Hurlbut's Life of Christ For Young and Old / A Complete Life of Christ Written in Simple Language, Based on the Gospel Narrative

by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut

"From this time let no fruit ever be picked from this tree forever!" he said.

This was not because Jesus was angry with the poor tree, which could not help not having fruit. It was because he saw in that tree a parable or picture of the Jewish people. They made a show of serving God, and were like trees covered with leaves; but they did not bring forth the fruit of good lives, of love to God and their fellow-men. They were fruitless trees, and trees which have been planted and kept for fruit are of no use without fruit.

The twelve disciples who were with Jesus around the fig tree heard those words, and soon had cause to remember them.

As the traders looked upon Jesus and heard his stern rebuke, they became afraid and rushed out of the court before him

From the Mount of Olives they walked, as on the day before, across the valley of the brook Kedron, and again came into the Temple. You remember that two years before when Jesus visited the Temple, he then drove out from its court all the people that he found buying and selling and changing money. But in the two years that had passed, they had all come back, and the Court of the Gentiles was again a place of business and of confusion. All around were oxen lowing and sheep bleating; their owners calling upon the people passing by to come and buy them; cages full of pigeons and doves were standing on every side; and from a row of tables might be heard the chink of silver, as the money of foreign lands was changed for that of Judea.

When these traders saw Jesus standing before them, some of them could remember how two years before he had driven them out of the Temple, and all saw in him the man whom only yesterday the people had welcomed as the coming King of Israel. There was a look upon the face of Jesus which made all these wrongdoers afraid of him; and when he spoke in the hearing of them all, "God's book says, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer; but you are making it a den of robbers,'" with one accord they rushed out of the court before him, driving out the sheep and oxen, carrying away the cages of doves, and even upsetting the tables of the money-changers.

Jesus saw that people who were coming from outside the wall were carrying goods and jars of water and of oil through the Court of the Gentiles as the nearest way to the city, so that the court was becoming merely a street between the city and the country. He put a stop to this carrying of loads through the Temple courts; and would not allow even a jar of water to be taken by way of the Temple into the city. This building in all its parts was the house of God, and Jesus as the Son of God gave commands that everywhere it was to be used only for the worship of his heavenly Father.

After casting out all these evil things from the outer court, Jesus walked up the steps to the inner court, called the Treasury. There he sat down, and for the rest of the day taught the people who crowded around him.

While he was in the Treasury, they led to him the blind, and he gave them sight by a word; and the lame came in on crutches, or were carried in by their friends to his feet, and he gave them power to walk. Boys too were marching around the Temple and shouting everywhere, "May God save the Son of David!"