Four Gardens of Life
Introduction:
One of the things that I look forward to in the spring is planting our gardens. Leslie and I are starting to put away some money for plants. She is telling me some things that she would like to do with the flowers, and I have been telling her some things I want to do regarding vegetables.
When I was growing older (I’m not sure if I’ll ever grow up) in Minto we always had a huge vegetable garden. Things always followed a very strict pattern. We’d start by tilling the soil and fertilizing it. Dad and a friend of his would go get the plants for transplanting. When the time was right, we’d get out the tape measure and stakes and line off our rows and do the planting. We would do all the daily caring for the garden, weeding, hoeing, watering. In the fall of the year we would enjoy a wonderful harvest, much more than what we would need, and dad freely and cheerfully gave much of the produce away to neighbours.
Everyone who saw our garden told us how beautiful it was, and I don’t mind telling you that they were right. My father put a lot of work into it, much more than I did, and the beauty of that garden was directly related to the care of the gardener.
When my father died I promised that I would not put in another garden until I had someone I loved to share it with. The first time I put in a garden since my parents died was the first year of my marriage. You see the garden was not so much an exercise of necessity, we could buy the vegetables cheaper than what it cost to grow them. Planting the garden was an act of love.
Today I want to take you on a journey to visit four gardens. Each garden varied greatly in what was produced, but the underlying reasons for each of the gardens was the same. You see, the underlying reason for each of the gardens is the love of the gardener to those around Him.
THE GARDEN OF EDEN:
Our first garden takes us back to the beginning of time. It was a beautiful garden filled with the creation of God. You cannot think of this garden without being drawn to the creator. This garden encompassed all of creation, in fact the first garden ever planted was planted by God. We have an account of this in Genesis 2:8-15. It was also in this garden that God made a helper for man in woman.
This was a garden of perfection, and this was a gardent that was formed out of love. All creation was good, according to the record here, but it was only the creation of man and woman that is said to be "very good." The garden of Eden was created as an act of love and relationship by God for His creation, because this was a creation of spiritual as well as physical dimensions. In this garden God created something that is seldom seen as we study it. He created the opportunity for man to return love to God and be in a pure relationship to Him.
Have you ever asked yourself why God even put the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden in the first place? Have you ever wondered what it looked like, what the fruit tasted like? Do we have it in our world today? Surely God, knowing that man would fall, could have taken the tree out of the garden and solved the problem. You see the tree of knowledge of good and evil was not a specific type of tree, as much as it was an opportunity for humanity to demonstrate their love to God by not eating it’s desirous fruit. It created for us the opportunity to choose to follow God. We should not sidetrack ourselves by determining what type of tree or fruti it was. The important thing was the spiritual command, not the physical tree.
In this garden was the birthplace of sin. When we choose to eat of that fruit, it was not eating the fruit that caused us to fall. If eating a particular fruit was a sin then the name and description of the fruit would be made clear so that we could avoid it. Just as we know that a person should avoid poison ivy, there are without a doubt very few of us who don’t have a mental picture of what poison ivy is. The sin was not in eating the fruit, the sin came in breaking the relationship.
Have you ever really considered the name given the tree "The knowledge of Good and evil" and asked how can this be? It came to be when man took of that fruit and discovered something he had never known before. He discovered shame, betrayal, disappointment, sorrow. He discovered the difference between good and evil because at that point our eyes were opened to something we had never seen before. Our eyes were open to sin. God then had to send man out of the garden to make sure that we did not take of the tree of life, and live forever in sin.
In the garden of Eden we became so encompassed by the garden, that we forgot that the real praise should go to the gardener who created it. Ravi Zacharias states this of the four major thoughts of Genesis:
The principal thrust in the opening pages of Genesis is that God is the creator and that He is both personal and eternal - He is a living and communicating God. The second is that the world did not come by accident, but was designed with humanity in mind - man is an intelligent, spiritual being. The third thrust is that life could not be lived out alone but through companionship - man is a relational, dependant being. The fourth aspect is that man was fashioned as a moral entity with the privilege of self determination - man is an accountable, rational being.
God spoke to us in the garden, and humanity chose to ignore Him. We chose to try to be our own little gods. Zacharias sates it this way:
" If there is no voice from without, we are the cause and the keepers of the garden. All relationships can be legitimately redefined. We speak to ourselves. We define ourselves. We regulate ourselves. Free socitey mocks any self-regulating body, yet, when it comes down to living in a community, that is precisely what we do. Notice the number of laws the free world must enact in order to keep us from destroying this garedn because there is no gardener but us.... There is no one to speak to us but ourselves"
God by contrast, hung it all on one law - to love the Lord your god with all your heart and soul and mind, and to love your neighbour as yourself.
Zacharias goes on to state about this garden:
" The heart of the question was raised: Has God really spoken? When Adam and Eve questioned the authority of God, the allurement placed before them was that they could become as God, defining good and evil. What the temptor did not tell them was that good and evil as defined by God are rooted in His character, and there is nothing contradictory in God. Good and evil as defined by fallen humanity are born out of a spirit of rebellion that results in the disintegration of life...."
In the first garden God spoke, and humanity denied that He had. Humanism was born, and man became the source of meaning.
One other thing was planted in this garden that we can’t ignore. Just as the seed of humanism and sin were planted in this garden, so too was the seed of salvation. The story of redemption begins in this garden as well.
THE SECOND GARDEN: THE DESERT
The setting of our second garden is unusual by our standards, but one thing I have learned is that it takes all kinds of soil to grow different types of plants. The setting for the second garden is in a desert. The desert is the birthplace of the mirage, where things can be other than what we determine them to be.
Turn with me to the account in Matthew 4: 1-11. Jesus having been baptized was led out into the desert to be tempted by Satan. For forty days and nights Satan allowed Jesus to be weakened due to fasting. Then He came and tempted Jesus three times. As Zacharias correctly points out, "The irony here is that though Jesus is divine, He could not lay claim to His power without forfeiting His mission." You see, Satan was tempting Jesus to act in a supernatural way, and for Jesus to claim His power would be falling to the temptation.
The garden in the desert is a garden of deception. It is a garden to twisted words and meanings. It is a garden that we are all to familiar with. Modern cults will use parts of the Bible taken out of context as formulative statemens for their beliefs. Zacharias states:
Verses such as, "The kingdom of God is in you," or "I and My Father are One," are used to sustain pantheism.... Any reading of the context in which these statement in Scripture were made shows clearly the illicit use of the texts by those who seek to distort them.... What begins with a subtle departure from the truth by the allurement of self-deification ultimately results in the deification of everyone and everything.
In the garden of the desert Satan tried to deceive Jesus to use His divine powers and thus rob Him of the chance to complete His Father’s business. To fall to Satan would make Jesus only human and eliminate the cross forever. To quote Zacharias again:
When God sent the plagues upon Egypt in the Old Testament, they were designed to show that He alone was supreme over the objects they had deified....and that there was no other like Him.... From pantheism to the worship of nature, the temptation of the desert is still with us today, to have religion without God.
In the second garedn we learn the vital lesson that we cannot create God in our image. We cannot pick and choose His attributes based on the way that we see Him. Jesus who was victorious in the garden of the desert, is the seed of redemption of the Garden of Eden preparing to bloom fully for us on the cross.
THE THIRD GARDEN: GETHSEMENE AND PAIN
One of the things that come to light from our journeys to these first two gardens is that the temptation to go our own way is forever with us. In Eden humanity gave in to that testing and fell. In the desert Jesus remained strong, but nowhere in Scripture is it more clearly evidenced, that Jesus thoughout His life had the temptation to go His own way, than at the garden of gethsemene.
Turn with me to the account in Matthew 26:36-45. Jesus has finished His passover meal with the disciples and is preparing Himself for the cross. It is in Gethsemene that we see Jesus at His most human state. We have all been there at one time or another. Seeing the task too painful, too stressful, too large, to think that we can complete it, we too look for a way out, a way of escape.
The cup (v. 39, 42) that He asked to be taken from Him contained the sin of everyone since the beginning of creation and also contained the sin of everyone until He returns as King. It was a prayer of desperation and intensity. It was given over to three parts, the third being so personal we have no account of the contents.
This garden becomes synonomous with the struggle of the Christian walk. If Jesus were to struggle so intently over this, how can we not expect to have to visit this garden as we go through our earthly existence. Zacharias states that this garden is synonymous with lonliness, sorrow, pain, and death. Gene Edwards puts it this way: "The Lord faced His Father... in a garden. In that Garden He gained the central ingredient necessary to triumph over crucifixion.
Edwards suggests a Gethsemene can be as horrible as a crucifixion. The Lord did not easily pass through His Gethsemene. (Consider Luke 22:43,44). For Jesus it was a yielding to His father’s view of crucifixion. For you it will be the same. Edwards states:
Your Lord’s Gethsemene was to yield to His father. He found that very difficult to do, but He did; and as a result of that yielding he was nailed to a cross. Until He yielded there could be no crucifixion. Once He yielded events and circumstances became irreversible. Your Lord in Gethsemene, had quite literally taken up His own cross....
Gethsemene is not a when or a where, but Gethsemene is a must. Without facing your Gethsemene, the crucifixion you have known will destroy you....with no hope of resurrection. Allowing a Gethsemene to come into your life changes all that....
When is the correct time for you to face your Gethsemene? When you call out to your Lord and say, "No man crucified me; it was You, my dear Lord, and You alone. It was sent into my life for edification. To that crucifixion I yield.
Edwards suggests that Gethsemene was the only time in eternal history where the father and Son had differing opinions. It was a bitter prayer struggle that resulted in Jesus surrendering His will to that of His Father’s. We will visit that garden many times. It may be a job promotion or move, it may be the choice of a mate, it may be the choice of a career, it may be the choice of a life, but in any case, we too will come to this garden and battle for the will of the Father, and the need to surrender our desires unto Him. It is at that point we too will be victorious. Edwards states:
That garden is the place where frail humanity finally comes to agree with divinity, it is where you come at last to agree with your Father, with His will. You agree to be crucified. You yield even when everything in you shrinks back in horror. While there, you might be comforted in remembering this: You will never be close to the human side of your Lord than in Gethsemene.
In Gethsemene Jesus learned a knd of obedience that He needed to face the cross (Hebrews 5:8).
Edwards states it this way:
The Son learned to obey His father, even when that included dying. Only a crucifixion could provide that classroom. He learned an obedience He had never known before.
This is not the kind of obedience which is simply obeying orders. This is obedience of a far higher, rarer kind. Here is obedience that speaks of full concert between father and Son. This is a matter of all things being wrapped in yieldedness.
What profoundness there must be in such unique yieldedness. It means that whatever comes, however bad circumstances get, you are at a state of yieldedness. You do not need glory days. The good days and the bad days are the same because you abide in a state of yieldedness. All days, regardless of content, are Best Days.
Two wills were in total concert. For a moment those two wills disagreed. Once that disagreement was settled, their wills became eternally one. Indistinguishably, utterly, one. The center of that disagreement was a bloody cross; the disagreement was settled in a garden.
It is no wonder then that Paul witnesses to the centrality of the cross in 1 Cor. 1:23-24; 2:2). One cannot talk about the work of this garden without talking about the cross. Zacharias states:
A form of Christianity that goes by that name but loses sight of the cross is not Christian. A "religious" person that thinks nature and the cross portend no difference understands neither. His cross is the hill from which our gardens are addressed. His was a crown of thorns. His voice rings above the sounds of hate and torture and death, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."
THE FOURTH GARDEN: THE EMPTY TOMB
In the first garden we were introduced to the sin of humanity and the seed of salvation, the second garden allowed us to see that seed in human form withstand the tests of Satan, and in the third garden we witnessed the titanic struggle of Jesus surrendering His will to the Father’s, leading to the cross. Now we are about to enter the last garden.
It is a fact that we can never enter this garden without first going to the cross. We can never enter this garden without first surrendering ourselves at Gethsemene. But once we enter this garden, we shall evermore bo changed.
Turn with me to John 20:1-18. This is a passage about life, transformation, and conversion. Jesus body was requested by Joseph and Nicodemus. The request was granted by Pilate an unusual turn of events for all crucifixion victims were not to be buried but their bodies left unattended for the animals to eat. Jesus burial was an unofficial sign of Pilate’s declaration on innocense.
Just as we all must visit several times the garden of surrender and pain, so too shall we on several occasions have the opportunity to visit this garden of life. This garden was new life for Jesus, one not shackled by the forces of the past. All that limited Him in this natural order was destroyed with the crucifixion. Jesus’ crucifixion was not an execution but rather a liberation.
The essence of crucifixion is that it is a portal to pass through to come into the fullness of the resurrection. Edwards states: "A crucified one has within his grasp the highest plane of Christian living - life beyond crucifixion, Living in resurrection". Edwards states:
At this moment your Lord walks and lives in resurrection! He lives beyond. He lives beyond the worst that can happen. He lives beyond the worst that can happen because the very worst happened to Him. He lives beyond death!....
What is the difference between life and resurrected life? This. You can kill life! Look at Golgotha and learn that even divine life could be killed. You cannot kill resurrection life. You cannot kill divine life which has passed through death. You cannot kill divine life that is on the other side of crucifixion. Divine life....crucified divine life....dead...divine life....passed through death....divine life....resurrected. There is nothing that can touch that life. When you have risen from the dead, nothing can touch you!
When you have been hit by the worst possible circumstances and you rise in victory from out of the ashes, those former circumstances have lost their cutting edge. Their power has been broken.
Nothing can stop Jesus Christ because He has ascended over Death.... There is no other enemy who is as great as death. Jesus Christ was slain by death, then He slew death and rose again. Death cannot ever touch Him. Death is less than what Christ is. Crucifixion is less than what Christ is.
In this garden the women were forever changed because they had talked with and experienced resurrection life. All that they had been told was true, and they were looking at the Messiah. Nothing would ever again deter them from praising His name. This same resurrection life would transform the disciples. And that resurrection life is here this morning, ready to transform you.
CONCLUSION:
My friends, we have all been to the first garden. We are all fallen sinners, in need of repentance. Many of us in fact any who has accepted Christ as Lord and Saviour, have been to the second garden, the garden of testing. At one time or another we all failed there as well. Only Jesus the test of the desert garden. Few of us show the maturity to go into the third garden, the garden of surrendering and pain, and that means that only few of us live the resurrected life that we can have in the fourth garden.
But that garden is open to you today. The Lord is inviting you to come to Him today. If you’ve got questions, bring them. He’ll reveal your answers. If you’ve got pain bring it, He can heal you. He wants you just as you are wherever you are in your life.
Brothers and sisters today the scriptures say is the acceptablke time for salvation. Let me make this clear. The scriptures in Ephesians tell us that we are dead in our sin. This means that if you were to die today and have not accepted Christ that you would spend an eternity in hell. Jesus died to provide you with resurrection life. He bore the pain and death for you. Zacharias states:
The first and foremost reality is that suffering and death are not only enemies of life, but a means of reminding us of life’s twin realities, love and hate. Here, love and hate did not just happen. The paths were chosen. Those who hurt Him hated Him. Those who hated Him He loved. Those who killed Him wanted to be rid of Him. By allowing Himself to be killed, he made it possible for them to live....
But here is the point. He did not die as a martyr for a cause, as others have done, nor was He just nonviolent so that the enemy would surrender through public outcry, as still others have done. He did not even die because he was willing to pay the price that someone else woiuld live. He came to lay down His life so that the very ones who killed Him, who represented all of us, would be forgiven because of the price that He paid in the hell of a world that does not recognize His voice.
Do you realize what this means to your life? In resurrection life you will be able to go forth in your walk with the Lord, higher up and deeper. The Lord offers you the right to live by resurrection life. Resurrection life is a life that exists only as it is a life that has fully walked through the valley of crucifixion. He awaits your permission, permission to be crucified in the manner and style of Christ. That gives Him permission to raise you from your spiritual grave and grant to you resurrected life.
Will you allow Him to do this today? Will you present yourself to Him and place your all on the alter, saying that no matter what happens I will serve the Lord. Are you ready to crucify your old self the worldly self, and take on the resurrectionlife in Christ. If you are ready, then you come forward as we sing our hymn of invitation today.
