"Behold, I have told you before." — Matthew 24:25 (KJV)

It is Monday morning, the week Jesus is going to die.

He walks out of Bethany with the twelve, heading up over the Mount of Olives toward Jerusalem, and He is hungry. Off in the distance He sees a fig tree in full leaf.

That tree is making a claim. A fig tree puts out its fruit before it puts out its leaves, so leaves that early mean figs should be on the branch. Anybody walking that road knew it. That’s why He crossed over to it.

"And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it." — Mark 11:13–14 (KJV)

Nothing but leaves. The very next morning, walking the same road, they find it dead, dried up from the roots.

Hold on to two words: for ever. Jesus put a permanent sentence on that tree. This is the same Jesus who wept over Jerusalem. He does not curse things carelessly.

So what did the tree do?

What the Leaves Are

Here is the answer up front, and the rest of this post will watch it work.

The leaves are the outward appearance of health, of holiness, of God’s approval.

Not good works exactly. Not miracles exactly. The leaves are whatever a tree puts on the outside that tells everyone walking by: there is fruit here.

And here is what almost everybody skips. That tree did something backwards. A fig tree is supposed to produce fruit and then leaf out. This one ran ahead of itself. It got the display up before it had the substance to back it.

Leaves before fruit. Appearance before reality.

Jesus didn’t curse it for being barren. He cursed it for advertising. There is a difference between an empty tree and a lying tree, and the lying tree is the one that draws the judgment. A bare tree in winter is honest. You walk past it and you know exactly what you’re getting. A fig tree in full leaf out of season pulled a hungry man off the road.

Hold that thought. We’re coming back to it, and it’s going to be about you and me.

What the Tree Was About

Mark isn’t telling a nature story. Look at how he builds it:

He split the fig tree story in half and put the temple inside it. The tree interprets the temple, and the temple interprets the tree.

That temple was busy. Sacrifices running, priests working, crowds coming from every nation for Passover, money changing hands. If you had stood in that court on that Monday, you would have said this was the most spiritually alive place on the face of the earth.

Leaves, all the way up. Jesus walked in looking for fruit and found a marketplace.

"Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves." — Mark 11:17 (KJV)

The Mountain Cast into the Sea

Most people read right past what happens next. Peter points at the dead tree, and Jesus says:

"And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart... he shall have whatsoever he saith." — Mark 11:22–23 (KJV)

Where are they standing? On the road over the Mount of Olives. From that road you look ahead and see the temple mount: Herod’s temple, stone blocks the size of railcars, gold on the front that Josephus said you couldn’t look at in the morning sun without hurting your eyes.

This mountain. He is likely pointing right at it.

A chapter and a half later, the disciples are still admiring the architecture, and He tells them:

"Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." — Mark 13:2 (KJV)

Understand how impossible that sounded. The temple had stood in some form for five hundred years. Herod had been renovating it for almost fifty. The sacrifices had been running for a thousand years. For every Jewish person alive, it was the fixed point of the world.

And Jesus said that mountain was going into the sea.

Forty years later it was gone. Burned to the ground. Never rebuilt. Not one day of sacrifice since. The priesthood, the altar, the schedule, the buildings, the leaves: the whole religious system cast into the sea.

Now you tell me what that tree was about.

“Behold, I Have Told You Before”

"Behold, I have told you before." — Matthew 24:25 (KJV)
"But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things." — Mark 13:23 (KJV)

Those few words are the reason the church survived AD 70.

Jesus gave His disciples an escape order. Not a prediction. An order:

"...then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains: And let him that is on the housetop not go down into the house, neither enter therein, to take any thing out of his house: And let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take up his garment." — Mark 13:14–16 (KJV)

Don’t grab your coat. Don’t go back in the house. Run.

That is hard to obey. When a siege is coming, everything in you says get behind the walls. Get inside the city. Get to the temple, because that’s where God is. Jesus said leave.

Decades later, that was exactly the choice people faced. In the autumn of AD 66, a Roman general named Cestius Gallus marched on Jerusalem, broke into the northern suburb, and then, for reasons nobody has ever been able to explain, pulled back and withdrew. Josephus writes about it like he can’t believe it. The early church historian Eusebius records that the Jerusalem Christians, warned by a revelation before the war, left the city and went across the Jordan to a place called Pella, and many have seen Cestius’s strange retreat as the open door they walked through.

They got out. And the door shut behind them, because when Titus came in AD 70, there was no way of escape.

Now hear what the other side was saying. Josephus records that on the day the temple burned, a false prophet stood up in the city and proclaimed that God had commanded the people to go up on the temple, where they would receive miraculous signs of their deliverance. Six thousand people went up, women and children among them. The soldiers set the cloisters on fire. Not one came out alive. Josephus adds that there were many such prophets, put up to it by the rebel leaders, telling people to stay and wait on God so they wouldn’t desert.

Same city. Same weeks. Two voices. Christ said flee. The false prophets said gather.

And listen to how Jesus prepared His people for exactly that:

"And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ; or, lo, he is there; believe him not: For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect. But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things." — Mark 13:21–23 (KJV)

His warning isn’t “you’ll be able to tell the real signs from the fake ones.” It isn’t “you’ll feel a check in your spirit.” It’s I already told you, so nothing anybody announces later can move you.

That is the protection. Not your discernment in the moment, because a starving man in a burning city will believe anyone who promises deliverance. The protection is already knowing what God said before the pressure hits.

The Man Standing Where He Ought Not

Right in the middle of that warning is a phrase people argue about constantly:

"But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains." — Mark 13:14 (KJV)

Two things about that verse.

First, let him that readeth understand. That’s a nudge. Jesus is saying this one is a puzzle, and you need to solve it before you need it.

Second, in the Greek, the word “abomination” is neuter, but the word “standing” is masculine. The grammar doesn’t match, and a lot of careful readers, going way back, have taken that mismatch the same way: this isn’t a statue or an idol on a pedestal. This is a man. Somebody standing where he has no business standing.

So was there a man back then standing in the temple where he ought not? Let’s look.

In AD 67 and 68, before the Romans burned anything, the Zealots seized the temple and turned it into a fortress. Josephus, a Jewish historian with no reason to help a Christian argument, writes that their wounded men went up into the sanctuary and defiled the holy floor with their own blood.

Then they did something worse. They abolished the high priesthood. They pulled in one priestly clan and cast lots for a new high priest, and the lot fell on a man named Phanni, son of Samuel, from a country village. He was not of the high priestly line. Josephus says he was so simple he scarcely knew what the high priesthood even was. They dragged him out of his village against his will, put the holy garments on him, and, in Josephus’s description, dressed him up for the part as though they were staging a play. They had to coach him on what to do.

A man in a costume, in the holy place, who did not know what the office meant. Standing where he ought not.

Josephus adds one more thing. There was an ancient saying among the Jews that the city would be taken and the sanctuary burned whenever sedition came and native hands were the first to defile God’s holy places.

The temple was defiled by its own people before a single Roman torch touched it. Jewish hands murdering priests in the sanctuary. Jewish lots installing a fake high priest. Rome didn’t kill that tree. Rome cut down something that had already withered from the roots.

And the whole time, from the outside, the building still stood. The garments were still worn. The incense still burned. The schedule still ran. Fig leaves, and a man in the costume who didn’t know what the office meant.

Now It Turns

Here is why all that history matters.

If you walk away thinking those first-century Jews sure blew it, you’ve missed it completely. You’ve done to that story exactly what the Pharisees did to the prophets. They built the prophets’ tombs and said, “If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers.” And Jesus said that’s how He knew whose sons they were.

So let’s bring it home. That tree put its leaves out before it had fruit. That’s backwards. And it is exactly what we do.

We want the outward appearance of holiness now, this week, visible where people can see it, instead of the slow, invisible, unglamorous inward work of a mind being cleansed and renewed by the word of God.

One of those you can put on this morning. The other takes diligent time.

The Rest We Will Not Take

"Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little." — Isaiah 28:9–10 (KJV)

That’s how understanding comes. Not in a download. Not in a conference weekend. A little at a time, stacked over years, until it’s structural.

Now read what God says next:

"To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear." — Isaiah 28:12 (KJV)

God calls it rest. He calls it refreshing. That’s the offer: sit down under My word, take it a little at a time, and be rested. And the verdict on the whole nation is yet they would not hear. It was offered, it was free, it was rest, and they would not sit down and take it. However you take verse 10, verse 12 is God calling it rest, and the nation refusing it.

And we all know why. Studying the Bible is quiet, and slow, and nobody sees you do it. There’s no applause and no photo. You sit down with a chapter you’ve read fifteen times and work through it again, and half the time you don’t feel a thing. You do it on a Tuesday and again on a Wednesday, and there is nothing to show for it that anybody could point to.

Compare that to what religion offers instead.

The Price Tag Test

Here’s a test. It isn’t perfect, but it shows you something. Look at what it costs.

Getting dressed up for church costs money. The upgraded building with stained glass costs a lot of money. The sound system, the lights, the screens. The Christmas play, the costumes, the sets. The Christian t-shirt, the bracelet, the bumper sticker. The wall decor with the verse in nice lettering. The conference, the retreat, the concert tickets, the hotel, the summer camp. All money.

Sitting down at your kitchen table for an hour with a Bible you already own, with nobody watching? Free.

Every outward thing has a price tag. The inward thing is free, and we still won’t do it.

There’s a man at the temple gate who can’t walk, and he asks Peter and John for money. Peter answers:

"Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk." — Acts 3:6 (KJV)

The two men with the most spiritual power on the planet that morning were broke. No building, no budget. What they had was the name of Jesus Christ and the word of God in their mouths, and it knocked the crutches out from under a lame man.

The transformative thing was never the money. It was the word.

An Honest Correction About Feeding People

There’s a ditch on this side of the road, and we need to be careful. Someone could take what was just said and run with it: “So the food pantry is a waste. The benevolence fund is just leaves.”

No. God commanded it.

"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." — James 1:27 (KJV)
"But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" — 1 John 3:17 (KJV)

Leaves aren’t bad. The outward appearance isn’t wrong. The problem is the outward appearance without the fruit of the Spirit. Jesus fed people. The early church fed people. If your church feeds people, that’s obedience, not decoration.

The real danger is named exactly in Acts 6. The Jerusalem church had a genuine feeding ministry, and it started to break down. The Greek-speaking widows were being overlooked. Real problem, real hunger, real people. Watch what the apostles did:

"Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word." — Acts 6:2–4 (KJV)

They didn’t shut down the food. They didn’t tell the widows to go read their Bibles. And they didn’t abandon the word to run the kitchen. They said this work matters enough that it needs qualified men over it, so the word of God doesn’t get dropped.

Look at the qualification for handing out food. Not whoever’s available. Not whoever has a truck. Men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom. That’s the standard for the food line.

Hold on to that, because it leads straight into the biggest problem in the church today.

What Happens When a Church Chases Appearances

A church that runs on outward appearance doesn’t just end up shallow. It ends up with the wrong men in charge.

If what you’re producing is a display, the man you need is the man who’s good at displays. He’s charming. He’s funny. He fills a room. He can run a program. He looks the part. What he doesn’t have is the fruit of the Spirit and a working knowledge of the word of God.

Paul spelled out the qualifications so nobody would have to guess:

"A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)" — 1 Timothy 3:2–5 (KJV)

Notice what is not on that list. Charisma. Crowd size. Business success. A good singing voice. Working a room. Miracles. Not one item is something you can do on a platform. Every one is about how a man handles his wife, his children, his money, and his temper: the four things nobody in the audience can see.

Scripture also tells you what the disqualified man looks like:

"Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things." — Philippians 3:19 (KJV)
"Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake." — Titus 1:11 (KJV)
"And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you." — 2 Peter 2:3 (KJV)

And Titus puts the fig tree on him in one line:

"They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him." — Titus 1:16 (KJV)

Leaves, and no figs. That man ends up teaching Sunday school. That man ends up in the pulpit, because the church was grading on the wrong thing and he scored high on it.

A man standing where he ought not to stand. Same phrase, same problem, different century.

It Has Happened Before

This isn’t theoretical. Go back five hundred years. The church in Europe had the greatest buildings ever raised in the western world. It had the art, the music, and ceremony that could make a grown man weep.

It also had offices bought and sold for money. Bishops appointed as political favors, some of whom never once visited the people they were over. Parish priests who couldn’t read the Latin they recited every week, administering a book they couldn’t open. And forgiveness itself for sale, with a receipt, to fund a construction project.

Leaves on a scale the world has never seen before or since.

Then a man sat down with the text, with Romans, and read that the just shall live by faith, and the whole thing came apart. That’s what a reformation is. Not new revelation. People going back to the book.

But don’t walk away thinking that was somebody else’s problem. The same rot grows in churches that would tell you they’re nothing like that. Independent churches. Baptist churches. Churches proud of how plain they are. You can be plain and still run on appearance; you’ve just changed which appearance you’re grading.

Every institution drifts this direction, and the drift always runs the same way:

A reformation came, and I believe one will come again. It will start the same way it did last time: with somebody sitting down and reading the book, line upon line, precept upon precept.

Three Mirrors

Look at three groups, and watch the same failure wear three different costumes.

The Pharisees. Their leaves were the law: fasting, tithing, cleanness, descent from Abraham. Serious men, and many of them sincere.

"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones." — Matthew 23:27 (KJV)

Whitewash is something you apply.

The miracle workers.

"Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." — Matthew 7:22–23 (KJV)

Real power, no relationship. He doesn’t say their works weren’t good enough. He says I never knew you. Whatever fruit is, it grows out of knowing Him, and these people had the output without the union. That’s why Paul can write:

"And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing." — 1 Corinthians 13:2 (KJV)

Paul grants every gift in the hypothetical and calls the man nothing anyway.

The men of AD 66 to 70. Their leaves were zeal: the temple, the nation. They defiled the sanctuary with their own hands, put a costumed man in the holy place, and told six thousand people God would deliver them on the roof.

Three costumes, one tree.

The Garden

Where does this end? Where it started, in Genesis 3.

"And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons." — Genesis 3:7 (KJV)

Fig leaves. The first thing man ever made with his hands, and he made it to cover his guilt before God. Now read the very next verse:

"And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves." — Genesis 3:8 (KJV)

They had the aprons on, and they were still hiding. That’s how you know it didn’t work. A covering that leaves you hiding is not a covering.

Here is God’s answer:

"Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them." — Genesis 3:21 (KJV)

He made them. He clothed them. Both verbs are His. And something had to die to provide those skins. The first death in the Bible is the death that clothed the guilty.

The Finished Work

Hebrews puts its finger on the exact spot:

"...gifts and sacrifices, that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience." — Hebrews 9:9 (KJV)

The conscience is the place fig leaves could never reach. You can dress the outside all day and still lie awake at two in the morning wondering why you haven’t changed.

Then comes a brilliant argument:

"For the law having a shadow of good things to come... can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins." — Hebrews 10:1–2 (KJV)

The repetition itself was the proof it wasn’t working. If it had worked, they would have stopped. Adam and Eve had to keep sewing. Israel had to keep offering. And we keep running our religious routine over and over, because it never once cleaned the conscience.

"But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God." — Hebrews 10:12 (KJV)

Sat down. There were no chairs in the tabernacle, because a priest’s work was never finished. He sat down.

And there is for ever again. Jesus said “for ever” over a fruitless tree, and Hebrews says “for ever” over a finished sacrifice. One thing permanently ended. One thing permanently done.

Here is the promise:

"How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" — Hebrews 9:14 (KJV)

Dead works. That’s the fig leaf in two words. And notice what the cleansing is for: to serve the living God. He doesn’t take away your works. He takes away the dead ones so live ones can finally grow.

You can ask Him for that today, right where you’re sitting.

"Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience." — Hebrews 10:22 (KJV)

Imputed

Understand what you’re standing on when you ask, because this is the whole gospel.

"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." — 2 Corinthians 5:21 (KJV)
"But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works." — Romans 4:5–6 (KJV)

Imputed. Put to your account. Credited to you. Not earned, not grown, not performed. Given.

"And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." — Philippians 3:9 (KJV)

You do not have to jump through a single religious hoop to be right with God. Not the dressing up, not the program, not the shirt, not the play, not perfect attendance. Not one of the leaves. You are right with God through faith in Jesus Christ, with His righteousness put to your account. Finished. He sat down.

And then, because you’re clothed and your conscience is clean, you sit down with the book.

"This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing." — Isaiah 28:12 (KJV)

Precept upon precept. Line upon line. Here a little, and there a little. Slow, quiet, and nobody watching. That’s where the mind gets renewed, and that’s where fruit comes from. Not from the display. Not from fig leaves.

Already Knowing What He Said

A tree in full leaf, out of season, on a road outside Jerusalem, advertising a harvest it didn’t have. Forty years later, a whole system in the sea, and a man in a costume standing where he ought not to stand.

The Lord saw all of it coming and said six words to His people so they’d be ready:

"Behold, I have told you before." — Matthew 24:25 (KJV)

He told them ahead of time so that when the pressure came and the voices started shouting here is Christ, go up on the temple, deliverance is here, they would already know what God said, and nothing announced in the smoke could move them.

That is the only protection there has ever been. Not being clever enough to spot the fake in the moment. Already knowing what He said.

So the question isn’t whether you look like a Christian this Sunday. Anybody can put leaves on.

What are you wearing: something you sewed, or something He made?

And when the noise comes, and it will, will you already know what He told you before?