Of Gardens, and Books, and Looking Back, by Pastor Ed Evans

Scripture: Psalm 133

133:1 How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!

133:2 It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes.

133:3 It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion.
for there the Lord ordained His blessing, life forevermore.

One Psalm of three short verses, and yet packed with such impact and import when you understand not only the context from which the psalmist was writing, but how they stand through the ages to speak to us today, about our life and future.

As I prepare this sermon, I am sitting in what my wife and I here in Tennessee call the "Florida Room." It is a room added onto the back of the house enclosed on all sides by windows so you can stay warm and dry and gaze down upon the garden one story below. The variegated rock walls enclose plants and trees of all sorts, growing and thriving together. A freshly cut lawn circumscribes the garden itself. Roses of gold, pink, and red climb the green metal gate at one end, flourish in the middle and even persevere at the other end of the garden in the shade of great, tall trees that were here long before the house was built. At the end near the rosy gate, both thornless and thorny blackberry bushes have joined forces in an attempt to take over the corner with the vegetable garden, but stop at the edge of the raised beds. Colorful nasturtiums of every hue spread out and cover one flower bed in the back near three compost bins, and white lilies lift high and lofty above the greenery from another nearby bed. Perhaps because of the recent rains, the dwarf magnolia tree just off the corner of the room is festooned like a Christmas tree with great, white magnolia blossoms. A variety of colorful flowers weave themselves in and out of the different ferns, hostas, and other greenery, and along the back rock wall, my neighbor's Rose of Sharon presents a privacy wall of beautiful pink and lavender blossoms. Then, about the middle of the garden, just below where I sit gazing at them, four examples of two different types of fig trees are weighed down with sweet fruit, a tempting treat to the resident squirrels and visiting cardinals, sparrows, wrens and humming birds. They are kind enough to leave a few for me. In the very middle of the garden, all the way in the back, a small greenhouse built by a former tenant stands nearly covered with ivy which seems to be content to climb across all but the glass, and not to spread out across the lawn.

I thought of the blessing my garden is to my sense of peace when I read that first verse of the psalm, "How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!" The flowers, the trees, the ferns, ivy, grasses, all thrive in consonance with one another, reaching their limit of sunshine and shade, and "live together in unity." It's true that either I or the person who lived here before have planted all this, but it is God who has directed the growth. I must admit my garden is one of my favorite places to be, and to be there with a book to read is an added blessing.

It was the ancient Roman lawyer, scholar, orator and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero who said, "If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."

But Cicero was lacking one thing. For it is in my garden I feel closest to God. English poet Dorothy Francis Gurney agreed, for she wrote, "One is nearer God's heart in a garden." Perhaps it's because it was in a garden that God first walked with man. It's as if your soul were in sunshine in the garden, a way of professing that you believe in tomorrow.

So what has happened since mankind left that garden where God first walked with man? Have we so frayed away our belief in tomorrow? The world has changed many times over since then, and yet mankind persists, by the grace of God, and by His grace hope for tomorrow.

My friend and fellow Pastor Bernard Lutchman, Jr., has written a new book that addresses this topic, called "Danger Zone." Bernie writes that we today are in the danger zone, and so we are. Our faith in God and in tomorrow has walked out of the garden and is susceptible to all the slings and arrows that Shakespeare once wrote about, and more. Our creativity for evil seems to know no bounds, so that today we do, indeed, find ourselves deep in the danger zone.

Why can't men and women from all over the world "just get along," and match the description of that first verse of today's scripture, experiencing " How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity"?

First, let me set the context for our short three verses today. Bible scholars believe this psalm was written as the result of the nation coming together for David's coronation as King over Israel, a unity of all those whose lineage could be traced back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But while the surface meaning may have alluded to national unity, it was spiritual unity that was the foundation of who they were and how they survived.

The anointing with oil is believed to refer to the anointing of Aaron as High Priest of the nation, noting a rich spiritual blessing as a first priority, the oil naturally running down into the holy man's beard even as the naturalness of gravity asserts itself.

The dew of Hermon is a refreshing material blessing as a second, lesser priority as Mt. Hermon, the 9,220-foot peak towering over the extreme northern portion of Palestine, provided the major water supply for the Jordan River out of its melting snow. The naturalness of the mountainous dew was a reminder that God created it all.

That great Christian preacher Charles H. Spurgeon, in his "The Treasury of David," wrote of this verse: "The Alpine Lebanon ministers to the minor elevation of the city of David; and so does brotherly love descend from the higher to the lower, refreshing and enlivening in its course. Holy concord is as dew, mysteriously blessed, full of life and growth for all plants of grace. It brings with it so much benediction that it is as no common dew, but as that of Hermon which is specially copious, and far reaching. The proper rendering is, "As the dew of Hermon that descended upon the mountains of Zion", and this tallies with the figure which has been already used; and sets forth by a second simile the sweet descending diffusiveness of brotherly unity."

But what is meant by "... which falls on the mountains of Zion.
for there the Lord ordained His blessing, life forevermore"?

Hopefully you already know that Zion is both the city of David -- Jerusalem is built upon Mount Zion -- and the city of God. It's first mentioned in the Bible in 2nd Samuel 5:7 -- "Nevertheless, David captured the fortress of Zion, the City of David." It then occurs 149 more times. And as the Bible continues, the word "Zion" transitions from meaning mainly a physical city to having a more spiritual meaning.

What does this imply for us today? Note that last verse, that God has ordained the blessing of "life forevermore." How shall we live together "forevermore" if we can't even get along with one another here, if there is no kindred unity? Where on this earth do you see "kindred unity" today? Sometimes not even in the church of Jesus Christ, more's the pity.

Let me give you an example of what I believe is a large part of the problem. Several years ago a fellow and I were talking and I mentioned I was concerned about how the engine sounded in my new car. I'm not a mechanic, and it just sounded "off" somehow. This fellow was quick to point out that I just needed to take it in and have the dealership check the sparkplugs, gap them properly, maybe even replace them altogether, and it would run smoothly. I pointed out that this new car didn't have spark plugs. Either the man didn't believe me, or he was embarrassed about not knowing that. He pointed out that I was obviously too ignorant to own a car and we parted company.

Now, the same Roman statesman I quoted earlier, Cicero, also said, "I am not ashamed to admit that I am ignorant of what I don't know." And I'm willing to stand on that. But a more recent statesman, Ronald Reagan, once said of some people that it isn't that they are ignorant, it's just that so much of what they know is wrong.

And there is where we find ourselves today, a people mixed together who are totally ignorant of some things, and then totally wrong about the things we think we know.

My friend, Pastor Bernie Lutchman, Jr., in his new book, "Danger Zone," addresses this very subject in Chapter 3, Leaving a Living Legacy. He begins by quoting Pericles, General of Athens, who said, "What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others."

When I first read that, I thought of the trip my wife and I took to England a few years ago, and how London is absolutely replete with stone monuments. They are everywhere. In some places the roads must snake around centers with nothing but competing monuments. And yet the very basis of civilization is now crumbling in that international city after nearly a week of rioting, looting, and burning of buildings both modern and historically ancient. The lessons of history didn't make it from the monuments to the schoolyard.

Bernie writes, "Over the last century, the western church became more about programs and navel-gazing and music than the actual work Christ gave us to do. That work still is to "go into the entire world and make disciples."

Over on page 38 of his book Bernie points out, "In the recent book Already Gone, both [Ken] Ham and [Britt] Beemer found we have already lost the next generation of believers in kids' Sunday School! ... Children as young as 6th grade have already tuned out these well-known Bible stories they have heard since pre-school, because the church is not teaching HOW those stories apply to their lives!"

Do you begin to see? Bernie goes on to point out that these future adults are not taught the facts that can defend the gospel, there is no emphasis on prayer, and therefore no revelation and discernment involved with the Word of God. And at home, the Bible sits gathering dust, on a shelf or in a closet, because the parents were not taught to be disciples, either.

How then can there be a spirit that even allows that the "kindred live together in unity"? The forces of evil are working overtime for they smell victory in every person who ignores God, walks away from the Word of God, the leading of the Holy Spirit, who fills their time with self-serving and glorification of the things of this world, which will pass away one day, which will not follow us to the grave.

We as human beings are natural creatures in a God-created natural world. But as the French priest and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin pointed out, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." We are not here on our own, or here to accomplish some personal mission of our own. Romans 9:16 states it very plainly, "It [God's compassion and our destiny] does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy.”

The priest de Chardin, who was born in 1881 and lived until 1955 -- so he knew some of the pains of these recent centuries -- made another interesting observation, saying, "Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."

But we will not get there without God's mercy. We will not get there without, as my friend Bernie points out, teaching, sharing and living the Word of God before our children and others.

There is still time, even as time runs out on us. In Chapter 6, "Fourth and Goal," Pastor Bernie notes with Point One of his eleven points in that chapter, "You live life looking forward, but you understand life looking backward." Let us take a hard, Godly look back at what we have wrought, and correct our course. For Jesus Christ is coming back regardless of what we do. Let us then persevere to prepare those we love, and those we know, for the return of the Lord of Glory. And I'll see you at the Garden Gate.

Amen.