Matt 21:18–32 — The Fruitless Fig Tree

We are in this very important section of the Gospel of Matthew, which begins in Matthew chapter 21 and continues up until the Passion narrative, which begins in Matthew 26. These five chapters, Matthew 21 through 25, are a crucial block of teaching that prepares us for the Passion, prepares us for the death and resurrection of Christ by telling us what is happening. If you were there, if you were just an ordinary Jewish person who was standing there on the day when Jesus was crucified, you might be tempted to think that all that happened was just simply a person who claimed to be the Messiah, some rabbi who had some strange ideas, got in trouble with the Jewish authorities and was crucified and put to death, handed over to the Romans and killed. because of his strange claims to be the Messiah. But if you have faith, if you are not simply an ordinary Jew who’s just standing there looking at these events from the outside, if you have faith, if you view the death and resurrection of Christ from the perspective of the gospel narrative that tells us what is really going on there, is that we are beholding not simply the death of a person who claimed to be the Messiah, we are beholding the death and resurrection of Israel. That is what the Gospel of Matthew is telling us, and that’s what this block of teaching in Matthew 21 through 25, preparing us for the passion narrative, is telling us.

It’s telling us that the old Israel, which is symbolized by the great symbols of Judaism, the temple, as well as the Jewish leadership, the Jewish authorities and the Pharisees, the old Israel is coming to an end. but it is not the end because through the death and resurrection of Christ, the new Israel is being raised to a new existence in the person of Christ and in the church that is gathered around Christ. We come to this important part of the narrative after Jesus has entered into Jerusalem riding on a donkey to show that he is a humble king who’s coming to die. He’s not coming as a militaristic, patriotic, nationalistic hero. He’s coming as the king who’s coming to die for his people.

He then enters into the temple and cleanses the temple, showing that he has authority over the temple and implying that he is critiquing the current Jewish leadership. and their control of the temple. After all, they’re the ones that permitted the money changers to set up shop within the temple courts. And so by cleansing the temple and casting out the money changers from the temple, he is declaring his authority as the Messiah over that temple and implying that that temple is going to come to an end and he is going to raise it again from the dead in that new Israel that we were just talking about. Continuing on then, it says in Matthew 21 verse 17 that he left them and went out of the city to Bethany and he lodged there. Bethany is on the Mount of Olives. You have Mount Zion where Jerusalem is and the temple on the top. Then you have the Kidron Valley and then there’s another mountain over to the east which is the Mount of Olives.

That’s where he came down when he was coming with the crowd. He came down and he went to the city of Bethphage, a little town, a little village on the Mount of Olives. That’s where he told the disciples, go and get the donkey for me. And then he went down the Brook Kidron and came up into the city. Now he’s going back the other way. He’s going back to Bethany, which is another town like Bethphage, there on the Mount of Olives. Leaving the town, leaving the city of Jerusalem, he went to the city of Bethany and he lodged there for the night. Then in the morning, verse 18, as he was returning to the city, that is to Jerusalem, he became hungry. and he saw a fig tree by the wayside, and he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves.”

The Fruitless Fig Tree

Here, Jesus is using the fig tree as a symbol for the people of God. In the Old Testament, there are two main metaphors or images that are used to describe the people of God. One is the people of God are viewed as a vine, And the other is they’re sometimes viewed as a fig tree. And both the vine and the fig tree, of course, are symbols of the idea that there is this living organism that produces fruit. At least that is what is intended.

For an example of seeing Israel as a vine, look at Isaiah chapter 5. verses one and two, my beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill and he looked for it to yield grapes but it yielded only wild grapes. Another example of Israel as a vine is in Psalm 80 verses eight and nine where it says that God cleared out the nations and he planted his vine in the land, and he’s looking for it to bring forth fruit. But Israel is also described as a fig tree.

For example, in Micah 7, Verse one, and this particular cross-reference is very helpful for our text. In Micah 7, verse one, this is in the Minor Prophets, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah. Micah 7 says, woe is me, for I have become as when the summer fruit has been gathered, as when the grapes have been gleaned, and there is no cluster to eat, no first ripe fig that my soul desires. And there’s some other references as well, Jeremiah 8, verse 13, Hosea 9, verse 10. We even have another verse in Joel, Joel 1, verse 7, that combines the two, where Israel is referred to as God’s vine and God’s fig tree at the same time.

The point of this metaphor for viewing the people of God as a vine or a fig tree is that God desires the sweet summer fruit from God’s people. He longs to come to his people and find the sweet fruit to satisfy his soul. Now, we don’t normally think of figs as being that, right? That’s not in our culture. Perhaps for us it would be, I can’t wait for the sweet summer corn or the sweet summer watermelon. But in ancient culture, in ancient Israel, the summer fig, that was the delightful sweet summer fruit that would be satisfying to the soul. What is the fruit that God is desiring from his people?

Well, he desires true love of God that flows out in true love of neighbor. That is the sum of the law and the prophets, as Jesus will teach in a few paragraphs as we go on in Matthew. We’re in Matthew 21 right now, but if you turn over to Matthew 22, we have that passage where Jesus summarizes the whole law and the prophets as we read in the call to confession in our service a few minutes ago. That is the fruit that God desires from his people, that they would love God with all their heart and that they would love their neighbor as themselves, which is the outflow of their love of God.

The point of this whole passage and the point of the sermon today is that you can only be that delightful sweet summer fig in God’s mouth if you embrace Christ in humble faith, joy, and worship. We see that in our text, right? We see that the people who are embracing Christ, the crowd from Galilee that is going with Jesus from Galilee down to Jerusalem, who are entering with Him into the city, who are putting out their cloaks before Him, who are crying out, Hosanna to the Son of David, the blind and the lame who come to Him in the temple, the children who are crying out, Hosanna to the Son of David. They are that good fruit. They are the ones who are that pleasing sweet summer fruit in God’s mouth because they embrace Christ in humble faith and joy and true worship.

Whereas the Jewish leadership, those who are in control of the temple, those who are seemingly the ones who are the pious, godly ones, who have zeal for God’s law and for the purity of the temple, they have a great outward show of piety, but they do not have real love of God and neighbor.

The abundance of leaves that Jesus saw, he saw the fig tree and he thought from a distance, wow, look at all those leaves. gave him the impression that there’s got to be some fruit under those leaves, right? If it’s full of leaves, that’s a symbol, that’s a sign that the fruit is about to come out. But when he got up closer to it and he began inspecting behind those leaves, he found nothing. He found nothing but only leaves. The leaves promised fruit, but no fruit was to be found.

Just like the Jews’ great show of outward piety and zeal for the worship of God in the temple and zeal for the purity laws and keeping the law and keeping the Sabbath, all of these things were an outward show of piety, but underneath was no genuine fruit, no genuine love for God and for neighbor.

As Jesus said earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew 15, verse eight, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. They honor you with their lips. They claim to believe in God and to obey God’s laws. They claim to be full of zeal for the holiness of God and the purity of the people of God.

In that context, in Matthew 15, Pharisees were criticizing the disciples for eating without washing their hands first. It had nothing to do with hygiene. or getting rid of the germs. It had to do with following the ritual purity laws that the Pharisees borrowed from the Levitical priests. They were required of the Levitical priests and said that all of God’s people needed to keep those things.

This people honors me with their lips, with this great outward show of piety, but their heart is not in it. They’re not doing it out of love for me and love for neighbor. They have a great show of all the leaves that seem to imply great piety and godliness and holiness. And yet they have no genuine love for God. Their hearts are far from God.

And so Jesus, when he found the fig tree with nothing but leaves, he said to it, may no fruit ever come from you again. And the fig tree withered at once. This is another parable, if you will, although it’s more like an acted-out parable, similar to the various signs that the prophets would do in the Old Testament. For example, there’s this one acted-out parable of Ezekiel, where to warn God’s people about the coming Babylonian captivity, God told him to get a brick, which was a symbol for the temple, and put it on the floor, and then he was supposed to lie down next to the brick naked, symbolizing the judgment of God upon the temple. This is an acted out prophetic sign. Jesus is doing something similar here by withering the fig tree. The fig tree stands for the nation of Israel.

It may seem like by withering it, that’s what kills it, but in reality, it’s already dead. It has no fruit. And no fruit means it has no life. Jesus simply pronounces it to be dead and then it causes the tree to wither up. This is the death of Israel, although let’s not forget that the resurrection of Israel is coming as we keep reading in the story as Jesus is raised from the dead and creates the new Israel. of those who believe in him, whether Jew or Gentile. But for the public national Israel under the leadership of the scribes and the Pharisees and the high priests, there is no further opportunity for repentance. They have rejected Jesus the Messiah. Their cancer is terminal. And so Jesus pronounces the death of the old Israel.

Now in verse 20, the disciples marveled. They said, how did the fig tree wither at once? And Jesus answered them, truly I say to you, If you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, be taken up and thrown into the sea, it will happen. The disciples seem, as usual, to miss the point of this symbolic action of the withering of the fig tree, and all they see is the raw power of the miracle itself. And they’re astonished that the fig tree withered immediately at the word of Jesus. Of course, that is a sign of Christ’s authority, his divine authority, to be able to wither the fig tree instantaneously like that.

But Jesus’ reply says that if they have faith, they will be able to move mountains. Now, we do not see any mountains being moved in the book of Acts. You turn to the book of Acts and you see the ministry of the apostles after the death, resurrection, and exaltation of Christ. You don’t see them actually going around and moving mountains into the sea in a literal way.

And so clearly this is figurative language. This mountain symbolizes the old Israel. It symbolizes Jerusalem and the temple and the whole system of external national Israel with its current state of being in rebellion against Jesus and not acknowledging that he is the Messiah.

And so Jesus here is speaking about what will happen through his death and resurrection, which is the death and resurrection of Israel, and will then continue into the church age, which is the inauguration of the new creation and the new Israel. He’s speaking about their authority that they will have as apostles to exercise the keys of the kingdom and to not only pronounce judgment upon Israel, but also to open the doors of the kingdom to the Gentiles and to begin the whole erection and beginning of this new mountain, this new temple, which is the spiritual kingdom of Christ in the church. Now in verse 23, when he enters the temple, so he was coming back to the city, just like the triumphal entry, he’s coming to the gates of the city, on the outskirts of the city, he sees this fig tree, he pronounces a curse upon it, but then he goes back into the temple just like he did in verses 12 and following. He goes back into the temple and of course this reminds the chief priests and the elders of the fact that just the day before he had been there and that he had overturned the tables of the money changers and that he had driven out all of those who were selling their wares in the temple. And so the temple authorities, the chief priests and the elders of the people, they are responding to Jesus’s authoritative action. In a sense, it’s as if Jesus threw down the gauntlet, right? He threw down the gauntlet at them and said, you guys are corrupt.

You are not the true custodians of God’s holy house. I am. I am the true messianic claimant who has authority over the temple. He has directly challenged their authority and so they respond by challenging his authority. They ask by what authority are you doing these things? Now obviously this is not an honest question as if they simply want to know. They’ve already made up their mind. They already think that he has no legitimate authority. Rather, what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to challenge Jesus in front of the crowds in order to deflect the crowds from respecting Jesus to returning to their authority. And Jesus knows that they are asking this question out of a heart of unbelief that has already rejected him.

And so Jesus responds to their question by asking them a question. He turns the tables on them and asks them a question. Such a brilliant move, as you see throughout this whole section of the Gospel of Matthew. We’re gonna see some more controversies in Matthew 22, where the Sadducees come up to Jesus and challenge him about the resurrection. The Pharisees ask him about the commandments and so on.

The Question of Authority

And Jesus continually turns the tables and answers in a brilliant way that shows his authority as the Messiah, that shows that he is indeed the Messiah. who has the right way of interpreting scripture and the right way of understanding what God is doing. So Jesus asked them a question, and the question has to do with John the Baptist. the important topic of John the Baptist and his ministry comes back up again here in our text. It’s such an interesting thing as I’ve been preaching through Matthew to notice how often the topic of John the Baptist keeps coming up.

Of course, we know at the very beginning of the story the ministry of John the Baptist, calling people to repentance, and then Jesus comes and is baptized by him. That’s recorded in Matthew 3. But then as you continue throughout the gospel, this subject of what is the purpose of John the Baptist’s ministry? What is his ministry all about?

Keeps returning, and Jesus himself keeps going back to it. Jesus talks about John the Baptist in Matthew 11. He talks about John the Baptist in Matthew 17. Why? Why is the topic of John the Baptist brought up again? Why does Jesus challenge the authorities by saying, I will ask you a question, and if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things.

The baptism of John, that is the whole ministry, public teaching, and baptism of John, where did it come from? Was John and his whole ministry of preaching a baptism of repentance, was that from heaven, that is from God, or was it merely from man? Was it merely his own idea and his own teaching? Was it a divine ministry that God himself had ordained and sent, or was it simply his own teaching from his own ideas?

So Jesus brings up John again because John the Baptist also spoke of the death and resurrection of Israel, just as Jesus here is teaching that through the symbolic action of cursing the fig tree and through cleansing the temple. John the Baptist said the same thing. Remember back in Matthew chapter three, verses seven through 10, that when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, John said to them, You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

Bear fruit. Ah, there’s that key word fruit, which ties in with our text about the fruitless fig tree. Bear fruit in keeping with repentance and do not presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. We’re good, we’re biological descendants of Abraham, so we don’t need to worry about having our hearts right with God. We’re okay as we are. We can presume upon our election just based upon our descent from Abraham. Don’t presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father, for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham, a new Israel. Even now, the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Even now, the fig tree is about to be withered. For every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

What John taught in his preaching, specifically when he saw the Pharisees coming to his baptism, is exactly what Jesus is teaching here in our text, although he’s doing it in a symbolic way with this action of pronouncing a curse upon the fig tree. But notice that there’s both the death and the resurrection of Israel implied here, right? The death of Israel because they’re fruitless, they’re under a curse, the ax is laid to the root of the trees because of the lack of fruit, but there’s also this expectation and hope that through this Messiah, whom John introduces to Israel by baptizing Jesus, that this Messiah is the one through whom God is going to raise up children for Abraham, through whom God is going to raise up a new tree, a new fig tree that will bring forth fruit. And so Jesus has now put these chief priests and elders of the people on notice. He has challenged them. They have challenged him, but now he’s challenged them in return.

And they had to discuss it among themselves, saying, if we say that John the Baptist’s ministry was from heaven, if he was really a prophet sent from God, then He’s going to say to us, well, then why didn’t you believe in him? But if we say from man, but it wasn’t really a ministry of a divine message from God, then we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet. Either way, either answer, if they say that John’s ministry was from God, or if they say it was from man, either way, their answer will expose their unbelief. It will expose their hearts as being bound in this grip of rejecting Jesus as the Messiah.

And so, they take the fifth. They say, we don’t know. And this answer itself exposes their unbelief and their true motives. And so Jesus says to them, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. But we, as the audience who’s here, who believe in Jesus, who are reading the gospel story, we know the answer. We know the answer that Jesus is doing these things because he is the Messiah of God, sent by God to do the work that the Father sent him to do. That he’s doing these things by the authority of his Father who sent him.

And this is the very thing that the Jewish leadership does not believe. Jesus then gives two parables. We’re only going to look at the first of the two. The first parable is the parable of the two sons. The second parable begins in verse 33, the parable of the tenants. We’ll look at that one next week. But this first parable is based upon this analogy of two sons. What do you think?

The Parable of the Two Sons

A man had two sons and he went to the first and said, son, go and work in the vineyard today. And he answered, I will not. But afterward he changed his mind and went. And then he went to the other son, said the same thing, go work in the vineyard. And this son answered, I’ll do it, I go, sir. But he did not go.

And so Jesus asks them, which of the two did the will of his father? Interestingly, the elders and the chief priests, they answer the question, and in so doing, they condemn themselves, right? They answer the question correctly, that even though the first son said he wasn’t gonna go, but he ended up going anyway, He was the one that did the will of his father. They correctly said the first son is the one who did the will of his father.

And so as a result, they have condemned themselves with their own mouths. Even though they tried to take the fifth amendment and say, no, we’re not going to say whether we think John’s ministry was from heaven or from man, they have now fallen for the parable and they have condemned themselves. And so Jesus applies it to them. He says in verse 31, truly I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes, the ones who initially said, I’m not going to go and do the father’s will, the ones who seem like they’re just living in sin.

They go into the kingdom of God before you because they did believe in the ministry of John, which was an arrow ministry of pointing to Christ. They did believe in John’s ministry and in John’s pointing to Christ. And therefore they believed in Christ. Verse 32, on the other hand, John came to you, elders and scribes and chief priests, John came to you in the way of righteousness, that is preaching that we ought to be righteous, that we ought to bring forth fruit, love for God and love for neighbor, but you did not believe him. even though the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, even when you saw them believing and turning to not just John, but to Jesus, to whom John was pointing, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him.

Clearly, not doing the will of the Father in this parable is a way of referring to not believing in John’s testimony to Jesus as the Messiah. And doing the will of the Father is believing in John’s testimony to Jesus as the Messiah. It’s easy at first to think that doing the will of the Father means keeping the law, keeping the Ten Commandments. But that’s not what it means in the context. In the context it means, to do the will of God means to believe in Christ, to believe in the Messiah. The parable of the two sons comes directly after this dialogue with the Jews about the authority of Jesus.

The leaders of God’s people had failed to respond to Jesus’s ministry as the Messiah and the bearer of the kingdom. By contrast, the sinners, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, they eagerly responded to Jesus’s teaching and ministry. And so what excluded the leaders of God’s people from the kingdom was not sin in and of itself, Because in fact, they seem to be pretty righteous, at least compared to the tax collectors and the prostitutes. But rather, what excluded them from the kingdom was that they had no awareness of their sin and need of Christ. Because they had hardened their hearts in unbelief and rejecting Jesus.

That’s why this parable, it’s just continuing the dialogue. It’s not even a separate, there is a separate header in your Bible. with a separate heading, but Jesus is still speaking to these same scribes and chief priests and elders of the people who had challenged him.

Notice the contrast between these two groups. The Jews are like a fig tree full of showy leaves but no fruit. They’re indignant. They hate Christ. They do not humble themselves and acknowledge their need. They do not worship Christ. They can’t. They can’t worship Christ because they’re so blinded by their superiority and their sense of self-righteousness.

But in contrast with them, stands the crowd from Galilee that has accompanied Jesus down the Mount of Olives to the city of Jerusalem. The crowd of the lame and the blind, even the children who worship Jesus. And even though they appear to be sinful, even though they appear to be outcasts and not truly part of the inner circle of the righteous, they are the true worshipers. They’re the truly fruitful ones. This whole section of Matthew is about the death and resurrection of Israel. God wants a people that bear good spiritual fruit, focused on love for God, which is symbolized by worship and love for neighbor.

But the people of God, at least under their current leadership, have failed. The Jerusalem righteous rejected him. They are the fruitless fig tree that’s withering up. But the crowd of Galilean sinners gladly welcomes the humble king riding in his lowly majesty to go to the cross. They cry, Hosanna to the son of David.

A Fruitful People

God is planting a new and beautiful fruit tree, a fruitful tree. You can see how it’s already emerging. We already see the green shoots emerging as we see this nucleus of the new Israel being formed around Christ. The old Israel, the fig tree, has a show of piety, but it’s fruitless. And it’s fruitless precisely because of its rejection of Christ. But the new Israel, the new fig tree that is growing, it may lack outward piety, it may seem to be full of lame and blind and children and sinners and tax collectors, this ragtag bunch of sinners from Galilee, yet they are genuinely fruitful because they’re the ones that are worshiping Christ. And they have fruit because of their worship of Christ.

One sinner who humbly and joyfully worships Christ is more pleasing to God than a thousand self-righteous people who despise Christ and have no need of Him. how wonderful it is to see the fruit, true saving fruit, true beautiful fruit that is the result of this work of God in our hearts, granting us faith in Christ. Not that false fake fruit of the showy leaves of the fig tree, but genuine fruit that comes from a heart that has been renewed by grace to honor Christ and to love him.