WWUTT 2073 Jesus Curses the Fig Tree (Matthew 21:18-27)

Over and over we've seen demonstrations of Christ's authority that has been granted to Him by the

Father. The Pharisees asked Him where His authority came from, Jesus wouldn't tell them.

But we know where it came from when we understand the text. This is

When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's word, that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Matthew, we've been in chapter 21 this week, reading about the triumphal entry on Monday, the cleansing of the temple yesterday, and today we're looking at Jesus cursing the fig tree and His response to the

Pharisees when His authority is challenged. We'll put those two sections together. So let me read beginning in verse 18 and go through verse 27 out of the

Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. Now in the morning, when

He was returning to the city, He became hungry, and seeing a lone fig tree by the road,

He came to it and found nothing on it except leaves only. And He said to it, No longer shall there ever be any fruit from you.

And at once the fig tree withered. And seeing this, the disciples marveled, saying,

How did the fig tree wither all at once? And Jesus answered and said to them, Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain,

Be taken up and cast into the sea, it will happen. And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.

And when He entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to Him while He was teaching and said,

By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority? And Jesus answered and said to them,

I will also ask you one thing, which if you tell Me, I will also tell you by what authority

I do these things. The baptism of John was from what source, from heaven or from men?

And they began reasoning among themselves, saying, If we say from heaven, He will say to us,

Then why did you not believe Him? But if we say from men, we fear the crowd, for they all regard

John as a prophet. And they answered Jesus and said, We do not know. He also said to them,

Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. And what we see in these two sections, the cursing of the fig tree and His response to the

Pharisees, we once again see a demonstration of Christ's authority. We saw that with the triumphal entry, knowing that Jesus is the promised one who would come in the line of David, fulfilling what was foretold by the prophets.

Then in the next portion, the cleansing of the temple, we see Jesus' authority even within the house of God itself, authority that has been given to Him by God.

We saw His authority practiced, demonstrated as He drove out the money changers and proclaimed to them from the

Old Testament, My house will be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.

And then with the cursing of the fig tree, we see His authority even over this fig tree and what it symbolizes, which we'll come to that here in a moment,

Christ's authority demonstrated there also, and though He doesn't answer the Pharisees by telling them where His authority comes from, we know.

So the reader, what do you call this? I think this is dramatic irony where the reader knows, though the audience may not know.

We know where Jesus' authority comes from. And so though the Pharisees challenge Him on this, we know the answer to this question.

So all of this is demonstrating for us as we have read in these sections this week, we see the authority of Christ as testified to by the apostle

Matthew. So let's come to this cursing of the fig tree account, which we have in verses 18 to 22.

You might remember Mark's account a little bit better than you remember Matthew's, but I'll show you kind of the differences between the two.

In verse 18, it says, now in the morning when he was hungry, or sorry, when he was returning to the city, he became hungry.

Now, as I said yesterday at the close of yesterday's lesson, this is now on Tuesday, and this is the last time from now until the end of chapter 25 that we're going to see the indication of a day.

There is another section coming up where it says on the same day, but there's no indication that the days ever change.

So we're reading what is happening on Tuesday now from Matthew 21, 18, all the way through to the end of chapter 25.

All of these things are taking place on Tuesday, at least the way that Matthew is presenting it. Now, if you compare this with Mark's account, there would appear to be some discrepancies, but not really.

And we'll consider that. So verse 19, seeing a lone fig tree by the road, he came to it and found nothing on it except leaves only.

And he said to it, no longer shall there ever be any fruit from you. And at once the fig tree withered.

Now if you know Mark's account in Mark chapter 11, remember that I mentioned on Monday or Tuesday that according to Mark, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, the triumphal entry.

He goes into the temple, but he doesn't cleanse the temple. Then he leaves and goes to Bethany. And then the next day, which would be

Monday, he comes back to the temple and cleanses the temple. Matthew doesn't indicate that time change.

Matthew makes it look like Jesus comes into the city and then goes into the temple and cleanses it.

And all of that happens on the same day. Matthew doesn't say it happens on the same day, but the way that he goes from one event to the next, he doesn't give an indication that days have changed.

Now like I said, there's not a contradiction there because Matthew doesn't have to say that this happened on a different day.

So there's still consistency there. Matthew has a reason why he's writing the way that he writes.

And Mark has a certain penmanship to the way that he writes as well. There's something that you've probably heard pastors preaching through Mark say is called the

Mark and sandwich. And it's where Mark will give an account of something that he'll tell another account. And then he comes back to the first account.

So it's like there's a thing that happens in the middle with a story that happens on either side of it.

And so that happens here, even in Mark 11, where he has the triumphal entry. Jesus curses the fig tree.

He comes back into the city, drives out the merchants, and then the disciples see the fig tree again the next day, passing by the next morning.

So this would be on Tuesday, and they see that the fig tree is withered. Matthew again puts all of that on one day.

So just like he makes it look like the triumphal entry and the cleansing of the temple are all on the same day, he makes the cursing of the fig tree and them noticing that the fig tree has withered and died.

All of that happened on the same day as well. Mark lays it all out chronologically. Matthew doesn't.

But again, there's no discrepancies there. There's not a there's no contradiction there. This is just the way that Matthew tells his accounts, the way he gives his account.

He's going to focus on this thing and give you all of the details on this before he moves on to the next thing, whereas Mark might be more chronological and he puts things in that in that sandwich presentation.

So it's just a writing decision. This is God using these men's writing styles in the way that they do to present the gospel in a slightly different way.

If Mark was worded exactly like Matthew, then what would be the point of Mark?

I mean, why would we really consider Mark a second gospel? We would just consider it to be a carbon copy of Matthew.

So you see these agreed upon accounts between Matthew, Mark and Luke.

We call those the synoptic gospels, meaning same. They tell roughly the same story or a lot of the same events are included in those gospels.

John is altogether different, but still eyewitness accounts from one of the apostles. It is it's

John, of course, who's giving that account. But these things may have been agreed upon by the apostles.

Here's the main things that we're going to tell people, and that's why they end up in Matthew, Mark and Luke. But each person's style, each person's penmanship shows up in the gospel as they're giving it so that you see this is not, you know, some we're going to say exactly these words and don't deviate from it in any way, because then you would be skeptical.

Then you would think, well, is this really true or is it just something that they came up with and decided all of our accounts have to be exactly the same?

So in Matthew's account, once again, he kind of presents all of those things together. So hence we have the fig tree being cursed and withered and dying at seemingly the same time.

So Jesus curses the fig tree and says, no longer shall there be any fruit from you and all at once the fig tree withered.

Matthew even goes as far to say at once the fig tree withered. But even if it's on a different day, if Jesus curses the fig tree on Monday and they come back by on Tuesday morning and they see that it's withered, that would still be at once.

It's not something that happened over the course of the season that it eventually withered and died. It was

Jesus cursed it. And then the disciples are baffled to see that the tree is dead. Trees don't just die in one day like that.

So it still happened all at once, even if it was a span of 24 hours difference. Now again, back to Mark 11, you have the the the barren fig tree that's cursed.

And then Jesus drives the merchants from the temple. And then in verse 19, this is

Mark 11, 19. When evening came, they were going out of the city. And as they were passing by in the morning, so now it's

Tuesday morning. They saw the fig tree withered from the roots. And being reminded, Peter said to him,

Rabbi, look, the fig tree which you cursed has withered. Now there's another aspect to the cursing of the fig tree that Mark mentions.

Matthew does not. Let me go back up a little bit to Mark 11, beginning in verse 12. And on the next day, when they had left

Bethany, he became hungry. And seeing at a distance a fig tree that had leaves, he went to see if perhaps he would find anything on it.

And when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves for it was not the season for figs.

Now because that is is written in Mark 11. There are people who will who will be like, well, why does

Jesus get upset at the tree and curse it when it wasn't even the season for figs to be on it anyway?

Shouldn't Jesus, who is the son of God, who is omniscient, wouldn't he have known something about fig trees, even as a person living in in in Judah in Israel, wouldn't he have known something about the fig tree that surely there wasn't supposed to be any figs on it.

But here it doesn't have figs. He gets mad and says, may no one ever eat fruit from you again.

And then the next day, the fig tree is withered and died. But fig trees. My grandmother used to have a fig tree in her backyard when a fig tree has leaves on it.

It also has fruit on it. So they see the tree with leaves on it. But when they get to it, it doesn't have fruit.

Mark says it was not the season for figs. It was not the time when the figs would have been ripened to have been picked and harvested.

But a fig tree will produce figs 10 months out of the year. There may be several times over the course of the year that you can pluck the figs from the tree and then more figs will grow in to replace those.

But as long as the fig tree has leaves on it, there will be fruit on it. And here Jesus comes to the tree and he sees leaves on it.

But there's no figs for it was not the season for figs. Well, then there shouldn't have been leaves on it either.

But since there were leaves, there should have been fruit. So since there wasn't fruit, Jesus curses the fig tree.

And you understand what is supposed to be meant by this. The fig tree is supposed to represent Israel and Israel's not being fruitful.

And we've been seeing that over the course of what we've been reading here, not just in Matthew 21, but in the gospel altogether.

Even going back to Matthew 2, when the Magi came into Jerusalem looking for he who has been born king of the

Jews, the people had no idea what the Magi were talking about. And Herod and along with all the people with him were troubled because the

Magi, these foreigners, had come into the city asking about this king who had been born. And the people don't know what they're talking about.

And so Herod has to consult the scribes and ask them, what are these Magi saying?

Why are they asking about one who has been born king of the Jews? And the scribes, of course, tell him, well, yeah, there is a prophecy that talks about the king being born in Bethlehem.

And so that's where Herod sends the Magi too. But they should have known this.

Anybody in Jerusalem should have been able to answer that question. Yes, our king has been born. He is over in Bethlehem.

Come and see where he lives. They should have been able to say that, but they couldn't because they didn't know the scriptures.

The Pharisees, the teachers of the law, were not accurately teaching the scriptures, nor did the people have the desire for them, for the word of God.

And so we've seen this unfruitfulness in Jerusalem over this entire time that Jesus has been on the earth.

And so here we are in that last week where Jesus is even going to go to the cross. He's going to give us his last teachings, which we're reading here in Matthew from chapter 21 all the way to chapter 25.

And as he gives these teachings, even the teachers themselves are not going to receive what it is that he says.

And at the end of the week, the people are going to be shouting, crucify him. So this is demonstrating that they have no fruitfulness in themselves.

And we're going to see this further elaborated on with the parables that are coming up. And I'm saving the parables that we would begin those in the same week.

So that'll be on Monday. We get to the parable of the two sons, the parable of the vine growers, the parable of the wedding feast, those three parables coming up next week.

That's what's next in this account that we're reading in the final week of Jesus teaching.

So Israel is not producing fruit and Jesus curse upon them is, may you never produce fruit again.

And so the fruit will not come out of Israel. The fruit is actually going to come out of the church. That's what's coming next.

And that will be explained in the parables that we're going to look at. But that's what's being symbolized here by the fig tree, which is supposed to represent

Israel not producing fruit, Jesus cursing the fig tree, and then it withers and dies.

Finally, without any fruit being produced, what had been prophesied about Christ comes to fulfillment upon Israel, that the axe has been laid at the root of the trees.

He's going to be taking those branches that don't produce fruit and he will bundle them up and throw them into the fire. And that's being demonstrated here by Jesus cursing of the fig tree.

And the disciples are marveled saying, how did the fig tree wither all at once?

And Jesus answered and said to them, verse 21, truly, I say to you that if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, be taken up and cast into the sea, it will happen.

Now they're standing on the Mount of Olives because that's the mountain that they had to cross when they were going back and forth between Jerusalem and Bethany.

So when Jesus says, you'll be able to say to this mountain, he's literally talking about the

Mount of Olives that they're standing on. But what about that measure of faith, that demonstration of faith?

If you believe enough, are you able to say to a mountain, go be thrown into the sea?

And Pike's Peak in Colorado would just lift itself up and throw itself into the Pacific Ocean.

I mean, is that what Jesus is saying, that if you have the faith for it, then it will happen?

Like Yoda lifting up the X -Wing out of the bog on the planet Dagobah.

When Yoda says to Luke that you didn't believe it, and that's why you weren't able to lift the fighter jet out of the bog, right?

So is that what Jesus is doing here? If you just believe hard enough, you'll even be able to lift a mountain and throw it into the sea?

No, this is what's called a Hebraism. So it was a common thing among the Hebrews to say that you can move mountains.

Jesus is saying that you must have faith to be able to move mountains. And moving mountains was that Hebraism that was indicating any problem or obstacle or obstruction in your life.

So it wasn't about literally lifting up a mountain and throwing it into the sea. It was any kind of obstruction in front of you that is hindering your path.

It is preventing you from obtaining your goal.

And so Jesus is telling the disciples that in the mission that they will be given to preach the gospel, there's nothing that will be able to stand in your way as long as you have faith.

You will be able to say to this mountain, be thrown into the sea and it will be done for you. And we don't have any indication here in this account that the disciples took

Jesus literally in the sense that they thought he was saying, I can lift up an entire mountain just by speaking to it and throwing it into the sea.

They understood that Jesus was using a Hebraism, a very common Jewish saying. And all things you ask in prayer,

Jesus says, believing you will receive. And this goes back to teaching that he had given in the

Sermon on the Mount. If you ask of your father in heaven, he will give to you. He will give to those who ask of him.

He loves his children. He will give to his children what they ask of him. But all of this, keeping in mind that we are asking according to the will of the father, not that our will would be done, but that the father's will would be done.

So as Jesus taught us to pray in Matthew chapter six, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

When we pray and ask that God would act, we're asking according to his will. We are desiring to have the mind of God, the mind of Christ and be subject to whatever his decision would be that would be carried out.

So that's what we must understand when we ask of God. We ask that his will would be done.

And all things you ask in prayer, believing you will receive. So finally, we have this authority of Jesus that's challenged by the

Pharisees. He entered the temple and the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him while he was teaching and said, by what authority are you doing these things and who gave you this authority?

And once again, we know the answer to this question, that his authority comes from his father. Jesus is going to say that a little bit later on in his teaching, not directly, but it's going to come out in his teaching.

And we know that the authority that he has comes from the father. He said as much to his disciples. He's not saying it yet to the

Pharisees, but it will come out in this very week. Jesus answered and said to them,

I will also ask you one thing, which if you tell me, I will also tell you by what authority

I do these things. And this is just very shrewd on Jesus part, because he knows the Pharisees are not going to answer this question.

The baptism of John was from what source from heaven or from men. Now once again, this is dramatic irony.

We know where John's baptism was from. It was given to him by God. He was doing what

God had told him to do. And the Pharisees reason among themselves, they said, if we say from heaven, he'll say to us, then why did you not believe him?

But if we say from men, we fear the crowd for they all regard John as a prophet. And they answered

Jesus and said, we do not know. And he also said to them, neither will I tell you by what authority

I do these things. He just wasn't going to play into their hand. But we know the authority that he had came from God.

The very authority that he exercised in the temple, the authority that was proclaimed by the people when they sent

Hosanna to the son of David as he came in, in the fulfillment of prophecy, riding on a donkey's colt.

It's the same authority he exercises over the fig tree and the same authority that the Pharisees questioned, but they don't yet understand.

Yet this authority was plainly going to be seen by all in such a very short time.

And we will see that further when we come back to our study in the gospel of Matthew next week.

Tomorrow we resume our study in Isaiah. Let's finish with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we've read here.

And I pray that you would continue to encourage us and build us up in your word that we may see

Christ and him crucified for our sins. The authority that he has over death itself, that he rose from the dead so that death no longer has any power over him.

He has conquered the grave and death doesn't master us either. For in Christ Jesus, we are more than conquerors through him who loves us.

And so help us to continue to rely upon Christ today, knowing that by faith in Jesus, we have faith to move mountains and nothing will stand in our way as we desire to live out the will of God.

It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an

Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an