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Village SDA Church

Ron Kelly

Meeting at the Tree - Chapter Three

I'm praying that our hearts would be open and our minds would be open.

And now, Lord, I pray, bless us as we focus our lives on your soon coming.

I was having a family memory this morning, having my mom and dad here with us this morning.

We're so glad you can be here, mom and dad.

It's a great privilege for me to have you here.

And I was thinking about when I was about 5 years old.

That journey was traumatic, thank you mom, but I did learn.

And not being very aware with only 5 years of experience, I didn't understand what a big risk my parents were taking when they allowed me to ride my bike from 304 Fulton Road, all of those 7 or 8 blocks all the way over to the little candy store.

I was told in no uncertain terms that the bike was ridden on the sidewalk alone and that when I came to the corners, I would get off and walk my bike across the street.

I was a good little boy for the first half of the trip.

But on the way back with my newfound sense of conquering the world on my two-wheeled bike, and by the way, in those days they had banana seats and high-rise handlebars, and if you were a girl, you had little streamers hanging off the end of your handle grips.

And so when I got up to where the fire department was, of course it only happened to be probably the busiest road in town, which wasn't terribly busy in our little town, but it was way busier than the others.

I thought to myself as I came to that wide access to the parking lot of the fire department, it won't hurt me a bit to slip out onto this road and see how much better it is to ride on the blacktop than the cement.

Now, only being 5 years old, I had a very limited perspective on life.

How was I to know that my father had been following me the whole trip in the car, watching?

I was rapidly apprehended, and I'm sure speedily punished, and properly so.

Take your Bibles and open them if you would to the book of Genesis, chapter 3.

We don't know how long Adam and Eve had been on the face of the planet.

We don't know if it was weeks, months, years, or decades and eons.

But we do know that from the time they walked in the garden until the time they fell to sin, there was a test.

It was a tree whose name was the knowledge of good and evil.

Adam and Eve had been warned that there was a rebel in the universe.

And like Satan himself, who was once Lucifer, and was given the choice to obey God, they would have a choice.

The very essence of who God is is self-determination under the auspices of his creative power.

All that Adam and Eve had known was good.

And like my five-year-old limited perspective, the idea that someone could be so evil or something could be so bad was beyond her purview.

But 1 thing that was not, she knew what goodness was.

Every single tree in the garden bore fruit It was all sweet.

She was in love with the most handsome man She was co-regent on an earth full of animals that had taken names given to them by humans.

And she was the queen of this lovely estate called Eden.

But she finds herself 1 morning or 1 afternoon.

We don't know separated from her husband And there she is at the tree.

She comes to the tree According to the spirit of prophecy actually thinking out loud the thoughts, the cautions, talking out the thoughts, thus Satan himself who cannot read your mind but does study your life, your words and your actions picked up on what she was saying, and her without even sensing that she had been thinking out loud is very, very impressed.

For the snake picks up almost where her thoughts left off.

The serpent, verse 1, was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made and he said to the woman indeed As God said you should not eat from any of the trees of the garden And the woman said to the serpent from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden God has said you shall not eat it or touch it or you will die and the serpent said to the woman you will not surely die God knows that in the day that you eat from it your eyes will be opened and you'll be like God knowing good and evil.

The woman saw that the tree was good for fruit and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to make 1 wise she took from its fruit and she ate and she gave also her husband with her and he ate the eyes of both of them were open They saw things they never saw before.

They sewed fig leaves together to make themselves coverings.

And they heard like they had never heard before, the Lord God walking in the garden of the cool of the day and they felt like they never felt before because they were afraid.

Before there was a battle for the mind of Adam and Eve there was a battle in heaven Revelation 12 tells us that there was war in heaven The dragon and his angels fought with Jesus and his angels.

Because an angel by the name of Lucifer, dawn of the morning, is how some of your scriptures describe him was not content with his place and he would not submit To God the angel that stood in the very presence of God who was what we call the covering cherub who walked amidst the firing stones the Old Testament prophets speak of and yet he said to himself I will ascend I will sit on the throne of God I will sit in the sides of the north which was a reference to the sanctuary and the visible throne of God on earth.

He was not content to a life of purposeful submission.

He instead wanted a higher estate, and he came plying his trade for a higher estate to Eve.

He was a slick dealer and in the end he suckered them out of the entire globe and out of their freedom.

Satan comes down to earth and the Angels which formerly were guarding Adam are now guarding the access to the tree of life.

Stationed outside the Garden of Eden which remained on this earth until sometime before the flood were angels.

The presence of the garden was a testimony to the legitimate story of creation.

And this morning I want to assure you there are many other proofs that how the story began is indeed pure history, not fiction.

Adam and Eve are now exiles in their own kingdom.

It is a kingdom which now is ruled by Lucifer or Satan, and this engagement at the tree has turned out to be the great ruination of their future.

They can't even control themselves anymore.

They get angry, you see it in the life of their children.

Cain hates Abel, there's not enough self-control to say, well, I guess I didn't do it the right way when I brought my offering.

Instead, he rises up and beats his brother to death.

When we look at the story of the human race, what was in the beginning was All was good with access to a knowledge of good and evil.

What we see now is that all reflects the battle between good and evil.

There are thorns and thistles, there are rosebuds and the sweet scent of flowers.

But all around us now, it's a very different world.

But the tree of knowledge of good and evil is still there for you and me.

It's not exactly the way it was, But the opportunity to do it your own way and not submit to God remains the great test of humanity Will I allow the creatorship?

The redemptive Authority and the restorative power of God will I allow and acknowledge that he is truly God or Will I continue enjoying the temporary?

Superficial delicacies of my will wrongly indulged This is the issue God has put before us all the same test.

Nature was still seen to be man's lesson book.

Not only was the natural world blighted, but so was the human nature.

I can remember 1 person rather sarcastically sarcastically asking on September 11, 2001.

This issue of theodicy, the understanding of good and evil, the Bible refers to it as a mystery of iniquity.

Why should Satan choose in the remits of resplendent good, why would Satan choose to create a rebellion?

How could this root of selfishness be so nurtured, so fertilized, so tended to, that it would bring down so many over such a long period of time.

It was best stated, I think, by someone who said God was in the hearts and lives of those firemen that were rushing into the building as everybody else was rushing out.

You see the battle between good and evil.

You see self-ascendancy and self-sacrifice right up against each other.

And the question that comes to us is the question that remains.

Is there this unrestrained license of human will, or is there this knowledge of a battle with the willful choice to surrender my life to the legitimacy of God's beauty, order, and love as the governor of the cosmos.

The result of eating the tree of knowledge of good and evil is manifest in everyone's experience.

The author of the book, Education, writes, there is in his nature a bent to evil, a force which unaided he cannot resist.

To withstand this force, to attain that ideal which in his inmost soul he accepts as worthy, he can find no help but in 1 power.

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Meeting at the Tree - Chapter Three

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