Over the next few days everybody will be making final preparations for Christmas, and it is not exactly something we look forward to. At least I don't. I admire people who do it weeks or even months in advance, like people who have all their gifts purchased, wrapped, and even mailed by Thanksgiving. I do most of my shopping two weeks before Christmas. However, whether it is early or late, by the final night we will have made whatever preparation we are going to have made. After that it is too late. All we will be able to do is sit back in an exhausted state and “enjoy.”

And yet, having cleansed the temple, having driven the money changers out, having put them all outside of this great courtyard of the Gentiles where all of this trade was going on, faced down by the King of glory with all his authority as Jesus is standing there alone in the empty courtyard, what happens? All of the others are put out, but the blind come staggering in looking for Jesus, and the lame, and the people helping them to get them to Jesus, and also the children running around singing, “Hosanna. Hosanna. Hosanna to the King.” That’s a great, great illustration of what happens. When our Lord turns his back on one he turns it in order to open the door of the gospel to others.

Immediately after this, having driven out the money changers, he passes by this fig tree. We’re told that he was hungry and he went to it. But since he found nothing on it he cursed it saying, “May you never bear fruit again,” and the fig tree withered. What’s that all about? That’s an unusual story, isn’t it?

Isn’t it interesting? These religious leaders, the ones who were behind all of this and for whom it was profitable, would in that day have looked down on Matthew the tax collector. They would have said, “That Jew has sold out to the Roman armies for money.” They would have had nothing to do with him, politically, socially, or religiously. Why, they wouldn’t have let Matthew even come into the temple enclosure. 

When we continue to trace the theme of money through Matthew’s Gospel, we see that there was also instruction in Jesus’ words for the sending out of the twelve that you have in the tenth chapter. He told them on that occasion not to be concerned about money, not to take an extra cloak with them or an extra pair of shoes, but, rather, to trust the Lord to provide these things through the people to whom they would minister and in whose homes they would stay.