OCTOBER 19 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#31
“Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master
made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season?”
(Matthew 24:45)
LIVING FOR JESUS - Daily Prayer
JESUS, one day at a time — each day I start with Your Word
and with this prayer, and each day is a blessing and regardless of
the circumstances of the day because You keep Your promise to be
here for those that call on Your Name, You are here and I can say,
“Yeah though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death that
I will fear no evil for Thou art with me”!!!
When I think of the circumstances that I find myself in, I realize that
they fall into one of two categories and either “Your rod” is
correcting a wayward course or “Your staff” is pulling me to safety so
I take comfort in the fact that You are with me and there is no
circumstance that You cannot use to keep and
protect us with Your Grace and Mercy.
Thank You Lord for coming to earth and suffering in the flesh
so that when we are suffering we can rest assured You have won
Victory over suffering for our sakes. Forgive me for my daily sins
and lead me in paths of righteousness for Your Name’s sake!!!
AMEN
THE JESUS QUESTIONS
Jesus has started His lead-up Lessons to His next Question by
asking us to “learn this parable from the fig tree” (Matthew 24:32)
and with a minimum amount of research on fig trees themselves
we find an unusual behavior about the fig tree that is not common
among what we modern Walmart-age-westerners know about
fruit trees. I know I expected that the life cycle would be for the
fruit tree to go dormant and lose its leaves in the fall and then in
the spring there would be leaves and then flowers which turn
into fruit that ripens in the summer — and then the cycle repeats.
So when I read for the first time about Jesus cursing the fig tree,
I took the same position of many people who don’t know
(or have not “learned” about the fig tree) and about the unusual
thing concerning figs is that in the late fall, figs that do not ripen
before the fig tree goes dormant and sheds its leaves, these
remaining fall figs are called the “late” figs and they too will go
dormant but they do not fall off but instead they “winter over”
and then when the tree begins to come out of the winter dormancy.
This unusual “dormancy” is observed by the fig tree branches
becoming tender and starts to put forth leaves, that the “late” figs
actually ripen and are used as food! The other odd thing about the
fig tree is that the blossoms of the fruit appear before the leaves
so if the fig tree has nothing but leaves then the tree
is not producing fruit! Furthermore, if the tree does not have any
“late” figs ripening along with the tree putting forth a new crop
of “blossoms” then the tree had not produced any fruit the
previous year either, hence when Jesus observed the fig tree
outside Jerusalem’s Eastern Gate in the village of Bethphage
(Bethphage means “house of unripe figs”) then He observed
that there was no “fruit”.
It was for the reason that the fig tree was producing no fruit to sustain
the people that Jesus cursed the fig tree. The “cursed tree” was
“fruitless” and the fact that Jesus as His first order of business as
the Messiah making His Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem was to
“drive out all who bought and sold in the temple” and returned it
to a “house of prayer” as God had intended it and then when one
adds to these occurrences this incident of Jesus cursing the
“fruitless” fig tree, His actions makes perfect sense! This sequence
of Divine Actions gives us insight on the “end times” as well to
consider that Jesus again uses the fig tree
as a sign of the end of the age.
If Jesus cursed the fig tree because it was not bearing fruit we can
assume that it was a symbolic gesture by Jesus which was an
indictment on the rulers God had put in place over His House of Prayer,
coincidentally, these “rulers” actually resided outside Jerusalem’s
Eastern Gate in the village of priests known as Bethphage. When all
this is considered together we can surmise that Jesus is
pronouncing a “judgement” on the nation Israel and their “rulers”
because they were proving themselves to be unwise and unfaithful
servants who had let God’s temple become a den of thieves.
We know from history that the temple was destroyed in 70 A.D.
after Jesus cursed the “fig tree” and the nation Israel was taken into
captivity as the Scriptures had prophesied. Now Jesus is using the Fig Tree
which is representative of the nation of Israel to give us a sign
that can only be understood by those that have “learned” the parable
of the “fig tree” and know that at the end of the age that the nation
Israel will be converted and will start producing “kingdom fruit” which
will be a major event in the religious history of Israel who prayed
for thousands of years for the Messiah
and then had Him crucified when He came!
So when you see the nation of Israel recognize Jesus Christ
as the Messiah, then you will “know that summer is near”.
So you also, when you see all these things, know that the
end of the age and Jesus coming again is near, very near —
at the doors.” (Matthew 24:33)
Just as Israel becoming a nation again was a sign of the beginning
of the end times, so will Israel recognizing Jesus as the Messiah
be a sign that we are in the last generation of this age!
