2020 Lent Midweek Series
The season of Lent is a time to consider our failures but God’s faithfulness. This year we will do that by looking at garden scenes in scripture and thinking about all that God has done for us. In the beginning, at Creation, God planted a garden and put Adam and Eve in it to care for it, to “till the garden” by tending to the place that God had made. But that didn’t last very long. In the same garden the disobedience of the first people allowed death to break into God’s good creation. In that same Garden, God promised to one day rescue, redeem and restore what had been lost. The overarching story in the Biblical narrative is God’s work to do that.
God chose Abraham and sent him to a land flowing with milk and honey. He established Abraham’s descendants as the nation of Israel. And that Promised Land was an important part of their identity and remains important in history. Isaiah uses the imagery of a vineyard – similar enough to a garden for our purposes – to describe the unfaithfulness of Israel, God’s chosen people. God planted the vineyard; but the vineyard only produced wild grapes. God established His people; but they rebelled and turned away from Him.
Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s promises made in the Garden. He was sent to crush the head of the serpent once and for all. His life, death and resurrection are how God worked to save. And the garden scenes of Jesus include his time in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane; his crucifixion and burial in a garden tomb; and his resurrection from the dead.
As we live our lives on this side of eternity, we wait “till the garden” is restored when Jesus comes again.
This season we will unearth the truth of scripture and learn about what God has done. Your invited to share in that time each Wednesday. If you can’t make worship, you can still give the messages a listen here.