Part 1: Two Trees, Two Rivers

“My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:30

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” John 7:37-38

“All our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” Isaiah 64:6

Simple

In the beginning, things were simple. And I mean REALLY simple. God made a garden, put two people in it, and walked with them. Not above them. Not ahead of them. Not sending memos from head office. WITH them. Adam and Eve didn’t have a religion. They didn’t have a prayer routine or a Sunday service or a worship team with matching T-shirts. They had something infinitely better — they had GOD, right there, in the cool of the day. No program. No bulletin. No awkward greeting time where you shake hands with someone whose name you’ve already forgotten three times. Just walking with God.

And here’s what I want you to notice, because this is the foundation of everything we’re going to talk about in this series: they weren’t TRYING to be righteous. They just WERE. They were wrapped up in God’s righteousness like a child is wrapped up in their parent’s love — not earning it, not thinking about it, not filling out an application form for it, just LIVING in it. They didn’t know any other way. Jesus said something centuries later that sounds a lot like the Garden: “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). THAT’S what it was like. No striving. No performing. Just walking with God. HOW COOL IS THAT?!

Two Trees

But there were two trees in that garden. And this is where the whole story of humanity pivots, so pay attention.

The Tree of Life stood right there in the middle of it — open, available, offering everything they’d ever need. And then there was the OTHER tree. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The one God said to leave alone. Just one rule. ONE. And if you’ve ever been a parent, you know exactly how this is going to go.

Now the serpent was cunning. He didn’t come to Eve with an ugly lie. He came with a BEAUTIFUL one. He said, “God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). Do you hear what he’s REALLY saying? “You can be righteous on your own terms. You don’t need to depend on Him.” Let me tell you, that whisper has been echoing through every generation since, and it sounds just as reasonable today as it did in the Garden. It’s the oldest sales pitch in history, and people are STILL buying it.

And that was the real sin. Not just biting into a piece of fruit. It was Eve deciding, “I’ll determine for MYSELF what’s good.” It was Adam standing RIGHT THERE — the man was literally within arm’s reach, he didn’t even have the excuse of being in the next room — taking it from her hand, and making the same choice. They traded God’s righteousness for self-righteousness. They stepped out of His covering and tried to cover themselves. And what did they do next? They sewed fig leaves together. They HID. That’s what self-righteousness ALWAYS does — it covers and it hides. It performs and it pretends. And if you’ve ever tried to make yourself look good with the wrong materials, you know how that goes. Fig leaves don’t exactly hold up in the wash. They’re not even good in a salad.

God came walking through the garden — the same way He always did — and called out, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). Not because He didn’t know. He’s GOD. He knew exactly where they were hiding. He asked because He wanted THEM to see where they’d gone. They’d stepped out of the river of Life and into another current entirely.

Two Rivers

I want you to picture two rivers flowing out of that garden. Because that’s exactly what happened, and this picture is going to carry us through this entire series.

One river flows from the Tree of Life. It’s fed by God’s righteousness — His goodness, His truth, His love. It runs clear and straight. It has run since the beginning, and it will run FOREVER. The other river flows from the fruit of that other tree. It’s fed by self-righteousness — man deciding for himself what’s right, what’s good, what’s true. And that river? It TWISTS. It turns. It looks refreshing in places, but it’s polluted at the source. You can put it in a fancy bottle and slap a label on it, but it’s still contaminated water.

Every human being born after Adam and Eve has been born near those two rivers. And every one of us, at some point, has to decide which one we’re drinking from. The Bible tells us that things got so bad, so fast, that within a handful of generations, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). Self-righteousness had flooded the whole earth. So God sent an actual flood to wash it away. He saved Noah and his family — eight people out of the WHOLE WORLD — and started again. But here’s the hard truth: the seed of self-righteousness survived. It lives in us. Every one of us carries it. Noah’s descendants proved that soon enough.

The Levee

So God did something different. He raised up Moses, a prophet, and through him He gave the Law. Now, I used to think the Law was a signpost — something that pointed toward righteousness, showed people the way, and left them to follow it. But I don’t think that’s right. I think the truth is deeper and harder than that. Israel had been so polluted by the world that they couldn’t run straight on their own. They had been in Egypt for four hundred years. Four HUNDRED years. And Egypt wasn’t just a place — the Hebrew word for Egypt is mitzrayim, which literally means “narrow places.” They had been squeezed, oppressed, and shaped by a pagan culture for generations. And even after God brought them out with signs and wonders and a parted sea, their hearts kept pulling them back. They grumbled. They complained. They wanted to go BACK. “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost” (Numbers 11:5). They were FREE, and they were homesick for slavery.

So what does God do with a river that won’t run straight? He builds a levee. The Law was God’s way of FORCING the river to run where it should, because men’s hearts wouldn’t do it on their own. It wasn’t a gentle suggestion. It wasn’t a signpost saying “righteousness this way.” It was rigid, it was absolute, and it had to be — because their hearts were too crooked to hold the water. Where love SHOULD have guided them, rigidity had to step in. God essentially said, “Since you won’t walk in My righteousness by love, I will give you a structure so that you walk in SOME semblance of it until your hearts are ready.”

And then, after years in the wilderness — years of manna and murmuring, years of the Law shaping them, years of God patiently channelling that crooked river — they came to the edge of the Promised Land. And look at what God calls it. A land flowing with milk and honey. Milk in Scripture represents nourishment, sustenance, the basic provision of God — Peter tells us to crave “pure spiritual milk” so we can grow (1 Peter 2:2). And honey? Honey represents sweetness, delight, the very words of God — “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103). And here’s something beautiful: milk and honey are both produced without killing anything. They represent LIFE. Abundant life. The opposite of mitzrayim — the narrow places. God was saying, “I’m bringing you out of the narrow places, out of oppression, into a place of nourishment and sweetness and LIFE where you can walk with Me again.” It’s an echo of the Garden.

And right there, at the border of that abundant life, Moses gives them something extraordinary. Not another rule. Not another regulation. An INVITATION. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). Do you hear what Moses is saying? He’s saying, “The levee has held you this far. But where you’re going, you don’t need the levee anymore. Let your heart run straight on its own. LOVE Him. Not because the Law forces you to, but because He has brought you out of Egypt, through the wilderness, and to the edge of everything He promised.” THAT’S IT. That was the whole thing. If they had grabbed hold of that one command — really GRABBED hold of it — it would have carried them right back to what Adam and Eve had in the garden. Walking with God. Resting in His righteousness. Not striving in their own. The river running clear and straight, not because of the levee, but because of LOVE.

But they didn’t. They took the land of milk and honey and they hardened their hearts all over again. And by the time we get to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, centuries later, they had turned the levee into a RELIGION. They worshiped the structure instead of the God behind it. They polished the outside of the cup while the inside was filthy (Matthew 23:25). They tithed their mint and dill and cumin but neglected justice, mercy, and faithfulness (Matthew 23:23)*. The levee that was meant to hold them until love could take over had become the very thing they hid behind. And the river of self-righteousness was flowing stronger than ever. The prophet Isaiah said it plainly: “All our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Isaiah 64:6). Our BEST efforts, apart from God, are filthy rags. Not because we’re worthless — God forbid — but because self-righteousness can never do what God’s righteousness does. It can never make us clean. It can never make us whole. It can never give us LIFE.

*Note: The Law of Moses required tithes on crops like grain, oil, and wine (Leviticus 27:30, Deuteronomy 14:22). It said nothing about garden herbs. Mint, dill, and cumin were the smallest, most insignificant things growing in their gardens, and the Pharisees extended the tithing law beyond what God ever required. They built the levee higher for everyone else while giving God their mint leaves.

The River Never Stopped

But God never stopped flowing. That river from the Tree of Life NEVER dried up. It runs through Abraham. It runs through David. It runs through every prophet who had the courage to say, “Thus says the Lord.” And it is always heading somewhere. Or rather, it is always heading toward SOMEONE. “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). The Law was the levee. Jesus is the river itself — running straight, running true, running free.

Everything — from the garden to the flood to the wilderness to the prophets —points to Him. He is the Tree of Life in human form. He is the river of God’s righteousness made flesh. He didn’t just TEACH righteousness. He IS the full embodiment of God’s righteousness. And He stands today, the same as He stood two thousand years ago, and offers the simplest invitation in the world: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water'” (John 7:37-38).

Two trees. Two rivers. One choice. You don’t have to earn it. You don’t have to perform. You don’t have to sew fig leaves together and pretend you’ve got it all figured out. You just have to come to Him and drink. THAT’S where the power of righteousness begins. Not in you. In HIM.

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A Moment Before You Go

Lord, I don’t want to sew fig leaves together anymore. I don’t want to hide from You or pretend I’ve got it all figured out. I’m thirsty, and I’ve been drinking from the wrong river. Lead me back to the Tree of Life. Lead me back to You. In Jesus’ name, amen.

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A.W. Tozer wrote, “The whole course of the life is upset by failure to put God where He belongs. We exalt ourselves instead of God, and the curse follows.” Jesus put God exactly where He belongs — at the centre of everything. That’s the righteousness we’re invited into.

C.S. Lewis said, “We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved: we are rebels who must lay down our arms.” The fig leaves were the first act of rebellion. Laying them down is the first act of coming home.

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Next: The Power of Righteousness — Part 2: The Watergate

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Part 2: The Watergate

“For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” John 1:17

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21

Beautiful Tombs

By the time Jesus showed up, the river was a MESS. Not God’s river. That one still ran clear and true, the way it always had. But the OTHER one — the one fed by self-righteousness — had swallowed up the very people who were supposed to be guarding God’s truth.

The Pharisees. The Sadducees. The scribes. The teachers of the Law. These were the religious leaders of Israel. They knew the Scriptures inside and out. They could quote Moses from memory. They tithed down to the herbs in their garden. Let me tell you, these guys measured out a TENTH of their mint leaves. You have to be pretty committed to religion to tithe your spice rack. That’s not devotion — that’s an accounting problem.

And Jesus looked at them and said something that should shake every one of us: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead men’s bones” (Matthew 23:27). Beautiful on the outside. DEAD on the inside. That’s what self-righteousness does when it puts on religious clothes. It looks the part. It sounds the part. It can quote chapter and verse all day long. But there’s no LIFE in it. Because it’s drinking from the wrong river.

Heavy Burdens

These men had taken the Law that God gave through Moses — the Law that was meant to be a LEVEE holding the river straight until love could take over — and turned it into a religion. A performance. A checklist. A way to measure who was in and who was out. They stacked rule on top of rule, building the levee HIGHER than God ever intended, until the burden was crushing. And then they stood back and JUDGED everyone who couldn’t carry it. “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger” (Matthew 23:4). Does that sound like “my yoke is easy and my burden is light”? Not even CLOSE.

They had Moses’ words, but they’d lost Moses’ HEART. Remember what Moses told Israel as his final charge? “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” That was the WHOLE POINT of the Law. Love God. Walk with Him. Let His righteousness be your covering. But self-righteousness doesn’t want to love God. It wants to BE God. It wants to sit in the judge’s seat. And that’s exactly where the religious leaders had planted themselves. Smith Wigglesworth once said, “God does not call the qualified; He qualifies the called.” The Pharisees had it completely backwards — they thought their qualifications made them called. They were SO wrong.

A Baby in a Feeding Trough

So into this world, at EXACTLY the right time, God did something He’d been planning since the garden. He sent His Son. Not as a king on a throne. Not as a scholar in a temple. As a BABY in a feeding trough, born to a carpenter’s family, raised in a nowhere town called Nazareth. God’s righteousness showed up in the simplest, humblest package imaginable. The Creator of the universe could have arrived with a marching band and a sky full of fireworks, but instead He chose a stable that smelled like livestock. That tells you everything you need to know about the difference between God’s way and man’s way.

And from the moment Jesus began His ministry, He made one thing absolutely clear — God’s righteousness and man’s self-righteousness are NOT the same river. Not even close. “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). Now THINK about that. These Pharisees were the most religiously disciplined people alive. They fasted twice a week. They prayed at every appointed hour. They followed HUNDREDS of rules. And Jesus says your righteousness has to EXCEED theirs? How? How could a fisherman or a tax collector or a woman drawing water at a well ever out-righteous a Pharisee? By drinking from a DIFFERENT RIVER ENTIRELY.

Living Water

Jesus wasn’t asking people to try harder. He was asking them to START OVER. To stop drinking from the polluted water of “I’ll do it myself” and come to the source of living water. He sat down with a Samaritan woman — someone the religious leaders wouldn’t have been caught DEAD talking to — and told her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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” (John 4:13-14). THAT’S the river. Right there. Not a river you earn your way into. A river that He GIVES you. And once it’s in you, it doesn’t run dry. It wells up. It overflows. It becomes a SPRING.

Rubbish

This is what the Apostle Paul came to understand so deeply after he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. Paul had been a Pharisee HIMSELF — one of the best. He had the credentials, the training, the zeal. If anyone could have earned righteousness by effort, it was Paul. But listen to what he said after he encountered Jesus: “Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord… not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Philippians 3:7-9).

Paul threw it ALL away. Every credential. Every achievement. Every gold star on his religious report card. He called it rubbish. Actually, let me tell you — the Greek word Paul used there is a LOT stronger than rubbish. Your Bible is being polite. Paul was NOT. Because he’d finally tasted the real thing, and everything else was polluted water by comparison. There are two kinds of righteousness, and Paul saw them as clearly as anyone who ever lived. There’s the righteousness you build yourself — brick by brick, rule by rule, performance by performance. And there’s the righteousness God gives you through Jesus Christ. One is dead weight. The other is LIVING WATER.

The Gate

And this is what makes Jesus so different from every prophet who came before Him. Moses delivered the Law. The prophets delivered warnings and promises. But Jesus didn’t just deliver a MESSAGE. He IS the message. “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). Grace and truth didn’t come THROUGH Jesus like a courier dropping off a parcel. They came IN Him. He IS the grace of God. He IS the truth of God. He IS the door to God. He said so Himself: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

If the river of God’s righteousness has been flowing since Eden — and it has — then Jesus is the gate through which it pours into the world for EVERYONE. Not just for Israel. Not just for the religious. For EVERYONE. He is the watergate. He lived the life of perfect devotion to the Father that Adam never finished. He walked in God’s righteousness the way we were always meant to. And then He went to a cross — not because HE’D drunk from the wrong river, but because WE had. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Read that again. SLOWLY. In Jesus, you BECOME the righteousness of God. Not your own righteousness. Not a cleaned-up version of self-righteousness. GOD’S righteousness. The same kind of clothes Adam and Eve wore in the garden before they ever reached for the wrong fruit.

The Spirit

And when Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to the Father, He didn’t leave us alone. He sent His Holy Spirit — the same Spirit that hovered over the waters at creation — to walk with us, guide us, and lead us in all truth. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). The Spirit keeps us in the river. He’s the current beneath our feet when we don’t know which way to go. He’s the voice that says, “This is the way, walk in it” (Isaiah 30:21). Let me tell you, if you’ve ever had the Holy Spirit nudge you away from a bad decision, you know EXACTLY what that voice sounds like. It’s the most gentle, most persistent, most annoyingly accurate voice you’ll ever hear.

Seek First

So here’s where it gets personal. And here’s where it gets simple. Jesus stood in front of a crowd of people who were worried about food, about clothes, about tomorrow. Regular people with regular problems. And He said: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). Seek FIRST. Not seek when it’s convenient. Not seek after you’ve figured everything else out. FIRST. Before the bills and the stress and the noise of this world. Seek His kingdom. Seek His righteousness. And watch what He does with the rest.

That’s the invitation. Same as it was in the garden. Same as it was at the well in Samaria. Same as it is right now, wherever you’re sitting as you read this. Come to Jesus. Drink from the right river. And let His righteousness — not yours, HIS — carry you home.

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A Moment Before You Go

Lord, I’m done trying to out-righteous the Pharisees. I’m done building something with my own hands that You’ve already built with Yours. I want the living water. I want the real river. Pour it through me. In Jesus’ name, amen.

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A.W. Tozer wrote, “The man who has God for his treasure has all things in one.” Everything the Pharisees were scrambling to collect, Jesus was offering for free. The treasure isn’t the rules. The treasure is HIM.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross.” The grace Jesus brought cost Him everything. Don’t cheapen it by treating it like a participation trophy.

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Next: The Power of Righteousness — Part 3: The Narrow River

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Always

Part 3: The Narrow River

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” Matthew 7:13-14

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” Revelation 3:15-16

The Twist

I want to tell you something that might be hard to hear. But I’m telling you because I care about where you END UP, not just where you are right now. And if I only told you the comfortable bits, I wouldn’t be your friend — I’d be your fan. And you don’t need another fan. You need the truth.

We talked about how, by the time Jesus arrived, the religious leaders had perverted the Law. They took what God gave through Moses and twisted it into something God NEVER intended — a system of control, performance, and self-righteousness dressed in holy clothes. Jesus confronted that perversion head on. He tore the mask off it. And through His death and resurrection, He opened a new and living way — not through the Law, but through grace and truth. “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). Grace and truth. That was the correction. That was the answer to centuries of religious self-righteousness choking the life out of God’s people.

But here’s the twist. And it’s one the enemy has been working on for a LONG time. The first time Jesus came, the Law had been perverted. What’s happening NOW is a perversion of grace and truth.

A Different Poison, Same River

It looks different than what the Pharisees did. It sounds different. But it flows from the SAME polluted river.

Some have taken grace — that beautiful, costly, life-giving grace that Jesus purchased with His OWN BLOOD — and turned it into permission. Permission to live however you want. Permission to ignore what God calls sin. Permission to nod at Jesus on Sunday and forget Him by Monday. A grace that fits in your pocket and never asks you to change your plans. Let me tell you, that is NOT the grace Jesus brought. That’s not the grace Paul preached. Paul, who understood grace more deeply than almost anyone, said it plainly: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:1-2). BY NO MEANS. That’s about as strong as Paul gets without using that Greek word again.

Grace isn’t a permission slip. Grace is the POWER OF GOD to transform you from the inside out. It cost Jesus EVERYTHING. It should mean everything to us. And truth? Truth has become an uncomfortable word. We live in a time when people want to hear what makes them FEEL good, not what makes them FREE. Paul warned Timothy about this very thing: “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4). Look around. That time isn’t COMING. It’s HERE.

Lukewarm Water

Jesus spoke to the church in Laodicea through the Apostle John, and His words cut right to the bone: “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:15-16). Neither hot nor cold. LUKEWARM. That’s a generation that knows enough about Jesus to feel comfortable, but not enough to be TRANSFORMED. A generation that drinks from both rivers and thinks it doesn’t matter. A little living water here, a little polluted water there. What’s the harm?

Let me tell you what the harm is. It’s like mixing fresh orange juice with pond water and calling it a smoothie. Nobody’s buying that at the farmer’s market. Lukewarm water comes from mixing hot and cold. And when you mix God’s righteousness with self-righteousness, you don’t get something in between. You get something GOD SPITS OUT. I’m not saying this to scare you. I’m saying this because JESUS said it, and He said it to people He loved. The very next words out of His mouth were: “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline” (Revelation 3:19). He’s not angry. He’s URGENT. There’s a difference. A parent who grabs their child’s hand before they touch a hot stove isn’t angry — they’re saving them.

Blind Guides

Now here’s where I want to be careful, because some of you reading this are new in your faith. Your heart is soft. You love Jesus, and you’re trying to figure out what it looks like to follow Him. I respect that more than you know. And I want to PROTECT that, not crush it. But I owe you honesty.

Not everyone who stands behind a pulpit or speaks on a stage or builds a following in Jesus’ name is leading you down the right river. Jesus warned about this directly: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:15-16). By their FRUITS. Not by their crowd size. Not by their production value. Not by how many followers they have on Instagram. Not by how good they make you feel. By their FRUITS. Does their teaching make you more dependent on Jesus, or more dependent on THEM? Does it draw you deeper into Scripture, or away from it? Does it challenge your sin, or make you comfortable in it? These are important questions. And you have every right — and every RESPONSIBILITY — to ask them.

Paul and Barnabas came into the city of Berea and preached the gospel, and Scripture says something remarkable about the people there: “They received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). They didn’t just take Paul’s word for it. They CHECKED. They opened the Scriptures and compared what they heard to what God actually said. And Paul didn’t rebuke them for it. The Bible calls them NOBLE for it. Wigglesworth himself said, “Read the Word of God. Give it first place in your life. Don’t read anything else if you’re not reading the Word.” Be a Berean. Check EVERYTHING — including what I write — against the Word of God. That’s not doubt. That’s WISDOM.

The Narrow Way

Two rivers have been flowing since the garden. One is wide and winding, and plenty of people are floating on it. It’s comfortable. It tells you what you want to hear. It asks very little of you. And it leads somewhere you do NOT want to go. The other river is narrow. It’s fed by the living water of Jesus Christ. And it runs straight.

Jesus didn’t mince words about it: “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13-14). FEW. That word should stop us in our tracks. Not because God doesn’t want everyone — He DOES. “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). He wants ALL. But few choose the narrow way. Because the narrow way COSTS you something. It costs you your self-righteousness. It costs you the comfort of blending in. It costs you the luxury of building your own version of God that fits neatly into your lifestyle.

But here’s what it GIVES you: EVERYTHING.

Come and Drink

If you’re reading this and something in your spirit is stirring — that’s not me. That’s HIM. That’s the Holy Spirit doing exactly what Jesus said He would do: guiding you into all truth. Maybe you’ve been drifting and you know it. Maybe you’ve been drinking from a river that looked clean but never quite satisfied. Maybe you’ve been following voices that sounded right but left you EMPTY. It’s not too late. It’s NEVER too late while you still have breath.

Jesus stands right now, the same way He stood in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, and says to you: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37). Don’t come to a religion. Don’t come to a system. Don’t come to a personality with a podcast. Come to JESUS. He is the gate. He is the way. He is the living water. And His river — the river of God’s righteousness — runs straight and true and never, EVER runs dry. Drink from this river, and you will never thirst again.

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A Moment Before You Go

Lord, I don’t want lukewarm. I don’t want a comfortable lie dressed up as grace. I want the real thing — the narrow river, the living water, the truth that costs me everything and gives me everything. Lead me to the narrow gate. I’m ready. In Jesus’ name, amen.

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C.S. Lewis once said, “If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth — only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.” Don’t settle for comfortable. Seek what’s true.

A.W. Tozer wrote, “The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress, is because they haven’t yet come to the end of themselves.” The narrow river starts where self-righteousness ends.

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Next: The Power of Righteousness — Part 4: Seek First

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Part 4: Seek First

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Matthew 6:33

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” John 15:4

The Simplest Command

We’ve come a long way together in this series. We started in a garden with two trees and two rivers. We watched self-righteousness flood the earth and pervert the Law. We saw Jesus blow the doors open with grace and truth. And we looked honestly at how that grace and truth are being twisted in our own time. If you’ve been with me through all four posts, let me tell you — I’m proud of you. This hasn’t been easy reading. But the best things never are.

Now I want to bring it home. Because all of this — every word, every verse, every warning — comes down to ONE thing. And Jesus said it Himself. He was standing in front of regular people. Not priests. Not scholars. People worried about where their next meal was coming from. People worried about clothes and bills and what tomorrow might bring. People just like you and me. And He said: “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:31-33). Seek FIRST. Two words that change EVERYTHING.

The Order Matters

Notice what Jesus DIDN’T say. He didn’t say, “Get your life together and then seek God.” He didn’t say, “Figure out your finances, fix your relationships, sort out your problems, and when you’ve got some time left over, give God a look.” Like God’s your backup plan. Your spiritual Plan B. The emergency contact you never actually call. He said FIRST. Before all of it. Seek the kingdom. Seek His righteousness. And then watch what happens with the rest.

That’s the OPPOSITE of how the world works. The world says secure yourself first. Build your own foundation. Trust in your own strength. Then maybe, if you’re the religious type, add God on top like a cherry on a sundae. But Jesus turns the whole thing upside down. Or maybe RIGHT SIDE UP, because we’ve been living upside down since the garden. Remember what Moses told Israel? “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). Jesus was asked which commandment is the greatest, and He quoted Moses word for word — and then ADDED to it: “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:39-40). EVERYTHING hangs on this. Every law. Every prophecy. Every page of Scripture. Love God first. Love people second. That’s the whole river. That’s the Tree of Life bearing fruit in your daily life.

His Righteousness, Not Yours

I want to make sure you hear this clearly, because it’s the HEARTBEAT of everything we’ve talked about in this series. When Jesus says, “seek His righteousness,” He’s not asking you to MANUFACTURE something. He’s asking you to RECEIVE something. There’s a world of difference. Let me tell you, if you can get this into your spirit, it will change everything about the way you approach God.

Self-righteousness says, “Look what I’ve done for God.” God’s righteousness says, “Look what GOD has done for me.” Self-righteousness keeps score. God’s righteousness keeps no record of wrongs. Self-righteousness performs for an audience. God’s righteousness flows from a RELATIONSHIP. Paul understood this better than anyone. He’d spent his whole life building his own righteousness — and he was better at it than most. But after he met Jesus, he saw it for what it was: “Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Philippians 3:9). The righteousness FROM GOD. That’s the living water. That’s what you’re seeking when you seek first. Not a to-do list. Not a performance review. A PERSON. Jesus Christ.

Abide

So what does this look like on a Tuesday morning when the baby’s crying and the bills are late and the world feels like it’s unravelling? I’ll tell you what it DOESN’T look like — it doesn’t look like a mountain-top worship experience with fog machines and an eight-piece band. It might look like standing at the kitchen sink asking God to help you not lose your mind before 9 a.m. And let me tell you, THAT COUNTS. It counts MORE than most people realise.

It looks like ABIDING. Jesus used that word with His disciples the night before He went to the cross. He knew what was coming. He knew they’d be shaken. And He gave them — and us — the simplest instruction for staying in the right river: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5). APART FROM ME YOU CAN DO NOTHING. That’s not a threat. That’s a RELIEF. You were never meant to do this alone. You were never meant to carry it. You were never designed to be your own source of righteousness. You’re a branch. He’s the vine. Stay connected, and the fruit comes. The peace comes. The righteousness comes. Not because you worked it up, but because HIS LIFE is flowing through you. That’s the power of righteousness. It was never yours to begin with. It’s HIS. And He gives it freely to anyone who will come, drink, and stay.

Two Rivers, One Choice

We’re at the end now, but really, we’re at the BEGINNING. Your beginning, if you’ll let it be. Two rivers are still flowing. They’ve been flowing since the garden, and they’ll keep flowing until Jesus comes back. One is wide and polluted with the pride of man. The other is narrow and crystal clear, fed by the living water of God’s righteousness. The wide river is loud. It’s popular. A LOT of people are on it. But it ends in the same place it’s always ended. The narrow river is quiet. It’s not flashy. Sometimes it’s lonely. But it leads to LIFE. Real life. The kind that doesn’t end.

The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green” (Jeremiah 17:7-8). A tree planted by water. Roots in the stream. Green leaves in the heat. That’s not a man STRIVING. That’s a man ABIDING. That’s a life rooted in God’s righteousness. And the book of Revelation, the very last chapter of the Bible, shows us where this river goes: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. On either side of the river, the tree of life” (Revelation 22:1-2). HOW COOL IS THAT?! The river of Life that started in Genesis ENDS in Revelation — flowing from the throne of God. And the Tree of Life is still there. Still bearing fruit. Still offering what it offered in the beginning. It NEVER stopped flowing. It never will.

Come

If you’ve read this whole series and something in you is pulling — follow it. That’s not coincidence. That’s the Holy Spirit doing what He does. Drawing you. Calling you. Leading you to the water. You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need to clean yourself up first. You don’t need to understand everything. You just need to COME. “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price” (Revelation 22:17). WITHOUT PRICE. It’s already been paid. Jesus paid it ALL. Come and drink.

* * *

A Moment Before You Go

Lord, I’m done seeking my own righteousness. I’m done trying to earn what You’ve already given. I seek YOU first — Your kingdom, Your righteousness, Your river. I’m a branch, and You’re the vine. I’m staying connected. Flow through me. In Jesus’ name, amen.

* * *

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” But what feels like dying — letting go of your self-righteousness, your control, your own way — is really the doorway into the only life worth living.

A.W. Tozer said, “God waits to be wanted. He seeks for a people who will seek for Him.” He’s not hiding from you. He’s waiting for you. The river is flowing. All you have to do is drink.

i-CH

Part 5: Don’t Look Back

“Remember Lot’s wife.” Luke 17:32

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.” Hebrews 12:1-2

The Warning We Don’t Want to Hear

A few months ago, we walked through the story of two rivers — one flowing from the Tree of Life, fed by God’s righteousness, and the other polluted at the source by the self-righteousness that entered the world in the garden. We followed those rivers from Eden to the cross, from the cross to today, and we ended with an invitation: come to Jesus, drink from the right river, and never thirst again. That invitation still stands. It will ALWAYS stand.

But today I need to talk to you about something harder. Something that Jesus Himself brought up, and He didn’t bring it up casually. He didn’t mention it in passing like a weather update. He brought it up as a WARNING. And He used a story from the oldest pages of Scripture to drive it home. Three words: “Remember Lot’s wife.” That’s it. That’s the whole verse. Luke 17:32. Three words. And they carry the weight of ETERNITY. Let me show you why.

The Cities on the Wrong River

Back in Genesis, two cities had become so consumed by wickedness that their names became synonymous with judgment: Sodom and Gomorrah. These weren’t cities that had never known God. They existed in the time of Abraham, the man God had chosen to be the father of nations. Abraham’s own nephew, Lot, LIVED in Sodom. The knowledge of God was near. But the people of these cities had given themselves over entirely to the polluted river. They drank from it without shame, without restraint, without any thought of God, as if it were on tap and the tab was paid.

Now the prophet Ezekiel tells us what was really at the root of Sodom’s sin — and it might surprise you: “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it” (Ezekiel 16:49-50). Pride. Excess. Ease. And a complete disregard for the people around them. Sound familiar? It should. It sounds like the world outside your window. It sounds like the six o’clock news. It sounds like half the internet.

Sodom wasn’t just sexually immoral — though it was that too. It was self-righteous to the BONE. It had decided for itself what was good, what was acceptable, what was right. It had built an entire culture on the fruit of the wrong tree. And it was THRIVING — by the world’s standards. Beautiful buildings. Full stomachs. Prosperous ease. The kind of place that would have had a five-star rating on every review site. But God saw it. He ALWAYS does. And a five-star rating means nothing when the foundation is rotten.

Abraham’s Plea

When God told Abraham what He was about to do, Abraham did something remarkable. He BARGAINED. He stood before the Lord and pleaded for the city — not because he loved its sin, but because he loved PEOPLE. “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it?” (Genesis 18:23-24). And God said yes. If there are fifty, I’ll spare it.

Abraham kept going. Forty-five? Yes. Forty? Yes. Thirty? Twenty? Ten? “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it” (Genesis 18:32). TEN righteous people. That’s all it would have taken to save the entire city. Ten people walking in God’s righteousness. Ten people drinking from the right river. There weren’t ten. In a city FULL of people, God could not find ten who walked with Him. The polluted river had taken EVERYONE.

This is what self-righteousness does when it’s left unchecked. It doesn’t just corrupt individuals. It corrupts whole communities, whole cultures, whole GENERATIONS. And eventually, it brings judgment. Not because God is cruel — He’s not. He’s the God with no shadow of turning, remember? — but because a holy God cannot call evil good forever. There comes a point where mercy has knocked on the door so many times that even mercy steps back and lets consequences do the talking.

Get Out

God sent two angels to Lot. Their message was simple and urgent: GET OUT. Take your family and go. Don’t stop. Don’t hesitate. Don’t go back for the photo albums. And then they gave one specific instruction that matters more than all the rest: “Escape for your life. Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away” (Genesis 19:17). Do NOT look back.

Lot and his family started running. Fire and sulfur began to fall. And Lot’s wife — the woman Jesus would reference by name THOUSANDS of years later — looked back. “But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt” (Genesis 19:26). One look. That’s all it took.

Now, she didn’t just glance over her shoulder the way you check behind you when you hear a loud noise. The Hebrew word here suggests she LINGERED. She longed. She looked back at what she was leaving behind — the life, the comfort, the familiarity of that city — and in that moment, she made her choice. She chose the old river over the new road God was setting before her. And it cost her EVERYTHING. The distance between salvation and destruction was the length of one backward glance. That should terrify us and sharpen us in equal measure.

Remember Her

So why does Jesus bring her up? And WHEN does He bring her up? He brings her up while He’s talking about the last days. About the time when He will return. About a generation that will be living just like the people of Sodom — eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building — carrying on as if God isn’t watching and judgment isn’t real. Business as usual. Netflix and takeaways. Like the sky isn’t about to split open.

And right in the middle of that warning, He says: “Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it” (Luke 17:32-33). Whoever holds on to the old life — the old river, the old ways, the old self-righteousness — will lose EVERYTHING. But whoever lets go and follows Jesus will gain everything that matters. This isn’t ancient history. This is a warning for RIGHT NOW. For you and for me.

The Days We’re In

Paul wrote to Timothy about the kind of people who would mark the last days. And when you read his words, it’s hard not to feel like he’s looking out the SAME WINDOW you are: “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:1-5).

Read that list again. LOVERS OF SELF. Lovers of money. Proud. Arrogant. Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Having the APPEARANCE of godliness but denying its power. That last one is the one that should keep us up at night. Because it doesn’t address people who reject God outright. It’s talking about people who LOOK religious. People who show up on Sunday. People who post Bible verses on social media but live as if God’s Word doesn’t apply to them Monday through Saturday. People who’ve got the bumper sticker, the worship playlist, and the Instagram aesthetic — but no POWER. No transformation. No fruit. The appearance of godliness. That’s fig leaves all over again. That’s self-righteousness wearing its Sunday best.

And Paul’s instruction? It’s blunt: “Avoid such people” (2 Timothy 3:5). Don’t follow them. Don’t drink from their river. Don’t look back at their version of Christianity and mistake it for the real thing. Smith Wigglesworth put it this way: “There is a difference between the manifestation of the gift and the counterfeit. Don’t be afraid of the real because you’ve seen the false.” The real river is still running. Don’t let the counterfeits scare you away from it.

The River Still Runs

I know this is heavy. I know it might feel like I’m painting a dark picture. But I’m NOT. I’m pointing you to the LIGHT. Because here’s the thing about Sodom: God still saved Lot. He still sent angels. He still made a way out. Even when the whole city was lost, God’s mercy reached in and PULLED PEOPLE OUT OF THE FIRE. He’s doing the same thing right now.

The river of Life — the one that started in Eden, the one that flows through Jesus Christ, the one fed by the Holy Spirit — hasn’t stopped running. It’s still clear. It’s still straight. It’s still available to anyone who will turn away from the polluted water and comes to drink. But you have to CHOOSE. And you have to keep choosing. Every day. Every moment you’re tempted to look back at the old life, the old comforts, the old lies that felt like truth — remember Lot’s wife. DON’T LOOK BACK.

The writer of Hebrews put it this way: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2). LOOKING TO JESUS. Not behind you. Not beside you. Not at what the world is doing or what you used to be or what you’re afraid of losing. Look at JESUS. He is the author. He is the finisher. He is the river, the gate, the vine, the way, the truth, and the life. And He’s not behind you. He’s AHEAD of you. So why on earth would you look back?

One Last Drink

If this series has done anything, I pray it’s made you THIRSTY. Thirsty for the right water. Thirsty for something real in a world full of imitations and knockoffs and five-star-rated polluted rivers.

Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6). That hunger you feel? That restlessness? That sense that there’s got to be MORE than what the world is selling? That’s not a problem. That’s a BLESSING. Because it means you’re being drawn to the right river. Don’t fight it. Follow it. Follow HIM.

Don’t look back. Don’t settle for lukewarm. Don’t let anyone — no matter how polished or popular or how many followers they’ve got — lead you down a river that ends in death. The narrow river leads to LIFE. Jesus is standing at its banks right now, hand extended, saying the same thing He’s been saying since the beginning: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Come. Drink. Live. And NEVER look back.

* * *

A Moment Before You Go

Lord, I don’t want to be a pillar of salt. I don’t want to stand frozen between two rivers, one foot in Your kingdom and one eye on the old life. I’m turning my face forward — toward You, toward the narrow river, toward everything You’ve prepared for me. Burn the bridges behind me if You have to. I’m not going back. In Jesus’ name, amen.

* * *

A.W. Tozer wrote, “The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven’t yet come to the end of themselves. We’re still trying to give orders, and interfering with God’s work within us.” Stop looking back. Stop giving orders. Let go, and let His river carry you forward.

C.S. Lewis said, “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” Lot’s wife didn’t believe that. Don’t make her mistake. The best is ahead of you, not behind you. It always has been.

i-CH

Always