HARVEST OF THE GARDEN OF THE LORD

Some say that Jesus cannot be found in the Old Testament, but everywhere any perceptive person looks, there he will find ‘Jesus,’ not by name, but the ‘Name.’

The first mention of ‘Jesus’ was with righteous Seth, “And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the Name of the Lord” (Gen 4:26). The Hebrew root word for Enos was ‘Incurable’ in the English. Implied therein is that the genetics of Seth was incurable, but in the “Name’ was the cure!

The ‘Name’ that was called upon was ‘Sem’ also written ‘Shem,’ meaning “to transform” (Strong 2006). The ‘Name’ was to transform Seth’s kind, hence they were the ‘sons of God,’ in a genetic sense — the ‘gens’ of the LORD GOD. The Latins used gens to describe their family line.

Of course, soon came Shem before the flood, but he would not be the ‘Name’ but the gens from which the ‘Name’ would come, according to the Abrahamic Covenant; hence Shemites were God’s “chosen and peculiar people” (Deut 14:2) from which Jesus was born, and Christians reborn.

Speaking of Christians Paul wrote, “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people…” (1 Pet 2:9). There you have it, the ‘Chosen One’ Jesus is identified with both Seth and Shem, and Jesus is the ‘Peculiar Man’ who came from the seed of Seth. Just as Seth’s progeny were the ‘sons of God,’ the Name, ‘Jesus’ is the ‘Son of God,’ not in a reproductive context but genetically.

Adam was to “multiply” As God commanded him, both the male Adam and the female of his kind:

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” (Gen 1:28)

 Multiplication is to increase Adam’s kind. His family tree would be binary in two respects; it would be genetically male and female but an exponential of two (binary) — 2⁰ =1; 2¹ = 2; 2²=4; 2³=8; 2⁴=16, 2⁵=32; 2ⁿ=infinity. Not only was Adam’s kind to be binary but their numbers would be infinite. That was the Abrahamic Covenant, to wit: “That in blessing I (God) will bless you, and in multiplying I will multiply your seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore…” (Gen 22:17). (Note that miscegenation, or intermarriage, usurps the binary function. Kit cuts off the infinite series.)

The LORD GOD had repeated the Adamic Covenant to Abraham, making it His covenant as well. Abraham was an ‘Adam’ in the sense that his seed was to multiply. From the seed of Abraham would come the Messiah, and the genesis of the Matthew chapter one accounts the seed of Abraham to Jesus. It is the fulfilment of the covenant, not just some boring list of names!

Adam was to have dominion over all the kinds, not just the fish and fowl, but every living thing. Adam was to have dominion even over angelic kind, but when he sinned, the dark angel, Lucifer thereafter would have dominion over Adam’s kind.

Although Seth was the ‘son of God, even Seth’s progeny would turn to sin and multiply sexually, having carnal knowledge with their new ‘lords’ – the ‘daughters of men’ of Cain’s seed. (Gen 6:4). Until Jesus, the ‘last Adam’ (1 Cor 15:45), Adam’s kind was as dead, but Jesus was the “quickening Spirit” that would save mankind.

All this background is to show that Jesus was the ‘Name’ in Hebrew doctrine, and His Name is most often called, the ‘Word’ (Gen 15:1). Abraham’s progeny spoke to him years before God conceived Him in the womb of Mary (John 1:1-14).

Christ is the Jewish ‘Messiah’ and his genetics are the thread from Adam to Jesus — the ‘last Adam.’ To deny Jesus is to deny both His Spirit and His genetics, also to refute the Abrahamic Covenant!

The Edenic Covenant was to bless with a blessing. God in a figurative sense, ‘kneeled’ to them (ibid). He came down to them and imbued them with His Holy Seed. He did the same with Seth’s seed in Enos.

All the patriarchs even though blessed, came short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23). Abraham did as well but the Testament of Abraham reveals that Abraham was regenned by God, and on the deathbed of Abraham, even Jacob (Israel) was comforted in Abraham’s Bosom.

Now, we come to today’s passages: 

³⁶ But when He (Jesus) saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. ³⁷ Then said He unto His disciples, “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; ³⁸ Pray you therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth labourers into His harvest. (Mat 9:36-38)

 God had planted a Garden in Eden — in the center of the world. Therein mankind was to grow and multiply. The intention was for Adam to grow the beings that God planted in the Garden. God would be the ‘quickening Spirit’ and Adam the ‘living soul’ that was planted. Adam was the ‘plant’ so to speak and God the life-giver and preserver.

When Jesus came into the world, he saw a scattered Garden of the human beings that were no more than lost sheep. (Quit thinking of the Garden as vegetation but beings of all sorts!)

Jesus had compassion on them. He shared His nature of compassion to engender them with like compassion. Jesus in a sense, corrected Adam’s ‘multitude’ with His genetics. The word, ‘multitude’ means much more than many, but people of different genetics.

They were the living souls that God planted in the Garden when He planted Adam therein, “The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed” (Gen 2:9); not that the Garden was eastward of anything, but before time as the Sun comes from the East. God planted the living soul in the Garden before the ‘Clock” — the Sun was made.

Now it was time for the harvest. God did the planting as the ‘Husbandman,’ Jesus was the ‘Vine’ or the family Tree of Life, but now it was time for the branches to produce good fruit (John 15:1-2).

That ‘compassion’ was virtue from the Spirit of Jesus. In a sense, Jesus took a knee to the souls that He had planted before time and quickened them. He took the dead spirit of the beings that He had planted and made them alive again.

Jesus came to replant the Garden that He had planted before time. He made it fruitful again and prepared it for his disciples to harvest the crop of God — the one He had planted from Adam’s seed back before time. “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first…” His compassion was not just for the people of right genetics but compassionate spirits — good will toward God and the multitudes, regardless of who they were or from whose seed they came!

If you are a Christian, your chore is the same as Adam’s — “to dress and keep it,” to plant and preserve the crop of Christians.

Judaism plans to do that, but at the moment, they are neither dressers nor keepers of the Garden of God. Christians do that. Jews cannot make you Judes, and neither can they make you Messianic. Only Jesus can make you chosen and peculiar people and only Christians can dress and keep the Garden.

One way of looking at the entire Bible is that it is all about the Garden of God and the harvest. Jews would, for a time, keep the Garden in the bosom of Abraham, but the harvest of the Garden is for those who Jesus provides to do the harvesting. The harvest is when Jesus comes for His ‘plants,’ “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first…” (1 Thes 4:16).

Not only is that the salvation of Adam’s kind but the harvest of the crop of living souls, even those who have died. (Note that the patriarchs had been resurrected as Jesus was after the crucifixion; Mat 27:53). They would rest alongside Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham, just awaiting the bosom, or genetics, of Christ.