Things Aren't What They Seem - Wild Heart: Mark’s Portraits of a Radical Messiah

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We’re continuing our series Wild Heart: Mark’s Portrait of a Radical Messiah this morning. 

The last time we looked at the Triumphal Entry but specifically the evening that Jesus went into the temple to look around and how that parallels how He enters and looks around in our life.

This morning we pick up the story of Jesus’ final week as He returns to Jerusalem.

The theme that stood out to me for this passage was how things weren’t what they seemed to be.

Jesus wasn’t who He seemed to be, the fig tree wasn’t what it seemed to be, the activities in the temple weren’t what they seemed to be, and prayer wasn’t what it seemed to be.

So let’s read Mark 11:12-26….

The first thing I noticed was that Jesus wasn’t acting like a Messiah should act. He was coming in peace, but then all of a sudden He takes up this violent attack on the merchants in the temple. Can you imagine what His disciples were thinking? They probably didn’t know what to do. Should they stop Him or join Him? They’d never seen this side of Jesus and they had to wonder what had gotten into Him. It certainly wasn’t what they expected.

He turned over their money tables, and set the animals free, and Mark adds that He even made the people who used the temple courts for a short cut stop.

But Jesus’ words give us a clue to why He did this. First He said “My house…” He didn’t say God’s house – This is a quote from Isaiah and Jesus is taking action as if He owns the place. In fact He does own the place because He is God! So in this statement He’s showing His authority as Messiah and God. The rest of the quote says that this place is a house of prayer, communion with God but they had turned it into a den of thieves.

The problem wasn’t that they were selling sacrificial animals. That was necessary for the pilgrims who had traveled several miles to get there. It would be difficult to bring an animal that far so having sacrificial animals was helpful. But these merchants were selling imperfect animals and cheating people on the exchange rate for their out of town currency and an even bigger problem was the priests who should have kept this from happening were profiting off of this themselves probably from kick backs or fees for booth space.

Either way it was a huge violation of the temple and a sign of the corrupt core of the religious leaders.

Then we come to the whole fig tree thing. Anyone else ever wonder what that was all about? I mean the whole cursing the tree because it didn’t have any figs is kind of strange. One thing this passage show is Jesus humanness. He was hungry, frustrated, angry, and He cursed a fig tree.

Doesn’t that sound so like us? How many times have you been hungry, cranky, and got mad at an inanimate object and yell at it like it could even hear. The interesting thing about this is that the fig tree incident reveals Jesus divine power. His curse actually caused the tree to wither and die.

Do you ever wonder why Jesus got mad at the tree because it didn’t figs even though He knew it wasn’t the time figs? Well the best explanation I’ve heard is that it wasn’t the season for leaves either. So if this tree had leaves it should have had figs and since it didn’t it was a hypocrite and served as an object lesson for the religious leaders of Israel who had the ‘leaves’ to look like they had the truth, but inside there wasn’t anything of value.

But even at this there’s something else that’s odd about this encounter. When Peter notices the dead tree he points it out to Jesus and you’d expect Jesus to explain the tree is a symbol of the religious leaders of Israel, etc. But instead He goes into a lesson about faith and that with faith the disciples could kill trees or even cast mountains into the sea. What? Didn’t see that one coming did we?

Now if the tree was to be a symbol of the religious leadership wouldn’t Jesus have said that? Maybe, maybe not, because He seemed to confuse His disciples a lot but I have an additional thought about this. The OT law (Deut. 21:23) said that anyone who was hanged on tree was cursed. By the end of this week Jesus will have been hanged on a tree becoming a curse for us and could it just be possible that the mountain He’s talking about is the mountain of sin that separated us from God that would be removed by faith in His power to reverse the curse that the tree represented?

Turn with me to Gal. 3:5-14 and look at how it seems to affirm this idea.

It all ends with vs. 24-26 and a quick lesson on prayer. Normally we place vs. 24 separate from vs. 25-26 but I think these verses go together. You may ask what you want but if your heart isn’t right with your neighbor it’s not right with God and your prayers won’t be answered. But there’s something else to consider, not will an unforgiving heart hinder your prayers it will prevent your forgiveness.

Do you get the idea here that God takes this forgiving each other thing pretty seriously? With so many other ‘worse’ sins why would He throw down on this? What’s the harm in a holding a little grudge here and there, it’s not that big a deal, right? I mean everyone does it so it can’t be that bad.

Well let’s look at those verses again. Nope, don’t see any loopholes. So if you’re holding a grudge or unforgiveness in your heart toward someone then you need to take care of it so God can move on with you.

When we boil it all down…

Faith is the one constant that we need when things aren’t what they seem. I think if anything Jesus was saying to them and to us that this world is a crazy place and not everything will go as you expect it to but if you have faith in God you’ll find the source of hope you need to transcend the confusion and enter into His rest.

There are three empty things that make our faith full:

The empty manger
The empty cross
The empty tomb

Jesus didn't stay little and He didn't stay dead.  He was born to die so that we could have life.