Meditations in Matthew Twenty-one: Kingdom Inspection

The timing of this week’s post on Matthew 21 is fitting. This passage describes events that occurred on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday in the week of Jesus’s crucifixion.¹ The anniversary of this (Palm) Sunday will occur on April 14, 2019. So, this post is about events that happened almost exactly 1,989 years ago.

These events occurred after Jesus “drew nigh unto Jerusalem” (Matt 21:1). They intensified the message of the first-last parable (Matt 20:1–15). Our last post (here) showed that parable was about God taking the kingdom from apostate Israel and giving it to another nation. 

Now, Jesus continues this message through three symbolic actions (Matt 21:1–22) and two parables (Matt 21:23–46). This post will discuss Jesus’s three symbolic actions: his contemplation of the city (Matt 21:1–11), his cleansing the Temple (Matt 21:12–17),² and his cursing of the nation (Matt 21:18–22). Lord willing, we will consider the parables in our next post.

The King Contemplates the City

Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey on Palm Sunday. He came as Israel’s King. Matthew says, “All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass” (Matt 21:4–5).

The context of the original prophecy (Zech 9:9) is important. The King’s entrance would precede God’s judgment of Jerusalem. God would “cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem” (Zech 9:10a). He would then speak “peace unto the heathen: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth” (Zech 9:10b).

Let’s consider the fulfillment sequence further. On Palm Sunday, Jesus the King arrived to inspect the holy city (cp. Isa 52:1; Dan 9:24). Mark says, “Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple: and when he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve” (Mark 11:11).

Jesus contemplated what he found in Jerusalem. “Jesus’ coming to the Temple must be seen as a ‘divine inspection’—the Lord coming to that which was his own to see what was being done in his name.”³

The crowd had praised Jesus as he entered Jerusalem. But had the city been faithful to God’s covenant? The Lord’s subsequent actions, parables, and prophecies showed she had failed her final inspection.

God then judged Israel for her unfaithfulness. As Jesus predicted, he cut Israel off in the “great tribulation” (Matt 24:21). This occurred in that generation (Matt 24:34).

Now, during the parousia (presence) of Christ, God is expanding the King’s domain. He is speaking “peace unto the heathen.” He will continue to do so until the nations serve him (e.g., 1 Cor 15:25; cp. Pss 2:8-9; 110:1). His dominion shall then be “from the sea even to the sea.”

Inmillennialism preserves this sequence and maintains the continuity of these events. The King came to Zion on Palm Sunday, AD 30. God cut Jerusalem off in the Jewish Wars of AD 66–70. He is now blessing his servants to “make disciples of all the nations” (Matt 28:19 NKJV).

The King Cleanses the Temple

As the above Scriptures show, Jesus’s contemplation of Jerusalem focused on the Temple (Matt 21:12–17). “Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves” (Matt 21:12).

The Lord came to his Temple to perform an act of judgment. “Anyone with the slightest insight who had witnessed the cleansing of the temple would have recognized the enacted parable as a sign of the temple’s destruction and its eschatological rebuilding: a sign against the present temple and a sign for the future temple.”⁴

This act makes us “recall the words of prophecy.”⁵ As with Jesus’s contemplation of Jerusalem, so with his cleansing of the Temple—the sequence of events in the original prophecy is important.

Through Malachi, God had foretold the ministry of John the Baptist. “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me.” Then, “the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts” (Mal 3:1; emphasis added).

Malachi agreed with Zechariah regarding what would come next. “But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap” (Mal 3:2). God said, 

I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts. (Mal 3:5; emphasis added)

The Lord would come to his Temple. He would then judge Israel. 

The parallel to Zechariah continued. After the judgment, a time of great blessing would occur. God said, 

I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts. (Mal 3:11–12; emphasis added)

Again, inmillennialism preserves this sequence and proximity. Jesus comes to his Temple and acts out its coming judgment. That judgment comes in his generation (i.e., in AD 70). The messianic age follows in which the kingdom of God destroys all other kingdoms (cp. Dan 2:44).

The King Curses the Nation

Jesus’s third symbolic action was his cursing of the fig tree (Matt 21:18–22). Commentators debate what this action meant. D. A. Carson, for example, says “The cursing of the fig tree is an acted parable cursing hypocrites, not Jews or Judaism.”⁶ Yet he admits

most scholars interpret the cursing of the fig tree as a symbolic cursing of the people of Israel for failing to produce faith and righteousness, as evidenced primarily in their attitude to Jesus. The fig tree then becomes akin to the imagery of the vine in Isaiah 5:1–7 or the figs in Jeremiah 8:13; 24:1–8: sterility, the absence of fruit, or bad fruit—all lead to judgment.⁷

We believe the majority opinion is correct for two additional reasons. The first involves context. Matthew places the cursing of the fig tree after the symbolic overthrow of the Temple (Matt 21:12–17). It comes before parables about God’s soon-coming judgment of Israel. Jesus then explains that God will take the kingdom from Israel and give it to another nation (Matt 21:43). 

A symbolic judgment-action about hypocrites, in general, seems out of place. Jewish hypocrites concerned Jesus here (cp. Matt 16:3; 22:18; 23:13).

The second reason to affirm the majority opinion is more nuanced. It comes from Jesus’s application of his act. The withering of the fig tree amazed the disciples. 

And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away! Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. (Matt 21:20–21; emphasis added)

Some commentators believe Jesus was referring to the Mount of Olives as “this mountain.” They base their opinion on the location mentioned in Matt 21:1.⁸ 

But the Mount of Olives was within sight of Mount Zion and the Temple. This leads other commentators to believe Jesus was “referring to the Temple mount.”⁹ That Jesus cleansed the Temple the same day lends credence to this suggestion.

The near demonstrative pronoun—this mountain—suggests Jesus was not speaking generically. He was not saying faith can overcome any mountainous difficulty we encounter. This is true, but he was speaking of a particular mountain, one near at hand. In a context filled with pictures of judgment against Jerusalem, it is best to understand “this mountain” as the one on which the Temple stood. The disciples’ faith and ministry would end the Mosaic age that this mountain represented.

This leads us back to the withered fig tree. “Most probably the fig-tree would have been understood as a symbol for Israel.”¹⁰

But we should limit the cursed fig tree to apostate Israel. In Jeremiah’s vision, one of Israel’s baskets “had very good figs, even like the figs that are first ripe” (Jer 24:2). These figs represent those Jews who recognized Jesus as their Messiah. These Jews formed the nucleus of the Israel of God (Gal 6:16) in the messianic age. The Father had ordained that they bear much fruit (John 12:24; 15:5, 8).

Conclusion

In the week of Palm Sunday, Jesus emphasized that God would soon judge apostate Israel for her covenant unfaithfulness. His rebukes of the nation led to his crucifixion. But God vindicated him by raising him from the dead the following Sunday. And, he did something else. “The resurrection inherently entailed the consequent destruction of the temple; the two events are inter-connected.”¹¹

The three symbolic actions mentioned in this post pointed to the second vindication. Next week, we plan to show that the two vineyard parables in this chapter did so as well.

1. A. T. Robertson, A Harmony of the Gospels for Students of the Life of Christ (New York: Harper, 1922), 152, 156, 159.
2. The image in this post is Christ Driving the Money Changers out of the Temple by Valentin de Boulogne (1591–1632). This file (here) is in the public domain (PD-US).
3. Peter W. L. Walker, Jesus and the Holy City: New Testament Perspectives on Jerusalem (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), 4.
4. Nicholas Perrin, Jesus the Temple (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), 111.
5. C. H. Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954), 50.
6. D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in Matthew, Mark, Luke, vol. 8 of The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 445.
7. Carson, “EBC,” 445.
8. For example, John Albert Bengel, New Testament Word Studies, trans. Charlton T. Lewis and Marvin R. Vincent, 2 vols. (Gnomen of the New Testament, 1864; repr., Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1971), 1:248.
9. Walker, Jesus and the Holy City, 11.
10. Walker, Jesus and the Holy City, 5.
11. Walker, Jesus and the Holy City, 11.