II The Tree of Life vs. the Tree of the Law (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil)

A good writer or speaker will always write or speak according to a simple outline. First, he will tell you what he is going to tell you. Then he will tell you. Then, finally, he will tell you what he told you. Our God is the best writer of all. Therefore, His writing of the Bible is according to this formula. In Genesis one and two He tells us what He is going to tell us. Between Genesis Three and Revelation twenty He tells us and in Revelation twenty one and twenty two He tells us what He told us.

The first two chapters of Genesis portray the foundational principles of the Bible. In Chapter two you have a man before two trees. The implications that are revealed through this picture are staggering and awe inspiring. If we can see why God began His revelation with this simple picture, we will be able to unlock many passages in the Bible and to be enabled to live the Christian life according to the Lord’s revealed way.

Have you ever heard that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is a picture of the law? Please think about it. What does the law do? It teaches us the difference between good and evil according the God’s standard. It teaches us and the teaching demands us to love God and to have nothing to do with idols. To love God is good. To worship an idol is evil. It teaches us to honor our father and our mother. To dishonor them is evil. Every other point of the law is the same. By it you know what is good and what is evil. So the tree of knowledge of good and evil a picture of the law.

The law of God demands that if you live by it, everything you do will be good and on the other hand you will not do anything unrighteous or evil. Only this kind of living will please God under His law. However, if you live by the law you will have to do it by your own strength. He will not help you do it. So it means that you will be your own god living by your own decision to work the good and abstain from the evil. You have become independent from God.

However, you are under a deep deception. If we live by the law, we are automatically brought under the domain of the devil. For his life is stronger than the good nature in us and we will be captured by sin and wind up in death.

No doubt you know that the tree of life is a picture of Christ as our life. So it is obvious that Christ is verse the law. Not only Genesis two reveals this but the rest of the Bible unveils that if a man or a nation attempts to please God by keeping the law the result will be sin and death.

This is the history of the nation of Israel and the history of the church. The minute any from of law keeping enters into a man’s thinking, he will enter onto the way of failure in living the Christian life..

Let’s think about it. Was there ever a king of Israel who did not fail? David? No he fell into adultery and murder. Solomon. No, he was seduced by too many women and their idols. How about Josiah? He was excellent yet in the end he died by fighting a battle that was not of God. How about Moses? Also no. Even eventually he was prohibited from entering into the good land due to his failure.

Eventually, there were only four who overcame. Joshua, Caleb, Joseph and Daniel. I believe that these men learned the secret and did not live by the tree of knowledge. It was their hearts desire to God Himself and their determination to stay with Him that saved them.