David: Well, welcome back, everyone, to the Spoken Gospel podcast. I'm David Bowden, and this is our third and final installment of a short series we're doing to see how you like it, of sharing some sermons that I've been preaching through the Book of Mark at my local church. Uh, let us know what you've thought of this series so far. Uh, you can email us at info\@spokengospel.com. Uh, we wanna know if you wanna hear more of these. I've, I've really enjoyed being able to share them with you, and, um, I hope they've been a blessing.
Today, we're gonna be looking at Mark 11, verses 12 to 25, and three scenes unfold that are all very famous, um, and I think largely misunderstood. Uh, it is the cursing of the fig tree, the cleansing of the temple, and the teaching at the fig tree, where Jesus says that you can throw this mountain into the sea with your faith and prayers. Uh, what is going on there? It, it can be a confusing passage, uh, but I'm very excited to show how all of it is just landing the story of Scripture that's begun on page one of the Bible.
And so we're gonna dive into all three of these passages, um, all three of these stories, and see how they connect to Scripture. And again, as I've shared, we're doing this for a really specific purpose. It's because what Seth and I have done in here for years, have been to apply this gospel-centered hermeneutic of Scripture, this looking at the broad stroke of Script- Scripture, reading the Bible literarily, and trying to understand what it's saying. And we wanna show what that looks like on a normal Sunday morning, when you're just opening up a few passages, a few verses of Scripture, and teaching out of it.
And I think it's, it's cool to see how the, the rubber of this principle meets the road of a normal Sunday morning gathering. So I hope this sermon encourages you and illuminates this, uh, really fascinating passage of Scripture in Mark. Uh, again, let us know what you thought of this sermon series so far, if you wanna hear more. But for now, enjoy this sermon on the cursing of the fig tree. Let's get into it. All right, they gave me the cursing of the fig tree passage. [audience laughing] Good morning. My name's David Bowden, I'm a Bridgeway member and on the teaching team, and I love this passage, so I'm totally kidding.
I totally wanted this passage. Um, I've thought about this one for a long time. Uh, so I studied... I did not study- no, I'm just kidding, I studied a lot. Um, but it's an interesting story, right? We've got three different stories that form little bookends, and they're all talking to each other, which is really important for us to see. And so the three stories that we have are Jesus cursing a fig tree that doesn't have fruit, Jesus, quote, unquote, "cleansing the temple," as you've might have heard it called before, and then he goes back to the fig tree and gives a teaching there.
And these are the three stories we hear, and they're all talking about one main point. And this is what we all need to make sure we're aiming our exegesis, and understanding, and application of this passage around, is this main point that he's making, and I'll show you throughout the sermon. But the main point is something like this: Jesus is destroying the temple in Israel to build a new one in his people. That's the point. Jesus is destroying the temple in Israel in order to build a new one in his people.
So in this sermon, I'm gonna try to demonstrate that the cursing of the fig tree, the cleansing of the temple, and the short teaching at that cursed fig tree, and the prayer stuff around it there at the end, with the mountain going into the sea, all are talking about the same thing: the temple, its destruction, and its rebuilding. But I've been, I've been doing this almost a year now, and so if you have... If you've gotten used to me at all, you know I'm gonna have to go back to the Garden of Eden to explain any of this.
[audience laughing] And so we have to go back there to understand why any of this makes sense because we have to understand what the temple is, right? Because if I just start talking about the temple, we're gonna be like: "I don't even know what that is." And so l- let's talk about what is the temple. So here's my little pithy way of trying to give, like a, like a thesis statement, or a mission statement, or an explanation of what the temple is. So if you wanna write it down, you can, or if you wanna memorize it, it's not too long. The temple is God's people, in God's place, living out God's purpose for the whole planet.
So it's God's people, in God's place, living out God's purpose for the whole planet. We'll talk about that more throughout the rest of the sermon. And the first place God builds a temple is in Genesis 1, on the first page of the Bible. He builds his temple in the Garden of Eden. 'Cause a temple is just where God lives with his people. It's just where Heaven and Earth meet, and that's where God dwells. That's a temple, and his first temple was the Garden of Eden. It was God's place. It was, it was this gorgeous temple where he dwelt with humanity, and he dwelt there with his people. He made human beings in his image.
So he had God's place, he had God's people, and then he gave them God's purpose. He told them to be fruitful and multiply, to spread his image and presence, and then he tells them where to do that, across the whole Earth. He tells them to, uh, fill the Earth and subdue it, and by doing so, they would take the temple of God, of Eden, across the entire world so that it became the center of reality, that the Mount of Eden would be the center of the whole world, a- and the entire planet would be filled with God's place and God's people carrying out God's purpose.
So they could have communion, and presence, and relationship with God everywhere they are on the planet. That's the, that's the purpose of the temple. God wants to dwell with us. He wants to be with us. Nearness to God is, like, the purpose of the whole Bible [chuckles] and so God builds a place to be with his people. But-... humanity, as you know, failed this mission to take God's place to the whole planet, and when Adam and Eve failed this mission, they felt shame to be in the temple of God. They felt shame about who they were, a- and they realized they were naked, and they famously used what to cover themselves up? Fig leaves.
Fig leaves, right! I mean, you're gonna connect. Yeah, it's gonna be pretty obvious here. They used fig leaves to cover up their nakedness, and, and so after this fall, for the people of Israel, the image of fig trees, fig leaves, and fig fruit all became deeply connected with the land of Eden, the temple of God, the presence of God, and God's purpose for the whole planet. So after Adam and Eve leave this first garden temple, this pattern gets developed that gets repeated throughout the whole Bible. So you have God builds a temple and puts his people in it and gives them a purpose.
They fail at that purpose, and then they are exiled from that temple, removed from it, and that temple is destroyed or made obsolete or passed on from. And so that's what happens. They're removed from the Garden of Eden, and they can't enter it again, but God promises to build them another temple. God's always pushing into humanity to dwell with us, and so after Israel is freed from slavery in Egypt, God gives them plans to build another temple. This temple's called the Tabernacle. It's this tented structure that's filled with garden imagery.
Etched and sewed onto the walls and onto the, the different metal pieces in the temple are all these Eden images to remind us that this was God's purpose, to dwell with his people. This was God's place, and this tented temple would be picked up and moved throughout the wilderness and brought to a new land, the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, where God would build a new place with his people. And unsurprisingly, when they come to Canaan, one of the predominant ways that this land is described is using figs.
In, in Numbers thirteen twenty-three, twenty and verse five, Deuteronomy eight:eight, it all describes the promised land of Canaan is filled with figs, okay?
And then throughout the Old Testament, the regular poetic language for people living in this new place with God and living in this new Eden-like place, when God's temple presence has finally come across the whole Earth, one of the regular ways that the poets throughout many, many, many Old Testament books describe it is, "Each one will live under his own fig tree." So there's this whole biblical theme of figs, and it's all connected to the Garden of Eden, the temple of God, dwelling with him in peace, and filling out his purpose across the whole Earth.
Now, eventually, just what happened in the Garden of Eden, the first temple, happened to the second temple, right? The temple or the tabernacle moved into Canaan and eventually became a physical, permanent structure, um, called the Temple. That's the first temple that Solomon built, and that one, too, just like the Garden of Eden, became corrupted, and so God said that it would be destroyed. And very interestingly, I think, whenever Hosea and Michael, uh, uh, Micah and Jeremiah all talk about the corruption of Israel's first temple, they talk about it like a withered and corrupted fig tree that's fruit is not even good for eating. Amen.
And so, just as he did in the Garden of Eden, when God's people failed to take his place to the whole planet, God exiles them and destroys the place where they dwell with him. This is exactly what happened in the Babylonian exile when the nation of Babylon came into the southern reden- region of Judah and the temple in Jerusalem, and they destroyed it. They exiled the people of God and destroyed the temple, and this, too, is described using fig tree language. [chuckles] It's amazing.
Hosea two:twelve: "I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees." Joel one:seven: "It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree." Joel one:twelve: "The vine dries up, the fig tree languishes." And then for my own sake, I put, like, five more references in my own notes. It's everywhere that this exile, this destruction of the temple, will be like a fig tree withering to its roots. I almost don't have to preach the rest of the sermon now. You got... You get it now. Like, that's the amazing thing about letting the, the whole Bible inform what we're reading in the New Testament because it does all the work for us.
And so Israel goes into exile. They're spread among the nations, but after exile, some of God's people start returning to the Promised Land, and they rebuild a second temple. However, and importantly, Israel, though they've built God's place, they are very determined, very determinedly not living out God's purpose for the whole planet in that new place. And you can kind of not blame them in a s- in a sense because they've just been scandalized by the Gentiles, by the nations. They, they've spent time being persecuted and harassed by these nations that they're meant to take God's presence and life and forgiveness to.
And so Israel and her temple and her culture and her religion and her borders all become very insulated at this time. It's like a protect the borders kind of moment. Circle the wagons. Let's, let's keep this in- ins- insulated and safe and not go outside because the nations are bad and dangerous. Uh, uh, they, they, they took the, the treasure of God's presence and his forgiveness and his atonement and his temple, and they locked it up behind a wall like a den of robbers and kept it all for themselves.... and this is the situation that Jesus comes into.
You had this second temple that was built, and then King Herod, much later on, and there's a lot more that happens with the temple in that intermediate time for 400 years. But King Herod comes, and he decides he's going to increase his relations with the Jews, and the nations, and Rome, and does this kind of political thing with the temple, where he builds this gigantic Court of the Gentiles all the way around the temple structure. This place could house 75,000 people at a time, and became the place where everything for the temple started to happen when it came to the, the markets, and the, the, the community, and all that.
And as its name suggests, this Court of the Gentiles was a place that the Gentiles, which is the same word for nations, could come and be close to the temple. But in reality, the opposite was really happening because all the Court of the Gentiles really did was highlight and make worse the separation between the Jews inside the temple and the Gentiles outside the temple. Because inside the temple, beyond the Court of the Gentiles, where only Jews could go, is where the real work of the temple happened. That's where atonement was granted, that's where sacrifices were made, that's where the presence of God was meant to dwell.
And so the Gentiles were kept out by a massive wall around the main temple, and every entrance into that main temple, you had to walk up these 14 stairs past this stone wall, and there were signs next to those entryways, and archaeologists have actually found those signs, and we can read them today, so we know exactly what they said. Here's one that they found, quote, "No alien may enter within the wall around the sanctuary and the enclosure. Whoever is caught, on himself shall he put blame for the death that will ensue." A place meant to bring life to the nations is now threatening death to anyone who comes near it.
Do you, do you see how twisted it's become at this point? Instead of taking the presence of God to the nations, they were excluding the nations from the presence of God. It's all backwards and broken, and this is the temple that Jesus rides into on a donkey, like a conquering king, as we learned last week, foreshadowing the victory that he would soon have over it. And Jesus goes in, and he looks around and surveys everything like a military captain about to conquer a new territory, and that's when we get to our passage today. Mark 11:12-14: "On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he," Jesus, "was hungry.
And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, 'May no one ever eat fruit from you again.' And his disciples heard it." So as we've seen, the fig tree is a symbol, a prophetic image, an enacted parable of Israel and her temple, of the purpose that God had for his Eden-like temple in the earth. That's what the fig tree came to represent. And so Jesus sees this fig tree from a distance. He's hungry, and, and it looks like it should have fruit on it because it, uh...
The fig trees in, in Israel, they put out their leaves in the spring just before they start to bear fruit in kind of early summer, and so the leaves give promise of the fruit. Once the leaves start showing up, you know the fruit will soon follow. And so Jesus sees this fig tree, and he, and he's immediately, 'cause he's a good Jew, and, and he knows his Old Testament, [chuckles] he's immediately thinking about his people, and about the temple, and about his plans. I mean, maybe he's thinking about the fig tree he himself spoke into existence that Adam and Eve pulled the leaves off of.
Like, he's, he's remembering that moment when his heart was broken at his people's fall, and he sees this fig tree, and he sees that there's signs of fruitfulness on it. It has leaves on it, and the same could be said for Israel and her temple. Israel and her temple was- had all the signs of life. They were blooming like never before. The temple had never been so large or so grand or so well-visited or so well-upkept. It, it had all the signs of life. It was a tree covered in leaves. But as Jesus gets closer to the tree, he realizes that there's no fruit on the tree, only leaves.
And Israel's temple is the same way, all show, no fruit, or a- as a turn of phrase is, uh, all sizzle, no steak, right? I think is a, is a, is a phrase there. Israel is not going to the nations. She has the complex, God's presence, the atonement, the forgiveness that's meant to go to the nations. She even has a court of Gentiles that's like, "Come on, nations, come on in," but there's never been more separation from the nations. All leaves and no fruit. She's not bearing fruit.
And then Mark notes that it's not the season for fig trees to be in fruit, and this note doubles down on the impossibility for Israel to produce fruit from her current tree. Just as this tree that Jesus sees is not in season, it can't bear fruit right now, in the same way, neither can Israel's temple, the way that it is being managed and the way it's functioning, and ultimately, because of what will replace it, namely Jesus himself, it cannot bear the fruit for the nations like it's meant to do. It's not in season.
Or, or to think about it another way-... when Jesus comes, a new season has arrived, and so therefore, the season of the temple is over. So it's not going to be the place that will bear the fruit for the nations any longer. And so, as God has done many times throughout the Old Testament, He curses the fig tree as a picture of the curse that's soon to come upon the temple. And when He does, He declares that no one will ever eat fruit from that tree again. He's saying that the temple in Israel will no longer be the place from which God's purpose for the whole planet will be accomplished.
The temple's not gonna be the place that bears fruit anymore. So then, after He curses the fig tree, they travel to the temple, and here, Jesus doubles down on this point. Let's read Mark 11:15 to 16: "And they came to Jerusalem, and He entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and He overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. And He would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple."
Crowd: Amen.
David: So Jesus enters the temple, that He has just cursed from the symbol of the fig tree, and He said it would never bear fruit again. It would never produce what it's supposed to produce, and He, He does something wild. He interrupts the core function of that temple. So let's, let's look at a few things here. It says that He drove out those who sold and bought. So, so let's look first at those who bought. Well, who are we talking about here? 'Cause if you're anything like me or if you've heard sermons on this that I've heard before, um, it's like, "Oh yeah, you're not supposed to sell stuff inside the temple," or, "These moneychangers and people selling animals are corrupt." Y- you'd really have to infer that pretty heavily. It's just giving you information about who He drove out, and I think why He drove them out is really important, and I don't think the main reason, as we're gonna see, is that they were selling stuff.
Here's why. Those who bought. Those who bought are buying animals for sacrifice in the temple. These are pilgrims who had traveled from all over the nations to come to Israel during the feast of Passover, and in Deuteronomy 14:24 to 26, there is a law that actually commands that these pilgrims be given the right to buy animals at the temple when they arrive. Because they've traveled so long, you can't travel that long with an animal for sacrifice and it stay alive or remain unblemished, [chuckles] or it's just hard to keep that animal in tow. And so they instead would maybe sell that animal at their local market, bring the money to the temple, exchange the money for the shekel of the sanctuary that was there, and then buy an animal locally to offer for sacrifice. This happened f- for a long, long, long time. This was a normal thing that happened at the temple. And so Jesus is driving out those who are buying animals, not because it was wrong to buy animals. We'll see why He does it in just a second.
He also drives out those who sold the animals. Same thing, they were there doing a Torah-ordained and protected act, to sell animals for sacrifice, but Jesus drives them out. Then it says He also drives out the moneychangers and overturns their tables. Now, why does He do this? Are they corrupt? We don't know. We're not told that. But at that time, there were so many different denominations of coins, um, and you had to use the shekel of the sanctuary, as described in the Torah, in order to do commerce at the temple. It was a specific kind of currency. And so you had all these different denominations of coins circulating around the Roman Empire at that time, many of which had idols printed on them and would be not okay to have in the temple. And so these moneychangers, you know, it's like whenever you go to a new country, and you swap currency. They're doing that job for you, and, and just like whenever we do it, there's a, there's an e- there's, like, a cost of goods sold. You had, you had to do, like, a three percent commission on the exchange or something like that to keep them in business. Something like that was probably going on, too.
Now, before I make my final point about why He drove them all out, let me just say: Is it possible and even likely that those selling animals and exchanging money were corrupt? Yeah, people suck! Like, of course, we're all evil, and we all do messed up things. Of course, it's highly likely that these people were doing things corruptly, but I don't think that is Mark's main point of why Jesus drove them out. Otherwise, I think he would highlight other details, okay? Instead, Jesus drives them out to make one specific point, that all of the function of the temple, its sacrificial system, its atonement, the forgiveness offered by the priests, all of that is going to stop. Just like He looked at the fig tree and cursed it and said, "No fruit's ever gonna come from you again," He goes to the temple, stops its main function, and says, "This is all done." He's living out this enacted parable of the temple's destruction, and all the commerce stops. It even says that He, He stopped those from bringing anything in and taking anything out. There's nothing wicked in that. They're just coming and going, and He's like, "No, no, no, everything stop. Everything pause, everything halt." And the only thing left in the temple at that moment, after Jesus stops everything, is Jesus Himself teaching, and He's saying, "A new temple is here. A new place of sacrifice, a new place of forgiveness and atonement is here, and it's not going to be done through this old sacrificial system anymore."
So Jesus starts teaching then. Mark 11:17 to 19: "And He was teaching them and saying to them, 'Is it not written?'"... My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers. And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. And when evening came, they went out of the city.
So here, in his teaching, we only get a snippet of what Jesus taught in this time, but here we get the, the, the crux of it, at least what Mark really wants to highlight for us. Jesus quotes two major prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, and these two major prophets spoke extensively about the temple's destruction and the people's exile. Even just saying the words to a, to an ancient Jew, Isaiah and Jeremiah, they would think back to exile and temple destruction. That's such a common theme in what they're talking about. And just to note, both of them use fig tree image, imagery to do it, so there's a lot going on here.
So first, from Isaiah, Jesus says that the temple is to be called a house of prayer for all nations, and he says this standing in the court of the nations, the court of the Gentiles. But the opposite is happening all around him. The nations can't participate. They're walled off under threat of death. They come in to, to maybe pray or, or learn more about what's happening in this place, and all around them, uh, the Jews are buying and selling animals and exchanging coins, all activities that the Gentiles, the nations, can't participate in. And so there's this grand irony in the court of the Gentiles that everywhere they look, they're just reminded of what they can't participate in. And so this is not a house of prayer for all nations, this is... I can't say that on the, on the pulpit. Never mind. Just gonna move on from that.
All right. Basically, Jesus is saying, [chuckles] "Look around you. Does this look like a house of prayer for all nations? No, of course not. You're not going out to the planet. You're not going out to the unreached. You're not reaching the nations. You've insulated yourselves and walled yourselves off, and you're keeping everything away from the nations." That's why he then quotes Jeremiah and says that Israel has become a den of robbers. I think it's so important for us to remember, the robbers' den is not where the robbery happens. The robbers' den is where they take the treasure after they've done the robbery, which is another reason why I'm like, it's not that they were doing the stealing there in the money changing and the animal selling. That's where they were hoarding the treasure. What's the treasure? Who cares about currency? Who cares about coins? The treasure they were hoarding was the presence of God, the forgiveness of sins, the message of his plan for the world. They were insulating that off from the world, and they had become this den of robbers.
They were like Alibaba and the Forty Thieves who had hoarded all their treasure into a little cave that could only open if you said the secret password, "Open sesame," except now the little cave that they built was the temple, and the password was, "I'm a Jew." Everybody else was kept out, and they could not reach the treasure of God's presence and forgiveness and atonement that was available to the nations in the temple.
And so then we read, after Jesus teaches all of this, that the chief priests and the scribes heard all of this, and that's when they start seeking to destroy him. Now, that might- you might read right over that 'cause you're like, "Yeah, they've been trying to kill him all along." Who are we talking about here? Yeah, way back in Mark 3, when Jesus healed a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath, the Pharisees decided to put him to death. But remember, they were this kind of outside sect, this religious group outside the main power structure of Jerusalem. Were they a big sect, an important sect, a well-followed one? Yes, but they were not the inside clique of power within the temple proper. That was the chief priests and the Sadducees, the scribes, those that formed this, the nucleus of power there, and now they are the ones who are deciding that Jesus has to die. He said that their temple is going to be destroyed. Well, they will destroy him instead.
Finally, we get to our last part of the three-part story. They leave the temple, and they go back to the curs- the cursed tree, the fig tree that Jesus cursed, and we read this, Mark 11:20 to 25. If any of this has been confusing, guys, buckle up. This is the, the hardest part. "As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said, 'Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.' And Jesus answered them, 'Have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, "Be taken up and thrown into the sea," and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.'"
Crowd: Amen.
David: And so just as Jesus said to the fig tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again," and the fig tree withered and died, in the same way, Jesus says that if any of them say to this mountain, "Be taken away and thrown into the sea," it will be done. But what mountain are we talking about? What's the sea? What's going on here? Because I've heard plenty of worship songs that are like, "If I pray, I can move a mountain." You know, I don't know, I, I can't remember any of them. [audience laughing] But you guys know what I'm talking about, right?
Crowd: Yeah.
David: Okay, yeah. This is a normal Christianese thing to say. Uh, "Man, if you just have faith, you can move a mountain!" Okay, hold on. [audience laughing] We're talking about something here, and it's not that. The only mountain Jesus could be talking about in this moment is the Temple Mount. The temple was on a mountain, and, and anytime you say you were going to the temple, whether you're coming from north, south, east, or west, in the Bible, you're always going up to Jerusalem, up to the temple. Even Jeremiah says Eden was on a mountain. Like, [chuckles] you're always going up to this mountain. So Jesus is talking about the temple again, which shouldn't be surprising. The fig tree is about the temple, the temple was about the temple [chuckles], and now the mountain is about the temple, and it's all about it being destroyed. And so he's saying, "If you say to this temple mountain, 'Throw yourself into the sea,' it will be done." The temple will be destroyed.
But what does it mean for it to get thrown into the sea? Well, the sea, in the biblical imagination, is this place of chaos and destruction and, and utter waste. And, in fact, uh, there's even more happening there, that, um, the temple itself, you know, w- like we talked about, was full of Eden imagery, full of creation imagery. Um, yet there's something that existed before, "Let there be light," on day one of creation. It was the sea, this idea of the sea. I'm not saying there was an actual place of water, okay? There's this biblical imagery of the sea. It was the wild and waste, and that's what the Spirit hovered over whenever God said, "Let there be light," and he created the world. And so what he's saying is the temple and all its creation imagery, uh, uh, the, the place of God's dwelling itself, is going to go backwards. It's going to uncreate all the way back into the chaos, destruction of the sea. And so he's talking about the temple's destruction, yet again.
But then, [exhales] here's where we gotta hold on to our seats, 'cause it feels like a weird shift is made, uh, but it's not, if you hang with me. But it feels like there's this weird jump in the text, where we're talking about the temple being destroyed, and we're talking about all this stuff, and then he starts talking about prayer and forgiveness. And you're like, "Okay, uh, what? What's going on here?" But I think hopefully we've built the categories, or maybe some of you are starting to fill in the gaps for yourself, that if the temple's destroyed, where do we direct our prayers? Where do we go for forgiveness? What's, what's gonna happen with my sin? How do I... How do I have faith that that's going to be forgiven if I can't go to the temple, take an offering, and have the blood sprinkled, and go, "Oh, I'm clean! I'm right with God. My sins are covered. Everything's okay." Where is that gonna come from if I don't have the temple anymore? And Jesus says, "Have faith. You can say to that mountain, 'Be thrown into the sea.' I don't need you anymore." Why? "Because you can pray to me, and I will be the place of forgiveness for you." This is why it's so important that Jesus halted the sacrifices in the temple-... 'cause he's saying, "I'm gonna be the new sacrifice for you." Amen.
And it's also really important that it's the chief priests who, in this text, decide to kill him. 'Cause the chief priests are the ones who make the sacrifices. Namely, the chief priest is the one who makes the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement that is supposed to heal everybody, it's supposed to atone for the whole nation. And Jesus is saying this, "The, the chief priests are gonna make one final sacrifice [chuckles] and they're not even gonna know it, but it's gonna be me. And so you can say to that old mountain, 'Be thrown into the sea,' because you have faith in me, that I'm the only place on Earth or in Heaven that you need to look for, for my presence, for atonement, for forgiveness, and to be filled with me, to take my presence to the whole planet." Jesus is the final sacrifice that we need.
He also says something really interesting here that I just love! He talks about forgiving others to the disciples, too. This is actually even highlighted a little bit more. In your Bibles, if you have them open, you might notice that there's a verse missing. Uh, i- i- I mean, that's a r- that's a really rough way to say it. [chuckles] Your numbers skip, okay? The numbers are old, or, uh, sorry, the numbers are new, they're not old. But there's, there's a few manuscripts out there that have an extra verse in there, and we know through critical scholarship that that verse probably wasn't original, which is awesome that we know that. That actually tells us that we have really, really good manuscripts. But that verse actually talks even more about forgiving others.
A- and I think what's really interesting about this, is you have God's people and God's place in the temple, but what was the purpose of it? It was to take God's forgiveness and atonement to the whole planet. And so now he's saying, "All right, disciples, all right, Christians, yes, the temple is destroyed, and we're not saying, 'Hey, everybody go there.'" Instead, he says, "I'm the temple now, and I'm going to come and dwell in you through my Holy Spirit. And now you, collectively, you plural, y'all, are my temple, and I'm going to send you out into the nations, and I want you to take my message of forgiveness, and presence, and nearness to the world." Amen. We are the temple of God, moving around the world now, taking his message of forgiveness to the nations. That's what Jesus is saying here. We can say to that old mountain, "Be thrown into the sea," because we are the temple now, and Jesus is its foundation, and we are the ones who get to go out to the nations and fill the world with God's presence.
All right, as we wrap up, [paper rustling] so what... Is this like, I like, I- that's what I have in my notes. So what? What's the, what's the point here? This has been really fun, it's been cool nerding out with you guys. Um, but, but I think there's a couple things I just want to point out as, as quickly as I can here. I think, obviously, this passage is about fruitless religion. Amen. If we build walls like Israel did, that insulate ourselves like a den of robbers, we are hoarding up the treasures of the kingdom and the message of the gospel for ourselves. And, and I'm not just talking about this place, this church, these walls, I'm also talking about our homes, and how we live our lives, and, and who we go to and who we don't go to, who we wall ourselves off from, and who we pursue. And, and I think w- we can... are dangerously close to, to being a, a tree that has all the right leaves and none of the right fruit. Amen. That we need to not insulate ourselves off and wall ourselves off from the nations, but to destroy what Ephesians calls, "The dividing wall of hostility," that's the wall it was talking about, the one with the death signs on it, and go to the nations. Uh, someone in prayer [chuckles] said, the, the curtain in, in the temple that separated God's presence from the world was torn in two when Jesus died, and that's because his presence was going out of the temple to the whole world. And so that's our- that's, I think, the warning of this passage: Do not insulate yourself from the world. "Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you. And surely I'm with you, you're my temple. I'm with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen.
And if you're anything like me, when you hear that, your mind goes to one of two places, right? You, you either start to get really, really guilty and shameful... You don't have to raise your hand. Uh, [chuckles] you're really, really guilty and shameful, going like, "When's the last time I talked to my neighbor about Jesus? I didn't go on that short-term [chuckles] mission trip. I think God called me to that country, and I said no. I haven't even told my sister about Jesus in a long time." Like, you start to fill up with the guilt. Or maybe you do the opposite, and you're like, "You know what? No, I do this. I give to this organization. I'm a part of this team, uh, at Bridgeway. Uh, I, I, I go on these mission trips, I support missionaries," and I'm like, "I'm good." And I think both are wrong, [chuckles] and both are harmful because we're trying to define what fruitfulness is in a way that I don't think Jesus is defining it here.
So what is the measure of fruitfulness in this passage? What is the fruit that Jesus is talking about? It's not how many people you've shared the gospel with, though I hope it's so many you can't keep track of. It's not how outgoing you are and how many unreached people groups that you have lived among, though I hope you go and live among unreached people groups. You should do that. [chuckles] But that's not the measure of fruitfulness. The measure of fruitfulness is in what Jesus told us to do in this passage, "Have faith." Have faith. Have faith that we don't need anything else other than Jesus. Amen. He is all we need. That's what he was telling his people to do. You can say to the mountain, "Go throw yourself into the sea, because all I need is Jesus.
David: ... That's the measure of your fruitfulness. How much is Jesus all you need? And insofar as Jesus is all you need, and all you treasure, and all you cling to, and all you want, that's when you're a fruit-bearing tree. Because He will bear the fruit in your life. He will take you to the nations. He will take you to your neighbors. He will put the message of forgiveness on your lips. He will make you a high priest to your neighborhood, but not until you have severely treasured Him above all else.
And guys, I think we today need to say, "Let the mountain be cast into the sea," not because we have a physical temple in Jerusalem that we wanna go visit, but because we build temples out of everything. We build temples out of everything.
We are always setting up new places of worship, new places that we think can atone for our sins and earn us forgiveness, new places that we think that involving ourselves in or, or leading from will ultimately be the way that God fulfills His purpose in us, that ultimately will be the way that we get made right with God.
We build temples out of our work, out of our home, out of family, sports, achievement, religious piety, spiritual disciplines, church attendance, morality, success, notoriety, popularity, being well-liked, anything. We build a temple, and we say, "As long as I'm doing really well here, me and God are good."
Crowd: Amen.
David: But when that happens, you're not clinging to Jesus alone.
But friends, when Jesus comes into your life, He does exactly what He did in this passage. He steps into the center of everything, and He halts, and He says, "Stop bringing other sacrifices in. Stop changing money. Stop buying stuff. Stop selling stuff. You don't need anything else but me. I'm all you need."
And then He comes to the things in our lives that we've, we've planted, and grown, and we, we look to, and they're very showy. They've got all the leaves on it. They look really, really good,
and He comes to them, and He says, "I wanna wither that to the root. I wanna wither your dependence on your own morality to the root. I wanna wither your dependence on how good of a church member you are to the root.
I wanna wither how good you are at prayer, or Bible reading, or biblical knowledge, or, or something like that. I wanna wither it to the root. I wanna take everything away from you that's not me, and I wanna be the only one standing at the center of the temple of your heart and saying, 'Put everything else down and worship me.'" [upbeat music]
Outro: Thank you for listening to the Spoken Gospel podcast. Spoken Gospel creates short films, devotionals, and podcasts like this one. Everything we make is free because of generous supporters like you. To see our resources, visit spokengospel.com or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thanks for listening. See you next time. [upbeat music]
