1.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly
Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Amen. The message from God’s Word
as we begin the season of Lent with Ash Wednesday is taken from Psalm 1,
portions of Genesis 2 & 3, and Deuteronomy 30. The message is entitled, “The Tree of the
Knowledge of Good & Evil,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
Unless you are more environmentally minded, you may only
care about the trees you see and experience on a daily basis, such as the ones
that drop sap or leaves on your car, shade your homes, and paint your
landscapes. You may be able to think of other such examples. Although we may
not see them every day in the same way, the Bible’s trees are relevant to us. In
fact, considering them helps us realize why we need a Savior, how God provided
a Savior for us in the person of Jesus Christ, and how the saved lives of
repentant believers look. This repentant season of Lent, our special sermon
series is themed “Living among the Bible’s Trees.” We begin that series
by considering the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Considering the Tree of the Knowledge of
Good and Evil, we realize that, although we do only evil, we have life and every
other good in Christ.
3.
Although the first chapter of Genesis narrates God’s
creating fruit trees in general and mentions his giving those trees to the
first man and woman for food (Gen 1:11–12, 29), the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil is the second of two specific trees mentioned in the Bible,
as we heard in the First Reading. This particular fruit tree God’s Word set
apart; it was “fenced,” as it were, by his Word,1 which told
the man not to eat of it, under penalty of physical and spiritual death. The
man and later also the woman were to honor God with obedience to his Word that
expressed his will regarding the tree. They were to work and keep not only the
garden but also God’s commands concerning the garden and their relationship to
it.2
4.
Tragically, the serpent tempted the woman to doubt God’s
Word spoken to her by her husband regarding this tree. Since she considered the
tree’s fruit good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirable to make one
wise, she took the serpent up on his tempting suggestion and also gave some of
the fruit to her husband who was with her. They both disobeyed God by eating of
it, and they both suffered the consequences for their sin, including being
banished from the garden.
5.
Through the centuries, art has usually depicted the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil as an apple tree, but we really don’t
know what kind of fruit tree it was. And, we don’t know much about how the tree
lived up to its name, although there are various speculations.3
Certainly before the man and woman ate of the tree, God’s Word revealed to them
what was good and what was evil. And later in God’s Word, out of concern for
the truth in this regard, King Solomon’s request for an understanding mind to
discern between good and evil pleased the Lord (1 Ki 3:9). So, people
knowing the difference between good and evil can’t itself be the problem. Maybe
all we can say for sure about the man and woman’s eating of the tree is that
doing so changed for the worse their relationship to God and their relationship
to each other.4 As their physical and spiritual descendants, we by
nature suffer from those same consequences of their sin, and our sinful natures
lead us to add sins of our own. This, of course, is what we confessed tonight
by receiving ashes on our foreheads, and what we were reminded with those
words, “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19).
6.
Unlike the first man and woman, we’re not purely good to
begin with, but we all by nature are dead in our trespasses and sins. We’re
dead in our trespasses and sins regardless of our age. Any so-called “age of
accountability” or “age of discernment” or “age of discretion”
is imagined; ignorance of good and evil has never been an excuse, and no one is
truly ignorant anyway. God’s Word continues to reveal to us all what is good
and what is evil, and so, like the man and woman, we also are to honor God with
obedience to his Word. But apart from faith in God, by nature all we can do is
dishonor him with disobedience to his Word. Our Psalm presented well the two
ways: (1) the way of sinners, walking in the counsel of the wicked and
sitting in the seat of scoffers, or (2) the way of the righteous, delighting in
the “law” (or “teaching”) of the Lord and meditating on it day and night. The
wicked are like the chaff that the wind drives away; they don’t belong to the
Lord’s Church and won’t withstand his judgment but perish. The righteous are
like trees that don’t wither, because they are planted by streams of water and
bear their fruit in its season; the Lord knows them and blesses them.
7.
The righteous are righteous when, as God enables them to
do, they turn in sorrow from their sin and trust God to forgive their sin for Jesus’
sake. Jesus is the Seed of the woman, who bruised the head of the serpent to
the point of defeat—a smackdown from which the serpent ultimately will never
arise—since, even as the serpent bruised Jesus’ heel to the point of death on
the cross (Gen 3:15), Jesus did rise from the dead and lives forevermore. Jesus
perfectly honored God with obedience to his Word, and on the cross he paid the
price for our failure to do so. Jesus’ sacrifice fulfills the animal sacrifice
God made for skins to cover the man and woman’s shame. The fear of the Lord in
the form of faith in Jesus is the wisdom we need in order to be forgiven (Prov
1:7).
8.
As God’s Word set apart a particular fruit tree that
ended up being the cause of the man and woman’s physical and spiritual death,
so God’s Word now sets apart other ordinary things to be the cause of our
physical and spiritual life, if we don’t reject them. God works life for us
through his preached words of Holy Scripture, through the Sacrament
of Holy Baptism, through the words of forgiveness in Holy Absolution,
and through the bread that is Christ’s body and the wine that is Christ’s blood
in Holy Communion. These Means of Grace enable our repentance and
faith, give us the forgiveness of sins, and result in our honoring of God with
obedience to his Word. Considering the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, we realize that, although we do only evil, we have life and every other
good in Christ.
9.
In the Second Reading, God set before the people of
Israel, whom he had delivered from slavery in Egypt, blessings of life and
curses of death and called the people to choose life. So too, God sets before
us, whom he has given physical and spiritual life, the same blessings of life
and curses of death and calls us to choose life. In that regard, the scenario
is largely the same as it was for the man and woman facing the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. Apart from the First Reading, Holy Scripture
never again mentions that tree, and so it remains somewhat shrouded in mystery
to us. Likely part of God’s salvation for us by grace through faith in his Son,
Jesus Christ, is that we don’t have to deal with that tree eternally. Instead,
whatever might bring death has been removed from us, and so, as we are “Living
among the Bible’s Trees,” we have only life in Christ and all the good that
life brings! Amen. Now the peace of
God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus
until life everlasting. Amen.
1. Ronald B. Allen, “1670a Tree, etc.,” Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, ed. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer
Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke, vol. 2 (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), 689. Used by
permission.
2. C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament:
Volume I, The Pentateuch,
trans. James Martin (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1959), 84.
3. K. Nielsen, Helmer Ringgren, and
Heinz-Josef Fabry, “‘ets,” Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, eds. G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer
Ringgren, and Heinz-Josef Fabry, trans. David E. Green, vol. 11 (Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 273.
4. Brevard S. Childs, “Tree of Knowledge,
Tree of Life,” The Interpreter’s
Dictionary of the Bible, ed. George Arthur Buttrick, vol. 4 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962),
696.
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