Is Jesus Enough?
Every day we are inundated with “stuff”! What is that “stuff”? Well, everything! From the billboards you see on your way to work, signs on the street corners, and every time you turn on the TV, radio, or get online you see ads and commercials. They tell you, “For the person who has everything, we have everything else,” “Obey your thirst,” “I bet you can’t have just one,” and “it’s everywhere you want to be.” Everywhere you look its about bigger, better, faster, stronger, wider, brighter, more pixels, more memory, more, more, more, more.
Is there such a thing as having it all in our society today? Do you feel like you have enough “stuff”? If someone asked you, “Is Jesus enough?” what would you say?
One particular passage that I have been marinating on recently has shown me that Jesus is enough, in fact, he is more than enough and yes with Jesus you WILL have it all! The passage is found in Psalms 1:1-3, specifically verse 3 which tells us that we are like a tree. I love studying nature because there is so much to learn about God in the world around us. “He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.”
First, the tree is “planted” intentionally, this is found in the root of the word planted in the Hebrew. Second, it is intentionally placed by the rivers of water. For a tree to survive it needs three major things; the sun, water, and soil. The soil has nutrients to give it “food” and so does the water and sun. Jesus says to the Samaritan woman at the well, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” And again Jesus says, “but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Jesus is the water!
We all know that the sun is crucial to healthy plant life and for a tree it is no different. In Psalm 1:3 the tree is planted by the river and no doubt it receives the rays of light from the sun that produce something called photosynthesis, which means combining or making with light (“photo” a derivative of “phos” which is Greek for light). The sun makes the tree grow by giving of itself to change the properties of the tree into nutrition (photosynthesis changes CO2 and H20 into sugars and starches). The sun feeds the tree, and Jesus, “the Sun of righteousness” (Malachi 4:2) feeds us.
The last of the three major necessities for a tree is the soil. The Bible says that there is good and bad soil. What is interesting here in Psalm 1:3 the tree, as mentioned before, is “planted” by the rivers of water. The soil near water is highly nutritious for plant-life. He wants to plant YOU by the rivers of water in the “good” soil.
What will happen if you are planted there? The tree “brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf does not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.”
Do you want to bear spiritual fruit? Do you want to never be spiritually thirsty or hungry again? As long as you are planted by the living water, soaking in the rays of the Sun of righteousness, all that you will do according to HIS WILL, will prosper! Jesus is more than enough; Jesus is more than we could ever ask for. Rest assured that all your desires and needs will be met in Christ!
The tree planted by the rivers of water is abundantly supplied with everything that it needs to succeed and flourish. Jesus is there and HE is more than enough! If you want to be this tree in verse 3, then take the advice of the Psalmist from verses 1 and 2. Do not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, or stand in the path of sinners, or sit in the seat of the scornful, instead let your delight be in the Law of the Lord and mediate on it day and night and you WILL be that tree!
– Pastor Michael Butler
