A little prelude: In my class at DBU I am limited to a two page paper, maybe somebody ought to limit my posts! Today I am more or less "thinking a loud". As I began to read Mark 11 this morning I began to put myself in the passage (ever do that?) and I put some of what I may have felt into the passage (I hope that is okay?), but in the end it allowed me to see the human side of Jesus that makes Him totally relatable to us. So I hope it's not too lengthy and I hope that the thoughts in my head have been made clear in the words on the page today. I pray everyone has a blessed day and a wonderful weekend.
Read: Num. 35:33-34 and Mark 11
S.O.A.P.
Scripture – Observation – Application – Prayer
S: “The
next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing
in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit.
When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season
for figs. Then he said to
the tree, ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again.’ And his disciples heard him say it.” Mark 11:12-14
O:
One thing I noticed from the passage today is the humanness of
Jesus. We say Jesus was fully God and
fully human at the same time, and I believe that is one of the mysteries of Who
He was. How He could be fully
both at the same time. I suppose I like
to focus more on Christ’s diety than I do His humanness for some reason, but
today it was His humanity that jumped out at me.
Hebrews 4:15 says this, “For we
do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but
we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet he did not
sin.”
I wanted to mention the verse in
Hebrews first because it specifically states that Jesus did not sin, even in
His humanness. As we look at the ways Mark
11 shows Jesus as human (like us) keep in mind that He did not sin:
1. He got hungry (verse 12)
2. He experienced emotions (verses 11-17)
3. He got upset and angry (verses 14-17)
Jesus was human. He needed to eat sometimes. The Bible doesn’t share a lot about Jesus’
diet. We know at one time walking
through a field His disciples grabbed a stalk of grain and rubbed it between
their fingers/palms and ate the grain; perhaps Jesus did too. Jesus was condemned for eating with
sinners. Jesus cooked fish early one
morning for the disciples. Jesus in his
humanity ate and got hungry just like we do.
I find it interesting that the verse
says it was not the season for figs. The
implication here is that Jesus was really, really hungry because look at what
He does – He curses the fig tree for not producing figs (even though it wasn’t
the season for figs). In my NT Survey
class we studied this passage and the theological way of looking at this
passage is that it was a foreshadowing of Israel and what was going to take place
there after the crucifixion of Jesus.
I don’t doubt this was true, but I
also know in my humanness two things and I guess I kind of put my own feelings
if you will into this story. Jesus was
about to be crucified. You might say
this was creating a lot of human emotions in Jesus. If we focus just on the diety of Jesus we
might miss this. We know in the Garden
just before His crucifixion He was praying so hard over what was about to take
place that He began to sweat drops of blood.
This was no easy task for Jesus.
He was under a lot of, you might say, stress and emotions. He was fighting His own will vs. the will of
the Father, but the will of the Father won out – “not my will, but THINE be
done”.
I don’t know about you, but when I’m
under a lot of stress I find myself reacting in unexpected ways. I’m not saying Jesus did that. We are not told that in this passage, but why
curse a fig tree for not bearing fruit when it wasn’t it’s time to bear
fruit? Jesus was hungry, He was
experiencing, no doubt, some high emotions, perhaps in our language, feeling
some “stress”. Did He curse the fig tree
out of what He was feeling or was it simply as my NT Survey class pointed out a
foreshadowing event?
We don’t know the timing, but it
appears Jesus went from the fig tree to the temple, still hungry. He sees the money changers and is bothered by
what is taking place in the temple. Again
Jesus is upset. We see him reacting with
anger at the situation, at the injustices being done there. These money changers were price gouging the
people who were coming to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. Jesus was upset at what He saw. He could have done anything He wanted to the
people, but instead He simply overturned the tables. Again this is one of those scenes you don’t
hear a lot of church sermons on.
A:
I think it is refreshing to me to know that Jesus was human too. He got hungry, He got upset, He experienced
emotions. In our Christian walk we might
be tempted to minimize our feelings and emotions and our humanness, but these
are part of who we are. We get
hungry. We feel emotions and sometimes
we get upset. Jesus, we are told, did
not sin in any point when He was tempted, as we are, but He did feel, like we
feel. We can take anything we are
dealing with to Him and He will understand.
We can also allow ourselves to be human and feel too. It is our responses and how we react though
in those times that we must be careful about.
When it’s 5 or 6 o’clock at night and
everyone has had a long day and kids are hungry, and mom is tired, emotions can
rise high. We can become short with each
other.
This is just one example where I see
this played out. But we never see Jesus taking
out His feelings on people. He took it
out on a tree and some tables. Now I’m
not suggesting we all go outside and curse the trees around our house or start
overturning the tables in our kitchens, but the point is Jesus didn’t turn to
his disciples and start yelling at them.
He didn’t go into the temple punching the money changers.
He never allowed His human emotions to
hurt those around Him. In my Christian
Doctrine class right now we are talking about the Doctrine of Humanity which is
a fancy way of saying “what the Bible says about how we were created and what
our purpose is here”. One verse we are
talking about is James 3:10, “Out of the same mouth come praise and
cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.” And
if you go back to verse 9 talking about the tongue it says, “With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse
men, who have been made in the likeness of God …”
The point being that every person you
see has been made in the image of God and everyone deserves our respect and
blessing. Jesus didn’t curse the money
changers, He overturned their tables, He called out the unjust way they were
treating their fellow man and treating the house of God – the temple.
So with all of that (a lot of this is
my thinking out loud through the passage today) I guess I am glad to see that Jesus
can relate to me (not that I didn’t know that before, but it is refreshing to
me to see it this morning). Jesus got
hungry and experienced emotions just like me.
In His divinity He was still human and He knows what I experience when I
am under times of stress or just even when I’m simply hungry. How does that make you feel to know that He
knows and experienced what we feel?
(Comment below)
P: Our Father in Heaven, Thank You for sending
Your son not only to die for our sins, but to live out His life on earth and to
experience things that we would experience so He could be relate to us and we
could relate to Him. While He was fully
God we also know He was fully man. This
is a refreshing mystery to me to know I’m not alone in the things I experience
or feel. It is through Christ, our
brother, I pray. Amen & Amen.
