Richard Ellis Talks

Richard Ellis: You could starve to death taking food, but never eating food. You say, "Well, I've got it." Okay, you're listening, you hear it. At some point, it has to go in. You have to receive food into your body somehow or it doesn't do you any good. It's the same thing with Jesus.

Guest (Male): Welcome to Richard Ellis Talks with Richard Ellis. Thanks for allowing us to share this time with you. You may be stuck in traffic or stuck in life. Either way, today's message is going to help you get on the right track as you learn how much God loves you right where you are.

Richard's unique style checks all the boxes with a lot of hope, insight, truth, and, of course, humor. Today's talk with Richard will get our conversation started, but we want to keep it going with you. So let's stay in touch through our website, richardellis.com. But right now, let's go ahead and get right into today's talk. Here is Richard Ellis.

Richard Ellis: The title of today's message is "Take, Eat." Genesis chapter two, if you'll go there with me. We're going to go literally from Genesis and end up in Revelation. We're going to start there. A lot of stuff starts there, obviously. We're not going to read this whole thing, but Genesis chapter two, verse 16.

Let's start there. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying—okay, simple thing he tells him here—"Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die." Now, I don't know how big the garden was, but he gave him access to everything. And you'll see in a minute even another tree that he loses access to because he couldn't obey this simple request.

Now let me start here and make some application for us. God is in no way trying to withhold any good thing from you. What we have defined as a good thing is not necessarily a good thing if it violates what he has asked us to do and what he's put in place to protect our lives.

So some of the things even that God provides for us, we twist, we indulge. Simple things like food. Food is not a bad thing, but if you eat too much food, now you've got a problem. And people say, "Well, do you think alcohol is a bad thing?" I am not the Holy Spirit. I can give you verses to say, "Better not to drink." But can I say you should not be drinking? I can't tell you that.

That is a place where you have to say, "God, can I?" As I facetiously say, if you can pop a beer and say, "God, for all you do, this Bud's for you," and go for it. Now, you're laughing. What does the book say? "Whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." So ask yourself a question: is this glorifying God? And if you can't say yes to that, then give it up.

You say, "Well, you're trying to tell me how to live." No, I'm not. Now, if you're a drunk, I'll call you out on that maybe because that's a clear violation. There's no question about that. God has made the whole planet available to us. Amazing things in their proper way he has made available.

And he says, "Look, to them, even in a perfect garden, a perfect situation to Adam, here's the deal: every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die." So it's not just about looking at it, seeing it, being aware of it—clearly he's aware of it, God's pointing this thing out—but it's when we take it and eat it. That's the problem.

People say, "Well, I just feel terrible. I feel like I'm a horrible person. I'm being tempted." To be tempted is not to sin. Does everybody get this? You say, "Well, I was tempted to do something." That's not the question. Did you follow through and do it? Now you've got a problem. Being tempted to take and eat something is one thing. Passing on it is another. So you're going to be tempted, but that's not the same thing as committing the sin.

All right, now go to Genesis chapter three. So this is a simple deal that God has set for them, to Adam. Genesis chapter three, verse one: "The serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, 'Has God indeed said, "You shall not eat of every tree of the garden"?'" Asked a simple question, right?

And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said"—and now she start, early on, starts quoting God—"You shall not eat of it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die." Now just parenthetically, almost let me say this: don't misquote God. He doesn't need any help.

What he says, he says. You say, "What are you talking about?" He did not say you couldn't touch it even. He said, "Don't eat it." Okay, now she says, "Well, God says we can't even touch it." And that's not what he said. "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat of it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.'"

Then the serpent said to the woman, "You're not going to die. What is that even? You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." It is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so he's right about that. But he starts messing with your head.

So the woman saw that the tree was good for food, so sees it, that it was pleasant to the eyes. So it's food, looks pretty. And by the way, nowhere does the Bible say it was an apple. That's another crazy thing people have come up with. And people think, oh, the Macintosh—all these computers have apples on them with a bite out of it, maybe that's the curse. It's not even an apple. It doesn't say that in the Bible. I mean, they've got other problems, but not that.

Tree was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise. So what did she do? So she took of its fruit and ate. She took it and she ate it. Now this seems like such a simple thing. Why does everything collapse around such simple things? It's the same thing in our lives. You go, "Well, God, I didn't do any big deal. I just did this one thing." And all of a sudden that domino slams into the next one and bam, bam, bam, before you know it, they're all down.

So she takes of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her and he ate, which is a whole other sermon. What is he doing? He's the one that got the instructions in the first place. He's already told her; she wouldn't have known what God said. She misquotes God, but he's standing there and she hands it to him. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

And then they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden and it all goes downhill. "Where have you been?" "Well, I don't know." "How'd you know you're naked?" So it unravels.

Keep going down in that same chapter, part of the consequence here, verse 17: "Then to Adam he said, 'Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten'"—interesting, he didn't heed the voice of the serpent, he heeded the voice of his wife—"'you heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree which I commanded you, saying, "You shall not eat of it": Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.'" Remember that verse when we get to Revelation.

Then look down also in verse 21: "Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them." Which an animal had to be sacrificed, be killed; blood had to be shed to make coverings for them. "Then the Lord God said"—which is extraordinary to me—"Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"—therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.

Now, the tree of life still is somewhere. And we can't get to it. Not yet. This is what's crazy about the story. God never told Adam that he could not eat of the tree of life. Didn't tell him it was forbidden, didn't tell him not to touch it, nothing. He had access to the tree of life, but what happens to human nature?

We don't go for the best thing that God has for us, we get tricked, deceived into going after something that God says, "Don't do this." And we have access to not the whole garden but literally life itself. You say, "Well, what does that have to do with me and us today?"

The whole point of church, the Bible, Jesus, the gospel—that he died, buried, raised from the dead—this whole thing is giving you access to the tree of life. And the world says, "No, dude, no. You don't want that. That will ruin your life. You'll live forever. Like that's a problem."

Don't go to God, don't do that. Come over here and let's figure out something he said will destroy your life and you will surely die from. And let's go do that. What are we thinking? And what do we end up doing? The very thing that gets us killed. From the beginning, the snake, Satan himself, it's been steal, kill, destroy. Tempt them to do something that will bring death into the equation and we've got them. And look at the ensuing chaos that we live with because one person took one bite out of a piece of fruit, gave it to her husband, he eats it, and here we sit.

Go to Proverbs chapter three. A few pages to the right. And I'm going to read a few of these verses to get to the one, verse 13: "Happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gains understanding; for her proceeds are better than the profits of silver, and her gain than fine gold." So finding wisdom, finding understanding. "She is more precious than rubies, and all the things you may desire cannot compare with her. Length of days is in her right hand, in her left hand riches and honor."

So wisdom, get a hold of wisdom. "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." Verse 18: "She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her, and happy are all who retain her." She is a tree of life. So the Bible makes reference, and we're going to end up with the tree of life here in this "Take, Eat" thing. So if you came across literally a tree of life and God himself said, "Tree of life, wisdom," whatever descriptors you want to use, why would you not take and eat of that and live and have what it describes here?

But no, the devil comes and says, "You don't want that. That's what God wants. He's trying to hurt you. He's trying to keep something from you." God is not trying to keep any good thing from you. Trust him. Proverbs 11, a few pages over, verse 30. These are simple little things. It's all in your Bible. "The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise." Simple little phrase: the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life.

Have you ever thought about someone being able and seeing you and being so attracted to you that if you were literally a fruit tree, they'd want to eat your fruit? Like, "Wow, what has that guy got going on? It's like his life is a tree of life and it's not just for you; literally, it helps other people in some way. You have provision for somebody else." There's so much for you and beyond.

People ought to want to pick you. I've been kind of wrestling with this—not wrestling, just processing this week. I met someone the other day and someone else's name, another man's, came up. And this is what I said about the other guy who wasn't even there. I said, "Wow, he's a great man. He's a great man."

Why did I say that about that guy? And is that what people use to describe me or you as a man? If your name came up in conversation, would anyone even think about saying, "Wow, that's a great guy. He's a great man"? That ought to be what people say about you. And if your life is a righteous life that yields basically a tree of life, that's not something you ought to go around saying, "Oh, please call me a great man. My pastor said that would be a good thing."

People don't call you that because you ask them to. It's because you either are or you're not. Or some woman's name comes up: "Oh my gosh, that is a great lady. That is a great woman. Spend time with her. Get around her." You say, "Well, I don't know if people say that or not." If that's who you are, you'll know it because you don't wait for people to say it, you live it.

Be a great man. Be a great woman. You say, "Well, what does that take?" It takes reading the directions and applying them to your life. Keep reading. Proverbs 13:12: "Hope deferred makes the heart sick." So you're hoping for something and you wake up and it didn't happen. You go to sleep that day; it didn't happen that day, something you hoped for. And it makes your heart sick because it's not coming to pass.

Some of you pray every day, every day, every day, all day for kids that are in trouble. Your kids. And some of you pray all the time for parents. Your parents are in trouble. Or a brother, a sister, family member, a friend. You pray and you think, "Oh, they're coming around. They're going to get it." And then it doesn't happen. Your hope is deferred and it makes your heart sick.

"But when the desire comes, when it finally happens, it is a tree of life." Everything changes. Proverbs 15, one more. Proverbs 15:4: "A wholesome tongue is what? A tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit." Contrast a wholesome tongue or a perverse tongue. One is a tree of life, provides life to people; the other breaks the spirit.

Now go to Matthew chapter 26. Matthew 26:17, just read through this with me quickly: "Now on the first day of the Feast of the Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying to Him, 'Where do You want us to prepare for You to eat the Passover?' And He said, 'Go into the city to a certain man, and say to him, "The Teacher says, 'My time is at hand; I will keep the Passover at your house with My disciples.'"' So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them; they prepared the Passover.

"When evening had come, He sat down with the twelve. Now as they were eating, He said, 'Assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.' And they were exceedingly sorrowful, and each of them began to say to Him, 'Lord, is it I?' He answered and said, 'He who dipped his hand with Me in the dish will betray Me. The Son of Man indeed goes just as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man if he had not been born.'"

Not something you want to have Jesus saying about you: "It would be better if you had never been born." Then Judas, who was betraying him, answered and said, "Rabbi, is it I?" He said to him, "You have said it." And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said what? "Take, eat."

Very interesting to me that the whole mess starts in the garden with the enemy saying to Adam and to Eve specifically, "Take, eat," and everything gets screwed up. And now the way everything gets turned around is another "Take, eat." "Take, eat; this is My body." Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom." And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Now without going back into this whole story, Passover, what is it? God's going to deliver his people, tells Moses, "Tell everybody, sacrifice a lamb. Get in your house. Take the blood of the lamb"—we use this verbiage—"take the blood of the lamb and put it on the doorpost outside your house, so when the angel of death passes over Egypt, wherever he sees the blood on the doorpost of your home, he passes over and doesn't take the firstborn of your house."

So you survive. The firstborn survives. But if the blood is not there, the firstborn dies. Very interesting Jesus is partaking of the Passover and says, "This Passover that we're taking, the bread represents my body, which is broken for you. The blood represents my blood." So you've got to get his blood over the doorpost of your heart or when the angel of death comes along, he does not pass over, he takes you out. So it takes a firstborn, the only born, to be the sacrifice, the Lamb of God slain before the foundation of the world to fix this problem.

Now, it is not enough to give intellectual assent to the facts. You could starve to death taking food, but never eating food. You say, "Well, I've got it." Okay, you're listening, you hear it. At some point, it has to go in. You have to receive food into your body somehow or it doesn't do you any good.

It's the same thing with Jesus. "As many as received Him, to them gave He the power to be sons of God." So you say, "Okay, God, I don't just see this. I'm not just going to take it. I am going to take you in." How do you do that? It's a simple prayer. It's a simple conversation. It's simply believing. This is so crazy simple you have no idea. You are this close to living forever.

Now go to Revelation chapter two and let's wrap this up. And I know some of you think I'm an evangelist trapped pastoring a church. You may be right. I don't feel like I am trapped at all, but I think every pastor should be an evangelist because nothing is going to work without the gospel. I have nothing without that weekend. If my Jesus does not come and die on a cross and get buried and raised from the dead, I've got nothing. The bus will never show up for me because there's nothing. There is no hope. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

Now I appreciate the golf clap, but you're going to have to do better than that. I'm not afraid. I don't know if that's the right word, but I'm a little afraid that I will die and I will have to give an account for not loving enough, not caring enough, not crying enough, not being passionate enough, not pleading enough, not beseeching you, in Jesus' name, be reconciled to God.

Because I'm going to be okay. If you don't know Jesus, it's hell. You say, "Well, I don't believe that." You will, but not on my watch. And we are surrounded with people who are trying to find their way and the snake has deceived them into taking and eating everything that God says, "Don't do," and their lives are screwed up and they don't know how to get out.

And so you come along and offer them a new meal. And what is the new meal? It's Jesus' blood. It's him. It's his body. And you say, "Here, take, eat this." And why does he say the Lord's Supper, "Do this thing, do this as often as you do it in remembrance of me"? Because we forget. But if we seriously stop and think about what he did, we won't forget.

Then hopefully we go into our everyday lives and when we look at people, we go, "You know what? I'm set. The bus comes, I've got my ticket. I can get on the bus and I'm out of here. But you're in trouble if you don't know what I know." And so we have passion and compassion and we reach out to them and say, "Look, let me tell you a simple story."

You say, "Well, what if they don't like me? What if they're mean to me? What if they call me names?" Welcome. That's what the book says is going to happen. But you know what? I very rarely have anybody flip me off and tell me it's none of your business, "get out of my life." If you approach them punching them and smacking them over the head with a Bible, they might resist you.

But if you approach them gently, humbly, broken-heartedly, and say, "Look, this may be none of my business, but I actually believe there's a God and he loves you and there's a heaven and a hell and that all this is true. And if it's all true, I'm going to be okay, not because I'm okay or I'm a good person, but because I took him. I took his deal. I got bit; the snake took me at first, but I got another 'Take, eat.' So I'm offering you what was offered to me."

And if you explain it this way, with tears, with sorrow, with brokenness, I promise you, nobody has anybody crying over them. Nobody. You weep over souls, you'll get more response. I've never even heard of a Muslim pleading with someone to believe or a Buddhist pleading with someone to believe. We are ambassadors of Christ and we are to plead with people because we understand what's at stake. It's their life.

Revelation chapter two, the first part of this chapter, he talks to this church at Ephesus. In verse four, he says a bunch of stuff to them, but one of the things he says—he said some good things to them—but he says, "Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love." And this is what I'm talking about for me, too. Some preachers misquote this and say, "You've lost your first love." You haven't lost it; you have left it. You lose something, you don't know where it is. You left it, you go back where you left it and pick it up. There's some of you that left your first love somewhere and you need to go back there and pick up where you left off and keep moving.

You say, "Well, this happened to me and I did that and you don't understand." You know what? Enough excuses. Get off your butt and live your life. You don't have any more time to waste. "Well, I'm going to be angry." And what is that going to fix? "I'm going to make him pay." I sit with people who hate dead people. This drives me nuts. And I go, "What are you talking about?" "Oh, I'm so angry." Like, they're dead. How are you hurting them now? You're hurting no one but you. Let it go.

Keep reading verse five: "Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. But this you have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from"—what?—"the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God."

Guest (Male): We'll get back to Richard in a moment to close out today's talk. But first, I want to share something with you about the program. Our mission is actually very simple: to take the planet. So it's our prayer that these daily talks from Richard aren't something you only hear and enjoy, but that they inspire you to share with others. Together we can do this.

The message of the gospel is something everyone needs to hear. And that's why it's a huge priority to us. And you can join us in this important mission. Call us at 855-6-RICHARD to say you're in. Or you can get on board with us through our website, richardellis.com. Well, here's Richard with some closing thoughts for us.

Richard Ellis: I don't know how to explain all this. I like some movies because they give me some idea, like *The Matrix*. I go, "There's a real world and there's a real-real world." And all that. I go, "Okay, that helps me." And I have no idea. I cannot get my head around the universe. And the Bible says that God holds the universe in the span of his hand, from the tip of your thumb to there. Billions and billions and...

You are dealing with an awesome, almighty—you don't even have words in any language to describe him. He's bigger than big. There's nothing that you can describe a God who can hold a universe like that. And that is who you either say yes to or no to. What are you saying to that Holy God? Who cares enough about us that the only planet we even know at all that there's life—this tiny not even speck in the middle of the universe, with little old me and you on it right now—and God says, "I love you. I made all this, but I sent my Son after you. Please say yes."

And we say, "Well, let me think about that." What is there to think about? Today if you hear his voice, don't harden your heart. One day, I'm going to eat from that tree. I've already eaten from another tree. We sing a song around here sometime about a mighty cross. And a little phrase in there says, "His sacrifice on Calvary has made the mighty cross a tree of life to me." I have eaten the fruit of that tree and that fruit is Jesus. And one day in my life, as a little bitty kid, he offered himself to me and I took and I ate and he lives in me. That's as simple as I can make it. And the same thing is offered to you.

You say, "Well, I'm not back in the garden yet." You will be. And when we get to the garden, when we get to heaven, when we're with Jesus, you'll go, "Wow, what a great decision. I'm glad I said a simple yes to this Jesus."

Guest (Male): This has been Richard Ellis Talks with Richard Ellis. The message of the gospel is one we take very seriously in our mission to reach the planet. And you have a vital part of doing that along with us. If you've been encouraged by these talks with Richard, be sure to tell someone about the change they've made in your life. You can even share today's talk with them through the website, richardellis.com.

And we'd love to hear your story as well as to how these talks have made a difference to you, too. Give us a call, 855-6-RICHARD. You can also reach us through our website, richardellis.com. And while you're there, check out all the pages we've put together for you, richardellis.com. Also, be sure to click on the contribute tab to send your very generous gift. If the program is making a difference to you, your gift will make a big difference to us. Until next time, thanks so much for listening to Richard Ellis Talks.