Most Americans never experience real hunger. They might delay a meal for a few hours, feel their stomach growl a little, but that isn’t real hunger. One of the sad things about this world is that there is enough food to feed everyone. Political and religious factors prevent starving people from getting what they need. Food is used as a weapon, withholding it from those opposed to the tyrannical rulers.
Jesus awoke from His night’s rest and went through what we all go through. He was hungry. Absolutely normal. He was hungry, no big deal, right? I have been hungry in this sense every day of my life. I wanted my next meal. My stomach was speaking to me.
But Jesus’ hunger sets the stage for an important object lesson. Jesus never wasted an opportunity to take the most mundane events in life and turn them into a lesson. He didn’t have to have the most profound things happening in order for Him to teach profound things. He talked about crops, water, seasons, travel, weather, and a host of other just plain and ordinary things.
Jesus starts right where people live when He teaches. We should do the same thing. Our lives need to be in the world, but not reflecting the values of that world. We are foreigners. Our final destination is not a box in the ground.
So what does Jesus do with His hunger? He begins an object lesson on the fruitlessness of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was supposed to be the spiritual hub of the world. It was the place the LORD had chosen to make His presence known. The pillar of fire and the cloud showed up to demonstrate in a tangible way that He was with His people.
People would gather and celebrate His history of interaction with His people throughout the year, every year. There were rituals that taught the lesson that people could not earn their way into His presence, that someone had to die in their place, that sin was a much bigger problem than they had imagined. All the solutions that people try will fail. But if people are obedient to the LORD and do the prescribed ritual sacrifices, He provides the needed forgiveness and reconciliation.
But Jerusalem and the Jewish people had failed at their mandate, so Jesus uses His hunger to illustrate this truth. He goes to a tree knowing that there is no fruit, just like His journey to Jerusalem where there is no fruit. He announces in His disciple’s hearing that the fig tree will never bear fruit again. The condition of the tree indicated to Jesus there was no fruit. And He confirmed the tree’s condition.
When Jesus enters Jerusalem, He find they are also unfruitful. When Jesus enters our lives, He finds us unfruitful as well. Then He does His work of salvation and regeneration. He changes us from the inside out, from fruitless to fruitful. He does the work we could never do ourselves. And then He wants us to live is such a way that our world changes because of His presence in our lives.
The Arnold Journey 