SERMON: Adam Walked Back Into The Garden

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.

We've been in Proverbs for a long time. Proverbs is one of those books that the understanding of the passage is very simple.

It's right on the surface, and most of the sermons have been digging deep and burrowing into application.

Today we get back to one of my favorite types of passages where the meaning is quite deep, and there's a lot going on underneath the surface that we need to pay very close attention to in order to see, and if we see it, it will expand our entire view of what

Christ has done. There's something that almost no one talks about that's hiding in plain sight right there in the text of Holy Week.

Something that once you see it, you actually can't unsee it. Jesus did not spend his final week simply and merely building toward the cross.

He spent his final week systematically dismantling the world. Day by day, undoing old creation, unmaking it, and returning it back into the chaos from which it came.

So that on the eighth day, he could rise again and remake it entirely according to his vision.

That's what Holy Week is. It's not just the passion narrative. It's a new seven -day decreation narrative.

Seven fateful days where creation is going to fall back into the chaos just before Jesus rises from the grave as the author of a new creation.

And while that may sound like an astounding or maybe even novel claim, I want to show you the clearest proof right up front before we get started so that you will see how this works.

And then we'll go through it a little bit more deeply. In the original creation on day six, God reaches down into the dust of the ground and he forms the man.

And what's the first thing that he does? He breathes life into the nostrils of the man, and the man becomes a living creature.

The breath of God goes into the man, producing life, and then God blesses the man and calls that very good.

Now what happens on Good Friday? Six days after Jesus walks into Jerusalem, day six,

Jesus is hanging on the cross, the true man, the one who deserved nothing but blessing in life, hangs on the cross on his sixth day.

And instead of breath going into his lungs, we see breath going out of his lungs instead of in the beginning.

Jesus says it is finished. Creation light collapses in darkness.

The earth itself shook, which shows us that the earth itself is responding to the death of Jesus and saying, may we be ripped apart and remade.

Do you see what I'm saying? In day six of the original creation, God breathes life into man, and day six of Jesus' final week, the breath goes out of man.

And that's not a coincidence. It's a deliberate reversal of old creation.

And it's not just the sixth day. It's in every day of the Holy Week. Jesus is walking through each of the days of creation one by one and undoing them.

And in my estimation, it's one of the most important themes that's running through Holy Week that gets almost zero attention.

That Jesus is re -entering into a garden in order to establish a new

Eden. He is the true and the better Adam, who will march back into the garden, crush the serpent who deceived the man, cure the curse that Adam brought upon the world, remake the world into a new garden paradise where he will be fruitful and multiply and fill the world full of his people, as Adam was originally commissioned to do.

To say it simply, the theme of Holy Week is Jesus remaking the world.

And all that is in it. And in the same way that the first creation was a literal seven days, evening and morning first day, evening and morning second day, day three, four, five, six, and then seven, the events of Holy Week are going to play out in seven literal days as well.

And I do not mean metaphorically. I do not mean thousands and millions of years and day age and theistic evolution.

I mean a parallel between the original seven days of creation and the Holy Week of Jesus.

That's not a coincidence. Why is Jesus doing this? Because he's telling the story of a new creation.

And before Jesus can begin a new creation, he has to tear down the old and broken one.

Which is why Jesus comes as the new Adam. That's why he's bringing judgment on the old world. That's why he's filling this world with his new creation people.

That's why he's making this world as Psalm 65, or as Isaiah 65 says, back into a garden.

And this is demonstrable from the text. This is not just creative theologizing. It is creative.

But it's not just frivolous either. For instance, day one of the original creation.

Let's track with this for a second. Day one of creation, God the spirit hovers over the chaotic waters and God speaks and says let there be light.

Light entered the world and there was no darkness. The light came. Day one of Jesus' final week is

Palm Sunday where Jesus comes. And he reverses the evening morning paradigm to morning and evening.

You'll notice that the Holy Week doesn't say evening and morning new day. It says morning and evening. Morning and evening.

He's reversing the creation paradigm because he's undoing old creation. Which means

Palm Sunday is the beginning of the end of the world. And just like light entered into the world on day one, he being the true light of the world entered into the city.

The city that was supposed to be the garden home of God. The city that had the temple of God, which by the way was decorated like a garden.

And when the true light came into his city, which was a microcosm of the world, all he found was darkness.

And at the end of the first day of Jesus' week, we'll read it in a minute,

Mark. He looks around and he abandons his city. The light leaves. Day one of the original creation, light comes.

Day one of Jesus' week, light leaves. Because he's tearing down old creation.

If you're a builder, you will know this. If you find an old dilapidated house that you buy the property and it's so bad, it's so rotted, you have to actually tear everything down, dig out the foundation before you build something new, that's what

Jesus is doing. Old creation had fallen so bad into so much squalor that he's digging it systematically, day by day, gutting it so that he can rebuild it.

So that he can remake it. Day two of the original creation. On the second day of creation,

God began ordering the world. And he began ordering it according to his will. He began bringing dominion over the chaos.

He ordered the waters above from the waters below. God is bringing order. God is bringing specificity.

Well, on Jesus' second day of his final week, he begins by doing the opposite. Instead of building things on Jesus' second day, he starts tearing things down.

Instead of ordering things, he brings disorder to things. Because his purpose is not to sustain the old creation.

It's to replace it. Let me show you a couple examples of this. After Palm Sunday, that's his first day.

The next day, that's his second day, Jesus goes to the barren fig tree. A tree that had only leaves and no fruit.

A symbol of the world that was only leaves, but bore no fruit. And Jesus speaks to it.

Instead of blessing it, he curses it. Instead of ordering it, he destroys it. In that moment,

Jesus is closing out a picture of old creation. And then on that exact same day, he enters into the fruitless temple.

And he drives out the money changers with a whip. He overturns the tables. He cleanses the courtyard.

Because instead of bringing order to the chaos, Jesus brings mayhem and chaos to the temple. Because he's undoing the old creation.

Day three, God divides the water and the dry land and the vegetation begins sprouting and growing from the earth.

Do you know what day it was that the disciples found that the fig tree was no longer sprouted, but withering and retreating back into the earth from which it was found?

Day three. Day three in the original creation. Things are growing.

Day three in Jesus's final week, the fig tree has become withered. He goes into the city and he says,

I am going to leave your house desolate. He says that to the Jews about their temple. He's withering their house.

He sits on the Mount of Olives overlooking the city and he says that this city is going to be plunged into chaos.

It's going to wither. It's going to happen in a single generation, Matthew 24, 34. And he does that on day three.

So that things are no longer growing. They're withering and shriveling and dying.

Again, this is not a coincidence. On day four of the original creation, God assigns roles to the sun and the moon and the stars that he has appointed to rule over the heavens.

And one of the things that the sun is supposed to do and the moon is supposed to do is to hang in the sky and to shine on the men.

To shine on the affairs of men. And in the Old Testament, every time a nation is destroyed, the sun hides its face.

The moon runs away and turns to blood. Because when men rebel against God, the sun decides to abandon us.

What happens in day four of Jesus' final week? He does not go into the city of Jerusalem at all.

He abandoned it. He stayed in Bethany the whole day and did not enter the city at all.

He refused to shine his light. He withheld it. The language and the actions of Jesus here is not only reversing creation, this is the language of decreation, destruction, plunging

Jerusalem into its own darkness and ruin. Meanwhile in Jerusalem, the priest and the Pharisees, they're all literally bumbling around the city trying to figure out how they're going to arrest him.

Even Judas leaves Jesus in Bethany and goes into the city of Jerusalem to try to kill the light of the world as darkness enters into him and possesses him.

Day five of the original creation, the earth and sea are filled with creatures who will serve Adam and who will serve the things of God.

The ocean is literally teeming with animals. The sky is literally teeming with birds.

What happens in Jesus' final fifth day? He retreats to the garden of Gethsemane and instead of the world teeming with creatures who multiply in life, the garden is filled with human beasts who are bloodlusting for death.

On that day, while Jesus is praying in the garden, a mob of animalistic murderers stagger into his presence to arrest him, usurp him, bludgeon him, and murder him.

And this is by far one of the most profound acts of the downfall of creation where the creatures come to their

God to arrest and kill him. God is back in his garden!

But the creatures have now showed up to kill him. Which is, of course, a symbol and a sign that the world is on the brink of destruction.

Brings us to the pinnacle of the creation week, day six. At the height of the creation story,

God takes the man and he breathes life into his lungs and makes him alive and he finishes the old creation by saying, this is very good.

And yet on the sixth day of Jesus' week, the true man, the better man, the one who deserved nothing but life, had the breath exit his lungs.

And in that moment, hanging on the cross, on the tree of death, instead of the tree of life, death overtook the man who deserved nothing but blessing.

So that blessing could overcome all of us who deserve nothing but cursing. When Jesus spoke, it is finished.

He did not just mean that salvation is finished. He was saying that old creation's destruction is complete.

And lest we forget the seventh day of the original creation. What was the seventh day?

The day of rest. Six days God labored and on the seventh day he rested. Six days Jesus labored and on the seventh day in the tomb, dead.

The Lord of the Sabbath kept the Sabbath in the tomb. In the garden tomb.

But this is where things get extraordinary. Because the original creation only had seven days, which meant that God stopped counting.

Which meant that every day after the seventh day was still the seventh day, according to God. Every day that existed after that was within the world of a seven -day world.

There's no eighth day in the Old Testament. There's no ninth, tenth, or eleventh. God labored for six days, created everything that was in the world, and he created nothing new from day seven onward.

So that all days after the seventh day were under the banner of day seven.

Living under the rule of God over the things that he made where he's making nothing new. So that means plants grew.

Nothing new is happening. You plant a tree, it grows. It's not new. It's from the same material and the same rules of the universe that govern everything so that it's not something new happening.

It's something true happening according to the laws that God gave to govern the world. When babies are born, it's not fundamentally a new thing.

Because babies have been born for thousands of years. It's according to the laws of nature that God created, and he's ruling over on day seven.

So again, no new material is being created. No new things are being created. But here's where things get supremely interesting.

Because when Jesus rises from the dead, and Paul says that he rises as the author of a new creation, did you know that he rises not just on the third day, but he also rises on the eighth day.

Did you know that? He rises on the third day from his death, but he rises on the eighth day from his entering into Jerusalem.

Which means there's a new day. There's more than just a seven day world now.

There's an eighth day, which means that God has now done something new. A miracle has happened. An eighth day miracle has happened.

And what new was created? Because plenty of people in the Old Testament died. That's not new.

And there were even a handful of people who died and were raised back to life. That wasn't new either.

But all those people who rose back to life died again. Lazarus being the most recent.

The new thing that God created on day eight, that makes it fundamentally new, which changed the entire world and plunged the world into a new entire epoch of history, a new creation, was that when

Jesus rose, he rose to never die again. And for all who are in him, you rise with him to never die again.

That is why Jesus switches from a seventh day Sabbath on Saturday to an eighth day

Sabbath on Sunday, because the resurrection interjected into the fabric of creation something utterly and profoundly new.

He is the author of new creation. He goes through all seven days of the old creation, tearing down, tearing down, tearing down, tearing down.

Why? So that he can remake the world. So that one at a time, one salvation at a time, one nation at a time, one continent at a time, one people at a time, he can fill the world with the glory of God as the water covers the sea.

And for 2 ,000 years, he's been remaking the world. Yeah, it's not according to our timeline. We want it to have happened in 2 ,000 nanoseconds, which is like less than a normal second.

I don't even know because I'm not a scientist. To quote Ketanji Brown.

But for 2 ,000 years, God has been remaking the world. Listen, I want you to think about it like this because we are so myopic.

We are so myopic. We look at our world and we look at Iran and we look at all of the things that are going bad in the world.

But we say it's the worst time that's ever been. This is not the worst time that's ever been.

As we ride to church this morning and we stop and we get our coffee and as we put gas that has been drilled out of the ground and refined into an automobile and then we drive to church with clothes on that no one would have possibly been able to manufacture 300 years ago and we sit in chairs under lights with all of the blessings that we have and we say we're really we're living in the worst times ever.

Like what an ignorance of history we have. And then you say okay, well, maybe not materially.

More people now are born without infant mortality. Okay, more people now don't die from heart attacks because we have medicine or whatever.

You can say materially things are better, but not spiritually. Well, I mean if you go from one man who then puts 12 men around him and then 70.

So 70 people out of a population Rodney Stark, a famous historian, said there was probably 300 million people on earth in the first century.

So I'm not a mathematician, but 70 out of 300 million is a pretty low percentage as opposed to 2 .5

billion out of 8. The Lord is covering the earth with his glory as the water covers the sea by reproducing people after himself who by the

Spirit of God everywhere they walk is sacred space. Yes, you and your sin, you're not special.

You and your sin, you fail. But the Spirit of God inside of you is the same

Spirit that lived inside the Holy of Holies except now you're mobile. You're not rooted in a single location.

So every place your foot steps, you are the temple of the living God making sacred where you stand.

So my point is that God who's done this for 20 centuries now, who's redeemed more and more people now, will he all of a sudden stop?

Or will he continue to do what Adam did not do and continue to fill the world with people who are filled with the

Holy Spirit until the entire world is made sacred space? If he wasn't going to do that, why would he deliberately go through each of the seven days tearing them down so that he could rebuild them back with the goal of filling the world with his people?

And now that you've seen that theme, which I think is a is a theme that needs to be talked about more and more, is

God remaking Eden. Now that you've seen it, at least in summary form, now you understand why

I wanted to do a series on this in Holy Week because Jesus is doing things in Holy Week that is not just about individual personal salvation.

Raise your hand, sign the salvation card, go up front, do your thing. It's not

American individualism. He's doing something that's cosmic. He's doing something to not only save individuals, but to globally wash the world with the water of his renewal so that the entire world would redound to him.

The entire world would obey him. He's doing something larger and more cosmic than we could possibly understand and that began with a ride on a donkey into the city of Jerusalem.

In Holy Week, Jesus is not only dying for our sins, he's tearing down and remaking everything and he's not going to stop until his job is finished.

Unlike many of our friends who say that the world collapses in ruin, I refuse to believe that Jesus, the perfect one, will stop short of what he said he's going to do.

So I want to sketch out where we're gonna head in this series for a second, just so you'll know. Today I want us to look at Palm Sunday where the true

Adam walks into the world of cursing that Adam left us in and he ends up in a garden.

And then next week, I want to look at, or sorry, Good Friday, I want us to look at how the true Adam, when he walks back into that garden, when he walks back to the tree of life, actually dies on a tree of death.

And then on Easter Sunday, I want to look at how this former Adam rises up from the dust in the garden tomb and even

Mary misunderstands and says he must be the gardener. But actually she didn't misunderstand, did she?

She actually knew far more than what she thought she knew because he is the true gardener, the true Adam who's risen from the dead to make a new creation.

And then the week after Easter, I want to show you one of the strangest passages in John 22 that you probably have never understood until you've heard it now.

Jesus, when he enters into the upper room, he breathes on his disciples and he says, receive the

Holy Spirit. Why is he doing that? Because he's the God who breathed into Adam's nostrils and made him a living being.

So now this God who died in the garden for our curse has now risen so that he can share his new creation life with all of us.

So that all of us, when the Spirit comes into us, have the breath of God. Do you feel like you've seen an epiphany yet?

I've been so excited all week. So today,

I've given you the roadmap for where we're going in the series. Today, I want to look at Palm Sunday as the true

Adam comes riding into the Garden City on a beast of burden. And I want you to turn with me to Mark 1, 1 through 11, as we're gonna read these events and over the next three sermons, we're gonna examine these events over the next four sermons and we're gonna see the new creation themes that are underneath them in ways that you may have never seen before.

So Mark 1, 1 through 11 is our text. I will read it. We will pray and then we will dive in.

Mark 1. Starting in verse 1. And they went away and they found a colt tied at the door outside in the street and they untied it.

Some of the bystanders were saying to them, what are you doing untying the colt? They spoke to them just as Jesus had told them and they gave them permission.

And they brought the colt to Jesus and put their coats on it and he sat on it and many spread their coats in the road and others spread leafy branches, which they had cut from the fields.

Those who went in front of those who followed were shouting, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David. Hosanna and the highest.

This is the important verse I want you to look at. Verse 11. Jesus entered Jerusalem and came into the temple and after looking around at everything he left and he left for Bethany with the twelve since it was already late.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that underneath these passages there are some glorious gems of truth that demonstrate to us what you are doing.

New threads that will widen our understanding of what salvation is and of what redemption is and of what the telos of all creation is.

Lord, let us see that how you went so deliberately through these days of creation in order to begin a new and purified creation that you will not stop until it is finished.

Until all men are saved. Until every thorn and thistle has been put away.

Until every curse has lost its sting. Until every stain has lost its blemish.

That you are remaking the world from your tomb to every resurrection of every dead soul that was dead in their trespasses and have been raised to life in Christ unto the ends of the earth.

It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. The first thing I want you to see especially in verse 11 is that Jesus comes into the city of Jerusalem as a to inspect the rot.

Jesus comes as the author of the creation that was supposed to follow him and bear fruit for him and he comes to his special people who were supposed to make his name known among all the nations and he comes to the epicenter of that people the city of Jerusalem and he comes inspecting the damage.

You can't miss this in Mark's account of Palm Sunday because after Jesus enters the city and after the crowd waved their branches their leaves with no fruit.

After the hosanna has been echoed across the walls. Mark 11, 11 tells us what

Jesus did. Jesus entered Jerusalem went to the temple and after looking at everything he left for Bethany with the twelve since it was already late.

He looked at everything. You cannot read this as if Jesus is somehow an awestruck tourist.

Look at that. That's a nice building. I really like that one. Next time we're here guys if the crucifixion doesn't happen we're going there.

That's not the way Jesus is doing. He's not like a wide -eyed first -time visitor. He's the royal inspector.

He's the landowner of the vineyard in the parable that we read earlier. Who's come to see what his tenants have done.

To see what they've done with everything that he's entrusted them and what does he find? He finds a beautiful temple on the outside rotten with dead men bones on the inside.

He finds a city that was supposed to be a garden city designed to be the dwelling place of God the picture of heaven on earth a microcosm of creation

Jerusalem was supposed to be the place from which the the gospel went to the ends of the earth and yet he found it filled with the machinery of religion emptied of the presence of God and dead

He finds a city that shouted his name, but does not know his face He Finds a people who can quote the

Torah, but don't recognize the author when he shows up He looked around at everything

And at everything he looked at he found the same problem. It had a lot of leaves

But there was no fruit It had the appearance of health green

But upon further inspection it had no evidence of life and Jesus proves this to them in the parable that he will tell them in a couple days in Matthew 21 the parable of the landowner

The landowner built a wall around the vineyard. He dug a winepress

He constructed a tower to defend and guard it In other words, he gave it every provision that it needed in order to produce massive tons of fruit and then

He left it in the hands of land owners vine growers and he went on a long journey

This is God handing over the vineyard to the kingdom of the

Mosaic Covenant Going on a long journey and trusting them to bear fruit for his name

And yet when the harvest came when it was time to collect the fruit, he sent his servants to the vineyard

The servants or the prophets of God that were sent to the people of God over and over and over to inspect them if you

Don't know this. This is very helpful. Prophets are not eccentric weirdos who just like to shout

They do that They sometimes wear animal skins sometimes like Isaiah.

They parade around naked for an entire year It's a little strange sometimes like Ezekiel They they chop they chop off their beard then they take a sword and they chop it even more finely and they throw it up In the air as a pronouncement of doom upon the people of God They're strange people.

I Feel like I would have fit in They're intense people

They are a little eccentric but what prophets are more Fundamentally than just weirdos and robes

What prophets are is their covenant attorneys? If you want to understand what a prophet is think about them as a defense attorney who's coming to prosecute

The person who's broken the law of God. That's what they that's what they're there for They come with an open Torah to prosecute the crimes of the people.

That's their job. They're covenant attorneys And he sent his servants over and over and over again and what do they do they killed them they killed the prophets

So, what is the landowner do what is the one who owns this vineyard do he sent more servants

They did the same thing to them. And then finally he said finally I will send my son Surely they will respect my son

But when the vine grower saw the Sun, do you know what they did? They said this is the heir come let us kill him and seize his inheritance and They threw him out of the vineyard and murdered him which of course

Is talking about Jesus Now here's the thing Jesus isn't just telling them a story.

He's describing what's happening right in front of their eyes in real time on that very day He was the

Sun Jerusalem was the vineyard the Pharisees and the chief priests were the wicked tenants He came to collect the fruit, but what he found when he got there was that there actually was no fruit

The reason the wicked tenants were killing the people that the landowner sent is because every time he sent someone there was nothing there

There was no fruit So instead of sending them back to tell the landowner that these wicked servants have produced no fruit

Which means they would be killed they killed the messenger When Jesus came he found exactly what he thought he would find which was nothing

And here's why all of this matters Why did

Jesus expect to find fruit? Why did Jesus why should Jesus have found fruit? Why must

Jesus have found fruit? Well Genesis 1 through 2 sets up the paradigm for all reality

God made man and God placed man in a garden and God gave man one

Assignment so if you're looking at the creation of humanity and the one thing that God told them to do

You could agree with me that that one thing that humans were told to do is Properly basic to the to what it means to be human if you want a foundational statement of what it means to be a human being you probably ought to look at the one thing that God told the

Original human being as their assignment that he called very good and that he called blessed What is that one thing?

The only thing that humans were told to do be fruitful multiply the fruit fill the earth

With the fruit our entire purpose in life is to bear fruit for God That's why the

Spirit of God comes and brings fruits of the Spirit. That's why Jesus says I'm the vine

You're the branches if you don't abide me you can bear no fruit because our purpose is to bear fruit. That's why we exist

We don't exist to build our castles and our 401ks and our vacations and to go and cruises and all those things are fine

But we don't exist for that. We exist to bear fruit for God That is what's properly basic to what it means to be human humans bear fruit for God in the same way that pineapple trees bear pineapples and When pineapple trees don't bear pineapples you chop them down It is properly basic for humans to understand that their role in this world is to bear fruit for God The garden was not a retirement community where Adam got to lay in a hammock and drink his parrot

Bay The garden was a workshop The garden was a launching pad

The garden is a place where the image of God was meant to produce fruit multiply fruit and expand fruit and so the entire world was filled with the fruit and life and Knowledge of God in the same way that the waters cover the sea

That was the plan and that's always been the plan from the very beginning that's the plan before sin entered into the world

So now thousands of years later Jesus comes as the chief inspector Holding them to the account of what humans are supposed to do bear fruit and he finds nothing but leaves

Not a single piece of fruit, which means that what

Jesus was looking at was not just corrupt religion It was the catastrophic downfall of what it meant to be human

Standing right in front of his eyes He was seeing in real time what a world looks like when it's made in the image of God and it's abandoned its purpose

Abandoned its post fell at the tree and handed its entire sovereignty dominion and will over to the serpent

Jesus came and he saw the rot and he saw the ruin and he saw what the fall actually cost and When that new

Adam came he looked at everything and he found nothing

And he abandoned the city The second thing he did is because he found nothing of value because he found no fruit now

The narrative and Matthew and in Mark and in Luke shifts to a dark chapter

Where now the inspector is now the general and the judge who because he found no fruit will be delivering curse

Because he didn't find any life He's gonna be the one that delivers the curse, but before Jesus is going to take the curse from us he has to deliver the curse to us and to those people and This is demonstrating the events of Palm Sunday the morning after Palm Sunday Jesus left

Bethany walked towards Jerusalem when he was hungry and he looked at the fig tree from a distance It had leaves had the appearance of life

It looked like it was a healthy tree and then he found that there was no fruit on it And he says may no one ever eat fruit from you again.

Jesus was not just hangry in a Snickers commercial People look at this verse all the time.

They're like Why is Jesus being so extra? Jesus looked at that fig tree

Which by the way, what have Adam and Eve cover themselves with when they said fig leaves he looks at that fig tree as A symbol of fallen humanity and he says may you

Never bear fruit Again, he looks at that fig tree as a symbol of old creation

May you never bear fruit again Because he's closing out the old and he's bringing the new and I want you to see something here

That's actually astounding every miracle that Jesus gives in the gospel Heal something restore something heals the sick raises the dead feeds the hungry calms the storm every miracle

Jesus does gives life except this one This miracle because it's in decreation week

Goes the exact opposite direction He doesn't feed someone with this tree.

He doesn't heal this tree. He doesn't prune this tree. He kills this tree Why? Because before Jesus can lift humanity from the curse

He must apply the curse and the consequences of their sin to them

Before he can break the power of fruitlessness. He must name it judge it and pronounce a sentence upon it

But that scene was only the beginning because on the same day he entered into the city and he told them the parable of the wicked tenants and he said

I'm taking the kingdom away from you and The Jews they knew he was talking about them. It says they perceived that maybe perhaps perchance

Possibly he was talking about them. Do you know what it says at the end of that parable?

I will take away this kingdom and give it to a people who will bear my

Fruit Because I'm going to take a people tax collectors and sinners the low down the dirty the rotten the shameful the guilty the marred the

People that you Pharisees look down your nose and say are no good I'm gonna take them and I'm gonna make them new creations who now start bearing fruit for God And I'm gonna take you and all of your self righteous smugness and I'm gonna deliver you over to what you actually are

Which is dead? fruitless Death Jesus is coming to repossess the vineyard to evict its former tenants.

The fruitless ones are Losing what little they even still had and perhaps most devastating of all he stands over the city and he weeps

Because remember Jerusalem was supposed to be the city on the hill The light to the Gentiles the place where the temple of God is and remember we got to think like Israelites for a second

There's one place on earth where you go to meet God You don't go to your prayer closet.

You don't go on your car ride with Caleb You don't sip your chai latte in Starbucks and say

I'm gonna spend time with God. You don't know that You've got to plan a trip to Jerusalem you've got to walk through the the court of the

Gentiles in the court of the women and I'm The court of the men then you got to hand your animal off to a priest who then goes in and represents you before God You had to always stay at a distance

It's almost like Islam is today if you want to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca that is similar to what it was

You don't know God in Chelmsford. You don't know God in Lowell You don't know God in Boston or New York or LA or Chicago.

You have to go to Jerusalem if you want to know God So Jesus looks at this city that was supposed to be the life of the world, but it actually became the death of the nations

He looks at it and he says Jerusalem Jerusalem Who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her how often have

I wanted to gather your children together the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings and You were unwilling behold

Your house is being left to you desolate the city of Jerusalem had a very famous house

And that very famous house was the dwelling place of God And when Jesus said behold

I'm leaving it desolate what he was saying to them is that I am demolishing every single

Substructure of your religious idolatry. I'm removing the temple so that no longer people will have to come to you

To meet God because you so abused the Covenant and disobeyed the terms now

I'm gonna do something utterly new your house will be left to you desolate but guess what I'm rebuilding the house and I'm the cornerstone and the

Apostles are the foundation and guess what you and I are living stones that are building up a house

For the glory of God Ezekiel saw this happen long before he saw the glory of the

Lord lifting up out of the temple and moving east Which is by the way back towards the garden and now it's happening again

That's Ezekiel 10, by the way, the true glory of God standing in the temple Your house will be left to you desolate leaves

This is a fulfillment of Ezekiel 10 where the presence of God lifts up and leaves the temple Jesus lifts up Disciples he walk into the

Kidron Valley backs to the temple leaving the temple the disciples say look at these buildings Jesus What do you mean that this house is gonna be left to you desolate?

He says I tell you the truth not even one stone will be left upon another

The light of the world was walking away and leaving the city in darkness and here's the point of all of it in Genesis 3 when

Adam and Eve sinned the first thing God did is he went to them? He visited them

God came to them and pronounced to the curse over them That's what

God does God's not avoidant God's not like us where we have a problem with someone.

I don't really want to talk to them They need to come talk to me first I'm not gonna make the first move

You know, how dare they assault me and my specialness They're gonna have to make it God doesn't do that they offended

Almighty God and God came after them and What is the first thing that they do when

God comes after them? They hide and then he pronounces curses on the serpent then curses on the woman and curses on the man

And then curses on the ground itself so that every human being born born after that day is born into a world of curse a world of thorns and thistles instead of fruit a

World of pain instead of peace a world of death instead of life a world of exile instead of home The curse was real it was totalizing and no human being had ever been able to escape it except on this week

Because the new Adam was walking through a cursed world pronouncing curses which means that he's

God Because who's the one in the Garden of Eden who comes pursuing sinners pronouncing curses?

God and which member of the Trinity is the one with legs and arms and voice and walks Jesus Christ in the garden the one who comes pursuing

Adam and Eve is Jesus Here in Jerusalem The one who is pursuing

Israel Is Jesus? He calls the fruitless tree what it was cursed

He calls the fruitless temple what it was abandoned because the fruitless city what it was

Desolated Jesus is not being cruel here. He's being a surgeon He's going right into the heart of where the tumor is and he's cutting it out to save the world

Because before you can heal the wounds you have to open it and expose it before you can cure the infection you have to reveal

It before you can break the curse you have to enter into it and that is exactly what Jesus did But to our surprise he not only enters into the moment.

He takes the curse upon himself Jesus comes Examining the rot

Pronouncing the curse and then in fulfillment of prophecy becomes the curse

And how does he do this? He walks back into the garden so that he could become a curse for us

After the inspection after finding no fruit after cursing them after weeping over them after doing what what

God did in the garden Now he does something that ought to stop us in our tracks. He doesn't leave

He doesn't just kick them out of the city and put a chair over the garden so that they can't come back he stays

He doesn't ascend to heaven like Rocket Man, he doesn't call down fire like Elijah in the past he keeps walking

It's so funny when you look at it very carefully look at the events of Holy Week this week read it Every time

Jesus walks he's walking towards the city He's pursuing them. He leaves the city and he walks east which is theologically significant

He walks towards the city and he's walking west which is theologically significant And now Jesus is walking in an easterly direction again

When Adam was cast out of the garden, he was cast to the west so that he had to return He would have had to come back east.

Jesus is walking to the east He's walking past the walls He's walking past the gates

He's walking past the valleys He's walking past the bramble in the wilderness

He's walking past the slopes of the Mount of Olives he's walking towards Bethany he's walking toward the quiet He's walking towards a place where it should not surprise you where he ends in a garden

What Jesus is doing is he's being Adam All of humanity was cast out of the garden and none of us could ever come back.

But Jesus in this week is coming back Walking humanity on his shoulders back into the garden with a plan on how to rescue us.

That would actually shock us John 18 1 when Jesus had spoken these words he went forth with his disciples over the ravine the wilderness of the

Kidron where there was a garden and To which he himself entered should we be surprised that he entered a garden in the final moments of his freedom?

and The name of that garden was Gethsemane which means oil press Why is that important?

Because when you crush olives the oil comes out when Jesus has crushed the oil of his salvation flows.

I Want you to picture the scene? Jesus walks into the fruitless city.

He walks past the fruitless tree. He goes past the fruitless temple. He abandons the fruitless people

He goes past all the bramble in the wilderness so that he can arrive at a garden and here in that garden where he

Stands where Adam should have been Jesus is about to be crushed in Genesis 3

Adam and Eve sinned God came looking for them in the garden What did Adam do Adam hid and what did Adam hide himself with with fig leaves?

The same kind of leaves Jesus just cursed days before because when

God found Adam and Eve he found them with leaves and no fruit Now look what happens in the

Garden of Gethsemane Jesus is the true Adam He hears the danger coming for him and I want you to pay very close attention here

Adam was kicked out of the garden so that cherub could guard the garden with flaming swords

Jesus hears the men with torches and swords coming after him

But instead of like Adam hiding when he smelled the fire of the torches or when he saw the flickering of the lanterns or when he heard the clanking of the

Swords, he doesn't hide himself He stands up and he says who do you seek?

because he's a man and Because he was innocent Adam hid because he had guilt

Jesus stood up and said I'm here do your worst.

I Have nothing to hide. I Have no reason to hide. I have no reason to be ashamed

What are you here for? Who do you seek? Jesus knowing all these things that were coming upon him went forth and he said to them.

Who do you seek? He walks towards the danger Yes He walks towards the danger and he presents himself to them and he says that I am he there's a example

I'm going to share with you from my time in the prison systems or the jails This is a fact this might save your life one day

Actually, if someone is coming towards you the worst thing that you can possibly do is back up I was taught this

Because when you back up you show vulnerability and for someone who already is in pursuit

Who thinks that they have more power than you you backing up affirms that they have more power than you and they will attack you

The way to stop an attack is when someone is pursuing you to run at them There were multiple times.

I'm Intense as a person so I overdo things all the time. There was this time It was amazing this guy was running his mouth at me in jail and he was like pursuing me and I run at him and he tripped and fell on the ground and I was like Where you at boy?

Where you at in the same way in the same way

Jesus doesn't hide. He doesn't run he pursues He pushes towards them and he says that he's they say who do you seek you?

They say Jesus and he says I am he the word I am The name of God the tetragrammaton eggo me

I am and then they all fall and hit their faces the pursuers become the victims The ones who thought that they were going to judge him became

Adam hiding naked and ashamed he says

To his disciples who start grabbing swords Do you not think that I cannot appeal to my father and at once my put at my disposal more than 12 legions of angels?

12 legions of angels is 72 ,000 angels So if you think about it one angel killed all the firstborn sons in Egypt one angel killed 185 ,000

Assyrian soldiers in a single night. He has 72 ,000 of them He's not worried but because he didn't come to the garden to escape the curse, but he came to the garden to become the curse and To absorb the curse.

He said put away your swords these guards were carrying flaming swords like the cherubim before and Now the true

Adam who's walked back into the garden is being escorted to the tree of death And he doesn't run

And he doesn't let the swords scare him because that is what he came for He came to stand between you and I and to become sin

He who knew no sin came to be sin so that we may become the righteousness of God the one

Who had done nothing wrong came to become a curse for us

Paul says in Galatians 3 13 So here's the scene

Jesus rides into the fruitless city He finds leaves no fruit He goes past the fig tree the next day leaves no fruit temple next day leaves no fruit city leaves no fruit

Garden, he finds that they're pursuing him leaves no fruit But in order to heal it

The only one who ever bore fruit for God Was crucified on the tree of death

So that now he could be the author of life So my point in all of this to show you is

That Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse The events of Holy Week are not random

Jesus riding into the city on a donkey was not because he couldn't find a horse It was intentional every bit of it

Every bit of it was Jesus the royal inspector Exposing the depravity of humanity and the only way that he would save us is the innocent one would die in exchange for us

Which is where we'll pick up our story on Good Friday But for now, let's pray Lord we thank you that in the events of Holy Week and in Palm Sunday you demonstrate something that The author of creation has showed up to his creation to bring it under decreation

To put away the mold and the rot and the brokenness and the sin in order to heal it from within Lord help us as we see these things to understand the monumental nature of these things

These things go far beyond individual salvation They go far beyond our Bible reading plan far beyond the music that we listen to far beyond our even our family worship

These things are cosmic in scale And Lord, I pray that all of us instead of adopting our

American Individualism will understand the corporate realism that Jesus has brought us into a family a church

That as we will see soon that he will breathe his own life into so that we can be his gardeners to remake the world

Lord help us to see our purpose as fruit bringers as fruit bearers help us to see the parts of our life that are rotten and ask you or to cut them out and Help us

Lord when you inspect us in eternity For us not to be found as leaves with no fruit

Holy Spirit, please bear fruit in us Please rot fruit 60 and a hundred fold in us

So that when we stand before our great gardening King he will look at us and say Well done

My good and faithful servant you have borne fruit for God. It's in Jesus name.