Where’s the Love?

3rd Sunday after Pentecost, 6/14/15
Genesis 3:8-15


Where’s the Love?
I. In our God’s confronting sinful humans
II. In our God’s comforting sinful humans


Quit hating on me. Don’t be a hater. You should be more tolerant.

I’m guessing that most of you have heard such statements. You may have even used them yourself. I realize that, from a Christian standpoint, those statements can be used correctly. Hatred is sin. So is prejudice and bigotry. Our Lord commands us to love all people and forbids us from hating anyone.

But certainly you realize that, especially in our current world, those statements are misused, at least from a Christian standpoint. Our holy God will not tolerate sin, and he demands that we do the same. But that’s not hatred; it’s actually love. He tells us to speak the truth in love to everyone who will listen to us.

We have before us this morning the results of not speaking the truth. The Father of Lies had told Adam and Eve that deliberately disobeying God would bring them something desirable—they would be like God knowing good and evil, as if knowing evil is ever good. Satan’s oldest and most-often used lie is that sin is actually good.

But sin is never good. It ruins. It destroys. It brings guilt and shame, blame and hatred.

The devastation their deed caused lay all around them. Their loving relationship with the Lord had been blown-up. Their loving relationship with each other had been shattered. A spiritual war had just taken place and the smoking ruins were a terrible reminder of it.

But there’s love here—all over the place. Do you see it? Maybe not. Where is it? Where’s the love? It’s not in the way our God tolerated their sin; it’s in the way he dealt with it. May our loving Lord Jesus lead us to see it as we review this familiar biblical event.

Part I.

It started with just one. That’s the likely scenario. Experts in US disease control say that the measles outbreak this past winter likely started with just one infected traveler to Disneyland in CA. Within a matter of weeks it had infected 173 people. It seemed like such a small thing, but it brought a dreaded disease to so many.

It seemed like such a small thing. There was a tree in the middle of the garden. God told Adam and Eve not to eat fruit from that tree. It was their one test of faith, one way in which they declared how loving and good God was to them. The garden may have been filled with trees very similar to it. They could eat from those trees, but not from this one. And when Satan tempted them, they succumbed. They fell. Hard. They ate the fruit. It only took one bite.

And look what happened. Just the opposite of what Satan had said or insinuated. He had said they would be like God. But in reality, they were now
more “unlike” God than they had ever been. Instead of completely holy as God was and is, they were completely sinful. Instead of being filled with care and concern for one another, they blamed each other and God. Instead of desiring a close and loving relationship with God, they hid from him.

And we know what that’s like. A mother tells her five-year-old son not to touch the cookie jar which is filled with freshly baked cookies. But shortly after she leaves the room, his sinful desires overtake him. He pulls a chair over to the counter, climbs it and touches the cookie jar. He lifts the lid and then pulls the jar to the edge of the counter. As he reaches into it with one hand, the other hand loses its grip on the jar and it falls to the floor and shatters. And what is his reaction? He runs and hides in his bedroom closet, as if that’s going to help him. But that’s what he does. That’s what we do.

That’s what Adam and Eve did. They tried to do the impossible—to hide from the God who knows all and sees all. In fact, that’s where they wanted to be left. That’s what guilt does—it separates people; it separates us from God. Adam’s solution for his guilt was to hide from God so that God would never confront him with his sin. Adam’s solution was for God to leave him alone so that he could die in his sin.

And God could have said, “Fine! Have it your way! You’ve made a sinful mess of the perfect world I created. Now you can live in it without me.” But that’s not what the Lord God did. That name—Lord God—is full of meaning. Yes, he came to his creatures as God—the almighty God who had created them. But he also came as Lord—that’s the special name God uses for himself to emphasize his faithful love and forgiveness. Notice that the Lord doesn’t come crashing into their sinful world. He walks in the garden, as he apparently had done before. He doesn’t shout or bark at them. No, he calls out, “Where are you?” In his tremendous love for them he seeks them out. He’s not willing to let them die in their sinfulness. He will not let them deal with their guilt by hiding from him. That would be a hateful action—to say and do nothing. For him to be tolerant of their sin would be unloving. No, the loving thing to do is to seek them out to confront them with their sin, to make them admit their guilt, to confess what they have done.

This is an ugly scene—the first ugly scene in the world’s sinful history. Where’s the love? In our God’s confronting sinful humans.

There’s one sure-fire way not to solve a problem. Refuse to deal with it in the first place. Adam and Eve realized they had a problem of epic proportions. They had sinned. They had violated a direct command from God. And the result of their sin was death—eternal separation from God. Their solution—to hide from God and refuse to deal with it—was no solution at all. It would mean certain separation from God forever. They were willing to live with that; better…to die with that. But the Lord God wasn’t. The solution was not to sweep their sins into Eden’s dirt. The solution wasn’t to change his mind about sin and its punishment. The solution wasn’t to give them a second chance. The solution—the loving solution—was to deal with their sin, to seek them out since they weren’t coming forward, to ask them what they’ve done, to elicit a confession from them. Confronting them with their sin was not hating on them. It was loving them so that God could deal with it. That’s what God ultimately did when he sacrificed his Son on Calvary’s cross. That’s what a loving God did.

Part II.

And that’s what he now announces he will do for Adam, for Eve, for every sinner in the world.

When we read the responses that Adam and Eve gave to their loving Lord God as he confronted them with their sin, we chuckle, right? They play the blame-game as if they can fool God. But then our humor is replaced by disgust. How pathetic! He simply wanted them to come clean, to admit honestly what they had done. But instead, they blame the perfect partner God had given them and they blame the holy, loving Lord God. Pathetic!

All the more reason God should have done a 180 right then and there and marched right out of the garden, to abandon his thankless, mutinous creatures.

But what does he do? The unexpected. The graciously amazing. “So the LORD God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’”

These words flow out of a heart of divine grace. The Lord is not willing that anyone should perish. He wants all sinners to be saved, even these first two who ruined everything he had created. What love!

Next he causes us to recognize that Satan is our enemy and not our friend. Satan had come to Eve and Adam appearing as someone who had their best interests in mind and causing them to doubt that God did the same. He appeared as their buddy. God stated to Satan, “I will put enmity—hostility and hatred—between you and the woman.” Never forget that! As amicable as Satan appears, he wants to murder you spiritually forever.

Our loving Lord God also wants us to hate the ways of the sinful world. Are you disgusted yet by what goes on in our world? I certainly hope so. If not, let’s talk. We live in a sin-sick world that is terminally ill. It’s caused by those in league with Satan. He uses them to perpetrate wickedness and immorality, abuse and hatred. Listen to what your loving Lord God said to Satan, “I will put enmity…between your offspring and hers.” There is conflict between non-Christians and Christians.

And then our loving Lord God saved the best for last. “He will crush your head and you will strike his heal.” Death in hell is the punishment for sin. God didn’t hedge on that at all. But he announced that a Savior from sin would take that punishment upon himself. By God’s grace Adam and Eve believed God’s promise to send them a Savior from sin. He would be one of her offspring. He would be the Satan-crusher.

Where’s the love? It’s not so hard to see now. It’s in our God’s comforting sinful humans.

Ever since that fateful day, nothing has gone right in our world. It can’t go right. Our moments of real joy are few and far between, and too often, even those times are tainted with sin. So what is our loving Lord God going to do about it? What’s he going to do about my chronic pain, my terminal illness, my broken relationships, my mounting financial pressures, my depression and anxiety? Are you ready for the answer? He comforts you with the news of forgiveness. Yes, Satan bruised Jesus, but Jesus crushed Satan with his death on Calvary’s cross. He sealed his victory with his resurrection. Forgiveness is yours. Heaven is yours. Paradise once again. No sin, no death no crying, no pain. Just bliss. Where’s the love? No need to ask. You’ve seen it. Embrace it! Amen.