Both actions — the cursing of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple — symbolize the purging of that which is barren or corrupt in the Creator’s kingdom. He had created a world prepared for life (air for the breath of life and water as the matrix of life), but mankind, even the very teachers of His chosen people, had made the world unfruitful and impure. As physical life must first have a world of pure air and water, so the preparations for a world of true spiritual life require the purifying breath of the Spirit and the cleansing water of the Word, preparing for the true fruit of the Holy Spirit and the true temple of God’s presence, in the age to come.
Third Day. The next day, the sight of the withered fig tree led to an instructive lesson on faith in God, the Lord Jesus assuring the disciples that real faith could move mountains into the sea (Mark 11:19–24). In parallel, on the third day of creation, God had actually called mountains up out of the sea (Gen. 1:9–10)!
It was also on this day that the Lord had the most abrasive of all His confrontations with the Pharisees and Saducees. He spoke many things against them, and they were actively conspiring to destroy Him. It is appropriate that His challenges to them on this day began with two parables dealing with a vineyard (Matt. 21:28–43; see also Mark 12:1–11 and Luke 20:9–18), in which He reminded them that they had been called to be in charge of God’s vineyard on the earth and had failed. Like the fig tree, there was no fruit for God from their service, and, therefore, they would soon be removed from their stewardship.
Likewise, the entire earth was on the third day of creation week prepared as a beautiful garden, with an abundance of fruit to nourish every living creature (Gen. 1:11–12), and it had all been placed in man’s care (Gen. 1:28–30; 2:15).
But mankind in general, and the chosen people in particular, had failed in their mission. Before the earth could be redeemed and made a beautiful garden again (Rev. 22:2), it must be purged, and the faithless keepers of the vineyard replaced.
This third day of Passion Week was climaxed by the great sermon on the Mount of Olives in which the Lord promised His disciples that, though Jerusalem must first be destroyed, He would come again, in power and great glory, to establish His kingdom in a New Jerusalem (Matt. 24 and 25; Mark 13; Luke 21). It was appropriate that He should then spend the night following that third day with the handful of disciples who were still faithful to Him, on the Mount of Olives (Luke 21:37), for the mount would call to memory that far-off third day of creation week when He had drawn all the mountains out of the sea. Also, the Garden of Gethsemane on its slopes, with its little grove of vines and fruit trees, would bring to mind the beautiful Garden of Eden and the verdant world He had planted everywhere on the dry land on that same third day. Because of what He was now about to accomplish at Jerusalem (Luke 9:31), the ground would one day be cleansed of its curse, and all would be made new again (Rev. 21:4).
Fourth Day. On the fourth day of creation week, the Lord Jesus formed the sun and the moon and all the stars of heaven. There had been “light” on the first three days, but now there were actual lights! Not only would the earth and its verdure be a source of beauty and sustenance to man, but even the very heavens would guide his way and keep his time.
But instead of the stars of heaven turning man’s thoughts and affections toward his Creator, they had been corrupted and identified with a host of false gods and goddesses (see Job 25:5). Furthermore, instead of creating a sense of awe and reverence for the majesty of the One who could fill all heavens, they bolstered man’s belief that the earth is insignificant and meaningless in such a vast, evolving cosmos. Perhaps thoughts such as these troubled the mind of the Lord that night as He lay on the mountain gazing at the lights He had long ago made to overcome the darkness.
When morning came, He returned to Jerusalem, where many were waiting to hear Him. He taught in the temple (Luke 21:37–38), but the synoptic gospels do not record His teachings. This lack, however, is possibly supplied in the apparently parenthetical record of His temple teachings as given only in the fourth Gospel (John 12:20–50) because there the Lord twice compared himself to the light He had made: “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth in me should not abide in darkness” (John 12:46). “Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth” (John 12:35). He who was the true light must become darkness, in order that, in the new world, there would never be night again (Rev. 22:5).
Fifth Day. There is little information given in the gospels about the fifth day of redemption week. When there were yet “two days” until the Passover (Mark 14:1), right after the bitter confrontation with the scribes and chief priests on the third day, these enemies began actively seeking a means to trap and execute Jesus, though they feared to do it on the day on which the Passover Feast was to be observed (Mark 14:2).
It was either on the fourth day or possibly on this fifth day, which was the feast day, that Judas Iscariot went to them with his offer to betray Jesus. He had apparently been seriously thinking about this traitorous action ever since the night when the Lord had rebuked him for his greed. This had been in the home in Bethany, on the night of the Sabbath, just before the day when Christ entered Jerusalem riding on the ass (John 12:1–8). This seems to have occurred at the same supper described in Matthew 26:6–13 and Mark 14:3–9, even though in these it is inserted parenthetically after the sermon on the Mount of Olives, probably in order to emphasize the direct causal relation of that supper to Judas’ decision to betray his Master (Matt. 26:14–16; Mark 14:10–11).
On this day of the Passover, the Lord Jesus instructed two of His disciples to make preparations for their own observance of the feast that night (Mark 14:12–17). So far as the record goes, this is all that we know of His words during that day, though there is no doubt that He was teaching in the temple on this day as well (Luke 21:37–38). Perhaps this strange silence in the record for this fifth day is for the purpose of emphasizing the greater importance of these preparations for the Passover. The fact that John indicates the preparation day to have been the following day (John 19:14) is probably best understood in terms of the fact that, at that time, the Galileans are known to have observed the Passover on one day and the Judeans on the following day.
Multitudes of sacrificial lambs and other animals had been slain and their blood spilled through the centuries, but this would be the last such acceptable sacrifice. On the morrow, the Lamb of God would take away the sin of the world (John 1:29). He would offer one sacrifice for sins forever (Heb. 10:12). With the blood of His cross, He would become the great peacemaker, reconciling all things unto the maker of those things (Col. 1:16, 20).
As the Lord thought about the shedding of the blood of that last Passover lamb on that fifth day of Holy Week, He must also have thought of the fifth day of creation week, when He had first created animal life. “God created every living creature (Hebrew nephesh) that moveth” (Gen. 1:21). This had been His second great act of creation, when He created the entity of conscious animal life (the first had been the creation of the physical elements, recorded in Gen. 1:1). In these living animals, the “life” of the flesh was in their blood, and it was the blood which would later be accepted as an atonement for sin (Lev. 17:11). Note that the words “creature,” “soul,” and “life” all are translations of the same Hebrew word nephesh. Surely the shedding of the innocent blood of the lamb that day would recall the far-off day when the “life” in that blood had been created. And because He, the Lamb of God, was about to become our Passover (1 Cor. 5:7), death itself would soon be swallowed up in victory and life (1 Cor. 15:54).
Sixth Day. On the sixth day, man had been created in the image and likeness of God, the very climax and goal of God’s great work of creation (Gen. 1:26–27). But on this sixth day, God, make in the likeness of man, finished the even greater work of redemption.
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