Holy Week (Tuesday) ‘The Withered Tree: Israel’s Failure, Christ Triumph’

Welcome back to day two of our Holy Week study.

Today we're going to be in Matthew chapter 21, verses 18 and 19.

Matthew 21:18

It says, In the morning as he was returning to the city, he became hungry.

And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves.

And he said to it, May no fruit ever come from you again. The fig tree withered at once.

His disciples listening to him don't necessarily get the analogy, but they will.

What Jesus is trying to help them see is this fig tree represents the religious

establishment of Israel, of God's people of the time, specifically the temple.

Jesus looks at the fig tree and says, this is what it looks like for a people

that are hungry for God, that those that truly hunger and thirst for the Lord,

they come to the temple, they come to religious leaders in Israel,

and what do they find? No fruit.

Nothing for people to eat, nothing for people to enjoy.

We said yesterday that the temple was supposed to be a place,

a house of prayer for the nations.

And it had become, as Jesus says, a den of robbers.

The place which the nations were supposed to be invited to pray to the God of

gods, the Lord of lords, has become a place for people to pray on those people.

And Jesus wants to make clear,

I'm going to make this wither. I'm going to make it obsolete.

I've come to do what this was never going to accomplish.

It's easy for us, as always, to read our Bibles and go, man,

I'm so glad that that is not true of me anymore. I'm so glad that that's not

true of the world we live in anymore.

But the truth is, it is true of many.

There are not only many places in the world that claim to be Christian,

that claim to be Christian places, but yet when you go to those places, you receive no fruit.

And even more dangerous than that, our own lives can become like this.

At the root of the issue of the fig tree and of the temple and of the religious

system of the day was that they did not trust God alone for salvation.

There were still religious activities taking place. There were still sacrifices

and worship and prayers and feasting and fasting.

All of the religious mechanisms were still operating.

What the issue was is they did not come to seek God. They did not come to love God.

And ultimately, they did not trust God to save them.

They trusted in themselves. They trusted that their sacrifices and that their

prayers and their worship was what would make God that loved them,

was what God really desired from them.

Not that they would love Him with all their heart, and in so doing,

turn and worship and pray and sacrifice, but that those things would be a response

to the love that God has already shown them.

And I have found in myself and in others that this is still very much a danger

in our religious posture.

That we might think that something that we do might gain God's favor,

that He might dip His ear to our voice just a little bit quicker if we were

to do something, accomplish something, give something,

worship in such a way, sing in such a way,

attend in such a way, serve in such a way, that God might love us more when

the exact opposite is true.

And Jesus is making clear with this word picture, this real-life example,

that what He has come to do is that He has come to give us fruit.

He is a tree that bears fruit, that everyone that is grafted into Him,

everyone that comes and is attached to the true vine of Jesus Christ,

they will produce fruit.

But it is not the fruit that we produce that attaches us to the vine.

We are attached to the vine by grace and mercy and love of a God who would offer

up his only son for the sins of his people.

And because we are shown grace and mercy, we produce fruit.

Israel had forgotten this. Israel had forgotten that it was God that initiated

his love towards them, going back as far as Eden.

He says numerous times in the Exodus, before he ever gives them a command to

follow, I am the Lord your God who delivered you out of slavery in Egypt.

That's who God was. Instead, they had turned him into, like every other false

god of the nations, we must serve him so that he will like us.

Instead of He has loved us and we will serve Him because of the love with which He has shown us.

I pray that this is, again, a reminder for us to cling only to Christ, to trust only in Christ,

that when we come to God in prayer and in worship and in service,

that we would do so in a response to the love that we have already been shown,

most notably in the person and work of His Son, Jesus Christ,

and His death on the cross.

That's my prayer for us this week. as we seek the Lord, as we meditate on the

scriptures, we will be reminded that Christ has done it.

He has paid it all, that we are saved by works, but they are not our own.

They are Christ's works.

And when we come to the Father in whatever capacity we can, we come based on

His merits and God's grace and mercy.