Oct 18 The Cursing of Hypocrisy (Mark 11:12-21)

Mark 11, verses 20 to 21.

Mark 11:20–21

My title this morning is The Cursing of Hypocrisy.

The Cursing of Hypocrisy.

So many of you, even if you're not sports-minded, you're probably familiar with the Tour de France.

It is the most prestigious of all of the cycling races anywhere around the world.

And it is a multi-stage, multi-day, grueling cycling event that takes place primarily in France.

Now, the name Lance Armstrong was essentially synonymous with the Tour de France for a number of years.

The reason is Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France seven consecutive times.

Other than those seven consecutive times, nobody else has ever won it more than five.

And I don't know if anybody else has won it five in a row.

Well, with such incredible endurance, with such stamina, seven years in a row, questions started arising.

To be sure somebody to do all that Lance Armstrong is doing is on performance enhancing drugs.

No, he would say every time he was asked.

He had cancer, he had battled through cancer, founded the Live Strong Foundation, and so to protect their reputation, he was always vehement in his decline, his saying that he never participated in performance enhancing drugs.

And then 2013 rolls around, and he's in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, and on national television, he finally confessed to being a fraud.

You see, Lance Armstrong was a hypocrite.

He came off as being something that he actually was not.

And so he was stripped of all seven of his titles.

He was banned for life from all cycling events in the future.

He was a hypocrite.

Hypocrisy will be the theme of the text that we're going to look at this morning.

Hypocrisy is presenting an image that conceals the truth.

And we're going to see a tree doing that this morning.

And we're going to see a temple and the people who are supposed to be the ones running it, if you will, also epitomizing hypocrisy.

Now, last Sunday, if you were here, in the first 11 verses in Mark's gospel, Jesus has mounted a young colt, a young donkey, and he is riding into Jerusalem.

It is commonly called the triumphal entry.

People with their palm branches, cloaks on the donkey from the disciples, people throwing down their cloaks, waving palm branches, red carpet treatment.

This is our Messiah.

Only Jesus would not become the Messiah that they all were hoping that he would be.

As the day ended, Jesus goes to the temple, he looks inside, he kind of takes inventory just to see what all's going on.

And he's not happy at all.

It's business as usual, and that was not a good thing.

So when we pick up our text, it's the next morning.

And as we begin in verse 12, so I'm going to take a little bit of a risk this morning.

When I do some teaching to younger preacher boys, I usually tell them don't put off application toward the end.

You should weave it all the way through.

Well, I'm kind of breaking that general rule.

I'm going to give you a couple of plot points that will help set the stage of what our text is about.

And then I'm saving most, if not all, of my application toward the end.

But I think you will see the benefit of us grasping what the text teaches before we seek to apply it in our lives.

So the next morning we're going to see the cursing of hypocrisy illustrated.

Now, we're going to see this in verses 12 to 14, and then we're going to come back and you'll see the bracketed approach that Mark uses in his gospel, which lets us know that in between, which is the teaching about the temple, the teaching about the fig tree is going to be very important to help us understand what's going on in the temple.

So first the cursing of hypocrisy illustrated, verse 12.

On the following day when they came from Bethany, he was hungry.

We just sang, and rightfully so.

God the Son, to him belongs honor and glory, just like God the Father and God the Spirit.

But Jesus is also unique from the other two members of the Godhead in that he clothed himself in human flesh.

He, God, deity, became man, humanity.

And because of that, he got hungry, he got thirsty, he got tired, and so he needed to eat, he needed to drink, he needed to rest.

On this occasion, he is hungry.

Verse 13.

And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it.

When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.

Fig trees were predominant in the Palestinian area.

I mean in abundance.

You could find them growing anywhere and everywhere.

As a matter of fact, Bethage, one of the two places that we talked about in the first couple of verses last Sunday, about a mile approximately from Jerusalem, that name itself means house of figs.

So it probably lets us know there were fig trees all over that community, that village.

Now, Jesus is hungry and he sees from a distance this fig tree in leaf.

But when he gets there, he's disappointed.

There are no figs on this tree.

And you might be wondering, well, why was he disappointed?

Because the text says it was not the season for figs.

It's springtime.

Figs normally bear fruit in the summer.

So why is Jesus disappointed if it's not the season for figs?

Because fig trees, and evidently this is the only tree that's got all these leaves on it.

So it's almost like the author Mark is letting us know this is a special tree.

It's located in an area that must have incredibly rich soil.

It is well cared for to have all of it.

But here's the deal: fig trees bear fruit, bear figs at the same time, or even just a little before all the leaves.

So it wasn't fig season, but this tree with all of these leaves, it's as though this tree was saying, Hey, if you're hungry, come.

I've got lots of figs.

Have your fill.

Enjoy false advertising.

And so it's as though the tree was making promises that it could not fulfill.

And because of that false advertising, listen to what Jesus did next, verse 14.

And he said to it, May no one ever eat fruit from you again.

And his disciples heard it.

You see, because of the tree's empty profession, Jesus pronounced judgment on it.

And as we'll see when we get down to verse 21, when he pronounced judgment, the disciples heard that as a curse.

Now notice, for clarity, the tree was not cursed for its lack of fruit, but for its deceptive promise of producing exceptional fruit.

Alright, so what's going on?

What is going on here?

Now, this passage is describing an actual historical event, but behind it we are to see symbolic significance.

It's as though those who know the scriptures really, really well, there's truth being reflected back from the Old Testament.

You see, in the Old Testament, Israel, well, a fig tree, not unlike an olive tree.

In the Old Testament, God sometimes likens himself to uh the master of an olive vineyard.

And Israel was that vineyard.

He also used the fig tree to teach truth about the Jewish nation.

And so, sadly, sadly, this tree was a perfect symbol of the Jewish nation making proud boasts of being God's favored people.

And it's almost as though they came off with all of their ceremonies and the temple.

Man, you can come to us and get spiritual food.

And that was false advertising.

The tree is a fitting symbol of Israel's failure to produce spiritual fruit it professed to have.

And that brings us to verses 15 to 19.

We're going to see the cleansing and the cursing of hypocrisy demonstrated.

The cleansing, we often talk about Jesus cleansing the temple, folks.

That's not all he did.

We're going to see the cleansing and the cursing of hypocrisy demonstrated.

Verse 15.

And they came to Jerusalem and he entered the temple.

It's not the first time.

We know he was there earlier the next the evening before.

He was there as a child, listening, asking questions.

He made multiple visits throughout his earthly ministry, teaching, taking the Old Testament scriptures and just expounding upon them, believing people in amazement.

But there was another opportunity, another time early on in his ministry when he did clean house.

On that one, many of you are aware, Jesus took these cords, put them together, and made a whip out of it.

He was hot.

We don't have any reference to him using a whip this time, but we're going to see that he is equally upset with what is taking place.

Now, the temple.

There are a couple different words in our New Testament that make reference to the temple.

This is the one that makes reference to the entire structure.

The whole temple complex, it covered almost 30, with over 30 acres, nearly 35 acres of land.

Let me just show you a picture to kind of give you just a rough idea.

The temple had four main areas.

It had the court of the Gentiles.

That was the biggest outlying area.

It also had the court of the women, the court of the Jews, and the Holy of Holies.

Nobody but the great high priest went into the Holy of Holies, and only he could go in there one time a year.

So this area, the court of the Gentiles, that is where we're about to see the remainder of our scene taking place.

Now, the court of the Gentiles, the largest part.

It was designed to be a place where Gentiles could congregate.

And when God called Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, he told him, I'm calling you because I want you and your people to be a blessing to the whole world, to all nations.

So all nations were welcome to come and they could participate in temple activity here in the court of the Gentiles.

But tragically, tragically, the vast majority of Jews hated the Gentiles, despised them.

The vast majority of Jews would have preferred if they could just push a button to wipe them off the face of the planet.

Isn't that ironic?

The Jewish people had that kind of a desire back in Jesus' day.

The scene we're about to see now unfold takes place in the court of the Gentiles, which looks more like a circus than a welcoming place for people to find God.

Verse 15.

And he, Jesus, he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.

Alright, so remember, it is Passover season.

All Jewish people all over the known world were expected to come to Jerusalem for this Passover celebration.

So Jerusalem is bursting at the seams.

And on Passover, you were required as a Jewish family to sacrifice a sheep, or if you were extremely poor, a pigeon.

Now, depending upon where you lived and how far you had to travel, bringing an animal along with you could be kind of an inconvenient.

But for somebody who did bring an animal with them, guess what?

That animal had to meet inspection.

Guess who was in charge of those inspections?

The temple mafia.

Because that's essentially what the priests were like.

And the priest had the backing of the powerful and corrupt Sanhedrin.

And so, therefore, most people chose to just buy an animal when they got there.

Well, guess what?

Guess who's in charge of all the animals that could be bought on site for the sacrifices?

The same mafia.

Guess what they did to the prices?

Jacked them up.

Most of us know if you go to an athletic event, you will pay seven times in that stadium, in that Coliseum, than what you could have bought it for at Walmart.

That's what they did to these people.

Oh.

And if you had foreign currency, you had to exchange it.

And guess what?

We're going to also charge a fee for that.

So money is being made by the spiritual elite, the spiritual leaders of Israel, hand over fist.

And so the court of the Gentiles was looking more like a country, a county fair, and the stock exchange all rolled into one.

And instead of the reverent hum of maybe people singing and or praying, and perhaps the smell of incense, there was the bleeding of sheep and the smell of manure.

And Jesus is not happy.

In my sanctified imagination, I can see these blood vessels popping out.

And with obvious force, our Lord is becoming a bouncer.

Now, many of you who knew my dad, if you did know my dad well, I think you would agree that he was a sweet man.

He was a sweet man.

As a matter of fact, when I did my dad's funeral, I chose the word sweet as an acrostic that I hung all of my thoughts about dad.

My brother and sister Rex and Susan and I got together, we reminisced and we thought about stories, and then I fit all of those under S W E E T.

Partly.

My dad, spirited, sharing, sold out to his family.

W, working, witty, welcoming.

He used to be one of the faces out in front of our church, just welcoming people, giving ladies those side hugs that just made them feel so welcome.

E, energetic, another E, excellence, and then T, talkative and trustworthy.

So yeah, my dad was a sweet man, but you did not want to experience his righteous wrath.

Oh my goodness, folks, I'm not lying.

Well, actually, when I say I'm not lying, it was about lying that I have this vivid memory.

I had lied to my dad about smoking.

He took a tobacco stick and he exacted violence on my backside.

And I deserved it.

So my dad was sweet, but he was country strong.

And when country strong couples with righteous wrath, it makes for a day you do never forget.

Now, folks, listen to me.

Jesus was sweet, meek, and mild.

And he said, You come into me, all you who are weak and heavy laden, I'll give you rest.

Learn from me, for I am meek and lowly.

But don't you dare mistake meekness for weakness.

And may I remind all of us that Jesus, the Lamb of God, was also the Lion of Judah.

And it's like for a few moments, the Lamb of God became the Lion of Judah.

And Jesus was a man's man, and he cleaned house.

So we're seeing the great, the ultimate great high priest exercising his rightful authority over his temple.

Verse 16.

And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.

So you may or may not know this, but our church sits obviously between Charles Boulevard, Highway 43, and Bell's Fork Road.

And I mean a lot of people use our church property and parking lot as a shortcut.

I mean, every day there are cars going back and forth, back and forth.

And I'm okay with that, as long as they don't go too fast.

Every now and then, boy, there's been a couple times I'm sitting there and I'm studying whatever, and I'm and I'm thinking, boy, let me take a picture of that license plate.

But now imagine, imagine some of our neighbors petitioning me.

And maybe they want to have a special meeting with me and the other pastors.

They'd like to make a special petition.

There are some of us that would like to walk the area.

And we'd like to do it on Sunday, anywhere from, say, like a 9 to 12, and we'd like to cut through your building.

We'd like to just kind of walk right through here.

Would that be okay?

Ain't gonna happen.

Not gonna happen.

Some people were just cutting through the temple complex.

If it's a 35, if it's a 30 plus acre um um place, they could cut through and save themselves a lot of time.

And Jesus said, Not anymore.

Not on my watch.

Verse 17.

And he was teaching them and saying to them, Is it not written, he's quoting Old Testament scriptures, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations?

But you've made it a den of robbers.

Now, it's we we should not infer that Jesus only says those two sentences.

He began teaching, and that he he emphasizes those, and I'm I'm confident that he elaborated on that.

And so, on this day, however, instead of the temple being a place where people from all nations all over the world could come and hear truth about the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and how he could be their God too through faith like Rahab and others.

Instead, it was impossible to concentrate on anything, much less on prayer to and worship of the Lord.

Verse 18.

And the chief priest and the scribes, they heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him.

Let me just pause there.

Do not read reverential awe there, obviously.

That's the kind of fear that we have, right?

Reverential awe of our God.

We fear him appropriately so.

That's not what's going on here.

Their fear is of the people and of Jesus influencing them to stop admiring them.

They're fearful that Jesus is going to take away their pri their power, their prestige, and their profits.

And so, consequently, uh, they were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching.

And when evening came, they went out of the city.

Because, and only because Christ's death a few days away was a part of his predetermined sovereign plan.

That's the only way that these guys' plans were successful.

The scripture says that money is a root of all kinds of evil.

And a love of money was a part of what caused these dudes with diabolical motivation to destroy Jesus.

Verse 20.

As they passed by in the morning, and this is back to Jesus and the disciples, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots.

And Peter remembered and said to him, Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.

By 24 hours later, it's completely withered down to the roots.

It's only good for firewood now.

Do you see the connection?

Sadly and tragically, the tree was a picture of what would happen to Israel's religious system.

It was a picture of what would happen to the temple.

Folks, it pains me to say this, but Jesus did not just cleanse the temple, he cursed it.

And the Romans would be the ones who would be the ones who fulfilled the cursing because in less than a generation they would come in and utterly destroy Jerusalem and the temple.

No two stones left on top of each other.

So when when preachers are preparing sermons, we should always be asking ourselves, reverently so, so what?

So what?

So what should we learn from this?

Can I give you four take home truths, four things I think we can easily apply to our lives from this passage?

Number one, I would encourage you to inspect your appearance.

Your appearance.

Does your outward appearance match or contradict what you profess with your mouth?

Just because you got a lot of leaves doesn't mean you're actually producing fruit.

Now, how do we produce leaves?

Spiritually speaking, how do we produce leaves?

In a variety of ways.

Well, one way you profess Christ as your Savior.

You go to church, you read your Bible, you serve, you teach, you preach, you lead, you give, you attend maybe a Christian school, a Christian college, you lead a small group, attend a small group.

And by the way, folks, there's nothing bad about the leaves.

There's nothing bad about the leaves.

All Christians who are bearing fruit will bear leaves.

The leaves are good, but they can also be exterior only and can cover what's going on inside your heart.

And what might be going inside your heart is nothing like what a person with all of those leaves should be living like.

Sometimes I like to take truth and put it in like a little formula.

And so leaves, spiritual leaves, minus fruit equals hypocrisy.

Have a lot of leaves, but no real fruit that remains, that equals hypocrisy.

As one writer put it, hypocrisy will always keep company with self-deception.

Hypocrisy always keeps company with self-deception.

So some questions.

Are you consistently producing spiritual fruit?

Are you filled with the Holy Spirit such that He is producing His fruit in your life consistently?

Nobody produces it perfectly, but consistently.

What's that fruit look like?

Well, Galatians 5, 22 and 23.

The fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control.

Those are some of the fruits that should be continuously and maybe even ever-increasingly produced in your life.

So if you are a Christian and yet you consistently lose your temper and mistreat your wife and kids, you're a hypocrite.

If, as a professing believer, you are consistently filling your mind with pornographic material, you're a hypocrite.

If you claim to be a follower of Jesus and yet you're not pursuing holiness and sexual purity, you're a hypocrite.

If you are harboring bitterness and resentment, refusing to forgive somebody for what they did to harm you, to hurt you, and yet you're claiming to be a believer, you're a hypocrite.

If you are a racist and a believer, you're a hypocrite.

If you're a Christian and you're lying and cheating and submitting AI-produced work as your own for school of work, you're a hypocrite.

As a disciple of Jesus, if you are filled with pride and arrogance, you're a hypocrite.

If you as a Christ follower are guilty of exploiting people and taking advantage of them, you're a hypocrite.

Have I ever been guilty of hypocrisy?

Yes.

Absolutely.

And probably all Christians who've been saved long at all can have moments where hypocrisy is there.

It might be two or three days where hypocrisy just resides.

It might be a week, it might be a month or longer.

Keep in mind, if your consistent behavior contradicts your profession of Christ as your Savior, it's also possible you're not even a believer.

But assuming that many of us in this room would claim Christ is our Savior, are you producing fruit that justifies the profession that you make with your mouth?

If so, I'm just urging you, as my brothers and sisters in Christ, just confess it.

Come clean with the Lord and ask him to forgive you.

Secondly, another take-home applicational truth: respect God's patience.

Oh, folks, I would encourage you to respect God's patience.

Make no mistake about it, our God is incredibly patient.

Scripture is loaded with testimony to that fact.

In Exodus 34, 6, God testifies about himself.

Here's how he describes himself: the Lord, the Lord.

A God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

In Psalm 86, 15, the psalmist says, But you, O Lord, you are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

Folks, Jesus is as patient as the prodigal father, the prodigal's father, who in Luke 15, as the story goes, he's walking on that porch every day just looking for his wayward son to come home.

The Lord is patient.

And nobody is more patient than he is.

But God's patience does have a shelf life.

God's patience can run out with you or me or a nation, just like it did Israel.

Listen to Romans 2, verses 4 to 5.

Romans 2:4–5

Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

But because of your heart and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.

Now, folks, come on.

If God discipline his own people, John 1.11, what makes you think he won't discipline you?

Professing to be devout followers of Jesus, could it be that some of you are not much more than dried out, withered spiritual leaves?

Third, a third take-home truth, a third way to apply this passage.

Expect some resistance.

In this feel-good age of so much, you know, gospel cotton candy junk, um, it doesn't prepare people for the realities and sometimes the hardships of life.

Expect some resistance.

If Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith, was lied about, mistreated, and killed, why would you and I think we ought to be treated like royalty?

Now, um, John 15, 18, Jesus said, if the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you.

1 John 3, 13, don't be surprised, brothers, when the world hates you.

1 Peter 4, 12 to 14, beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you.

If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you're blessed because the spirit of glory and of God rest upon you.

And then fourthly, inspect your acceptance.

Inspect your acceptance of outsiders.

You see, again, most Jews in Jesus' day were totally against accepting the Gentiles.

They did not like this court of the Gentiles.

Do you have any similarities with them?

In Acts 10, verses 34 to 35, Peter's preaching and he says, Truly I understand that God shows no partiality.

Acts 10:34–35

But in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

Romans 2, verses 9 to 11, there will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil, first to the Jew, and also then to the Gentile.

Romans 2:9–11

But glory in honor and peace for everyone who does good, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.

For God does not show favoritism.

He doesn't show favoritism.

Like God's temple then, his church today should exhibit no national, racial, or ethnic segregation or discrimination.

Now you can be proud to be an American, and I am, but do not think that we are privileged special people, superior to anybody else and everything.

That's not Bible.

And so are you accepting of those who were outside the faith?

Those who don't know Jesus?

Are you fully accepting of people outside your race?

What about those who are outside your financial demographic?

What about those who are outside your educational demographic?

What about those who are outside your comfort zone?

I mean, they don't look like you, they don't act like you, they don't talk like you, they don't vote like you.

But if they were to come in one of these doors, would you be like, What are you doing here?

You're not welcome here.

Lance Armstrong.

He spent years building an image that millions of people believed in.

He looked like a champion, acted like a champion, talked like a champion, celebrated like a champion, but when the truth came out, his whole image utterly collapsed.

And so, folks, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as I know many of you are.

Here's the danger of hypocrisy.

We can become so concerned with maintaining the appearance of righteousness that we neglect the reality of righteousness.

We can act the part and walk, I mean, I talk the talk, but boy, are you walking the walk in the depths of your heart and soul.

Can you imagine how painful it was for Lance Armstrong to do that interview with Oprah back in 2013?

That had to have been painful.

And it may be painful for you to just talk to the Lord right now and say, Lord, I'm I'm sorry.

Forgive me of my my hypocrisy.

Forgive me, Lord, you might want to pray of having so many leaves, but very, very little fruit.

Would you bow your head with me?

Just heads are bowed and eyes are closed.

Father, thank you for meeting with us.

Thank you for the presence of your spirit.

And I believe he has been applying this truth, helping me all along the way.

And so, Lord, would you would you would you help us to not be resistant to what you'd like to do in our hearts and our lives?

Lord, may we just come clean with you.

Just be as honest and truthful with you as we know how.

We sure can't fool you.

We are foolish if we think we can.

And so, Lord, um, in the quietness of the moment, for the next few moments, may your spirit work as we confess, as he convicts, may we confess and ask for forgiveness.

Would you do that now for the next few moments?

Lord, it's easy to get in the flesh.

But I pray that with the help of your spirit, we would be people full of fruit.

Thank you, Lord, for being patient.

May we not be presumptuous.

Thank you, Lord, for wanting to use each and every one of us.

May we do so in sincerity and in truth.

That's my prayer, Lord.

I pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.