Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.
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Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.
one verse, one week 
In this gospel of Mark, the occurrence of the disappointing fig tree is weaved within a couple of other topics – the driving out the thieves from the temple and the prayer-moves-mountains lesson. So it might be a good idea to take a long-view of this fruitless, maybe immature, tree.
The first thing that comes to mind is to be actually serving Jesus and His Body, instead of just looking like you are fruitful from a distance. The spiritual application being, you actually HAVE to have faith in your heart, which in turn produces true obedience/actions. Not that that subject doesn’t seem to be pervasive throughout Jesus’ ministry, but it does make sense when thinking about the vendors in the temple and also the necessity of FAITH when praying for something.
If you’ve looked into this subject at all, the first thing you learn is that the fig tree should have had edible, unripe fruit on it at this time of year. From a distance, seeing the leaves, Jesus would have been expecting this unripe fruit. Saying, “May no one ever eat fruit from you AGAIN”, seems to imply that it wasn’t an immature tree – it had offered fruit before. But now all it was was a deceptively inviting tree, only good for catching some shade and starving to death under it. Well Jesus obviously wasn’t going to put up with such deception for himself or anyone else – he got rid of it.
So, with an empty tummy, Jesus heads up to the temple to get rid of some other tempting yet useless, and even harmful, things hanging around His house.
Then he attempts, again, to get through to his disciples about the real nature of faith. The underlying theme is the REALNESS and TRUTH of your faith. For anyone who is new to this Jesus thing, Christian faith, is surety and it comes from God. So when Jesus tells them to believe and it will be done – He’s essentially saying that your faith must me real and true or it won’t be what God wants.
So, in the end, the message is that Jesus wanted all the people in temple to know and love Him. And He wanted His disciples to know and love Him. And he wanted some tasty organic sustenance on His journey 🙂
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Amen!!!!
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Maybe the tree served every other purpose, but had nothing for Jesus. Reminds me of all the do gooders, secular humanists. What does Jesus say, Apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:5
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There would be those that would swear that the fruit was good for food, desirable to make one wise ect… Plenty of people say the same about many dot orgs. But when Jesus came it had nothing. That’s the way the world is, filled with a bunch of nothing, cursed. If you eat of this tree, you too shall be withered.
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