Choose the Right Tree

So everybody's got a card on your uh on your seat and a pen, and that probably makes you nervous.

You're like, what is happening?

Okay?

Is this a pledge drive?

And it's not.

Good news.

We don't we don't, if you're new to His Hands, by the way, uh, we actually have a gathering after the service next week for anyone who's new or new-ish.

If you're like, I really want to know what this church is all about, stick around next Sunday.

You can do that.

And one of the things we'll talk about is kind of how we do finances here.

We don't do pledge drives.

In fact, in the 15-year history of our church or or longer, we've we've had one giving campaign ever and we canceled it halfway through.

Like that's our culture.

So don't worry, that's not what that is.

This is for you.

This is like a little thing we're gonna fill out together here in a second.

And let me set it up this way.

I had a friend of mine this week talk to me about the stress of building a resume.

This person is currently changing some job stuff, and they were just like, it's so awkward to put yourself down on a piece of paper and like kind of try to sell yourself.

You know what I mean?

I mean, some of us, that's something that we have a lot of experience with.

I've I've had people that have sent me their resumes and like, you know, here it is, and and I haven't done that in a long time.

In fact, it I've worked here for 15 years.

The last time that I filled out a resume or created one was to send to this church to hopefully get an interview, and I remember even then feeling really awkward about it.

Because, you know, you don't want to like lie, right?

Of course, none of us have ever lied on a resume, not at all.

But you do want to sort of expand.

You know what I mean?

Like you want to find what is the most impressive sounding way to put that I just did my job, right?

That's what you do on a resume.

And so I remember when I when I sent my resume here, the job that I had right before this, uh, I put, and it was this was not a lie, I promise you, I wouldn't do that.

Like, it was true.

I was the vice president of the company that I worked for before I came here.

Now, it was a three-person company.

Okay, and so, like, I mean, depending on how you look at it, I was one step away from the top, but also one step away from the bottom.

And it was true, like, I had that title, it was on my business card, and it was just it was vice president of a three-person company.

It was really kind of meaningless.

But I put it on my resume, because you know, I wanted it to get noticed, I guess.

That's how resumes work.

One of the interesting dynamics that I'll have sometimes, and I'm sure you've had this experience too, where you meet someone and just unasked for, they start to give you a resume.

Have you ever had that happen?

Where like they just you start talking to someone and they're just within a few seconds, like, yeah, and so I I've done this and this and this, and I'm and you're like, that's cool, you know?

Great.

Because we have this, I think there's a need we have, almost an insecurity at times, to prove that we're good.

You know, maybe we feel like we're not enough, or or maybe we look at other people, we compare ourselves to other people, and we have this need to kind of build ourselves up sometimes.

And so what I'd like us to do right now is tap into that unhealthy part of our human nature for about 35 seconds.

And you've got these cards.

I want I want you to leave one side blank, and I'll explain why in a second.

But on one side, three lines, max, one, two, three, it doesn't really matter.

Like, resume build for a second.

Think of what are some things about you that are good?

And if you are submitting a resume, maybe it's not for a job, maybe it's to God.

Like, hey God, here's why you should listen to my prayers.

Okay?

Maybe that's what it is.

Whatever, just what are three things about you?

Two, whatever it is.

Seven.

If you're like an overachiever, fill it up, but don't turn it to the other side.

We're just gonna play some quick music.

I'm gonna fill one out too.

So there you go.

That's the prompt.

Whatever you've got, build your resume for just a second.

I'm gonna start with vice president.

Okay, here we go.

You guys got it?

We wanted to put like kind of epic sounding music so it feels like you're doing something special.

Has everyone got it?

Alright, you got it.

Did anyone hate doing that?

Just out of curiosity.

Raise your hand if you hated that whole process.

I figured you would, just so you know.

So I wrote a few things online, and uh pretty good dad.

Trying to sell myself low, but I'm pretty good dad.

Decent decent husband?

Depends on who you ask.

If you ask me, ask Megan, you might get a different answer.

I don't know.

And I am one of the top two pastors of all time at Hiss Hands Church.

I put that on my I'm in the top two.

It's pretty good, right?

Um now the other side that you didn't write on.

I'm not gonna ask this, there's no prompt here.

You don't have to write anything.

In fact, don't.

Um, this would take way less time and energy.

No one does this with the resume world.

No one asks you like your failures, like your low points.

Your resume is all your highlights, it's your high points, it's your strengths.

It'd be interesting if the flip side was like, oh yeah, the the bad.

Go ahead and write the bad.

I I don't have to think very hard about that.

And so just look at your little resume and picture on the other side.

That's the bad stuff.

One side's good, one side's bad.

And I would imagine if you're anything like me and we were doing a prompt to fill out the bad, you could come up with a pretty decent list pretty fast.

Anyone in the same boat as me?

You're like the bad, okay, yeah.

Good and bad.

Put those to the side.

We're gonna come back to those here in just a little bit.

Today, we are starting uh a new series, and it's called Lessons from the Garden.

What we're gonna do for the next month is we're gonna go back to some of the earliest stories that we have in Scripture, the stories that take place in and around the Garden of Eden.

These are actually some of the earliest stories we have in human history.

And it's amazing how often you can learn by just going back to the beginning sometimes.

Beginnings are really important.

Like we've all had that situation where someone comes into a movie that we're watching or a show and they didn't catch the first part, and they sit down and they're like, What's what's happening?

And you're like, Okay, here you go.

And you have to give the backstory and you gotta fill them in, right?

Because what what happens at the beginning is important.

You don't want to miss the beginning.

There are times where I might be frustrated in my role here at the church, or maybe even frustrated in my marriage.

And and it's important sometimes in those moments to go back to the beginning.

I'll think back to like, hey, in the in the early days, why was it that I was so excited?

What was it about this place or or this person that I was so passionate about?

It's very helpful to go back to the beginning and be reminded of those things.

The beginning is is vital, it's important, and there are so many takeaways and stories and lessons from the very beginning chapters of the Bible that speak to us in powerful ways today.

They're foundational for us as believers, they're foundational for us as people, as a church, they're extremely foundational for us.

In fact, what we're gonna talk about this morning is one of the most foundational ideas for who we are as a church that we have.

Now, I do want to say this on the front end.

Anytime you start talking about Garden of Eden, uh Adam and Eve, that kind of stuff, you get a lot of questions.

This becomes an interesting point of contention or sort of a faith kind of issue for some people.

Like, is this a literal story?

Is this figurative, right?

Is this like a made-up myth, or is this actually what the Bible's saying happens?

I get a lot of questions about that.

We're not gonna dive into all of that for the purposes of this series because it doesn't really pertain to what we're we're talking about.

But I will let you know, one of our, one of our kind of core philosophies in terms of teaching is we don't skip the hard stuff.

So if there's ever a question, if there's ever anything that any scripture brings up and it's like, oh, this is really hard for some people to grab a hold of, we'll deal with it.

And so we're actually gonna record like a separate podcast episode this week and put that up.

Answers as best as we can that question.

Like, is did this really happen?

Is that what the Bible's saying?

Is this how it all went down?

Um we'll do our best to answer that.

So check back in for that if you're interested in that later this week.

If you're not interested in it, great news.

I'm not boring you with all of that right now, okay?

But we're gonna go back to the garden.

We're gonna go back to the beginning and learn some lessons that I believe, I believe for many believers, many Christians, we can we can go our whole lives, our whole journey of faith, so to speak, and never really think about it, never really understand that from the absolute beginning, God was telling us some very, very important things.

Some things that Jesus Himself had to come back to this earth as a person to remind us of.

So in order to move forward, we've got to go back to the beginning.

And today we're gonna start by looking at a story about a couple of trees.

A couple trees.

And if you've ever looked at our logo or you've ever walked around our hallways and you've seen all the different, all the different uh paintings on the walls and all the different trees, you you might you might grab a hold of the fact that this is important to us.

Some of you have been here from the beginning, you kind of know some of this stuff, but still, stick through it.

Because every time I look at this story, I see something new.

So let's go to Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Verses 8 and 9.

It says, Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made.

The Lord God made all sorts of trees grow up from the ground, trees that were beautiful and that produced delicious fruit.

And in the middle of the garden he placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

It goes on to say in verses 15 through 17, then the Lord God placed the man in the garden of Eden to tend and watch over it, but the Lord God warned him you may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.

Now, if you're anything like me, you've you've at some point in time, if you've thought about this story, wondered why God did this in the first place.

Like anyone ever have that thought?

Why would God even put that tree there?

Why on earth?

I have a home and we have trees.

I didn't really plant them, but I could I could.

I could plant a tree if I wanted to.

Why would I plant a poisonous fruit tree in my backyard and then tell my children, just don't eat it?

Whatever you do.

Like, why put it there in the first place?

And we could go for hours about that, but I think at some level we have to understand that from the very beginning of our relationship with God, we were given a choice.

We were given a choice.

God desires a relationship with you.

He doesn't desire mindless followers who have no ability to choose.

He wants a relationship.

And you cannot have a real relationship with someone who does not have the ability to choose differently.

So from the very beginning, God gives us a choice.

And I think that's a really important thing to remember.

That's not our main takeaway today, but from the beginning, we were given a choice.

Tree of life, or the tree of what God called the knowledge of good and evil.

And you might know how the story ends.

In fact, you could be someone who's never been in church in your entire life, and you probably know the gist of this story.

We'll go ahead and jump forward to Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

There's a serpent that talks, that's a little odd.

And uh and it says that the woman was convinced after hearing what this serpent says, this lie that we'll kind of get into in a future week.

She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her.

So she took some of the fruit and ate it.

Then she gave it to her husband who was with her, and he ate it too.

At that moment, their eyes were open, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness.

I forgot to tell you, they were naked.

But they didn't care.

Now they do.

So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.

And when the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden.

So they hid from the Lord God among the trees.

Then the Lord God called out to the man, Where are you?

The first recorded game of hide and seek ever in history.

And it did not last, it didn't last long.

It's hard to hide from God.

It turns out, really hard to win that game.

This story is actually one of the key stories, the key scriptures to who we are as a church, specifically his hands church.

So our our founding pastor, Steve, who, in personal opinion, the second best pastor we've ever had.

Just my, I mean, we can all have, some of you are shaking your head disagreeing, and you know what?

I mean, we can have that conversation if you want to.

He can give you my his amateurs.

And I love Steve.

Steve's actually super close to me.

Uh, he and I are really good friends.

He's been a mentor of mine for years.

We still spend a lot of time together.

And Steve taught on the tree of life really early in the history of our church.

And there's been very, I'll be honest, there's been very few messages I've ever heard in my life that I would consider to be like mind-blowing.

Where it's like I could remember specific aspects of that.

I I don't even really think when when I teach, by the way, I don't expect it to be mind-blowing.

I actually don't think for the most part, that's how we grow, by having like our minds blown all the time.

Anytime I'm on social media and I see people like, I just heard something that blew my mind.

It's like, if your mind blows up all the time, that's not a good thing.

You you you should have a mind that's hard to blow up, okay?

We really change by just sort of the steady, constant surrounding of truth.

It's just that steady, slow osmosis of truth kind of coming into us.

That's how we really grow and change, but there are moments where we can hear something that is that is mind-blowing, that is truly category shifting for us.

And that's that's what happened the first time I heard this teaching because I'd never heard anything like it before.

And I'll never forget where I was.

It was an interesting situation.

Megan and I had had uh come here from Kansas City, Missouri to interview for the youth ministry job here, and like it was a nerve-wracking experience for me.

So many, I had no idea whether or not I was gonna get the job or not.

I really didn't think that I was, but we we drove back to Missouri and they gave us three CDs, because back then that's how, you know, you didn't, no podcasts, nothing like that.

They gave us three CDs.

And these three messages we think are really important for our church and will kind of help you understand us better.

So listen to these three on your way back.

One of them can't even tell you what it was about.

Totally forgetful, to be honest, Steve, if you're listening, not that good, because I don't even remember it.

All right?

One of them was blank, and see that was crafty, because I'm like, oh, okay.

Either they they made a mistake and gave me a blank CD, or it's brilliant.

Because they're gonna be like, what'd you think of those three messages?

And I'm like, I loved all three, and they'll be like, aha! One of them was blank, you're a liar, you do not get the job.

And I was like, this feels like it turns out it was just a total mistake, but I thought this was maybe a super clever trick.

And that would have been just like Steve to do.

But the third one was on the tree of life.

And Megan and I listened to this teaching, and as soon as we we stopped it, we were like, how have we spent so many years in church and never heard this before?

Never thought about it from this angle.

And so I was gonna try to do my best, Steve Impression, and just sort of give it to you like he would, because I mean, he's the one that originally got this, and and I've grown up around it, so I can definitely have this conversation.

But sometimes it's just best to hear it from the person who first had it.

And so I want to take seven minutes and just let Steve, in his own words, talk to you about the tree of life.

All right, so let's let's do that.

Understanding the tree of life and God's word, I think, is the key to understanding all of God's word.

It's actually the key to understanding our relationship with God.

Um there's a tree at the very beginning of the Bible uh in the garden, the tree of life.

There's two trees of life at the very end of the Bible in Revelation, they're on either side of uh of a river.

In fact, those leaves of those two trees of life heal the world, it says, that heal the nations, or the world is as we would say it.

But the story of the tree of life is so misunderstood, and God so clearly started uh his communication with us with that story.

And so you know the story.

There's this uh beautiful garden, Adam and Eve are there, they've got a relationship with God, they walk with him in the morning, they talk with him.

Uh they're completely free, they're not worried about what they're wearing, they're not worried about their appearance, uh, they've got someone that they love, they're in a loving relationship with God, they're in a beautiful place, they've got responsibilities that they enjoy.

And there's two trees in the garden.

One is this tree of life that God says, you know, you can eat freely from this tree.

Come, you can, you know, picnic under the tree, you can just uh be with this tree of life.

And uh the other tree had this forbidden fruit.

It was the one that if you eat from this tree, it it says you will surely die.

And so when we think of this tree, we have a lot of things that jump in our mind.

You know, what kind of forbidden fruit?

Is that a sexual sin?

Is that greed?

Is that in the, you know, what what types of possible things could be this forbidden fruit?

But the tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Uh it was simply the rules.

Uh that is the tree that would cause death.

You know, Satan came along and said, hey, this will make you like God or God Lee, we would say, if you just know the rules.

But God in his ultimate wisdom and how he created us, uh, he knew that we had this choice.

The choice was do we want to be in relationship with God, a life-giving, loving relationship, or do we want to focus on the rules?

And so Adam and Eve got to choose for us, and they didn't do so bad because we've all made the same choice, probably would have made that same choice in their position.

But they chose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and immediately uh things changed.

Uh, all of a sudden, you know, what they wore was good or it was bad, how they looked was good or how or or or was bad.

Everything was through this filter of good or bad.

And and and so from that sprung the old law.

And so we look at God, many of us, I would say most people, and we view God as schizophrenic, and we don't really understand it, and we're not sure which God to believe, because we've got this harsh, mean God in the Old Testament that would uh wipe out nations, he would do all these types of things, he would demand all these types of things, and then all of a sudden Jesus comes along, and he's nothing like that.

You know, he's loving, he's merciful, he's compassionate, he's for the uh for the underdog.

So so what should which is the real God?

And the question is not which is the real God, the question is which is the right tree.

Because what God was giving us was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Here's the rules.

This is what happens when you decide that you're gonna justify when I decide I'm gonna justify myself by the rules.

And, you know, sometimes whole nations aren't living by the rules, and so in that case, I guess they get wiped out.

Thankfully, the New Testament talks about Jesus coming and and and preaching to people and saving whole nations.

But the the point is God has never been a schizophrenic God, he's never been an unloving God.

That even in the Old Testament, a lot of people he healed, a lot of people he blessed weren't even necessarily Jewish people that even knew his law.

They're people with good hearts that were seeking him.

Um and so the the idea that we can pursue right and wrong, that where most religion falls.

It's this is good, this is bad.

Do good, you're good with God, do bad, you're not.

And that is living at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Well what we need to do, and I think with his hands, what we try our best to do is live at the tree of life.

We're encouraging each other.

We're talking about the good things.

You know, Paul goes on a discourse in the New Testament saying, give us all the all these good stuff.

And he says, think on these things, you know?

And so that's that's the place to live, is at the tree of life.

And so when Jesus comes along, over and over he calls himself life.

Um, and then now all of a sudden, we're not under this curse that Adam and Eve chose.

We get to choose ourselves, we get to decide where we want to live.

Do I want to live in shame?

Do I want to live in guilt?

Do I want to live in remorse?

Do I want to live separating myself from God's love?

Uh or Do I want to pick the tree of life?

Is that where I want to live?

Do I want to get back where I can picnique under that tree, where I can eat that fruit, where I can hang out with God?

There's a natural pull in the world to get away from the tree of life, to get back to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

But if somehow together as a family we can all say, hey, no, we're gonna live at the tree of life, it it changes everything.

And God sharing that with us has changed my life.

It's changed the church.

You know, it's done so much.

I think that uh Marwan took that uh message from from the Holy Spirit and uh painted all these beautiful uh trees.

The the first one uh he did um was when when God laughs, and it's it's one that I have and and uh cherish.

You can see them all through the halls.

And if it's somebody's first time here, you might be what's with all the the trees, and that's what it is.

It's just different depictions of the tree of life and how we're committed uh with God's help to live at that tree.

And thankful.

I'm I mean, just thankful that God would show that to us, and so we can no longer be living under that curse of the rules, but enjoy the freedom and life of a real relationship with God.

Yeah, good stuff.

I know some of you right now are like, no, he he was the best pastor.

I know you're doing.

But that's tree of knowledge of good and evil thinking right there, and I'm not gonna go into that, all right?

I don't have to compare.

So, you know, Megan and I talked about that the moment we heard it.

We had this long drive, 12-hour drive, back to uh back to Missouri, and we spent probably four or five of those talking about this very idea.

Because it was a paradigm shift for us.

A lot of our experience in church, and it's understandable, it's so understandable, was it's kind of like the church's job to point out all the bad things.

Right?

Like these are the bad things happening in the world.

And these are the bad TV shows.

And and these are the bad music groups that are popular right now.

And the there was a lot of focus on bad, bad, bad, bad.

Actually, way less focus on good, but a lot of focus on bad.

And that's that's like in our minds helpful because, you know, yeah, the world's full of bad stuff and good stuff, but shouldn't we be hyper-focused on calling out the bad?

And and the simple truth of the matter is God, whether or not those things are good or bad, put that to the side for a second.

God never wanted us to think in those terms.

You know, forbidden fruit.

That's one of those phrases that comes from this story that exists in culture day.

How amazing is it that you have a story that's thousands upon thousands of years old, and yet here in our culture, that's so different than the culture that that story comes from, we have a phrase, forbidden fruit, that's still it's ubiquitous.

It's known by everyone.

They don't have to be someone who's grown up in church to understand forbidden fruit.

And if you ask someone, what's an example of forbidden fruit?

It's gonna be some of the things that Steve mentioned, right?

It's gonna be lust, greed.

But that wasn't the forbidden fruit.

The forbidden fruit was knowing right from wrong.

It was it was good and evil.

In fact, the Hebrew words for good and evil that are that tree, in the Hebrew language, it's just good and bad.

It's the tree of good and bad.

God never intended us to think in those terms.

He wanted us to have a relationship with him, independent of that.

And you know, I've talked about this before.

I didn't really understand that whole dynamic until I had kids because one of the hardest things about having children is that moment when you know that they know right from wrong.

Because it fundamentally changes your relationship with them.

So just pull the curtain back in my life.

Uh, yesterday or the day before, one of our children came to our bedroom and just said, hey guys, Eli, our four-year-old, he's outside.

And we're like, great.

Outside is good.

Like, no, no, no, he's naked.

We're like, oh, totally different.

You know?

I feel so bad for my neighbors.

We moved into this cul-de-sac that had no children.

There was one girl whose only child, high school, and it was just a lot of retired people, and it's just, I'm like, I'm sorry.

This is all about to change for you.

Uh, this quiet, nice, peaceful cul-de-sac, it's just blood-curdling screams and nudity, and it's just, it's all sorry.

But you know, like Eli, a year ago, he's outside naked.

It's funny.

It's like, oh, cute.

But he knows he knows.

Like, he knows.

And so, you know, I go outside and we have it's it's so odd if you're like someone watching this.

I'm like this grown man staring down this four-year-old naked kid at the end of my driveway, and I'm like, you get over it.

I'm not chasing a naked kid down the street.

Like, that's not, I'm in jail.

If I'm like, you don't understand this.

My child, he's just but he like, he knows better, right?

And and I'll be honest, it like it does kind of break my heart as a father when my kids, they're all in that stage now.

They all know right from wrong.

So I have to discipline.

I have to.

I don't want to.

I don't enjoy that.

And you almost get the idea that when God created us, he wanted us to have that childlike innocence, that our relationship with him would just nothing we could have ever done would have been anything more than cute and funny.

Because we just didn't know.

But once you know, you know.

And you have to be held accountable to that.

And that's where we get the law and the rules and religion.

It was the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.

You could just call it the tree of religion because that is what religion is obsessed with.

Good, bad, good, bad, good, bad.

And look, some of us grew up in a church setting, some of us have never been in church before.

And if that's you, sometimes it's hard because you got a lot to learn when it comes to like the church stuff, but sometimes you're the best one because you don't have a lot to unlearn.

Some of us grew up in a church setting where we were celebrated.

And we got the gold stars, right?

And you're good.

You did, you did good, you're good.

Some of us, many of us, in fact, I would say most of us who grew up in church have some type of hardship, even minor trauma, maybe major trauma, because we didn't, we didn't live up to the rules.

And we were told, you're bad.

Because that's the way the good and bad thing works.

We might get angry at Adam and Eve and say, Thanks a lot, guys.

Thanks for that.

You know, it's like in elementary school, there was always that one kid who couldn't shut up and got the whole class in trouble.

That was me.

But, you know, you always had that kid like thank you.

But guys, we would all have, like Steve said, we would all have made the same decision because we do it every day.

Go back to those cards that we feel like you have to pick it up, but think about how easy it was for you to shift into the mindset of good and bad.

Here's why I'm good.

Here's what I'm good at.

And just the prompt to think about the things you're bad at, we're easy.

Because our minds work very well in the categories of good and bad, and that's the way we relate to the world.

You want a promotion?

Do a good job.

I I remember I was coaching a fourth-grade basketball team a few years ago, and this little boy on the team came up to me, and he was nervous, and he said, Coach, do you think I could be the one who dribbles it down the court?

And I said, No.

You're looking at me, and he wasn't very good at dribbling.

And I wanted to win.

I'm serious.

And I'm being like, what am I supposed to say?

Oh, sure.

And just dribble it out of like, no, it's not.

Sports is is do better, get better.

Right?

It's good, bad, win, lose.

But that's how our world works, right?

That's how we relate to the world around us.

You want a better life?

Be better.

Do good things.

More good things, less bad things.

And sometimes we think that the point of church or God is to help us in that good-bad dynamic, but the reality is that when it comes to how we relate to God, the way he wants us to come to him, we have to shed the good-bad dynamic.

That's not how God relates to us.

He does not relate to you because you're good enough.

He does not pull back from you because you're not good enough.

Look, many of us know what it's like to have a bad Saturday and not want to be here on a Sunday.

I mean, we've all had those days like, I don't, I'm not gonna go.

Because I don't want to, I don't want to deal with these emotions.

Especially when our mess ups are really close behind us.

I've had I've had Sundays where I've just, my Saturday was rough and I was not a good husband.

I was cranky, tired, just selfish.

And those are the Sundays where I'm, I'll be honest, I'll have times on a Saturday night where I'm like, I wonder if Fred could do the message tomorrow.

You know?

Maybe I just call somebody.

And and I don't do that.

I have to like work through that.

But I feel like not being here.

Because I just I did bad.

And then if I go to church, it's like, uh, even though his hands is this amazing tree of life, church, there's part of me that just still I don't want to feel bad.

That's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

It's good and bad, and we live in those dynamics very well.

But God doesn't want us to when it comes to him.

Now, am I saying it doesn't matter to God that we do good things?

Like, no, not at all.

I mean, 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, verse 13, says, never get tired of doing good.

2 Thessalonians 3:13

Never grow tired of doing good.

But here's the reality, guys: the good that we do, all that comes from God.

See, that's that's the difference.

That's like the mind shift.

Think about it in terms of a tree.

I heard it put this way once and it clicked with me because our church uses a lot of tree language.

We're often taught or brought up to believe that the good things we do are like the roots of our tree.

And the fruit that develops because of our roots is God being okay with us.

You know, you you did good.

You went to church.

You know, you did a good job, you were honest, you you said no to that temptation.

That's your your good actions, and those good actions are the roots, and if you do enough of those and it's strong enough, then the fruit, the result is that God looks at you and says, Yeah, you're okay with me.

But in our faith, and this is what makes our faith different from every other faith in the world, it's the opposite of that.

The root is God's love, and it's his acceptance, and it's his forgiveness and mercy.

It's just throwing away all the whole good and bad dynamics.

Throw it out.

He loves you.

And if you connect with him and you live connected to him in relationship with him, the fruit is that you're actually empowered to do more good than you could otherwise.

It's not the other way around.

Jesus makes this so clear, and his ministry would have been so confusing to so many people.

Because he's constantly telling stories that just completely shook up the good, bad dynamics, the good, bad assumptions of his day.

Classic example would be Luke chapter 18.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

Jesus says that two men went to the temple to pray.

One was a Pharisee, and in his culture, Pharisee, good, religious person, devout, committed to God, and the other was a despised tax collector.

This would be like the worst.

The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer.

I thank you, God, that I'm not like other people, cheaters, sinners, adulterers.

I'm certainly not like that tax collector.

I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.

But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed.

Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, Oh God, be merciful to me, for I'm a sinner.

I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God.

For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

Jesus tells a story where the tax collector is the hero and the Pharisees not.

He flipped it.

And he did this all the time.

He told a story that's classically known as the story of the good Samaritan.

Jesus didn't call it that.

That's what we called it.

No person in his culture would have believed that any Samaritan was good.

And Jesus makes this person the hero of the story.

There was once a wealthy man who came to Jesus, and Jesus loved him, but challenged him, and he walked away.

And Jesus says, Man, people like him, it's really hard for them to connect with God.

And all of his followers were shocked because in their culture, if you had wealth, that meant God loved you because he'd blessed you.

So that was a sign of God's favor, and they believed that.

So now he's saying that this guy's further from God than other.

How does this work?

Jesus is constantly upending the whole assumptions of who's good, who's bad, who's in, who's out, to the point that it would have been very confusing for the people in his time.

Because Jesus was bringing us back to the tree of life.

To forget all of that stuff that we use to figure out where we stand with him.

And I think that this is something that, guys, we we really have to grab a hold of.

Like I have to be reminded of this all the time.

Because some of us have these fears, we'll just call it what it is, legitimate fears of how God would respond to us in light of our sin.

Steve just rattled a few off in the video.

You know, lust and greed.

Those are classics, right?

Those are bad things.

And maybe for us it could be an addiction of some kind, substance abuse, you you name it.

And we wonder, man, how would God respond to me in this state?

And the thought is that he would be repulsed.

But you know what's interesting is Jesus is God.

I don't know if you knew that or not.

He's God.

He is the exact representation of God.

In fact, Hebrews tells us that Jesus is the perfect representation of the Father, meaning that he's not God in a good mood.

He's not God who got a good night's sleep.

He's God.

He's the closest picture we have of God the Father.

And we actually see Jesus interact with people like this all the time.

So let's let's talk about sexual sin.

I mean, what in the world would is God in favor of sexual sin?

Absolutely not, because it's devastating to us.

But how would he respond to someone who's in the in the midst of that?

Well, how did Jesus respond to people who were dealing with sexual sin?

He heaped on a whole lot of shame, right?

No, no, we actually have lots of stories.

There's the woman at the well, and she had been married five times and was living with someone that wasn't her husband, and Jesus has this conversation with her, and he brings her so much honor, and he actually makes her the first person he ever says explicitly, I am the Messiah, too.

She's the first one that ever heard him say that.

He brought her in in a way deeper than he'd even brought his disciples in at that point.

He hadn't even told them that.

Not in those terms, like they were kind of guessing and hinting, but but this is a woman who's living in sexual sin.

And she comes face to face with Jesus and he loves her.

And he doesn't push her away.

In fact, he brings her close.

There's another story of a woman who's caught in adultery, and everyone's about to stone her because that was their law.

You could kill someone caught in adultery.

And what does Jesus do?

He saves her life and he loves her and he tells her, I do not condemn you.

Now, after that, he says to her, Go and sin no more.

Like he loves her.

He doesn't want her to keep living this way.

Look at what it's doing to her.

But but in the moment, he doesn't push her away, he brings her in because he loves her, because it's not the good-bad dynamic.

He's not the tree of good and bad, he's the tree of life.

He wants a relationship.

What about greed and materialism?

I was with my son at an Atlanta Hawks basketball game, and uh I drive a 2006 Scion, and it's in decently bad shape.

Um, but it's paid off, so I think it's beautiful, you know?

I'm like, oh, you're so gorgeous.

And uh my son hates my car.

Sometimes he'll make fun of my car, and I'll be like, don't make fun of your first car.

How dare you do that?

I'm gonna keep this sucker going for another like four years.

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

This is your he's like, Dad, no.

I'm like, oh, you need a car with character, you know?

So we're coming out of this game.

And if you've ever been to like a NBA basketball games are fun, but they're kind of like, it's like a lot, there's a lot of bling, okay?

It's it's a lot of wealth on display.

A lot of really nice shoes.

Like, you're looking, if you know anything about certain shoes, you're like, thousand dollars, wow, that's okay.

A lot, a lot of that.

A lot of really nice cars, most of them leased, but it's okay.

Um so we're coming out of the parking garage, and these guys walk by my car.

They're all about my age.

And this one guy, just really loud, you could hear it through the windows.

Liam's sitting next to me, he's like, oh man, can you imagine having to drive a piece of crap car like that?

I don't care.

And Liam looked at me, he kind of looked down.

I said, What are you embarrassed by that?

He's like, Yeah.

I was like, Well, son, I could buy a new car.

He's like, Well, then why don't you?

I'm like, well, hey, I'm waiting until you drive this one, then I get the new car.

That's a simple equation.

But I but I told him, I said, look, there's, son, this is a different lesson, but I'm like, there's a difference between building wealth and displaying wealth.

Okay.

But but we live in a world that's fascinated with wealth and things, and and and it greed becomes a big factor right away.

Well, God must hate greed, right?

And sure, God's not a fan of greed.

But how would he respond to someone who's enmeshed in it?

Well, we know because Jesus had this interaction with a man named Zacchaeus, who was a tax collector, who's incredibly greedy.

He extorted people for money, and he was rich because of it.

And Jesus interacts with him, and he doesn't say, Zacchaeus, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Zacchaeus is in a tree, it's a weird story.

Uh he doesn't say, like, come out of that tree and take what's coming to you.

He says, Hey, Zacchaeus, come down from that tree.

I want to have dinner with you tonight.

Now, in that dinner, Zacchaeus' heart is changed.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't change, but again, that's not the root of our relationship with God.

It's the fruit, it's the result.

I'm saying it because of this.

If you here today, watching from home, listening to this sometime in the future, if you are worried that your sin repulses God, you are wrong.

When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, what's the first thing that happened to them?

They felt shame and they withdrew from God.

Not the other way around.

God did not withdraw from them.

They withdrew from God.

Jesus gives us an opportunity to go back to that original choice.

So think about your card again.

And we're actually going to do this kind of uh on the front end of finishing with Lord's Supper this morning.

We're wrapping up.

Are you good with God?

Are you good in his eyes or are you bad?

Have you had a good week or a bad week?

Has this been a good year for you, a bad year?

What I'm trying to tell you is that when it comes to how God sees you, throw all of it away.

If you want to take that piece of paper, the front represents the good, it's your resume, the backside represents the bad, you don't have to fill it out, you know it.

When it comes to you and God, you could crumple it, throw it away, burn it if you want to, because it does not have any bearing on how he approaches you.

Because that's not, it's the wrong tree.

I was talking with uh with Ashley Dickerson, who's doing a group for women uh for moms during the middle of the week on Wednesdays here at our building, and uh sign up for it if you want to be part of it.

It's really cool.

And so she was talking about how they were they were talking about the idea that God is enough.

Or sorry rather that we are enough in Jesus.

In Christ, we're enough.

And that's really hard for us to believe, right?

That just Jesus is enough to make us good with God.

It's kind of like if we want to picture ourselves trying to like get into a club.

I've never actually tried that, I've never been to a club, but I've seen movies, and there's always like a bouncer, and the people are always like making their case, like you should let me in the club.

Because, you know, like if we're trying to get into God's good graces and be close with Him, like what are we gonna say?

What's our resume?

Are we gonna go to God and be like, oh, um I'm a pretty good father, decent husband, top two pastors all the time at His Hands Church?

And he's like, All right, you can come in.

No, that's that's not that's not gonna work.

Like, if I start giving the good, guess what can come?

The bad.

But I can come to God and say, Oh, I'm with Jesus.

And I'm good.

It's it.

And you don't need more than that.

That's the challenge that many of us struggle with.

You don't need to add to that.

It's not like, oh, Jesus, I am with him.

Oh, oh, by the way, if that's not enough, just to seal the deal, I'm pretty decent dad.

Not gonna lie.

Top two pastors all the time at his hands.

You know?

If you didn't, we've only had two.

That's the joke, if you're new.

We've only had two.

So I could be the worst and still in the top two.

It's fine.

Um we need to wrap up.

We're gonna take Lord's Supper.

And this little meal represents everything we're talking about.

Here's what I this is what I'm trying to tell you.

And I may not be doing a good job at it, but I'm just trying really hard.

Some of you are trying so hard to impress God and you need to stop because you don't have to do that.

Some of you are trying really hard to make up for the bad and you need to stop because you don't need to do that.

You feel like because of your mistakes, you've got to give more, do more.

And like, honestly, if if let's talk finances.

If you're giving to his hands, because you love this church and and you you like, it's of course I want to give, I want to support what God's doing.

Awesome.

If you're giving out of guilt, just stop.

And if everyone stops giving, I'll know that we were all giving out of guilt.

And we'll just have a different conversation next week, okay?

All right, some things are gonna change, but it's okay.

Uh but I'm I'm I'm like 100% serious about that.

Don't.

You don't, you don't have to make up for anything.

Jesus paid that price.

It's done, it's finished.

He was more than enough.

So some of us are trying to make up for the bad.

That's that's the wrong tree.

Even if you're you're doing good, but if you're doing good to make up for the bad, you're still living at the wrong tree.

You're operating in that earnest mentality.

And you need to stop and rest and receive from God.

Make the choice that Adam and Eve should have made.

Live at the right tree, choose Jesus, just Jesus, only Jesus.

What justifies you before God?

Jesus.

Why are you forgiven for your sins?

Jesus.

Why do you have access to God the Father?

Jesus.

Why are you assured that you're gonna spend forever in heaven?

Jesus.

Why do you have the Holy Spirit inside of you?

Jesus.

Why are your sins forgiven?

Jesus, it's just Jesus, nothing else.

So stop trying to make up for all the other stuff.

It's just Jesus.

Some of us, some of us are filled with so much guilt for the bad that we pull away from God, that we're hesitant to take steps forward.

Some of you are like, you know you're ready to get baptized.

You're ready to make that decision, but you're just going, I'm not good enough yet.

That's not the way this works.

That's the wrong tree.

And you need to get baptized.

Like we'll baptize you right now if you want to.

If you want to stick around, fine.

That would create a huge uh logistical crisis for a few people on our team, but they're fine.

Like, we'll do it.

Or sign up and get baptized next week.

But my point is, that's the wrong tree.

Never pull away from God.

He doesn't ever pull away from you because of your issues, your sins.

He comes close so that he can give you all that you need to be made whole.

So if you're someone who's like the bad way outweighs the good, okay, first of all, join the club.

Second of all, take a step toward him.

Draw near to him because he is what you need.

And he's not gonna shun you because Jesus never did that.

As a church, we're gonna live at the right tree.

Amen?

We're a tree of life church, that's who we are, and we're gonna be a church that learns that lesson from the garden.

We're not good or bad.

We're his.

It's as simple as that.

So let's let's do this.

Let's pray for the bread.

Father, thank you for this piece of bread for what it represents.

This is the tree of life to us.

This is a chance to not be defined by the good and the bad anymore, but to simply be defined by who we belong to, and that's you.

So thank you, Lord.

Let's take the bread.

Thank you, Jesus, for this juice and what it represents.

Your blood spilled for us on the cross.

A price that was was more than enough to cover all the bad.

And also, Lord, it's more than enough for us to even feel the need to justify ourselves with the good.

So help us get out of that mentality when it comes to how we engage with you.

Help us go back to that simplicity of knowing that we're yours, of living in a close connected relationship with you, not justifying ourselves by our ability to follow the rules.

It's not our track record that matters, it's yours.

And yours is perfect.

We thank you for that.

Let's take the juice.