20 The next morning as Jesus was passing by with his followers, they saw the fig tree dry and dead, even to the roots. 21 Peter remembered the tree and said to Jesus, “Teacher, look! The fig tree you cursed is dry and dead!” 22 Jesus answered, “Have faith in God. 23 I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, fall into the sea.’ And if you have no doubts in your mind and believe that what you say will happen, God will do it for you.” ~ Mark 11:20-23
The measure of any society is its worship because it is whom we worship that defines us and determines our eternal destiny. This is why the Lord Jesus cursed the fig tree in our previous study and He went into the temple and drove out those who were insincere. As we have pointed out before, the fig tree was a metaphor of the unbelieving hearts of Israel's people.
In v.20 of today's passage we read, "The next morning as Jesus was passing by with his followers, they saw the fig tree dry and dead, even to the roots."
The next day was Wednesday of the passion week. When the Lord Jesus and His disciples passed the cursed fig tree, it began to be more and more clear to the disciples why the Lord cursed the fig tree. They began to see that the religion of the Jews had been corrupted as evidenced by the activities in the temple the day before. And, just a few days later, when the temple curtain before the Holy of Holies was ripped from top to bottom, they would note that these activities were from God who was dismantling the false worship of Judaism.
True worship was and is possible, but no longer at the temple. And, after the crucifixion and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, it became clear that true worship only happens in the shadow of the cross. It is the cross of the Lord Jesus that makes sense of those things in our lives that aid our worship of God. Those things are mostly unwanted by us and they all find their origin in our hunger and in our thirst for that which is substantive.
In v.21 of today's passage we read, "Peter remembered the tree and said to Jesus, 'Teacher, look! The fig tree you cursed is dry and dead!'"
Here, Peter began to recognize the relationship between the fig tree and the cleaning out of the greedy in the temple. Much of our existence upon this earth is made up of connecting the dots. We are able to do this because we are relational beings. Relationship is such a great concept and reality from God.
Before His crucifixion and resurrection, the Lord Jesus told His disciples that He must die in order to connect the sinful hearts of man to the holy heart of God. He explained that though He was leaving this world, His followers would not be left alone or without power.
In John 14:25-26 the Lord Jesus said, "All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you."
In v.22-23 of today's passage we read, "22 Jesus answered, 'Have faith in God. 23 I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, Go, fall into the sea. And if you have no doubts in your mind and believe that what you say will happen, God will do it for you.'"
When the Lord Jesus explained to His disciples the cursing of the fig tree. He did not provide the secret of how to curse a fig tree, He provided the secret of how to live so as not to be cursed. The fig tree was an analogy of the people of Israel who were cursed because they had substituted vibrant faith in the God of the Bible with empty, meaningless religious performance. The Lord Jesus was not giving a formula for throwing mountains into the sea; He was underscoring the imperative of placing our faith in the God of the Bible. He knows that we all struggle with mountains which oppose our faith. Their hunger and thirst had not served them well.
The main subject in this section is prayer. Essential to worship is prayer which is essential to our existence. If we are to become totally dependent on the One whom we cannot see, we must be given to having personal conversations with Him daily. This is where our hunger and thirst factors into this process.
Like the woman at the well in John 4, we long for meaningful interaction. The Lord Jesus had come to save this woman from her own slavery, not just from loneliness but from sin and death. The Lord Jesus offered to quench the thirst that she had probably never recognized. Her dry mouth and the distant well were not her only problems. Even her five husbands and her present de facto were only symptoms of the problem.
The ultimate need of the woman at the well was not to be in the arms of the perfect bachelor but in the arms of the loving God who created her. She had a God shaped hole that no man could fill. She had made the most common mistake: she had turned her men into gods, and as every woman soon realizes, men make lousy gods. Her greatest need was for eternal life, to know the true and living God, and his Son the Lord Jesus Christ. Only an honest relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ fulfills. Unlike the woman at the well, the people in Israel in that day had not been served well by their hunger and thirst. They had become religious.
As illustrated in that cursed fig tree, the ultimate judgment of God is coming. The cursing of the fig tree was the first destructive miracle in the Gospels, all the rest are constructive: casting out demons, healing diseases, raising dead people, feeding multitudes, stopping storms. And, it was a precursor of what will come at the end of time as we know it.
In the Babylonian Talmud we are introduced to a rabbi who was able to teach a difficult passage, or who could solve a difficult riddle or a problem. The talmud refers to that person as the "rooter up of mountains." This is the background to the statement made by the Lord Jesus in v.23.
Through this old analogy, the Lord Jesus was saying that removing obstacles to a life of faith in the God of the Bible so as to avoid the curse is what this is all about. True worship has always been on God’s terms, but now the terms have changed in this one fundamental respect. True worship is not about a place but a person. It’s not about Jerusalem but the Lord Jesus. There is not a place on the face of the earth, nor a building, nor part of a building that will bring us into the presence of God. The question is not where we worship but whom we worship. The old has gone and the new has come.
It’s not the nature of faith here that is the issue, it’s the character of God that is the issue. All of our prayers must begin with His honor, His kingdom, His will be done. Our faith and our words spoken in faith have zero power. God has all the power. Our faith in Him is only a way to activate His power within the framework of His purposes for our lives. And, the issue here is whether we believe God or whether we doubt God. Don’t doubt; believe. And believe that what He says is going to happen, and it will be granted. The Lord Jesus was calling for faith: faith in the power of God, not in our power to believe.
