This sermon delves into the concept of four gardens, starting with the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve enjoyed perfect fellowship with God until sin entered. It then transitions to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus chose to bear the sins of humanity, followed by the Garden of Resurrection where Jesus conquered death, and finally, the metaphorical garden in the Song of Solomon representing the intimate relationship between God and His people.

Let's turn in the Torah, the Tanakh, to Bereshit, this is Genesis, Bereshit means in the beginning. I've been spending a lot of time in the first three chapters of Genesis, and I want to talk to you this morning about four gardens. Four gardens. Let's pray. You're thank you for your word. We thank you, Father, for your son. Yeshua, thank you for your Holy Spirit. Give us ears to hear, hearts to respond. I ask you, Lord, that you will transform us by your word. Help us, Lord, to receive your holy, holy love. Amen. Let's look at Genesis, chapter 1. Chapter 1, verse 26. And God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish in the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him male and female. He created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over every living thing that moves on the earth. Chapter 2, verse 7. The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. The Lord God planted a garden eastward of Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. God put Adam in a garden. And I've been meditating on this garden for a long time. We're blessed to have a little balcony, a little mere peset that looks out over a wadi, over some wildlife in the Mediterranean. And I love the spring because the birds come back. And we hear them in the morning, the symphony of bird song. And I love the spring in Mount Carmel because all the wildflowers with all their multi-colors come up. And I marvel at God's creation. This morning I was watching the drawers. The drawers are swallowed, D-R-O-R. If you've ever watched these little birds, all they do is play. I know a couple of people named drawer. They're named after these birds. And what they do is they just cavort. They play. Some of us were cavorting in here. Hallelujah. But I think of Adam. God created him and formed him. And then God breathed the breath of God into Adam. And he was created to reflect the image of God. Then he created Eve. And he brought the woman to the man. And he told them to be fruitful and multiply. I know there are a few people in this meeting, including myself and Joseph, that God brought the woman to us. Yeah. And Eptisom knows he brought her to you. That's not what I said. No comment. Can you imagine Adam and Eve in the garden? They were given dominion over everything that God created. Every flower, every bird, every fish. And Adam had the privilege of naming the animals. Did he and Eve walk through the garden, this perfect environment, where there were no germs, no disease, the purest of air? Did they walk through the garden and she stopped? And say, Adam, what's that tall one with the long neck? And he said, that's a giraffe. I named him a giraffe. But what is that one that seems big and strong and has this mane around his neck? He said, that's a lion. What's that little white furry thing sleeping with the lion? That's a lamb. They were in the perfect environment. There was no evil. There was no disease. And they had perfect, pure, wonderful fellowship with the Creator. They must have had wonderful walks and talks with God. And when I think about it, God is good. They were to demonstrate to the world that God is a good God. God is holy love. He's holy. He's translated complete now. He's holy. Think, holy love. Pure, perfect love coming from the Father, coming from the Creator to his Creator. The flowers. Anybody here like flowers besides me? I have a little garden on my merpeset, on my balcony. This morning I said to Karen, I'm sitting in my garden. I went to a party at Mark's house. He's got gardens all over the front of his house. Mark Parish. He's trying to grow corn out here. Listen, this garden of Eden was so fabulous, we can't even imagine it. The aromas of the flowers. The orchards of pomegranates. The trees bursting with fruit. There was peace. There was love. There was pure happiness. The most wonderful thing we could imagine, Adam and Eve in a pure environment. Hallelujah. He formed them. He created them. He breathed life into them. This God creates his people and he breathed the life of God into Adam. It says he put him in a perfect environment. Everything in it was perfect. Every rose bush, every geranium. He was surrounded by every blessing imaginable. And then God brought him a woman. He had never seen a woman before. And God was stood there. He was at their wedding. He was the only wedding guest. And he was pleased. Hallelujah. This wonderful picture. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Bible ended there? The snake came. Satan in the form of a serpent. Came into God's beauty, God's perfect place. And what did he do? He said to Eve, did God really say the first thing he did was attack the Word of God? Did God really say you should not eat of that tree? And then Eve said something strange. She said not only did he say we should not eat of it, he said we should not touch it. God did not say don't touch it. She added to the Word of God. So she took of it. It looked beautiful. It was lovely to look at. And what entered the perfect environment that God had created was the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. She actually was doubting God's love for her. And after what he had demonstrated to them, because Satan was intimating that if you eat that fruit you'll be like him, one little command God gave them just to prove that they loved him. Then she brought some of it to Adam, and he ate. And immediately they were in shame and fear. There had never been any shame. There had never been any fear. They knew that they were naked, and they started to hide from God. The tragedy, the horror of how wonderful the garden was and that they, in their own ambition, decided to take things into their own hands. It was the entrance of the horror of humanism. We really don't need God. We can do it ourselves. And it's been the blight on the human race ever since. You know, it says, the scripture says, God came down to visit them. He liked to walk in the cool of the evening. And God said, the scripture says, God said, where are you, Adam? Now, I thought about this for years. And I've read different commentators, what they say. Was he saying, where are you? Have you disobeyed me? You know what I think? I think it was perfect love crying out. Where are you, Adam and Eve? I can't wait to spend time with you. It was love coming down and reaching out to them. At least Eve admitted she had been deceived. Look, this all took place in the most magnificent, perfect environment we can imagine. And what did Adam say? The woman you gave me, she told me to do it. Adam blamed God. And he blamed her. We call it, you know, when you work with drug addicts on the street of New York, they always blame somebody else. They're laying there, haven't had a bath in months. One time I was with this big guy, we were going to drug addicts. And this poor guy, he was black and the guy with me was white. And we walked up to him. And he said, it's the police's fault. The police did this to me. He was blame shifting. It's not my fault, it's the cop's. The guy said he'd been sleeping with it, stolen his teeth and sold them. He didn't have any teeth. The guy with me reached in his wallet. He had a badge. He said, and a card, and he said, what does it say? The guy went and says, cops for Christ. The big guy said, I'm a cop. I love you because of Yeshua. Come on man, I know you can't eat, but we're going to get you some soup, let's go. It all began with Adam. It wasn't my fault, it was her fault. Now, what Adam and Eve went through is terrible to imagine. And for years I know we've all thought about it. What happened to them when they realized they were being put out of the garden? I have a deeper question. What happened to God? What did God go through? That the creation, the people that he'd created had rebelled against him. Peter calls him the divine long-suffering. He's been suffering with mankind ever since. He propelled them. He took them, compelled them to leave the garden. There was a sword. The hand of angels turning around a fiery sword. There was no way back. Can you imagine Adam and Eve, if they walked into the darkness, and the disease, and the anger, looking back at that sword, saying, there's no way back. God had said in his word, my delight was with the children of men. He delighted to be with them. Why did he even create them? Why did he create them? God wanted to delight them. Because God is holy love, he's always giving up himself. Sin separates us from God. The scriptures are clear over and over and over again. They started to age. They had not aged. The bodies were perfect. All the things that we now have difficulties with. Adam never needed, when he lived in the garden, he never needed a hip replacement. And Pam and me said hallelujah. Disease started to come into it. I mean, they must have realized, look, what are these wrinkles? They didn't have a pharmacy to go to. They couldn't buy some cream somewhere. He drove them out of the garden of paradise. Death. Darkness. Holiness and sin cannot dwell together. They had complete authority over everything he created. And yet it wasn't enough. What secular ambition? I'm going to eat some of that. And I'll be like him. Hadn't he proved his love to them over and over and over and over? Well, Satan thought he had won. But he hadn't. Because there was another garden. When Yeshua was celebrating the last supper, his last Passover Seder in Jerusalem, he was at Pesach. And he explained to his men about the Holy Spirit. And that he was leaving, he was going to come back. The Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the temple. And Yeshua took the elements of wine and matzah. And he said, this is all about me. This is all about my blood being shed for you. Feed on me. They probably didn't understand it at all. But we do. And as he left that room, he prayed this wonderful prayer to his father. And they were walking out, going down to the Kidron Valley. And at the end of the prayer, he says, Father, I know that you love them as much as you love me. You know that God loves you as much as he loves Yeshua. If you don't believe me, read John 17, verse 23 and 26. He's talking to them about the love that he has for the Father and the love the Father has for them. The scripture says he came to a garden. It's called Gat Shemen. The Garden of Gethsemane. Gat Shemen means oil press. Where they took the olives off the trees and pressed out the oil. He went to this garden. The scripture says he loved this garden. He slept there. He and his men. He would teach them there. But he came into a garden. Orchards of the olive trees. You see olive trees on the Mount of Olives. And in that garden, he started to pray. And his men fell asleep. Peter, James, and John, who would be the leaders of his body, fell asleep. And he began to weep. The scripture says blood came out of the pores of his arms. He had a prostrate on his face. He said, Father, if there's any way any way that I can avoid this cup but not my will, yours will. He was choosing to take all the sin that had gone all the way back to Adam and Eve. He was God incarnate, but he was a man too. And he chose to go to the cross for you and me. It happened in a garden. I wonder if he thought, did he think of Eden that night? They came and got him and dragged him out of a garden. Judas came and betrayed him with a kiss. The garden that he loved to fellowship with his men in. The garden that he was pressed out like he was in an oil press. They took him and they crucified him. They put him in a tomb. He spent Shabbat in a new tomb. The new tomb was in a garden. The third garden. The Son of God who had died for the sins of the world was in the tomb in a garden. And his people were celebrating the Shabbat. But Mary Magdalene Mary Magdalene over by the Sea of Galilee she went there while it was dark. She went to the garden. She was just drawn to the garden and to the tomb. It was still dark, the sun hadn't come up. And as she looked at the tomb the stone was rolled away. He was not there. She ran. She got Peter and John. They ran. They ran to the tomb. They looked in there. He was gone. And Peter and John left. And Mary stood there weeping and weeping They've taken my Lord away. What did they do to him? As she looked in the tomb there was an angel at the foot of the slab He had been laid out on the slab. An angel here and an angel here. And the things he'd been wrapped in were laid there. What is this depiction of? It's the Ark of the Covenant. The two angels. He is our kappara. He is our atonement. She didn't realize it but we should. She looked and the two angels they said there, what are you looking for? She said, I'm looking for my Lord. They've taken him away. And he's not here. He's risen. Hallelujah. In the Garden of Resurrection. She went outside. There was a man standing in the garden. The sun had come up on a new world, on a new day, a new week. And she thought that it was the gardener. Well, Yeshua is our gardener but he's much more. And she said to him, where have they taken him? Yeshua turned around and looked at that lady and said, Miriam, Mary, he says your name to you today. He's in the Garden of Resurrection. He wants to give you resurrection life in a deeper way than you've ever had. That moment when he said to her her name to me is one of the greatest moments in the Bible. Every time I go to the garden tomb I read that and just weep and weep and weep. He died and was raised from the dead in a garden. He suffered in the garden of Gethsemane. But there's one last garden. Turn to the Song of Solomon. In Hebrew it's Shir Hashirim, which means the song above all songs. Shir Hashirim means the song of songs. We know that this is a prophetic duet between the bridegroom and the bride. It's also for the bridegroom coming for the Jewish people when they turn to him. The rabbis know that. But it is the song of songs for you and for me. There has never been a song like this. It's the greatest love song ever written. That's why it's called Shir Hashirim. Let's look at chapter 4, verse 9. This is the bridegroom speaking to the bride. Are you his bride? Are you without spot or wrinkle or any such thing? The Lord is coming for his purified bride. The scripture says the bridegroom is saying to the bride and he's saying to you and me. You have ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse. You have ravished my heart with one look of your eyes. The love of God is overwhelming. I pray right now that everyone in this place will get a fresh reality and revelation of the love of God for each one of us. With one look of your eyes the Messiah says with one look of your eyes you've made my heart beat faster. That's what it means in Hebrew. When we even look at him that look that Mary had oh, it made his heart beat so fast. The Lord wants us to look at him. He's altogether lovely. He's the King of Kings. He's the Lord of Lords. He's Avi-Ad. He's the Everlasting Father. He's the Prince of Peace. He's El Shaddai. El Gibor, the Mighty One. He's all of these. This poem is taking place in a garden. Here's Yeshua today talking to his bride. Verse 12. A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. He calls us a garden. Why? Look at verse 13. Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates, pleasant fruits, fragrant henna and spikenard. All these cheap spices these are the spices that go into the anointing oil. We need a fresh anointing day by day by day by day. We've become a spring of living water. We've become a spring of living water. This love affair of God for His people verse 15 a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters and streams from Lebanon. My friends this is God speaking to you. He wants the north wind to come and we pray this all the time to blow across this garden to blow across us and out of us will come the spices of the character of Yeshua. Look at verse 16 Awake oh north wind and come on south, blow upon my garden that the spices may flow out, that my beloved come to his garden and eat his pleasant fruits. Paradise lost. The great Puritan poet wrote an amazing poem called Paradise Lost. He was blind he learned to read the Bible by heart but then he read another book Paradise Regained Yeshua came down to meet with us to bring us into the garden and regain the garden of Eden, hallelujah. Look at Song of Songs chapter 2 My beloved spoke and said to me rise up my love, my fair one, and come away the winter has passed, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth the time of singing has come my beloved spoke and said to me rise up my love, my fair one, and come away the winter has passed, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth the voice of the dove has heard in our land we have doves around our house the doves always are in pairs they have eyes for each other and when I hear the doves, usually it's in March I know the spring is coming and I also know the Lord wants us to hear the voice of the Spirit about what he's doing in the land hallelujah look at verse 13 the fig tree puts out her green figs, the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell rise up my love, my fair one, and come away the fig tree puts out her green figs, the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell my friends in these days that we're entering into there's going to be a great glory the glory of the latter house will be greater than the former yes, there will be increased violence and war here in the land but we need to be a people who are so intimate with the Lord that we're in the garden with him he wants you to live in the garden the garden of his beauty the garden of his intimacy the garden of his love, the garden of his holiness the Lord warns us the little foxes will come in and try to destroy your garden the little foxes are those sins or those doubts that unbelief he wants to come in and spoil your relationship with the Lord how many of you hear want to get so much deeper in the Lord that you'd be living in a garden, raise your hand I'm going to ask you to get out of your seats and come up here let's all stand, let's stand we're coming to the garden of his delights my friends he died in a garden he died in a garden but he was raised in a garden he suffered in a garden but he's alive he did it all for us make room for everybody there's a wonderful old gospel song about come to the garden where I walk with him and I talk with him let it be your lifestyle daily walking in the garden being in the garden with him, the beautiful garden hallelujah father I thank you for everyone in this meeting thank you for everyone who will see this video would you implant in their hearts your desire that even with one look of our eyes your heart beats faster your desire to be with us would you release fresh desire in us to be with you father I thank you for this great gospel you take our sins and they're gone you don't even remember them thank you for setting us free Lord you see all these people here I pray for each one of them that they will be people that live in the garden the garden of your delights hallelujah let's lift our hands together if you have not been spending time with the Lord you tell him now you tell him now, forgive me it's all about knowing him don't leave your first love he needs to be first place in everything it's all about him he's made the way back the sword isn't keeping us from the garden anymore we have a new and living way right into the heart through the blood of Yeshua let's pray this prayer together father thank you for Yeshua Yeshua thank you for what you did in Gethsemane thank you that you were raised from the dead began to reveal yourself to your people in a garden thank you Lord now let me pray this prayer for you I pray for everybody in this place that you'll begin to see the flowers see the olive trees see the fish jumping see the sea, see the stars and realize he made it all for me he wants to give us dominion thank you Lord Lord let us accept your love affair in a deeper way hallelujah can we worship him let's praise him