Matthew 21:18 - 22
18 Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry.19 Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” Immediately the tree withered.
20 When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. “How did the fig tree wither so quickly?” they asked.
21 Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. 22 If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”
Questions:
ReplyDelete1. Why did Jesus curse the fig tree?
2. If we only believe we can ask for anything and receive it?
Posted by Maribeth:
ReplyDelete1) Because it did not bear fruit. Usually understood to be a symbol for Israel which was not doing what God intended. Serves as a good warning for us!
2) We can't have faith in faith, but faith in God, so our asking wouldn't make sense unless we asked for things in accordance with God's plan and nature. That would eliminate a lot either based on our selfishness or presumption.
https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/646-why-did-jesus-curse-the-fig-tree says:
ReplyDeleteIt should be noted first that the term “curse” is not used in biblical parlance in the modern sense of profanity. Rather, a curse was a pronouncement of judgment upon a person or object (cf. Mt. 25:41).
Christ’s action was not a purposeless act of intemperance. It represented a strong object-lesson that the disciples needed to learn (and numerous others since that time as well).
Did Jesus Destroy Someone Else’s Personal Property? it was common for travelers to pick fruit from road-side trees, or from any tree that was not enclosed.
When the Lord first saw the tree, he was yet “afar off.” He could only discern that it had leaves (v. 13). When the Savior arrived at the tree, he observed a curious thing — the fig tree was fruitless. Of what significance is this?
“in Palestine the fruit appears before the leaves” Thus, to see a leafed fig tree (even at an unseasonable time — v. 13b), warranted the assumption that there would be fruit on the tree.
But this tree was an oddity; the leaves were there, but it was fruitless. This phenomenon, therefore, served as a perfect “visual aid” for an important lesson that the Savior wished to teach.
Centuries earlier, the Hebrew nation had been separated from the pagan peoples of antiquity to serve in a special role in the divine economy.
Across the centuries, however, the Israelite people frequently rebelled against their Creator.
While there were occasional periods of spiritual revival among the Hebrews, as in the days of Josiah, a good king (cf. 2 Kgs. 22-23), the tragic fact is that the nation was on a gradual, degenerative slide — a path of apostasy that would culminate with the blood-thirsty cry, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” (Lk. 23:21).
In the symbolism of the Scriptures, a fruitless, withered tree was worthy of nothing more than being cut down (cf. Psa. 90:6; Hos. 9:16). “Withering” was a symbol of imminent death (Joel 1:12). In the blasting of this fruitless fig tree, the Son of God was suggesting this:
The nation, as a political entity, had become a worthless mechanism in the sacred scheme of things. It thus was worthy of nothing but destruction.
That destruction would shortly come (within forty years — A.D. 66-70) with the invasion of the land by the Roman armies (cf. Mt. 22:7ff; 24:15ff).
The punishment would be complete and final; the “tree” would be dead from the very “roots” (Mk. 11:20).
Conclusion
There was a very good reason why Jesus Christ acted as he did on this occasion. It was not an impulsive act, it was not a misguided, irresponsible gesture. It was a deliberate, highly instructive warning. Unfortunately, the lesson conveyed has been lost upon the minds of many.
Note: This episode is a deadly refutation of the false notion that there will be a revival of the old nation of Israel in the “end times” — as advocated by dispensationalists and premillennialists. For further study, see our article, God and the Nation of Israel. https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/28-god-and-the-nation-of-israel
My 2 cents: A side note:
ReplyDeleteI look at all sources from the internet (or from anywhere else for that matter) as suspect. I usually try to include sources that I consider main-stream. None the less, sometimes those sources contain weird things.
For example, I may choose to quote from an article a section that I believe is a relatively mainstream view. But I will skip sections that contain odd (or in my opinion tragically wrong) views.
Once again, all sources should be considered suspect.
In the Christian Courier article I quoted from above, I slightly violated what is my usual mode of operation. I did quote the standard stuff, but then I quoted the note at the end. In this case, I thought it was interesting (not because I necessarily agreed).
http://www.crivoice.org/commanding.html says about asking for anything:
ReplyDeleteOne of the interesting yet potentially harmful features of the church's use of Scripture is the confusion of personal interpretation with the actual teaching of Scripture in light of the larger body of biblical material or the traditions of the Faith. Throughout history people have taken a single verse, read it in light of their own experiences or needs, and then taught that private interpretation as the truth of Scripture.
On the surface and taken out of context, this verse sounds like a blank check for Christians. "Whatever" we want, if we just believe strongly enough, we can accomplish by just speaking a word. There does not seem to be any restrictions placed on this, since it says "whatever you ask." Some prosperity gospel preachers like to combine this verse with Psalm 37:4-5:
37:4 Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. 37:5 Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act.
When these two passages are taken out of context and used together, "whatever you ask" is then defined as "the desires of your heart." In other words, whatever one's heart desires can be accomplished if we have enough faith. This gives rise to the idea of a "word of faith" in which Christians who truly believe can simply command things in Jesus' name with the confidence that whatever they command will happen just as they desire.
However, this is a classic example of failing to understand a biblical text in its own context. That failure to hear the text on its own terms leads not only to projecting our own human agenda onto Scripture and calling it the truth of God, it violates the message of other parts of Scripture that deal with God's power to endure hardship, suffering, and even death. Also, it is contrary to common human experience, a fact that John Wesley suggested ought at least to raise questions about the validity of a theological idea.
First, we need to reject the idea that we can combine separate biblical verses from different books, from different contexts, and from different types of writing in order to make them address a single topic of our choosing. We also must resist the temptation to group verses by what topic we think they address without first understanding the context from which they come and the main idea they are addressing within that context. Each biblical passage must first be understood in its own context for what it says within that context before we move to contemporary application.
http://www.crivoice.org/commanding.html (continued):
ReplyDeleteChapter 21 begins what is known in Christian tradition as Passion Week, the final week that culminates in Jesus' death. There are three events that dominate this chapter: the entry into Jerusalem, the cleansing of the temple, and the cursing of the fig tree. More than just historical events, in Matthew these symbolic actions make important confessions about the nature of the Kingdom of God about which Jesus has been teaching throughout the book.
The entry into Jerusalem (21:1-11) proclaims Jesus as the long awaited Messiah. However, at the same time, it radically redefines the role of the Messiah.
The cleansing of the temple (21:12-17) . . . illustrate the inadequacy of the temple system and the need for a reemphasis on the needs of people (v. 14).
It is in this context that the incident of the fig tree occurs (21:19-22).
if we remember that Old Testament prophets often used symbolic actions to get their point across, we can easily understand Jesus' action here to be similar.
The barrenness of the tree when it would rightly be expected to have fruit becomes the central feature of this incident. Isaiah had used a similar story of a carefully tended vineyard that should have produced good grapes but only produced worthless and inedible fruit as a parable of judgment on Israel (Isaiah 5).
In this context of Matthew in which Jesus had proclaimed a different kind of Kingdom and Messiah than that which the people expected, along with the opposition of the Jewish leaders and the failure of the temple and sacrificial system to produce a righteous people, this incident becomes an acted parable of judgment against Israel and first century Judaism. While the Jewish religious system looked good from the outside and by all appearances was healthy ("leaves"), yet it produced no fruit. Just as the corrupted temple that should have been a house of prayer had perverted its purpose and needed to be cleansed, so now Jesus pronounces judgment on barren Israel.
Jesus' curse produces an instant withering of the tree, a metaphorical way to indicate the decline of the religious system of Judaism. The "no longer" nature of the curse is a further indication that the coming of Jesus would mark a shift in God's work with his people in the world. On a larger scale, and from the perspective of Matthew writing his Gospel around AD 80, this curse would be an indirect reference to the destruction of the temple by the Romans in AD 70. In other words, the early church saw in this acted parable, not just a spiritual curse, but also a very real pronouncement of the end of temple Judaism.
The reaction of the disciples to the withering of the fig tree was amazement and the question, "How did the fig tree wither so quickly?" At first reading, Jesus response does not seem to answer their question. But if we try to understand Jesus' response as, indeed, a direct answer to their question, it gives us a window into the meaning of verse 21.
http://www.crivoice.org/commanding.html (continued):
ReplyDeleteObviously, the language here is that of hyperbole. But that hyperbole had a specific function in first century culture. The idea of moving a mountain was a common way of talking about doing seemingly impossible things (Job 9:5, Matt 17:20, Cor 13:2, cf. Lk 17:6). It does not necessarily refer to what we moderns might want to identify as "miraculous," meaning some fantastic supernatural feat. It simply refers to something that from a human perspective is impossible.
We also need to note that faith here is not some magical power that human beings can exercise on their own. Here, faith is linked with "in prayer." This does not mean that prayer becomes the activating key to faith, but that faith must be submitted to God in prayer. The implication is that it is finally God and his will that govern how mountains are to be moved.
In this chapter of Matthew the central issue is the mission of the people of God in the world. Israel had reduced that mission to a physical earthly Kingdom with the expectation of a new King that would restore the glory days of Solomon. As a result, religious practices and temple worship had come to serve the national and selfish interests of the people rather than serving God. In both the entry into Jerusalem and the cleansing of the temple Jesus had challenged those expectations and the religious practices that went with them. And he had pronounced judgment on their failure to be God's people in meaningful ways.
And yet throughout Matthew Jesus had been constantly proclaiming a new Kingdom, one that is not defined by external rituals and superficial obedience, but one in which Torah is internalized, in which genuine care for others and service to God characterize the life of God's people, and in which the mission of God's people is to proclaim throughout the world by word and action the grace of God. In Matthew, this new Kingdom has erupted into history with Jesus' coming, and those who follow Him comprise the new people of God (Paul deals with the same issue in a different way in Romans 9-11, which should strongly caution Christians against letting this degenerate into anti-Semitism).
So when Jesus answered the disciples that they should have faith and not doubt, and that they would have power through that faith, we need to hear Jesus talking about fulfilling their role as God's people in the world as servants of the Kingdom that was dawning in Christ. That is, the power of God on which they would draw by faith is not to fulfill whatever they think they want or need, or to perform any miracles that might occur to them to perform. That would be exactly the perversion that Jesus had already condemned.
http://www.crivoice.org/commanding.html (continued):
ReplyDeleteThe issue is whether they can produce the "fruit" that Israel had not produced. The power that is available to them in prayer is the power to fulfill their mission as God's people, to be fruitful as God's people. This is not just an "evangelistic" promise, but involves all of the things that Jesus has taught so carefully in Matthew, things like authentic ethics (ch 5), humility (ch 6), selfless service to others (ch 10), and the witness to Christ throughout the world (ch 24).
It might be helpful to note the following context of this verse as well. The very next incident that Matthew recounts is conflict with religious leaders over Jesus' authority (21:23-32). And yet, as the disciples are given their final instructions about being God's people in the world, Jesus declares, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (24:1). The contrast is sharply drawn between the religious leaders who cannot answer the question of authority, a further sign of a failed system, and the authority of Jesus and the Kingdom that he had inaugurated.
The concluding parable of the vineyard (21:33-46) makes the same point that the cursing of the fig tree had made. This parable is even more directly related to Isaiah 5:1-7 as it illustrates the failure of those entrusted with responsibility. Once again, the failure to produce fruit according to valid expectations provides the metaphor for the new Kingdom.
This provides the governing thought for this entire chapter of Matthew 21. Verses 21-22 must be read in light of this transition of the kingdom from those who have failed to fulfill their responsibilities to those who believe the new Kingdom has dawned in Jesus. At seeing the fig tree wither, the disciples had asked Jesus, "How did the fig tree wither at once?" That is, how can Israel so quickly fade as God's people? Jesus' answer is that the new Kingdom of God has come in Jesus and in those who have faith in Jesus and that Kingdom. Those who are able to "move mountains" in fulfilling their calling as the people of God according to Jesus' teaching throughout Matthew, will be able to produce the fruits of the Kingdom. It is these fruits of the Kingdom, the giving of cups of cold water in Jesus' name, making disciples of all peoples, living by that internal Torah that is governed by love, that are the product of mountain-moving faith. And that will quickly mark the "withering" of unproductive Israel.
The implication is that none of these things can be accomplished by human effort; they are mountains that cannot be moved. Yet, by seeking the presence of God in prayer and placing faith in God's revelation of himself in Jesus who is the Christ, God's people who inhabit the new Kingdom can move mountains, can do the impossible of being God's people and producing the fruit of the Kingdom.
So, this verse is not justification for modern Christians to command physical things. I think that risks the same kind of self-centered fruitlessness that typified the failed religious system of perverted first century Judaism in thinking that God's power is to serve our wants and needs.
My 2 cents:
ReplyDeleteThis is the previous article in my own words. That article is definitely worth reading, but is very long.
1. Jesus cursed the fig tree to show the disciples what God will do to fruitless trees. Old covenant Israel was that fruitless tree.
2. Asking for anything you desire in prayer is in the context of the fruit tree. We (like old covenant Israel) do not have the power or ability to bear fruit. If we ask Jesus to bear fruit in us, He will do so. There are many parts and steps to the fruit bearing process - including the deeds we will perform in God's kingdom. We cannot do any of these, and don't have the power to. But, if we ask God, He will answer our prayers by giving us faith to act within His kingdom. Jesus asks us to move mountains in His name. We need to remember that we need to ask Him to do these things all the time.