SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/21/2023 9:24 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Parable”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
21:19b
Message of the verse: “and He said to it, ‘No longer shall there ever be any fruit from you.” And at once the fig tree withered.”
I have to say that as I was writing this partial
verse out that I was wondering if Christ ever spoke to anything like a fig tree
before. Perhaps when He calmed the sea He may have talked to the storm, after
all Jesus is in control of everything on this earth and. So when He talks to
things like fig trees and storms they will immediately listen to Him, and obey
Him, unlike mankind who for the most part don’t listen to Him.
Jesus
had earlier used a fig tree as an illustration of a barren one in a parable
that He had spoken earlier. The parable
comes from Luke 13:6-9 “6 And He began telling
this parable: "A man had a fig tree which had been planted in his
vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and did not find any. 7 “And he
said to the vineyard-keeper, ‘Behold, for three years I have come looking for fruit
on this fig tree without finding any. Cut it down! Why does it even use up the
ground?’ 8 “And he answered and said to him, ‘Let it alone, sir, for this year
too, until I dig around it and put in fertilizer; 9 and if it bears fruit next year, fine;
but if not, cut it down.’" This
parable speaks of God’s patience before giving out judgment. MacArthur adds “Our Lord makes no specific
comparison of that three years to the three years of His ministry, but it was
three years after Jesus first presented Himself to Israel as her Messiah that
the people declared their final rejection of Him by putting Him to death.”
The
curse of the fig tree in our verse in Matthew will be fulfilled some forty
years later in 70 A. D. when Jerusalem and the Temple in it will be destroyed
by Titus and his Roman soldiers. The
Temple was a magnificent looking building as Herod had added to it, and Titus
did not really want to destroy but there was gold between the giant
foundational stones and the only way to get the gold was to destroy the
building, which is what he did. When
this happened it destroyed the nation of Israel and its religion, because
Israel had not borne any fruit, and it has not to this day.
We
have recently looked at Jesus, the King cleanse the Temple, and the King’s
message was that Israel’s worship was unacceptable, and in cursing the fig tree
it was that Israel as a nation was condemned for its sinfulness and spiritual
fruitlessness. MacArthur writes “Those
messages of doom the people would not tolerate.
They had not accepted John the Baptist’s call to repentance in
preparation for the coming of the kingdom or his declaration that the Messiah
was coming with ‘His winnowing fork…in His hand [to] thoroughly clear His
threshing floor; and [to] gather His wheat into the barn [and to] burn up the
chaff with unquenchable fire’ (Matt 3:1-12).
Nor had they accepted Jesus’ same call to repentance or His command to
come to God in humble contrition and a genuine hunger and thirst for
righteousness (4:17; 5:3-12) They were
not even more ill-disposed to accept His word of judgment.”
Let
us now look at Deuteronomy 28:1-6 in conclusion of this SD, which tells us that when the Lord delivered Israel out of Egypt what He declared to them.
1 "Now it shall be, if you diligently obey
the LORD your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you
today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. 2
“All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the LORD
your God: 3 “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall
you be in the country. 4 “Blessed shall be the offspring of your
body and the produce of your ground and the offspring of your beasts, the
increase of your herd and the young of your flock. 5 “Blessed shall be
your basket and your kneading bowl. 6 “Blessed shall you be when you
come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.”
The Lord also declared the following
later on in this chapter in verses 15-19.
15 "But it shall come about, if you do not obey the
LORD your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with
which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake
you: 16 "Cursed shall you be
in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. 17 “Cursed shall
be your basket and your kneading bowl. 18 “Cursed shall be the
offspring of your body and the produce of your ground, the increase of your
herd and the young of your flock. 19 “Cursed shall you be when
you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out.”
6/21/2023 9:51 AM
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