<\/p>\n
\nTim Chaffey, AiG\u2013US, explains how the three gardens are linked and how Jesus, the good shepherd, offered himself as the final, once-for-all sacrifice.<\/p>\n
While the Lord originally called all creation \u201cvery good\u201d (Genesis 1:31), he seems to have a special affinity for certain people and places. For example, he apparently holds a special place in his heart for shepherds. David, a man after God\u2019s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14), was a shepherd early in his life. He wrote the famous words, \u201cThe Lord<\/span> is my shepherd,\u201d which Jesus likely had in mind when he declared that he is \u201cthe good shepherd\u201d (John 10:11). Of all possible occupations, it was lowly shepherds to whom the angel appeared and announced \u201cgood tidings of great joy\u201d when Jesus was born (Luke 2:8\u201314 NKJV).<\/p>\n The Bible frequently uses the shepherd as a picture of God (Isaiah 40:11; Zechariah 13:7; Hebrews 13:20) or the leader(s) of his people (Zechariah 10:3; Acts 20:28; 1 Peter 5:2). His followers are often compared to sheep (Jeremiah 23:1; Ezekiel 34:6; John 10:11\u201316; Acts 20:28; 1 Peter 5:2), while those who seek to harm his people are called wolves (Matthew 7:15, 10:16; Acts 20:29).<\/p>\n Similarly, it seems that God has an affinity for gardens, as three of the most important events in human history occurred in these places. On the night of his arrest, Jesus led his followers to the garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives where he poured out his soul to the Father in prayer (Matthew 26:36\u201346). He pleaded for the protection and unity of his immediate disciples and for all of us who would come to faith through their ministry (John 17:15\u201323).<\/p>\n Perhaps most significant is that it was also during this time in the garden that Jesus affirmed his commitment to carry out the plan of redemption\u2014no matter how agonizing it would be.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n And he withdrew from them about a stone\u2019s throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, \u201cFather, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.\u201d And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. (Luke 22:41\u201344)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Even though Jesus was \u201csorrowful and deeply distressed\u201d (Matthew 26:37 NKJV), he completely submitted himself to the Father\u2019s will. After a period of intense prayer, Jesus went out to meet the great multitude that had come to arrest him. He was determined to \u201cendure the cross\u201d and ready to despise its shame (Hebrews 12:2).<\/p>\n All four Gospels record the burial of Jesus<\/span> in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. John records the following details:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewsish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there. (John 19:41\u201342)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n A few days later, Jesus gloriously conquered death by rising from the dead in that garden. Early in the morning, while it was still dark, at least five women set out with spices to visit the tomb in which Jesus had been buried (Luke 24:1, 8). When they arrived, they discovered that the massive stone had been rolled away from the opening of the tomb and that the body was no longer in the tomb.<\/p>\n After informing the disciples of these things, Mary Magdalene returned to the tomb where she would become the first witness of the resurrected Savior.1 At first glance, she thought Jesus was the gardener and said to him, \u201cSir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away\u201d (John 20:15). The fact that she thought he was a gardener reiterates John\u2019s earlier statement that the tomb was in a garden.<\/p>\n Is there any special significance that these two critical events in the ministry of Jesus<\/span> took place in gardens? Perhaps not, but it is interesting that these events were set in motion 4,000 years earlier in another garden. In fact, Jesus<\/span> came to earth, died on the cross, was buried in a tomb, and rose from the dead because our first parents rebelled against God in the garden of Eden.<\/p>\n \u201cVery good.\u201d That is how God described the original creation upon its completion (Genesis 1:31). There was no death, sin, bloodshed, or disease in this unspoiled environment. That all changed when Adam and Eve rebelled by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:6\u20137), shattering the perfection of this world.2<\/p>\n God had already told Adam that the penalty of violating his command was death (Genesis 2:17). The Lord would have been entirely justified in carrying out this sentence immediately\u2014after all, the holy Creator must punish rebellion or he would not be just. But God<\/span> is also loving, merciful, and gracious. Adam and Eve would still physically die, but the Lord delayed this aspect of their sentence.<\/p>\n In place of the fig-leaf coverings Adam and Eve had made for themselves, \u201cThe Lord<\/span> God made .\u00a0.\u00a0. garments of skins and clothed them\u201d (Genesis 3:21). These words imply that God must have killed at least one animal to make these garments, giving our first parents a vivid example of the devastation of sin. Man\u2019s sin brought death and corrupted this world (Romans 5:12, 8:22; 1 Corinthians 15:21). No longer would Adam and Eve<\/span> enjoy a flawless environment. Instead, among other things, childbirth pains would intensify and man\u2019s labor became toilsome and less efficient as thorns and thistles would infest the ground\u2014the ground to which they would ultimately return in death.<\/p>\n The death of that first animal also provided a lucid picture of sacrifice, foreshadowing what God himself would ultimately do through Jesus Christ, the \u201cLamb of God,\u201d to rescue sinners from the eternal consequences of their sin. In the years to follow that first sacrifice, other sacrifices for sin were offered to God by righteous men like Abel (Genesis 4:4), Noah (Genesis 8:20), Abraham (Genesis 22:13), and Job (Job 1:5). In the days of Moses, God<\/span> gave more detailed instructions regarding sacrifices, and over the centuries, the Levitical priests sacrificed millions of animals to the Lord.<\/p>\n Whether these people realized it or not, their sacrifices all pointed forward to the greatest sacrifice of all. God himself became a descendant of Adam, taking on human flesh and being born of a virgin, so that he could offer himself as the final, once-for-all sacrifice (Hebrews 7:27). Jesus, the spotless and sinless Lamb of God, bore the sins of the world and endured the wrath of God upon himself as he hung on the cross. His death satisfied God\u2019s justice, but that wasn\u2019t the end of the plan. Three days later, in fulfillment of his promises (Matthew 20:17\u201319; John 2:19), Jesus<\/span> victoriously rose from the grave, demonstrating his power over sin and death and guaranteeing our hope of eternal life with him.<\/p>\n Man\u2019s rebellion in the garden brought death and suffering into this world that would eventually be conquered by the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ in a garden. <\/p>\n Man\u2019s rebellion in the garden brought death and suffering into this world that would eventually be conquered by the glorious resurrection of Jesus<\/span> Christ in a garden. Sadly, many Christians fail to recognize the importance of the events in the first garden, relegating these events to the realm of myth or allegory. Some have even claimed that Adam never existed, and others have argued that death and suffering have been around for billions of years, meaning that these things are here because God<\/span> made the world that way and still called it \u201cvery good.\u201d<\/p>\n This idea strikes at God\u2019s perfectly good nature and raises a crucial theological problem. If Adam\u2019s sin did not bring death into this world, then why would the death of Jesus, \u201cthe last Adam\u201d (1 Corinthians 15:45), have anything to do with our sin<\/span>? Why would Jesus<\/span> need to become a man to die for sin<\/span> if death were not brought into the world by man? What possible connection would there be between the death of the Savior and man\u2019s sin<\/span> if man\u2019s rebellion were not the cause of death? And why would the last Adam need to rise from the dead to defeat sin<\/span> and death if death had nothing to do with sin<\/span>?<\/p>\n Without Adam\u2019s sin<\/span> in the garden of Eden, there would be no reason for Jesus<\/span> to agonize in the garden of Gethsemane over the mental, spiritual, and physical torment he would soon undergo in our place. And without these events, there would be no glorious resurrection of the last Adam in the garden near Calvary. By reinterpreting the early chapters of Genesis to accommodate evolution and millions of years, these Christians unintentionally undermine the message of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus<\/span> by removing the history in which these events are rooted.<\/p>\n Jesus gave his followers \u201cinfallible proofs\u201d that he had risen from the dead (Acts 1:3). God has also given us infallible proof that he created a perfect world, which we subsequently wrecked through our sin. He has revealed these things to us in his infallible Word, the Bible. Just as we can have complete confidence in the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the garden near Calvary, we can rest assured that the events in the garden of Eden also happened, as described in Genesis 1\u20133.<\/p>\n God may indeed have a special affinity for shepherds and gardens, but he also has an extraordinary love for each human being, whom he created in his image (Genesis 1:26\u201327). The good shepherd told Nicodemus, \u201cFor God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life\u201d (John 3:16).<\/p>\n The bad news is that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), and the wages of our sin is death (Romans 6:23), just as God told Adam in the garden (Genesis 2:17). But the good news is that the good shepherd willingly gave his life to redeem us from our sin. Jesus Christ offers complete forgiveness and eternal life to all who will turn from their sin (repent) and place their faith in him, the all-sufficient, glorious, eternal, death-conquering, and risen Lord and Savior. If you have not done so already, would you call on the name of the Lord and be saved (Romans 10:9\u201310, 13)?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tim Chaffey, AiG\u2013US, explains how the three gardens are linked and how Jesus, the good shepherd, offered himself as the final, once-for-all sacrifice. While the Lord originally called all creation \u201cvery good\u201d (Genesis 1:31), he seems to have a special affinity for certain people and places. For example, he apparently holds a special place in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[9605,156,3742],"class_list":["post-29046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-gardens","tag-good","tag-shepherd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Garden of Gethsemane<\/h2>\n
The Tomb in the Garden<\/h2>\n
The Garden of Eden<\/h2>\n
The Gardens Are Linked<\/h2>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n