The Tree of Life

Notes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Uj1m7PJvoe0RYjC-DvRQLdlFD3WADloS/view?usp=sharing

The Tree of Life

 

(Matthew 23:25-27) “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 You blind Pharisee!

 

27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.

Trapped in Religion:

·      You can do all the right things and be in all the right places and have the wrong heart.

·      The difference maker is having a right motivation.

(Hebrews 8:7-12) For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. 8 But God found fault with the people and said[a]:

“The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.
9 It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord.
10 This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
11 No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.
12 For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

 

(John 14:15) “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

 

How am I going to become godly?

(Genesis 3:1-7) Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God DID SAY, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’

You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will BE LIKE GOD, knowing good and evil.”

 

(Galatians 1:6-7) I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel-which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.

 

The choice before us...

1.    Religion is spelled do. Christianity is spelled done.

2.    Religion is man’s attempt to reach God. Christianity is God’s attempt to reach man.

3.    Religion focuses on the external. Christianity focuses on the internal.

 

How do we live in the right tree?

1.    Approach God through relationship not rules.

(John 5:39-40) You study[a] the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

2.    Respond to sin with life.

3.    Guard your heart from going back.

(Proverbs 4:23) Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.