When Your Focus Is On the Tree

When Your Focus Is On The Tree

8/26/17

Whether one believes in the content of the Bible or not the majority of people around the world have heard about the story of Adam and Eve and how it changed the lives of humans forever.  There is a great deal of information about our surroundings in this short account of our beginnings, but information that is needed in order for us to understand God, our enemy, and human activity as well.  Most importantly, this story brings into light the effects of obedience and how important it is to obey God and not just focus on the rules and regulations that our enemy wants us to harbor first.  This lie of our enemy shall continually be followed if we do not recognize our need to obey God and keep His Ways in our heart through obedience and until we live in such a manner our lives shall always be overturned with animosity.

Every message, title, and article that God has given me to write over these past five years now have dealt with the importance of obedience and how this single topic is the key to understanding God and having a relationship with Him.  Nowhere in God’s Word does it say that He allows us to live in disobedience and that it is alright and okay for us to live in such manner.  The Bible is always talking about obedience and it gives countless examples of what occurs when we live in obedience and when we do not.  There is a reason for this teaching for God does not wish for any of His prized creations to miss His Will for their lives and to die in their sins and be eternally separated from Him and the riches of His definition.  We should find this point very telling since it is dealt with on all sides right from the beginning of the Bible, and once again we will be directed to the Garden of Eden and the beginning of Genesis to hear what God is saying to our hearts.

All of us have disagreed with our parents’ rules at some point in our growing span of life, but that does not mean that we should completely rebel against them over one issue either.  I have found myself questioning such rules from my parents and many times I have not taken it to heart when they were doing their best to explain the reasons why those rules were in place.  We have heard the phrase I may be sitting down on the outside but I am standing up on the inside or something similar to these words and while this phrase may sound good at the time it serves as the basis for our individual downfall and if allowed to grow a downfall of national proportion.  It is our job as kids to respect our parents and the bible states this policy many times over and therefore since we are all children of God we must obey His rules as well and do our best to understand the importance of obedience and not just the rules themselves.  We want to obey our parents’ rules but when the time comes for us to choose whether to obey or not many times we choose our own self will instead and until we understand that obedience is better than sacrifice our choices can prove to be deadly.

There is nothing more intimidating than a person who continually throws the book at someone when they are trying to make a point.  The rules need to be known and understood there is no question about that but when the law is taken out of hand and placed onto the shoulders then continually led with, of the ones in charge that setting will eventually take a turn for the worse.  People who have a kind and gracious heart for the rules will obey them when times of question arise but not if they are constantly being reminded and then bombarded with how things should be run and not trusted with such information.  The key to any good supervisor is to trust your employees with the truth and then allow them to uphold these truths in order to provide credible results, the same goes with God and the rules that He has ordained throughout His Word.  However, many people have not understood this policy and have used the laws of God to beat people over the spiritual hearts with and then condemn them instead of teaching them the reasons why God put those rules and regulations into place in the first place.  An individual or nation shall wish to obey rules and laws if they are in agreement with the authority figure who initiated these rules, and we all know what happens when we do not agree with them, but what we do not know is that if we recognize the rules first and not the person or entity who established them first our focus is off and it shall cost us dearly.

God has mentioned to us before about the importance of obedience and what occurs in our lives when we choose to disobey.  Obedience was not an issue for humans before sin was chosen as a way of life by us for we lived according to what God provided for us and we had no outside worries that presented it to us.  But that setting did not last long and we found out that there was a presence of curiosity that was able to question the laws of God and their interpretation thereof, a guise that eventually cost Adam and Eve their livelihood and dominion altogether.  But what was the reasoning as to why Adam and Eve chose the ways of the world instead of living in perfect peace and holiness; it must have been a powerful force to change a heart so drastically. 

Even before our human history began God wanted only one thing with His creations and that was to have a relationship with them.  It does not matter if the relationship was between angels or humans, God’s desire was to know them and for us to know him as only He designed.  The only way that we could achieve this status was to be in obedience to Him for God represents absolute Truth at all times and we can only understand Him in such manner as if we are obeying His Truth.  My favorite Christian musician hit it on the head many years ago when Keith Green sang about how obedience was/is better than sacrifice and that the only way one could obey is to have a clean heart all of which is created by God.  It is through relationship and obedience that we have the capability to understand why God placed His Ways into life and when a relationship is established and flourishes the His Laws become secondary in the shadow of relationship.

In Genesis Chapters 1 & 2, we find the creation of the world which includes the creation of humanity.  Right from the beginning, God sets out to demonstrate that He wants nothing more than a relationship with Adam which can be spilled over to our lives today.  God issues a directive that Adam should keep the dominion that God gave him clean and neat at all times and protect it at all costs.  God also defined the one tree that Adam and Eve should not eat of but we must remember that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was within their dominion which meant that it as a part of their upkeep duties.  It does not matter how big the Garden of Eden was or how many trees and herbs bushes were present, God wanted Adam and Eve to obey what He wanted from them and to complete this task with a relationship heart.

But at some point during the time period between Genesis Chapter 2 and the beginning of Chapter 3, we find that the relationship heart of Adam and Eve had changed and the ways of God became a duty instead of a willingness of obedience, a focus change that would eventually cost them dearly.  In Genesis Chapter 1, we have God describing the serpent and how cunning he was in all that he did and it was through this portion of his existence that became a necessary part of Adam and Eve’s lives for if he was not there would not have been any reason for the both of them to heed his words.  In the conversation that we have between Eve and the serpent we find that there is a specific pattern to the line of questioning that the serpent used, for it was strictly based on the law that God had placed out to Adam and Eve only, a true testament to what the serpent believed and a nasty trick that Adam and Eve fell for.

We must remember that Lucifer fell for a specific reason and that was his hatred for obedience to God and to His Laws.  Lucifer knew that God was almighty and knew everything and thus had no rival present.  When we think about this process of rebellion that Lucifer took we have to stop and believe that this being was absolutely nuts to think that he was going to be greater than God the one who created him.  Yet, as we ponder on this subject we can understand his reasoning because we have done this to our parent’s rules too and tried to think up of a way to circumvent them so that we can have our way.  It is here that we define the difference between relationship and rule breaking for it is what our heart is set on first that brings this setting into play.  It is obvious that Lucifer had no intentions of developing his relationship with God any further and that finding a way around God was the plan of the day, a course of action that said rules were now more important than relationship.

The fall of Lucifer had already occurred when the Garden of Eden was made and humans were placed into their dominion.  The serpent was allowed to enter and to be a part of the process of life within the Garden of Eden, he also knew what his plan of action was going to be for it was the exact plan that he had when he believed that he could overthrow God and His existence.  Satan knew of the thoughts and patterns that Adam and Eve had and he understood that if he could manipulate these patterns enough and over a long enough period of time that he would eventually sucker them into the same type of separation from God that he had and in order to do that he had to plant the thought of law first and relationship second into their lives.  When the Serpent addressed Eve concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he based his talk on one area the law that God said and nothing else.

The reason that he mentioned nothing else except the law that God gave to Adam and Eve was because if he did it would have triggered the thought about relationship with God instead of the law and it is this point of contention that Satan did not, does not, and will not address when he is trying to grab your attention away from God.  It was the relationship status of him and God that defined him as being the father of lies and if a person is schooled in the knowledge of this principle then it will not be used as a source of contention because relationship is the foundation of our existence with God, to God, for God, and in God just as it was for Lucifer.  The law that Adam and Eve should not eat of the tree was superficial and not the core or root of what their lives meant.  Obedience is what God wanted from them and it is obedience that serves as the foundation of that relationship.  Satan had grabbed their attention enough away from the truth of obedience that they focused on the law and when that occurred there is no doubt that they had doubts about why God placed that law into their dominion.  This process is a human truth about ourselves and it cannot be denied by any person either for we have all followed this path about our lives.

Can you imagine if Satan had addressed the obedience side of God’s command about not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?  This is the first example and the reason why God spoke further in His Word that a kingdom cannot be divided against itself and survive for if Satan would have addressed the exact issue that caused him to fall he would have defeated his own kingdom’s purposes and thus our lives probably would have been a different story.  The law of the tree was the superficial content that Adam and Eve fell for when Satan tricked them, God only wanted Adam and Eve to willingly participate in the obedience of relationship and if they would have understood the deepness and the roots of this eternal truth, things would have been so much more different for them.  We cannot afford to have the same address as Eve did when questioned about the tree, her answer was superficial and not relational a huge symbol of where her heart was at that moment and a picture of where our hearts are today.

Look at the quagmire of laws today and tell me what you see in them.  We have succumbed to the gravity of such impurity that we are turning around in circles and digging a self-sized hole in the ground that will eventually serve as our own drowning place.  Obedience represents purity for God established a relationship in this manner, through His own defining characteristics and that is the reason understanding the law is good but it shall not serve as the salvation that we need to live with God for eternity.  Stop and think about things for a minute concerning this choice that God gave to Adam and Eve a long time ago, God knows that He planted free will into our lives and we knew/know that He wants us to obey Him at all times so what better way would God present than to place the choice of Him or the law in our paths?  It might seem like a folly but it is an ingenious plan that demonstrates where our heart lies.  Our only problem is that we tend to forget about this genius of God and take matters into our own hands and not think about the entire picture and truth of why God does things; a testimony of why God has different ways and thoughts than humans.

The law alone cannot fulfill itself and that is the reason why God represents the relationship definition because God Himself is the Law and thus defines the Law through Him and if we do not obey Him then no matter how much we try or how many laws we write we cannot fulfill them because we do not obey Him first.  The Pharisees were brilliant at observing the law and Jewish Law but had no concept of a relationship with God.  Along with the Sadducees and Scribes, the Pharisees made up law as they went projecting their physical interpretations of God in the physical flesh (them) and thus confiding in their own personal and superficial presence to the “sinners” of their time.  What they did not know and what Jesus combated the most was the fact that they were following the exact same path as Adam and Eve did when they were in direct conversation with Satan and about to pick the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  So, what is the difference between the Adam and Eve, the Pharisees and the Church today?  Not very much!

Look at this verse, Genesis 3:6, and it is the defining test that all of us have to make at one point in our lives and the answer we give concerning this test question says a lot about what is in our hearts.  Above all else, God wants obedience from His children and when we live in obedience to Him the laws that are in place become secondary for God represents the Law through obedience in Him.  Adam and Eve chose the superficial instead of the deep root which defined them and thus projected that their relationship status with God had waned significantly.  In turn, they had no real concept that relationship gives us the understanding of why the law is in place for it must be in place in order for God’s order to be present.  When a superficial law takes a hold of our lives, relationship automatically takes a backseat and therefore is vulnerable to the superficial wellness of self.  Obedience desires relationship for it is the reason it is in existence and when placed in a different position it cannot function properly and as it was designed.

The question now presented is who are we obedient to is it the world (the tree) or God (obedience)?  The world’s point of view should not even have to be addressed but unfortunately, we must because the modern Church has also taken from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  I know that that statement and the words of this message are a little tough but they are words that we need to hear because we a steadily sinking in our own homemade muck and we fail to see where we are headed.  The Titanic is sinking and we are still playing music is the best example I can think of right at this second but it is the message that God wants us to understand.  Our hearts are focused on the superficial tree and not the deep root of obedience.  In no way should the Church be focused on the world and its standards yet we have gladly and systematically grabbed a hold of the fruit and gleefully taken a bite from it.  The more we place our focus on the tree the more we shall miss God and hear what He is warning us about, this is a given and not a maybe.

Church, it is time we once again neutralize Satan by obeying God’s Word completely, obedience to God is the ONLY way we can achieve any push forward against our enemy and until we start obeying and fulfilling what God intended for us to do the world shall continue its destructive path in our hearts.  Listen to God’s voice and allow Him to be number one in our hearts again before we have sunk too far down and are helpless when the rushing waters approach.  God loves us so much and He wants us to live in complete peace and harmony but it shall not occur until we drop the fruit from our hands and spit out the piece we are chewing on and ask for repentance.  The fruit may be tempting and good for the eyes and stomach but obedience is best for the heart and eternal placement.  This truth from our eternal Father spells out exactly what our enemy is focused upon so, where is your focus?

DLB