Holy Monday: Mark 11:20-26, Matthew 21:25-27

Holy Monday!  In which Jesus curses a fig tree and has his authority questioned yet again.  Do you have a faith that could move mountains? Come closer to Jesus with Aimee Copley Mulder

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

All glory to God. This is Amy Cockley Mulder. It's Holy Week. And so I'm so glad you chose to join me. Please continue to listen to my podcast every single day this week as we walk the last week of Jesus together. The last week where Jesus was on the earth before he was crucified. This Holy Week is a time for us to set aside moments where we really think about what Jesus did for us. Holy Week. Join me here at all glory to God.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Doesn't matter if you're young or alive. All that matters is you answer the door when Jesus comes to change your life. And now I catch me. All the glory to God.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

This is the day after Palm Sunday, and Jesus was up to a lot of stuff on this Holy Monday. One of the things that happens is this weird story that I still, even though I will wax poetic and try to reflect on it, I still will always be confused at why Jesus did this cursing of the fig tree. Jesus curses a fig tree and it withers and he uses it to teach a lesson. It's kind of an interesting thing that Jesus does after he has just come to Jerusalem through a parade where everyone is saying, you are the God who saves us, a fig tree. Jesus curses the fig tree and it withers and he uses it to teach a lesson. And it's just a really strange thing to do, right? After you've gone through this parade and Hosanna. And I know I told you we're going to be in the book of John for Holy Week, but holy Monday events are not mentioned in the book of John. So we're going to have to take a little detour. But as we read this event, it's recorded in Matthew chapter 21, and then it's also recorded in Mark 11. And so as we read Mark 11, verses 20 through 26, I want you to think about what this means in terms of what Jesus is doing and the response from the disciples. It's an incredible thing that the disciples keep seeing over and over again, Jesus doing something, being questioned. And so as we go to Mark chapter 11, verses 20 to 26, I want you to really pay attention to what Jesus is doing and what the disciples are doing. Chapter 11, verses 20 to 26. In the morning, as they went along, they saw a fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered. Have faith in God, Jesus answered. Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, Go throw yourself into the sea, and does not doubt in their heart, but believes in what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive your sins. So this is this incredible moment. Now in Matthew, Jesus curses the tree and it withers right on sight. Matthew is um focuses on is that Jesus is saying, embrace the kingdom of God, embrace the things of the kingdom. And what Matthew does not say at the end of his version of the story is the forgiveness verse that's in verse 25 of Mark. And Mark's thing is that they were walking, Jesus cursed a fig tree, they kept going, and then they came back, and Peter brought to attention look, that fig tree you cursed has with has withered. And Jesus comes in a very declarative statement. Listen, you need to have faith in God. You need to have a faith that moves mountains. It's a believing faith. It's a believing prayer. It's the same thing that Matthew asks through the words of Jesus. Matthew asks, have faith. What do you believe in? What is the thing that you are going to cling to? Jesus is asking people to pray prayers that are beyond imagination. Because no one believed you could curse a fig tree that it had no fruit and it would wither within a short period of time. No one would believe that. And Jesus was saying that this tree needed to have fruit and needed to have faith, it needed to have belief. And I don't think the disciples came from this encounter and started going tell mountains to move into the sea. But Jesus is saying, listen, if if you're following me, if you're praying prayers of true faith, amazing things can happen. Now that becomes problematic for us. Because this verse is incredible. It's about this power of God, and God can do anything, and all I need to have is the faith of the mustard seed. That's what it brings to mind. And anything can happen if I just forgive people and believe. And you and I know if we've lived on the planet a little longer, that the world doesn't always work like that. That we've prayed prayers with great belief, and God hasn't conformed his actions to our prayer. That we prayed for people to be healed, that are incredible, that had cancer or a heart problem, or we've seen our loved ones die too soon. And we've prayed. And it didn't happen the way we prayed. And maybe you've been like me and you've asked yourself, did I not believe enough? Should I pray harder? Do I have anything against anybody? Maybe it's it's me that God didn't answer the prayer the way that I needed God to answer. Now I'm gonna tell you, I have seen God do miraculous things, amazing things, move mountains into the sea, kind of things. But God doesn't always work the way that I ask him to. Do you know why? It's because I don't truly have the big picture. I am Amy Mulder. I'm in Muskegon, Michigan. I have three sons. That's who I am. I'm serving God the best I can as a pastor. Most of the time, I don't really think I'm doing anything correctly. I did get my doctoral degree last year, and it means that I get to say, look, I'm Reverend Dr. Amy Copley Mulder at the moment. It also means I finished something I started, which is a big thing, but my authority is not. Okay, I don't have authority. I do have this beautiful curiosity that I believe is from God, that I will always be looking at this scripture in Mark 11 and Mark 21 and asking myself, huh? I wonder why Jesus had to curse the fig tree and watch it wither and then he used it for a lesson. And so the question that that cursed fig tree gives me this morning on Holy Monday is Am I bearing fruit? And I don't know if I'm not praying hard enough for my church to see more people come or to grow more. Maybe that's it. But maybe the fruit that God is producing in me is a fruit of expectation and embracing waiting in the presence of God. Maybe that's the fruit I need to have. The other thing that it's important to do when we're talking about fruitful, not fruitful, is remember the beautiful, miraculous God that has met you in the past. I remember my four-year-old through ages four and six being extremely sick and not being able to do anything about it. We would drive to Davos twice a week, once a week, so much. And get his blood drawn. He was four years old and was able to tell them which vein to go in and the procedure. And he was so weak. He was this little active little ball of cuteness with bright pink cheeks and just glowy eyes, and he just became a little gray child that could barely move. And it was breaking my heart. I had just had my third son, Tucker. So I wasn't it, but my kid was not a normal four-year-old. He would just come home from kindergarten and um sleep. He was so tired, so sick. And I had had it. And we were just watching him constantly for bruises. He had this thing called ITP, which is we don't know why your platelets, your antibodies are being attacked by your platelets in your body. And it was overwhelming. And we just kept going to the doctor. We had all these visits, and they put him on chemotherapy medicine because that's some kind of treatment for it. And it was just way, he was wasting away. And I remember we were at camp meeting at Indian Lake Nazarene campground in Vicksburg, Michigan, which is a wonderful place to go if you ever get to go. And it was camp meeting, and I looked at his body, and there were the bruises again. It's kind of one of the telltale signs that we find out everywhere. There was just bruises all over, which meant we needed to make sure that he was going to be okay and get in medicine and drive once again from Vicksburg, Michigan to DeVos. So this was the story. And I just remember crumpling in my chair in my pew. And and just being done, just saying, God, I can't. I can't do this forever. I can't. The doctors had wanted Ford to be in a couple of studies, and I was hesitant because I didn't want my kid to be a guinea pig. They're like, he's one of one in 10,000 have this disease the way he has. And so I know I was supposed to be like, oh, I need to help solve the the disease, but I was just worried about my kid being a guinea pig and being poked and prodded and what that meant. And I just remember praying. Because what he had was not necessarily life-threatening. It was threatening before we figured out what it was. But he could live with this disease. He just would have to have a spleen taken out, and he would just have um, you know, he couldn't have been like this healthy athlete guy, and he could have, um he could have lived with it fine. It just would have been a challenge. And I remember with everything in me, I just was praying, God, just take this thing away. I know he can live without a spleen. I know he can live with this disease, but just I remember praying, and everybody in Indian Lake kind of got around us before we drove to DeVos and we prayed this prayer. And I'm not saying that my faith was great that day because I was spent and done and finished. But I think the chorus of people praying there was something that happened because that moment on, the numbers of his um platelets and his blood just kept climbing and climbing. And within months, he was no longer suffering from that disease. They said, He's done. He's no longer a patient of hematology at Helen DeVos Hospital. So I don't quite know why Jesus cursed the fig tree and it withered, and why he is saying, Listen, you can have faith where you can move rounds in the sea. And why when I pray with faith, it doesn't always work out that way. Like it doesn't happen the way I think it does. But I remember a moment when a group of people who believed in God gathered around my son and he was healed, and that is from the power of God. And I know that I'm not the only one with that story. There's been a moment where you have had faith that could move mountains, and that faith and that faith has changed the way you encounter the world. So Jesus says, have faith, forgive, and your faith can say to the mountain, move into the sea. That doesn't mean that every prayer I pray happens the way I think it should. But it does every time I pray, an impossible prayer. A prayer like, Lord, bring a million people to my church or whatever it is, Lord, heal my friend from cancer. Those impossible prayers, it doesn't mean that God always acts the way that I think he should, but it does recall that moment and many moments since where we gathered around my Ford and He was healed. Because God does heal, He does cause miracles, He does cause fig trees to wither when He curses them. This is who Jesus is as he encounters the world. The other thing that happens on this holy Monday is Jesus gets his authority questioned again. It's the theme of the Gospels. I bet you didn't know this. One of them is that Jesus, how are you able to do what you are able to do? So after this cursing the fig tree lesson with just his disciples around him, he enters into the temple. And this account is from Matthew chapter 21, verses 23 to 27. When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching and said, By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority? Jesus said to them, I will also ask you one question. If you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin? And they argued with one another, If we say from heaven, he will say to us, Why then do you not believe him? But if we say of human origin, we are afraid of the crowd, for all regard John as a prophet. So they answered Jesus, We do not know. And he said to them, Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things. How can you do these things, Jesus? That's what the people want to know. And I was really thinking about this from Palm Sunday to now, to this moment in Scripture and in the Holy Monday, where Jesus' authority is questioned. That the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the chief priests of the law, the ones that are plotting Jesus' death and plotting the death of Lazarus, and very concerned by his crazy actions of miracles and raising people from the dead and all of the things, this is their main question. How can you do these things by whose authority? And when he alludes to it and when he says it, I am the Son of Man, I am God, I am the Messiah, the one you've been waiting for. Whenever he gives these kind of answers, they always want to kill him right then. And they throw him out of the temple and they pick up a stone or whatever. But you can see this comical situation where the Pharisees are gathered together, like, okay, we gotta get him. He's coming in the temple. He's coming in the temple. We gotta get him. And so they they kind of talk. You can just you can just see it. It's like this little like junior high boy is trying to to catch a bully or something, but they're the bullies in this case. And so they go and they go up to Jesus. Okay, we have a question. How are you able to do all this stuff? And they think they are. I mean, you can see the satisfaction on their faces. They're like, Yes, we got him. How is he gonna answer? He goes, Okay, so answer me this. How about John? How was he able to baptize? Was it from heaven or from human? Oh man, good question, Jesus. You know, being fully human and fully God is very helpful in a debate kind of situation. And so the Pharisees go away and they go, okay, what do we do? What do we do? We can't answer this. So we just said we don't know. And Jesus goes, then I don't need to explain to you by what authority. I love this exchange because you can just see the Pharisees going, oh, foiled again. When he's called Hosanna, son of David, and it's all this wonderful, come into Jerusalem. They're like, oh no, he's getting the crowd. The crowd is singing his name. And then they'll they're afraid to say that he is of uh that John the Baptist is from human origin because they know that John the Baptist is important. And they're like, oh, we can't say it's of human, but we can't say it's of heaven, so we don't know. Oh, foiled again. But just hang with me this holy week. You will see that the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the chief priests of the law and all of these religious leaders, their focus on the crowd pays off eventually when Jesus is crucified. Their concern of the crowd is what's driving them. And that crowd does actually drive to the end of Jesus' life on earth as the prophet Jesus from Nazareth. I'm so glad that that's not where the story ends, though. So on this Holy Monday, I have a bunch of questions for you that I'd love for you to ponder before you join me tomorrow as we talk about Holy Tuesday. First of all, I want you to hear the words of Jesus in the commandment tone: have faith in God. Have faith in God. And when God doesn't answer your prayers the way that you think you should, or he curses a tree that withers in front of you and you have a question, just remember back to the time when God did do a miracle for you. And also pray for more faith. Part of having faith in God is accepting the things we cannot understand. And the other question that Jesus does in this fig tree lesson is he says, Do you have unforgiveness in your heart? So that's my other question for you. I'd like you to have faith in God. And I want you to ask yourself, is there anyone that I have not forgiven? Because just like the mountain is thrown into the sea, so when God forgives us, we our sins are thrown into the sea, and we can actually forgive others with that same reckless grace when we forgive with the power of God. But I just want you to remember that Jesus, as he walked the earth this holy week, had to deal with a lot of questions. And it's the same question coming from the same group of people. By whose authority are you able to do things? And the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the chief priests of the law look past the blind man that can see. They look past the lame man that can walk. They look past the woman steeped in sin by her circumstances, um, going and sinning no more, and never the same. They look past Lazarus' alive body after he was dead. They look past 5,000 people being fed. They miss the miracle because they want to know by whose authority. And Jesus, fully human, fully God. Jesus doesn't have to give his authority to those Pharisees. He rests in his work and his miracles and his walking through life, fully human and fully God. The nature of Jesus is something that I just can't even tell you that it gives me such comfort. That the God we pray to walked among us. It's one of the things that I cling to as I have faith in God. And not only did he walk among us and know what it was like to be betrayed by his friends and know what it's like to have his authority questioned, he had the power of God and the full experience of humanity. And on this Holy Monday, as you Can you get a hold of or can you draw close to the beautiful truth that Jesus is walking alongside you? So this day, as we conclude our time together, can I just encourage you to have faith in God? But have faith in God with the questions. When the Pharisees, with all of their scheming and plotting, come to Jesus and say, By whose authority do you have to do these things? He doesn't condemn them. He just comes back at them with a question. And he quietly deigns to answer because they cannot answer his question because of fear of the crowd. So you have questions about who God is, or why he cursed a fig tree, or why he hasn't healed the way that you would like him to, or why God works the way he works. Can I encourage you to have faith in the God that asks us to have faith in the beautiful reality that God was fully human, fully God, and walked among us? And the Pharisees that succeeded in turning the crowd against Jesus by Friday still did not get a win by what happens on Sunday. Have faith, ask questions, and ask yourself if you've forgiven people fully. Make this holy Monday a day where you wipe the slate clean and you say, God, whatever you have for me today, examine my heart. And Lord, give me a faith that increases in depth and width. Give me a faith that can move mountains as I walk with Jesus. God's blessings and peace. All glory to God. This is Amy Copley Mulder saying, Happy holy Monday. Join me tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

So it's about time we give it up. So let's give all the glory to God.