Sermons

Dear children of Adam and children of God, Are there times in your household when you choose not to answer the phone? Are their times when you are happy just to let the phone ring and ring and ring until the answering machine picks up the call? Maybe there are other times when you take you phone off the hook or disconnect the wire. In our household mealtime is a special time for my wife and me to be with our children. It’s a time when we ask them about their day and the events that took place. It’s a time to plan the activities for tomorrow. And most importantly it’s a time for our family devotions. Simply put, mealtime is family time. It’s not a time to answer the phone. While choosing not to answer the phone for valid reasons such as family time, napping time or devotional time may be a good practice, there are other times when we chose not to answer a call for invalid reason. When your parents call you home for supper and you don’t like the menu of liver and onions you might chose to ignore their call. Or when your boss calls you at home on the weekend you may be tempted not to answer the phone because you know he’s not calling to say what a good job you did at work this past week. Instead you know what he has to say isn’t good news. But there are also other calls that we sometimes chose not to answer. These calls are not calls from parents or employers, rather such a call comes from the LORD our God. Granted, our Lord doesn’t look us up in the white pages and dial our seven-digit number. But nonetheless, he does call us. Before us today is such a call. It’s a call of great importance. It’s a call that has eternal consequences associated with it. It is a call that comes from the LORD. As he called Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, so he still calls each of us. As we ponder his calling of Adam and Eve, let us be encouraged to Answer the Call of the LORD. As believers we will want to answer his call for two reasons, 1) He calls with soul- searching questions, and 2) He calls with soul-saving promises. The setting of our text in the Garden of Eden is very familiar. Adam and Eve have just yielded to Satan’s temptation to doubt God and eat fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Since God knows what has happened he comes calling for Adam and Eve with the goal of rescuing them from their sin. His call involves a series of four soul-searching questions. The first is this, “WHERE ARE YOU?” The all-knowing God certainly knows where Adam and Eve are, but his call is open and inviting. He is not sneaking up like an enemy in order to ambush them. He wants to rescue them. So, where were they? Moses tells us they were cowering among the trees, hiding. But the LORD’s question wasn’t so much to get them to consider where their physical position was, rather where their spiritual position was. “Where are you in relation to Me?” was the Lord’s question. Leading Adam and Eve to search their soul, God was in affect asking them, “Are you continuing to walk with the One who lovingly created you, or have you begun walking your own way?” Adam unknowingly admitted his “position”, admitting that he and Eve had made a 180 degrees turn and had walked away from the LORD God. He made this confession when he said, “I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. So I hid.” Adam’s confession led to the LORD’s second soul-searching question, “WHO TOLD YOU THAT YOU WERE NAKED?” Who did tell them they were naked and had something about which they should be ashamed? It wasn’t Satan; he in essence told them they had nothing to be ashamed of. God hadn’t spoken with them yet. So it must have been they themselves. Their consciences were screaming at them that something was terribly wrong. The conscience the Lord God had put within them had judged their actions on the basis of his law. Their conscience was shouting loudly that they were guilty of offending against the LORD God. Their conscience was accusing them of something horrible, their sin. Since God put their conscience in them, as he did his law, it was really God calling to them that they had done something shameful. The LORD’s next question gives Adam and Eve the opportunity to answer God’s call by confessing their guilt and shame. “HAVE YOU EATEN FROM THE TREE THAT I COMMANDED YOU NOT TO EAT FROM?” Here God seeks honesty from Adam. This was a question that demanded a simple “yes” or “no”. But Adam could not give a simple “yes” or “no”. He beat around the bush and finally answers “yes” after excusing himself and blaming Eve and God for his offense. “The woman you put here with me she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” The Lord God then turned his attention to Eve and asked her the fourth and final soul-searching question. It too required a simple answer. “WHAT IS THIS YOU HAVE DONE?” What had she done? She disbelieved the LORD God, then disobeyed him. Eve was the member of the human race who had the privilege of bringing new life into the world, but instead with her disobedience she brought death. The simple answer the LORD God expected was, “I disobeyed you;” or “I sinned,” but following the lead of her husband, Eve also passed the blame on in an attempt to excuse her action before she admitted her guilt. “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” With these four soul-searching questions the LORD God calls Adam and Eve’s attention to the fact that they were moving away from him and his blessings and closer to spiritual death and the agony of hell. With the same soul-searching questions the LORD God still calls. He calls us through his Word that we read or hear from pastors, teachers, and Christian brothers and sisters. It is the LORD calling you. The LORD God is asking you those soul-searching questions. Answer that call! Answer honestly when he asks, “Where you are?” Are you walking with the Lord God or are you walking away from him and hiding from him? Do you know that you are naked before him? When he calls us to account for our sin, does our conscience lead us to feel the guilt and shame of our sin? Or are we muffling our conscience? Or are we not listening at all to our conscience, rather to the voices of that sinful nature within us or of the society around us that tells us that we “look” just fine the way we are? Answer honestly when the LORD God asks you through his Word or through a fellow Christian, “Have you done what I commanded you not to? What is this you have done?” Our desire to answer the call of the LORD comes from the fact that he does not call us so that he may destroy us. That was not why he was calling Adam and Eve. He calls to save us … from the eternally self-destructive path we are on. The very title that Moses uses in referring to him tells us this. Moses, by the Holy Spirits inspiration, speaks of the "LORD GOD". Yes, this is almighty GOD, who created us and has commanded us how to live. The One calling is the almighty GOD who punishes sin. But this is also "the LORD" spelled capital L-O-R-D. This Old Testament name reveals God as the gracious and merciful God who forgives sins. Jesus clearly explained it when he spoke with Nicodemus (John 3). After telling Nicodemus that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in his should not perish but have eternal life," He went on to say, "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." Dear children of Adam, when the Lord God calls you with those soul-searching questions, answer. Answer honestly! For He calls to save you. That becomes apparent as we note that with Adam and Eve, not only does he call with those soul-searching questions, but also he calls with soul saving promises! Those promises of the LORD God came to Adam and Eve as he cursed the serpent and Satan. It was a wonderful soul-saving promise to them when the LORD told Satan that he was putting enmity, an intense hatred between him and the woman and between his offspring and the woman's. It was a wonderful promise because the friendship between Satan and Eve had brought shame, death and destruction to the human race. In that promise the LORD God revealed to Adam and Eve that he was putting them back where they needed to be, in a friendly relationship with him and a distrusting and fearful relationship with Satan. The LORD God continued his promises by proclaiming that Satan and his power would be destroyed, his head would be crushed. Again, what wonderful news for Adam and Eve that Satan who had exercised such deceptive and soul-destroying power over them would not have that kind of power any more. In that promise was another one, the promise that someone else would come to do destroy the power of the devil. This someone else was THE OFFSPRING of the woman. He would crush Satan's head. The Lord promised someone who would come and fight the battle for Adam and Eve, and win. He would be a descendant of the woman. This someone was none other than Jesus Christ, the Son of God. What grace that was to Eve! While she and Adam both had been deceived, the Lord God graciously does not take her out of the picture, rather he uses her in his plan of salvation. Through her this great Savior would enter the world to fight for her and win the victory. But the greatest promise was that the Lord himself would take care of all this. Adam and Eve could not, and would not save themselves from the destruction they had brought on themselves. "I WILL PUT ENMITY", the Lord God promised. He would be the One entering their world to live their lives and to receive their destruction. Yes, the Lord God was calling Adam and Eve, not to bring them to destruction but to save them from it. That is why he still calls. When he has gotten us to honestly look at ourselves by means of his soul-searching questions, and to recognize where we are and what we have done, He saves us with these promises that apply as much to us as they did to Adam and Eve. For us Jesus crushed Satan and freed us from his deceptive and soul-destroying power. The Lord God has kept his promise to establish an intense hatred in our heart for Satan and his work. His promise to us is that we will live with him in his paradise. And just as with Eve, what grace he pours out on us that he now uses us in his plan of salvation. Many are still in Satan’s grip. Many still hide and run from the LORD when they "hear him in the garden". What a privilege to know that God uses us to ask those soul-searching questions on his behalf! What a privilege to be able to share with repentant sinners the soul-saving promises of the LORD! Every day through his word the LORD is calling us. May God’s Spirit ever give us the grace to hear the LORD’s call and answer it because there’s no other call like it. Answer the call of the Lord and share his message with others. Amen.