Tending The Garden

I hope you came with some extra coffee, because today is not a story. No, today is a call to action. In the last 3 weeks, we have seen the spirit of this country shift. In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, many were waiting to see riots in the streets. Another “Summer of Love” that saw cities burn, businesses close, and innocent lives lost all in the name of retaliation.

But that’s not at all what we saw.

Instead, we’ve seen church attendance across this country rise. In fact, there was such a noticable spike in those going to church that we saw more people going to church than actually turned into the Emmys.

But it didn’t start here. The fires have been stirring. Young men, espeically college aged men are coming back to faith in droves. Since the height of the toxic masculinity hysteria, we’ve seen men coming back to faith, looking for what it means to be a traditionally masculine male. One that’s strong and motivated, and looking for biblically sound women.

Why?

Because they haven’t found happiness in the secular world.

Surprise - the more we pull from God, the less happy we are.

God Gave Us A Garden

Since the beginning, we’ve searched for a Garden. We’ve searched for paradise. We’ve searched for meaning and happiness. And guess what, it’s not found from within. God gave us a garden—not just Eden, but every community, family, and soul around us—and He said, ‘Work it. Keep it.’ But the enemy wants that garden to rot.

The Garden of Betrayal

Jesus’ ministry is coming to an end.

Jesus, having served, healed, taught, and led, now enters Gethsemane to pray.

It’s no accident that Jesus ends up in a garden to begin the end of his ministry. The perfect Adam is again being pulled out of the garden. Because when Satan entered Judas and lead him to betray Jesus, he was playing the same tricks in a new time.

And he thought he was going to win again. And this time he thought he wasn’t going to be trampled under his heal.

Jesus knows betrayal is coming—but notice the betrayal comes through a kiss.

A kiss - a universally accepted sign of affection, love, friendship - is used by Judas to betray the Son of God. His friend, his teacher, his rabbi.

Luke 22:39–44 (ESV)

And he went away and proceeded, according to his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples also followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not enter into temptation.” And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw and knelt down and began to pray, saying, “Father, if you are willing, take away this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.” ⟦And an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him. And being in anguish, he began praying more fervently and his sweat became like drops of blood falling down to the ground.⟧

Truth for Comfort

Judas didn’t raise a sword, he used a kiss. God’s perfect plan can be twisted when we allow comfort, control, or compromise to take over.

How often do we trade truth for comfort and disguise it as kindness?

The Garden of Responsibility

What does the garden look like?

What are we trying to get back to?

What is the greatest story ever told trying to get us back to?

Before sin. Before Eve. Before naming the animals. God placed Adam in the garden and told him to work.

Work is not the result of the fall—it was part of paradise.

We’ve always been asked to work in our walk with God. I can’t think of a single story in the bible that starts with God asked him to sit still and take on all the blessings without doing anything at all.

God didn’t give Adam a hammock and tell him to chill in the sun. He gave him a hoe and said get to work.

Genesis 2:5–18 LEB

before any plant of the field was on earth, and before any plant of the field had sprung up, because Yahweh God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no human being to cultivate the ground, but a stream would rise from the earth and water the whole face of the ground—when Yahweh God formed the man of dust from the ground, and he blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And Yahweh God caused to grow from the ground every tree that was pleasing to the sight and good for food. And the tree of life was in the midst of the garden, along with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now a river flowed out from Eden that watered the garden, and from there it diverged and became four branches. The name of the first is the Pishon. It went around all the land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stones are there.) And the name of the second is Gihon. It went around all the land of Cush. And the name of the third is Tigris. It flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. And Yahweh God took the man and set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it. And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “From every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” Then Yahweh God said, “it is not good that the man is alone. I will make for him a helper as his counterpart.”

We were made to work. We were made to steward. Even paradise requires attention.

To think that we have put in our time and accept that once you decide you have given enough, then that’s it. It’s time to coast.

Echoes of The Garden

For those of you who would like to argue that this isn’t provable, I’ll give you 2 examples.

In each you’ll see that we know what it takes to usher in his word - and it’s not sit back and relax.

In fact, not only do we know this psychologically, but we have explored this in literature, movies, TV, even science has gone as far and proved it over and over again.

We are not meant to be passive observers of life, we are meant to be active participants.

Let’s go back 26 years to a little move that came out that you may remember - It was called The Matrix.

The Matrix

If you haven’t seen it, then I’m sorry, but there will be spoliers. You had 26 years to watch it, and trust me, it still holds up.

In the movie we have our unwitting hero, Neo played by Keanu Reeves, and our antagonist, Agent Smith played by Hugo Weaving.

What we learn is that humanity has been enslaved by the machines who now use us as living batteries. We, however, are completely unaware as we are all plugged into this giant computer network called The Matrix.

Inside they ahve created a replica of our world. We are essentially living out the Sims in real life.

There’s work, there’s play. As far as any of us knows, this is reality.

But a few have been able to escape the matrix and live outside of its control. They know the truth about the world and what’s happened to society.

A great war against the machines that turned on us. Ultimately, we find out, humanity lost and we are all know enslaved. The energy our bodies create while we live is harvested to power the machines and when we die? Well, at least they recycle us.

So our heroes outside the Matrix are trying to shut down the machines and free humanity to come into the real world.

Now, let’s go back into the Matrix because, well, movies, our heroes can hack into the matrix and interact. But Morpheus, the guide to Neo, gets kidnapped

And while he’s a prisoner, Agent Smith explains that the version of the Matrix they are currently running is not the first.

In fact, the first Matrix they created was a paradise where all the needs of humanity were met and we as an entire society wanted for nothing.

Can you imagine paradise on earth? It’s the socialist dream. Everyone has exactly what they need. An Eden revisited.

What do you think happened?

It was a major failure. As Agent Smith tells us, “entire crops were lost. Cities fell.

It was as if we couldn’t handle the programming and we kept rejecting it as a reality.

Why would we reject paradise?

Agent Smith present the theory that humanity is in fact a parasite on this planet and that we define our lives through misery.

I don’t know about you, but I have never, ever heard anyone in the real world tell us that we are wasting natural resources or destroying the world with technology, fossil fuels, first world conveniences…

Back to The Garden

It’s easy to see how we have in fact scorched the earth for our own gain, our own conveniences, and for the sake of advancement.

But it’s a lazy argument to say we are just parasites on this world. In fact, I would argue it’s more realistic to say we are lazy gardeners who are more occupied with admiring our own handywork and waiting for the praise of what we, or in many cases, others have already done, instead of picking up our hoe and plowing the next field.

The paradox of modern society is that with modern conveniences, we have been blessed with more time.

And with more time, we’ve been cursed with laziness.

Diana and I maintain a minimum of 3 calendars in order to navigate our week. Between work, maintaining our home, running Kara to Soccer, Ryah and her work schedule and generally being a teenager, school meetings, endless emails, and, oh yeah, a 5 year old who also needs to be taken to school, picked up, played with. Well, we also threw on 2 dogs because, you know, we’re nuts.

We look forward to a few hours on Sunday between church and soccer and bed to sit down and watch some football.

And ask Diana how long I can sit still. About 15 minutes in and Im up looking for something to do.

Why?

Because there’s work to be done. I like being busy. My mind needs something to do.

We were built and made to work. And yes, we were instructed to take a day of rest and to recuperate. But before all else, we were made for work.

In Jeremiah 1:5 the bible tells us:

Jeremiah 1:5 LEB

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you came out from the womb I consecrated you; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

Our task, in all that we do, was appointed to us by God before we were born, before we were formed in the womb.

Ephesians 2:10 LEB

For we are his creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that we may walk in them.

We are seeing depression and apathy hit all time highs today.

Could it be that the work we are doing is not focused on glorifying God, but glorifying ourselves. Or even worse, in trying to get out of any work at all?

This isn’t just an issue with mankind. We’ve seen these behaviors in the animal kingdom as well.

Pandas are so lazy, that they are going extinct becuase they can’t be bothered to have sex.

Can you imagine being so apathetic that you don’t even want to have sex?

Can you also believe that in church on Sunday you have some guy up here repeatedly saying sex?

Not quite what you expected today is it?

Universe 25

In a controlled experiment in 1968, the National Institute of Mental Health conducted an experiment that started with 2 mouse couples. John Calhoun lead the experiment.

He created a mouse utopia with apartments, unlimited food and water, as well as unlimited nesting supplies. It was the Garden of Eden for mice.

The mice were given everything they needed. All they had to do was exist and enjoy.

As the population reached overcrowding, the mice became more violent, females stopped reproducing, the emergence of “pretty mice” emerged - these males that were compulsively grooming themselves and were more concerned with their appearance than anything else.

It quickly fell into disaster and the entire colony died off. Mice that were removed from the colony were reported to never adapt to normal groups of mice.

There’s a lot to be said about the methodology of the experiment and what can be applied to modern society from it.

But the lack of work for food, for mates, for anything can easily be shown to have negative effects on society.

Without purpose, without meaning, without work, without responsibility, we don’t just have decay, we destroy ourselves.

The Modern Garden

We are in a cultural moment that glorifies comfort over character. We are watching institutions fail - because they were built without God.

And for those that were founded in faith, they left their beliefs long ago and are now suffering the consequences of embracing a secular world that worships the self more than it looks to Christ for its salvation.

But the good news is, revival is here. You can see it on TV, you can feel it in church. - the lies are collapsing under their own weight. They can’t be sustained.

Young men, college aged men especially, are coming back to the church in record numbers because they want to know Christ. they want to grow up with a spiritual understanding of what it means to be a man.

They are hungry and searching for a belief system that tells them truth, not lies.

2 Thessalonians 3:10 LEB

For even when we were with you, we used to command this to you: that if anyone does not want to work, neither should he eat.

We’re hungry for a community the seeks Christ.

The pendulum is swinging back to faith, back to Christ, and we as the body of Christ need to open our arms and our hearts to those who are seeking it.

The are many who have been hurt by “the church”. Many who are too afraid to walk through the doors because of a bad expereince, becuase of the way “church people” have treated them in teh past

And some, they’re not afraid of us, they’re afraid that God may reject them - like they’ve felt he has their whole lives.

Reclaim The Garden