Christmas Eve 2021 - 3 Trees
Message Description
Senior Pastor Dr. Kurt Bjorklund teaches about three major trees mentioned in the Bible and what each means for us this Christmas season.
Message Transcript
Wow, what a great job by our worship arts team, our tech team, the kids. Spectacular. I get the joy of being able to experience this 14 times, and it is spectacular every time. I really do love this week, a chance just to hear the music, see the pageantry, and a chance to just talk with so many of you about the spiritual significance of Christmas. And today I'd like to just start by asking you a question, and that is, as you think about Christmas, what do you think is one of the most obvious symbols of Christmas in our culture?
I would guess that there are a lot of answers, but probably near the top would be the Christmas tree. It's pretty much everywhere. We see it. In fact, sometimes it shows up in places that you don't even necessarily expect it to be. I received a catalog in the mail earlier this month that was selling shirts. Here's a picture of the one it was selling. And I thought this was kind of funny because here's a guy handling a tree, one handed because we all handle Christmas trees one handed.
And then he's handling it barehanded because of course you don't put on a glove because you like getting sap all over your hand. And then he is looking out across with this, Hey look with his cool shirt on. Not to be outdone, we receive this, this kind of the equal opportunity tree one handed handler. Now I don't know what you think about trees, but here's what might be true. And that is your tree says something about where you are in life. I remember when my wife and I were first married, we were living in Chicago and we went to get a tree.
Our first Christmas together, we were in this little house and I had not really had experienced getting a tree because my parents were artificial tree kind of people. And so this was my first time getting a tree. And we thought we're going to do it upright. I thought the bigger, the better. And so I went to a tree lot and you know how, when you go to a tree, lot, the trees are bound so you don't necessarily see how big they are. But I thought I'm going to get the biggest tree that I can get.
And I brought it back to this little house. And I should have known that when the unbound tree struggled to get through the front door, that it was a little on the big side. But I got it through, got it in the stand, cut the binding or the little ropes off. And the thing took up most of our living room. It was one of those over ambitious trees where it was clearly somebody who had never done Christmas, real tree in his life and thought, this is how you do it.
And maybe your tree is not the big ambitious tree, it's the little tree. Maybe you just have one that says I'm in transition or I didn't want to put a lot of effort into it this year, or maybe you don't have your own tree. You're living in your parents home and you're saying, well, one day maybe I'll get a tree. Maybe I won't. But you feel like in many ways, your life is still waiting to start. Or maybe you have the perfect tree. You know what the perfect tree is, you spent years cultivating the ornaments, getting it just right.
And you try every year to produce the perfect tree because you're convinced that a perfect tree in some way will help your family have the perfect Christmas. Or maybe you have the perfect tree and then in the other room, you have the kid friendly tree. Because even though you love your kid's ornaments, they don't quite make it to the perfect tree. So you have the kid friendly tree that the kids can put their ornaments on and decorate any way that they want. Or maybe it isn't just the tree, it's the things that aren't on the tree this year.
Maybe you had one of those ornaments that said our first Christmas together. And it's in a box because you're not together anymore. Or maybe you have some of those ornaments that used to go on the kid tree and now they just make you sad because your kids are grown and gone, or maybe you're estranged from one of your kids or maybe some of us don't have any tree. It just doesn't feel worth the effort, nobody's coming or we're so sad about who's been lost that we don't want to have a Christmas tree this year.
You see, your tree says something about you. What does your tree this year say about where you are? Now certainly the Christmas tree does not appear in the Christmas narrative in the Bible. So in that sense, it's not a symbol that we typically associate with Christmas in the sense of the Christmas story. It has origins probably in Germany where people use greenery to decorate and it became ubiquitous here in our country. And usually, when people talk about the nativity or the birth of Jesus, they'll talk about things like the star and how the star means that you can always find your way to God, that he'll reveal himself.
Or the manger that speaks about the humility God. Or the donkey and the journey of Joseph and Mary that speaks about the sacrifice that sometimes it takes to understand who God is. But I'd like to suggest today that the tree is actually a great symbol of the Christian story. In fact, I want to tell you about three trees that I think tell the whole story of the Bible and then ask you how maybe your tree, your place intersects with these three trees.
So here's the first tree, I'm just simply going to call it the tree in the garden. In the very beginning of the Bible, we're told that God created heaven and earth and that he put Adam and Eve in a garden. And the word that's used over and over is that it was good. That what God had created was good, that men and women were good, that things were as they should be. But God in the garden put one tree in the middle. And he said to Adam and Eve, you can eat from any tree, but don't eat from this one in the middle. Here's what we read about this in Genesis two.
It says, "And the Lord, God commanded the man. You are free to eat from any tree in the garden but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For when you eat from it, you will certainly die." And people who study the Bible theologians have called this the fall, or when sin entered the world. This is what explains the brokenness that we experience. I don't know if you've ever said this yourself or heard somebody say this, but sometimes people will say, I can't believe in a God who... And then they fill in a blank with some kind of tragedy, either global or personal.
Maybe you've said that, heard somebody say that. And it usually goes something like this, I can't believe in a God who would out tornadoes to rip through several states just days before Christmas taking people's lives and taking their livelihoods at this time of year. I can't believe in a God who would allow famine to strike Afghanistan after all of the political turmoil and upheaval and hope that they may have had at one point. For them to be enduring this, how could I believe in a God like this?
Or how could I believe in a God who would let a tanker in Haiti blow up and have 67 people just going about their lives die. But I'd like to suggest to you that without understanding the tree in the garden, that becomes almost a default reaction to tragedy to say, how could God, how could a good God let this happen? But the reality is that that sense of should actually is an argument for the existence of God. It's an argument that helps you say, I now have a vocabulary, a reason.
And here's what I think it's more like. If you ever go into a art museum and you see beautiful works of art, and then you walk into the art museum and somebody's gone in and vandalized one of the exhibits, what you don't do is you don't say, "Boy, the artist really messed up over here." What you do instead is you say, "This is beautiful art that somebody has defaced." And what the tree in the garden tells us is that creation is good and beautiful, but it's been defaced by sin.
And it's not just those global issues, sometimes it's stuff in our own lives. Some of us this year are struggling with a health issue, ours or somebody we love. And the brokenness is hard, or maybe there's been a relationship breakdown. Somebody told us something and we took them at their word, but they misrepresented themselves and it has hurt us, cost us in some substantial way. Or maybe we love somebody who doesn't appear or two be interested in us or available to us in some way and so we feel the depth of the brokenness.
But this tree in the garden, which speaks of the ruin of humanity, doesn't just speak about what's broken, it also speaks about what's frustrating. As the philosopher Taylor Swift put it. Now, I know nobody likes to admit that they like Taylor Swift and listen to her music. I understand that, but I know that people listen to it. And here's how I know I was at a wedding this last summer. And as the dancing was happening, I was sitting on the side.
I wasn't dancing. I generally don't dance at weddings because I have this belief that nobody wants to see the pastor shake it. And so I was sitting on the side and the dancing was happening and a bunch of 20 something year olds were dancing and singing. And when all of a sudden on came a song that they all sang in unison. And I thought they all know this song. Here's the song, "Romeo, take me somewhere we can." Somebody told me I should sing this. I'm not going to. "Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone. I'll be waiting. All there's left to do is run. You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess. It's a love story. Baby."
Okay. You just outed yourselves. Now that is not the piece of wisdom from T Swhizzle that I wanted to share. But there's a song that came out that was just released. She re-released some songs on Red. It was a lot of songs that had been done. But there was one new song on that release recently that I thought was interesting. She's sang it with Phoebe Bridgers. And Phoebe Bridgers, now I've included the indie fans among us. And this song was sung by these two women about their lives and their longings and the things that they wanted to experience and have happened, and their hopes.
And at one point they sing the line, "How can someone know everything at 18 and nothing at 22." But then the kind of signature line is, "Will you still love me if I'm nothing new?" And so as these women, at least in the song are singing about their lives and their hopes, their fear is that if they're nothing new, that they won't find real love, that their love won't last. And it points to something that's deep in all of us. And that is this yearning to say, I want to find meaning and love and significance in this world. But sometimes the frustration of the world that we live in tells us that it will never be found.
You know this because you've experienced it. You start life and think maybe if I could get into the school that I really want to get into, maybe if I could find the best job, maybe if it isn't that job, it's the next job or the job after that. Or maybe if I could just make a little more money, if we could buy a house, if we could buy a bigger, better house. Maybe if we could go on a bigger vacation, a better vacation, then I'll feel satisfied. Maybe if I could get married, maybe if we could have kids. Maybe if the kids would leave home.
Maybe if I could retire with enough stream of income to-. And what happens go through our lives and find ourselves constantly moving from this hope that this will be the thing to frustration of saying I'm still not fully satisfied. And it's not just big things, this frustration. Sometimes it's seemingly small things. We start to watch something and think if I can just find a show to binge watch on Netflix, that kind of makes me feel alive for a while that'll be good. Or maybe if my football team could make the playoffs and make a deep run in the playoffs, then I'll be satisfied.
Sometimes we shop for it. Think if I can get a cool pair of Yeezys or a new Louis Vuitton bag then I'll really be happy. But we all know that we make purchases, we indulge some of our pleasures and they still don't bring satisfaction. And we won't have vocabulary or understanding for that if we don't understand the tree in the garden, the tree that speaks of the fall and the brokenness of humanity. Now I know some of us right now are saying, this is not a light encouraging Christmas Eve message, but that's because we haven't talked about the second tree yet.
C.S. Lewis put it like this at one point, he said, "If I find in myself a desire for which nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." So at the beginning of the Bible you have this tree in the garden that speaks of the ruin of humanity. And at the end of the Bible, you have a tree in this city that speaks of the restoration of humanity. And this is in revelation 22. And this is so cool because what you have is at the very beginning of the Bible, you have this tree, the tree of life and the tree of good evil.
And then at the end of the Bible, you have the tree of life appearing again. And this is what it says, "Then the angels showed me the river of water as clear as crystal flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb. And down the middle of the great street in the city on each side of the river, stood the tree of life." There it is. So the tree that's in this city with a river running through it, it's a picture of the restoration of all things. And then it says this, "Bearing 12 crops of fruit yielding its fruit every month." If you ever give or receive a fruit of the month club, it's a biblical size gift.
"And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations, no longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the lamb will be in the city and his servants will serve him." And this picture gives us this sense of hope, this sense of beauty, this sense of love, this sense of joy of saying if I can be in a place where I experience those things, that is the goodness of what God promises. And you've experienced this.
Whether you're a person of faith or not, if you've ever stopped and gazed at a sunset and just beheld the beauty and say that is otherworldly. That is something in you that is longing for the tree in the city and for the restoration of all things. If you've had a wonderful meal with friends where the food was delicious and the conversation deep, and the sense of connection was real for you, you've had a moment of longing in saying, I long for the tree in the city, for things to be as they will be. If you've looked at the brokenness of our current world and said, things should be different, you've longed for the city.
My wife and I went and saw the movie that's out right now called West Side Story. My wife wanted to go and I took her. That's how that went down. My wife's been a fan of this for a long time. And if you're not familiar, it came out in 1961, the original. And the original is about two gangs in New York city, one from Puerto Rico and one from New York that are at each other a little bit. And they get completely crosswise with each other. When what happens is the young man and a young woman from the two different gangs fall in love and the gangs absolutely go at each other. And not to ruin the movie, but it's been around since 1961.
So this is not a spoiler alert. And that is, this does not end well. And in the original play, the Adaptation, which by the way, this is old and completely current. Do you hear the elements of people from different ethnic groups, not getting along, hatred, discord, some of the things that you see. And what happens is in the original, there's a song Somewhere Someday There'll Be a Place For Us, is sung between the young man and the young woman.
And the idea I think at least is love, human love transcends the brokenness of our world. It's probably the most iconic song of the original musical. But in the movie, Adaptation the song isn't sung by the young man and the young woman in love, it's sung by this older woman named Valentina, who in this version is doc's wife. They wanted a place, I think for Anita to replay this, she's an older woman. She was in the original. But she sings the song and she's been a mentor to the young man in this.
And she sings it. And even for somebody like me, who doesn't necessarily love musical theater, it was a show stopping moment because in the midst of all of the brokenness, all of the devastation, she says someday, somewhere, there's a place for us, a place of peace, a place of forgiveness. And in essence, a place where love will transcend the brokenness. And that is the longing for the tree in the city. It's a longing that is universal whether you recognize it and name it as something from God or not, that is something you long for.
But in the Bible, this is where creation is moving and what God is doing. I love how one of the old Testament prophets put it. This is Zechariah chapter eight, verse four and five. It says, "Once again, men and women of a rip old age will sit in the streets of Jerusalem. Each of them with a cane in hand because of their age. The city streets will be filled with boys and girls playing there." If you're a parent, you know that one of the things you don't do if there's any sign of danger is let your children play.
And so this is a picture again of Jerusalem, God's city to be restored, that he's saying there will be a time when the vulnerable children will be able to play with no fear, when those who are old can sit on their porches and in the streets and kind of sit with one another with no fear of violence. And that is the longing of our human heart. And here's what's true. And that is if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, the broken things, the hard things, the difficult things of your life are as close to hell as you will ever be.
But if you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, then the sunsets, the dinners, the moments of hope and joy and peace are as close to heaven as you will ever be. And so we have the tree in the garden at the beginning, the tree in the city at the end, but there's one more tree. And this is the tree I'm going to say on the hill. And this is in Galatians chapter three. And when I say a tree on the hill, I'm referring to the hill where Jesus was crucified. What's known as the hill of Golgotha. Here's what we read.
Galatians three 13, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written cursed is who is everyone who's hung on a pole." And you may say, well, Kurt, that doesn't speak of a tree. It's a pole. But in the English standard version, it says on a tree, cursed is the one who's hung on a tree. And the word in the original means a tree that's been cut down and repurposed. So the [inaudible 00:20:55] says on a pole, and this is the cross of Jesus Christ. And it's a tree.
And so between the brokenness of the first tree and the restoration of the final tree, you have this tree of redemption right in the middle, where Jesus goes to his death to be the curse for those of us who should be cursed. And sometimes this is part of the message of Christianity that some people don't like, because they say Christians are always talking about what's wrong with people, what's sinful, what's wrong in the world.
But the message of Christianity, isn't so much, everything's wrong out there as much as there's a standard that God has that none of us reach, but Jesus has reached it for us so that we can share in his restoration of all things. If you've ever played golf or mini putt, which by the way are not the same thing. You can understand this very easily.
And here's what I mean, no matter how great of a golfer you are, or a mini putt player you are, you, I can almost guarantee you have not hit par every hole of golf or miniature putt you have played. Because sooner or later, maybe right when you started, maybe even if you've been playing for years, you shank a shot, or you hit some obstacle in the mini putt course, and you get a bad score. And here's what the message of Christianity and the curse of the law in this tree is, and that is morally speaking all of us come short of moral par.
Sooner or later, we lose our temper. We think things we shouldn't think, we say things that aren't edifying to other people. We may be shade truth to make ourselves look better than we should. And as a result, we don't come close to it. But what we prefer to do according to Henry now, and even though the message is a message of grace, he says is we prefer to live with closed hand hands where we can look at other people and say, I'm good, they're bad.
And he says, it's the religious people who close their hands to grace so often because they want to compare distances or scores with other people rather than saying, I'm a person in need of a savior and Jesus has done for me what I can't do for myself. And so my question today is of these three trees, which tree speaks to where your tree says that you are today. Do you need to hear about the tree in the garden again to be reminded that all of your pursuits will lead to frustration if it's not rooted in something bigger than this world?
Or to have vocabulary for the brokenness? Do you need to hear about the tree in the city to be reminded that the grave is not the end, that this life isn't everything? Or do you need to hear again about the tree on the hill and know that all of your moral goodness or badness doesn't keep you or get you to God, but it's only what Jesus Christ has done.
And by the way, this is where Christmas intersects with this. God's movement in Christmas of sending Jesus to earth to go to the cross, was to take us out of the brokenness, rescue us from the brokenness and appoint us to the future of all that is restored because of what he's done. I am a dad of four boys. And when my boys were a little younger, there was one day when my youngest son, Nathan, we called him for dinner, called all our boys for dinner. And he didn't come. We'd been in and out of the house a little bit that day, doing things in the hard playing, working.
And when you have four kids, you don't always keep perfect track of them all. And I've heard it said that when you have one child, you double team them. When you have two children, you play man to man defense. When you have three, you play zone defense. And when you have four or more, you play prevent. And so we were playing prevent all the time with our kids. They were all over the place. And this one day after being in and out, we had made dinner. My wife had made dinner and we called the kids to come and Nathan didn't show up.
And so we went around the house looking for him. We called, we asked the other boys if they had seen him, nobody had seen him. And none of us could remember when we had last seen our four year old. And we had one of those moments where at first it was a little concerning. And then it went to all out panic. Because we said, where has our son gone? I went outside. I went back into these little woods behind our house. They're not big, but there's a few trees that are dense between us and the neighbor behind us.
And I thought maybe he had gone in there and gotten hurt. Nothing. My wife went outside and called for him. Soon, the neighbors were outside calling for him as well, going up and down the street. And we went into this state of something horrible has happened. And if you're a parent, you know the pit in your stomach you get when a child goes missing. Now God doesn't get a pit in his stomach. He doesn't panic.
But like me as a dad, would've done anything in that moment to find my son and restore him to our dinner table, God has done the amazing in sending Jesus to say, "I want you to be rescued from the brokenness and restored to the tree in the city. And I've made a way, and it's the life and death of Jesus Christ." It's my rescue operation. By the way, we did find our son. He had crawled under his bed looking for a toy and fallen asleep and heard none of the yelling and commotion until my wife went back through the house. And he came out. He was, "Hi, what?"
And so we had dinner and that was that. But for 30 minutes, 40 minutes would seem like an hour or two to us there was the moment of where is our son. And that's the way that God wants you to know that he wants to rescue you from the brokenness of this world and point you to the restoration of all things because of what Jesus has done. And you can experience that now by admitting that your moral scorecard is not perfect and you need a savior.
And even if you believe that for years and years, you can reexperience the beauty of Christmas this year by saying these trees paint the broader story and my story needs to constantly intertwine with the trees of the story of God. God help us today to be people who don't just sing songs and see pageantry, but understand and appropriate what Christmas is all about for us. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
