Genesis 3:8

Genesis 3:8

I. That which strikes us first of all is, that Adam represents the average sinner. A man may do worse than Adam. Many men have done and do worse than hide themselves from God after outraging Him by sin. Adam's conduct proves that the sense of God's presence, awfulness, greatness, was still intact in his soul.

II. "They hid themselves." It was not the result of a consultation; it was an instinct. Two motives would concurrently have determined the action of Adam. (1) Fear. God's greatness was now the measure of the terror of the creature who had dared to disobey Him. (2) Shame. Adam had felt a fear of God in his unfallen life which differed from the cowering fear of his guilty conscience much as a healthy circulation of the blood might differ from the pulse of fever. But shame was an absolutely new thing, unlike any other capacity or experience in himself with which our first father had been previously acquainted. As the greatness of God was the measure of Adam's fear, so his own lost greatness was the measure of Adam's shame.

III. "Amongst the trees of the garden." The trees beneath the shade of which the human soul seeks refuge from its God are: (1) pleasure; (2) occupation; (3) moral rationalism.

IV. We have no difficulty in characterising this act of Adam as foolish and irrational. It was so: (1) because it was to attempt the impossible; and (2) because it was to fly from the one hope and opening for restoration and safety.

H. P. Liddon, Cambridge Lent Sermons,1864, p. 23.

References: Genesis 3:8. H. Hayman, Rugby School Chapel,p. 159; W. Meller, Village Homilies,p. 212; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount,p. 1; H. Macmillan, The Olive Leaf,p. 241; C. Kingsley, Gospel of the Pentateuch,p. 41; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 184; J. H. Blunt, Miscellaneous Sermons by Clergymen of the Church of England,p. 93; B. Waugh, Sunday Magazine(1887), pp. 138, 209; G. Calthrop, Pulpit Recollections,p. 16.