4-3-2015

Good Morning All,

          1 Peter 2:24; “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.”

    It all started at a tree.  Trees on the high plains of South Dakota are rare.  If they are here, someone put them here.  Away from the creeks, streams and rivers, there are very few indigenous trees; the probability is that someone planted the tree.  Sort of like how God planted the trees in the Garden of Eden.  “And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. (Gen. 2:9)  So the trees began to produce food and beauty and shelter and a peacefulness that only exists in a garden.

   Yet we know the rest.  A serpent, the devil actually, whispered and deceived Adam and Eve and soon death, sorrow, pain, sadness and all the troubles of the world showed up and the trees that once gave only food, shelter and beauty now gave spears, arrows and ways to provide death.  Wars are fought over the territory that trees now occupy and trees are often used as shields or walls to protect or hide behind to fight.  The value of trees has shifted.

    Soon empires and rulers began to use trees in despicable ways by using them as instruments of hideous deaths.  Some would impale their victims running a spike through the lower bowel region and exiting through the collarbone region.  The goal was to miss all vital internal organs so death would be slow and painful.  Some empires and rulers preferred to hang their victims from a cross shaped tree and let them slowly die of asphyxiation.  The crueler ones would use nails to add to the pain and the suffering.  Trees had come from things of beauty and of nurturing to things of death and terror.

    It was this kind of tree that Jesus used to win the victory.  On the cross, he crushed the head of the serpent that poisoned the first tree of life.  Now Jesus has made this second tree the new tree of life for us.  With his blood we are cleansed.  With his blood we are redeemed.  So as we look at this tree we should not be consumed by guilt.  We should not respond out of guilt thinking that we somehow owe God and can repay him.  Rather, we should look at the cross and see God’s unimaginable love and his unfathomable mercy.  Rather than guilt we should feel thankful, joyfully, exuberantly thankful.  We should experience a rebirth of desire, desire to serve God.

    For God invites us by his love to come into his kingdom and to serve him with love.  He calls upon us to see the beauty of this once hideous tree.  He calls us to cling to this cross so that we might always know of his mercy.

Father, we give you thanks for the redemption which you have so freely given to us because of what Jesus has done for us upon the cross.  Lead us to see the cross with hearts filled with thanksgiving and joy.  Let us see the cross as your great gift to us.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret