and more important, practically, it might scare people away from our churches, so we’ll just stop with v.9 and call people instead to what JAMES calls “DEAD faith”, faith WITHOUT works, but we’ll make sure we offer the best programs and ministries in town, well-suited to feed YOUR personal spiritual appetite; so Christianity becomes all about consumerism and entertainment and in all the hubbub of the modern-day church marketplace, the Starbucks in the lobby, the fog machines in the sanctuary, somewhere along the way, we forgot the whole REASON we’re here in the first place... Why Christ INSTITUTED the Church in the first place... Because of His heart for the NATIONS. To call unto himself, Revelation 7:9 “a great multitude that no one can number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” and worshipping Christ to the glory of God the Father. And the Church is God’s ACTION plan for accomplishing that. For calling people to Himself. We’re supposed to be salt in a bland world. Light in a dark world. We’ve been commissioned to go preach the gospel to ALL nations, Mark 16:15, which we will CONSIDER doing, or designating a fraction of our tithes and offerings to send someone ELSE to go do for us, so long as it doesn’t cut too much into our budget for donuts and the new sound system we want in the sanctuary.
If it sounds like I’m upset, it’s because I am. I’m upset, like JESUS was in His day, by what the Church has become today. Not necessarily THIS Church, although I think we do need to take a good, long, hard look in the mirror this morning, West Hills. And take Jesus’ warning, his CURSING, of the fig tree here, really seriously this morning.
Speaking of the fig tree, What is “fruit”, after all? Fruit is a tree’s means of reproduction. Fruit is God’s tasty design for making more trees: animals eat the fruit, they defecate out the seeds as waste, and he ALSO designed manure as a great natural fertilizer, and VOILA – a new tree! So just a couple quick notes on the fig tree:
This tree, in v13, is “in leaf”: Interestingly, fig trees are one of the few trees that grow fruit BEFORE their leaves sprout. So if THIS tree is “in leaf”, it is PASSED the time for growing fruit. And 1st c. Judaism was PASSED its time for being fruitful. They should have been serving as a blessing for ALL the nations for CENTURIES by this point, and God has been patient with them, and waited, and pleaded with them, and forgiven them, and given second chances, and now his patience has finally run out. So now it’s time, as 1 Peter 4:17 says, “For judgment to begin at the household of God”. As John the Baptist prophesied: “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Matthew 3:10) And 21st c. Western Church, in the culture of comfort that we’ve built for ourselves, guess what: God’s not gonna wait forever for US either. To be fruitful. We are PASSED the time for bearing fruit. The Church has been around for 2,000 years now. Our roots go DEEP. We’ve been STUDYING Scripture for the past 1,700 years; it’s time to DO something with it. Are we a fruit-bearing church, West Hills? Please, let us do away with our excuses for not serving in the kids ministry: “I’m a newer Christian; I need to grow personally before I teach others.” Some of you have been saying that for 5 years... 10, 15 years now. How much sturdier and taller of a tree do you think you need to be before it’s time to bear FRUIT. Our excuses for ignoring evangelism: “I’m afraid if I try and share my faith I won’t be able to answer all their questions.” First of all: SO?! Where does God ever make having all the answers a prerequisite of sharing Christ with others? And second of all, if you know the GOSPEL – that God is holy, you’re sinful, that Jesus died and rose to reconcile you BACK to God, and that it’s by grace you’re saved through faith – then you know everything you need to know to bear fruit.
Notice, #2, v13: “it was not the season for figs”. Literally, in the parable, Jesus is searching for fruit in mid-spring, just before the Passover, but MacArthur notes: “Although the main fig harvest was in late summer and fall, small but edible unripe figs (cf. Isa. 28:4; Hos. 9:10; Mic. 7:1) appeared in spring, about the time of Passover.” (MacArthur, vv20-21) Likewise, God knew that Israel would fail to be the blessing to the nations they were created and called to be. God is Sovereign; He knew his big picture plan of redemption all along, that the OT was “not the season for figs”; that He would have to come MOTIVATE his people in a fundamentally NEW, history-altering way in the person of Jesus. 1st c. Judaism was the spring, around the Passover. But folks, 2,000 years later now, the season is RIPE. Jesus said, ““The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” (Luke 10:2) He says, “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit... By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” (John 15:2, 8) You wanna glorify God? Sure, come to a building and sing songs; of course, spend time with him daily in His word and in prayer, but if you REALLY wanna glorify God – BEAR MUCH FRUIT. Be a reproductive AGENT of spreading God’s word to all the nations. Or at LEAST your neighborhood. Your office. The other mom’s on your kid’s soccer team: WHEREVER your mission field is. It’s EVERYWHERE. Don’t be picky. Remember the parable of the sower from Mark 4: sow LIBERALLY. Hard ground? Oh well, sow and pray. Thorns? Scatter the seed of the gospel, and pray for God to give the growth. Brothers and sisters: NOW is the season for figs.
3) Lastly, Jesus pronounces the CURSE in v14, “may no one ever eat fruit from you again”. He is patient. But his patience won’t last forever. 2 Pet 3:9-10 says “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you,[a] not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies[b] will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.” The bridegroom is returning. And I’m convinced, from Scripture, that we will have to answer more for the good works we’ve left UNDONE than the bad ones we’ve done. Jesus left us with a MISSION to pursue and to accomplish until that time: Matthew 24:14 “this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
Here’s how Jesus put it in another parable, from Luke 13:6-9 “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7 And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ 8 And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. 9 Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”” He’s patient. But his patience won’t last forever. And meanwhile, we have lost friends and family and STRANGERS dying every single day, all around us, and spending ETERNITY in Hell, because we’re afraid of offending them.
So I ask you, Church: are we just taking up good soil? Are we nothing but leaves?
...Let’s Pray