A sermon by João Soares da Fonseca
We saw last Sunday that the Bible mentions some beautiful gardens, and we also saw that they contain some nice lessons. We took a walk by the garden of Eden, the garden of Gethsemane and the garden of Joseph of Arimathea. What about the fourth garden?
Let us begin by reading our text again. The comparison here is clear: the life of those who fear and obey God is like a well-watered garden. So let us draw from this picture some remarks for us:
1. The spiritual life, like a garden, is pleasing to see
1.1. Beauty – Brazilian poet Affonso Romano de Sant’Anna wrote in one of his chronicles, “Beauty is a sign that God exists”. Indeed, God created the Garden of Eden and surely granted it a beauty never seen on earth, before or after it. Eden became a model and inspiration for any other garden, because in it “God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight” (Gen 2:9). Therefore, the first glory of a garden is its beauty. It is the aesthetic spectacle it provides. We admire its flowers with their variety of different colours, sizes and shapes.
Likewise, Christian life has a similar beauty. It is a monument to be contemplated and admired. From nearby or from afar. It is no use to have a pretty appearance if our innermost life is ugly as sin, or uglier than Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame.
1.2. Perfume – A flowering and healthy garden is also a source of a lovely fragrance. We willingly inhale the perfumed air of a garden. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing” (2Co 2:15. NAS). What a responsibility! You are the aroma of Christ. Wherever you go, the aroma of Christ is there with you. But I must also say that the opposite of a good fragrance is something that has a bad smell. The opposite of a fragrant garden is a stinking swamp. As far as I know, nobody goes to a stinking swamp to do tourism.
There is a story about Alexander the Great. A soldier is his army “was brought before the great world-conqueror for court martial. When the emperor had listened to the charges and the evidence, he turned to the soldier facing condemnation, and said,
- What is your name?
- Alexander! – was the reply.
Again the emperor questioned, ‘What is your name?’
And the second time the soldier answered, ‘Alexander!’.
With a cry of rage, the emperor roared, ‘I say, what is your name?’
And when the soldier answered for the third time, ‘Alexander!’ the great general angrily replied, ‘You say your name is Alexander? You are found guilty of your crime as charged, and now you must pay the penalty. Either change your conduct or you change your name, for no man can bear the name Alexander, my name, and do the things that you have done.”[1]
2. The spiritual life, like a garden, demands constant care
I am sure that when Spring comes, you will dress yourself in bermuda shorts and will go again to spend some hours each day in your garden. And what will you do? You will pull the weeds, you’ll mow the lawn, plant flowers, water the plants... In our last sermon we saw that if there is a garden, consequently there is a gardener. So if we want to enjoy a beautiful garden, we have to pay the price: time, devotion to it, work in it.
It is no less true in our spiritual life. We need to remove the weeds that persist in growing in the soil of our souls. Sometimes it is a pride here, an envy there, a “root of bitterness”, some lies being heaped in a corner of the garden. The context of our text, for example, is prophet Isaiah denouncing the hypocrisy of the Jews upon fasting. What a dangerous weed hypocrisy is! Do you know a worse weed than that?
A friend of mine, Solidônio Lima Cedro, used to say that we have to plant flowers, but weeds grow by themselves. It is the same with sin. It grows by itself. I need do nothing. It is enough to let your heart do whatever it wants to do. If we just give full reins to our despicable tendencies and sinful propensities, our heart will be fully inclined to vice. But virtue demands personal investment. Some times it will be necessary to pluck out the evil by its roots, as we do to weeds. As Dr. Martin de Haan wrote, “...it is not enough for the gardener to love flowers: he must also hate weeds”.[2]
Who should care for the garden of the heart?
As a matter of fact, two gardeners must join together for the maintenance of that very important garden: ourselves and the God whom we serve. You do your part. God does his.
When I say “constant care”, I want to emphasize that this care must be done daily. Occasional care is not enough to ensure the beauty of a garden. I know some gardeners that care for the garden only at Easter or Christmas. Jesus said that it must be constant. He said a verse that every lazy person avoids reading, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” (John 5:17). Constant care means constant prayer, continuous reading of the Word of God, constant sanctification.
3. The spiritual life, like a garden, needs water
“And you will be like a watered garden”.
We know that water is essential to the soil. Where there is no water, there is no life. One of the pioneers of the Baptist work in Portugal, Rev. António Maurício, in a book Salvos para Servir (Saved to Serve) published in the first half of the twentieth century, tells us something funny. He said that when a farmer saw the ocean for the first time in Castelo do Queijo, in the city of Porto, he had an epiphany and yelled, “Wow! So much water, and my potatoes are dying of thirst”.
Not only the potatoes of a farm need water, but every plant, with the exception of one or another weird one. The garden of the heart does not survive without the water of life. Who is the water of life? Jesus. He said,
“If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.'" But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:37-39).Talking to the Samaritan woman, Jesus said to her:
“Everyone who drinks of this water shall thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” (John 4:13, 14).When the Bible talks about the Christian ministry it usually uses words from the farmer’s world: to plow, to plant, to prune, to water, etc. Paul, you remember, said, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth” (1Cor 3:6).
Friend, your heart is a plant that needs the water of life. Your life is a garden that cannot exist without God’s water. When you deprive your soul of this water, it happens to you the same that happens to the plants: first, they fade and wither; then they lose their vitality and finally they die and disappear.
Conclusion
“A Frenchman named Charney incurred the displeasure of Napoleon and was put into a dungeon. He seemed to be forsaken by his friend and forgotten by everyone in the outside world. In loneliness and despair he took a stone and scratched on the wall of his cell. ‘Nobody cares.’
One day, a green shoot came through the cracks in the stones on the floor of the dungeon and began to reach up toward the light in the tiny window at the top of the cell. The prisoner kept part of the water brought each day by the jailer and poured it on the blade of green. It grew until at last it became a plant with a beautiful blue flower. As the petals opened in full blossom, the solitary captive crossed out the words previously written on the wall and above them scratched, ‘God cares.’
But God had a further blessing for this prisoner, and the story ends even more happily. The man’s next-cell friend had a little daughter who was permitted to visit the prison. The little girl was pleased with Charney’s love for this plant. And the news reached the amiable Empress Josephine, who commented: ‘A man who so devotedly loves and tends a flower cannot be a bad man.’ And so she persuaded the emperor to set him free.
Charney carried his flower home and carefully tended it the rest of his life. It had taught him to believe in God.”[3]
Guided by God, your life will be like a garden. Sometimes you may think that nobody cares, but, remember, God cares, because He loves you!
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[1] TAN, Paul Lee. Encyclopedia of 7.700 illustrations: Signs of the times. Third printing. Dallas: Bible Communications, Inc., 1996, p. 1138, illustration number 4999.
[2] DE HAAN, M. R. and BOSCH, Henry. Bread for each day – 365 devotional meditations. Fifth printing. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1967, Meditation of August 8th.
[3] TAN, Paul Lee. Encyclopedia of 7.700 illustrations: Signs of the times. Third printing. Dallas: Bible Communications, Inc., 1996, p. 483, illustration number 1888.
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