Eating From The Right Tree

So, we are in a series of messages called Summer of Salt where we're doing stand-alone messages each week, and me and other people and guest speakers and some people in our church, our elders and different leaders, are sharing on things or subject matters that God's placed on their heart. We call it Summer of Salt. It's our summer series as we kick off the summer, and this week I want to share with you, I think, something that's really important. And it's called Eating From The Right Tree. My question for you is, are you eating from the right tree?

Because there's two brands of Christianity in the world today. There's two brands. There's one that's life-giving and there's one that's life-depleting. It will suck the life out of you. And they're very, very similar.

A lot of people don't even know the difference. And some people are Christians practicing the wrong brand of Christianity and don't even know it. And we want to make sure we have the right idea, the right brand, the right type of Christianity, the one that really gives life, because church and Christianity should not just be endured. It should be enjoyed. And a lot of people are enduring Christianity.

They're just going through the motions of Christianity. But God wants you to have joy and life and life to the full. So my question for you today, and this is how we set up the topic, is what is your view of God? What is my view of God? Because that means everything.

Because your view of God determines your approach to God. And what is going to be my approach to God? Because everyone is trying to find God. If you go around the world, everybody is trying to look for God. It doesn't matter the culture.

It doesn't matter the color of skin. It doesn't matter where you are. Everybody is looking for God. Why? Because all of us have a piece of God inside of us.

God made us in His image, and everybody is searching. So how do we approach God when we're looking for God, when we're sharing God? Well, I want to take you to the Genesis account, because this is where it all starts. And when we talk about eating from the right tree, Genesis talks about two different trees we should choose from. Two different types of Christianity is what we're seeing here.

So let me give you a quick outline of what happens in Genesis so that we can prepare for what we're talking about today as we go into Scripture. So God created, chapter 1, God created everything, right? He made the heavens and the earth. He made people. He's made the magnum opus of His image.

So in chapter 1, we see God creates, and in chapter 2, He gives a choice for us to make. He puts a choice in the garden. And then the third chapter, Satan shows up and tries to convince us to make the wrong choice. And that's what he's been doing since the very beginning. So let's look at this in Scripture.

If you'll go to Genesis, starting with chapter 2, verse 8 in the NIV, it says, And the Lord God... Made all kinds of trees to grow out of the ground. Trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. Pleasing to the eye and good for food. So God's original intent was for His creation to enjoy.

He wanted us to enjoy the things that He created. He wanted us to enjoy life. And then it goes on to say, and in the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So there's two different trees here. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

We are given two different pictures of choices we have to make. So you put two choices in front of them to make. See, most people get this wrong. When we go back to the story of Adam and Eve, we think of this apple tree in the garden. And these two trees, and one of them is a God tree, and one of them is a sin tree.

And we want to choose the God tree over the sin tree. But let me say this. At this point, there was no sin. Sin isn't even mentioned at this point in story because she had not yet made the decision. Eve had not yet made the decision to eat the apple.

And if you notice, it was the knowledge of even good things. It was the knowledge of even good things, the knowledge of good and evil. Let's go on there. That's an important point. So let's go on.

And the Lord God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For when you eat of it, you will surely die. So he says, don't eat of this tree. You're free to eat of anything else. What we see here, eat meaning consume.

We're consuming a worldview. That's really what he's saying there. Consuming the worldview, the knowledge of it, your mindset, and how you see the world, or surely you will die. If you consume the wrong tree, if you consume the wrong Christianity, you will not like Christianity. In fact, you'll hate the church if you go this route with the tree.

And we've had a lot of people fall out of the church. Christians or those who were born in the church that are no longer Christians, no longer in the church because they ate from the wrong tree. So if we consume the wrong tree, we will surely die. We will not make it. So if you go on to Genesis chapter 3, it says, Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals that the Lord had made.

And he said to the woman, Did God really say, You must not eat from the tree of the garden? So here's the deal. If the devil can convince you to doubt the Word of God, did God really say that? That was what he said. He said, Did God really say that?

If He can convince you to doubt God's Word, He can convince you to doubt God. And it's very confusing today. The Word of God is very confusing in our culture. A lot of people are confused about the Word of God and what it says and what it means. A lot of people are confused about the Word of God.

People who grew up in church now doubt church because they have a different view of Scripture. And that's Satan's plan. He wants to confuse us. He wants to distort Scripture. He wants to distort what God meant for good, what God's truth is.

Truth is distorted in these days. And what God wants you to see is that His truth stands forever. His truth always stands. It never changes. His truth never changes.

And we need to be careful, put on guard, not let Satan confuse us. And then it goes on to say this, The woman said to the serpent, We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God said, You must not eat the fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, for you will die. You will surely die, the serpent said to the woman. Sure, you won't die. For God knows that when you eat of the fruit, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

See, here in this Scripture, Satan didn't appeal to her sin nature, okay? Because she had not yet sinned, right? He appealed to her godliness. He appealed to her knowing what was evil and what was good. That by eating the fruit, she would become more like God.

He was appealing to her desire to do right. He wasn't appealing to her desire to do wrong. It was to do right. See, that's how Satan works. He appeals to all of us deep inside ourselves to know that we do wrong.

We know that something inside of us says we're pretty off target. But what Satan does, he leverages that to make us choose or to convince us to choose the wrong tree in the garden, so to speak, or in life in general. And he says you will be like God. And then it says this, It says when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. And also she gave it to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. So their eyes were opened, meaning they lost innocence. They lost their innocence, and they were naked. And they saw their shame.

And this is what eating of the wrong tree, this tree, let's just call it the tree of right and wrong versus the tree of life. Because that's what we see, these two choices. This tree of life, this life-giving tree, and this tree that says, hey, you can know good and evil. You can be like God and know good and evil. And if you eat of that tree of right and wrong, that I get closer to God.

My approach to God is eating of a tree of doing more right than wrong. And that's really what this tree is focused on. It's the religious tree, if you want to call it that, versus... The tree of life that is God and our connection to God, it really leads us to loss of innocence and shamefulness, because we can never add up. We can never do enough, and this brings us to a place of death.

If we eat from a tree that says right and wrong brings us closer to God, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then we're hopeless. So, let me offer four different comparisons of the different tree. The first comparison is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil says, do more to get closer to God. That's what religion will do. Religious people will do that.

They measure how much you do in order to get closer to God. You need to do more. You need to pray more. You need to read the Bible more. We call this, and I like to call this, and I've heard this approach, the Wizard of Oz approach.

Because in the Wizard of Oz, if you're familiar with the Wizard of Oz, what was Dorothy's main goal? What did she want? She wanted to go home. All she wanted to do was get back to Kansas. She was far from home.

She wanted to go home, and she went to the great Oz, hoping that she could help her. And she approached Oz, and what did Oz do? He says, you need to go and get the broomstick of the wicked witch. So, she goes and gets the broomstick of the wicked witch. She comes back, and here it is, and that wasn't enough.

She needed to do more, and that's what a lot of Wizard of Oz approach Christians do. They try to do more. I need to read more. You need to read your Bible more. They beat you down with rules and regulations in order to get closer to God, and we beat ourselves up.

But the tree of life says this. You don't have to do more to get closer to God. You can receive Jesus' free gift. Receive what Jesus has already done. He's already done it.

It is a free gift. Here, let me say this. Doing wrong doesn't send you to hell. Can I say that again? Doing wrong doesn't send you to hell.

Trusting in Jesus keeps you from hell. Let me say it like this. Sin doesn't make us sinners. Being sinners makes us sin. We're already sinners.

That's why we sin. That's why we're destined for hell, because we are sinners already. And Jesus came in to save us from the sinful nature we always have had. So if we suggest that what we do wrong sends us to hell, we must logically deduce that doing right sends us to heaven. So it goes back to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Doing a measure of right and wrong doesn't get us to heaven. See, God sent his son so that we could trust in him who is the only sinless one. We are not without sin, but he was without sin. We were already sinners, so we needed a savior, and it's a free gift. It's available to us.

But we're so focused on rules, and the wrong brand of Christianity says you need to do more. That's why Jesus doesn't. Jesus opposed the Pharisees so much. That's what he said in John 5, verse 39. He says, "...

you diligently study the Scripture because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life." Let me say, some of the meanest people I've ever met were Christians. They knew the Bible really, really well. They just focused on the rules.

You need to do this more. You need to read your Bible. You need to come to church. You need to serve more to get closer to God. If you're not doing that, then you're doing something wrong.

Let me beat you down." Listen, the Pharisees did that. 613 laws, thousands of extra laws to try to clarify those laws. And what Jesus was saying, you're so focused on the rules that you don't even see the person behind the rules. You're so focused on the commandments that you don't even see the person behind the commandments.

Yeah, the commandments are legit, but he fulfilled the law, right? He fulfilled the law. He is the law. Jesus is the law. When we look to Jesus, we see the law and the fulfillment of that.

And it is a free gift. He's paid the price. We no longer have to even try to get to that level of being like God, eating from that tree, because we can't do it. It's impossible. That's why we have Jesus, so that it is made possible through him who is the sinless one.

Number two, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil does this. It tries to earn God's approval. A lot of people think that God's just sitting in heaven mad all the time. He's always mad. His nature's mad.

He thinks mad. You think God, you think mad, right? He's sitting on a throne in heaven like Abraham Lincoln and looking down on you, waiting, waiting, waiting to strike you dead because he wants to bring judgment upon you. And again, your view of God determines your relationship with God. And if you believe that God hates me because of blank and that he's out to cast judgment on you, you're messing out on the true tree that you are to be eating from.

Because the tree of life says receive God's love. You need to receive God's love versus to earn his approval. We don't have to earn his approval. All we have to do is receive his love. God already loved us, and he's gone out of his way because he gave his son.

He went to extremities to give his only son. That's why scripture in Romans says, but God demonstrates his love for us in this. While we were still sinners, while we were still sinners, okay? While we were dead in our sins, God, Jesus Christ, died for us. He died for us, and he endured the cross and that joy that was set before him, as Hebrew says.

And what was that joy? That was you. That was you. And if we can help people see it this way, if we... If we could capture this and get others to understand this, the way the Bible explains it, really explains it, we would not have enough buildings to contain the people, because this is such good news of God's grace and God's mercy.

An example, I had a friend I grew up with, we were both preacher's kids, and he reached out to me on Facebook one time, I haven't talked to him in years, saw a post or something, and connected with me. And he was like, how are you doing? Good to hear from you. And then he said something that was real puzzling, I don't know why I even brought it up. He says, I no longer believe in the man with the white beard in heaven.

And I'm like, I didn't know that you even thought that God was some man in heaven with a white beard looking down on us. And as I began to dig into the conversation, I learned that he had had some tragedy in his life, and he was very, very upset with God about those things. Why was he upset with God and was really just throwing out his faith for this reason? You know, because God didn't follow through with something. Why?

Because he was eating from the wrong tree. Instead of receiving God's love, he was thanking God in terms of approval. Like, I've done this my entire life, I've lived this way, I served you, I earned, I'm living for your approval. And when God doesn't honor that, what does that come to? It comes to, I'm not good enough, or God is a mean God up in heaven looking down on me, and he's not a loving God.

And he ate from the wrong tree. We need to eat from the right tree. God is loving. Receive God's love in your life. Number three, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil focuses on the external, focuses on the external, what I do on the outside.

The way I dress, the way I act, the way I look. When I walk in the door, cleanliness is next to godliness kind of stuff, you know? Like, that's not even in the Bible, but a lot of people think that and look to people. The way you look at people, the way they are from the outside. But the tree of life focuses on the internal, internal.

And we want to be a church that focuses on the internal more so than the external because the internal changes the external. It isn't the other way around. It isn't the outside in. It's the inside out that changes a person. It really starts with the heart.

That's why the Old Testament talked about laws written on tablets. But the New Testament says that the laws are now written on the heart. We call this transformation or regeneration or being born again. That you're a new creation in Christ. You're no longer the old person and something supernaturally happens inside of you.

And it changes the way you act. It changes the way you live. And it starts internally. When that means to a friend that exists internally, Thank you. And then you don't want to sin.

You don't want to do the wrong things. You want to do what's right because you're transformed internally. And the problem with a lot of kids that grow up and maybe they grew up in the church, I was a preacher's kid and we had this stigma that we were bad kids and we rebelled. It wasn't that we were any different than any other kid that rebelled, but we were in the public eye because we were preacher's kids. So that's probably the main reason for that.

But the reason a lot of kids grow up and they rebel is because perhaps we focus too much on behavioral modification rather than soul transformation. It starts with the internal. If we focus on the internal with them instead of focusing on the external, we would make it a lot better. We would have more success in our children's life because it's not about behavior. It's about first an internal transformation.

Behavior comes from the internal transformation. If the heart's not changed, then behavior is not going to change. You can't work from external behaviors and a person change. That's why the Lord, that's why it says in first Samuel, the Lord does not look at things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

And then number four, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it obeys out of duty. Because I have to because I don't want to go to hell. I've got to do it. I've got to do this. This is how I've got to live.

This is how I've got to do things because, you know, my duty is to do that, you know, so I can stay out of hell, so I can stay out of prison. I want to do the right things. It's my duty. It's a duty I owe God. And that's what makes us mean Christians, honestly.

That's what makes us because we're thinking, duty, duty, you've got to work. You've got to work your way to heaven. Somebody shared a story with me one time of a man that that was or there was a group of people doing submissions and this guy came out of a bar. He was partying that night or whatever, and they were ministering to him and he was like defending, you know, his his view of church and things. He says, oh, I know.

I know all about that church. I grew up in church because my daddy, my daddy got me to church every day. And my daddy was a demon in the Baptist church, a demon in the Baptist church. And they were like, you mean deacon? And his girlfriend looked at them.

No, he means demon because there are demons, demons in the Baptist church. OK, there are there are some mean people in church in general, not just Baptists. I say Baptists, but but, you know, in general, there are some of the meanest people I've met are in church. And because they teach you have to obey out of duty. If you're going to go to hell, if you don't make it right, they say two syllables with hell and and that's how how they act.

But the tree of life says. To obey out of delight. That I obey out of light. I don't do it out of duty. I do it out of delight.

That's why I don't understand when people that are called to ministry say, or have been serving in ministry. 28 years ago, I surrendered to the ministry. I surrendered like, I didn't want to do it, but God caught me and made me do it. Like it was just this plague on their life or this prison sentence. And it shouldn't be that way, because eating from the tree of life is so life-giving.

It's a joy to serve God. It's a joy, I get to do these things. That's why 1 John 5.3 says, This is love for God, to obey His commands, and His commands are not burdensome. They aren't burdensome when we love the Lord, when we're doing it out of delight, when we understand that.

So those are the four comparisons there. So let me end and close this, start landing this message with these three thoughts, these three responses we can make to these different types of thoughts about the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. How do we tap into the tree of life? Well, number one, we have to fall in love with Jesus. Just fall in love with Jesus simply for who He is and what He's done.

Don't fall in love or worship an institution or organization. Fall in love with Jesus, because He's the one that laid His life down for you. He's not only God, He's your friend. He knows every hair on your head. The one who sees you cares, and He sees your faithfulness, and He loves you.

And if you, that's why He says, If you love me, you will obey my commands. Now, when we read that scripture, I used to read that scripture in, If you love me, you need to prove that by obeying my commands. That's proof that you love me. But that's not what God's saying. God's saying it's kind of the opposite.

If you love me, it's not hard to obey my commands. It just naturally happens is what He's saying here. You obey my commands if you love me. That's just how it is. It's just an outworking of falling in love with God.

That I get to do these things. I get to read my Bible. I get to go to church. I get to serve because I'm so in love with God. And that's where resolve and faithfulness comes from.

When we're serving in ministry and we're serving in the church, it's because we love God. It's not man we love. It's God we love. It's God's heart for man that we love. And we are so in love with God, we're willing to serve people and do things.

And if you read or eat from the wrong tree, you see God as saying, prove your love to me. But if you really love God, you will do what He commands effortlessly. In fact, 2 Corinthians 5.14 says, For Christ's love compels us. It compels us to do what's right.

It's like a marriage with my wife. I don't do things for my wife, go out of my way for my wife, serve my wife to prove to her that I love her. I already love her. I'm in love with her, right? So I do these things because...

Because she already loves me. I'm in love with her. It just happens naturally. I don't even think about it. It's not about proof.

It's just about love. And here's the deal. Here's just a nice little statement. I can fulfill the commands of the Bible better by falling in love with God rather than trying to obey everything on my own. And it's so true.

The second thing is we need to respond to sin with life. We need to respond to sin with life. I love how John 3.17 in the message says that God didn't go to all the trouble of sending His Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.

Can I go back to that statement? We were already sinners. We were already doomed. But God came and brought life to us. So how do we respond to sin?

With life. God did not come to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might live. He wants the world to live. He goes out of His way so that you can live. Not to come to point.

He doesn't want to make you feel bad. He wants to save you. He wants to love you. He wants to rescue you. That's why He came.

He wants to give you life. I think about the woman who committed adultery in the Bible. What did He say to the woman after all the accusers went away? Where are your accusers? And then He says, now go and sin no more.

You don't have any accusers. I'm not accusing you. I'm not pointing the finger at you. But go and sin no more. Now, it's not that we don't address sin.

Absolutely not. That's why He ends with, go and sin no more. Go and live life without sin, okay? It's time to change your life and turn your life around. With the changing times, you will find a church that stands on truth of God's Word.

Listen, we're not ever going to compromise with sin. We're going to teach truth, and we're going to teach the truth of God's Word. What it says is what it says. We are sinners. We sin, and we do wrong.

And we're going to disciple people. We're going to tell people when they're living wrong, and we're going to help them get out of that. But we don't start with the sin nature, right? When a new Christian comes into the church, or a new person that doesn't know the Lord comes into the church, we're not going to respond to sin with a negative, accusing finger. We're going to respond to sin with life.

We're going to tell them that the truth is that grace, there is a way out. Grace is available to them through Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ come to set you free, not to make you feel bad. And I will be bold about sin, but I will not judge people before they ever come in and come to the saving grace of God. And then finally, we need to do this. We need to guard our hearts from going back.

Guard your heart from going back, because people will go back and forth, back and forth from each tree. They'll be in the tree of life, and they'll be receiving freedom in life, and then they go back to rules and laws and doing right and doing wrong and how, and the understanding. And they start depleting again. They start dying again. They go into doldrums again.

But we want to protect ourselves. We want to go back. Go back to that day when you first gave your life to Jesus, when you were first transformed. Don't forget your first love. Go back to that very place.

Don't forget that any time you go back to working hard for God, trying to earn God's favor, doing things so that God will do for you, or whatever that might be, try to get back to the real thing that happened in your heart. That Jesus, when you were still a sinner, when you had nothing to do with Him, He came and rescued you. He found you where you are. I love how C.S.

Lewis says it. Human history is a long, terrible story of men trying to find something other than God, which will make them happy. Isn't that true? Always trying to find something else, whether it's doing right, or doing something big, or giving a lot of money away. You've got very, very, very rich people in this world doing everything they can to find happiness, right?

Outside of God. They'll make millions of dollars and give millions of dollars away, and some of them billions of dollars away to charities. And why do they do that? Those who don't have a relationship with Jesus, why are they doing that? Because they're trying to find something that makes them happy.

We are meant to be generous people. We are meant to do something beyond ourselves, because we have a piece of God inside of us. But they're empty still. They can do all these things, but they still find themselves empty because there's no life in that. There's no life outside of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the only one that fills the hole in the heart of everyone who is searching for whatever that is. You can go around the world, do lots of things, make millions of dollars, give away millions of dollars, make differences, change countries even. But if you don't know Jesus, what is it for? You're still unhappy. You're still without life.

That's why 1 John 5, 12 says, He who has the Son has life, but he who does not have the Son does not have life. You don't have life unless you have Jesus. And Jesus said the only way to come to the Father is through knowing him. And we don't have to see God as this God up in heaven that's just looking down at us angry. In fact, Jesus told the disciples, when you see me, you see the Father.

So when we look at the Father, we see Jesus. Jesus is the personification of God. He is the personification of the Father. And when we view Jesus and his love for us and that he gave his life for us and the Father sent Jesus to give his life for us, we know that God truly does love us and he's come to save us even though we are sinners by nature. Because we're already doomed if we don't know Jesus.

It's just our nature. It's just who we are. But God came. God didn't come to tell us you need to do this right and you need to do this and you need to do more of this. He came to say I love you and I'm giving my son for you so that you can be with me, that you can have a real relationship with me.

And wherever you are in your spiritual walk, I want to give you an opportunity today to receive Jesus, okay? Will you pray with this? If that's you and you hear this message and under the sound of my voice, God is calling you, whether you've flipped to the wrong tree, you've gone off the path, it's time to come back to God. And maybe you've never given your life to Jesus. Maybe you're one of those people who's done all these good things but still feel empty inside.

That's because Jesus Christ is missing in your life. Because He who has the Son has life and you can have life today. So if you'll pray this with me and receive Jesus as your Savior, as your hope, that fills that emptiness in your soul, that rescues you from whatever it is that wherever you are heading and wherever you don't know you're heading, He's here to rescue you from yourself. So give your life to Him today. Amen?

And just say this prayer with me. Lord, I believe that you are the Son of God, that you died on the cross for my sin, and you come to rescue me. Even when I was still in my sin, you died for me. So I receive your blood over my life, Lord. I receive the sacrifice.

Save me, Lord. Come into my life. Make me a new creation. Transform me from the inside out. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Amen. Now, if you gave your life to Jesus today, praise God. Get connected. Fill out the card. Let us know you gave your life to Jesus.

Fill out an online connection card. Whatever it takes and take the next step to growing closer to Jesus in your journey. Amen. We love you so much. Thank you for being with me today.

Join us next week as we talk about missions. John Bear, one of our missionaries, is going to share with us next week on missions, and we're excited about that. So I love you, church. Have a blessed day, and we will see you next time.