Recently, you were in town for the National Conference Pastor John, and while you were

here, you mentioned to some of us your thoughts on why you think God banned Adam and Eve

from eating from one tree. Explain this for us here now on the Ask Pastor John podcast.

What, what theological significance do you draw from the prohibition in the Garden of Eden?

Well, I remember standing last week, Tony, in your office and saying,

the tree is a way of securing that the pleasures of all the other trees in the Garden

are supremely pleasures in God. The function of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil

is to make sure that the pleasures of all the other trees in the Garden

that those pleasures are supremely pleasures in God. Let me try to unpack that and explain

how that is. The command not to eat went like this. You may surely eat of every tree of the

Garden, but 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 what was God saying in prohibiting the eating of one tree

out of a million trees? He was saying, I've given you life, I've given you a whirlpool of pleasure,

pleasures of taste and sight and sound and smell and feel and nourishment, only one tree is forbidden

to you. And the point of that prohibition is to preserve the pleasures of the world,

because if you eat of that one, you'll be saying to me, I'm smarter than you are, I'm more

authority than you are, I'm larger than you are. I think I can care for myself better than you

care for me. You're not a very good father and so I'm going to reject you and that's what you'll

be saying. So don't eat from the tree because you'll be rejecting me and all my good gifts and all

my wisdom and all my care. Instead, keep on submitting to my will, keep on affirming my wisdom,

keep on being thankful for my generosity, keep on trusting me as a father and and keep on

eating these trees as a way of enjoying me. There are 10,000 trees every magical fruit. Just go

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