Rationale
'A Tree for Me' is more of an expansive, highly potent theological Salvific Tract in the form of a mini-book without having to purchase a textbook; laced with picturesque verbiage throughout. It's about Jesus dying on a cross and the significance of that event in Salvation, but a special emphasis is given time and attention as to why the Apostles referred to his cross as a tree four times after Jesus ascended into heaven. The implications from that phraseology originate the scapegoat atonement practice on
and draw a direct line as Christ bearing the sins and the curse of those sins on a cross for the world. (Deuteronomy teaches that the communal curse of sin needed to be dealt with by allowing the accursed to hang on a tree additionally sending scapegoats away during the atonement procedures.)
Future Plans
Future plans for the Book design include a perforated page that can be a tear-away tract and a tear-away page at the end that is designed to be a salvation decision card. Special Tree for Me tracts can be ordered additionally with this book. A Gospel video website will be listed as a link that someone who is lost and not much of a reader can go to and discover salvation. (This remains to be recorded.)
A designed Tree for Me outreach campaign design template could be included in mass purchase book orders and then we could walk a church through the outreach campaign of giving away Christmas Trees, crosses, etc...
The intention is to turn this book into three books while using the same core material and only changing the introduction and graphics (some of the conclusion). The three outreach yearly points are centered around Christmas, Easter, and Summer. The graphics include a Christmas tree, a cross, and a hammock (between trees) for summer camping.
A specially designed and timed sermon and sermon series is being planned- outlines and handouts are being designed as well as narrated and unnarrated slides of PowerPoint and Keynote. An additional thought would be perhaps that they could be sold as a Sunday School curriculum.
Research Topic
This book focuses on the "Significance of the Apostolic Language referring to Christ dying on "A Tree" instead of a Cross and its salvific implications.
Research Question
Did the method of Christ’s crucifixion have any theological, prophetical, or eternal significance as to the specificity of the way the human actors performed it?
Thesis Statement
This book will argue that the specific death of Jesus on the cross made of wood has a significant impact on the way that we interpret the salvific benefit and understanding to humankind, or ...Jesus died on the cross (tree) in my place, vicariously taking upon himself my sin so that the payment due by the penalty of sin can be completely covered, thereby making a free way that I might go to heaven to have eternal life with my Heavenly Father on the condition that I receive His gift of that payment by faith on my behalf.
Outline
I. Introduction (2 page)
A. A Tree for me Christmas Story
B. A Tree for me Salvation Testimony
II. An Introduction of Jesus as Saviour and God (Jesus)
A. Introduction to God
B. Introduction to Mankind
C. Mankind as a Sinner (Federal Headship)
D. God (Jesus as Saviour)
E. Layman's Clarification
III. The Death of the Saviour (Died)
A. Death Necessary
B. Death Patterned by God (Adam and Eve Coat? Lamb Slain et.)
C. Death Natural World Understood (Wheat in the grown)
D. Death of Jesus Described
E. Layman's Clarification
IV. The Specific Death of Christ (On a Tree)
A. The Specific Death Necessary (Quick Synapse)
B. The Specific Death Apostolic Descriptor
C. The Specific Death Logic (OT-NT) Draw the Lines
D. The Specific Death Outcomes -Justice Satis., Blood, Mercy Seat, Cursed Gal.3:13
E. Layman's Clarification
V. Given (For Me)
A. Given the Gift of Imputed Righteousness
B. Gives Vicariously (Intercession) (In my place)
C. Gave Himself (Personally) (Gave Back to Smiters)
D. Gave Voluntarily=Love John 3:16
E. Layman's Clarification
VI. Conclusion (2 page)
A. A Tree for Me Application
B. A Tree for Me Scriptural Invitation
C. No One is too Good.
D. No One is too Bad.
E. Layman's Clarification Summary
Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................1
Chapter One (Jesus).............................................................................................................2
Chapter Two (Die)..................................................................................................................3
Chapter Three (On a Tree)....................................................................................................4
Chapter Four (For Me)...........................................................................................................5
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................6
Introduction
It was a cold December 1997 morning during the first year of our marriage, and Debbie and I had moved to Warrensburg, MO to move away from family and start our own dreams. One thing that young married couples need to decide on almost immediately by their first Christmas together is their Christmas traditions. The Nix family had a long-standing tradition of getting live trees for Christmas. I guess that is why I settled on the issue that our family would indeed carry on that tradition of using a live freshly cut Christmas tree to be the focal point of gathering gifts at Christmas time. Debbie quickly agreed as I pitched the event with an almost cozy Christmas movie scene of going off to a Christmas tree farm, far away from town as we would harvest our first Christmas tree together.
The event proved to be more adventurous than I had first imagined: I mean, how hard can it be? See the tree, cut it down, and get it to the (car)? Yes, despite the good feelings of endorphins that one might receive at a Christmas Tree Farm, this day was proving to be work. If it were not for the sawing with the rickety saw that the farm provided and the carrying the tree for what seemed like miles, it would be an easy day of drinking hot cocoa. I managed to work through all of those issues, but I had not pictured the whole extent of tying down the Christmas tree to the top of the car. In my early days of adulthood, I had not yet had enough mattresses or construction materials fly out of my truck to convince me against the notion of not tying down the Christmas tree to the top of the car. And so, it was decided that it would just have the two of us love birds hold on to the rope as it was closed on our Mustang car doors as I drove down the highway. How many ways can I tell you that this went wrong? By now you get the point and we all realized with hilarity what disastrous thinking and planning it took to pull off such a jovial event. But after all, we had both stubbornly agreed that we wanted our own tree and wanted to carry on our own traditions. We both agreed, almost in unison and were both thinking "A Tree for Me". You didn't know that Christmas Trees can take on your personality, just like those who stay married for a long time begin to look like one another. I hear that even pets sometimes look like their owners. Once we unloaded this tree and brought it into the house, the new traditions must be established, and the new precedents were about to be set. We had already gone through some firsts together in our brief few months of marriage. The first-time grocery shopping together and the first time preparing a meal in our newly rented home using our plates and silverware. I must confess, I have never gone hungry, and those first years proved to be quite entertaining as we casually dismissed our lack of the greater quantity of our love. Why, I can almost see the first dinner platter that I ate our first meals together on: it was a John Wayne plate with the slogan captioned, "Welcome to our home Pilgrim." Another first was that this would also be the year that Princess Dianne would die, and we both had to console one another after watching the evening news: a tradition that we would replay time and time again during major catastrophic events such as (9/11).
The Christmas tree decorating tradition is one that we need to get right because of the meaningfulness to both of us and our faith as we celebrate the Christ of Christmas in our own unique way with our own unique tree. After a fun-filled argumentation and debate challenge as to exactly how much tinsel to place precisely on the tree, we finally pulled it off: A Tree for Me.
More than a Christmas tree designed and decorated uniquely by a newlywed couple celebrating their precious faith by setting first precedents, Jesus died on a tree that was designed for me. There needs to be so much said to gain a biblical understanding of that last statement, but I will attempt to bring you along that Biblical narrative to demonstrate to you exactly how I concluded that oddly worded assumption as a matter of theological, dogmatic fact. While I am not going to shy away from using drastically important biblical words, I am going to attempt to condense this theology into an understandable mini book, with a section at the end of each chapter that will reiterate in layman’s simple clarifying terms as to what one might need to remember from the chapter so that you may conclude with me, that Jesus died on a tree for me.
I was saved on February 12th, 1997, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Unlike the concepts of God that view him as a source of all things and not actively interacting with his creation, God is very intimate with His creation and desires to have a relationship with His human creations. That is exactly what happened to me when I was saved on that February night. God became my Heavenly Father, and I became his offspring or son. I became a born again Christian. (John 1:12-13) "12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."[1] I now have access to God because I have standing within His family. The reason that I can know that I am saved is because of the salvation of the Lord and what He says about eternal security in his word. When the object of faith is in Jesus, then according to God's word, I can know that I am saved with biblical authority. (1 John 5:11-13) "11 And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. 13 These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God."[2] In fact, God wrote about the certainty of salvation based on a record. Salvation's certainty is officially documented in the Biblical Book of I John 5:11-13 and is described with no uncertain terms but uses the emphatic eternal security word of "know". You can be saved and know that you are saved and that your sins are forgiven while on your way to heaven because God says that one can know that they are saved. Salvation is the miracle of the moment and is based on receiving the Lord Jesus Christ by faith of asking him to save you because you are trusting in the work that He did on the cross to save your soul. Jesus died on a cross or as the Apostles put it (tree) for you. Jesus died on a tree for me.
Mel Trotter, the famous rescue mission worker, was the son of a bartender who “drank as much as he served.” Trotter followed in his father’s footsteps, losing job after job because of his addiction to drinking and gambling. Each time he lost a job, he promised to reform and start doing better, but each time he failed. After the death of his baby son, Trotter made his way to Chicago where he intended to drown himself in Lake Michigan. He had sold his shoes to get money for another drink, and was walking barefoot through the snow toward his death when he went inside the Pacific Garden Mission and was saved. For the next forty years, Trotter did everything he could to help those like himself who had fallen prey to the deceptively alluring temptations of sin.[3]
I too have been to the Pacific Garden Mission and have witnessed the evidence of the saving that Jesus has done throughout these many years. On a particular trip to Chicago, Debbie and I had two destinations in mind: one was to see what was formerly known as one of the world's largest buildings (Willis Tower) and the second must see destination was the Pacific Garden Mission to sit through a recording of Unshackled. Unshackled is the longest lasting radio drama in history and the stories mainly consist of salvation testimony after salvation testimony. The great takeaway that our family realized by having visited the two sites is that salvation stories are greater than skyscraper stories because one day you are the largest sky scraper and the next minute you look at the record book and you are a thing of the past. The content of Unshackled is the salvation of souls through the amazing grace of God based on Jesus dying on a "tree for me". These stories will keep on going into all of time and earth's existence because that is just how powerful the salvific work on the cross is.
[1] (King James 1769)
[2] Ibid
[3] (Leona Hertel 2000)
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