Holy Monday: Jesus the Fruit Inspector

During Holy Week, I’ll be attempting to post one new devotional each day. Enjoy.

Many of us know Palm Sunday—when Jesus triumphantly entered Jerusalem a week before his crucifixion, hailed as the coming Messiah—but what happened next?

Holy Monday marks the events that followed. We’re told:

“On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again.’ And his disciples heard it.” (Mark 11:12–14)

On first read, this seems arbitrary—especially since figs were out of season. But it was a parable for what Jesus was about to do.

“And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, ‘Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a den of robbers.’” (Mark 11:15–17)

The connection between these two episodes becomes clear in what follows:

“As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said to him, ‘Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.’ And Jesus answered them, ‘Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, Be taken up and thrown into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.’” (Mark 11:20–23)

Jesus is a fruit inspector. He came 2,000 years ago to see the state of his people—the old covenant people of God in the nation of Israel—and found them fruitless. They lacked the living spiritual substance that proves true spiritual life.

Rather than bearing the fruit of faith, obedience, justice, mercy, and love, they bore hypocrisy, self-righteousness, legalistic law-keeping, pride, and corruption. Rather than looking to Christ for salvation, they looked to their own religious performance for justification. Rather than worshiping God in spirit and truth, they turned the temple into a place for profiteering off religious activity.

The old covenant nation was as cursed as the fig tree. They were cut off from the covenantal tree.

Jesus’s teaching about prayer and casting mountains into the sea may look like a non sequitur, but it follows directly. The mountain he alludes to is the Temple Mount. Forty years later, the mount on which the temple stood was spiritually cast into the sea—the sea representing the flood of the Roman horde that overwhelmed it in AD 70. This judgment had been promised in Daniel 9:26.

Jesus continues to come to his people as a fruit inspector. Revelation pictures him walking in the midst of the churches (1:13) with eyes like flaming fire and words piercing like a sword—seeing through our excuses, cutting through the walls we erect in our hearts to keep him out.

Holy Monday is an invitation to let Jesus inspect our lives, just as he inspected the temple. Will he find true religion, true faith, true repentance? Or will he find busybody activity and profit-seeking in place of prayer and worship?

The Christian has a duty to examine himself and test himself to see if he is in the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5).

Rather than wait for Jesus to inspect our lives and find us wanting, we are called to inspect ourselves first—to judge ourselves so that we will not be judged by him.

The King has come into town. Let us overturn the tables in our own hearts. Let us drive hypocrisy and sin from our hearts and households—as with an improvised whip. Let us bring judgment upon our own sins before the Lord brings it himself.