With the acknowledgment of Christ as the Messiah King on Palm Sunday Holy week continues with Christ leaning into His role as the Messiah King. On Monday morning Jesus returns with His disciples to Jerusalem. On the way the King curses the fig tree because it had failed to yield the fruit that was expected. Here we see the Messiah King taking up the prerogative to banish faithless servants. In many respects what the Messiah King is doing here is removing the chaff from the wheat of His Kingdom. The fig tree represented faithless Old Covenant Israel, who had rejected their prince and now the prince returns service by rejecting faithless Old Covenant Israel.
This cursing of the fig tree has been anticipated in Luke 13
6 He also spoke this parable: “A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7 Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, ‘Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it [b]use up the ground?’ 8 But he answered and said to him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. 9 [c]And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.’ ”
In the cursing of the Fig Tree on Holy Monday we find a consistency with the resolve to cut down the Fig Tree in Luke 13 if it does not produce.
We get the same theme again in Matthew 21 with the parable of the wicked tenants. What connects all these is that Old Covenant Israel as been faithless and the consequence is that God is going to divorce them. Of course, the Israel of God remains but official Israel has been faithless and is cursed, promised to be slain, and is going to be cut down. God is done with faithless covenant Israel as His people. The promise of divorce is made here and the divorce papers are finally served in AD 70 as Titus utterly demolishes the infrastructure of faithless Old Covenant Israel.
Christ is King and the King has the royal duty to bring rebels to a proper end.
Also on Holy Monday the Messiah King comes to His Temple palace where He finds worshipers being fleeced in their desire to worship God by the Jewish bankers/money changers. Here the King, out of zeal for the glory of the Father, forms a whip and runs the Jewish bankers/money changers out of His Temple. The Messiah King has the authority to do this in order to protect the honor of His Father, with whom He is one (John 10:30). The Holy Messiah King shouts out;
“The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be a house of prayer,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves” (Luke 19:46).
Observations
1a.) God is done with faithless Old Covenant Israel as a people. Israel has been replaced in God’s economy by His Church, all the while understanding that the Church is merely an extension of faithful Israel in the OT. The invisible Church is to God what Israel was responsible to be.
1b.) This is turn means that what happens in the Middle Eastern country called Israel is irrelevant to God’s eschatological clock, and that would be true even if they were related to OT Israel and not instead of Khazar and Edomite stock.
2.) If the God-Man Jesus Christ was so animated to protect the honor the Father’s name from being defaced by Jewish bankers/money changers shouldn’t we be animated by concern for the Father’s name?
2b.) Note it was a matter of economics that found the Messiah-King cleaning out the Temple. The Lord Christ was angered by the fact that worshipers were being cheated by Jewish bankers/money changers in their desire to worship God.
3.) There are times when righteous anger is the proper response.