Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 412
Genesis 3:9.
IT will be interesting to the members of this Church to know that it was under a sermon delivered by Mr. William Wallin from this very text, that my honored and venerable predecessor, Dr. Gill, was converted to a knowledge of the Truth of God as it is in Jesus. I looked with some degree of curiosity to his interpretation of this passage. I had half hoped to find there some allusion to his own conversion, but I did not, although I was edified by his clear and methodical comment upon it, to which I am under obligations for suggesting the present discourse. May I hope that, as this text has been the means in the hands of God of conferring upon the Church of Christ a man who valiantly defended the Truth of God, and was the means of expounding the Doctrine of Grace with great clearness, that there may be here present today someone at least who like John Gill may hear the Word with power, and may receive it in its quickening influence into his soul! No, let us pray that not one alone, but that many may hear the enquiry of God as it rings through the multitude, and while it reaches the ear, may it reach the heart, too, and may some be brought before God in answer to the question, “Where are you?” and receive the assurance of pardon, and go on their way in peace!
It is not necessary that I should, in expounding this text, enter at all into the circumstances which led to the enquiry. Man had sinned against God. Mark the alienation of heart which sin causes in the sinner. Adam ought to have sought out his Maker. He should have gone through the garden crying for his God, “My God, my God, I have sinned against You! Where are You? Low at Your feet Your creature falls and asks mercy at Your hands. My Father, You have placed me in this lovely Paradise; I have wickedly and willfully eaten of the fruit of which You said that I should not eat of it, since in the day I ate thereof I should surely die. Behold, my Father, I submit to the penalty. I confess Your justice and beseech Your mercy, if mercy can be shown to such an one as I am.” But instead thereof, Adam flees from God! The sinner comes not to God; God comes to him. It is not, “My God, where are You?” But the first cry is the voice of Grace, “Sinner where are you?” God comes to man; man seeks not his God. Despite all the Doctrines which proud free will has manufactured, there has never been found from Adam’s day until now a single instance in which the sinner first sought his God! God must first seek him. The sheep strays of itself, but it never returns to its fold unless sought by the Great Shepherd! It is human to err, it is Divine to repent. Man can commit iniquity, but even to know that it isiniquity so as to feel the guilt of it, is the gift of the Grace of God. We have and are nothing but what is vile! Everything which is God-like, everything which aspires towards righteousness and true holiness, comes from the Most High.
And while the text manifestly teaches us the alienation of the human heart from God, so that man shuns his Maker and does not desire fellowship with Him, it reveals also the folly which sin has caused. Sin made man a fool! He was once in God’s Image, wise; now, since the trail of the serpent has passed over his nature, he has become an arrogant fool, for is not he a fool who would cover the nakedness of sin with fig leaves? Is not he indeed mad who would hide from the Omniscient Jehovah beneath the spreading branches of trees? Did not Adam know that God fills all space, and dwells everywhere, that from the highest Heaven to the deepest Hell there is nothing that is hid from His understanding? And yet so ignorant and stupid is he that he hopes to escape from God, and make the trees of the garden a covert from the fiery eyes of Divine Wrath! Ah, how foolish we are! How we repeat the folly of our first parent every day when we seek to hide sin from conscience, and then think it is hidden from God; when we are more afraid of the gaze of man than of the searching of the Eternal One; when because the sin is secret, and has not entrenched upon the laws and customs of society, we go to our beds with the black mark still upon us, being satisfied because man does not see it, that therefore God does not perceive it! O sin, you have made man ask the question, “Where shall I flee from Your Presence?” And you have made him forget that if he ascends to Heaven, God is there; if he makes his bed in Hell, God is there, and if he says, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,” even the night shall be light about him!
But now, the Lord Himself comes forth to Adam, and note how He comes. He comes walking. He was in no haste to smite the offender, not flying upon wings of wind, not hurrying with His fiery sword unsheathed, but walking in the garden. “In the cool of the day”—not in the dead of night when the natural glooms of darkness might have increased the terrors of the criminal; not in the heat of the day, lest he should imagine that God comes in the heat of passion; not in the early morning, as if in haste to slay, but at the close of the day, for God is long-suffering, slow to anger, and of great mercy. He came in the cool of the evening, when the sun was setting upon Eden’s last day of glory, when the dews began to weep for man’s misery, when the gentle winds with breath of mercy breathed upon the hot cheek of fear! He came when earth was silent, that man might meditate, and when Heaven was lighting her evening lamps, that man might have hope in darkness—then and not till then—came forth the offended Father! Adam flees and seeks to avoid that very God whom he had once met with confidence, and with whom he had the sweetest fellowship, talking with Him as a man talks with his friend. And now hear the voice of God as He cries, “Adam, where are you?” Oh, there were two Truths of God in that short sentence! It showed that Adam was lost, or God would not have needed to ask him where he was. Until we have lost a thing, we need not inquire about it. But when God said, “Adam, where are you?” it was the voice of a shepherd enquiring for his lost sheep. Or better still, the cry of a loving parent asking for his child that has run away from him, “Where are you?”