Exploring My Strange Bible - Jesus, Prophet and Provocateur - Gospel of Matthew Part 27

Episode Date: November 12, 2018

In this teaching, we take apart Matthew Chapter 21 and the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem during the week of Passover, and he creates a storm. He literally storms into the temple and turns over tables and stages a protest. Immediately following that, there is a story about Jesus and a fig tree. Get ready for Hebrew word plays, prophetic poetry, and more in this episode.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right, in this episode, we are going to keep exploring the gospel according to Matthew. How many times have I said that now?

Lots of times, because the Gospel of Matthew is long, and we're exploring a whole bunch of it in these episodes. Anyway, we are going to consider one of my favorite stories in the Gospels, and especially Matthew's version of it, in Matthew chapter 21. It's the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem during the week of Passover, and he creates a storm. He literally storms the temple and does the whole thing of turning over the tables and staging a protest. There's also, following that, a strange story about Jesus and a fig tree. Maybe you've read these stories and they've puzzled you. Maybe I don't know what you've thought about these stories, but get ready for lots of Hebrew

word plays, prophetic poetry and symbolism, and future fate of Jerusalem in Jesus's worldview. So there you go. Matthew chapter 21. Let's dive in. view. So there you go, Matthew chapter 21. Let's dive in. This has been what I call the road trip section of the gospel according to Matthew. So Jesus has been on a road trip since chapter 16. He had a really significant conversation with his disciples about how he was Israel's king, and that as Israel's king, he was going to become king by dying, by being brutally murdered and executed. And this was surprising to the disciples, a bit shocking, and they were not pleased to receive this information. And Jesus, we're told at that point, set his face to go to Jerusalem. And so for chapters now, chapters and a couple months, we've been following these

conversations that Jesus has on the road as he heads towards his death. And almost all of these conversations have been about people misunderstanding Jesus, misunderstanding what it means to follow him. And so today they've reached the destination. The road trip's over, guys. It's been a blast. And today it ends. And it ends in a really, really dramatic way. Something shifts today with the story that we're going to read.

We've seen a Jesus that's operated somewhat under the radar, though the leadership of Israel is becoming more and more aware of him and his kingdom movement. But today, Jesus changes how he behaves in public. And if you've been following with us through the series, you'll notice it. Jesus comes into Jerusalem to bring his kingdom, his upside-down kingdom. And some people are thrilled, some people are not happy. This is a story that happens in three scenes that are all dramatic. Let's go for it. You guys with me? Let's dive in. Chapter 21. As they approached Jerusalem and they came to Beth Phage, is how we butcher it in English But Bethphage, house of the early fig.

They came to the house of the early fig, little village, on the Mount of Olives. And then Jesus sent out two disciples, saying to them, why don't you go into the village ahead? And at once you're going to find a donkey tied there and a little colt by her. Untie them both and bring them to me.

Now if somebody says something to you, just say, the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away. And then Matthew whispers in our ear, he says, Dear reader, this took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet. And then here's the quotation of the prophetic poetry. Say to daughter Zion, look, your king comes to you gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

What prophet? Look at your footnote. What prophet is he quoting? Prophet Zechariah. The disciples went, and they did just as Jesus instructed them. They got the donkeys. They brought the donkey and the colt, and they placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. And a very large

crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches off of trees and spread those on the road. And the crowds that went ahead of him and those that were following behind him, they were all shouting, Hoshanna, Hoshanna, which is one of these, I don't know why they don't, it's an English translation, but somehow they just choose not to translate certain bits for you. So it means save us, save us, please. Save us, son of David. How blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Save us in the highest heaven. Now when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred. I have the New International Version.

New International Version. It says stirred. Any other translations? The city was. We all have stirred. Nobody has turmoil. It was in turmoil. When you hear the word stirred, is that neutral, negative, or positive?

Stir. Like you stir in your sleep. This is like really disturbed. This is a nightmare in your sleep or something like that. That's what's happening here. The point is turmoil, real disturbance. The whole city was in turmoil and asked, who is this? And the crowds answered, well, this is Jesus.

This is the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee. Scene number one. Jesus has timed his arrival in Jerusalem, right? Had the road trip, and he's timed his arrival in Jerusalem for the week before Passover. Now, in the Christian calendar, this event marks what day in the Christian calendar? Some of you know. It's called Palm Sunday. And so this is the beginning of what Christians call Holy Week. So the week leading up to

Passion Friday and so on, Crucifixion Friday and Resurrection Sunday. So this Christian Holy Week on the Jewish calendar, this is the week leading up to Passover. It's called the Week of Unleavened Bread. So Jesus has timed his arrival to Jerusalem to coincide with the most charged, volatile, significant week of the whole year for Israel in its capital city. This is interesting. The archaeologists, those geeks, tell us that the population of Jerusalem would have been around 50,000 people in the first century, and that somewhere around 150,000 pilgrims, Jews from all over the world would descend every year on Jerusalem for this week, which means, well, let's just imagine. It's a 50,000-person city, right? This is a room for about 250 people.

How many of you have been in here when we pack it with 400? It's ridiculous, right? It's ridiculous. So it's like, yeah, this is a sardine City, you know? And there would be, and the families would camp in the hills all during the nights all around Jerusalem. It's just tens and tens of thousands of people additional. And so Jesus has been, we're told that he has a large crowd. There's all these people coming with him, and these are all these thousands of pilgrims, Jewish pilgrims coming down for the feast. And Jesus, he's timed it all and he's actually prearranged it all too.

This is really interesting. This is the epic scene. So we're told that he approaches Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. Now just, you can't recreate this, but let me show you a picture. So he's coming from the east. And this is a picture taken from kind of the main tourist spot on the Mount of Olives.

So you can't see the Mount of Olives because you're looking from it right now. It's actually a big mount. And when you hear mountains and mountains in the Bible, no, no. Think Mount Tabor. You know what I mean? Here in Portland here, just really tall hills, right? Nothing like Mount Hood anywhere around there. So, the Mount of Olives is about the height of, say, Mount Tabor, and then it actually is taller than Jerusalem itself. And what you're

looking at here is directly west from the Mount of Olives. And can you see the castle walls? Can you see castle walls there? It's the big horizontal line. Those are castle walls. Those are not the walls that were there in Jesus' day. Those walls are a mere 600 years old, but they're 1,400 years after the walls of Jesus. But they're in the same location that the walls of Jerusalem would have been. And where you see the gold dome, that's a Muslim holy site called Shuram al-Sharif, or the Dome of the Rock. But that is the location where the temple would have stood. It would have been actually much larger than that structure right there. So the point is you're on the Mount of Olives, and it's just a steep downhill.

Really, it's quite steep, all the way down, down, even beyond where those trees are. And at the bottom are the olive groves of Gethsemane. Near the bottom of the valley, it goes down even further, and then a steep uphill. And so this ride, Jesus comes over the Mount of Olives, and there's a little village, and he's prearranged everything. This is one of my favorite parts of the story, because this happens more than once during Holy Week. He's prearranged these donkeys, right? So he says, go into the village, and you'll find a donkey. This isn't a big town. This is like not even a one-stoplight village, you know what I'm saying?

So it's not like there's donkeys everywhere, you know? It's just a very small little village. Jesus has prearranged with somebody that there's going to be some donkeys there, and then there's a code word even. This is my favorite part, right? They go and tie the donkey, and you're like, who does this belong to? I feel very awkward right now, the disciples. And then somebody will come up and talk to you and say, the Lord needs them. The disciples. And then somebody will come up and talk to you and say, the Lord needs them. Yeah. All right.

The Lord needs them. Got it. And so on. Do you get it? This is great. It's like a spy movie or whatever. This is going to happen again with the room that they celebrate the Last Supper in. It's all prearranged and there's a code word.

It's wonderful. Anyhow, so the point is, is Jesus, he's arranged all of this. All of this is intentional. Every move, every step, every word that he's going to say from this point on for the next seven days, it's all intentional. This is the culmination of his whole mission to announce and to bring the kingdom of God into reality. And so he comes, he comes over this hill. It's the Mount of Olives. He has these two donkeys, which we'll talk about more in a couple minutes. And then we're told huge crowds, all these pilgrims,

they've seen his miracles up in Galilee. They've come with him on the way. They've heard his teachings. And they think he's the real deal. Like they're shouting. They're shouting that he's the Messiah. Save us, son of David. And it's this huge, they have this impromptu red carpet, you know. All right. They like take off their clothes. What do you think? It's like a muddy, dirty road. And it's your only jacket. I mean, what this tells us is what these people think of Jesus. Like, they really believe that he's the Messiah, the son of David, he's the king,

and so they get branches. I mean, what an epic scene. It's such an epic scene, and it's all intentional. Well, actually, I don't know if he could have intended the crowds and the impromptu red carpet. That was probably a pleasant surprise. But you can see clearly, like, this is an event that Jesus has both intended and planned and becomes a huge, huge thing. Now, you might think, well, he's Jesus. Yeah, people should praise him or something like that. But think, has this been Jesus's MO? Has this been his way of operating in public up to this point? If you've been following, this is the exact opposite of everything Jesus has been doing. You might remember on more than two occasions when people said publicly after Jesus had healed them,

and they said, you're the Messiah, the son of David. And what did Jesus say to them? He said, shh, stay quiet, you know? Like, don't tell anybody. You remember that? It happened more than a few times. And he's been operating under the radar, and he's slowly been coming into more confrontations with Israel's leaders, but then all of a sudden it's like public, really public and really intentional. Like he doesn't tell these crowds to be quiet. He's just like, yeah, yeah. And he gets a donkey. Jesus is not the first king of Israel to ride down this very hillside on a donkey before. to ride down this very hillside on a donkey before.

Bible geeks. Anybody? That's great. That's great. King David. King David. After his son rebelled against him, 1 Samuel 16,

excuse me, 2 Samuel 16, when he is reinstated as Israel's king, he made the same exact ride on a donkey. And when David's son, the son of David, Solomon, went to his coronation as king, guess what he rode to his coronation? His father's donkey. So what's Jesus doing here? None of everything's architected here. Full of symbolism.

Full of meaning. It's as if he's staged, he's waited, he's waited, he's waited, and now this is the moment to reveal who he is. Now, when Jesus says that he's the king of Israel, what does he mean by that? What do you think these crowds think it means for Jesus to ride victoriously into Jerusalem. What does Jesus know he's going there to do? To die. I doubt that's what these crowds think is going to happen. Save us, son of David. Big bad Romans in there? Let's go get them, you know. Like that's, this is a charged, a charged moment. Okay, just want to pause right here.

And I, so I hope I'm, I'm trying to paint the gravity of this scene. There's something really, really significant happening here. And why is Jesus doing such a public, dramatic presentation of who, of who he is? It'll almost, and what does, what do the people in Jerusalem think? How do they feel about King Jesus riding up to Jerusalem? Deeply disturbed. Deeply disturbed. For all kinds of reasons.

One, Jerusalem already has leaders. The chief priests, the Sanhedrin. There's also a huge fortress, right, overshadowing the temple that represents the king of the world, Caesar Augustus of Rome. I mean, Jerusalem already has a king. It's not Jesus. This is a way to get yourself killed. So I just want to camp out right here because the two scenes that follow from this one, this is a side of Jesus we don't see very often. And it's actually going to, we're going to spend the next couple months as we work through,

the next couple months we're going to work through seven days, the last seven days of Jesus' life. We're going to take like three months to do it, but it's going to be seven days. And every conversation, everything Jesus does, it's just like this. It's public. It's calculated. It's meant to communicate more than just the surface events show. And so I want to help us grasp the gravity of this.

We're going to pause. I'm going to show you something else, and then we'll come back to the story, I think, with some renewed perspective. I want to show you an image, and you may or may not be familiar with this. How many of you have seen this image before? I'm actually curious by show of hands.

A smattering, a smattering. Well, you're welcome, the rest of you. You need to know about this. So who's the artist? Where did this image come from? Who painted this? Anybody? Yeah, so an artist who goes by Banksy. He's a British street artist. Some would say graffiti artist, but street artist, and you'll see why. I think he's more significant than that. This image was painted originally not two miles from where Jesus rode into Jerusalem. Did you know that?

Know that? Here's the original right here. It was painted on a separating barrier wall that divides modern Jerusalem from the Palestinian West Bank. And Bethlehem and Jerusalem are like bedroom towns now. And so there's the separation wall due to the conflict and so on, what's going on. And so this is on the West Bank side. It's a painting of a Palestinian teenager. And instead of throwing a Molotov cocktail bomb, he's throwing flowers. Banksy's a fascinating, fascinating artist,

and people love to hate him or hate to love him or whatever, and I don't know what you think about Banksy, but he pulled this stunt here in Jerusalem, like did it by the cover of Night, it's illegal to paint on the barrier wall and so on. But his career and what he's been up to over the last few years is actually very similar to what Jesus will be up to in these last seven days. Banksy, and nobody, well, maybe some people do, I don't know.

Publicly, his identity is unknown. And he began as a graffiti artist painting on the sides of buildings, but it wasn't just like tagging or words or anything like that. It was always political and social commentary, for example. So it's always very sarcastic. It's very charged. And it's always symbolic. And just Google him and you'll waste, it's not a waste, you'll use an hour and a half of your life and just be amazed by whether you agree with his viewpoints or not by the brilliance of this artist. Where he does his art and what he paints and how he does it

is just absolutely, absolutely brilliant. So here's what's really interesting, is that a number of years ago he got so popular that he began to be invited by American and British art galleries to put together shows. And it's really clear that he loved and hated all this attention. So what he first started doing, this is so amazing, what he first started doing was dressing up in disguises and then going into British art museums and hanging his own

framed works of art. Have you ever seen these? So here you go. So he would dress up in these classic inspector gadget-like outfits. And then this is the security camera picture here. And he's putting up a little framed piece of art. And all of the art is either spoofs on classic works of art or just mocking the whole modern art scene altogether and how ridiculous the prices are. Did you get it? It's brilliant. It's brilliant.

So he did this, and he did all kinds of pieces like this. It's really interesting. I think the most provocative thing that he ever did was he snuck into Disneyland, and he had a backpack that was full of mannequin parts. And then he assembled a mannequin and dressed up the mannequin in a prisoner uniform from Guantanamo Bay. Did you guys hear about this? And then he placed the mannequin at the entrance to Thunder Mountain in Disneyland. All right, this was a number of years ago. So I don't know if he's got the orange thing, he has the black hood on. It's from an iconic photograph taken of the prisoners in Guantanamo

Bay. And so Disneyland was so shocked, whoever first noticed this, they shut down the park for three hours. They shut down the whole park because of this, because they thought, is this some sort of threat or what's going on here or whatever? Okay. How you guys doing? They thought, is this some sort of threat or what's going on here or whatever? Okay, how you guys doing? So here's my point. Here's an artist. He has convictions about politics, about religion, about the way the Western powers behave. And he pulls these very calculated public stunts that gets everybody's attention,

that shock people, that make you question your values, that make you rethink things. And that's his career. That's his job. Somehow he's made his job of this. And what Banksy has been to Western culture in the last 15 years or so,

it's exactly what the Israelite prophets were in their day. So go read Isaiah chapter 20, and you'll see God ask Isaiah, who was a very public figure, to go walk around Jerusalem for one year wearing no clothes, totally naked. Just what a bummer to get that one from God. So totally naked as a shocking symbol of the naked captives that will be taken to Assyria when God allows Assyria to come take over part of Israel because of their sin and their idolatry. Or the prophet Ezekiel. God told Ezekiel to shave off all of his hair with a sword, so not a good haircut job, and then to go out in public and throw his hair up in the air and chop it up with the sword as a symbol of the Babylonian armies heading towards Jerusalem to take it out.

And this was like street theater. This is what Israelite prophets do, these shocking public symbols. And if you know Israel's scriptures, you get the symbols. There you go. And what Jesus is doing here and what he's going to do in scene two and scene three is precisely that. He's taking up this mantle of the Israelite prophets. We can change the image. I don't know.

Or maybe let's just do blank. Let's just do blank for right now. Or maybe let's just do blank. Let's just do blank for right now. He's taking up this mantle of this very public, symbolic, attention-getting, shocking behavior. Why? Why? He has a message.

He has a message from the God of Israel that the time is up and that Israel's chance to respond to the kingdom of God offer through Jesus the windows closing. So he rides into Jerusalem, and what does he do when all of the eyes are on him? Where does he go? He goes to what for us would be marching on the White House. This is next week. You get a thousand people to do this impromptu presidential announcement inauguration of you next week right in front of the White House, right out in front. You guys get it here. This would be something like that. Nobody's asked Jesus to become king. He's just making himself one. Scene number two, verse 12. So great. So Jesus entered into the temple courts.

It's like going to the White House. And he drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. It is written, he said to them. That's a sign that he's going to quote from the Hebrew scriptures, which they all know and grew up on and so on. He says, it's written, my house will be called a house of prayer,

but you all are making it into a den of robbers. Who's he quoting? If you have little footnotes, who's he quoting right there? Two prophets. One of them, the naked guy, Isaiah 56. One of them, a really sad guy, the weeping prophet, Jeremiah chapter 7. We'll come back to that. Then the blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests, finally the White House staff shows up, and the teachers of the law, and they saw all these amazing things he was doing, and these children are shouting in the temple courts, Hoshanna, save us, son of David. They were indignant like you would be too. Do you hear what these children are saying?

They asked him. Of course I do, Jesus says. Have you read your Bibles before? Oh, it never gets old, that one. He's talking to Bible scholars. It's funny. Have you read your Bibles, Jesus says, quoting Psalm 8, from the lips of infants and children, you, O Lord, have called forth your praise.

And then he left them, and he went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night. Jesus has the whole city's eyes on him. He's just made very public his claim to be Israel's true king. And so where does he go? He goes right to the center of power, to the heart of Israel's life and culture and leadership. And what does he do? He gets angry. He goes on a rampage. We're told in the gospel according to John that this required a whip

for him to let people know he was really serious and he made people run. Now, not everybody. Children, the blind and the lame, were actually quite pleased with him, weren't they? But not the leadership and not the people running the money changers. Now, just think about this. If you've ever traveled to another country, what's one of the first things you need to do when you land there? You need to go to the exchange booth.

Now, if you go to... What's the interest rate or the fee charge that usually comes with that? It varies. It varies. You know, in Jerusalem today, you still just really get taken advantage of. It's really unfortunate. So what's happening here? People have to change money.

You have 150,000 people who don't live in Jerusalem going to be in Jerusalem for a week. So there have to be money changers. It's Passover. There's going to be lots of sacrifices. People need to buy their sacrificial animals and so on. So what is Jesus objecting to here? Well, where are all these people doing their business?

Where are the money changers making a handsome profit off of people? In the temple. So lots of pictures here today. Sorry, but I'm not really sorry. So here's, I've shown you this before. It's like a model reconstruction from everything we know about the shape of the temple that Jesus would have walked into. So the temple is that tall thing right in the middle, and then there's a series of courtyards and walls around that. The altar of sacrifice would have been right in the

outer court of the building around the temple. And then you have a big, huge courtyard. And on the left, that red-roofed building, it's a pillared portico. It's called the Portico of Solomon. That's where Jesus pulls his stunt right here. That's where the money changers would have been. That's where people, I mean, if you're from Galilee, 100 miles away, you don't want to bring little Lammy with you, right? You're going to bring money. And then you need to exchange the money so that you can go buy a sacrifice and so on.

And so that's what people are doing. Now, this is interesting. We know that the money changers and the people selling animals weren't always there. We actually know that Caiaphas, the high priest that we're going to meet in a couple chapters, he moved the money changers and everybody from outside the walls of the temple, like lower down in the city. He recently relocated them right into the heart of the temple. We know that this move would have made him a handsome prophet would have lined his pockets and notice where jesus really what what animal tables does he go after here this is really this

random detail what animal tables does he go for the selling does now since you were reading leviticus last night if you you're a poor Israelite and you don't have enough to buy a lamb, but you still want to show your thanks to the God of Israel, what can you buy instead with the little money that you do have? Doves. Doves were the offerings of the poor in Israel. So Jesus walks into the temple, the house of the God he called Father, and what he sees is some renovations. He sees that Caiaphas has moved the business center right

into the temple courts itself. He sees that instead of being a place for the prayer and praise of the God of Israel, the poor are being taken advantage of as they come to buy their offerings. And people are undergoing extortion as they try and exchange their money, and he gets ticked. He just gets absolutely ticked. Because in Jesus' mind, this is yet another example of the corruption of Israel's leadership. And so what does he do?

You know, in great symbolic form, like a prophet, he quotes the poetry of Israel. Quotes the poetry of Israel. And he quotes two prophets, one Isaiah, who said that the temple was to be the meeting place of heaven and earth where Israel would become a light to the nations. Yeah, that's not happening. And he quotes from the prophet Jeremiah, and I actually want to subject you to this whole poem in context, and you'll just see, I don't even need to tell you. I'm just going to read it to you. He quotes from Jeremiah chapter 7, and you put the pieces together. Through Jeremiah, the prophet says, Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah,

who come through these temple gates to worship the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty says, the God of Israel. Change your ways, change your actions, and I will let you live in this place. Don't trust in deceptive words that say, this is the temple of the Lord. The temple of the Lord. The temple of the Lord. Just make sure you know this is a really important building for them, right?

This is the temple. If you really change your ways and your actions, and if you deal with each other justly, if you stop oppressing the foreigner and the fatherless and the widow, and don't shed innocent blood in this place, if you don't follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors forever and ever. But look you're trusting in deceptive words that are worthless. Are you going to

steal and murder and committed adultery and perjury and burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you haven't known and then you all come and stand before me in this temple which bears my name, and say, we're safe. Look at the temple, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.

Surely God's pleased with us. I mean, look, there's the building to show it. Really? Are we that stupid? Jeremiah says. Has this house, which bears my name, become a den of robbers to you? Oh, I have been watching you, declares the Lord. And what you read on in the rest of Jeremiah 7 is God saying, because of your bad decisions, the Babylonian empire is on its way. God's going to destroy the house, the temple that Israel built to honor the God of Israel. destroy the house, the temple that Israel built to honor the God of Israel. What do you think was going through the priest's minds as Jesus quotes Jeremiah chapter 7? Right? It's all intentional. They know what he's saying, and they know what he's doing.

Jesus is going to become king of Israel by saying that the temple's going to be destroyed? Scene 3, verse 18. Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, remember he spent the night outside, outside. He was hungry. So seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it, and he found nothing on it except some leaves. So then he said to it, may you never bear fruit again. And immediately the tree withered. That's very weird. The disciples think so too. When the disciples saw this, they were stunned. How did the fig tree wither so quickly, they asked. Jesus replied, truly I tell you, if you have faith and don't doubt,

not only can you do what was done to this fig tree, but you could also say to this mountain, go throw yourself into the sea, and it'll be done. If you believe, you'll receive whatever you ask for in prayer. How are you guys doing? What? This is so bizarre, right? We were all kind of tracking, and then Jesus hates on a fig tree, you know? And then apparently says, you can have superpowers too if you just trust and believe or whatever. So again, so did you have to stop and just like, you have to put the story in its context. So Jesus, he's just done these things and he's walking back to Jerusalem and he sees a tree, a fruit tree, a fig tree,

and it's spring, and it has all these leaves. It just says, it's full of leaves. So if it's the right time of year, and you see a fruit tree that has full of leaves, what are you going to start looking for? Apples, whatever, fruit, you know, figs, pomegranates, these kinds of things. And so whatever, he's peeking around, you know, and he's like, there's no fruit. There's no fruit on this tree. It's full of leaves. It looks like it's full of life, but there's no fruit. And then for the small circle of his disciples, he performs his third symbolic act,

which is to pronounce a curse on this fig tree. I don't think Jesus hates fig trees, and I don't think Jesus hates plants. I think we're dealing with a highly intelligent man whose mind and heart were soaked in the scriptures of Israel. And he sees an opportunity to communicate to his disciples yet one more time with the gravity of what's happening here. Because Jesus is not the first prophet of Israel to talk about fig trees that have leaves but produce no fruit.

Is he? And once again, Bible geeks, you might know about this, but I could show you half a dozen passages in the prophets right now where Israel is depicted as a fruitless tree that God planted and it produced no fruit. I'll show you one just because I'm that kind of guy. So Micah, Micah chapter 3. Hear this, you leaders of Jacob, you rulers of Israel, who despise justice and distort

all that is right. You look for the Lord's support, and you say, look, isn't the Lord among us? The temple, the temple of the Lord, the temple of, It's right there. Surely God loves us. Look at that shiny building. No, Micah says, disaster is coming upon us. Because of you, Zion, which was the name King David gave to the city of Jerusalem, Zion will be plowed like a field. Jerusalem will become A couple chapters later, Micah has his own symbolic poetry. There's no early figs. There's no early figs. There's no Beit Fage, house of the early fig. There's no figs that I love. So the prophet Micah, he's like, I'm going out to the vineyard

and I see the vines and there's all these leaves and then I look and there's no grapes. And I go out and there's these leafy fig trees and there's no figs. What's this image for? That among Israel, the faithful have been swept from the land. Not one upright person remains. The rulers demand bribes and the judges accept them. The powerful dictate what they desire and they all conspire together. And so

the day of your judgment has come. How you guys doing? Do you get it? Do you get it? Jesus is brilliant. He doesn't hate trees. He's brilliant. He sees a moment to communicate yet again to his disciples. And so what he picks up, this prophetic image that they all would have known, that Israel, that he's ridden into Israel. These are the covenant people of God who were called to be the people who would host the presence of the living God. And the temple was this place where heaven and earth would meet and where Israel would come to praise and to honor this God who showered them with generosity and with life. And what do they do? They turn it into this shallow religious icon. They turn it into an idol. The temples become this idol to them. As long as the

building's shiny and the rituals are cruising, then surely we're fine with God. And Jesus comes, and he asserts himself as Israel's king, and he says, no, everything's not fine. This drama's been played out before, and in fact, Israel's sin and corruption is just the same as it was 600 years ago when Jeremiah, or 700 years ago when Micah uttered his words. And in Jesus' mind, Israel's leadership has reached a point of no return. And so, his disciples say, well, what does this mean? How did that happen, Jesus? And he says,

the fig tree is nothing. If you want to tell this mountain, where are they standing? And what are they looking at? Not Mount Hood. What are they looking at? They're looking at the temple mount. If you tell this mountain to be uprooted and thrown into the sea, what is Jesus going to start doing? He's going to start warning everybody that the temple is going to be destroyed. This isn't a random little teaching on prayer and how to do, you know, super miracles or something like that. Jesus, he's reflecting on the faith that he himself is having as he's predicting what seems preposterous to all of them. That God would abandon his temple again? Surely not.

Surely Israel has learned its lesson. Surely, no, Jesus says. We've reached a point of no return. It's not going to be Babylon this time. It's going to be Rome. And Jesus will go on to predict the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple as God's justice for rejecting the offer of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple as God's justice for

rejecting the offer of the kingdom. And it's going to happen in just 40 years from Jesus uttering these words in 70 AD. And it was a grim moment. It was a grim promise for Jesus to utter, just like it was a grim promise for Jeremiah and for Micah to utter. And this is the story that Jesus sees himself in. How you guys doing? This has been like a history lecture for the last 30 minutes. I'm having a great time, and I hope that you are too. But we don't come here just to learn history. The purpose of our Sunday gatherings is to come and to worship Jesus. To worship Jesus and to meet with him and to meet with his people. And so how are we supposed to respond to Jesus when he's in this? This is like aggressive,

confrontational Jesus. And it's very different than the mode of Jesus up to this point, which has been, well, actually, there is a way in which it's no different, because he's very hostile to the leaders of Israel, but who is he immediately compassionate and aware of their needs in the temple? The blind and the lame. He just, he can't stay away from hurting people. And so he's in angry mode pronouncing judgment on the temple, and then he notices blind and lame people, and then he's right, he's right there. And so this is Jesus. You don't just get the meek and mild Jesus who tells you to love everybody. If you want that Jesus, you also have to reckon with the Jesus who says that God will bring justice on human evil and corruption.

And actually, you want those two Jesuses to be the same Jesus, even though you may not feel like it all of the time. We're here to worship Jesus. And so some of us, you know, I don't know, some of us might be kind of bothered in a visceral way when we see Jesus get angry like this, when he gets super aggressive. Maybe that kind of stirs up something in some of us here because of your story, because of angry, you know, people or adults or parents that you had in your life. And so you love the meek and mild Jesus who moves towards the blind and the lame. But when Jesus gets angry and makes a whip and starts shoving, you know, you're kind of like, whoa, I don't know what to do with this here. So think of it this way.

And this is how I want to kind of steer us to the bread and the cup and to worship this morning. Jesus is angry. He's ticked. Right? He's claiming to be the embodiment of the God of Israel who's coming to his own covenant people, and he planted them and gave them everything they could need, and they've produced no fruit. It's not even that they've produced no fruit, though that's this

image here. Isaiah the prophet says they've produced stinky fruit. Horrible, wretched, stinky fruit, horrible, wretched, rotten fruit is coming off the tree. And this arouses anger in Jesus. What is anger? What is anger? It's an emotion, right? It's a strong, instinctive reaction, right? It's all this emotional energy. But the experts tell us that anger, in a way, is actually not an emotion. It's a reaction to a deeper emotion. And that deeper emotion can come from all kinds of things. It can be bad, but it can also be good. What we're talking about is Jesus' passion. And at least a way for me to understand this is to think about the anger that gets aroused in me.

I live with two small cavemen, as I call them right now. One is two and one is four. And they are constantly at this age now where they're just constantly perpetrating on each other. It's just, I don't know how we're going to do this, but we're going to make it somehow. Pray for me. We prayed for Jacob and Katie. Please pray for me and these two little cavemen. And so, you know, because it's, they're both old enough where they can really sin against each other and like steal each other's toys and then they chase and hit and this kind of thing. And it's, you know, I've never been in this situation before. And it's remarkable to me, the passion that stirs up in me when I watch my older son chase and hit my younger son.

Like, I've never felt anything like this before. I get angry. I really, really have to check myself that I don't express it because I know there's something deeper going on here but my instinctive reaction is to be like dude, what are you doing? That's not going to work well because they're just going to get even

now they're going to be angry at me together they'll forget about each other and unify against me so this is the journey of parenting that we're on one of my main missions is to not respond instinctively. But it's not like the anger is just a symptom of this passion that's in me. What's the root emotion? I love these cavemen.

I love them. They come from me. I'm so dedicated to them. And so I think about my older caveman, right? And I know that he continues this habit and pattern. If it doesn't get checked, that he just hits whenever things don't go his way, this is not good. This is not good for his future or for him. And so I love him. I'm concerned about his future. I love my younger caveman, and he's so adorable, and they're both adorable. And so, like, I'm sticking up for the underdog, you know? Like, that's what's going

on inside of me. Love for these little humans. But what they see, what they see is anger. You guys with me here? Anger is a secondary emotion. And so, I think there's something like that happening, and we're going to see it again. We're going to see Jesus get really angry with the leadership of Israel and with a fig tree. And it's not because he hates people. It's exactly the opposite. It's because he loves people. Jesus is the embodiment of the passionate love of Israel's God, who wants more than anything to be reconciled to his rebellious world, and whose response to the rebellious nations was not to destroy them, but to set in motion a plan to bless them through this family of Abraham. And now this family itself has rebelled. And so Jesus comes as the very embodiment

of the love and the passion of Israel's God, and he calls Israel to account, and he warns them. He's going to weep over the city in the next chapter. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if only you knew what I'm trying to do for you. But you would have none of it, he says.

And so I think as we come to take the bread and the cup and worship Jesus, let's focus here. There are moments where the passionate love of Jesus is confrontational. And it happens especially when he sees hypocrisy, when he sees idolatry, when he sees religious people who just think, we're fine with God, the temple of the Lord, surely we're safe, the building's shiny, the sacrifices are going, but no, it's stinky fruit.

It's rotten. It's rotten. There's apathy, there's injustice, there's compromise, and Jesus confronts because he loves and there are other times when his passion and his love will move him towards people who desperately need him

like the blind and the lame and it's the gentle Jesus that we love who moves towards people in their need and so let's meet this Jesus as we come to take the bread and the cup today. There might be some of us who are here and we don't want it, but we know that if we're honest with ourselves,

we've become shallow, we've made compromised decisions, we've dishonored Jesus by how we live and how we treat people. And we actually need him to confront us and to get serious with us. And so as we take the bread and the cup, we're eating his death, right? The fact that he loves us and gave himself for us and for our sins. And we allow his love to confront us. And there might be some of us here who were in a place just of pain in our lives, were confused, trying to figure out what's going on.

And Jesus comes precisely to those people with gentleness and patience and compassion. And as we eat the bread and the cup, we eat the loving passion of Jesus for people who are lost and confused. Amen? Amen. This is the real Jesus. It's the real Jesus, a man of passion for people. Thank you for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible Podcast. We will continue on in Matthew in future episodes, so we'll see you next time. Thank you.