Morning Sermon

July 13, 2008

Return to the Garden

Text

Something terrible happened when Adam and Eve fell into sin. Something awful. They died, for that was the curse of the covenant. Just as they had been warned,

Gen. 2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."

And die they would, immediately becoming mortal, immediately and instantly becoming subject to corruption and an inevitable return to the dust. But that wasn't the worst aspect of this curse.

The life they would live became difficult, for all of life was now cursed. The man, in his distinctive role of providing for his family, would be frustrated with the pain of labor and toil.

Gen. 3:17 Then to Adam He said, "Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat of it': "Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life. 18 Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, And you shall eat the herb of the field. 19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return."

But even that wasn't the worst of it. Neither as the curse upon the woman's distinctive role the worst part,

Gen. 3:16 To the woman He said: "I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you."

No, the worst was this, Gen. 2:23 "...therefore the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. 24 So He drove out the man."

No longer could they enjoy life in the Garden.

Gen. 2:8 "The LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. 9 And out of the ground the LORD God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 10 Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads."

They were banished from that garden. They were expelled from the presence of God, excommunicated from that fellowship with God which they had so enjoyed. And that had been the nature of life in the garden, fellowship. Communion with God, represented by these words,

Gen. 3:8 "And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day."

That's what they had. And that's what they lost. They were evicted from paradise and prevented from entering again, because in their sin, with their newly obtained knowledge of good AND evil, they could not see God and live. So God "placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life." They couldn't get back in.

Until Revelation 22. In our text this morning, they go back to the garden. The Bible comes full circle. The Holy Spirit gives John a revelation of the return of man to the garden, and what a glorious homecoming it will be. v.1-3

Let's start with,

I. THE RIVER OF LIFE. v.1

Life is represented by water, and appropriately so. The human body is, after all, 50% water. Or even 60% or 70%. And it is water that sustains your life, in one sense even more so than food. It is water that makes you alive, and keeps you alive. Thus when God made man out of the dust of the ground, immediately we read,

Gen. 2:9 "And out of the ground the LORD God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food."

And then the next verse, another necessary element for human life to be sustained,

Gen. 2:10 "Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads."

A river to water the garden, water to give it life. But water came to have a deeper symbolic significance after the fall, and that is the ability to wash us. To cleanse us of our sin. Our text this morning emphasizes the water as being "clear as crystal."

In the Old Covenant, there was just at the entrance to the tabernacle the bronze laver, the washbasin. The sink. There the priest had to wash himself before going into God's presence.

Ex. 30:18 "You shall also make a laver of bronze, with its base also of bronze, for washing. You shall put it between the tabernacle of meeting and the altar. And you shall put water in it, 19 "for Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet in water from it. 20 "When they go into the tabernacle of meeting, or when they come near the altar to minister, to burn an offering made by fire to the LORD, they shall wash with water, lest they die. 21 "So they shall wash their hands and their feet, lest they die. And it shall be a statute forever to them--to him and his descendants throughout their generations."

David prays so earnestly, Ps. 51:2 "Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin."

And the gospel itself is described by Ezekiel with these words, Ez. 36:25 "Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols."

And in the language of the Apostle Paul, our salvation is described this way,

Tit. 3:4 "But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, 5 not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior."

The gospel itself can be pictured and explained very simply by the image of,

A. The cleansing of water. The point is, since the fall, we all need to be washed. And in the new Jerusalem, in our eternal home, there is "a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb."

But what about,

B. The source of the water. v.1 "...proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb."

God himself is the source. God himself provides the water by which we are cleansed, for we do not go about trying to cleanse ourselves. God himself provides the water of life, or as Jesus puts it when speaking to the Samaritan woman at a well dug for water,

John 4:10 Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water." 11 The woman said to Him, "Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? 12 "Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?" 13 Jesus answered and said to her, "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 "but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life."

And just to complete that image, consider Jesus' words in,

John 6:35 "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst."

Ps. 46:4 "There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God, The holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High."

What a glorious paradise that shall be, a paradise restored, for sinful man shall be cleansed by the waters of life God himself provides. And then there is,

II. THE TREE OF LIFE. It was this tree specifically from which Adam was barred by the curse. He could no longer live, he was no longer be permitted to eat from that tree, such was the consequence of his knowledge of evil.

Gen. 2:22 Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever."

But that tree is restored, and restored with an abundance, for actually it was a garden of trees, along both sides of the river of life. v.2

David Chilton makes a fascinating point here, "...on each side of the River was Tree of Life - not a single tree only, but forests of Tree-of-Life lining the riverbanks. The blessing which Adam forfeited has been restored in overwhelming superabundance, for what we have gained in Christ is, as St. Paul said, "much more" than what we lost in Adam... Paradise is not, therefore, only "restored"; it is consummated, its every implication brought to complete fruition and fulfillment."

The reference is, Rom. 5:15 "But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many...17 For if by the one man's offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.)...20 Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, 21 so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

A forest of trees, the gift of life abounds. But the emphasis in our text is,

A. The fruit of the tree. That's what trees do, they produce fruit. So according to verse 2, the tree of life "bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month." There is a never-ending supply of life, so great is the removal of the curse of death!

And notice that the fruit of the tree of life extends to all the nations of the world. v.22b "The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."

That means salvation!

B. Salvation and the tree. The tree of life brings fruit to all the nations, as we've seen throughout our study of this book. The gospel goes to all the nations, and the elect from all those nations are the citizens of this eternal city. And all of this was clearly prophesied by Ezekiel.

Ez. 47:1 "Then he brought me back to the door of the temple; and there was water, flowing from under the threshold of the temple toward the east, for the front of the temple faced east; the water was flowing from under the right side of the temple, south of the altar. 2 He brought me out by way of the north gate, and led me around on the outside to the outer gateway that faces east; and there was water, running out on the right side...6 He said to me, "Son of man, have you seen this?" Then he brought me and returned me to the bank of the river. 7 When I returned, there, along the bank of the river, were very many trees on one side and the other. 8 Then he said to me: "This water flows toward the eastern region, goes down into the valley, and enters the sea. When it reaches the sea, its waters are healed. 9 "And it shall be that every living thing that moves, wherever the rivers go, will live. There will be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters go there; for they will be healed, and everything will live wherever the river goes...12 "Along the bank of the river, on this side and that, will grow all kinds of trees used for food; their leaves will not wither, and their fruit will not fail. They will bear fruit every month, because their water flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for medicine."

The healing of the nations. So we read and studied,

Rev. 21:24 "And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. 25 Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). 26 And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it."

That promise and that hope of what is to come is the motivation for the work of missions today, for the command and promise of Jesus to the church are equally clear,

Mat. 28:19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 "teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

The healing of the nations. The salvation of the nations, all the nations able to take the food from the leaves of the tree of life.

But one more thing. The tree of life is, more literally, the wood of life. And that word for wood or tree is a word specifically used to identify the cross of Jesus Christ. For example,

Acts 5:30 "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you murdered by hanging on a tree."

And, 1 Peter 2:24 "...who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness--by whose stripes you were healed."

So we have,

C. Jesus and the tree. The tree not only represents life itself, but more personally, it refers to the finished work of Jesus Christ. And so the cross of Christ becomes the tree of life. The ancient church father Irenaeus wrote of that connection in the very early years of the church, "just as by means of a tree we were made debtors to God, so also by means of a tree we may obtain the remission of our debt."

So that is what awaits in the new Jerusalem, the restoration of the garden of Eden, with the tree of life bearing fruit upon the shores of the river of life. But in that re-creation, there is one great difference, which we saw last week. I'll mention it again this morning just briefly, in relation to our text here, and that is,

III. THE LIGHT OF LIFE. v.5

Recall last week, Rev. 21:23 "The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. 24 And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it."

No sun. No moon. No lights placed in the sky, because God himself will dwell with his people. And the only light that will be needed then is,

A. The light of the glory of God. 1 John 1:5 "This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all."

So when God is present with his people, "there shall be no night there!" When God dwells with his people, "They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light."

But again, with personal reference to Jesus, what we have is,

B. The light of the glory of Jesus' presence. "The Lord God gives them light."

Rev. 21:23 "The Lamb is its light."

Or, to quote Jesus himself, John 8:12 "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life."

Well, let me go back to where I began, with the more general idea of the removal of the curse of death. And so we have the river of life, and the tree of life, and the light of life. All images, pictures. Let's focus then for a few minutes upon the reality that is being illustrated. In other words,

IV. LIFE ITSELF. Specifically,

A. Ending of the curse of the covenant. Ending the curse of death. v.3

There it is. The purpose of God is complete. The curse of death is destroyed, just as Paul declares,

1 Cor. 15:50 "Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. 51 Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed-- 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54 So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." 55 "O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?" 56 The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

The purpose of God's self-revelation is complete. "Death is swallowed up in victory." And the people of God are alive. The land which was cursed will now be blessed in abundance. And as we have seen repeatedly, that is precisely what the Old Testament prophets predicted,

Ezek. 36:33 "Thus says the Lord GOD: "On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will also enable you to dwell in the cities, and the ruins shall be rebuilt. 34 "The desolate land shall be tilled instead of lying desolate in the sight of all who pass by. 35 "So they will say, 'This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden; and the wasted, desolate, and ruined cities are now fortified and inhabited.' 36 "Then the nations which are left all around you shall know that I, the LORD, have rebuilt the ruined places and planted what was desolate. I, the LORD, have spoken it, and I will do it."

In that restored city, the people of God shall enjoy the fullness of,

B. The blessing of God's sovereign rule. For in this heavenly city, we find that, v.3 "...the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it."

The throne. This new Jerusalem is a kingdom, a monarchy. And the ruler is sovereign.

This is no democracy. It is not the not the people who rule, but they, rather, are servants.

v.3b "...and His servants shall serve Him."

Yet actually, that is the greatest blessing of all.

C. The blessing of the servants of God. This is that blessing, v.4

What a glorious identity we have, to be called servants of God. Bondservants, slaves. Because our owner, our slave-master, is inherently and infinitely good! You see, our ultimate blessing as Christians is that as servants of God, he claims us to be his own! He seals us with his name upon our foreheads. Not the mark of the beast, as with unbelievers, but the mark of Christ. He puts his mark on us, and we "shall see his face!"

That was the blessing Moses sought, beseeching the Lord, "Please, show me Your glory."

Ex. 33:19 Then [God] said, "I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." 20 But He said, "You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live." 21 And the LORD said, "Here is a place by Me, and you shall stand on the rock. 22 "So it shall be, while My glory passes by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and will cover you with My hand while I pass by. 23 "Then I will take away My hand, and you shall see My back; but My face shall not be seen."

Moses saw a glimpse. The citizens of New Jerusalem shall see God face to face! And beloved, that is the ultimate blessing. Then, in that day, we shall see his face, a face so bright and so full of light that the sun itself is obsolete and completely unnecessary.

The question remains, how do we apply all of that for our lives today? The simple answer is this, that in the anticipation of that great day, we seek to see God, by faith, as fully as possible. And that means we enter this sanctuary to worship him. That is what matters. That is what you are to get out of it, when you come to worship, the greatest blessing imaginable, that you might see God.

So as you wait for that great day to come, think about the glory of Jesus himself. And lose yourselves, even in the midst of these moments of worship this morning. Lose yourself in the anticipation of seeing Jesus. We shall see his face. And as you worship, therefore, sing his praise with utter delight.

I believe the hymn writer helps us to do just that with these words, "The bride eyes not her garment, but her dear bride-groom's face; I will not gaze at glory, but on my King of grace; not at the crown he gifteth, but on his pierced hand; the Lamb is all the glory of Emmanuel's land."

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