Hiding From God
Scripture Reading — Genesis 3:6-10
Adam and Eve] hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
Genesis 3:8
When I was a teenager, I accidentally damaged the family car. Nothing too serious—a broken taillight—but I was so ashamed that I tried to hide what I had done wrong.
We all try to do that sometimes, don’t we?
From the beginning, God walked in the garden to have fellowship with Adam and Eve. Today’s passage tells us they hid from God. What was going on? Why did they want to hide from the Lord? The answer is simple: as we learned from yesterday’s reading, they had disobeyed God and were ashamed.
Sin is disobedience, and the result of sin is separation from God. Disobedience builds a wall between us and our Creator. Because of sin, we are afraid and hide ourselves from him. We inherited this tendency to disobey God from our first parents. Because of their sin, we are unable to live the way God wants us to.
Yet God still wants to have fellowship with us and to walk with us each day! He wants that walk so deeply that he went to extraordinary lengths to restore what we had broken. In his Son, Jesus Christ, the Father will go the extra grace-filled mile to bring us back to his side.
How’s it going in your walk with the Lord?
God, our first parents disobeyed you, and so do we—again and again. Seek us out by your grace and bring us back into fellowship with you. Help us to obey you always. In Jesus, Amen.
About the author — Adrian A. Helleman
Dr. Adrian Helleman served as a pastor in British Columbia before being called to serve as a missionary-teacher in the Philippines. He and his wife, Wendy, later taught philosophy at Moscow State University in Russia, and then philosophy and theology at the University of Jos in Nigeria. They have also lectured in Canada, the United States, South Africa, and Tanzania. They have three children and three grandchildren.
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