The Garden of Eden
The Lord God in the Garden
y: HE Lord God called unto Adam and said,
Where art thou?” Man had sinned against God. Mark the alenation of heart which sin causes in the sinner. Adam ought to have sought out his Maker. He should have gone through the garden crying for his God, “My God, my God, I have sinned against Thee. Where art Zou? Low at Thy feet Thy creature falls and asks mercy at Thy hands. My Father, Thou hast placed me in this lovely Paradise; I have wickedly and wilfully eaten of the fruit of which Thou saidst that I should not eat of it, since in the day I ate thereof I should surely die. Behold, my Father, I submit to the penalty. I confess Thy justice and beseech Thy mercy, if mercy can be shown to such an one as am.” But instead thereof, Adam flies from God. The sinner comes not to God; God comes to him. It is not “My God, where art Thou?” but the first cry is the voice of grace, “Sinner, where art Zhou?” God comes to man; man seeks not his God. Despite all the doctrines which proud free-will has manufactured, there has never been found from Adam’s day until now a single instance in which the sinner first sought his God. God must first seek him. The sheep strays of itself, but it never returns to its fold unless sought by the great Shepherd. It is
human to err, it is divine to repent. Man can commit iniquity, but even to know that it is iniquity so as to feel the guilt of it, is the gift of the grace of God. We have and are nothing but what is vile. Everything which is God-like, everything which aspires towards righteousness and true holiness, cometh from the Most High.
Sin made man a fool. He was once in God’s image, wise; now, since the trail of the serpent has passed over his nature, he has become an arrant fool, for is not he a fool who would cover the nakedness of sin with fig leaves? Is not he indeed mad who would hide from the omniscient Jehovah beneath the spreading boughs of trees? Did not Adam know that God filleth all space, and dwelleth everywhere, that from the highest heaven to the deepest hell there is nothing that is hid from His understanding? And yet so ignorant and stupid is he that he hopes to escape from God, and make the trees of the garden a covert from the fiery eyes of divine wrath. Ah! how foolish we are! How we repeat the folly of our first parent every day when we seek to hide sin from conscience, and then think it is hidden from God, when we are more afraid of the gaze of man than of the searchings of the Eternal One; when because the sin is secret, and has not entrenched upon the laws and customs of society, we make no conscience of it, but go to our beds with the black mark still upon us, being satisfied because man does not see it, that therefore God doth not perceive it. O sin, thou hast made man ask the question, “Whither shall I flee from Thy presence?” and thou hast made him forget that, if he ascend to heaven God is there; if he make his bed in hell, God is there; and if he say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,” even the night shall be light about him.
But now, the Lord Himself comes forth to Adam, and note how He comes. He comes walking. He was in no haste to smite the offender, not flying upon wings of wind, not hurrying with His fiery sword unsheathed, but walking in the garden. “Ju the cool of the day’ — not in the dead of night, when the natural glooms of darkness might have increased the terrors of the criminal; not in the heat of the day, lest he should imagine that God came in the heat of passion; not in the early morning as if in haste to slay, but at the close of the day, for God is longsuffering, slow to anger, and of great mercy; but in the cool of the evening, when the sun was setting upon Eden’s last day of glory, when the dews began to weep for man’s misery, when the gentle winds with breath of mercy breathed upon the hot cheek of fear; when earth was silent that man might meditate, and when heaven was lighting her evening lamps, that man might have hope in darkness; then, and not till then, forth came the offended Father.
Adam flies and seeks to avoid that very God whom he had once met with confidence, and with whom he had the sweetest fellowship, talking with Him as a man talketh with his friend. And now hear the voice of God as He cries, “Adam, where art thou?” Oh! there were two truths in that short sentence. It showed that Adam was lost, or God would not have needed to ask him where he was. Until we have lost a thing, we need not enquire about it; but when God said, “Adam, where art thou?” it was the voice of a
shepherd enquiring for his lost sheep; or better still, the cry of a loving parent asking for his child that has ran away from him, “Where art thou?” There are but three words, but they contain the dread doctrine of our lost estate. When God asks, “Where art thou?” man must be lost. Uanen. God Himself enquires where he is, he must be lost in a more awful sense than you and I have as yet fully known, But then, there was also mercy here, for it showed that God intended to have mercy upon man, or else He would have let him remain lost, and would not have said, “Where art thou?” Men do not enquire for what they do not value. There was a gospel sermon, I think, in those three divine words as they penetrated the dense parts of the thicket, and reached the tingling ears of the fugitives — ‘ Where art thou?” Thy God is not willing to lose thee; He is come forth to seek thee, just as by-and-by He means to come forth in the person of His Son, not only to seek but to save that which now is lost, “Where art thou, Adam?” Oh, had God meant to have destroyed the race, He would have hurled His thunderbolt at once, and burned the trees, and let the ashes of the sinner lie beneath His angry gaze. He would have rushed in the whirlwind, and in the storm, and tearing up the cedars and the pomegranates by their roots, He would have said, “Here thou art, thou rebel; traitor, take thy due deserts! Let hell open before thee, and be thou swallowed up for ever.” But no, He loves man; He careth for him, and therefore now enquireth where he is in tones of calmness, “Adam, where art thou, where art thou?”
The question which the Lord asked of Adam may 14 The Garden of Eden.
be used in five different ways. We are not sure in what precise sense the Lord intended it — perhaps in all — for there is always in the utterance of the Divine One a great depth which coucheth beneath. Our words, if they give one sense, do well, but the Lord knoweth how to speak so that He shall teach many truths in few words. e give little in much: God iveth much in little. “Many words and little sens this is too often the rule of man’s speec Few words and much meaning — this is the rule with God, We give gold beaten out into leaf: God giveth ingots of gold when He speaketh. We use but the filings of gems: God droppeth pearls from His lips each time He speaketh to us; nor shall we, perhaps, even in eternity, know how divine are God’s words — how like Himself, how exceeding broad, how infinite.
We believe that the enquiry of God was intended in an AROUSING SENSE — “Adam, where art thou?” Sin stultifies the conscience, it drugs the mind, so that after sin man is not so capable of understanding his danger as he would have been without it. Sin is a poison which kills conscience painlessly by mortification. Men die by sin, as men die when frozen to
’ death upon the Alps — they die in asleep; they sleep,
and sleep, and sleep, and sleep on, till death closes the scene. One of the first works of grace in a man is to put aside this sleep, to startle him from his lethargy, to make him open his eyes and discover his danger. One of the first deeds of the good physician is to put sensibility into our flesh. It has become cold, and dead, and mortified; he puts life into it, and then there is pain; but that very pain has a salutary effect upon us,
Now, I think that this question from the Lord was intended to set Adam thinking. “Where art thou?” He had perceived in some degree into what a state his sin had brought him, but this question was meant to stir the depths of his spirit, and wake him up to such a sense of danger, that he should labour to escape from the wrath to come. ‘Adam, where art thou?” — look at thyself now, naked, a stranger to thy. God, dreading the presence of thy Maker, miserable, undone. “Adam, where art thou?” — with a hard heart, with a rebellious will, fallen from thy high estate. “Adam, where art thou?” Lost! lost to thy God, lost to happiness, lost to peace, lost in time, lost in eternity. Szuner, “where art thou?” O that I might, by earnest words, stir up some callous, careless sinner to answer the enquiry for himself! Man, where art thou? Shall I tell thee? Thou art ina condition in which thy very conscience condemns thee. / How many there are who have never repented of sin, have never believed in Christ!
Must not that creature be in a very pitiable position who is afraid of his Creator? You were made to glorify Him; you were made to rejoice in His presence, and to delight in His goodness; but it seems you love not the very food which was meant to sustain you. You must be sick — you must be sick indeed!
“Where art thou?” Thy life is frail; nothing can be more weak. A spider’s line is a cable compared with the thread of thy life. Dreams are substantial masonry compared with the bubble structure of thy being. Thou art here and thou art gone. Thou sittest here to-day; ere another week is past thou mayest be in another world.