Have you noticed that many times we are asked questions, and we wonder why we are being asked such a question because the answer seems so obvious.
Illus: Listen to these foolish questions and their answers -
Q. A lawyer said to a man on the witness stand, “What happened then?”
A. “He told me, ‘I have to kill you because you can identify me.’”
Q. “Did he kill you?”
Q. A lawyer said, “Was it you or your brother that was killed in the war?”
Q. She had three children, right?
A. Yes.
Q. How many were boys?
A. None.
Q. Were there any girls?
Q. A lawyer asked, “Were you alone or by yourself?”
Q. I show you Exhibit 3 and ask you if you recognize that picture?
A. That's me.
Q. Were you present when that picture was taken?
Q. You say that the stairs went down to the basement?
A. Yes.
Q. And these stairs, did they go up also?
Q. Do you know how far pregnant you are now?
A. I'll be three months on March 12th.
Q. Apparently then, the date of conception was around January 12th?
A. Yes.
Q. What were you doing at that time?
Q. A lawyer asked, “Was that the same nose you broke as a child?”
Q. Mrs. Jones, do you believe you are emotionally stable?
A. I used to be.
Q. How many times have you committed suicide?
Q. A lawyer said, “You don't know what it was, and you don't know what it looked like, but can you describe it?”
Q. Have you lived in this town all your life?
A. Not yet.
Q. Do you recall approximately the time that you examined that body of Mr. Huntington at St. Mary's Hospital?
A. It was in the evening. The autopsy started about 5:30 P.M.
Q. And Mr. Huntington was dead at the time, is that correct?
A. No, you idiot, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was performing an autopsy on him!
So many times we are asked questions, and the answer seems so obvious we wonder why anyone would ask such a question.
School children and young people in college are asked questions to evaluate how much they know. Someone very wisely said, “We will always have prayer in school as long as we have tests!” But test are not only given to students, they are also given to immigrants who are entering this country.
Illus: (humor) We are told that they used to give immigrants a test when they came to America. The last question on the test was to use the words pink, green and yellow in a sentence.
A Mexican was asked to do this, and he responded to the question by saying, "When the phone goes 'GREEN GREEN GREEN' I PINK the telephone up and say 'YELLOW?'"
Notice, in our verse of scripture the question is asked of Adam, “…Where art thou?" Even though this is a simple question, this verse of scripture creates some problems for some people. For example, they say, “If Christ is omniscient (knows all things) why is He asking, ‘Where are thou?’”
The Lord does know everything. If you were to put all the questions in the world on one big test, the Lord would know the correct answer to every one of them. He is Omniscient, there is nothing He does not know or see.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT THAT GOD KNOWS ALL AND SEES ALL? God’s eyes are on us every day. He has to know everything if He is going to judge us fairly.
• If He did not know all the evil we have done, He could not judge us fairly. But he sees the evil that men and women do each day of their life.
But God has to know everything about us for another reason, for example-
• He can not reward us if He does not know the good we have done.
Illus: The Bible says that when Noah lived here on earth, he was surrounded by evil but God saw him dwelling there.
Look at Genesis 6:8 “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.” God is an Omniscient God, He knows everything about us that is to be known.
God asked Adam, “Where art thou?”. Some people fail to realize that questions are asked for two reasons:
• Sometimes it is a way of finding how much we know
• Sometimes the question is a method of teaching us something we need to know
In the case with the Lord asking Adam, “Where art thou?”, this was a teaching method to get Adam to examine where he was spiritually. God knew where He was, but He wanted Adam to examine his own life so that he might discover where he was.
Look at verse 8, we read, “And THEY HEARD THE VOICE OF THE LORD GOD walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God AMONGST THE TREES of the garden.”
When the Lord appeared in the garden, Adam actually thought he could do wrong and hide, and God would not know where he was!
Illus: One of the funny things on television that most of us enjoy watching is when they show live videos of things that take place in people’s lives. The TV host of one of these programs showed a video of a little boy around 3 years old, when the giving of thanks was being expressed at the dinner table.
It was a video of a little boy WHO KNEW THE VALUE OF SAYING GRACE AT THE TABLE, BUT THOUGHT HE COULD FOOL GOD ABOUT WHAT HE WAS DOING!
They showed a little boy sitting in a high chair, with a plate full of food in front of him. He was stuffing his mouth with food, and his mother said, “Let’s bow our head in prayer and thank the Lord for the food.” The little boy immediately stopped and put his hands over his face. But once the prayer started he began to reach for the food again with one hand, and he covered his eyes with the other one. And all during the prayer he was constantly stuffing his mouth.
What made this video so funny was that HE KNEW THE VALUE OF PRAYER BUT THOUGHT HE COULD FOOL GOD ABOUT WHAT HE WAS DOING.
Adam thought he could do the same thing by hiding. When God said to Adam, “Where art thou?”, God knew where he was. But God was asking this question so Adam would realize that you can not hide from God. He knows where we are. The biggest mistake we can make is to try and hide from God.
• When we are saved POSITIONALLY, we are in Christ. The Lord knows all those who are in Christ and those who are not! The question has nothing to do with our POSITION SPIRITUALLY-
• The question is where are we PRACTICALLY? That is, are we where God wants us to be?
Let’s take a look at where we are in Christ.
I. WHERE ARE WE IN OUR WALK WITH THE LORD?
Did you know that you can recognize some folks by their walk?
Illus: Today, the police use forensic evidence to identify and apprehend criminals. For example, to catch some of these law breakers, sometimes they are identified by the way they walk.
• Some folks walk by putting a lot of weigh on the front part of their foot. That is, they walk on their toes
• Some walk by putting a lot of weight on the back of their foot
• And some walk by putting a lot of weight on the out side of their foot
The way we walk tells a great deal about us.
While that is true PHYSICALLY, it certainly is true SPIRITUALLY! There are a lot of folks that claim to walk with the Lord, but their life does not reflect that by the way they walk.
Illus: Did you hear about the police officer that pulled over this guy who had been weaving in and out of the lanes?
• He goes up to the guy's window and says, “Sir, I need you to blow into this breathalyzer tube." The man says, "Sorry officer I can't do that. I am an asthmatic. If I do that I'll have a really bad asthma attack.”
• “Okay, fine. I need you to come down to the station to give a blood sample.” “I can't do that either. I am a hemophiliac. If I do that, I'll bleed to death.”
The good officer said, "All right then, I need you to come out here and walk this white line." The man said, "I can't do that, officer." "Why not?" "Because I'm drunk."
The way some walk the Christian life causes us to wonder about them.
HOW SHOULD WE WALK? We should be walking with the Lord as ENOCH walked with Him.
Look at Gen. 5:22-24, "And ENOCH WALKED WITH GOD after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: And ENOCH WALKED WITH GOD: and he [was] not; for GOD TOOK HIM."
Just think about how close Enoch must have been in his walk with the Lord. Some say that Enoch walked with the Lord each day of his life, and one day as He was walking with God, God said, “Enoch, you are closer to my house than yours” and GOD TOOK HIM HOME WITH HIM.
In this case, it was not God calling out, “Where art thou?”, it would have been his family calling out, “Enoch, where art thou?”
Our “WALK” is simply how we live day by day. Paul speaks of this in the Book of Romans.
• Look at Rom. 6:4, "Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should WALK IN NEWNESS OF LIFE."
When we receive Christ as Saviour, all things in our life are changed.
• Look at 2 Cor. 5:17, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
Have things changed in your life? SPIRITUALLY SPEAKING, “Where art thou?” Are you a “new person” in Christ? Or are you the same person you have always been, pretending to be saved when really you do not know Christ?
Some Christians refuse to change certain things in their lives. They have ...
• Bad Habits
• Bad Language
• Bad Tempers
• Old Grudges
Christians are to be walking in “NEWNESS OF LIFE”, not in the old ways of evil.
Rom. 8:1, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who WALK NOT AFTER THE FLESH, BUT AFTER THE SPIRIT."
Walking with God means walking with God ALL THE TIME! WHERE ARE WE IN OUR WALK, and ...
II. WHERE ARE WE IN OUR DEDICATION?
We should serve the Lord faithfully, like NEHEMIAH.
The devil is very clever in the way he side-tracks a lot of Christians from serving the Lord. They started off living a dedicated Christian life, but HE SIDE-TRACKED THEM!
Nehemiah considered his work for God so important, he did not have time to waste with those who opposed him.
Look at Neh. 6:3, "And I sent messengers unto them, saying, I AM DOING A GREAT WORK, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?"
The devil knows that some folks dedication is so puny, that all Satan has to do to stop them in their tracks is send someone across their path and say something unkind, and they will be boo-hooing for the next six weeks.
It seems that all some people do is boo-hoo all through life. But this kind of life does not lead us anywhere in a positive way.
Illus: Over breakfast one morning, a woman who always was crying about something, said to her husband, with tears in her eyes, “I bet you don't know what day this is?"
"Of course I do," he indignantly answered. But all the way to his office, he is thinking to himself, “Is it her birthday or is it our anniversary?”
• At 10 AM, the doorbell rang, and when the woman opened the door, she was handed a box containing a dozen long stemmed red roses
• At 1 PM, a foil wrapped, two pound box of her favorite chocolates arrived
• Later, a boutique delivered a designer dress
The woman couldn't wait for her husband to come home. "First the flowers, then the chocolates and then the dress!"
When he arrived she flew into his arms and said, "I've never had a more wonderful Groundhog Day in my life!"
The devil knows that to stop some people from serving the Lord, all he has to do is get some boo-hooing going and they are ready to throw their hands up and quit.
If all it takes to stop you from serving the Lord is for someone to come along and say something to insult you or hurt your feelings, you will never serve the Lord.
There are people out there that are looking for people like you. That is, they are addicted to doing evil.
WHO ARE THESE WHO ARE ADDICTED TO INSULTING AND HURTING PEOPLE?
• If you cannot go for twenty-four hours without drinking liquor, you are addicted to alcohol
• If you cannot go for twenty-four hours without smoking, you are addicted to nicotine
• If you can not go over twenty-four hours without saying any unkind words about someone, you are addicted to hurting people
There are people in our society that look for opportunities to hurt people. They find happiness in making others miserable. Such people exist, but when they attack us, they are not worthy of our time to respond to them.
Illus: One of our strong allies was asked by a journalist if his country had a million people protesting the war in Iraq. He said, “That is correct, but we have a population of 32 million and only one million was opposing the war.”
So often it is the focus groups that are making so much noise that receive all the attention.
Notice, Nehemiah recognized that his work, was a “great work”, and he was so dedicated to God, he refused to come down from working on the wall to fuss with that crowd. Too much time is given to those who are opposing the work of God.
Illus: A church can be a firehouse for God, and people are focusing on Christ in their worship service, and the devil will send someone to oppose it. Soon all the attention is taken from Christ, and all that the church is talking about are the troublemakers.
We need to recognize that what we are doing for the Lord is a “great work”, and we must not allow the troublemakers to steal all the attention from Christ and place it on themselves. Leave them alone, GOD WILL TAKE CARE OF THEM IN DUE TIME!
We will have opposition, but we have victory in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Conclusion:
God called out to Adam, “Where art thou?”
TO THE LOST: “Where art thou” ...
• Are you lost and on your way to an eternal hell?
• Are you satisfied to live your life here on earth and then to die and suffer in torment forever?
• Are you satisfied to never have a relationship with God? To never be His child?
Jesus died for you. Won't you repent of your sin and accept the free gift of God which is salvation through Jesus Christ?
TO THE SAVED: “Where art thou?”
Christians, where are we in the practical outworking of our salvation?
The Lord Jesus knows where you are, whether you be saved or lost! But this question is to get you to ask yourself, “WHERE AM I?”
I. WHERE ARE WE IN OUR WALK?
II. WHERE ARE WE IN OUR DEDICATION?
