AUGUST 17 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#24
“Is the power and authority of baptism
from heaven or from men?””
(Matthew 21:25)
LIVING FOR JESUS Daily Prayer
JESUS, You Lord are forever the Unchanging Faithful One,
full of Mercy and Grace. We are nothing next to Your Glory, we
are weak and we have no good in us if we have no God in us!
Apart from You we find we live our lives selfishly and think we
can do our own thing if we just build up enough “spiritual brownie”
points — Lord I know better and I beg Your forgiveness for
even this slightest of touches against my total and unyielding
faith in living a totally surrendered life to You. I pray to completely
abandon self, take up my cross daily, and live only a “life in Christ”.
Lord Jesus, I pray for the day when I will know that I shall never
look back or even think of looking back. There is no excuse for my
ever turning from You or taking my eyes off You for even the
slightest of seconds. Forgive me, for when I am not looking at You,
I am looking at self and it is when I am “in self” that I sin, but when
I am “in Christ” my true life begins again!!!
AMEN
THE JESUS QUESTIONS
Jesus has just made His Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem but was
met with contention by the chief priests and elders so Jesus left
Jerusalem and spent the night in Bethany. Now as He returns to
Jerusalem He curses a fig tree and
“Immediately the fig tree withered away.” (Matthew 21:19)
Instead of entering into a debate among ourselves as to “why”
Jesus would “curse” a fig tree, we should instead consider the
eyewitness accounts and then look at the other actions of Jesus
to see if He “explains” the “why” for us.
“And when the disciples saw it, they marveled,
saying, ‘How did the fig tree wither away so soon?’”
(Matthew 21:20)
The eyewitnesses were the disciples of Jesus and this is not the
first “miracle” they had seen Jesus do — they had observed
Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, they had seen Jesus feed
the multitudes with a small boy’s lunch, and they had witnessed
demons being cast out and every infirmity that had been brought
to Jesus, Jesus healed them all; however, when the fig tree
withered and died “immediately” these disciples “marveled”.
Perhaps not all of these disciples that were following Jesus in
Jerusalem were with Jesus earlier in His ministry when He taught
“Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matthew 7:1)
and then Jesus called those that lord themselves over others as
“Hypocrites!” (Matthew 7:5)
Then Jesus rebuked false teachers and He declared,
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing
…you will know them by their fruits.
Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?
Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree
bears bad fruit…Every bad tree that does not bear
good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Matthew 7:15-20)
There is much correlation to be made from the circumstance
in which this “fig tree” was cursed in the village of priests and
judges in the walled village of Bethphage that stood as the
Supreme Court over Israel and were supposed to be handing
down decisions based on the Holy Scriptures and not the
doctrines of men! It can easily be seen that since Bethphage
means “house of unripe figs” that Jesus has passed the sentence
of death onto the Sanhedrin for being a “bad tree” that has not
produced good spiritual fruit and therefore this “Supreme Court”
is now cut down and will be thrown into the fire! It makes
sense that just yesterday Jesus executed the Divine Duties
of the Office of Messiah and cleansed the temple of God in Jerusalem
and today Jesus is addressing the source of the problem and is
pronouncing sentence on those who have been found guilty of
defiling the temple of God by abusing their “office” and
“responsibility” of handing down Godly decisions! Instead, the
‘religious rulers’ had made the temple a center of commerce instead
of a house of prayer!?!?! Jesus said that you will know a tree by
the fruit that it bears and He demonstrated by the cleansing of the
temple that He had indeed “come in the name of the LORD” !
We can see that the temple was defiled by the fruit of commerce
and that unGodly fruit could only have been produced by an
unGodly tree which we know was planted and watered by the Sanhedrin!
We know also that the Sanhedrin was not an office instituted by God,
but was formed and maintained by men as they handed down
judgments based on what they thought was “best” for Israel. Once the
disciples saw the fig tree wither away immediately, Jesus made it clear
that the Lesson He intended for the disciples was about their “faith”
because when they asked
“How did the fig tree wither away so soon?” (Matthew 21:20)
that “Jesus answered and said to them,
‘Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt,
you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but also
if you say to this mountain, be removed and be cast into
the sea, it will be done. And whatever things you ask in prayer,
believing, you will receive'.” (Matthew 21:21-22)
When one considers the context, one can quickly see Jesus Teaching
and these last Lessons on
“Faith” and “Obedience to God”
should be studied and not doubted — our attention should not be
on “why” we think Jesus did what He did with the fig tree,
our attention should be firmly fixed on
the fact that Jesus cursed a fig tree outside the eastern gate
and at His command, the tree withered away immediately —
where do you think the
“power and authority”
to accomplish this miracle came from,
“from heaven or from men?” !?!?!?!?
