Tag Archives: Tree of Life

I Am the Bread of Life – Sermon on John 6:35-51 for Maundy Thursday

The Scripture readings for tonight’s service are Psalm 111:1-6; Deuteronomy 8:1-3; Hebrews 9:11-15; and John 6:35-51.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

On this very night—1,993 years ago—Jesus celebrated the final Passover feast with His disciples. When that meal was done, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to His disciples, saying, “Take, eat; this is My Body, which is given for you. This do in remembrance of Me.”Then He took the cup, blessed it, and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Drink of it, all of you; this Cup is the New Covenant in My Blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me” (Mt. 26:26-28; Mk. 14:22-24; Lk. 22:19-20; 1 Co. 11:23-25).

One year before that, right around this time of year—1,994 years ago (Jn. 6:4)—Jesus fed 5,000 men, plus women and children, near the Sea of Galilee. The very next day Jesus stood before that same crowd and declared, “I Am the Bread of Life.”

To understand this text, it’s helpful to have an idea of just who these people are. Like every child of Adam, they lived under the curse of sin which meant they could only eat bread by the sweat of their brow until they returned to the ground (Gen. 3:19). They lived in Galilee, which was a very fruitful land. But heavy taxes and tributes took 30-50% of what they earned. Those taxes meant that most of them could not own their own lands. Instead, they had to find work each day as day laborers. Getting daily bread first required them to find a job for that day. Then, they could eat by the sweat of their brow. They were not utterly destitute, but their lives were far more precarious ours. The line between food and starvation was always just a step behind them.

Then, Jesus came. With five loaves and two fish, He fed a stadium-sized crowd so that every stomach was full. And He could do that in an instant. That’s the kind of man you want to keep around. No more searching. No more sweating. No more fear that the table might be empty tonight. Here was security. Here was stability. Here was a Man who could roll back the curse of eating bread through sweat and toil.

The people tasted that bread. It filled them and carried them through the night. So, the next day they went looking for Jesus. Yes, they were chasing daily bread, but that desire wasn’t evil. They were trying to reach for Eden again. They longed to return to the initial goodness of God’s creation where He would feed them. They wanted to be done with the curse. Done with the thorns and thistles. Done with the pain and sweat and toil of getting daily bread. They wanted life as God had first given it.

In the verses leading up to our text, Jesus sees their hearts. He says, “You are seeking Me… because you ate your fill of the loaves.” But listen to what our Lord says next: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you” (Jn. 6:26-27). Jesus is pointing them to something more and better than daily bread: “Don’t just chase after the kind of bread that keeps you alive for one more hour or day. Instead, chase after the Bread that gives you eternal life. I Am the Bread of Life.” Jesus had come to give them far more than a steady supply of bread for their bellies.

In our reading, Jesus presses the point even deeper: “I Am the Bread of Life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died” (Jn. 6:48-49). Think about it. Their great-great-great-great-grandfathers ate heavenly bread that God rained down on them every morning for forty years in the wilderness. Each day, God gave what they needed to sustain them. Even though they were fed by very the hand of God, they still died. Every last one of them. God humbled them. God let them hunger so they would learn that man does not live by bread alone, but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God (Dt. 8:1-3).

Then, Jesus says something astonishing: “This is the Bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I Am the Living Bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this Bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is My flesh” (Jn. 6:50-51).

Dear saints, do you hear echoes of something more, something better, than the daily manna that God provided? Here is a promise: Eat and never die. Eat and live forever. This is more than the reversal of thorns and thistles. Here is the undoing of death itself!

Jesus is promising a food that results in eternal life. Jesus is offering a new and better Tree of Life. At the end of Genesis 3, God would not let Adam and Eve eat from the original Tree of Life because that would mean living forever in their sin. So, God drove them out and sent the cherubim with a flaming sword to guard them from an eternal life in sin (Gen. 3:22-24).

But now the Son of God steps forward and says, “I have come to give you more than daily bread. I have come to give you Myself as Living Bread that will give you eternal life.”

Dear saints, the Tree that gives eternal life does not grow out of the ground in Eden. It was carried by Simon of Cyrene and planted on Golgotha by a Roman soldier (Mk. 15:21-25). The Fruit of that Tree does not blossom from a flower. It was nailed to that cross with iron spikes. Jesus Himself is the Tree of Life because He is the Bread of Life. He is the way to life without end.

Tonight, dear saints, Jesus has gathered you here so that you would eat that Bread.

He has brought you here to taste and see that the Lord is good (Ps. 34:8). He has brought you here so you would hear His Word and live. Jesus promises that you will live forever because you believe in Him. Your sins are forgiven. Jesus carried them in His Body to the cross. He has died for them. Christ has taken upon Himself not just your flesh and blood, but also your sin and shame. He suffered it all so He could give you Himself—the Bread that never perishes and the Life that never ends. With His Own blood your great High Priest has won an eternal redemption for you. He has cleansed your consciences so you can now serve the living God. Through Him and the New Covenant in His Blood, you have the promised inheritance (Heb. 9:11-14).

Dear saints, come. Come, eat. Come, drink. Come, believe. Come, live because your Savior is the Bread of Life. Amen.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Php. 4:7). Amen.

Tree of Life to the Cross – Sermon on Genesis 2:15-17, 3:22-24; 1 Peter 2:21-25; and John 3:14-15

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:22-24; 1 Peter 2:21-15; John 3:14-15

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

I love looking at maps. At the risk of you thinking I’m a complete geek (which I probably am), I sometimes relax by opening the Google Earth app on my iPad and search for little islands near Antarctica, the north pole, and in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I’ll zoom in as close as possible and tilt the view to see what the terrain of those islands looks like. Then, I’ll zoom out and see how close those islands are to other locations that I am familiar with.

Let’s do something similar tonight. Don’t actually pull out your devices, just do this in your mind. How would you find the place where Jesus was crucified? If you wanted to find it on Google Earth, you would probably zoom out and scroll over to the Mediterranean Sea. Then, you would zoom in again to find Jerusalem, and there you have it. Geographically, slightly outside of Jerusalem, Jesus was crucified on the hill of Golgotha. But most of the time, when you think about the location of Jesus’ death, you probably don’t imagine a map. Instead, you likely think about the instrument of His death – the cross. The cross is where Jesus paid the price for your sin. The exact latitude and longitude of where Jesus’ cross was planted isn’t certain; Scripture doesn’t give all those details and didn’t need to. But, believer, you can know for certain that the cross of Jesus is where God saved you.

Now, there was a point to all that. In our Epistle lesson tonight (1 Pet. 2:21-25), Peter zooms in as close as possible to the place where you were reconciled to God. In v. 24, Peter says, “[Jesus] Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree.” Notice, Peter doesn’t say that Jesus bore your sins in His body on the cross, but on the tree. It’s no accident Peter uses that word. Just briefly, the Greek word Peter uses that gets translated as ‘tree’ can mean either ‘wood’ or ‘tree.’ The same thing is true in Hebrew; Hebrew has one word for ‘wood’ and ‘tree.’

Now, with that in mind, let’s go back to the beginning. God placed man and woman in the Garden of Eden to work and keep it. In the middle of the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:9), God put two trees, two living woods – the Tree (or ‘wood’) of Life and the Tree (or ‘wood’) of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The fruit of the Tree of Life was, of course, life. That is why God wouldn’t even finish the thought of Adam and Eve eating its fruit after they fell. They would live forever in sin and death. And the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was forbidden because it brought forth death. But there, at the trunk of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve listened to and believed the lies of the devil. That disobedience has cast us into exile and away from life itself. Before humanity could have access to the Tree of Life again, sin had to be dealt with.

Because of our sin, you and I are not able to be part of the solution to sin and death. In our sin, we are left stumbling helplessly through this world. Restoring ourselves to God is impossible and beyond our reach, but not beyond the reach of God. Even though we were overcome by the fruit of a tree, God has come and restored us by the fruit of another tree – the wood of the cross that was planted outside Jerusalem on Golgotha.

Jesus, the Son of Man was lifted up on a tree just as Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the wilderness (Jn. 3:14-15). The tree of the cross – a piece of wood that was used as an instrument of torture, suffering, and death – is the Tree of Life upon which Jesus is lifted up. There, Christ bears your sins – all of them. Just as all mankind brought the curse of sin and death upon himself by eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, Jesus takes all the curse of sin and death upon Himself by becoming a curse for us. The Scriptures say, “cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Dt. 21:23, Gal. 3:13). Now, through Jesus’ wounds you are healed because He has taken the curse that belonged to you upon Himself. And now, whoever believes in Him has eternal life.

Jesus has led you out of your exile away from the Garden, away from the Tree of Life to the new Tree of Life.. Through faith in Jesus, the promised Seed of the Woman (Gen. 3:15), you follow your Savior to the tree of life, which is the tree of the cross, whose fruit gives you life. 

You heard God say in Genesis 3:22, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.” Listen carefully here, “Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” God wouldn’t even finish the thought of you being cursed by living forever in sin. But now Jesus has come and become a curse for you by dying on the tree of the cross. The way to the Tree of Life is open again to you. In John 6:51 (and listen to how closely this parallels Gen. 3:22), Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that give for the life of the world is My flesh.” Now that you are redeemed by Jesus, He desires that you eat and live forever with Him. Jesus has come to bring you home, out of exile, and give you eternal life free from sin, pain, guilt, shame, and death. A new life of joy, peace, and perfection that is forever.

Dear saints, by Jesus’ wounds on the new Tree of Life, which is His cross, you have been healed. You are no longer straying like sheep but have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your soul. Amen.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Eden to Heaven – Sermon on Genesis 3:22-24 & Revelation 22:1-5

Genesis 3:22-24 & Revelation 22:1-5

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

God created you to live in perfection. In six days, God created everything in the universe. He created light and darkness. He placed the sun, moon, stars, and galaxies in their places. God established land, sea, and plants and filled the earth with birds, fish, and every kind of animal. And God planted the garden of Eden. Only after all that was completed did God create the crown of creation – man and woman. And Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

But it wasn’t the kind of work that we experience – it was pure joy. There was no need to look at the forecast to see what the weather would be. No worries about gas prices and inflation. No crisis. No war. No disease or pandemic. Everything was in perfect harmony. In God’s own estimation, all that He created was good, in fact, very good (Gen. 1:21). Best of all was the perfect relationship that existed between God and man. God freely giving and man graciously receiving. Even the one command that God gave was gracious, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17).

Now, some suggest that God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden so Adam and Eve could choose to trust or reject God. But this is not the case. God’s prohibition to eat from that tree was a promise for Adam and Eve to believe. Just track with me for a minute here. Scripture repeatedly says, “The righteous shall live by faith” (Hab. 2:4; Ro. 2:17; Gal. 3:11; Heb. 10:38). In other words, to be righteous is to have faith. We know that for us sinners to be righteous is to have faith in Jesus as our Savior. But what kind of faith did Adam and Eve have before the Fall? They already knew the mercy, goodness, and graciousness of God because they constantly experienced it in everything that God had given and in everything God was to them. So, what is it that Adam and Eve believed before the Fall that made them righteous through faith?

Well, at some point in those first six days, God created the angels. Now, Scripture doesn’t tell us specifically when, but at some point in those days of creation the devil and demons rebelled and fell. In other words, evil existed. When God banned Adam and Eve from eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God was giving a promise, “Evil exists, and I just want you to trust Me on this. When you find out what evil is, it won’t go well for you, in fact, you’ll die.” So, Adam and Eve could go to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and know, “What a good God we have. He has given us everything and doesn’t want us to experience or even know what evil is.”

But, as you heard in Sunday’s Old Testament lesson (Gen. 3:1-21), Satan stirred up discontentment in Adam and Eve. The devil told Eve that she could become something more than God had created her to be. Satan said that she would become like God. So, deceived as she was (Gen. 3:13; 2 Cor. 11:3), Eve took the fruit. Adam was even worse; he wasn’t deceived and knew exactly what he was doing (1 Tim. 2:14). They both sinned and fell. They took. They ate. Their eyes were opened. They had become something more. You heard God say it Himself tonight, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:22).

But Adam and Eve knowing evil wasn’t better. Not even close. Now, because the head of creation had fallen into sin, creation fell with him (Ro. 8:20-21). And Adam and Eve were sent into exile – away from God’s presence, away from the Garden of Eden, and away from the tree of life which was now guarded by the cherubim and a flaming sword. But God sent them into this exile with a new promise to believe. A promise that paradise would be restored to them when the seed of the woman would come and crush the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15). And it was through faith in that promise that God went with them.

Dear saints, you and I live in exile. We wander about sinfully trying to become like God by our own works, but all our effort is curved in upon itself. Instead of being like our giving God, we seek after our own comfort and desires. Unlike God who is generous and giving, we try to pile up riches for ourselves. We try to create our own little gardens of Eden in an attempt to regain the paradise we lost. But we never achieve the perfection we long for. The treasures we acquire quickly fade and fall apart in our hands.

We cannot return from this exile by our own reason or strength. Yet, God walks alongside us, calling us back unto Himself. Out of His great love for us, He continues to give us promise after promise. And God delivers on every one of His promises. He has sent Jesus into this world of exile to bring us back to paradise. He comes to us who are bent over in our sin and frees us. He delivers us from the bondage of Satan (Lk. 13:16) and gives us rest. He announces to us that because of what He has done by His death and resurrection, we will be eternally restored. While Jesus was on the cross, He told the thief next to Him, “Today, you will be with Me in paradise” (Lk. 23:43). That word ‘paradise’ means ‘an enclosed garden.’

In our reading from Rev. 22:1-5 tonight, we get a picture of that garden of paradise. And that is what lies ahead for you, dear saint. Through faith in Jesus, you are righteous. Your destination is the bright crystal river, the tree of life yielding its twelve kinds of fruit, and leaves for the healing of the nations. There you will see God’s face, and there will be no more night. You will need no light of lamp or sun, for you will be restored to God, and He will be your light. Your time in exile has an end. And there, in eternal bliss, you will reign forever and ever. Amen.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.