Mark 11 -- A Good Lesson In Killing A Tree

“It was unusual for Jesus to act in judgment, yet there comes a time when this is the only thing God can do,” my commentary said.  It was speaking about Jesus condemning a fig tree and cleansing the temple.  Here’s why He did it:  The tree was “a lesson in failure:  Israel had failed to be fruitful for God.  In the Old Testament, the fig tree is associated with the nation of Israel.  Like the fig tree our Lord cursed, Israel had nothing but leaves … Christ is still seeking fruit from His people, and for us to be fruitless is sin.”  (John 15:16 says, “I gave you this work:  to go and produce fruit.”)

 

The cleansing of the temple occurred in the court of the Gentiles, “the one place where the Jews should have been busy doing serious missionary work.  If a Gentile visited the temple and saw what the Jews were doing in the name of the true God, he would never want to believe what they taught … The court of the Gentiles should have been a place for praying, but it was instead a place for preying and paying,” my commentary noted.  “The chief priests and scribes were using the temple and its religious services to cover up their sin and hypocrisy.  Both Isaiah and Jeremiah had warned the people of their day that the presence of the physical temple was no guarantee of blessings from God.  It was what the people did in the temple from their hearts that was really important.”

 

I was appalled thinking about how the religious leaders of that time were in the temple plotting the murder of someone they saw simply as their competition.  That’s unbelievable!  That it also happened to be against the Son of God was unthinkable!

 

Father, please give me the ability to look at what I do from the outside to make certain that I’m not so caught up in a wrong-headed vision that I become spiritually blinded as they were.  Reveal any wrong motives to me and point me in the right direction.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

 

Gary Ford