A Matter of Faith and Purpose
Matthew 21:21
As I started this series on the “I tell you the truth” statements of Jesus, I wasn’t thinking about some of the harder ones. Today, I find myself tackling one. In Matthew 21:21, we find the culmination of a little interaction Jesus had with a certain fig tree. To his astonished disciples who had witnessed an apparently healthy, full-grown tree wither from the roots, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig-tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done.”
Wow! What’s that? If I have enough faith, I could command a mountain to “go jump in the lake” and it would obey? Let me respectfully (and I mean respect for both Jesus and for you)... Let me respectfully suggest that Jesus is indulging in hyperbole here - that he is exaggerating to make a point. He did it several times in His teaching. Here are a couple of other examples:
“... it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 19:24) This simply means that people who trust in wealth to get into heaven don’t make it. It takes a miracle of God, which is exactly what Jesus said, two verses later.
Here is another one: “.. if your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” (Matt 5:29) We know that cutting off body parts would not make us holy, because sin is central to our thinking as well as to our doing. This is the point Jesus was making here. (Look at the context.)
Jesus always had a purpose for what He did and it was never selfish - for only His own comfort or benefit. Jesus cursed the fig tree to open the eyes of his disciples to the power of faith. They were coming from a context where keeping the law was the epitome of spiritual reality and power. Jesus was showing them that the life of faith is something else entirely.
In this declaration of truth, Jesus challenges us to consider more than the nature and power of faith, He calls us to take a close look at our own faith. To my knowledge, no one in the last couple of thousand years has had sufficient need to move a mountain into the ocean and the requisite faith to do it. Set that aside, what about the real obstacles you face. Addiction, destructive anger, dysfunctional relationships, struggles with vengeance, the nitty-gritty reality of your life. These are the mountains that impede our progress. Conquering a literal, physical mountain is less difficult than dealing with these every day. Will you trust God with them?
