Israel: The Fruitless Fig Tree
During Jesus’ final Passover Week, He came into the city of Jerusalem during the day and returned to Bethany, where He was staying outside the city each night. One morning, hungry, Jesus approached the city and saw a fig tree with leaves, but no fruit. He cursed the fruitless tree and declared it would never again produce fruit, and no one would ever eat of its fruit again. It withered (Mt 21:18–22; Mk 11:12–14, 20–26). The disciples marveled. What is the meaning of this miraculous curse? Our proposition: Israel is the faithless, fruitless fig tree, cursed by Jesus, never to bear fruit again.
Fig trees produce a pear-shaped fruit, eaten fresh or dried. They are a favorite in the semi-arid lands of the Middle East and Southwest Asia. The sweet fruit manifests in the dry season, and because of the leaves of the fig tree, they can be harvested in the shade. Fig trees are a cultivated ficus, which means they are intentionally planted for the harvest of their fruit. A prospering fig tree is a good thing, but Jesus was hungry, and this one gave Him nothing to eat.
The Bible teaches us about the power of words, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit (Prv 18:21).” Jesus spoke to the lame man, and he got up and walked (Jn 5). He spoke to Lazarus in the tomb, and the dead man walked out (Jn 11). The pronouncement of a judge has the power to free or to incarcerate. God is judge of all (Heb 12:23), and Jesus is the judge of the living and the dead (Rom 2:16; 2 Tim 4:1; 1 Pet 4:5).
Bible interpretation teaches us to look at a passage in its context. Jesus Christ taught the people in parables. His vivid stories were rich with imagery and came with a principal truth. When the Jewish authorities questioned Jesus’ source of authority, He refused to make an open claim that He was authorized by Yahweh (Mt 21:23–27). Instead, Jesus told them the parable of the two sons (Mt 21:28–32) and the parable of the landowner (Mt 21:33–41).
The parable of the two sons is about a father who asks his sons to work in the vineyard. One agrees to do it but does not. The second son refuses, but then repents, and goes and works. One is obedient and the other is disobedient. Israel had agreed to serve Yahweh on a number of important occasions, but they always did what was right in their own eyes. Israel was a disobedient son.
The parable of the landowner is about a vineyard owner entrusting his vineyard to some workers. When the owner would send messengers, the workers would kill the messenger. The owner then sent his son, and they killed him. So, the owner took the vineyard from the workers and gave it to others. Israel had killed the prophets sent by God, and they were about to kill God’s own Son. Israel and God’s vineyard were about to be separated from one another.
Israel was depicted as a nation of builders, but they rejected the cornerstone, Jesus Christ (Is 28:16; Eph 2:20; 1 Pet 2:4). You cannot build without a cornerstone. Therefore, God has taken the building/kingdom from Israel and has given it to another nation. Which nation? The holy nation of royal priests, chosen by God to be a race of His people, who were not His people (Hos 1:10; 2:23; Rom 9:25; 1 Pet 2:10), drawn from every nation (Rev 5:9), which is the church of Jesus Christ (Mt 16:18; Col 1:18; 1 Pet 2:9), the Israel of God (Gal 6:16).
What is different between the church and Israel? Israel is a cursed and withered fig tree, producing no fruit because it has no faith in the Son of God (Jn 3:36; 1 Jn 5:12). The church, in union with the true Israel (Is 49:3, 6), Christ Jesus, is a called-out gathering of God’s people, who live by faith in the Son of God (Gal 2:20). The church is justified by this faith (Rom 3:28; 5:1), even as Abraham was justified by faith in the promised seed (Gen 22:17–18), who we know is Jesus Christ (Gen 3:15; 15:6; Gal 3:16).
Ethnic Israel never secured right standing with Yahweh in a permanent way. The Temple sacrifices, continually offered, were a demonstration of this fact. Jesus Christ brought an end to the sacrificial system, by fulfilling the Law of Moses (Mt 5:17). His unblemished, one time, once for all His people (Rom 6:10; Heb 7:27; 9:12; 10:10; 1 Pet 3:18), sacrifice of Himself, as the Lamb of God slain, was accepted by Yahweh (Phil 1:29; Heb 4:15; 7:26). We know this because God raised Jesus from the dead (Acts 17:31).
The apostle Paul wrote to the Romans about this exchange of nations (Rom 9–11). Jesus Christ, the Vine (Jn 15), had wild branches (nations/Gentiles) grafted into His life (Rom 11:17–24). At the same time, cultured branches were cut off (Israel) because they were fruitless. Without the true Vine, the branches could produce no good fruit. They were deemed worthless, gathered up, and thrown into the fire (Mt 3:10; 7:19).
Far from casting a dark shadow over the Jewish people, the New Testament writers demonstrate God’s mercy on the Jews, by saving the elect remnant (Rom 11:5, 7), as He had always promised to do (Is 10:22; Hos 1:10; Rom 9:27). The Gospel has gone out to the Jew, first, and then to the Gentile (Rom 1:16). They are convened together in Christ (Eph 2:14), as a whole new creation (Gal 6:15), for Yahweh is the God of the Jews and the Gentiles (Rom 3:29). Therefore, one who is broken off from withered Israel may be grafted in again to Christ (Rom 11:23). Thus, we must learn the kindness and the severity of God (Rom 11:22).
Unfortunately, Dispensationalism has divided Christ’s church from ethnic Israel and apportioned promises and blessings, a future and a hope, to ethnic Israel under a different arrangement. The effect is a strange affinity for the secular nation-state of modern Israel.
We are told that God will find a way, where there is no way, to save all the Jewish people, who are strangers to the New Covenant, outside of the true Israel of God, without hope in the world, and without God in Christ (Eph 2:12). However, Jesus Himself said, “I am the way…no one comes to the Father except by Me (Jn 14:6).” God shows no partiality, and Christ’s church incorporates both Jews and Gentiles (see Gentile Inclusion in Acts 15).
Every nation, including ethnic Israel, receives the curse of Jesus Christ because the nations of the world do not bear fruit, nor fruit that remains. That is reserved for the one fruitful nation, which demonstrates faith in the coming Messiah, who has already come. At His second coming, Jesus will judge the nations (Rev 19:11–21).
As we think back to our original scene, Jesus offers an explanation to His disciples, which we can now understand a bit better. His judgment upon unbelieving Jerusalem and unbelieving Israel was because of their unbelief.
The same judgment rests on all who wither and die in the body, having produced no fruit of righteousness. On the last day, the wicked unbelievers throughout history will be gathered up, as with all cut off branches (Jn 5:28–29) and be cast into fiery hell to be burned in the furnace of the lake of fire, forever (Mt 25:41, 46; Jude 7; Rev 20:14–15).
The disciples marveled at Jesus’ miracle curse, and its profound effect. Their response to what He said next is not recorded. They may have marveled some more. Jesus’ next statement was conditional, “If you have faith (21:21b).” The effect of faith for the disciples would not be the same as the fig tree.
These disciples would soon be turning the world upside down with their preaching (Acts 17:6). They preached the Gospel (1 Cor 2:2; 15:1–2; 2 Tim 4:2), and it produced the fruit of life in those regenerated by the Holy Spirit (Jn 3:1–8; 1 Pet 1:3). They preached the Gospel, and it exposed the curse of unbelief in spiritually lifeless, dry trees (Jn 5:42; 8:47; 10:26).
Speaking to a mountain, and casting it into the sea is an impossibility, but Jesus knew all things are possible with God. It is impossible to please God without faith (Heb 11:6). Therefore, faith in the God of all possibility can make the metaphorically impossible mountain move. What stands in your way? What mountain stands impassible?
Speak first to God in prayer, and then engage the impossibility without doubt. It is not your faith, nor your ability to speak that removes impossible situations, it is God who removes them. What is required of you is what ethnic Israel has forever failed at…faith. Judaism is a man-made, works-based religion, derived from the Old Testament Scriptures. It, of course, still misses Jesus Messiah, in whom we trust.
Ethnic Israel served as a type for spiritual Israel, the people of God from every nation, tribe, and tongue (Rev 5:9). The Israel of God (Is 49:6), including Jewish and Gentiles believers (Gal 3:28), is a nation of faithful ones (Gal 5:22), who have been covered by the blood of Jesus Christ (Mt 26:28; Eph 1:7; 1 Pet 1:18–19).
Christians, both Jew and Gentile, have been justified by His blood (Rom 5:9). Their justification has further come to them by His grace (Rom 3:24). The Holy Spirit has sprinkled them with His precious blood atonement that has given them the forgiveness of sins (Mt 26:28). It is the grace of God bringing new life to them (Rom 6:4; 2 Cor 5:17). Within this grace is the gift of faith common to all believers (Jude 3), both Jews and Gentiles (2 Pet 1:1). It is a faith granted to them by God, for Christ’s sake (Gal 3:22; Phil 1:29).
People of true faith in Jesus Christ are people of prayer (Joel 2:32; Rom 10:13). We pray in faith, believing in the Almighty Sovereign God over all, the Maker of heaven and earth, and owner of everything. He has asked us to conduct a faith check, “Is anything too difficult for God?” Is mountain rock harder than the stone heart of the wicked oppressor? Ask the apostle Paul.
We do not bless and curse others according to our own will. Should we call down fire from heaven? This was the inquiry of disciples who did not understand the program. It is God who blesses and curses, at precisely the same time we are obedient to all He has commanded. We bless our enemies, and God puts burning coals upon their heads (Rom 12:20), to purify them, or to judge them. We preach, and God transplants the heart of stone with a heart of flesh, or He refrains (Ezek 36:26).
In a dry and dusty land, we grow on the true Vine, who is pouring His life into us, the grafted-in branches. His life is producing spiritual fruit in us, through us, and from us, as we grow. The fruit remains and even reproduces a hundred-fold by His design and grace. God gives the increase (1 Cor 3:6–7).
The Christian life has seasons of expansion and contraction. We ebb and flow, like the day and night. What makes us different is the presence of life within us. Sometimes it is visible with spiritual fruit, and sometimes it lies dormant, waiting for God’s appointed season to flourish. This is “the other fig tree” recorded in Matthew 24:32–35. In this parable, Jesus warns His disciples to keep watch, as one watches the fig tree to know the times and seasons. We must be like the living fig tree, bearing witness to the coming harvest of souls, with the message of our coming Lord Jesus Christ (Mt 24–25; Mk 13; Lk 21; Rev 22:12).
Who can endure the day of the Lord’s visitation? Withered Israel, the cursed, fruitless fig tree, had every advantage, but it was missing the one necessary thing…faith, as a fruit of the Spirit of God (Gal 5:22).
Hearing, watching, praying, believing, witnessing, and forgiving everyone, even as we have been forgiven, we blossom with excitement for the coming harvest. Are you ready for His coming?
David Norczyk
Spokane Valley, Washington
March 18, 2021
