Posted by George Morrison

Biblical Gardens              Word on the Week                     10th October 2020.

This week the garden signed off in a blaze of colour as the Virginia Creeper, which clothes the gable end of the house, dropped its leaves.   These tumbled in profusion in a plethora of colours brightening up the garden in a last extravaganza before the Autumn gales take over and put the place to bed for the Winter.

As a result of travel restrictions imposed by Government in order to curtail the spread of the Covid virus people have been encouraged to stay at home.   This has meant much more time spent in the garden.   There has also been increased interest in the Gardening Programmes on TV with would be Monty Don’s pricking out cuttings for next year’s planting!

The fruit and vegetables have not done too badly.   The tomato crop has lasted well but now has come to an end.   The apples are ripening well and will keep us busy for some time to come.

Some say it was the apple that was Adam’s downfall!    Whatever the fruit was it conferred on the eater the knowledge of good and evil.   This was probably all knowledge from good to evil, the two extremities of knowing which could be summed up as total knowledge – something we could not handle.

What compounded the problem was the tree of life.   It was within reach of the disobedient pair.   Immediate action was taken and they were cast out of the garden (Genesis Chapter 3 verses 22 to 24).

With sin a present reality mankind now is no use for the primary purpose for which he was made i.e. to love God and his fellow man with all his heart and soul.    The garden of Eden had become the garden of grief.

The garden of Gethsemane was to be the place where the cup of God’s wrath against sin was to be drunk.   Christ’s battle, fought in prayer, alone, was won in the climax, ‘nevertheless not my will but thine’ as he yielded himself totally to do his Father’s will.  

What that would mean, the full ransom price, the curse, the thunder and lightning, forsaken by God who was to condemn the world’s sin in his body (1Peter Chapter 2 verse 24).   Why couldn’t it have remained in Gethsemane? Why did he need to go to Calvary?   Why the cross, the blood, the shame, and death.   The garden is so nice and Golgotha so utterly evil.

But justice had to be done.   Sin had to be expiated.  Atonement could not be made by repenting in our place – only by dying in our place.   Jesus did it all for you and me.   How then should we respond (St John Chapter 20 verse 28).