Friday, June 10, 2016

Secondary Bible Themes 8 - Trees




Here is a list of themes in the Bible.One of them is trees. Trees in general represent a connection or intersection between heaven and earth. They extend their branches, leaves, and needles upward and there very shape is an arrow pointing to heaven. At the same time, however, they are firmly and deeply rooted in the earth below. This is why a tree Christmas Tree is a symbol used at Christmas, when the divine became human. Planting a tree was even a form of worship in ancient times before the covenant with God (Genesis 21:33, Deuteronomy 16:21).

Genesis 1:11 Describes a Garden of Eden full of trees. Verse 2:18 explains that the vegetation yields food with sources of running water and verse 9 explains that there are two trees on streams specifically named, which are tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. One brings protection, life, comfort, grace, and community as people gather to eat. The other casts a shadow of death, sorrow, and hardship.


Proverbs likens good things to the tree of life, such as Wisdom (11:30), A desire fulfilled (13:12), and a gentle tongue (15:4). Psalm 1:3 states that the blessed man is like a healthful tree, planted by streams of water. He yields fruit, has leaves that don't whither, and is always prosperous. This language of a man being a tree that bears fruit is continued throughout the Bible. 
Good tree bears good fruit bad trees bear bad fruit. There is the Fruit of the spirit and Sanctification fruit.

This brings to mind the imagery of the Garden of Eden. Referring to the blessed man, restore what Adam lost. While we all aspire and work toward this, the ultimate fulfillment of this blessed man is Jesus. This is explained in Jeremiah 17:7-10, which sounds a lot like the Psalm, but with the addition that our hearts are deceitful and desperately sick, showing that we are not the perfect fulfillment of the good tree.

Continuing the theme of Heaven being like Eden restored, in Chapter 47, Ezekiel discusses his vision of a massive river lowing east out of the temple of Jerusalem with trees growing for food on both sides. Their leaves will not whither, nor fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit.


This imagery of Heaven and the New Jerusalem is repeated again in Revelation 12:12. God shows John his vision a tree by a river that bears 12 kinds of fruit, one for each month. Leaves are for healing of the nations. Throughout John’s writings, he likes to link Genesis to Christ (such as John 1). Christ is the tree of life. Christ bore the fruit, Christ healed the nations.



Also, God being the perfect blessed man then allows us access to the tree of life one again. "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God." -Revelations 2:8

The tree of life acts as bookends to God's story of the Bible, with Jesus as the tree of life in the middle, anchoring and tying the whole thing together. Man ate of the forbidden tree and was spiritually dead, along with being banned from the tree of life, causing physical death. The God of Life who is life, died on a tree to give us a new spiritual life and came back to life to defeat death, so that we could eat of the tree of life once again and have a new physical life.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”
-Galatians 12:12

“And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God.You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance. -Deuteronomy 21:22-23 as a Prophecy of Christ.

The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.
-Acts 5:30-31

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. -1 Peter 2:24

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