Mark 11

From this point on in Mark's gospel we are moving quickly to the cross and the empty tomb. All of these events in the last few days of Jesus' life are filled with a sense of God's sovereignty over every detail. There is an odd combination here of everything going according to the plan of God, and everything leading to the tremendous suffering of His Son. We realize here more than ever that the cross is the plan of God, and not merely the result of jealousy and animosity from the contemporaries of Jesus. If Jesus is to ride into Bethlehem in fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy, then there will be no problem getting the colt, or with any other similar detail. God really is in charge of all of these events.

If people need to cover the ground that Jesus will travel with their cloaks and with palm branches, this will all happen, in fulfillment of the prophetic word, and crowds will cry out calling to Him with their plea for salvation, though their understanding of what this salvation is all about may be sadly deficient. Here is the long expected seed of the woman. It is not yet clear how He will work out our salvation, but it is clear that He is the Messianic Son of David who will crush the head of the serpent.

He comes with a word of judgment against Old Testament Israel. She is a fig tree with no fruit. She should have yielded something good for her Lord, but now that she has demonstrated her lack of good fruit, she is being destroyed from the roots by the Son of God. He is capable of complete control over the stars in the heavens, He can certainly speak in faith to a plant, and He can certainly bring the nation of Old Testament Israel and the era of the Law to a close by his command. This is displayed in another way when He asserts divine authority over the temple area. Once again, biblical prophecy will be fulfilled. The builders of that day are what the prophets said they would be. Powerful people in the Lord's land have turned the place of Old Covenant worship into a den of robbers, and they are called to account before the Lord of hosts in their midst. No one is able to stop the man who is willingly going along a pathway that will soon lead to His death. He will build a new house of prayer for the nations with His own resurrected body.

The new temple that He is building will be made up of people who pray in faith. When we do this, we are acting our part as those who have not only been created in the image of God as all men are, but also as those who have been recreated by the Spirit of God. We are those who have come to know the forgiveness of God for us in a very personal way, forgiveness that was bought through the blood of the man who teaches us how to pray as the Lord's holy temple, a new people of God who are alive in Christ. We are Jews and Gentiles who will bear fruit for our King. One of the most precious results of His works in us is a fruit that springs forth from His own forgiveness of our sins. That fruit is our sincere forgiveness of others who may have sinned against us.

It was not an easy thing for the corrupted power structure of the old fig tree to give way to the coming of a new fruitful vine. That new plant is here on clear display only in the one Man who is the representative of a new order. They question Him concerning His authority. They had heard Him teach. They had witnessed miracles, but they are unwilling to allow Him to change the age from the Law to the gospel. They cannot stop Him. This is obvious since He is doing things that we would have expected to lead to His immediate arrest, and they are not arresting Him right away. No one is pinning Him to the ground and dragging Him away. That time has not come quite yet. Obviously those who consider themselves to be the authorities on the temple mount are unwilling to flex their muscles against Him at this moment.

They are not even up to a debate concern the divine authority of John the Baptist. They are afraid of the crowd. Jesus was not afraid of the crowd, though a crowd would soon turn against Him, as crowds can and do. Jesus knew that all of this was happening by a divine decree that would result in the greatest event of history, and the turning point in the battle for the earth.

Because of the coming death and resurrection of the Man who is our salvation, not only will our position in heaven be guaranteed, but the earth itself will be renewed as the victory in heaven will one day descend and become the victory on earth. It is our privilege to serve our King with this kind of resurrection confidence even now. The One who is overturning tables is the One who will go quietly to the cross in a few days. He is in charge.