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But he stated this parallel: “A certain one had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit in it and did not find. But he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look and see! Three years from this time I have come seeking fruit in this fig tree, and I do not find. Cut it down! Also, for what purpose is it making the earth useless?’ But, responding, he states to him, ‘Lord, forgive it also this year until which time I may dig around it and may cast manures and if indeed it may make fruit into the future; but if not, you will cut it down.’” (Luke’s AD 60 research report re Jesus: Chapter 13: 6-21) |
Jesus had just spoken to the crowds about avoiding the consequences of their present ways – Info BT. Above, he addressed the bigger picture. A fair proportion of those in the crowd classed themselves as descendants of Abraham (alive c. 1900 BC). Abraham had been blessed by the LORD God with an everlasting covenant and this covenant was extended to his grandson Jacob, later named Israel. He fathered 12 sons including one named Judah, from which we derive the adjective ‘Jewish’.
The history of this family is recorded in the Bible’s Old Testament and it is one of continuing unfaithfulness to the LORD God. Do you think that Jesus, in the parallel, may have used “vineyard” to describe the earth and universe as a whole and used “fig-tree” to describe his chosen people? If so, the bigger picture would have been understood by many there to be a foretelling of future agony (“dig around … cast manures”) - for a while.
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But he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And, look and see! A woman having a spirit of disability for eighteen years – and she is bending together and entirely unable to straighten. But Jesus, seeing her, summoned her and said to her, “Woman, you have been set free from your disability.” And he placed the hands on her, and immediately she was made upright and was glorifying God.
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Jesus then reverted to the earth to the individual – or did he? This dear woman was pretty useless – not standing for anything. He frees her and she is restored to “glorifying God.” Maybe, through Jesus, that could again be the case for all Israel? Upright and glorifying God
But, a ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus healed on the Sabbath, was responding and was stating to the crowd that, “There are six days in which it is necessary to work. Therefore, on those days, coming, you be healed! And not on the Sabbath day.”
Jewish religious laws forbade truly wonderful blessing.
But the Lord was responding and said to him, “Play-actors. Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the feeding-trough and, leading it away, waters it? But this daughter of Abraham whom the adversary bound – look and see! - ten and eight years - was it not necessary to be untied from this bond on the Sabbath day?”
“Play-actors.”? It seems that Jesus identified this strict Sabbath observance by this “ruler of the synagogue” as hypocritical religion. He rubbishes this pretence and asks whether, on a Sabbath, any of them would leave his farm-animals without water.
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And, he himself stating these things, all those opposing him were being shamed, and all the crowd were rejoicing over all the glorious things coming to be under him. He therefore stated, “What is like the kingdom of God and to what will I liken it? It is like a grain of a mustard-plant which a man, taking, cast into a garden of his own, and it grew and it came to be a tree and it lodged the birds of the heaven in its branches.”
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What exactly was “coming to be under him”? Was it the reversal of the earth-shattering calamity outlined in his mini-parallel. Was he referring to the Bible’s Genesis 3 when, into the perfect and glorious creation, Adam, the first man, “cast” his decision to dismiss God’s only request to him?
And he again said, “To what shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like to leaven which a woman, taking, hid in three measures of wheat-flour, until the whole of it was leavened.”
Do you think this may refer to Eve’s three reasons for, like Adam, breaking God’s command: my appetites; my assets; my ambitions?
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