I'm gonna invite you, if you would, to take your Bible and let's go to Genesis chapter three. We are pressing on in our study in the first 11 chapters of Genesis, and we're gonna get to Genesis chapter three in just a moment, but I want you to just imagine with me for a moment. Imagine, I'll speak as a parent. As a parent of three kids, imagine lining your three children up. By the way, when they were little, there was a period of time I thought, our house was haunted. Because something would be broken, something would be missing, something would be dirty, and you would ask, does anybody know what happened? No. No, I didn't do that. Child two, I didn't do that. Child three, it wasn't me, which if you know Jordan, that's probably exactly what he said, wasn't me. It was amazing how nobody or somebody would break into our house and do weird things. That is the oldest trick in the book. The desire for all of us when we are caught in something that we have done, our initial response is to lie, cover it up, or my personal favorite, blame somebody else. It wasn't me, it was so and so. You know, if there has ever been an argument for original sin, it is the sin that began in the Garden of Eden. The very same response to Adam and Eve's sin is the same one that many people use today. I can't count. I can't count how many times I've been in a counseling situation where somebody has been caught doing something. And they are often there against their will. And you ask them, okay, this is what was found out. Is there anything else you would like to tell me? Oh, no, no, nope. Well, if something else comes out that you're not telling me, that's gonna make matters worse. You understand? Oh, no, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Yeah, you know how that story generally ends. More comes out, more information. And so when we go back to the garden, we know that paradise is lost. The initial creation that God created, Adam and Eve, the garden in which they were placed to live, the perfection of that has now been violated. It was violated the moment that Adam and Eve chose to disobey the one commandment that God had given to them. And now, as we pick up in verse eight, after Adam and Eve have chosen to eat of what they were specifically told not to eat, notice what happens. We're gonna begin reading Genesis three, verse eight. And they 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. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And he 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? The man said, the woman whom you gave to me to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is it that you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. Let's pray together and take a look at this text. God, we are humbled by the words that we read this morning, that when we read this text, we are reminded that each and every one of us are inherently prone to lying, prone to covering our tracks, prone to blame shifting. God, this is something that even thousands of years later, as we sit here in this room, these are the same tactics that we so often use. And God, I pray that as we look into these verses, we would understand how we should respond. The reality is all of sin to come short of the glory of God. There is not one person here today that is sinless. We understand that. But Lord, how do we then manage and respond to the sin that we all have, that we all fall to? God, how do we respond correctly? So God, I pray that this day would, this time around your word, this time would be an encouragement to us and remind us of the danger of not confessing where we need to confess and repenting where we need to repent. And so God, we pray your blessing on our time around your word and we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. You know, arguably the most dangerous lie is a lie that includes an element of truth. If you go back last week when we talked about Satan's cunning lie and cunning deception of Eve, there was an aspect of truth to what Satan was trying to get Eve to do, what he was tempting her to do. We understand that if Satan was more honest than what he was, he would have said something like this. God knows that when you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will become like me. Not like God. Like me, knowing good and evil. In Adam's and Eve's quest, and their pride, and their arrogance, and their desire to be equal to God, that they wanted to eat of this fruit and become like God. And the reality is, when they ate of the fruit, they became far more like Satan than they did God. because now they understood good and evil. They had only understood good until this point and now their eyes are open, not in the physical sense, they were already able to see, but their eyes are open in a spiritual sense that they are now able to see what is good and what is evil. It's interesting how quickly sin immediately affected them. It doesn't take very long minutes, hours, I don't know exactly how long, but it was a very brief period of time that the cunning and shrewd character of Satan begins to be demonstrated by Adam and Eve. Now, when it's too late, Adam and Eve see their folly of disobeying God. They witness now as their once enjoyed harmony among each other is now broken. Their innocence is broken. They now feel discord and guilt and shame for the very first time. And like most of us, they go to great lengths to hide their tracks. They run, they hide among the trees, they sowed fig leaves in order to hide their nakedness, which before had never impacted them or influenced them. But as we're gonna see today, that their attempts were absolutely in vain. When sin enters our lives through disobedience, how do we respond? Well, unfortunately, we respond with the same two responses that we see in Adam and Eve. So let's take a look at each one of these one at a time. First of all, in verses eight through 11, we see that sometimes when we are guilty with sin, we often run and hide. It's interesting when you read through this text, it says the Lord, they rather, heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day. I understand Pastor Brian this past week, I think it was just this past week, maybe it was the week before, in elementary chapel used the word anthropomorphic. And one of the kids in chapel said, that's not on the test, is it? What does that mean? That is a huge word that simply means in times, there are times in scripture when the biblical writers used words that sound like you would describe a man or a person to describe God. God, for instance, He doesn't have physical eyes. He doesn't have hands physically, but He is presented that way. And here we see God His presence in the garden that Moses writing this says when they heard the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Now this phrase was used to talk about a close relationship with God. I think all of us as Christians would long to have an opportunity to spend time with Christ in person. To spend time in the presence of our Heavenly Father that was not impeded by sin and not impeded by the things of this world. Just pure interaction with God and to be able to experience His presence. And here in the garden it says that Adam and Eve heard Him. His presence was in the garden with them. This phrase is used elsewhere in Genesis, by the way. Genesis 5, verse 22, verse 24, we see a similar phrase to talk about this intimacy with God. Enoch, it says, walked with God. In Genesis 6, 9, Noah was a righteous man, blameless in this generation. Noah walked with God. Genesis 17, when Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless. This picture of intimacy that Adam and Eve enjoyed, not in the figurative sense that The other writers that Moses used to talk about, Noah and Enoch, where he walked with God in an obedient sense, they literally experienced his presence in the garden. But notice their response. Now that they have disobeyed God, now that they have disregarded, again, the one commandment that God had given to them, only one, The one limitation. After this, notice it says, they hear God walking in the cool of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord. Why would they do that? If there had been this pre-fall experience of God's goodness and grace, they'd experienced the perfection of God's creation. Why is it now, all of a sudden, that they have sinned, that now they are afraid, they are hiding? They had carefully covered themselves with loincloths, and now they are hiding within the garden. We'll come back to this in a minute, but this is a new kind of fear that Adam and Eve had not experienced before. There are two sides to fear. There's a positive side, Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, fear God and keep his commandments. In Proverbs, it talks about the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. In that sense, the Jews talk about respecting God, honoring God, fearing him in the sense of respecting and honoring his authority. Adam and Eve understood that kind of fear. But now they understand a very different kind of fear. They knew good. They knew what fearing God was like in regard to honoring Him and respecting Him, but now there is a sense of fear that comes understanding that they have disobeyed, and now God would hold them accountable for their choices. This was a new experience for Adam and Eve. This was a brand new emotion that they were feeling for the very first time. Imagine, I don't know what it was exactly like, but imagine them sewing the fig leaves together to cover their nakedness somewhere behind a bush. Shh, don't talk too loud, God might hear us. And they're sewing away. We gotta cover. Our shame, we gotta hide. Now we'll get to this in a minute. That was a complete waste of time. When God says in a few minutes, where are you? That was not because he didn't know. And they begin to feel this sense of fear. It's like a child hearing their father coming up the stairs. And you have a group of kids in somebody's bedroom, and they're messing around, and they're doing something that they know they shouldn't be doing. And they hear dad coming up the stairs one at a time, and they say, put that broken chair away. Close the computer. Turn off the movie. Put away the phone. Stop telling that joke. Stop telling that story. That's the sense. Now the Father, the Creator, is in their presence and they hear Him. And here's what's sad about it. Rather than running to the God of comfort, Rather than running to the God of mercy and grace and forgiveness, they hide from him. They run from him. They want nothing to do with him because they know that they have violated God's word. Now here's an interesting point to note. God hasn't changed. God didn't change pre-fall, post-fall. There was no difference. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It wasn't God who changed. It was Adam and Eve's heart that changed. And now, rather than running to God for comfort, they hide from him and fear him. But here in verse nine, after they are hiding, comes the rhetorical question that I just mentioned. But the Lord God called to the man and he said, where are you? Why would he ask a question? God's first words spoken after Adam and Eve sin are spoken with. Grace. Mercy. Where are you? Now, we've already said Adam and Eve, their location was known to God. God didn't need them to tell him where they were. So why then was it in the form of a question? Well, God uses this question to draw Adam and Eve out of hiding, to give them the opportunity to repent, to explain what they have done, to come forward and ask for forgiveness. The old statement goes that questions pierce the conscience, but statements harden the heart. There wasn't a statement of accusation. Adam and Eve, you ate of the tree. I know you did. It wasn't that. It was Adam and Eve. Where are you? Come forward so that I can forgive you and our relationship can be restored. This is an opportunity to repent. That's interesting. In Luke 1910, we read the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. He came to look for them, to seek them, and so God's question is rhetorical. He is drawing them out, begging them, asking them if they would, in fact, come forward. Notice this question doesn't stop in verse nine. Verse 10, and he said, I heard, this is Adam now, and I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself. This is Adam's answer. His answer is very interesting for many reasons, but for one in particular. Notice what he is willing to admit. He doesn't admit to anything other than one, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. The only thing that Adam is willing at this point to admit is his fear. I was afraid. There's no statement about why he was afraid. There's no statement about what he had done. This is so typical of humanity. We are very willing to admit symptoms of sin, but we're not very good at admitting sin. We will admit to things that we can't really measure per se, an emotion. The only thing that Adam was willing to say is that, I've got this emotion now, this brand new emotion of fear. I don't know exactly what it means. But I'm afraid. You know, imagine if this went differently. Imagine God saying, why are you hiding, Adam? Can you imagine Adam saying, because I disobeyed you, God, I ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Please forgive me of my sin. Now, as a parent, if a child said that, this is where you collapse on the floor. But God here has given them the opportunity to be honest. But like so many of us, willing to admit a symptom, but not willing to admit the sin. Why was Adam afraid? Because he was naked? No. Partially? Maybe? He was afraid because he knew he had eaten the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And so often, here's what you hear when somebody gets into an argument, let's say. So often you hear an apology, something like this, I'm sorry I made you angry. That's not an apology. That is you placing blame on that person for your sinful response. And Adam and Eve here are doing the typical response of hiding and covering from what they have done. Now, notice God does ask them then a follow-up question. He says in verse 11, he said, who told you that you were naked? Who told you that? God knew the answer, but who told you? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? Have you violated my commandments? Now, we'll get into their response, which is arguably more problematic, but let's just pause here for a moment and think this through for a minute. No one can hide from God. No one. Jonah tried it. Jonah tried it and ended up in the belly of a fish. In Psalm 139 we read these words, David writing, he said, where shall I go from your spirit? Or where shall I flee your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. The reality is that before our omniscient, omnipresent God, Everything that we do, everything that we say is ultimately in His presence. Adam and Eve had no reason to hide because God was fully aware of what they had done. And yet so often in our sin we would prefer to hide, we would prefer to clean up the outside and look better and pretend that everything is okay. like Matthew 23 when Jesus said,