Jeremy L. Berg

“Couldn’t you keep watch with me for one hour?” Matthew 26:40

Spring has me thinking about gardens again. Not gardens that grow vegetables and attract rabbits and other invaders. I’m thinking about two Biblical gardens—Eden and Gethsemane. As for naps, a warm stretch of weather recently found me napping in a hammock on a lazy Sunday afternoon, dipping in and out of a book. My version of paradise. 

Today, I realized both these fateful gardens in Scripture have people falling asleep. I’ve reflected on these two gardens many times before, usually emphasizing the fateful choice faced by both the First Adam (“To eat or not to eat”), and the Second Adam, Christ (“To suffer or not to suffer”). But I’ve never made the connection between the first Adam being put into a deep sleep in the Garden of Eden, and the disciples falling asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

In my ruminating, I found a powerful and urgent spiritual lesson bubbling up for those with ears to hear. Let me show why we need the sleep of the first garden, while we must avoid snoozing in the second garden.

Sabbath Snooze

God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden to “tend and watch over it” (Gen. 2:15). Adam is employed as God’s image-bearing caretaker over his good creation. Steward it wisely. Grow things. Enjoy its tasty abundance. But the phrase “watch over it” in Hebrew can mean “guard it” from any sinister threats that lurk—and we know of one slithering threat is waiting to strike. 

Being caretakers over creation is a tall task! So God provides a suitable partner to help him fulfill his lofty vocation. Adam is put into a deep sleep, and God brings forth woman from his side to be a capable partner in their shared holy vocation. As Adam rests, God raises up another to help.

In Genesis 2, the woman is called an ezer, often translated as a “suitable partner” in Hebrew.  The word ezer occurs twenty-one times in the Old Testament. In two cases it refers to the first woman, Eve, in Genesis 2. Three times it refers to powerful nations Israel called on for help when besieged. In the sixteen remaining cases the word refers to God as our help. He is the one who comes alongside us in our helplessness. Furthermore, 

Because God is not subordinate to his creatures, any idea that an ezer-helper is inferior is untenable. In his book Man and Woman: One in Christ, Philip Payne puts it this way: “The noun used here [ezer] throughout the Old Testament does not suggest ‘helper’ as in ‘servant,’ but help, savior, rescuer, protector as in ‘God is our help.’ In no other occurrence in the Old Testament does this refer to an inferior, but always to a superior or an equal…’help’ expresses that the woman is a help/strength who rescues or saves man.” (Source)

Again, as Adam lies down to sleep, God raises up another to help. I see here a picture of Sabbath. Every seventh day God invites us to enjoy a deep and restorative sabbath sleep. The challenge sabbath poses to hard-working gardeners is this: If we stop to rest, will the world stop spinning? Do we trust our Covenant partner—God—is a capable tag-team partner if we give ourselves a deep sabbath sleep? 

I wonder if God looks down upon our hurried and harried lives, and is tempted to come down with a tranquilizer gun to force us into a sabbath rest, long enough for Him to once again bring something  truly worthwhile and awe-inspiring from our side. Let us not resist this invitation to let go and let God, to slumber and surrender to the Holy Spirit God has given to us.  

Watchful Guardians

In high school, I worked on the grounds crew at a golf course. I was on the mower at 6AM each morning cutting the greens, and that is very early for a teenager who was up too late the night before with friends. The hum of the mower would occasionally lull me to sleep on the job. Usually I would wake up somewhere on the fairway en route to the next green with the blades off, but occasionally I would doze off while cutting the greens and this could have disastrous results if I cut into the longer fringe.

Just as God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden to “tend and watch over it” (Gen. 2:15), so Jesus placed three disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane to stay awake and watch over Jesus. The Enemy once again slithered about the perimeter, waiting for another chance to strike. 

Jesus has come to this garden as the Second Adam to undo the curse of the First Adam. That curse has kept the original gardening project in the weeds and under the shadow of Death. Why? Because the original couple failed to “tend and guard it” from the ravages of Sin and the venom of the serpent. Jesus no doubt sweats blood in Gethsemane partially because he’s worried the Twelve new gardeners he’s been training may very well fail again when the New Creation garden project is launched that first Easter. What if God’s servants once again fall asleep on the job? 

So Jesus says to Peter, James and John, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me” (Matt 26:37-38). What exactly are they watching for? Certainly not Northern Lights or shooting stars!  Perhaps they are watching for the soldiers coming to arrest Jesus. Perhaps they are watching over Jesus, waging war against the Enemy in prayer, as  Jesus’ will is tested.

Maybe Jesus realizes his own rib cage is about to be pierced with a spear in death, just as Adam’s side was opened long ago to bring forth another life. God give Adam a partner to stand by him in life’s battles, and Jesus hopes these three  will prove faithful helpers in his time of weakness. 

Unfortunately, they prove to be sleepy servants in that garden, failing to guard it from the serpent poised to bring down the Second Adam. Jesus prevails over the Enemy, but his servants fall asleep on the job. 

Today, Jesus is still seeking covenant partners to join him in cultivating the New Creation garden on earth. The church isn’t a holding tank for saved souls awaiting the rapture or gathering to hear sermons and sing songs until we grow old and die.  We are God’s New Creation Gardening Club, training up faithful image-bearers to be co-rulers and caretakers of a creation still groaning for liberation.

We are to plant little gardens—i.e., churches—throughout the land and cities where the fruit of the Spirit grows in public and passersby can come pluck and enjoy the fruit of our fellowship.   Echoing Isaiah 2:4, the church is to be about teaching disciples how to “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks,” and instead of training for war, train up an army of peacemakers and self-sacrificial servants. 

But we live in a moment when many Christians are more interested in being combative culture warriors swinging the sword of worldly power than being gentle gardeners keeping our  eyes on Jesu and our hands on the plough. In Gethsemane, Jesus invited his three closest disciples to stand guard over the garden at the moment of his greatest testing and threat. They were told to stay alert and stay on task. The body of Jesus sweat blood as he fell to his knees and prayed that he would bear Kingdom fruit all the way to the cross. Jesus was the perfect embodiment of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control to his last breath.

The church is Jesus’ body on earth, and we should be sweating blood these days as we try to stay alert and watch over the New Creation garden under threat. The Enemy is at the gate, and sometimes in the pulpit, desiring to infest the New Creation Garden with weeds of fleshly fruit—“hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions” (Gal 5:20). Will we fall asleep on the job and let the Enemy prevail? Or will we stay awake and watch over the Body of Christ as faithful stewards of His Kingdom?

Likewise, we are called to watch over our own  lives and guard the soil of our hearts. “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Prov. 4:23). “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24). This is not a white knuckle self-help gardening project, but a task we undertake in partnership with the Holy Spirit who helps us “reap a harvest at the proper time, if we do not give up” (Gal. 6:9). 

What Kind of Soil Are We?

A young man I am discipling met me at a local arboretum for a chat. We walked about observing the gardeners hard at work, and the beautiful variety of flowers popping out of the soil. We sat down on a bench and my friend asked, “Why do you think so many people resist following Jesus?” I opened my Bible to Jesus’ parable of the sower and four soils. “Every person is a garden and every life a gardening project,” I said. “Some people are like seed along the path, where Satan comes  in and steals faith away. Others are like seed on rocky soil and with no root, they quickly fall away when trouble or persecution comes. Still others are like seed sown among thorns, where the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke out faith.” 

“But you and I desire to be like seed sown on good soil,” I continued. “We aspire to be a garden diligently guarded and tended by an an awake and attentive gardener. We gather regularly with other gardeners in order to shake each other awake when we begin to fall asleep, and we help each other root out the weeds that threaten to choke out our faith. We want to be like those who hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.” 

Just as I ended this lesson, the sky opened up and the rain came pouring down on the thirsty gardens around us. And we gave thanks to the God of grace “who sends his rain down on the righteous and unrighteousness” (Matt 5:45).

Conclusion

So like Adam, let us embrace the sweet surrender of sabbath rest, wherein we are refreshed by the gift of the Helper at our side. “It is not good for Humanity to be alone.” We need this deep sleep and the presence of our divine ezer at our side—a faithful Covenant Partner in the work of cultivating the New Creation.  

Unlike the sleep guardians in Gethsemane, we need to remember our Lord’s words and remain awake and alert in this moment of testing. Right now the world seems “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” and so we must “stay here and keep watch” (Matt 26:38). Jesus condemned the holy place of his day as a “den of thieves”; and if we fall asleep guarding God’s holy place today—His Church—weeds will overtake the New Creation Garden and the church will become a haunt of jackals instead of a foretaste of Heaven. Let’s stay awake and stand guard. 

You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober” (1 Thes. 5:5).