Genesis 3:8-14

I remember once trying to find the stereo on my car floor while driving round a bend. The crunch that followed, as I ploughed into a bollard at the side of the road, was very embarrassing and so I drove home and pretended nothing had happened. Years later I was still tense every time Dad walked passed the front of the car. Somehow I managed to hide my mistake. Adam however had no such luck. The first consequence of sin, is not God withdrawing himself from us but our own inability to look at him. God, in fact, proactively seeks out his fallen creatures. We should always be asking ourselves whether we are withdrawing from God because of sin that we just don’t want to let go of. If we are then we should simply turn from it and respond to our God who calls out for us. If this is not our response we may, like Adam and Eve both did, choose to blame others for our sin rather than take responsibility and face up to our own weakness. Of course it wasn’t Adam’s fault, Eve had given him the fruit and of couse is wasn’t Eve’s fault, the serpent has told her it was ok. How familiar do those sorts of excuses sound?

In the God centred world that existed before Adam and Eve had taken the fruit there was no awareness of their own nakedness. Their sin now seems to turn their eyes from God onto themselves and they become self-aware in a way they had previously not been. Self-consciousness seems to cripple people with fear and shame as sin forces self to the centre stage. It is self's desire to stay there that drives us to prop it up with materialism, scepticism, individualism and all the other 'isms' that massage our ego and make self comformtable. Relationship with God, on the other hand, frees us from this as we discover in Him that we have all that we need for life.