Matthew 21, a visual study: the triumphal entry, the cleansing of the temple, the cursing of the fig tree, and the parables of the two sons and the wicked tenants, from The Lampstand Project.
Hosanna.
The King finally enters his city, riding a borrowed donkey while crowds throw down their cloaks. Within hours he has overturned the temple's tables, withered a barren fig tree, and told the religious leaders, to their faces, that they have run out of fruit.
"Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"Matthew 21:9 ESV
This is the day the road has been heading toward. Jesus comes into Jerusalem not as a conqueror on a warhorse but as the humble King the prophets promised, on a donkey, to shouts of Hosanna. But a King comes looking for fruit, and what he finds, in the temple, on the fig tree, among the leaders, is foliage with nothing underneath. The welcome and the warning arrive on the same afternoon.
The King comes looking.
Four movements through the chapter. Tap any numbered marker to read its scene below.
Tap any numbered marker to read its scene
Mounted on a donkey.
He sends for a donkey and her colt, and rides into Jerusalem fulfilling the old promise of a king who comes lowly, mounted on a beast of burden, not a battle horse. The crowds spread their cloaks and cut branches, crying Hosanna to the Son of David.
The whole city is stirred, asking who this is. He arrives exactly as Zechariah said he would, gentle and unarmed, and the welcome is real, even if the crowd that shouts blessing today will shout something very different by Friday. For one bright moment, the city greets its King.
"Behold, your king is coming to you; humble, and mounted on a donkey."
Overturning the tables.
His first stop is the temple, and it enrages him. He drives out the buyers and sellers and overturns the tables of the money-changers: my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers. The place meant for the nations to pray has become a marketplace.
Then the blind and the lame come to him there, and he heals them, and children take up the cry of Hosanna, to the leaders' fury. The same hands that flipped the tables now mend the broken. He is not against the temple; he is for what it was always supposed to be.
"...but you have made it a den of robbers."
The fig tree.
The next morning, hungry, he goes to a fig tree in full leaf and finds no fruit on it, only leaves. He says to it, may no fruit ever come from you again, and at once it withers. It is the only destructive miracle in the Gospels, and it is a parable in living wood.
A tree advertising fruit it does not have is a picture of a religion all show and no substance, exactly what he found in the temple. When the disciples marvel, he turns it toward faith and prayer, but the warning lingers. The King has come looking for fruit, and leaves are not enough.
"...there are no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree."
Cornered by the leaders, Jesus tells of two sons and of wicked tenants who kill the owner's son to seize the vineyard, and then he quotes the psalm the crowd had just been singing. The very stone the builders throw away, he says, is the one God makes the cornerstone of everything. He is talking about himself, and he knows it, and so, dangerously, do they. The rejection they are planning will not defeat him; it is the means by which he becomes the foundation. What they discard, God builds on.
The two sons and the tenants.
When the chief priests demand to know his authority, he answers with parables. One son says no to his father but goes; another says yes and does nothing, and the tax collectors and prostitutes, he says, are entering the kingdom ahead of the respectable. Saying the right words is not the same as bearing fruit.
Then the tenants who beat the servants and murder the heir to keep the vineyard for themselves. Therefore, he tells the leaders, the kingdom will be taken from you and given to a people producing its fruits. They understand he is speaking about them, and they want to arrest him, but they fear the crowds. The fig tree's lesson has found its target.
"...he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry."
Looking for fruit.
The genealogy looked back. The geography looked out. The river looked up. The wilderness looked ahead. The mountain looked inward. Chapter six looked beyond. Chapter seven looked down. Chapter eight looked closer. Chapter nine looked around. Chapter ten looked outward. Chapter eleven looked to him. Chapter twelve looked across. Chapter thirteen looked beneath. Chapter fourteen looked into the dark. Chapter fifteen looked past the surface. Chapter sixteen looked him in the face. Chapter seventeen looked into the light. Chapter eighteen looked among us. Chapter nineteen looked at what we hold. Chapter twenty looked at the wage. And chapter twenty-one looks for fruit, on the tree, in the temple, among the leaders, and the question it leaves is whether the King, looking at us, would find any.
Hosanna means save us, and the crowd shouts it without quite knowing what they are asking, or what it will cost the one they shout it to. The King they welcome is the cornerstone they will reject, and the rejection itself is how he saves them. But the day carries a warning we cannot shrug off: he comes looking not for noise, not for leaves, not for the right words, but for fruit. The cleared temple and the withered tree are the same sermon. He wants the real thing.
"Therefore the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits."Matthew 21:43 ESV
All scripture quoted from the English Standard Version. A study from The Lampstand Project.