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What Is the Trunk of the Tree?

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What Is the Trunk of the Tree?

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What Is the Trunk of the Tree?

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Just what is the trunk of the tree in God's way of life? What is the trademark or the main message of God's truth, and, therefore, the main message of the Church of God? What is the core of our belief? What is the true gospel message we're commissioned to take to the world? That's what we're looking for, is the trunk of the tree of God's truth. And, granted, there are branches that branch off of the main trunk, and we'll come to see that toward the end of the sermon. But what is the main trunk of it, the trunk of the tree of God's way?

Transcript

 

When you look out the window—and you've got permission to look out the windows, except for those of you sitting beside the windows because you are aimed in the wrong direction now with this lovely layout. I really like it. That side of the room keeps this side of the room awake because you can see each other in your peripheral vision, and vice versa. But it also gives it a more intimate setting here for speaking. It's really quite delightful.

I love this. The trees are going to disappear shortly. They get this big green mass that pops out on the ends of their branches, and then all they look like is green jungle from a distance. When you get in to them and you look up into the tree, you can't tell one branch from another because there are branches of others with leaves down below, and it is very difficult to analyze the superstructure of the tree. Right now you can look at the superstructure of the tree. The ash trees are different from the locust trees, which are different from the maples and from the oaks. Each one has a different superstructure. And that's the only thing that holds the leaves up. If it weren't for that, they would all fall. Well, I guess, with autumn they fall, too; but this is the marvelous time of the year to look at the trees and see how they're put together.

I've noticed a commonality in the trees. Down at the bottom, you've got a trunk. And then, if you follow up the trunk a ways, then you have the main branches coming off; and on really big trees, the main branches are as big as small trees. A few years back I was helping at Camp High Sierra in California—that was the very first year we used it, 2003—and one of the activities was to take the campers on a trip to the Sequoia National Park. It's only like an hour and fifteen minutes from the camp location. The Sequoia Park is different from the Grant Grove, which is in Kings' Canyon National Park, in case you've been to that one. That's where the General Grant tree is; and General Grant is, I think, the second biggest sequoia and perhaps the second biggest plant in the world. The first biggest is General Sherman, and that's in the Sequoia National Park. It's in the area they call the Congress, or near the Congress. They named trees after all the parts of the United States government at the time that they put the park together.

The General Grant is a gigantic, massive tree, a couple hundred feet high; and it has a broken top. The thing about sequoias is that they just go straight up. They don't taper in much at all. There's a massive amount of board-feet of lumber there, if it was worth anything. It's not very strong, but it does hold the tree up. They've got an incredible bark. They withstand fires, which is good because that's how they grow. You have to have a forest fire to get the seeds to pop out of the cones, which are lying all over the forest floor, and get started growing. Fire is good for them.

General Grant must be 27 feet in diameter. I think that is what I remember. But way, way up at the top, you look up there, and there's a branch sticking out, I don't know, 150 feet, 160 feet in the air; and the ranger saw us all looking at it and she said, "How big around is that branch?" And we didn't have any idea, but we guessed, and she said, "No, much larger. It's 8 feet in diameter." The branch was as big as gigantic trees anywhere else in the world. It was amazing! So we got to look at the trunk, and that was really the only main branch that it had. Most of them have come off.

So you have your trunk, and then you have your main branches, and then you have smaller branches, and then you have the tiny branches, and then you have twigs. And then you fall off.

Our cat Winston used to do that. He's an Ohio barn cat, which we're convinced is actually derived from the Norwegian forest cats brought over by the Vikings. Norwegian forest cats are called forest cats because they like to climb trees. His confirmation is exactly what a forest cat would be; and when he was young—and he still does now, it's just that he's gotten a little bit fat and lazy in his middle age—he would go climb trees for fun. We had other cats that would climb trees under extreme duress, and they could do it. And then you go get a ladder and get them down, after you chase off the dog. Winston would climb trees and play in the trees. One was a weeping willow at the bottom of our yard up by Columbus, and he'd climb up in the tree and then he'd climb out onto the main branches, then onto the tiny branches, and then he'd get out among the twigs, and he'd fall. But that was OK with him. He'd just throw his claws out and reach for the branches that he was going to bounce down off of. Then he'd climb back in to the trunk and do it all over again. He was the most entertaining cat we've had as far as tree climbing goes.

So trees have trunks and they have all those other branches and then they have twigs at the end. I married a logger's daughter quite a few years ago and always enjoyed her father. He ran a logging company, and her brother had been a logger for all of his working career. I noticed one thing about them. When they would walk into the woods and up to a tree, they didn't pay any attention of significance to the branches. All they were interested in was the trunk of the tree because it was their job to harvest that. Branches are just details. You're going to cut them off and probably just leave them right where they are, unless it is that giant redwood, General Grant; but they like trees too much to do that. And they didn't have a chainsaw big enough to do that anyway.

They always focused on one thing—the trunk of the tree. And that brings us to the lesson today: Just what is the trunk of the tree in God's way of life? What is the trademark or the main message of God's truth, and, therefore, the main message of the Church of God, the true Church of God? What is the core of our belief? What is the true gospel message we're commissioned to take to the world? That's what we're looking for, is the trunk of the tree of God's truth. And, granted, there are branches that branch off of the main trunk, and we'll come to see that toward the end of the sermon. But what is the main trunk of it, the trunk of the tree of God's way?

How similar, for example, are the teachings of the Jesus Christ of the Bible with the teachings of traditional Christianity? Now, if we start doing a mental inventory, we realize, well, there are differences. Oh yes, there are—many. How close does God's true church compare to the churches of this world today, therefore, when we look at the trunk of the tree? Don't get confused by the branches.

In the summertime when the leaves are on, it's hard to even see the trunk sometimes. It is certainly hard to see where the main branches are; but right now, you can look at the trees and you can really get a picture in your mind's eye or in your camera of what the trunk of the tree and the various kinds of trees look like.

So the first step that we are going to do is go back to the beginning. [microphone interference] Did I move it wrong? Testing, one, two. Is that better? OK. I adjusted it and sometimes with the gooseneck—that's what this is called is the gooseneck—and if you wring it long enough, it kills the goose. We hope it hasn't killed it entirely.

Let's go back to the beginning. I don't know if you ever watched the movie Princess Bride; but when the Spaniard gets separated from the hero of the movie, he doesn't know where to go, so he was told by the man who hired him—Vizzini, I think he was, the Sicilian—to go back to the beginning. So he goes back to the beginning, and that's a scene toward the end of the film, if you remember it. When we go back to the beginning, the first beginning in the Bible is actually in John 1:1-5. Part of this we usually have memorized, the first verse, at the very least; but it is good to look at it all.

John 1:1-5 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, being "the Word," who is the main subject of this paragraph. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

Now, the Word, we know, is Jesus Christ. It is made very, very clear in v. 14. You can jot that down or read it later.

V. 14 – And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

But it speaks of the great family of God that we know as God the Father and Jesus Christ. This is the Kingdom of God as it presently exists. So God is God the Father...there are many titles that the Father has and even many more, in some ways, that Jesus Christ Himself has; and so, the Father is sometimes referred to as God, but Christ can be referred to as God as well. So we have God and the Word; that is, God the Father and Jesus Christ. And they have always existed. They're eternal. And that's a concept that we can't fully comprehend.

We can think back, and we can think forward. Let's think forward for a minute. It is our desire to also live forever, going forward; and we can sort of envision that—like the cowboy riding into the sunset, and he gets smaller and smaller and smaller; and you know it just keeps on going because if you ride fast enough, you're not going to get the sun to set on you. You have to ride really fast! But if you keep it up, you could do it. So we can envision going forward, but to think backwards and envision eternity into the past, our mind goes on a very antique phrase: "tilt."

Back in the days before video games, there were actual games. One was called a pinball machine, where there were steel balls and you pushed a button and one came down and then there were other buttons you would push that activated flippers. And you would try to keep the ball from coming to the bottom of the tilted table by bouncing it up there and bouncing it off all these little things that made dings and dongs and scored points for you. And it would finally slip past your flippers...it slipped past mine really fast. I was never any good at it. But the people who were good at it, like my cousin, he would sometimes shake the machine to keep that ball going. Theoretically that was OK under the "shake rules," but if you shook it too much, it would go "TILT" and it would start flashing a red light and send off a siren and the pinball police would come and arrest you, or make you go back to the soda fountain and drink soda pop instead of playing anymore.

Our minds go on "tilt." We can't envision eternity backward. We have very finite minds. Now there will be a time when we won't have finite minds and we'll be able to envision forward and backward forever without any problem, but right now we can't.

The other point I wanted to draw from this is that Jesus Christ created all that was created. So now we go to the other beginning in Genesis 1:1. Go back to the beginning. This is all in the quest of finding the trunk of the tree, and it will become clearer as we unfold it. For some of us, in decades past, we have heard this lesson time and again; and yet we have to hear it again, yet again, to bring it fresh into our minds.

Genesis 1:1 – In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

When it says God did it, we know that is the Lord God of the Old Testament; and that was Christ, because He made everything that was made. We just read that in John. So He was one of the two great beings that formed the family of God. Christ was the one who did the act of creating. So He created the heavens—that would be the universe—and the earth, as a part of it, with the earth being the focus, the apple of God's eye, what He is really focusing on in all of this vast universe that we are a part of.

But then there was trouble, and we have to go to other scriptures to fill in the gaps and details. When we get to v. 2, there was trouble.

V. 2The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep.

"Without form and void" is also translatable into "chaos and confusion." And the chaos and confusion was caused by something else. We know that from 1 Corinthians 14:33, where it says God is not the author of confusion, so God didn't make the heavens and the earth in confusion. Something brought confusion. And we know that to be the rebellion of the angels, the ones now known as the demons, and lead by Satan...as I said, other scriptures fill in the gap. The tense of the word in English that is translated "was" can also be rendered "became," which makes much more sense. It [the earth] became without form and void or in chaos and confusion.

It reminds me of the two rock-and-roll groups that came out of the Bible—one was from the book of Acts, and it was Simon Magus and the Gnostic Five. I don't know if you remember any of their hits, but you undoubtedly are familiar with the music by Tohu and Bohu and the Chaotics, because that's what "without form and void" means in Hebrew. The word tohu means "without form," and bohu means "void." Tohu and Bohu and the Chaotics, now there would be a number. And probably you are familiar with their music. It has been played by a lot of other groups that sound pretty chaotic to me.

Continuing v. 2-3 – ...and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. So there was a worldwide flood, and there was darkness because of the cloud cover. Everything needed to be made right; and so, God said, "Let there be light," and things started happening so that light could exist. He probably rearranged the solar system to bring everything into the junctures that it needed to be and probably put the earth back on the correct axis that it needed to be on, and all kinds of other things what would have been done. The earth existed before this. It was being prepared for man. This is the creation time for mankind.

Then it goes all the way through the chapter, and finally we come down to the apex of God's creation, which was not the angels, nor was it the physical universe. The apex of His creation is mankind. And we see that made clear in v. 26.

Genesis 1:26 – Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image..."

Now I will stop on the word "us" for a moment. What do you mean, "Let US make man in Our image"? Well, this is a hint, a little insight into the fact that the Father and the Son are the family of God; and, thus, they are God as God is defined by God Himself, Themselves. They can be spoken of singly or together. "Let Us make man in Our image." That became clear with the New Testament, with John 1, being one of the classic cases in point. So we have the Father engaging in this part of the creation, in that sense, v. 26,"Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness."

So human beings—being as how we all are, as much as Adam and Eve were—are made in the image of God. Bodily, we look like God looks, and the Father and the Son look. We're in the same form or shape. And you think that makes perfect sense except, you know, the strange thing is that traditional Christianity doesn't technically teach that. We found that out a couple decades ago, about 18 years ago. They don't teach that. They teach that spirit has no form, to the point, philosophically...and you think, well, what do they teach theologically? I thought theology was from the Bible and not philosophy. Hmmm. Philosophy and theology in this world sort of start to sway back and forth, like the twigs on the ends of a tree branch. So philosophically they think that spirit can't have a form, which is wrong, because we know that God does have a form and God is spirit and, therefore, because God decides all those things, that there is form to spirit. We just can't see it. It's beyond our senses to perceive.

When we're baptized, we feel wetness. When we have hands laid on us, we feel the weight of palms for the receiving of God's Spirit; but we don't feel God's Spirit. You cannot feel it because it is imperceptibleto our five senses. However, in the course of time for a newly baptized person, you will see the effects in your thinking. You will see the evidence, the fruit of God's Spirit, working in your mind. Within a few months, you begin to see things, things that you had struggles in maintaining a positive or right attitude about, you will find it is much less of a struggle. There will be all kinds of other aspects that just...changes in the way you think, which is the whole idea. That's what repentance ultimately is, and it is more fully carried out once we're converted because we have the power to do so.

So God created man in His image. We're made in God's image physically. We look like God looks bodily. However, when you stop and think about it, the creative part of man wasn't finished then. Physical creation of man was completed, and it was good. Adam and Eve, when they got married, they were pretty happy about it, too. It was good. However, there is a spiritual image. We need to be like God spiritually. And that process, as we call it, is conversion; and it takes time, and it is yet to be fully completed, which will only happen at the time of the resurrection.

When you go on and read there in Genesis 1:

Continuing Genesis 1:26 – Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."

So all the grubs that are eating the roots of your lawn...we have dominion over them. What you do is, you capture moles and then release them on your lawn, and they dig under your lawn and they eat the grubs. That's what their purpose is. And it gives it a nice spongy feel when you walk over it. It's actually better than poisoning everything; but still, there might be a better way than moles. But we have dominion over all of that, the moles, the creeping things. It's like the grub, in one sense.

V. 27-28 – So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Male and female—we're all in the image of God. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

And so, that's what happened. And things looked pretty good. God had this garden that He prepared for the man and then, shortly thereafter, the woman. We read about that in chapter 2, just down a few verses.

Genesis 2:8-9 – The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden...so the location of this is Eden. It is the garden of Eden, as we call it. We know that...and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.

All these trunks...now I presume that, you know, He made trees grow and they were in various stages of maturity, not unlike people that do major overhauls of landscaping. They don't put in seeds and expect to grow trees and have a nice looking landscape. They want it to look like it's been there a while, so they buy big trees and the landscape guys come in with their heavy trucks and they lower the tree with its massive root ball into a hole that they have dug for that purpose.

I remember at Ambassador in Bricket Wood we were doing that one time. I worked on the college farm part-time, and occasionally I would go assist the guys that worked on the grounds. We had pretty extensive and pretty amazing grounds. The Bricket Wood campus of Ambassador College in those days was actually the former home of Sir David Yule. You probably haven't heard of Sir David Yule, but he was the Bill Gates of the late 1800s. He was the richest man in the world. He owned the British East India Company, and he needed an estate in England. And so, he bought what later became known as Hanstead House, which we called Memorial Hall. That was one of our classrooms and then our library after that. So it had beautiful grounds. We had cedars of Lebanon that were brought in from Lebanon that grew there that were about 3-1/2 to 4 feet in diameter at the base. They were 400 years old, planted at the time of Oliver Cromwell. So it was quite a beautiful place. But we, therefore, didn't put seedlings in for trees.

We needed a spruce tree to replace a tree that had died. They brought it in, and we had the equipment. We had the boom truck, and we tried to lower the spruce. It was 25 feet tall with a really big root ball; and every time we lowered it, it lowered so that the tree was going off at an angle like that. And immediately passers-by would get a kink in their neck as they try to make everything right when they look at the tree. They were trying to find the trunk of the tree, just like we are. So we got the land rover—they had a land rover pickup—and they connected the land rover's cable for the winch to the front bumper of the truck to pull it down so we could lift the tree back up. The front end of the truck was in the air like this, and the tree was sitting sideways. So he cranked it down, and as he cranked it down, the rear bumper of the land rover went up. So you had two trucks like this, and that's when I came by, driving a Massey Ferguson tractor from the farm. It was obvious that we needed the weight of the tractor on the other end of the land rover, so I hooked onto the land rover and pulled them all down, and then the tree came up off the ground and we were able to position it and get it settled. But it took three vehicles to get it done. So I am sure that God, you know, He doesn't have to have trucks to plant trees; and in the garden, He just planted trees at various stages of production and various ages. Instantly He can have them there whenever He wants without the rigmarole that we were going through. So the trees were planted in the garden.

Genesis 2:9 – And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden...oh, now we come to the two trees...and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. These two particular trees were in the midst of a garden that had many other trees. And it talks about the boundaries of the garden, and then we come down to v. 15:

V. 15-17  – Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. You may eat of all the other trees, including the tree of life."
It was meant to be eaten from because it had particular meaning; but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they were to leave alone. And then we go into the creation of Eve that starts there and goes through the rest of the chapter. So we have the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. The tree of life symbolized everything good, as we have come to see in reading the scriptures. It symbolizes God's way, His Holy Spirit. Ultimately, it symbolizes eternal life in the Kingdom of God, hence the tree of life. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil symbolizes man's way apart from God, or in violation of God's way. There may be some little temporary good, but nothing that will last eternally. It is man's way infected with the devil's thinking, and it ultimately leads to death, just like the proverbs: There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. That is cited twice, Proverbs 14:12 and Proverbs 16:25.

There is a way that seems right to a man—this is, essentially, what the tree of the knowledge of good and evil symbolizes. Now, that was summarized long ago by Herbert Armstrong, I think quite brilliantly. The tree of life was symbolized as the way of give, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was symbolized, what he summarized, as the way of get. Now, the way of give is the way of serving and helping and sharing. It is of outgoing concern for others equal to your concern for self and your dedication to God above all. But the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the way of getting for self, irrespective of concern for others. It's selfishness, it's the wrong thing, and it leads to death. The way of give and the way of get.

For a long time in the church, those terms were commonly used. They're good terms to use and they are a brilliant way of summarizing what the two trees were all about.

God told Adam he should eat of all the trees except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so he should have eaten of the tree of life; but he apparently did not. We come to chapter 3. Again, this is all of the trunk of the tree—actually, the trunk of two trees here. We want to get to the trunk of the tree of life; essentially that is what we're after. This is deception time, because suddenly we meet the great dragon, that serpent of old, called the devil and Satan. And that is cited out of Revelation 12:9, and it is referring back here to the serpent of old.

Genesis 3:1 – Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field, so the serpent is actually Satan manifesting himself as a serpent...more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?"

Now we think that's irregular. We know from the previous chapter that Adam named all the animals. And he's the only one that spoke English, or whatever, "human." He's the only one that spoke "human." None of the animals spoke human. While he was naming them, they all spoke "bow-wow" and "moo" and "meow" and "cluck, cluck, cluck," whatever sound it was that they made, and, I don't know, snakes mostly hiss. I don't know that they have any vocalizations beyond that. But Eve didn't seem to be worried about that, which is not a good thing. If things seem just a bit off, they probably are. There's a bit of wisdom to learn from this.

We know that the serpent, as I said, was, in fact, the devil manifesting himself. He was the great angelic cherub who had rebelled, who had put the earth into tohu and bohu, back in chapter 1, and then God repaired it and planted these trees in this magnificent garden that He made for mankind. But Eve, after he said, v. 1,"Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?" Here is a baiting question. "Did God really say that?" And you use a tone of voice and you're creating doubt in the veracity of God, which obviously was the whole point he was making.

V. 2-3And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.'"

So she gives this very thorough religious answer to a preacher that shouldn't be talking "human," and never stopped to ask why he was doing that. And you think, "Oh, gullible Eve." In fact, the Bible calls her "gullible Eve" back in 1 Timothy 2:13-14.

The irony of it is this, that Adam was right there, and he wasn't deceived, which is also in 1 Timothy 2:13-14. He saw through this and it still happened, and he could have stopped it. It was a real joint project on the part of humanity.

V. 4-5 – Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Oh, it's so much better if you eat of this tree, you can see stuff that you don't see yet."

I thought Jason was spelling "meth" and left the T out when he started doing that...and I was worried for a minute there. If you take meth and eat that—I don't know how they use it—but you'll see things that aren't there, too. And then you'll die! A very terrible death. After your teeth fall out and your face gets all wrinkled and ugly and gray...it's a terrible drug.

He goes on with his saying, v. 5, "For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God...this is the way to enlightenment. Come down this way."

Do you see the angle of temptation? "This is really the cool way to live. You don't have to listen to what God says. He's trying to hide something from you." This is called disinformation, accusation, innuendo, all the things that one who is against God, which is what "Satan" means—against, or adversary. And "devil" means accuser. All these things that he was saying against God...this is not just a simple statement. Don't ever think it was. Eve fell for it. We don't have to.

V. 6 – So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food...

Did she have a book that said "edible" under a picture of the fruit? "The tree of the knowledge of good and evil has fruit like this, the tree looks like this," and did it say "edible"? I have mushroom books, and they say they're either edible, nonedible, or poisonous. The poisonous ones pulsate, and when you try to touch the picture, you get shocked. You don't really, but you try to remember the picture, at least. No, she couldn't look at it and be able to see that it was good for food. She had to take that information from the devil and start reasoning from where he had brought her, the so-called knowledge that he brought her.

The second point is, it was pleasant to the eyes. Give her credit, you can figure that one out. "Well, that's pretty." And most any fruit is. Even "destroying angels" are beautiful mushrooms, but don't eat them! That's why they're called "destroying angels." They will kill you quickly. "Morels," on the other hand, the king of the mushrooms—which will soon be out if we have days like this and nights like last night—they're edible. But if you're worried about that, just bring them to me if you find any and I'll double-check.
Continuing v. 6So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes...she could see that...and a tree desirable to make one wise...you can't tell that by looking at the tree. She had to be reasoning from the premise that the devil had given her. We have to be careful that we don't reason from the premises that this world is full of, that the devil has given them, and thus, from them to us. So she took of its fruit and ate. Notice this, she also gave to her husband with her—he was right there. 1 Timothy 2:13-14 makes that clear. He was right there and he ate as well. So it was a joint project that caused the downfall of what had been a happy future to become the terrible world of today.And that's how it came to be.

Let's notice Galatians...before we go to that, I want to show you the happy ending that is alluded to. The first prophecy of Jesus Christ Himself is in v. 15, because God then takes the devil to task, the serpent to task, He takes Eve to task, He takes Adam to task; and they have all inherited curses because of what had happened here. In v. 15 He is talking to the serpent. He said to the serpent:

Genesis 3:15 – "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel."

Bruising your heel you can recover from; bruising the head, you don't recover from that. That is a prophecy of Satan trying to destroy the Messiah, which he tried to do through various agencies—whether the Romans or the Jews or whoever—when Christ conducted His ministry. But ultimately Christ will bruise the head of the devil, and he will be bound and removed from the presence of God and man for all eternity. So there will be the seed of success found there.

Now we go to Galatians 1. What Adam and Eve did is they launched the world on a course, a way of living that was the way of get, rather than the way of give. And that's the world that we have inherited. In Galatians 1, Paul is making a reference to it in v. 4. If we read v. 3it will kind of give the sentence flow better.

Galatians 1:3-5  – Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever.

He will deliver us from this present evil age. This present evil age began with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, and we're still in it. It is not a world based on God's thinking. You have to distrust virtually everything until you have proven whether it has some validity and some value or not—facebook included, and lots of other books.

Now we go to Romans 5. Again, Adam and Eve launched humanity on a course of living that plagues us today. Eventually that will stop with the return of Christ, but not until then. We begin in Romans 5:12-17.

Roman 5:12 – Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin...that man was Adam. Remember, Eve was made from Adam. So, in essence, he was the first man...and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned...and death is the penalty of sin, which is in the next chapter. And there is a parenthetical in v. 13-14 that says, For until the law, that is, the law when it was delivered through Moses, written down...it existed, but it was written down in Moses' day...until the law, sin was in the world...you had to have the law in force for there to be sin, so the law of God was in force right from the beginning. For until the law was codified, in essence, in Moses' day, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam...Adam, because he was the first man, started a chain reaction of sin in humanity. ...who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

So, Adam is a type? Yes, Adam was a man who started a chain reaction. In this case, a chain reaction of sin unto death. There is a second Adam who started a different chain reaction. That's the one he is a type of.

V. 15 – But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many.

In other words, Adam launched the way of get; it's still with us. But Christ launched the way of give.

V. 17 – For if by the one man's offense death reigned through the one, that's Adam, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

So you see how that prophecy of Genesis 3:15 began to have its effect. Adam started a chain reaction of bad things, of getting for self at the harm of others. Christ started a chain reaction of good things, which we are trying to follow. We have the ability by using God's Spirit and striving to overcome, but we still live in Adam's world. Now, the world is going to change in due course.

Let's go to 1 Corinthians 15. The destiny of man is, as we alluded to back in Genesis 1, he is made in the image of God, first of all bodily, secondly spiritually. We will have the Spirit of God. We will be a part of the family of God. That is our destiny. This is the trunk of the tree! By understanding how things started in our world, we suddenly see clearly what's happening. Instead of swirling around in minor details, we see the big picture coming out of the garden of Eden which set in motion everything around us. Here is a section we don't read often, but we're going to today.

1 Corinthians 15:42-45 – So also is the resurrection of the dead. This is the resurrection chapter, so we'd expect it to be about that. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. I don't think this is specifically talking about moral corruption, although the analogy is true. This has to do with the body decomposing, which is what Beethoven has been doing ever since he died—decomposing. It is sown in corruption, raised in incorruption. In other words, we can't decompose ever again because we'll be spirit. We won't be subject to death when we are resurrected. It is sown in dishonor...now, that would have more to do with morals and righteousness or lack of righteousness...it is raised in glory, again, righteousness. It is sown in weakness, and we understand, being human, as we are, that we are weak; it is raised in power, the power that the Father and the Son have. It is sown a natural body, a physical body which we have, with aches and pains that we put up with right now, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. So you see, we are made in the image of God with the natural body, but we will also be in the image of God when we are resurrected, far more so. And so it is written, now we are coming back to a reference to Adam, "The first man Adam became a living being." The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

Jesus Christ is the last man, the second Adam, or the last Adam. First Adam, last Adam, or first and second, either way, it's a reference to Christ being a life-giving spirit, and He will give us eternal life at the resurrection of the dead.

V. 46-47 – However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, you know, the physical existence that we have, and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven.

So we see, again, the analogy of comparing Adam from Genesis with Christ Himself. Adam was a fall-short comparison because he fell short, as have all the rest of us ever since, being human as we are. You know, Mark Twin said that. Do you remember that famous scripture in Hebrews where it says that man was made a little lower than the angels? And, of course, the scripture goes on to say that in the resurrection, we will be higher than the angels. Mark Twain read that part of scripture once—he was the great American author who wrote Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and some other books. Mark Twin was a little bit of a pessimist of sorts, but he obviously had reason. He had experienced great tragedy in his life. If you read about his life, he lost most of his children through death, either in a fire or through illness. He had a lot of sadness, and he saw...he's kind of a realist. He saw what human nature was really like in a lot of respects. So his version is, "Man was made a little lower than the angels, and he's been getting lower ever since," which is also true. Man was made a little lower than the angels, talking about Adam, and humanity has gotten lower ever since.

OK, so the last man Adam became a life-giving Spirit. The spiritual is not first, but the natural. And afterward the spiritual. So we have the natural physical body now, but we are looking forward to a spirit body, a spiritual body, to come.

V. 47-49 – The first man was of the earth, made of dust, or in the King James, "earthy"; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust, and we understand the dust part; and as is the heavenly Man, because Christ is in heaven and coming back from there, so also are those who are heavenly, they are spiritual. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man.

So man was made in the image of God physically or bodily in the garden of Eden, but we are in the process now of being made in the image of God spiritually. That is the finished product that God is after, and that is the destiny of man. That's what our booklets are about, the Why Were You Born? booklet and the What Is Our Destiny? booklet, which covers the same thing. That's why we were born, so that we could be in the Kingdom of God. But we have to go through this transition process that started when Adam and Eve were led astray by the serpent, and they followed along and now we have inherited a world that is like that. The destiny of man is to be made in the image of God.We must ultimately bear that image, the spiritual image, of Christ; and that is salvation and eternal life in the Kingdom of God. That is what we look forward to. And we have the opportunity to do so.

Let's go back againto Genesis 4 this time. We're making progress through that book. I call this passage "Cain's opportunity." That was the problem with Adam and Eve—they raised Cain and caused one bad thing to lead to other bad things; unfortunately, this son of theirs cooperated.

Genesis 4:6 – So the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen?"

And you think, what did He mean by "countenance fallen"? Countenance is your face. You're down in the face. Body language. Christ could read his body language as well as read his mind. And we understand that. When somebody is angry, very, very few people can mask anger and make their face look placid. At a certain point, the anger comes through, with the furrowed brow and the gritted teeth and then lines that show up on your face that you didn't know you had before. It's really, really kind of ugly, scary ugly, so we try not to get angry like that. It didn't seem to bother Cain. He was furious that God had honored his brother's sacrifice but not his. And the reason He hadn't honored Cain's sacrifice is because Cain gave exactly what God didn't ask for. God expected Cain and Abel to obey Him and do what He asked. Cain said, "I'm going to give You this. I'm going to give You vegetables. Don't You know that's better for Your diet than eating meat, especially red meat?" But Abel gave of his livestock, just like he was supposed to do. God respected Abel's offering because that's what God asked for. God doesn't have to worry about eating too many vegetables. They're good for us, but...Cain was ticked off really bad, and God said to Him, in v. 7...and this is the opportunity. You could call it "Cain's challenge," too. "If you do well, will you not be accepted?" And that is the opportunity we all face. If we, knowing God's truth, if we do well, if we follow God like righteous Abel—and he is called righteous Abel back in the book of Hebrews—if we follow God and are obedient to God, then we will be blessed. We'll be accepted. God will be pleased. That will lead us forward more toward Christ and less toward Adam. And the next question is:

Continuing v. 7"[However], if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it."

And you think, well, how can you be stopped if sin is all for you. It doesn't mean that. Sin's desire is for you like a man-eating tiger's desire is for their next human meal. It will eat you alive. Well, normally they'll kill you first. Tigers are at least decent that way. I've read a lot about man-eating tigers and man-eating leopards. They're scarier yet because they're really kind of scrawny and they can still carry you off into steep valleys and into the jungles where they lay down and crunch, crunch, crunch, they eat you. Until a man named Jim Corbett puts a bullet in their brain; but, you know, he doesn't always get there in time.

He [Jim Corbett] is a real guy who killed most of the man-eating leopards and tigers in northern India for the first forty years of the twentieth century. James Corbett was a major in the British army during World War II. He's only written about six books; I've read four of them. But he knows how to describe enough details that you kind of feel like you're there. He would often go when the tribesmen would come because he was their friend. You know, he would come with his hunting rifle and then he would hunt the man-eater; and, in many cases, he hunted the man-eater while it was hunting him because that was the only way to find it in the jungle.He needed lightning reflexes to do that. When God said to Cain that sin's desire is for you, He meant it wanted to eat him alive. It wanted to consume him and destroy him, "but you should rule over it." You rule over sin. That's the challenge. If we do well, we'll be accepted; and if we do well, we will be ruling over sin.

Now we go to Acts 17, because the challenge or the opportunity of Cain is the opportunity of every human on earth. God did not just give the Israelite tribes or the ancient nation of Israel—when you put all the tribes together, He didn't just give them the incredible human potential of being a part of His divine family. He gave it to everybody. And this passage in Acts 17 makes that abundantly clear. The apostle Paul has been preaching the gospel in Athens. It is the epitome of Greek cities in his day. It is the center of education in the Roman Empire. I don't understand that exactly, but the Romans were more powerful than the Greeks by far, but they had the Greeks educate them. It seemed to me that the only thing that could do is make you less powerful. But somehow it didn't seem to work exactly that way. Athens was considered to be essentially the world's university—the whole city. So Paul gives here, starting in v. 22, he gives what we call the sermon about the unknown god.

They had these pedestals that statues would normally be set up on, and the statues would all be gods and goddesses that the Greeks would worship. But they had a bunch of them scattered around the city that said, "To the Unknown God." There had been a plague at one time hundreds of years before, and they called upon a wise man, I think from Crete, to come and help them stop the plague. So he said to take a flock of sheep and turn them loose at the Areopagus, which was actually where Paul went to speak, and then follow them and wherever they laid down, sacrifice them right there "to the god we don't understand," because they had made sacrifices to all the other gods and goddesses. And so, they did, and then the plague was stopped; and so, they erected all these pedestals with the inscription, "To the Unknown God," wherever the sheep or goats had laid down to sleep and then were sacrificed there.

So what Paul is doing is explaining to those who are the classic gentiles, not Israelites, he's explaining to them God's plan for mankind. He's giving them the trunk of the tree, right here.

Acts 17:26-27 – And He, referring to this God that they don't know about, he said, "I know this God. You are very religious. I admire you for your religiosity, you Athenians. And you have all these inscriptions. I found one that says ‘To the Unknown God,' and I've got something to tell you. I know all about Him. Just sit back and let me explain it." So he started to do that. And He, this God that you don't know about, has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth...what he just said is that every human being in the entire human race descends from Adam. We are all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, all of us. No matter Israelite, no matter what we call race...I don't think that race is the big determination between peoples, I think it's tribes. The tribes, whether you know the tribe you are a part of or not, I think the temperaments are more tribal than that, but the race is human; and we're all from Adam and Eve. And He made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings—God has orchestrated elements of the history of all the tribes of all the earth—whatever continent and whatever time—so that they should seek the Lord, for the purpose, therefore...He organized the boundaries of their dwellings, He put the sea at different places and mountain ranges and rivers and things like that, natural boundaries so that they should seek the Lord in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him...

If you do well, will you not be accepted? And so, God reached out to all those, even those who were not of the lineage of Abraham. He offers this opportunity, just the same, as soon as they know about it.

V. 28 – ...for in Him we live and move and have our being, referring to God, as also some of your own poets have said, and then he quotes it, "For we are also His offspring."

"We are His offspring" is not quoting from scripture. He quoted from a Greek poet named Epimenides who wrote about 600 or 800 years before Paul lived. But Paul knew what he said, and he used what he said. He used, probably, a pagan guy's poem to prove a point of truth. Remarkable, because there was a point of truth there, that humans are descended from God. Epimenides evidently had that.

V. 29 – Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man's devising.

So we are the offspring of God. The trunk of the tree is that humanity are the children of God, physically, who will be God's children spiritually at the resurrection. That's the trunk of the tree, when we enter the Kingdom of God.

Now we come to v. 30-31. What's the action step?  Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked...you haven't known this, God understands that, He's willing to forgive, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead, referring to Christ.

There is a day of judgment for all mankind. There is a plan that God is working out here below. We have a day of judgment referred to here. In 2 Corinthians 6:1-2, Paul makes this statement and he quotes something from Isaiah 49.

2 Corinthians 6:1-2 We then, as workers together with Him also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain. Do not receive God's grace and His mercy in vain. Act on it. For He says, and he quotes now, Isaiah, "In an acceptable time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you."

The words "the day of salvation" can also be rendered "a day of salvation," which would correspond with "an acceptable time," the indefinite article.And that's how it is referred to in Isaiah in the King James Version.

The few of God's true church in this age are having our day of salvation. It's us now; it was those who came before us earlier; but we are just a tiny few, a tiny few. Then there will be the remnant of mankind that is left who will have this phenomenal day of salvation during the millennial rule of Jesus Christ. And then, and we know this because we see a lot of other scriptures here, then there is the Great White Throne judgment when the rest of the dead live again, and it will be their first time to have Cain's opportunity: "If you do well, will you not be accepted?" It's an incredible plan of salvation, which is the core and the root of God's way and the trunk of the tree.

Back a verse or page or two to 1 Corinthians 15 again, we read this plan of God outlined.

1 Corinthians 15:20-24 – But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, that's Adam, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead, that's Christ. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. We have the Adam and Christ connection again. But each one in his own order...there is a plan. Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ's at His coming. Then comes the end, and ultimately He will deliver the kingdom to God the Father...So He has the Kingdom of God as the essence of that trunk of the tree and of the plan of God.

We know the passage upon which we have based our Kingdom of God Bible seminars. It's Mark 1:14-15:

Mark 1:14-15Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel."

The Kingdom of God was the gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ preached. The Kingdom has four elements...we wonder, well, isn't love really the trunk of the tree? I would say love is, in conjunction with God's way, it's obviously God's way, isn't it? It's the way of give.

There are four elements to a kingdom. One is government. In this case, it's the divine royal family of God the Father and Jesus Christ, right now. We get to be that later. It's territory is the earth, it's the universe, it's eternity, in a sense. It has subjects, that's number 3. You have government, territory, subjects. The Kingdom of God governs over people right now and angels. And then, finally, there has to be a system of law for a kingdom to exist. And there is this system of law. Christ makes this clear in Matthew 22, and here is the connection with the way of give, which is simply another way of saying the way of loving others. In Matthew 22, the Pharisees were trying to trip Christ up in this section of scripture, so the Pharisees sent a warrior, somebody who could argue God's law, and to test Christ with a question. So he said:

Matthew 22:36-38 – "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? What's the greatest commandment of the law? What's the biggest one?" Trying to see if he could pry something loose and discredit Jesus in His speaking. And there had to be a crowd. There always seems to be a crowd around Christ when these take place. That's their whole purpose. They have to discredit Him in front of others. Instantly, Jesus said to him, "‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment."

Now he [the man] was probably hoping for one of the ten commandments, maybe the Sabbath, maybe not murdering, maybe honoring your parents or something. "No," He [Christ] says, "You love God above all."

V. 38-39 – "This is the first and great commandment." Christ goes right on and gives him extra, "And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"

Love God above all and your neighbor as yourself. I think it's important in analyzing the trunk of the tree, this is the order. No. 1 is loving God; no. 2 is loving your neighbor as yourself. Sometimes the world chants loving your neighbor, sort of their emotional appeal, but they forget to love God. And they do like Cain. They don't honor God as God says for Him to be honored, and He makes the rules. You know, His way is the way of give; He defines it.

V. 39-40 – "And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."

The ten commandments devolve down from the two great commandments—loving God above all, as we have always known, is the first four, summarizing or teaching that. They are more details of loving God above all things. And the last six talk about loving your neighbor as yourself. Actually, number 5 can be going either way. If you look at God as a parent, then honoring your parent is certainly a part of loving God.

So it is God's love of His way, loving your neighbor as yourself, as the basis for the law and the prophets. The ten commandments, in that sense, are the details of the two great commands; and the rest of God's truth descends down from the ten. The trunk of the tree is getting back to what started in the garden of Eden and what God's plan for man was, to make him a part, to make him His children in the Kingdom of God. To do that, we have to follow the way of give and not the way of get. The way of give is the way of loving your neighbor as yourself, but above that, loving God above all.

We live in a world, brethren, that is deceived. Traditional Christianity does not understand God's truth. Other religions understand even less than traditional Christianity does. But we are the called-out ones of the true body of Jesus Christ. We know the divine truth of God's incredible plan for mankind to become, in essence, the God kind. Our destiny is to be the children of God, His sons and daughters in His Kingdom.Always remember that the gospel or the good news of the Kingdom of God is, in essence, then, the trunk of the tree.