THE KING’S BUSINESS
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“In this thy day.” There is a day of op portunity, a day of grace (Luke 4:17-19). “But now.” There is a time when it is too late (Matt. 25:10-13). But even in that day had they turned doubtless all would have been forgiven and forefended. The kingdom would have come had they re pented; the king would long ago have come, “quickly,” as He said had the Church been faithful. Nothing seemed more improb able than that Jerusalem, with its walls and battlements, its surrounding steeps and chasms, would so soon, would ever be walled in on every side. But so it was— by an unusual and unpremeditated decision of the Roman generals. However incredible, O Christ-rejecting sinner, the judgment, its reality, its near ness and its dread issue may seem to you today, know now the things that belong to your peace, before they are hid from your eyes. Behold, a Judge whose sobs inter* rupt His sentence, is for this "age” (Greek), or dispensation, for Israel shall yet fill the face of the earth with fruit (Isa. 27:6) ; for signs of which men shall look (Matt. 24:32). 2. Objections Stated and Answered. It is objected: (1) That if the Lord was Di- vin He would have known that the tree had no figs. The same objection might be (and is) made against Jesus’ whole approach to Israel, He knew they would “not bring forth fruits worthy of repentance” yet He appealed to them as if He expected them to. No doubt He knew, but He had a les son to teach. (2) That if He knew, it follows that it was deceit and pretense to seek the fruit. Miracles are acted par ables, parables are in the letter fiction, but true in their intent and import, to all but idiots and infidels; (3). That it was un reasonable if not immoral to destroy a tree (an irresponsible object), for appearing to possess what it ought (!) to possess but
plause of a mob. Through it all Jesus heard “Crucify, crucify,” and saw Calvary with its Cross. He saw them dividing His raiment, who now cast theirs at His feet. He saw the Tree stripped of its branches (now withered .like the honors they had symbolized) standing bare and rugged as if those sham honors had anticipated the Governor’s “I, miles, expedi crucem” (“Go, prepare the cross”)., Jesus did not take it as a triumph, but met outcry with outcry, acclamation with lamentation. At the grave of Lazarus “Jesus wept” silently, at the grave of Jerusalem, which now opened in vision at His feet, He wailed alpud (sp the Greek, Luke 19:41). The Holy City, “the eye of the world,” famed for its splendor of palaces and temple, and its adorning of gleaming gold and marble, lay at His feet, apparently an impregnable citadel, and He lamented,— “I f thou hadst known.” There was no fatal necessity for the desolations that have overtaken Israel. Interpretations. We venture to sug gest: The tig tree is Israel and its institu tions (Joel 1:6) ; the Lord’s hunger is His gracious longing for spiritual fruit—the love, loyalty, obedience, and testimony of His people; the leaves are their self-right eous pretensions, their abundant outward show of zeal and devotion to the Law and traditions (Luke 18:11,12) ; its location "in the way” (Matt. 21:19) “afar off,” their conspicuous position before the world as in “the highway of the nations,” yet their spiritual distance from the Lord (ch. 7:6) ; “nothing but leaves,” the utter barrenness of Israel, having “forsaken its sweetness and good fruit” (Judges 9:11); “the time of tigs was not yet” may hint of the fact that because of willful unbelief Israel’s fruit season would be (was to be) at the second, not at the first coming of the Mes siah ; the “no man eat fruit of thee forever,” I. C u rsing th e T ree . 1.
LESSON VI.1—August 9.—T he B arren F ig T ree and the D efiled TEMPLE.^i-Mark 11:12-33. G olden T ext : By their fruits ye shall know them. —Matt. 7 :20.
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