Last night we turned the clocks back. Are there times you wish you could just keep going? Wouldn’t it be nice to turn back time, not just back to last week or last year, but all the way back past the day of your birth to the birth of mankind; all the way back to the Garden on that day when something went terribly wrong with the world. “Don’t eat that! Please!” There is something wrong with this world, something desperately wrong. We see it in nature. Hurricanes, floods, famines, wildfires all produce a sense of upheaval and uncertainty. We see it in human behavior. Wars, murders, racism, terrorism, genocide, slavery, the sex trade, the drug trade, the weapons trade conspire to make a mockery of romantic notions like those in the old commercial that long for the world to singing in perfect harmony. An honest assessment of the world reveals discord not harmony, dissonance not consonance. Sometimes this dissonance stimulates a search for meaning. Donald Miller wrote a book called, Blue Like Jazz in which he shares his own faith journey. Listen to how he describes what provoked his search for God:
“I knew, because of my own feelings, there was something wrong with me, and I knew it wasn’t only me. I knew it was everybody. It was like a bacteria or a cancer or a trance. It wasn’t on the skin; it was in the soul. It showed itself in loneliness, lust, anger, jealousy, and depression. It had people screwed up bad everywhere you went – at the store, at home, at church; it was ugly and deep. Lots of singers on the radio were singing about it, and cops had jobs because of it. It was as if we were broken, I thought, as if we were never supposed to feel these sticky emotions. It was as if we were cracked, couldn’t love right, couldn’t feel good things for very long without screwing it all up. We were like gasoline engines running on diesel. I was just a kid so I couldn’t put words to it, but every kid feels it. (I am talking about the broken quality of life.) A kid will think there are monsters under his bed, or he will close himself in his room when his parents fight. From a very early age our souls are taught there is a comfort and a discomfort in the world, a good and bad if you will, a lovely and a frightening. There seemed to me to be too much frightening, and I didn’t know why it existed.” Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz, p. 14
Miller’s discomfort exists because of something that happened back in the Garden of Eden. The incident is recorded in Genesis 3:6-12,
“When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. 8 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. 9 Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?" 10 He said, "I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself." 11 And He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" 12 The man said, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate."
In spite of their rebellion, God still pursued Adam and Eve. His love would not let them go so He entered the Garden in hot pursuit of His children. When they heard His voice how did they respond? The same way we do. Rather than run to Him and seek His help they hid. Hiding is a hereditary disease. One day we recognize that we are naked, exposed before God. We fear that we will be punished so we hide.
I don’t remember what I did; I do remember where I hid. I was under my parents’ bed. I must have been 5, maybe 6 at the time. I heard the sound of my father’s car pull up in the driveway and I made a bee line for my mom and took cover under the bed. The size of their bed made it a safer place to hide than my own little bed. I had done something wrong and I knew I was in trouble so I hid. I hid for a long time. I still hide from time to time. It is the default condition of a fallen human being. We hide because we’re afraid. We’re afraid we will be found out and once people know what we’re REALLY like we will be rejected. We hide because we’re flawed and we don’t want our flaws to be exposed. We hide from God, we hide from others, we hide from ourselves. We hide through our humor. We hide through our performance. We hide through our indifference.
One of the sad ironies in the story is that Adam and Eve hid behind the very trees that God provided to sustain them. What God intended as a blessing became a barricade. It’s true of things like work…sex…communication…religion.
From then until now, we have been hiding and waiting for the world to change. Throughout history, as mankind faces the pain of a world gone wrong, we have been waiting for someone or something to save us from the mess we’re in. Saviors have paraded across history’s stage in the form of political figures, spiritual leaders, philosophies, systems of government but nothing has ever produced much hope for lasting change. The Bible gives us hope. The essence of the biblical story is that God created this world, something went terribly wrong, and only God can restore this world back to the way He intended it. We have a radical problem that calls for a radical solution. The solution is found in Jesus Christ, specifically, the blood of Christ dripping down a rough wooden cross. His blood not only atones for our sin but gives us hope that one day, the world will be made right again. The Bible contains God’s promise to change the world and His promise is written in blood.
If we are ever to turn back the clock and return to the way it was supposed to be the breach between us and God must be repaired. There are two ways to approach this restoration project:
The fig leaf approach…v. 7 The most perplexing problems of our day seem to defy any human solution. For all of our progress we seem to be helpless to solve the most basic problems. Teenage pregnancy? Condoms. Stress? Drugs. 911? Kill those who killed us. Childhood diabetes? Soft drink and candy machines in our schools. Homelessness? The parking lot of First Pres. Downtown. Illegal immigration? We don’t have one. The evidence is overwhelming that the human race has worked ourselves into a situation that we have no ability to work our way out of. The human approach is insufficient. Fig leaves will never do.
Adam and Eve’s response reminds me of the suggestion made by the chicken to the pig that they provide a nice breakfast of ham and eggs to the farmer. Remember what the pig said? “That’s easy for you to say. For you, it only requires a donation. For me, it requires a total sacrifice.” Throughout history man has taken the chicken approach to the problem of sin and it has proved insufficient.
God’s approach to the human predicament is much different. It is a costly approach, a sacrificial approach. In Genesis 3:21 God drops a hint as to how He intends to solve our problem. It will require a sacrifice. “The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.” A fig leaf solution would never do. They had a radical problem that required a radical solution, a costly solution.
“(Adam) had to learn that sin could be covered not by a bunch of leaves snatched from a bush as he passed by and that would grow again next year, but only by pain and blood. Sin cannot be atoned for by any mechanical action nor without expenditure of feeling. Suffering must ever follow wrongdoing. From the first sin to the last, the track of the sinner is marked with blood.” Marcus Dods
God’s approach to the problem is the only sufficient solution to our predicament. The way back to the Garden will require costly sacrifice. When Adam and Eve walked out of the Garden they left bloody footprints. Over the next several weeks we are going to turn back the clock and follow that trail of blood all the way to the cross.
As we come to a time of communion this morning we are reminded of God’s remedy for our sin. The body and blood of Christ is the only all-sufficient payment for our sin. Our sin is a bloodborne pathogen that flows through the veins of Adam’s descendants. The solution is blood bought. The only solution to the predicament we are in is to accept God’s gracious provision for us. Rather than waiting on the world to change let’s turn to Jesus and then maybe we can change the world.
If you have responded to God’s invitation to accept His help then let me invite you to partake of this communion with a grateful heart. If you have never said, “Lord I stand exposed before you. I’m tired of hiding. I open my heart to you and I accept your offer of forgiveness purchased at the price of Jesus’ blood.” You can do that right now and then celebrate with us as we observe communion.