The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil are two of the most mysterious things ever created by God—this week’s lesson takes us from Genesis to Revelation and into the ancient Near Eastern world.
If you can’t see the podcast player, click here.
Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
(Scripture from the English Standard Version unless I say otherwise)
This is our third week studying concepts from Genesis chapters two and three. At the end, when we’ve covered all the topics, we go back through and read everything experientially, as though you are right there, and try to understand what God is telling us about himself and about our relationship with Him. Of course, this section of Genesis is special because at the end I am going to share the Gospel with you. After all, we can’t talk about sin entering the world without talking about the cure—Jesus! I can’t wait!
Over the course of the last two weeks, I have been hinting about something mentioned briefly but we haven’t talked about yet and that’s the two trees mentioned.
9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Well, that doesn’t sound good, right? Or does it? It should sound really good. Now remember that Adam is still alone. He hasn’t had the dream where God put him to sleep (like he did with Abraham in Genesis 15) and shown him that no animals will be a suitable partner for him to help him keep and tend the garden and be his equal. He hasn’t met Eve yet. At this point, Adam doesn’t even definitely have a name yet—he’s just called “the man.” It’s just Adam in the Garden and there aren’t even any animals yet to keep him company. And God gives him a command. It’s not even a difficult command, it’s a terrific command! “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden.” Sign me up for that kind of order. “Oh sure, Tyler, I’ve planted every tree that is good for food and you can eat from any of them. Bon Appetit!” That is one super easy commandment to keep. Go get into the fresh fruit buffet line and eat whatever you want! But wait, there’s a small no-no. “…but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
So, there’s one thing in the entire Garden he is not allowed to eat from. Just one tree. That means he can eat from the Tree of Life and all the other trees—he just isn’t allowed to eat anything from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Just one tree. Not two. Not half. Not every tree except for one. Just that one. Did I mention that he can eat all the oranges and apples and plums and peaches and pears and apricots and mulberries he wants? Everything except the fruit of the one tree. Sometimes, we read this verse and we focus on the negative. We immediately think, “Oh man, why can’t he have that tree’s fruit?” And maybe we begin getting irritated that we have one thing we aren’t allowed to touch—but is that fair when God has been so generous with everything else? Is it even reasonable to focus on that one thing that is forbidden? Maybe it’s a good thing it’s forbidden. Maybe it’s dangerous. Maybe Adam isn’t mature enough yet to deal with it. Right now, before we talk about the trees anymore, I want you to think about all the wonderful things your loved ones give you and how few things they don’t allow you to have. Is it okay for you to ignore all the good things they let you have and get angry about what you aren’t allowed to do? Or should you always be grateful for all the things they do give you? Gratitude means being thankful for what you have and not focusing on what you don’t have. When we talk about the serpent, we will be talking about the dangerous power of ingratitude and how he used it to tempt Adam and Eve to sin against God.
So, let’s review the trees. On one hand, we have the Tree of Life. We will learn in Genesis three that as long as Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Life, they will continue to live forever. But when they stop eating the fruit of that tree, they will start aging and dying. Of course, it will still take them nine hundred years to die but still, they had a hard nine hundred years outside of the Garden. How do we know that Adam and Eve were created mortal? If you remember our lesson last week, I told you that the Bible says that Adam was made out of dust, which is a Hebrew idiom that means he is mortal—as opposed to immortal, like God, living forever. And if you remember the word idiom from the idiom game we played on week one, an idiom is a phrase that doesn’t mean what it sounds like it means. Like when someone who is Japanese says, “Stinky like fish!” they are telling you to come back and visit again soon. To be made from dust and to return to dust means that God created us to be born, get older, and to someday die. It probably doesn’t mean that God took a pile of dry dust and made Adam. It might mean that too, but that’s not what “being dust” meant to people in those days. They thought about how a body turned to dust in the burial caves. In Genesis three, we find out that if Adam and Eve stay in the Garden and keep eating from the Tree of Life that they will live forever. Without that tree, they won’t. Therefore, Adam and Eve are mortals just like you and me. But the Bible doesn’t spend much time talking about this tree! We will see it pop up a few more times in the Bible but you’d think that something like a tree that grants eternal life would be a big part of the Garden story but it is only mentioned three times. Here, when we are first told about it and two more times when God boots them out of his Garden.
Then there is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In Hebrew, it actually reads the Tree of Knowledge Good Evil but that’s not very catchy. The fruit from this tree is off-limits to Adam. God tells him that the consequence if he eats from the tree is that he will die. God doesn’t say how. He just says it will happen. Maybe Adam asked, maybe not.
Now a really cool thing about the trees is what we can learn from the rest of the Bible and from the ancient Near East. After all, if there was such a thing as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil then we might also see stories about it in religions from all around the world—and we do! Trees are very important symbols in the ancient world. In the Bible, we see the children of Israel planting sacred groves to worship Asherah—a mother goddess of the Canaanites. Bad kings worship in those groves and the good kings cut them down and burn them up! That’s the first rule of sacred tree club in the pagan world—once you cut the tree down it isn’t sacred anymore! It’s only good for carving an idol out of or burning for firewood! But once the tree is dead, that’s it! Of course, not all trees were part of pagan worship—most trees were for building and for food and for firewood. They were just ordinary trees. They were grown to be harvested and so any tree that is grown just to be eaten from or harvested is not being worshiped. One big difference between the Bible and the religions of the rest of the world is how they looked at trees. In the Bible, trees were just one more creation of God and one of the ways he provides for us, but in the rest of the ancient world, certain trees (but not all trees) were considered to be fertility symbols—and we’ll get back to that.
So, Adam and Eve in the Garden would have known that these trees were special but they wouldn’t have bowed down to them or anything the way that we see pagans doing in sacred groves. And they certainly wouldn’t be carving idols out of them. “Hey Eve, look at this, I cut down the Tree of Life and made an idol. Pretty keen, eh?” The trees were God’s provision for them and also their responsibility. Provision means, the trees were God’s way of providing for them, and especially for feeding them. The trees were also their responsibility because they had to care for them, harvest from them, and make sure not to take from the tree that only belonged to God—the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Sometimes we forget that the Garden wasn’t Adam and Eve’s Garden, it was God’s Garden. He made it for Himself, so that He could be in it with His Creation. But that doesn’t mean that they (or we) can do whatever we want. Think of it as someone else’s home. When you visit someone, do you have the right to go wherever you want or take whatever you want? Of course not. The things in that person’s home belong to them and you don’t touch without asking permission. And when they say no, they aren’t being mean because they don’t need to let you do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want someday when you have your own house but until then, you always have to obey the house rules of other people and respect those rules. It doesn’t matter if you like those rules or not because it isn’t your house. And same with your parents’ house—they are older and they pay for everything. They know best so they decide what you do and do not touch, do and do not eat, and where you do and do not go—and that is a good thing. They have more experience so you can trust them.
Now, in the Bible, we see that certain trees were associated with pagan goddesses in sacred groves—oaks and terebinths. You have probably all seen oaks, as they are everywhere in North America and throughout the world. But what on earth is a terebinth? Well, if you live in the Americas or most of Europe, you’ve probably never seen one because they are a tree that grows in the countries around the Mediterranean Sea. In the Bible, especially in Hosea 4 and Ezekiel 6, we see the Israelites getting yelled at by the prophets because they would grow whole groves of oak and terebinth and perform sacrifices to the fertility goddesses that they believed could be worshiped there. Well, not only is that silly but it is an insult to God. They would worship fertility goddesses because they wanted a lot of babies and they wanted their cows and sheep and goats to have a lot of babies too. In the ancient world, most people didn’t really carry money around. For them, money was about having land and a bunch of critters. More critters meant more money and so when they were worshiping a fertility goddess, what they really wanted was more wealth. And the more critters and land you have, the more kids you need to work that land and take care of the critters and they thought those goddesses would help with that too. It’s just the crazy stuff they learned in Egypt and from the Canaanites that were still in the land while they were living there. Bad kings of Israel and Judah would plant the groves and worship there, and the good kings would chop them down and burn them to the ground. The good kings knew that the people wouldn’t continue to worship around dead trees because dead trees aren’t sacred in anyone’s eyes anymore. So, they cut them down to get rid of whatever fake goddess the people thought lived there and then they burned them to keep people from taking the wood and carving idols of that goddess out of it.
But the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil were different. There wasn’t a whole grove of them—they were each unique. Adam could eat the fruit of the Tree of Life all he wanted and it would keep him from aging and dying. At least I believe it would keep him from getting older. Wouldn’t be totally strange if he ate from the tree for a thousand years but didn’t stay young? That doesn’t seem like a good deal to me. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be a thousand years old and be old and still be alive. No sir. So, that’s an assumption. I am guessing. But I think it is a good guess or what was the point of living forever, right? The thing about the Tree of Life is that we don’t see it in any other cultures like it exists in the Bible. There are no Tree of Life stories in ancient mythology. It’s absolutely unique! That’s really cool. Some religions have trees that represent the cycles of life and death, and others teach of the great world tree, and a lot of others that have trees that give wisdom. But nothing about a tree that exists only to give life to the people who eat the fruit.
But the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we see that sort of thing in a lot of ancient cultures. In Egypt, we see the god Thoth with his pen, writing wisdom on the fruit of the acacia tree on rock carvings and tomb paintings. In Buddhism, there is the Bodhi tree that Buddha was supposedly sitting under when he gained enlightenment. In Assyria, they had a tree that was part Tree of Life and part Tree of Wisdom but only special people could eat the fruit of it. Only kings and priests. And they didn’t care nearly as much about the life part of it than they did about the wisdom part. In the ancient world, what people wanted was the secret knowledge of the gods. They wanted to know the secrets of the stars, and omens and divination, and to be able to tell the future. They also wanted the secrets that would allow them to destroy their enemies. They didn’t want to have a relationship with their gods, they wanted to be wise like they were and to know what they knew.
They wanted that because people have always wanted that and, as we will see in a few weeks, Eve and Adam wanted that too. But God said no. Even though God said no, He was saying yes to so much. What do the two trees teach us about God? (1) He is the Creator. As special as the trees were, they were just two more creations. As special as Adam was, he was just another Creation. One of the most important lessons we will ever learn in life is about who we are compared to who God is. We are smarter than the animals but compared to Him we don’t have two braincells to rub together. Although we can even grow to be very wise, we will always be foolish compared to God. When we think we know anything better than God, we are always wrong. (2) He is the rule maker. Life down here on earth is pretty crazy and we don’t see things as clearly as He does. Sometimes He tells us to do things or not do things that we don’t agree with or understand but it isn’t because he’s wrong—it’s just because we are limited. (3) The universe is God’s house and He knows every nook and cranny and every person and every animal and every bug that lives in it. So, it makes sense that we should respect His home and when He tells us how to treat the things in it, we need to obey Him. He knows best. Humans have a lot of opinions about how things should work, but He’s the only one with perfect knowledge. Because of that, we can trust Him completely.
God isn’t unreasonable. That’s a big lesson that takes us a lifetime to learn because we humans hate being told what to do. Even your parents don’t like being told what to do. That’s why the world is such a mess—because people don’t really believe that God should be able to make the rules and a lot of the time, people think they can come up with better rules. But when people look at the can’t and don’ts they aren’t really looking at the do’s and can’s. Our lives are really very wonderful and full of good things to do. We can play in the snow, take walks in the fall, sit in the shade of a tree on a sunny day and jump in rain puddles. We can cuddle kittens and play fetch with dogs. We can eat friend chicken and spaghetti. We can sing songs and play board games. We can paint pictures and create sculptures and play guitar. We can invent new things and discover amazing things about the earth. We can sit in front of warm fires or on the beach. We can drink iced tea and hot cocoa. We can plant a garden or collect things. The truth is that there are probably millions of things we can do and a lot less that we can’t do. It’s all a matter of perspective. And we can waste our lives angry about the few things we can’t do or we enjoy all the things we can do.
But there’s something amazing that we will all be able to do someday—everyone who is loyal to King Jesus. We will all be able to eat from the Tree of Life! That’s right! The Bible tells us that someday, when the heavens and the earth are made new again, that we will go to New Jerusalem where Jesus will be our King. The city will be incredibly beautiful, made with gold that is so pure that it will be as clear as a diamond. The gates of the city will be huge pearls, and the foundations will be covered in jewels. It will be more beautiful than anything you can imagine. But the best part is on the inside because that is where God will be with us, just like He was in the Garden in the beginning—except this time there will be no sin because everyone who is there has already lived out their lives loving and obeying Him and they won’t want to be kicked out. They will trust Him. There won’t be any bullies or thieves or liars or murderers there. You will be able to trust everyone who lives there. Let me read a few verses from the very last chapter of the Bible, Revelation. With no s at the end. If you call it Revelations, it will look like you’ve never read it. Don’t make me look bad there, guys.
Now, close your eyes and just imagine this. And the angel here, I don’t want you to imagine wings. Angels in Scripture never have wings. Only Seraphim and Cherubim have wings and they aren’t angels—they’re entirely different. But angels in the Bible always appear as human beings and always as men, which is a good thing because if they appeared as women in the ancient world, it wouldn’t have gone over very well. Remember that the city is pure gold that is so clear it looks like a diamond.
22 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever…14 Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.
The Tree of Life must be huge because the one tree is on both sides of the river. And it gives a different kind of fruit every month. The leaves can heal people. Nothing in the world will be cursed or bad anymore so I wonder if the leaves heal broken legs and things because it doesn’t seem like people should be able to get sick anymore but we can always fall down, right? And those of us living in the city will worship God. We will see His face and it will be light out all the time because light comes from Him. In fact, we won’t even be able to see the sun because He will just shine. And we won’t need lamps. I wonder if we will still sleep?
It’s interesting to think about, isn’t it? What the world to come will be like. All the people who will be there in that great city. Like, all the famous people from the Bible (at least the ones who loved God anyway) will be there. Noah will be there for sure, and Abraham and Sarah. King David—I bet he has some stories to tell! Joshua and Caleb and Moses. Mary and Joseph and John the Baptist. Peter and his brother Andrew, James and John. All the prophets will be there. Paul and Barnabus. And great modern saints like Gladys Aylward and Cameron Townsend, Corrie and Betsie ten Boom, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Just think about going down to the Tree of Life to get a new ripe piece of fruit and never knowing who will be there to meet you. And what do you think we will talk about? Nothing sad or terrible, that’s for sure because the Bible says that God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. And people won’t die like they do now—unless they are outside of the city. The Bible does say that some people will not be allowed inside—the people who choose to do bad things. Like Adam and Eve, God won’t allow people who choose to still do terrible things into His city but can you even imagine wanting to do those things when you can be with God instead? That’s why we need to choose now to follow God, so in the world to come, we can be in His city and eat from the Tree of Life. What will we be doing there? Not sitting on clouds and playing harps, I can tell you that. That would get old really quick. Next week, I think we are going to talk about Adam and Eve and their special jobs in the Garden and how we were created to work in very special ways.
Until then, I love you. I am praying for you. And I hope you have a wonderful week studying God’s word with the people who love you.