He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.”
– Genesis 3:10
This verse, Genesis 3:10, is Adam speaking to God after he has fallen into sin so what was once a joy, like the presence of God, is now something that Adam is afraid of. He’s afraid, he’s hiding from God. He used to long to, enjoy being with God but now he wants to run from God afraid of God. This is not the way it was supposed to be. This is not what God had created Adam to experience and really the same is true in our lives.
We are prone to run from God rather than communing with Him, the purposing for which we were made.
Genesis 3:10 Exposes Sin in the World
God has created us to enjoy His presence, to want to be with Him, not to run from Him. Yet the state of our hearts is that’s what we’re prone to do. We are all prone to run from God, to turn away from God’s ways, to not spend time with Him in His presence. I mean, how often is it that we wake up in the morning and we go through our day and we don’t spend concentrated time with God? Why is that? Because we have a sinful nature in us that is prone to do things our own way, on our own and there’s all kinds of reasons behind that. Ultimately it comes back to there is something wrong in our relationship with God and we need His grace to overcome that. We need to be brought back into what we were created for.
Just picture it. Adam and Eve were once walking with God in the garden, just enjoying His presence in perfect harmony. Don’t you want that with God? That kind of delight in relationship with God? Don’t you want that kind of perfect harmony in relationship with God where you are experiencing His goodness like every single moment where you’re walking in perfect communion with Him? Oh that’s what the beginning of creation was about and that’s where all new creation is headed. There’s coming a day when sin will be no more and we’ll have that kind of perfect harmony with God. Sinless relationship with God. No more sin in us. Perfect communion with God. Oh, I long for that. Come Lord Jesus, come quickly.
This Verse Reminds us to Turn Away From Sin
Let’s pray that today we would experience that more and more and more. God, we want to enjoy You, walk with You, experience communion, fellowship with You like You designed us to experience. God we hate sin. We hate this tendency in us to turn from You. God, help us, help us by Your grace, by the grace of Christ who’s paid the price for our sin on the cross.
Help us to turn from sin and to walk with You, to walk in intimacy with You. God, we pray that You would keep us from trying to hide our sin from You. God, help us to be honest in our sinful tendencies before You and in that honesty to find Your forgiveness, to find Your mercy waiting for us in our confession of our need for Your grace. Then in the process of that confession, in the process of experiencing Your grace to be drawn into greater closeness with You, greater intimacy with You. God, this is what we need most in our lives today. Need You. Need to walk with You so help us to experience that by Your grace. Help us to turn from the sin and temptation around us and to walk in communion, just
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
