Genesis 3: 8-10
Where Are You?

This morning I want to look at that time when we were first separated from God, when our first parents disobeyed and faced God in their disobedience.  Specifically I intend to consider what God was seeking from Adam and Eve, both in the event about which we shall read and in the things that are emphasized in the telling of the story.  How can we know from it what He seeks from us and what we can expect from Him?  The story before us today reminds us that God seeks obedience not as an end in itself but as a means to another end -- a restored relationship, through Christ, between creator and creature.

Our text is Genesis 3: 8-10, with particular emphasis on those three words that God speaks in verse 8, 'Where are you?"  But we will begin at verse one of chapter 3 to gain the context. (Read Genesis 3: 1-10)

Now having heard the narrative, or rather this small part of a larger narrative, and before we look at it in detail, let me ask some questions and make some comments that you might consider as we study it together.

1. What do you imagine to be the tone of those three words God spoke 'Where are you?"  Is He angry?  Is it a straightforward question seeking the fact of the matter?  Is it plaintive, inquiring?

2. Why does an omniscient God -- He who knows everything that can be known even ask such a question?  He of course has the RIGHT to, but certainly not the NEED to in order to discover the answer.  And further, doesn't it seem that He expected to see them as He walked, without having to ask where they were, as though He had seen them here on previous occasions?

3. How did they know that what they had done was worth hiding over?  And why did they say "we were afraid because we were naked" rather than "we were afraid because we ate of the fruit?"  Why would not their enjoyment of His presence outweigh their fear of His judgment?  They had presumably never before been estranged from Him, and He had not yet announced any condemnation of them.

4. Notice that they recognized their new condition before one another, not only before God.  They covered themselves to hide trom each other.  Was it incipient fear, a need for protection, that caused them, wisely, to begin to hide trom one another?

Looking, then, at verse 8, the first part.  "They heard the sound of the Lord God walking..."  This is a theophany, a physical appearing of God the Father, or else a Christophany, a physical appearance, before the incarnation, of the Logos -- the second person of the Trinity.  Summarizing a number of sources, it seems to be the dominant view that this appearance was the latter, a Christophany; not so much for textual reasons, as either view is substantiable (I might add that I am excluding views that deny the historicity of the event or claim that it was anything other than an actual appearance -- an occurence outside the mind -- to Adam and Eve.)  The reasons for claiming that it was the second person rather than God the Father are primarily theological.  First, because Christ is the Logos, the person of the Trinity who relates and reveals the Godhead to the creation, and through Whom the creation came into being, and is therefore ALWAYS the one who engages the creation, particularly later in the incarnation.  The son is the one who mediates the creation to the Godhead, even before the fall.  Second, and closely related, is the idea that the Father is "invisible, unapproachable, ineffable, but that the Son can reveal Himself' to quote the Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck.

The essential point is that God has appeared, and was in the habit of appearing.  How else would they have recognized his step, his voice?  In fact, where the RSV reads 'they hid from the presence of the Lord God" the Hebrew actually reads 'they hid from the face of Jehovah God."  Their recognition of Him implies that they had encountered Him before, and we know that they had from earlier verses.  It does not seem too much to claim that this couple and their creator had been in the habit of conversation.  This time, though, God has to seek and ask, and everything has changed.

The next portion states that the Lord was walking "in the cool of the day."  This is a common but not literal translation of the Hebrew which actually says "in the wind of the day."  Many commentators make the case that "wind of the day" better comports with the idea of theophany in other places, where God's appearance is accompanied by storm-like conditions; wind, lightning, darkness, etc.  But it seems to me that the common translation better fits with the tone of all that has gone on up to this time.  God has been a friend to the man and woman, He has called them and all that he has made good, he has provided this garden of protection and sustenance; "every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food..."  If there is a change in His relation to them, it has only just occurred.

Thus we come to the central question, posed by the creator to His creation
 

In this question, it was not the case that God was lonely; He had been for all eternity in perfect relation in the three persons of the Godhead.  He had no need of the man and woman.  It was further not the case that He did not know where they were.  He always knew, but by this question we understand both the fact that he expected them to be "out of his presence" at times, i.e. they had been given substantial freedom, but He also expected them to be available to his call, to be always responsive.  He wanted them to be present out of their own desire to be present.  The question is literal -- they were hiding -- but it is moral and spiritual as well, "you have hidden from me for cause, state the cause, consider our relationship.

What I want to say and why I have taken the time to do this bit of exegesis is that the words "Where are you" in this setting are sufficient to imply judgment, but are out of a context of relationship.  God did not say "what have you done" or "why did you do such," nor did He destroy them.  He requested or perhaps demanded that they come before Him, where they had been before.  All of the fear, all of the shame, all of the uncertainty, the dishonesty was in the man and the woman.  They had used their freedom to move away trom God and from one another.  He had not declared, at this point, any sort of judgment, though He soon would.

There are many subsequent scenes of the voice of the Lord coming to His people, of theophanies and christophanies, particularly in the book of Deuteronomy, but they always contain threat and command; they come most often in a context of fear.  Hear the people of Israel just after the giving of the Ten Commandments:

Now therefore why should we die? For this great fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the Lord any more, we shall die. (Deuteronomy 5: 25}

Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God (Deuteronomy 8: 20)

The Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all the work of your hand, in the ftuit of your body, and in the ftuit of your cattle, and in the fruit of your ground; for the Lord God will again take delight in prospering you, as He took delight in your fathers, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the law, if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. (Deuteronomy 30: 9, 10)

Remember these points, then:

You were created for Him -- for His glory, for His pleasure.  Though we were given the garden "to till and to keep" and this was important (witness the consequences of our expulsion), and though we should practice stewardship and recognize our dependence on the rest of the creation -- it remains only a means, the place in which we enjoy God Himself.

And though we were given one another, both as husband and wife -- "It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a helper fit for him."  And as brothers and sisters in Christ "...that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one."  This oneness, these pleasures of companionship and fellowship, are again borne out of and lead back to fellowship with God.

Though we are always to obey, this obedience is for the purpose of pleasing God, not, of course, for self-justifying, or for achieving goals, or for staying out of trouble.  If we lose sight of this, and I believe we often do, we do the right thing in the wrong spirit, and that is, of course, the wrong thing.  There is a scene in C.S. Lewis' Pilgrim's Regress that resonated with me as an example of this error.  The character Vertue, who has always done his duty and made good progress on the journey, has come to a spiritual crisis;

I saw the two travelers get up from their sacking and bid good-bye to their hosts, and set out southwards.  The weather had not changed, nor did I ever see any other weather over that part of the country than clouds and wind without rain.  Vertue himself was out of sorts and made haste without the spirit of haste.  Then at last he opened his mind to his companion and said, "John, I do not know what is coming over me.  Long ago you asked me -- or was it Media asked me -- where I was going and why: and I remember that I brushed the question aside.  At that time it seemed to me so much more important to keep my rules and do my thirty miles a day.  But I am beginning to find that it will not do.  In the old days it was always a question of doing what I chose instead of what I wanted: but now I am beginning to be uncertain what it is I choose."

Because of Christ, if you are a Christian, the question "where are you" is answered in two directions.  First, God's question to us is no longer necessary in the way that it was for Adam and all his descendants in the flesh.  We are present to Him -- united with Him in Christ.  Our obedience gains us none of the things that Adam's disobedience' lost.  But our obedience is pleasurable to Him, and good for us.  Second, whenever we are tempted to ask of Him: Where are you? we can be assured that He has not hidden from us, that it is we who are out of place.  Our sin, our unbelief, our indifference, our coldness; all of these things cause us to believe that He has in fact hidden.  But He does not hide -- He has no reason to hide.  And though you may be blind to His presence at times, He will even then, even when you have nothing to offer to Him, reveal His love to you, just as He continued to care for the first couple in the garden.  And we know that His love through Christ will restore and is restoring all that was lost, first of all fellowship with Him, and then everything else.

I will add, on this communion Sunday, that the first and best way in which we find Him is when we meet with Him in His ordinance, as we share the body and blood of Christ with others who know Him and love Him.  Then Christ is with us all, without judgment.  To quote Dan Orme: "...the Lord is present in the communion in a real sense, albeit in a spiritual sense.  The communicant, if he has faith, perceives Christ in the communion and feeds on Him who is 'the bread of life.'"  May this be so today.  Let us pray together.

[Sermon by Lee Moody.]