Decision Tree

Revelation 22:1-5

May 5, 2024 • Mount Pleasant UMC

It had only been four days since the Winter Olympics in Beijing had ended. Four whole days of basking in the unity and the camaraderie that the Olympics are known for. The world comes together for these games to compete in a wide variety of sports and demonstrate that we can get along, at least for a couple of weeks. World leaders usually attend, too, and one of the prominent attendees in Beijing was Russian president Vladimir Putin. All eyes were on Putin because his army had been establishing itself along the border with Ukraine. And four days after the Olympics were over, that army moved. Here we are, over two years later, and the invasion and the conflict goes on.

My friend Tony was on a Lands of the Bible trip and the next day they were to dock in Israel. October 7. That was the day the terrorist group Hamas launched 3,000 rockets into southern Israel along with ground vehicles and paragliders. Before the day was over, over 1,100 people had died, including almost 700 civilians, 70 foreign nationals and 373 members of the Israeli security force. Hamas also took around 250 people hostage, including 30 children. Israel, of course, declared war, and it goes on yet today. My daily morning prayers include prayers for peace in Ukraine and Israel and frequently end with the same petition that ends the New Testament: “Come, Lord Jesus!”

We long for peace. We experience conflict most every day, but we long for peace. And while I’ve mentioned two of the most notable conflicts of our current time, every nation on earth, including our own, needs to healing. Humanity needs to be rescued (cf. Armstrong, Sticks, pg. 123), and when you look at what’s currently happening, it’s easy to give into despair. But followers of Jesus are now allowed that so-called “luxury” because we are called to be people of hope. And that hope comes through loud and clear as we stand at the final tree in the Bible, one that actually we have already stood by.

This morning we are wrapping up this series called “Sticks,” during which we have looked at some of the significant trees in the Bible. As we come to the end of the Bible, we come back to the beginning. “Both Genesis and Revelation hinge on a sacred tree” (Armstrong 118), and if we’re paying close attention, we’ll realize it’s the same tree: the Tree of Life, the tree Adam and Eve were told not to eat from way back when. But before we get to the tree, I want to say something about this book, this strange and perplexing book that closes out our Bibles.

Revelation is a hard book to read and even harder to understand, and despite what some people would have you believe, it’s not a simple roadmap to the end of the world. It is, instead, a “revelation” or unveiling of Jesus. It’s about Jesus and nothing else. The problem we have with this book is that it was intentionally written in code, and we’ve lost the key in 2,000 years. Revelation is a vision given to John while he was an exile on the island of Patmos at a time when the Roman Empire had all the power in the world, or so it seemed. But John gives us a new way of seeing the world: God is actually the one with all the power. God is in control, and no matter what mess the world finds itself in, whether Rome is in charge or someone else, God is not threatened. In the end, he wins. That’s really the whole message of the book of Revelation, and the purpose of the book is to help us live in absolute confidence that evil will not win (cf. Armstrong 118).

So that’s what this vision at the very end of the book is all about. It’s an assurance that history is going somewhere, and that “somewhere” is back to the beginning, to the way God intended creation to be from the start. This book is not about going to heaven; it’s very clearly about heaven coming down to earth, the two being joined together forever (cf. Revelation 21:2). It’s about God making “everything new,” and Jesus receiving his bride. The reason John wrote all this down in the first century is not to make us preoccupied with the future but to allow us to live with hope and confidence in the present. He wanted his readers who were, many of them, undergoing intense persecution to hold onto their faith because Jesus is coming and he will win. I think most of all John wanted us to read these words and, whether we understood the code or not, to be able to breathe a sigh of relief and say, “Finally! This is what my heart has longed for.”

So engage with me with your imagination as John describes what this city looks like. For one thing, there is no sun but that doesn’t mean the city sits in darkness. God himself is the light of the city and there will be no more night, which is really disappointing to those who like their sleep. But the good news is we won’t be tired. We will have a resurrection body that does not wear out. In the middle of the city is the water of life, clear as crystal, running down from the throne upon which God sits. This river waters everything in sight. It flows out of the city and into the whole earth (cf. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, pg. 199). It is the source of everything good, which tells us that everything good comes from God, just as James wrote: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17). Anything good in your life and my life is a gift from God. That’s true now, and it will continue to be true forever.

And growing somehow on both sides of the river is our tree, the Tree of Life. When I’ve led Bible studies of this passage, I sometimes ask people to try to draw what they picture it looks like. How does the tree stand on both sides of the river? I get some interesting results every time. Maybe the water runs through the tree, or maybe it has two trunks that grow together. I honestly don’t know, and again, I’m not really worried about exactly how literally to take these images. The point here is that this tree, once a source of temptation, is now a source of healing. John says, “The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (22:2). The word that is translated “healing” is the source of our word “therapy.” It indicates a process that points toward wholeness and the way you get there is through worship. That’s very interesting to me. The healing of the nations will come, at least in part, through worship, when the whole world acknowledges Jesus as Lord over all. Paul has said that’s what will happen in the end: “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11). So the wars that rage, the racism that divides, the scandals and the grandstanding that anger and bewilder us all—all of those things and more will go away. Everything will be made right; everything will be healed, made whole. Oh, and by the way, this tree bears a different crop every month. It never stops bearing fruit. The healing that happens there will last forever, which is different than now. While we may experience healing now, it is not permanent. But there and then, as John has said, “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (21:4). And sometimes we get hung up on wondering about the “how” and what that kind of world will look like because we’ve never known anything like that. But don’t let the “how” questions distract you from the truth that, in the end, God will make everything right. That’s the message of this book that is wrapped up in this tree.

So gathered near this tree are the worshipping servants (though the original language says “slaves”—McKnight, Revelation, pg. 230), the ones who see God’s face and have his name written on their foreheads (22:4). There’s generally a lot more talk about the way the Beast’s name is written on foreheads (cf. 13:16) than there is about this observation. As simply as I can put it, John is using the image of the forehead as a place where we make our decisions and pledge our allegiances. From eternity’s view, it’s as easy as looking at someone’s face to determine who they belong to. Do they belong to the broken world system or do they belong to the one who will reign over all? All of that is meant to tell us that this tree, the Tree of Life, is the place of decision, the place where everyone has to declare their allegiance. It has always been so, even in the beginning when Adam and Eve stood by this tree in the Garden of Eden. They had a choice: obey God or not. Follow God’s plan for life or not. They chose not to, and they found themselves exiled from God’s presence (Wright 200). Ever since that moment, God’s mission has been to put it all back together, to remake creation in the way he intended in the first place. He could have chosen to destroy everything and start over, but instead he chose to love us and call us back to himself. Now, at the end of the Biblical story, this same tree reappears, and the decision is once again placed before humanity. Choose God’s way or swear allegiance to the way the world works. Choose life or death. Choose light or darkness. Choose the Tree of Life or eternal exile. There is a decision to be made at the tree of life and it affects each person forever.

“The stakes are high at this decision tree” (Armstrong 124). Maybe higher this time than even at the beginning. John is writing this near the end of the first century to churches who are caught between two “cities.” Early in the book, Jesus speaks pointedly to seven churches in Asia Minor, and for each of them, the choice is between compromise and faithfulness. Nearly two thousand years later, the same choice confronts Christ’s church and each individual believer. Will we stand for Christ or follow a different path? At the heart of this city and at the heart of John’s vision is a decision: which city do we want to live in: the city of humanity or the city of God (cf. Armstong 126)? For those who choose the city of God, John says, “They will reign for ever and ever” (22:5). What a promise! What a hope!

Before we move to some practical implications of this vision, I want to address the question people often ask today and maybe it’s a question some of you are even asking right now. One of the questions that can cause people to doubt and even to leave the faith is this: how can a loving God send people to hell? Because that really is the alternative offered here: everyone ends up somewhere for eternity. Some end up in what John calls the New Jerusalem, and others end up in a place called hell. Why would God do that? Why wouldn’t God just save everyone? It’s a legitimate question, one I touched on a bit last week. But first let me say that, at least in our culture, we get more of our images of hell from Dante’s book The Inferno than we do from the Bible. Most of the pictures or paintings of hell you see are from Dante’s descriptions. I don’t know what hell will be like except that it is eternal separation from God. Hell is being outside of God’s presence. And God does not “send” anyone there. It’s always our choice. This past winter I read C. S. Lewis’ book The Great Divorce which describes a fictional (obviously) bus trip people take from hell to heaven, and Lewis describes heaven as more real than anything we can imagine. He says the entirety of hell can fit into a crack in the ground of heaven. At one point in the book, one of Lewis’ characters tackles this very question and says, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened” (Lewis 72). The choice is ours, not God’s. And that’s why the stakes are so high at the decision tree.

When we lived in the northern part of the state, our parsonage was just a short drive from the shores of Lake Michigan. From the Portage beach, on a clear day, you could see Chicago to the west, and if you turned just a little bit to the right and looked true north, the horizon seemed to go on forever. The lake and the sky met in an endless span of blue, and that was a view that would always bring peace to my soul. It’s the same thing with the vision John is giving us here. So many people tell me that they don’t read Revelation because it’s a scary book, but that wasn’t why John wrote it. He wrote it all down so that you and I would have peace and, even more importantly, hope. So I want to encourage you in a couple of ways this morning. First, as we stand at the decision tree, Jesus through John actually wants to correct our vision so that we will see things the way he intends us to. The Tree of Life asks to reframe our perspective so that we see everything through the lens of hope. Throughout this series, we’ve talked about some difficult things as we’ve stood by various trees. And in a congregation this size, undoubtedly there are as many challenges and struggles represented here as you can imagine. But here’s what I want you to hear: that sin you struggle with, that shame that holds you back, the hurt that has been done to you, the hurt you have done to others and the healing you have been waiting on—none of that will exist in the new heaven and new earth. Evil has an expiration date. Brokenness and sadness will come to an end. Everything that is broken will be healed by one leaf from the Tree of Life. And what is true of individuals is also true of nations and people groups and even denominations. Jesus’ prayer in John 17 that all of his people would be “one” (17:21) will finally be answered completely. “Irreconcilable differences” will no longer be a thing. Bible teacher Kat Armstrong puts it this way: “When it feels like evil is multiplying in our world or that the enemy is winning—remember, this is not how our story ends” (136). On that day, standing in the shade of the Tree of Life, every voice will worship Jesus and every heart will be healed. And that is the kind of hope that can transform every single day here, knowing that something better is coming.

But to be able to do that, we have to practice. Practice living hopefully. The world around us does not encourage us to do that. Life is absolutely jam packed with disappointments, discouragements and disillusionment. Broken relationships, people and leaders who let us down, illnesses that seem to run rampant and even church leaders who fail to live up to our expectations. Add to that things like, oh, a little global pandemic and the constant threat of military conflicts around the world and it’s far too easy to give into gloom and doom. But for those who stand at the decision tree and choose to live for Jesus, the future will be bright. Not might be. Not may be. It will be bright. The apostle Paul (quoting the prophet Isaiah) said, “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived—the things God has prepared for those who love him—these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:9-10). No matter how bad things get here, there is something better coming. Guaranteed. And so we can choose each and every day (and sometimes moment by moment) to live hopefully.

There are some simple, practical things we can do to live hopefully. You can plant a tree, knowing that you may never see it come to maturity but that its very presence will make the world better. Or plant a simple flower. It may not last the whole season but for the time it’s blooming it will make the world a more beautiful place. Hug a child, invest your life in a child, certainly in the life of your children and grandchildren but also in the lives of children around you who don’t have anyone. While our kids have wonderful grandparents, for all of their growing up years we always lived about 2 hours away from both families. I am forever thankful for those who took the time to invest in my kids’ lives, who took them under their wing and loved on them, showing up for soccer games and dance recitals. And there are a lot of children in our own community who don’t have anyone who pays attention to them or loves on them. Live hopefully by investing in a child. And share your faith. Living hopefully involves passing this faith along to the next generation, and even to this generation. What better hope to offer someone than the love and joy found in Jesus? Practice living hopefully and the world, God’s world, will be a better place.

Once a month here we engage in a practice that is meant to help us live hopefully, a practice Jesus gave us called Holy Communion. Jesus had told his followers, his friends, several times leading up to that night that he was going to be arrested and killed, but either they didn’t hear him or they simply didn’t believe that could happen. We know that at least one time when he told them this, Peter had told Jesus that such a thing could “never” happen (cf. Matthew 16:22). But it was going to, and it was coming faster than the disciples were ready for. And so, during that final meal Jesus shared with his friends, he gave them a practice that would help them live hopefully. The bread and the cup were meant to remind them not only of what Jesus was going to do on the cross, to remember but also to live forward-facing, hope-filled. “Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). Until he comes, we share in the bread and the cup. Until he comes, we live hopefully.

Will you join me in prayer as we prepare our hearts to come to the table? Let’s pray.