Love Requires a Choice

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

My name is Ashley, and I get to serve as one of the pastors here.

And what joy it is to get to preach this weekend as I'm celebrating five years of being a part of this community and pastoring here.

Thank you.

And it's because of all of you and getting to be a part of this beautiful community that I continually choose to say yes to serving this church body.

Now we love choices, don't we?

We don't love being forced to do anything, right, high schoolers?

We don't love being forced to do anything.

We can get a little cranky and antsy when we have to face the parts of our lives that we have to do.

You know, taxes, jury duty, laundry.

It really drags us down when we don't have the choice to do something or not.

Starbucks is the master at giving us these choices.

Starbucks specializes in customized drinks, and there are tens of thousands of combinations that you can create by choosing from these categories: your base drink, your milk, flavors and syrups, toppings, size, and temperature.

Their menu is designed to be highly customizable because they know that people love to choose.

Starbucks also knows that the choices that people make become their identity because you are that caramel macchiato.

And this is how they keep you coming back for another coffee.

Even the people who prefer independent, higher quality coffee shops, they still have, they still secretly, secretly have their Starbucks order of choice.

My husband has worked at Starbucks for many years, and he's been at his current store for about three years now, and so he knows many of his regular customers' drink orders.

We'll be at a restaurant on a date, and he'll lean over to me and he'll whisper, Venti iced five shot espresso, two pumps extra ice, and he'll subtly point at the table next to us.

So romantic, I know.

This week, I asked him to rattle off a few of his regular customers' drinks.

Now remember, he wasn't at his store, like we're in our house.

Here we go.

Ready?

Are we ready?

Can you can you track with me here?

Okay.

Grande pike in a venti cup, double cupped with heavy cream.

Venti chocolate cream cold brew, extra sweet vanilla cold cream, eight pumps vanilla.

We're just getting started.

Tall pike with almond milk with salted caramel sweet cream foam and non-dairy sweet cream foam.

Now here we go.

This is this is the one that's hardest to say.

And he had this by memory.

Caramel ribbon crunch frappuccino, extra whip, extra caramel drizzle, cookie crumble toppings blended in with a floating double shot made with heavy cream and two pumps of hazelnut.

Sorry if that was yours.

I don't think it was someone who goes here.

Tall iced vanilla latte with coconut milk.

That one's mine.

Starbucks has tapped into this deep desire that we have to make our own decisions, the desire to have choices.

And in our scripture today, we're going to see what the very first choice that people were given was, and see that having a choice is embedded in the very foundation of creation.

This whole year, we're studying the book of Genesis through our Sunday preaching, and this series, Unalone, is focused on Genesis 2.

One of the greatest needs that we have is to be unalone.

And yet we're living incredibly lonely lives.

There was this podcast I was listening to recently, and they called this the ever-lonely era.

Through this series, we're discovering how God created the world to be wired for connection.

What we find in Genesis 2 in this part of the creation narrative is foundational for how we understand the rest of the Bible and how we encounter the world that we live in.

So let's get into this text and discover a key piece of the world that God was creating.

This is a tale of two trees.

So turn in your Bible with me to Genesis 2 and picture this scene that God is creating.

Genesis 2, verses 8 and 9.

Genesis 2:8

The Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had formed.

The Lord God caused to grow out of the ground every tree pleasing in appearance and good for food, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden, as well as the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

So God plants this garden and he places the man that he created there.

Now I want you to picture in your mind every tree that you can think of: fruit trees, trees with flowers, evergreens.

This garden is full of trees and life.

And right in the middle, there's a tree that is set apart from the rest, the tree of life.

And there's another one with it, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

So we have this beautiful garden with abounding fruit and these two trees in the middle.

And God has placed the man there.

Now, the woman is coming.

She's coming into the picture in a few verses, and those are what we're gonna be in for the rest of the series.

But today we just have the man in the garden.

Moving ahead to verses 15 through 17.

The Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and watch over it.

And the Lord God commanded the man you are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

For on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.

God plants this abundance of trees in the garden that are beautiful and they're good for food.

He plants two special trees in the middle of the garden, and now he gives the man a command.

You can eat from any tree in the garden.

Notice that this includes the tree of life.

But, he goes on, you must not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for you will certainly die.

These are pretty high stakes for some fruit.

I get this.

I have a little boy, he's five.

And while we were walking to school the other day, he starts telling me this story about the day before about how he picked a leaf from a bush at school and he ate it just to see what it would taste like.

Now, the anxious mom in me had this internal dialogue of, oh boy, I'm so glad it wasn't poisonous.

And what if he does eat something poisonous one day because he clearly doesn't know to not do this?

And my outer words said, bud, it wasn't really a wise choice to eat off of a plant that you don't know what it is.

Finishing that sentence in my mind with, because you could die.

The stakes are really high when you eat from a plant that isn't meant for eating.

Now, this tree in the garden wasn't physically poisonous, but the stakes were still high for the man.

The tree was there and available, but God commanded him to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because he would certainly die.

So to understand what's going on here and why God said this and why he put that tree in the garden in the first place, we need to understand more about each of these trees.

So the tree of life is the center point of the garden, and it's given for the man to eat from it.

God says, you are free to eat.

This tree was the gift of eternal life with God.

We began with the gift of eternal life.

This wasn't a reward for if the man was good enough or if he avoided the forbidden tree long enough, he had access to it from the very start.

The tree of life was the place where there was fullness of communion with God.

There was no boundary around it.

Later in the temple, there would be a boundary between God and people.

Certain people could only be in certain areas of the temple to keep a certain proximity away from God.

We see this with Moses on the mountain in Exodus 19.

If you're keeping up with this Lent reading plan, you were reading that today.

We also see this in the construction of the tabernacle, and then again later in the temple.

But here, in this first Holy of Holies, the man was invited to commune with God in his actual presence with no restriction.

The man could have full personal connection with God.

From this close proximity to God, wisdom would be given to the man over time.

When you're in personal connection with God, he gives you wisdom as you spend more time with him.

God created this tree to provide a path to communion with God forever.

The way to be unalone.

So we have this tree of life in the middle of the garden that is a gift of eternal life with God.

And then we have this other tree, the one that will surely lead to death.

The tree of knowledge of good and evil.

This tree is the rival to the offering of God.

With the tree of life, God offered communion with him.

He offered life everlasting.

And through that relationship, God would impart wisdom to the man.

But this tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was the option for the man to choose his own path.

This tree would unlock the understanding, the knowledge of good and evil, or how Bible Project puts it, the tree of knowing good and bad.

Eating from this tree was the shortcut to the knowledge about the world.

Both what was good, things that create life, that build up, that are beneficial, and bad.

Things that break things down, things that are harmful or terrible.

To the man, Genesis 3.6 says this tree was good for food, delightful to look at, and it was desirable for obtaining wisdom.

It looked good, but it was a shortcut.

We love a shortcut, don't we?

A life hack, right?

When my iPhone says rerouting to save two minutes.

We love that.

God was going to give the man wisdom.

He was going to teach him his ways by being in relationship with him.

God wasn't holding out on him.

But this other tree was a shortcut, a shortcut to the knowledge.

The man wouldn't need to wait around to learn slowly.

This shortcut, however, God said, would surely lead to death.

Shortcuts almost always undercut.

Cutting corners in business leaves you with a worse product or unhappy investors, or at its worst, fraud allegations.

Cutting corners in education can lead you to a failing grade from cheating or plagiarism and can get you kicked out of school.

Cutting corners in relationships leaves you with a lack of closeness and trust, and at its worst leads to abuse.

We see how shortcuts undercut over and over again as people with a big platform fall because they've taken shortcuts to build that platform that they have while skipping the building character step.

Taking these shortcuts is saying I can get everything I want in my own way and in my own time.

But we end up with the death of the very things that we tried to cut corners to get.

If we shortcut things that matter, it leads to the death of those things.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a shortcut to the knowledge that the man would eventually gain from God.

And this shortcut would lead him to death.

Now, the text does not say that God said, If you eat it, I will kill you.

It says, For on the day you eat it, you will certainly die.

It's saying that eating from this tree will lead to death.

Death is separation.

Separation in relationship with God.

Not as a punishment from God, but as a consequence to choosing the shortcut to this knowledge.

The consequence for choosing the alternative to life.

And when the man chooses this other tree, it's a choice to forfeit the gift of life that he has already been given.

In the next chapter, when the man did eventually eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, what God says gives us greater insight into the consequence of eating from this tree.

Genesis 3.22 says, The Lord God said, Since the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out.

Take from the tree of life, eat and live forever.

The man and the woman at this point chose their own path by eating the fruit that looked good and was desirable for what they wanted, and now they had lost access to the tree of life and to being with God.

God exiled them from the garden, separation from God and from life.

Death had begun.

These two trees represented two distinct choices.

This is the ultimate choice to be unalone.

There's one path that leads to loneliness and isolation and death, separation from God.

And there's one that leads to life and being in communion with God and all of God's people.

God gave the man these two options.

He said, You have all these trees, including the one that gives access to eternal life with me.

But he gave him the choice and essentially said, I'm not gonna make you choose me.

Have you ever been required to spend time with someone that you wouldn't choose to spend time with?

Now, I'm not talking about your spouse or your kids or your close friends.

You chose those people.

I'm talking about required time spent with someone that you don't really care to be around, someone who you would rather avoid spending time with.

About a decade ago, I worked at an organization with a staff of about 50 people, and there was an abundance of staff drama and division.

The departments were siloed and cross-departmentally, people didn't really get along.

Unless they were in your corner, people didn't choose to be around each other.

In an effort to combat this culture, an era of staff fun days was ushered in.

I've been at other organizations where these types of days were welcomed and appreciated because it gives you a reprieve from that day-to-day grind, right?

And brings a sense of joy and connection with the people who you work with and are friends with.

However, in that staff culture, people avoided each other and avoided even general friendliness.

The staff collaborated when necessary, but generally kept distance at all other times.

When participation in the staff fun days became required, one person dubbed it a triple F, forced family fun.

Without a choice, love wasn't cultivated.

Without a choice, the tension that already existed actually grew.

Now, in contrast to that experience, a few weeks ago, Awakening Youth hosted winter camp for junior high.

They were gone for a whole weekend, they played games and had amazing teaching and worship that led them right to the heart of God.

And they participated in multiple dance parties and hours and hours of a game called Nine Square.

Though part of my role here is to oversee our youth ministry, this wasn't a camp that I needed to attend.

Molly and her youth team, they had it all covered.

They had the leadership all covered and they did it so beautifully.

But because I wanted to spend time with this part of our church, I chose to spend my entire Saturday at camp with them.

I could have been doing a lot of other things that day.

However, I said yes to this invitation to come and spend time with that group.

And because I chose to be there, I was choosing to invest in these relationships.

And you know what happened in me?

My love for the people grew.

My love for my coworkers who were there grew.

My love for our guest speaker who I've known for many years grew.

My love for our youth leaders, the volunteers who gave up their whole weekend and then went right back to work on Monday morning.

My love for them grew.

And the junior hires, spending time with them, playing games with them, laughing with them, worshiping with them, my love for them grew.

See, love requires a choice.

When I was made to spend time with people in this shortcut version of fun and community, it bred resentment and bitterness.

And it ended with further isolation.

But when I chose to enter into community, it grew a deep love and connectedness.

If God created the garden where there was no other option but to choose him, that's not a relationship.

It would be robotic, fake, forced.

A real relationship requires the ability to choose.

Our deepest desire is living in the state of being connected to others.

Or as this series is defining it, unalone.

And this choice that God gave to the man in the garden invites us into communion with God.

That community that we all crave, it begins here with God.

And if we were forced into it, if we didn't have a choice, it wouldn't be the real, true love that God was offering us.

The man needed a choice for the love to not be forced, for it to be real.

The man was given this choice.

He could choose the tree of life and communion with God, or he could choose a shortcut, his own path, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

He didn't have to choose the tree of life, that is the set-apart space to meet and commune with God.

He didn't have to choose to live with God forever.

God allowed the man to make that choice for himself.

And when the man ultimately did choose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he was cut off from the tree of life.

He was exiled from the garden.

And here's why.

And for thousands of years after that, people didn't have that distinct choice anymore.

They now needed structures to be set in place to be able to access God himself.

They didn't have the option of being in the presence of God anymore.

Only specific people on specific days could be in that holy.

Of holies and be in the presence of God.

But God always had a plan to give that choice back to us, to invite us back into everlasting life and into his presence.

And that plan would come thousands of years later, and this is where we come to a third tree.

We called this the tale of two trees, but surprise, plot twist, to reconcile the choice that the man made in the garden, God introduced a third tree.

Where the two trees in the middle of the garden have shaped everything that we experience, God used another tree to bring us back from the exile, from the tree of life and communion with him.

About 1300 pages, at least in my Bible, after the moment in the garden in Genesis 2, which equates to what scholars estimate to be about 4,000 years, we meet a man who would die on a cross to rescue us from this exile that we were living in.

This is why Jesus came.

God was still choosing us.

God chose us first in the garden, and God continued choosing us first.

You have been chosen since the foundation of the earth, and God keeps choosing you, and he chose you all the way to the cross.

Jesus died on the cross for the forgiveness of all the times that we chose something other than God.

And scripture refers to the cross as, that's right, a tree.

First Peter 2.24 says he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that having died to sins, we might live for righteousness.

By his wounds, you have been healed, for you were like sheep going astray, but you have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.

Jesus chose death in our place so that we might live, so that we could once again be in the presence of God, and we could choose to be connected to him for all of eternity, to be unalone forever.

Once the man was exiled from the garden, it introduced this consequence of death for all of us.

Jesus on a tree said, It is finished, meaning he gave us this choice back to choose God and to be in communion with him.

Matthew 27, 1551.

This is Jesus from the cross.

Suddenly the curtain of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom.

This curtain was in the temple sanctuary to separate the people from the presence of God.

Once the man was exiled from the garden, there was a barrier between people and God.

This was represented in the temple by this curtain.

And when Jesus died, when he declared that his rescuing work was complete, the curtain in the temple tore into from top to bottom.

The temple curtain was torn, providing the ability for people to enter into God's presence once again.

People could have that communion from the garden with God once again.

The gospel is that God has chosen you, that he has always chosen you, and that he is always choosing you even now.

God didn't put the man at the gate of the garden.

He didn't put him there and give him a choice to come in or not.

He placed him in the middle of the garden.

God chose the man.

We're able to choose God because he chose us first.

He chose us in the garden and then he continued to choose us by sending Jesus to rescue us.

First John 4.19 says, We love because he first loved us.

We're able to love God and each other, to live unalone, because God first loved us.

God gave the man the choice in the garden.

To choose to live in communion with him or to go his own way, of choosing what is good for food, delightful to look at, and desirable for obtaining wisdom.

The alternative, the shortcut.

These choices are all around us.

Something that looks good, delightful, desirable, but it's really an alternative to what God is offering me.

It's really a shortcut versus actually choosing the goodness and life that God has given.

Every tree pleasing in appearance and good for food and the gift of life with Him.

Sometimes these decisions are obvious, having the choice between a good thing and a bad thing.

But usually they're more subtle and more like shortcuts to what we want than sinful actions.

Working through the weekend to get ahead and climbing that ladder, or setting aside time for Sabbath to prioritize rest and connection with God, numbing out by scrolling, which gives us this fake boost of connection.

Or intentionally connecting with a friend, sneaking out during the meet and greet to get some more coffee, or choosing to meet someone new and being more connected to your church community.

All of our choices, both good and bad, come with consequences attached to them.

Every choice that we make has an outcome.

Each relational choice that we make leads us toward life in our relationships or toward isolation and death in our relationships.

To live unalone and to break through this ever lonely era, we need to make choices that lead us toward life.

But here's the most important part: we don't have to earn this gift of life that Jesus gave to us.

God isn't keeping score of how many times you've chosen each metaphorical tree.

That's not how this works.

Just like the man in the garden, this gift has already been given to us.

That gift is eternal life with God because of Jesus' sacrifice of his life on the cross.

It's a gift to never be alone because God chose us to be in community with him now and forever.

We're plagued with loneliness.

And God has given us a way to never be alone.

John 10, 10.

Jesus said, I have come so that they might have life and have it in abundance.

Jesus came so we could have life, so that we could live unalone.

So we have in front of us the same opportunity that the man had in the garden.

We have a choice.

But what's even better than that is that we have been chosen by God.

God continues to give us the freedom to choose him back because he loves us so much.

He's given us the tree of life.

And he has said, you may eat freely.

You can have life in abundance.

You can have what is beautiful and what's good to eat.

It's all here for you.

But you also have another option.

There's this other tree.

And this other tree is taking a shortcut to the life you're hoping to have.

You can choose it, but you need to know it really leads to death.

It really leads to separation from me.

God doesn't make anyone choose him because his love for us is real.

He doesn't force us to love him back.

He doesn't want love to be fake or robotic.

He wants a real relationship with you.

Two groups of people in this room that I want to direct this next part is, part two.

First of all, there's many of you in this room who have already chosen that tree of life.

You have already accepted that gift from Jesus.

But maybe you're seeing places where you've taken shortcuts in your own relationships, either with God or with each other.

And you're seeing how that has left you lonely.

If that's you, this morning, choose to take a step toward life, toward relationships with God and people.

And then there's some in this room who are encountering this choice for the first time.

Or seeing that you want to choose the tree of life over the alternative for the first time.

Now I'm gonna ask everyone to close their eyes for a moment if you feel safe to do so.

Take a deep breath.

Notice what's bubbling up for you.

God speaks to us, and often that's as quiet as a whisper deep inside us.

We need to calm the noise around us to hear him.

So take a moment and notice what God might be saying to you.

I'll give us about thirty seconds.

And if that's you this morning, if you're choosing God for the first time, we want to give you an opportunity to do that right now, to not let this moment be fleeting for you.

So we'll keep our eyes closed.

I'm gonna pray, and I want for you to take the words that I'm praying and say them, either in your mind or out loud.

He'll hear you, either way.

Say them to the God who has chosen you.

God, thank you for choosing me.

Thank you that your love for me is real.

God, on this day, I choose you.

I choose to accept your gift of eternal life that Jesus gave his life for.

God, I choose you.

With your eyes still closed, if that was you, if you prayed that prayer with me this morning and you chose to enter into life with God for the first time, we would love to celebrate with you.

With everyone's eyes still closed, would you raise your hand?

This is a safe space for you.

Oh, thank you, Lord.

To celebrate in community.

If you're willing, keep your hand raised as everyone opens their eyes.

The Bible says that when people, that when someone chooses life with God, that all of heaven celebrates.

This moment is heaven and earth colliding, and we get to celebrate that eternal decision together.

Church, can we celebrate with all of heaven for the people who made that decision this morning?

Thank you, Jesus.

So if you're someone who has chosen God, either today or any other time in your life, if you have chosen God, take this moment of this song to meet with him.

Don't take a shortcut by sneaking out early or not singing.

This is your moment to lean in and to linger in God's presence.

Oh God, thank you.

Thank you that you have been in this room.

Thank you that you are speaking to us.

God, thank you for the people who chose you this morning.

God, may you be glorified.

May we meet with you in this moment.

May we experience your presence in this moment.

And may you be glorified in both the meditation of our heart and the words of our lips.

Amen.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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