The Tree of Life

George brought a message Sunday about the Tree of Life.

Main Point: The Tree of Life is an object lesson (Biblical type) to point us to Jesus Christ who is the source of all life.

Tree of Life mentioned 10x in the Bible:
Genesis 2:9, 3:22-24
Proverbs 3:18, 11:30, 13:12, 15:4
Revelation 2:7, 22:1-2, 22:14

The tree of life is a real physical tree that provides tangible healing benefits to the natural body. If you could eat from it, you would never grow old and you would live forever. It did not require Adam's obedience or faith to be effective. It was a "super-fruit" that God provided for Adam's benefit.

Adam's body was the same as ours is today. He was not created with an eternal body that could not grow old or die. He needed air to breathe, food and water to live. However, God walked with him and protected him from any dangers. No such protection is mentioned in the Bible for the animal or plant life. The tree of life was the physical provision for Adam's eternal bodily existence.

See I Corinthians 15:39-58 for a description of Adam's physical body. He had a natural body. Just as we now bear the image of Adam's original body, we shall bear the image of the resurrected Jesus' body (I Cor. 15:46-48). Jesus is sometimes called the "second Adam." These verses refer to Jesus Christ as the "template" for our resurrected state. The resurrected Jesus had a spiritual body, not a natural body. Note his miracles of appearing/disappearing bodily that he did not do before his resurrection. Jesus is the first fruits from the dead (I Cor. 15:20-23).

God will provide for our eternal existence after the resurrection. Revelations describes the tree of life in heaven. Why would it be there? Is it necessary? The tree of life serves as a type to point us to Jesus Christ, who is the source of all life (John 10:9-10, Colossians 1:16-19).

Proverbs uses the tree of life in the symbolic sense to represent a source of life. The contrast is life vs. death, such as in Prov. 15:4.

May God be praised for His provision for us in the past, present, and future.

The Tabernacle in Legos

Last week we discussed the Tabernacle that God instructed Moses to build. One of the boys put together his own rendering of the Tabernacle using Legos.

My son, Ethan, decided when he got to home to try his hand a Tabernacle construction.

The Law and Evangelism

I shared a bit last week on the topic of using the Law in evangelism. I Tim 1:8 say that the Law is good, if it is used lawfully. While the law has no power to make any man righteous, it is useful in showing men how horrible they really are. We tend to judge ourselves based on a comparison of those around us, instead of according to God's enduring commandments revealing the standards of right and wrong that are a part of his created order.

One of the great things about God's moral law, is that it is embedded in the conscience of every man. That makes it even more difficult to resist, and one of the greatest tools to point people to their need of salvation from their own guilt. The law makes sin, exceedingly sinful, as Romans 7:13 says.

So how do you use the law to point people to Jesus Christ, the Savior? Below is an example from Ray Comfort.



Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron run a ministry together called Way of the Master, that teaches Christians how to effectively share their faith. Ray has a teaching called Hell's Best Kept Secret that provides an outstanding and compelling case for both why and how you should use the law in evangelism.

Walk Through the Bible

The last several Thursday nights, George has been sharing a broad overview of Biblical history based on the Walk Through the Bible seminars. He's been starting off with a short quiz to see how much we know already.

Then we read a portion of scripture...

and go through a series of hand motions to help us remember the major events of biblical history.

This week included pulling out the world map to see were all these places we've been talking about are.