Holy Week - Cleansing and Cursing

Jesus does a lot of teaching between Palm Sunday and Good Friday.

But right after the Triumphal Entry, He takes two provocative actions:

cleansing the temple, and cursing the fig tree.  See Matthew 21:12-19

It's a little known fact about Jesus in this week: He comes to Jerusalem with lots of judgment and rebuke.  Temple leaders had let those selling animals for sacrifice set up shop in the Gentile court, the only place where Gentiles could worship in the temple.  Jesus comes and says, NO.  Wrong policy, and I don’t allow it.  Get out.  

He quotes two Scriptures, the first from Isaiah 56.  He makes all kinds of assertions here.  First, it’s My house.  Second, this is a place of prayer, not for buying and selling.  And third, if you look at the context in Isa 56, this place is for all the nations, for the Gentiles.  But you’re making them have to worship in the same place where people are buying and selling.  

In the second Scripture Jesus quotes, He comes down even harder – you’ve made this a den of robbers.  First, he calls the temple leaders robbers.  Second, the context of Jeremiah 7 is God condemning Israel’s leaders for trusting in the temple building while they lie, steal, murder, worship pagan gods, and so on.  This is an act of judgment on wicked rulers who are rejecting His authority as the rightful ruler of the temple they are running.  It’s like Aragorn coming to Gondor, and the king’s steward Denethor scoffing at him.

That's the Cleansing.  Now the Cursing.

The second act is similar to the first.  Jesus curses the fig tree.  Generally, figs were fruit and the point is that Israel wasn’t bearing fruit for God, so Jesus is going to curse and wither the tree.  More specifically, I think the fig represented the leaders and rulers of Israel, so the point is much the same as cleansing the temple.

Now, Mark tells us that Jesus didn’t find figs on it because it wasn’t the season for figs.  That trips some people up: why would Jesus be so unreasonable as to curse a tree for not having fruit when it wasn’t SUPPOSED to have fruit?  I think this is part of the genius of the Bible, that we have responses to reading it like this that expose our hostility to or skepticism of God.  Like Satan tempts Adam and Eve to doubt God’s fairness, we have the same question here.  Is Jesus being fair?  

Of course He is.  For one thing it’s God’s tree.  He can do what He wants with it.  Second, Jesus withers the tree deliberately to make a point; He isn’t having an impatient temper tantrum.  That we would think that of God says more about our folly than anything else.

With each of these acts of judgment, Jesus also gives healing words. He heals the blind and lame in the temple after he judges it. He speaks of faith and prayer moving mountains after withering the tree.