Life Between The Trees: The Cedar Tree - Ezekiel 17:22-24




Here’s your weekly question: Have we added any new proud tree-huggers to our midst?  We had a few more (despite the snow and ice covered trees) last week.  Hopefully each week we will add more and more of our congregation as we remember the importance of trees throughout God’s Word, as we journey in our “Life Between The Trees” from the Creation of Eden to the restoration of our fallen creation in New Jerusalem, not mention our call from Eden, in the meantime to care for all of God’s Creation.

In Eden, as we encountered the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life we were confronted with gift of Free Will offered to us by God.  We also encountered humanity’s tendency to choose our way and choose death over obedience to God and choosing full life.

With Noah, we found the Olive Tree.  Cast out of Eden we saw humanity spiral downward out of control until our sin brought about the destruction of creation with God saving Noah and his family and preserving animal life aboard the ark.  The olive leaf brought back to Noah by the dove becomes the symbol of hope, realizing that no matter what we may feel like we are drowning in, God is with us, God will save us, and God will bring us through the flood—just as God saved us from the flood of our own sin, as Paul tells us using the image of an olive tree, by grafting us into His family through Jesus Christ.

Today we come to the mighty cedar trees. 

The cedar tree.  It is amazing how God works.  In the original plans for this series I had included the cedar tree.  However, when calculating the weeks from the start of the series to the end of the series, I found that I had one too many weeks planned in order to end on Easter Sunday.  I had to pick one to drop.  I decided to drop the cedar tree.  After finalizing plans, and coordinating things with our worship team, I started work on the first sermon and conducted the survey on Facebook, asking folks to name the first tree that came to mind when thinking of trees associated with the Bible.  I shared with y’all that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was tied for second, and the Tree of Life tied for fourth.  Last week’s olive tree was the number one response, and, well the Cedars of Lebanon was tied with the Tree of Life for fourth.  Oops…dropped the wrong tree.  Oh well.  But like I said, God works in amazing ways.  We couldn’t get our musician secured for our music Sunday today, opening the need for another Sunday in the series.  God must have really wanted us to deal with His mighty cedar.

So what is the significance of the cedar tree throughout the Bible?  References to the cedar through Scripture are most often the Cedars of Lebanon.  We find these cedars of Lebanon over and over throughout the Old Testament in a variety of ways.  Sometimes they are presented in very positive ways, however there are times that they are cast in a negative light.  If you were able to build with cedar, it was a sign of wealth and prestige.  The cedar logs imported into Israel were understood to be of the choicest of woods…for their beauty, for their strength.  They were used to build David’s palace.  They were used by Solomon, along with the cypress, for the building of the Temple in Jerusalem.  They were tall trees, they were strong trees, they were beautiful trees, and as evergreens, they were a sign of life.  Yet it is their height and strength which also lend the cedar to be used through Scripture in negative ways—they become a symbol for pride and arrogance.  Yet, less the people think themselves too great, trusting in their own strength and glory, we are reminded, as in Psalm 29:5 that even the voice of God is strong that the cedars: “The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.”

That power of God, greater than even the powerful cedar, becomes the focal point of our reading from Ezekiel this morning.  God had made a covenant with King David, “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom…Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever.”[i]  Though God made this promise, it isn’t too long before we see David’s family starting to fracture as David and his sons make decisions that would rival any of today’s dysfunctional families.

After David’s death, his son Solomon ascends to the throne, and Solomon’s reign seems to pick up and mirror David’s greatness.  Solomon asks God not for riches or fame or even the defeat of his enemies, but instead asks God for wisdom to lead God’s people. Solomon constructs the original Temple in Jerusalem, with such splendor and glory that there was no rival.  However, it is after that his decisions lead to the crumbling of the Davidic kingdom…like his father, he has problems with restraint when it comes to women, and takes to himself wife and wife and female companion after female companion, including relations with non-Hebrew women. 

Solomon dies and his son Rehoboam assumes the throne.  We don’t see Rehoboam continuing the trouble decisions with regard to women.  However, rather than lower the taxes on the people that had been put in place under Solomon as he raised money to build the temple.  Rehoboam increases the financial demands placed on the people for the sake of padding his treasury.

Revolt under Rehoboam split the kingdom into the Northern and Southern Kingdom, into Israel and Judah, and then the continuing faltering and sinning of the leaders and the people saw the king and all the officials of Jerusalem taken off into exile Babylon.  Earlier in chapter 17, Ezekiel paints the picture of this as an eagle swooping in and ripping off the top of the cedar tree and taking it off to a foreign land.  The royal cedar of David was broken, and left for dead.  Ezekiel then says the seed from the branch the eagle broke off will be planted by the river and begin to grow there in that land of exile.

Our reading picks up this morning as Ezekiel speaks further into this scene, as the people find themselves in exile, under the rule of Babylon, wondering if they, as God’s people, are no more, God’s promise to David, void; if they are now simply to become people of Babylon.  Ezekiel reminds them that no situation is beyond the redemptive power of God who is greater than even the mighty cedar.

God says, “I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar; I will set it out.  I will break off a tender one from the topmost of its young twigs; I will plant it on a high and lofty mountain.”  The lofty cedar that had been in Jerusalem had been damaged and destroyed, but God had removed from that cedar a sprig, a remnant, and he replanted the cedar to grow into a mighty tree.  Out of Babylon, God will bring Zerubbabel, a descendant of David.  Zerubbabel will lead the people back into Jerusalem where they will rebuild both their city and their Temple.  God’s promise to David is still in place as his ancestor reassumes leading the people of God.

God replants that remnant, that sprig, with Zerubbabel.  However, that is just the beginning of God’s growing that sprig into a full tree that stands tall for all the world to see.  This sprig will become the full tree, reach its full height in the Messiah, in Jesus, the Christ.  It is Christ that we see that the tree fully grown.  It is in Christ that we see God’s promise of David’s throne being established forever.  It is in Christ that we see God establish a kingdom not marked by the political borders of Israel and limited to the Hebrew ethnicity, but through Christ we see this kingdom become worldwide.  This noble cedar produces fruit in works of mercy and grace, and provides shade for “every kind of bird…winged creatures of every kind.”

So what does this cedar tree mean to us, my brothers and sisters…there is so much to take from God’s mighty and noble cedar.  Two things them I would lift to us today.

First, while we might falter and fail, God does not.  While we might remove ourselves from enjoying the blessings of God due to our sin, we do not and cannot void God’s promises.  God keeps His promises and will see them fulfilled.  For us we have the promise of a redeemed and eternal life through Christ, and while our sin may have caused us to become estranged from God, if we, like the people of God in Babylon, return to God, we will see God’s new life springing from our lives.  God has the power to give new life where the rest of the world sees brokenness and death, whether it is reestablishing the people of Israel out of exile in Babylon, raising His Son, our Savior, from the tomb, or rescuing us from wherever our sin may have us languishing like a broken tree.

Secondly, God’s life giving, redemptive, re-establishing of His people is not simply for the sake of those He immediately rescued.  God’s raising up of Zerubbabel was not simply for Zerubbabel, but for all of God’s remnant that had been in exile.  God’s raising of Jesus was not just for Jesus’ sake, but so that all who believed in Him might find salvation.  God’s raising up of us from wherever death has tried to take hold of us is not simply for our sake, that others might find new life in Him.  It is so all the birds will find shade and places of rest…all the birds, not just the birds that look like us, not just the birds that sound like us, not just the birds that fly like us, but all the birds of the world—God has raised us up as his mighty cedar, His Church, that in order that we might provide places of relief and rest for all people, regardless of their skin color, regardless of their language, regardless of their nationality, regardless of their political allegiance, regardless, even, of their religion or lack of religion.  It is for all.  Why?  So that all the trees of the field, all the kingdoms and people of the world might know that God is Lord, who will raise up those who are low and have fallen…and give new life where death seems to have taken hold, that all might come to find themselves not only in the shade of, but as a branch of God’s noble cedar.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.



[i] 2nd Samuel 7:12, 16

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