1.
Christ is risen! He is risen
indeed! Alleluia! The message from God’s
Word today is taken from Psalm 52, Ezek. 47:1-12, Rev. 22:1-20, and Matt.
28:1-10. It’s entitled, “Tree of
Life.” Dear brothers and sisters in
Christ. An angel with a flaming sword
guards the way to the tree of life. And no one may approach. And no one may
taste of that fruit of life. Until today…when… an angel, bright as
lightning, shocks those guarding the way to the place of death. And they
flee. And now we again taste of the tree that gives life. As we conclude our special sermon series, “Living
among the Bible’s Trees,” in a sense we come full circle, returning to that
precious tree once placed in the Garden of Eden, the tree of life. Considering the Tree of Life, we realize that,
although on account of our sin we deserve to be barred from the Tree of Life,
Jesus’ Cross becomes our Tree of Life and we eat of its fruit.
2.
The tree of life is mentioned not only at the beginning
of Genesis and the end of Revelation but also in our First Reading from the Old
Testament Book of Ezekiel (Ezek 47:1–12). It’s also mentioned in a couple of
other places I’ll talk about later. But, before we go any further, we want to
recognize that Ezekiel and Revelation, although with some differences, are
largely what’s called “apocalyptic literature”—literature consisting
of symbolic, visionary, and prophetic
pictures, used to reveal things to believers but to conceal them from
unbelievers. We believers are well positioned to understand Ezekiel and
Revelation, as we heard more than six weeks ago from Genesis how God planted a
garden in Eden, with the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil in its midst. God commanded the man not to eat of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, lest he die. But when the woman doubted the Word of
God and she and her husband ate of it, God drove them from the Garden and
placed cherubim with a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to
the tree of life (Gen 2:8–9, 15–17; 3:1–24).
3.
In today’s Second Reading (Rev 22:1–20), we find that
tree of life, as one author says, “transplanted, as it were, from Eden (Gen
3:9, 22, 24) and made available for the inhabitants of the coming new world.”29
In Revelation, the Garden of Eden paradise—especially its river and tree (Gen 2:9–17;
3:1–7)—merges with the holy city of God, the new Jerusalem. It’s the place
where believers will live as their blessed reward. In the new Jerusalem, there’s
a main street and a river running through the center of the city. On either
side of the river is the tree of life30 (see also Rev 2:7) and so
also access to what has been called its “wonderful, supraterrestrial food of
immortality,”31 at least a figurative (if not also literal) way
of expressing Christians’ share in the eternal life to come.
4.
You and I may be among those who, at times if not
always, think it’s unfair when we suffer the consequences of someone else’s
actions, such as our being banished from Eden on account of the man and woman’s
original sin. Of course, we’re prone to overlook our own sin, on the basis of
which God could cast us away from his presence in paradise and sentence us to
eternal torment. As we heard in today’s Second Reading, outside the city are “the
dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and
everyone who loves and practices falsehood” (Rev 22:15)—and that includes
us in thoughts and sometimes words if not also in deeds! Just like Adam and
Eve, we don’t trust God’s Word or obey it. On account of not only our sinful
nature but also our actual sins, we deserve eternal torment apart from God,
unless, as God calls and enables us to, we repent, believe, and receive his
forgiveness for our sins, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
5.
Between Genesis, with the cherubim guarding the way to
the tree of life, and Revelation, with the Lord granting us to eat of the tree
of life, something changed! Genesis, Revelation, and the other sixty-four books
of the Bible in between tell the prophecy and fulfillment of the woman’s
Offspring, who suffers the bruising of his own heel (the loss of his own
life for a time) but in the process bruises (or crushes) the
serpent’s (the devil’s) head (ultimately for all time). In Ezek
47:12, Ezekiel saw a vision of God’s temple at the end of time. In Ezekiel’s
vision, water was flowing from the temple.
6.
But in the vision St. John recorded in the Book of
Revelation, after the saving work of Jesus, the water is described as flowing
from the throne of God and of the Lamb.32 The temple is no more, for
God and the Lamb are the temple in the new heaven and earth (Rev 21:22). But, even
Ezekiel, may still have had a sense that a final sacrifice would have been
made, as he omits from his complete vision some key sacrifices, such as that
made on the Day of Atonement.
7.
On the cross, Jesus, the Lamb of God, makes the only
sacrifice needed to take away your sins and my sins and the sins of the whole
world (Jn 1:29, 36). Jesus was true God, called the Alpha and the Omega in the
Second Reading, but Jesus also was the living Shoot or Branch from the dead
stump of human Jesse’s tree. And the dead wood of Jesus’ cross in a sense
becomes for us a tree of life. Early Christian art saw such a close
relationship, picturing the trunk of Jesus’ cross sprouting twigs and leaves
like a living tree,33 and in the Lutheran Hymn “The Tree of Life”
(LSB 561) author and Lutheran pastor Stephen Starke uses the
cross as a bridge from the tree of life in the Garden of Eden of Genesis to the
tree of life in the paradise of Revelation.34 On the tree of the
cross, as we heard on Good Friday (Gal 3:13), Jesus removed the curse from all mankind
in general, and we’re individually delivered from that curse through God’s
Means of Grace.
8.
Today, at last, after all those millennia, we see the
curse removed. We see the flaming sword quenched. We see again the way to the
tree of life. Now after the Sabbath,
toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary
went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of
the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.
His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear
of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the
women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.
He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he
lay.” (Mt 28:1–6) Come!
9.
In the books of Genesis, Ezekiel, and the Gospel of
John, water and the tree of life both figure prominently and depict salvation
(see also Joel 3:18; Zech 14:8). The river of salvation is flowing from the
throne of God and of the Lamb (see Jn 7:37–38), bringing life to the dead Salt
Sea, the lowest and saltiest body of water in the world. That river of
salvation exists for us now in Holy Baptism, where we, who are dead in
trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1, 5), are restored to life by God’s transforming
grace. In Baptism, we first receive God’s name, the sign of his cross upon our
foreheads and our hearts to mark us as one redeemed by Christ the crucified (LSB,
p 268). Our baptismal robes are washed white in the blood of the Lamb (Rev
7:14), and so we have the right to the tree of life. The desert touched by the
river of salvation becomes ever-widening banks of a paradise filled with trees
that yield a different kind of fruit each month and whose leaves are for the
healing of the nations. Such trees of life exist for us now in the Lord’s
Supper, where we in bread and wine eat and drink Christ’s living body and
blood. Here and now, God satisfies our hunger and thirst as he will do for
eternity, when we, delivered from the hands of our enemies, worship him without
fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our never-ending days (Lk
1:74–75).
10.
I mentioned earlier that there were a couple of other
places in the Bible that speak of something along the lines of the tree of
life, and all four of them are in the Book of Proverbs. In one, Wisdom is
described as a tree of life so that those who lay hold of Wisdom, that is, we
who believe—are blessed (Prov 3:18). In a second, the fruits of
righteousness—or, we might say, of the righteous—are described as a tree
of life, as if for others (11:30). Likewise, in a third, a gentle tongue, such
as one that speaks the Gospel, is described as a tree of life (15:4). And
finally, a fulfilled desire, such as that desire for eternal life, is described
as a tree of life (Prov 13:12). All four of those things that God brings about
in us—wisdom, fruits of righteousness, a gentle tongue, and fulfilled
desire—are beneficial to life.35 By God’s mercy and grace, we
become, as we sang in Psalm 1 more than six weeks ago, trees planted by streams
of water that yield their fruit in its season, and our leaves don’t wither (Ps
1:3). As we heard in Psalm 52 today, while unbelievers are uprooted, we are like green olive trees
in holy ground,36 protected in God’s presence, for we trust in his
steadfast love and mercy forever and ever (Ps 52:8–9). Considering the tree
of life, we realize that, although on account of our sin we deserve to be
barred from the tree of life, Jesus’ cross becomes our tree of life and we eat
of its fruit.
11.
Our special Lenten and now Easter sermon series has been
themed “Living among the Bible’s Trees.” We have considered nine
different biblical trees, and each has been relevant to us. We have realized
our need for a Savior, God’s provision of a Savior in the person of Jesus
Christ, and how the saved lives of repentant believers look. By God’s mercy and
grace for the sake of his Son, Jesus Christ, we live among the Bible’s trees
now and for eternity. Christ is
risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.
Notes—
29. Allen, “1670a
Tree,” TWOT, 2:689. Used by permission.
30. Louis A.
Brighton, Revelation (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 625.
31. Schneider, “xylon,”
TDNT, 5:40.
32. For a
perspective on this difference between Ezekiel’s vision and that of Revelation,
see Brighton, Revelation, 624 n. 11.
33. Schneider, “xylon,”
TDNT, 5:40–41.
34. Paul M. Heiser,
“873 The Tree of Life,” Hymnal Supplement 98: Handbook, 141.
35. Nielsen,
Ringgren, and Fabry, “‘ets,” TDOT, 11:274.
36. Franz Delitzsch,
Biblical Commentary on the Psalms: volume II, Commentaries on the Old
Testament, trans. Francis Bolton (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1959), 146.
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