Homestead Trees

So Abram went to live near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron, where he pitched his tents. There he built an altar to the Lord…. The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground. (Genesis 13:18, 18:1-2)

 

After Abram separated from his nephew Lot, he pitched his tents near the great oaks of Mamre at Hebron. The trees provided him with shade and firewood. Perhaps Abram also used wood for construction, although he and his servants continued to live in tents. Abram entertained guests at the oaks of Mamre for several years.

 

This is the place where Abram went to war to rescue Lot. This probably is the place where God cut the Abrahamic Covenant. This is where Abram’s son Ishmael was born. Perhaps Isaac was born here. And this is where Abram pleaded with the Lord to deliver Sodom for Lot’s sake.

 

The Oaks of Mamre were home for Abram. Trees can provide a temporary home for us when we go camping. Trees can help turn a desert into a home. Just as trees helped establish Abram’s homestead, trees improve my property today. Perhaps you benefit from trees, too. How often do we thank God for something so simple as the trees in our yard?

 

A Landmark Tree

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you…. Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. (Genesis 12:1, 6-8)

The area where I once lived in South Dakota is a genuine plain. We lived in a town that was eight miles from U.S. Highway 81. When we turned west and drove two miles toward that highway, we could see three tall trees standing in the distance near the intersection six miles away. We could drive that entire stretch without losing sight of those three trees. I often drove with an eye on them. The land was flat enough, the road was straight enough, and the trees were tall enough. There was another constant which made that experience possible: the trees never moved.

In our survey of trees in the Bible, we’ve encountered several purposes for trees, including beauty, food, deliverance, and peace. Today we encounter another purpose for trees in the Bible – landmarks.

When Abram was living in Ur of the Chaldeans, the Lord had prompted him to travel “to the land I will show you.” Abram migrated for decades until the Lord met him again at the great oak tree of Moreh near Shechem and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” The tree became a landmark to record the location and announce the climax of Abram’s soon-to-end journey. The oak tree marked the spot.

In response, Abram built an altar to the Lord. Commentators have noted that when Abram built the altar and called on the name of the Lord, he also proclaimed the name of the Lord. That’s comparable to pioneers of the American West who built churches wherever they went, marking the end their journeys and the proclamation of the gospel.

We still regard trees as landmarks. At the climax of a 1994 movie The Shawshank Redemption, starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, an oak tree served as a landmark of redemption. I used to live in northern Ohio near where the tree in the movie was located. It was struck by lightning in 2011 and eventually was cut down. That oak tree no longer marks the spot. 

Next time, we’ll encounter more trees that served as a landmark in Abram’s life.

The Ark Was Made of…

God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. (Genesis 6:12-15)

As the population of the world increased, evil increased along with it. God’s heart was broken. His indictment upon humanity was that “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time” (Gen. 6:5). Mankind’s sin was universal, and God prepared for a universal judgment – a worldwide flood. 

“But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (Gen. 6:8). God would deliver Noah and his family from the flood through the building of a boat, an ark. We don’t even need to know the story to guess what Noah used to build the ark.

The ark was made from wood. Wood comes from trees, more trees of the Bible. We’re only six chapters into the first book of the Bible and trees have told us most of the story.  These trees in Genesis 6 carried Noah and his family safely through God’s righteous, divine judgment of sin.

God command to Noah was specific. The ark was to be made of cypress wood (Gen. 6:14). Older Bibles (KJV & NASB) used the term “gopher” wood here.

I think the gopher wood came from Minnesota. 

Maybe not. But Noah’s salvation came through trees.

Thousands of years later, our salvation would come through another tree.

But first, trees still have another role to play in the telling of the flood story. We’ll look at that next time.

 

The Tree of Salvation

Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle. (John 19:16-18)

We’re accustomed to seeing crosses in many places. In churches. On churches. In cemeteries. On graves. In worship videos. On tattoos. To most of us, crosses are a symbol of faith.

In the Roman world, there were crosses in public places, too. But those crosses were not a symbol of faith; they were weapons of torture and death. People would see crosses frequently, often with a naked figure hanging on it–alive or dead. Rome crucified thousands of people, most of them slaves or criminals. There is a record of Roman soldiers crucifying an entire village simply because they wanted to occupy that territory. One way Rome kept the peace was by the terror of crucifixion. They used timber configured as a cross to crucify their victims or they used whatever tree happened to be available.

Jesus of Nazareth was crucified on a Roman cross outside Jerusalem. We remember that event on Good Friday.

Brian Zahnd writes: When the blood of the Son of God stained the wood that stood upon Skull Hill, it became the tree of life. What once was lost behind the closed gates of Eden has now been found…. The cross of Christ is the wood between the worlds—the world that was and the world to come…. As in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, the wood between the worlds is a portal.” (The Wood Between the Worlds, p. 16)

To the Apostle Paul, the cross was a scandal. He wrote, “We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block [skandalon] to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” (1 Corinthians 1:23)

The scandal was not that crucifixion was a horrific and cruel practice. No, the crucifixion of human beings–guilty or innocent–was a common sight in Roman-occupied Israel. The scandal was that a cross would become Good News to the world. The heart of the gospel is the cross.

What turned a scandal into Good News was the third day. We’ll consider that next time.

Good for Food and Pleasing to the Eye

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. (Genesis 2:8-9).

The trees in the Garden of Eden could have become the world’s first tourist attraction. Of course, Adam and Eve would have needed no price for admission because they lived right among a great variety of trees: big trees and little trees, green trees and yellow trees, trees with smooth bark and trees with rough bark, trees with round leaves and trees with pointy leaves…. OK, those aren’t very scientific descriptions. If you want technical science, perhaps you could start off with coniferous and deciduous.

But we don’t need to dive into science here. The text reports that the trees in the Garden of Eden “were pleasing to the eye.” The trees were good looking! How often do we miss the aesthetic beauty of trees? Yet that is the very first purpose of trees noted in Scripture.

The largest tree in Minnesota is a massive cottonwood tree just a half-hour drive from our home in Clarkfield. Carol and I have stopped a number of times to admire it. The tree is 106 feet tall with a circumference of nearly 33 feet. (There’s a picture of it below.) I also recall another unique tree I once saw in Hawaii. It was a Eucalyptus Deglupta, also known as a rainbow tree. God has created a world with great beauty. Trees are pleasing to the eye. That’s the first thing Scripture says about trees.

A second purpose for trees in the Garden of Eden is that they were “good for food.” Undoubtedly, there were many kinds of rich, juicy fruit for Adam and Eve to enjoy. Perhaps there were apple trees, pear trees, peach trees, cherry trees, and more. Let’s not forget that leaves, bark and roots from trees also provide food for both humans and wildlife.

God created trees for us. Feast your eyes. Feast your taste buds. Enjoy!

Trees are beautiful. Trees are delicious. Next time, we’ll discover more of God’s purposes for trees.

 

Trees of the Bible

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day. (Genesis 1:11-13)

 

According to the 8 Billion Trees website, there are over 3 trillion trees in the world, comprised of 65,000 to 73,000 different species. The number is uncertain because scientists are still discovering new species of trees. Forests occupy about 30% of the world’s land area. Russia plays host to more trees than any other nation by a large margin. Canada has more forests than any other nation. The oldest tree in the world is generally recognized to be the Methuselah tree in eastern California. Tree ring data indicates Methuselah is 4,855 years old. The world’s oldest tree is appropriately named!

 

Life as we know it could not exist without trees. Beyond the obvious necessities which trees provide humanity – food, shelter, and clothing – are essential processes which maintain the air we breathe, and land on which we stand, and the water we drink. Chlorophyll, photosynthesis, and cellular respiration are terms we may have learned in middle school, reminding us that trees are complex living organisms.

 

Trees made their earthly appearance in God’s second creative word on the third day of creation. Have you ever noticed that Day 3 and Day 6 each include two unique and separate creative words? God’s creation of trees on Day 3 stands out as a significant parallel to the creation of mankind on Day 6. 

 

J.R.R. Tolkien famously personified trees in his Lord of the Rings trilogy. The tree-like Ents could both walk and talk like people (and Hobbits). Similarly, C.S. Lewis humanized trees in The Chronicles of Narnia series. In both mythical fantasies, trees played a crucial role in the redemptive climax. So in Scripture, trees play a major role in our redemption and the healing of the nations.

 

It all begins on Day 3 of creation. The trees created in Genesis 1:11-12 utilized the light of Day 1, the sky and water of Day 2, and the dry land of Day 3 to perform their “magic” in beginning what would become the cycle of life. The work of trees continues to this day in our daily sustenance, in our redemption from the fall, and in the future restoration of God’s creation.

 

An Unimpressive Title

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day. (Genesis 1:11-13)

Long ago, back in the days when “media” ministry denoted devotional literature delivered by the postal service, I used to receive periodic booklets from Radio Bible Class (now known as Our Daily Bread Ministries). They were best known for their daily devotional series, but RBC also published a large number of topical booklets and sent them out to anyone who requested them. I eagerly read everything that landed in my mailbox.

One little booklet piqued my interest the first time I saw it. It surprised me and I never forgot it. The pamphlet still stands out in my mind decades later. In fact, it’s sitting on the desk in front of me right now. It was written by Richard W. De Haan and published in 1976.

The title of the devotional booklet? Well, it won’t impress you. And that’s exactly what impressed me so long ago. The title was unimpressive. This wasn’t a book about salvation or heaven or hell or marriage or children or church or prayer or evangelism. In my mailbox was a package with 32 pages addressing a subject I had never considered before, even though it is referenced over 300 times in the Bible, including 19 times in the first three chapters of Genesis and four times in the last chapter of Revelation.

When I opened the booklet and began to read, I was captivated by the subject. I’m still intrigued by it today. So in my next post, I will begin to survey the Trees of the Bible.