Sermon Tone Analysis

A Greater Gardner

Text - Genesis 3:17-24

Introduction

Adam is created and placed in a garden with instructions to dress it and keep it.

He is given a limited number of commands to obey with the promise of death upon his violation of these commandments.

The Word of God must be taken seriously.

At the very Word of God, Creation came into being.

At the breath of God, Adam became a living soul.

The Sin of the Creature - v. 17

Adam was told that the day he violated the Word of God, he would certainly die.

Nevertheless, Adam did disobey God’s Word.

It may seem small, but God is so holy that the slightest disobedience is destructive and damned all of Creation to disease, decay, depravity, and death.

Upon pronouncement of judgment upon Adam, the serpent was cursed, the earth was cursed, the woman was cursed, and the man was cursed.

All of Creation was affected by the sin of one man.

We should not be so naive to think that our sin, no matter how small, does not have an impact on ourselves and those around us.

As holy as God is, man is as equally unholy.

As righteous as God is, man is as equally unrighteous.

But, God had made a promise to Adam that in the day he violated God’s Word and broke his commandment, Adam was to die.

Adam hides from God out of fear because he remembered the promise of wrath.

Some may wonder, did God forget or abandon his promise of wrath?

After all, Adam did not die.

But someone else did.

God killed an animal in order to satisfy his righteous wrath and sufficiently cover the nakedness and shame of Adam.

And so the first time the smell of blood filled the air, was when a holy God killed an innocent animal and spared a guilty man.

But that sacrifice was a temporary covering and purposely insufficient to satisfy the wrath of God for all sin.

It was insufficient to cover the nakedness and shame of all of his people.

Therefore in the fullness of time, God brought forth another sacrifice.

Once again, God would offer the blood of an innocent sacrifice as a permanent atonement for sin.

At Calvary, it was not merely Barabbas who was set free and who’s place Jesus took.

It was my place and the place of every believer that Christ hung on the cross for.

The Sign of the Curse - v. 18

As a result of the curse, the earth was to bring forth thorns and thistles to the man.

And thorns it did bring.

Pain, death, disease, and destruction are rampant on the earth because of the curse.

It was not the condemnation of the Jews, the conviction by Pilate, or the beating by the Romans, but the wrath of God that Christ endured that perfectly atoned for Adam’s sin and my sin and yours.

As Jesus hung on the cross, he hung there with a crown upon his head.

Not a diadem of gold with the sun’s light refracting through the precious gems, but rather a cruel crown; a dull crown; and what glow and shine it did have was from the sun reflecting off of the blood that dripped from his pierced brow.

In the Garden of Eden, God’s curse to Adam was that the earth would bring forth to mankind painful thorns.

And yet on the cross, Jesus bore those thorns that were for Adam and his descendants.

Every iota of suffering; every small prick of sin was platted upon the head of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

It was not a crown of glory.

It was a gory crown.

But hours earlier he had made the statement that he must drink the cup that the Father had given him.

And drink it he did.

Every drop.

Some may think that Jesus only died for big sins.

He did die for the big sins.

He died for the biggest of sins.

What we fail to remember is that the smallest sin to us is of great grievance to God.

Things that do not bother us are of great offense to God’s holiness.

But we see Jesus high and lifted up, hanging between heaven and hell, bearing the sign of the curse in his own body.

The thorns that were to us, he took.

No one would naturally reach out and grab thorns and allow them to pierce our skin and cause great pain.

But the Father willed for Christ to bear it and Christ willingly received that crown of thorns to endure fully the great curse that was upon mankind.

The Servant in the Garden - v. 23

Lastly in our text, we see Adam being exiled from the Garden to till the ground and toil in his labors because of his failure and great disobedience.

We see exile because he did not dress and keep the Garden that he was planted in.

But now in the Gospels, we see Mary coming on resurrection morning and finding a man in the garden whom she supposed to be a gardener.

Now I cannot, from the text, say that she saw him dressing and keeping the garden.

But I can say that from his appearance or his occupation, she mistook him for a gardener.

And whatever he was doing, we can all agree that he was dressing and keeping that garden where he was planted.

For the scriptures say that there was a garden near to Golgotha.

And in the garden, a tomb chiseled into the rock where no man had been laid.

And on resurrection morning, the Lily of the Valley, the Rose of Sharon bloomed as he came out of the tomb.

But he did not leave the Garden.

No, unlike Adam and all of creation, he is the only one worthy to dress and keep the garden of God’s entire creation.

Not just Eden, but everywhere.

Not just the good ground, but in the barren desert places of our depraved hearts, our Great Gardener makes new hearts grow where dead hearts were.

He grafts broken sinners into the root that is himself and makes us alive in him.

Mary saw a servant in the garden whom she thought was a gardener.

What she saw was the Last Adam perfectly fulfilling the roles and responsibilities and redeeming those who were descendants of the First Adam.

Where the First Adam failed to obey God’s every Word, the Second Adam, Jesus the Christ, satisfied not only God’s Word, but also God’s wrath and thereby purchased to himself a peculiar people that through them, he might show forth the abundance of his great grace and mercy and salvation.

Closing

We have a greater gardener than Adam.

In every place where Adam failed, Christ succeeded.

Every place where Adam stumbled, Christ stands triumphant.

Where in Adam all that live will die, all those in Christ though once dead in sin and trespass are made alive In him.

And if you are today dead in your sins without Christ, he commands you to repent and believe the gospel that I have just preached to you.

Do it not, and you will die and face the full wrath of God throughout eternity.

Do it, and live.

Not just in heaven one day, but live today free from guilt and shame.

Free from the wrath to come.

A normal gardener can work as long as he has life to work with.

But Christ our Great Gardener can make dead things live.

What a Gardener!

If you are unsaved, fall at his feet like Mary did.

Cry out as Thomas did, “My Lord and my God!”.

Turn from your sin and run to Christ by faith and live.