Back to a Garden

It started in a garden.  How fitting to come to a garden to begin its end!

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John 18:1 – When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the which he entered, and his disciples.

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I love to read the Word of God, and as I do, I frequently find intriguing parallels in things that happen over great spans of time.  Today I want to look at one of those marvelous parallels.  Both events occur in a garden; one in the garden of Eden, and the other in the garden of Gethsemane.  Let’s look at them together.

In the garden of Eden, we find the first Adam (male and female; for they were both Adam at that moment; woman was not called Eve until AFTER the fall.  There in the garden of Eden, a garden planted by the Lord, the man and woman find themselves confronting Satan.  The woman was tempted to eat forbidden fruit; fruit the Father had expressly forbidden them to eat.  There, being offered positions of glory, power, and knowledge, she succumbed, and the man beside here took of the fruit without being tempted.  While the woman had committed sin after being drawn away by her own lusts and enticed, the man committed high treason.  And their action led to spiritual death and expulsion from the garden they should have owned and enjoyed.

Now we turn to our Text for Today.  Thousands of years after man’s failure in the garden of Eden, another man, the second Adam, is in the garden of Gethsemane.  There, He, too, encounters a device of Satan.  Three years prior to this encounter, Satan had offered Him the kingdoms of the world and their glory if He would only worship the devil.  And here again, Jesus has that same cup, the cup of sin, sickness, poverty, and death set before Him.  Where the first Adam had taken that cup without being tempted, Jesus received that cup at the direction of Father.  He had prayed, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me.  Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done.”  On that day, Jesus, the second Adam, drank that cup He so hated so He could taste of the curse of the law for you and me, suffer the death of the cross, and be raised from the dead for our justification.  Oh, what a wonderful and loving thing He did for us.

In both instances, after partaking of the cup before them, they left the garden.  Adam was forced out, and Jesus was arrested and taken out.  In Adam’s case, he was barred eternally from re-entering.  But with Jesus, it was not so.  Though He departed the garden of Gethsemane, He opened a way through His blood for man to enter again into the Kingdom Garden of God; a place of love and life, healing and health, provision and plenty, abundance and authority, glory and grace.  Adam was driven out, Jesus was taken out, but we have gained entrance through the blood. 

Manna for Today – John 18:1-11; Genesis 1-3; Matthew 26:39-42

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