SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/18/2023 7:36 AM
My Worship Time Focus: “Intro to
Matthew 21:18-22”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matt. 21:18-22
Message of the verses: “18 Now in the
morning, when He was returning to the city, He became hungry. 19 Seeing a lone
fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it except leaves only;
and He said to it, "No longer shall there ever be any fruit from
you." And at once the fig tree withered. 20 Seeing this, the
disciples were amazed and asked, "How did the fig tree wither all
at once?" 21 And Jesus answered and said to them, "Truly 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 even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into
the sea,’ it will happen. 22 “And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you
will receive.’”
John MacArthur entitles this section “The Way of The
Fig Tree,” from the 26th chapter of his third commentary on the
gospel of Matthew. I have been listening
to his sermons on the gospel of Matthew and there are 225 sermons that he
preaches on this the first of the four gospels.
I have been studying this gospel for about three and a half years, and I
can say that it has been challenging but
very worthwhile.
We
have been talking about the time line that our Lord has been following for a
while now and to review it we have seen that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on what
we call Psalm Sunday on Monday morning.
He rode into the city on the colt of a donkey and all the people
acclaimed that He truly was their Messiah.
This has been called His coronation.
Then on Tuesday we have seen that Jesus cleansed the Temple of the
sacrifice merchants and money changers (vv. 12-17). Now we are looking at in this section, which
would be Wednesday as He entered for the third time since coming up from
Jericho.
In
the book of Mark we learned that this even with the fig tree involved two
successive days. Jesus cursed the fig
tree on the morning He entered Jerusalem to cleanse the Temple, and it was on
the following day, Wednesday, that the disciples noticed that the tree was “withered
from the roots up” (Mark 11:14, 20).
MacArthur adds “Matthew condenses the two events into one account, which
he mentions only in regard to Wednesday.”
He
goes on to write “In light of Jesus’ just having been hailed by the populace as
Israel’s great Messiah and King, His cleansing the Temple an cursing the fig
tree were of special and monumental significance. The cleansing of the Temple was a
denunciation of Israel’s worship, and the cursing of the fig tree was a denunciation
of Israel as a nation. Instead of
overthrowing His nation’s enemies as the people anticipated He might, the
newly-acclaimed King denounced His own People.”
With
that said from the study of the gospels it can certainly be learned that the
spiritual leaders of Israel have certainly missed the truth that Jesus was
indeed their Messiah and their King.
With that said then one can be sure that these actions of Jesus over the
past few days was inconceivable to them that their Messiah would condemn them
instead of deliver them, that would attack Israel instead of Rome. This is why what happened on Monday was so
short lived, turning in a few days to cries for Jesus’ death. Jesus had conclusively demonstrated what both
His words and His actions had testified all along—that He had not come as a
political-military Messiah to free Israel from Rome and set up an earthly
kingdom. I have mentioned before and it
is worth mentioning again that all that Jesus would accomplish from His first
coming to earth can be seen in different passages from the Old Testament,
places like Psalm 22, Isaiah 52-53, and also in the book of Zechariah. There are more to be looked at, but these are
mentioned because they seem to me the most obvious ones to show what Christ
would do while on earth the first time. In
the end, as seen in Luke 19:14 we read about the Jews “We do not want this man
to reign over us” (Luke 19:14).
MacArthur concludes “Jesus’ cursing of the fig tree
was not nearly so powerfully dramatic as the cleansing of the Temple, but it
was equally significant.”
The
significance is what we will be looking at as we go over verse 18-22, Lord
willing in these future Spiritual Diaries.
6/18/2023 8:02 AM
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