The Tree Church

Pastor Matthew Johnson

Can you hear it? Can you see it? Can you feel it…HE’s coming! 

Pour it out Spirit more and more. Come have Your way in us.

Like a violent wind I feel You rushing in. Like a might flame of fire Your Spirits’ falling.

Jesus was here to do the will of the Father. He came to the earth to reveal to us the perfect will of God. Every thing He did was the perfect representation of God.

True love allows God to be the defining truth in our life.

John 1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God.

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

16 And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.

Our anchors get established in our lives as we grow and mature. We are in a culture that wants to remover the anchors in our life. There is an element of phycology because of our cultural beliefs. The ones in power dictated our worth. We started celebrating knowledge and set up absolutes who hold these truths to be true. Modernism starting pushing outside of the box. The 60’s and  post modernism said that your experience became your truth. Relativism- the doctrine that knowledge, truth and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical contes and are not absolute.

Our society would like us to follow this. The major problem is that they are giving us their best guess. They are experimenting with your life. Do we let the anchors to be removed or do we know that there is a defined pathway to follow. 

John 14:6

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

Deconstruction is the process of critical theory. It is the believe that everything that is wrong in society needs to be evaluated and deconstructed. To look for faults and if found destroy them. Any concrete truth is a threat to personal freedom. 

Some people in the name of truth created slavery, restricted women’s rights and put personal rights of the minority in jeopardy. Many good things came out of this. Voting rights, the end to slavery, equal pay for equal work was established.

It can also meant that I can judge you on a standard that you are unaware of and so can you. 

Parenting is an example of this. It has changed in every generation. When children turn around and judge the parents…it hurts. You know what you have invested in their lives. 

Every single thing in our culture is being challenged.

When everything can be challenged it can be overwhelming. Deconstruction can be a good thing when it is modeled after Jesus.

Matthew 22:

37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

The greatest thing that you can do is love God and obey Him.

Without faith it is impossible to please God. We show our faith and our love for Him by our actions. 

True love allows God to be the defining truth in our life.

God wants to use us to bring the truth of salvation to everyone that we come in contact with. His standard is of the heart. In the culture of Jesus He corrected the hypocrisy of the religious leaders. He warned us not to become the evil that they used. He taught love for all, including our enemies, trusting God for the outcome.

He deconstructed the prejudices of His culture and replaced them with the truth of Word of God. Grace and truth in the fullness of the Gospel.

The Samaritan, the woman at the well, the little children, the woman caught in adultery are examples of His grace with truth…He loved God and He loved people. 

Jesus is telling us that we do not get to decide what is right…God does. He always offers us grace but with the admission to sin no more.