Tag: Fruit Trees

The Failing Fig Tree

Lesson Theme: The Object Lesson of the Cursed Fig Tree

I’ll admit, when I first read this story, I was pretty quick to take up an offense for the poor fig tree.  It’s not the tree’s fault that it is not in season.  What do you expect?!?   This tree is completely innocent in this crime!

Is Christ being an unrighteous judge, perhaps influenced by His hunger?

When we ask ourselves the following questions, this story goes from odd to downright perplexing!

Q1: Is this fig tree bearing fruit?

Q2: WHY isn’t it bearing fruit?

Q3: Is it the tree’s fault that it is not in season?

Ultimately, WHO set up the seasons? Who should have known better than to expect an out-of-season fig tree to be abundantly stocked with figs?  Was someone supposed to be taping them up there for just such an occasion?!

WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?

Obviously, if our Saviour can fast for 40 days in the wilderness, disappointed hunger certainly isn’t the motivator here. But rather, could it be possible that this tree’s purpose isn’t to bear fruit, but rather to be an object lesson?

Note:  No PowerPoint lesson today. Let’s just use our Bibles and make some notes in the margins.

The Failing Fig Tree – Lesson

 

“And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.”

— Jonah 4:9

Why Does the Bible Talk about Circumcision?

Lesson Theme: Physical manifestations of spiritual applications

“Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  I was told this by a preacher when I was just a child, and I think about this frequently almost 30 years later.

As society drifts farther and farther from the pier of God’s Word, we seem destined to a measure of self-destruction and doomed to re-invent the wheel only to re-discover the truth present in God’s inspired Word.

There is a growing movement promoting ‘intact males’ and anti-circumcision. Is it un-natural to circumcise your baby boy?  Is it purely cosmetical surgery left over from an outdated judeo-christian oppressive attempts to curb masturbation?

In an adult-oriented lesson, lets not shy away from a clear Bible teaching, lest we pass over a precious truth symbolized in this medical procedure.

Note:  No PowerPoint lesson today. Let’s just use our Bibles and make some notes in the margins.

The Circumcision Lesson

 

“Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.”

— Exodus 4:25