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Where Are You?
Don’t you love how the Bible can convey so much truth in such a short passage? Here, we are given a fairly complete picture of temptation, sin, its consequences, and God’s desire to redeem us in nine verses!
First, we meet the Devil, using his favorite tactic as the great deceiver – encouraging us to doubt God’s word. How often do we head towards sin when we think “Did God really say that?” And how often do we, like Eve, distort God’s word, so that it seems ridiculous and thus acceptable to ignore.
Then the Devil, sensing he has a willing participant, goes a step further, blatantly contradicts God’s word – “You will not surely die” – and suggests that God is really trying to keep good things away from his children. Eve focuses on what she wants instead of what she already has, a right relationship with God. Once she eats the apple, she tries to justify her behavior by getting Adam to join her in disobedience. All too often we try to justify our sin by focusing on what we’ll get and pointing out that “everybody’s doing it”? And Adam doesn’t even analyze his behavior – he just jumps right in!
The inevitable result is that what Eve thought she wanted isn’t so terrific and the consequences of disobeying God are worse than Eve anticipated. Adam and Eve are ashamed and embarrassed, and their fellowship with God is broken. The Devil achieves his goal when they hide from God. But because He loves them, God refuses to let them hide and seeks them out to rebuild the relationship. In a single verse, we see the theme of the Bible summarized: “But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’” In the midst of our sin, God seeks us out relentlessly to restore a right relationship. Even when we are ashamed and embarrassed by our sin, we can’t hide from Him. We need to answer Him when He calls us and allow His grace to redeem us.
Romans 3:22-24 – “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference [among believers], for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
All too often we try to justify our sin by focusing on what we’ll get and pointing out that “everybody’s doing it”?
This really is an amazing thing we do, isn’t it? My sin (that requires a cross, blood, and nails) becomes “not so bad” because other fairly good Christians are doing “things” too. Amazing. At this point, my relationship with Jesus has become trivial or non-existent. It seems we so often make Christianity MORE about how we stack up with others instead of how close we are to Jesus.
“Where are you?”
I love that question. God, who knows the location of Adam and Eve, asks the question as He seeks out sinful man.
Thanks Beck…you’re right, what incredibly rich truth in such a short passage. It’s crazy how easily (and often) we can jump on something that fits our “vision” for our lives (maybe just an immediate want), when it’s actually a distraction for the one thing we need…a right relationship with our creator!