Marked By Blessing

The LORD God Calls & Finds Lost Sinners

6.9.24 [Genesis 3:8-15] River of Life (3rd Sunday after Pentecost)

What do you think is the world’s oldest game? No, it’s not stick ball or rugby or soccer. It’s not mancala or chess or checkers. It’s not even some card or dice game. The world’s oldest game is hide and seek.

You were probably first introduced to its prequel—peek-a-boo. But hide and seek came first. Along with it’s rougher cousin game—tag—hide and seek is one of the most flexible games ever created by man. You can play it just about anywhere, at any time, for any length of time, with any number of contestants and it can still be a lot of fun.

Of course, like any game, there are tricks that you pick up through experience. Some tricks become so obvious, such second nature that we only realize that we learned them when we watch someone who is new to hide and seek play the game. Be quiet. Step silently. Don’t move if there is a light behind you. Don’t laugh if they tell jokes.

One of the funniest parts of hide and seek is when you see a kid who doesn’t quite get the hide part. So they run and hide behind a skinny tree that doesn’t cover either of their shoulders. Or they put a blanket over their head but you can still see their feet. My personal favorite is inverse peek-a-boo—when they just cover their own eyes.

When you see that you can’t help but laugh. Because it looks so silly. Because they’re not fooling anyone. Also, because it’s just a game.

But it’s not so silly when it’s not a game. And that’s what we have in Genesis 3. Hide and seek’s first run wasn’t played as a game. But the “contestants"—Adam and Eve—looked even sillier than a kid with his hands over his eyes. They were only fooling themselves.

(Gen. 3:8) When Adam and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden he made for them, they decided to try to hide from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

The Lord God knew exactly where they were. He knew what they had done and why they were hiding. He knew all this before he began his stroll in the the cool of the day. But still he called out: Where are you?

Why do you think he asked this question? The Lord God who fills all things didn’t have to search for them. The Lord God who knows all things already knew the answer. The Lord God who knows every word we are going to say before they are even on our tongues, knew it all. So why did he ask?

The Lord God asks this question for the same reason he asks the other three questions in this chapter. He wants Adam and Eve, the beloved crown of his creation, to stop hiding. Unfortunately, it took a while for Adam and Eve to begin to understand that. Yes, we hear Adam answer the Lord God back, by saying (Gen. 3:10) I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid. But even in that response, Adam was still hiding something. Foolishly and futilely hiding his guilt and shame.

So the Lord God asked another question. Well, two actually. (Gen. 3:11) Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?

Adam never answers the first question. And, even as he answers the second question, he is still trying to hide. (Gen. 3:12) The woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it. His wife follows Adam’s lead when God asks her: (Gen. 3:13) What is this you have done? She answers the question, but tries to hide, too. (Gen. 3:13) The serpent deceived me and I ate.

It’s hard for us not to pick up on the foolish and futile finger pointing. It looks really silly from our perspective, like a kid hiding behind a tree.

But don’t we do the same, today? Don’t we point the finger at the people around us when we are confronted about our own sins?

Maybe, like Adam did, we point the finger at our spouse. We know that we have been angry or deceitful or selfish or lustful or overly-worried, but when we are confronted we think they are to blame. We wouldn’t be so angry if they would just keep their word or honor their vows. We wouldn’t be so deceitful or selfish or lustful if we felt like they were more honest, more selfless, or more passionate. We wouldn’t worry so much if they were more reliable or responsible. It doesn’t really matter how silly that may sound to other people.

Maybe we point the finger of blame at our parents. We blame them for the mistakes they made, the harm they inflicted, or the trauma they passed down.

Or maybe like Eve, we point the finger at the evil around us. The devil, the wicked world, the sinful flesh are easy targets when we fall into temptation and sin. We may not out and say the devil made me do it, but we do like to make it sound like we had no other choice or that anyone else would have done what we did in that situation.

Ever since this day, when people are confronted with their sin and we are feeling exposed, we choose to respond with a story.

Sometimes the stories we tell about our sin involve pointing fingers at the people in our lives, in our past, or in our proximity.

Sometimes, the stories we tell about our sins deftly define our sin as anything else. We call them lapses in judgement. A careless word. An imperfection. A foible. A misdoing. Misdeed. Mistakes. Poor choices. Slip ups. Even a scandal. Anything but a sin. We never call it a sin.

Sometimes, the stories we tell about our sins involve making excuses about how that wasn’t really us, or we weren’t really thinking, or how we were just reacting, or having a terrible day, or caught in a bad mood.

Sometimes, the stories we tell involve a lot of sorries. We say that we have learned a lot from the experience and we are better people than that moment and we are going to do better in the future. Our stories involve promises about personal atonement and rectifying wrongs.

But our stories cannot hide the truth any better than your hands can hide your whole frame. The truth is plain. It’s clear. And it is where God wants to lead all sinners.

Did you notice the last words out of Adam and Eve’s mouth? (Gen. 3:12-13) I ate. That’s what God was after. He didn’t ask all those questions because he was looking for a story. He was looking for the truth. Because a healthy relationship cannot exist without the truth.

The truth is that the serpent did deceive Eve and she ate. The truth is that Adam was given fruit from the tree and he ate. Each sinned. But that uncomfortable truth was not the end of the truth.

When the truth was laid bare, God laid into the serpent. He did not ask him any questions , because he is the father of lies. He cannot speak the truth because it is a foreign language to him. So the Lord God of power and truth cursed the serpent and pledged to deal with the sins that Adam and Eve had committed.

The truth is that God wasn’t going to hide from the trouble that was unleashed upon the world that day. Adam and Eve were guilty, but God was granting them a stay of sentencing.

Though their days would not unfold as God had designed—Eve would experience pain in childbirth and frustration in family life; Adam would toil to bring food from the earth and would eventually return to the dust he was formed from—they would not face the death their sins deserved.

The Lord God promised that a champion would come from the descendants of Adam and Eve. He would do what his parents had not done. The father of lies would try to deceive him and he would not be led astray. He would not disobey. He would not deviate from the path of righteousness.

Even so, his life would not be confused with a walk in the park. He would not enjoy the paradise that God designed for Adam and Eve. He would be struck. He would be crushed. He would be punished for sins of others. He would experience the wretched and torturous pains of hell. He would cry out to the Lord his God, Where are you and there would be no answer. He would die.

Jesus did all this for us. Jesus endured all this to redeem us. Jesus braved the wrath of the righteous Lord God and tasted death so that the serpent’s head would be crushed once and for all sinners. That is the story that the Lord God told sinners who had run out of stories.

That is the same story that God unfolded for us in Revelation 20. The ancient serpent, who is the devil or Satan does his worst in trying to deceive people. He wants us to think sin is no big deal. He wants us to think there is no judgement coming. He wants to deceive us. And as soon as he has, he tries to again. The sin that he said was no big deal, he exposes. He fills our hearts and minds with dread at the idea of God drawing near. He wants us to feel so guilty and ashamed that we try to play hide and seek with God.

But look at how the Lord our God deal with lost sinners. He draws near. He draws a confession out of us. Yes, sometimes our confession is a confused, garbled mess of a story. But God does not demand a perfect confession from imperfect sinners. Instead, the Lord our God draws us to the truth. He draws us to himself. He does not want us to hide from him any longer. He wants to hide us in his hand.

That’s what he did for Moses. You see, ever since the Fall into sin, God has had to hide himself from mankind. Sinners cannot handle God’s righteousness and glory. But God has revealed himself to us.

When Moses wanted to see God’s glory, the Lord told Moses that he could not see his glory and live. So God did something special. He put Moses in the cleft of a rock and covered him with his hand until he had passed by. All Moses would see was God’s back. Which might sound disappointing. Until you realize why. God is going before us. He marched out to meet the Evil One and win the victory for us.

So we can sing: Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee; Let the water and the blood From thy riven side which flowed Be of sin the double cure: Cleanse me from its guilt and pow’r. Amen.