Tag: tree of life

A Strong Green Olive Tree

OLD TESTAMENT: Zechariah 3-4
POETRY: Psalm 144
NEW TESTAMENT: John 17:1-5

Zechariah 3:6-10 (NKJV) Then the Angel of the LORD admonished Joshua, saying, 7 “Thus says the LORD of hosts:
‘If you will walk in My ways,
And if you will keep My command,
Then you shall also judge My house,
And likewise have charge of My courts;
I will give you places to walk
Among these who stand here.
8 ‘Hear, O Joshua, the high priest,
You and your companions who sit before you,
  For they are a wondrous sign;
For behold, I am bringing forth My Servant the BRANCH.
9 For behold, the stone
That I have laid before Joshua:
Upon the stone are seven eyes.
Behold, I will engrave its inscription,’
Says the LORD of hosts,
‘And I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.
10 In that day,’ says the LORD of hosts,
‘Everyone will invite his neighbor
Under his vine and under his fig tree.’ ”

Psalms 144:3-4 (NKJV) O LORD, what are human beings that you should notice them,
mere mortals that you should think about them?
4 For they are like a breath of air;
their days are like a passing shadow

John 17:1-5 ​(NKJV) After saying all these things, Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son so he can give glory back to you. 2 For you have given him authority over everyone. He gives eternal life to each one you have given him. 3 And this is the way to have eternal life—to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth. 4 I brought glory to you here on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. 5 Now, Father, bring me into the glory we shared before the world began.

The greatest message of the kingdom that we need for ourselves, and that we also need to share with others is this wonderful news about Christ and his life and death.  When we read the Bible histories in both OT and NT we are brought to an understanding of who the Father is and what He desires for mankind.  We get this by opening our hearts to His message that He is sending to us.  The Bible is not an encyclopedia where we look up the answers to our questions alphabetically.  God wants us to have faith and trust in Him and He shows us who He is in all these interactions with people who believe.  Especially we see Him in the life of Christ.  Jesus fulfills the law of God by doing the things and saying the things which truly represent God’s love and grace.  We become involved in a lifetime study of trust and faith.  Every day we should see a larger and greater picture of this love God has for us. We also learn of our inability to earn our own salvation but are dependent on His grace.  As we grow, we should come to  appreciate more and more God’s wonderful plan for mankind. 

About 500 years before Christ is born Zechariah prophecies about a man who is called the “Branch”.  This word is better translated as “shoot” or tree.  The stump of the tree of Israel has been cut off and this tree is no longer what it was.  God in the OT compares Israel to a strong olive tree. 

Jeremiah 11:16(NKJV) The LORD called your name,
Green Olive Tree, Lovely and of Good Fruit.
With the noise of a great tumult
He has kindled fire on it,
And its branches are broken.

Jesus becomes a strong tree shoot that grows from the roots of this tree stump and becomes a new tree of life. In Romans 11 God tells us that we are branches from a wild olive tree grafted into this new tree of Christ.  “Romans 11:24 You, by nature, were a branch cut from a wild olive tree. So if God was willing to do something contrary to nature by grafting you into his cultivated tree”.  The words “wild olive” in the Greek is “Oleaster tree”.  If you have noticed in the Midwest we have a terrible plague of invasive Russian olive or autumn olive trees growing everywhere.  These are from the “oleaster” family of trees.  They are very invasive and have no particular value to anyone.  They have small red berries which the birds eat and spread everywhere, but which are very bitter and have no food value.  They look at first like an olive tree especially from a distance.  They have silvery gray leaves and a shape like an olive tree.  But when you get close you see that it is this tree which everyone wishes to get rid of with no value or fruit.  God takes us Gentiles who have no value and aren’t even the right genus of plants and grafts us onto the wonderful tree of Christ.  We become part of this tree of life which God has decided to make us.

 These are branches grafted onto the roots in the humanity of people (which is why it is called the stump of Jesse instead of the stump of David).  But this is a tree chosen and prospered by God and then made even more diverse with the addition of wild olive tree branches to the tree.  What a wonderful picture of the love God has for us.  When we see ourselves in God’s plan then we are trusting Him with our hearts.  This is the desire that God has for us to be in His wonderful family of faith and love. God is always faithful to keep His Word. We have received a wonderful life today and a future with Him.  Have a great day in fellowship with our big brother Jesus Christ and our Father Yahweh God.

Revelation 19:10 (NLT) Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said, “No, don’t worship me. I am a servant of God, just like you and your brothers and sisters who testify about their faith in Jesus. Worship only God. For the essence of prophecy is to give a clear witness for Jesus.”

-Tom Siderius

Reflection Questions:

How do you see yourself in God’s plan?

What ministry does He have for you to do this day?

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Paradise

Old Testament: Ezekiel 37 & 38

Poetry: Psalm 107

New Testament: Revelation 22

     Revelation 22 begins with a few more verses describing New Jerusalem, a topic which began in chapter 21. It is full of life. I go back and forth on how to visualize this from the details we have. The city is described with one street, paved in gold like glass. The street leads to the throne of God and Christ – it is the most important destination. Perhaps the street spirals up to them, and the clarity of the gold helps the light from the throne reach everywhere. The river of the water of life passes down the center of the street, and the tree of life is on either side (v. 2). So perhaps the water goes through a tunnel carved in the thick trunk of the tree of life, which has grown quite large since being transplanted from the Garden of Eden. The design does not concern me greatly, the key is the offer of life and blessings. This is a place of contentment and worship – it has no temple because it needs none, all within it are constantly in the presence of God and Christ, bathed in their glory.

     Rather than design, I am interested in the idea that things have, at last, moved beyond the stage where God considers them “very good” (Genesis 1:31). After each of the first five days of creation God declared the work “good”; after day six it was “very good” – notably with the addition of humans. It may be that things didn’t remain at “very good” for long before they slid into distress and pain due to the addition of sin, but that isn’t the point in this chapter. God has restored matters. The curse is gone! But I think God more than restored things and passed “very good” to “perfect.” I suspect the needed element for that to take place involves free will – God would not force Adam and Eve to love and accept Him, it was to be our choice if we would seek companionship with Him.

     Well, talking about this sort of thing with God can wait, and by the time we enter those kinds of conversations with God we will be better equipped to do so. For now, we know the challenges we face, and the Spirit we have been entrusted with to face them. Let us continue toward the paradise God has planned for us.

     The Greek word for “paradise,” by the way (Luke 23:43; Revelation 2:7), from which we get our English word “paradise,” comes from a Persian word for a pleasure garden. It seems like we are striving to get back to a garden, where we could eat from the tree of life and perhaps even walk with God.

     With understanding and acceptance of each other.

     Loving and loved.

     Forever.

     These are goals worth having.

     Lord, the book says a blessing is on those who read and hear the words of this prophecy and heed the things written in it, for the time is near. Help us be attentive to these words, and all that you direct for our lives. Thank you for the gift of your words. Do not let us be drawn astray from you, your message, or your work. You are a gracious God. In Jesus’ name I pray to you, Amen.

-Daniel Smead

Reflection Questions

  1. We are repeatedly told there will be no night in the time of the New Jerusalem – what do you associate with night that you will be pleased to have end?
  2. How do you find the curse affecting your life this week? How is knowing Jesus, and believers, helping you to deal with the curse now?
  3. Looking back over Revelation, what directions stand out to you for your life? How is it going? Do you think you should call on someone to help you be accountable for what you feel called to do?
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Living Water

Revelation 22

Revelation 22 1 NIV

First off … Revelation 22 is so deep and glorious that I feel inadequate to even write a devotion about it.

The scene portrayed here as Pastor Jake talked about is the main point. This is what the  whole book of Revelation is pointing us to and even the entire  Bible.

The vision described  is magnificent and has a great implication on our lives in the here and now. Verses 1-2 point us to this river of life that is going through the middle of the thrones of God and Christ. Just imagine the throne of God on earth with his son seated next to him. Through the middle of these glorious, holy and spectacular thrones is a river flowing from it. The scripture says this river is bright like a crystal. Have you ever held a crystal in your hand? It’s a beautiful stone that has a certain awe-inspiring quality to it. Now, imagine a river with the same breath-taking quality flowing from the throne of God and Christ! When I imagine this scene, I see everything I hope for wrapped up before me. Imagining being in the presence of a holy God where I in my sinful flesh have no business being near and seeing this stream descending from them overwhelms my heart with gratefulness for the grace of God.

The river in this vision is feeding the Tree of Life. The same Tree of Life that we see in the beginning with Adam and Eve. The tree needs to be connected to this river simply to be alive. This tree is pretty crazy though because I don’t know about you but I have never seen a tree produce 12 different kinds of fruit. I have never even seen a tree produce two different kinds of fruit. There must be something special about this river that it has the capacity to produce twelve different kinds of fruit on one tree.

When we look at the tree and its fruit, we must conclude that without this river, this tree and its fruit would not exist.

When we examine our world today if a tree or plant doesn’t receive the water it needs it will die. There is even a great example of a plant dying from lack of water in my living room right now. It is a proven fact that trees need water.

In the same way so does the human soul. But not physical water, living water. The greatest mistake we can ever make in our lives is when we disconnect from this river that is flowing from God and Jesus. Sometimes we think that the busyness of our lives doesn’t allow us to spend time with God on a daily basis. We think that today I don’t have time to spend with or connect to the river or well that never runs dry. The tendency is to think that I can skip a day or a week and still be fine. We think “After all I’m still doing fine” and its only when we are hurting that we run to God.

We were made for so much more than just existing, though. We, like this tree, were made magnificently to produce multiple different kinds of fruit. I feel like personally I short change myself and my whole existence when I don’t go to the river and well to fill my soul. When we go to God or the river we can allow ourselves to be changed from the inside out by God. Then we start to produce in hearts and in souls this natural fruit  that can come from nowhere else but God. This fruit externally manifests itself in the fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5.22-24).

In verses 3-5 it talks about how God will be the light of the world and there will no longer be need of lamps or a sun. God isn’t dwelling on the earth yet; instead, he is allowing us to be the lights in this world. The only way this happens in our lives is through this connection to living water. We simply cannot be the lights in this world without the connection to these waters of life.

So, I encourage you and I frankly am encouraging myself to stay connected to these waters and don’t let the days go by without connecting to God. When we do, we will become the people God created us to be with lives that shine lights reflecting the God we serve.

Daniel Wall

God’s Presence and the Garden

Genesis 2 8

Text: Gen 2:4 – 3:24

 

Yesterday we began talking about the presence of God, starting with the creation account in Genesis 1:1-2:3. We saw that God not only created the earth as a place for us to live, but also as a place for him to be present with us. The heavens and earth are God’s temple.

 

As we move on in Genesis, starting with 2:4 and going to the end of chapter 2, we find another creation account, and its focus is different than the first, paying special attention to humans and what seems to be agriculture. We are introduced to a garden, and people to cultivate and rule over it: Adam (which literally means man or mankind) and Eve (which literally means living or life). The garden also includes two special trees, the tree of life, and tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of knowledge could have easily been called the tree of certain death, because God promises they will die if they eat from it. But they can eat from anything else.

 

This garden is a special place. It seems to be a focal point, almost like a holy of holies for God’s cosmic temple. It is sacred space that he shares with his creation. God walks in the garden and is present there with Adam and Eve. Can you imagine just sharing space with God, doing some gardening, and God just walks by, like it was a normal thing? “Oh, hey God.”

 

That kind of closeness and intimacy with God in his presence was how it was for Adam and Eve, until something happened. There’s a talking serpent. This mischievous serpent character convinces Eve that she won’t in fact die if she eats from the tree of knowledge, she’ll just have knowledge like God. This is tricky because it has just enough truth in it. Maybe you would call it a white lie, but still a deception. Eve eats from the tree of knowledge, and Adam follows suit.

 

As Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, they disobeyed God’s direct command and took matters into their own hands, going down a path to prematurely obtain the knowledge of good and evil. They likely had a childlike innocence about them before, and maybe God would have in time revealed this knowledge of good and evil to them in his way, in his time. Well, now things were going to be different for them. They suddenly realized they had no clothes and hid from God. They were ashamed. God finds out what they did (surely he already knew what they did) and kicks them out of his garden.

 

The consequences were very serious. God has cherubim (winged creatures sort of like a sphinx, not at all like a baby with wings) and a flaming sword guard the entrance so they can’t enter and eat from the tree of life. They are exiled from the garden, they are effectively sentenced to death by no longer having access to the tree of life and God’s presence. They will have to work much harder to grow food to survive, and some other fun consequences.

 

Reading an account like this makes you think a lot. What sorts of things are symbolized by the tree of life, and tree of knowledge? What is a serpent doing there? Are we really talking about fruit? I have no definitive answers to these questions. The beauty of this passage is that it forces you to think more every time you read it, and I believe that is why it is there.

 

The garden account is ripe with symbolism to interpret. While it is an account about real people, it is written in a way that makes it much bigger than that. Adam and Eve can be seen as archetypes for us, meaning the things that are said of them are also true of us. Adam is formed from dust (Gen 3:19), so are we (Ps 103:14). Eve is made from one of Adam’s sides, while we recognize that men and women are each other’s halves in a way. They face temptation and shame, so do we. They do things in defiance against God, and so do we (Rom 3:23), and as a result of that defiance, they exiled themselves from God’s garden, as we frequently exile ourselves from God’s presence when we sin, in a way. Their story is much like ours.

 

This isn’t the most encouraging chapter in the story of God’s presence. It’s one of the lower places we could go in scripture. The reality is that sin and the presence of God are not compatible things. Sin, separation from God, and death are all connected, if not three heads of the same monster. Of course, God knows this, and still wants to be present with us, so there has to be some kind of remedy for sin. Ultimately, we know that remedy to be Christ, but there was a progression to get there.

 

Tomorrow we’ll look at Exodus 40 – how God used a man named Moses to renew his presence among his people.

 

-Jay Laurent