Okay, okay. I’m taking a bit of liberty here in talking about the fig tree for a fourth time, but even though these events technically took place on Tuesday, I think that this particular teaching brings a nice bookend to our study so far this week.
Yesterday we saw the disciples walking by the fig tree and noticing that it had died. Jesus responds with a cryptic answer about prayer and forgiveness, but if that wasn’t confusing enough, today’s passage is even more complicated. Mark is continuing to draw out this metaphor of the fig tree so that we will connect the details of these final days of Jesus leading up to the cross with our own circumstances in life.
This passage is in the middle of Jesus’ longest teaching segment in the Gospel of Mark. It is a prophecy with a lot of complicated metaphors that many scholars have tried to make sense of for centuries, arriving at different conclusions. This study isn’t an attempt to pick apart the details of these prophecies but instead to focus on the purpose of Jesus’ teaching and what He was ultimately telling His disciples.
Jesus is announcing three things in this text. He predicts His death, He predicts the destruction of the temple, and He tells His disciples that they are going to suffer persecution. Jesus is preparing them for what is about to come. Although He has announced that He is going to die a gruesome death, they have ignored His teaching and presumed their own interpretation of reality. They’ve just come into the city with great fanfare a few days earlier. In their minds, they were getting closer to the revolution they had been waiting for in following Jesus for the last three years. But the way of the Kingdom of God is not through politics or war, but through death and suffering.
Jesus is going to die, and as we will see as the days unfold, the disciples aren’t ready. Jesus prepares them by telling them what to look for in the coming days. The temple is going to be destroyed. For a Jewish believer, that would have been seen as a mark of judgment. God only sent His people into exile because of their rebellion. But now Jesus is telling His disciples that the temple’s destruction and their ultimate exile will be for the purposes of spreading the gospel throughout the world.
Christians have been persecuted for their faith ever since the death of Jesus. In fact, suffering is a mark of a true believer. We are called to take up our own crosses if we are to follow Jesus. Wherever there has been persecution, the gospel has spread dramatically. This is how the Kingdom of God is established. Jesus is preparing His disciples while also encouraging us to see how the gospel will continue to spread in these last days.
But Jesus doesn’t just offer these heavy prophecies without any encouragement. He tells us that as we see these things happening we can be confident that Christ is near. He is right at the gates. We may feel like we are losing the battle, but Jesus has not abandoned us and we will win the war. Second, He tells us that although the temple, God’s monument of worship, has been destroyed, His words and His promises will never pass away. And finally, although Christ will have died on the cross, three days later He will rise from the dead and the promise of hope is that He is returning just as surely as He has risen.
All of these prophecies should imbue us with hope. Although it may appear that the world is collapsing around us, our faith is in God and our hope is in Christ. Today we ought to reflect on the promises of God and prepare our own hearts for the challenges we will face by building into our lives a theology of God’s sovereignty and Christ’s promises.
(For further reading on the events of Holy week, read Mark 14:1-11)