The Mystery of Trees in the Bible. A Dan Duval Sermon

I recently stumbled onto the revelation of trees, and I want to tell you, the more I looked at it, the deeper it went. God started bringing it up in our morning prayers in Dallas, dealing with evil sacred trees in spiritual warfare, and I realized I had been walking past one of the biggest threads in the whole Bible.

So I taught this at The Fire Place Church, and I want to give it to you now. The first conflict in human history happened around two trees. That alone should tell you trees matter. Then I read 1 Kings 4:32 and saw that part of Solomon's wisdom was that he spoke of trees. Strange, right? Apparently there is a connection between wisdom and trees that most of us have walked past our whole lives.

In Matthew 21:18-22, Jesus is on His way back to the city from Bethany. He sees a fig tree, walks up to it, finds no fruit on it, and says, "Let no fruit grow on you ever again." The tree withers on the spot. Then He turns to the disciples and teaches them about faith and moving mountains.

But why the fig tree? Why was He so peeved by a tree with no fruit that He killed it with a spiritual axe? That is not tree hugging, that is carpentry gone wrong. This is an angry Carpenter, and there is something deep here.

The Hebrew word for fig breaks down by its letters: the cross of our own eyes sprouted offspring who are heirs to the throne designated to be beheld and revealed. That is what a fig is. Then Hosea 9:10 says, "When I found Israel it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree." So the fig tree represents Israel, the children of God, who were assigned to be beheld and revealed in the earth.

Jesus walked up to that fig tree right before the cross, and what He saw was a picture of a nation that had four thousand years of access to the kingdom of God and never produced the fruit they were called to produce. The tree had to die. The era was ending.

Romans 11 talks about a cultivated olive tree and a wild olive tree. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, all the branches got broken off, Jew and Gentile both, and then the cultivated olive tree became Christ Himself. We get grafted into Him. That is one new man in Christ Jesus, and it is what Ephesians 2:11-13 calls being brought into the Commonwealth of Israel.

Break the Hebrew word for olive down by its letters and you get this: the nature of a weapon, cut, a hand by which the work was finished, the cross. The olive tree points to the cross. The fig tree points to the assignment, the children of God revealed in the earth.

So Jesus becomes the tree. We become the branches. And the root, which is Christ, supports us. We do not support the root. The root supports us.

Here is where I have to challenge some bad teaching. A lot of people think Jesus brought the kingdom of God when He rose from the grave, or that He is coming back to establish His kingdom for the first time. Both are wrong. In Matthew 21:43 Jesus says, "The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation producing the fruits thereof." You cannot take what was never given. The kingdom of God existed before Jesus came. Israel had access to it through covenant.

Jesus took the kingdom from genetic Israel that failed to bear fruit, and gave it to spiritual Israel, comprised of Jew and Gentile grafted into Him. 1 Peter 2:9-10 spells this out: "You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people." We are the new nation. We have access to the same kingdom that put ancient Israel at the apex of world influence for a brief window under Solomon, and we have a better covenant based on better promises.

That should rattle you. If a genetic nation could rise to the top of civilization for a season under a lesser covenant, what do you think God can do through us under the New Covenant when we actually step into being beheld and revealed?

The fig tree bears fruit twice a year, in the spring and in the fall. Jesus examined it in the spring and Israel was found barren. That fulfilled the spring feasts: Passover, Unleavened Bread, and Firstfruits, all completed at His crucifixion and resurrection. But the fall is coming. Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles. Those are not fulfilled yet. There is a second examination of the fig tree at the end of the age, and this time God is looking for fruit through us.

So please, listen to me. You have been trained to be a Christian slacker. You have been told to sit in the pew and wait for Jesus to come back and do everything. That is the same mistake the scribes and Pharisees made when they shut up the kingdom of heaven against men (Matthew 23:13). The kingdom of God is within you and among you (Luke 17:21). You are sons and daughters (Romans 8:15-17, Galatians 3:26, 4:6). You are heirs.

There is a company of people coming who will give the kingdom of darkness the run of its lifetime. Systems will be rebuilt. The Rothschild banking system does not make it to the end. God is looking for figs. He is looking for sons and daughters revealed in the earth, walking in their inheritance.

That is what trees are about. That is why I cannot stop talking about them.