Anyone who has a love of horticulture is familiar with the growing process of plants. Be it the large scale farmer, or the backyard gardener, the scale differs but the process is the same. Prepare the earth, plant the seed, water and patiently wait for the plant to grow to maturity. During the growth process, the sprouted seed must absorb nutrients from the soil, water and sunlight. It must develop strength to withstand the winds (of adversity), as well as the attack of insects that would devour it. Farmers use many methods to protect their crops from the elements of nature that would prevent them from obtaining a 'good harvest.' By way of analogy, (comparison), we are God's garden.
"The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof" 1 Corinthians 10:26. "Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the LORD'S thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is" Deuteronomy 10:14. And we, my friends, are 'the planting of the Lord'...
"To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified" Isaiah 61:3.
One of the primary 'villains' in any 'garden'... is the 'weeds.' Now anyone who is committed to seeing the 'fruits of their labors,' will not sit idly by while the weeds take over their garden. They know from experience that if they do not stay on top of pulling the weeds out, that the weeds will choke out the choice plants and their labors will have been in vain. They do not feel 'bad' about taking the life of the 'weed.' Quite the contrary, I have seen people spend hours on their hands and knees in the dirt, yanking the hateful invaders out of the soil, piling them up in heaps to be burned. And they did not feel in the least bad about the fact that they were taking the life of a 'living thing.' The true gardener... hates weeds!
And so it is with man and sin. We are the Lord's garden, created in His image, for His pleasure, while the sin in man is comparable to the weeds in His garden. God has every right to weed His garden,...does He not? He feels no more pleased with or tolerant of the weeds of sin in man than we would be to have our field taken over by some noxious invader. Yet many today are of the mind-set that God has to love everyone, including the weeds. This is because they have accepted a man-centered rather than a God-centered ideology. Universalists today would have us to believe that everyone is going to be saved eventually, whether they make Jesus Lord of their life or not. Many today have discarded their belief in an actual hell. They discount all that Jesus said regarding life after death. Oh, they believe in heaven all right, because that is pleasing to their flesh, but the idea of eternal torment is far too offensive to be acceptable. So man creates a god in his own image, according to his own desires, and sees nothing wrong in it. This is nothing new, man has done this from the beginning of time, but we should be advised that there are consequences to the choices we willfully make.
Here is a quote from Charles Spurgeon...
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. (Galatians 6:7-8)
And we now declare that the God of Holy Scripture is a God of inflexible justice, He is not the God Whom some of you adore. You adore a god who winks at great sins; you believe in a god who calls your crimes peccadillos and little faults. Some of you worship a god who does not punish sin but who is so weakly merciful, and mercilessly weak, that he passes by transgressions and iniquity and never enacts a punishment.
You believe in a god who, if man sins, does not demand punishment for his offense. You think that a few good works of your own will pacify him, that he is so weak a ruler that a few good words uttered before him in prayer will win sufficient merit to reverse the sentence, if indeed you think he ever passes a sentence at all. Your god is no God; he is as much a false god of the Greeks or of ancient Nineveh.
The God of Scripture is one who is inflexibly severe in justice and will by no means clear the guilty. "The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked" (Nahum 1:3, KJV). The God of Scripture is a Ruler who, when His subjects rebel, marks their crime and never forgives them until He has punished it, either upon them or upon their Substitute. [End quote].
What we are sadly lacking today is any kind of 'fear of the Lord.' It is very easy to have no fear, when our god is of our own imaginings...created to fulfill our needs and our desires. 'Bless me and mine,' with no consideration as to what the desires of God's heart might be. Multitudes today give no thought whatsoever as to whether or not they are pleasing in God's sight.
"For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest" Psalms 95:7-11.
There are sheep... and there are goats. Did you know that goats thrive on eating noxious weeds? They will eat things that sheep will not. What are we eating in this hour? With what are we attempting to sustain our souls? The living Word or the rational conclusion?
Rational thinking is a pitiful substitute for 'having the mind of Christ.' 1 Cor 2:16-3:1 "For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ." And we can only pervert and change the Gospel of Christ... when we employ our carnal mind. "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace" Romans 8:6.
This involves a choice on our part, we must exercise our 'will.' To live by the Spirit, is to lay down our own thoughts, not an easy thing for this carnal creature to do.
God made man for a purpose, that HE might have fellowship with us. He also gave us a god-like power... that of choice. We choose whether or not we will obey Him. God knew when he created man the risk that He was taking, but He placed such value on the prize that He deemed the reward worth it. We do not know how long Adam enjoyed fellowship with God in the Garden, before he chose to eat of the tree of Knowledge... and was cast out of God's presence. But we do know that God places enormous importance on 'bringing many sons to glory'... restoring the relationship with man that HE desires. And He made the way for this through Jesus Christ, the firstborn among many brethren.
That there are many weeds in the garden is irrefutable. It should be no surprise to us, that the Lord meticulously weeds His garden. He digs deep down into the furthest recesses of our hearts, and uproots the seeds of self-will and rebellion that are lying there, waiting for an opportunity to sprout, growing up to produce sin. This is for our preservation!
Today we are seeing that which was in the beginning, come full circle again now, at the end of time...
"And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them" Genesis 6:5-7.
God made a way then... and He has made a way today. "But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be" Matthew 24:37. We are living in a time when these words are being fulfilled... for the wickedness of man is great in the earth, and every imagination of his heart is only evil continually. Socialism and humanism are not the answer. Repentant hearts before a Holy God is the only remedy.
The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof. He is well able to keep those who are His. God's judgment is an inescapable reality... We are all given opportunity. What we do with that opportunity is up to us. "God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day" Psalms 7:11. We cannot change the world at large. We can only affect the place where we are at. We cannot even take care of our own little garden spot on our own. Pulling up the weeds is a full-time job... recognizing them takes the Spirit of God working in our hearts. We must be diligent, lest we too fall short, giving way to unbelief. So think about it... how is your garden growing? What are you more concerned with preserving and nurturing... the weeds or the plants? Are we working out our own salvation with fear and trembling? Do we stand as trees of righteousness, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation? Are we willing to die to self, that we might ..."But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen" 2 Peter 3:18.
While there is still time, may we all..."Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" 2 Corinthians 13:5. With the full knowledge (understanding) that it is all GOD..."Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you" John 15:16.
