Lessons from the Fig Tree
Fruitfulness and Faith among the people of God
In our last Newsletter - Ask and Believe, we began a study of Mark 11:22-24. This week continues, and we need to go back a few verses and learn lessons from the fig tree. We will draw our lesson from Alistair Begg 1
Now 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. When He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. In response Jesus said to it, "Let no one eat fruit from you ever again." And His disciples heard [it]. ... Now in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter, remembering, said to Him, "Rabbi, look! The fig tree which You cursed has withered away." Mark 11:12-14, 20-21 NKJV
In the Old Testament, vines and fig trees are used routinely as a metaphors to the status of Israel before God. See Hosea 9, for example.
Here Jesus is using the fig tree to set forward the judgment that is about to fall on Jerusalem. He’s doing in this action what he then exemplifies in the cleansing of the temple that follows.
The fig tree had leaves, that is, the appearance of fruitfulness, but was instead was empty of fruit. He went looking for fruit, “found nothing but leaves.” And so “he said to the tree, ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again.’”
The very next day, they pass by the same tree, but now it has died. But all the thing that struck me was, the reason it’s so dramatic is because instantaneously the structure and the status of this tree is transformed, not in the natural process of decay but as a result of the supernatural activity of the creator God.
The withered fig tree provides a sorry picture of unbelieving Judaism—that what we discovered Jesus doing was, in fact, prophetic symbolism, that it was an acted parable, and that what happened to this fig tree was an indication of the judgment of God that was coming upon the temple and upon the ceremonial and legalistic externalism that was represented in so much of the teaching and actions of the Pharisees.
And what Jesus did on that occasion was dramatic, it was unmistakable, it was shocking, and it was a warning...Jesus had come to his temple looking for fruitfulness; he had come to his temple looking for faith. He was finding neither. And we’re supposed to look at this and say, “When Jesus comes and scrutinizes me, is he finding in my life fruitfulness? Is he finding in my life faith?”
If you read the parallel section in Matthew 21, you will find that it gives us a help in this regard. Because in Matthew’s record, he records Jesus as saying, “Hey, listen guys, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will do it.” So, in other words, Jesus helps us in the transition by saying, “Here has been a dramatic display of the power of God, but I want to remind you, my followers, that you have the power of God at your disposal when you act in believing faith.”
What Jesus has just done in this dramatic act serves as a model for how true believers might draw on the power of God.
He continues by referring to “a strong link here between the absence of prayer in the temple in verse 17—that the temple has now become defunct as a place of prayer—and now Jesus is giving instruction to his disciples so that they might become a community of prayer, and that the prayer that they exercise will be the prayers of believing faith and not the shibboleths and routine prayers that had now been represented in a temple that was going south.”
If there was any fruit borne from the fig tree, it was the teaching that followed on faith and on prayer. We will study these further in The Secret of Believing Prayer, and Four Essentials of Prevailing Prayer as we continue in this passage. For now, we’ll close with a few words from our teacher on faith:
Have Faith In God...What Jesus is saying here is, “I want you boys to have an audacious faith…I want you to have such confidence in God that you are prepared to ask him to do things that are seemingly impossible.”
We are reminded of Abraham, who believed God. Faith then is “being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.”
Says Begg, “This is what you need to understand: God is able to do beyond all of your capacity to even imagine. You could even say, as it were, to this mountain, ‘Throw yourself in the sea,’ and it would actually be accomplished. It is a picture of the doing of the impossible. Jesus is encouraging his disciples to trust God with all that they need for doing God’s work. The only restriction to the answer of prayer is the sovereignty of God.”
Those who trust God for the right things in the right way may have confidence that from God they will always get the right response. ~Alistair Begg
Pray For The People Of God From The Word Of God
Here are three passages we are praying from this week for the saints:
Monday - 1 Thessalonians 3:12
Tuesday - 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
Wednesday - 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12
Will you commit to praying these verses for the church, and can you ask one person to join you?
Until Thursday, grace and peace
Lessons from the Fig Tree — Part One and Part Two
October 10, 2011
Series: The Gospel According to Mark, Volume 5
Sermon