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‘The Two Trees’

1Corinthians 1:21 -31
Since the world in all its so called wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.

While Jews clamour for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can’t begin to compete with God’s “weakness.”

Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”?

That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own trumpet before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a trumpet, blow a trumpet for God.”

In the Garden of Paradise the Lord planted trees, only two trees in Genesis are named
The first named is the tree of life. The second was the tree of knowledge of good an evil which gave you the ability to tell the difference between right and wrong, I prefer to call it the judgement tree. One tree gave you knowledge of right and wrong, and according to Pr 3:18, the other tree the tree of life gave you wisdom. Knowledge gives psychological reasoning giving us the ability to make logical and moral judgments, whereas wisdom gives us insight, so that we intuitively know, know that you know, that you know a knowing which is deep within.

So in the Garden of Paradise all is well until the tempter turns up and catches the women on her own. The tempter basically tells her that when she knows the difference between right and wrong she’ll be like God and humanity has been doing things ever since to be like God. In this one act the woman fulfilled her desires and became full of pride.

It came to my notice that my bible was made out of paper and paper came from trees. It occurred to me that here in this bible in my hand was both the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. For in this book I could find the knowledge of right and wrong or, find the source of Life. The choice for me was to work or wallow, I could work at being good and I could try to do good or, I could wallow and rest just trusting in what Jesus had done and join Him in what He was doing. I could try and gain His favour or simply rest in knowing I have His favour. Part of this book, representing one tree, could make me judgemental of myself and others or, part of this book, representing the Tree of Life, could make me graceful towards myself and others.

Abraham married Sarah his half sister so he sinned according to Lev 18, but God didn’t condemn him, on the contrary He blessed him. He blessed Abraham with health, wealth, and an enviable relationship with the Lord, Abraham is called the friend of God.

One day I felt the Lord ask me, ‘Did Abraham sin?’ Funny question I thought. The apostle Paul wrote, ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ so that was my answer to the Lord’s question, He replied ‘I’ve recorded Abraham’s faith not his sin’, 1Cor 13 ‘love keeps no record of wrongs’.  The Lord was teaching me about grace and the life found within grace, Lev 18 condemns, grace cannot condemn, grace can only bless, the Lord was teaching me to look at people the way He looks at people, through grace glasses.

Many moons ago while visiting a house group one evening, Nina had an overwhelming experience of God, it blew her mind and for the first time in her life Nina felt loved. For the following 4 years she wallowed in the Lord’s love, she enjoyed the freedom in His grace. But then she went to church and they planted a tree in her heart, it was like Russian Ivy that rapidly grew to choke her freedom and cover her grace. She became preoccupied with trying hard to do right, saying sorry to God anytime she thought she’d done something wrong and was always feeling she wasn’t quite doing well enough to really please God.

But then Nina met me and re-discovered the grace and freedom she had known in those four years when she first knew God and she stopped trying to make herself good, she relaxed in God and enjoyed His goodness. After being together for about a year we went to visit an old friend of Nina’s. After dinner we sat chatting into the early hours, her friend Lon said, ‘Nina remember when you used to visit and after dinner I would always excuse myself and go to bed early,’ ‘Yes,’ Nina replied, ‘Well it’s because I used to feel on edge around you because you were trying so hard, I knew I couldn’t be as good as you, you made me feel really guilty.’ But then Lon said, ‘You’ve changed. I can relax around you now, you don’t make me feel guilty.’

Nina hadn’t realised that in judging herself all the time her judgemental attitude was bubbling to the surface, her judgementalism was leaking out, and other people could sense it. Unwittingly her church had been feeding her from the wrong tree ‘do this and you’ll be like Jesus, do this and you’ll be like God.’ She ate the fruit and swallowed a lie.

Are any of us facing the same choices as humanity in the Garden of Paradise, the Lord gave them a choice they were free to eat of any tree of the Garden even the tree of knowledge of good and evil and they did. Sadly they never ate from the tree of life, never.

Jesus said that, ‘He had come to earth so that we could have life’, He is our tree of life, God’s life. Jesus is life and gives life, sustains and nourishes life, all we’ve got to do is reach out and ask, Lord give us more and more of Your life.

Tonight’s reading tells us God chose the foolish, weak, lowly, despised and the things that don’t make sense, to so many the simplicity Jesus offers doesn’t make sense. The word Gospel means good news and what’s good about it is that we don’t need to be good or even do good. The good news is the God news, the news that God is good and His goodness is ours, He wraps us round in His goodness and all we need to do is trust, trust that His goodness has got us covered, no striving or straining trying to be good but just living in His goodness. A goodness so good it will bubble up and percolate through our lives, soaking into us in the deepest parts of our being and at times people like Nina’s friend Lon will sense it as God’s goodness leaks out.

We still have a choice; we can eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good or evil and strive to please God or, we can know that we are wrapped in His goodness and already pleasing to Him, knowing He’s got us covered we can relax as He walks with us through the ups and downs of life.

In the book of Revelation John tells us of his experience in heaven, he says there is only the tree of life and no tree of judgement. If we don’t allow the tree of judgement to live within us, not only can we not judge ourselves and others but we experience heaven which is devoid of judgement, neither will we plant the seed of the judgement tree nor help it grow in others, but instead we will impart life and the grace and truth found in Jesus.