In Spite Of

They Could Still Hear Him

Take in what that verse has just told you. They heard Him.

The fruit was eaten and the thing was done, and the very next thing the chapter tells us is that they heard the voice of the LORD God in the garden. Genesis does not tell me what part of the day the eating happened in, so I will not put an hour on it. He came in spite of it.

Not why He came. That is a bigger matter and I am contending for it elsewhere. This morning, only this. Man had fallen, and God still came, and they could still hear Him coming.

Now Genesis does not stop and tell me He came every evening, so let me say how I get there, and then I am going to stand on it for the rest of this study. They heard a sound and they did not ask what it was. They hid. And when Adam speaks in verse 10 he does not say I heard a voice, he says I heard thy voice. He knew whose voice he had heard. So I read that walk as a thing they knew, and I want that word read to stand over everything I say about it from here to the end of this study. Genesis records this walk and no other. It gives me no earlier evening, no earlier hour, and no earlier route. Every time I speak of what He had always done, that is me reading and not Genesis reporting. And here is the reading. Nothing had happened to His feet. And here is what was different, and it is not on His side. The order matters. Verse 8, they heard Him walking, and they hid. Verse 9, then He called. This is the first recorded time in the Bible that God asks a man where he is. Genesis does not show me what happened on any evening before this one, so I will not tell you how the man used to come. What I can tell you is that on this day the man was not there to meet Him, and God asked. And I am not saying He asked because He did not know, because He knew. He asked out loud, and He asked the man. So in my reading the walking was the custom, and the calling is the new thing on the page. Because look at what actually moved.

The Separation Was on Man's Side

He came, and they hid.

The distance that opened up in that garden was not opened by God. He came. That is what the verse gives me, and it gives me nothing about Him hesitating or holding back. They went into the trees.

Something in him now could not stand to be near what was coming, and it drove him into the bushes to get away from it.

And here is what I take from that, and it is mine, because one garden is not a rule. In this garden, the sin did not make God hide. It made the man hide.

Adam says he was afraid, and that is the reason the verse gives. I call it guilt, and that is my word for it, not his. But whatever we call it, nobody drove him in there, because he was in the bushes before God had said one word to him.

And this next part is mine as well. Guilt does not make a man come out. It makes him hide, and then it makes him blame. That is Adam on the page, and it is what I have watched in people since. And by the time God asked him plainly what he had done, the answer he came out with was, the woman thou gavest me. Genesis does not tell me how long he was in there, so the building of that answer is my picture of it.

And here is what I make of that, and it is mine. The enemy works that ground. He does not have to make you sin. He only has to keep you in the trees afterward. Scripture calls him the accuser, and that is the name it gives him.

Man Made the Gulf, and God Walked Across It

What the text actually records is this. They hid. God came walking in the garden. There is nothing in that verse about Him withdrawing from them.

The distance was made from their side, and it was made by hiding. And then He crossed it.

Notice where the verse puts Him. He is walking in the garden, the same garden they had gone into the trees of. He is not calling from somewhere else.

And gulf is my word for it. Genesis does not call it that, and I will show you in a moment where Scripture does use the word. He walked across a distance He did not make. He walked across it for me.

And There Is a Gulf That Cannot Be Crossed

There is another gulf in Scripture, and it gives this one its weight.

The Lord told of a rich man and a beggar, and after they both died the rich man lifted up his eyes and asked for one drop of water, and this is the answer he was given.

Fixed. And read the whole of that line, because it runs both directions. They which would pass from here cannot, and neither can they which would come from there.

Nobody steps over that one, not the rich man, not Lazarus, not Abraham himself.

So Scripture gives me one gulf by name, and I am the one holding the garden up beside it.

In the picture I am drawing, one is a distance the man made by hiding, and God crossed it and called to him. And the other is fixed, where crossing it is no longer possible.

And that is what makes the sound of Him walking in Genesis 3:8 what it is. He came while it could still be crossed.

He Interrupted. He Did Not Restore

And I have to say the hard half of it, because it is in the chapter. Go back and hear what He had said.

In the day. And Adam walked out of that garden alive.

He barred the tree, and He clothed them, and He kept them, and the man walked out alive. Genesis does not tell me the barring stood in place of ending him, so when I read it that way, that is me. And here are the two verses for that, because I have been teaching them without showing them.

And here is what I call those, and the word is mine. Every one of them is God interrupting. Not one of them is God restoring, and Genesis does not use either word.

The coat of skins covered him, but it did not carry him back in, and he still walked out, with the way to the tree still under a sword.

And Genesis gives its own reason for the guard, that the man not reach the tree of life and live for ever. So the guard was a keeping out. None of it was a bringing back.

And the distance was still there when Adam died, and when his sons died, and it stayed there. That is me tracing it through and not one verse saying it.

And here is where I take it, and the taking is mine, because Paul is not writing about Eden. The nearness Adam lost makes me hear differently what Paul says Christ’s blood has done.

He came into that garden to call a man out of hiding. He walked all the way to a cross to bring him home.

All the day, to a rebellious people, walking a way that was not good. The hands are out the whole time they are walking away.

And He Called

He did not walk past. He did not stand at the edge of that garden and wait to be approached. He called.

Adam is the one He called, and Adam is the one He had given the command to.

Now I have opened the manner of that calling elsewhere, in Whosoever Will, how He called and did not drag, how He could have reached into those bushes and hauled him out and did not. He calls, and the answering is left to the man. This morning I only want the fact of it.

They hid, and He called anyway. I searched that chapter and could not find it.

And Nobody Asked Him To

Nowhere does either one of them say, God forgive me.

Read it for yourself, and He calls, and Adam answers and explains himself. And when God asks him plainly what he has done, Adam says the woman gave it to me. And she says the serpent beguiled me.

That is the whole of it, blame and blame, and not one word of asking.

He does say I did eat, and I will not pretend he said nothing. What is not there is any sorrow put into words, any owning of the fault, any forgive me.

And He came anyway. And before they were out of that garden He made them coats of skins and clothed them. Genesis says skins, and it does not tell me who took the animal, so I will not put that in His hand. What it tells me is that He clothed them.

And here is what I see in that, and it is mine. That is love and mercy working before anybody asked for any.

He Named the Symptom and Not the Sin

Now read his answer carefully, because it is the answer of a man who is not yet ready to say it.

I heard thy voice, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.

Every word of that is true, and none of it reaches the thing God is about to ask him about.

He does not say, I was afraid because I disobeyed You. He does not say, I ate what You told me not to eat. He says he was naked. He names the symptom and not the sin.

And that is us, because it is far easier to tell God how we feel about the mess than to tell Him what we did. I am ashamed, I am struggling, I am not myself lately, all of it true, and all of it standing in front of the one sentence that has not been said yet. And look at what he says he was afraid of.

And Nothing Had Changed About the Voice

I heard thy voice, and I was afraid.

That is the voice that gave him a garden and brought the woman to him.

Genesis does not tell me how he had felt about that voice before, so I will not tell you either. What it tells me is what he feels now. Afraid. Genesis records no change in the voice.

What it does record is a changed man listening to it. He heard, and now he was afraid.

What Fell Was the Confidence

And now let me say what I believe actually fell that day, because we speak of the fall of man and indeed we fell hard, but look at what it was that went. Go back one chapter and look at how they stood before Him.

The verse says naked and not ashamed, and it does not use the word confidence and does not mention God in that line. Confidence is my word for what I see in it. Standing there with nothing to explain, nothing to cover, nothing to arrange first. Then he heard that same voice and hid himself among the trees.

Nothing in that verse changed on God’s side. He came, and He called. What broke was the man’s ability to stand in front of it.

And that was not God’s doing, it was man’s. He came. He called. And the man could not stand in front of it. And look at what He did with the ages after that.

And He Never Stopped Coming

He spoke to Cain after the killing, and He came to Abraham, and He came in a burning bush, and in a pillar, and in a tent in a wilderness, and into a temple made of stone. And He was still coming when Israel had nothing to show Him.

The tent, and then the house. A cloud in both, the glory of the LORD filling both.

Where is Abel thy brother. Not the same words He used in the garden, but the same shape of question, put to the next man, one chapter on. A where, asked by the One who already knew. Different ages and different ways, and God kept coming.

And What Christ Gives Back Is the Standing

And now see what the New Testament gives us, because I hear in it the very thing I have been calling Adam’s lost confidence.

Boldly, and boldness, and that is the confidence to stand, handed back.

He does not give us the garden back, He gives us the standing back.

Adam ran from that voice. And Hebrews gives us a throne, which is not what Genesis gives, so the two pictures are mine to hold together. We are told to come boldly, and to walk into the holiest place there is, and not to be afraid of it.

That is what the blood did, and not only the forgiving, but the standing.

So Where Did We Learn to Ask

And that leaves me with a question I have carried, and I believe I know where the answer is.

If Adam never asked, where and when do we learn to ask forgiveness for what we have done?

It is not in Genesis. Nobody in that garden asked, and Cain does not ask in the next chapter either. What Cain says is that his punishment is more than he can bear. What is recorded in his mouth concerns the sentence, not sorrow for the sin.

Then in Leviticus God commanded His people to name it. And read carefully what He commanded, because it is confession and not a form of words for asking.

He shall confess that he hath sinned in that thing. Mark those words, in that thing, not in general and not I have been struggling, but name it. And notice the verse commands the naming. It does not hand him a request to make.

That had to be commanded, because the naming does not come naturally to us any more than it came naturally to Adam. And when I call that learning to ask, that is me putting the two together, the naming and the asking. Leviticus gives me the naming.

And by the time we get to David it is in the mouth of a man on his own.

And by the time it reaches us it is written down as plainly as it can be written.

Adam never said it. We have been told plainly what to do, confess our sins, and told what He does when we do.

And look at what Adam said instead. He said the woman gave it to me.

Now I will give Adam this much, and he did not conceal it. He answered when he was called, and when God asked him plainly he said, I did eat. He knew there was a fly in the buttermilk and he knew why.

But he admitted the fact and not the fault, the eating he owned. The weight he moved, first onto her, and then onto God for giving her.

And the Picture of How It Works

And our Lord drew us a picture of it, so we would know how it goes.

A son took what was his and went and spent it and ended in a far country with nothing. And when he came to himself he made a speech to say to his father, and it began, I have sinned. He had it ready, and he was going to say it.

When he was yet a great way off.

Luke says the father saw him while he was yet a great way off. It does not tell me where the father was or how long he had been looking. What it tells me is that he saw him first, and he did not wait for the speech, and he did not wait to hear the asking. He ran.

So the son had learned to name what he had done, and the father did not wait for the confession to move. That is the same God who came walking in the garden.

So Hear This

Learn to ask. Adam did not, and God commanded a whole nation to name what they had done, and by the time it reaches us we are told plainly what to do.

But do not think for one moment that your asking is what starts Him moving.

He was already walking in that garden before anybody said a word. His hands are spread out all the day toward people going the wrong way. And that father saw his son while the son was still a great way off. Sometimes things do not have to go the way they go.

It Did Not Have to Go That Way

He came and He called. And here is a question I do not have the answer to, and I will not pretend I do. If Adam had come out and faced it like a man and said, I did it, I was wrong, now let us see how we move forward, what would that have been. And I am not telling you the sentence would have changed, because God had already said what eating would cost, and Scripture never offers Adam another ending. I only know he did not come out and say it. And we do the same thing to one another.

Somebody does you wrong, and often it is somebody you held in high esteem. And rather than say sorry, they are the ones who make an enemy out of you. And there you are, running behind it, still explaining yourself, still reaching, trying to hold down a relationship that already left the room. Adam did that to God.

The woman whom thou gavest. He did the wrong, and by the time he opened his mouth he had moved it onto her, and then onto God for giving her. The one at fault, making the accusation.

And God Did Not Run After Him

The chapter does not show Him chasing Adam through those trees, or pleading with him, or running behind him trying to hold down a relationship. It shows Him crossing and calling and then waiting.

He crossed the distance and He called. And then the chapter gives me a man answering out of the trees on his own. Genesis does not describe God stopping or waiting, so the waiting is my picture of the gap between the call and the answer. And that part was his to do.

God does the coming, and God does the calling, and God does the covering. And coming out is my word for the answering, because Genesis gives me a man answering and does not describe him stepping out of the trees. And that answering was his to do.

And let me say what kind of must I mean, because there are two of them and only one is in this chapter. It is not, I called you, so you had better answer. Genesis 3:9 is a question, and He asked it. It is the other kind. The answering was his to do. God called, and Adam answered.

And I hear the same responsibility in 1 John. If we confess. The confessing is left to us.

Thou shalt confess, and thou shalt believe. Paul is writing about salvation and not about a garden, and I am the one carrying it back there. But the shape is the same to my ear. He did the dying, and the confessing is left to me.

And He Held It Out All the Same

And I have to end honest. What Genesis records is God coming, and calling, and asking, and Adam naming the fact and moving the weight.

He came and He called. And if I put the olive branch I see there into my own words, it sounds like this to me. I know what happened, but come, let Me help you, in spite of. Those are my words for what I see Him doing, and not words Genesis puts in His mouth. It does not excuse the act and the sentence still stood, and He called all the same.

And it is the same picture God drew of Himself, in His own words. His hands spread out all the day, and the people walking the other way. He is not asking them to beg. I hear those spread hands saying, come. And Adam talked straight past it.

He still clothed them, and He still set a guard on the way to the tree, and Genesis says that guard was to keep the way, so what it gives me there is a way kept and not a way opened. And He kept coming, to that family, and to Abraham, and to a nation, and at the last in a Son.

That is the picture I have followed through these passages. Man hides, and God is still the One coming and calling.

Adam did not come out and say it. And through every passage I have laid out here, God is still the One coming.