A Hider-Sensitive God

Good morning. Great to see all of you here today and a wonderful opportunity we have now to worship God by opening our hearts to Him. As he speaks to us, through his word. so let me invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis chapter 3. We are doing a study through the book of Genesis, and as we continue in our study of this book, we come today to Genesis chapter 3 verse 9, and my goal today is to try to cover verses 9 through 13. And if you want to give a title to the message this morning, it would be a higher sensitive God. let me start this way.

I want, I want to state at the outset categorically that Cornerstone Fellowship Bible Church desires to be a seeker sensitive church. Before you walk out, let me explain to you what by that. There is a seeker in the Bible that we learn about whom we as a church always want to be sensitive to, and that seeker whom we want to be sensitive to is God. According to John 4:23, God is seeking people to worship Him in spirit and in truth.

According to Luke chapter 19 verse 10, Christ says the Son of Man has come to seek and to save those who are lost. On the other end of the seeking spectrum is man. who is described in Romans 3:11, where the apostle Paul tells us that there is no one who seeks for God. In other words, no one on their own, Ever seeks for God, apart from God's miraculous regenerating work in their hearts.

I begin this way because what we find in our passage today is the first exchange between God and fallen men. And as you might expect, man is not seeking God. Man is not the seeker here. In fact, man is hiding, and God is the seeker who is seeking man out and drawing.

Man out of hiding. So let me say it this way, we want to be here at Cornerstone, a seeker sensitive church and the seeker that we want to be sensitive to is God. Because God is full of grace and truth, and he is very good at drawing people out of hiding. Let's say it another way, here at Cornerstone, we want to be a higher sensitive church.

How about that on our website? Come to our church. We are a higher sensitive church, a church of people who have been drawn out of hiding by the grace of God and who want to help draw others out of hiding. Into the light of God's amazing grace and truth.

Amen. What we have seen in Genesis 3 up to this point is Adam and Eve tragically disobeying God and partaking of the forbidden fruit. And then upon disobeying God, partaking Of the forbidden fruit, they immediately have their eyes open and they realize that they are naked. They began to feel ashamed of their nakedness in front of each other.

This is husband and wife, and so they dress themselves in fig leaves in order to hide their body parts from one another. We also saw in verse 8, at the end of the message last Sunday that God, shows up in the garden after they sin and had covered themselves with fig leaves, and Adam and Eve, hear him walking in the cool of the very day that they had sinned. And they hide themselves among the trees of the garden from God. This is really a tragic difference that has overcome them.

A sad difference that has come over Adam and Eve in the past, whenever, no doubt they would have heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden, they would have run to him and look forward to another occasion of fellowshipping with him, but now they hear the sound of him and they run in the opposite direction. And hide behind the trees. So as God shows up in the Garden of Eden on this occasion, he really has on his hands a twofold problem. First of all, Adam and Eve have sinned and violated his commands, and then secondly, Adam and Eve are hiding from him and they don't want to see his face.

So what does God do? How does he address these two problems that he faces as he looks upon fallen Adam and Eve? Well, what he does is he brings them out of hiding and he gets them to confess their guilt. And what we find in our passage today is something of an inquisition.

God asked what amounts to 4 questions in these few verses. And yet, as one writer says, there is a certain gentleness about the Inquisition. Up to this point of the story, guys, as we've gone through Genesis up to this point, we have seen God as the creator and as the provider, but beginning in our passage today, we begin to see God. As redeemer, seeking to save two trembling and fearful and hiding souls.

And as glorious and impressive as the vision is that we have seen of God as creator and provider, The vision of him as redeemer in Genesis 3 and through the rest of the Bible is even more impressive. Let's begin by reading the text. Let me read it to you. I'll begin in verse 8 just to help set the stage for what we'll study in verses 9 through 13.

Says, and they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you? He said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself. And he said, Who told you that you were naked?

Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, The woman whom you gave to be with me. She gave me from the tree, and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this you have done?

And the woman said, the serpent deceived me. And I ate. This is the word of God. May God help us to understand his heart.

In his words this morning. Here's how we're gonna frame things as we break down the passage, we'll observe seven developments in the story of how God brings Adam and Eve out of hiding and nurtures them along to the point where they are confessing their guilt, confessing their sin. The first development that we observe in this passage is in verse 9. Where we observe that God calls to the man.

God calls to the man, it says, then the Lord God, so he showed up in the garden, they heard the sound of him, they've hidden behind the trees, and what does God do? God calls to the man. Then the Lord God called To the man It's interesting here that God is referred to in verse 9. In fact, if you look back at verse 8, he's referred to both here in verse 9 and in verse 8 as Lord God, and that's literally Jehovah Elohim.

We've seen how the name Jehovah is the personal, the relational, the covenantal name of God. So it makes sense that the writer of Genesis, starting in Genesis chapter 2, verse 4, all the way through the end. Of Genesis 3, which ends in verse 24, I believe, from Genesis 2:4 to the end of chapter 3. the writer of Genesis refers to God always as Jehovah Elohim because that section is all about God's relationship with Adam and Eve.

However, there's one exception. If you start in chapter 2, verse 4, all the way through the chapter and through chapter 3, it's always Jehovah Elohim. With one notable exception, and that is inside the dialogue that takes place between Eve and the serpent. If you read those verses like in verse one, the serpent refuses to use the name Jehovah.

And instead, he refers to God merely as Elohim, which is the more impersonal name of God. And Eve buys into the serpent's language and uses only Elohim in her response in verse 3. So in Genesis 3:1 through 7, God is referred to 4 times, and in each of those occasions, Only Elohim is used. The word Jehovah, the personal name of God, the covenantal relational name of God is left out of that dialogue, no doubt intentionally.

But starting again in verse 8. When we see God coming into the garden after their sin, the writer tells us that it's Jehovah Elohim that shows up. The serpent and Eve might prefer to think of God only as Elohim, but that doesn't change who he is. He is still Jehovah.

God has been rejected and His will has been rejected, but God is not done trying to relate to man in a personal way. It's not too late, even on the other side of this sin, it is still possible for man to have a covenant relationship with God, even on the other side of his sin. So it's really good news for Adam and Eve for God to show up in the garden in verse 8 as Jehovah Elohim. And it's really good news that in verse 9, it's Jehovah Elohim, who is calling to the man.

Notice that at this point of the narrative, that there are 2 people hiding and yet God doesn't call both of them. In fact, he calls the man first. Adam is the head of the human race. He is at the head of this relationship, marriage relationship with Eve, and God is coming to him first for an accounting of what has happened.

Man, I want you to feel the weight of that. When God wants an accounting of what is going on in your marriage relationship, it is you, oh man, that he comes to first. The serpent came to the woman first. God comes to the man first.

He calls to the man and then he does something else which brings us to the next development, and that is that God asked the man, where he is. God asked the man where he is. The Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? This is the first question that God ever asks in the Bible.

And his question is, Where are you? It's a question being asked to fallen man on the other side of his sin. Where did you go? Where are you?

God is asking. As one writer says, God's first word to fallen man has all the marks of grace. It is a question, since to help him, God must draw rather than drive him. Out of hiding.

God absolutely knows where Adam is right now. And he could have gone right to Adam and grabbed him by his ear and dragged him out of hiding. But God doesn't do that. Instead, God, the sovereign God of the universe, who is also the consummate gentleman, speaks and says, Adam, Adam, where are you?

His intent is to give Adam a chance to speak and to tell him where he is. To get the feel of God's question, it's probably best that we not imagine God looking around for Adam, saying, Adam, where are you? And then checking over here, where are you? Kinda like I do when I'm looking for my car keys.

I will ask my car keys where they are. Where are you? Where are you? And as I go from place to place looking for things, I am terrible at finding things that I have lost or misplaced, especially if that item is underneath something else.

not too long ago, I couldn't find my wallet. I was trying to get off to work and I went from place to place looking for my wallet, asking my wallet where it was and it never answered. And I then asked my wife and I said, where's my wallet? She says, it's on the buffet table.

And I, I went to the buffet table and I looked carefully and it was not there. So I then go upstairs, I tell her it's not there and I go upstairs looking for it. She walks over to the buffet table and magician that she is. It was there on the buffet table.

So she brings it to me and she says, here's your wallet. I said, where was it? She says it was on the buffet table. And then she said, but in your defense, it was underneath a piece of paper.

So we know what that's like to look for things and not be able to find things that we have. Misplaced or lost. That's not what God is doing as he is asking the question of Adam, where are you? The picture is more that God has shown up in the normal location where he and Adam are accustomed to meeting, and Adam hasn't shown up there, so God ask, where are you?

God isn't so much asking this question to find out where Adam actually is. As much as he's asking the question to find out why Adam is not where he normally is. When God shows up. We used to have a dog named Roxy that I've told you about several weeks ago who would always greet us at the door when we came home and she'd be so excited, it would take her a couple of minutes to just calm down and take a breath.

and so we were accustomed to that. We'd come home, she would always greet us, and if she greeted us at the door, we knew that all was well. But as happened on many occasions, if we came home, And Roxy was nowhere to be seen. That was usually a very bad sign.

It usually meant that she had done something bad. And was ashamed to greet us. And meet us at the door. So with a sense of dread, we'd start looking around the house.

To see what had happened, and usually we would see that the trash can had been tipped over and trash was strewn everywhere or a loaf of bread was on the floor and chewed into, or any number of things. But we knew when we walked in and she wasn't there, something has gone wrong. And on a far more serious level, this is what is happening to God. God shows up in the garden and his sound is sufficient to alert Adam and Eve that he is approaching, but when God arrives at their meeting spot, Adam and Eve are nowhere to be seen, and God already knows why.

And so he says, Adam, Adam, where are you? There's a relationship, there's a loss that's been experienced. Why are you not where you normally are? Now Adam could have, upon hearing this question, remained in hiding.

He could have run from hiding place to hiding place to try to keep himself from God. We do that sometimes. He could have said nothing in answer to this question until he was found, but Adam doesn't do that. I want us to observe his response to God, which brings us to the third development in this passage, and that is that the man, Adam, confesses his fear, his shame, and his hiding.

He said, look what he says to God, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself. This is actually an honest and transparent response by Adam. We will observe that there are deficiencies in Adam's response to God in this passage, but it's also true that Adam could have done much worse than what he does right here. Adam basically makes 4 admissions to God right here in verse 10, and all of these admissions are good.

First of all, he admits that he heard God. I heard you. I heard the sound of you in the garden, he says. Adam didn't have to admit that.

He could have acted like he never heard God. We do that sometimes, right? But Adam doesn't do that. Secondly, Adam admits how he felt when he heard.

The sound of God in the garden, he admits that he was afraid. He says to God, when I heard the sound of you, I felt fear, I was afraid of you, I was afraid to be seen by you. What we see here, honestly, is a sad remnant of the intimacy that Adam used to enjoy with God where he used to share with God, no doubt his every thought and his every feeling, and here Adam is quite transparently telling God, I heard you, I heard the sound of you, and, and I felt afraid of you. This is the first time that Adam has felt fear of God.

And the first time that he has ever confessed to God that he was afraid of him. There's a 3rd thing that Adam confesses to here in verse 10, and that is, he goes another step and admits why he felt afraid of God. He says, I was afraid because I was naked. This is actually a stunning admission by Adam, Adam is clothed right now with fig leaves that he had sown for himself, and yet he sowed those fig leaves to cover his nakedness, and so he's dressed in those fig leaves, God shows up and Adam is feeling naked even in those fig leaves, so he hides from God, and here he is admitting to God that he still felt naked in God's presence.

Adam here is admitting that his fig leaves were not doing the job of covering his nakedness like he thought or hoped that they would. This is progress. This is good. Adam is admitting that his own efforts at self-covering are insufficient and there's a lot to love about what he's admitting to here.

Fourthly, Adam makes a final admission in verse 10. Saying I hid myself. This is awesome. Adam doesn't say, Lord, I, I, I, I was busy doing some work cultivating this part of the garden and I just, I just didn't hear you coming.

He doesn't do that. He doesn't cover up what he's doing and hiding. He's honest and forthright, and he's admitting what he did. He's saying, God, I heard you, I was afraid of you.

I realized that I was naked in your eyes, even though I was clothed with fig leaves, so I hid myself from you. God, I did not just happen to be over here behind these trees when you showed up. I am behind these trees. Because I was intentionally hiding myself.

From you So do you guys agree on a lot of levels, what Adam is saying here is really good. He tells no lie here. He's quite transparent with God. This is a good start, but God is not satisfied.

The reason God is not satisfied is because Adam is making confessions, they're good confessions, but he's making confessions of things that lie somewhere downstream of his original sin. He's confessing his fear, his shame, and his hiding, which is great, but he's not confessing the cause of those things. He's not confessing sin. At its root.

As one writer says, Adam is not yet willing to avow or to own his sin, hence, or therefore, he strives to turn the conversation to another subject, which is the last thing that happened after his transgression. You see, up to this point, Adam has only confessed to symptoms. He has not confessed to the source. Of his problems.

In fact, as another writer says, Adam's answer conceals the cause. Behind the symptoms. We're good at this, aren't we? Even when we think we're being transparent and vulnerable with people and sharing ourselves with them, often what we're doing is we're merely confessing symptoms rather than confessing sin.

At its root For example, maybe we have been full of anger over some wrongs done against us and our anger leaves us with a headache. Someone sees us and says, hey, how are things going? and we respond by saying, pray for me. I have a headache.

Or maybe you've not been walking with God and you've been doing things in the flesh. In your own strength. Maybe you have sin in your life that you're holding on to and that sin is keeping you from walking dependently together with God, doing all that you do in his strength and someone sees you and says, hey, how's it going? And you respond by saying, pray for me, I've been stressed.

Lately Or someone says, how's it going? and you say, I got pulled over by a cop today. That's a symptom, right? you don't say, man, I was, I was going 80 miles an hour on the freeway.

You don't normally go straight to that. You normally go to the fallout from that. Or maybe you've been neglectful as a husband and you've not been nourishing and cherishing your wife and your wife isn't handling that very well, and you run into a brother who says, how are things going? And you say, pray for me, man.

My, my wife and I are having problems. In fact, let me just be transparent with you, brother, and share with you that my wife's not in a good place right now. Pray for us. Mighty transparent of you, huh?

Aren't we good at this, guys? Seriously, just think about, there's nothing wrong with confessing to symptoms, but is that all you're doing? Think about those occasions where you're confiding in and sharing with other people about the issues in your life and just ask yourself, am I confessing merely the symptoms or am I confessing sin? That those symptoms emerge from.

Am I going as far upstream as I can and confessing to actual sin on my part? To confess symptoms is fine, but confess the cause as well. So far, Adam has only confessed to symptoms and God could have busted him up hugely over this. God could have said, Adam, I know what you did, you ate from the tree that I told you not to eat from, and yet evidently, you're just confessing the symptoms and the fallout from that, and you're concealing your sinful deed, but God doesn't do that.

God wants Adam to confess what he did. God wants to give Adam the chance to go there himself and so God helps him and that brings us to the next development, and that is God asked the man if he had disobeyed. He asked the man if he had disobeyed, verse 11, and he said, who told you? That you were naked Who told you that you were naked?

God is trying to nudge Adam to go deeper than where he has gone. And he's asking Adam, how did you find out? That you were naked. You didn't know that you were naked before, you were unashamed of your nakedness before.

What is the source of this knowledge regarding your nakedness? God probably waited for an answer. to this question. And when Adam hesitated and gave no reply, God then asked the next question.

Have you eaten from the tree? That I commanded you not to eat. God did not have to put this to Adam in the form of a question, but he did. He could have just pronounced the fact that Adam sinned, but he doesn't do that.

Instead, God is asking a question designed to give Adam the opportunity to confess his sin. We're seeing God. The Redeemer, God, the Doctor of our souls at work here, and it's a beautiful picture of him. A part of his work of salvation is helping Adam and helping us to get to the point where we confess our sins.

Adam had sinned, Adam had done what God had prohibited. Everything else that Adam has confessed to lies downstream of this one thing. Note the progression, Adam sins, he realizes that he's naked, he hears God, he's afraid of God because of his nakedness, and he hides himself from God. On that list there, Adam has admitted to items 234, and 5, but he has not yet admitted.

To the first item on that list. So God asked him, did you sin, Adam, did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat? Observe how Adam answers. This brings us to the 5th development, and that is the man confesses his sin.

The man confesses his sin, and the man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave to me from the tree. And I ate. All Adam needs to say in answer to God's question is the word yes, or I ate. In fact, he does say at the very end of his answer to God, the words I ate.

Ultimately, Adam admits his guilt and says the magic words, I ate, and this is all that Adam needed to say. But fallen Adam is much like us, and he is not content to merely say, yes, I ate. He gets there eventually, but his journey to that admission is paved with blame shifting, delay, and even accusation. It's painfully obvious that Adam is very reluctant to get to the matter of his original sin.

The sin that he had committed. How many of other people who are like that? Just raise your hand. Just say, yeah, Pastor, I know other people who are like this.

OK, very good. Notice how Adam phrases his confession. God asked him, did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat? And Adam, here's a literal rendering.

Here's his answer. The woman. Whom you gave to be with me, she herself gave to me from the tree. And I And I In bringing Eve into his confession the way that he does, Adam is doing two things.

He's wanting to make it clear that he's not the only one who has sinned. And he's also wanting to make it clear that he's not the only one to blame for his. Sin Sadly, Eve is not the only one that Adam mentions in his blame shifting. He also mentions God Himself, the woman you gave.

To be with me, the woman. The woman The woman you gave to be with me, she herself gave to me. From the tree And I ate As one writer says, Adam admits the truth but angles it against the woman and ultimately God. Will Rogers once said that there are 2 eras.

In American history. Those of you that love American history, you might want to take notes on this. There are two eras in American history, the passing of the buffalo and the passing of the buck. But we see here that the era of the passing of the buck started in Genesis chapter 3.

As R. Kent Hughes. Says to err is human, to blame it on others and upon God is more human. And we see Adam doing that here.

Actually, it would be wrong to say that it's human. sin and blame shifting was actually not originally a part of the human condition. It actually makes us less human than what God created us to be. But nonetheless, we get his point.

Adam is saying, yes, Lord, I, I ate, but it's not that simple. I must provide a context to explain to you why I did what I did. It's the woman that you gave to be with me, she herself gave to me from the tree and I ate. There's essentially 3 protective layers that Adam is placing over himself.

And just in what he says here, the woman, layer 1, layer 2, whom you gave to be with me, and layer 3, she gave to me from the tree and I ate. It's evident that Adam is feeling very naked here in his sin. He has tried fig leaves, but that didn't work. He's tried to hide behind the good and the pleasant trees of the garden, but God has drawn him out from there.

Adam tried to cover himself with confessions of symptoms of his sin, but God is probing deeper. So now Adam tries to cover himself with deflections and excuses. He covers himself with the woman, he covers himself with God's act of giving him the woman, and he covers himself with the woman's action of giving him. The fruit, just this desperate at every layer as God, God is going deeper and deeper with Adam.

Adam is being caught by God, but, but he's trying every layer he can of covering from the fig leaves to the trees, to symptoms, to now the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave to me of the tree. We see the word gave. in the Hebrew text twice, as Adam is explaining his sin in this verse, clearly indicating that Adam sees himself as something of a victim in this. He's saying, God, you gave this woman to be with me and she gave to me from the tree.

I've sinned, yes, because of what you handed me. And because of what she handed me. Yes, I admit it, I wrongly responded to what you have handed me and what my wife handed me. I'm guilty.

Based on the literal wording here, we can actually say this, Adam is confessing his sin here, but the first sin he confesses is not his own. But Eve's, the first sin ever confessed in human history. was the sin of Eve. And Eve wasn't the one who confessed that sin.

It was Adam confessing Eve's sin to God, and ever since then, husbands and wives have been really good at confessing their spouses's sins and very willing and eager to do that. I've mentioned this before in a number of marriage counseling situations, husband and wife come in. And so many issues in their marriage, and the question is asked, what's going on here? Help me to understand, and I've seen it time and time again, a husband and wife sit there and they do an excellent job of confessing their spouse's sin.

Let me tell you what's going on. I've had at times husbands or wives bring in a spiral bound notebook containing their spouse's sin. they have kept record. And they confess their spouse's sins with the precision of an attorney.

Adam is, he, he's confessing a sin, but it's couched in this language here and blame shifting. Rebecca Manly Pippert in her book Hope Has Its Reason says, I love this. Adam's reactions are so smooth and deftly developed that one would never guess he is a rookie at the business of sin. Notice that Adam offers no explanation of Eve's sin.

He doesn't say, God, Eve got deceived by the serpent. No, he just states the fact of her sin and giving him of the fruit. But with regard to his own sin, he offers an explanation. And I think this is one of the things that's so insidious about what Adam does here.

Adam's sin merits an explanation, but his wife's sin doesn't merit. A context or an explanation apparently. We can be exactly this way in our relationships, right? We're skilled at confessing the other person's sin, and when we confess their sins, we offer no explanation for their sin that provides some context for understanding or grace.

We treat people, especially in conflict situations who've sinned, we treat them as two dimensional creatures who simply sin for no good reason, but our sins. Our sins are different. We have reasons for our sins. Our sins require explanation.

And many times, much of what we call confession of sin is simply explaining away our sin. It's not until Adam gets to the final words of his answer that he actually admits his guilt at the very end. He says I ate. I ate Adam's confession here is far from perfect.

But amazingly, God accepts it. It does not press the matter further. We will see in the coming verses how God views Adam as fully responsible for his sin, but for now, God doesn't rebuke and pick apart what Adam has said. In fact, God honors what Adam has said enough to turn to Eve and question her, and that brings us to the next development.

By the way, let me just say this. We all know that we've sinned, right? And we repent of our sins. We come to God and we confess and we repent.

How many of you have ever repented perfectly? You have confessed to the full depth and the full breadth, and you've gone upstream to the farthest extent, and you have delivered to God a perfect, flawless repentance that God is so amazed with and dazzled by that he says, I happily forgive. I have never beheld such perfect repentance before. The point is, guys, we sin and fail, and then we repent and confess, but even our repentance and our confession is imperfect.

And yet we have a God of grace. Who listens to our confession. And, and he receives that. As for the imperfections, he'll deal with that.

He'll deal with that in time. But he's not waiting for a perfect repentance and a perfect confession for him to continue working in your life. He receives what Adam has said, Adam has said the key words, I ate, I ate. Adam will know by the time chapter 3 is done that God did not buy any of his blame shifting or excuses.

The 6th development here is that God asked the woman what she did. Says in the Lord, God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? God has just heard Adam explain what Eve had done and God already knew what Eve had done before Adam said anything, so God's not asking Eve, for his own benefit. He's asking in order to give Eve a chance, just like with Adam, to confess herself what she had done.

God is treating Eve with the same respect that he treated Adam with. God could have just started denouncing her and pronouncing judgment upon her, taking her husband's word for it. Given the fact that God already knows her sin, but instead he asked her the question, what is this that you have done, giving Eve a chance to respond? Notice the word this in God's question.

Given what Adam has just said, what do you think this is referring to? Adam has just told God that Eve had given to him of the fruit, therefore, God's question can be paraphrased in this way, what is this that you have done in giving the fruit to your husband? That's what this is referring to, her act of giving the fruit to her husband. What's interesting, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of this, in her response, Eve doesn't even go there to the issue of her giving the fruit to her husband.

And that brings us to the 7th development where we see where she does go, and that is that the woman confesses her sin. And you can add the words of eating. She confesses her sin of eating. Verse 13, and the woman said, the serpent deceived me.

And I ate Now this is not a perfect confession, but there's some good things here. Notice that she uses the word deceived. This tells us something about her mindset. It means that Eve knows that she's been tricked.

She knows that she's been lied to, she knows that it was wrong for her to partake of the tree. She is not defiant in her sin before the face of God. She does not say, yes, I ate the fruit. And I gave it to my husband and I'm proud of it because now that I partake in, I am now like you and I have a wisdom that the serpent told me you've been trying to keep from us.

She could have responded that way. Yeah, I did it and I'm proud of it. People talk that way today, but Eve doesn't respond this way at all by acknowledging that she was deceived. She's expressing the fact that she knows at this point, I was tricked.

I was lied to, and I have allowed myself to think wrongly about God and about the promise of the fruit. She is admitting to the fact that she was duped into believing a lie and she confesses that to God. So there's a lot just inside the word deceived. Nonetheless, there is some blame shifting here.

All Eve needed to say was, yes, Lord, I, I ate of the fruit and I gave it to my husband. Instead, she brings the serpent into it. And while what she says here is factually true, she's blaming the serpent for deceiving her. The serpent deceived me rather than saying, I allowed myself to be deceived by the serpent.

Now, to her credit, she doesn't say the serpent. Whom you made. And whom you put in the garden, he deceived me and I ate. So she's doing a little better than Adam did.

She's admitting to the fact that she was deceived. I know what I did was wrong. I was lied to, but she's blaming the serpent for deceiving her. Rather than saying I let myself be deceived.

Think about how the ser serpent deceived her. He just asked, did God really say such and such? He says, here's what God said, and God said, if we eat of this tree, we're gonna die. And the serpent said, you certainly will not die.

And God knows the day that you eat of it, you're going to be like Him, knowing good and evil, you'll be as gods. That was his deception. There wasn't some big long rationale that tricked Eve. He just said, Eve, God is lying to you and God's holding out on you, and Eve was deceived by that.

And she says to God, the serpent deceived me. And I ate. What's interesting, as I mentioned a moment ago, is that God didn't ask her if she ate. God simply asked her about this.

What is this that you have done? Because Adam had just said she gave to me of the tree. But Eve doesn't even address the issue of having given the fruit to Adam. She bypasses that issue of having given the fruit to Adam and goes straight to the issue of her having eaten.

Of the tree Some might say that's actually a good thing. She's going as far upstream as she can to her original sin. There also might be some deflection there. Eve, where, whereas Eve is maybe rathering or preferring not to focus on her sin of initiative and giving fruit to Adam and prefers instead to focus on the serpent having deceived her.

And seduced her into eating. But whatever is going on there, in summary, here's what we have. God asked both Adam and Eve what they had done, and Adam's first response is, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave to me of the tree, and Eve's response initially on the front end is the serpent. deceived me.

Both of them are still to a degree, hiding. Adam is hiding behind his wife and Eve is hiding behind the serpent. Both of their confessions are flawed, but contained in both of their confessions is a nugget of gold. Their confessions are joined.

At the words I ate. I ate, and that is what God, the doctor of their souls, God the Redeemer was after. God is so great that he even accepts their imperfect confessions of sin just as he does so with ours. Let me wrap things up this morning by sharing just, just a few thoughts.

honestly, if we look at what happens in these verses with a spirit of understanding and grace, the confession that comes out of Eve's mouth and Adam's mouth, actually, they're amazing confessions. we need to appreciate the good that is in their confessions. Think about the threat that they're under. God had told them the day that you eat of this tree, you will surely die.

And to their credit, they admit their sin even though all they know is we're dying today because of this, and yet they both said, I ate. I ate. That's huge. If God said to you the day you commit this particular sin, you will surely die and you end up committing that sin, and then God comes to you on that very day and says, did you commit this sin?

How would you respond to that? If you knew nothing and had no experience with God as savior and redeemer, how would you answer that question? When you think about it, it's actually pretty remarkable that Adam and Eve admitted that they ate. They're admitting their sin, knowing as far as they know that they're going to die, certainly that day because of having done so.

And I know that there's good reason to really critique Adam and Eve's confession here and we've tried to do that. We've tried to be fair with them and at the same time critique what is flawed about their confessions to God in response to his questions, but Let's just ponder this for a moment. We actually have less excuse for our blame shifting and our deflections that we're often guilty of. Adam and Eve deserve more understanding.

For their blame shifting than we ourselves deserve today. Up until this point of their life experience, they have only known God as Creator and as companion. They know nothing of him as redeemer, absolutely nothing. They have no experience in seeing how God responds to sin.

And so their deflections and evasions, they are absolutely wrong, but we on this side of the fall can have some understanding of it in light of their total inexperience with God as a redeemer. But today, you and I know so much more than Adam and Eve knew. We know that God has demonstrated His love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. We know that Christ, the Messiah loves us so much that he was willing to lay down his life.

For us so that we might have forgiveness and atonement and be made his friends. We have a God who speaks to us in His word. In First John 1:9 and says, If you confess your sins, I am faithful and I am just to forgive you of your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness, and we have a savior who was hanged naked on a tree in order to make that forgiveness and that cleansing and that atonement possible. And so think about all that we know and that we've experienced.

If you've known the Lord for any length of time, how much experience do you have with God as a redeemer who forgives? sin and who delights to transform sinners who repent of their sins. Given the volume of experience and biblical knowledge that we have that Adam and Eve did not have, we have absolutely no excuses. For deflecting and hiding and delaying in our confessions.

We have nothing to fear from God when we confess our sins to Him. And so we as Christians of all people should be the most free and the most radical confessors of sin. In our culture today. We Christians should be the ones who show the most courage and facing our sins squarely and looking at them honestly and being willing to go where more timid souls are afraid to go, and that is, here is my sin, I'm gonna call it as I see it.

I have sinned against God, I have sinned against this other person. And I am confessing it without shifting blame, without deflections, and without excuses. Imagine if the people of Cornerstone, if, if genuine Christians around the planet, especially in our culture here in America, if we were known for being radical repenters. who repent and face our sins with courage and without shifting blame.

We should so do that and demonstrate the beauty of repentance that the world observes our courage in repentance and says, what is your secret? What is your secret? And our secret is a God of grace, who sent His Son into the world. To die on the cross so that we would have atonement.

And we all know that at the foot of the cross, we've all been outed, right? You already know the worst thing that there is to know about me when you look at me. Under the light of the cross. The worst deed I ever did is I killed Jesus Christ with my sins.

What could you possibly learn about me that is worse than that? Why would I ever want to deflect and hide and shift blame? I've been exposed at the foot of the cross, and it is there that God has moved toward me with love and forgiveness, and he's done the same with you if you have believed in Jesus, and that now frees us up to look at our sins honestly and confess them without excuse, without shifting blame. Without deflection and without delay, because we know that though we have sinned, we are safe in the arms of a savior who died for us.

And will never give up on us. Finally, we see Adam here trying to pass the buck to his wife and we see Eve trying to pass the buck to the serpent because both of them are having, they're, they're inexperienced at this, this feeling of guilt on their shoulders and they're doing everything they can to separate themselves from this guilt and to, to be free of that and if that means hiding behind the trees of the garden, I'm feeling really bad and naked cause God is now in the garden, so I'll put trees between us and that will help me to feel less bad about what I have done.

I, I'll confess to symptoms, I'll, I'll shift blame. What they're doing is they're struggling, inexperienced sinners that they are, and how to get this guilt off of them.

And to lighten the load, and we understand this because guilt is hard to carry. And that's why Jesus came. And said, pass the buck to me. Pass the buck to me.

I will bear your guilt. I will bear your shame. Upon myself And I will receive upon myself at the cross the judgment that you deserve. For your sins, so that you can be released from the burden and the guilt of your sin and be brought back into a right relationship with God through me.

See, this is why We as Christians can have courage to confess our sins to God without making excuses. Making excuses for sin is what fearful people do. Who lack courage. But God is the God of grace who's given us atonement.

He's brought us into a relationship with Himself so that we can come out of our hiding and confess our sins fully to Him and to others and totally rest. In His mercy and His grace. That even when we sin, His grace abounds to us all the more. As he maintains our justified status as believers in Christ.

And it is this God of mercy and grace who is talking. To you today, wherever you're at. And he's asking, where are you? Where are you?

Let's pray together. Lord, I'm amazed that you are a God revealed in Scripture is a God who Who forgives sin. You forgive the sins of those. Who repent But even the repentance of Those who repent is not A perfect repentance without any measure of flaw or ignorance.

Lord, we spend our lives learning how to repent, and we get better at it. You are a God of such grace. I pray, Lord, that if there's any in this room that have been hiding from you. Whatever it is that they've been.

Hiding behind Lord. I just pray that just like you did with Adam and Eve, you didn't drive them out of hiding. You spoke to them and you drew them out of hiding. And I pray, Lord, that you would draw anyone that is hiding from you out of hiding and into the light of your grace and your truth.

Open their eyes to see your amazing love today like they've never seen it before and may they run to Jesus and cry out to him and believe in him and to experience the full exposure that comes. At the, at the foot of the cross, we are fully exposed, fully naked. And yet in that same location you move towards us. And our full exposure and you embrace us and you love us.

At the foot of the cross, we are fully known and fully loved by you. And so we don't have to hide anymore. We are hidden in you. And in your amazing grace.

Give us all, Lord. Give us all the grace. To believe in you. To trust in you And to live lives of radical repentance.

That the world would take note of and say, what is with these people. What is their secret that we might have a chance in reply to speak to them. Of you We thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to give of our Offerings to you. We pray, Lord, that you would receive these funds.

And take every penny that is given, Lord, and use it mightily for the glory of Christ. And for the spread of this amazing good news that our lives are based upon. At the same time, we give ourselves to you in the name of Jesus, and all God's people said,