Biblestudy: Matthew (Part Twenty-Seven)

Matthew 21:11 - 32
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John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 28-Jul-82; 75 minutes

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Let us get back to Matthew and head for the 21st chapter. The last time that I had a Bible study, we got as far as verse 11. And so, I want to review very quickly the first several verses of this chapter, at least to set the background for the remainder of the chapter.

Matthew records, here, Jesus coming into Jerusalem just before His crucifixion. If you want to put a time element on these events, they took place on the 10th day of the first month, which would have been the month of Nisan, it was just five days before His crucifixion. These people did not realize what was occurring, but what was occurring was actually a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Now, Jesus chose this event in order to dramatize the significance of this occasion.

What was being fulfilled is explained at least symbolically in Exodus 12. If you recall the instructions that God gave to the Israelites in Exodus 12 was that on the 10th day of the first month, they were to choose a lamb that the family was going to sacrifice on Passover. Well, these people did not realize it at the time (of course, we can look back on it and understand) but they were in the process of choosing the Lamb of God, the one who they were proclaiming to be king. They were saying Hosanna which means, “Save now.” And those people, of course, were looking for a political salvation. They were looking for liberation from the Roman oppressors.

But Jesus was not coming for that purpose at all. He was coming to die for the sins of the people. He was the Lamb of God. They were actually choosing their Messiah, their King, to be the one who would die for the people. So that is what we are seeing here—the Lamb who was going to be sacrificed for the people, chosen on the 10th day of the first month.

Now, in this occasion, He was deliberately challenging, publicly laying claim to His being the King and the Messiah. He was actually throwing down the gauntlet to those who were the authorities in Jerusalem.

It is quite possible that what He did here actually hastened His death (if we look at it carnally, or physically) because when the authorities saw the response to Jesus with all of these people yelling, “Hosanna!” and it says here that the whole city was in an uproar, they knew that they had to act quickly or they were going to find their authority slipping out of their grasp. That is certainly the way that a person would look at it carnally—that this man had the city under His control. He had the power of the people, and He was going to take over.

Now, it is quite possible (looking at it carnally) that they would not have put Him to death were He only perceived as a preacher or a prophet. But if He was perceived by them as a threat to their political authority over the people, then it was most certainly something that they could not abide for very long. They were going to have to act. And so, He was in that sense, openly challenging them and prodding them to do something about Him.

Let us go to verse 12 because what occurred in verse 12 followed right on the heels of the people proclaiming to Him, “Hosanna!”

Matthew 21:12-14 Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all 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 said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer [that is in the book of Jeremiah],' but you have made it a 'den of thieves.'" Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them.

Let us look at verse 12 with the description of the Temple. In the Greek there are two words that are translated into the one English word “temple.” The word that is translated temple here is a word that we would better translate into English today, “the temple precincts,” but not the Temple proper; not the sanctuary where the Holy of Holies was, and where the Holy Place was that contained the showbread and the candles and the incense altar.

So what took place here took place in the courtyard that surrounded the Temple. The Temple was placed at the center of a series of ascending courtyards. The outer courtyard was positioned the lowest, and it was called the Courtyard of the Gentiles. Into this courtyard anybody could come—children, men, women, Israelite, Gentile—anybody could come into this area.

After passing through this courtyard, one would come into the Courtyard of the Israelites [actually, Courtyard of the Women, see below]. It was several steps higher than the Courtyard of the Gentiles and was walled all around. The only way you could get in was to go through a gate, called in the Bible, Nicanor’s Gate. It was a great huge bronze gate that according to Josephus was so large that it took 20 men to swing it open.

Once you were inside that courtyard, the Courtyard of the Women, then you would ascend a few more steps and go into the Courtyard of the Israelites.

Now, apparently the Courtyard of the Women was so named because that was as far as they were allowed to go. I do not know of any regulation that God has in His Word regarding this that says that a woman was not allowed to proceed any further. And I feel it was undoubtedly a regulation that the Jews put forth in order to make the men feel superior to the women.

After going through the gate, one would then be in the Courtyard of the Israelites. And after the Courtyard of the Israelites, came the Courtyard of the Priests.

Now this activity (see also Matthew 21:12) took place in the Court of the Gentiles. That is the outermost court. Because it was an area that was permitted to anybody—men, women, children, Israelite, Gentile—and because of the time of year, the occasion was undoubtedly extremely crowded. So what was done here was not done in a corner at all, but was actually done under very crowded circumstances.

Let us describe what got Jesus so upset. In this courtyard were stalls at various places around the edges where two activities were going on. One activity was designated by the Bible, in that God commanded that every Israelite above the age of 20 was required to pay one half shekel per year for the maintenance of the Tabernacle, and then later, the Temple. In an earlier Bible study, I told you that this tax, this half shekel Temple tax, was collected in about February of the year. It was collected in a one-month period. The priesthood would send representatives out to the various towns with a book of the census. And whenever anybody paid their tax, then his name was checked off. If a person for whatever the reason was unable to pay his tax at that time, then the only other place that he could pay it was at the Temple itself.

Now because of the political situation, there were a lot of various kinds of minted money floating around. There was Grecian money, Tyrian money, Syrian money, I guess Arab money, Roman money, Spanish money, you name it; because there were Jews in every one of those nations. Usually what the Jews would do, especially if they lived in Spain, or Rome, or Greece, they would return to Jerusalem for either Passover or Tabernacles and they would go to the Temple to pay their half shekel tax. They would naturally come bearing their money in whatever country that they came out of.

However, the priest would only accept a certain kind of silver alloyed coin. And if it was not that one coin, then the Jew who was traveling from the other country, had to change it into a coin that would be acceptable, and then he would get his coin, and take it over to the box and drop it in.

Now, the half shekel tax was equal to roughly about seven cents in our money. It was not very much, it was only worth about seven cents, but the money changer charged one cent for making the change. Now, in addition to that, let us say that the coin that the man brought from Rome was really worth 20 cents, and he not only had to get back the silver coin worth seven cents, but he also had to get back 13 cents in change. Well, the money changer then charged an additional penny for making change. So that out of that deal, it was, it was possible for him to make two cents.

It does not seem like a very large amount of money, but when you are dealing with millions of people, it added up to a great amount of money. You can see that it was a system that would lend itself to abuse. And indeed, there were abuses.

Far worse than this was the selling of the doves. That is also mentioned in verse 12. The offerings that were stipulated back in the book of Leviticus were free will offerings. An Israelite was not obliged, it was not mandatory that he make an offering. However, as any conscientious God-fearing Israelite who wanted to worship God would be certainly inclined to want to give an offering. Now, you certainly want to give offerings to God, do you not? Sure you do. Well, these people did too.

It says there that the offerings had to be without blemish. Now they are arranged so that the various economic categories in a society would each be able to make an offering. If you are wealthy, you could offer a bullock, which should certainly be quite an offering. If you were, let us say, a middle class citizen, you could offer a lamb or a goat. And if you were poor, you could offer a turtledove.

What most of these people did was they raised their own turtledoves, or their own lambs, or their own bullock. But the priests in almost every case would reject the offering that the people brought as blemished or unfit. And then the poor Israelite had no alternative but to buy a turtledove from the people who were selling them in the stalls.

Now, maybe the middle class citizen could do that without too much trouble. And the wealthy could most assuredly do it without any trouble. But the poor fellow who brought the turtledoves, he could not do it. The average Israelite at this time made [the equivalent of] about three cents a day. That was the going wage for a 12 hour day. Working in the fields, he made three cents in American money.

If he would buy a turtledove outside the Temple, if he had not grown his own, the chances were extremely great that he could buy one for four cents or one day's wages. However, if that turtledove was rejected as blemished by the priest, and he was forced to buy one inside the Temple precincts, he would pay 75 cents, almost a month’s wages to buy one turtledove to make a sacrifice at the altar. The going price was about 18 times higher inside the Temple precincts as it was right on the outside. I will tell you, that infuriated Christ, because here these people were, all they wanted to do was to obey God. They wanted to worship Him in the way He stipulated.

Guess who owned the concessions on the inside? It was Annas. You can read it in the Bible. Annas had been the high priest, but now at the time of Christ, he was the father-in-law of the high priest. So here was the high priest’s family, taking advantage of these poor people who all they wanted to do was worship God, and they were abusing their prerogative as the high priest, and just ripping these people's pocketbooks right out of them.

Well, you know, as the Creator, and as the one who gave those laws, He was burning with anger. This was not the first time that He had done this. This was the second time that He had done that. The first time is recorded in John 2, very early in His ministry. Now here He is closing out His ministry and He is symbolically beginning the cleaning out of the Temple. It begins by cleaning out the courtyard.

Now, it was only a symbolic action, but it is symbolic lesson to you and me. There are several lessons that we can get from these 3 or 4 verses.

First of all, I do not believe that this is the primary thing, but nonetheless, I feel that it is worth mentioning. In reading this, it would be very easy to be guilty of making a sweeping judgment of these people who were operating the concessions inside the Temple precincts. It is very easy for us to condemn the whole, because of the actions of a few. You know that you and I are guilty of this.

We make sweeping judgments at times in regard to political leaders that maybe every political leader is rotten to the core. All that he is seeking is power. All that he wants is money, advantage, and prestige, because we are well aware of the fact that there are some who are in those positions because of those very things. And every once in a while, they get caught with their hands in the cookie jar. It is very easy to condemn the whole bunch, because of the actions of a few.

Adjust the principle there. It is very easy to condemn large groups of people, maybe a religious organization, because of the actions of a few. We ought to know because we have been on the receiving end of this in newspapers, radio reports, magazine reports regarding Garner Ted Armstrong and his group of people who gave the whole church of God a black eye. And so, everybody in the church of God is looked upon somewhat askance because of this principle.

Now, all Jews were not like these ones who are operating the business inside of the Temple precinct. And I feel absolutely certain that there were large numbers of them that were just as sincere and honest and upright as they could possibly be. I mean in their desire to worship God. They were not worshipping Him in truth, but they were worshipping Him to the best of their ability, to the best of their understanding at that time. So let us not be guilty of making sweeping judgments.

I can recall when I was at an Ambassador College, Mr. Meredith used to call this, “The Ambassador Approach.” His accusation was justified because he would listen to speeches in advanced public speaking class where these young fellows—juniors and seniors in college—would give these speeches regarding things that were going on in the world. And they would make these sweeping accusations, not getting specific at all, about circumstances or conditions.

This is one of the hardest things we have with men in the Spokesman's Club—to get them to speak as specifically as they possibly can, rather than in generality. It is a lot harder to speak specifically than it is in generality. One of the major portions of the speech is called, “The Specific Purpose Statement”—specific, you see. Not the general purpose statement—specific. We want men to speak specifically for six minutes on one subject. And it is all part of this principle that we are talking about here.

Far more serious is something that I really admire Mr. Armstrong for, and that is that he will not allow the church to make money on anything. He will not endorse products under any circumstances at all. We do not endorse Shackley products, Amway products, General Nutrition vitamins, Revco vitamins, Eckerd vitamins, or anybody's vitamins! We do not endorse a certain line of clothing; Dodge automobiles, Chrysler automobiles, General Motors automobiles, Cessna airplanes, or you name it. Mr. Armstrong studiously avoids anything that could be construed in any way as exploitation of the members, even when people [give by a] will maybe a block of stock to the church upon their death. Mr. Armstrong has one man who takes care of those things, if something happens to come to us through a will, and he hangs on to it until it is appropriate to sell it, and then he does.

But the Worldwide Church of God has no stock portfolio. We are not making money on anything at all. The only thing that I know of that we sell you regularly is the college Envoy [the Ambassador College yearbook], and that is something that you decide on your own free will that you want to buy with second tithe money. And it comes to you at cost—what it costs to produce. Mr. Armstrong, though he was in advertising, and though he has proven himself as a man capable of generating tremendous income, he will not take advantage, nor profit from the membership in any way.

Incidentally, in the latest issue of Time Magazine, there is an article on the Seventh Day Adventist church in there. And it seems as though that denomination got stuck with a $20 million loss because some of their ministry was persuaded to invest church money in a development of some kind in Los Angeles, or southern California. And the thing went down the tubes, and that church is at $20 million. You do not have to worry about Mr. Armstrong doing that, because he will not do anything like that. He does not invest in anything.

Now, that does not mean that some who are under him will not get involved in something that may involve some money. Several years ago, a commissary was begun in Pasadena, and it began with the approval of an evangelist, who is no longer with us. It started out kind of small, because it was thought it would be a good idea to have a place where the large number of members in the Los Angeles area could come to, and do shopping, and get high quality food items.

Well, it seemed like a good idea. But you know, it just kept growing and growing, just like topsy. It started out selling a little bit of milk, and a little bit of grain. And the first thing you know, we had a full-fledged grocery store going there, and a haberdashery. We are selling suits, and appliances, televisions, stereos. I mean, you name it, we had a key discount store going there. Mr. Armstrong found out about it. He said, “What commissary?” He said, “What's going on?” There was about a two year lag between the time that this was started, and the time he found out about it. Inside of one month, that thing was gone. Mr. Armstrong went down and visited “The Tower;” like the Tower of Babel, he paid a visit to them. He did not know about it.

So every once in a while something like this will occur. You know, we have got a pretty good-sized organization. But as soon as he finds out about it, that is the end of it. Even though we went into this Quest, and Everest House thing, he had papers drawn up to make it impossible for the church to make any money on that, so that there could be not even the appearance of any kind of exploitation of the membership in any way. So I am very happy that we are completely free of that thing.

There is one more thing that I want to bring up in this area, because I feel that it is very important. It is a facet of the keeping of the third commandment, something that I feel that we need to grow in understanding, and in practice. It applies to this thing about exploiting people and associating the name of God with products. And that is this: We do not want you in any way to associate the name of God, or the church of God, with anything unless it is the very best quality of whatever it is. The reason for that is that God is the author of the very highest in quality and standards in everything. We do not want His name associated with junk in any way.

I had a hard time learning that. I finally got the point in about 1973 or 74 when the church that we pastored out there in California was only about 25 miles from Pasadena. And it was very common for us—for the churches who were on the perimeter of headquarters—that any time that we had anything going on that we felt the people up there would be interested in, we would write out an announcement, and they would announce it up there.

Well one time, I wrote out an announcement because we were going to have this gigantic garage sale. We had a building very similar in size to this, and everybody turned in their white elephants, and we put them on display on the inside of the building. Well, when I wrote out the announcement, I thought I would be a little bit funny, a little bit facetious. And I said in the announcement that we have some of the best-looking junk you will ever see.

Guess who read the announcements that day? Herbert W Armstrong read the announcements that day, and I heard later when he came across the word “junk,” his face got red, and he said, we will not associate the name of God with junk. I heard that through Al Caruso, because he was the one through whom the announcement had to go through.

I got the point. You do not associate the name of God with anything except the very best of quality.

Now what you can associate the name of God with is the things that He has made. He allows His name to be associated with the church of God. He is the author of it. But he expects us to grow in imitation of Him and work toward the highest quality in everything; certainly the highest quality within the framework of our economic station. He wants us to work within that in the food we eat, in the clothing we wear, the automobile we drive, the way our house looks—everything, and of course, above all, in our character.

Back to this. I bring this up because that is what Jesus was incensed about. It was that principle. Here was the name of God in the very Temple of God being associated with what was nothing more than thievery. And that is why I quoted, “My house shall be a house of prayer.” And so what He was angry at was these people who were making it difficult or downright impossible for people to worship God.

It is interesting to note that the ones who fled were the ones who had a guilty conscience. The ones who knew that they were involved in this beat a hasty retreat. But it also shows that in verse 14 that the blind and the lame, the poor folk, did not run away from it. And those that remained around, he healed.

Matthew 21:15-16 But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" they were indignant and said to Him, "Do You hear what these are saying?" And Jesus said to them, "Yes. Have you never read, 'Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise'?"

That is a quote from Psalm 8. And it is a psalm that we sing every once in a while out of our hymnal. I believe it is also page [7] in our hymnal. I am not real sure of that, but we do sing that song.

Now, children were generally not allowed beyond this point of the Courtyard of the Gentiles, but it says Temple again, and it might give one the impression that children might have been in and about the sanctuary proper. But again, it was in the same place in the Courtyard of the Gentiles,

[tape turned over]

. . . shouting and yelling. The Temple had a security force made up of the younger priests. They were given that duty. One of their duties was to make sure that the children did not pull any shenanigans in there—running around, yelling, or making a general disturbance.

They were certainly allowed in there. And they were able to walk around, generally, with their parents. But they were not allowed to make a lot of noise. But this was no ordinary time or day, and they were making a lot of noise. And the priests were upset about that. So Jesus used it to illustrate something that is significant to you and me.

The lesson is this: Here were the priests, who certainly represented the intellectual elite of the Jewish culture at that time. On the other hand, here were the unsophisticated, virtually uneducated children. The children were shouting praises to God. The priests were taken aback. That teaches you this: The truths of God tend to be evident, that is, understood, by the simple but are hidden from those who are more educated.

You will remember that back in I Corinthians 1:26 where Paul said:

I Corinthians 1:26 For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.

And that too, of course, is a truism, because the truths of God tend to escape the understanding of the more highly educated. The truths of God are simple. They are not complicated. They are not difficult to understand. But because of all of the garbage that in many cases is going through the minds of these highly educated people, they do not seem to be able to get it. It somehow just escapes them. And apparently it is just too simple. What could be simpler than saying, “You shall do no murder?” That is too easy to understand.

See, the highly educated have to go into all of the ramifications of why a murder took place. And they start looking for whether the person was insane; was he under duress? Was he goaded into it, egged on into it? And on and on. God just says, “Did he murder somebody? Was it an accident? Or was it planned? If it was planned, he is to be put to death. If it was an accident, the person has to escape to a city.” It is that simple. That is not so hard to understand, is it? And we could go on and on with this.

But you see God's truths are simple. And the simple tend to grasp it. The more learned are apparently just too sophisticated and vain, and so it just escapes them.

Matthew 21:17-22 Then He left them and went out of the city to Bethany, and He lodged there. Now in the morning, as He returned to the city, He was hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it but leaves, and said to it, "Let no fruit grow on you ever again." Immediately the fig tree withered away. And when the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, "How did the fig tree wither away so soon?" So Jesus answered and said to them, "Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but also if you say to this mountain, 'Be removed and be cast into the sea,' it will be done. And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive."

Now, this is a highly controversial section among the intellectuals. Some of you might remember Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell was a British author, highly acclaimed; philosopher; thinker; who was also, I believe, an atheist. I am not sure he was an atheist. I know for sure that he was at the very least an agnostic.

When Bertrand Russell died, there appeared quite a long article in The Los Angeles Times regarding him, as they gave a resume of his life and his writings. And in that article, they addressed his atheism/agnosticism. I am not real sure which one it was. At any rate, I am sure that he had many reasons for believing as he did, because he was a very incisive and acute observer of what was going on on earth. And I am sure that he was the way he was, at least partly because of what he saw in the Christian churches—that it was a far cry from the things that he read in the Bible, and what he saw being done in Christianity.

But he did have the opportunity to speak on the Bible on occasion. And one of the reasons that he gave for not being willing to be a follower of Jesus Christ is that he could not follow somebody who was given to fits of temper and petulance. And then he cited this example of Jesus going up to a poor, helpless, old fig tree, and killing it with the breath of His lips, simply because it could not do what was impossible for it to perform.

Let us examine that. First of all, the Bible in the Old Testament uses the fig tree in a way somewhat different than it does in the New Testament. Turn to Deuteronomy 8, verse 8 to show you the way a fig tree is used figuratively in the Old Testament:

Deuteronomy 8:8 A land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey.

God is describing the kind of land that He is going to bring the children of Israel into. And a fig tree is used to define prosperity, fertility, peace.

Back in Micah 4:4 we have that famous series of verses where it talks about every man sitting under his vine and under his fig tree. I will read that:

Micah 4:4 But everyone shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree.

It is talking about a time of universal peace and prosperity, when people do not learn to make war anymore, that their spears are beaten into pruning hooks and their swords into plowshares [verse 3].

And so, a fig tree then is pictured as a time of universal peace, with everybody sitting peacefully under his own fig tree.

Back in the book of Zechariah, chapter 3, verse 10 it is used talking about the Millennium.

Zechariah 3:10 In that day,' says the LORD of hosts, 'Everyone will invite his neighbor under his vine and under his fig tree.'"

So here we have again, pictured a time of peace, when every man is your neighbor. It is a time when you do not fear the Russians. You do not fear the Germans. You do not fear the Jews or the Arabs or anybody. Everybody on earth is at peace with everybody else, figuratively symbolized by a fig tree.

Now, I do not know how many of you know the nature of fig trees. They are, under good circumstances, one of the most productive, useful, and helpful of all of the plants that God has created. A fig tree actually produces two crops a year. I do not know how many fruit trees do that, but a fig does. They will begin to bud and to leaf out generally about sometime in April. And by June, another unique item is that they will be in full “flower,” full ripe fruit, and full leaf all at the same time. All of that will take place on old growth, you see, the old stock of the tree. Now, after that crop is harvested, the tree begins to suddenly sprout new growth. And by September usually, it will put out a second crop of figs.

Now, when did this event take place? It took place in April.

The first crop does not become ripe until about June. See, Bertrand Russell said he did not see why anybody should curse a fig tree for not doing what it was impossible for it to do. It could not possibly produce fruit in April. And yet Jesus cursed it, because He did not find any figs on it. Now, you are beginning to see why it is a little bit controversial.

Not only was a fig tree a productive tree but also (in that part of the world anyway) it grows to quite a height. It will grow up to be 25, 30, 35, 40 feet tall. And you know how large a fig leaf is—very large. And as was their habit, they would almost always plant fig trees around their house. That is why it always talks about a man sitting under his fig tree, because the fig tree was planted right close to the house. And so the fig tree would grow, up and it would have these great big bushy leaves on it and it would provide air conditioning for the house, and it was a place that neighbors could gather and talk.

Now, oftentimes they also planted it near their wells, so that it would always have an abundant supply of water. Anytime anybody came to the well, they would also have shade and possibly at least two times in the year, they would have figs.

If it was planted by the well, it was open to anybody, to could get fruit off at any time.

Well, here comes Jesus along the way and there is a fig tree. Now, let us go to Mark the 11.

Mark 11:13 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.

There is in that verse an indication of the problem. It really does not come through too well in the English there. But if you have ever observed a fig tree…we have one right out of our outside of our kitchen window and I have watched it. Boy, it is loaded with figs right now. I just hope they all come to fruit; the best year we have ever had on it. But the new growth begins with a little bud at the end of the stock, and at various other places on the stock.

If things are working right, the leaf and the bud which grows into the fig will appear almost simultaneously. Now, what this verse in Mark tells us is that this fig tree was in full leaf, in April. It should not have been in full leaf in April. There was something wrong with the tree. It was degenerate. It looked good, but it should not have been in full leaf in April. If it would have been in full leaf, it should also have been in full fruit. Remember I told you earlier, that one of the peculiarities of a fig is that it is in full leaf, full fruit, and full flower all at the same time. Now, something about this tree had gotten out of sync. That is why when Jesus went over to it, he expected to find fruit, because it was in full leaf.

Now, we know from the Bible that Jesus never did anything wrong, He never sinned, He never misused His power or authority. He always used sound mindedness, wisdom, and judgment in every circumstance. The only thing then we can conclude if we are going to be guided by the Bible’s principles here, is that there was something wrong with the tree.

Let us begin to apply this to you and me. Let us go to Luke 13. Now we already know there was something wrong with the tree. It should not have been in full leaf in April. It should not have been in full leaf until June. So it was degenerate. There was something wrong with it. It would be like one part of your body growing at an accelerated rate while every other part of your body grew at a normal rate. Like you would have one arm, but it would be 5 feet long, and the other arm would be normal.

Here in Luke 13 we have the only time that figs are mentioned in the book of Luke. And it is interesting because Luke does not include the story that Matthew and Mark include about Jesus cursing the tree. Apparently, Luke felt, or God inspired Luke to put something else. And it shows us the way the fig tree is used in the New Testament.

Luke 13:6-9 He also spoke this parable: "A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, 'Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?' But he answered and said to him, 'Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.'"

What is the lesson? There are two lessons here for you and me. We ought to be able to understand that the fig tree in the New Testament represents you and me—that we are the fig tree of Luke 13. And what does he say? He says if we do not produce fruit, you cut it down, you get rid of it.

Now, back in Matthew 21, what happened? We had a degenerate tree. It says in Matthew 7 that it is impossible for a poor tree to produce good fruit. This is another principle of Jesus Christ. He followed that principle in Matthew 21. This was degenerate, it was in full leaf at a time that it should not have been in full leaf. And He found absolutely no fruit on it. Since there was no fruit, He got rid of it. It is perfectly logical. But He did it as a lesson to you and me. It was a symbolic action. And that lesson to you and me is twofold: God judges by what a person produces; and if you are not producing, you are useless.

Now, everybody knows that. If you do not produce for your employer, what is he going to do to you? He is going to fire you. Why should he pay you money for not doing anything for him?

Yet somehow, we get the fuddy-duddy idea that God is not like that. Oh yes, He is!

Lesson number one is: uselessness invites disaster. And if you are not producing in terms of usefulness for God, He will dung you about. He will give you every opportunity. He will put you through trials. He will give lessons to you. He will practically beat you over the head with your fault, or flaw; anything to get you to use your free moral agency to change and produce fruit. But if He begins to see that it is useless, then He is going to shake the tree, and the rotten fruit will fall off.

The second thing is closely related. It is that profession without practice is condemned. Now, this tree looked like a good one. It was a professing Christian, but it was not practicing Christianity. It was really degenerate; it was a hypocrite. And so He got rid of it.

Now, the disciples were amazed by that. And so Jesus went on, and taught them something about prayer. Now there is again a symbolic lesson in this. I think that it is known and understood by all of us that He did not intend that the casting of a mountain into the sea be taken literally. He Himself never did that. And probably in almost every case that would be simply a useless and vain action, it and would not be something that God would grant if the request was made.

But rather, what we have here is an idiom, a Hebrew idiom that they use to signify a very large problem. We talk about making mountains out of mole hills. We have got a little problem, but we make a great big one out of it. Well, to them, the casting of a mountain into the sea was a solution to a large overwhelming problem. It is an idiom that they use.

But Jesus wants us to understand that prayer is power, and that prayer is extremely useful in overcoming mountainous problems.

Now, I feel that there are things that we need to understand about prayer that some of us do not understand. We need to have our comprehension of it matured quite a bit.

Prayer is to be used by us to find the ability to do—to find the ability or to receive the ability to do. We should never approach prayer from the standpoint of getting God to do things for us. I think that we understand the principle, that God will only do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Now, what is God doing with us? He is reproducing, recreating Himself. He is taking us to the place of maturity, of understanding, of knowledge, of wisdom, whereby we will be able to rule and to teach in the World Tomorrow. We are going to have to be problem solvers. And the best way to have problem solvers produced is to make them solve problems.

Now, if God use the child rearing techniques that many of us use, we would grow up unable to solve our problems because our parent—God—had always solved them for us.

God is not a fuddy-duddy parent at all. And if it is going to be good for us to go through something, He is going to make us go through it. If we need the experience, if we need the education, if we need the character that can be developed from doing this, He is not going to remove it from us. He is going to make us go through it. We would grow up to be somebody who could not do anything—uneducated, untrained, unfit for His Kingdom.

So because He is love, He cannot answer most of our requests. To do so would be detrimental to our character. He has to let us go through it. So why even pray to that end at all? Why not instead, ask Him for the power to overcome it. That He will grant.

Your approach needs to be, then, pray to God for that power, get up off your knees, and go to work as though everything depended upon you, as though God was not even in the picture, although we understand that He is. That is the way to grow. And that is the way to use prayer.

Number two: Prayer should give us the ability to accept our cup—our circumstance. This has to do with an attitude. It does not have to do with the actual overcoming of the problem so much as it does have to do with our attitude toward it.

Two prime examples of this are the apostle Paul and Jesus Christ. Remember in II Corinthians 12:7-10 how that Paul stated that three times he sought God to remove the thorn in his flesh, this messenger of Satan. And each time God said no. Well, it was through prayer that Paul came to be able to accept his condition, whatever it was, that God was never going to remove it. But nonetheless, he understood that God would give him the power to endure it or overcome it. And so he accepted it.

Now, many of us do not. And it is because we do not understand this that we get bitter, we get discouraged, we despair, we get filled with self-pity. Woe is me! Here is God trying His hardest to develop character and wisdom and empathy and compassion and pity, and all kinds of positive attitudes, understanding, knowledge, through the circumstances that we go through, and we are fighting Him tooth and toenail, because we cannot accept it.

Now, I mentioned Jesus. Remember in the Garden of Gethsemane He came to God and said, “Look, I would like to get out of this, but nevertheless, not My will, but Your will be done.”

How did He come to accept it? It was by prayer. That is when He came to the realization (that is revealed in the Bible) that He was going to accept God's will—God's decision—regardless of what it led to; regardless of the pain; regardless of the embarrassment; regardless of the shame; regardless of the ignominious death; that He would just accept it.

The third thing that we should use prayer for is to ask God for the ability or the power to endure. If you come to regard prayer as an escape, you are going to end up in bewildering disappointment. Prayer is our contact with God. God is communicating with us. There is a flow of His Spirit, of His mind, of His energy, back and forth between us and Him, when we are in contact with Him.

Remember always what God is doing—He is producing a product; and that product is going to be an imitation of Him. Jesus learned by the things which He suffered. He endured grief bearing the cross as it said, because of the joy that was set before Him. Jesus had to endure being a man, giving up divinity, giving up the Godhead, but He kept in constant contact with God.

So let us remember those three things. Prayer is power, the ability to do things, the ability to accept, and the ability to endure.

Matthew 21:23-27 Now when He came into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people confronted Him as He was teaching, and said, "By what authority are You doing these things? And who gave You this authority?" But Jesus answered and said to them, "I also will ask you one thing, which if you tell Me, I likewise will tell you by what authority I do these things: The baptism of John—where was it from? From heaven or from men?" And they reasoned among themselves, saying, "If we say, 'From heaven,' He will say to us, 'Why then did you not believe him?' But if we say, 'From men,' we fear the multitude, for all count John as a prophet." So they answered Jesus and said, "We do not know." And He said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

Here Jesus chose to avoid a direct confrontation. He, I am sure, felt that He had pushed them as far as was necessary on this day—by all the acclamation of His riding into Jerusalem; by the crowds of people crying Hosanna; by their acceptance of Him. But here, when He is brought into a direct confrontation, He avoided it. I am sure that He did it because He understood that there were still some things that had to be done.

Now He put them into a corner, which really tested their character. And He found their character to be wanting. If they had accepted John as being from God, then they would also have had to accept Jesus as the Christ, because that is what John preached. And so that really put them between a rock and a hard place. They did not want to admit that Jesus was the Christ, and they did not want to admit that John was from God either.

You and I are sometimes put into this kind of a circumstance. The route that they took actually became for them a shameful humiliation, because they knew the truth, and they avoided it. They took the way that was expedient, rather than the way that was honest and truthful.

Now, what do you do in similar situations where you are confronted with having to humble yourself, to admit a truth, or to justify yourself and take another route? You know, that is the first thing that Adam and Eve did. When they were confronted with a question that put them in a corner where they would have had to admit their mistake, their sin, they instead justified by blaming it on one another, and Satan.

Do we have enough character to be honest with the truth?

I will tell you, this circumstance probably had a great deal to do with Jesus’ almost immediate death, because they were so shamed, their conscience, I am sure, burned within them—that the best thing that they could think of was to get rid of this person that was a thorn in their side. He had shamed them by making them face up to a truth, and they backed away from it. I will tell you; it takes humility to admit that you are wrong. But I will tell you, it is the test of a Christian. It is a test of a person's conversion. And if a person is converted, he will admit that he is wrong.

Matthew 21:28-32 "But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, 'Son, go, work today in my vineyard.' He answered and said, 'I will not,' but afterward he regretted it and went. Then he came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said, 'I go, sir,' but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said to Him, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Assuredly, I say to you that tax collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him; but tax collectors and harlots believed him; and when you saw it, you did not afterward relent and believe him.”

I tell you; they were really burning on the inside after that. Their eyes were smarting. But did you notice that Jesus did not praise either group? The one was certainly better than the other. The publicans and harlots who repented after first saying that they would not and yet went and did it were certainly better than the scribes and Pharisees who said that they would, and did not. There is not a note of praise for either one of them.

Do you know why? Because the ones who are going to be praised by God are those who say, “I will,” and go do it. You see, they just say I will do it in a good attitude, and they go, and do it. Now that is doing the will of God—accepting it like a child and just turning and going and doing it.

JWR/rwu/drm