A&E, Sin & Dry Wood

A very long time ago in a Garden far away, Adam and Eve -- A&E, for short -- came out of the closet. Yes, they had sinned, they knew it and they were ashamed and tried to hide from God. In fact, when they came out they tried to cover their shame with leaves. 

The closet is no place for sinners. And as such, all of us need to come out. All of us have sinned (Rom 3.23)

Notice what God does NOT say to A&E:

•  "Now that you're out, doesn't that feel better?"
• "Actually, I created you to sin so your sinful state is acceptable to me."

The words and actions of God that follow tell us that Adam and Eve would not feel better just because they came out.  They were not acceptable as they stood before Him.  Notice what God does and says, in this order:

1.  God cursed Satan (Gen 3.14)

2.  God promised a Savior who would deal the death blow to Satan while sustaining an injury himself. (Gen 3.16)

3.  God pronounced judgment upon  A&E, because of their sin. (Gen 3.17-19).

4.  God covered up A&E because human efforts to cover up sin won't suffice. God sacrificed an animal and made appropriate "coverings" for them. (Gen 3.21)

5.  In His grace, God drove A&E from the Garden and posted a mighty angel as a guard at the gate, lest they venture back into the garden, eat of the Tree of Life and live forever in their sinful state. (Gen 3.22-24)

For the first two chapters of the Bible, no Satan. That spells paradise.  The ominous, opening words of Genesis 3, however, spell ruin and destruction, "Now the serpent..."  John Milton wrote his great epic blank verse poem, Paradise Lost, about the events of this third chapter after eternity past.

We'll come back to A&E but first, fast forward.

Fast forward almost to the end of the Bible, interestingly enough, to the 3rd chapter from the end, the third chapter before eternity future.  Satan is banished to eternal hell. He enters the world in Genesis 3; he's banished to eternal hell in Revelation 20.  That leaves us with two chapters of Paradise (Gen 1-2) and with two chapters of Paradise Restored (Rev 21-22) Pretty neat, huh?  But it gets better still... and it's more than neat, it's eternally true and necessary to life.

The central feature of the Paradise Restored, Heaven, will be the Tree of Life (Rev 22.2).  And as only God could do, this Tree is connected to the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden... by another tree, the cross.

In case you're wondering, I haven't forgotten A&E.  Just this last excursion and we're back to them.

When Rev 22.2 talks about the Tree of Life, it uses the word xylon for tree, not the customary word, dendron (as in rhododendron).  Throughout the NT, tree always translates the Greek word xylon -- the tree to which John the Baptist said the ax was being laid (Mt 3.10), the trees from which people cut off branches on Palm Sunday (Mk 11.8), the fig tree Jesus mentions in Lk 21.29.  It is even the trees of the book of Revelation (7:1, 7:3, 8:7, 9:4) with One Notable Exception - Rev 22.2.

The "tree" of Rev 22.2, xylon, means "wood, beam, cross"... and with that, the tree of life in Revelation is connected to the Tree of Life in Genesis.  Every mention of Christ hanging on a tree in the book of Acts (5:30, 10:39, 13:29, 16:24) is the word xylon.  The Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden connects to the Tree of Life in Heaven by the tree upon which our Savior hung on Mt. Calvary. One telling use of xylon is by our Lord, Himself.  As Jesus was carrying His cross up Calvary's mountain, the devoted of God were weeping and mourning for him.  And He said,

"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.  For indeed the days are coming in which they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which never nursed!'  Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us!' and to the hills, 'Cover us!'  For if they do these things in the green wood [xylon] what will be done in the dry?"  (Luke 23.28-31)

This is what A&E needs to know and what Christians in America and around the world need to remember.

All was paradise before sin entered the world.  Coming out of the closet doesn't make sin better.  It doesn't make it acceptable to God.  It doesn't change the ugly nature of sin.  Coming out of the closet does not satisfy a loving God because ultimately His holiness prevails.  He is Holy; we are sinful.  All will be paradise again but not because we achieve political correctness, not because of profits which stream in from a majority of the viewing public.  All will be paradise again because of the Cross of Christ.  

Look what Jerusalem did in a green wood, to the innocent Christ.  What would become of them in a dry, without Christ?  It took less than one generation, 40 years, for them to discover that as Rome destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD, forever ending the sacrifices for sin offered in its Temple.  

We who are Christian can expect that our world, largely without Christ, is fast becoming a place where we may wish our wombs never bore, where our children would not have to live in the midst of savage and unnatural desires and forces.  But the scripture tells us that those who in their pride do not like to entertain the knowledge of God will be turned over to a reprobate mind, a depraved nature (Rom 1.26,28).  Those who have redirected their journey in life by way of the cross will find their way to the Tree of Life in Revelation for all eternity.

It's okay that sacrifices are not being offered in Jerusalem's Temple these days. In fact, it's God's plan because the blood of bulls and goats could never atone for sins inside the closet or sins outside the closet (Heb 9.13-14).  The perfect Son of God took His innocence to the cross and there took our sins upon Himself, paying forever the wages of sin (Rom 6.23) which are due to a Holy, Immutable God.  And if that were not enough, he nailed the invoice for our sin to the cross marked "paid in full" and make a public spectacle of Satan in the spiritual realm (Col 2.14-15).

A&E are creating a public spectacle.  While those who oppose God will one day find a time when they will cry for the mountains to fall on them in eternity, Christians in America find that the green wood is quickly becoming dry and we may be facing more difficult days than we could ever imagine.  Fear not, however; God is faithful.