Deo Gloria
Sermon for June 9, 2024
Pastor Martin Bentz
Text: Genesis 3:8-15
Theme: An All Too Familiar Game of Hide and Seek
- Guilty sinners hide from God.
- A gracious God seeks them out—and saves them.
They were hiding among the trees in the garden. Sounds kind of fun. We all enjoyed playing that game with our friends or family members in our younger days. Someone counts to 50 or maybe 100 and everyone else runs and tries to find a good place to hide, a place where the seeker won’t be able to find them. Our little granddaughter enjoys playing that game with us at times—only we don’t make it too difficult for her to find us. Unfortunately for Adam and Eve this wasn’t a game. You see, they had messed up—big time. They had done something really, really, really bad. Here God had given them a perfect world with perfect weather and perfect food and perfect health and perfect bodies and perfect minds and a perfect relationship with him and with each other and with all the animals. No pesky flies, no annoying mosquitoes, no blizzards, no thunderstorms, no hurricanes, no tornadoes, no floods. Everything was absolutely perfect. And they had just messed it all up. It’s like the time you were playing catch in the front yard and you threw the ball over your brother’s head and broke the picture window in the front of the house. It’s like the time you snuck out of the house one night to be with your boyfriend and your mom and dad were waiting for you in your bedroom when you got home. You were in so much trouble. You thought you’d probably be grounded for the rest of your life. You wanted to get away. You wanted to run away and maybe never come back.
God had given Adam and Eve one command—not 50 commands, not 20 commands, not even 10, just one. He gave them only one command. They could eat from any tree in the Garden of Eden, any tree they wanted, but they could not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And if they did, God told them they would die. And yes, you guessed it, they had just eaten from that tree. They could hardly believe it. How could they be so foolish? How could they be so stupid? It was just one simple command. And they couldn’t keep it?
Of course, they did have some help. It’s not like they woke up one morning and said to each other, “Hey, how about we go and break God’s command today? Let’s go and eat from the tree he told us not to eat from.” No, Satan had tempted them. Using the form of a serpent, Satan had lied to them, told them that God was trying to keep something from them, told them that if they ate from that tree, not only would they not die, they would become like God himself, knowing good and evil. It was a bold-faced lie, but they believed it. They should have told Satan to take a hike, but they believed his lie. So Eve took some of the fruit from the tree, even though she knew she shouldn’t. She took some of the fruit and she ate it. And she gave some to Adam and he ate it too. And bam, in an instant they had ruined everything. It’s like they had just taken a brick and thrown it through the picture window of perfection in Eden. The perfection was shattered—in a million pieces. And they could tell right away.
Now all of sudden they were ashamed of being naked. Now bad thoughts came into their minds. They hadn’t felt embarrassed or ashamed before. They hadn’t had bad thoughts come into their minds before; but they did now. Now they felt guilty about what they had done—terribly guilty, horribly guilty, because they knew they had disobeyed God’s command. And they were afraid, which is why they were hiding. They were afraid that God might come and find them, afraid that he might find out what they had done, afraid that he would be angry with them and punish them for what they had done, afraid that he might give them the very punishment he had threatened, the punishment of death.
And then they heard it—or shall I say, heard him. They heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day. They tried their best to be absolutely quiet. Maybe he wouldn’t notice them. Maybe he wouldn’t find them. Maybe he would walk on by and just keep on going. Yea, good luck with that. God isn’t going to notice? God isn’t going to find them? That’s like mom not noticing that the picture window is shattered, or dad not noticing the big dent in the front of the car.
“Adam, Adam, where are you?“ he called out.
So Adam slowly, reluctantly walks out from behind one of the trees with guilt written all over his face. And he says, “Oh, hey, God, how’s it going? Yea, Eve and I—we ah—we were hiding. Yea, I heard you walking in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”
Notice Adam doesn’t own up to what they had done. Yes, he does admit that he was afraid, but he doesn’t give the real reason.
So God has to probe a little further: “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”(v. 11)
So this time Adam owns up and confesses what they had done, right? Wrong. He throws Eve under the bus instead. Instead of admitting what he had done, Adam blames Eve. And he even blames God. “The woman—it’s her fault. And by the way, you’re the one who put her here in the garden with me. She’s the one. She gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.”
OK, well at least Eve would be honest about what happened, right? At least she would take responsibility and confess what she had done. Nope. “It’s the serpent’s fault. The serpent deceived me and I ate from the tree.” Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? It’s a thousand times worst than “The dog ate my homework.”
“You listened to a talking snake? Really? Do you always listen to talking snakes? And this snake—he tells you to eat from the tree I told you not to eat from and you listen to him? What were you thinking?” That’s just it: They weren’t thinking. They weren’t thinking about God and how good he had been to them. They weren’t thinking about God’s love for them and how he filled their lives with every blessing imaginable. They weren’t thinking about God’s warning and the terrible consequences that might happen if they disobeyed. No, they were only thinking about Satan’s lies and how God might be trying to keep something from them. And they were thinking about their egos and their pride and how cool it would be if they could be like God too. So they listened to Satan’s lies and disobeyed God’s command and they sinned.
And the results were catastrophic. Their relationship with God was ruined. Their relationship with each other was ruined. The perfection of their bodies and minds was ruined. The perfection of creation was ruined. And one day—no, it didn’t happen right away, but one day they would experience the ultimate consequence of their sin. Instead of enjoying life, they would die, just like God had said. What a mess they had made of things! What a horrible, terrible mess!
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it, all too familiar? We do the same thing, don’t we? We know what God’s word says. We know what his commands are: Don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t covet. Don’t cheat on your spouse. Don’t hurt or harm others. Obey your parents. Love God. Don’t misuse his name. We know the things we should do and the things we shouldn’t; but we ignore it and choose to listen to Satan’s lies instead. We lie and cheat and steal from others. We gossip and slander others and get in fights with our brothers and sisters. We ignore our parents and disobey them. We curse and swear and misuse God’s name. We love other things more than God and put other things ahead of God. And in the process we make such a mess of things.
We ruin our relationship with our spouse and our children. We ruin our relationship with our brothers and sisters. We ruin our relationship with our classmates at school and our co-workers at the office and our neighbors across the street. We burden our hearts with guilt and grief and shame. And then we turn to drinking or drugs as if that’s going to make things better.
Well, at least we’re honest about it, right? At least we take responsibility for our actions and admit our mistakes and confess what we have done, right? No, we deny it or we make excuses or we blame everyone else. We blame our spouse for our drinking. We blame our kids because we lost our temper. We blame our boss because we got fired. We blame the police officer because we got stopped for speeding. We blame the dog for eating our homework.
Can we just stop already? Didn’t we learn anything from Adam and Eve? We too try to play this foolish hide and seek game with God. Instead of being honest and owning up to our sins and admitting them to God and asking for his forgiveness, we try to hide our sins and cover up our sins and deny our sins and blame everyone else for our sins. Do you actually think you’re fooling God? Do you think he doesn’t know? Do you think he doesn’t see? Do you think he doesn’t actually know the truth? He does know. He knows all of it. He knows the real reason you feel guilty and ashamed. He knows the real reason you feel afraid. He knows the real reason you’ve been trying to hide from him. And just like Adam and Eve, he knows you deserve to be punished. What a hopeless, horrible mess—for Adam and Eve, and for you and me.
Aren’t you glad that isn’t the end of the story? Yes, Adam and Eve had messed things up. They had sinned and messed things up in a terrible way, and we haven’t done any better. But look at what God did. First of all, he came looking for them. By all rights, Adam and Eve should have come to God. I mean, they were the ones who sinned. They were the ones who messed up his perfect creation. They should have come to him and confessed what they had done and apologized, but they didn’t. So in his love and mercy God went looking for them.
And when he found them, he patiently led them to see their sin. Sure, he had to wade through the excuses and the half-truths and the blaming others, but he did lead them to admit their sin. He had to, to get the real problem out on the table so the problem could be dealt with.
And notice how he dealt with it. He cursed the serpent. He cursed the one who had started all this, the one who was ultimately responsible: “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”(v. 14).
On top of that he said he would put enmity, hostility between Eve and the serpent and between her offspring and his. Instead of friendship with the devil and his followers, there would be hostility. Eve and all of her true descendants, those who would walk in the ways of life instead of death—would want nothing to do with the devil and his descendants. And those who walk in the ways of the devil would want nothing to do with Eve and her descendants either.
And then he did something even more amazing. He made a promise, a promise that someone would come and put an end to the devil and all his evil work, someone who would defeat him once and for all, someone who would crush his head, but who would also be wounded in the process. He would strike his heal. That someone, of course, was Jesus. This was the first promise of a Savior, the first promise that someone would come to defeat the devil, the first promise that someone would come and rescue us from Satan and all the evil, all the trouble he has caused in our hearts and in our lives and in our families and in our world.
Can you imagine how relieved they were? Can you imagine the comfort and peace that promise brought them? They should have been toast. For what they had done, God should have put an end to them right then and there. They should have died, or at the very least they should have been banished, not just from the Garden of Eden, but from the presence of God forever. But instead God issued a promise, the promise of a deliverer, the promise of a conqueror, the promise of a Savior.
Actually I bet you can imagine their relief, because their relief is your relief. Their comfort is your comfort. Their peace is your peace. The promise of a Savior for them is a promise of a Savior for you, someone to rescue you, someone to conquer Satan for you, someone to take away your sin and your guilt and give you life instead of the death you deserve. Rejoice, friends! Rejoice that God did not turn his back on you and abandon you either because of your stupid and foolish sins, but that he loved you enough to seek you out and find you and save you. Rejoice in God’s grace to Adam and Eve. Rejoice in God’s grace to you, that he promised and sent a Savior. Amen.