/fontfamily>These
opening chapters of the Bible give us some of the most important information
that has ever been written in any book throughout the entire history of the
world. They tell us how God created this world in the very beginning; not just
plants, trees and animals but men and women as well. They also give us the only
adequate explanation of what has gone wrong in this world. How God’s perfect
creation has become the world of sin and violence, greed and injustice, carnage
and cruelty that we see today.
We are going to look at the
first question that God ever put to a human being - ‘The Lord God called to the
man Where are you?’. God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the beautiful
garden of Eden. He told them how they were to live and how, in particular, they
were not to eat the fruit of a certain tree in the garden. Adam and Eve happily
accepted this command and lived in the garden in perfect friendship with God and
in perfect harmony with each another and the animal kingdom. But the Devil,
Satan (who originally was a good angel but had rebelled against God) came to
Adam and Eve and tempted them to rebel against God, and sadly they did so.
That’s what sin is, rebellion and disobedience toward God.
They
immediately had feelings of shame and guilt and tried to hide from God among the
trees of the garden. It was at that point that God put his question to Adam,
‘Where are you?’ Obviously God, who knows all things, knew exactly where Adam
was hiding, but he asked this question to make Adam face up to himself and his
spiritual position. God would put the same question to us. We are all
descendants of Adam and like him we have turned against God and are rebels
against him. We need to ask, where are we, spiritually?
A. Where
was Adam at this moment of time?
1. He was away from God.
When he was first created he had a close relationship with God. and
enjoyed God’s presence in a most wonderful way, but now this question indicates
that the relationship had been broken. That's one of the most awful things about
sin. It comes between us and God, and separates us from our maker.
That’s why this world is in a mess. We are trying to run God’s world
without him.
That’s why many people’s lives are in a mess. They are
trying to run their God-given lives without God
That’s why many people
are so dissatisfied. They were made to communicate with God but they have pushed
him aside.
2. He was in bondage to the devil. When Adam
was first created he was a free man and it was so wonderful. No hang ups, no bad
habits, no phobias or fears or foibles. He had perfect freedom in the presence
of God. But then the devil told him that God was being unfair to him and trying
to repress him. Adam listened to the devil and rebelled against God. By his own
folly he fell into the clutches of the devil and became his slave. Ever since
men and women have been slaves of Satan as is obvious when we looked at
society.
3. He was in serious danger. He didn’t realise how
serious at that moment, but he was about to be banished from paradise (verses
23-24). and that’s the danger that faces every non-Christian. The danger of
being banished for ever from heaven (paradise) and of going to hell. The
question ‘Where are you?’ clearly implies that we are lost.
4. He
was trying to hide from God (verse 8). That’s how it is with many people
today They know they have done wrong and they are scared to face up to God, so
they try to hide from him in a variety of ways.
By immersing themselves in
endless pleasures and amusements
By a blank refusal to think or talk about
him.
By trying to hide behind a veneer of good works or ritual
By hiding
in a crowd of religious people.
But try as we may, we cannot hide
from God and one day he will ‘find us’ and confront us Far from hiding from him
we should be seeking him and asking him to forgive us.
B This
question not only teaches us about Adam but about God.
1. It is an
indication of God’s concern. When you hear a mother crying out ‘
2. It is also an
invitation to turn back to him. When a mother cries out, ‘
It’s possible to return to God through the Lord Jesus Christ. The very
first reference to Jesus in the Bible is here in verse 15. It speaks of the
offspring of the woman, a descendant of Eve who will crush the serpents head.
That’s the first promise in the Bible of a Saviour who would come into this
world and defeat the devil and save men and women from his clutches. And that
happened. Jesus, the perfect, sinless Son of God came into this world. He lived
a perfect life and then he died upon the cross and when he died there he endured the punishment of sin. Because of that he can cleanse away all our sin, shame and guilt. He can free us from the grip of sin and make it possible for to come back to God.