sermonette: The Man Like a Tree
What Is Your Source?
Bill Cherry
Given 17-May-03; Sermon #612s; 12 minutes
Description: (show)
A tree can be a symbol of a righteous man. In addition to serving as a source of food, the tree also provides shelter, furniture, and lifesaving shade. The righteous man, like the tree, flourishes when tapped into an abundant source of water—metaphorically identified with God's Holy Spirit and His Holy Word. Our roots must be planted in living water.
Well, thank you, Richard, and greetings to you all. Please turn to Jeremiah 17 and 7. OK, we will start reading verse 7, blessed is a man who trusteth in the Lord and whose hope and in and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree. That
God says in this verse, are these two verses, the man that trusts in God and hopes in God is like a tree. So how is a man like a tree? Well, that's the purpose of this sermon, is to show you what it means to be a man like a tree. Now this tree is not just any tree, it has special privileges or it is planted in a special way. So as we continue the verse, it says he shall be as a tree planted by the waters. And that spreads out her roots by the river and shall not see when heat comes and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall it cease from yielding fruit, and I skipped apart, it says, but her leaf shall be green. So this tree is going to flourish in heat, it flourishes in drought. And the main reason is because it's planted by the waters and it has its roots spreading out receiving water. Now, I want to give you a few facts from World Book Encyclopedia 200, excuse me, 2002. Trees are the largest plants living and some over 30 stories high. They have a very long lifespan, some over 1000 years, and they are very useful to us on this planet Earth. And you see how many trees we have here as you as you look out, but they prevent the soil from eroding away by by their root system. They also produce oxygen. They take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, which keeps the balance of the atmosphere as close as possible to what we need. They also produce many products. They produce building materials, they produce materials for tools. They give us heat in, in the winter or a way to heat our homes and of course food, yielding food, uh. Apples, pears, oranges, bananas, coconuts, dates, and you can mention lots and lots of things that trees do, and that's just a starter because trees are very important to our system, but our our. Let's see, our environment and the way we live. Now, water makes a tremendous difference, and I was amazed at this little personal experience that I had. I wanted to plant some tomatoes, so I went to the store and bought a 6 pack, and it was not gonna, I was not going to drink it. I was going to use this, this 6 pack of tomatoes, and you know what I'm talking about, they have 6 little tomato plants and they are about around the size of your thumb or a little bit larger of um. Soil connected with each plant and their little roots are right in there. Now, They keep the the plants at that at the store well watered and naturally I bought the ones that stood up straight and tall and had these green leaves and I picked the best six-pack that I could find. And I took them home. I put them in the shade, and after 2 days, see, I neglected those poor little tomato plants after 2 days, and to my dismay, they looked like little shoestrings that are draping over the edge of the shoebox, the stems were there, the leaves were withered like. Tiny little wither dish rags, and I said, well, I bought them, I will plant them and I do not care what they look like, I will plant them. So I took them and I, I Try to restore them by soaking them and soaking them in water. And I left them overnight, but much to my amazement, they stood up straight and tall, the leaves were filled out and they were green, and it looked almost as as good as when I bought them at the store. But they were revived well. I filled the hole with plenty of water and plenty of dirt and the tomato plant, and they lived happily ever after. But the point is that water makes a tremendous difference, and these trees are this tree in Jeremiah 17 stands by the rivers of waters and it gets plenty of nourishment. Now, we are going to read another tree about another tree in Psalms 1, so you can turn there if you want to, uh. A man who is like a tree, and there is so many that I mean these, these trees have such similarities, they sound like the same tree. Both of them are planted. Buy water They have green leaves, they yield fruit, and they seem to be the same tree. So let's read starting at Psalm 1 verse one, it said, blessed is a man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. So, This shows to me this man has looked at the way that people live, the society governed by men and men's ideas and men's way of doing things and human
goodness and the customs and fashions of
this world and said, I'll reject all of this because it is not godly, and that doesn't mean it's wicked and sinful as much as it's not godly and they have no thought of God. So that's what ungodly does not say wicked, it says. Don't have any thought of God, so it doesn't seem to be so bad, but he says, no, I'll not have any part of it, and like a tree would say, I'm not going to stick my roots in that dirty polluted water, and so his total rejection of the customs of men. But verse 2, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. It makes him happy, it makes it thrills him in the in this law, does he meditate day and night. So, When it says the law of the Lord, it's not merely talking about the written word of God that we have. It includes that, but it's talking about the total way of life, the way of life that God is teaching us and that we are striving to understand and learn, but he delights in it. Because he sees what happens when he deals with other people in his human relations when he applies
love and service and the things that God is teaching us that we should incorporate in our character, the heart and mind of God. He sees what happens in his dealings in the way that he uses his time. And the way that he works with physical possessions and these things give him a delight to understand how beautiful it is and how wonderful it is to live a life where you're using the understanding, the
wisdom that God gives us and lives by it, and so he delights in
God's law. But I want you to read the next verse, well, Uh, he says, and he shall be like a tree. See a familiar phrase planted by the rivers of waters that brings forth his fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither. And I love the the last part. I considered a promise from God if we try to be like this man it's like a tree, he said, and whatever, whatsoever he doeth shall prosper, and I've looked at this and I've used it to pray. I said, well God, I'm trying to do it. Please help me to prosper and, and if we get our minds and hearts straight with God and, and on the right track in what we do, we will prosper. So Let's look at our personal situations. Every one of us. We have access to God's word. It's there. It's right there before us. We have access to spoken and written instructions in the form of tapes and literature and things that we can get from the internet from ministers who are trying to give us as much as they can an application, the way we can apply God's words to our lives, so. And we have an understanding that the work of God is to prepare us for the
kingdom of God, that we should look at our own hearts and our own minds, and we should use the material, we should use. Uh, God's word to correct and change our lives so we can be like Him and take away the stony heart, put in the, the soft, fleshy heart of love in the heart of God. So we have, we understand that Christ is. Preparing us and so when we have situations that come, we know that God's sovereign. He looks at us. He knows what's happening. He hasn't forsaken us. We need to learn to obey God and try to live and try to be like this man, like a tree. So what does that tell us? Let your roots go into living waters. Put your roots there. It's there. We are planted by the rivers of waters. We have it. It's not. It's not like we do not have access to it. We have full access to it, and we are just like that tree planted by the rivers of waters. So we can drink and we can drink deep and there is There is a Almost no end to what we can absorb except our own personal limitations so we can understand. How we can live this life and serve other people and be a blessing to them, and how we can serve God in the future kingdom of God. And if we do, we have the promise of God, whatever we do will prosper.
