"THREE MISTAKES AND ONE RIGHT REMEDY!"
Written and preached by David P. Nolte

GENESIS 3:8-21

1. MISTAKE ONE: THEY TRIED TO HIDE FROM GOD:
1. "Toward evening they heard the Lord God walking about in the garden, so they hid themselves among the trees." Genesis 3:8 (NLT). Think about it: their disobedience had created a sense of guilt; their guilt created a sense of fear; their sense of fear created a panic and they went and hid themselves.
2. People today still try to hide from God and get away from God and from facing Him or having to deal with Him.
1. They deny that He exists. Just get rid of the idea of God and we don't have to deal with Him.
2. They claim He died. Then He becomes inconsequential so we don't have to worry about Him.
3. They crowd Him out by becoming so busy they never give Him a thought.
4. They convince themselves that He pays no attention to what we do, so He's not to be taken seriously.
5. They deceive themselves that God is ignorant of their activities saying, "'Does God realize what is going on? Is the Most High even aware of what is happening?' Look at these arrogant people - enjoying a life of ease while their riches multiply." Psalms 73:11-12 (NLT). They think they can hide from Him because they think He doesn't have a clue!
3. What folly! How delusional! Consider:
1. "For the ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He watches all his paths. His own iniquities will capture the wicked, and he will be held with the cords of his sin." Proverbs 5:21-22 (NASB).
2. "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, watching the evil and the good." Proverbs 15:3 (NASB).
3. After living a life of folly, Solomon concluded, "Fear God and obey His commands, for this is the duty of every person. God will judge us for everything we do, including every secret thing, whether good or bad." Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 (NLT).
4. "For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears attend to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil." 1 Peter 3:12 (NASB).
5. And Jesus said, "The time is coming when everything will be revealed; all that is secret will be made public. Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops for all to hear!" Luke 12:2-3 (NLT).
4. Guess you've figured it out by now: the Bible says you can't hide from God. Yet some still try. They are like the ostrich who sticks his head in the sand thinking that if he can't see others, they can't see him, either. Some imagine that if they can just get God out of mind, and can't see Him at work, He can't see them either. Wrong!

The first mistake: they tried to hide from God:

2. MISTAKE TWO: THEY TRIED TO RESOLVE THEIR OWN SHAME:
1. "Their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they strung fig leaves together around their hips to cover themselves." Genesis 3:7 (NLT). They fashioned fig leaf hula skirts to resolve their sense of naked shame.
2. This is like the attempts most people make to resolve their shame.
1. They rationalize saying, "Everybody does it! I'm only human, after all! The temptation was too strong for me! Anyway, this is a new century and the old morals don't work!"
2. They deny wrong doing, saying as did the immoral woman who sinned and shrugged her shoulders, "What's wrong with that?"
3. They minimize it, saying, "It's no big deal! It's just a mistake, not a sin!"
4. They try to do a lot of good things to balance the scale.
5. They try to tranquilize their shame in things that produce more shame: alcohol, drugs and other addictive behaviors.
6. They try to defend their shame: "I'm my own person! It's my body, my life and nobody has a right to tell me what I can and can't do!"
3. These are merely palliative: that is they tend to lesson our sense of shame but don't do anything to really remedy it.
4. When I was in college, my nephew and I experimented with gunpowder for rocket fuel. We had a coffee can of the stuff in his bedroom, and somehow while trying out a fuse we'd made, a spark hit the can. You guessed it. The entire can of gunpowder went up in a cloud of smoke. It burned a hole into the bedroom wall. We tried to wash the soot off, but it only spread it around; we tried to hide it with a dresser, but the smoke had wafted out of the room, my brother smelled it and came in - our effort to resolve our own shame failed. So did that of Adam and Eve.

So the second mistake: they tried to resolve their own shame.

3. MISTAKE THREE: THEY TRIED TO PASS THE BUCK FOR THEIR GUILT:
1. "Who told you that you were naked?" the Lord God asked. "Have you eaten the fruit I commanded you not to eat?" "Yes," Adam admitted, "but it was the woman You gave me who brought me the fruit, and I ate it." Then the Lord God asked the woman, "How could you do such a thing?" "The serpent tricked me," she replied. "That's why I ate it." Gen 3:11-13 (NLT).
2. It's pretty easy to see how Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent - but did you catch the subtle accusation of God? "The woman You gave me brought me the fruit, and I ate it. If You hadn't given her to me I would not have sinned so it's kind of Your fault, too."
3. That's a human tendency:
1. Blame our ancestry. "My parents made me do things I didn't want to, like go to school and church, so I have reason to rebel now." or "If I hadn't been born into a family of horse thieves, I wouldn't be a horse thief!"
2. Blame society. "Everybody does it, so that means I can, too. I don't want to be out of step with popular opinion."
3. Blame our peers. "They dared me, and I had to do it." or "They set a bad example for me, so I did it."
4. Blame Satan. While he is the deceiver and the suggested of all sorts of evil, saying, "The devil made me do it" is a cop out!
5. Blame God, as Adam did. But James said, "And remember, no one who wants to do wrong should ever say, 'God is tempting me.' God is never tempted to do wrong, and He never tempts anyone else either. Temptation comes from the lure of our own evil desires." James 1:13-14 (NLT).
4. A little boy was playing with his niece when he slugged her for some infraction. She went to the boy's mother and while she was tattling, the boy bit himself on the arm, leaving teeth marks. When mother asked if he had hit his niece, he said, "She bit me first!" She got the spanking. Well, I own up. I was that boy and the girl was my niece, Cynthia. Though I tried to pass the buck, in truth, I was the one in the wrong.

The third mistake was to try passing the buck. But in spite of these three mistakes, God had the one right remedy.

4. THE ONE RIGHT REMEDY: GOD MADE PROVISION FOR THEM:
1. "And the Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife." Genesis 3:21 (NLT).
2. The fig leaf hula skirts didn't cut it, so God provided garments which covered their nakedness. This symbolized His righteousness given to them as a covering. Self-righteousness is inadequate; we must have that righteousness that only God imparts.
3. The Bible says,
1. The blood of Jesus, God's Son, cleanses us from every sin. "If we say we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth. But if we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong." 1 John 1:8, 9 (NLT).
2. "And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven's Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. This is the new, life giving way that Christ has opened up for us through the sacred curtain, by means of His death for us." Hebrews 10:19-20 (NLT).
4. Remember the old "snake oil" salesmen who touted their product as a cure-all for everything from asthma to zits? Actually all it would cure was sobriety. Fake remedy for real ailments. The world, our own minds, and Satan offer all sorts of so called remedies to our shame. The only multiply it, but they never cure it. Only Jesus can do that - and does that for all who follow Him in faith.

All have sinned and fallen short of God's ideal for us. The wages of sin is death - we earn that by our continuance in wrong doing. But the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. Not by good works; not by good intentions; not by promises made; not by measuring up to anyone else, but only by grace may we enter the presence of God and find welcome there. He calls us, "Where are you?" so that we will take stock of where we are - in right relationship with Him or not. His call is an invitation to come - not because we are good, but because He is. That's grace and that is why we are free to come. Don't make the mistakes Adam and Eve made. Come out of hiding, let Him embrace and restore you. He is ready if you are. Do that as we sing.




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