SERMON: The Church And The Garden World

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day sermon and we pray that as we declare the Word of God that you would be encouraged Strengthen in your faith and you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

And may you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word and may the Lord be with you now. We've been in this series restoring Eden for now for I think messages three or four I lose count and What we've been talking about is the purpose of what Holy Week is and underneath all of it.

What is going on under the surface? Yes, Jesus is arrested. Yes, Jesus dies. Yes, Jesus resurrects. Yes, Jesus ascends to heaven. Yes He sends his Holy Spirit to save us sinners. But underneath all of that what is going on and what we've seen is that Jesus is Dismantling the old creation world so that he can be not only the first fruit of a new creation But the author of a new creation and bring many sons and many daughters into that work so that the world could be transformed back Into a garden as it was originally designed.

So that's what we've been looking at. Now I want to begin this morning with a question as we land the plane on this series. It's the last message in this series. This is the this is the message that is sort of like the so what what difference does it make?

Yeah, you've talked about some really cool typology. Yeah, you've talked about some great connections in the Old Testament. What how does that actually intersect with my life and what we're going to see is That it actually has great implications.

For how we actually live and move in the world. Because as I'm sure you've realized What we are talking about is a very hopeful view that Christ actually does win the world. That when Christ rises from the grave and says all the authority in heaven and earth belong to me.

That he wasn't kidding. That he wasn't just telling us that he has all authority with the plan of eventually losing the world and the world Collapsing into chaos that the world continued to get worse and worse and worse, but Jesus is like but I'm in control.

That would make Jesus no different than his father Adam. So I'm sure you've seen that we have a very hopeful view here that Christ Actually does win the world that Christ is actually going to do what the first Adam could not do and bring back paradise and put away all of his enemies both foreign and domestic and It is that very view that we've been putting forward and is that very view that has caused two very equally bad and very equally awful Responses.

The first wrong answer is what you can call evacuation theology. The view that says Stop force-feeding us all of this hopium. The world is broken. The world is getting worse. The job of the church is to rescue as Many people as we can before the whole thing sinks and this view the world is the sinking ship.

It's the Titanic and the gospel is the lifeboat. It's our job to get as many people onto the lifeboat as we can before the ship sinks and anything else is the equated view of arranging chairs deck chairs on the Deck of the Titanic as it's sinking to the frigid waters of depression below.

This view is the let's take our elevator ride out of here or our rapture rocket or whatever you want to call it. But this view is a view of great pessimism. The second wrong view is a shallow kind of post-millennialism a shallow kind of triumphalism where the resurrection happened new creation has begun the victory is won so just be positive and Everything is going to go great.

This is the everything is awesome theology. This view doesn't allow for any kind of negativity. It sees the kingdom always expanding even down to the minute-by-minute level never having seasons of Retracement or retraction in route to its expansion.

And this view leads to a lot of disappointment and disheartened people Who don't understand that the kingdom doesn't grow always up and always to the right in the same way that the S &P? 500 has grown tremendously but not always up into the right.

There are seasons of great valleys and there are seasons of great pits. And That is because Both of these views are wrong because neither of them actually reckon with what the resurrection is. Both of them have a wrong view of the resurrection.

One view treats the resurrection merely as a last-ditch Flotation device to save sinners from plunging into the depths of ruin and while it is a rescue for sinners. That's not all that the resurrection accomplishes.

And then the other view treats the resurrection like it's a good luck charm that it'll magically remake the world without Any effort any participation on our part just ipso facto. It's going to happen without any cooperation whatsoever and both of these views are wrong because while the Cross and while the resurrection will remake the world It doesn't do so apart from the means of grace that God has given and one of the means of grace that God has given to make the world Into the image that Christ wants the world to be in is his church on earth his hands and feet on earth his church that preaches word and sacrament binds and looses his church on earth is his means by which he expands his kingdom to the ends of the earth and If you don't reckon with that, then you will fall into either one of those camps.

God does not simply snap his fingers and produce a harvest. He plants seeds and then he tends the soil and then he works through people who've had the life of the Holy Spirit breathed onto him and then he sends them out and then he causes him to preach the gospel and then the Gospel being preached causes hearts to come alive dead hearts to come alive.

And then they're raised from the from the deadness of their sins and then you see it Multiplying in that way so that new creation spreads through salvations, but it doesn't spread apart from the preaching of the word God has decided to use means to extend his kingdom.

He doesn't extend his kingdom apart from his people. He could he could have said all right now that I've risen from the grave. I'm gonna save everybody that I want to save and you don't have to do anything.

I'm gonna do everything but that's not what he does. He involves his church. Jesus tells us exactly what the resurrection is when he talks to us in John 12 24 when he says Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies it remains alone.

But if it dies it bears much fruit. So Jesus is saying that the purpose of the resurrection was that his Resurrection would bear much fruit and that our resurrection as we're raised from death to life would bear much fruit.

He's not speaking abstractly about the things that are gonna happen to him or the things that are gonna happen to us. He is calling the gospel a seed that goes down into the ground and the seed must die and from that death life will rise.

The evacuationist theology looks at the broken world and says it's time to abandon the field. Don't waste your time planting. Take your tools and go home. The determinist view the Pollyanna view says if God wanted to grow something then he would plant it himself.

That he would do it all himself. There was a great quote. It's not a great quote. It's a great quote for this situation. William Carey goes to a group of people asking them for funding to go on a missions trip and one of the men says dear son if the Lord wanted to save the heathen he would do it himself and They did not give him the funding.

Because that's this view that if God's gonna do it He's just gonna do it apart from interaction with us apart from cooperation with us. But that's not how the Bible talks about it. The Bible talks about Jesus being the first fruit of many fruit.

The Bible talks about the resurrection being that that many sons are brought into his body and that we serve him on earth and Extend his kingdom on earth as his hands and feet until the entire world is filled with his glory.

So this morning in this final series talking about recovering Eden. I want to talk about our part in the equation. We've seen what Jesus does. We've seen him through seven sequential days of Holy Week put away old creation.

We've seen him on Good Friday dying on the tree of death. Just like Adam should have When he sinned in front of the tree of life. We saw on Easter Sunday that he's the true gardener who breathes life into his people and makes them new creations now.

Today, I want to ask the question. What does it actually look like for us? How does it actually affect our lives? What are we supposed to do about it? When the Holy Spirit breathes life into us is our life meant to be nothing more than yes I'm saved now.

I do what I want or is there a purpose to it all do you have something that God expects from you? So that when you stand before him in eternity, and he says well done good and faithful servant. There's something actually to measure your life by that's what we're gonna talk about today.

And we're gonna do so by looking at John 20 19 through 20 and Matthew 28 18 through 20 and I'll begin with John chapter 20 and I'll just read those final two verses 19 through 20. And then I will go to Matthew 28 18 through 20 and we're gonna look at what it means for Jesus to be the gardener.

What it means for him to restore the world and what it means for us to be his subcontractors in his fields. So John chapter 20 verses 19 through 20. So in his evening on that day the first day of the week and when the doors were shut where the disciples were for fear.

Of the Jews.

Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them peace be with you. And When he had said this he showed them both his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. So Jesus said to them again. Peace be with you as the father has sent me.

I also send you. And when he had said this he breathed on them and said to them receive the Holy Spirit. Then Matthew 28 18 through 20 all authority in heaven and on earth have been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all the nations Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey Everything that I have commanded you and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.

Let's pray Lord God.

Help us today to see the purpose underneath the hood of our salvation. Help us to see what it's for. Help us to see what the end or the telos of our salvation is. Help us to understand why you saved us.

You didn't save us because we were special. You didn't go into a thrift store and find a precious item. And we were it. You saved us for a purpose for your glory for the advancement of your kingdom and for our good.

Surely. But Lord help us to see specifically in the context of John 20 and in Matthew 28. What it is that you've designed us to do and Lord help us to have courage as Christians. To live according to that design plan.

Help us Lord not to rebel against your design. Help us Lord not to as stubborn. Impetuous children refuse your design plan. Help us to submit to your plan. To obey your plan to rejoice in your plan and to do it all the days of our life.

Until you return it's in Jesus name. We pray. Amen. The first thing I want to show you is identity. Who are you Christian? Who are you ultimately down at the depths of it? I'm a Christian. Yes. But what does that mean?

Because before the new and the resurrected Adam tells his people what they're supposed to do. He actually tells them who they are. And what I mean by that is that he doesn't commission them before he equips them.

He equips them by telling them who they are and then he commissions them to tell them what they're supposed to do. I want you to notice how he does not say to go in Matthew 28 first. Before he says to receive in John 20.

John 20 is chronologically before Matthew 28. John 20 is in the upper room before they go to the mountain before they meet Jesus on top of it where he says all Authority in heaven on earth belong to me.

That's later. This is the first sighting that the disciples have of Jesus and the first thing that he says to them is who they are. Not what they're supposed to do. He'll tell them that later and This teaches us something that identity precedes activity.

Transformation Precedes mission. You cannot carry forward what you yourself do not have. There's a principle there if you don't have it you can't take it with you and what Jesus gives them here is extraordinary because The identity of a Christian is defined by the breath of God.

That's what he gives them. He gives them his breath and By giving them his breath He's telling them who they are. You belong to me. You're mine. I Just like the Holy Spirit lived in the Holy of Holies and when the priest would come in and he would see the smoke and he would see the he would see the fog and he would feel the Denseness of the holiness of God that breath of Christ coming into you and I through his spirit is who you are.

You belong to him you are in union with him. That's your identity. John is the most deliberate writer and all of the New Testament and he does not choose words carelessly. In fact John even breaks the rules of Greek grammar to get across this point.

I love translating John when I was in seminary. Luke is easy when you translate Luke. It's like textbook Greek. When you translate John it is like genius level and redneck at the same time. Because John doesn't care about the rules of grammar as much as he cares about the meaning and he will bend the rules of grammar.

He will write into Greek Aramaic phrases if he has to in order to get across the point he is deliberate and he is intelligent and he chooses his words very carefully and here the word that he chooses for Jesus breathing into us is emphysiol.

Emphysiol is the same Greek word or root where we get the word emphysema today. Now emphysema is a disease where the breath is choked out of you. Emphysio is where the breath is put back in where the breath of God is brought into you and This is one of the most carefully chosen words because it is what scholars call a hapax Legomenon, which is a fun word.

I don't care if you know what it means or not. It's just fun to say that's a hapax legomenon and people are like, oh, he's really smart a Hapax legomenon means that it's a word that is used only one time in the New Testament.

This is a word that is only used once in the New Testament and it's used once in the Old Testament. And I bet you can't guess where it's used in the Old Testament.

In.

Genesis 2 verse 7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed emphysio in his nostrils the breath of life and the man became in living creature so the Old Testament Greek version of the Bible uses the same word here for God breathing into Adam as as John uses in John 20 with Jesus breathing into his disciples so what you have is the new creation of men with new breath and John's not doing this coincidentally.

He knows this word is a very specific word John has read his Old Testament. John knows that he that there's a connection that's being made here to Genesis 2 where God breathes into Adam and old creation and old humanity begins where God animates the dust and now a living creature is alive and living and moving in the garden and John knows that here in his 20th chapter that when the new Adam is Breathing on his disciples that new creation is happening.

New Humanity is beginning because the humanity that was suffering with spiritual emphysema. The breath of God came out in our fall now the breath of God emphysio comes back in in our salvation the same divine breath the same act of vivification.

Vivification means the infusing of life. But no longer simply animating the dust. Now he's transforming people who already have heartbeats and histories to become alive in a new kind of way where they will never die again where death cannot sting them where they like he though they will fall into the grave.

You and I will fall into the grave or into an urn or Into the waters if you're not careful on a boat one a whale watching journey. That would not be fun. Be careful when you're on those well-watching journeys either way, however, it is that you die you will die.

But you dear Christian our new creations, which means you also will rise. You will rise up out of the grave and in short You will be with Christ forever in eternity because he's put the breath of God in you and you can't that can't be choked out.

In.

Short Jesus makes them new creations. This is why Paul says it plainly in 2nd Corinthians 5 17 if anyone is in Christ He is a new creation the old has passed away meaning the old way of being human is gone the old way of being a Person the old way being male the old way being female the old way of being a child the old way of being a worker.

The old way of being anything is gone. It's passed away. Now. The new has come. So if you are in Christ, you should be new. There should be something different about you. There should be something distinct about you.

There should be something bubbling up inside of you. That wasn't there before the Spirit came in. He does not say that you've been renovated. He does not say that you've been rehabilitated. He does not say that you've even been refined.

He says that the old has died and that the new has come. The eighth day of new creation has dawned in you. But Paul's not the only one who talks like this. Ezekiel talks like this standing hundreds of years before Jesus came.

He he sees a vision a vision of a valley of dead bones. He walks to this valley and he sees dead bones everywhere and God comes to him and tells him and says speak over. These dead bones breathe on these slain ones so that they may live.

Ezekiel is acting out what Jesus is going to do to his disciples breathe on them and they may live and In the vision he does breathe on them and God says that he will put his spirit within them and they shall live.

When Ezekiel saw a valley a vision in a valley these disciples now are receiving it in person. The thing that Ezekiel was talking about in a locked room from the lips of the new Adam and by extension now all of us Are receiving what Ezekiel saw hundreds of years before it occurred and this is now who you are.

That's your identity. You're not a sinner trying to clean yourself up. That's not who you are. You're not broken trying to glue yourself back together again. You're not stained trying to wash yourself clean anymore.

That's not you if That's who you think you are. That's not who you are. You're no longer broken. You're no longer stained. You're no longer guilty. You're no longer those things because the old has passed away in the new has come.

You've got to wrap your head around the fact that even though you sin his power in his word is more. It's more efficacious of who you are than even who you are. Who you are Dies at the feet of who Christ is in you.

You are a new creation and Though you sin and though you fall short of the glory of God Christ is in you. The hope of glory the eighth day has sprung up inside of you. The same spirit that hovered over the face of the deep in Genesis 1 now the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead now lives inside of you.

Which means the breath of God has come in no longer spiritual emphysema now spiritual emphasis the breath of God in. Now that's gonna lead to a mandate right because we now know who we are who we are is we've been bought paid for by Jesus Christ breath of God has come into us now.

We're walking talking temples of the Living God the breath of God emanates us making us new creations. Now, what do we do? Do we sit? Do we sleep? Do we prop our feet up on a nice hammock? Do we go? Playing lots of rounds of golf.

Sure, you can do that. But what is underneath all of that. What is the purpose of our life? Everybody's asking this question and only the Bible has the answer. What is your purpose? Now that we've seen who he's made us to be now We need to look at what he's made us to do.

We are no longer meant because we are new creations. We are no longer meant to live old creation lives. We are no longer to continue living the same old way that we were living before Christ, but now with a new bumper sticker.

Another way to say this is now that we have become new we must act like it and This takes us to the Great Commission. This is where Jesus tells us what we are to do. Matthew 28 18 all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Therefore go the Greek word. There's a participle. Therefore as you are going make disciples of all the nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Teaching them to obey everything I've commanded now, this is not a deep dive on Matthew 28.

But when you look at that, that's your life mission. That's your purpose.

That's the charter of your life.

Your life is to be as you're walking and talking and moving and going throughout every place that you've been planted. You are to be making disciples until all the nations have been discipled. That is your charter.

That's not the charter of the church. That's not the charter of the of the pastor. That's not the charter of the professional Christian. That's not the charter of the missionary. That's the charter of every Christian under the Sun make disciples of all the nations and lo He is with you always even to the end of the age.

That is our purpose and Here's how we know that we've done it if you make disciples. You get them baptized you bring them to church. They're baptized. What else do you do you teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded?

What's the thing that Jesus just commanded make disciples? So you haven't made a disciple until you've taught them to go and make disciples see how it's multiplicative. That's our goal is to help people teach people learn what their identity is in Christ so that they can become fruitful and multiply so that the mission of God the missio de spreads to the ends of the earth and in that way The Great Commission is the theme of our life.

It is the blueprint of our life. It is the purpose of our life and it's also not a new command. It's actually a very old command. The first time it shows up is not in Matthew chapter 28. It's actually the oldest command in the world.

It's actually the very first command that God ever gave. If you remember in the garden the first command was and God blessed them and God said to them be fruitful and Multiply and spread out to the ends of the earth.

Now I want you to notice that The first Adam is being given authority over the earth. The second Adam has all authority in heaven and on earth. You see the how it grows. Christ now is more authority than the original Adam.

The first Adam is told to be fruitful. Jesus tells us to make disciples. That is fruit. That is going into all the world and making fruit for God. Jesus comes to the city that gives him leaves but no fruit.

He goes to the temple that gives him leaves but no fruit. He curses a fig tree. That's leaves with no fruit. You get this narrative in Matthew 21 through 24 where Christ is cursing the old People and the old covenant system because it offered him no fruit and now through Jesus We go in the world making disciples, which is making fruit for God.

It is filling the world with the fruit of Almighty God. That's how we take dominion of the world. That's how we spread the kingdom to the ends of the earth from every single tribe tongue and nation. It is not just about salvation.

It is about disciple making. You'll know that we've accomplished the mission of make disciples of all the nations when all the nations are discipled and you and I. That's our job. That's our mission. All of this is the same mandates the same geographic destination the same power to accomplish it.

It's it's the same have dominion mandate. He sends us to be his vice regents his delegates his ambassadors on earth and we go with his authority. When the king sends you on a mission and he tells you go to this nation and tell them my decree.

You go in the authority of the king. So when Jesus tells you go and make disciples you go with the authority of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. You don't go in your own authority. You don't even go with your own intellect.

You don't go with your own competency. You don't even go with your own character. You don't go with your own foibles. You go with a message that the King of Heaven has given you and you can deliver it with confidence.

Because he gave it not you. If you are the one who is originating the message. Well, then you have reason to be humble and you have reason to be afraid and you have reason to be squeamish. But if it's Christ who commanded us and he told us exactly what to do.

Then we can have confidence because he's the one who gave us to us and he's the one who shares his authority with us for Us to do it. And probably the most stunning parallel of all in this is that in Genesis 2 God was with Adam in the garden.

They walked together in the cool of the day and the presence of God was the defining feature in Eden. What made Eden Eden? It wasn't the nice plants and the fruit. That was wonderful. What made Eden truly Eden was the presence of God dwelt with man?

Without restraint. And when Adam fell the first and the most devastating loss was not the loss of oranges and pineapples and Azaleas and other flowers. I don't know flowers. But it was the loss of the presence of God.

The breath of God was taken the spiritual emphysema crippled the world and that's what the Old Testament is all about that coming to God is Impossible on our own because he's too holy to approach. He's too beautiful to look at.

He's too awesome to hear his voice. This is why the Israelites begged and pleaded for Moses. Hey Moses you go up and interact with God. We can't deal with him. Now if you think about that, that's actually really unloving.

God's holiness is pressing the people down. Crushing them and they're like listen. I have a great idea Moses you go get crushed and We will we will stay here and see what happens.

Every.

Sacrifice from every high priest every day of atonement every. Every time that the priest walked through the curtain into the Holy of Holies all of it was pointing out the fact. That living in the presence of God is an outside phenomenon to you but it's all pointing to a moment when Jesus would come and bring those things back into you in Union with him and with God.

That is why Jesus says in the Great Commission Behold, I'm always with you even to the end of the age. I want you to think about that fact as you go and you make disciples of all the nations. He's with you as you go to your job.

He's with you as you go in your home. He's with you as you parent your children. He's with you, whatever you do, whether you eat or whether you drink and how you give glory to God. He is with you in a way that no one in the Old Testament could ever say.

What privileged position we stand in as believers in Christ? That's the that's the mandate. Now I want to bring this down a little bit Into what this means because it means that we are now not only ambassadors, but we are subcontractors of the chief gardener.

Remember in Genesis 1 God is the original gardener. God is the one who plants. God is the one who tends. God is the one who speaks order into chaos. He's the one who calls fruitfulness out of the void.

He's the one who turns wildernesses into paradises. He's the one who separates. He's the one who fills. He's the one who divides. He's the one who cultivates until the region of Eden that formerly before that moment was formless and void is now Teeming with life and beauty and goodness.

That's what God does Paradigmatically as an example of what now he's going to call Adam to do for the rest of Adams life. And in Genesis 2 He creates this Adam this man from the dust and he places him into the garden and he gives him the Commission.

He teats gives him the blueprints. He says look at everything that I've created now fill it. I Remember I heard a pastor won't say I've probably said this to you a hundred times because I love it so much.

He said if Adam and Eve were faithful To what they were called to do they would have had so many children that Eden and its zip code would have been so full that it would have been more densely populated than Manhattan and Then what would happen?

They would have had to invent backhoes and bobcats and they would have had to extend the borders of the garden into new zip codes and new territories until Eventually that new expanded space was filled and then they've got the same problem again.

So they have to expand it again until that space is filled and they've got the same problem. Maybe they invent skyscrapers at this point so they can more densely pack people in. I don't know. But eventually they have the same problem until eventually they can't expand any further.

Because the entire world has now been filled with the people of God who worshiped God the whole world's a garden that was the purpose for which God made the world and That is the purpose that Adam fell from.

And that is the purpose to which Jesus restores in. This way the garden was not the final destination in Genesis 1. It was the headquarters. It was the prototype it was the starting point in the blueprint for what God wanted the entire world to become and he called that plan very good and While the fall delayed that plan even for thousands of years that delayed that plan it did not thwart that plan.

Do we believe?

That the God who made that plan and called that plan very good will leave that plan unfulfilled and unaccomplished or. Do we believe that God tells the truth? Do we believe that God will accomplish what he said?

He's going to accomplish. Do we believe that God can and will through his son actually do what he told Adam to do? I.

Do.

Because I don't believe that God gave Adam something frivolous. Here Adam do this. I know you'll never do it. And by the way, I also have no plans to do it either. It's just a task. That's not who God is.

God gave Adam the task to do it to show humans that we can't do it so that he could send his one and only Son who will do it. That is the point anything short of that is limiting the faithfulness of God.

And On the eighth day when Christ Jesus rose in a garden tomb and Mary mistook him as a gardener and then right after that he breathes life into a bunch of nude creatures made from the dirt. You can see that he is working and doing what Adam should have done being fruitful and multiplying and spreading his kingdom to the ends Of the earth so that from those 12 to now 2 .5 billion people on earth He has spread his kingdom.

And I what I love so much about it is that he spreads his kingdom with fools. He spreads his kingdom with people who don't even have a clue that the kingdom is being spread through them. If if Christians all over the world got a vision for making disciples, we would disciple the world in about seven years.

And yet.

Jesus Christ still builds his church. Even though we're mostly unluke and mostly don't recognize that this is our purpose because we're mostly self-centered creatures and we believe that our life is about what we are doing and we pray and we ask God to join us in our life instead of joining our life to the purpose and plan of God.

And. Yet Christ for 2 ,000 years has still built his church. And I think that there's a reason that he does it that way. Because if Jesus built his kingdom full of rock stars and all stars and and all of that we would be tempted to take the.

Glory.

When we get to heaven and we look at the history of mankind and the silliness of mankind and The finitude of mankind and we see Jesus building his kingdom with people like us. We will fall on our faces and we will worship Jesus and say you're the only one God who could have done this.

I think he does it for that very reason. When Jesus breathes on his disciples, he's reinstating them back to their original purpose and he's making them sub Gardeners with the purpose of being like Adam and being fruitful and multiplying now.

The question is how do we do that? Because the point of this message is not for you to go home and till up some New England earth and plant some tomatoes. So, what do you do? You be fruitful where you are where God has planted you.

And how do you be fruitful where you are? You tend what God has given you you keep what God has given you. You protect what God has given you. You Cultivate what God has given you. You plant you water you wait and you do.

Everything that you can do by the power of the Holy Spirit to see God's life. Come into the things that you've been entrusted with because no one else is entrusted with it but you. Your life is what God has given you to be fruitful in.

So be fruitful there. And You can do it in a variety of ways. For instance, if you're single your garden is not on hold. You're not waiting in some kind of a waiting room to get on to a bigger assignment.

You can be fruitful where you're at. The first Adam in the garden was given the Commission before he had a wife. He was given the job before he was married. He was told to tend it to keep it to fill it and to be fruitful even before he got the girl.