Matthew 21:1-22
“Hosanna, the Temple & the Fig Tree”
Pastor Jason Van Bemmel

¹ Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, ² saying to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. ³ If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and he will send them at once.” ⁴ This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying,

⁵ “Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold, your king is coming to you,
    humble, and mounted on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’”

⁶ The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. ⁷ They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. ⁸ Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. ⁹ And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” ¹⁰ And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, “Who is this?” ¹¹ And the crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.”

Jesus Cleanses the Temple

¹² And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. ¹³ He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

¹⁴ And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. ¹⁵ But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, ¹⁶ and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,

“‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies
    you have prepared praise’?”

¹⁷ And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.

Jesus Curses the Fig Tree

¹⁸ In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. ¹⁹ And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.

²⁰ When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?” ²¹ And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. ²² And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”

• Matthew 21:1-22, ESV

Are You Ready for the King?

Today is the beginning of Holy Week, considered by many to be the most important week of the year. This final week of Jesus’ earthly ministry, the eight days from Palm Sunday to Resurrection Day, is immensely important. It’s easily the most significant week in the history of the world, as all of the promises of God were fulfilled in Jesus, in His betrayal, condemnation, suffering, death, and resurrection. The Gospel writers focus about 1/3 of their Gospels on this very important week. We celebrate this every year, remembering what Jesus said and did.

Before Jesus entered Jerusalem, He had ensured that every detail was prepared. But while Jesus was prepared for what He had come to do, and while He had ensured that everything was prepared for Him to fulfill His mission, the people and their leaders were not prepared.

So, are you ready for the King? Are you ready to remember and celebrate who Jesus is and what He has done for the glory of God and for you and your salvation? What does it mean to be ready? How can we be ready? Well, very often, we’re unprepared because our expectations get in the way.

1. Hosanna! The King Promised, Not the King Expected

Jesus came as the King God had promised, but not as the king the people expected. They knew the Scriptures, but they had selectively chosen to focus on those Scriptures that met their expectations, and they interpreted those selected Scriptures in a way that suited their desires and would fulfill their agendas.  

1. The King Promised

Matthew includes 4 quotations from Scripture in this passage to show us that Jesus is coming just as He was promised by God:

In verses 4-5, Matthew quotes Zechariah 9:9: "Say to the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden"

In verse 9, Psalm 118:25-26 is quoted as the crowds shout "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!" This Psalm was the culmination of the Hallel Psalms sung during Passover and was associated with messianic expectations. The word "Hosanna" itself is from Hebrew meaning "save now" and is a prayer from Psalm 118:25.

In verse 13, Jesus quotes Isaiah 56:7, when He says, "It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers" So, Jesus is acting according to what God had said about the Temple.

In verse 16, when the chief priests and scribes are indignant at the children crying out "Hosanna to the Son of David," Jesus defends their actions by quoting Psalm 8:2, "Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?"

Jesus was the Son of David, the rightful royal King of Israel. He had fulfilled all the Scriptures written about Him – born of a virgin in Bethlehem, born in the line of David, teaching in parables, opening the eyes of the blind, setting people free from demonic oppression, doing great miracles, and fulfilling the Law in His personal, perfect obedience to His Father. Jesus arranged for the colt, the foal of a donkey, to be His ride and for the words of Psalm 118 to ring out to proclaim Him.    

1. The King Needed

Jesus also rode in on the donkey as the King the people truly needed. They were lost and alienated, cut off from God and under the sentence of condemnation. Jesus came to defeat their greatest enemy, solve the greatest problem, and accomplish the greatest salvation.

The people needed true righteousness, which they lacked in themselves. They needed forgiveness for their sins, which all the blood of bulls and goats could not secure for them. They needed rescue from the powers of hell that enslaved and oppressed them. They needed deliverance from death, which Scripture calls the King of Terrors.  

1. Not the King Expected

And yet, although Jesus was the king promised and the king they needed, He was not the king they expected. They expected a Son of David who was a mighty warrior who would defeat their enemies. What they got was the Son of David who was David’s Lord who was a far mightier warrior than David ever was and who soundly defeated all their worst enemies. But their expectation was so low, as they wanted a military victory over an earthly empire, Rome, and Jesus came to win an eternal victory over a supernatural oppressor, Satan.

We have this annoying and dangerous tendency to think of spiritual things as somehow not quite real, not as real as physical things. Sometimes, people will use the terms spiritual and symbolic interchangeably, but that’s not true. The unseen things are eternal; the seen things are temporary. You will never live free lives until your hopes and expectations are firmly fixed on unseen, eternal realities.

The expectations of the crowd welcoming Jesus to Jerusalem were likely heightened because He had just recently raised Lazarus from the dead. Word of this amazing miracle would have spread quickly, as it was witnessed by a large crowd of people. Also, because this was a big national pilgrimage festival, people from Galilee would’ve brought word of the miracles Jesus had done there, especially the very public miracles of feeding 5,000 and feeding 4,000. So, here was a man who could raise the dead and feed the masses. What better Messiah could there possibly be to lead the people in a revolution to overthrow Rome?

And so, Jesus did not meet the expectations of the crowd shouting, “Hosanna!” – not because He fell short of their expectations but because He so far exceeded them that they couldn’t understand what He had accomplished.

1. Temple: The Heart of Jerusalem with no Heart

But Jesus gave them a very strong clue as to what He had come to do when He went into the Temple and cleansed it from the money-changers and animal-sellers.

¹² And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. ¹³ He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

¹⁴ And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. ¹⁵ But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, ¹⁶ and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,

“‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies
    you have prepared praise’?”

¹⁷ And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.

The Temple was the heart of the life of God’s people. It’s where they sought the Lord, offered Him sacrifices, and heard from His Word. 

1. Impressive

The Temple that stood in Jesus’ day was really impressive. The Second Temple had been built initially in 517 BC, after a remnant returned from Babylonian exile. The initial Second Temple was not very grand or magnificent. In fact, those who were old enough to remember the First Temple, built by Solomon over 400 years earlier, around 950 BC, wept at the comparison of that glorious Temple to this simple copy. But Herod the Great had financed a great expansion of the Temple Mount and the courtyards and a great beautification of the Temple itself, and the Temple as it stood in Jesus’ day was massively impressive. The disciples were so impressed by the Temple when they visited, they called Jesus’ attention to the massive stones so perfectly placed.

1. Busy

The Temple was also incredibly busy. All Jewish families who could afford to do so were expected under the Law of Moses to visit the Temple three times per year, for Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Passover was probably the largest and best-attended of these annual gatherings, and Palm Sunday took place just days before Passover. In fact, the Law of Moses required families to bring their Passover lambs into their homes for four days before Passover itself. So, Palm Sunday was Lamb Selection Day, and the city would have been packed with people and lambs. Likely close to half a million people and close to 100,000 lambs would have crowded into a city that normally had a population of around 30,000-50,000.

Because Passover was a celebration of the final plague that led to God’s people leaving Egypt, it was also a national holiday that had lots of expectations of deliverance from bondage associated with it. So, the city would’ve been busy with expectations of national independence and freedom.  

1. Spiritually Bankrupt

Sadly, the Temple was as spiritually bankrupt as it was beautiful and busy.  The chief priests and rulers of the Temple had heard of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, but they saw this miracle as just another reason to kill Jesus. They were solely focused on protecting their position of power, authority, and wealth. The benefits of their position could be seen in the Temple courts, where the money-changers and the animal-sellers that crowded the outer courtyard of the Temple.   

Not only were the chief priests corrupted by their greed and their love of power, but they were also corrupted by their nationalism. John 11 tells us what they said to each other after they heard about the raising of Lazarus:

⁴⁵ Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him, ⁴⁶ but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. ⁴⁷ So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. ⁴⁸ If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” ⁴⁹ But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. ⁵⁰ Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” ⁵¹ He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, ⁵² and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. ⁵³ So from that day on they made plans to put him to death. (John 11:45-53)

Notice the heart of their fear: “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” They were jealously guarding their place of power and wealth and their nation’s special relationship with Rome. Their nationalistic pride is also seen in the sin of crowding the Temple Courts with animals and money-changers. The court where they set up the merchandise and money was the outer court, the Court of the Gentiles or Court of the Nations. The verse that Jesus quoted from Isaiah 56, “My house shall be called a house of prayer” is part of a longer section about foreigners  -

“And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
    to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
    and to be his servants,
everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it,
    and holds fast my covenant—
these I will bring to my holy mountain,
    and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
    will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
    for all peoples.” – Isaiah 56:6-7

God gave the Temple to be a public testimony to the nations as well as a gathering place for His people to worship. The leadership of the Temple in Jesus’ day were so committed to profiteering off of God’s people that they crowded out the nations from being able to come and inquire about God, as their place for worship was crowded with animals and money-changing tables.

• Fig Tree: Lots of Leaf, No Fruit

And that brings us to the strangest part of this passage: the fig tree. Why did Jesus curse the fig tree?  

¹⁸ In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. ¹⁹ And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.

²⁰ When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?” ²¹ And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. ²² And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”

1. Vibrant Leaves

Jesus was hungry, so He wanted fruit from the fig tree, but He found no fruit but only leaves. Mark tells us in his Gospel that it was not the season for figs, so the lesson isn’t ultimately about the fig tree. It is about God looking for something and finding the show of it but not the substance of it.

1. No Fruit

Like the fig tree, the Temple was all leaf and no fruit. The fig tree is a living parable of the religious life of God’s people in Jesus’ day. Outwardly, they were not worshiping idols, and they were supporting the Temple worship, which was beautiful and seemed very impressive. But all of it was fruitless.

Application: What Does the King Find Among Us?

What about us? What does King Jesus find among us when He comes among us? Is it all leaf and no fruit? How do we know? What is the fruit He’s looking for?

Well, this section concludes with Jesus talking about faith, because what God wants in the worship of His people is true faith. In John 4, when speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus said that God the Father is seeking worshipers who will worship Him in spirit and in truth, and living, vital faith makes our worship in spirit – that is, sincere and from the heart – and in truth – that is, from the Word of God and not the imaginations of people.

If we look back at Jesus in the Temple, we will see that it was not all bad news when He went into the Temple. While the religious leadership was fruitless, there were three groups of people in the Temple who weren’t –

 ¹⁴ And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. ¹⁵ But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant

The blind, the lame, and the children all had faith, all welcomed Jesus, all sought Him in spirit and in truth. These three groups would all be aware of their need, of their weakness. Jesus isn’t looking for our abilities, our talents, our wealth, or even our impressive knowledge. He wants faith, and even the faith He wants from us He graciously gives to us by His Holy Spirit.

So, do you believe?

Are you coming to Jesus knowing how weak you are and looking to Him for strength?

Are you coming to Him knowing how ignorant and foolish you are and looking to Him for wisdom?

Are you coming to Him knowing how sinful you are and looking to Him for forgiveness and righteousness?

And are you coming to Him loving Him for who He is, joyful and thankful for what He has done to save you from your worst enemies, and for how wonderfully He has fulfilled all the promises of God?