Genesis 3:8-13

Hey friends, thanks for joining us today.
We are glad to be with you,
although I’m not actually with you,
but it’s good to be able
to have this study and thank you for being back with us as we continue through this
chapter three, the false story.
And as we join the story today,
we have the man and the woman who have
both committed disobedience.
They have introduced the idea of shame.
They were ashamed.
They covered themselves.
Their eyes were open.
But what they see is not fulfillment and wisdom that they had hoped.
They see now the flaws in one another.
They see embarrassment.
They see shame.
And so this idea of covering themselves
extends.
As we jump in here at verse eight,
not only is there a separation from one another,
that now continues and it even extends to God.
So verse eight here,
they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the
time of the evening breeze and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence
of God among the trees of the garden.
And the Lord God called to the man
and said to him,
“Where are you?”
So the obvious and quick
impact of their disobedience is that there’s now fear.
They’re afraid of God.
They now experience a
temptation,
a desire to hide from God,
to put themselves not front
and center in this creation,
but to use the creation,
to use the very garden that’s been
given to them to hide themselves from God because they’re embarrassed,
they are ashamed, and potentially they’re afraid.
Yeah.
So we get the sense that there has been an ongoing kind of relationship with God,
that God’s walking through the garden at the time of the evening breeze,
doesn’t say so, but
we get this sense that there has been communion and fellowship,
that God is doing this thing
once again and that there’s this connectivity to the creator of all things.
And this, as Clint is saying, is obviously disruptive.
We have this idea that they are now using the very thing that was before an instrument of God’s provision,
this very garden that they’re going to live in,
is now a tool that
the man and the woman are using in order to curb this decision that’s been made that
they now have come to a different spiritual place,
that they now see a thing that they
didn’t see that was true,
but yet now it has a meaning for them that they are wrestling
with it, that they don’t really truly know what to do with.
And so instead of running to the one who they have a relationship,
they’re running away from, they’re hiding from it.
And this sets up this theme of shame,
this theme of self-protection that we see now throughout
the rest of the scriptures.
This is, of course, chapter three, so we haven’t had a lot before this,
but this is new.
We’ve not had this before.
This is a new kind of experience that we’re discovering because of this choice,
and it’s going to have significant ramifications throughout the rest of the story.
Right, and then God asks the question,
“Where are you?” Which is not a question of
God not knowing,
it’s a relational question.
Why are you not here?
Why is it that I have to look for you?
Why aren’t you in front?
Where have you gone?
But it shouldn’t be thought that God doesn’t know.
It’s not ignorance on God’s part.
This is a reflection that something has changed,
and God now questions him.
And in verse 10,
we hear the response,
“I heard the sound of you in the garden,
and I was afraid because I was naked,
and I hid myself.”
So this one, I think, is important.
In the Hebrew, which is a rougher language,
“I heard,
I was afraid,
I was naked,
I hid.”
So there are these actions,
these things that the man has done that walks you through the verse.
“I heard God,
and there was fear,
and I was naked,
and so I hid myself.”
These are new realities in the garden.
These things have not existed.
Fear and shame and hiding come with disobedience.
They are the first instance,
the first inclination,
the first evidence that things have changed.
The relationship between man and God,
perhaps even man and woman,
as we saw earlier.
But things have now been damaged.
Things are now different than they were,
and we are going to see that extended throughout
the rest of this chapter.
Notice this interesting use of the word “sound”
here in this story,
because sound has already
played a substantial part in the creation story thus far,
where God speaks and things are.
So there’s this idea that the thing heard that has creative potential.
And here,
the very sound of God in the garden,
the voice of whom,
just moments before, had created all things,
right, is now an instrument that literally,
as we see here,
strikes fear in the heart of the created one.
And this is,
let’s not pass by this,
this is substantially divisive.
This is an amazing sort of
cut between the relationship of openness and vulnerability,
this idea that they were naked and that there was no shame in it,
is now completely severed.
So that the very sound of God walking in the garden, not God’s voice,
just God’s
actual presence in the created order,
is now a source of shame and anxiety and fear
for this man and the woman.
And this is a kind of schism that will have
the eternal kinds of implications.
It is the first shot,
the first symbol, the first image that we have in Scripture of how
substantial this separation from God actually is.
At the end of the day,
it forces us to reckon with the reality that that separation,
as we see, teased out in other places,
is in some ways final,
that some people find themselves unable
to be reconciled to the God walking in the garden.
And here we see this division set in place.
Yeah, and I think as we go through the rest of this story,
this is really the driving theme that
the creation has been altered,
that the man and the woman have been changed.
God is unchanged,
but God is affected.
This, especially when we get to a very strange part at the end of this chapter,
there is now tension and enmity between God and the created order in a way that was not intended and in a
way that was not
original.
And so it is in the man’s words that God knows that something has changed,
at least as the story is written.
So God responds,
“Who told you
that you were naked?
Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you to eat?” Again,
notice that God gets there with a question.
“Who said you were naked?
Why does that matter?
Why all of a sudden is that an issue?”
And then this is,
I think in some ways,
Michael, my favorite part of the story.
The man said, “The woman whom you gave me to be with me,
she gave me the fruit from the tree,
and I ate.”
And just as we saw in yesterday’s study that there’s really no hesitation,
there’s really no blame in the story,
though it kind of comes in later in our tradition.
Adam is trying to avoid,
he’s like, “Well, it’s not my fault.
She did it.
And not only she did it,
but the one you gave me.” So by implication,
this is almost,
not only is it not my fault,
it’s almost God’s fault.
There’s just that little hint of accusation pointed back at God.
Make no mistake about it.
Sin,
as we see portrayed in this very Genesis story,
is one that we convince ourself we have no part in.
We have a substantial ability as humans to separate ourself from the things that makes us feel inadequate.
Here, Adam, having some sense that something has gone wrong,
clearly there’s an emotional
kind of spiritual response that’s happened on the other side.
The consequences are not fully known yet,
but it’s clear that now something has changed
in a real and important way.
What’s fascinating about that is that
Adam is now just seamlessly,
I mean, without even trying, is able to point the finger and say,
“Yeah, but here’s the why.
Here’s the reasoning.
Really,
this is how I got here.”
Today,
this is the de facto human response.
When we allow ourselves to give in to that inward turn, when we
pursue our own interest over God’s plan,
we find a way to justify it.
Well, if you just understood why,
then it would make sense.
It would be okay.
That’s the gut reaction that we have here.
And it’s interesting because Adam’s willing to pull anybody else down as quickly as he
to make himself feel like that reason is justified.
Right, and then it continues.
The Lord said to the woman,
“What is this that you have done?”
And the woman said,
“The serpent tricked me,
and I ate.” So this avoidance of accountability just rolls downhill.
The man says,
“It’s at least her fault,
possibly God.
It’s a little bit your fault.”
God says to the woman,
“What were you thinking?”
And she says, “Well, it’s the snake’s fault.
So nobody’s to blame in this whole deal.
And if you’ve ever worked with small children,
you see how that is.
How did a window get broken?
Well, it wasn’t anybody’s fault.
It just broke.
The idea that it’s just a big accident.
Nobody did anything wrong.
I do want you to notice,
particularly as we move from chapter three into chapter four,
notice the kind of escalation that happens in the aftermath of disobedience.
We start with some fear.
Then we go to hiding.
Now we go to blaming.
And as you read this story across a couple of these chapters,
there is this sense in which the snowball of human sinfulness is beginning to get traction.
It’s beginning to get bigger.
And I want,
particularly as we move into chapter four,
I want you to notice how those gates,
those flood gates burst wide open in the aftermath
of what seems like one small decision to disobey.
But what that brings with it is just an onslaught of another thing and another thing and another
thing.
And they do kind of escalate.
The way that the story tells it,
they kind of get worse.
Yeah, I’m taking us a little afield from the text itself,
but there is maybe a human temptation to think that the thing that we should be afraid of
is the questions,
but that’s not what we’re seeing in the story.
It’s not the questions that were asked.
It was the answers that Adam and Eve brought to those questions, right?
The serpent is crafty.
If you remember all the way back earlier this week,
the serpent is crafty.
Yes.
And asks a purposely misleading question granted,
but it’s not the question asking that is the problem.
It’s the fact that Adam and Eve fundamentally in the end didn’t trust God.
They didn’t trust that God had established this garden in the order of that,
this garden for their own benefit.
And so as they began to then sort of cascade down into this series of questions,
this is where we begin to see their choices have the implication
of sin.
The reason I’m making this distinction is there are some who believe that faith questions,
which are some very difficult questions for us to engage in life,
that they are dangerous places to go.
And I suppose they are.
By definition, anytime we ask something that is fundamental about
God’s presence or what God has done in our life or what we believe about that, that is substantial.
But I want to encourage you,
if you have doubts or if you have fears,
if you have anxiety,
God’s not particularly afraid of those questions.
God’s rather
responding to what is a demonstrated lack of trust.
Why did you eat of the thing?
Why did you do this thing that I told you not to do?
That is the thing that’s in play here.
It’s not the question asking that’s the problem.
It’s the responses that Adam and Eve give in the midst of it.
Right. And historically,
this has also been seen not as just a Garden of Eden story,
but a human story.
The idea that there is something in us that is rebellious.
There is something in us that gives up the perfection
of a relationship with God in this sanctified Garden.
The idea that we have this amazing,
incredible gift and a relationship with the one who has given it.
And yet,
we take the one out and chase the self in those instances.
We sometimes call this story the fall.
And we do that because it indicates that there is a fallenness in us.
There is something not wired right in us that will often choose the selfish path
instead of the better path and allow ourselves to be misled.
And in the aftermath of this story,
every other human story is one of fear,
is one of hiding,
is one of blaming,
is one of disobedience.
These are things now on this side of the Garden that are inherently part of being human.
Specifically,
we’ll see that next week in what God
sort of issues as the consequences for these decisions and these actions.
But just know that at this point,
what Adam and Eve experience is unfortunately
now going to become normative for the human family.
Yeah, and I’ve always been intrigued
and should really do more reading about this.
The fact that eating is a central part of this story has always intrigued me.
Because there’s something very fundamental.
Of course,
sustenance is essential for our physical life.
The idea that Adam and Eve take into themselves this fruit,
a thing that God designed and intended for their good,
becomes the thing that works to reveal a sickness that obviously existed from the inside.
They take in this thing,
but it’s not the thing that spoils them.
It’s not as if that fruit was spoiled and that it biologically caused sin to happen.
It was this lack of trust in God that fundamentally,
a few short questions could bring them to a place of questioning the one who made all
of all that scene,
the one who established a relationship with them in the Garden.
That is the thing that this taking
in is able to reveal.
I don’t want to read too much into that,
but there is a sense in which we ourselves
take in those things as well.
Those things that help us to reveal our lack of trust in God.
Later,
as God assigns work to the man and woman,
says that your work is going to be laborious in these different ways.
That very act of taking in is going to become even more difficult.
The lack of trust makes it harder to have the sustenance that you need.
And yet it was the very act of taking outside of God’s plan that has implications for it.
I wonder if there’s some lesson for us in beware of what you take,
because when you take it,
are you trusting God in it or are you taking it to your own detriment?
I think we should be careful of that in our own lives.
I think that’s good,
Michael, and I think that possibly even behind it, remember that
yesterday, we saw the woman
attracted to the tree,
attracted to the idea
that it was beneficial for making one wise.
And so in the pursuit of what she assumed to be wisdom,
she did something foolish.
In the idea that the man and woman would gain something,
they lost nearly everything
else.
And so this idea that when the focus became selfish,
whatever they pursued
cost them this
larger relationship with God.
Because instead of being grateful,
instead of being connected,
instead of being unashamed,
they pursued instead
a kind of selfish end that left them perhaps knowing more, but not better.
The things they learned are not things they needed to know,
not things they should have known.
And yet they end up in a place,
because of their sort of flawed intentions,
they end up in a place that is by far a downgrade from where they started.
And there’s something innately true in that for us.
When we chase most of the things that are shiny and hold our attention,
we almost inevitably find that they tend to lead us in the wrong direction.
Yeah, they tend to evaporate.
The thing that was once important tends to lose its importance.
And we discover that the one that we really ignore,
the one that we didn’t trust,
that we reached out to grab that thing was right all along.
But it’s always in hindsight that we discover that.
And that’s really maybe the great tragedy of sin,
is that it’s compelling until the moment that it’s not.
And then it’s foolishness, it’s rubbish,
it’s dumb.
And as Paul would say,
and that puts us,
I think, in a very beautiful illustration of that in today’s story.
One of the great invitations of Scripture is always to see ourselves
in the stories, in the characters.
And I think if we approach this with any humility,
we have to confess that we likely find ourselves at some level in the story of people
who have the thing they think they want put in front of them
and the struggle to be obedient in light of their selfishness,
in the light of what they think they gain and end up losing.
I think there is a lot of room to find ourselves in this story.
That’s a good last word for the week.
Friends, I hope you have a great weekend.
I look forward to seeing you for worship,
whether that be in person or online at 8.50 on Sunday.
And we’ll be back next week,
Monday, 2 o’clock Central Standard Time.
Have a good weekend.
Thanks, everybody.