“COME! LET’S TAKE A WALK TOGETHER”

Genesis 3:7-13
Bob Bonner
March 21, 2004

There is a pair of verses I memorized shortly after I submitted my life to Jesus that throughout my years have continued to settle me when my life needed perspective, direction and stabilizing. In these parallel verses there are two clear directives from God each ending with a promise. They declare, “Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will do it.” (Psalm 37:4-5)

There are times that all of us wrestle with a sense of being alone or we lack contentment. I have learned personally that this lack of contentment is caused by several practices that stand in opposition to delighting or trusting in the Lord. When I allow these practices to take precedence over delighting and trusting in the Lord, my lack of contentment and sense of aloneness increases.

One of those practices is when we covet another’s wealth, possessions, significant other or their position in life. Another is when we find ourselves comparing ourselves with others. The third and fourth causes that leave us with the effects of being discontent and alone are our endless criticizing and complaining.

Last week, we learned the answer to the question, “Why do I keep finding myself feeling discontent?” We find discontentment when we take our eyes off the Lord and seek after this fallen world’s lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and the pride of life. When we seek after what the evil one says brings life, we soon discover he lies, and the result is a death of some sort. Death of purpose, a death of contentment and a loss of that deep sense of belonging. In its place is alienation, estrangement and restlessness.

Our passage for this morning, Genesis 3:7-13, helps answer the question “How did this continual struggle with discontentment and feeling alone begin?” Our passage also gives us the divine prescription for ridding ourselves of the “discontentment bug.” I call it “a prescription to a bug,” because discontentment and feeling alone is much like the common cold. As long as we live on this earth, we will never truly cure the common cold or things like sinus infections. We will do fine for a while, but then we will eventually get sick again. That’s just life in a fallen world. The same is true of lacking contentment or feeling alone. Nobody I know really likes to remain in that soulish sick state of discontent for long. But is there a spiritual prescription that is fast-acting and long-lasting, so that we don’t continually have to experience this soul sickness? Yes, I believe there is, and it is revealed in our passage.

First, read through these verses and then let’s look at them from two perspectives: the consequences of Adam and Eve’s choices, and then from God’s response to their disobedience. Beginning with verse 7, we read, “Then the eyes of both of them [meaning Adam and Eve] were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. 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.”

As I follow the flow of these verses, there are three major consequences of Adam and Eve’s ignoring and deliberately disobeying God’s warning not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The first is given in verse 7, and that is their immediate coverup due to their nakedness and shame. Whenever we ignore God or violate the conscience He has placed in each of us, one of the first evidences of our violation is a sense of shame and the action of trying to cover-up or cover over our wrong doing. When we knowingly do wrong, we typically hate what we have done, realize that we have lost something and sometimes we even reject ourselves. Just like when you take a good look in the mirror and you see something about yourself that you don’t like, you reject yourself, and try to cover up that blemish. In a similar way, we try to hide or cover-up our failures, soulish blemishes from others. We don’t want others to see our “nakedness” or who we really are. We are ashamed.

Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert cartoon strip, catches this about our fallen nature in one of his comics. Dogbert was giving Dilbert some advice on dating. He says to Dilbert, “Women like men who have accomplishments, but they hate men who boast. I’ll be your designated bragger, allowing you to appear humble.”

Dilbert thinks about that for a minute. “The one potential problem with this plan is that I have no accomplishments.”

Dogbert looks at him for awhile, then says, “If she isn’t wearing make-up, we’ll be honest too!”

Cover-ups due to shame is one of the consequences of the Fall that haunts all of us today.

The next consequence we see is in verses 8-10. Adam and Eve knew they had done wrong and they were afraid as evidenced in their hiding from God. It should be obvious that hiding from God is irrational, but we still attempt to run and hide from Him when we fail. Jonah did, Peter did and we do.

Like Adam and Eve, when we are wrong we should run to Him, fall on our knees and cry out, “Oh Father! We have ruined everything. What can we do? Can you help us?” In fact, God gave them every opportunity to do so, but they did not and we quite often do not do so immediately. Instead, we typically run away from God and hide.

In Scripture there are times when God deals with people in terrifying ways as a result of their sin. Sometimes He confronts them with His obvious displays of power, forcefulness and hatred of sin. But this is not one of those times. God came gently, looking for His beloved children to help them. He wanted to be with them. Yet out of fear of their wrong, they hid.

The third consequence of their sin is that Adam and Eve blamed others so as to avoid taking the responsibility for their own actions. First, Adam blames God. In the Hebrew, the stress of verse 12 is not Adam blaming Eve, but rather Adam blaming God for giving him Eve. In other words, Adam is saying, “God, if you hadn’t given me Eve, this would never have happened. But as a result of you giving her to me, I ate the forbidden fruit.” Eve’s response was no better. She blamed her foolish choice on the serpent.

We live in a day and age that has raised “victimhood” and the art of blaming others to an all time high, if not an entirely new level. We are a society of individuals who refuse to take responsibility for their actions. If we have two actions that are wrong, we will cop to the lesser crime, just to not go to jail for the bigger crime.

Sadly, we have come to believe that refusing to take responsibility for our actions is the solution to our shame and fear of being exposed. But it never is the solution, for we are still left with the problem of self-hatred, shame, fear and alienation.

Yet, having seen our typical reaction to our own failures, how does God first respond to this guilty party? How does God respond to our failures? Some believe that God ruthlessly punished Adam and Eve without giving them a chance to respond or repent. They believe that God tracked them down, rebuked them, cursed everything in sight, then booted them out of the garden. But a closer reading of the text proves that thinking to be in error.

In verses 8-9, we see something that no other major world religion begins with. Verse 8 is not the report of sinners seeking God, but God seeking after fallen sinners. The other major world religions have it backwards. They begin with man seeking after God. But here we see that Christianity teaches that God was the one who initiated the search for Adam and Eve after the Fall. Likewise, God first seeks us out when we fail Him. God called out to Adam and Eve with a question, “Where are you?” It’s a similar question God asks many today. In fact, He may be asking you that question this morning.

Also notice that four times in these verses God is referred to once again as “the Lord God.” Last time, I pointed out to you that Satan and Eve only spoke of God as “God.” But the name that God had used for Himself from the beginning of chapter two was “the Lord God” or “Yahweh Elohim.” The difference is significant, for the latter name for God refers to His personal commitment to care for and watch after Adam and Eve. This name restated here teaches us that God’s nature never changes and that the “Lord God” is still the personally committed and caring God after the Fall. He still seeks to have a relationship with us, even though we wrong Him, ignore Him and flat out disobey Him.

In addition it is apparent that God often took personal walks in the garden with Adam and Eve. They even knew the sound of His footsteps, for it was when they recognized His footsteps that they ran and hid. We learn elsewhere in Scripture, that God often appeared to man in the form of a man. This is what theologians call a “theophany”, a visible manifestation of God, the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ.

In Genesis 18:13, three messengers of God appeared to Abraham. Two were identified as angels and the third was identified as the Lord. Therefore I believe Abraham, Adam and Eve and others actually saw and knew the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ.

Furthermore this very characteristic of God taking the initiative to search for Adam and Eve fits the same modus operandi of Jesus Christ. Although Jesus will one day judge all sinners who refuse to submit their lives to Him, Jesus clearly tells us in John 3:17, “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him.” As Jesus first came to this world, so did God come to the garden. He came to rescue those who realized they needed a Savior.

Likewise in Luke 19, we read about the day that the rich and dishonest tax collector Zaccheus met Jesus, repented of his sins and turned his life over to Christ. In response to Zaccheus’ commitment to Christ, Jesus replied thus about Himself, in verses 9-10, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, [Zaccheus] too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Jesus reveals here the same heartbeat of God when God first entered the garden to meet with Adam and Eve after they sinned. He wants to apply his mercy and forgiveness to those who take responsibility for their actions and want to repent.

Notice how God graciously comes to Adam and Eve by asking them questions. He did not ask them questions because He didn’t know the answers, but He was trying to cause them to see reality, and/or to lead them to repentance so that he could save them. God does this to us today. His Spirit convicts with thoughts of “Why are you doing that?” “Do you really want to do that?” Or “What have you done?” Again, God never asks questions because He doesn’t know the answers. He asks questions to get us to think. However, in Adam and Eve’s case, I don’t believe that His questions led them to respond as He hoped they would, in confession and repentance.

God begins His questioning with Adam in verses 9-12. Look again at these verses and capture the tone of them. “God says, ‘Where are you?’ And Adam said, ‘I heard the sound of Thee in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.’ And God said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’”

Note the construction of this verse puts the emphasis not on the fact that Adam realized he was naked, but on his disobedient eating from the tree which he knew was forbidden. Furthermore this would have been the perfect time for Adam to say, “Yes, Lord. You are right. I wrongly ate of the forbidden tree. God, I have made a mess of my life. Will you forgive me?” We will never know for sure what God would have done if Adam had repented right then and there. But I believe the outcome would have probably been less severe.

However, rather than a repentant response, we see Adam do what we all have done, shift the blame away from himself and his being personally responsible. “The woman whom you gavest to be with me, she gave me from the tree and I ate.” It’s all your fault God! If you hadn’t placed her or the tree or the snake or the....this would have never happened!

Eve’s response to God’s question is no better. In verse 13, God asks, “Woman, what is this you have done?” Again, in the Hebrew, this is an emphatic question whose purpose is to not just point to what she had done, but also to the seriousness of what she had done so that she might ask for mercy or help. The question in English might be better rendered, “Do you realize what you have done?” Answering in her mind, she thought, “Sure I do, but I’m not going to admit it to you. Instead I’m going to blame the serpent rather than take responsibility for my actions.” So out loud, Eve replies, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

It is very clear from this passage and elsewhere that there is no clear sign of genuine repentance. Why do I say that? For several reasons: first, these verses clearly reveal that Adam and Eve did not take responsibility for their sin. And in order to have a genuine confession or repentance, one must take personal responsibility for one’s sins. Instead of taking responsibility for their sin, they both pointed the finger of blame at someone else.

Secondly, there is no evidence elsewhere in scripture that they had taken responsibility for their sin, repented or were saved. In fact, in the rest of the Bible when their names are brought up, only two thoughts are connected with them. Those passages either refer to them in a chronology of generations, or point the finger at them for being the ones through whom death came to reign upon the human race. All we have is their attempt to justify themselves.

But you might object and say, “Wait a minute, Bob. Didn’t they receive the skins of sacrificed animals from God?” Yes they did, in verse 21. But simply receiving God’s gift of the skins and the putting on of those garments does not mean they sought out God’s mercy or gift of salvation.

Think about this: have you ever received a gift from God and never thanked Him or acknowledged Him, but just took it? Have others received mercy from God, received a covering from God, a healing from God, but still rejected God? In Luke 17:10-19, Jesus healed ten lepers, but only one of them returned to worship and give thanks to Jesus. Jesus said to only that one, “Rise and go your way, your faith has made you well.” What did Jesus mean by “your faith has made you well”? He was referring to salvation, because the other lepers were already well physically. People have responded to God’s gifts by taking them and never worshiping Him ever since the Fall. Both the saved and unsaved alike take God’s grace for granted. The fact that men and women receive God’s gifts with an ungrateful heart certainly is no sign that they are saved.

Furthermore, when I looked at Hebrews 11, known for being the Hall of Faith, here is what I found. Verse 3, “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain...” Notice whose names are conspicuously absent: “Adam” and “Eve”. As in any Hall of Fame, being first at anything is noteworthy. I suspect that being the first person saved by faith would have been placed here at the beginning. But instead of Adam or Eve’s name, look whose is listed first: their son, Abel.

How did Abel come to know God? I suspect that Abel, like most kids beginning at two years of age, started asking a lot of questions of his parents, Adam and Eve. Questions like, “How come there are no other people around here? Are we the only ones? Oh, God made us. Who’s God? How did He make us? Where does He live? In heaven? How come He lives there and not here with us?”

Eventually, Abel got the sad news that because of His parents’ sin, death now reigns. But as we will see in the next chapter, Abel responded to the news the way God had hoped Adam and Eve would respond. Abel wanted to know his spiritual Father in heaven. He worshiped Him, even though his parents did not. He recognized his need for a sacrifice to cover his sins, so he regularly did so, out of worship to God. He delighted in the Lord. For that act of saving faith, he is included in the Hall of Faith, as the first true man of faith in history, and his dad, mom and brother are omitted as people of faith.

If you were God, wouldn’t you want others to know that those who first sinned not just could have been saved if they confessed their sin, but were saved? You wouldn’t want an ambiguity at that point. Hence, the absence of Adam and Eve’s names in the hall of faith, Hebrews 11, clearly says to me that they were not saved.

Imagine for a moment you were God, and these were your first four children: Adam, Eve, Abel and Cain. Out of your first four children, three reject you. Talk about a broken heart. And keep in mind, God was the perfect Father. There is no putting any blame on His poor parenting skills.

Today, God’s questions to Adam still ring in the ear of every human being who has run from God or who has ignored God. “Where are you?” This question is God’s call of Divine justice, which cannot be overlooked. At the same time, it is the call of Divine sorrow, which grieves over our rebellious want-to-live- independent-from-God heart. It is the call of Divine love, which reaches out and offers us a solution to our alienation from God due to our sin or refusal to honor Him. It is a Divine offer to “Come, let’s take a walk together.” That very kind of walk that God enjoyed with Adam and Eve, before the Fall, that intimate and private walk with Him, is what He wants you to enjoy. That’s what’s behind Psalm 37:4's invitation to delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.

To each and every one of us this morning, right now, God is issuing you a Divine call. It is an invitation to take an intimate walk with Him. One that can restore your life. One that can bring contentment to your soul and relieve your feeling of being out there alone.

As a younger man, I had a wiser and older friend I could call on when I was blue, confused and felt alone. Often, he would say, “Why don’t we take a walk together?” I use to love those walks. As we would walk, I could pour my heart out to him. Tell him some of the stupid things I was thinking or had been doing. He would never reject me. He would just listen. Sometimes he would laugh at my stupidity and even tease me, but it was a good teasing. It helped me realize that I was taking some things too seriously. But somewhere in the walk, he would correct my thinking or give it to me straight. If I needed to stop doing something or start doing something, he would tell me. I will never forget those walks.

This morning, God is inviting you to call Him and invite Him to walk with you. I have since learned that He is the One person who brings ultimate stability to my life in the midst of a volatile and constantly changing world.

To those who have never put your trust in Christ, this teaching is God’s invitation to you to answer the question once and for all, “Am I in Adam, living like Adam, or am I in Christ, saved and empowered by His love? There are only two possible answers to that question: I want to remain in Adam, unforgiven, or I want to be born again and become a new creation in Christ. The choice is yours.

To move from being in Adam’s fallen club to the resurrected club of new life in Christ requires only one thing: faith. The faith that admits, “God, I need you. I have failed you and ignored you. I have gone my own way.” It is the faith that believes what God says is true: That Jesus paid it all. He paid the price with His death on the cross, once and for all for you.

By faith, ask God to apply Christ’s work to your life, and God promises He will. That faith saves you. That faith can lead you down the road to life, contentment and knowing that you will never really be alone again. You will probably feel lonely from time to time, but never will you be alone again.

For those of you who have already put your trust in Christ, are you living daily as though you are in Christ, or in Adam? Here is how you can tell: How’s your contentment level? How alone do you feel out there? To what degree do you take walks with God in your daily world? Are you seeking His counsel? Are you submitting your live to His agenda or are you holding tightly to yours? How are you responding to His correction?

We no longer live in a sin-free garden, but He still wants to walk with you throughout your day. As you walk with the Lord, He may need to change some of your dreams or desires. If He does, don’t worry or fuss, for the results in your life will be a deeper sense of contentment and joy.

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