Genesis 3:8-13

October 11, 1998

Dr. Jerry Nelson

READ Genesis 3:1-13

My parents, from Wisconsin, are with us this weekend and (will be/are) in the worship services today.

When I was quite young, I’m certain too young to know better, I had the habit, so my mother tells me, of directing blame to my brother.

That kind of nonsense is not restricted to me.

I won’t embarrass them, but I’m certain my own daughters, when young, gave ample illustration of that same human tendency - point the finger somewhere else, anywhere else, to avoid responsibility.

But it is not only children who use this technique - We all seem to have a natural aversion to owning responsibility for anything that others might find objectionable.

I can’t tell you how many husbands I have heard blame their wives for how the husbands were acting.

How many times have you heard these words, "Oh, I know I haven’t been perfect BUT...!"

I have heard men and women attempt to justify pornography, adultery,

divorce,

abandonment of children,

abortion,

unforgiveness,

unwillingness to tithe,

failure to serve,

and many other things by saying they had done all they could do and therefore it couldn’t be helped - it may have been wrong but they certainly couldn’t be held responsible.

According to this text in Genesis 3, it seems we come by this tendency naturally.

I’m indebted today to Helmut Thielicke - a German pastor/theologian who was a prolific writer following WWII.

In the first part of this chapter, verses 1-6, which we looked at quite closely last week, Eve and Adam are confronted by temptation and they sin against God by disbelieving his word and his goodness.

In the latter part of the chapter, verses 14-24, which we will look another time, we have God’s response to their sin - a response that affected not only them but all humanity.

But tucked in between the account of the first sin in human history and the consequences of that sin is a short section, verses 7-13, which I thought was interesting but not particularly significant.

At first I thought the section was there mainly to help move the story along - to get smoothly from the sin of Eve and Adam to the consequences God pronounces.

Listen, though, to that short section once again: READ 3:7-13

This isn’t just Eve’s and Adam’s experience - it is mine and yours!

Just as Eve’s and Adam’s losing battle with temptation in the first part of the chapter is "Everyman’s" battle (as we saw last week) -

The point of the passage then seems to be something like this:

Look how this denial of responsibility unfolded in the Garden of Eden:

The snake (or more accurately Satan through the snake) tempted Eve and Adam to eat the forbidden fruit by telling them if they ate it their "eyes would be opened..."

And sure enough, the serpent was partially correct - their eyes were opened.

And when they were opened what does it say they saw?

"They realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves."

Back in chapter 2:25 before their sin it says, "The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame."

Now clearly their sin caused the difference but what is the difference?

Before their sin there was nothing to hide, there was an openness, a willing vulnerability - the relationships were without secretiveness or defensiveness.

Now after their sin they immediately experience shame because of their guilt.

Before, their nakedness was representative of their innocence - like a little child - now, their nakedness represented their guilt.

Between each other, their intimacy turned to isolation - they sewed fig leaves together to hide from each other.

But they not only felt isolated from each other but when we look at verse 8 we see that something also drastically changed between them and God.

Before their sin, they were open with God.

But now, in v8, when they hear God, the God who made them, loves them, and provided everything for them, they hide.

And when God called out to him (v9 "Where are you?"), Adam admitted, "I heard you in the garden and I was afraid..."

What is very interesting to me in this passage is that Adam and Eve didn’t go out to find God when they sinned - God had to find them.

And this is the decision point of the story - how would Adam and Eve respond to God?

They had already sinned, they knew it, they experienced guilt because of it, they tried to compensate for it by making coverings for themselves, and they hid from God when he showed up.

Now God calls out to them, and they have the opportunity to put a stop to their self-help program or they can add to their sin by further sin.

What do they do?

God said to Adam, "Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

And so God turns his attention to Eve saying, "What is this you have done?"

I hear myself in that kind of response, do you hear yourself?

God, if pornography wasn’t so available,

if women didn’t dress so seductively,

if my husband was more responsive to my needs,

if my boss was less demanding,

if I had a different job,

if I had more money,

if I had more time,

But Adam and Eve don’t just blame someone else, or their circumstances - listen to what they say:

Both Adam and Eve make God ultimately responsible for what they have done.

"God could have given me a different home when I was growing up."

"God could have changed my spouse."

"I didn’t make myself, choose my genes, my environment - God made me the way I am - I’m just jealous or ambitious, or sexy by nature."

And furthermore if God made everything and nothing existed apart from God making it - then God must have somehow made evil.

Though most would dare not say it aloud - do you hear what they and we are saying?

"You, God, not man, are the one who should hide yourself in the woods of Eden. You are the one who should be accused by the mothers who have lost their children to disease, the widows whose husbands have left them alone, the orphans who are growing up unprotected, you and you alone should be accused. You would do better to call yourself a bungler or to call yourself "blind fate". Then at least we could play out our lives as a tragedy which we can do nothing about. Then at least we could drop this convulsive lying gesture of having to beat our breasts and keep crying out: ‘Wretched man that I am!’ You are the one who made death and evil, you alone!" (Thielicke 164-5)

God you are responsible!

There! I’m no longer guilty - because my sin was caused by something or someone other than me.

But that leaves me with two huge problems:

1. I still have this profound sense of guilt and
2. I am left with a God who is evil.

Some would say there is no God, that evil in the world is due just to fate. I’m not exaggerating.

Increasingly evolutionary psychologists are telling us that we are what we are because of humanity’s built-in need to survive.

Everything we do is determined by our need to survive and to make certain the human species survives.

Lust, for example, is simply the human’s way of preserving the species.

Do people really believe this?

Increasingly in our magazines and newspapers we are reading that alcoholism,

sexual addition,

homosexual practice,

even violence in our schools,

murder on the streets,

and every other conceivable social aberration is caused by fate -

natural selection produced those behaviors - the perpetrators are not responsible - certainly they not, in any moral sense, "guilty".

When we pursue the source of evil we find either evil doesn’t exist at all, if we live in a world controlled by fate - naturally selected genes.

OR we have an evil God.

Someone well said, we don’t really want to know the source of evil - we are just trying to divert the attention away from ourselves. (Thielicke)

You can fumble around in this philosophical exercise, of finding the source of evil, all you want but in so doing you will never find the solution to the initial problem:

Yes, I can pretend someone else or God is responsible or I can pretend evil doesn’t exist - OR I can admit the source of the evil I committed was ME!!

In I Samuel 15 there is a tragic illustration of another person who refused to accept responsibility for his sin.

God had told King Saul of Israel to conquer an enemy and slay everything including all the animals - keeping nothing.

When the prophet Samuel confronted Saul with this failure to completely obey Saul does a perfect "Adamism" -

When Samuel further rebuked him, Saul only slightly changed his tune:

Denying full responsibility for my sin makes me unavailable to experience the mercy and grace of God.

Contrast King Saul with King David only a few years later when Nathan comes to him after his sinful adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah.

In a further reflection on this same incident David said it this way in Psalm 51:1,3 "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love;.. My sin is always before me...Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge."

Only when I accept responsibility for my sin am I ready to experience the mercy and grace of God.

When David offered no excuses,

no mitigating circumstances,

no finger-pointing and

cast himself on the mercy of God he was able to experience the grace of God

Though I grant you it is not explicitly stated, I think v21 gives us a clue to what happened to Adam and Eve following their attempt to divert guilt.

And the story stands as a clear signal to the Israelites and to us:

God came to Adam and called out, "Adam where are you?"

He said, "I came to seek and to save the lost."

And anyone who is willing to put aside this pretense of not being responsible for sin,

Have you sinned against God and others?

Does your conscience declare your guilt?

Are you done with trying to blame anyone else - even God?

Are you ready to say only, "I have sinned."

Then respond to Jesus, knowing that he will forgive you.

When we give up defending ourselves then Jesus can begin to do so.

He will protect us from our own consciences.

If you live with guilt there is only one way to truly deal with it.

Excuses won’t cut it - only confession matters with God.

Only when I accept responsibility for my sin am I ready to experience the mercy and grace of God.