Mark 11

¹² On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. ¹³ 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. ¹⁴ And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it. ¹⁵ 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. ¹⁶ And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. ¹⁷ 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.” ¹⁸ 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. ¹⁹ And when evening came they went out of the city. ²⁰ As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. ²¹ And Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.” 

I have a great dad and a dad who has always been good to me so I hesitate to tell this story for fear that it might embarrass him. It is a story we joke about now but, at the time when it happened, I was terrified. It remains the only time in my life that I was terrified of my dad. There were plenty of times I was scared of my dad and all of those times had to do with well-earned and well-deserved disobedience on my part! But I was only terrified of my dad once in my life.

I was a little boy. I was standing in our front yard at 7 Clinton Street in Sumter, South Carolina. Our family had a large red Oldsmobile at that time. I remember that car well. It seemed like a tank: big and metallic and strong. My dad had the car in the front yard and, while I climbed the branches of a tree, he was there, just a little way away from me, quietly and intensely focusing on getting the passenger side door of that big Oldsmobile back on the car.

He had to take the door off to fix something or other. The door was huge and heavy. It was not plastic like car doors tend to be today. He had some kind of jack on which he was balancing the door as he tried to line the hinges up in order to reattach it. It was one of those things that never…quite…line…up. Perhaps you know what I mean: those jobs that will test your sanity, that seem to be almost sadistically toying with you, that allow you to think that you have got it when you do not have it. He was so focused and so quiet and so intense in his silence that somehow it got my attention. I stopped playing on the tree and watched him.

It was hot out. He was sweating. The sweat was dripping off the tip of his nose while he strained to hold the door upright, to balance the door, and reattach the door. I think it was the silence that first startled me. There was just the sound of metal bumping and scraping and clanging on metal, but, from my dad, silence. He was too quiet. He looked like he was in a death-grip wrestling match with some sort of red metallic beast, his muscles straining against its resistance.

In a moment, I thought he finally had it. The door lined up. The hinges lined up. But then, at the last second, no, it slipped out again like it had slipped out a thousand times during the time in which he was wrestling with it.

Then it happened. The moment that terrified me. My father stopped. His hands still on the door. Then he gripped it, the entire big door, and, screaming, slowly lifted it over his head. While I stood there with my mouth wide open, my father held that big metal door over his head like Atlas except that he was not stooping the way Atlas does under the earth. He held it up and then with all of his mustered might and fury and rage he slammed the door into the ground.

The door was red metal on the outside but white upholstery on the inside. I jolted with shock when the door hit the ground, the white interior now belly-up in the sun, the dust rising in a cloud. Then my father took his big dirty foot and slammed it down on the door, as if he was pinning the neck of some deadly beast, reached down to the white door handle that you would reach out, grab, and use to shut the door when you were sitting inside it, and with a cry of anger ripped the handle off the door, did a shot-putt rotation, and then hurled the door handle like a propeller over the top of our house.

I watched with stunned amazement as that handle propelled over the house: whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. I think it landed in Florida.

Then, seething and sweating and red-faced and fist-clenched and shaking, my father slowly turned to look at me standing there, trembling, horrified, and all of six years old. I will never forget it: my dad, animalistic with fury, the car door still shaking in the aftermath of the assault, the gaping passenger side hole behind him, the interior handle still flying south. And when he looked at me in that instant, I recall as clear as a bell that chills came over me and I physically took a step back.

That transformation from my loving dad to whatever it is that he had become startled me and startles me even now as I think about it! It…was…epic!

Finally he calmed himself and now, many moons later, we laugh about it. But not at the time. It is unnerving to see one who always seems to have it together suddenly act out with destructive force. And while it was not directed towards me—and I hasten to add that my father never treated me like he treated that car door—it made, shall we say, an impression.

There are people who feel the way I felt then about the story in Mark 11:12-21. This is a hard story. Basically, our text has three components, all three of which cause us to step back a bit in shock:

• Jesus curses a fig tree that is not bearing fruit.

• Jesus casts the money-changers out of the temple.

• Jesus and the disciples pass back by the cursed tree and see that it has withered and died.

In a sense, of course, comparing our text to my dad’s great battle with the Oldsmobile door is unjust, for Jesus did not lose control of himself. Jesus was always in perfect control. However, there are some similarities. Jesus shocked the disciples by doing what He did to the fig tree and He shocked everybody by doing what He did in the temple. Jesus did indeed display ferocious anger, though, unlike our anger, the anger of Christ is never contaminated by sin. And He did react with a kind of fury against something that was not doing what it was supposed to do.

What, then, are we to do with this strange and startling tale? The first thing we must do is understand the connection between the cursing of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple. Let us recall those three component parts:

• Jesus curses a fig tree that is not bearing fruit.

• Jesus cleanses the temple.

• Jesus and the disciples pass back by the cursed tree and see that it has withered and died.

In order to understand this we need to understand that Mark, by sandwiching the story of the temple cleansing within the story of the fig tree, is using a literary device that he is particularly fond of. Mark is using something that is called inclusio or intercalation or sandwiching. Scott Duvall and Danny Hayes define inclusio as “a literary technique in which a passage (a story or a poem, etc.) has the same or a similar word, statement, event, or theme at the beginning and at the end. This is also called ‘bracketing’ or ‘framing.’”[1] Our text is a perfect example of this. Consider:

Fig Tree

¹² On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. ¹³ 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. ¹⁴ And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.

Temple

¹⁵ 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. ¹⁶ And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. ¹⁷ 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.” ¹⁸ 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. ¹⁹ And when evening came they went out of the city.

Fig Tree

²⁰ As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. ²¹ And Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.”

What this means, then, is that what happened in the temple is crucial to understanding what Jesus did to the fig tree and what Jesus did to the fig tree can only be understood by what Jesus did in the temple. The two are not only connected, they explain one another.

So the question is this: what was Jesus so angry about? Why did He act the way He acted?

We are going to approach this text from the vantage point of Jesus’ actions in the temple. We will then allow those actions to explain what He did to the fig tree.

Jesus is angered when the focus of His people becomes usward instead of Godward.

We will begin with the disciples’ Oldsmobile door moment. It happened as they were approaching Jerusalem.

¹² On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. ¹³ 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. ¹⁴ And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.

In truth, a lot of people really dislike this story. Many are outright offended by it. They particularly dislike how Jesus cursed a fig tree, a tree, Mark tells us, that was out of season! Here are some actual comments from commentators and readers of this text:

• “a gross injustice on a tree which was guilty of no wrong”

• “It is a tale of miraculous power wasted in the service of ill-temper…”

• “The story does not seem worthy of Jesus. There seems to be a petulance in it.”

• “It is odd…”

• “There can be no doubt that this, without exception, is the most difficult story in the gospel narrative.”

• “The story does not ring true.”

• “…the whole action was unreasonable.”

• “The whole story does not seem to fit Jesus at all.”[2]

Are these critics right? Is this a display of petulance or is something else happening here? In point of fact, what we have here is something that is called an “enacted parable.” In the tradition of the prophets, Jesus acts out something that is going to happen. He does something shocking and even confusing in order to make a deeper point. That point is made by what happens next.

Jesus goes to the temple. This is not just any normal trip to the temple, of course, for this is Passover, a time in which the population of Jerusalem swelled to ten times its normal size and a time in which animals were purchased for temple sacrifice on a massive scale. Mark describes what happens:

¹⁵ 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. ¹⁶ And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. ¹⁷ 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.”

There it is again, that terrifying moment when one you love and trust reacts in a way that shocks and unsettles you! Jesus was apparently deeply agitated by something and He reacted with righteous rage against it. But what was it that so angered Him? Consider, again, the sequence:

• Jesus enters the temple.

• Jesus begins driving out those who sold and bought in the temple.

• Jesus overturns the tables of the money changers

• Jesus overturns the seats of those who sold pigeons.

• Jesus stops people from carrying things through the temple.

Thus, the specific objects of Jesus’ anger are the buyers, the sellers, the money-changers, the pigeon merchants, and the people carrying things through the temple. Why was that? What were these folks doing wrong? We might think of it in these terms:

• The buyers: They were not necessarily doing anything wrong. Some were simply victims of what had become an unseemly business. Perhaps others, however, viewed themselves as purchasing God’s favor or were even showing off their wealth by buying the more expensive animals for sacrifice.

• The sellers: Some of these folks were unduly profiting off of the economy that had grown up around temple worship and all of them had become part of something ugly, uncouth, and blasphemous.

• The money-changers: Like the sellers, some of the money-changers may have been profiting off of the worship of the people, though Card suggests that the offense lie elsewhere:

In Jesus’ day, moneychangers took in currencies from all over the area and exchanged them for the accepted currency of the temple, the shekel minted in Tyre. It was accepted for payment in the temple for two reasons: first, it was coined from the purest silver, and second, its value was the closest equivalent to the older Hebrew shekel. Past interpretations have tried to make the case that Jesus condemned the money-changers because they were charging exorbitant exchange rates. In reality, the surcharge for the exchange was set by the temple authorities and was relatively small, covering only the devaluation due to the wearing away of the silver. Jesus’ anger probably had to do with the fact that the Tyrian coin bore the image of Herakles on one side and an inscription on the other that read, “Tyre, the holy and invincible.”[3]

• The pigeon merchants: The selling of pigeons (or, more traditionally, “doves”–pigeons and doves are in the same family but are different species) was particularly grievous to Jesus. “Doves were the offering set aside for the poor (Lev 5:7),” writes Michael Card. Furthermore, “[t]he Mishnah records that during Jesus’ time, prices for doves in the temple market soared.”[4]

• The people carrying things: These people angered Jesus by disrupting the worship of those seeking to honor God and possibly even by dishonoring the Lord by using the outer temple court as a short-cut so that they would not have to walk further around the outside of it.

What had happened here and why was Jesus so angry? In short, temple worship had reduced to a carnival, to a market place, to a place of exploitation, and to a place of convenience. The pigeon sellers were fleecing the pour. The crowd carrying things through the court of the Gentiles (where this episode takes place) had diluted a sacred place into a short-cut for their own convenience. The money-changers fit right in with this whole motley scene. In short, the sacred had been profaned, the holy had been reduced to a commodity, and, in the process, true worship was being distorted.

All of this is because the focus of the people had moved from God to themselves…even in the midst of worship!

Jesus is angered when the focus of His people becomes usward instead of Godward.

How does this happen? Usually this happens incrementally. It seems as if we are most Godwardly-focused when we first come to the Lord in repentance and faith. In the early days of our walks with Jesus we are focused and the externals and inconveniences do not bother us. In fact, they seem irrelevant in light of His glory.

Over time, however, we begin to think more of ourselves. We begin to take notice of the things we do not like. And, without fail, when the little things become big things the big things become little things. Soon, if this drift is not checked, church becomes about us: our comfort, our convenience, our desires, our agendas. What was once upward now becomes usward.

It is a tragic thing! In the devil’s arsenal, this degradation of church and worship is a favorite weapon, for through it he keeps us in the house of God while blinding us to the truth of God! How delicious this must be for Satan!

We must search our own hearts. We must humble ourselves. If we are honest, we can answer this question: has church become all about me? Has my focus changed? Which direction am I looking when I come to church?

Jesus is angered when the focus of His people becomes usward instead of themward.

Not only had the Jews’ focus become usward instead of Godward, it had also become usward instead of themward.

¹⁷ 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.”

In Mark’s telling of this story, Jesus says that the temple was to be “a house of prayer for all nations.” That last phrase, “for all nations,” is important, especially in light of where all of this was taking place. As mentioned earlier, the cleansing of the temple took place in “the Court of the Gentiles,” that large outermost courtyard where non-Jewish God-fearers were welcome to come near. It was, again, furthest from the Holy of Holies, much in the same way that Gentiles were considered to be furthest from God Himself. It is true that provisions were made for these outsiders to come and worship, but it is also true that the distortion of the Court of the Gentiles into a raucous marketplace sent a message that, to the religious authorities at least, Gentile worship was not something to be protected or honored.

Imagine if you were a God-fearing Gentile who had traveled perhaps for months to come to the temple at Passover to worship the one true God. Imagine that you are ushered into the Court of the Gentiles and told that this was as far as you could go and as close as you could approach. Then imagine that you attempt to pray to God and offer worship to Him but you cannot focus because all around you is the hue and cry and bustle of commerce: the exchanging of money, the purchasing of animals, etc.

By allowing the Court of the Gentiles to become, in essence, a large shopping mall, the Gentiles were made to feel like they were so far from God that their presence and their offerings and their worship truly did not matter much at all.

It was precisely here that Jesus cast over tables and chairs. It was precisely here that Jesus drove out the money-changers. It was precisely here that Jesus forbade the throng from making the Court of the Gentiles into their own personal shortcut. And it was precisely here, among the peoples of other nations, that Jesus said, “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.”

Nothing so angers God as when His people become calloused, indifferent, selfish, and forgetful of the nations who likewise need to know the one true God! Apparently nothing so angers the calloused, indifferent, selfish, and forgetful as when their own wickedness is pointed out to them, for we read:

¹⁸ 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.

The church that has lost a sense of mission does not like being told that it has lost a sense of mission! But it must be told, for the people of God were ever and always supposed to be a people who reached out to the nations. The consequences of failing to do so can be seen in the chilling conclusion to our text:

¹⁹ And when evening came they went out of the city. ²⁰ As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. ²¹ And Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.”

Cursed down to the roots.

Total destruction.

Such is the wrath of God when His people pervert what is holy into that which is based, crassly commercial, and self-serving. Many suggest that in cursing the fig tree Jesus was giving a nod to the words of the prophet Micah in Micah 7.

¹ Woe is me! For I have become as when the summer fruit has been gathered, as when the grapes have been gleaned: there is no cluster to eat, no first-ripe fig that my soul desires.

This is likely so.

God’s soul desires fruit.

When we reject His life-giving power we invite judgment.

Church, let us keep it about Jesus! Let us keep it about taking Jesus to the nations! Let us resist the temptation to be insular, to be comfortable, to be safe, to be profitable, to be self-serving, and to be narcissistic.

Consider the fig tree.

Consider the church.

Let us lash ourselves to the cross of Jesus Christ!

 

[1] J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays, Grasping God’s Word. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), p.120. Ronald J. Kernaghan, Mark. The IVP New Testament Commentary Series. Ed., Grant R. Osborne. Vol.2 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), p.216.

[2] Daniel Akin, Mark. Christ-Centered Exposition. (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2014), p.251. Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark. Hermeneia. Ed., Harold W. Attridge. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), p.525. William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark. The Daily Study Bible. (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1971), p.280-281.

[3] Michael Card, Mark. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012), p.140.

[4] Card, p.140.