Today, while Christina was nursing a nasty headache, I took the girls outside to play. Now by saying "to play", I actually mean "to garden".
Though gardening is not often associated with macho masculinity, I defend myself by noting that God Himself was mistaken as a gardener (John 20:15). Take that all you haters. Jesus was not some beer-guzzling, UFC watching, weight-lifting dude. No. Like the first Adam, one of His favorite hats was that of the gardener (see John 15 for more ahem, eisogesis)....
Anyways, I love spring because it reminds me of the promise God repeatedly makes to His people of a new heaven and a new earth. A real, physical, touchable, smellable, workable earth. Kinda like the original Garden of Eden, but better.
You see, God's original creation, which He deemed "very good" on the sixth day, was "earthy". The physical was not bad. Things like work and sex and nature and eating were good. God commanded the first man, Adam (a play on words in the Hebrew), to "work [God's garden] and keep it" (Gen. 2:15).
"Wait", someone may be thinking, "I thought the chief end of man was to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." If God created us to worship Him, wouldn't it have made sense for Him to have commanded Adam to first build an altar or edifice for worship?
I think the answer is simply this: before sin irrupted into the world via Adam's transgression/rebellion, the entire world was to be an altar of worship to the true and living God. Now of course, I don't mean that man was to worship creation, as Paul makes it very clear that to do so is blatant and flagrant idolatry (see Romans 1:19-27). Rather, I am thinking that everything was to be done as an act of worship, from gazing upon the grandeur of God's creation (cf. Psalm 19:1) to working and tending it. Every aspect of man's existence was to be an act of adoration and worship. He didn't work for six days and then take off a Sabbath to devote to worship. No. He worshiped the God of the garden as he tended God's garden. He worshiped the God of life as he worked in His living garden.
Creation was a great testament to the glory of God. To get one's hands dirty with God's handiwork was not a bad thing.
Until sin entered into it.
Since then, working and tending God's earth/world has become tedious. I know all too well from personal experience that weeds are "alien" and burdensome. Simply put, in the words of Moses, they are a curse (see Genesis 3:17-19).
I hate pulling weeds. I can only imagine how convicting this would have been for Adam, for he actually knew what a world without weeds was really like. Every weed was like a nasty mirror that revealed his rebellious sin against God. Every weed reminded him of his distrust of God's gracious promises. Every weed reminded him of his preference of the creation to the Creator. Every weed was a reminder to him of the catastrophic effects of sin, not only upon himself, but also upon the world that he was created to govern as God's vice-regent.
And yet at the same time, for Adam, every weed would have been a reminder to him of God's promise to reverse the curse he had introduced into the world.
Similarly for us, every weed is to be a reminder of the need of redemption. Every weed screams out for God to restore His earth to the paradise it once was. Every weed declares that the world we are living in is still fallen and in dire need of emancipation (for this picture, see Romans 8:19-23).
Well, just as weeds remind us of these things, so also does my own sin. My sin reminds me that things are not as they ought to be. Like the weeds of my garden, the sins in my heart may go away for a season, be thinned out and weakened, but ultimately they are here to stay.
And so my tireless, ruthless fight - whether against the weeds in my garden or the sins in my heart - ought to cause me to join in with all creation and cry out (or in the words of Paul, "to groan") for the redemption of all things - not only our physical bodies, but also our physical world (see Romans 8:23).
While on this earth, I am to enjoy it. It is not inherently bad. Christians are not gnostics who deem the spiritual good but the physical bad. No. But even in my enjoyment of things such as gardening, I am to remember that God in Christ has called me to an inheritance much more glorious than anything I could ever imagine (see 1 Peter 1:3-6).
These weeds (or sins), which I tend to curse, are a gracious reminder that I am not to set my hopes on "things below", which are passing away, but on things above, where Christ, who is my hope, is seated at the right hand of God (see Colossians 3:1-4).
As I was simultaneously enjoying the re-emergence of life in my garden and murmuring over the weeds seeking to choke that very life out, the promise God made to us through Peter came to mind:
"But according to [God's] promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13)Trust me, lately I have been waiting much.
But this "waiting" is not the absence of effort. I'm not waiting on some kind of spiritual cot for Christ to take me home. No.
As John says, he who has this hope purifies himself (cf. 1 John 3:3). This is precisely what Peter reminds his audience, who are groaning for the new heavens & new earth:
"Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for [the new heaven and earth], be diligent to be found in [Christ] without spot of blemish, and at peace" (2 Peter 3:14; see also 3:11-12).The new life of spring is a great reminder of what God has promised His people. Let us not waste this glorious time of the year. Let it remind us of the new life God in Christ has granted us. And let it remind you that the rest is guaranteed (see Ephesians 1:13-14; 2 Corinthians 5:5), since God's great and eternal plan of summing up all things in Christ will indeed come to pass (Ephesians 1:10; see also Colossians 1:20 and context).
So let us not waste our weeding or our waiting.
Even so, come Lord Jesus!
In Him, and for His glory to the ends of the earth,
Pastor Ryan
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