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 Strengthened 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 the 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 Live in you now 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 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 is 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?

We prop our feet up on a nice hammock. Do we go? playing lots of rounds of golf

I'm 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 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 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 has 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 which means that work even predates

Fruitful work godly work predates marriage There's this idea that singles often get that the church has forgotten about them

And I understand why because most sermons are aimed at marriage family and all of that. You're not forgotten in the eyes of God You have a purpose you have a plan you have something that you can be doing and in fact, you can even do it probably more effectively than some of us who have

Children and who are married because you have more time to be able to devote to the building of the kingdom of God So what does this practically look like for you as a single person invest deeply in the local church?

Be the most generous person in the room open up your home open up your table If you live with someone else ask them if you can open up your home and open up your table be available in ways that married

People often can't be bear fruit where you're at while you're at until you your status changes

The single saint who is wholly given to the mission of God is one of the most powerful tools in the hand of Christ Do not waste this season of your singleness think about it as What can

God do through me and use me right now where I'm planted to bring life and to bring fruit? Use your singleness to the glory of God if you're in a marriage if you're married

The first and most important garden that God has given you is the person that you've made covenant with Tend that relationship keep that relationship

Nurture that relationship in the same way that a garden requires daily work if you've ever had a garden

You don't leave it to its own because it will become overgrown with weeds and roots and thorns and thistles and everything else the the

Idea of having a garden is daily work pulling weeds digging out rocks digging out roots making sure that the squirrels aren't eating the the tomatoes making sure that the pests and the bugs aren't eating the pumpkins like you have to Constantly be at work in order to produce anything of value in a garden.

We'll take that as a metaphor That if you want a fruitful marriage You can't just stop working on your marriage if you stop working on your marriage your marriage actually be filled with weeds and thorns and thistles and roots and It will be choked out by the cares of the world

The way to have a fruitful marriage is to constantly be working on your marriage Remember gardening is not a seasonal job.

It's a year -round effort. There's things that you do in the wintertime That's going to prepare the soil for the seed time in the spring

There's things you do in the summer as you're preparing for the harvest There's things that you do in the harvest to prepare yourself for winter marriage is like that.

It is a year -round effort Where you do daily and very unheroic and very non glamorous things to tend this

Relationship that is going to bear mighty fruit for God and if you're not doing those things you should not expect to bear much fruit in the original creation

Adams job was not to admire the garden, but it was to work in it every day to keep it from returning back to a wilderness

Because neglected soil eventually becomes fallow ground and if you want an example of this look at New England New England was the place where the gospel hit the shores of America most fiercely like a tidal wave

Jonathan Edwards John Wesley George Whitfield the booming preacher revival spread in our area and Now it's gone.

Why because we sat down and stopped tending it We stopped working it we stopped planting it

We watched as the thorns and the thistles took over to where now We're living in a wilderness instead of a garden and the only thing that happened was the slow commitment to do nothing

Whatever you do nothing to entropy will take over Neglected soil eventually becomes fallow ground with that in mind.

I want you to ask yourself husband and wife What are you doing today to make your marriage fruitful?

What are you doing today to cultivate life in your spouse What are you doing today to bring to bring about more fruit in your spouse?

And I want you to stop asking what you need. I I I think that this is the worst aspect of our

Narcissistic humanistic society is to I just I need to think about my needs I need to put on my oxygen mask first that that whole kind of concept

I get where it comes from But when you spend the majority of your time thinking about how can I be a better spouse and how can

I be better? And how can I improve myself? You're not spending time on her or you're not spending time on him and you're both growing apart

Stop asking what you need and start asking what he needs what she needs No matter how much modern humanistic societies taught you to focus on yourself

Your job wife is your husband your job husband is your wife. You are to attend to tend

Cultivate and help produce fruit in the one that God has given you and their job is to attend to your needs and if you would do that if you'd spend the majority of your time focused on Cultivating fruit in your wife and if wife you'd spend the majority of your time cultivating fruit in your husband

You would have a healthy holy happy marriage and there would be no such thing as marriage counseling among Christians It would be over But what happens is

We say this is what I need and because they're not meeting my needs now I'm gonna draw a line in the sand and now

I'm gonna dig a foxhole and now I'm gonna wait I'm gonna wait for them to apologize. They were wrong

I'm gonna wait for them to make the first move. I can't believe what they did to me. I Can't believe how they made me feel

That's not the way of Christ The very essence of Christianity is deny yourself pick up your cross and follow me the essence of what it means to be a

Christian Is you're dead? Your needs don't matter You're supposed to be a servant more than you are to be about yourself.

I Will tell you from 15 years of being in ministry That if marriages will do what

I just said if the husband will spend his energy and effort cultivating his wife

And if the wife will spend her energy and effort cultivating the husband There would be no marriage problems in Christian churches and Christian people.

We would have flourishing fruitful marriages I know it seems counterintuitive.

I know it seems vulnerable. I'm gonna wait a minute I'm gonna I'm gonna lay down my own needs so that someone else can tend me so that someone else can be the one to Cultivate me so that someone else can be the one to to help me

I'm gonna I'm gonna be that level of vulnerable Yeah Because when you do that you free yourself from being the center of everything and you free yourself now to serve and You free yourself to have the kind of marriage that Christ has with his own church from heaven

He came and sought her to be his only bride and he works for her good and he tends her and he cultivates her

And Christ does not a single time say what about my needs? Christ says how can

I serve you? How can I care for you? And the church is supposed to respond by Lord Jesus How can

I worship you? How can I care for you? That's what a faithful marriage looks like when you stop looking at you and you start looking at them and you say how can

I? Make them grow How can I turn them in to God when we die? More fruitful than when

I found them. I know that you've probably been through lots of hurt

I know that you've been through lots of pain. I know that there are deep years and layers of scars

That make this really hard What I'm saying is forget you

Focus on who God has called you to be forget your opinions forget your list of grievances because it's really not helping you it's hurting you and Serve the other person and as you do that you will find a joy unspeakable and they will be

Having so much joy that you've cared for them So well, they will respond by caring for you and then it will be the kind of marriage you've always dreamed about because you've taken your foot off the oxygen tank and You've started serving the other because if your marriage is a garden you ought to tend it and Don't tend you tend them

What about family if you have children remember your children are not just part of your legacy. They're part of Jesus's harvest

So if he is the true gardener and he's assigned you as his sub gardener And he's giving you children to tend and to keep and to cultivate live your life in such a way that is bringing fruit into Your children ask yourself the question

How can I be the kind of parent that brings fruit and life and joy and flourishing into my child?

How does this look practically? Plant the gospel so deeply and deliberately into your children

Adopt a half -century plan for your children instead of a 50 -minute plan for your children Or a minute by minute flustered responding to them

Take a 50 -year half -century approach. What am I going to do from now for the next 50 years? They're going to make my children flourish for Christ What kind of seeds am

I gonna plant into the soil that I might not even see that might not even grow until after I'm gone your job is to till the ground of your children to plant the seeds of the gospel to give it the water of life and to stand back and watch

God grow it and Again, it could be that those seeds do not germinate and do not spout until you are at the end of your life

Or maybe you will never see them But be faithful to plant the seeds be faithful to cultivate the soil be faithful to give them every

Opportunity to hear the gospel on your lips to see the gospel on your fingertips and to live the gospel in your home

Remember the words you speak over your child at the age of seven The scriptures you read and you sing and you pray over them when they're still sleeping in their bassinet

May not surface until later, but plant them anyway read scripture to your children anyway, even if they don't get it, even if they look at you and they're like Or if they're hanging off the chandelier and family worship seems a little like The Royal Rumble, it's okay.

Keep doing it. Keep being faithful to it. Don't get discouraged by it. Keep bringing them to church one of the one of the biggest things that we had to learn as a family is

That our children sitting in church without making a peep is probably not a realistic expectation

But what is a realistic expectation is that we don't send them out of the room. We plant seeds in them

We let them see the seeds of us singing we let them see the seeds of us worshiping

We let them see the seeds of the Bible being read over them prayers being prayed over them the church

Rejoicing in the truths of the gospel them hearing them coming to the table and tasting and seeing that the Lord is good

We've given them by the time they're 20 years old a lifetime of one message.

This is yours It belongs to you If you tell your children for their entire life that this doesn't belong to you go to a different place so that we can as adults

Pay attention if you tell them this doesn't belong to you. You shouldn't be surprised when they grow up and believe you But if you tell them for a lifetime that this does belong to you

They will believe you they've done research On denominations that have their children in worship service with them despite theological distinctives and churches that don't churches that don't or denominations that don't have about a 40 to 50 percent fail rate with children who leave the faith some

Denominations are worse than others upwards of even 90 percent of children who leave the faith Denominations or churches that keep their children in service with them, even though their children are loud, even though mother

I get it You can't pay attention and you have to listen to the sermon later. I get it But of those churches that have their children in worship 90 % of them never walk away because you've told them for a lifetime that this belongs to you

You spent time planting seeds and watering them and guess what the Lord made them grow

Your children are a garden cultivate them. What about your home? Your home is not your castle your home is his outpost and his embassy by which he's gonna win the world

Your house is a little colony of new creation Your house is planted as as a forward operating base in the middle of the war

So that you can reach those who are far from God which means that our houses should be places of peace and joy and love and Reconciliation and forgiveness and repentance and the gospel

So that when people come in our homes, they should say there's something different about these people They're weird, but I love them for some reason they love me so in this way brothers and sisters listen,

I Know I'm from the South. I Know that we have a reputation of being hospitable.

I don't even really like the South. I like New England better So let me talk to you one -on -one here for a second

We have a reputation in this region of being a little cold And being a little hard to get to know

Once you know us, we're friends for life But we have a reputation of not being very hospitable.

I Think it's time that the church shows The rest of New England what it means to open up our homes open up our tables open up our living rooms

So that people can come in and find the refuge of the gospel you don't have to be an elder or pastor a deacon to do that you have a door it has hinges open it and Let people in and feed them and pray with them even if they're not

Christians let them in Show them who Christ is through you Make your table a part of your evangelistic strategy

With good wine and good steak Don't give them the scraps bring them in and feed them to the glory of God Tell them about this good

God who has blessed you so much Let the aroma of your home be so potent that the only thing that it smells of is the gospel

Remember tables are theologically loaded concepts in the Bible. They're pieces of furniture in the world, but they're often

Instruments of new creation in the Bible remember Jesus leveraged this so well Jesus did not just stand behind a pulpit and tell parables and sermons

He didn't just sit on top of mountains and give discourses Jesus went and ate with sinners and publicans and tax collectors

He went and had meals at people's homes and the Pharisees would even look at him and say what is he doing?

because to eat with someone in that time period meant that you accepted them and They were looking at Jesus.

They were saying you claim to be so holy. Why are you doing this? but Jesus was weaponizing the table and weaponizing the biscuits and Weaponizing the baked potatoes and the meat and the green beans and everything else to reach people who are lost

Who would be found? You remember that the table also is where we come every week to feast with him

How can we possibly forget that the most important part of the Christian worship service is that we dine with Christ?

Let us then leave here and dine with others Let us then leave here and show them the goodness of what we received at the table through our life and through our table

You'll remember that all the human history is heading towards the table the marriage supper of the lamb let your table today

Be a foretaste of heaven So that people who are far from God would know him and see him

People who are lonely people who are grieving people who are far from God people who do not yet know what new creation feels like But they're curious because they've seen it in you

When you bring people to your home and in your tape to to your table

You're doing one of the most ancient and most radical acts of gardening that is available to you

Cultivating new creation one biscuit at a time So make your home a place that smells like a garden decorate it thoughtfully adorn it deliberately make it welcoming warm and full of love

And you'll see the Lord use it What about what about your work? Remember the things in your vocation remember men

Genesis 128 to work to be fruitful and to multiply happened before sin. I Hear so many men.

I'm not saying guys in here. I'm just saying in general I hear so many men complain about their work Complain about their work as if it's a scourge upon their humanity as if it's a curse upon their being brothers

Use your work as an example of who Christ is Go to your job and make your company fruitful because you're there and make it so obvious that the only reason that the company

Was not in the red this quarter was because of your faithful work That they can't help but even if they're pagan they have to look and say there's something different about that person

My only point is that in all of life you have the opportunity To bring garden spaces to bring life to cultivate fruit to be thoroughly dynamically and robustly

Christian thoughtfully Christian deliberately Christian The problem is is that we often go into autopilot and we become thoughtless

I'm asking you to remember to be thoughtful to be deliberate To bring

Jesus's kingdom wherever you've been called Don't think that this is going to require you to pack up and leave and go somewhere else to go do the work of The gospel do the work where you're at do it in your home do it with your family do it with your children do it at your work wherever your feet touch the earth do it there and God will use it and God will extend his kingdom and maybe just maybe in our lifetime.

We will see New England one back to Christ Let's pray Lord all throughout the scriptures we see that you are

The first mover you're the one who pursues us you're the one who does the work of saving us

But you do not do that work as an end unto itself you do that work to Reinvigorate us to vivify us

To make us instruments in your hands So that your kingdom will spread on earth as it is in heaven so that the increase of your government will know no end

So that all the nations will call you blessed So that everyone will remember and turn to the

Lord as psalm 22 says So that from the rivers to the ends of the earth the psalm 72 says so that the war horn will be torn down as Zechariah 9 says and that the kingdom of peace will expand and So that the glory of God would cover the earth as the water covers the sea as Habakkuk 2 says

Lord use us and let us remember that our purpose is to be used

Our purpose is not to build our castle. Our purpose is not to build our ego Our purpose is not to build our expectations.

Our purpose is not to build us Our purpose is to build out out into our children out into our families out into our spouses out into our neighborhood out into our world and and Lord, to do that faithfully for a lifetime.

Encourage us in that work, strengthen us for that work, revive us for that work.

Let us not become like the Israelites who grumble, but let us be those who are joyful.

Let us be those who, when you return, have taken the five talents and turned them into 10.

Let us be the soil that produces 30, 60, and 100 fold, and let us do it because you alone are worthy, because when we were unworthy, you saved us, and because you saved us, there's nothing that you could not ask us to do.

There's nothing we can withhold from you. Lord, let us give it to you freely and joyfully. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.