Echoes From Eden 13
DRESSING THE GARDEN
"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed... to DRESS IT AND KEEP IT" (Gen. 2:7-8,15).
As we have noted in a previous study, the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden is the greatest parable in the Bible. It is supremely important because it explains the real nature of our life here on earth. It tells us about ourselves, about our state of being, and how we bring about the conditions in which we live. It is the textbook on spiritual and psychological anatomy. It is the blueprint of man's experience on earth and his destiny in God. When you thoroughly understand the Garden of Eden you will understand the nature of God, the nature of man, and the nature of satan. This parable is placed almost at the beginning of the Bible because it is the foundation upon which the whole Bible is built; and all the rest of the Bible, to the end of Revelation, assumes an understanding of the Garden of Eden. Indeed, there is only one Bible section before it, and that is the basic first chapter which gives the fundamentals of the creative processes of God.
The book of Genesis begins with man in the blessedness of the garden of Eden, and ends with a man "in a coffin in Egypt" (Gen. 50:26). The Bible, however, opens with man in Eden's fair garden and ends with man, the temple and habitation of God, in that blest Paradise, the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. Before our eyes can see the glory of God, they must become blind to all things that only seem to be. Before our ears can hear the voice of God, they must become deaf to every earthly voice that clamors for our attention. Before our minds can embrace the depth of eternal wisdom we shall have to strip ourselves of the shallowness of human wisdom and all the limited surface understanding and darkness of the carnal mind.
When we come to the Garden of Eden it is evident that this is more than merely a piece of real estate over in the Middle East. No such place has ever been found, neither the angel with the flaming sword to keep men out. The Garden of God is not a physical place located on this or any other planet. It is a STATE OF BEING. It is a higher existence for man than this cursed state we find ourselves in from birth. It is the state of being that man was in when he was first brought forth from the hand of God and placed upon earth. It represents man in the presence of God, man walking in fellowship with God, man living above sin, sickness, fear and death, man as master over all things!
Blessed realities, one and all. The Garden, however, also represents man together with all the factors and conditions, both external and internal, of environment and nature, which were to ultimately lead to his ruin and alienation from God. On the one hand, man WAS the Garden, while on the other hand, man was IN the Garden. The Bible reveals it as a "garden within a garden." It is a world within a world, a universe within a universe. It is man himself in both a state of being and an environment – the two corresponding.
This great truth of man's STATE OF BEING constituting the Garden of God is one of the tremendous themes which courses its way like a mighty river through the scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation. Consider now how great are the words of the prophet: "For the Lord shall comfort Zion: He will comfort all her waste places; and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the Garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody" (Isa. 51:3). Of course you know that apples cannot sing, grapes cannot show forth gladness, nor can orange trees rejoice in the Lord! He is talking here about His people, a people that are being comforted while in a wilderness state as waste places, and eventually brought back to a life or state of being known as EDEN, the GARDEN OF THE LORD.
Again Isaiah prophesied, saying, "Now will I sing to my well beloved a song of my beloved touching His Vineyard. My well beloved hath a Vineyard in a very fruitful hill: and He fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it... and He looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem... judge, I pray you, betwix Me and My Vineyard. What could have been done more to My Vineyard, that I have not done to it? And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to My Vineyard... I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briars and thorns... for the Vineyard of the Lord IS THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL, AND THE MEN OF JUDAH HIS PLEASANT PLANT" (Isa. 5:1-7). And yet again, in mercy, the Lord comforts His people, declaring, "The Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be A WATERED GARDEN, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not" (Isa 58:11).
When the Lord declares that HIS PEOPLE is His Vineyard and His Garden we should understand that His purposes are the same now as they were in the beginning when He placed man IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN TO DRESS IT AND TO KEEP IT. In the scriptures the Garden of God always represents the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. The thought is not only of the Lord's great Garden; but the life of every child of God is a garden within God's Garden. And what a Garden it was! in that long ago beginning when man stood in the holy and beautiful environment of the presence and glory of God. “And the Lord planted a Garden,” which does not mean He laid it out like an Italian garden with borders and walks and fountains, flourishing with foliage, blossoms, fragrance and fruit.
He planted it. I dare take that word and express it another way. He packed it with potentiality. And all human history has come out of that Garden. Moscow, Calcutta, Cairo, New York, and San Francisco have all come out of that Garden. God put man in the Garden, the most favored environment and state of being in the whole earth, and what had he to do? DRESS IT AND KEEP IT. He was to keep it, to guard it, to prune and work it, that it might bring forth much fruit. God took one man by the hand, the offspring of God, to be of the Kingdom of God on earth.
In the beginning Adam failed to dress and keep the garden of his own soul, and what a pitiful thing it is to see that men through the long millenniums since that day have also wretchedly failed and the world has endured a long night of sorrow and pain. The Shulamite, in the Song of Solomon, at the outset of her relationship with her Beloved confessed her own neglect, saying, "They made me keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept" (S. of S. 1:6). Though the Lord may let us tend a portion of His great Vineyard, though He may let us minister to other souls in different ways, there is a part of the Vineyard of the Lord which He actually gives to each one of us; and that is the vineyard of our own lives.
He would have us care for and guard our heart above all that we treasure and protect, for out of it are the issues of life. It is this hidden place of our innermost being that must be watched and tended more than all that appears on the outside. We cannot judge the condition within, by the exterior; for many times, the outward appearance is either better or worse than appears before the face of God. We must guard and protect the roots and hidden fibers of our beings, our thoughts, our impulses, our desires. Adam was a son of God (Lk. 3:38) and was placed in the garden of Eden to dress and to keep it. Can we not see by this that all who would be sons of God must put away everything that is not of God that is hidden and unseen, as zealously as we put away the defects that appear on the outside, which humble us when they are seen by others?
Ray Prinzing has beautifully expressed it this way: In our daily overcoming, it is not a going out to fight other spirits, but TO KEEP OUR OWN SPIRIT PURE AND CLEAN. There are so many things these days to stir up and agitate our spirit, until it becomes defiled, unless we place that guard over against the things without – and seek to maintain a meek and quiet spirit before the Lord. The whole teaching of God is, “My little children, KEEP YOURSELVES…” You are the area that is under attack by the enemy because God has purposed that you shall be an overcomer. We are right back to the beginning instruction of the Lord – Genesis 2:15, “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and TO KEEP (guard) it.” Your spirit has been placed into an earthen vessel, and your first charge is to keep that vessel pure unto the Lord, to be “meet for the Master’s use.” And we need to beware lest anything come in that would defile. Thank God, we do not fight this battle alone, but “GREATER IS HE THAT IS WITHIN YOU,” who shall become our strength, our shield, our victory. Paul gave clear instruction to Timothy (2 Tim. 1:14), “That good thing which was committed unto thee KEEP BY THE HOLY SPIRIT which dwelleth in us.” – end quote.
My brethren, if we cannot tend the garden of our own soul and life, we must not think that the Lord will entrust us with the oversight of greater gardens. How can a man rule over other men's souls, how can he judge angels, how can he rule the nations with a rod of iron, how can he exercise dominion over the vastness of universe, yea, how can he rule over ALL THINGS as God hath spoken – if he cannot rule his own spirit? "He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city" (Prov. 16:32). There are literally thousands of men and women running about over the face of the earth doing what they call "The work of the Lord," but it is distressing to see that the vast majority of them were never called nor commissioned by the Lord of the Vineyard in the first place. I am convinced that the first work in the Lord's Vineyard, which He entrusts to us and calls upon us to do, is to care for our own lives and to first partake of the fruit.
Vast multitudes who are caught up in the works of the religious institutional realm, often ignore their inner state of being. In our day every concerted effort is being made to occupy the minds and time and actions of the people of God so that they never concentrate on Christ or come to any real knowledge of Him. Their lives are so crammed and cluttered with the manifold programs of the church system that they will finally awake to the fearful knowledge that they do not know Him. How busy we were in that realm trimming all the vines around us, but our own inner nature was not dealt with. That is the condition that produces the tragedy of men and ministries like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert – and thousands of others less known. So it is not at all a strange phenomenon to find that hundreds, yea, thousands of men and women who truly desire to serve God, have over these past several years been drawn aside by Him, to the backside of the desert, as it were, while He now purges and purifies within. It has meant much bewilderment, frustration and perplexity, until they being to see that God IS more concerned with their own vineyard, to deepen and perfect HIS LIFE WITHIN THEM.
Paul Mueller has written: “The principle purpose which is uppermost in the mind of the Father at this time is the growth and coming to maturity of His chosen remnant. Every other purpose under heaven is secondary to this purpose during this exceptional time. Therefore, it is essential that all who are members of this Christ body, the sons of God, should concentrate on their own spiritual maturity. Strive not to do the religious works of man, but seek rather for the fullness of Christ in your own heart and life. There is no other purpose under heaven that can equal this grand and holy purpose of the Father. Put away all the desires and appetites of the world and of the flesh, and seek only to please the Lord. And if you really care for the masses of the world who know not God and His wonderful grace and mercy, then you will seek for His fullness in your life. If you have really heard the groans of a creation that is suffering under the burden of sin and shame, you will cease all your religious activity, which is really only the works of the flesh, and will follow hard after the Lord.
Let us seek to please God as Enoch did, and we will witness a glorious manifestation of His life that will set every captive free. God, in His great wisdom, has linked all of creation’s needs and travails with the glorious transformation of the bodies of the sons of God into bodies like unto Christ’s body. And it is quite possible that when this glorious transformation does occur, the stones, the trees, shrubs, and grass of the field, as well as all animals life, will lift their voices in praise to Him who has fulfilled His word and satisfied the inherent hope within every created thing” – end quote.
This story is told of a little boy who couldn’t play outside because it was raining. His father, who was trying to take an afternoon nap on the sofa, became annoyed, “Go to the other room, son; Daddy wants to sleep. Find something in there to play with.” “Like what?” “Anything,” snapped the father. “There isn’t anything,” replied the lad. Grabbing the newspaper, the man tore out a page with a large map of the world printed on it. With scissors he cut it into dozens of odd-shaped pieces like a puzzle. “There, see if you can put it together, and don’t bother me till you’re done.” The father settled down on the sofa thinking his problem was solved, but ten minutes later there was a tug on his shirt. “You can’t be done yet!” But there on the floor was the neatly constructed world. “How did you do it?” he asked. “Easy,” said the son. “A man’s picture was on the back, and when I got the man together right, the world was right.” Ah, yes – when God gets HIS MAN put together in the fullness of Christ all the problems of the world will simply fall into place! Let us not expend our energies trying to get the world straightened out and ordered aright in this hour. Let us give ourselves to apprehending that for which Jesus Christ has apprehended us – to grow up into a PERFECT MAN, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Then the whole creation will fall into place. Let us not sell creation short!
Israel of old was ordained by God to be a kingdom of priests unto God and unto all the nations of earth. But the men of Israel forgot the vineyard of their own souls and it became neglected, overgrown with thorns and thistles, with noxious weeds; the soil was rocky and unfertile. How easy it is to just lose ourselves in the flurry of activity commonly called "the Lord's work," and give our attention to everybody else, involving ourselves in their needs and problems, rather than facing up to OURSELVES. And while it is true, HIS LOVE AND LIFE flowing through us will give us compassion for others, with its various avenues of service, nevertheless there is a divine principle in the Kingdom of God – a PRIORITY established that we must first tend to our own vineyard. I do not hesitate to say that over the past few years there has been an increasing emphasis by the Holy Spirit, as a TRUMPET thundering out the message, declaring that God is not concerned with where we are GOING (heaven, golden streets, mansions etc.), but He is first interested in what we are BECOMING – OUR STATE OF BEING IN HIM, before all our doing. Is this not because the ministry of the sons of God, soon to arise, shall be a ministry out of BEING, rather than out of GIFTS?
A "gift" will function through the most unclean of vessels; the Corinthians were a classic example of this, and we see abundant evidence of this fact all around us in the religious activity going on; but the holy sons of God SHALL BE LIKE HIM and shall rule and reign out of that incorruptible STATE OF BEING, and then, and only then, shall there be a reign so glorious and life-giving that every enemy shall be subjected and even death itself shall be swallowed up in victory throughout all God's creation! This goes hard on all those involved in man's program, and I suppose all the arguments and persuasions in the world will not awaken Christians to the fact that the vast majority of the activities of the church today are but the works of MEN, but I can assure you that when men stop long enough to quiet themselves BEFORE THE LORD, He inevitably turns their attention from "works" into our BECOMING what He want us to BE.
The blessed age to come shall be governed by those saints who have become OVERCOMERS, who have arrived at maturity of sonship, who have come to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Not those who tend the Father's Vineyard negligently, shall be in this company; not those who pamper their flesh and let it overrun their lives, shall be in this company; not those who examine their vineyards only now and then shall appear on Zion's Holy Hill; it is those who dwell in their gardens and tend them day and night, those who ever keep them before their eyes, that shall be well-pleasing to the Owner of the Vineyard and shall be given dominion over all things. You can count on it!
Echoes From Eden Part XIII by J. Preston Eby
"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed... to DRESS IT AND KEEP IT" (Gen. 2:7-8,15).
As we have noted in a previous study, the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden is the greatest parable in the Bible. It is supremely important because it explains the real nature of our life here on earth. It tells us about ourselves, about our state of being, and how we bring about the conditions in which we live. It is the textbook on spiritual and psychological anatomy. It is the blueprint of man's experience on earth and his destiny in God. When you thoroughly understand the Garden of Eden you will understand the nature of God, the nature of man, and the nature of satan. This parable is placed almost at the beginning of the Bible because it is the foundation upon which the whole Bible is built; and all the rest of the Bible, to the end of Revelation, assumes an understanding of the Garden of Eden. Indeed, there is only one Bible section before it, and that is the basic first chapter which gives the fundamentals of the creative processes of God.
The book of Genesis begins with man in the blessedness of the garden of Eden, and ends with a man "in a coffin in Egypt" (Gen. 50:26). The Bible, however, opens with man in Eden's fair garden and ends with man, the temple and habitation of God, in that blest Paradise, the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. Before our eyes can see the glory of God, they must become blind to all things that only seem to be. Before our ears can hear the voice of God, they must become deaf to every earthly voice that clamors for our attention. Before our minds can embrace the depth of eternal wisdom we shall have to strip ourselves of the shallowness of human wisdom and all the limited surface understanding and darkness of the carnal mind.
When we come to the Garden of Eden it is evident that this is more than merely a piece of real estate over in the Middle East. No such place has ever been found, neither the angel with the flaming sword to keep men out. The Garden of God is not a physical place located on this or any other planet. It is a STATE OF BEING. It is a higher existence for man than this cursed state we find ourselves in from birth. It is the state of being that man was in when he was first brought forth from the hand of God and placed upon earth. It represents man in the presence of God, man walking in fellowship with God, man living above sin, sickness, fear and death, man as master over all things!
Blessed realities, one and all. The Garden, however, also represents man together with all the factors and conditions, both external and internal, of environment and nature, which were to ultimately lead to his ruin and alienation from God. On the one hand, man WAS the Garden, while on the other hand, man was IN the Garden. The Bible reveals it as a "garden within a garden." It is a world within a world, a universe within a universe. It is man himself in both a state of being and an environment – the two corresponding.
This great truth of man's STATE OF BEING constituting the Garden of God is one of the tremendous themes which courses its way like a mighty river through the scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation. Consider now how great are the words of the prophet: "For the Lord shall comfort Zion: He will comfort all her waste places; and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the Garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody" (Isa. 51:3). Of course you know that apples cannot sing, grapes cannot show forth gladness, nor can orange trees rejoice in the Lord! He is talking here about His people, a people that are being comforted while in a wilderness state as waste places, and eventually brought back to a life or state of being known as EDEN, the GARDEN OF THE LORD.
Again Isaiah prophesied, saying, "Now will I sing to my well beloved a song of my beloved touching His Vineyard. My well beloved hath a Vineyard in a very fruitful hill: and He fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it... and He looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem... judge, I pray you, betwix Me and My Vineyard. What could have been done more to My Vineyard, that I have not done to it? And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to My Vineyard... I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briars and thorns... for the Vineyard of the Lord IS THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL, AND THE MEN OF JUDAH HIS PLEASANT PLANT" (Isa. 5:1-7). And yet again, in mercy, the Lord comforts His people, declaring, "The Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be A WATERED GARDEN, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not" (Isa 58:11).
When the Lord declares that HIS PEOPLE is His Vineyard and His Garden we should understand that His purposes are the same now as they were in the beginning when He placed man IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN TO DRESS IT AND TO KEEP IT. In the scriptures the Garden of God always represents the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. The thought is not only of the Lord's great Garden; but the life of every child of God is a garden within God's Garden. And what a Garden it was! in that long ago beginning when man stood in the holy and beautiful environment of the presence and glory of God. “And the Lord planted a Garden,” which does not mean He laid it out like an Italian garden with borders and walks and fountains, flourishing with foliage, blossoms, fragrance and fruit.
He planted it. I dare take that word and express it another way. He packed it with potentiality. And all human history has come out of that Garden. Moscow, Calcutta, Cairo, New York, and San Francisco have all come out of that Garden. God put man in the Garden, the most favored environment and state of being in the whole earth, and what had he to do? DRESS IT AND KEEP IT. He was to keep it, to guard it, to prune and work it, that it might bring forth much fruit. God took one man by the hand, the offspring of God, to be of the Kingdom of God on earth.
In the beginning Adam failed to dress and keep the garden of his own soul, and what a pitiful thing it is to see that men through the long millenniums since that day have also wretchedly failed and the world has endured a long night of sorrow and pain. The Shulamite, in the Song of Solomon, at the outset of her relationship with her Beloved confessed her own neglect, saying, "They made me keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept" (S. of S. 1:6). Though the Lord may let us tend a portion of His great Vineyard, though He may let us minister to other souls in different ways, there is a part of the Vineyard of the Lord which He actually gives to each one of us; and that is the vineyard of our own lives.
He would have us care for and guard our heart above all that we treasure and protect, for out of it are the issues of life. It is this hidden place of our innermost being that must be watched and tended more than all that appears on the outside. We cannot judge the condition within, by the exterior; for many times, the outward appearance is either better or worse than appears before the face of God. We must guard and protect the roots and hidden fibers of our beings, our thoughts, our impulses, our desires. Adam was a son of God (Lk. 3:38) and was placed in the garden of Eden to dress and to keep it. Can we not see by this that all who would be sons of God must put away everything that is not of God that is hidden and unseen, as zealously as we put away the defects that appear on the outside, which humble us when they are seen by others?
Ray Prinzing has beautifully expressed it this way: In our daily overcoming, it is not a going out to fight other spirits, but TO KEEP OUR OWN SPIRIT PURE AND CLEAN. There are so many things these days to stir up and agitate our spirit, until it becomes defiled, unless we place that guard over against the things without – and seek to maintain a meek and quiet spirit before the Lord. The whole teaching of God is, “My little children, KEEP YOURSELVES…” You are the area that is under attack by the enemy because God has purposed that you shall be an overcomer. We are right back to the beginning instruction of the Lord – Genesis 2:15, “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and TO KEEP (guard) it.” Your spirit has been placed into an earthen vessel, and your first charge is to keep that vessel pure unto the Lord, to be “meet for the Master’s use.” And we need to beware lest anything come in that would defile. Thank God, we do not fight this battle alone, but “GREATER IS HE THAT IS WITHIN YOU,” who shall become our strength, our shield, our victory. Paul gave clear instruction to Timothy (2 Tim. 1:14), “That good thing which was committed unto thee KEEP BY THE HOLY SPIRIT which dwelleth in us.” – end quote.
My brethren, if we cannot tend the garden of our own soul and life, we must not think that the Lord will entrust us with the oversight of greater gardens. How can a man rule over other men's souls, how can he judge angels, how can he rule the nations with a rod of iron, how can he exercise dominion over the vastness of universe, yea, how can he rule over ALL THINGS as God hath spoken – if he cannot rule his own spirit? "He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city" (Prov. 16:32). There are literally thousands of men and women running about over the face of the earth doing what they call "The work of the Lord," but it is distressing to see that the vast majority of them were never called nor commissioned by the Lord of the Vineyard in the first place. I am convinced that the first work in the Lord's Vineyard, which He entrusts to us and calls upon us to do, is to care for our own lives and to first partake of the fruit.
Vast multitudes who are caught up in the works of the religious institutional realm, often ignore their inner state of being. In our day every concerted effort is being made to occupy the minds and time and actions of the people of God so that they never concentrate on Christ or come to any real knowledge of Him. Their lives are so crammed and cluttered with the manifold programs of the church system that they will finally awake to the fearful knowledge that they do not know Him. How busy we were in that realm trimming all the vines around us, but our own inner nature was not dealt with. That is the condition that produces the tragedy of men and ministries like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert – and thousands of others less known. So it is not at all a strange phenomenon to find that hundreds, yea, thousands of men and women who truly desire to serve God, have over these past several years been drawn aside by Him, to the backside of the desert, as it were, while He now purges and purifies within. It has meant much bewilderment, frustration and perplexity, until they being to see that God IS more concerned with their own vineyard, to deepen and perfect HIS LIFE WITHIN THEM.
Paul Mueller has written: “The principle purpose which is uppermost in the mind of the Father at this time is the growth and coming to maturity of His chosen remnant. Every other purpose under heaven is secondary to this purpose during this exceptional time. Therefore, it is essential that all who are members of this Christ body, the sons of God, should concentrate on their own spiritual maturity. Strive not to do the religious works of man, but seek rather for the fullness of Christ in your own heart and life. There is no other purpose under heaven that can equal this grand and holy purpose of the Father. Put away all the desires and appetites of the world and of the flesh, and seek only to please the Lord. And if you really care for the masses of the world who know not God and His wonderful grace and mercy, then you will seek for His fullness in your life. If you have really heard the groans of a creation that is suffering under the burden of sin and shame, you will cease all your religious activity, which is really only the works of the flesh, and will follow hard after the Lord.
Let us seek to please God as Enoch did, and we will witness a glorious manifestation of His life that will set every captive free. God, in His great wisdom, has linked all of creation’s needs and travails with the glorious transformation of the bodies of the sons of God into bodies like unto Christ’s body. And it is quite possible that when this glorious transformation does occur, the stones, the trees, shrubs, and grass of the field, as well as all animals life, will lift their voices in praise to Him who has fulfilled His word and satisfied the inherent hope within every created thing” – end quote.
This story is told of a little boy who couldn’t play outside because it was raining. His father, who was trying to take an afternoon nap on the sofa, became annoyed, “Go to the other room, son; Daddy wants to sleep. Find something in there to play with.” “Like what?” “Anything,” snapped the father. “There isn’t anything,” replied the lad. Grabbing the newspaper, the man tore out a page with a large map of the world printed on it. With scissors he cut it into dozens of odd-shaped pieces like a puzzle. “There, see if you can put it together, and don’t bother me till you’re done.” The father settled down on the sofa thinking his problem was solved, but ten minutes later there was a tug on his shirt. “You can’t be done yet!” But there on the floor was the neatly constructed world. “How did you do it?” he asked. “Easy,” said the son. “A man’s picture was on the back, and when I got the man together right, the world was right.” Ah, yes – when God gets HIS MAN put together in the fullness of Christ all the problems of the world will simply fall into place! Let us not expend our energies trying to get the world straightened out and ordered aright in this hour. Let us give ourselves to apprehending that for which Jesus Christ has apprehended us – to grow up into a PERFECT MAN, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Then the whole creation will fall into place. Let us not sell creation short!
Israel of old was ordained by God to be a kingdom of priests unto God and unto all the nations of earth. But the men of Israel forgot the vineyard of their own souls and it became neglected, overgrown with thorns and thistles, with noxious weeds; the soil was rocky and unfertile. How easy it is to just lose ourselves in the flurry of activity commonly called "the Lord's work," and give our attention to everybody else, involving ourselves in their needs and problems, rather than facing up to OURSELVES. And while it is true, HIS LOVE AND LIFE flowing through us will give us compassion for others, with its various avenues of service, nevertheless there is a divine principle in the Kingdom of God – a PRIORITY established that we must first tend to our own vineyard. I do not hesitate to say that over the past few years there has been an increasing emphasis by the Holy Spirit, as a TRUMPET thundering out the message, declaring that God is not concerned with where we are GOING (heaven, golden streets, mansions etc.), but He is first interested in what we are BECOMING – OUR STATE OF BEING IN HIM, before all our doing. Is this not because the ministry of the sons of God, soon to arise, shall be a ministry out of BEING, rather than out of GIFTS?
A "gift" will function through the most unclean of vessels; the Corinthians were a classic example of this, and we see abundant evidence of this fact all around us in the religious activity going on; but the holy sons of God SHALL BE LIKE HIM and shall rule and reign out of that incorruptible STATE OF BEING, and then, and only then, shall there be a reign so glorious and life-giving that every enemy shall be subjected and even death itself shall be swallowed up in victory throughout all God's creation! This goes hard on all those involved in man's program, and I suppose all the arguments and persuasions in the world will not awaken Christians to the fact that the vast majority of the activities of the church today are but the works of MEN, but I can assure you that when men stop long enough to quiet themselves BEFORE THE LORD, He inevitably turns their attention from "works" into our BECOMING what He want us to BE.
The blessed age to come shall be governed by those saints who have become OVERCOMERS, who have arrived at maturity of sonship, who have come to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Not those who tend the Father's Vineyard negligently, shall be in this company; not those who pamper their flesh and let it overrun their lives, shall be in this company; not those who examine their vineyards only now and then shall appear on Zion's Holy Hill; it is those who dwell in their gardens and tend them day and night, those who ever keep them before their eyes, that shall be well-pleasing to the Owner of the Vineyard and shall be given dominion over all things. You can count on it!
Echoes From Eden Part XIII by J. Preston Eby
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