Word of Salvation – Vol. 35 No. 44 – November 1990

 

God’s Response

 

Sermon: by Rev. L. Douma on Genesis 3:11 (Part 2)

 

Last week we looked at the Bible’s answer to our question ‘Why?’  If God is so good and loving, why is there so much suffering and evil in the world?’  Genesis 3 gave the answer.  The problem is not God but mankind.  We as a human race have rebelled against our Maker.  Adam and Eve abused the freedom given to them and rejected God to be ‘God’ themselves.  And that rebellion has caused the breakdown in all our relationships.

In our study of Genesis 3 last week we centred on Eve and Adam and their attitude toward God.  That is their rebellion.  Today we will look at this passage from God’s point of view and His attitude toward man.  That is His love and mercy.

We take it up at Genesis 3:8.  The man and woman have rebelled by eating of the forbidden fruit.  Now God comes on the scene.  Cf.Genesis 3:8a ‘Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day.  Already here we see the love of God for his creatures.  He is God Almighty yet He takes time to come down to the level of His creatures and has fellowship with them.  This man and woman are special.  They are made in God’s own image.  They are made a little lower than God, to rule the creation on God’s behalf.  God loves Adam and Eve, and comes regularly to have fellowship in the evening.

It seems God took on human form, which shows how high man is in creation.  The Creator Himself would come, take on human form and talk with mankind in such a beautiful relationship.  It emphasizes how terrible Adam and Eve’s rebellion was.  They had it all.  They were a little lower than God.  And God loved them.  It also strikes us that God who knows everything knew what Adam and Even had done.  Yet He comes to them as usual ‘in the cool of the day’.  They rejected Him, but He has not rejected them.

How do Adam and Eve respond to the presence of God?  Cf. Genesis 3:8b.  ‘Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.’  Such is the tragedy of sin.  Once there was a relationship of trust and joy, of complete open fellowship.  But now the man and woman fear God.  They do not run to Him as His children.  They run from Him like scared animals, like the animals cringe from the hunter.  You see how sin and guilt wrecks a relationship.  We have seen it so often in our world, but it began here.  Talking with God was no longer their greatest delight but their greatest fear.

Such is the destructive power of guilt.  And sin also made them ignorant and unthinking.  Adam and Eve seem to forget that God knows all, sees all, and is everywhere.  They cannot possibly hide.  Such is the destructive force of sin.  Sin is not just about being bad.  It blinds our understanding, it causes ignorance and stupidity.  Adam and Eve’s state is such, that they cannot face God.

But what about God?  Does he want to see them?  These people guilty of treason and betrayal.  Cf. Genesis 3:9 ‘But the Lord God called out to the man “where are you?”  In that question we hear the loving voice of God that rings all the way through Scripture.  The love of God calls sinners to Himself.  ‘Adam, where are you?’  God knew where they were.  He knew what they had done.  But did they?  God was not searching for them.  He is asking a rhetorical question, to make the man and woman realise what they had done.  He is giving them an opening to confess.  It is a question of love.  God is showing an unwillingness to just let them go.  ‘Where are you?’

Notice as Adam replies to God’s calling cf. Genesis 3:10.  He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid’.  This is the first word of fallen man to his God.  And we see how it reveals the dreadful effect of sin on man.  For his answer is a mixture of half-truth, evasion and attempted deception.  The only true thing Adam says is that he was afraid.  But the reason he gives for his fear is not honest.  His conscience is screaming out that he disobeyed God.  But he says the half-truth that he was afraid because he was naked.  We can recognize the style.  We cannot openly confess our wrong to each other or God.  We so often subtly use half-truths to deceive.  We see it here as Adam tries to deceive God.

But God graciously pushes further to have Adam repent cf.  Genesis 3:11, ‘And he said who told you that you were naked?  Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?’

God puts two questions to the man.  The first takes away Adam’s half-truth that he feared God because he was naked.  Notice the reasoning: ‘who told you Adam?’ There is no one else, so you must have done something to make yourself aware of your nakedness.  What was it Adam?  In the second question God leads the man to a point where he cannot get out of honestly dealing with his wrong.  God lines him up ‘Did you eat of the tree?’  The man is now face to face with his God.  He cannot deceive God.  He has no defence.  The man who wanted to be God now stands as a shame faced culprit.

What does he do?  Will he confess and ask for forgiveness?  It is what God wants.  Cf Genesis 3:12, ‘The man said; the woman you put here with me she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it,’

We are inclined to say, what a shameful reply.  Except we are quick to recognize the response as typically ours.  Adam refuses to plainly admit his guilt.  Instead he puts the blame elsewhere on his wife and on God ‘the woman you gave me’.

It goes to prove that sin has caused a spiritual death.  We cannot relate to God and confess our sin unless the Spirit moves us.  Adam remains stubborn and blames others.  He will not admit his guilt.

But God continues on in His love.  He turns to Eve.  Cf. Genesis 3:13, ‘Then God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’’  This points to the magnitude of her wrong.  How is it possible when God loves so much, and made man and woman so high, that Eve could doubt His goodness?  How could she deliberately give her allegiance to someone else?

But Eve, like Adam, passes the buck.  Genesis 3:13b, The woman said: ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate’.  She also refuses to admit that she made a deliberate decision that she had thought through.  Sure, the serpent was very subtle.  His argument sounded convincing.  But she traded God’s Word, His truth, for a lie.  She could have said ‘Listen serpent, I don’t care how clever and right you sound.  I know what God has said and I trust him.’

We still have the same problem today.  We can be led up the garden path by all sorts of clever arguments in the fields of science, T.V., morals, peer pressure.  We can often go along with clever sounding ideas rather than saying, ‘Thus says the Lord’.  It is not a question of our ability to think.  Even though ignorance and laziness are the result of sin.  The main problem is our heart direction, our relation to God.  Eve followed the clever arguments because she had changed her allegiance, her heart direction.  But she will not admit it.  She hides behind ignorance: ‘The serpent deceived me.’

Can you see how God is striving to turn His children away from their allegiance to evil?  He wants them to come back to Him. He wants them to confess and receive His forgiveness.  But they will not.  So God, in His grace, Himself smashes their covenant with Satan.  He turned to the serpent and pronounces a curse and defeat.  Cf. Genesis 3:14 & 15, ‘So the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals.  You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.  And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head and you will strike his heel’.

The curse is in the terms of the serpent, but it is aimed at the real culprit, the devil.  He will be defeated.  The reference to ‘crawling on your belly and eating dust’ is an Old Testament terminology for someone in fear, totally defeated e.g. Micah 7:16 & 17, ‘nations will see and be ashamed, deprived of all their power.  They will lay their hands on their mouths and their ears will become deaf.  They will lick dust like a snake, like creatures that crawl on the ground.  They will come trembling out of their dens; they will turn in fear to the Lord our God and will be afraid of you.’ 

God tears apart the allegiance.  Satan will not get all mankind.  God will put a tension, a division, between mankind.  In all of history there will be struggle between those who serve God and those who follow Satan.  But in time God will crush Satan through the chosen one of His people namely through His own Son.  Satan will strike his heel’  That is, Jesus will suffer hell and die.  But the Christ will rise and bring forgiveness and life and crush Satan.

Such is the love of God.  Right here, at the beginning of man’s rebellion, God gives the promise of a Saviour.  The cause of all the world’s suffering and misery is our sin and its curse.  To suggest otherwise by the question of ‘why is there so much suffering if God is so loving?’ is really to do as Adam did.  It is an attempt to shift the blame on God.  That is: ‘You are God, you are sovereign, therefore you caused it’.  But despite our deceit and blame shifting, God keeps calling us in His love.  He has proven His love in giving His Son.  And now He is calling His own.  Where are you?

AMEN