"yielding All Things: Faith Vs. Fear"

“Yielding All Things: Faith Vs. Fear”

Genesis 3:1-15, 21-24

Let’s try and imagine the original Eden.

Animals roam freely and peacefully.

A mist goes up from the earth, watering the green land and the blooming flowers.

The birds chirp, the fish swim in glistening water.

Trees are filled with delicious fruit, ripe for the picking.

Each day is magnificent.

Humankind lives in perfect harmony with creation and with the Creator.

And then, with a whisper, the scene changes.

Discord and distrust build.

Fruit from the forbidden tree is eaten, and, as promised, the eyes of the first man and woman open.

And they suddenly experience brand new feelings of shame, humiliation, and overpowering fear.

“We disobeyed the God Who made us.

We are going to die!”

In 1st John we are told that Perfect love casts out fear, but Adam and Eve learned another thing.

Perfect fear casts out love.

What had started out as a story of trust and obedience now becomes an account of crime and punishment.

What started out as a life of faith, relationship and love has been twisted into a life of fear.

They had wanted knowledge rather than trust.

And now that they have it; they now know more than they could ever have wanted to know.

And there is no place to run.

And here we have the tragedy of the Fall of humankind.

But through it all, God remains faithful.

We are told in verse 7 that when “the eyes of [Adam and Eve] were opened, and they realized they were naked; they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.”

They made “the first clothes, so to speak” and not very good ones we might add.

And then they hid from God.

But God sought them out, and did for them something they couldn’t do for themselves.

In verse 21 we are told that “The Lord made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.”

In the Bible, to be clothed is to be given life!

In Romans 13:14 Paul instructs us to “cloth [ourselves] with the Lord Jesus Christ…”

In Galatians Chapter 3 we are told, “all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ”…and… “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

Let’s try and take in the magnitude of this for a moment.

I mean where did the skins come from that God used to make their clothing—in order to cover their nakedness (and nakedness here is a metaphor for sinfulness)?

They came from an animal, and scholars down through the ages have contended that it was a lamb.

So, the first sacrifice in the Bible was made by God and this was a hint of the ultimate sacrifice to come.

And those hints turned into reality when God took on flesh and lived among us, died and was resurrected in order restore those who will believe back to life as it was before sin and fear entered the picture.

And so, those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, die with Christ and are clothed with Christ—just as God graciously made Adam and Eve clothes out of the skin of the first sacrifice.

Pretty amazing stuff, wouldn’t you say?

And so, through the ages, at all times and in all places God remains faithful to us.

As we are told in Hebrews, “God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

And because of this, God offers us faith and Perfect Love which drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment.

Let me ask you this morning, what are you afraid of?

What keeps you up at night?

What causes you to want to run and hide?

What makes you feel naked?

Remember, how, last Sunday, I asked “How many of you have had those kinds of dreams where you show up for a test at school totally unprepared?”

Often, in those dreams, somehow you have missed all the classes until the final exam.

It seems to be an almost universal dream folks have.

At lunch this week David and I got talking about those universal dreams.

And another one that many of us have is showing up to school either naked or in our underwear.

Or we may be giving a presentation or whatever.

It’s an awful dream, and I don’t know if I have ever met someone who told me that they have never had a dream like that.

According to a website called DreamStop:

“Dreaming of being naked is a sign of great vulnerability and insecurity.

You fear others seeing you for exactly what you are, and you desire to hide some part of yourself which you feel to be shameful or embarrassing.