That he worked in Christ
when he raised him from the dead
and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places …
And he put all things under his feet
and gave him as head over all things to the church.
–Ephesians 1:20, 22
Consider these words describing the honor of the one reigning as victor--
“seated him at his right hand.”
Consider also the words of shame describing the ones
conquered and put into submission--
"he put all things under his feet.”
These word meanings belong to a culture dominated by the
values of honor and shame.
Observe the two verses in the Psalms from which the
words in Ephesians are clearly derived:
The LORD says to my Lord: Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.
–Psalm 110:1
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
–Psalm 8:6
Now consider how the following Old Testament verses reinforce
1) the honor of being seated at the right hand of the king, or
2) the honor of kingship ordained by God, or
3) the shame of enemies in being
‘put under the feet’ of the conqueror:
So Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him on behalf of Adonijah. And the king rose to meet her and bowed down to her. Then he sat on his throne and had a seat brought for the king’s mother, and she sat on his right.
–1 Kings 2:19
daughters of kings are among your ladies of honor;
at your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir.
–Psalm 45:9
Then Solomon sat on the throne of the LORD as king
in place of David his father. …
And the LORD made Solomon very great in the sight of all Israel and bestowed on him such royal majesty as had not been on
any king before him in Israel.
–1 Chronicles 29:23, 25
You know that David my father could
not build a house for the name of the LORD his God
because of the
warfare with which his enemies surrounded him,
until the
LORD put them under the soles of his feet.
–1 Kings 5:3
In the New Testament,
the supreme exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ is frequently
described by Christ being seated
at
“God’s right hand;”
and that simultaneously,
all enemies of Christ are shamed
by being
“put under his feet.”
The passage quoted from Ephesians chapter 1 at the beginning of this post is but one of many verses in the New Testament which reflect this theme.
Jesus said to him, …
from now on you will see the
Son of Man
seated at the right hand of Power
and coming on the clouds of heaven.
–Matthew 26:64
This Jesus God raised up, and of that
we all are witnesses.
Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this
that
you yourselves are seeing and hearing.
–Acts 2:32–33
For he must reign until he has put
all his enemies under his feet.
The last enemy
to be destroyed is death.
For God has put all things in subjection under his feet. …
–1 Corinthians 15:25–27
If then you have been raised with Christ,
seek the things that are above,
where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
–Colossians 3:1
He is the radiance of the glory of God
and the exact imprint of his nature,
and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.
After making purification for sins,
he sat down at the right hand of
the Majesty on high,
–Hebrews 1:3
And to which of the angels has he ever said,
Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies a
footstool for your feet?
–Hebrews 1:13
Now the point in what we are saying is this:
we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the
right hand of the throne
of the
Majesty in heaven.
–Hebrews 8:1
But when Christ had offered for all time a single
sacrifice for sins,
he sat down at the right hand of God,
waiting from that time until his enemies should be
made a footstool for his feet.
–Hebrews 10:12–13
looking to Jesus,
the founder and perfecter of our faith,
who for the joy
that was set before him endured the cross,
despising the shame,
and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
–Hebrews 12:2
who has gone into heaven
and is at the right hand of God,
with angels, authorities, and
powers having been subjected to him.
–1 Peter 3:22
Again, notice the sheer frequency of this theme in the New Testament:
Jesus Christ
is
seated and enthroned
at
God’s right hand in highest honor--
and correspondingly, all enemies, indeed
“all things,”
have been utterly subdued and shamed—put
under his feet
The force of this truth
cannot be
appreciated without understanding
the
pivotal cultural value of honor and shame.
It sure seems like
Jesus was having a bad day
when he marched down
to cause mayhem in Jerusalem
by turning tables in the temple,
blasting
a fig tree along the way.
Was he just in a foul mood?
Did he get up on the wrong side of the bed?
Why curse a tree?
What was going on there?
It’s easy to miss it, but I think we are given a clue in one particular verse.
We can discover that far from being
random or impulsive, every word and deed
of Jesus was
delivered with precision and intent.
THE BACKSTORY: WHAT HAPPENED ON
PALM SUNDAY
here’s what happened according to Mark. Jesus had three times now explained to His disciples that He would suffer, die and rise again on the third day.
The first time,
Peter rebuked Him,
but Jesus was having none of it.
The second time,
they just didn’t understand
and were too afraid to say anything.
The third time
came as Jesus went ahead of them,
leading the way to Jerusalem and certain death.
They couldn’t believe it.
“And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. And they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid”.
“What is he doing?”
They must have been thinking, because for them
(and let’s face it, for most of us)
if there’s a chance to escape crucifixion, we’ll take it.
But not Jesus
He reinforced with certainty the plan:
“Look, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the
Son of Man
will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes,
and they will condemn him to death and
deliver him over to the Gentiles.
And they will mock him and spit on him,
and flog him and kill him
And after three days he will rise.”
This is not a man who is not prepared for what’s coming.
He sees it, he is ready for it, and He shows no fear.
He has made up his mind, and is resolute.
John 13
lets us in on His secret:
“Knowing that the Father had given all things
into his hands, and that he
had come from God and was going back to God…”
Jesus knew for sure that this would ultimately turn out very well.
He knew it was all in hand, and that He would
end up safe at the Father’s right hand--
not only delivered from evil and death,
but sitting in victory over it
This is the context of what happens next. So in Mark chapter 11,
Jesus and His disciples make their way to God’s chosen city,
and holy temple. At this point,
He is well received, and is warmly welcomed
by the people to cries of
“Hosanna!,
Blessed is He who comes in the
name of the Lord!”
Then comes the critical verse:
“Jesus went into Jerusalem and
into the temple
So when He had looked around at all things,
as the hour was already late,
he went out to Bethany with the twelve.”
(Mark 11:11)
He went to the temple and “looked around at things”?
What things?
Then they went to Bethany and went to bed.
Jesus had taken in what he had seen, and slept on it.
FIG TREE CURSING AND TABLE TURNING
It was the next morning that it
all kicked off
They were walking back into Jerusalem from Bethany,
and Jesus was hungry.
“Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if He could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And He said to it,
"May no one ever eat fruit from you again.”
And his disciples heard it.”
Then they got to the city, and went into the
House of God
“He entered the temple and began to drive out
those who sold and those who bought in the temple,
and He overturned the tables of the money-changers
and the
seats of those who sold pigeons
And He would not allow
anyone to carry anything through the temple.
And he was teaching them and saying to them,
“Is it not written,
‘
My house
shall be called a house of prayer for
all the nations’?
But you have made it a den of robbers.”
And the chief priests and the scribes heard it.”
We can clearly see that Jesus is a man
who knows what is going to happen.
He has predicted his death and resurrection
three times.
We know that he regularly
prayed during the night,
or
when it was still dark,
and that He was not the kind of guy to
skip on quality time with God
He assures us that he only does things that
He sees his Father doing.
He is unafraid of people or death,
and
unswayed by man’s applause
After the Triumphal Entry,
Jesus had gone into the temple and seen all the
commercialism and defilement of the temple the day before.
He just looked. He saw it all.
He did not say a word, much less take any impulsive action.
He absorbed the information and went to bed.
He almost certainly talked it over thoroughly with His Father.
Then the day broke.
FIGS AS A PICTURE OF ISRAEL
First, the fig tree incident.
The fig in several places is analogous to Israel—consider
Nathaniel sitting under a fig tree,
and
Jesus calling him
“a true son of Israel”
God also used figs as a metaphor
for the people of Israel and their
spiritual state in the book of Jeremiah,
contrasting figs were of the finest quality,
ripe and ready
to eat with figs that were rotten,
so rotten they couldn’t be eaten…
“This is the Message from the God of Israel:
The exiles from here that I’ve sent off to the land of the Babylonians
are like the good figs,
and I’ll make sure they get good treatment.
I’ll keep my eye on them so that their lives are good,
and I’ll bring them back to this land.
I’ll build them up, not tear them down;
I’ll plant them, not uproot them.
And I’ll give them a heart to know me, God.
They’ll be my people and I’ll be their God,
for they’ll have returned to me with all their hearts.”
(Jer 24:1-7)
So here was a tree all leafy and looking to be full of promise,
but with no fruit
Usually the fruit comes even before the leaves,
so plentiful leaves should normally indicate the
presence of fruit,
even though it was rather early in the year to find any.
Charles Spurgeon said that,
“The blighted fig tree was a singularly apt simile of the Jewish state.
The nation had promised great things to God.
When all the other nations were like trees without leaves,
making no profession of allegiance to the
true God
the Jewish nation was covered with the leafage of abundant religious profession… Their constant cry was,
“The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord,
The temple of the Lord, are these”…
They were a fig tree in full leaf.
But there was no fruit upon them;
for the people were neither holy,
nor just, nor true,
nor faithful towards God, nor
loving to their neighbour.
[They were]
a mass of glittering profession, unsupported by spiritual life.”
The tree was a picture of the religious leadership
and what the temple system had descended into.
All leaves and no fruit.
No sustenance for the spiritually hungry
Just like John the Baptist
warned the Pharisees and scribes
who came to him in false repentance:
“Do not 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.
Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.
Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is
cut down and thrown into the fire.”
(Matthew 3:9-10)
Jesus had come to do
anew thing
The fruitless tree was about to be destroyed—the
temple would be brought to rubble and Israel would
be scattered. Jesus promised to destroy it and
raise it again in three days--
God was going to make his home in the very lives of His people,
thanks to the cleansing power
of our Messiah’s blood to make us holy.
Holy enough to host the
Shekinah Glory.
It was in this understanding that
Jesus cursed the fig tree
and then turned things upside down
in the temple.
HIS ACTIONS WERE PLANNED
Jesus had all night to contemplate and pray into the ramifications of going ballistic in the temple.
He would also know for sure that there would be questions asked,
and that answers would be required.
But as we have said, this was no spur of the moment decision,
and he was ready with an excellent response.
They demanded,
“By what authority
are you doing these things, or
who gave you this authority
to do them?”
Jesus responded, “I will ask you one question; answer me,
and I will tell you by what authority I do these things.
Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me.”
That scuppered them. Jesus had them either way.
“If we say, ‘From heaven,’”
they reasoned, “he will say,
‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But shall we say,
"From man’?
”—they were afraid of the people, for they all
held that John was a prophet.
So they answered Jesus,
"We do not know.”
And Jesus said to them,
"Neither will I tell you by what authority
I do these things.”
He had every authority
to do what He did.
“The first Adam came to the fig tree for leaves,
but the Second Adam looks for figs”, notes Spurgeon.
Jesus always knows exactly what He is doing, and He is slow to anger—always merciful and longsuffering.
He never once lost control of his temper.
Far from displaying unbridled wrath,
He courageously defied the authorities under the authority of God,
and provided us all with an escape from wrath as
He continued on towards Calvary.
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