The first thing sin does is destroy innocence. Innocence is that quality of being free from blame. It means to be pure, virtuous, above suspicion. Just think of the verses we just read there in I John 3. It means to be pure, virtuous, above suspicion. It means to be simple, fresh, undefiled, completely harmless. An innocent person is one whom others feel no sense of threat to be around. There is no fear, no competition with that person.
This illustration is showing us that no one can ever be quite the same after one has sinned with knowledge. Notice they sinned after God instructed them. Nobody had to tell them. They knew. Do you know why? Their conscience that had been educated by God convicted them. This is why I said a little bit earlier, when we sin with knowledge, the psychological effects - the damage - is much greater than when a person sins in ignorance.
Nobody had to tell Adam and Eve they sinned. They knew. They now looked at things in a different light from the way they did before, and a sense of wrongfulness rushed in on them immediately. A moment before, brethren, they had been friendly and joyful, and all of the garden seemed to be obedient to their every wish. Suddenly there was guilt and fear, and it seemed as though every creature in the garden was witness to their act, condemning them. They felt exposed, and they tried to hide. Separation from the purity of God began immediately. The virtue of their innocence began to lose its vitality. In Psalm 40, David wrote a few interesting things in regard to this:
Does that remind you of Adam and Eve? Did David feel guilty? Did he feel condemned? Did he feel unworthy? What does a child do when he is caught telling a lie? He hides his face. What do criminals do when they are taken out of the police car and the television cameras are there taking a picture of them while they are hauled off into the corridor, or whatever? They pull their jackets over their faces. They try to hide. They turn. They know. The innocence is gone.
Why are children so adorable? Do you know what it is we love about them? It is the beauty of their innocence. What happens on our trip to adulthood? Sin changes our view. It changes the way we look at life. We become distrustful, sophisticated, worldly, competitive, cosmopolitan, cynical, suspicious, sarcastic, prejudiced, self-centered, cool, and uninvolved. Sin drives people apart, and it creates fear. Sin and its companion - worldliness - does that to us.
Have you ever noticed as you have read through the Bible how God likes to ask questions? For example, when He asked Adam and Eve questions in the Garden of Eden after they had sinned. Well, let us take a look at that quickly.
Everybody was passing the buck all the way down, and to this day human beings do the same thing in life.
God did not ask questions because He did not know the answers. He was not trying to figure out whether Adam was hiding in one or another of the trees. Later in the account of Cain and Abel when Cain was displeased that his offering was rejected, God asked him a series of questions.
So in both those incidences God asked a lot of questions.
In II Samuel 12:9, God asked David through Nathan, Why did you despise the word of the Lord? by doing what is evil in His eyes. In Isaiah 6:8, God asked Isaiah, Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us? And in Matthew 16:15, the Lord asked, Who do you say I am? The apostle John recorded many of Christ's questions as well. God asks questions to get us to face the situation. He asks us, we have to answer, and whatever we answer better be the truth. And then even if we answer the truth, often we have condemned ourselves, but that is one of the main reasons God asks questions - to get us to face the situation ourselves to more deeply realize what we have done.
The result of the sin was hiding from God, desperately attempting not to be in His company. But God was up to the task here. He knew what was going on. Let us drop down to verse 22 after He gives the curses on the serpent and then on the woman and the man.
God could not just have them hide from Him. He had to go farther than this because of their sin. Because of their sin they were no longer fit to dwell in His presence. They were no longer fit to dwell in His garden, the place of His abode, you would say. They could not live with the symbol of the Tree of Life so close. They had to be guarded from it. So they were shown the door because they had shown their hand. They did not love God, at least not to the measure that they were supposed to - with all their heart, with all their soul, with all their mind. They would not love Him. It is pretty evident that they had made up their mind that they would go their own way.
The result was not what He was looking for: two becoming one. Now it was them going their own way. There was disunion, not unity, there was divorce, there was separation between the two parties, that is, God and man. His purpose of two becoming one would not work in an environment of hatred, of disobedience, and of selfishness. So He cut off man's access to Him. That was the penalty. Man has been cut off ever since.
There are two things that happened here that changed our relationship with God and each other. They go hand-in-hand with what has been the point so far in this sermon, because they are both, perhaps, the most significant part of the problems we face today. There is failure to stand by the decisions not to be disturbed in the truth of God's Word. And there is a drive away from God by Satan's own self-deception of, This is your right!
Brethren, we live in such divisive times that are only getting worse as rights are being demanded, and the making of decisions that are not built on truth, but on what is best for our side and convincing others that it is to ensure our rights! Do we really think that we can make proper decisions based on the truth of God's Word as long as we hold on to the this is my right, attitude that is trumpeted all around us throughout this world from all sides?
Another effect was that they wanted to hide from God - that they had some dirty little secret that they did not want God to know. There was some part of their lives that they wanted to put in a closet and not reveal to anyone. And so we can see immediately that the gap between men and God was widening at an ever-increasing speed.
Here is another effect. On top of shame, and secrets, and hiding - there is also fear that comes onto the scene.
That is interesting. Why would you fear because you were naked? I do not know that I have a good answer for that. Anyway, he says, and I hid myself.