Sycamore Tree in Israel.
One of my problems in reading the Bible is that
I take many things Jesus said as being literal. The disciples had this problem
too. When Jesus said to sell your cloak and buy a sword, it sounded like advice
to have a sword in case people persecuted you. But this flies in the face of
the other things Jesus said about turning the cheek and loving your enemies.
Most commentators of the Bible say Jesus was
not being literal. And I believe they are right since when Peter cut off the
ear of one of the men who came to arrest Jesus, Jesus healed the man and told Peter
not to use the sword.
Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary:
“At the time the apostles understood
Christ to mean real weapons, but he spoke only of the weapons of the spiritual
warfare. The sword of the Spirit is the sword with which the disciples of
Christ must furnish themselves.”
Today, I was reading Luke 17 and Jesus spoke
about the Sycamore or Mulberry tree. He said, “If you had faith even as small
as a mustard seed, you could say to this sycamore tree, ‘May you be uprooted
and thrown into the sea and it would obey you.’”
He said this in answer to his disciples who had
asked him, “Increase our faith.” And they asked him to do this after he had
spoken about forgiveness, the kind of forgiveness they thought impossible for
them.
“Take heed to yourselves; if your brother sins
against you, rebuke him, and if he repent, forgive him. And if he sins against
you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn to you, you shall
forgive him.”
So, uprooting a sycamore tree is impossible for
anyone to do; therefore, if you think it is impossible for you to forgive over
and over, you are wrong. Faith in God will make it possible for you.
This is what I read in some commentaries this
morning:
Pulpit Commentary
“The Lord signifies that a very slight real
faith, which he compares to the mustard seed, that smallest of grains, would be
of power sufficient to accomplish what seemed to them impossible. In other
words, he says, “If you have any real faith at all, you will be able to win the
victory over yourselves necessary for a perpetual loving judgement of others.”
Barne’s Notes on the Bible
“This sycamore is a remarkable tree. It not
only bears several crops of figs during the year but these figs grow on short
stems along the trunk and large branches, and not at the end of twigs, as in
other fruit-bearing trees. The figs are small and of a greenish-yellow color.
It is easily propagated, merely by planting a
stout branch in the ground and watering it until it has struck its roots into
the soil. This it does with great rapidity and to a vast depth. It was with
reference to this latter fact that our Lord selected it to illustrate the power
of faith.”
Thinking of all this reminds me of the fires of
hell preachers talk about. I believe the fire is symbolic of something else.
What would be the point of God burning people who are lost? Punishement? Punishment
is supposed to be restorative. Actual, physical burning? I don’t think so.
Being burned is very painful, and I think when the wicked realize they are lost,
it is like a burning in their soul. A terrible pain in their heart at seeing
what they have given up because they loved darkness rather than light.
