The Fall Brings Fallout (v8-13)
Because the world is fallen, this Fall brings fallout. Genesis 3:8 says, 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.
When we see how dirty we are we always try to hide. Sinners love to play “hide” but never want to play “seek”. And this is what our consciences do. When we see our sin, our conscience torments us and we can’t stand the pain. So, we try to run from God rather than running to God.
But, God loves us too much to leave us hiding. He plays “seek”. Look at verse 9. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
God hasn’t literally lost them but they have spiritually lost Him. And that’s what sin does. Sin causes us to be lost. Sin distances us from God relationally.
Adam responds by saying, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”
And God asks another searching question. “Who told you that you were naked?”
Their conscience has. They ate of the tree. They ruined it. And immediately, their conscience accused them. And that might be the most difficult thing for life in our fallen world. The pain of a guilty and ashamed conscience can drive men and women into utter despair. We will do anything we can to escape the pain.
And here is one of the main ways we do it. We play the blame game. Look at verses 12-13. The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 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.”
Sin destroys our relationship with God, with others, and even “with ourselves”. God’s Law exposes our sin. And when our sin is exposed, we will do anything to escape the blame. Adam blames his wife. Eve blames the serpent.
To be sure, we live in a world where we are sinners and sufferers. We are not either/or but always both/and. But, one of the things you can hear modern psychology saying is that we are only or even mainly sufferers. We love to place the blame on others. The reason we are the way we are is only or mainly the fault of other people.
This is actually a big ideology of Les Mis author Victor Hugo. Hugo believed that people are not bad but they are made bad by their circumstances. But, as bad as our circumstances are or as bad as the sin is that others have committed against us, we are not only sufferers. RUF Arkansas Campus Minister Austin Royal once told me, “Sinners tend to respond sinfully to being sinned against.”
That’s why when one of the papers posed the question “what is the problem with the world?” G.K. Chesterton wrote back and said, “I am.”
We are not only sufferers. We are also sinners. And sin perpetuates sin. Sinners have an enormous capacity to multiply sin in response to being sinned against.
Who in the world can save us from this cycle? Who in the world can make this world right? Who can be greater than Robert Moses and not just bring some transformation or some renewal but complete transformation and renewal?