THE FIG-TREE
The next morning as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus felt
hungry. He noticed a fig tree a little way off that was in full leaf,
so He went over to see if He could find any figs on it. But there were only
leaves because it was too early in the season for fruit. Then Jesus said to
the tree, "May no one ever eat your fruit again!" And the disciples heard
Him say it. Mark 11:12-14
The Hosannahs of yesterday had died away—the memorials of
its triumph were strewed on the road across Olivet—as, early on the Monday
morning, while the sun was just appearing above the Mountains of Moab, the
Divine Redeemer left His Bethany retreat, and was seen re-traversing the
well-worn path to Jerusalem. Here and there, were Fig plantations. The
adjoining village of Bethphage (lit. "the house of figs") derived its name
from the Green Fig. Indeed, fig-trees may still be seen overhanging the
ordinary road from Jerusalem to Bethany, growing out of the rocks of the
solid mountains, which, by the prayer of faith, might be removed and cast
into the distant Mediterranean Sea.
An incident connected with one of these is too intimately
identified with the Redeemer's last journeys to and from the home of His
friend to admit of exclusion from our "Bethany Memories." These memories
have hitherto, for the most part, in connection at least with our blessed
Lord, been soothing, hallowed, encouraging. Here the "still small
voice" is for once broken with sterner accents. In contrast with the
bright background of other sunny pictures, we have, standing out in bold
relief, a withered, sapless stem, impressively proclaiming, in
unusual utterances of wrath and rebuke, that the same hand is "strong
to smite," which we have witnessed so lately in the case of Lazarus was
"strong to save."
The eye of Jesus, as he traversed the rocky path with His
disciples, rested on a fig-tree. It seems not to have been growing alone,
but formed part of a group or plantation on one of the slopes or ravines of
Olivet. Its appearance could not fail to challenge attention. It was now
only the Passover season (the month of April); summer—the time for ripe
figs—was yet distant. And as it is one of the peculiarities of the fig-tree
that the fruit appears before the leaves, a considerable period, in
the ordinary course of nature, ought to have elapsed—before the foliage
was matured. Jesus Himself, it will be remembered, on another occasion,
spoke of the putting forth of the fig-tree leaves as an indication that
"summer was near." It must have been, therefore, a strange and unusual sight
which met the eye of the travelers as they gazed, in early spring, on
one of these trees with its full complement of leaves—clad in full summer
luxuriance. While the other fig-trees in the plantation, true to the order
of development, were yet bare and leafless, or else the buds of spring only
flushing them with verdure, the broad leaves of this premature (and we may
think at first favored) plant—the pioneer of surrounding
vegetation—rustled in the morning breeze, and invited the passers-by to turn
aside, examine the marvel, and pluck the fruit.
We may confidently infer that Jesus, as the Omniscient
Lord of the inanimate creation, knew well that there was no fruit
under that pretentious foliage. We dare not suppose that He went
expecting to find figs; far less, that in a moment of disappointed hope, He
ventured on a capricious exercise of His power, uttered a hasty
malediction, and condemned the insensible boughs to barrenness and decay.
The first cursory reading of the narrative may suggest some such unworthy
impression. But we dismiss it at once, as strangely at variance with the
Savior's character, and strangely unlike His customary actings. We feel
assured that He literally, as well as figuratively, would not "break the
bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax." He came, in all respects, "not
to destroy, but to save." Some deep inner meaning, not apparent on the
surface of the inspired story, must have led Him for the moment to regard a
tree in the light of a responsible agent, and to address it in words
of unusual severity.
What, then, is the explanation? Our Lord on this occasion
revives the old typical or picture-teaching with which the
Hebrews were to that hour so familiar. He, as the greatest of prophets,
adopts the significant and impressive method, frequently employed by the
Prophets of Israel, who, in uttering startling and solemn truths, did so by
means of symbolic actions. As Jeremiah of old dashed the potter's
vessel down the Valley of Hinnom, to indicate the judgments that were
about to befall Jerusalem; or, at another time, wore around his own neck
a wooden yoke, to intimate their approaching bondage under the King of
Babylon; or, as Isaiah "walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and
wonder to Egypt and Ethiopia," so did our Lord now invest a tree in silent
nature with a prophet's warning voice, and make its stripped and blighted
boughs eloquent of a nation's doom!
On the height of their own Olivet, looking down, as it
were, on Jerusalem, that fig-tree becomes a stern messenger of woe and
vengeance to the whole house of Judah. Often before had He warned by His
words and tears; now He is to make an insignificant object in the
natural world take up His prophecy, and testify to the degenerate people at
once the cause, the suddenness, and the certainty of
their destruction! Let us join, then, the Master and His disciples, as they
stand on the crest above Bethany, and, gazing on that fruitless
leaf-bearer, "hear this parable of the fig-tree."
Jesus, on approaching it (it seemed to be at a little
distance from their path), and finding abundance of leaves, but no fruit
thereon, condemns it to perpetual sterility and barrenness. A difficulty
here occurs on the threshold of the narrative. If, as we have noted, and as
Mark tells us, "the time of figs was not yet"—why this seeming impatience?
why this harsh sentence for not having what, if found, would have been
unseasonable, untimely, abnormal? In this apparent difficulty lies the main
truth and pith of the parable. The doom of barrenness, be it carefully
noted, was uttered by Jesus, not so much because of the absence of fruit,
but because the tree, by its premature display of leaves, challenged
expectations which a closer inspection did not realize. "It was punished,"
says an able writer, "not for being without fruit, but for proclaiming, by
the voice of those leaves, that it had such. Not for being barren, but for
being false."
Graphic picture of boastful and vaunting Israel! This
conspicuous tree, near one of the frequented paths of Olivet, was no
inappropriate type, surely, of that nation which stood illustrious amid the
world's kingdoms—exalted to heaven with unexampled privileges which
it abused—proudly claiming a righteousness which, when weighed in the
balances, was found utterly lacking. It mattered not that the heathen
nations were as guilty, vile, and corrupt as the chosen people.
Fig-trees they were, also—naked stems; fruitless and leafless; but then the
heathen made no boastful pretensions. The Jews had, in the face of the
world, been glorying in a righteousness which, in reality, was only like the
foliage of that tree by which the Lord and His disciples now stood—mocking
the expectations of its owner by mere outward semblance and an utter
absence of fruit.
The very day preceding, these mournful deficiencies had
brought tears to the Savior's eyes—stirred the depths of His yearning heart
in the very hour of His triumph. He had looked down from the height of the
mountain on the gilded splendors of the Temple Courts beneath; but, alas! He
saw that sanctimonious hypocrisy, and self-righteous formalism had sheltered
themselves behind clouds of incense. Mammon, covetousness, oppression,
fraud, were rising like strange fire from these defiled altars! He turns
the tears of yesterday into an expressive and enduring parable today! He
approaches a luxuriant Fig-tree, boasting great things among its fellows,
and thus through it He addresses a doomed city and devoted land—"O House of
Israel," He seems to say, "I have come up for the last time to your highest
and most ancient festival. You stand forth in the midst of the nations of
the earth clothed in rich verdure. You retain intact the splendor of
your ancestral ritual. You boast of your rigid adherence to its outward
ceremonial, the punctilious observance of your fasts and feasts. But I have
found that it is but 'a name to live.' You sinfully ignore 'the weightier
matters of the law: judgment, justice, and mercy!' You call out as you tread
that gorgeous temple—'The Temple of the Lord! The Temple of the Lord! The
Temple of the Lord are we!' You forget that your hearts are the Temple I
prize! Holiness, the most acceptable incense—love to God, and
love to man, the most pleasing sacrifice. All that dead and torpid
formalism—that mockery of outward foliage—is to Me nothing. 'The incense you
bring Me is a stench in My nostrils! Your celebrations of the new moon and
the Sabbath day, and your special days for fasting—even your most pious
meetings—are all sinful and false. I want nothing more to do with them.'
These are only as the whitewash of your sepulchers to hide the loathsomeness
within—'the rottenness and dead men's bones!' If you had made no impious
pretensions, I would not have dealt so sternly with you. If like the other
trees you had confessed your nakedness, and stood with your leafless stems,
waiting for summer suns, and dews, and rains, to fructify you, and to bring
your fruit to perfection—all would be well; but you have sought to mock
and deceive me by your falsity, and thus precipitated the doom of the
cumberer. Henceforth, let no one eat fruit of you forever!"
The unconscious Tree listened! One night passed, and
the morrow found it with drooping leaf and blighted stem! On yonder
mountain crest it stood, as a sign between heaven and earth of impending
judgment. Eighteen hundred years have taken up its parable—fearfully
authenticated the averments of the Majestic Speaker! Israel, a bared,
leafless, sapless trunk, testifies to this hour, before the nations, that
"heaven and earth may pass away, but God's words will not pass away!"
"The fig-tree, rich in foliage, but destitute of fruit,
represents the Jewish people, so abundant in outward shows of piety, but
destitute of its reality. Their vital sap was squandered upon leaves. And as
the fruitless tree, failing to realize the aim of its being, was destroyed,
so the theocratic nation, for the same reason, was to be overtaken, after
long forbearance, by the judgments of God, and shut out from His kingdom."—Neander.
But does the parable stop here? Was there no voice but
for the ear of Judah and Jerusalem? Have we no part in these solemn
monitions? Ah! be assured, as Jesus dealt with nations so will He
deal with individuals. This parable-miracle solemnly speaks to
all who have only a name to live—the foliage of outward profession—but who
are destitute of the "fruits of righteousness." It is not neglecters or
despisers—the careless—the infidel—the scorner—our Lord here addresses. He
deals with such elsewhere. It is rather vaunting hypocrites—wearing the garb
of religion—the trappings and dress of outward devotion to conceal
their inward pollution; like the ivy, screening from view by garlands
of fantastic beauty—wreaths of loveliest green—the moldering trunk or
loathsome ruin!
We may well believe none are more obnoxious to a holy
Savior than such. He (Incarnate TRUTH) would rather have the naked stem
than the counterfeit blossom. He would rather have no gold, than
be mocked with tinsel and base alloy! "I know your deeds, that you are
neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other!" says He,
speaking to one of His Churches at a later time. He would rather a man
openly avowed his enmity than that he should come in disguise, with a
traitor-heart, among the ranks of His people.
Oh that all such ungodly boasters and
pretenders would bear in mind, that not only do they inflict harm on
themselves, but they do infinite damage to the Church of God. They lower the
standard of godliness. Like that worthless Fig-tree, they help to hide from
others the glorious sunlight. They intercept from others the refreshing dews
of heaven. They absorb in their leaves the rains as they fall. Many a tuft
of tiny moss, many a lowly plant at their feet, is pining and withering,
which, but for them, would be bathing its tints in sunshine, and filling the
air with balmy fragrance!
Solemn, then, ought to be the question with every one of
us—every Fig-tree in the Lord's plantation—How does it stand with me? am I
now bringing forth fruit to God? for remember what we are NOW, will fix what
we shall be when our Lord shall come on the Great Day of Scrutiny! We
are forming now for Eternity; settling down and consolidating in the great
mold which ultimately will determine our everlasting state. If we are
fruitless now, we shall be fruitless then. The principle in the future
retribution is thus laid down—"He that is unjust, let him be unjust still;
and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still."
The demand and scrutiny of Jesus will on that day be, not
what is the number of your leaves, the height of your stem, the extent of
your branches! not whether you have grown on the wayside or in the
forest, been nurtured in solitude or in a crowd, on the mountain-height or
in the lowly valley! All will resolve itself into the one question—Where
is your fruit? What evidence is there that you have profited by My
admonitions, listened to My voice, and accepted My salvation? Where are your
proofs of love to Myself, delight in My service, obedience to My will? Where
are the sins you have crucified, the sacrifices you have made, the new
principles you have nurtured, the amiability and love and kindness and
generosity and unselfishness which have supplanted and superseded baser
affections?
See that the leaves of outward profession do not
become a snare to you. You may be lulling yourselves to sleep with
delusive opiates! You may be making these false coverings an excuse for
not "putting on of the armor of light." One has no difficulty in persuading
the tenant of a wretched hovel to consent to have his mud-hut taken down;
but the man who has the walls of his dwelling hung with gaudy drapery, it is
hard to persuade him that his house is worthless and his foundation
insecure. Do not think that privileges or creeds, or church-sect or
church-membership, or the Shibboleth of church-party will save you.
It is to the heart that God looks. If the inner spirit be right, the
outer conduct will be fruitful in righteousness. Make it not your worthless
ambition to appear to be holy, but be holy!
Live not a "dying life"—that blank existence which brings
neither glory to God nor good to men. Seek that while you live, the world
may be the better for you, and when you die the world may miss you. Unlike
the pretentious tree in our parable-text, be it yours rather to have the
nobler character and recompense, so beautifully delineated under a similar
figure three thousand years ago—"He shall be like a tree planted by the
rivers of water, that brings forth his fruit in his season. His leaf, also,
shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper."
Let us further learn, from this solemn and impressive
miracle, how true Christ is to His word. We think of Him as true to
His promises; do we think of Him, also, as true to His
threatenings? Judgment, indeed, is His strange work. Amid a
multitude of other miracles already performed by Him, this "cursing of the
fig-tree" formed the exclusive exception to His miracles of mercy. All the
other miracles were proofs and illustrations of beneficence, compassion,
love. But He seems to interpose this one, in case we should
forget, in the affluence of benignity and kindness, that the same God, whose
name and memorial is "merciful and gracious," has solemnly added that "He
can by no means clear the guilty."
He would have us to remember that there is a point beyond
which even His love cannot go, when the voice of ineffable goodness
must melt and merge into tones of stern wrath and vengeance. The
guilty may, for the brief earthly hour of their impenitence, despise His
divine warnings, and laugh to scorn His solemn expostulations. Sentence may
not be executed speedily; amazing patience may ward off the inevitable blow.
They may, from the very forbearance of Jesus, take impious encouragement to
defy His threats, and rush swifter to their own destruction. But come He
will, and must, to assert His claims as "He who is HOLY, He who is TRUE."
The disciples, on the present occasion, heard the voice
of their Master. They gazed on the doomed Fig-tree, but there seemed at the
moment to be no visible judgment on its leaves. As they took their
final glance before passing on their way, no blight seemed to descend, no
worm to prey on its roots. The fowls of Heaven may have appeared soaring in
the sky, eager to nestle as before on its branches, and to bathe their
plumage on the dewdrops that drenched its foliage. But was the word of
Jesus in vain? Did that fig-tree take up a responsive parable, and say,
"Who made You a ruler and a judge over me?"
The Lord and His apostles passed that same place a few
hours afterwards on their return to Bethany. But though the Passover moon
was shining on their path, the darkness, and perhaps the distance from the
highway, veiled from their view the too truthful doom to be revealed in
morning light. As the dawn of day finds them once more on their road to
Jerusalem, the eyes of the disciples wander towards the spot to see whether
the words of yesterday have proved to be indeed solemn verities. One glance
is enough! There it stands in impressive memorial. One night had done the
work. No desert whirlwind, if it had passed over it, could have effected it
more thoroughly. Its leaves were shriveled, its sap dried, its glory gone.
Ever and always afterwards, as the disciples crossed the mountain, and as
they gazed on this silent "preacher," they would be reminded that
Jehovah-Jesus, their loving Master, was not "a man that He should lie, nor
the son of man that He should repent."
Ah! Reader, learn from all this, that the wrathful
utterances of the Savior are no idle threats. He means what He
says! He is "the Faithful and True witness;" and though "mercy and truth
go continually before His face," "justice and judgment are the habitation of
His throne." You may be scorning His message—lulling yourself into a dream
of guilty indifference. You may see in His daily dealings no sign or symbol
of coming retribution; you may be echoing the old challenge of the
presumptuous scoffer—"Where is the promise of His coming?" The fig leaves
may have lost none of their verdure—the sky may be unfretted by one vengeful
cloud—nature around you, may be hushed and still. You can hear no footsteps
of wrath; you may be even tempted at times to think that all is a dream—that
credulity has allowed itself to be duped by a counterfeit tale of
superstitious terror!
Or if, in better moments, you awake to a consciousness of
the Bible averments being stern realities, your next subterfuge is to trust
to that rope of sand to which thousands have clung, to the wreck of
their eternities—an indefinite dreamy hope in the final mercy of
God! that on the Great Day the threatenings of Jesus will undergo some
modification; that He will not carry out to the very letter the full weight
of His denunciations! that the arm which love nailed to the cross of Calvary
will sheathe the sword of avenging retribution, and proclaim a universal
amnesty, to the thronging myriads at His tribunal!
No! O man, who are you that replies against God? Come to
the fig-tree near Bethany, and let it be a silent attesting witness
to the Savior's unswerving and immutable truthfulness! Or, passing from the
sign to the thing symbolized, behold the Jewish nation which God has for
eighteen centuries set up in the world as a monument of His undeviating
adherence to His Word. See how, in their case, to the letter He has
fulfilled His threatenings. Is not this fulfillment intended as an awful
foreshadowing of eternal verities: if He has "spared not the natural
branches," do you think He will spare you? "If these things were done in the
green tree, what will be done in the dry?"
Mourners! You for whose comfort these pages are specially
designed, is there no lesson of consolation to be drawn from this
solemn "memory?" Jesus smote down that fig-tree—blasted and blighted it.
Never again did He come to seek fruit on it. Ten thousand other buds in the
Fig-forest around were opening their fragrant lips to drink in the
refreshing dews of spring; but the curse of perpetual barrenness rested on
this one tree! He has smitten you also, but it is only to heal. He has bared
your branches—stripped you of your verdure—broken "your staff and your
beautiful rod;" but the pruning hook has been used to promote the vigor of
the tree; to lop off the needless branches, and open the stems to the
gladsome sunlight. Murmur not! Remember, but for these loppings of
affliction you might have bloomed into the lush luxuriant growth of
mere external profession. You might have rested satisfied with the
outward display of Religiousness, without the fruits of true Religion.
You might have lived and died unproductive cumberers, deceiving others
and deceiving yourselves.
But He would not allow you to linger in this state of
worthless barrenness. Oh! better far, surely, these severest cuttings
and incisions of the pruning knife, than to listen to the stern
words—"Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone!" It is the most
terrible of all judgments when God leaves a sinner undisturbed in his
sinfulness—abandons him to "the fruit of his own ways, and to be filled with
his own devices;" until, like a tree impervious to moistening dews and
fructifying heat, he dwarfs and dwindles into the last hopeless stage of
spiritual decay and death!
"If you endure chastening—God deals with you as with
sons; for what son is he whom the Father chastens not?" "He prunes
it, that it may bring forth more fruit."