What Fig Leaves Won’t Cover

Do certain passages in the Bible make you scratch your head? The temptation is to go, "Well, I'm just going to chalk that up to divine mystery and move on." The other temptation is to ask different questions than the text wants you to ask. We could look at a passage like this and spend more time wondering why this happens in a different order than Mark has it. It's fine to ask those questions, but only as long as we are asking what this text wants us to ask: "Why is this here?" 

So that is the question that we are going to ask today! As we dive into Holy Week this week, we are going to be looking at some of the little details on our way down the road to the cross. Since we have taken in the forest on our past journeys through Holy Week, I thought we would look at the trees, in this case, literally. Jesus makes important points about the Christian life, often using imagery of plants to help us see the point clearly if we take the time to see it. So today, we are going to look at our main point of this passage: Religious actions are no substitute for real faith in Christ.