“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field…” 1Cor3:6-9
Our hearts are the field, garden, soil where God plants His seed.
The seed is Jesus the Word of God. God expects a harvest of the seed, not a harvest of the soil. What God wants is for Christ the seed to grow in our hearts unto a harvest of Christ and not us growing unto a harvest of us. God wants Christ reproduced and multiplied in many.
The harvest is not souls, the harvest is Jesus reproduced in many unto the glory of God.
Over and over again throughout the scriptures we see God using the picture of a garden or a field or a tree in reference to man. In 1Cor3:9 we are referred to as ‘God’s husbandry’.
This word ‘husbandry’ (geōrgion) means a cultivated field, tillage, a farm, cultivable land or more precisely a garden. This more than anything is a picture of purpose and of destiny. By it we see what God’s intention is in us and how He will go about it.
The creation story in the beginning chapters of Genesis is filled with the language of increase and of purpose and of identity. It is filled with the concept of seed and harvest. God speaks His Word (the seed) into the earth (the ground) and from the earth (the ground) comes the whole of creation (the fruit).
He then implants into whatever He creates the ability to reproduce (increase) itself according to its kind by having seed within itself which will bring forth a harvest of that kind. Moreover He places all of this in a particular garden which we know as the Garden of Eden.
In Genesis chapter one alone the word seed is used 6 times, the word kind (as in of same nature) 10 times, the word yielding (as in reproduction) 5 times. It is clear that God intends to plant a seed, to have that seed reproduce of the same kind and to have that seed multiply and fill the earth. He then makes Adam (the word Adam means man) in His own image and places him in the garden and commands him in a certain way;
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 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 moveth upon the earth.” Gen1:27-28
What we need to grasp is that all of these are types and shadows. They are God’s way of illustrating His plan and purpose to us through natural things that we could understand. They weren’t the real deal. They were just images. Yes they existed, yes they happened, but they were earthly shadows of a heavenly reality. The substance was yet to come.
God’s intention from the beginning of creation was to have Jesus (The Word) reproduced and multiplied in the earth through man being fruitful, multiplying and having dominion in the garden and extending the garden to the whole earth. The Garden of Eden represents man and Adam (the first man) represents Jesus (the second Adam the last man 1Cor15:45-48).
God intends for Jesus (The Word) to fill, multiply, replenish, subdue and have dominion in man as the man also subdues and has dominion in the earth to the glory of God. God’s intention for establishing us as His garden or field is so that He can plant His Seed in us, have a crop growing in us and receive a harvest of that Seed.
A garden is not a garden unless there is seed being planted in it, crop growing in it and a harvest coming out of that crop. Without these it is just land. Without these three the garden is not fulfilling its purpose. This is God’s purpose for us, to be God’s garden, His field. We need to understand that we are not functioning properly until we are functioning as the field of God, the garden of God, His husbandry.
“Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.” Jer17:7-8
“And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.” Isa58:11
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