Bible Study series: Matthew 21:18-22. It’s another sign or visual statement directed at the Jerusalem and temple establishment. Mustard seed faith is taught in this post..
A warm welcome to this Bible study! I write to learn, so let’s learn together. I also translate to learn. The translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. If you would like to see many others, please click on this link:
In the next link to the original chapter, I comment more and offer the Greek text. At the bottom you will find a “Summary and Conclusion” section geared toward discipleship. Check it out!
In this post, links are provided for further study.
Let’s begin.
Scripture: Matthew 21:18-22
18 Early in the morning, Jesus returned to Jerusalem and was hungry. 19 And he saw a single fig tree along the road and came up to it and found nothing except leaves alone. And he said to it: “Never again may fruit be produced from you.” And instantly the fig tree withered.
20 When the disciples saw it, they were amazed, saying, “How did the fig tree wither immediately?” 21 In reply, Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth: if you have faith and do not doubt, you shall do not only what was done to this fig tree, but if you even say to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be thrown into the sea,’ it shall happen. 22 And everything which you asked for in prayer, having faith, you shall receive.
Comments:
This is the fourth of four signs that the Messiah arrived in town, the holy city: (1) Triumphal entry; (2) cleansing of the temple; (3) healing the blind and lame; (4) destruction of a fruitless tree. They are about his rightful place as King and Messiah over Jerusalem and the temple, which will soon reject him.
Watch God Work When We Pray, Command, Believe, Receive.
With Faith Command Your Obstacle to Go. Then Watch God Work
18-19:
Matthew makes use of a special wording: one fig tree or a single fig tree. It was not being cared for properly.
First, let’s deal with a misunderstanding and cultural snobbery by twenty-first centuries Americans on people of two thousand years ago.
These two verses trouble modern American city-dwellers. “What did the fig tree do wrong?” We don’t live in an agricultural society. Let me illustrate. Cattle farmers load up their livestock and take them to slaughterhouses. Do you work in one? No? Do you like hamburgers? Yes? Okay, where does the beef come from?
Now here’s a story that happened in my own life. I was sitting in the large dining room of the mother of a prosperous dairy farmer, who lived in her own house on the property, on Monday morning (the usual get-together time). The various farmers were chatting about the animals. The dairy farmer owned a horse that was unproductive and getting old. They decided to shoot it and have it hauled off to the glue factory. They even decided that the best thing was to put the rifle barrel right on its forehead and pull the trigger. The dairy farmer, gruff and tough, said to me, “Come on!” He wanted me to join them in the shooting. I recoiled and objected: “Oh, come on! It’s not hurting anybody! Let it live!” I could easily imagine the horse coming up to the men and expecting a treat or a little affection on the forehead. I was a grad student then, and I spent my days in a cocoon, on campus. They walked out the door with a determined look on their faces, ignoring me. They didn’t blink or show the tiniest bit of hesitation or remorse. This is business. They were used to death on the farm. To this day, I don’t know whether they actually shot the poor thing. I didn’t ask. Maybe we are not so different from how agricultural people were two thousand years ago, after all!
I now seem to recall that he let it live a little while longer, so maybe he did have a little remorse, as he walked out there, but I can’t be sure.
When trees are unproductive, they have to be removed. That’s the way of an agricultural society. In the Parable of the Barren Fig Tree (Luke 13:6-9), the owner inspected a barren fig tree for three years, planted in the middle of his vineyard (an odd place for it to be) and ordered the worker to chop it down. “Why should it use up good ground?” It’s a waste of time. The worker pleaded with the owner to give it one more year, so he can work with it. If it’s unproductive after that, then he’ll chop it down. Business for grownups.
Further, sacrifices of animals happened every day at the temple. God endorsed it in the Torah (Lev. 1-7). At least the slaughter of the animals served a religious purpose, while our animal slaughter for food serves no religious purpose whatsoever. We eat them to expand our bellies. Do I have to mention that Jesus sent demons into thousands of pigs which threw themselves in the Lake of Galilee (Matt. 8:28-34)? It is better that he do this to a tree and pigs than to us!
Therefore, we should not look down our long, twenty-first-century noses at those living two thousand years ago as if our urban or suburban society is better than theirs in every way. That’s cultural and chronological snobbery. If you think about it, we Americans (and Westerners) really are spoiled in many ways, unused to the daily unpleasantness of agriculture and blissfully carefree about the source of hamburgers. There is no moral problem, therefore, with Jesus cursing the fig tree any more than there is a moral problem with slaughtering animals for us today or sacrificing them at the temple for the ancient people, back then, a system once ordained of God.
Mark’s Gospel says it was not the season for figs (11:13). He arranges the fig tree episode in two parts: the actual cursing; the cleansing of the temple coming in between; and finishes the fig tree episode afterwards (11:20-25). Clearly there is a symbolic message going on here. The temple which had green leaves—the outer appearance of promise—was not bearing fruit. With such full leafage—Matthew’s Greek makes much of it—the tree should have had at least some figs on it, even if unripe. Its green leaves were false advertising. To speak unusually for a moment: the tree was “confused” and had “issues.” Something was wrong with the tree, just as something was wrong with the temple. Matthew condenses the episode but still places the temple cleansing before the fig tree pericope; therefore, the symbolism adds up to the same message. Most scholars interpret the fig tree, therefore, as a type of Israel, cursed for not bearing fruit (cf. Is. 5:1-7, where Israel is compared to a vineyard; and Jer. 24:1-8, where figs are unripe or rotten). More specifically, here are some passages that Jesus, inspired by the Spirit and guided by the Father, was reenacting (all from the ESV):
… as leaves fall from the vine,
like leaves falling from the fig tree. (Is. 34:4)
Next:
When I would gather them, declares the Lord,
there are no grapes on the vine,
nor figs on the fig tree;
even the leaves are withered,
and what I gave them has passed away from them. (Jer. 8:13)
A short line:
And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, (Hos. 2:12)
Finally:
It has laid waste my vine
and splintered my fig tree;
it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down;
their branches are made white. (Joel 1:7)
All those passages, above, speak of God’s judgment. The fruitless vines and fig trees are withered at his judgment. Clearly Jesus is using the same imagery here.
However, many Jews converted after Pentecost (Acts 2:41; 4:4; 6:7 [large number of priests]; 21:20), so the above analysis is not about them, but about the ones who rejected their Messiah. So the cursing of the tree is an action parable designed to say the temple is coming to an end, which happened in A.D. 70, when the Romans sacked the city and destroyed the temple. Ever notice how there are no more animal sacrifices going on there now? Judaism was devastated and forever changed.
Matthew 24:4-35 Predicts Destruction of Jerusalem and Temple
Matthew 24:36 to 25:46–From Second Coming to New Messianic Age
Those posts have photos I took of the Arch of Titus, which holds some carvings of the tools and objects from the Jerusalem temple.
20:
As noted, Mathew condenses the episode of the fig tree, compared to Mark’s version. Cursing the fig tree is the third symbolic act (the other two: riding the colt and clearing a part of the temple). As for condensing this episode, remember my nickname for Matthew: the Abbreviator. This may upset beginning readers of the Bible. Can Matthew really omit data and still be inspired and infallible? Yes. We must stop the foolishness of a brittle position on Scripture. “If there are disagreements or differences, then the brittle Bible breaks into pieces, and so does my brittle faith! I quit!” No. Don’t allow sneering postmodern skeptics to get under your skin (I no longer do). The three Gospel writers of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, inspired by the Spirit to write infallible texts, were permitted by their own purposes to arrange material. The main purpose of this parable was accomplished: the action parable of judgment on Jerusalem and the temple and the lesson about personal faith, which is next. The fig tree flouted the natural order, just as Israel flouted the moral order and religious law and internal righteousness. Israel’s moral misalignment is symbolized by the tree.
Here is Blomberg’s explanation of the difference between Matthew and Mark on the timing of the fig tree withering: “Yet Mark 11:13 notes that it was not yet the season for figs, so Jesus’ subsequent curse must stem from something other than the tree’s failure to perform in keeping with its appearance. Apparently the tree did not wither while the disciples were still watching but did within the next twenty-four hours (Mark 11:20). By horticultural standards, this still qualifies as ‘immediately’” (comment on 21:18-19).
I add: in the synoptic Gospels, the various words for “immediately” can be very fluid, depending on the context. Here in 21:19, 20 the Greek adverb parachrēma (pronounced pah-rah-khray-mah) is used and means “pertaining to a point in time that is immediately subsequent to an action” (BDAG). But even the sequence or elapse of time has a context, and Blomberg is right: in horticultural terms, the next day qualifies. But if a skeptic reads this explanation and rejects it, then Matthew was still communicating his main point; he simply condensed and focused the time for his narrative purpose.
Once again, don’t let your faith be brittle so that it snaps in two because of such minutiae in light of the bigger story of God. The main meaning is that Jesus’s action parable of speaking against the fig tree is that the temple and its caretakers (chief priests) were unproductive; God was about to move on.
My view of Scripture. It’s very high:
Authority and Inerrancy of the Bible
Begin a series on the reliability of the Gospels. Start with the Conclusion which has quick summaries and links back to the other parts:
15. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Conclusion
The Gospels have a massive number of agreements in their storylines:
14. Similarities among John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels
Celebrate those similarities and don’t focus on the differences.
See this part in the series that puts differences in perspective:
13. Are There Contradictions in the Gospels?
A difference ≠ a contradiction
The postmodern critics of the NT read the ancient documents in bad faith, assuming that the authors were deceivers and plagiarists. If the critics find differences, they triumph. They are wrong; they read these two-thousand-year-old documents with no subtlety and finesse. I urge everyone not to listen seriously to them.
21-22:
Jesus is likely preaching in the Court of the Gentiles, where most teaching occurred.
Matthew goes on with another lesson about the destruction of the fig tree. The disciples must have faith. Now Jesus gets personal.
This verse is very rich with truth, so it is right that Jesus would begin it with this clause, next.
“I tell you the truth”:
faith:
Word Study on Faith and Faithfulness
Next, it is important to see that vv. 21-22, so broad in scope, is actually about prayer—not “decreeing and declaring.”
Is ‘Decreeing’ Biblical for Christians?
Jesus says to speak out the order or command. Here the verb “speak” is the standard one.
The verbs “be removed” and “be thrown” are in the passive commands. Often passives like these in a context like this are called the “divine passive.” That is, God is the one who acts behind the scenes. Just because God is not mentioned does not mean he is not behind those two verbs. We pray and God works it out and “removes” the mountain and “throws” it into the sea.
Commanding the mountain is a visual image of a spiritual truth—it’s a metaphor. “‘Moving mountains’ was a Jewish metaphor for accomplishing difficult or virtually impossible” (Keener, p. 505). Jesus is speaking metaphorically and hyperbolically. Hyperbole (pronounced hy-PER-boh-lee) means a deliberate and “extravagant exaggeration” (Webster’s Dictionary) to make a strong point and startle the listener. Modern example: “The ice cream seller is really generous! He piled the ice cream on my cone a mile-high!” No, a “mile high” (1.6 km) is not to be taken literally. Followers of Jesus must learn to read the Bible on its own terms, without their wearing monochrome glasses, in which every word appears the same literal color in different contexts. Yes, most of it can be taken literally, like the histories or the commands of the Torah and Epistles. But in significant sections of Scripture, the Bible is not a “flat,” one-dimensional book, on one simplistic level. It is multi-layered. And this clause about the mountain is a case in point. This verse is not to be interpreted literally and simplistically.
Objection: you’re saying the fig tree did not wither; it was merely symbolic. No, I’m not saying that. It did wither, but it was an action parable. Jesus had a higher purpose than seeing a tree dry up from the roots, just for fun. What I do mean, however, is this. Don’t stand in front of a literal mountain and command it to “be removed” and “be thrown” into the sea. You can surely, however, command an obstacle in your personal walk with God—like a disease—to be removed and be thrown into the sea (so to speak). Remember that those verbs are in the divine passive. God is their subject. God causes “the mountain” to “be arisen” and “be thrown.”
Renewalists love verses like vv. 21-22 because they love to confess out loud and speak out and pray out loud. This is solid teaching. Personally, my prayer life is done with an open voice, when I take my prayer walks.
Lord, give me even a small amount of faith.
“having faith”: most translations say “if you have faith” because grammarians say the participle is conditional: if. True enough because v. 21 says so. But I translated it literally, realizing that the condition is built into the context.
As I wrote at Matt. 17:20, let’s never forget that faith rests on the will of God. We Renewalists must be very careful about commanding God or things in nature to happen because we want them to. Even Jesus said he does what he sees the Father doing: Jesus “can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son does also” (John 5:19). Word-of-Faith teachers say they read the Word and understand what the will of God is, so they can command things. Part of that is true because of what Jesus just said in v. 22, but mainly certain extra-super-confident excessive Word-of-Faith teachers misinterpret Scriptures which seem to indicate they can boss God around, like humans calling things into existence. (They base this on Rom. 4:17, but the verse clearly says God is the one who calls things into existence.) Faith-filled and Spirit-filled Christians must get a personal word from God. They must abide in Christ and his words abide in him so that they can hear from God about each individual and unique case. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you (John 15:7). They must pray according to God’s will (1 John 5:14). They must not launch out on their own and believe that God shall and must heal everyone, and if he didn’t, then they must not have had enough faith or spoken the right confession out loud. Somehow it’s their fault. No.
In my own life, I have heard from God that a sickness in a relative was “not a sickness unto death.” She has been cancer free for a long time (over a decade and a half if I recall). I also received a personal word that another relative was going to be taken home, so I should not pray for his healing (he died a few days later). No amount of commanding and pleading and rebuking and decreeing would have altered the outcome. And to be honest, I have seemingly heard from God about yet a third relative and believed God would heal him, but he died. I was going through a time of deception in my life, but even in this case I relented and realized in his last hours that he would not be healed. I had been deceived, but I didn’t give up on healing because of this disappointment (even after another relative lectured me about how wrong I was). It’s in the Word. I never give up on the clear teaching of Scripture. People need to follow what Jesus said in this passage and actively do faith, not pull back or go inside their shells like a turtle and give up. Disappointments happen down here on earth. It’s the human condition.
Yes, healing is in the atonement, but not everyone will be healed in their current bodies when God says that the ultimate healing is for them to be taken from the broken-down earth-suits and brought into his presence, where there is no more disease or brokenness—the ultimate healing, also won for us in the atonement.
Why Doesn’t Divine Healing Happen One Hundred Percent of the Time?
Pray for healing fearlessly and with active faith!
Once again, more directly relevant to these verses is this post about decreeing:
Is ‘Decreeing’ Biblical for Christians?
We have to be careful about believing that our words create or cause things to come into existence. Yes, speak to already-existing obstacles, but to create something out of nothing is God’s jurisdiction, not yours.
“So here believing once again means a total dependence on God and union with his will and purposes. It is not a formula for getting what we want but a God-centeredness for wanting what he wants” (Osborne, comment on 21:22).
Some teach that when we pray, we do not change things because God has already ordained them. I don’t agree with this interpretation. I believe that when we pray, God intervenes and stops the way of nature. For example, if nature says that you have cancer, then you can pray and God may heal you. We pray that God’s presence invades a warped or malfunctioning condition, and he changes it. The more we pray, the more God’s presence by his Spirit intervenes (HT: Osborne, p. 772).
GrowApp for Matt. 21:18-22
1. How does your faith grow?
2. Has God ever answered a prayer that was impossible for you?
RELATED
9. Authoritative Testimony in Matthew’s Gospel
1. Church Fathers and Matthew’s Gospel
2. Archaeology and the Synoptic Gospels
14. Similarities among John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels
1. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to Series
SOURCES AND MORE
To see the bibliography, please click on this link and scroll down to the bottom. You will also find a “Summary and Conclusion” for discipleship.
Dr. Jim's Essential Bible Teaching 