To Encourage You

Mark 11:12-19 “On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. 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. And he said to it, ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again.’ And his disciples heard it.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. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 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.’ 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. And when evening came they went out of the city.”

One of the statements that Jesus made in His Sermon on the Mount was this: “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.” In other words, salt has a characteristic for which it was meant by God. It has the wonderful characteristic of enhancing the flavor of foods. We are all aware of this. However, if salt loses that characteristic, it’s become worthless for that particular purpose. Now it might as well be discarded, to be trampled under someone’s feet. In context, Jesus was talking about His followers. They were to believe and act as His followers. They were to be His ambassadors, bringing the message of the gospel to the world. But if they didn’t do this, and if a church doesn’t do this, it is a worthless institution. It is in danger of being set aside in some way, made irrelevant. Jesus expressed this in another metaphor, that of a lampstand. It’s meant to give light. Like a lampstand, if a church fails to shine as the light of the world as it was meant to do, Jesus, sooner or later, may remove it, or at least remove it from any place of relevance (Revelation 2:5).

In the passage above from Mark 11, we have a similar teaching. Jesus uses a fig tree as an object lesson. Jesus was hungry at this moment. He Who had created everything, had created fig trees for the purpose of producing sweet fruit. But when He came to this particular tree, it had only leaves, and as such, although it may not have been the time for figs, the presence of leaves would suggest that this tree was different. But it wasn’t. It had no figs, so the purpose for which God had created it was not being met. And the result? Jesus cursed it. The next day the tree had completely shriveled up from its roots.

But then He came to Jerusalem and entered the temple, a place which God had always meant as a place of prayer. It was to be a focal point of religious life in Israel, a place where people could go to meet with God. But, sadly, this purpose wasn’t being met. The Jews had turned it into nothing more than a place of merchandise. It was a place, in which men had subverted the entire religious system that God had instituted into a place to rob people of their wealth. In another place, Jesus condemned the religious leaders who were using this system for nothing more than to enrich themselves, when He said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers” (Mark 12:38-39). As a result Jesus said that “They (like the unfruitful fig tree) will receive the greater condemnation.”

The fulfillment of this prophecy was soon to come. When Jesus was crucified, the veil of the curtain of the temple was rent from top to bottom and the entire religious system, including its ceremonies and sacrifices, was completely destroyed. In its place Jesus would raise up another temple, one that was not built by human hands (Acts 17:24). This temple would be the temple which is His body, which He also called, “the church,” as well as the individual members of that body (1 Corinthians 3:9-17; 1 Corinthians 6:19; Ephesians 2:19-22; 1 Timothy 3:15; 1 Peter 2:5-7).

However, sadly, in many churches today we see the same pattern followed by the corrupt teachers in the temple. They think that “godliness” is nothing more than a means to financial gain (1 Timothy 6:5). It’s such a tragedy. It’s such a perversion of what God intends. Others, although God meant them as a place where His law is proclaimed and the way of repentance and forgiveness of sin preached, have become places where violation of God’s law is explained away as irrelevant, and even encouraged in some ways. And like that unfruitful fig tree, all those perversions will be destroyed in the end.

So what about you? If you call yourself a Christian, are you the kind of person that Jesus expects of His followers? What about your church? Is it a place where people go to meet with God, hear His Word, and pray, or is it a place focused on the “health and wealth” of its leaders and members, something that the ungodly world, likewise, seeks. Is it a place where people learn to live a godly life and reach the world with the gospel or is it primarily a social club, or worse, a place where the very sins that the Bible condemns are tolerated or even encouraged? Well, if so, remember the lessons of the fig tree and of the money-changers in the temple. Beware that you don’t become a part of an ungodly system that Jesus also condemned with these words: “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness’” (Matthew 7:22-23).