Don’t Hide

Text: Genesis 3:8-15

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

          What are the three primary pictures of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden that we always see? The first is the two beloved children of God frolicking in the garden, enjoying everything God gave them. Animals of all kinds are all around them and the pair has not a care in the world. The second picture we all know so well is that same couple with the serpent slithering in the tree beside them, contemplating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the final picture we so often see is the one from our Old Testament text this morning. The jewels in the crown of God’s creation are foolishly trying to hide from their Creator. They’ve disobeyed God, they feel the guilt and shame of their transgression, and in this newfound knowledge of their naked and exposed state, they seek to hide themselves behind the meager covering of some leaves they find in the garden.

“Then their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” It’s been noted that the very first result of sin was shame. Shame at the realization of their nakedness. Certainly, Adam and Eve weren’t ashamed of their nakedness before each other. They’d never been before this. The shame at their naked state was much more about their hearts than about their bodies. Which just goes to show the utter futility of their attempts to cover this shame by covering up their bodies. Sewing fig leaves, which now in the post-fall world would wither and decay, is such an ineffective way to cover their skin, much less the guilt and shame of having broken their relationship with God.

So often we refer to this event, the Fall, and its results without really spending much time on the details. So, today we’re going to look at what happened when Adam and Eve realized their sin and especially focus on God’s reaction to the new reality created by His beloved children. There’s much that we can learn from the reaction of Adam and Eve, but even moreso from how God reacts to this life-altering, literally earth-shattering event. And especially we’ll focus on the fact that

HIDING FROM GOD IS CHILDISH, IT’S INEFFECTIVE,

AND IT KEEPS YOU FROM THE JOY OF BEING FOUND.

          First of all, hiding is childish. The allure of games like hide and seek to a child is pretty universal. Not even just children really. One thing I’ve found in nearly 30 years of working with various youth groups is that if given an option of a game to play and an adequate space to play it in, they will almost always choose to play hide and seek. But the youngest of children, just learning to play the game, are the most fun. Because they haven’t quite figured out yet how to hide. They’ll stand in the middle of the room and close their eyes and think that just because they can’t see anyone, that they must be invisible to the seeker as well. Or someone begins to count and they’ll say out loud something like, “Don’t look in the closet, I won’t be in there.”

And this plays out in real life as well. We’ll joke around with our kids sometimes because at a young age they would be terrible at hiding things they weren’t supposed to be doing. Mom would knock on the bedroom door and the answer would be “don’t come in here for a minute mom.” “Why?” And the voice from inside the room would come back, “Not doing anything bad in here, mom.” Or another who when doing something he knew was wrong while mom was right there in the room with him, and would simply say, “Don’t look at me for a minute mom.”

This kind of hiding might seem like a childish activity, but even as adults we regularly engage in it. Perhaps the allure is that deep down, we all have something to hide.

But the second point is that hiding is ineffective. “And 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.” What on earth would make them think that there would be anywhere they could run and hide where God wouldn’t immediately find them? I’m sure you’ve heard it said that if there’s ever anyone you don’t want to play hide and seek with, it’s God. He created the heights of the mountains and the depths of the sea, and He’s got them covered. Crouching behind a bush in the garden where He put everything in place with His own hands is like trying to sneak into the store in the middle of the night when the place is covered at all angles by security cameras.

Yet our sin does to us the very same thing it did to Adam and Eve. It brings with it guilt and shame. And as their descendants we seek to cover it up with our own paltry fig leaves. We wait for the cover of darkness to look at what we want to on our computers. We make sure no one else is looking before we treat a neighbor with disrespect. We think that if we’re just thinking the thoughts and no one can hear them that it’s ok. “He’s such a jerk.” “I’d be happier if…” “I really want that, so it should be ok.” But those are all the words and thoughts of the crafty serpent, seeking to destroy the relationship God desires to have with His people. And it’s all just like that toddler playing hide and seek, clasping his hands over his eyes and thinking that it keeps him from being seen even though he’s standing in the middle of the living room. It’s all just our own fig leaves that we think will cover over what to God has clearly been exposed.

But all hiding does is keep you from the joy of being found. As strange as that may seem, even as we recognized our nakedness, our exposure, and our fallenness, God’s desire to find us in the midst of all of that is not to destroy us, but to lead us back to the original relationship He created us to be in with Him. It’s why he tenderly seeks out Adam and Eve in the garden. Calling out to them that they might step out of their hiding and return to Him. He doesn’t come in yelling and screaming about their transgression. Everything God does is the result of His unending love for them.

          Even so, they play the blame game. We do it too. It was “the woman you gave to be with me. She gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate.” “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” We think we’re coming up with all kinds of great excuses, but God has heard them all. There’s nothing new under the sun when it comes to our desire to shift the blame for our own shortcomings.

The problem is that we think things like,“How could He possibly forgive me?” I hear too many people say that exact phrase. Or “I’m too big of a sinner to come to church.” We’re all in the same boat. We’ve all been caught with our hand in the cookie jar. There’s chocolate all over our faces. No amount of covering our eyes, or rearranging the fig leaves, is going to cover up our sin and our guilt, and our shame. There’s only one thing to do. Be found by the One who seeks you. And here’s a step-by-step guide of how that’s done. Step 1: Admit what you’ve done wrong. Step 2: Wait, there is no step two. That’s all there is to it. Step out into the light. Your sin will be revealed, but it’s revealed to the One who knows you better than anyone else. To the One who loves you better than anyone else. And to the One whose fiercest desire is to be in relationship with you for all eternity.

When sin is revealed, there’s punishment for sure. There was punishment for the serpent. “The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.” God curses the serpent. He curses the ground, making it more difficult for the man to make it yield for him. But God never curses Adam and Eve. It’s not that there’s not temporal punishment for them. There will be pain and difficulty and strife. And they will be banished from the garden. But the curse that Adam and Eve, and you an me, deserve as a result of sin is not laid upon us. It was borne by Christ. The One of whom God speaks when He says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

And thus God created a much better way for our sin and shame to be covered. Right after He curses the serpent and the ground and pronounced the reality of post-fall difficulties on Adam and Eve, God gives His beloved creatures a much better covering. He takes from them their self-made loincloths of fig leaves and covers them instead with garments of skins. It’s easy to gloss over this detail, but to cover Adam and Eve with garments of skins means that the first physical death within God’s creation had to have happened so that God could fashion these coverings for His children. And just as Adam and Eve’s guilt and shame is covered by God as a result of that first death, the death of His promised Messiah now covers all our guilt and shame. We have no need for self-made coverings. We have no need to hide from the One who always knows where we are and what we’ve done. We simply need to clothe ourselves with the covering He provides. The blood of the Lamb and His robe of righteousness.

We all remember those first three images of Adam and Eve that are so universal from the Garden of Eden. The first frolicking without a care in the world. The second being the serpent-surrounded contemplation over the fruit of the tree. And the third, hiding behind the fig leaves they hope will cover their guilt and shame from the Almighty. Today, I encourage you to add a fourth and a fifth image to that list. The one of a loving God tenderly seeking out His children to restore the relationship they have broken. And finally, that of the promised offspring of Adam and Eve, the Savior of the world, crushing the head of that wily tempter of old, the serpent, Satan himself. That particular image has so many ways to be depicted. It could be the bloodied heel stomping on the head of a snake. But it’s best shown to us in the outstretched arms of Jesus, hanging on the cross, which is where that promise was ultimately and eternally fulfilled. Thanks be to God that even when we desire to hide from Him, He won’t let us go. He seeks us out and we have the joy of being found by Him. And the joy of knowing that His plan to destroy the evil one is the same plan meant to restore our relationship with Him forever. Amen.

The peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.