"Where are you?" - Genesis 3:9
Basil Howlett - Carey Baptist Church - 27 August 2006

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 ‘Gary where are you’?, you not only know that Gary is lost and in danger. but you also know that she is concerned for her lost son. That is also true of God. He would’ have been quite justified to have finished with Adam and with us but he is concerned for us.

2. It is also an invitation to turn back to him. When a mother cries out, ‘Gary where are you?’ what she is really saying is ‘ Gary come back, wherever you are? ‘ God makes the same appeal to us. He wants us back in fellowship with him, back serving Him. He wants us to be in heaven with him.

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.


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