He Shall Be Like a Tree

The point: Stop claiming Psalm 1:3 as a stand-alone promise — examine whether verses 1-2 are first true of you.

Martin quotes an old writer: 'Take your foul fingers off the promise.' Verse 3 is for the man of verses 1-2; sinners cannot grasp it as a magic promise.

Bellowed real good. Because some of you have heard the roaring of a lion, and when I say he did this like that, it illuminates, it elucidates, it clarifies, it brings into focus the matter communicated. We have a record. It's written by, it's based upon some poetic sermons of a Negro preacher.

9:16 - 9:37 Read in full sermon

Martin pictures driving through a Georgia cypress swamp at one in the morning when 'darker than a hundred midnights' becomes the only adequate simile — illustrating how a likeness only works when both terms are familiar.

Now, what kind of tree did the psalmist have in mind? Most of the trees that you and I see are trees that either have grown what we would say wild or were planted by a forest tree or were planted by our own ingenuity in our backyards and living in the kind of climate we do where we have intermittent, periodic rainfall. This doesn't communicate to us. In fact, it was a long struggle before I began to understand a little bit about what the psalmist was talking about simply because I could not divorce my concept of a tree that I had planted or someone else had planted from the psalmist's concept.

11:28 - 12:05 Read in full sermon

Eastern farmers deliberately planted trees along riverbanks rather than depending on intermittent rain — that is the agricultural reality behind Psalm 1:3.

Its root system is tied in with a source of continuous moisture and supply of nourishment. It shall spread out its roots by the river. That's the significant thing. Where it cannot receive the rain from heaven, for the rains do not come regularly, even, Jeremiah says, in the year of drought, it will not cease from yielding fruit, its leaf will not wither, it will continually be green because its root system, the source of its life, is tied in to a continuous supply of water.

14:13 - 14:48 Read in full sermon

You don't see the moisture flowing from the river through the roots — only the green leaves, the blossoms, the fruit. The believer's communion with God is largely hidden but visible in fruit.

There is that supply of life and nourishment to the soul which becomes the root system next to the river. It becomes the source of health and fruitage in the life. Now, immediately this poses a problem. The life, at least it does to me, perhaps you haven't thought of the problem.

18:51 - 19:08 Read in full sermon

The point: When you find your spiritual leaves fading or fruit failing, do not work harder on the branches — go to the root and ask whether meditation has ceased.

Christendom is busy fixing leaves and fruit when the real problem is at the root. Martin's diagnostic image for surface-level Christianity.

Now, if this is true, do you begin to understand, dear child of God, and I'm speaking primarily now to you who are true believers, conscious of the conflict, do you see now why the great battle in your life is the battle of your mind? What is the devil seeking to do continually in your life? Does he come and aim directly at snatching the fruit from the limbs of your life, or spraying dark paint on the leaves so they won't look like green leaves? No.

27:59 - 28:30 Read in full sermon

The point: Recognize that the daily fight for time and quiet for the Word is not trivial — it is the fight for your roots.

The devil knows that if he can pull the believer's roots out of the river, leaves and fruit will fail of themselves — so he attacks meditation time.

Just get the roots pulled away. And I think I understand. I understand now more than ever before why it is that the place of conflict, by and large, for every true child of God, is the conflict for the mastery of the time and the mind to be the one who meditates in the law of God day and night.

29:30 - 29:50 Read in full sermon

The point: Don't compare your fruitfulness to another believer's — pear trees don't envy apple trees. Yield the kind of fruit God has gifted you to bear.

When fall comes the sap goes down and leaves turn color; when spring comes the sap rises and leaves return. The believer's evergreen leaf shows continuous spiritual sap.

Some pear trees, some apple trees, all different kinds of trees, but each one planted by the Lord, drawing from that source of life, bringing forth His fruit in His season. And in the midst of that, and even when there may not be that specific demonstration of fruit, here's the promise, His leaf shall not wither or fade. Now when you see a faded leaf, that's a sign that life, at least temporarily, is going out of the tree. Even in the fall, when the leaves turn color, why do they turn color?

38:46 - 39:18 Read in full sermon

Bless the blessed man with material things and he praises God; strip them away and he thanks God for the reminder that this world is not his rest. Either way, he prospers.

Strip away his material things and he thanks God for it as a reminder that this world is not his resting place. How in the world can you hurt a man like that? Whatsoever he does, he prospers.

42:18 - 42:29 Read in full sermon