Our scripture reading for this morning is taken from the gospel of Mark chapter 11, continuing our series through this gospel. We ordinarily would consider this in the evening service, but here we'll consider it this morning. And so we are Mark chapter 11, and just a couple verses, three verses, 12 through 14. Mark 11, 12 through 14. If you're using the Pew Bible, that's page 895. Mark 11, verse 12. Hear the word of God. Now the next day, when they had come out from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing from afar a fig tree having leaves, he went to see if perhaps he would find something on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. In response, Jesus said to it, let no one eat fruit from you ever again. And his disciples heard it. as far our reading of God's holy, inspired, and infallible word, and may he add his blessing to the preaching thereof. congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, I believe it was in March of this year, where we were considering the keys of the kingdom in our catechism series. Keys of the kingdom are those keys which lock and unlock entry and it either unlocks through the preaching of the word as the Spirit uses that to convert hearts by His grace and give faith, or what it does is that it locks, and that through particularly the act of Christian discipline which is exercised by the office bearers, the elders of the church. Look, it's history. We saw something and heard something of that now, although it was not at the final stage or step of things. It is nevertheless the beginnings of that process to which we are called to pray earnestly, fervently. You may recall when we considered the keys of the kingdom some time ago, there was an analogy that we used about a tree in a grove. And you know an orange tree by the fact that it grows oranges. It's not going to grow figs. It's not going to grow peanuts. It's not going to grow this. An orange tree is going to grow orange trees. And yet, there is a time and a place, and especially even as we might see around our area of apple orchards, there are some trees that don't quite make it. They're in the orchard. They're there planted among the rose. There's no fruit. And in like manner, it is as though every single individual soul here is like a tree that is planted within the kingdom of God. And as such, in the orchard, in this field of God, there must be fruit. There must be fruit. What happens when a tree does not produce fruit? You go to an apple orchard or wherever else, an orange grove, and you'll see that a farmer will come by, will examine it, and will see if it's not bearing fruit, cut it down, and cast it out. So we must think of the kingdom of God as like an orchard with all kinds of trees or this grove, which are the people, and then there's the benefit of having the life-giving spirit to produce that fruit within our lives. But if there is no fruit within our lives, and it testifies that, sure, yes, we may have grown up, we may have taken up some space within the orchard or the grove for some time, but we are not a living member of the kingdom. And eventually, if that's the case, well, we will be excluded. And these are the very things that our Lord would have us to know and to hear in these short verses here with this fruitless fig tree that we encounter in these three verses, Mark 11. And we'll consider this in three points under the title of the fruitless fig tree. We'll first consider the setting of it, And then secondly, the evaluation that Jesus gives, and then third, a call for us to hear, to heed this as the disciples had heard him say this. And so we consider the setting of this, and this will be a bit of a reminder for us, is that while we are in typically what's understood as the last week of Jesus' earthly ministry, and so there's not much time left and he had set his face like a flint to Jerusalem and there to accomplish a certain great and final work which is his work of redemption as the great high priest of God for his people, sacrificing himself. on the altar of God which was the cross and that in a sanctuary or a temple that was not made with hands but it was outside of the city at Calvary on Golgotha. And so with that in mind that Jesus knows it's going on and there is a limited amount of time that he has upon this earth for this particular set of his ministry. The days here are filled with a certain kind of tension. a certain kind of expectation. Emotions are high, and as we read through the Gospel of Mark, we're kind of tossed here and there from one end of the spectrum of emotions to the other. We read, have just read of that triumphal entry, and so there is a certain exuberance that was in the air, and then that next moment, we have a dreadful one. like the one we have in our text, where Jesus comes upon a tree, looks for fruit, he finds none, and then he utters a curse. There's a parallel passage that can be found of this, it's in Matthew 21, and you take these two together, you can kind of piece together what is happening on this day, and what Christ's mode of operation is while he is near Jerusalem. and we read at the beginning of chapter 11 that they came to Bethany and this place called Bethphagia or Phagia and there he seems to spend his nights on this Mount of Olives at this town of Bethany and Bethphagia which is about a mile or two east of the city. And so during the day he's there in Jerusalem and he spends his time And we read about the first day that he was there, the triumphal entry, and then he entered the temple. And what he did was he looked around. He looked and he looked and he searched and he examined and looked at everything and took it all in. And then he leaves. And so what he did is he went back to Bethany and there he rested for the night and here now the next morning he presumably comes early in the morning but on the route to Jerusalem from Bethany is that other village, Bethphage. Now this town, this name for this village, Bethphage, literally means house of figs. And it's probably because there were a lot of fig trees that were growing around. And they're even there today. You can look at them and see them. They like these wide open areas that are near the roads. And if you lived in this time and the season is still there, so if you lived in Israel, you would know that the fig trees, their harvest could be done about three times a year. And there were three particular seasons. But in verse 13, Mark specifically states that the time of figs, the harvest was not yet. It wasn't the time, it wasn't harvest. But what is actually the case with these fig trees is that you will see right before harvest, early spring, which is about this time, before the leaves budded on this tree, there would be a small kind of bud that would grow. And it wasn't a leaf bud, it was something else. It was a small edible fruit. It was almost like a pre-fig and Song of Solomon actually speaks of this, writes of this. Song of Solomon 2 verse 13. They're green figs and they weren't that tasty, sure, but you could eat them. And they were nutritious. If you were hungry, as Jesus was, you could eat them. And so the picture is this. Early morning. Jesus is traveling out, he's on his way to Jerusalem. Going through all of these fig trees by Bethphage and he's hungry. He hasn't had breakfast. And there amongst all of these fig trees there wasn't really anything that caught his attention being so early in the year, probably March or early April. But there was one from afar he could see it. There's one that has leaves and an abundance of leaves and it stands out from all the rest of these trees. And the fact is, is that if you could see leaves on a fig tree, you could expect to find that small little fruit. But as he looked, he had every reason to think that it would bring forth these fruit, but he found nothing. It was only show. And so he investigated and he speaks these dreadful words, let no one eat from you ever again. Now Jesus is not being harsh. There's not an overreaction as though, you know, when we maybe find something where we have an expectation and didn't find what we look for, we maybe blurt something out in exasperation and frustration, say, ah, forget it. That's not what's going on here. Christ knows and spoke with such precision and intentionality and has every right to say what he will to this tree as its creator. He brought this tree into being by the word of his mouth. Does he not have the right to demand from his creation what it ought to produce and what he created it to produce? Second, he's fully man as well. So he hungered like we do, but man has been given dominion. True God and true man. And he would never utter anything so flippantly out of an exasperated and frustrated response, especially not a curse, because he knows full well why it is he's in Jerusalem at this time. He knows that curse and that condemnation that is about to come upon him. We need to see here It's not Jesus acting frustrated in a frustrated way. We need to see here Jesus acting in a merciful way. The mercy of Christ in the fact that he, right here, right now, in this text, doesn't pronounce a curse and condemnation and rain fire upon the whole city of Jerusalem. He will later weep over the city and yet what he has here is just a word that is given to this tree. And it is a mercy so that you and I may learn. We will learn to flee, to flee from the curse of this world, the curse of everything, curse of our sin, to him who bore that curse. So what is the evaluation, secondly, that Jesus gives here? And the evaluation is building on this context and how it is a picture here. Because what is the case, oftentimes in scripture, especially in the Old Testament, the people of God are compared to trees. In the Old Testament, the covenant people of God are compared at least six times to a fig tree. But we read about, in Micah 7, for example, about the Lord who had planted his people, from which he expected fruit from them. If he plants something, he expects fruit from that. And we read of that in Micah 7, and it pictures the Lord going up to his people. There is this vineyard as this plant, and he brings a lamentation. He laments, as it were, where he says, there is no cluster to eat. My soul desired the first ripe fruit. This is what the Lord says about his people. When he comes and when he approaches and he sees and he evaluates that there is no fruit. He has a right to expect from his people fruit. It's why he's planted us. Christ also compares his people to a fig tree in Luke 13. In a parable, it's well known to many of us, where the owner has planted a fig tree in a vineyard and comes year after year for three years and having found none, he determines to cut it down. Now the vine dresser there, in connection with the owner, the vine dresser speaks to the owner and asks for permission that the fig tree would be spared just one more year. And so he was going to dig around and he was going to help it. And so this is something that is laden with spiritual meaning and significance for us as the people of God. Especially for the fact that the Lord was hungry. He's hungry for fruit from his people. This is what he desires. He deserves fruit from his people. This is what we need to be bearing in mind as Jesus evaluates this. He has these pictures in mind. This imagery. And notice that, yes, there are many, many fig trees around, but Jesus doesn't just take issue with all of these other fig trees that also likewise are not bearing fruit. He doesn't curse any one of those other ones. Just this one. Because the real issue in our text is not simply fruitlessness. The issue at the heart of it is that it pretended to have fruit. It appeared as though it was a fruitful tree and it advertised itself as such and by putting forth the leaves, the leaves are there, you would expect those little nubby fruits to be there. And so it made a pretension to be something more than these others. That's the problem with this tree. It gives the impression and the show that it is a fruit. And as Jesus looked upon it, as their text says, from afar, it may have been a very beautiful tree from afar, especially if all of these other ones were barren around them. It's a symbol of lushness and of beauty and it is almost as though it's like how the disciples will point out to Jesus a little bit later as they come to the temple and say, well look at all of the beautiful stones, look at the wonderful buildings and how everything has been built here. You remember the sandwich? principle that we had mentioned at the beginning of our series in Mark of how there will be a statement that's stated once and then it will be stated again and then there's something that's in between that's the meat of the message. Well note how there is the fig tree that's mentioned here in verse 12 through 14 and then Jesus cleanses the temple And then as they exit, they note the tree again. So we have that first slice of bread, as it were. This is having to do with the true worship of God. And the fact is, is that there may be this outward appearance of fruitfulness in our worship, in our church life, in our personal lives, our spiritual lives. The Bible teaches this over and over again, that man is one that looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord is the one that looks upon the heart. And so Jesus comes and he examines and he looks at this tree from top to bottom. You can imagine him pulling up all of the branches and looking up under all the leaves and whatnot. He evaluates, there is no fruit. He desires fruit. And what is the fruit that the Lord accepts? Sacrifices that please the Lord. Our poor and a contrite heart trembles at the word of God. Fruit that God looks for is repentance unto God. Faith in Christ. fruit of love to Christ, fruit of love for souls, fruit of hatred of sin, fruit of contentment, whatever lot our God has given to us, fruit of longing for Him, for His righteousness, to seek first the kingdom of God, fruit of charity and liberality to the poor saints among us, fruit of patience, fruit of renouncing the hidden things of dishonesty, fruit of resting in Him and His finished work. Or you can look in Galatians 5, where we read of the fruit of the Spirit, and notice the fruit is singular. It's one fruit with many parts. Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control. That's the fruit that the Lord looks for this morning. As he looks upon me and you and Bethany through his word upon each of our lives. He lifts up the leaves that are there. He searches even for small fruits. Fruits that we might reject. He's hungry even for that because it is a fruit, and that is something we ought to take encouragement from. And even the small fruits, however young they may be, however small they may be, however few they may be, He's hungry for that fruit. He will not pass it over, even though we might disregard it. He doesn't look only for the big and for the great fruit, but We need to bear in mind that this is also right after, this is right before the Lord Jesus, sorry, this is right after Jesus entered the temple and looked upon the temple and searched it and looked upon everything and there he looked up and down and he saw the Pharisees on the corner. A branch perhaps, beautiful leaves, they're praying out loudly as they would and yet it was no fruit. He watched also people throw in their money into the collection containers and in a way that drew attention to themselves and it showed wonderful leaves of wealth and opulence and charity toward others but it was all leaves and no fruit. They're the priests. They had their gowns and their implements on and doing all their work, but it was all form and it was all show. There were beautiful leaves and wonderful to watch, but there was no fruit. The Lord is going to come to his house and he is looking for fruit and he finds only leaves. The lesson here is that the Lord is the one that tries and searches the hearts. We cannot deceive God. We can deceive people so easily, can't we? The way we dress up, The way we talk in church, the way we sit, whether it's properly, the way we move our lips or hold our heads and everything else, we've got it down pat to look so good and so pious, but the Lord sees right through it. He sees it for what it is. Thankfully, the case is that the Lord does see fruit. There are fruitful trees among us. It seemed to us that our lives are just so leafy and barren, but no fruit, or even they're just bare branches with nothing on it, and yet the Lord knows that there are even small fruits, and even one or two there in the branches of your life, because he's the one who has planted you underneath the preaching of the word. And that soil waters by his spirit and his word. And that is the planting next to that river of water that we read of in Revelation 22. And he has made sure and will make sure that you yield fruit every season. If you're engrafted into him by true faith, you cannot but bear fruit. We do get discouraged at times of our own hypocrisy and of our own shortcomings in the fact that there's not more fruit or there's so little fruit or there's no fruit at all it seems. But even our concern and care and the sorrow over the lack of holiness can be something of that fruit that the Lord has worked in your life, in my life. So the master comes into the vineyard and his eyes look on our lives. What does he see? You find us hiding from the Lord at times. Hiding behind fig leaves of self-righteousness, like Adam and Eve did. The fact is, is that we cannot stay there because this pronouncement that Jesus gives is part of how we hear. It's part of how we hear this. As we move to our third point, the condemning word. And the words of the mouth of our Lord brings life and it also brings death because this is a word of judgment. It is a miracle of judgment, you could say. And all of the other miracles of Christ were miracles of mercy and of grace. They were powerful and indeed, but it was always on behalf of restoring those which were broken and often withered. He healed withered hands and withered bodies but here that by the same word he now takes what was alive or at least plant life and withers by his judgment. So what we need to hear through this is that the beautiful fig leaves of our lives need to go. We need to cease trying to cover our own shame and our own fruitlessness before God. And so what needs to happen is that the word of Christ needs to come and to wither us away, wither those leaves of self-righteousness away so that we have nothing left within us but what we really are. We're dead in our sins and our trespasses of ourselves. We have nothing. We have no adequate covering. This is exactly what had happened to the Apostle Paul. He, of all people, could boast that he was the most elaborate fig tree, if you will, of them all. He writes of this in Philippians where he said he was a Pharisee of Pharisees. Concerning the law, he was blameless of the tribe of Benjamin. He had it all. And if we were to see him and to watch him as a Pharisee in the temple and hearing one of his prayers on the corner, we would say, man, what a wonderful prayer that was. Rich insights into theology, into doctrine, and all manner of things, and yet what he says is it was all rubbish. There were a loss to him because when the word of the Lord came, it stopped him on the road to Damascus. It withered him and made him bend the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what made all of these other things wither away. And there he had the righteousness which is from God and the Lord Jesus Christ. There he had it all. That was a rich, rich treasure. So today, he also sends a word reproving the show of religion, the hypocrisy, He strips away all those leaves of our lives. Has that happened for you? Under the preaching of the word or the reading of the word, it seemed as though it was the Lord himself coming up to you and evaluating and looking at the leaves of the tree of your life and takes a leaf and then another. And then another. And then another. And then we get to the one. We say, Lord, not that one, not that leaf, please, but that has to go. All pretense needs to be taken away. And this needs to happen. And it's wonderful when it happens because today is the day of grace. Think as a come to the end. Because if it doesn't happen in this life, it will happen one day. The great judgment which is foreshadowed here when there will be a final pronouncement and judgment and evaluation made. From that courtroom of God will come the sentence upon all those professors of religion who never possessed true religion. And he will say in utter these words or whatever equivalent of the words there is here in verse 14, let no man eat from you ever again. So we need to have these words of Christ, of his gospel, of the gospel of repentance, the gospel of the kingdom of God have this effect upon our lives. These self-righteous and self-sufficient and false ideas and these wicked and vain things that we are all so prone to, they all need to wither away. It's repentance. The Lord is declaring these things in a measure of mercy to us. It's in the day of grace today because we're still on this side of that eternal judgment. So we must repent, but then also believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. So what it is to hear is to look for a better tree. Look for a better tree. There's two trees here. We only read of one, but the other tree is this tree of life. is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Bible speaks of Christ very often as a tree, so glorious and complete he is, bringing forth his fruit as the Son of God. Just a few days after this instance, he would compare himself to a green or to a living tree, and then to Jerusalem, to a dry or a lifeless tree. You can read of that in Luke 23, verse 31. And it's clear from these passages, from this last week here, that man, sinful man, we despised him, a root out of dry ground for all we are concerned. And there was no comeliness to him that we should desire him. Yet from the word from heaven, the Father's verdict, as it were, upon him is that he is the well-beloved son in whom he is well-pleased. And so he's a perfect picture of a perfectly fruitful tree. You can't come to this tree, Christ, and not find fruit. But in spite of being this glorious and fruitful tree of life, just a few days after this, we read in Galatians 3, verse 13, that he would be made a curse, as he was nailed to an accursed tree, another tree, the cross. He endured an infinitely greater judgment than this fig tree which the disciples discover afterwards had totally withered away. Because by his death on the cross, on that tree, Christ endured the withering wrath of God, the eternal death for every one of his people. And the fruit which has been born from that, from his person, his work, is absolutely incalculable. You cannot measure it. You cannot add it up. There is justification. Justification before the sight of God. There is the forgiveness of all of our sin. There is atonement. There is peace with God. There is eternal life. That's the fruit that was born by Him hanging on that tree. And then there is yet more fruit borne by his resurrection. As we had described and read in Revelation 22, that tree of life bears and yields 12 fruits every month. 12 is the people of God, there who by faith in Christ are engrafted into him as branches into a vine. That life is now ours by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who gives to us and enables that faith within us that we may abide in that vine. If we abide in Him, that regular constant faith in Him, a dependence upon Christ, going to Him for all our needs, for all our life and strength and supply that we need for all our days, we will bear fruit. And we will bear fruit that is acceptable to God in Christ. That's what it is to hear. The Savior yields fruit continually without fail to the satisfaction of every hungering and thirsting sinner. He came, was hungry, and he could not find any fruit, but all who come to this tree of life In true faith, we'll find an abundance of fruit and season, everything imaginable, that eye has not seen or ear heard or entered into the heart and the imagination of men. We who come to Christ shall never hunger. So we need to abide continually in Christ without him We are but a withered branch that is cut down and that is burned. As we close, do we see the connection of everything that has gone on this morning? The connections of this text, the connection there then with the announcement that we have heard and really the connection of everything that we do here. This thing that we do here. We call our religion, and we call Christianity the stuff that we do with it as well. It's not because this is just a part of our cultural identity, some tradition that we have, and we're not part of some kind of club. It's not like one of those cultural artifacts you see in all these other cultures amongst whom we live, where some dress this way and others dress that way, and some have this food, some have that holiday and do this kind of tradition. Well, for us, well, we go to church and we read the Bible and we have our confessions and this, that, and the other thing as though they were just kind of the same thing to either opt out if you think that all this church stuff isn't for you. That's not what we are doing here. This is life. This is our bread. We need the Lord Jesus Christ, the preaching of the word, the coming together, the saints, the singing songs. We need these things because it is the wellspring of life eternal that springs forth and brings nourishment that we may bear fruit that is acceptable to God. True religion isn't just putting on a suit and tie or a dress. Following this form and that form, true religion is found in the Lord Jesus Christ and a fruitful life from abiding in him. The greatest danger that we face of all professing people to satisfy ourselves with just a little bit of conviction here and there, a little bit of Christ, and then something of themselves, but it must become this in your life. Give me Christ Jesus in Christ alone, and nothing, nothing else will do. He came so low. He came under the judgment of God. And therefore, in him is our fruit found. Amen, let us pray. Gracious God and Father, we do pray for your blessing upon these words and these truths to be impressed upon our heart by your spirit. that indeed it would bear fruit. And so we pray that these things will make a lasting impression in our heart and mind that we would look to you for all things for that fruit to be born. And may we then render it unto you in thanksgiving, knowing that it is you who works in us, both to will and to do. And so we pray that by it you will accept the praises and the worship that we bring, not because we are worthy, but because of the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, his person and work, in whose name we pray, amen.