Christ Church Washington D.C.

Our reading this morning comes from Mark chapter 11. I will begin in verse 12. Now the next day when they had come out from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing from afar a fig tree having leaves, he went to see if perhaps he would find something on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. In response, Jesus said to it, let no one eat fruit from you ever again. And his disciples heard it. So they came to Jerusalem.
And he began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And he would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple. Then he taught, saying to them, is it not written, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of thieves.
And Peter, remembering, said to him, Rabbi, look, the fig tree which you cursed has withered away.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Amen. You may be seated. I bring you greetings from Trinity Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It is a great honor to bring God’s word to you this day, to declare the gospel of our Savior and King, the Lord Jesus, in your midst. That’s my great privilege today.
We are very grateful for this church plant in our nation’s capital. We are grateful to minister alongside of you in the CREC and to see what God is doing in our denomination. And we rejoice in what God is doing here in your congregation, planting the flag of Christ’s kingdom here. It’s a wonderful thing. I also want to add you’ve got a wonderful welcoming committee. I’ve never felt so safe walking into church as I did this morning.
So your hospitality is wonderful. Also, I know your future pastor, Brooks. He’s a good friend of mine. He has my utmost respect. He is going to be a tremendous blessing to you when he comes. So certainly we join in giving you thanks for that. Well, let’s turn our attention to our passage from Mark chapter 11.
We realize our expectations were all wrong. That’s really what Mark chapter 11 is about. The chapter opens with Jesus making his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Expectations are high as Jesus rides in on a colt. He is greeted by crowds who are throwing a parade for him. There is psalm singing. There are palm branches waving. It’s a great celebration.
There is all kinds of pageantry as Jesus processes into the city. His disciples have already confessed him as Messiah, as the Christ. And now it seems that the crowds in Jerusalem are getting on board the Jesus train. They’re hailing him as Messiah. Messianic fervor grips the city as Jesus rides in. The deliverer is finally here at last. Of course, they are right.
They are wrong in their understanding of what that means. And what we’re going to begin to see in this chapter, and it really carries through the next several chapters of Mark’s gospel that cover the events of this week, culminating with his crucifixion, is this. This is what we see. Jesus has to dash their hopes in order to fulfill them.
He will crush their expectations and then exceed them. The crowds are using all the right words to celebrate Jesus’ entrance into the city. Hosanna, they cry out. The Lord saves. Salvation is here. But again, they’re filling those words with the wrong content. They’re expecting the wrong kind of savior and the wrong kind of salvation. And so Jesus has to transform their own.
Their understanding of what messiahship is all about. Jesus is Messiah, but that doesn’t mean what they think it means. They were right to have great expectations, but their expectations were still all wrong. Again, those expectations would be crushed by the end of the week when Jesus is crucified. Of course, that’s Good Friday. But then on Sunday morning, something will happen that will go far and above even their wildest expectations.
When Jesus is raised from the dead. So Jesus has his triumphal entry. Of course, that is Palm Sunday. The next day, this is where our passage picks up this morning. The next day, he sees a fig tree and he expects it for fruit. So he does a little inspection of the fig tree. He does not find any fruit. And so he curses it and he says, may no one ever eat fruit from you again. The cursing of the fig tree is interesting.
The only miracle Jesus performed that brought death rather than life. It is clearly a parable of judgment. Jesus performs a miracle of destruction rather than restoration as he usually does. He performs a miracle that brings curse rather than blessing. Now we’re going to come back to the fig tree in just a few minutes because the story of the fig tree is wrapped around the story of Jesus’ action.
And Mark often does this. He’ll insert one story inside of another. So he starts a story, he breaks off and tells another story, and then he picks up with the story he had been telling. And when that happens in Mark’s gospel, that structure allows you to use the outside story to interpret the inside story and the inside story to interpret the outside story. So here the story of the cursing of the fig tree is wrapped around the story of his action in the temple. And so obviously they go together.
The fig tree is dealt with in verses 12 to 14 and again in verses 20 to 25. The temple cleansing is dealt with in between in verses 15 to 19. So obviously the cursing of the fig tree is supposed to help us understand what happens in the temple, what Jesus is up to when he goes into the temple. Let’s ask that question. What happens when Jesus enters the temple? What does he do and why does he do it? Now this is usually referred to as the temple cleansing.
It has headings for different sections. It probably says Jesus cleansing the temple, something like that. And the idea of this seems to be that it’s as if Jesus came to reform the temple, to deal with its corrupt leadership and its corrupt worship and clean things up. And that’s really what Jesus wanted, was a well-running, properly functioning temple. Now I will say that’s part of it. You can certainly say that’s part of it, but it’s not all of it or even the main point of it.
Back in Leviticus 14, in the Torah, in the law, in Leviticus 14, God gave rules about leprous houses. Now we don’t know exactly what it meant for a house to have leprosy. That’s kind of an odd sounding thing, but under the law, houses could get leprosy.
That’s the language of Leviticus 14. Now it’s interesting, in John’s gospel, Jesus cleanses the temple at the beginning of his ministry. John chapter 2, right at the beginning of John’s gospel. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
inspection, the temple cleansing, comes towards the end of his earthly ministry, that last week, right before his death. And so some have wondered, when did this happen? Is John right? Did it happen at the beginning? And the other gospel writers just put it out of order? Or are the other gospels right? And is it John who puts it out of chronological order? Well, actually, all of the gospel writers are right. Jesus inspected the temple twice, just like the priest inspecting the leprous
in Leviticus 14. He does it at the beginning of his ministry and again at the end of his ministry. And after this second inspection, finding the house corrupted, finding the house spiritually leprous, he announces in Mark 13, so later this week in Mark 13, not one stone is going to be left upon another. He condemns the house, he condemns the temple, and he says not one stone is going to be left
upon another. Jesus’ action in the temple shows the temple is a leprous house, spiritually leprous, and must be condemned. Note this as well. When he goes into the temple, he sees the money changers there, and he casts them out. It’s the exact same word used when Jesus performs exorcisms and casts out demons. He’s been casting out demons, now he casts out the money changers. It’s as if to
us as the reader. The temple has become infested with demons. The temple itself needs an exorcism. The house is not only leprous, it is demonic. And there’s no doubt all kinds of sinful things were going on in the temple. There’s no doubt there was economic exploitation going on with the money changers who had a monopoly on currency exchange in the temple. Jesus quotes from Jeremiah and accuses them of turning the temple into a den of thieves.
A hiding place for robbers. In the next chapter of Mark, we get a glimpse of this when the widow puts her last two mites into the temple treasury. And this happens right after Jesus has accused the leaders of devouring widows’ houses. See, in their greed, they are willing to take advantage even of poor widows. The temple has become a den of thieves.
Matred, ethnic, arrogance, what you might call ethnic vainglory. Jesus also quotes from Isaiah 56 where God says, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations. You go back to when this temple was built by Solomon and when Solomon dedicated it in 1 Samuel 8. When he gives the temple its dedication, one of the things he does is he describes foreigners coming to worship God.
Foreigners, those outside of Israel, we could call them Gentile God-fearers. That’s typically what they’re called. They’re not Israelites, but they do fear Israel’s God and they would come to the temple and offer their prayer and offer sacrifice. And Solomon says there, they were to be welcomed to pray and worship at the temple. It was to be a house of prayer for all nations. Gentiles could not participate in the Passover. For that, you had to be circumcised. But they could offer sacrifices at the temple.
It was their temple, too, if they were trusting in Israel’s God, in the true and living God. But by Jesus’ day, the Jews had put up all kinds of barriers to keep the Gentiles away, to keep them at a distance. The Jews forgot. They were called to be a nation of missionaries witnessing to the nations. They forgot the temple was to be a base for their mission to the nations. And so instead of seeing the temple as a gift of God’s grace to them, as a house of prayer for all nations,
the Jews treated it as a badge of ethnic vain glory. Instead of using the temple to promote God’s glory, they used the temple to promote their own glory. And so yes, you could say Jesus is cleansing the temple because they have corrupted it. They have corrupted it economically and ethnically. But there’s something more going on here. Note that Jesus interrupts temple worship altogether.
At least temporarily. Note that he threw everyone out. He doesn’t just throw out the sellers who were practicing economic injustice. He also throws out the buyers, the worshipers, those who are buying animals for sacrifice. There’s no reason to think that the buyers were really guilty of anything. They’re just coming to worship to offer sacrifice. They get thrown out too. He doesn’t let the sacred articles be carried about the temple. He shuts the whole thing down.
Think about the fact that he throws out those who were buying as well as those who were selling. It was impossible for those who had traveled long distances to get to the temple to worship, to bring their own animals with them. They just had to travel too far. And so they would come to the temple with their money and they would buy animals there for sacrifice once they arrived. They couldn’t bring the animals with them, so they would buy them once they got there.
They wouldn’t buy animals in the temple for sacrifice per se. In fact, again, you go back to the law, you go back to Deuteronomy chapter 14, you see God made provision for buying animals at the temple. There was nothing wrong with that in and of itself. Jesus is not flipping over tables and driving out sellers and worshipers merely because he wants to reform the temple. He’s not just cleaning it of corruption. He’s giving a preview of what is to come.
That’s what’s coming, and Jesus previews it here. One greater than the temple is here, and because one greater than the temple has arrived, this other temple must go. On Friday of this week, when Jesus dies on the cross, he will make the temple obsolete. He’s about to put the temple out of business for good. By the end of the week, the temple, with its animal sacrifices and its priesthood,
and all that they pointed to will be fulfilled. What do you guess Jesus was thinking about when he saw those animals in the temple being sold for sacrifice? Verse 15 mentions pigeons, which Leviticus 12 allowed poor people who could not afford a larger sacrificial animal to offer. But no doubt he saw other sacrificial animals too. Oxen, cattle, yes, lambs, because it’s Passover week. No doubt when he sees those sacrificial animals,
he will do on the cross in just a few days when he becomes the lamb of God and offers himself for the sins of the world as the ultimate and final sacrifice for sin. This is what’s interesting. Throughout his ministry, Jesus has been performing the functions normally reserved for the temple. Jesus has been doing things that Israelites were accustomed to looking to the temple to do. So again, think about this. Under the law, if you had leprosy,
you’d have to go to the temple and offer sacrifice for your cleansing. But now Jesus is healing lepers and declaring them cleansed on the spot, apart from the temple. Under the law, if you wanted absolution for your sins, you wanted to hear a declaration of forgiveness and know that you were forgiven, you would go to the temple and you would offer sacrifice, a sin offering. But Jesus has been going about declaring people’s sins forgiven far away from the temple. Under the law,
you wanted a meal in God’s presence. You wanted a communion meal with God. You would go to the temple. You would make a peace offering. That was your sacramental meal with God. That’s where God shared his table with you. But Jesus has been having meals with people throughout his ministry and God seems to be especially present in those meals as if Jesus’ table is now God’s table and that’s where you get the meal with God. Jesus does so much eating and drinking in the Gospels. It’s like his ministry is a traveling dinner
party and the meals certainly seem to be sacramental. He connects them with the kingdom of God and with the forgiveness of sins and in all of this he seems to be upstaging and replacing the peace offerings of the temple with his own meals. Repentant sinners be welcome to eat with him and this was deeply offensive to the Pharisees who accused Jesus of eating and drinking with all the wrong people. But again Jesus connects his meals to the inbreaking of God’s kingdom.
Again it seems that if you want to eat and drink in God’s presence now instead of going to the temple you go to Jesus. You get from Jesus what you would have gotten from the temple. This is the point. Jesus is performing the functions of the temple. Jesus sets up his ministry as an alternative to the temple, as a substitute for the temple, ultimately as a replacement for the temple.
Jesus clearly believed he was called to be and to do what the temple was and did. Jesus fulfills the meaning and purpose of the temple. The temple was the place where God was uniquely present with his people on earth, and now Jesus is acting as if he is the one in whom God is uniquely present with his people on earth. Jesus is clearly claiming to be the temple, to be the temple in person, the one who fulfilled
all the temple meant to Israel and all it pointed to. Again, Jesus has been upstaging the temple throughout his ministry. He has said one greater than the temple is here in Matthew 12. And with this background, we can now see what Jesus is doing in Mark 11 when he goes into the temple. Even if the temple had not been operating with economic or ethnic corruption, the temple’s days are numbered. It’s not going to be needed. It’s not going to be relevant much longer. Why?
Because Jesus is the true temple. And once he arrives in Jerusalem to do his great high priestly work and to offer himself as the final and ultimate sacrifice for sins, he’s going to make the temple obsolete. There can’t be two temples. And so one of them is going to have to go. There can only be one temple going forward, and that is going to be Jesus himself. Jerusalem isn’t big enough for two temples. And so the obsolete temple, that physical,
structure, has to be removed. When Jesus interrupts their worship with animal sacrifices, it’s not just an ethical action. It is an eschatological action. An action that points to the arrival of a new and better covenant. It’s a way of indicating the new age is dawning. The new creation is arriving. The kingdom of God is here. The temporary interruption of temple worship points to its permanent interruption that will soon take place. Or maybe I should put it
this way. The temporary interruption of temple worship points to the permanent termination of temple worship that will soon take place. I said Jerusalem isn’t big enough for two temples, and so when the true and eternal temple arrives in the city in Jesus, the old temple has to be removed. Look at what happens with the fig tree. Let’s circle back around to the fig tree here, verses 20 to 24. This is the next day after Jesus has cursed the fig tree and gone into the temple.
Now they see that same fig tree again. And Peter says, look, the fig tree you cursed has withered. The fig tree obviously is symbolic of the temple. But what Jesus says is the key. In verse 23, Jesus tells his disciples, have faith in God. That is, trust God’s plan as it’s unfolding this week. Have faith in God.
Now what is this mountain Jesus is talking about? This mountain that’s going to be cast into the sea in answer to their prayers. It has to be the temple mountain. There’s no other mountain. There’s no question about this. It is the mountain on which the temple rests. Jesus cursed the fig tree and then he tells his disciples they can pray prayers of imprecation against the old covenant temple and those prayers will be answered. The temple will be destroyed. That mountain will be cast into the sea.
Of course, for a Jew at this time, like the disciples, to pray against the temple would have been unthinkable. But Jesus is about to make it thinkable. The temple was the heart of Israel’s life, but now Jesus is saying it’s obsolete. Why is imprecatory prayer against the temple about to become thinkable? Well, because on the other side of Jesus’ death and resurrection, unbelieving Jews will be the biggest persecutors of Christ’s father.
Just read Acts and you see that. They set themselves in opposition to Christ and to his disciples. In Mark chapter 13, Jesus will prophesy against the temple at length and he says the temple will be destroyed not when stone will be left upon another before that generation then living passes away. And of course, that’s exactly what happened in 70 AD. The temple was destroyed just as Jesus foretold.
The temple mountain was removed, so to speak. See, their expectations were high on Palm Sunday when Jesus made his triumphal entry. His death will shatter those expectations, but his resurrection and his destruction of the temple will completely transform those expectations and fulfill them beyond anything they could have dreamed of. New wine is being poured into the old wineskins.
New wine is flowing. Three lessons I want us to draw from this passage as we wrap this up this morning. First, the text makes it clear that Jesus did not come to reform the temple, but to destroy the temple. And that’s a crucial point. He was not a temple reformer. He came to be a temple destroyer. Yes, he does cleanse the temple, but the point is not just to expose their corruption. It’s to show the temple’s planned
adolescence. The temple in Jerusalem was good, but it was only a temporary good. It’s like milk is good. Milk is good up to its expiration date, and then it goes bad. Jesus is announcing and demonstrating that the temple’s expiration date is near. It’s about to go bad. It’s about to be obsolete. But it’s not enough to say Jesus is a temple destroyer, and this is really the point. He is also a temple builder, and the rest of the New Testament makes this clear. What is the temple?
Jesus builds the temple. Jesus builds is you. It is his church. You are the temple Jesus is constructing. The church is his new temple. So in 1 Peter 2, Peter says to Christians, you are living stones being built into a spiritual house, a spiritual temple. He says to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Cornerstone, and we are all being built up into a holy temple in which the Lord dwells. We’re all being built up on this cornerstone that is Christ into a holy temple. Now understand, this doesn’t mean there are two temples. Jesus is one temple, the church is another. No, there’s one temple, and we are a temple because we are in union with him, because we are united to him who is the temple. That’s why we are the temple.
We are God’s new covenant house. Obviously, Jesus is with us in all times and in all places, but Jesus is present with us in a special way when his people gather together as we’ve done here this morning. When a local congregation gathers, it’s like all the living stones coming together to form the temple, and we know Jesus is in our midst. Wherever even two or three gather, there Jesus is amongst them. And so here’s really the first application.
Jesus is building his church into a temple. What does that mean? We have to seek Jesus where he has promised to be found, and that means especially seeking him in the means of grace, in the word as it is preached, and at his table where he gives himself to us in bread and wine. See, this is so critical to understand. Jesus continues to perform the functions of the temple in the life of the local church.
Here, your sins are forgiven. You’re cleansed. You’re restored. You’re transformed. Here, you get a meal with God. Here, you offer up sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving as a royal priesthood. Jesus continues to do the functions of the temple in the church, which is his temple. And of course, the church is to be like the temple before it, a house of prayer for all nations.
Jesus’ judgment on old covenant Israel and the temple in Jerusalem serve as an object lesson for the church. Learn the lesson of the fig tree. The new covenant is vastly superior to the old in every way. The book of Hebrews, of course, is all about that. But the new covenant does not make God’s people immune to judgment. In fact, some of the Bible’s fiercest warnings to the people of God are found in the new covenant.
Again, read the book of Hebrews. Even in the new covenant, covenant breaking remains a possibility. It’s interesting that when Jesus quotes from Jeremiah when he goes into the temple, if you know anything about the book of Jeremiah and the ministry of the prophet Jeremiah, you know that the prophet Jeremiah announced judgment that was going to fall on Jerusalem and on the temple in his day. Of course, this is centuries before Jesus.
Judgment coming on the temple in Jerusalem and on Israel. And Jeremiah was persecuted because he was speaking out against the temple, even as, of course, Jesus will be persecuted for speaking against the temple. There were false prophets in Judah who contradicted Jeremiah’s message. They said, peace, peace, when there is no peace. The people said, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. They thought there was no way God would let them be judged. They had the temple. Surely they would be saved.
They thought that because they had certain objective blessings, like the temple and circumcision, they would be safe no matter how they lived. And of course, the temple and circumcision were blessings, objectively speaking. They were gifts God gave his people, signs of his covenant faithfulness and mercy to them, markers of
their membership in his covenant. But here’s the key lesson. Nothing objective guarantees subjective faithfulness. Objective blessings do not guarantee subjective faithfulness. Receiving covenant blessings in and of themselves will not guarantee covenant keeping. Objective covenant blessings that are not received with a living, active, and obedient faith turn into curses. Hear that. Covenant blessings become covenant curses
to covenant breakers. And so you must receive God’s gifts, God’s covenant gifts with a living and active faith. Just as Jesus inspected the fig tree for fruit, he comes to our churches and he inspects them for fruit each Lord’s Day. And if he finds we are all fig leaf and no figs, he will judge us. He will curse us. We will wither. Fruitless branches on the covenant tree are cut off and cast into the fire. Go read John 15.
Read Romans 11. Read Hebrews 10 and so many other passages in the New Testament that tell us, that warn us about the dangers of covenant presumption and covenant breaking. It is a privilege to have God’s word in our hands and to have his word preached in our midst. It is a great privilege to have baptism and the table. But these gifts must be received with and mixed with a living and active faith or we too will be judged.
We must be vigilant. We must fight the good fight. We must make every effort in striving to be holy for without holiness, no man will see the Lord. The lesson of the fig tree applies to us. If our churches devolve into dens of thieves, Jesus will flip over our tables and drive us out of his house with a whip. That’s the warning. The whole idea that Jesus is just a nice guy, always sweet, never judgmental, that’s not biblical.
This passage shows us no more Mr. Nice Jesus. Jesus is not a pushover. He’s not an indulgent Santa Claus in the sky or a first century Mr. Rogers. Jesus is judge and judgment begins with the house of God. And finally, third lesson here, we must see that Jesus brings about our salvation by fulfilling the types and shadows of the old covenant. You can’t understand what Jesus came to do if you pick up the story of the Bible.
Three-fourths of the way through. You’ll hear people say, oh, we’re New Testament Christians. No, we want to be whole Bible Christians. You can’t understand the story if you pick it up three-fourths of the way through. The old covenant scriptures lay the foundation for the new. They give us the categories we need to understand what Jesus came to do. The Jews did not understand Jesus’ mission because they did not understand their own scriptures. And that’s why their expectations, high though they were, were still so far off.
Jesus is God in the flesh. He is Emmanuel, God with us. He is the true Israel and he is Israel’s God in his person. He is the temple in person. He is our great high priest. He is our sacrifice. He is the promised Messiah. All of these categories come from the old covenant. The old covenant is full of types and shadows. Jesus is the one they’re pointing to. This is how you understand who Jesus is. By seeing those types and shadows that pointed ahead to him.
The old covenant is full of promises. Jesus came to fulfill them. The old covenant, the Old Testament scriptures are a story in search of an ending. Jesus came to complete it, to write that ending with his own life. And that is our hope. Trust in Jesus. Fear Jesus. Obey Jesus. Hope in Jesus. Look to Jesus as your savior and your king, as the one who bore judgment for you. Look to Jesus as your temple, as your priest.
As your sacrifice. Trust in him to be the one who gives you access to God. Trust in him as your great high priest who gave himself as a sin offering for you on the cross. The righteous for the unrighteous. Trust in him to give himself to you in his word and in baptism and at his table. Jesus is our all in all. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Amen.
And now we pray in the words Jesus taught us to pray, singing.
Amen.
Amen.