This week’s lesson (4/8/12) focused on the fig tree. I knew that it wasn’t coincidence that the fig tree kept popping up around Jesus’ appearances in the temple (at Jerusalem), but God hadn’t led me to dig more deeply until this past week. Mk 11:12 says that Jesus was hungry. If you connect that back with Luke 4:4 (during the time Satan was tempting Jesus in the wilderness), Jesus is mentioned as being hungry. Satan thought it was for food, but Jesus replied, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word and expression that comes from the mouth of God.” (Amp). He wasn’t hungry for food in Lk 4:4, and I don’t think He was hungry for food in Mk 11 either. So what was He hungry for? He was hungry for the fruit of the Spirit, but was finding none in the temple or from those who looked as if they should be overflowing with it – the Pharisees and Sadducees. Hang with me for a second …
If you look back at Mk 11:13, the fig tree had leaves, and with fig trees, the fruit comes on at the same time as the leaves, so (regardless of season), if there were leaves, there should have been fruit. The Pharisees and were in full leaf. People came to them hungry for food (spiritually speaking), and if anyone should have been bearing fruit, it was the Pharisees. At the time of Mk 11, Jesus was preparing to fulfill all the requirements of the Law (Matt 5:17). Once that happened, the people would no longer need to go to the temple to be fed (again, spiritually speaking). The fruitless fig tree (i.e. the temple and its leaders and by extension the Law of Moses) had become a burden to the soil (Lk 13:6-7) and “the ax [was] lying at the root of the trees” (Matt 3:10).
I would encourage you to go back over the Scripture used in last week’s lesson (referenced above). How does it connect with the other things you’ve been reading about in your Bible, including memory verses? How does it connect to things in your life and family? I just get more and more excited about the direction God is leading our study!
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