Hearts of Ice

Genesis 3:9-13 ESV

9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

If you parented your children in a way similar to the way that I parent mine, then you know that it is vitally important for your child to own up to his or her mistakes and recognize that they have done wrong whenever they do something that they are not supposed to do.

But though that is the case, that is perhaps the hardest part of the discipline process. Whichever boy I am dealing with, I will sit down and say, “just tell me what you did wrong and why you deserve to be punished for what you did, and this will be over”.

But at that juncture, one of two things typically happen. The first thing that will potentially happen is whichever boy that I am talking to just won’t own up to doing anything wrong. They refuse to verbally confess to any kind of wrongdoing whatsoever.

But the other thing that will potentially happen, and this is what happens more times than not, is that not only will they not admit to doing anything wrong, but they will also place the blame for their wrongdoing on someone or something else.

Whichever boy I am talking to may say, “Well yeah, I did it… but it’s my brother’s fault!” or “Well yeah, I did it… but I did it because I thought that it would be a lot of fun”. They are what I like to call the “Yeah, buts”. “Yeah, I did wrong; but…” fill in the blank. It’s a refusal to take responsibility for your own actions and placing at least part of the blame on someone or something else.

Now, what is sad about this is that this is not only the case with children, no, I see the same thing over and over and over again with grown men and women, indeed, I even find myself reasoning this way at times.

“Sure, what I did was wrong” we will say, “but I only did it because of the way that I was brought up!” or “I only did it because of things that happened to me in the past!” or even, and this one is perhaps the most pitiful of all, “Everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn’t I?” as thoughthat makes our bad behavior excusable.

Now, all of that, whether it is from a child or from an adult is incredibly damaging to ourselves, and to others, but much more than that, it is extremely offensive to God.

It is extremely offensive to God because what we are doing is excusing our sin and attempting to turn it into something trivial. But sin is not trivial to God.

Sin is serious business, as was said, it is an offense to God, and thus God expects us, especially as born-again children of God, to take our sin seriously. And the way that we take our sin seriously is by owning up to it, being broken because of it, and seeking God to forgive us of it though we recognize that we most certainly do not deserve His forgiveness.

For example, if a man committed the devastatingly damaging and treacherous act of adultery and his wife knew about it and he came to her and he flat out denied that it ever happened, there is a great chance that she won’t forgive him of the sin that he committed against her.

Or, if he comes to her and he says, “Well yeah, I cheated, and it was wrong, but the other woman was just so attractive, and plus, she came onto me first”. If that happens, there is a great chance that she will not forgive him for what he has done.

But, if the woman’s husband comes to her, confessing his sin, absolutely broken over what he had done, blaming no one but himself, feeling legitimate remorse about what he had done, and pleading with his wife to forgive him though he knows that he doesn’t deserve her forgiveness, then his wife may still justifiably refuse to continue in a state of marriage with him, but the chances of her graciously forgiving him are probably much greater.

A broken and contrite spirit is what God justifiably demands from us, from sinners, which we all are. Recognizing the evil that we have committed, owning up to it, and pleading with God to graciously forgive us for our iniquities is what God desires.

As we continue through this series from the second and third chapters of Genesis, we find God confronting Adam and Eve concerning their sin and we will see in our reading for today how they responded to God when they had found themselves caught red-handed.

When we left off in our sermon last week, we had seen how the man and the woman had fled from God and hid from Him when they knew that He was coming near. We said that they did this because they knew that they were not worthy to be in the presence of God, and thus the One Who had been closest to them, they now fled from and wished that He was not.

Thus, we know that God knows that the man and the woman had sinned, but now, as we look to our reading, we see God coming to the man and giving man the opportunity to confess his sin to Him, first in verse nine, where we read:

Genesis 3:9 ESV

9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

God calls out to the man, “Where are you?”. Now, as we said, the man had hidden from the presence of God, and so to many, when we look at this verse, it may appear as though God is legitimately having difficulty finding the man because he is not where he typically is and thus, He asks the man where he is because He just can’t figure it out.

But of course, we know that there is no effectual hiding from God. God knows all things and thus He most certainly knew where the man was hiding. No, when God called out to the man and asked him “Where are you?”, what He is doing is calling the man to elicit an explanation for he and his wife’s unusual behavior.

Before this, whenever God would come to the man and to the woman, they would not seek to hide themselves from Him, but now they are, and thus God is seeking an answer for this new behavior.

Now, once again, it isn’t as though God was unaware of what had happened, as we have already stated, God is all-knowing. Thus, what God is doing here is what I said we as parents do with our children when they misbehave. God was in effect sitting the man down and saying, “I already know what happened, but I want to hear you tell me for yourself”.

So, let’s look to what the man said in response to this, in verse 10, where we read:

Genesis 3:10 ESV

10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

Adam says, “I heard You coming, and I hid myself from You, because I am naked!”

Now, Genesis 2:25 tells us at that particular juncture that “the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed”. And at that point, they were not ashamed because there was no shame. Shame comes as a result of sin, and back in Genesis 2:25, there was no sin.

But now, they are ashamed of their nakedness, and as was said, shame is present only when sin is present. And the only way that sin could be present at this juncture is if Adam and his wife disobeyed the prohibitive command of God to not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Thus, in seeking to excuse his hiding from God, the man unwittingly disclosed that he had disobeyed God.

But the worst part of this response is that it shows that Adam thought more of his nakedness, he thought more of his state of being less than, his insecurity, he was more ashamed of that than he was ashamed of transgressing the divine command.

Thus, to awaken the man to this shame, God connected the recognition of the man’s nakedness to his transgression of the divine command in verse 11, where we read:

Genesis 3:11 ESV

11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

God asks two questions here in order to awaken the man to his great transgression.

He asks, “Who told you that you were naked?” As was said, the man and the woman had felt no shame for their nakedness, for they knew not what shame was. It did not exist in a world without sin.

He then followed that question with another question when He asked, “Have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to eat?”.

And in doing this, God was telling the man that there is now shame in the world, and the only way that there could be shame in the world is if the man and his wife disobeyed His prohibitive command. There could not be one without the other.

Thus, we see God showing the man that there was no pulling the wool over His eye, He knows exactly what happened, so the best thing that Adam could do at this point was just fess up.

And in verse twelve, we see just that, where we read:

Genesis 3:12 ESV

12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”

Those last two words, “I ate” were Adam’s admission of guilt, but take a look at what he said before he admitted to eating the forbidden fruit.

He says to God, “The woman You gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree” … So, Adam blames his wife. He says, “It’s her fault! She gave me the fruit and therefore I ate the fruit”.

But even worse than this is how Adam says to God, “The woman whom You gave to be with me”. In saying this, what Adam is saying to God is, “Actually, you know what God? This is Your fault! I was doing just fine by myself, and You messed it all up by giving me a wife!”.

What a terrible, awful thing to say! He refused to own his transgression, let alone be broken, repentant, and contrite over it!

But worst of all, what we see in this response to God is that in man striving to become like God, he has now come to mistrust those closest to him; the helper whom God had given to him, and God Himself.

This was a pitiful response, and just like how we tend to not even acknowledge a troubled child when he gives us a pitiful excuse, so does God not even acknowledge the pitiful excuse given to Him by Adam.

Thus, without responding to the man’s excuse, God turned to the woman and questioned her, as we see in verse thirteen, the final verse of our reading for today, where we read:

Genesis 3:13 ESV

13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

The man was not broken over his sin, he was in no way repentant of it, he only offered excuses, thus, God looked to the woman, and He asks her, “What is this that you have done? The man, he’s not fessing up, so what about you, are you going to fess up?”.

And look at her response, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” Just like the man, the last two words that the woman spoke are her admission of guilt, but like her husband, she too was full of excuses. “It’s not my fault! The serpent deceived me! He tricked me! And that’s why I ate! It’s his fault! Not mine!”

Once again, we see no accountability, but even worse, we see no real sorrow over sin. What the woman and her husband were sorrowful over is that they sinned and got caught. But the sin itself, they weren’t sorrowful over that.

They weren’t sorrowful over the fact that they had rebelled against God, they weren’t sorrowful over the fact that they had offended God, they had no hatred of their sin.

The only thing that they were sorrowful over was the fact that they did what they did, and it didn’t go the way that they wanted it to go.

And remember what they wanted their disobedience to accomplish? They wanted to be like God. They wanted to be God. Thus, their sorrow was not that they offended God, but that they weren’t like God… That may be even worse than their original sin!

How deeply wicked is the heart of man!

This makes it all the more amazing that those who have been reborn by the Spirit of God have been given new hearts, for naturally this is what our hearts are like: Poisoned! Wretched! Rebellious!

Thus, what a miracle that God has come to certain ones, apprehended them, and removed that stony heart and given them a heart of flesh, a heart that genuinely sorrows over sin, is broken because of it, that is truly repentant of sin. And not because they don’t like being caught, but because they hate their sin. They hate it because it is of their old nature. They hate it because it offends their God.

May we, beloved, not excuse our sins, but be broken over our sins.

Amen?