The Tree of Life - Audio
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We need to realize that there's no communication going to take place apart from the Spirit, the Holy Spirit who lives within each one of us and who enables us to both communicate and listen. There needs to be preparation in the heart of the speaker and the ability to communicate, but there also needs to be an attentiveness on the part of a listener. And we have this morning, I think, an exciting portion of Scripture to look at. I'm thrilled about it, but times often happen that when I get thrilled about something, sometimes it leaves other people a little buried. And I want to just ask you to do what you can to stay with me. If you get lost, I'm going to try and bring things together at the conclusion, and hopefully things will make a lot of sense. One thing that has made the death of Princess Diana so tragic and difficult for the world to accept is that she was so young, youth is almost synonymous with life, and the death of a young person is particularly troubling. It just doesn't seem to be right. It just doesn't seem to be fair. It ultimately seems fair and right, if you were to ask most people, is if all of us, while we were young, could go to a fountain of youth somewhere and consume some kind of elixir or vitamin or food, sort of like fluoride in the water, that would keep us for every young, that would heal us of any disease that we might contract. And that if we had an accident, no matter how serious, that somehow we could be injected with a substance, and we would rejuvenate, wouldn't that be great? Well, the answer to that is yes and no. Learn with me, if you will, to Genesis chapter 3, verses 22 to 24. Genesis chapter 3, verses 22 to 24. First book of the Bible, and we've been giving some close attention to this one chapter in our review of chapters 1 to 11. Now, we'll be jumping from this chapter on to chapter 9 in about three weeks, and hopefully that will pick up and thread through the rest of these chapters. Oftentimes in my life, when I hear something red or hear somebody say something, I begin to form a picture in my mind, only to find out later that it was an insufficient or inaccurate representation of what was said, and I think this is certainly the case with what we're about to read. And so I invite you to read with me, but to read without making a judgment at this point, verse 22 of chapter 3, "Then the Lord God said, 'Behold, the man has become like one of us to know good and evil, and now lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever, therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So he drove out the man and he placed chair of him at the east of the garden of Eden and a flaming sword which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. Now, if you were to isolate this from the rest of the chapter, these words might seem merciless, full of pain, sorrow and judgment. In fact, there are many classic paintings that have been painted of the scene of Adam and Eve being expelled from the garden, driven, if you will, out of the garden and judgment. One man describes, I think interestingly, a famous fresco in Florence, Italy, that's called expulsion from paradise. And he describes it this way, since we don't have the painting in front of us, let me read what he says, "In it, Adam and Eve are being driven away by an angel who hovers overhead and swords in hand. Human pair are engulfed in anguish.
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Series on Genesis