The Fig Tree Incident

Then he said to [the fig tree], “May you never bear fruit again!”

Immediately the tree withered.

Matthew 21:19

If Jesus was so hungry, why didn't He just turn a fig leaf into a fig and be done with it?  Jesus does and says everything with a purpose.  In this case He was making a point, pronouncing judgment and extending mercy in one fell swoop.

The point: Faith is fruit.  "If you believe and don't doubt, then whatever you ask in prayer will be done." (verse 22)  While this may sound like a genie-in-a-bottle statement, there are some significant differences.  First is knowing the one in Whom we put our faith - he is not our slave; He is our God, and believing Him (not just believing in Him) is the lynchpin that puts supernatural things into motion.  Secondly, this faith is expected of us before anything else is to occur.  To put our belief in the Creator of All is a fruit that only human trees can bear and angels long to look into.

Pronouncing judgment: The days of religiosity and its influence over men had been pronounced as over.  Finished.  The power that the religious establishment had was prophetically announced as dead in this key moment.  Withered.  Weak.  Fruitless and completely powerless.  This was on the heels of clearing the temple - evidence that Judaism was not producing the fruit that was expected of it (verses 12,13).  (As if it could every provide answers in the first place, but it had devolved into something tragic and even wicked.)  This was also on the heels of a short, curt answer to the chief priests.  And He did not pause to listening to their answer.  Rather, from there He went to Bethany, the  House of Answer.  This was as if to say to them, you have no answers for these people anymore; I'm proceeding to a place (or time, if you will) where we will get on to providing answers for them.

Extending mercy: Jesus was also provided a stern warning to all that fruitlessness was a very grave condition, yet there is still time to make a change.  He is not a God of sugar and spice and everything nice.  There are boundaries to the love that He extends.  (Indeed, to have no boundaries to love is to cheapen the love itself.)  To respond to this love in faith is the fruit that He craves.  To refuse beyond this boundary is a tragedy that ends only in death.  Yet until the boundary is crossed His mercy remains to extend the opportunity, that all may enter into this life-giving relationship.

John Reichardt sums the passage well:

The Fig Tree Incident wasn't a capricious act by Jesus, but rather a deliberate teaching moment and the result of his motivation to make a level path for God to come. The shock value of the miraculous object lesson was a history lesson in microcosm on the relationship between God and Israel from the Old Testament.

Jesus, fresh from his frustrating second cleansing of the temple immediately realizes the spiritual parallel of this disappointment with the disappointment of his encounter with the beautiful yet barren fig tree. His response is apocalyptic in nature and consistent with Old Testament Biblical themes of God's repeated disappointment with Israel and repeated near destruction.

May we all bear fruit in adoration of this King!

Turf Wars

But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw ... they were indignant.

Matthew 21:15

To Jesus, the gig was up.  The temple courts was the place where Gentiles could go to worship the God of the Jews - the only real God.  It was designated to be the place where all nations could go to pray.  (Isaiah 56:7)  But instead, the priests and teachers had allowed it to be something akin to a gift shop in a 911 museum of sorts, where people could go to exchange foreign for local currency and then buy sacrifices on the cheap - turning a profit in over the sacred.  At face value, it was not quite extortion.  But it was indeed holding the act of worship to God in full contempt.  And it smacked of Eli, Hophni and Phineas at Shiloh where the tabernacle. (Read 1 Samuel chapters 2, and 4)

So when the chief priests and teachers got indignant over a) his healing the blind and lame, b) over the kids enjoying this new celebrity in their midst, and c) over driving out the profiteering in the temple, the straw had broken the camels' backs and they just had to express their indignation.  It was enough that he challenged their system of traditions, theologies and hierarchies.  It was enough that he was showing them up in the performance of their care for the people.  But now He was encroaching on their home base - the temple.  As if it was theirs in the first place.

Indeed, they had lost sight of the intent of this dear place.  But now the time for them to understand had come.  And they were either going to repent and fall in line or they were going to draw the line and sacrifice the Lamb for the sake of every soul.

The final battle had begun, and the children were at stake in the very heart of it all.

Autopilot

The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

Matthew 21:9 

Events are beginning to take over all of their own, and this is one of those moments.  All of His teachings, all of His challenging, all of His miracles are now squarely backstage as Jesus is escorted into the climactic reason for His coming.  In the celebration of it all, the people even praise Him with an appeal - the same appeal of the blind men at the end of chapter 20.  For Hosanna literally means "Lord save."  Their praises are escorting Jesus the Messiah into answering the very prayer with which they are hailing Him.  He is not praised like this before or after this moment; the moment stands by itself.

It's safe to say that they didn't know what they were doing, but it is the unfolding of an ancient psalm (part of the Hallel recited on Jewish holidays) into its fulfillment.  And it's all playing out without any intervention from Jesus.  His destiny of the saving of our souls has firmly gained impetus, and He is simply riding this wave to its final end - the horns of the altar (Psalm 118:27).

And all we can do is observe, receive and abide in gratefulness.