The Gospel According to Matthew - Week 29

Awake Us Now

This teaching is from Matthew 21:10-23 and continues a study of Holy Week - Jesus’ final week before His resurrection.

In today’s story, people recognized Jesus as a prophet, but He was much more than a prophet! Over the next few weeks we will be exploring: The heart of the Gospel as the heart of God’s message of salvation, and that message is at the heart of who Jesus is. Let’s dig into what that means for us.

Following Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, in today’s text picks up with Jesus entering the temple courts and how he drives out all who were buying and selling. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. Jesus says, “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers.”

Pastor shares the perspective that this is the second tine Jesus cleansed the temple, the first was at the beginning of His teaching ministry and the account in Matthew brings the second time Jesus does this.

Pastor talks in detail about the temple at this time: size, construction and the courts on the sides of the temple allowed possibly as many as 200,000 people to worship at the temple.

Following the overturning of the tables in the temple court, the blind and lame came to Jesus and he healed them and children were singing hosannas. But this angered the priest and teachers of the law, revealing their spiritual blindness and arrogance.

Jesus desires that heir minds would be opened and that these leaders would be accept Him for who He is. He desires that we all come to Him in humility and genuine worship.

Jesus then leaves the temple and heads to Bethany for the night. Everything the scriptures have predicted is about to take place...

Today’s teaching closes with the story of the cursed fig tree. What does this story tell us? Was Jesus just in a bad mood? Was he ‘hangry?” No, there is much to learn from this story, here’s how it goes.

Jesus is hungry. He goes to a fig tree to pick fruit but there’s nothing on it except leaves. But it wasn’t the season for figs! Didn’t Jesus know this?

Here’s what we do know: Prior to the season for figs to come on a tree there are small nubs that grow on the tree called paggim. They are edible - but there aren’t even any paggim on this tree. All Jesus finds are leaves.

It’s then that Jesus says, “May you never bear fruit again!” The fig tree is a symbol for Israel, the fig tree is often used as a representation of the children of Israel. And Adam and Eve, after the fall, were clothed in fig leaves.

So the fig tree is a reminder of human sin, Genesis 3, but also a reminder of the nation of Israel especially its leaders.

What Jesus sees as he looks at this tree is that it looks like a great tree but it has no fruit. This is a prophetic judgement on the leadership of Jesus’ day - it is also a clarion call to us to take seriously the things of God!

What God desires is that we don’t just “look good” on the outside, He desires that we bear fruit!

Jesus tells us throughout His ministry that if we continue in His word we will bear fruit. We’re not saved by our fruit production but because we are saved, we will produce the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control so that others are drawn to Jesus.

We don’t want our lives to be all for show - we want to produce fruit!

Jesus goes on to let us know we can trust God to hear and heed our prayers and that we can, with confidence, do the work He has called us to do: on our knees, praying and believing what Jesus says, “You will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”

We can ask anything according to His will - He hears and answers!

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