Welcome to the MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my 218th episode. In this episode I’m bringing you another edition of Bible study content I’m creating for my church. This content is every bit as professionally produced as my normal episodes on MHB — and my intent is to continue cross-publishing them for your benefit. So without further delay I bring you: Summit Bible Study.
Hello friends and thank you for listening to another Bible Study. Today we’re continuing with our study in Genesis. We are in chapter three. The opening of this chapter presented a look at the exchange between Eve and the serpent which led to the Fall of Man. The story of paradise lost is the first major inflection point in the biblical narrative. Taken by itself, it’s one of the most tragic tales in scripture. Once you understand it in light of the gospel, it gives us all the more reason to trust in Jesus. We serve a God who can redeem even the most tragic circumstances. I tried to emphasize the importance of reading this story in light of the New Testament, so we opened the previous study with a lengthy recollection from Paul as he detailed Christ’s role in redemption as the second Adam. We talked a lot about the nature of Satan (who I believe inhabited the serpent in the Garden) and how Satan knew the entire time eating the forbidden fruit would eject humanity from paradise. He knew we couldn’t be coequal with God anymore than he could be.
In the previous study we watched Satan play on Eve’s mind with deceptions. In this study we’ll see her drawn to the forbidden tree itself — and tempted by its delights. This is the moment when she consumes the fruit and certifies her and Adam’s rebellion against God. Let’s begin by reading verses 6-8:
Gen 3:6-8
6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.
8 They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
These verses show us the result of Eve’s discourse with Satan. She fell under the deception and Adam readily joined her in it. God’s warning against consuming the forbidden fruit was a test of humanity’s obedience — and Satan took umbrage with the idea that we would remain faithful. I don’t believe Satan knew, anymore than Adam and Eve did, that God Himself permitted this entire thing for His own wise and holy ends. Such is the case with everything we experience — nothing escapes God’s control and nothing escapes His sovereignty.
One reason why Eve was induced to transgress was because she couldn’t see anything different about the forbidden fruit than all the rest of the fruit in the garden. When God is creating the garden scripture says, “Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food.” Notice how these are the same descriptors used to reveal how Eve considered the forbidden tree.
When we’re about to sin we have this way of generalizing actions until we can longer tell the difference between which action is good and which action is sinful. This most frequently happens with premarital sex. The sin is sufficiently generalized that the sinner says, “It’s just sex so what’s the problem.” They say it as if, at this level of generalization, there’s no difference between premarital sex and sex within the confines of marriage. We do this with love as well. In our efforts to justify sinful relationships we say things like, “Love is love.” If we can generalize the term away from its biblical definition then we can justify sinful relationships. At this level of generalization we fail to see there are in fact important distinctions between the love of a husband and wife as opposed to the facsimile of love found in sinful relationships.
When Eve looked at the forbidden fruit she didn’t see any noteworthy differences between it and all the rest. That’s because the most important distinction was the prohibition from God. If she disregards the prohibition, then she can no longer tell the difference between trees. The principle here is that if God said don’t do it, then it could look and feel exactly like a good thing — yet it remains sinful nonetheless. This is why it’s not possible for you to be the arbiter over what’s sin and what’s not sin. Too often you simply can’t tell the difference until the consequences arrive.
It’s also entirely possible the forbidden tree looked more appealing than the other trees. It’s possible the forbidden tree had intrinsic properties that made it exceptionally tempting. Many sins draw us in by promising to satisfy the lust of the flesh. But even if it didn’t, the fact that it was prohibited may have piqued her interest. Before consuming the fruit neither Adam nor Eve had a corrupt nature like we have today. We know our own corrupt natures cause us to covet things which are prohibited simply because they are prohibited. We have this strange spirit of contradiction which resides in us. So it’s possible this temptation scaled to Eve in a way distinct from what we ourselves experience.
There was at least one property of the forbidden tree, real or imagined, that made it different from the other trees. The forbidden tree was said to impart wisdom. Notice the inversion found in the Satanic lie here. Scripture says fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Satan says wisdom is found in defiance of God. If Eve didn’t fear God, then she certainly had some reasons to believe what the serpent was telling her about wisdom. Remember she’s conversing with a talking snake. Snakes don’t talk under normal circumstances. Snakes are not rational creatures like human beings. But this serpent was, and so it’s possible (although not attested to in scripture) that Eve saw the serpent eat of the forbidden fruit before she did it.
Maybe this mysterious tree is what imparted the faculties of speech and reason to such a low creature? If its fruit could do that, certainly it could make an already rational creature into something divine. Something that haunts me about Eve in this moment is the connection between her desire for wisdom and her world-breaking sin. Solomon is blessed by God in response to his pursuit of wisdom — but I think the difference is that Solomon asks for wisdom from God Himself. I think it’s possible for us to become so knowledgable that we develop a Luciferian intellect. This is an intellect that is proud of itself and its own ideas. This is an intellect that doesn’t need God and may even discount what God has written.
What you should know about the holy scripture is that it is sufficient to make you wise — even if you’re starting out quite simple. You don’t need to look outside the inspired text to learn anything requisite to live a God-honoring life. It’s all there. The moment you compromise on the sufficiency of scripture is the same moment you begin looking elsewhere for worldview-shaping information. The moment you look elsewhere is the same moment your eyes find a forbidden tree promising to impart wisdom. Adam and Eve knew enough to walk alongside God in paradise — but were not awake to this fact. They failed to realize they already knew enough.
Scripture says all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ Jesus. Paul tells the Corinthian church that Christ has become to us the wisdom of God. There’s a difference between godly wisdom and unrefined knowledge. A wise person absorbs and processes information in light of the truths in scripture. A Luciferian intellect allows his sinful nature to determine which facts he’s going to learn and then he uses this unrefined head knowledge to discount the truths of scripture. “I’m too smart to believe in God. I’m too sophisticated to obey Him.” is the essence of a Luciferian intellect. The pursuit of knowledge is not a bad thing, but it must be acquired through the interpretive sense-making of holy scripture. Scripture is not merely the truth (although it is also that) scripture is the pre-condition for the ability to recognize truth at all anywhere. Without it we have no hope of wisdom, no matter how many forbidden fruits we eat.
Most sins we commit are carried out in a number of steps, even if we’re unaware of those steps at the time. I’m not denying the truth that we sometimes sin and it all feels like it happened so fast that we don’t know what led up to it — but even in these cases we simply failed to see the steps. It’s helpful in this context to examine the steps which progressed towards the Fall of Man. First is that Eve coveted the forbidden fruit. She saw it, and instead of turning her eyes away, she entered into temptation and looked at it with pleasure. In many instances the eyes are the windows through which the poison of sin comes and corrupts the heart.
This truth is acknowledged at many points in scripture, but two of my favorites are Proverbs 23 and Matthew 5. Consuming alcohol is not a sin, but drunkenness is a sin, so Proverbs 23:31 says, “Do not look on the wine when it is red, When it sparkles in the cup, When it goes down smoothly.” The idea here is that if you’re tempted to overindulge alcohol then you should avoid it completely. Jesus highlights the connection between your eyes and your heart in Matthew 5:27-28 when He says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Coveting with your eyes is the first concession to sinful temptation and it puts you in a position where resisting actual commission of the sin is much more difficult.
After coveting the forbidden fruit, the second step in her sin occurred when Eve took the fruit with her hand. Satan didn’t take the fruit himself and give it to her nor did he force her to take it. She allowed sinful temptation into her heart and then she acted upon it. Even Satan himself is not permitted to cast you down by force. Satan cannot steal you away from Jesus, he can merely persuade you to turn on Jesus yourself. Eve took what she had no right to take. The fruit was forbidden from her in the same way the spoils of war were forbidden from Achan when the Israelites conquered Jericho. He stole items which God had accursed and the result was trouble for all of Israel. Many times our hands become agents of the sins which came in through our eyes — and they represent the second phase of evolution in sinful conduct. When you know you’re about to sin, your hands may hesitate. And when the sin is exceptionally heinous, your hands may even tremble.
Eve took the fruit and then she ate the fruit. Eating the fruit represents the third step in the progression of her sin. In the aftermath of a sin, you’ll often hear the sinner say something like, “I didn’t mean to!” or, “I don’t know what I was thinking!” Sometimes there’s such severe dissonance between who they believe themselves to be and who they must have been to commit the sin that their reflexive decision is to attempt justifying the sin. Certainly this action can’t be what it looks like, because I can’t be the kind of person who would do that. This is usually the moment where reality comes crashing in and the sinner realizes he or she was asleep to the initial steps which led to the failure.
I believe it’s truly possible Eve never intended to take the fruit let alone eat of it when she first laid eyes on it. But the act of laying eyes on it opened her up to a series of further temptations the potency of which she wasn’t prepared to withstand. You can think of this progression into sin as a slippery, downhill slope. It’s hard enough to keep your balance at the top of the hill but it becomes much more difficult once you build up some momentum on the way down.
Many sins are like this, and it’s not that this slippery slope absolves you of responsibility — but it does reveal how an otherwise morally well-adjusted person might fall into trouble. Opening yourself to sinful temptation is much like releasing a flood of water — it’s very difficult to stop once it gets going and you can’t exactly just put it all back. It’s best to catch sin in its earliest stages of development and cut it off before it becomes too difficult to resist. This gradual ramping-up of sinful temptation is why we consider pre-meditation as specifically monstrous. A person who can sit calmly and plan their sin intentionally before ever encountering this slope of temptation is someone who doesn’t fear God and who may have a seared conscience.
After eating the fruit, Eve then gave some to her husband for him to eat. It’s likely he was not with her when she ate, because he may have intervened to stop the sin. Remember Adam had the advantage of being told by God Himself not to eat of it — we think Eve heard this prohibition indirectly through Adam. Sometimes sin is much easier to commit when you’re in the company of sinners. Perhaps convincing Adam to eat would help Eve feel better about her own transgression. She would no longer be alone in it. She may have even used the same arguments Satan used on her to persuade him. Her arguments would have been even more difficult to resist, since Adam loved and trusted her and also since she herself functioned as proof the fruit didn’t cause immediate death.
The forbidden fruit didn’t kill Eve, and furthermore its taste must have been pleasant and rewarding. Very often the shame of sin doesn’t hit you until after the sin is finished. When you’re in the midst of sin it can be one of the most ecstatic feelings you’ve ever known. If Eve was experiencing the thrill of rebellion she may have simply wanted to share this thrill with her husband. Or it’s possible she was afraid of the consequences now that she had sinned and she wanted her husband to be in misery with her. That’s how a sinner becomes a tempter. The same occurred with Satan himself. Satan knew eating the fruit would cause them to Fall and he knew it would not make them coequal with God. He himself suffered the consequences of trying long before Adam and Eve existed.
In the moments before we decide to commit a sin, we might ask the question, “What harm does this do?” Often this question is framed around what harm it may do to someone else, and many times our superficial evaluation concludes no harm at all. But this just means we haven’t thought it through. Consider being in Adam’s situation and finding out your wife just consumed the forbidden fruit — and yet here she is seemingly alive and well. But when you break down each layer of transgression you can start to see how major consequences will follow each one. Eating the fruit meant disbelieving the word of God and trusting the word of Satan. It meant proving discontent with paradise and desiring a fantasy instead. It also showed arrogance in his own merits and ambition for honor outside of God.
Eating the forbidden fruit proved Adam was envious of God’s perfection, and that the appetites of the flesh were supreme over God in his heart. He also cut himself off from the tree of life, and this demonstrates contempt for the favors God had bestowed on both of them. The essence which runs through all of these layers of transgression is this: Adam would be his own god and his own master. That’s the same exchange we make today when we enter into unrepentant sin. This exchange in colloquial form is often spoken like this: You either say to God, “Thy will be done.” or God says to you, “Thy will be done.” This statement implies God will leave us to be our own masters — much to our own destruction — should we refuse to live in obedience to Him. Adam’s actions in the garden represented plain disobedience to an express command from God, a command which he likely knew was a test of his own faith.
When you consider the way God loves humanity, it’s important that you frame it correctly. As Christians we always talk about God’s self-sacrificial love and immeasurable grace. I sometimes wonder if we realize the depth of it when framed in the context of our own condition. Here’s what I mean: No person to ever live had a clearer picture of God than Adam did when he lived in God’s direct presence before the Fall. A close second would be those who lived in the company of Jesus Christ during His incarnation. While they, too, were in the direct presence of God — their perception was distorted through a lens of sin.
Critics of the faith cite the problem of divine hiddenness as evidence against the existence of God. They say, “A perfectly good God who desires personal relationship with humans would not allow them to remain unaware of His existence, yet many people who genuinely seek God do not find Him.” I don’t think this is a valid criticism of the faith. I think Adam’s example as well as the example of the generation who lived alongside the incarnate Christ prove the tragic truth about humanity.
Adam was given the opportunity to live in the direct presence of God and he betrayed God by sinning and causing the Fall. The generation alongside Christ were given the opportunity to learn from the spoken words of God Himself and they crucified Him. It’s true there was a minority who elected to follow Him and these included His twelve disciples — but even they abandoned Him as He died on the cross. Most of the people who saw Jesus in person were either in support of His crucifixion or ambivalent to it. So when God reveals Himself to us in a more direct way — our reaction is to betray Him in our own sin or even attempt to murder Him. That’s how deep God’s love is for us. He would draw us in and redeem us, sanctifying us by His Holy Spirit despite our wretched, damnable condition.
Adam’s sin against God was aggravated by the truth that he ruined his own posterity by it. Adam and Eve sold the future of all humanity in a vain effort to be coequal with almighty God. This was high-treason against all of creation, a sin so egregious only God Himself could redeem us from it. And before you are tempted to wag your finger disapprovingly at our first parents, remember that Adam and Eve lived in a state of moral purity when they did this. Are you morally pure? I know I’m not. In our current condition of brokenness all of us are virtually guaranteed to have committed the same sin, or worse, if we were given the opportunity today.
Some readers wonder how the sin of one man could result in damage to generations of people who never even knew him. But that’s just the self-evident nature of sin. I don’t know anyone who fought in the world wars of the 20th century — and yet I’m certainly paying a price for those atrocities even in ways I can’t understand. We see this happen with public figures as well. Adam was kind of like a public figure insofar as he is the first biological father of all humanity. When prominent spiritual fathers fall into sin today, they inevitably drag hundreds if not thousands of Christians with them into the fallout from it. We could argue about whether it should be this way, but the truth remains that it is this way. Public figures, especially those who teach the scriptures, are held to a higher degree of moral responsibility because of this.
Immediately after eating the forbidden fruit, shame seized both of them. The scripture says their eyes were opened. This isn’t meant to suggest anything about their physical eyes — unlike when Jonathan ate a type of forbidden fruit in 1 Samuel and was physically rejuvenated by it. Adam and Eve’s enlightenment is also not suggesting any furtherance of knowledge as was promised by the deceiver. The eyes spoken about here are the eyes of their consciences. Adam and Eve were now awake to moral truth and their consciences convicted them for what they had done.
I believe Adam and Eve’s fall from grace will be similar to the experience unrepentant sinners will have standing before Jesus as their divine Judge. They will see the happiness they could have had. They will see Jesus and recognize Him as a loving God, but they will also see His grace and favor forfeited by them. They will recognize the image of God as something they once had, but which has been corrupted out of them. And perhaps most painful of all, they will hear the still small voice of the Spirit of God and remember it as the voice they so often declined to obey.
For Adam and Eve, part of what they lost was dominion over God’s creatures. Certainly our technological prowess has given us supremacy over all creatures today — but without our weapons and our tools we quickly find out we do not have dominion over God’s predatory animals. For the first time in their lives Adam and Eve experienced disorder in own spirits and were witnesses to the corruption of their own nature. The flesh now made war against the mind, and both faculties were subjugated to sin and wrath.
It’s possible they saw the cherubim and the flaming sword whom God would station to guard access to the tree of life. When God opened Balaam’s eyes in Numbers 22 the first thing Balaam saw was the angel of the Lord standing in his way on the path, sword drawn and blocking his way forward. Maybe our first parents saw the serpent who had deceived them and maybe he was adding insult to injury. Whatever else they might have saw in the immediate aftermath of defying God, we do know they were naked and now realized they were naked.
Their nakedness is symbolic of a couple things. First is that they had fallen from paradise and were now vulnerable to the threats of a corrupt creation. Second is that they were exposed to the holy gaze of a righteous God and they were completely disarmed to do anything about it. They were stripped of the honor and joy they once had in their paradisal existence. Their disgrace was laid open to the reproach of heaven, of earth, and of their own consciences.
The peace of being right with God which goes beyond comprehension was suddenly gone from them. In its place was a lingering disquietness which spoke of increasing shame. Something you should know about sin is that it destroys your peace and steals away your comfort. When sinners experience shame today it can either lead them to repentance or everlasting contempt. The direction it leads us largely depends on how we react to it. If I allow my shame to teach me that I’ve done something wrong, and if I have faith to believe Jesus Christ can redeem me, then my shame will lead me on paths to relationship with God and this will result in eternal life. If I resist my shame by blaming others — or worse — blaming God Himself, then my shame will lead me deeper into rebellion against Him. Sooner or later all of us experience shame because all of us are sinners — but how we respond to that shame makes all the difference.
The opening of Adam and Eve’s eyes also reveals the nature of Satan as a deceiver. Satan told Eve that her eyes would be opened, but he lied to her about what that meant. He knew she was expecting something completely different. The worst kind of liars often build their lies on a kernel of truth — they simply twist and pervert this truth so that it’s no longer true. Eve thought her eyes would be opened and she would be like the God she admired. Satan knew her eyes would be opened to her own shame and grief. You can imagine Satan saying something like, “Well, I told you your eyes would be opened, didn’t I?” Liars will sometimes try to excuse themselves by way of equivocation like this — but we can rest assured God is not fooled by them and God will not excuse them.
Once their shame is revealed to them, Adam and Eve attempt to fashion clothing made of fig leaves. They were trying to cover up in the sight of each other. When we’re caught in a sin, we’re most often immediately concerned with what other humans will think of us. The weight of shame comes in the form of man’s opinion of us more than our actual defiance of God. We seek the honor of those around us more than we seek a pardon of forgiveness from God. Many sinners act as if God’s forgiveness isn’t worth anything if it doesn’t come packaged with the forgiveness of his or her peers.
This is why we go to such great lengths to cover up ourselves and our sin once we are exposed. That’s what Adam and Eve were doing in the garden and that’s what king David did when he had Uriah killed in an attempt to conceal his adultery with Bathsheba. In neither instance would it have been realistic to suppose such stumbling efforts would conceal any of it from the omniscient gaze of God Himself — but they were more afraid of man. Not only are these efforts immensely harmful to the people around us, but they also cause us to bury our shame deeper into our hearts where it can take hold and cause further corruption.
When they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day, they were seized by fear and hid themselves from Him. This was a new feeling they experienced in the presence of God. While they lived in obedience, they enjoyed His company as a loving Creator. They weren’t afraid and they didn’t feel shame. But their transgression revealed God’s character as a Judge. It’s not that God Himself changed, it’s rather the quality of their consciences changed. If you have a guilty conscience, you will perceive God primarily as a Judge. God’s form as Adam and Eve hid from Him was the same form who placed Adam in paradise and fashioned Eve from his rib. After their sin, God didn’t approach them in the garden to dazzle them or terrify them, He came to humble them and to reveal truth. His form and His manner suggested He was still willing to have relationship with them.
We can learn some important lessons from God’s response to the Fall of Man. As we’ve discussed previously, this was undoubtedly a tragic and seminal moment for all of humanity. It would be hard to overreact to such a world-altering sin. But even in the wake of something like this, God didn’t come thundering down from Heaven in some great display of wrath. He simply walked, slowly and deliberately, through the garden. Irrational anger or uncontrolled rage are never the correct responses to any kind of provocation. Even our moments of righteous anger should be calculated and well-considered. I think this is part of the reason why God came to them in the cool of the day. If He came in the middle of the night He would have caused them unnecessary fear. If He came during the heat of the day perhaps the exchange would have been too stressful for Adam and Eve. God cares primarily about your spirit and so His timing is going to reflect that. God’s work in your life will come at precisely the correct time to maximize the potential for your spiritual well-being. This is why it’s a bad idea to force your faith onto unbelievers who aren’t ready to hear it. God will work in their hearts at exactly the correct time in order to draw them in to Himself.
Adam and Eve heard God before they saw Him and before He approached them. He wasn’t trying to take them by surprise by coming to them suddenly, and His voice may have resembled the still small voice the prophet Elijah heard. Some readers think God was lamenting to Himself concerning the sin of our first parents and talking to Himself about how He might respond to it. This would be similar to His self-deliberations in Hosea 11 concerning the sins of Israel. Of course it’s also possible He was simply calling out to them as He drew closer in the garden, giving them notice of His approach. As Christians there’s no reason for us to camouflage ourselves and trick people into hearing what we have to say. We should make clear our intentions from the beginning and give our listeners the freedom to choose whether they want to hear us.
If you ever want to measure sin’s corrupting effects on your relationship with God — simply observe the change that took place in Adam and Eve. Prior to their sin they would have ran out to meet God if they heard Him walking in the garden. They would have embraced Him with humble joy — not fled from Him in terror and shame. These same effects of unrepentant sin plague your relationship with fellow believers as well. I’ve watched Christians go from joyously worshipping on a platform in front of large gatherings of saints to being so terrified and ashamed that they could no longer walk through the auditorium where they once worshipped. This is not the kind of unravelling you want to experience. It’s incredibly painful because not only does your relationship with God freeze over, but so does your relationship with your faith community. Never underestimate the head-spinning speed with which unrepentant sin can excommunicate you into a space of loneliness and shame. Sin shatters precious trust which is hard to build and even harder to rebuild.
I think the velocity of all these consequences served to cast Adam and Eve into a state of confusion and fear. Their own consciences accused them and set their sin before them in its proper colors. They tried and failed to escape the shame using fig leaves, but even being covered by fig leaves didn’t quell their fear of facing the Lord. In a single moment they went from living in a paradisal, perfect creation under the omniscient gaze of a loving Creator to being at war with the creation itself. God now appeared as their enemy, even though He was not. At this moment they had no mediator to serve as ambassador between themselves and God. They faced God in the same way a sinner will face God absent the righteous covering of Christ. After experiencing all of this so rapidly it’s no wonder they were afraid.
Standing trial before a Judge is much more terrifying when you know you are guilty. They knew they were guilty so rather than pleading innocence they simply tried to flee from justice. Part of this sudden collapse included the revelation of just how much Satan had lied to them. He told them they would be like God and intimated they would be safe. The opposite was true and now they couldn’t even find safety from their own thoughts. He told them they would not die, and now they fled through the garden as if for their lives. He told them the forbidden fruit would magnify them and advanced their knowledge, but now they hid as criminals in a state of trembling confusion. Adam and Eve refused to be the obedient subjects of God, and so now they became prisoners of their own sin.
Part of the problem with sin is that it presupposes the possibility of escape from God. Our spiritual enemies convince us it’s possible to hide from God and live in a state of liberty from Him — as if such a thing is even desirable. It’s not until the sin has destroyed our lives that we realize it’s not possible to hide from God and none of us are truly free. God spoke about His own omnipresence to Jeremiah when outlining the wickedness of the false prophets who were leading Israel astray. In verse 24 of Jeremiah chapter 23 we read, “Can a man hide himself in hiding places So I do not see him?” declares the LORD. “Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?” declares the LORD.” As an unrepentant sinner there’s no escaping God, and as a faithful follower of Christ there’s nowhere you can go where He isn’t with you.
Another piece worth pointing out is the ineffectiveness of solidarity with other sinners. Remember how we talked about sinners seeking communion with other sinners so they can share each other’s shame? Remember how it feels easier to commit sin when you can do it together with other people? The sense of camaraderie and communion is also a lie. Eve shared the fruit with Adam but it didn’t do either of them any good to fall into sin together. They were still just as afraid as if they had committed it alone. They were not able to comfort each other against the shame they felt in the presence of God. The burning accusations of conscience, the approach of new troubles from every side, the creation itself turning on them, and ultimately this new inevitability of death. Although they linked hands and were partners in sin, they could not save each other from any of this. Let’s finish this study by unpacking verses 9 and 10:
Gen 3:9-10
9 Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”
10 He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.”
These verses mark the beginning of God’s indictment against Adam and Eve for their sin. Sometimes you’ll see God ask a question He already knows the answer to like He does here when He asks Adam, “Where are you?” He asked the question so that He could shift Adam’s perspective inward and realize the consequences of what he’d done. This encouragement for Adam to self-evaluate the situation is similar to the one given to Satan when he fell from heaven. “How art thou fallen, Lucifer, son of the morning!” Adam was prized among all God’s creation much the same way Lucifer was prized among the angels. Their special relationship with God was something the two had in common. God called on them to remember who they were and how far they had fallen.
Ultimately God was challenging them to recognize their rebellion and the cost of forsaking Him. Both of them defied God in an effort to rise up and become coequal with Him — and now both of them lived in a condition of self-ruin and fear. Adam fled from the very God he desired to supplant. This is what happens to all people who become entangled in unrepentant sin. They should listen to God when He asks, “Where are you?” and realize how far they have fallen from all things which are good. Sometimes it’s so painful to open your eyes and realize what you’ve done to yourself that it’s easier to push on down increasingly secluded paths of self-deception until you come to the crushing realization these pathways lead to ruin. God asks you where you are in order to wake you up and get you off of these paths.
At first this seems like God’s harsh encouragement to self-evaluation, but once you meditate on the alternatives, you see it as a loving act of kindness. God is the Good Shepherd and like a good shepherd He pursued Adam and called him back home. If God had not done this, if God had decided it was easier to ignore Adam’s sin and not confront him about it, then Adam would have been a lost sheep forever.
Adam’s response to God is trembling and, for lack of kinder words, quite pathetic. I don’t say that from a position of superiority myself — I believe I would stumble around like a weak, faithless creature if God confronted me about a sin. It’s just the way we humans tend to react when we’re caught doing something we know is wrong. Adam doesn’t own the guilt when answering God, but he at least owns the shame and fear written all over his body language. When we’re caught in a sin we tend to acknowledge nothing more than what we know can’t be concealed or denied. Some of us will even deny the undeniable, much to our own future embarrassment.
Adam was afraid to be in the presence of God because his sin revealed his own nakedness to him. He was now standing in front of the God he betrayed, naked and unarmed, completely vulnerable to whatever recompense God saw fit. Perhaps Adam was surprised when God didn’t force him to sit in the shame of his own transgression. Perhaps he realized just how much God loves him when God immediately fashioned clothing from animal skins and clothed the man and his wife. As we continue our work in studying the story of paradise lost, a crucial piece of context to keep in your mind is that while we were yet sinners — Jesus Christ died for us.
God is not interested in twisting the knife and prolonging the shame of your sins. That’s the work of Satan and why scripture titles Satan as the Accuser. Just like Adam, we should be afraid of approaching a holy and just God in the vulnerability of our own nakedness. But just like God took steps to clothe Adam and alleviate his shame, He has also taken steps to clothe ourselves in the righteousness of Christ. Covered by the Lord Jesus Christ, we don’t need to be ashamed of the sins from which He has redeemed us. Covered by the Lord Jesus Christ, we can draw near to God with humility, trust, and love.
And I think that’s a good place to end it. As always I do thank you all for coming along for these studies. I hope they’re benefiting you as much as they’re benefiting me. So many of you have come up and expressed thankfulness for the podcasts and that really does make my day. I love creating this content and knowing it’s edifying the body of Christ is the best outcome I could ever hope for. Thank you all for listening and I’ll see you in the next one.
If you enjoy this podcast, please rate it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to it. You can follow The MHB Podcast on Facebook or Twitter @mhbpodcast. Tell your friends about it and share it on social media. If you’d like email notifications of new episodes or if you’d like to support my work directly, please consider becoming a paid subscriber on my website at mhbpodcast.com. This work is made possible by listener support so your generosity is greatly appreciated. Thank you all for joining me, and I will see you in the next episode.
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