The Fallout of the Fall

Well, there are some slight changes we have this morning as we consider

Genesis 3 together. I think what had originally been announced as three parts is now stretching into four.

Sort of the nature of the beast when we're looking at these massive foundational chapters at the beginning of the beginning of the

Bible. And so as we said last week, it's sort of like the Himalayan range and almost any passage from Genesis 1 -3 is this great mountaintop, this great peak.

And perhaps Genesis 3 .15 is Everest itself as far as Genesis is concerned.

So last week we considered part 1 verses 1 -6 and we talked about temptation and the fall.

And this morning with part 2, originally we're going to be looking at verses 7 -13.

I'll read 7 -13. But as I continue to work on things, it seems more and more disjointed.

And I realized toward the end the marital dysfunction of the fall would be a shoe -in.

And I'm assuming that not every marriage in this room is running on all cylinders and has completely alleviated the curse of the fall.

So if that's not you, it's at least me, which means we're going to be looking at that in more detail next week.

And then we'll close. So the nice thing is this is all of a rhythm.

There is a pattern here. We're looking at the consequences of the fall. And that begins here with verses 7 -9, but it continues.

It continues not only in Adam and Eve's relationship to God, which will be the focus today, but also in their relationship to each other, which we'll look at next week.

And then the ramifications begin to work through creation itself into human society, into their offspring, into the woodwork of creation itself, the fabric of creation, which, as Paul says in Romans 8, is groaning, groaning for this deliverance.

So the fallout of the fall. That's our focus here this morning, the fallout of the fall.

And I'll read beginning at verse 6. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and she ate.

She also gave to her husband with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked.

And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And they heard the sound of the

Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the

Lord God among the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called to Adam and said to him,

Where are you? So he said, I heard your voice in the garden.

And I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And he said, Who told you that you were naked?

Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat? Then the man said,

The woman who you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate. And the Lord God said to the woman,

What is this you've done? The woman said, The serpent deceived me and I ate.

We need to keep the significance of last week in view. Verse 6 is a very important shift in the passage.

Theologically, verse 6 marks the shift from the original righteousness that Adam and Eve had to original sin.

They go from an original righteousness which perfectly reflected the perfections of God to now original sin which stains and corrupts all of their offspring, all that are born into Adam.

As we said last week, prompted by our brother during interaction and summoning the spirit of R .C.

Sproul, we're not sinners because we sin. We sin because we're sinners.

In one little phrase, we saw original sin come about. She gave to him and he ate.

In that phrase is contained the fall of the entire human race, the misery of the entire cosmos, the plunging into the darkness of spirituality and physical death.

Drawing back to Romans 5 in verse 12, Paul says, Just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin and death spread to all men because all sin.

So we see it's in Adam that this responsibility and curse of the fall ultimately lies.

So as we're looking at this together this morning, we have to be reminded that the fall cannot be minimized.

It's non -negotiable. You cannot make sense of Christianity, much less the gospel, if you minimize the fall.

The fall is the starting point for the gospel. The fall is the starting point for the plot of the scriptures, the plot of human history, the plot of creation itself.

The fall presents to us the universal plight of mankind, the universal curse, the condition of which we find ourselves even this morning, and we cannot minimize this.

C .H. Spurgeon in his day, and you remember toward the end of his life, he faced what was called the downgrade controversy within his own denomination as sort of Victorian morality was making its way into the politeness of the pulpit, but then also the enlightenment confidence in reason.

It was beginning to downgrade doctrine, rationalize doctrine, atomize doctrine. And Spurgeon said, few preachers of religion thoroughly believe the doctrine of the fall, or else they think that when

Adam fell down, he broke his little finger instead of his neck and ruined his whole race.

That's the difference. We need to thoroughly believe the doctrine of the fall. We need to understand its implications.

Over the past few centuries, there's been a steady decline in this doctrine. And when you minimize the doctrine of the fall, you minimize what comes with it, what it grounds theologically, sin,

God's judgment, the finality of God's judgment in an everlasting punishment in hell.

All of this becomes watered down, compromised, minimized when you start to shift away or downplay the fall.

Without these vital realities, Christianity becomes moralism. The Old Testament would be read as a moralistic book.

Be like so -and -so, don't be like so -and -so. That's how the Old Testament is often preached because the beginning of the

Old Testament is downplayed. It's forgotten. The fall, the story of redemption that's now going to work through the history of Israel until the culmination of the true

Israel, Christ Himself. Christianity simply becomes a moralism without the fall, an ethical way to live.

Preaching or evangelizing becomes life coaching. If we minimize the fall, if this is not our problem, our plight, our condition, our curse, then the most

I can do in a sermon is life coach. Give you good advice to make you more successful and have your best life now.

Or if I can risk stepping on some toes, new day, new you. And of course the church becomes just a social club.

We become the rotary of the elves. We get together because it's good to get together.

We're made for community. We like good soup. We like to be around each other.

We become that instead of a spiritual body of a risen Savior who's overcome the very curse of the fall.

When you get the starting point wrong, you'll never get the end right. When you get the problem wrong, you'll never get the solution.

When you take away the fall and its universal implications upon humanity, you take with it the cross, the resurrection, and the gospel.

So what we're dealing with here is foundational. Genesis 3 is the basis for all that follows.

It is the single, indispensable explanation for the what, why, and how of the gospel.

Now as we consider these verses, we also have to be reminded that Adam and Eve had an experience and a relationship with God that we just simply cannot imagine.

I cannot recover it for you, nor can I recover it myself. It is perhaps impossible for us to imagine.

It would have been impossible for Cain and Abel and Seth to imagine just what Adam and Eve had, just what they lost.

I can imagine Adam and Eve spent many centuries in their lives with tears streaming down their cheeks trying to explain what it was like to dwell with God in the perfection of Eden as pure image bearers.

Words could not convey. They could not explain what true white was now that there was no longer true white.

There was only stains, only corruption, only defilement. We, ever since Genesis 3 verse 6, have always related to God in one way or another through the results of the fall.

There is no going back. The fall was an event in human history, a concrete event in human history, and human beings from thence to eternity will never relate to God apart from it.

Whether it's through redemption or judgment, we all relate to God through the effects of the fall.

When He brings redemption into our lives, what does that redemption come with? It comes with this yearning of the not yet.

It comes with this Roman 7 combat that we feel this spirit at war with the flesh.

And this is all coming out of the effects of the fall. It leads us to the cry that Paul cries, Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

Adam and Eve, up through Genesis 3 -5, knew nothing of that. They did not have a body of death.

They had a body of perfection, a body of life, bodies of harmony, bodies of glory.

Adam and Eve once dwelt perfectly with God as their Creator. And when they fell and plunged humanity into this fallen state as individuals, they retained that memory.

Surely sin distorted it, but there was some nostalgia of the experience of the holy.

That, I think, is the greatest tragedy of all. Some of us are haunted by certain memories.

Can you imagine a life lived with that fateful day in Genesis 3 -6?

The haunting that they had thrown away the perfections of dwelling with God.

And now had been barred from His presence in Edom. The horror of what they had lost.

The horror of seeing their decision now played out ad nauseum in their offspring. It is impossible for us, post fall, to fully appreciate the glory that was lost.

Or to fully comprehend the horrible rush of filth that took its place. Mind became darkened.

Affections became rogue. And this builds and it builds and it builds and we come to Genesis 6 -5 and we read, the imaginations and thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually.

That's the effect of the fall. Prior to this point, the imaginations and thoughts of man's heart was only purity and godliness and righteousness and holiness.

And within three chapters, the continuous train of thoughts of humanity is only evil.

And God despairs that He makes man. This is all the fallout of the fall.

And we're only going to look at two aspects of it this morning as we really look at the way the fall impacted

God's relationship to man. This happened a long time ago.

And yet it's the reality that's lived out before us and in us day by day.

This very reality, this fallen condition, time has not abated it.

Cultures, unfolding events in history, all the very differences of humanity in the world have not ebbed away at all from this cursed condition.

These dynamics are as true today as they were the very moment Adam and Eve fell, as we'll see.

So what's the fallout of the fall? What's the first fallout? The first thing we'll consider. The first thing we begin with in verse 7 is shame.

Shame and an attempt to cover. Shame and an attempt at self -covering.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

Genesis 2 .25 is important here because it tells us that before the fall they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed.

So in the perfection of Eden, in this very, I think, figurative language, though it was physically real, they were truly naked.

But there's a theological, spiritual significance to that. And it becomes a very important metaphor as we continue on in Scripture.

So it's deeply theological in what it's saying here. They were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed.

At first glance, this seems to be a picture of marital intimacy. And you could make a good case for that.

It's in the context of marriage. The famous quote about marriage in 2 .24 happens right before it.

But this is a more profound statement about Adam and Eve's integrity before God and before one another.

There was no need to hide anything. There was no self -consciousness in a distorted kind of way.

They had complete integrity before God and before one another. And that utter transparency, that utter invulnerability is described for us by this word, naked.

They lived in the boldness of their integrity, utterly open, with no trace of embarrassment, nothing uncertain about their stature or their standing or their relationship.

A perfectly self -aware and yet other -oriented esteem, with nothing to hide, nothing to become self -conscious of.

Nothing but the bliss of God's perfections reflected perfectly in them, in their flesh, in the midst of paradise.

That's what it meant for them to be naked, without shame. Now if we can draw some lines toward the

Gospel, there's a sense in which their original righteousness was their clothing.

They were naked, and that was a free and transparent and a state of integrity that came out of having a perfect righteousness.

Because they were perfectly righteous, they were covered, if you could think of it that way. They were covered in holiness, their very own holiness.

It was innate to them, natural to them. And therefore, they could dwell with God, as they were.

They didn't need any barrier between them and God, any form of covering. They were their own covering. They were holy, they were righteous.

In their perfect flesh, they were unashamed and free. But notice what takes place to Adam and Eve immediately after the fall.

The eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked. They became self -aware, self -conscious, embarrassed.

They became ashamed. Satan had promised knowledge and their eyes were opened.

The knowledge that they received, they were meant to receive, but not in this way.

They did not come to know good and evil the way that God intended for them to know, as we said in weeks past, by trusting

God's Word, by resisting evil, and therefore learning about the goodness of God and the evil that He calls us away from.

That's how God meant them over time to know good and evil. Instead, they took this seeming shortcut through listening to the serpent.

They actually came to know good and evil by losing the good and becoming evil. They became defiled.

They robbed their own innocence. They corrupted, therefore, their ability to know God and to comprehend

God's Word or God's purposes or God's ways. And this is what sin always does.

It spoils our ability not only to appreciate life, but to view life rightly in God's world.

It spoils our sensitivity not only to beauty and to joy, but to what is upright, what is demanded of us as creatures made by a holy

God. It brings hardness, bitterness, aversion into our souls before God and fellow man.

And all of this is the fruit of this action, the guilt of which makes them ashamed.

They had never felt this way before. They had never felt this way before.

This was not an emotion that humanity had felt up to this point. Shame. Guilt.

I think one of the best scenes in Shakespeare's Macbeth is when, of course,

Macbeth is going back and forth. He's not quite sure if he's killed the king. And he comes back and he's vexed.

And Lady Macbeth, who seems to be this iron woman, she sort of castigates Macbeth.

And she takes the knives and she goes off stage and then comes back. And she begins to have a mental collapse.

And she's constantly washing her hands because her hands are just as they are, perfectly fine, but she has this sense that they're covered in blood constantly.

So she's constantly scrubbing at them. Constantly scrubbing at them. Why can't I get this blood out? And it's this depiction of the guilt.

The guilt that's there, and it doesn't matter how much you scrub, it's there. This is the guilt that Adam and Eve felt.

There's this stain. There's this offense. There's this defilement. And there's nothing we can do about it.

It's there. There's no way I can cover it. There's this shame. There's this misery and this fear that comes out of this guilt.

And look at what it leads them to do. They have to cover it somehow. They attempt to sew together these fig leaves.

It's very pitiful. There's this moral breach in the order of God's creation.

And there they are intricately sewing leaves together as though this somehow is going to remedy that.

But you get this idea. They need a barrier now. They need a covering. They need a hiding place.

There's no integrity now. There's no openness now. They're utterly vulnerable now.

They're liable now. They're guilty. Horatius Bonner, the great

Scotsman. We sing 403 all the time, don't we? He wrote that. Unfallen man needed no covering, and he asked for none.

But fallen man, under that bitter consciousness of the condition to which sin had reduced him, unfit for God or angels or even man to look upon, cries out for a covering.

A covering that will hide his shame even from the eye of God. That's what they're trying to do. There must be some way

I can alleviate this shame and this guilt and the things that I've done. There must be some form of scrubbing that I can do to make myself presentable once again to God.

I need a barrier. I need a refuge. I need something to hide behind. I need to cover myself.

And that's what they try to do. How pitiful, their little garment. Little garment of leaves. You know what happens when you pluck a leaf.

If you're on vacation in the summertime, just invite me to water your plants and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. They dry, they wither, they crumble.

Doesn't take long, does it? Elsie likes to pluck flowers, dandelions. I have a little box in my office and she puts these dandelions in my box, which is very sweet.

But of course, within days, they just wither. They wither and fall apart and they curl up.

And that little garment, how long is that going to last? How long is that going to be a suitable covering before it dries up and curls in and begins to fall apart?

That's how every attempt at self -covering does. Maybe this will give me a place to hide for a week or a month or a season.

Maybe this is sufficient for my sins. Maybe this is how I can have peace in my conscience.

Maybe this is what I'm convinced will be an effective barrier between the knowledge of God that haunts me and that I can hide from that.

I can put that away with this covering. And it always crumbles, doesn't it? It always crumbles. You're on to the next covering.

When you're in this state, as it were, you're constantly sewing together. You have a little sweatshop, spiritually speaking.

You're constantly working out these little leaf garments because you must have a barrier between the all -seeing, all -knowing, ever -present

God and your sin. Men and women get very creative about the ways that they hide from God.

The coverings that they devise. There can be very religious coverings, make no mistake. The leaves that you sew together might be heaps of good old

Christian books and loyalty to the church and many zealous efforts in the name of Christ.

And that can become, as Jesus taught us from the parable of the fig tree, not even the parable, the prophetic act of the fig tree, a fig tree that looked like it ought to have fruit and he found none on it and he cursed it and said, may you never bear fruit again.

That foliage of hypocrisy is something that many people hide behind.

For the Christian, the safest refuge is under the cross, in the blood, in the refuge of the assembly of the saved ones.

But frankly, for some people who have never closed with Christ, the safest place that they can be is in a church too.

It's a pretty effective hiding place for them. They put their conscience at rest. I'm doing more than most.

My life is given over to sin and there's things I won't repent of and there's things I won't confess, but hey,

I'm going to church. I'm in the right place. It's just a matter of time before I do finally surrender over to Christ and come clean and close with Him.

What is that but just the constant sowing of fig leaves? Sometimes the best hiding place is the church.

Whatever it is that you're hiding behind, whatever leafy garment you're hoping will cover you now, whether it's being good compared to other people that you know and can name, how that will curl up and wither in a moment.

Whether it's great heaps of religious deeds and religious fervor, whether it's some vain resolution that I'm going to cover my sins.

I'm going to make my own barrier because I'm going to do this. I'm going to turn things around. I'm going to do this.

By next year, I'm going to get this in order. I'm going to be able to do it. And you'll see that those leaves will wither.

You'll see they cannot cleanse. They cannot hide. They cannot purge. They cannot deal with man's fundamental problem.

Some people think that it's just time. If you can give enough time to your sin, then that somehow is a remedy.

I was reading this the other day from Joel Beeky and I thought it was very insightful. Sometimes we assume that time cancels sin.

Some people joke about the sins of their youth, and yet those sins have never been washed in the blood of Christ.

And God is not a creature of time. He remembers all of our sins as though they were committed today. Time is no remedy.

You might have forgotten about sin, but that doesn't cancel it out. There's only one way to cancel out sin, and it's not time.

There's only one way to cover the guilt and the shame of our sins. There's only one mediator that God has provided between God and man.

I remember when we were at the Cape a few weeks ago, we ended up watching a sermon by Jeff Thomas, and he was talking about this desire to be purged of sin.

And he said that he was at his home and there was a knock on the door, and he went and there was this young man.

And he was clearly very disturbed and very broken. And he said, I'm wondering if you could baptize me.

I need to be baptized. He had a very wrong understanding of baptism, but he came to him.

And so Jeff invited him in and had him sit down and said, Why do you need to be baptized?

What's your understanding of baptism? And he says, Well, you see, for weekends I've been going up and I've had this illicit relationship that no one knows about, and I've gotten this girl pregnant, and she just told me she had an abortion.

I need you to baptize me. I need to be washed. And so Jeff was able to talk about the

Gospel, that it's not the physical act of going into the water that makes you clean. It's being washed in the blood and how that's represented in baptism.

You see, this innate desire. I need a barrier. I need a covering. I need something to purge my guilt and my shame.

And men and women, they can do well to distract themselves with the sowing, but it always crumbles down.

If not in this life, then in the life to come on that day, it comes crumbling down.

And so David in Romans 4, 6, as Paul says, David describes the blessedness of the one to whom

God imputes righteousness apart from works, apart from sowing fig leaves, apart from self -covering.

Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered.

So that's the first fallout from the fall. It's shame. It's nakedness before God.

And the terror of trying to create a barrier, a hiding place. And then secondly, the next fallout we see between God and man is this hiding.

Hiding from the God who seeks. Verse 8, They heard the sound of the

Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the

Lord God among the trees of the garden. Again, the relationship

Adam and Eve had to their Maker was perfect. They delighted in Him. And He delighted in them.

But where they had once walked in freedom, now they were cowering in fear.

Now the stains cannot be hidden. Now their minds, instead of dwelling upon the wonders of God, only can think of the threat of God's judgment.

Now their consciences bark at them, accuse them. And they feel the pain of their guilt bowing them down like some impossibly heavy anchor.

And there's the coming one, the one who once was the light of their soul, now is the dread. Now He's the coming terror.

The one who had once made them in splendor. That's just to say, fellowship between God and man was broken.

Communion, intimacy between God and man, shattered. I must have been

David's age, and I'll never forget. I can almost picture it in my mind's eye, looking up and seeing

Pastor Dorr preaching. And he didn't preach with props very often. And this might have been like a

Friday night service for the youth. But he took out a big piece of rope. And he said, this was our relationship to God.

And this is what sin did. And he cut it in half. And he said, this is not coming back together.

And then he tied it together and talked about the gospel. That just stuck in my mind. Once that relationship is severed, it can't be repaired by just pushing it, pushing it, pushing it.

Something has to happen. Some act has to rebind what was broken.

Fellowship between God and man. Alienation between God and man. Aversion between God and man.

This is all flowing out of the fall. Now, human beings are no longer comfortable in the presence of God.

No longer comfortable. They no longer delight to be in the presence of God. Even though they think they would.

Remember, in holiness of God, you might take a fisherman, who seems to be a pious fisherman, one who's really laying his life down in sacrifice to the

Messiah. And yet, when Jesus reveals who he is with that great catch, what does he do? He leaps back to the other end of the boat and says, get away from me,

I'm a sinful man. Man is no longer comfortable in the presence of holy.

Guilt has made us afraid of God. They heard the sound of the

Lord God walking in the garden. That sound clearly, it's not just the sound of Him coming, but it's also the sound of Him seeking.

Because that's what Adam reports, I heard your voice. It's the rustling as God is, as it were, seeking men.

And I don't think we have the best translation here, when it says that God was walking in the cool of the day.

The Hebrew there is in the wind of the day, and it's an idiom. In the wind of the day, you can translate it as the cool of the day.

But I'm convinced by those that point out, this is really a theophany. This is a manifestation of God's presence.

God is moving in the wind, calling out. And it's just like Job 38, where God speaks out of the whirlwind.

And that's a theophany. That's a manifestation of God's presence in this wind, and He's calling out of it.

And so here's this presence of God, now moving through Eden like this rushing wind. Emblematic of Pentecost, by the way, in Acts 2.

We won't touch on that. And He's calling out. He's calling out.

There had been unity and harmony only moments before, but now they're hiding, holding their breath, careful not to tread on a strip, crouching behind trees.

I don't have this in my notes, and it's dangerous to preach sometimes.

You incriminate yourself. When I was less mature and less sanctified, I had a group of friends, and one of the things we used to do in my neighborhood was there was a playground that was elevated, and there was a street that went through it, and we would get coolers full of water balloons, and we would fling them at night into the road, and you'd get points for every windshield you hit.

Thankfully, no one was ever hurt by this. I kind of shudder to think about that, to be honest. Well, this field was quite long, and there was a long chain -link fence, and one night it was just me and one other friend,

Chucky, who I asked for prayer for a few weeks ago. And we were so bored, so we ended up saying, hey, why don't we go play a little one -on -one, see how many cars we can rack up.

So we had a couple coolers full of water balloons, and it's 11 at night, and we're flinging them toward the street.

Again, I'm not condoning this behavior. God is a merciful savior. Well, we hit the wrong

Jeep Wrangler, and it shot up like a banshee up the side street and turned with its high beams right on the field.

And here we are, completely glued, and we drop down. And then the doors open and close, and we hear thud, thud, thud, thud, and there's two young men running at us, probably not to laugh with us.

And so we book it. Now, Chucky's a lot faster than I am. So he's blocks ahead of me, and we're in the back of this neighborhood.

And I hear the Jeep firing up and roaring down the street, and I just dive behind a hedge through cobwebs, and it's like wet soil and hedge clippings, and I'm there, and I remember what it was like to hold my breath, and my heart is pounding, and I'm thinking, this will be the most embarrassing moment of my life if I get dragged out of a hedge for righteous retribution.

And every time I read this passage, I think of that. God is moving through the garden, and instead of the bliss, instead of the bliss of coming out to be in the presence of God, here

I am, God, perfectly reflecting Him. There's this terror that has gripped them.

Their hearts are pounding out of their chest. They're trying not to breathe too loudly, and yet they're almost hyperventilating.

This is terror. This is terror. They're alienated from God.

They hope never to be found. If the earth could cover them, they would choose that. What's the farthest point

I can get away from this God who made me? Estrangement from God. Their minds now darkened, blinded, dead in trespass and sins.

Their affections now rogue, turned against Him, the One who's seeking them. But this is the most wondrous thing about this passage.

We find that despite man's attempts to cover himself, as foolish as that was, and despite the terror of trying to hide himself now that he's estranged from God, now that he's averse to God and he wants to be absolutely away from God, we find that he's sought by God.

That's the beauty of this. As soon as the fall happens, God is seeking the fallen.

Verse 9, the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, where are you?

As A .W. Pink noted, I closed last week with it, it wasn't Adam who sought God, it was God who sought Adam.

And it's always been that way ever since. We would expect that God would come forth in fury.

And before Adam and Eve could even stick a toe out or take a stand or utter a word, that they would instantly perish.

That they would be blown apart because the wrath of transgressing God's command, of taking His perfect holy image and corrupting it, mutating it, making it an abomination.

You would think that God's fury would be unleashed in the moment, that He would be the one that would say, away from my presence, be hidden from my sight.

That He would obliterate them. You would think that there would be this roar of where are you?

You would think that it would thunder and collapse them into dust. But I don't think we can read it that way.

I think we have to read it with this astonishing tone of compassion. Where are you?

I mean, God's not asking for knowledge He doesn't have. He knows where they are. He's omniscient.

He knows all things. He's omnipresent. He is, in a certain sense, where they are, anywhere they go. So then, if He's everywhere and He knows exactly where they are, why does

He call out where are you? What is

He doing? Arguably, I think He's giving them a chance to repent.

And that chance is mercy itself. You want to know where grace begins? It's not Genesis 3 .15

with the promise that it really is here. Why doesn't man immediately fall to dust?

That's grace. Why does God say, where are you? It's like a father.

A child has done, he's disobeyed, done something horrid, done something horrific, and now they're hiding.

And the father comes through, he sees their little sneakers out from behind the closet. He knows exactly where they are.

But he knows that the child is terrorized and is ashamed and guilty and is trying to hide their sobs.

And what does that father do? Where are you? It's almost coaxing them, just come out before me.

Let's have a talk, you and I. Come out. It's almost a disarming, reassuring tone.

Where are you? Immediately we begin to know something of God's character.

Though He's holy, holy, holy, He's full of mercy.

He's a good God. It's all seeing God present now in Eden, standing agate at two image bearers that have butchered

His image. They've butchered it. They've sworn in faith, in loyalty to the serpent deceiver.

They've, as it were, conveyed all the authority they had over the world over to Him. To be against God's purpose, to introduce all manner of evil and depravity into what

God had said only moments ago was very good. This is the height of cosmic treachery.

And yet we see God seeking, God full of compassion, God turning in love.

We see God, frankly, looking at Adam and Eve in all of their sin through the cross.

He's looking at them through the cross, though it'll be many thousand years off. He will wait.

That's what we find out in Genesis 3 .15, isn't it? There's a reason He shows grace. There's a reason

He can be full of mercy and full of compassion. It's not because this is arbitrary. He says, oh, it doesn't really matter.

Let's just wipe that off. We can't put God's mercy against His justice. He is perfectly justice.

Perfectly just. And so when He waits, when He decides to show mercy, when He says, I'm going to make a covering, what is that doing but delaying, introducing the inevitability of the cross?

He's looking at Adam and Eve through the cross. He's long -suffering only until that day when all the wrath that is screaming, screaming throughout the cosmos to be poured out upon this sin, this act, until that can be poured out upon the

Son of God, upon the tree. And to make that covering for fallen man, to make a covering for them, to cover them, to say, get rid of these fig leaves and I'm going to provide a covering for you.

You have torn apart and slaughtered the original righteousness and I'm going to make you a righteous covering.

To make that covering, He has to strip His Son bare and put Him to an open shame, make

Him a mockery and a humiliation as He spends His blood to make a covering for fallen man.

That's what happens at the gospel in the fullness of time. The last Adam comes to save his bride. That perfect righteousness, that holiness, which is

His whole life, it's torn from Him and made into a covering for us.

Do you see then that the God who's moving in the storm wind through Eden is the

Savior? It's the second person of the Godhead.

It's the second person of the Godhead crying out, Where are you? Where are you?

I have no doubt that this morning that same question is inwardly calling, prompting, prodding, stirring, convicting by His Spirit in the same way.

I'm saying let's step outside of Genesis 3 and let me just address you as you are here this morning.

Where are you? Where are you? Have you come this morning expecting a

God of wrath? Have you come with your shame and your guilt and even coming today is a little fig leaf.

You're hoping to hold up against some refuge. Another temporary abatement of my guilt.

A temporary covering for my conscience. Another week that I won't fully confess my sins before Him.

I won't fully examine myself. Another week that I fully expect to go back to those things I refuse to turn from.

And so I come and I go through the motions and I don't want to meet this God who I'm sure is a fearful

God, who I'm sure will only torment me. And don't you see it's the same dynamic that He's coming through not the trees of Eden but the aisles in the hall and He's saying,

Where are you? Where are you?

These people, He says, they worship me with their lips, but their hearts, their hearts are far from me.

Where are you? It's an easy thing to bring our lips to worship, isn't it? It's a very difficult thing, even for mature

Christians, to bring their hearts to worship. It was the well -taught, the well -trained, it was the zealots in Israel who were worshiping

God with vain lips. It was those who should have known better. We know better. See, God doesn't settle for the outward.

He doesn't allow you to have these little crumbling leaves. He beckons you. He calls you.

Where are you? That call means you must take responsibility for your sin.

You'll not come out from the covering unless you do, right? Unless you fully acknowledge the guilt.

Once you fully acknowledge that, let that sink into your conscience. You fully acknowledge it, and you can say,

Here I am. Here I am. Undeserving of mercy. Hoping.

Hoping. Coming to you through the cross. Coming to you through your promises. Owning my choices.

Owning my sins. Not putting them off to others. Not saying it was the situation, or the events, or you misled me, or I trusted in you in a presumptive way.

Not these people. Not this situation. Not these conditions. Not these needs. Not these necessities.

Not this background. No. My sin. My choices. My guilt. My path.

My walk. I tear apart the self -covering I've made, and I come to you.

Here is my heart. I'm coming to you. Here I am. Will you show mercy to me?

Will you accept me through the cross of your Son? Remember the beginning of Isaiah, in those first five chapters, how the prophet is declaring woe after woe upon the nation.

Woe to you and woe to you. Woe to you in the drunkenness of your ways. Woe to you. Woe to you in the injustice in the streets.

Woe to you. And then what happens? He's drawn into the presence of God in the throne room.

And what does Isaiah cry out? Woe is me. I'm undone. See, that's what it's like.

We come to church, and we rightly pray for our nation and our culture and our leaders, and we say woe and woe and woe, and I hope there's some savor of God's holy presence that you don't leave these doors

Sunday after Sunday without saying woe is me. I am undone. No wonder

Adam and Eve wanted to hide. They wanted to melt. Just like Isaiah when he comes to know the true holiness of a holy

God. Has God brought you into that kind of presence? Have you been brought to that place of woe is me?

If not, again, the Spirit says, where are you? Where are you?

If not here before God, where are you? What barrier have you erected?

What seems to be working only to crumble and perish? Where are you? As we move toward a close,

I'd like to read. It's a little lengthy. But I think it really captures the fact that the fall and this desire to hide from God, this refusal to turn from sin, this alienation and estrangement from God isn't something that just Adam and Eve experience.

It's something that every fallen man experiences. And it's something that even redeemed believers in parts and ways still suffer.

And it produces within us this yearning, this hope to be fully delivered from the effects of the fall. This is from a man named

J. Budziszewski. I won't bother spelling that out for you. I'd love to see what you come up with.

J. Budziszewski. It's an article he wrote, a little bit of his testimony. He had been an atheist philosopher and ended up coming back to Christ.

And he had been a nihilist, meaning he believed there was ultimately nothing. There's no meaning to life, no purpose.

There's really no true morality. Good and evil are all completely relative. There's just nothing. We are nothing.

Everything is for nothing. He was a nihilist. That was this man's life and worldview. And to me it illustrates exactly what we're talking about this morning.

So I'm just going to read it for us. I took out some parts. He says at the beginning,

I had committed certain sins that I didn't want to repent of because the presence of God made me more and more uncomfortable.

I began looking for reasons to believe that He didn't exist. It's a funny thing about us human beings.

Not many of us doubt God's existence and then start sinning. Most of us sin and then start doubting

God's existence. But the main reason I was a nihilist was sheer pride.

I didn't want God to be God. I wanted to be God. I see that now, but I didn't see it then.

I've already said that everything goes wrong without God. This is true of even the good things He's already given us, like our minds.

One of the good things I've been given is a stronger than average mind. I don't make the observation to boast.

Human beings are given diverse gifts to serve Him in diverse ways. The problem is that a strong mind that refuses the call to serve

God has its own way of going wrong. Some people flee from God.

They rob and kill. When others flee from God, they do a lot of drugs or have a lot of sex.

When I fled from God, I didn't do any of those things. My way of fleeing was to get stupid.

Though it always comes as a surprise to intellectuals, there are some forms of stupidity that one must be highly intelligent and educated to commit.

God keeps them in His arsenal to pull down muleish pride, and I discovered them all. That's how

I ended up doing a dissertation to prove that we make up the difference between good and evil, that we aren't responsible for anything we do.

I remember teaching these things to students. That's sin. And it was agony. You cannot imagine what a person has to do to himself to go on believing such nonsense.

Paul said that the knowledge of God's laws written on our hearts and our consciences bear witness. That means that so long as we have minds, we can't not know it.

Well, I was unusually determined not to know it, right? Not just estrangement from God, aversion to God.

Therefore, I had to destroy my mind. I resisted the temptation to believe in good with as much energy as some saints resist the temptation to neglect good.

For instance, I loved my wife and children, but I was bent to regard this love as merely a preference with no real value.

Think of what this did to my very ability to love them. After all, love is a commitment of the will to the true good of another person.

And how can one's will be committed to the true good of another person if he denies the reality of good, denies the reality of persons, denies that his commitments are even in his control?

Listen to this. This is brilliant. Visualize a man opening up the access panels of his mind, pulling out all the components that have

God's image stamped on them. The problem is they all have God's image stamped on them.

So the man can never stop. No matter how much he pulls out, there's still more to pull. I was that man.

Because there was more and more I pulled out, there was less and less I could think about. I thought

I was becoming more and more focused. I believed things that filled me with dread, and I thought I was smarter, braver, than people who didn't believe them.

I thought I saw an emptiness at the heart of the universe that was hidden from other fools' eyes.

But, of course, I was the fool. So how did God bring me back?

I came over time to feel a greater and greater horror about myself.

Not exactly a feeling of guilt at the beginning. Not even shame, but just horror.

An overpowering sense that my condition was terribly wrong. And it led me to wonder why.

I had been believing that the difference between wonder and horror didn't exist. And letting that thought through, my mental sensors blundered.

At this point, I became aware again of the Savior whom I had deserted in my twenties.

Remember what He said. I started committing sin, and I started looking for reasons not to believe in God. At this point,

I became aware again of the Savior whom I had deserted in my twenties. Astonishingly, although I had abandoned

Him, He had never abandoned me. He said, Where are you?

Where are you? I now believe He was just in time. There must be a point of no return, and I was almost there.

I said I had been pulling out one component after another, and I nearly got to the motherboard. Do you know, not just the

God who is, but the God who seeks? The God who seeks to save that which was lost.

The God that comes to save sinners. The God who comes in the ferocity of the storm that your conscience is alarmed by only to very gently and compassionately whisper,

Where are you? Where are you? Show yourself. Take away this foolish barrier that's doing nothing for you.

Can you sing in faith, brothers and sisters, friends, visitors? Can you sing in faith?

I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew He moved my soul to seek

Him, seeking me. It doesn't take long in the Christian life. You often begin the

Christian life thinking, I've been pursuing God, and I'm really interested in this God thing, and I have a friend who's been talking to me about God, and I'm seeking,

I'm pursuing, and I think I've found Him, and oh, I'm a Christian now. And you go a little bit further, and you realize, oh, was it me seeking?

He was seeking me. He was pursuing me. God still calls fallen men and women.

He still moves in our midst, calling out, Where are you? And there's only one response you can give to that question, something along these lines.

Just as I am. No fig coverings. No excuses. No bargaining chips.

The only thing you can bring to the table is your guilt. It's your shame. It's the horror of this estrangement.

The things that you cling to that are against everything that God is. You must come in that, just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bidst me come to thee.

Where are you? O Lamb of God, I come. Father, we are humbled to consider these verses and what they record.

They behold, on the one hand, the horror of cosmic treason, of a genocide of humanity, of the introduction of all manner of evil and suffering and misery into a world that was once perfect.

And yet, on the other hand, we behold the perfections of a God who is full of mercy and compassion, who seeks the lost, who calls out to the fallen, who comes to a man that seeks to hide from his presence and, as it were, beckons him to come to him, come to your presence.

And how this draws us to the cross. For we know there can be no return, no mercy, no forgiveness apart from the finality of that cross, apart from the cry of,

It is finished, apart from the crushed head of the serpent, and apart from the stricken, smitten, and afflicted

Savior. Lord, I pray that we would all, in our own way, hear that compassionate cry,

Where are you? in our own lives, Lord, that it would expose those vain fig leaves that we hide behind, those foolish resolutions that are so empty and have always crumbled, those barriers of seeking to be good or thinking we are good, anything that we're hiding behind.

Might we learn the wisdom of tearing that apart and coming to you as we truly are. Might we sense your presence,

Lord, though it alarms our conscience and fills us with dread. Might we be emboldened by the call of your love, by the hint of mercy in your voice as you call out to us to come as we are to you, to be cleansed in the blood, to be washed and made clean, to be reconciled to the

God who we were once alienated from, enemies. And yet by the blood, you've brought us near.

You've redeemed us. You've united yourself to us in the person of your Son by your

Spirit. And so, our triune God, we bless you. And as we said even during the prayer time,

Lord, we're filled with thankfulness. Thank you. Thank you for seeking us.

Thank you for searching. Not just at the beginning when we first gave our lives over to you in faith, but even to this day, you seek us and you search for us.

You call out for us. You say, don't come to me with empty lips. Come to me with your heart.

Draw near to me. Your sinners purify. Thank you for being a

God who seeks and a God who saves. It's in your Son's name that we pray these things.