Authenticity in Faith: Lessons from the Fig Tree

The passage that I just read to you, as I’m sure you can imagine, is one that has been quite vexing over the centuries for scholars because on the surface it seems that Jesus overreacts to this poor innocent fig tree for not bearing figs when it wasn’t even the season for figs. [00:03:00]

The late Bertrand Russell, who wrote the book attacking Christianity, saying “Why I am not a Christian,” included this narrative as one of the reasons that he gave for repudiating Christianity, because he said this incident displays Jesus as a man who expresses vindictive fury to an innocent plant, manifesting behavior that is not conducive or consistent with even a righteous man, let alone the Son of God. [00:03:28]

And so Jesus, knowing the customs and culture of Palestine even better than Dr. Kelso, saw this fig tree in full bloom, which would say clearly that figs not just “paggim” and little knobs but real figs would be present on it, He turned aside to satisfy His hunger from these figs. But instead of finding an exotic fig tree bearing delicious figs out of season, He found a tree that was barren. [00:09:11]

And so here Jesus finds an object that displays the sin of hypocrisy. It had all of the outward appearance of fruit, but it was empty. It was barren. And if you follow the teaching of Jesus through His earthly ministry, you can see the severity with which our Lord regularly denounced the particular sin of hypocrisy. [00:10:29]

This was His basic critique of the Pharisees of the day. How many times particularly in Matthew’s gospel do we hear Jesus saying, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.”? “You’re like whited sepulchers, beautiful, pristine on the outside, but inside filled with dead men’s bones. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, you clean the outside of the plate, but underneath it’s filled with filth.” [00:10:51]

Now that should be a lesson to us in our own day. Several years ago when our friend Archie Parrish was the international director of Evangelism Explosion, he asked me to write a book to help his workers in that field because they had compiled over decades the responses that people gave to the diagnostic questions of the Christian faith, and they kept track, and they compiled the top ten objections that people raised against Christianity. [00:12:03]

And so Archie came to me and he said, “Would you write a book giving an answer to these top ten objections?” And so I did, and the title of the book was simply “Objections Answered.” But one of the top ten objections that they discovered in their ministry over the years was the objection that the church is filled with hypocrites. [00:12:47]

And here’s where the problem is, dear friends. What the church is full of is sinners. In fact, I don’t know of any other organization in the world that requires that you be a sinner in order to join it, but the church is an organization of sinners. Now here’s where our logic gets a little muddled. All hypocrites are sinners, but not all sinners are hypocrites. [00:13:45]

Let me say it again. All hypocrites are sinners, but not all sinners are hypocrites. Hypocrisy is one of many sins. And it’s unfair of our critics to say, “Well so and so is a professing Christian, and we saw him sin during the week; therefore, he’s a hypocrite.” Not necessarily so. If I claim not to do something and then you see me do it, then I’m guilty of hypocrisy. [00:14:18]

So we need to draw that clear distinction there. However, having said that in defense of Christians who by their fallen nature continue to sin even after embracing the Savior, we still need to be very careful to avoid the pernicious sin of hypocrisy. Paul himself was aware of this when he said, “The Gentiles blaspheme because of us.” They see us talking the talk and not walking the walk. [00:14:55]

Now the other side of this coin is something we in the church need to be very sensitive to. Why is it that sometimes we feel like we have to pretend that we’ve achieved a higher level of sanctification than we really have? Because we create pressure in the church. We create a level of expectation to Christians. We assume that they are going to behave at a certain level of purity, which in many cases, dear friends, is completely unrealistic. [00:15:33]

We know that conversion does not cure all of our sin, and that the process of sanctification is something that takes our entire lives. And there are no two people in this room this morning who are at the same point in their spiritual growth. There are no two people in this room this morning who came into the Christian faith with the exact same amount of baggage from the world. [00:16:16]