Classic Sermon

This is from my First-Year Preaching Lab at Seminary. The Professor said he would use it word for word. I know the editing is terrible, but here goes.

Some gardens can produce nutritents which sustain our

lives, or gardens can eventually rot to death,

depending on how people tend to gardens,  this idea of

gardens producing life and death is evident in God’s

word, because of how people tend to them.

Today’s text from Philipians can be related back to

Gardens, and what how life and death came from Gardens

in the Bible.  The Philipians text speaks of Christ’s

humilty.  Verses 6 and 7 speak of how Christ how

Christ humbled himself into the form of man.  How

Christ was humble, and trusting in God even to the

point of death in a form way more gruesome from what

we know about 1st century crucifixions,  than Mel

Gibson could even re-create in the passion.  What was

the point of Christ humbling himself and how does this

relate to gardens,  in this way for that answer we

need to look way back to Genesis 3, and how the first

Garden produced death in Eden.  God had provided Adam 

and Eve with a paradise, so unbelievable we can not

comprehend, due to the fallen world we lived in, but

Adam and Eve seemingly needed more. God had specifally

told them though not to eat from the tree in the

middle.   In  Verse 3 Adam and Eve state they know

that they know they must not eat from the tree in the

middle of the Garden or they will disobey God, and

they will turn from God.  In verse 4 the Serpent

twists truth as is often the case with sin.   For Sin

is something that appears good on the service, like

the fruit in the Garden as it states they saw in Verse

6, how good this fruit appeared to be.  The serpent

stated they would not die in the terms they thought

they would, but what the serpent didn’t tell them is

that this death would separate them from God, this

death would destroy the good order of creation.  Adam

and Eve hear had a choice they could rely on their own

temptations or desires, as they would figure they knew

better than God, or they could humbly trust in God

realizing all God had provided them with.  Adam and

Eve didn’t choose humility in the Garden of Eden they

choose, their own self-desires, and in turn creation

was made into a haven of human desire rather than

God’s desire as this is evidenced throughout the Old

Testament with Murder, Idolatry, Slaughter, Sexual

Pervesion, and constant examples of human desire the

lack of humility in the Garden of Eden for the Wages

of Sin were death, and this is turn  is what seperated

man from God.  This self-desire here in the Garden in

entrapped the human condition in sin.  There was no

way that humanity could escape from sin at this point,

because of Man’s lack of humility before God.

               Now let’s turn to Mark 14:32 and see of how in the

Bible, a Garden produced life.  As we enter the Garden

of Gethesemene, this sequence is powerfully recreated

in the Passion.  The first thing we see from scripture

about  Christ’s humility in the Garden is that he

prayed, Christ acknowledged that the only way he could

get through the trials of the next 12 hours was with

the strength of God.   Jesus in verse 36 he states let

not human will but God’s will be done.  The practice

of people trying to perform their own will rather

God’s, was the very reason Christ had to come down and

overcome death on the cross.  For the human condition

of sin is very serious business, although some in the

Church would like to have you think God gives sin a

wink and a nod.  If there were any other ways to

Salvation, why would Christ have endured what he

endured.  The Passion in Gethesmene  shows Christ knew

that if not for what he was going to go through Sin

would not have been able to defeat sin.  The images of

the Satan and the Snake are really quite provactive

images in the passion. Satan tries to tempt Christ to

not endure the next 12 hours , when in the Passion he

asks “If one man can bear the full burden for sin.”,

basically trying to get Christ to abandon God’s will

for the human will of acting for themselves, just like

Adam did in the Garden of Eden.  Christ stands firm

though through this temptation and as soon as a

serpent comes out of Satan like in the Garden of Eden,

comes out, Christ smashes the snake to signal the end

of humanity’s burden of sin is near.     

The  humilty by seeking to perform God’s will rather

than Human will,  by Christ beginning at Birth to

Gethesemene all the way to the Cross is how Christ

defeated sin by living a life free of sin, and then

defeating death by rising on the third day..  

               Now I ask you today what type of garden are you

trying to re-create in your life.  Are you trying to

re-create a Eden, in which you uplift yourself, and

display a complete lack of humility before God.  Will

you try to re-create the type of Garden which might

appear to be good, and satisfying like the fruit in

Eden, but deep down eats you up inside, the garden

which seeks to separate one from God.  This Garden is

what brought us death and seperation from God.

               Or will you try to re-create a garden like

Gethesemene in which you try to do emulate Christ in

Gethesemene.  Christ did two things in Gethesmene that

we can seek to emulate in our own lives.  The first

thing is Prayer.  Prayer is how we build our

relationship with God, it is our communication between

us and the maker.  Prayer is where we draw our

strength in God throught the trials, and hardships

that life might bring us.  I can’t promise Prayer

eliminates hardships, but it helps us realize that we

are not going through these hardships alone and that

someone will be listening .  The second thing Christ

did in the Garden and throughout his whole life, was

trust to perform God’s will, not human will.   Christ

seemed to perform God’s will by putting others before

himself, by seeking to teach what God wanted him to

teach, and to go out and share the saving faith

provided by God.  

               For the actions in the Garden of Eden brought about

Death for humanity by entreching the human condition

in sin, human arrogance led to man turning from God,

and to himself thereby seperating man from God. God

loved humanity way too much to keep this condition in

place.  So God assumed human form in Christ Jesus and

came to Earth, fully human/fully divine. Read from

Philipians 2:8.  In that very death, and subsquent

resurrection the wages of sin in death was defeated

providing life for all those who follow Christ.  As

the attitude of Man in Eden brought death, subsquently

Christ’s humility as shown in Gethesmene brought life.