The Seeker and the Sought

Genesis 3:8-15 If you talk to the average American about their relationship with God (assuming they have one at all and that is increasingly rare!) they would almost certainly talk about it in terms of their being the one who is seeking God.  They are the initiators—they are the ones who act—and they are certainly the ones who set the terms for what that relationship is.

That idea has even crept into the church.  Churches have “seeker-services” designed for all those people who they think are on a great spiritual quest.  And those who have gone through some spiritual experience say that they have “found” God. 

Now, please don’t get me wrong—I am thankful to the Holy Spirit for every person he brings to faith—even if that person cannot articulate it biblically.  But God is not lost—we are.  God is not the one who needs finding—we are.  We do not choose God—he chooses us.

Baptism and Holy Communion are not acts of obedience, works of our hands whereby we show our faith in God, they are acts of mercy whereby God graciously reaches down, makes us his own, and feeds us with the gifts of salvation he gives in Christ’s body and blood.

Now, if you are saying to yourself, well of course you say that, you are a Lutheran pastor.  You’re right I am.  But I am going to let you decide from the Word of God whether I am right or not.  I am going to let you decide from the Word of God whether your church teaches the truth or not.  Does man seek God or does God seek man?  The Bible says that:

Adam and Eve 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.

            Immediately before this verse, Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command, tried to cover their own shame by the work of their hands, and fled from God’s presence. 

This is the spiritual condition of ALL of us by nature.  This is sinful mankind.  Alienated from God.  Running away from God.  Hiding from God.  Trying with every fiber of our being to hide our shame and guilt by the work of our own hands.  That is what sin has done to man.

So what about all of those promises of Satan, that going our own way and making our own decisions, will make us like God?  Absolute lies! 

Instead of gaining wisdom, mankind who was created by God in his image, as the pinnacle of his creation, to exercise dominion over creation and bring forth new life-- flees from the God who is everywhere and hides from the God who knows everything.  Foolishness!

There is no clearer picture in the entire Bible of what sin has done to us—and especially to our natural spiritual abilities—than this picture of Adam and Eve who have (in an instant of sin) lost a right knowledge of God and right relationship with God.  And- so- it- is- for every- one- of- Adam’s- children, by nature, down to this day.  By nature…

There are NO seekers of God among the children of Adam, there are only sinners whose guilt and shame drives us way from God as fast as we can go—whose sin and blindness robs us of any kind of right knowledge of God. 

That’s the way it is was in the garden—that is what sin did to Adam and Even.  That is the way it is in our world today—that is what sin has done to every one of their children by nature and God could have—with perfect justice—destroyed them and the world with them.

But the God who created them in love, loved them still (just as he continues to love a world full of sinners) and sought them out and called them to return to him.  The Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 

Do you see the incredible act of humility and mercy that is here in this scene—that the almighty, all-knowing, living God of the universe calls out to his sinful, rebellious creatures:  Where are you?  Of course he knows where Adam and Eve are hiding!  He knows all things!  And yet God condescends- in mercy- to seek these sinners and call them to himself so that they can acknowledge their sin and come to him for forgiveness. 

In exactly the same way the gracious call of God still goes out to a world full of sinners who are running away from him as fast as they can, doing their level best to make their own way, and hiding from the truth of who they are just- like- Adam- did. 

Adam said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

            God created us to live with him in perfect fellowship, to be counted as his children, to receive his blessings in time and eternity and yet sin has destroyed the faith and trust children ought to have for their father and made us terrified of God. 

That is what the Hebrew word means that our Bible translates as “afraid”—it describes someone so terrified they tremble like a leaf.  The Bible says that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.  That is what sin has done to us:  made us terrified of God and blind to our own broken condition. 

Adam told God that he was afraid because he was naked-- but he had ALWAYS been naked!  That had not changed!  What had changed was his sin and disobedience and the guilt and shame that goes along with it.  But God loved him—he loved Adam even though he sinned.

What a comfort this is for us!  We fall into some sin and we think that God no longer loves us and so what is the point of returning to him.  We get caught up in some kind of mess of our own making and we can’t figure out what went wrong and we wonder, what’s the use? 

But God loves us in the midst of it and seeks us out so that we can return to him before we destroy our life and the lives of those around us.  That’s what God was doing with Adam—calling to him, questioning him, refusing to let him hide so that Adam could know the truth about his sin and turn to God for help-- for his sake and the sake of those around him.

Adam 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.” 

            When Adam saw Eve for the first time in the perfection of Eden he said one of the sweetest things recorded in the Bible.  He saw her and said:  This at last bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.  His joy in God’s good gift of a wife fairly leaps off the page. 

But look at what sin has done in such a short period of time!  The lie of Satan that their eating would bring blessing, has only brought destruction.  It has destroyed their life with God so that they blame God for their sin.  It has destroyed their life with one another so that they blame one another.  It is has destroyed God’s creation and brought death into the world. 

Adam and Even finally understood this.  At the end of their excuses, their confession was the heart of truthful simplicity:  I ate.  So it must be for us:  Lord, I have sinned.  As dark and as difficult as those moments of confession are, there is a bright beam of God’s gracious love and mercy and forgiveness that also begins to shine as he comes to our rescue.

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.  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.”

            During our meditation on God’s Word this morning I hope that you have come to see the truth about the spiritual condition of mankind apart from God-- but now I want you to see just as clearly the goodness and mercy of God towards sinners—that he is not content to leave us blind and dead—that he does not want us separated from him by our sin—that he seeks us to save us. 

In the midst of man’s rebellion, while he fled from God and hid from God, when he had destroyed God’s perfect creation and brought death into the world, God still loved him and promised that, as dark as that moment was, sin and death would not be the end of the story but God himself would make things right again by the offspring of a woman who would crush Satan.

This is the first Gospel promise in the Bible and it was fulfilled within the womb of the Blessed virgin mother of our Lord Jesus Christ as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity took upon himself our flesh and became man—a Son of Adam—one of us.  The Bible says that the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil

And so he has.  Even though it is not in our reading, I want to tell you what happens next.  The Bible says the Lord God made garments of skins and clothed Adam and Eve with them.  Do you understand?  The Lord made a promise of a Savior to come and then blood was shed.  A sacrifice was made.  And God himself covered man’s shame.  What the Lord’s promise meant, of a savior to come, began to take on shape.

And so it was that many thousands of years later Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, the Offspring of the Woman, went to the cross and shed his blood to cover our shame and guilt.  The innocent died in the place of the guilty.  Two rough beams of woods became the Tree of Life and three days later, early in the morning, as angels stood by, the restoration of Eden began- and death lost its hold on us and Satan was defeated. 

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.  And so it is that everywhere this Good News is told, there the Holy Spirit is at work:  opening eyes that are blind, transforming minds that are at war against God, restoring the image of God in those who believe, laying the foundation for a right relationship between us and others, and giving us new life where before there was only death.     

The Good News for us today is exactly the same as it was for Adam and Eve all those years ago:  not that we seek God—but that he sought us out when we were lost and blind and dead.  Not that we love God—but that he loves us with an everlasting love that our sin cannot destroy.  Not that we made our way back to him—but that he came for us and covered our sin with his sacrifice and restored us to our rightful place in God’s family as his children. 

God grant us his grace and the help of the Holy Spirit to believe it!  Amen.