Jesus' Final Week

During Holy Week, we concentrate mostly on Sunday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. But what about Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday? Knowing it was His last week, what were the last things Jesus chose to do? Let's look at two events from Monday. 

It was Monday, most scholars believe, that Jesus entered the temple and overturned the moneychangers' tables. John tells us he did so with a whip of cords (John 2:15, although John also places this event earlier in Jesus' ministry--might it have happened twice?). He quoted Scripture, saying, "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a robbers' den" (Matthew 21:13; Isaiah 56:7; Jeremiah 7:11). This was not some gentle warning or reasoned explanation. Jesus went in swinging, for several reasons. The animals being sold for sacrifice were priced exorbitantly and sometimes not up to standard, the moneychangers were making excessive profits exchanging Roman money for temple coinage (Jewish leaders required the temple tax to be paid in Jewish money), and apparently general merchants were traipsing through temple grounds hauling their wares as a means of taking a shortcut (Mark 11:16 AMP 2015)! Jesus' message: Corruption in the house of God, and among the people of God, is not tolerated.

It was likely also Monday when Jesus cursed the fig tree. Matthew says Jesus saw a "lone" fig tree, and my first thought was, "Uh-oh. There wasn't another tree to pollinate it?" But my research tells me figs do not commonly need cross-pollination from other trees, and that a lone tree will bear. So expecting the tree to produce fruit was reasonable. Mark 11:13 says Jesus found no fruit on the tree because it wasn't the season for figs, so on the surface His anger seems unfair. Fig season would have been May or June, and this was only March or April. The problem was that the tree leafed out, as expected, but it should also have contained edible fruit buds, as shown in the photo. The fact that it didn't meant it wouldn't produce a crop at the proper time. Jesus cursed the tree, declaring no one would ever eat from it again, to make a point. The next day, when He and His disciples passed the tree again, they saw it had withered from the roots up. Jesus then gave a teaching on the power of prayer, but I think there's another message as well, one that made His choice of a fig tree deliberate. The leafy tree looked good. It was fine for show. But it bore no fruit. There's a parallel danger facing us, that we might walk and talk like Christians but not really belong to Jesus, thus not be indwelled by the Holy Spirit, who is the one who bears fruit in and through us. No fruit = not His. By their fruit, Jesus was saying once more, you shall know them.

The parables Jesus told during the week, the other things He did and that were done to and for Him, are all so full of meaning to be plumbed. The more we read the Bible, the more ways we discover to read it. Studying the accounts of His final week through the lens of "This is what Jesus wanted to get across at the end" is another fresh way to approach the Scriptures.