Hearing the Voice of the Lord
Bible Passage:Genesis 3:8-15
Pastor: Pastor Horton
Sermon Date: June 9, 2024
In “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, a children’s fable made famous by Hans Christian Anderson, a pair of dishonest weavers are able to convince the king that they made a fabric so incredible and so special and so splendid that only “wise people” are able see the clothes. Foolish people would simply not be able to see them at all. And so, they pretended to sew him these special garments and pretended to tailor them to his fit and pretended to marvel at how wonderful they were. All the while the emperor and his advisors and his nobles could not see them since there was nothing there. Yet nobody wanted to speak up because nobody wanted to be considered “a fool”. And so, the emperor paraded his “magic” clothing out in the city and not one of the people said a word until a little boy spoke up and said what everyone was thinking “there’s no clothes there at all!” That was difficult and embarrassing to hear.
This morning, we hear our Lord speaking through his Word to Adam and Eve – individuals you are related to. Only the roles are a bit reversed. The truth speaker is the Emperor, the King of Creation, and the God and Lord of all. And what he has to say will be difficult for our family members to hear. And this time it’s the people who had been duped. Adam and Eve had bought into a lie. They were told that sin was going to be this wonderful and incredible experience and make them knowledgeable like God. They acted on and fell into sin making them into fools. Because those lofty expectations for sin…they simply didn’t exist. They aren’t real. Sin never EVER provides a better alternative than hearing the voice of the Lord.
Believers of the Bible know the lead up to our reading well: It happened in the Garden of Eden where God planted the first man and woman. We have no idea how long they had been in the garden—perhaps days, months, or years. But we can be fairly certain that God had visited Adam and Eve before, maybe even visiting often. Today they would find themselves in a terrible predicament. Because they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil from which God told them not to because it carried with it the punishment of death. But on this day they did not want to hear the voice of the Lord.
Our verses pick up, “They heard the voice of theLordGod, who was walking around in the garden during the cooler partof the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of theLordGod among the trees of the garden. TheLordGod called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’” The man said, ‘I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid myself.’” Like a boyfriend visiting his girlfriend only to walk in and find her lip-locked with someone else, these two humans, the hand-crafted crown of God’s creation went off to frolic with sin and acted outright against his words, his wills, and his wonderous wants for them. Gone was their perfection. Gone was their immaculate relationship with the living God. In comes sin and with-it death for the first time in the history of the world.
And they knew it. They acted like we their descendants would have acted…and to be fair like we so often do. We have “fright and flight” over our sin. You know that instantaneous feeling when you sin and realize you messed up: like when as a child you push your friend down and they are hurt and don’t stand up right away or as an adult you say something about someone else that should have been kept to yourself but out it comes and now it’s churning in the gossip mill and doing damage and you can’t fix it. It’s that moment of “Uh oh!” when we sin. Sin wrecks things, but most of all, sin wrecks our relationship with God.
What’s really incredible in this scenario is that the all-knowing, ever-present God didn’t have to ask Adam where he was, but he did. God made himself known. And god made himself audible. Why? He was giving his guilty creation now naked and afraid a chance to come clean and humbly admit that they sinned. How would they respond? How do we respond before God?
“God said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?’ The man said, ‘The woman you gave to be with me—she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’ TheLordGod said to the woman, ‘What have you done?’ The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” When we are called out and “fright and flight” doesn’t work and we still need to answer for our sin….we often do what? We switch gears to “shame and blame.” The patient mercy shown to Adam is met with an eruption in the Hebrew of self-revolving emphasis. “I I I…me me me.” And then from the shadows comes a “you know what, God, the fault is with….YOU.” I picture this playing out with a sneer and a side-eye as Adam really points a finger at God for placing the woman there to begin with. Remember that great love song he sang about Eve when he first saw her and the better-than-one-could-dream blessing she would be to him? Scrap it. He throws her right “under the bus” for the first time in human history. Then Eve, following her husband’s lead in a bad way, does the very same thing to the snake through whom the devil is speaking.
No parent enjoys watching their children bicker and fight among themselves. It gets old real fast. And God is simply not going to play this game – and certainly not be the recipient of the lashing out of his creation. God knows this is a deeper issue than their getting caught with their hand in the cookie jar and is concerned with the sinful attitude of their hearts. With sin comes consequences. Our sin delivers to us death now and eternally. And we hear the voice of the Lord giving out his judgment. “TheLordGod said to the serpent: Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all the livestock, and more than every wild animal. You shall crawl on your belly, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.” We know this to be true. At least I do. I once lived in a parsonage that got 5-10 snakes a summer around the house and property. For the majority of the world, we recoil when we almost step on a snake unexpectedly in the wild. There’s lots of questions and good guesses at this chapter when it comes to how the snake moved prior to this. But what matters in God’s words is the very next thing we hear from the voice of God. What he says is of vital importance in Genesis 3:15.
Martin Luther on Genesis 3:15 wrote, “This passage contains in itself everything noble and glorious that is to be found anywhere in the Scriptures.” Without missing a moment, God’s very next statement contains the promise of the Savior. Here is how God will fix the problem of our sin. Building off the human-snake interaction he directs his now sinfully fallen loved ones to Jesus. “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel.” This message of forgiveness, hope, and promise is one that Adam and Eve would look for in their lives. And this coming Messiah would be the base of faith for all the Old Testament believers like Noah, Abraham, Joseph, David, Daniel, and Esther. And that God-given faith in the coming Savior would be credited to them as righteousness.
Marvel for a moment that in the face of sin, God still acts to save. Into a corrupted world of spiritual death he gives life. Into this place of belligerent unbelief, he sent his son Jesus to suffer the ultimate punishment for our sins. The devil would continue to strike at Jesus throughout his life. He showed his fangs when: Herod wanted to kill the baby Jesus, when our Savior was tempted at the start of his ministry, and while our Savior endured the suffering and torture of his passion. The devil would deliver some damage, but Jesus would be triumphant. And that victory was not a minor injury or a mere body-blow but head-crushing. Crushing sin and the devil’s efforts on the cross. Rising to life in order to give us eternal life away from the clutches of death. Crushing the power it had over us. What comfort and relief! What mercy and forgiveness! What promise and delivery from God! For Adam and for Eve and for you and for me! 1 John 3:8 reads, “This is why the Son of God appeared: to destroy the works of the Devil.”
Dear fellow descendants of Adam and Eve. Let’s learn from our ancestors. We still have abundant opportunity hear the voice of the Lord speak saving truth in these our days of grace. Let’s take what he says to heart. Let’s not kid ourselves and pretend like in the emperor’s new clothes, that sin looks good on us. It destroys and brings death. Be wise to the temptations of the devil. Be in the Word where your Lord continues to speak to your heart. Know with confidence that Jesus crushed the devil’s head at his cross. And that salvation through Jesus is yours.
And one last thing…salvation is also yours to share. Let’s also be equipped and ready to give out the light of the gospel. Because that world is still steeped in natural unbelief, hostility towards God’s message, and riotous sin against the living Lord. Let’s hear the voice of our Lord as we embrace his gospel, but also as our minds and hearts are excited to share our victorious Savior Jesus. Amen.
