The Garden Tomb

Rev Rodney A Gray

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 “At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden
a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of
Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.”
(John 19:41, 42)

I invite you to go with me to a garden. In this garden was a new tomb in which no one
had ever been laid, and they laid Jesus there. It had to be a new tomb because Scripture
said, “you will not let your holy one see decay” (Psalm 16:10). And it had to be the tomb
of a rich man, because Scripture said, “he was with the rich in his death” (Isaiah 53:9).
But why in a garden? The apostle John mentions earlier that the Lord Jesus often resorted
to a garden with his disciples. “When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with
his disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the which he entered, and
his disciples. And Judas also, who betrayed him, knew the place, for Jesus often resorted
there with his disciples.” Later, after Jesus was arrested, one of the servants of the high
priest challenged Peter saying, “Did I not see you in the garden with him?”(John 18:1, 2,
26). Luke says that Jesus went there “as was his custom” (Luke 22:39). We know that
Jesus was in control of everything that was involved in his sufferings and death. He was
not arrested or apprehended, but rather he handed himself over to sinners. We read, for
example, in Matthew 26:2 that “he said to his disciples, ‘You know that after two days is
the Passover, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.’ Then the chief
priests and the elders of the people assembled together…” “Then,” but not until then.
“Then,” on the feast day, as the Son of Man directed. “Then,” according to his purpose,
not theirs. He repeated many times that he wanted to fulfill the Scriptures. His goal in life
was to finish the work that the Father had given him to do (John 4:34; 17:4). He had
power to lay down his life and power to take it up again (John 10:18). He said that all the
Scriptures testified of him (John 5:39). All of these things being said, they laid the body
of Jesus in a tomb in a garden. Why?

To remind us that we all came from a garden.

“Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man
he had formed. And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground – trees
that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree
of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…The Lord God took the man and
put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God
commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not

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eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely
die’” (Genesis 2:8,9,15-17).

So human life began in a garden, a garden planted by God. This gives us our definition of
a garden. Gardens are planned, cultivated, and planted. They do not just happen. Gardens
do not occur naturally in the world, though sometimes we wish they did. The spectacular
Longwood Gardens near Philadelphia is an example of what this means. With over a
thousand acres and many hundreds of varieties of plants and flowers, it is still a work in
progress. In the passage quoted above the Greek translation of the Old Testament used the
word “paradise” – “the Paradise of Eden.” It is the word Jesus used when he said to the
dying man, “today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). The apostle Paul spoke
of a man, probably himself, who “was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible
things, things than man is not permitted to tell” (II Corinthians 12:4). A paradise is a
garden. It is an enclosed and protected place. Paradise is sacred space because God is
there and man is there in perfect communion. Such was the garden of God.

We also learn that someone must take care of a garden. This is where Adam came in. God
had created man to rule over the other creatures (Genesis 1:26). Adam’s dominion over
the rest of creation was not just a privilege of rank, but a responsibility. He had “to work
it and take care of it.” God’s garden was a place where there was work to do. It needed a
caretaker, and God entrusted the care of his garden to the man. So Adam was a king, but
also a gardener. He was the royal gardener. But of course we know what happened.
Genesis 3 tells the somber story of how Adam and Eve forfeited their right to this high
office through unbelief and sin.

“So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which
he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of
Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree
of life” (Genesis 3:23,24).

What a contrast! The sinner banished and barred from the garden of the Lord, but the
dying Savior of men assuring the sinner, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” That
thief on the cross was every sinner driven from the garden of God. “Just as sin entered the
world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men,
because all sinned…for the many died by the trespass of the one man…the judgment
followed the one sin and brought condemnation…by the trespass of the one man death
reigned through that one man…the result of one trespass was condemnation for all
men…through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners…” (Romans
5:12-19). What was it like to be turned out of the garden of God? What was it like to be
denied the peace and joy of walking with God in the cool of the day? What was it like to
first begin to feel what it means to be lost, to be perishing, to be separated from the life of

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God, to be dead in trespasses and sins, to wander in spiritual darkness? Our Savior was
buried in a garden, to remind us that we all came from a garden long ago.

To remind us that we all seem to be trying to find our way back to a garden.

Human beings have always sensed a longing for something lost. Consequently, we have
dreamed and contrived ways to recover it. Multitudes who hate God and the gospel are
nevertheless striving for some kind of ideal world. People want to talk to the animals and
have the animals talk to them. They want to hug the trees and have the trees hug them
back. They are concerned about the civil rights of plants and insects. They want to swim
with the dolphins, fly with the geese, and worship the earth. One reason for this is that we
are God’s creatures still living in God’s world. In a way we can think of the whole world
as a garden. We know that it is not the same as the Garden of Eden, and we are not the
same either. The Bible says that it is “groaning” and “in bondage to decay” (Romans
8:21,22). Sin has ruined us and it has defaced God’s garden. We are sinners, rebels, and
criminals in God’s world. We are like blind men trampling God’s garden under foot. We
are ignorant and foolish. We don’t care that we are God’s creatures in God’s world. But
still it is God’s world. Jesus spoke of a day when there will be a weeding out of God’s
world all that is sinful and evil. “The weeds,” he said, “are the sons of the evil one”
(Matthew 13:36-43). In the Bible, God never surrenders ownership of his world to
anyone. Even under the curse it is God’s world.

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which
you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you
care for him…You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything
under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the
fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas” (Psalm 8:3,4,6-8).

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm
19:1).

“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he
founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters” (Psalm 24:1,2).

Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener” (John 15:1). In another
place he asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? It is like a
mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden” (Luke 13:18,19). In a parallel
account of the same parable, Jesus said that the man planted the seed “in his field”
(Matthew 13:31). In the parables the field is the world, and God is the one who owns the
field. The world is in rebellion against God, but he has not relinquished ownership of it.
Even men who hate God have faint memories of a garden, and they try various schemes

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to create their version of heaven on earth – utopia, paradise, or an ideal world. All human
wisdom, religion, and philosophy is an attempt to find the way back to the garden. All
political, sociological, and psychological theories have at least this in common. Man
wants something better, and he thinks he can have it without God. Man in his sin is
determined to take the garden by storm and banish God from it.

The garden memory is kept alive in the Bible in the practice of Israel’s kings. They
maintained palace gardens. The story of Ahab’s acquisition of Naboth’s vineyard is
legendary. “Ahab said to Naboth, ‘Let me have your vineyard to use for a vegetable
garden (garden of herbs, KJV), since it is close to my palace’” (I Kings 21:2). Manasseh
and Amon, two of the worst kings in Judah, were both buried in the palace garden (II
Kings 21:18,26). “The king’s garden” was often mentioned as a well-known landmark (II
Kings 25:4; Jeremiah 39:4; 52:7; Nehemiah 3:15). Other earthly kings also had gardens.
Nebuchadnezzar constructed the famous “hanging gardens” of Babylon, considered one
of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The palace garden of the Persian kings is
mentioned in the Book of Esther (Esther 1:5; 7:7,8). This practice has been maintained
down to the present time. The palaces of kings, emperors, tyrants and monarchs all over
the world have gardens. Even our nation’s capital is arranged like a garden.

Why is this? Part of the reason is that kings have usually thought of themselves as earthly
representatives of the gods. Some of them even thought they were the gods. We know
that the kings of Israel were supposed to represent the true God in Israel. So kings have
always wanted people to think of them as somehow occupying the place of God. They
built and maintained elaborate gardens for this purpose. Gardens were not intended so
much for their own amusement and recreation. They were supposed to provide an object
lesson about the role of the king. The king is your guardian. He is the source of life and
blessing, and you must be loyal subjects in order to have that life and blessing. The king’s
garden symbolized perfection, protection, provision, productivity, peace, and prosperity,
all of which depended upon the king’s good pleasure.

The garden memory is also kept alive in the Bible by the garden as a metaphor of perfect
love. The Song of Solomon makes frequent use of this theme.

“You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride…You are a garden fountain, a well of
flowing water streaming down from Lebanon. Awake, north wind, and come, south wind!
Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread abroad. Let my lover come into his
garden and taste its choice fruits” (Song of Solomon 4:12-16).

God’s word teaches us that human love and marriage are designed to represent the
relationship that God intends for his people, the perfect and permanent covenant bond
between Christ and his bride. That relationship reminds us of how things used to be in the

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garden of God. The garden existence of Adam and Eve was a happy one as long as it was
a holy one. “The man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame” (Genesis
2:25). But ever since sin entered, man has found that nakedness brings shame. The
history of humanity has been the history of man’s attempts to find a way to be naked in
sin and have no shame. Human beings still have the faint memory of something that they
want to have restored to them, but on their own terms. But God our Creator has so made
us that we cannot have true happiness without true holiness. We cannot enjoy genuine
and complete relationships with our fellow creature without a genuine and complete
relationship with our Creator. Our Savior was buried in a garden tomb to show the world
that there is a way back to the garden of God.

To remind us that there is a way to live in a garden again.

This is how the prophets often spoke of the future of the people of God. They knew that
God would give them an everlasting kingdom that would never be destroyed (Daniel
2:44). They knew that God would make a new heavens and a new earth (Isaiah 65:17).
They knew that the knowledge of the Lord would cover the earth as the waters cover the
sea (Isaiah 11:9). They knew that God’s salvation would extend to the very ends of the
earth (Isaiah 49:6). But they also knew that the future for God’s people would be
something like a garden. The Paradise that had been lost would some day be restored.

“The Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he
will make her deserts like Eden (paradise), her wastelands like the garden (paradise) of
the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing”
(Isaiah 51:3).

“You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail” (Isaiah
58:11).

“For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the
Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations” (Isaiah
61:11).

“They will be like a well-watered garden, and they will sorrow no more” (Jeremiah
31:12).

“They will say, ‘This land that was laid waste has become like the garden of Eden’”
(Ezekiel 36:35).

What the prophets could only see dimly, the apostle John saw more vividly.

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“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had
passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her
husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is
with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be
with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no
more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’”
(Revelation 21:1-4).

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from
the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On
each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit
every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will
there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his
servants will serve him” (Revelation 22:1-3).

What did John see? He saw a city with a garden. He saw a city that is a garden. He saw a
King on his throne with his people gathered around him in the palace garden. And what
are they doing? They are joyfully serving their King, but they are also reigning as kings
forever and ever. What John saw and heard was Paradise restored. Jesus said, “To him
who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise
of God” (Revelation 2:7). The tree of life, the river watering the garden, the abundance of
fruit, the absence of the curse, and the presence of God among his people all speak of the
garden of Eden. In John’s vision, the lost garden has been found.

Now go back with me to that garden tomb. There is something different about it. Mary
Magdalene has found that the stone has been removed from the entrance. She reported
the news to the disciples: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know
where they have put him!” (John 20:2). Peter and John ran to the tomb, went in, and saw
the burial wrappings.

“Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As
she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where
Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, ‘Woman,
why are you crying?’ ‘They have taken my Lord away,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know where
they have put him.’ At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did
not realize that it was Jesus. ‘Woman,’ he said, ‘why are you crying? Who is it you are
looking for?’ Thinking he was the gardener…” (John 20:10-15).

What thoughts do you suppose were passing through John’s mind as he wrote, “Thinking
he was the gardener…?” If you were there, do you think you might have detected just a

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glimpse of a smile? The beloved disciple must have known that it was not by chance that
Jesus was buried in a garden tomb. And he knew that Mary was more right than she
realized, because Jesus was the gardener. He was the new caretaker of the garden of God.
John knew that Jesus was the Son of God who came into the world to destroy the devil’s
work (I John 3:8). He knew that Jesus came to make all things new (II Corinthians 5:17).
Jesus had to be buried in a garden in order to rise from the dead in a garden. Jesus knew
that momentous events were decided in a garden long ago. Just as what happened in the
first garden had repercussions for all mankind and all human history, so did what
happened in this garden. In the first garden, the first Adam plunged the entire race into
sin, misery and ruin. But in this garden, the last Adam reversed the curse and brought life,
holiness and happiness. “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (I
Corinthians 15:22).

“Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also
the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just
as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through
the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:18,19).

The garden of the Lord is a garden of life. There is a way, and it is the only way, into that
garden. It is through Jesus, who is the life. “I am the resurrection and the life. He who
believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will
never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25, 26).

What a terrible day it must have been when Adam and Eve were driven out of the garden.
It was done in haste, with a sense of great urgency, because they had no right to be there
any more. We might think that they went with nothing but the clothes on their backs,
provided by a merciful God to cover their shame. But the mercy of God is even greater
than that, because they took with them one more thing. When they were banished from
God’s garden, they went with God’s promise (Genesis 3:15). They went out with the
promise that some day someone who would be born of them would earn the right for
them to live in God’s garden again. That someone is Jesus, the gardener.
At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it
was Jesus. ‘Woman,’ he said, ‘why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?’
Thinking he was the gardener…

Pastor Rodney A. Gray

April, 2006