Friday, October 20, 2023

The Vision (10.20.23): Where art thou?

 


Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on Genesis 3:8-15.

And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? (Genesis 3:9).

As we read the account of the LORD God’s confrontation with the first man and the first woman after they had fallen by sinning against God and by eating the forbidden fruit, we are meant to sympathize with our first parents. We should be moved to acknowledge that we too have fallen, that we are naked, exposed before a holy God, and we have only tried to hide ourselves from him, as did they.

Yet the LORD God comes to us even today, even also had come to them, with the voice of his Word. He seeks us. He confronts us, and he places us under a spiritual investigation or interrogation. He asks us questions, not because he is ignorant of the answers, but because he is probing our conscience. So, he asks:

Where art thou? (v. 9).

Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded that thou shouldest not eat? (v. 11).

What is this that thou hast done? (v. 13).

Will we cast or shift blame, as did the first man and woman, or will we acknowledge and confess our faults (1 John 1:9)?

Will we also come to know the one about whom God himself spoke in Genesis 3:15, in that first prophecy of the Gospel. God himself acting as the Prophet declared that from the seed of woman shall come one who will crush Satan’s head through Satan shall bruise his heel (Isaiah 53:5: “he was bruised for our iniquities”).

In Paul’s letter to the churches of Galatia he will describe the Lord Christ in this way:

Galatians 4:4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,

And in Galatians 3:13 Paul says that the Lord Jesus Christ “was made a curse for us.” He is the only hope for fallen men.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

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