Scripture: Psalm 1; Revelation 22: 1-6
Sermon: The Tree and River of Life
Topics: life, good, bad, holy, trees, torah
Preached: July 11, 2010
Rev. Mike Abma1
Psalm1 The Tree of Life
Happy are those
who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
2 but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law they meditate day and night.
3 They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.
4 The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgement,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6 for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
Revelation 22: 1-7 The River of Life
22Then the angel* showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life* with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants* will worship him; 4they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign for ever and ever.
6 And he said to me, ‘These words are trustworthy and true, for the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants* what must soon take place.’
7 ‘See, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.’
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION PSALM 1
Psalm 1 is a deceptively simple Psalm.
In four sentences it describes the moral order of things.
It describes the Good, the Bad, and the Holy.
The Good are those who avoid wickedness,
and who delight in righteousness.
The Bad, the wicked, are hardly described.
They are like chaff —
No roots, no permanency, simply blown about by the wind.
Then there is the Lord, the Holy One.
He is described as watching over the way of the righteous.
Literally it says, the Lord knows (yada) the way of the righteous.
but the way of the wicked will disappear.
The first word of this psalm is blessed or happy.
At its heart, Psalm 1 says:
A blessed person is someone who knows God.
A blessed person is someone who is known by God.
And here is the central metaphor, the main image, of this kind of blessed person.
They are like trees planted by streams of water
which yield their fruit in its season
and their leaves do not wither.
A blessed person is like a tree by a stream,
drawing life from God,
bearing fruit for God.
That is the wonderfully rich picture we have in this Psalm.
So how does a person draw life from God and bear fruit for God?
Well, they are those
who delight in the law of the Lord,
and meditate on it day and night.
LAW – TORAH — PARADISE REGAINED
The law of the Lord.
What is that exactly?
Well, it is the way of the Lord.
It refers to more than the 10 commandments.
It refers to the first 5 books of the Bible — the Torah.
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy — The Torah.
Do you know that the book of Psalms is also divided into 5 books?
Book 1: 1-41
Book 2: 42-72
Book 3: 73-89
Book 4: 90-106
Book 5: 107-150
Do you know why the Psalms are divided into 5 books?
It is to parallel, to mirror, the 5 books of the Torah.
So what are the 5 books of the Torah about – in a nutshell?
We know many of its stories, but there are large sections of the Torah that we spend very little time looking at.
Take for instance what happens after Israel leaves Egypt in the book of Exodus.
Israel is at Mount Sinai by chapter 20.
That is only half-way through the book of Exodus.
What happens for the next 20 chapters, between chapters 20 and 40?
Do you know that most of these chapters are about the building of the Tabernacle?
Do you know that God gives 7 speeches of divine instruction?
Why 7?
To mirror the 7 days of creation – and so that we know this is not simply a coincidence, the seventh speech is about the Sabbath.
Do you know that the two main builders of the Tabernacle were Bezalel and Oholiab?
Do you know that before they began their work of creating the Tabernacle,
the Spirit of the Lord moved over them – again, almost the same language as the Spirit moving over the face of the deep in Genesis 1.
And when Bezalel and Oholiab made the Tabernacle,
with the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies,
remember what was at each end of the ark?
There were Cherubim, angels, with outstretched wings,
protecting the ark – guarding the Divine Presence.
Again, that hearkens back to Creation, to the Garden of Eden,
to the day when Adam and Eve were banished,
and Cherubim were set to guard the road back into the garden.
These are just a few of the many, many references back to Creation.
Once you begin reading about the Tabernacle
and once you begin reading about the way of life outlined in the Torah
you begin to realize that it was all written
so that Israel could be a colony of a new creation.
It was all given so that that Israel could be put back on the road to paradise.
People delighted in the Torah so that
neighbor could live at peace with neighbor,
humanity could live at peace with creation,
and humanity could live at peace with a Holy God.
The Torah provided a vision of shalom.
That is what Psalm 1 is calling us to do.
To delight in the Torah.
To meditate on the ways God has provided to live out this shalom.
It is no accident that the image here is of trees by a stream.
This image again pulls us back to the Garden,
back to the tree of life,
growing near the banks of the river of life,
back to the time when we enjoyed the living Presence of God,
back to this vision of shalom.
Of course, Psalm 1 isn’t the only place
the righteous are described as being like trees.
Earlier in the service we read from Isaiah 61,
that great chapter of God’s deliverance —
of good news coming to the oppressed,
freedom to the captives,
and comfort to all those who mourn.
And to sum it all up,
Isaiah writes that these redeemed people
will be called “oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord.”
Torah-following people,
were like mighty oaks,
with roots going down to the living water
of God’s goodness and grace.
TOLKEIN and TODAY
The writer J.R.R. Tolkein was very familiar with this yearning for paradise.
He was also very familiar with the language of the Bible.
It is no accident that his loveable Hobbits were gardeners,
living close to the earth,
and that the place where they lived, the Shire,
was a place that flourished and blossomed.
It is no accident that the evil Orcs hated plants,
and that they lived a land called Mordor,
that was barren, treeless, a wasteland.
And when there is a battle for Middle Earth,
and Isengard has gone over to the dark side,
it is no accident that their evil is vividly displayed
in the uprooting of trees
and the spoiling of creation.
Gandalf becomes the only wizard to stay true to what is right.
And as the tree-shepherd Ent, named Treebeard, observes,
“Gandalf is the only wizard that really cares about trees.”
Tolkein was using Biblical images,
but he was tapping into a universal desire.
There is something deep within our human longing to get back there;
To get back to the way it once was,
when we enjoyed each other without fear;
when we delighted in the goodness of creation without want;
and when we were devoted to God without shame.
Isn’t that partly why we love puttering around in the garden,
why we leave our homes to go camping,
why we take long walks in forests,
and watch glorious sunsets over lakes.
Even die-hard atheists can’t help but feel their spirits lift
when they see a hummingbird hovering over a bee balm flower
sipping nectar in the quiet of the morning.
They may not know why they feel so good.
They may not know why they feel so grateful.
But they do.
We understand why they do.
We have read the Psalms.
We know where the Psalms begin.
We also know where they end —
they end with all creation praising God —
the sun, moon, and stars,
the mountains and the hills,
the flowers and the trees,
the hummingbirds of the air and the fish of the sea.
When we glory in the beauty of creation,
we are simply being caught up in
the earthly choir’s praise of her Creator.
REVELATION 22 — TREE and RIVER OF LIFE
Like oaks of righteousness,
like trees planted by streams of water
yielding fruit
with leaves that do not wither.
The longing remains,
to know God and be known by him.
To draw our life from him.
To bear fruit for him.
We know that the Old Testament dreams withered.
We know that this colony of the new creation was cut down.
The tree toppled and fell.
It became a stump.
But in the words of Isaiah,
even that stump became a seed of hope.
For one day the Torah became flesh and tabernacled among us.
He gave his life for our life.
He offered his righteousness to become our righteousness.
and his holiness to become our holiness.
He became for us the way, the truth, and the life.
The tree of life is now the cross.
The river of life is now the water of baptism.
The only way to draw life from God and bear fruit for God,
is to be rooted in Christ,
to be grafted into him,
to follow his way.
Through Jesus,
and his Spirit that lives in us,
we have become temples,
we are the new holy of holies,
we are the new colonists of the new creation.
This new creation is less a memory of what once was.
It is now a yearning for what one day will be.
John was given a glimpse of what it will be like.
Trapped on a rather barren, dry, rocky island of Patmos,
John is given a breath-taking vision of the garden city that awaits us —
a vision lovely enough to break anyone’s heart.
There are no more cherubim with flaming swords or protecting wings.
No, now there are gates, 12 wide open gates,
welcoming people from every tribe, nation, and tongue on the planet.
And people are streaming through the gates,
into this city along the river – this river of life,
with a grove of trees on either side –
trees bearing fruit.
Trees with leaves that never wither.
Trees whose fruit and leaves bring healing to everyone.
There is nothing cursed here.
There is no chaff, no windblown debris,
only that which knows God
and is be known by him.
And everything and everyone who knows God,
is filled with his praise,
and the vision of shalom restored is realized at last.
CONCLUSION
When we lived in Bowmanville, Ontario, our house was next to the river that flowed through the west side of town.
It was a beautiful stream valley,
and I loved taking the kids for walks upstream along its bank.
If it was early enough in the morning,
you might see a fox,
or deer grazing,
or wild turkeys.
I loved the sound of the water,
rushing and rippling over the rocks.
These, I now realize, were Sabbath moments.
Times to ponder the source of all this beauty,
all this life, all this wonder.
That stream was
filled with trees along the banks, shading the water,
keeping it cool, a perfect habitat for fish.
In the spring, rainbow trout would battle their way up to their spawning grounds.
In the fall, other kinds of trout and salmon would do the same.
Every once in a while, we would find a whole congregation of fish
below an undercut part of the bank.
resting and shimmering,
facing upstream,
facing that last-leg of the journey still awaiting them.
And we look upstream too.
We look upstream,
beyond the veil of time,
beyond the trials of our own journey.
We look upstream,
setting our faces toward the New Jerusalem,
the Garden City,
with its cross-shaped trees of life
growing on the banks of that crystal-clear river
where God will know all,
and will be known by all.
All things
drawing life from him
bearing fruit for him,
and there will be shalom at last.
Blessed are all those who delight in this vision,
and meditate on it day and night.
Amen
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