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He Came Into His Own House, and Mark Records No Response

He came up for the Passover, and He came into Jerusalem, and He went into the temple.

He looked around at all things. He did not say one word, He did not touch one table, He did not raise His voice, and because the hour was late He walked back out of that house and went to Bethany with the twelve.

Understand who just walked through. That was not a visitor coming to somebody else’s building. That was the Master of the house walking through His own rooms, and He had every right to look at everything without asking anybody. Now Mark says He looked round about upon all things, and Mark does not tell me what He was looking for, so the word inspection is mine and not his. What Mark gives me is a Man with every right to look, looking at everything, and then going back out into the dark. And when I say nobody knew Him, I mean that Mark records no response in the temple to the One who had just entered it. Mark does not tell me what every person there knew.

They were busy. It was Passover week and people were coming up for the feast, and by the next morning Mark shows us the doves, the tables, the money being changed, the buying and the selling. Everybody in there had something in their hand and somewhere to be.

That Is How You Miss the Owner, Not by Wickedness, But by Traffic.

They Kept the Appearing and Lost the One They Came to See

The word was appear before the Lord, not appear at the temple, and not appear in Jerusalem, before the Lord.

They kept the appearing and lost the One they came to appear before. The people came up just like the law required, the house was full, and the Lord they came for walked through the middle of it and back out the door. Mark records no response to Him at all.

They had an idea, and they had a must do list. Come up, change the money, keep the day, go home. Everything on that list got done, and the God the whole list was written for came in and went out. And Mark does not tell me why nobody knew Him, so let me not put a reason in his mouth. What Mark tells me is that He came in, He looked, and He left.

They were preparing for the festivities, the buying and the selling, and not the main objective. All of that had its place, yet the weightier matter was shrunk. And this is my observation, if they had been in tune with the Giver of the feast they would have known the Giver was standing in the room. That is one of the things Christ came to point out.

He did not tell them to stop tithing. He said these you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. The keeping was never the problem, the keeping without Him was.

It became a tradition, a religious event. Today when I hear the word religious I cringe, and I will tell you why. What I hear in it is a thing that used to be alive. Somebody met God once, and it became a service, and the service became a schedule, and the schedule got kept long after the Man it was built for stopped being looked for.

And mercy is my word for that first walk through, because Mark does not call it that. Mercy passed by the first time, and nothing in that house moved.

And these were the ones who said Abraham is our father. They claimed the bloodline, they claimed the house, they claimed the covenant. Now read what Abraham did the day visitors came to him.

He ran. He called for water for their feet, he killed the calf, he stood by while they ate. Abraham was sitting at the door, and when he saw them, he moved.

The Next Morning He Was Hungry

It was morning. He had gone out to Bethany the evening before, and now He was headed back toward Jerusalem. And Mark tells us something plain about Him, He was hungry.

And that word hungry is doing more than you think. Hunger belongs to His real human experience. So when Mark stops to tell you the Lord was hungry, he is showing you that the One who never stopped being God was truly man, with a real empty stomach on a long road, meeting that tree the way a man meets it.

Out ahead of Him on that road stood a fig tree, and it was full of leaves.

Now I have to bring in something the verse does not give me. The growers say a fig can carry an early crop before the main season comes, so a tree standing in full leaf is a tree that may already have something under it. That is background and not Scripture. What Mark gives me is a tree in full leaf and a hungry Man who went to see.

That is why He came off the road, and that is why He went to it. He was not asking that tree for the main harvest, because Mark says so, it was not the season for figs. He went to see if perhaps He would find something on it, and that is exactly what Mark says.

And look how He even came to it. He did not set out for that one tree, He saw it from far off standing in full leaf and He went to see. So in the picture I am drawing, He answered what the tree advertised, the way any hungry man would. The leaves said fruit, and He came looking for fruit. That means when He found nothing, the fault was never in His looking. Mark gives me leaves and no fruit and says nothing about blame. What I see is a sign that told a lie and a tree that dressed itself up with nothing to give, and I am going to keep talking about it that way, because that is what it looks like to me from the road.

Now hold this, because the timeline is doing something. Mark tells me it was not the season for figs, yet the tree was already in leaf. With the fig background I have been given, I read those leaves as creating an expectation of something there, even before the main crop. It leafed out, it went green, it dressed. It just stopped at the look. And it was reasonable for a hungry man on that road, seeing something that glorious on the outside, to expect something to eat.

He came off the road, He came to the tree, and there was nothing there, nothing but leaves.

Now let me be exact about what Mark hands me and what I am adding to it. Mark gives me a tree in full leaf, a hungry Man who came to it, and nothing on it but leaves. That is the whole of what the text reports. False advertisement is my name for it. Mark does not use that word and neither does the Lord. But a tree standing in full dress out ahead of everything else in the field, green and empty, gave a promising sign to a passerby and held none, and I do not have a kinder word for that. It raised my hope and then killed my hope, and a bare tree never did that to anybody.

That Tree Perpetrated a Fraud.

Being Passed by Is Not the Same As Being Examined

He had traveled that road the night before and said nothing about that tree. Mark does not tell us whether He saw it.

But whatever was wrong with that tree was already wrong before somebody hungry came down the road. The hungry man exposed it.

A tree can stand for years looking full and never be found out, because being passed by is not the same as being examined. Without a need, nobody tests the tree, it just stands there and gets admired. It takes a hungry man to find out what is really under the leaves.

What He actually said was this. He did not say die, He said let no one eat fruit from you ever again. And Mark does not tell me why He worded it that way, so I will not hand you a reason and call it his. What I notice is what the sentence is about. It is about fruit and about eating, and the tree was giving neither.

And Mark tells us the disciples heard it, and that detail matters, because the word was spoken out loud for their ears before He ever walked back into that temple.

Nothing He Did That Day Started That Day

He came off that road and He went into Jerusalem and He went into the temple. Read what happened.

The tables went over. The money changers, the seats of the ones selling doves, the buying, the selling, and He would not even let a man carry his goods through the house as a shortcut.

From where they were standing that morning, that Man came in there like He had lost His mind. It came out of nowhere, no warning, no conversation first, no argument, just furniture in the air. But nothing He did that day started that day.

The looking was done the night before, and the verdict was spoken on a tree outside of town before He walked back into that house. He walked in there carrying two days of quiet while they thought it started when the first table went over.

And when He came back the next day, the buying, the selling and the tables were there, and business was going on again.

And that is where it hurts, because a tree cannot change what it is, but they could have. Mark does not tell me what they knew or did not know between the two mornings, so I will not tell you they refused. What I can see is a tree that could not change and men who could. Put the two of them side by side.

One Was Empty, One Was Full

The temple was full of the wrong business and God rejected it. The tree was full of the right look and had nothing under it. One had too much of the wrong thing, the other had nothing but appearance. Mark says He found nothing on the tree, and putting the house beside it is my doing.

Most of us are not worried about being empty, we are busy. That house was doing numbers that week, the biggest crowd of the year, everything working, something happening every single day. But full is not the same as feeding, and look at what filled that house, tables and money and doves, things being sold to people who came to worship. The house was full of business done in God’s name.

The Tree Is Us, and the Temple Occupants Are Us.

The tree is what we look like from the road, dressed, watered, green, out in leaf ahead of everybody else, so somebody passes our life and says look how that one is blessed. The temple is what is going on inside the house, not empty at all, busy, loud, money moving, business getting done.

Leaves on the outside, and tables on the inside. And He comes up hungry and finds show on the road and traffic in the house, and nothing to eat in either place.

He Stopped Expecting

When I had just gotten married I did not have all the rights of the story. A young housewife did not like to cook, home all day and no cooking, and it brought a stiff contention. My mom had to speak to me on it, and it changed nothing, I just did not like to cook.

I had everything on the outside that said wife. I had the title, I had the house, I had the day long to do it in. And he would come home hungry and find nothing on the stove.

Eventually he stopped expecting, and he would come in and start cooking his own food.

That is what an empty tree does to a hungry man over time, he stops reaching.

But look at what the Lord did at that fig tree. He did not learn to walk past it and feed Himself, He came to it, He looked for something on it, He found nothing, and He spoke.

Then, and Now

In their day God had put His name on one house, one address, and that is what made those stones different from any other stones in the world, and that is why the Master could walk through and look around at all things and turn the tables the next morning. It was His house.

And here is my way of saying what changed. The veil tore, and I read the address as having moved.

So the building I walk into on Sunday morning is a building. All sorts of this and that went on in there during the week, and we are renting the space, and there is nothing in the walls that makes it holy.

I am the one who carries Him in with me, we arrive together.

He lives in me and He goes where I go, so I do not go to church to meet God at an address, I bring Him through the door.

And Paul says it the other way round too, and that one is not about my body.

You are the temple, said to a whole church. So I do not have to choose between I am His temple and we are His temple. Paul gives me both.

And if your church owns the space, thank God for it, and then watch it, because a building you own will start asking to be fed. Mortgage, roof, parking lot, upkeep. And once a building has a mouth there is a reason to push the offering, a reason to fill the seats, a reason to keep the big givers comfortable. That is how a house of prayer turns into a place of business, and nobody plans it, it happens slow, one legitimate need at a time.

And there were reasons for what stood in that court. Men travelled far, and buying an animal near the temple was a good deal easier than bringing one the whole way. And there was money changing going on there, though Mark does not stop and explain to me why. So I am not going to build the history of that court out of a verse that does not give it to me, and I will not tell you it all began as help and drifted. What Mark tells me is what it had become by the morning the Lord walked in, and He called it a den.

The building is just a building if the purpose for the building is not met. And hear what He said standing in the middle of it.

A house of prayer, and a den of thieves. God did put His name on that house, Scripture says so. But the stones were never permission to leave the purpose His name was put there for.

And It Is Still Happening

There is an act in America. Churches hold an event called a prayer breakfast, and I understand that to mean prayer and eating will take place. But the ones I have been to gave way to the big wigs, and the clothing each other wear got the big emphasis, and the food had to be right, and the introductions ran long, and then came the collections of the money, because that was the real objective, and the performance of the narrator. At the end of the day God was circumvented.

I heard a sister say once, and I sense she might have felt the same pull I felt, was Jesus lifted up. It was a fundraiser, and everything that needed to happen for it to be a success happened. But was He lifted up. That is a form of godliness denying the power thereof.

And Paul was not writing that about a temple in Jerusalem, he was writing it about the last days, about people who would carry the shape of it and deny the life in it. And when I hold Paul beside this tree, the form becomes the leaves in my picture, and the power is what ought to be underneath.

There was a day when four men tore the roof off a house to get one sick man to Jesus.

The house was full then too, but it was full of people pressing to get to Him.

Now the house is still full. And if Jesus wanted to come in, they may have to bring Him in through the roof of His own house.

Dried Up from the Roots

Not the leaves wilted. From the roots. The judgment went deeper than anything that could be seen from the road.

And two chapters later He sat on the mountain looking back at that same temple and said not one stone shall be left upon another. Then He told them to learn the parable of the fig tree. And then He told them to watch.

In the evening. Mark does not tell us He meant verse 11, and I will not say that he does. But Mark is the one who wrote both, two chapters apart, and I cannot read evening in that list without seeing the evening He came into that house, looked around at all things, and left.

So He does not always come the way we are watching for. Sometimes He has already come, already looked around at all things, already gone back out, and we counted it an ordinary evening.

And there is no pill for ignorance, for once He has come and gone you cannot take something for it in the morning. And the ignorance I am talking about was not simply lack of Scripture, because the religious leaders knew the law and the prophets and knew whose house they were standing in. The greater issue was Who they did not recognize.

I am the tree and I am the temple, and I have to say that in first person or I will duck it. There is a way to be in the celebration and never be in the room, and there is a way to keep the whole list and never once meet the Person the list was written for.

If I am the temple now, then the inspection moved too. He is not walking through a rented hall looking around at all things, He is walking through me. Everything He found in that house that morning, the buying, the selling, the tables, the traffic, the shortcuts, I have to ask what He finds when He walks through mine.

And in the picture I am carrying, He is not coming merely to catch me doing wrong. He is looking for fruit. He came hungry to that tree looking for something to eat, and when I carry the picture into my own life, I hear a question about what He finds there.

So the question is not how green I look from the road. The question is what is under the leaves when He reaches.

Mercy Passed by the First Time. He May Be Passing by Right Now.