If you would, open your bibles to Genesis chapter 2 and Revelation 21. Genesis 2, chapter 8. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Joel Brooks:A river flowed out of Eden to the water of the garden, and and there it divided and became 4 rivers. The name of the first is Pishan. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good. Delium and ox stone were are there. The name of the second river is Gihan.
Joel Brooks:It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the 3rd river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria, and the 4th river is the Euphrates. The Lord God took man and He put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to keep it. Revelation chapter 21 verses 1. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
Joel Brooks:And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God will be with them as their God. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Joel Brooks:If you would, pray with me. Our Father, we ask that you would bless the reading of your Word, that even now you would begin to open up hearts that we might receive what you would have for us this morning. Lord, we desperately want to hear from you. In order for that to happen, I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus, amen. For almost 20 years now, my wife and I, we have lived in the neighborhood of Crestwood just a couple of miles down the road. Our house was built in 1911, which means it's older than this church. It also means it has lots and lots of character. Character is just another word for something you throw money at.
Joel Brooks:And so you're always throwing time and and work, on this house. But we love our house, and since we do live in the city, we don't have much land, but in the backyard, we've done what we can do, and and we've always made sure that we have a garden. And over the years, we've we've gotten pretty good at gardening, pretty decent at it. We we regularly, we grow squash, tomatoes, lots and lots of peppers. We got some okra, some green beans, all of this in this little corner of our yard.
Joel Brooks:And if you were to come and visit us, and you are all welcome to come and to visit us, you're gonna see that over the gate that goes into our garden, there's a Bible verse there, a hand painted Bible verse, some quotes from Jeremiah, and and this is what the sign reads. It Reads from a couple of verses in Jeremiah. It says, build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. And we quote later on in that chapter, and seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile.
Joel Brooks:And pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in the city's welfare, you will find your welfare. Let me read those last words again. Pray to the Lord on its behalf for in the city's welfare, you will find your welfare. And now these words from Jeremiah have become life transforming words for my wife and I, for our whole family. It's the reason we have chosen to live where we live, to do the things that we do.
Joel Brooks:It is it is shaped so much of who we are. We want to seek the welfare of the city. And by welfare, I mean the the spiritual, the physical, the emotional well-being. The word welfare is actually the Hebrew word shalom there, to seek the peace, to seek the prosperity of the city. God's heart is for the city to prosper.
Joel Brooks:And I need to be careful here that when I use the language, the city, it's not that God has a heart for tall buildings or that God's a hipster or something like that. That's that's not what he means when he's saying, I I love the city. He's simply meaning, I love people, and a city is where there is a high density of people. God is seeking the welfare of people, and these people are all living in tight community in the city. And this means that we need to be after the welfare of people as well.
Joel Brooks:You could probably substitute the word community for the word city. Jesus wants us to seek the welfare of the communities that we find ourselves in. Now anybody who has been at this church for any length of time has heard me talk about this, alright? It's one of the heartbeats of our church. Seeking the welfare of the city is a foundational verse, And I especially love it because if you understand the context of that, it it it really opens up to us how Jeremiah is writing to exiles who have been ripped out of their homeland, probably their family members killed, and they have been taken off to the pagan city of Babylon.
Joel Brooks:And there the the Israelites, they just kinda wanna huddle up together, just kind of keep themselves pure and let the pagan city go to hell. The city that ripped them from their homeland, the city that has killed their family, They don't understand the culture. They don't share the same values and they just want the city to burn. And Jeremiah writes them this letter. He says, God tells you, don't you dare do that.
Joel Brooks:God himself sent you to the city, not to watch it burn, not to seek its destruction, but to seek its shalom. Your missionaries there. God wants the city to prosper. So we're to work hard to seek the welfare of the city. And once again, you've heard me preach this numerous times.
Joel Brooks:And I do this because it's a theme that's not just found there. It's it's found throughout all of scripture. Not many months ago, I was reading through Leviticus. I have to. It's my job.
Joel Brooks:Alright? I realize, you know, a lot of people start off trying to read Leviticus, but I actually made it to chapter 25. All right, and there was there was some good stuff there in chapter 25 that fits in with this theme. Chapter 25 is about the year of jubilee, and the year of jubilee is this. God, He made a command and He said, every 50 years, everybody has to give back their land that they own.
Joel Brooks:Give it back to the ones who originally possessed it when they went and they settled Canaan. So every 50 years, people have to give up their land and give it back to those original people. It's crazy. That's crazy talk. Can you can you imagine trying to implement that right now?
Joel Brooks:For us to say, okay, we gotta find out who owned my property 50 years ago, I gotta somehow try to find them and give them back this land so I can restore ownership to them, that is crazy talk. But it was God's command. And the reason that he did this is because he wanted to set up a system in which no person no person in Israel would exist just to accumulate wealth, that they would just try to go on and get wealthier and wealthier. Now, God gave this one exception to this year of jubilee. It's it's this one exception, and that's if you lived within the city walls, you didn't have to give away your property.
Joel Brooks:If you actually had a home that was within the city walls, you could not only keep it, but you can actually hand it down to your children as an inheritance. It's the only exception. Why would God set up for 1 this crazy plan, but then give this one exception for those who are living within the city walls. It's because of this. If you're living away from the city and you've got a lot of land, then your investment is in your land.
Joel Brooks:But if you're living in the city, your investment is in your community. It's in your relationships. Wealthy people, they own land because because that's what you needed to get wealth. You needed to farm it. You needed to raise cattle on it.
Joel Brooks:This is how you would make money. But if you lived in the city, then you couldn't obviously have that land, you didn't have that means of making money, and so your primary investment is in the community. It's in your neighbors. And God wants to make sure that those relationships endure, those relationships are not temporary. This is God's way of saying, if you are willing to make an investment that lasts, I'm gonna give you the incentive to do it.
Joel Brooks:Don't think of money when you think of an investment that lasts. Think relationships. Think community. Money perishes, but these relationships, they endure. It was also set up so the Gentile converts.
Joel Brooks:When you were bringing in these these new Gentile converts, how were they to live with the Israelite people if you just reverted back to land every 50 years? Well, God provided a place, but he didn't provide it out there by giving them land. He said, I want these Gentile converts to come in and to live in close community with these believers. So he provided for them. And this is just a small example.
Joel Brooks:This is just one example of what you see all throughout scripture, that this is God's heart, God's heart. Actually, the the the overall narrative of scripture, if you will, the arc of scripture is this, the Bible begins in Genesis in a garden, and it ends in Revelation with a city. We go from garden to city. We begin with a single individual, Adam, walking with God in the cool of the evening, placed in the Garden of Eden, but we end with multitudes upon multitudes of multitudes of men and women from every tongue, tribe, and nation worshiping together in a city with Christ Jesus living on Main Street. That's where we're going.
Joel Brooks:It's a great movement of of the Bible from garden to city, from a mere individual to an expansive community that is pulsating with life and with joy and with worship because Jesus is at the center of it. The question is, how do we get there? How do we get from that mere individual to that glorious community with Christ at the center? That's our trajectory, but how do we get there? Well, God shows us the way in Genesis.
Joel Brooks:He shows us the way in Genesis. In Genesis chapter 1, just earlier from what we read, he creates man and he he tells man that he is to have dominion over all the earth. He says, Adam, I've created you to rule. You're to rule the world not not as a tyrant, but you're to rule the world by by serving, by showing love and faithfulness, by executing justice and mercy. That's how you are to rule.
Joel Brooks:You see, God created us in his image, and and as his image bearers, we reflect the way he rules. That's that's our job. I mean for 1000 of years, emperors and kings who had vast empires, they would they would erect images of themselves. They would erect statues of themselves in all of the cities that they can never go to personally, but it was a way of people looking and being reminded, this is what our king looks like and this is the king ruling over us. But God decides when He is setting up His his authority and his reign over all this world, he's not gonna erect a statue.
Joel Brooks:He's actually gonna make man as his image bearer. And man is gonna reflect the way that he rules and he reigns in this world. And so he created Adam. To be created in the image of God can mean a lot of things. I mean it can mean that you're created to love or to be artistic or that, you have a life that will endure forever.
Joel Brooks:Those those all have merit, but if you were to just read through Genesis, you would see that to be created in the image of God most clearly means that you were created to have dominion. That's what it means. I mean, just just look at this where we read about the image of God. Genesis 1 26, God says, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds and over the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image.
Joel Brooks:In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them and he blessed them, and God says to them, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion. Over and over, you'll see he says I make you in my image, have dominion. I make you in my image, now I bless you to have dominion.
Joel Brooks:It's what it means to be created in God's image. So what I find absolutely fascinating about this is after God creates Adam and Eve in his own image and he tells them that they now he needs to exercise dominion over all things, he doesn't make Adam a throne to do it from. He doesn't tell them to sit down and to now rule. He didn't tell them to begin shouting orders at the rest of all of creation. He didn't give them a sword or a gun to strike fear and creation and rule by force.
Joel Brooks:Instead of giving Adam a scepter, He gives Adam a shovel. Instead of giving him a throne, He gives Adam a wheelbarrow. He says, now here's a garden, get your hands dirty and get to work. And here is Eve, a helpmate who can help you in this work of moving from a single individual isolated, moving to a glorious city with God at the center. We move from an isolated individual to a thriving flourishing city with Christ on Main Street by first learning how to garden.
Joel Brooks:And hear me, we are to never stop gardening. That is God's plan for us as his image bearers. God was teaching Adam and Eve something very important when he placed them in a garden right after creation and he told them to get to work. And it wasn't just to teach them the value of hard work, It's not what God was doing. He's actually showing them their purpose.
Joel Brooks:They were to be gardeners. All of their life is to be about gardening. Fish were meant to swim, birds were meant to fly, men and women are meant to garden. I know that some of you are thinking, that's kinda crazy. I mean, really, that God wants me to be a gardener?
Joel Brooks:And that's probably because the image that we have in gardening about being a gardener is, you know, you're wearing overalls, you're outside, you know, you got your your gardening hat on, you got your gardening gloves on, you're on your knees with your little trowel and you're planting things and you're weeding, and that's gardening. But I want you to take a step back, a big step back, and just ask the question, what is gardening at its most fundamental level? At its absolute basics, what is gardening? Gardening is taking the raw materials that are around you. Earth, dirt, rock, water, seed, available sunshine.
Joel Brooks:And through a lot of hard work, you're you're organizing those things, you're structuring these things, you're you're putting some things in, you're taking away some things, all in the hopes of making something beautiful and that can become life giving and bear fruit. That's gardening. A gardener takes the raw materials of this world, Dirt, seed, sunshine, all these things takes it and organizes it in such a way to to to take what once was chaos, what once was empty, and to turn it into something beautiful like flowers or something that produces fruit, something that becomes life giving. To be a gardener is to bring out God's potential in God's created world, To bring it out, to bring order out of chaos, is to lead all of creation into praise of its creator. This is the work that we were called to do as his image bearers.
Joel Brooks:If you accept this definition of gardening, that it's to take whatever raw materials are around you and to organize them in such a way that they can become life giving and that they could become beautiful, then you will realize that that definition of gardening applies to all of life. It applies to every profession. Whether you are a school teacher, real estate agent, a CEO, a banker, or financial advisor, you are a gardener. For instance, if if you were a maid or or a janitor, then you're gardening all of the time. What are you doing?
Joel Brooks:You're bringing order to chaos. That's what you're doing. You're taking something that was dirty and something that was messy and you're making it clean and you're making it beautiful. You're organizing things in such a way. You're making stacks, you know, where it was currently just spread out all over the place, and you're doing it all in the hopes of what?
Joel Brooks:Making the place something that can bear fruit, something that can be productive. If you are a lawyer, you are also a gardener. You are taking the chaos, the chaos that's out there and you're creating rule and you're creating order. Your raw material is all those nuanced laws out there that nobody understands. Nobody understands, but you have the ability to sift through it all and to make sense of it all and to actually help people out.
Joel Brooks:It can become life giving. If you are a writer, your job is to take the raw materials of letters and punctuation. And what are you doing? You're just taking those raw materials and you're organizing them in such a way to where if you're really good at it, you'll create words and sentences or books or articles and it'll become something life giving and something beautiful. If you were an accountant, your raw materials are numbers.
Joel Brooks:And trust me, when I go to our accountant, I dump on his desk nothing but chaos. Here's every receipt, w twos, all of this. I can't make sense of any of it. And he can go through all of these things, all of this chaos, and he brings order, and he brings structure, and these numbers are no longer meaningless, but they become extremely useful to me. If you're a banker, you're taking the raw material of money and all you're doing is simply moving it around and structuring it in such a way that it will grow and hopefully grow into something beautiful.
Joel Brooks:It can be life giving when you're giving loans to people who wanna start a company or loans to somebody who wants to buy a home. If you're a stay at home mom, you are constantly creating order out of chaos, whether it's from cooking or cleaning, trying to keep your children alive and to help them grow. You know, knowing just the right word to say to a child is like knowing how much sunshine a plant needs and where to put it, or knowing exactly the right amount of fertilizer to give it to maximize growth. Disciplining a child is like pruning a plant. You wanna prune just enough where, yes, it's gonna bring pain, it's it's it's gonna look like it really hurts, but ultimately it's to bring more fruit.
Joel Brooks:It's definitely gardening if you're a stay at home mom. I mean, we just we heard gardening right here this morning. Musicians, they're gardeners. They're taking the raw materials of notes, and they're putting together it together in such a way to make something that's life giving and something beautiful to us. Whatever job you are doing at its core, I hope you see it really is gardening.
Joel Brooks:It's what you were created to do as image bearers of God. It's about using the resources He has given you to create something life giving, something beautiful, all for His glory and let me add for your joy because it's what you were created to do. Now can you turn your profession into something that's selfish, something that's all about you? Absolutely. But if you do that, your profession and what you are doing will lack meaning.
Joel Brooks:If you turn it to an end in itself or just to make more money, it will lack meaning. It's an abuse of being created in the image of God. Your profession was not in order for you to create a throne, but for you to be in the garden. It's your purpose in life, and I hope you see your profession this way. I hope you see whatever you do, even if it's outside of your profession, it's gardening and that you're bringing life to those around you.
Joel Brooks:Now gardening is hard work. Gardening is time consuming. I love it when you study the, the creation story in Genesis, how God creates everything instantly with a word. Let there be light, there's light. Let there be vegetation, there's vegetation.
Joel Brooks:Let there be animals. There's animals. But he doesn't do that with people. He doesn't do that when he creates man. You know how God created man, don't you?
Joel Brooks:He slowed down and he got his hands dirty. That's what God did. He he took the soil of the ground and he began to fashion it in such a way, and then he breathed life into it. In other words, God became a gardener in order to create us. To create his most prized creation, he took his time and he got his hands dirty.
Joel Brooks:But why did he do it that way? And he certainly didn't have to do it that way. He didn't do it that way with anything else in creation, but he does it here. And he does it because he is modeling something for us as his image bearers. Just like God, we are to be a people who slow down, who work hard, who get our hands dirty and try to create something of such beauty, something that gives life.
Joel Brooks:Let me ask you, have you ever slowed down and intentionally, became really intentional, I guess, in the way that you you relate and invest in another person? I mean really slow down to do that. I mean work hard at it and by by work, I mean get your hands dirty work, trying to bring beauty and life into somebody whose life is utter chaos. Have you ever done that? When you see that person come around and begin to bear fruit, is there any feeling like it in the world?
Joel Brooks:When you see like because of the effort, the gardening effort I put in that person, I now see life and I see fruit in them. That's just not godly, that's Godlike, that's Godlike, that's what he did. That's what he is calling us to do as his image bearers. So that's our purpose. Now I gotta admit that I fail at that, every person in here fails at that.
Joel Brooks:And the reason is we might bear God's image, but we also have Adam's blood, and we wanna make thrones. Adam ultimately decided that he wanted to garden by his own rule, his own rules. Adam didn't wanna shovel, he wanted that scepter. He wanted to be barking the orders. He wanted to tell others what to do instead of God telling him what to do.
Joel Brooks:Let me say all of us at times have made that same choice. We have decided to to garden out a personal gain. But what I want you to see is that when you choose to do that, you are going backwards in this grand narrative we see throughout redemptive history. You're going backwards into a place of isolation instead of moving forward to a place of community where Christ is at the center. Listen, I'm I'm a pastor, in case you can't figure that out.
Joel Brooks:My my profession is no holier than yours by any means. And I could just tell you from my profession, I struggle with this. There are times I wanna turn this pulpit into a throne. There are times that I'm hungry for power and I wanna bully people around and I wanna get my own way. And I know if I want to do that in my profession, you likely want to do that at times in your profession.
Joel Brooks:But our hope is this, praise be to God that he sent us Jesus. Jesus succeeded where all of us failed as gardeners, where all of us continue to fail as gardeners. Jesus, he went to the Garden of Gethsemane and he showed us what a real gardener is like. When He said, Not My will, but Your will be done. I wanna do whatever You want me to do, Father.
Joel Brooks:And then Jesus, He not only became the perfect gardener, He actually became the perfect garden, He became the seed that was buried, that died and was buried and came up and bore much fruit. He's the gardener and He's the gardener, and that's our hope. Our hope is that Jesus did these things, He became this for us, that by his faith, by his obedience, we now have a righteousness that's given to us. But let me say on top of all of that, on top of all of that, Jesus being our hope because of the faith we have in him, our hope is this, Jesus has given us his spirit that enables us to become more like him. Through his spirit, we now have the ability to become the image bearers he has designed us to be.
Joel Brooks:His spirit has once again given us power and authority, once again commissioned us and given us dominion, if you will. But now with this this new authority, this new engine that we have in our hearts, driven by the spirit, And now we get to make choices, real decisions that will move us away from isolation and into a glorious city where Christ is at the center. By the way that we live that out every day, are we making the things around us a more beautiful place, a more life giving place? Are we making the people around us more beautiful and life giving? It's what God has called us to do as His image bearers.
Joel Brooks:Pray with me. Jesus, we thank you for being the perfect gardener and the perfect garden. We thank you that our righteousness rests on you, and not what we do, because we have failed so many times. And we thank you, Father, that through Jesus, you have given us your spirit, and your spirit now energizes us and enables us to live the life that we should as your image bears, and we want to move. In the movement that we have seen you moving throughout all these ages in history, from that isolated individual into that glorious, glorious community with you at the center, and I pray that you would show us every day how we can be a part of that movement.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.