Wow, Sunday’s message had a lot in it.  And yet, there was still more I wanted to touch on but couldn’t because of time.  Here are a few more quotes from various commentaries I look at on a weekly basis in preparing my message.  Kernaghan says, “The fig tree than is an enacted parable about the temple. When Jesus denounced the temple as a den of robbers, drove out the merchants and customers, overturned the tables of the moneychangers and stopped the offering of sacrifices, he was not trying to purify the temple. His actions amounted to a curse (on the temple).  And if the fig tree, which he also cursed, had withered away to its roots, what would become of the temple?”  Later, “it is impossible to love your neighbors as yourself when you are constantly seeking to put yourself in a position above them”  Wow, so good!

   I did not have time to explore the widow’s mites at the end of chapter 12.  It like Bartimaeus serves as an positive example of the teachings before it.  Lane has several insights into this that I was unable to bring out.  This account of the widow “serves to sharpen the contrast between the sham righteousness of the scribes and that wholehearted devotion to God which characterized an unnamed widow whose poverty was absolute. . . . The fact that the woman gave two coins was significant, for she could easily have kept one for herself.” Wow, so good!

  I will leave you with those two great thoughts.