Jaw-dropping Jewels about Jesus
Rarely does Jesus, God the Son, do exactly what we expect of Him. It seems odd that He so frequently surprises us, given that He never changes. Hebrews 13:8 makes this absolute statement: “Jesus the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” Still, though He is blessedly consistent in His goodness, Jesus does unforeseen things. Even when He does what is expected, He does not always do it in the way that we anticipate. Let us join with Jesus on a jaw-dropping journey. (I will be using this opening paragraph for each of the brief messages in this series. The following material will change daily.)
It is fashionable for hand-wringing, pearl-clutching critics of Jesus to tut-tut Him for His actions in Mark 11:12-14. In so doing, they are revealing their extreme ignorance. This passage says, “And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, He was hungry: and seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, He came, if haply He might find any thing thereon: and when He came to it, He found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it, ‘No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever.’ And His disciples heard it.” Anyone critical of Jesus simply does not understand the circumstances. First, since Jesus is fully God, He does not have to explain Himself to us; His longstanding and longsuffering integrity should silence our unknowledgeable protestations (and He does explain later). Second, anyone reading this Gospel when it was first written would have known that figs and leaves appeared simultaneously (or sometimes the figs appeared first). Thus, this was an unfruitful tree. Most people in Israel lived at a subsistence level; a fig tree that did not produce need fruit could not be kept as a decoration. Every arable part of the land was employed in providing crops. A fruitless fig tree was thus worse than useless, for it was wasting valuable growing space. There are other factors that we will discuss later in verses 20-26. For now, an appropriate application is to avoid a critical spirit, particularly when we are dealing with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.