By C. H. SPURGEON.
“Supposing Him to be the gardener.”—John xx. 15.
I WAS sitting about a fortnight ago in a very lovely garden, in the midst of all kinds of flowers blooming in delightful abundance all around. Screening myself from the heat of the sun under the overhanging boughs of an olive, I cast my eyes upon palms and bananas, roses and camellias, oranges and aloes, lavender and heliotrope. The garden was full of colour and beauty, perfume and fruitfulness. Surely the gardener, who had fashioned and who kept in order that lovely spot, deserved great commendation. So I thought, and then it came to me to meditate upon the church of God as a garden, and to suppose the Lord Jesus to be the gardener, and then to think of what would most assuredly happen if it were so. “Supposing Him to be the gardener,” my mind conceived of a paradise where all sweet things flourish and all evil things are rooted up. If an ordinary worker had produced such beauty as I then saw and enjoyed on earth, what beauty and glory must surely be brought forth “supposing Him to be the gardener”! You know the “Him” to whom we refer, the ever-blessed Son of God, whom Mary Magdalene mistook for the gardener. She was mistaken; but if we are under His Spirit’s teaching we shall not make a mistake if now we indulge in a quiet meditation upon our ever-blessed Lord, “supposing Him to be the gardener.”
This sermon is published by permission of the publishers, Marshall, Morgan & Scott, Paternoster Buildings, London, E.C., from whom Mr. Spurgeon’s sermons may still be had.—Editor.
It is not an unnatural supposition, surely; for if we may truly sing—
“We are a garden walled around,
Chosen and made peculiar ground.”
that enclosure needs a gardener. Are we not all the plants of His right hand planting? Do we not all need watering and tending by His constant and gracious care? He Himself says, “I am the true vine: my Father is the husbandman,” and that is one view of it; but we may also sing, with Isaiah, “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”—that is to say, He acted as gardener to it. The image is pregnant with suggestions and useful teaching.
In one of His own parables our Lord makes Himself to be the dresser of the vineyard. When the “certain man” came and saw the fig tree that brought forth no fruit, he said unto the dresser of his vineyard, “Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?” Who was it that intervened between that profitless tree and the axe, but our great Intercessor and Interposer? He it is who continually comes forward with, “Let it alone this year also till I shall dig about it, and dung it.” In this case He Himself takes the character of the vinedresser, and we are not wrong in “supposing Him to be the gardener.”
If we would be supported by a type, our Lord takes the name of “the Second Adam,” and the First Adam was a gardener. Behold, the Church is Christ’s Eden, watered by the river of life, and so fertilized that all manner of fruits are brought forth unto God; and He, our second Adam, walks in this spiritual Eden to dress it and to keep it; and so by a type we see that we are right in “supposing Him to be the gardener.” And so I sat me still, and indulged the suggested line of thought, which I hope may open many roads of meditation for your hearts also.
I. “Supposing Him to be the gardener,” we have here the key to many wonders in the garden of His church.
The first wonder is that there should be a church at all in the world; that there should be a garden blooming in the midst of this sterile waste. Upon a hard and flinty rock the Lord has made the Eden of His church to grow. How came it to be here—an oasis of life in a desert of death? How came there to be a people for God, separated, and sanctified, and consecrated, and ordained to bring forth fruit unto His name? Assuredly it could not have been so at all if the doing of it had been left to man. We understand its existence, “supposing Him to be the gardener,” but nothing else can account for it. The garden in which I sat was made on the bare face of the rock, and almost all the earth of which its terraces were composed had been brought up there, from the shore below, by hard labour. It was not by its own nature that the garden was found in such a place; but by skill and labour it had been formed: even so the church of God has had to be constructed by the Lord Jesus, who is the author as well as the perfecter of His garden. Painfully, with wounded hands, has He built each terrace, and fashioned each bed, and planted each plant. All the flowers have had to be watered with His bloody sweat, and watched by His tearful eyes: the nail-prints in His hands, and the wound in His side are the tokens of what it cost Him to make a new Paradise. He has given His life for the life of every plant that is in the garden, and not one of them had been there on any other theory than “supposing Him to be the gardener.”
Besides, there is another wonder. How comes the church of God to flourish in such a clime? This present evil world is very uncongenial to the growth of grace, and the church is not able by herself alone to resist the evil influences which surround her. The church contains within herself elements which tend to her own destruction, if left alone; even as the garden has present in its soil all the germs of a tangled thicket of weeds. How is it, then, that the church is a fair garden unto God, and there are sweet spices grown in its beds, and lovely flowers are gathered by the divine hand from its borders? Hear ye the word of the Lord, and learn the reason for the growth of His church below. “I, the Lord, do keep it: I will water it every moment; lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.” The reason for the existence of a spiritual people still in the midst of a godless and perverse generation can only be accounted for by “supposing Him to be the gardener.”
Another mystery is also cleared up by this supposition. The wonder is that ever you and I should have been placed among the plants of the Lord. Why are we allowed to grow in the garden of His grace? How is it that we have been kept there, and borne with in our barrenness, when He might long ago have said, “Cut it down: why cumbereth it the ground?” That we have not long ago been cut off as fruitless branches of the vine; that we are left still upon the stem, in the hope that we may ultimately bring forth fruit, is a great marvel. I know not how it is that we have been spared, except upon this ground—”supposing Him to be the gardener.” Surely the hoe has spared many of us simply and only because He who is meek and lowly in heart is the gardener.”
Dear friends, there is one mercy with regard to this church which I have often had to thank God for, namely, that evils should have been shut out for so long a time. During the period in which we have been together as pastor and people, we have enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity, going from strength to strength in the work of the Lord. I do not know how it is that we have been kept together in love, helped to abound in labour, and enabled to be firm in the faith, unless it be that special grace has watched over us. We are full of faults; we have nothing to boast of; and yet no church has been more divinely favoured. I cannot make it out except when I fall into “supposing Him to be the gardener.” I cannot trace our prosperity to the pastor, certainly; nor even to my beloved friends the elders and deacons, nor even to the best of you with your fervent love and holy zeal. I think it must be that Jesus has been the gardener. Yes, He has been with us, blessed be His name! Hence all this peace, and unity, and enthusiasm. May we never grieve Him so that He shall turn away from us; but rather let us entreat Him, saying, “Abide with us. Thou that dwellest in the gardens, let this be one of the gardens in which thou dost deign to dwell until the day break and the shadows flee away.”
II. Let your imaginations run along with mine while I say that “supposing Him to be the gardener” should be a spur to many duties.
One of the duties of a Christian is joy. That is a blessed religion which among its precepts commands men to be happy. When joy becomes a duty, who would wish to neglect it? Surely it must help every little plant to drink in the sunlight when it is whispered among the flowers that Jesus is the gardener. “Oh,” you say, “I am such a little plant; I do not grow well; I do not put forth so much leafage, nor are there so many flowers on me as on many round about me!” It is quite right that you should think little of yourself: perhaps to droop your head is a part of your beauty. In the Mentone garden right before me grew the orange and the aloe, and other fine and noticeable plants, but on a wall to my left grew common wallflowers and saxifrages, and tiny herbs such as we find on our own rocky places. Now, the gardener had cared for all of these, little as well as great. The smallest saxifrage could say, “He is my gardener just as surely as he is the gardener of the Gloire de Dijon or Maréchal Niel.” Oh, feeble child of God, the Lord taketh care of you! Oh, little plant, perhaps it is not yours to grow very fast; you may be a slow-growing shrub by nature, and you would not be healthy if you were to run to wood. Anyhow, be this your joy, you are in the garden of the Lord, and, “supposing Him to be the gardener,” He will make the best of you. You cannot be in better hands.
Another mystery is also cleared up by this supposition. praying for it. We ought whenever the Sabbath morning dawns to pray our Well-beloved to come into His garden and eat His pleasant fruits. All day long our cry should go up to Him, “O Lord, behold, and visit this vine, and the vineyard which Thy right hand hath planted.” We ought to agonize with Him that He would come and manifest Himself to us as He does not unto the world. For what is a garden if the gardener never comes near it? What is the difference between it and the wilderness, if he to whom it belongs never lifts up spade or pruning-hook upon it? So that it is our necessity that we have Christ with us, “supposing Him to be the gardener;” and it is our bliss that we have Christ walking between our beds and borders, watching every plant, training, tending, maturing all. “Supposing Him to be the gardener,” it is well; for from Him is our fruit found.
“Supposing Him to be the gardener,” there is another duty, and that is, let each one of us yield himself up entirely to Him. A plant does not know how it ought to be treated; it knows not when it should be watered or when it should be kept dry: a fruit-tree is no judge of when it needs to be pruned, or digged, or dunged. The wit and wisdom of the garden lieth not in the flowers and shrubs, but in the gardener. Now, then, if you and I are here to-day with any self-will and carnal judgment about us, let us seek to lay it all aside that we may be absolutely at our Lord’s disposal. “Supposing Him to be the gardener,” thou mayest well say, “Here, kind gardener, thy poor plant bows itself to thy hand; train me as thou wilt. I would neither have will, nor wish, nor wit, nor way; but I would be as nothing in thy hands: be to me my wisdom and my all.” Depend upon it, happiness lives next door to the spirit of complete acquiescence in the will of God, and it will be easy to exercise that perfect acquiescence when we suppose the Lord Jesus to be the gardener.
One more duty I would mention. “Supposing Him to be the gardener,” then let us bring forth fruit to Him. I believe that most of you do desire to glorify God; you feel a holy ambition to show forth His praises who has called you out of darkness into His marvellous light. You wish to bring others to Christ, because you yourselves have been brought to life and liberty in Him. Now, let this be a stimulus to your fruit-bearing, that Jesus is the gardener. Where you have brought forth a single cluster, bring forth a hundred. If Jesus is the gardener, and is to bear the blame or the honour of what we produce, then let us use up every drop of sap and strain every fibre, that, to the utmost of which our manhood is capable, we may produce a fair reward for our Lord’s travail. Surely we ought to do something worthy of such a Lord. Each little flower in the garden of the Lord should wear its brightest hues, and pour forth its rarest perfume, because Jesus cares for it. The best of all possible good should be yielded by every plant in our Father’s garden, supposing Jesus to be the gardener.
III. Thirdly, I have found in this supposition a relief from crushing responsibility.
One has a work given him of God to do, and if he does it rightly he cannot do it carelessly. The first thing when he wakes he asks, “How is the work prospering?” and the last thought at night is, “What can I do to fulfil my calling?” Sometimes the anxiety even troubles his dreams, and he sighs, “O Lord, send now prosperity!” How is the garden prospering which we are set to tend? Are we broken-hearted because nothing appears to flourish? It is a very blessed relief to an excess of care if we can fall into the habit of “supposing Him to be the gardener.” If Jesus be the Master and Lord in all things, it is not mine to keep all the church in order. I am not responsible for the growth of every Christian, nor for every backslider’s errors, nor for every professor’s faults of life. This burden must not lie on me so that I shall be crushed thereby. “Supposing Him to be the gardener,” then, the church enjoys a better oversight than mine, and all must go well in the long run. I beg you earnest workers, who are becoming depressed, to think this out a little. I pray you, bound your anxiety by the facts of the case. So you have a number of young people around you, and you are watching for their souls as they that must give account. This is well; but do not be worried and wearied; for, after all, the saving and the keeping of those souls is not in your hands, but it rests with One far more able than yourself. Just think that the Lord is the gardener.
I know it is so in matters of providence. A certain man of God in troublous times became quite unable to do his duty because he laid to heart so much the ills of the age; he became depressed and disturbed, and he went on board a vessel, intending to leave the country, which was getting into such a state that he could no longer endure it. Then one said to him, “Mr. Whitelock, are you the manager of the world?” No, he was not quite that. “Did not God get on pretty well with it before you were born, and don’t you think He will do very well with it when you are dead?” That reflection helped to relieve the good man’s mind, and he went back to do his duty. I want you thus to perceive the limit of your responsibility: you are not the gardener himself; you are only one of his boys, set to run on errands, or to do a bit of digging. The garden is well enough managed even though you are not head manager in it.
While this relieves us of anxiety it makes labour for Christ very sweet, because if the garden does not seem to repay us for our trouble we say to ourselves, “It is not my garden after all. ‘Supposing Him to be the gardener,’ I am quite willing to work on a barren piece of rock, or tie up an old withered bough, or dig a worthless sod; for, if it only pleases Jesus, the work is for that one sole reason profitable to the last degree.”
Then there is that succession in the garden which we cannot keep up. Plants will die down, and others must be put into their places or the garden will grow bare; but we know not where to find these fresh flowers. We say, “When yonder good man dies who will succeed him?” That is a question I have heard many a time, till I am rather weary of it. “Who is to follow such a man?” Let us wait till he is gone and needs following. Why sell the man’s coat when he can wear it himself? We are apt to think when this race of good brethren shall die out, that none will arise worthy to unloose the latchets of their shoes. Well, friend, I could suppose a great many things, but this morning my text is, “Supposing Him to be the gardener,” and on that supposition I expect that the Lord has other plants in reserve which you have not yet seen, and these will exactly fit into our places when they become empty, and the Lord will keep up the true apostolical succession till the day of His second advent.
IV. Fourthly, I want you to notice that this supposition will give you a deliverance from many gloomy fears.
I walked down the garden, and I saw a place where all the path was strewn with leaves and broken branches, and stones, and I saw the earth upon the flower-beds tossed about, and roots lying quite out of the ground: all was in disorder. Had a dog been amusing himself? or had a mischievous child been at work? No: in a minute or two I saw the gardener come back, and I perceived that he had been making all this disarrangement. He had been digging, and hacking, and mess-making; and all for the good of the garden. It may be it has happened to some of you that you have been a good deal clipped lately, and in your domestic affairs things have not been in so fair a state as you could have wished: it may be in the church we have seen ill weeds plucked up, and barren branches lopped, so that everything is en déshabille. Well, if the Lord has done it, our gloomy fears are idle. “Supposing Him to be the gardener,” all is well.
As I was talking this over with my friend, I said to him—”Supposing Him to be the gardener,” then the serpent will have a bad time of it. Supposing Adam to be the gardener, then the serpent gets in and has a chat with his wife, and mischief comes of it; but supposing Jesus to be the gardener, woe to thee, serpent: there is a blow for thy head within half a minute if thou dost but show thyself within the boundary. So, if we are afraid that the devil should get in among us, let us always in prayer entreat that there may be no space for the devil, because the Lord Jesus Christ fills all, and keeps out the adversary. I am sometimes troubled by the question—What if roots of bitterness should spring up among us to trouble us? Who is to prevent this? Only the Lord Jesus by His Spirit. He can keep out this evil, “supposing Him to be the gardener.” The root which beareth wormwood will grow but little where Jesus is. Dwell with us, Lord, as a church and people: by Thy Holy Spirit reside with us and in us, and never depart from us, and then no root of bitterness shall spring up to trouble us.
Then comes another fear. Suppose the living waters of God’s Spirit should not come to water the garden, what then? We cannot make them flow, for the Spirit is a sovereign, and He flows where He pleases. Ah, but the Spirit of God will be in our garden, “supposing our Lord to be the gardener.” He will “pour water on him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground.” But what if the sunlight of His love should not shine on the garden? if the fruits should never ripen, if there should be no peace, no joy in the Lord? That cannot happen “supposing Him to be the gardener;” for His face is the sun and His countenance scatters those health-giving beams, and nurturing warmth, and perfecting influences which are needful for maturing the saints in all the sweetness of grace to the glory of God. So, “supposing Him to be the gardener” I fling away my doubts and fears, and invite you who bear the church upon your heart to do the same.
V. Fifthly, here is a warning for the careless, “supposing Him to be the gardener.”
Many are to the church what weeds are to a garden. They are not planted by God; they are bringing forth no fruit to His glory. My dear friend, I have tried often to get at you, to impress you, but I cannot. Take heed; for one of these days, “supposing Him to be the gardener,” He will reach you, and you shall know what that word meaneth, “Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up.” Take heed to yourselves, I pray.
Others among us are like the branches of the vine which bear no fruit. We have often spoken very sharply to these, and yet we have not touched their consciences. Ah, but “supposing Him to be the gardener,” He will fulfil that sentence: “Every branch in me that beareth not fruit He taketh away.” He will get at you, if we cannot. Would God you would turn unto the Lord with full purpose of heart; so that instead of being a weed you might become a choice flower; that instead of a dry stick, you might be a fruit-bearing branch of the vine.
VI. Another set of thoughts may well arise as a quietus to those who complain, “supposing Him to be the gardener.”
Certain of us have been made to suffer much physical pain, which often bites into the spirits, and makes the heart to stoop: others have suffered heavy temporal losses, having had to endure privation, perhaps even to penury. Are you ready to complain against the Lord for all this? I pray you, do not so. Take the supposition of the text into your mind this morning. The Lord has been pruning you sharply, cutting off your best boughs, and you seem to be constantly tormented with the knife. Yes, but “supposing Him to be the gardener,” suppose that your loving Lord has wrought it all, that from His own hand all your grief has come, every cut, and gash, and slip: does not this alter the case? Hath not the Lord done it? Well, then, if it be so, put your finger to your lip and be quiet, until you are able from your heart to say, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, and blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Especially I speak to those who have suffered bereavement. I can hardly express to you how strange I feel at this moment when my sermon revives a memory so sweet dashed with such exceeding bitterness. I sat with my friend and secretary in that garden, and we were in perfect health, rejoicing in the goodness of the Lord. We returned home, and within five days I was smitten with disabling pain; and worse, far worse than that, he was called upon to lose his wife. We said to one another as we sat there reading the Word of God and meditating, “How happy we are! Dare we think of being so happy? Must it not speedily end?” I little thought I should have to say for him, “Alas, my brother, thou art brought very low, for the delight of thine eyes is taken from thee.” But here is our comfort: the Lord has done it. The best rose in the garden is gone. Who has taken it? The gardener. He planted it and watched over it, and now He has taken it. Does anybody weep because of that? No; everybody knows that it is right that He should come and gather the best in the garden. If you are sore troubled by the loss of your beloved, yet dry your grief by “supposing Him to be the gardener.” Beloved, remember the next time the Lord comes to your part of the garden, He will only gather His own flowers, and would you prevent His doing so even if you could?
VII. “Supposing Him to be the gardener,” then there is an outlook for the hopeful.
“Supposing Him to be the gardener,” then I expect to see in the garden the best possible prosperity: I expect to see the richest, rarest fruit, daily presented to the great Owner of the garden. Let us expect that in this church, and pray for it. Oh, if we have but faith we shall see great things from the work of Christ by His Spirit in the midst of His people’s hearts, and we shall not be disappointed.
“Supposing Him to be the gardener,” we may expect divine intercourse of unspeakable preciousness. Go back to Eden for a minute. When Adam was the gardener, what happened? The Lord God walked in the garden in the cool of the day. But “supposing Him to be the gardener,” then we shall have the Lord God dwelling among us, and revealing Himself in all the glory of His power, and the plenitude of His Fatherly heart; making us to know Him, that we may be filled with all the fulness of God. What joy is this!
One other thought. “Supposing Him to be the gardener,” then I expect He will remove the whole of the garden upward with Himself to fairer skies; for He rose, and His people must rise with Him. Oh, the glory we shall then enjoy up yonder, on the hill of spices in the garden of God; and how shall you and I grow therein. developing beyond imagination. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.” Since He is the author and finisher of our faith, to what perfection will He conduct us, and to what glory will He bring us! Oh, to be found in Him! God grant we may be! To be plants in His garden, “supposing Him to be the gardener,” is all the heaven we can desire.