Holy Monday

On Monday morning, having spent the night in Bethany, Jesus and His disciples head for the temple. On the way, Jesus finds a fig tree in leaf, but no fruit present. He curses the tree - symbolic of a people enjoying nourishment but yielding no fruit.

Upon entering the temple area, Jesus began driving out the vendors and others that were making a marketplace of God’s house. This was yet another reason the chief priests and teachers of the law looked for a way to kill Him. However, they feared Jesus, “because the whole crowd was amazed at His teaching.

What’s Up with Cursing the Fig Tree Though?

“He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans!”

Honestly who doesn’t laugh at that scene in The Jerk as Steve Martin ducks for cover thinking that the man shooting at him just really despises the oil cans at the gas station where Martin’s character works.

Does it make me a bad pastor that whenever I read the story of Jesus cursing the fig tree in Matthew 21:18-22 my first thought is “He hates this fig tree! Stay away from the fig tree.”

But I digress.

What Jesus was really doing was using the fig tree as a teaching illustration because of the false impression that the fig tree gave. Botanically speaking, if a fig tree has leaves, it will have fruit as well. This tree had leaves but no fruit. So what Jesus did was use the fig tree as a symbol for Israel. Israel had a great showing of religious tradition but no real fruit of godliness.

The cursing of the fig tree is a symbolic judgment on the nation for professing false faith. Jesus had already chastised the Pharisees and scribes about being hypocritical when He quoted Isaiah earlier in the book of Matthew: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of man.” (Matt. 15:8)

So here were people who were given intimate knowledge and understanding of who God is and what He is doing in the world. However, that good environment did not yield the fruit of actual growth in godliness.

Can we relate to this?

Faith: The Hand that Grabs Ahold of Jesus

Jesus uses the fig tree to teach the disciples about faith. Authentic faith in Jesus as Messiah and King leads to growth in godliness and maturity in our lives. However, I’ve found that sometimes Christians are confused about how to define faith.

So let me start with what faith is not. Faith is not simply a religious feeling. Faith is not rock-solid confidence with zero doubts whatsoever.

Instead, think of faith like this: faith is the hand that holds onto who Jesus and what He has done and doesn’t let go.

Now, this is a very graphic and very visceral illustration but that’s the point because faith is meant to be graphic and visceral. In the Old Testament, whenever someone brought in a lamb to be sacrificed, they would give it to the priest and then place their hand on the head of the lamb. Next, they would begin to confess their sinfulness. While this was happening, the priest would take a knife and cut the throat of the lamb and the blood would drain out.

What the hand on the lamb was showing was that the person’s sinfulness was being transferred onto this innocent lamb and destroyed. This was meant to foreshadow what salvation through Jesus would look like.

When a person becomes a Christian, essentially what happens is that they reach their hand out to the Lamb of God and say: “I believe you died for me. I believe that you came for me. I believe that I can’t save myself. And I am resting all of my hope on you.”

This is what faith is: it is the hand that holds onto who Jesus and what He has done and doesn’t let go.

Let Go and Let God?

If you have been in any type of Christian circles in the past 100 years, I’m sure you have heard the phrase, “Let go and let God.”

Yes?

It’s a phrase that actually came from the late 1800s from a group called the Keswick’s in England. There’s a really fascinating back story for how this phrase “Let go and let God” came into our Christian vernacular in the last 100 years but that’s a blog post for a different day.

However, suffice it to say, that phrase shows up a lot in the Christian vocabulary. And of course we understand in part what people are trying to say with that phrase. It’s basically, “I’ve got this thing in my life that I’m just at the end of my rope with and I can’t do this any more. So I’m letting go and letting God.”

Jesus take the wheel!

And I get that. I’ve been there and have said some version of that sentence. However, I just think it is unhelpful when it comes to understanding genuine faith. Because it is an incomplete, and honestly kind of confusing, expression of what faith in the Bible looks like.

In every place in the Bible where faith is portrayed positively, it is not about letting go of something but rather it is holding on to God and not letting go until He acts.

There’s the example of holding on to the sacrificial lamb that we just talked about.

There’s also Moses and the Israelites about to enter the Promised Land in Exodus 33. They have made it through the wilderness and are at the border of Canaan and God basically says, “All right go on in.”

However, Moses says, “We’re not going in without you. God, if you’re not going in there with us, we’re not going. We’re going to hold tight to you and not let go. Where you go, we’ll go.”

Every person who has lost their job this year.

Every person who is still crushed under the loss of a friend or loved one.

Every person who is daily fighting a sinful addiction.

It’s not “I’m just going to let go and let God.”

No. No.

It’s, “Jesus I can’t do this and you can. And I’m going to hold tight to you until you do something or you tell me to let it go.”

What if My Faith Isn’t Strong Enough?

Some people question whether they have strong enough faith though.

Consider this: I have a friend from Burundi, which is a small, rural and very poor country in Central Africa. In 2014, my friend came to the United States for the first time having never been out of Burundi. He had also never been on a plane before either. The first one he boarded was a 747!

Now this didn’t happen but imagine standing beside him on the tarmac is a Harvard educated aeronautical engineer. My friend from Burundi has never seen a plane like this. Further, he has never seen anything fly and has no concept of how something as big as a 747 could even fly! The aeronautical engineer however, not only knows the plane could fly but could actually build the plane.

Well the moment comes to get on the plane and because my friend has a friend in Dallas (me) who he trusts that he wants to go and see, with all of his doubts and with all of his confusion, he gets on the plane.

However, the Harvard aeronautical engineer isn’t quite sure about the plane and remains on the tarmac. The plane takes off and what do you have?

You have one person filled with doubt soaring through the air while another person filled with understanding is still on the ground.

Who is going to get to their destination?

Not the person who knew everything, but the person who chose to get on the plane.

This is the lesson of the fig tree. It is our call to trust Jesus and place our faith firmly in who He is and what He has done. It is about producing fruit in keeping with what has been revealed to you in Scripture (Matt. 3:8). It is about getting on the plane.

Faith is not the absence of doubt. Faith is choosing to rest the hopes of your salvation and your life on God Himself. Where you come to Him and you say: “I’ve got a ton of questions and I don’t know if I understand everything, but I have faith in what you said. And I may not understand how all this works but I’m trusting you.”