Mark 11:12-26

Bringing the sermon home:

The day after Palm Sunday and Jesus’ so-called “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem, He reenters the temple and begins turning over tables and chairs, clearing the outer courts of those engaged in the business of currency exchange and the selling of sacrificial animals. This account is sandwiched by the account of Jesus pronouncing a curse upon a fruitless fig tree and of that tree withering away to its roots within 24 hours. Taken as a unit, we see that the fruitless fig tree represents the fruitless faith of Israel, particularly that of its religious leaders.

The God they claim to worship has come, hungry for spiritual fruit, but He finds only leaves. Despite the outward glory of that great place of worship, filled with people engaged in their most visible annual displays of religious observance, Jesus does not find anything of substance. As with every interaction with the religious leaders up to this point in Mark, we again see a fixation on outward markers of religiosity and man-made traditions (the leaves) at the expense of compassion for the physical and spiritual needs of others (spiritual fruit).

As He comes to you today, hungry for spiritual fruit, will He find a fruitful faith that nourishes others, or will He find only leaves? Jesus draws attention to Jeremiah 7:11, indicating that His generation, just like Jeremiah’s generation, wrongly believed that God would not destroy their temple. They presumptuously trusted in their religious activities and in their identity as being God’s people, but none of that could save them from the judgment that was coming. As Jesus curses fruitless faith, He also exposes false security. May He create in us the fruitful, praying, and forgiving faith that He seeks.