Gen 3:8–13 — Judgment Day

The passage we have just read is “Judgment Day.” That is the title of the sermon. This is the day of judgment, God coming to point out and to expose the sin of Adam and Eve in breaking the covenant. This is the first judgment day in the Bible, but there are many judgment days throughout Scripture when God comes in power and judgment. He comes in wrath. His presence comes like a mighty storm with thunder and lightning. God comes many times throughout Scripture, ultimately pointing us to the ultimate day of the Lord at the end of the world when Christ comes to judge the living and the dead. But this is the very first one.

The Coming of the Judge

We begin with looking at the approach of the judge. Now remember that in the previous paragraph, we read about the fall of Adam and Eve as they sinned and broke the covenant. We remember that God had appointed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to be a tree of testing, to be a tree, a place where Adam, acting as God’s vice-regent, was to pronounce judgment upon Satan. God made man in the image of God and he gave him royal authority. He also gave him a priestly task of guarding the sanctuary. The Garden of Eden was a sanctuary, a holy place where God dwelt with his people. And the serpent who was giving voice to the words of Satan himself, the serpent was not to be permitted to enter into that sanctuary. God had appointed man to be God’s vice-regent to pronounce judgment upon Satan.

The point is that this whole scene here, not only beginning with God coming in judgment, but even going back before that into the previous paragraph, this whole scene is full of judicial ideas, judicial context. Man was given a mission. He was given a mission of calling God’s judgment down upon the serpent. God had committed Adam with this royal and priestly task. Of course, we know that Adam failed in that task. He should not have allowed the devil to enter into the garden and to engage in a theological discussion with his wife. He failed in his headship in the family, but also he failed in his role as the covenant head. And he allowed the devil to deceive his wife and even to deceive himself and bring him into this place of siding with the devil rather than with God.

Of course, Christ is the second Adam. And we read later on in the Bible how when he was tempted by the devil in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, that he succeeded where Adam failed. And he quoted scripture against the serpent. And said that we live not by, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Satan was trying to deviate Christ from his path of going to the cross. And Jesus resisted that, said, get behind me, Satan. And he went to the cross, to the suffering of the cross, to fulfill his mission in order to fulfill the covenant that Adam broke

So we see in the big scheme of redemptive history that what Adam was supposed to do is pictured for us in what Christ himself did, what Christ succeeded in doing. But the point is, is that this place, this holy garden with this tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle and this covenant that God made with Adam was a judicial event. Humanity, represented by Adam, was to act on behalf of God to pronounce God’s judgment upon the serpent. But he failed in his mission. And instead of pronouncing God’s judgment upon the serpent, he sided with the serpent in his rebellion against God. And thus he broke his covenant with God and became instead in some sort of false covenant with the devil. He is now on the devil’s side. He is now friends with the devil.

And so there is a judicial moment that is happening here. There was a judicial failure that happened, and now God comes, he appears in the garden as the judge to resolve the situation, to pronounce judgment upon the serpent, and to regain his covenant fellowship with Adam and Eve who had broken the covenant.

The key point to understand here is that in verse 8, when it says that they, that is Adam and Eve, heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden, we are to understand that word sound in a terrifying judgment way. This is not simply the rustling of the leaves. It is not simply God coming, it says they are in the cool of the day in most of our English translations as if it is like, like five in the afternoon when it is starting to cool off and there is a little breeze and God is sort of strolling into the garden to have his afternoon tea with Adam and Eve. No, this is God coming in judgment.

The word voice, or the word sound that is used there, the sound of the Lord God, This is the voice of the Lord. Remember later on in the Bible, in Psalm 29, where it has that whole Psalm that is dedicated to the sound of the voice of the Lord. The voice of the Lord is over the waters. The God of glory thunders. The Lord over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars. It is God’s thunderous presence coming in judgment. That is what is referred to there when it says, they heard the sound, they heard the thunder, they heard God coming in glory and power, a powerful voice, a voice full of majesty, a voice that shakes the heavens and the earth, a voice that is utterly terrifying. We can tell that because later on it says, when Adam was describing, Why he hid himself in verse 10, he said, I heard the sound of you. That is the same word back in verse 8, when they heard the sound of the Lord God. I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid. And that is why I hid myself.

This is God’s own presence coming in judgment, just like at Mount Sinai, when God came in that thunder and that lightning, the sound of a trumpet that was so loud that the people could barely stand it. This is God himself coming in glory and judgment. God is coming as judge, entering into judgment with his rebellious servants, with Adam and Eve. He is examining them, questioning them, exposing their sin.

Notice also that in our text it says, they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. I already mentioned that most of the English versions say cool, but that is really not quite the correct translation. It is really a mistranslation. In fact, the ESV has a footnote that says Hebrew wind. And of course you know that the Hebrew word for wind is the same word that is also translated as spirit. It is the same word that is used back in Genesis chapter one. When it says that God made the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

The Hebrew word that is used there, where it says spirit, is the same word used here that is translated as cool or wind. And so we could translate this that they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the spirit of the day. The Spirit is the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God that is reflected throughout the scriptures as God’s glory cloud that comes whenever God is coming in judgment. He comes in this glorious theophany manifesting himself.

Now of course we know that God is a spiritual being who has no body. God is without parts or passions. He is invisible. He is this spiritual being that is not in any way connected to creation. And so when we see the glory cloud throughout the Bible, that is a theophany. That is, God is using created things, the light and the fire and the cloud, in order to represent His presence. And that is what we have here in our text. The sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, in the spirit of the day.

This is God himself coming in that glory cloud, coming in judgment, coming to thunder his judgment and wrath against those who have broken the covenant. And ultimately against Satan himself who was the instigator of this terrible apostasy that occurred right at the beginning of the story of the Bible. This word day that is used there, he was walking in the garden in the spirit of the day, is another theological term that is used throughout the Bible to refer to the day of judgment, the day of the Lord.

This then is the first day of the Lord in the Bible. This is God coming in his glory and power and majesty to enter into a covenant lawsuit that is to show and to expose the sin of his covenant-breaking servants and to pronounce his judgment upon the serpent. God appeared in Eden as a judge. In order to resolve the dilemma that has been created here. Adam has broken the covenant. He has now joined, become in league with the serpent in his rebellion against God, taken the serpent’s position, taken the serpent’s, followed the serpent’s lies in rejecting God’s word, and now there is a big question. What is going to happen? What is going to happen? So the first thing we see is the approach of the judge. As we hear him coming, it is almost like, in Jurassic Park. That movie from a while ago. Maybe some of you do not know it because you are too young, but in Jurassic Park, right, when you hear the T-Rex thundering and coming, you do not see him yet. But you hear the earth shaking and you hear the roar. That is the way it is being described here in our text. God has not yet appeared, but they hear the sound, and they know that God is angry, and they hear God coming in wrath and judgment, and so they hide themselves from the Lord. So that is the approach of the judge.

Hiding from the Judge

But then we also have the presence of the judge. It says that they hid themselves, Adam and Eve, they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. And then God shows up and he speaks. So first we have the approach, we have the T-Rex thundering and they are afraid, but then we have God himself showing up, the very presence of the judge. It says in the text there, verse 8b, that they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord. Now he is here. Now his presence is on the scene. God is manifesting his glory, manifesting his presence in absolute terrifying power before his people.

And they tried to hide themselves from the presence of the Lord God, just like Jonah. Remember Jonah, he was called by God to go and preach to Nineveh. Nineveh, of course, was the archenemy of God’s people. Nineveh had hurt God’s people, and Nineveh was this pagan nation that had come in an army in order to attempt to destroy God’s people. And Jonah was not in favor of giving them an opportunity to repent. And so what does Jonah do? He tries to flee from the presence of the Lord. He tries to run away from God. He tries to avoid confronting God. He tries to avoid this face-to-face encounter.

There is something about Human faces. When we see somebody face to face, if we are not reconciled with that person, if we know that person is angry, we want to turn away. We do not want to confront that reality. There is this idea of the face to face reality of God showing up in his presence before Adam and Eve. The word that is translated as presence is literally face. They hid themselves from the face of the Lord, God. They are afraid, they are terrified. They do not want to confront God or be confronted by Him. They do not want to look Him in the eye. Of course, again, remembering God does not have a body, but we are speaking in spiritual terms. They do not want to be in that exposed state of seeing God face to face and hearing their sin and hearing their judgment.

We see something similar not only with Jonah trying to flee from the face of God, we also see this at the end of the Bible. Remember in the book of Revelation, when the sixth seal is opened, this is in Revelation chapter six, it says the wicked will hide themselves in caves and they will call upon the mountains and the rocks and they will say, fall on us. Why? Hide us from the face of God. Of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of God.” They are trying to escape the presence of God.

And just as Jonah found out, you cannot. You cannot run away from God. He tried, but he could not. God tracked him down. So also with the wicked at the day of judgment. They will try to hide themselves from the face of God. But they will be brought to justice. No one can hide from God.

It is interesting that they try to flee and cover themselves with fig leaves. They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths, it says at the end of verse seven. Even before the judge has exposed their sin, they are already betraying that they are conscious of their sin. Even before God’s formal pronouncement, a process of self-judgment has begun. They are acting guilty. They are acting like they have a guilty conscience. Their conscience has condemned them.

And that is evident by the fact that now they realize that they are naked. They did not have any consciousness of their nakedness before, but now they realize that they are naked, which is a symbolic way of saying they realize their shame. They realize their sin before God.

This shame that they are experiencing is expressed in two ways, both vertically and horizontally. Vertically, in terms of their relationship with God, they recognize that they have now broken the covenant with God. They are no longer serving God and worshiping him and obeying his word. They are now siding with the devil and listening to his deceptive lies and rejecting God’s Word, so there is a sense of shame in terms of their relationship with God, trying to hide themselves from God. But then that also expresses itself horizontally too, because their nakedness also symbolizes their alienation within the marriage bond. There is something going on between the man and the woman now. There is a loss of intimacy between them because they both feel this nakedness that they never felt before. So by sinning against God, they not only broke their covenant with God, but then they also broke their covenant with one another and they became alienated at the horizontal level. The breaking of their vertical relationship with God affects their horizontal relationships with one another. And we see this even today. We see this reality today. That it is because people are not right with God that we end up having broken relationships with the horizontal relationship. We hate one another. We have alienation from one another because we are not right with God.

Although conversely, then there is great hope, is there not? That if we want restoration in our human relationships, the best way to seek that is to make sure that we are reconciled with God. And it is as we are reconciled with God that we can then have those human relationships restored with one another as we both recognize our sinfulness and God’s grace.

The Questioning of the Judge

So we have the approach of the judge. Coming in this frightening way, the sound of the Lord God coming in the spirit of judgment, the spirit of the day of judgment. We have seen the arrival of God where his very face shows up and how Adam and Eve respond to that, seeking to hide, showing that they are aware of their own guilt, trying to cover it up with their own fig leaves in order to cover themselves. But then we have the questioning of the judge and that is, beginning in verse nine, in nine through 13. God comes to Adam and Eve, and he begins to question them. It is interesting, is it not, that he does not just come right out and immediately judge them, he actually begins by questioning them in order to reveal the corruption that they have now fallen into because of their sin. The Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. So instead of God telling the man, do you not see how you tried to hide from me and that shows that you are guilty, he lets the man himself come to that conclusion. And he says it himself. Adam himself says, this is what happened. I was afraid and I hid myself. And so he is condemning himself because of God’s patient questioning of him. Revealing this reality to himself.

Adam himself may not have fully realized what he was doing when he was trying to hide from God, but now that he has heard God question him, he realizes, yeah, this is what I did. I tried to evade you. I tried to avoid you because I now saw that I was naked and that my relationship with you had been broken.

God questions the man and then says to him, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? Of course, in all of these questions that God is asking, it is not as though he does not know the answer. God knows everything. He even knew before the fall that it would happen. So he knows that he ate of the tree, but he is asking the man this question and questioning him to get him to respond.

How does Adam respond to that? Well, Adam tries to deflect. He says, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate. Notice how he turns this wonderful gift that God gave him back in chapter two, when the Lord formed the wife for him and gave her to the man, and the man was amazed at this wonderful gift that God had given him. Thanking the Lord for this wonderful bride that had been so graciously given to him so that he could fulfill the dominion mandate of being fruitful and multiplying.

But here, he takes that and he turns it around and he says, this woman whom you gave to me, it is your fault, God. Yes, in a sense, he is blaming the woman, but he is also blaming God and saying, it is your fault for giving me the woman to be with me. She gave me fruit of the tree and I ate.

Adam is evading his responsibility. Remember, we saw in the previous paragraph that Adam was there when the serpent came and was having this dialogue with the woman and saying, God knows that in the day that you eat of it, you will not die, but your eyes will be opened and you will become like God. Adam was standing right there. It tells us that in the text. It says that in verse, this is in verse six, that the woman gave some to her husband who was with her. And he ate.

And so Adam clearly avoided his responsibility as the covenant head, as the head of his wife, he avoided his responsibility of taking his leadership role in this marriage by allowing the serpent to talk to her and to have this discussion with her and to deceive her. And so he is making this huge mistake then of implying that it is God’s fault for giving him the woman, when in reality, he should have stepped up to the plate and been the leader and the covenant head in this marriage.

Adam tries to avoid his responsibility by blaming his wife, but even more so blaming God for giving him that wife. And so he is clearly showing his evasive behavior. He is becoming a lot like the serpent, is he not? The serpent has this evasive, deceitful way of speaking. The serpent comes and questions God’s word and says, is God really correct when he says that this tree is a tree of decision and whether you eat or not is going to determine the destiny of mankind as a result. He is saying, no, this is actually something good. If you eat of this, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God. He is twisting God’s word. He is questioning God’s authority. So also, Adam, he is mirroring the serpent’s own way of thinking. God now is exposing to Adam how much he has become like the serpent, who is the father of lies.

We must listen to what God’s word tells us about the purpose of creation and all of the structures and authority that God has placed within creation. The male-female relationship, the headship of the husband over the wife, all of these things, God has ordained these things. The purpose of the tree, the purpose of all of creation itself, which is that it would be filled with the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea and become a theater of God’s glory as the image bearers reproduce and fill the earth. All of these things God has ordained. He ordained them at creation, and He added His word, His covenant word, when He gave them the covenant, saying, you shall not eat of this tree, for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.

But the serpent, and now Adam also, in league with the serpent, is questioning God’s authority as the creator, questioning how God has arranged the creation and His purposes for the creation. And so he is then implying that God is not a good God and that his authority and his word and his purposes for creation are not right.

God lets that discussion drop for a moment. Amazingly, he does not immediately argue back with Adam and say, why are you deflecting the blame? He just lets that sit for a moment, and then he goes to the woman. The Lord God then said to the woman, what is this that you have done? And the woman said, the serpent deceived me, and I ate. And then the process of the interrogation is now complete. She has actually said it. It is amazing that she has enough self-awareness that she can recognize that she was deceived. This is part of God’s patient, loving restoration of Adam and Eve, getting them to recognize their own sin.

God knows what happened. He is not asking for him to find out, but he is patiently interrogating them in order to reveal to themselves their own state of spiritual death and alienation from God. To see how they have become not made in the image of God, but now they are made in the image of the serpent. Now the image of God is not completely destroyed because of sin. All of humanity, even now, apart from grace, still retains the image of God to a degree. But the image of God has been distorted by sin. And in truth, we have become more like the devil than like God.

And so God, through this process of interrogation, reveals to them that they have become in league with the devil and aligned themselves with the devil’s way of thinking. They have ultimately been deceived by him. And they have taken up the devil’s side in the ultimate conflict between God and the devil. And so this shows us humanity’s need for divine intervention. God must intervene. God must restore the lost image. God must repair what has happened because of Adam’s sin. And we will go on to see this next week as we look at the judgment that God pronounces upon the serpent. And in the midst of that pronouncing of judgment upon the serpent, he also promises a coming deliverer, the offspring of the woman. And he is the one who will confront the serpent and do what Adam failed to do.

Are we not just like Adam and Eve? We are just like Adam and Eve. First, we try to do what? We try to hide from God. We try to run away. But secondly, when that does not work, and God shows up anyway, then we start to make excuses. We try to make excuses for our sin. Well, it is because of this woman that you gave me. Well, it is because of this thing that happened. Well, it is because of this circumstance. You do not understand. We are just like Adam and Eve.

But thank God for his astonishing mercy that even in this moment of absolute terrifying judgment, when Adam and Eve, in truth and in justice, ought to just simply be cast into hell right at that moment, God does not do that. But instead, he promises a coming deliverer who will make things right and who will restore the image of God in Adam and Eve, so that we will no longer need to hide from God, but rather we will be able to be reconciled with God through Christ. So that we will no longer need to make excuses for our sin, but rather we can own up to our sin, but thank the Lord for the work of Christ who has paid for all of our sins and given us salvation in spite of our unworthiness.

It is amazing that as we keep reading in the text, we have this whole section coming up, we are going to look at it later, but this whole section coming up of God’s pronouncement of the judgment upon the serpent, the promise of the coming deliverer. He also speaks about what is going to happen to men and the woman in terms of how they are going to continue to do the things that God has called them to do in terms of having children and cultivating the earth, but it is all going to be under the curse. It is not going to have the same wonderful, glorious hope that was originally envisioned before the Fall. Of subduing the earth and bringing about the glorious fulfillment of the kingdom of God as the creation was originally supposed to be.

But rather, in pain, the woman will bring forth children. And the marriage relationship itself will become distorted as the woman desires to dominate the husband, but then as the husband seeks to rule over her. And man, he is going to continue to work the ground, but it is going to be cursed. And he is only going to find that it is going to bring forth frustration and thorns and thistles.

But in the midst of all of this, in the midst of God’s pronouncement of judgment and of also hope, God also does something precious and wonderful for them. We have just read this narrative about the coming of God in judgment and power and glory and Adam and Eve hiding from God and trying to cover themselves with their own fig leaves that have no ability to truly cover themselves from God. But God in his grace covers them. In verse 21, the Lord God made for Adam and his wife skins of garments and clothed them.

Their own attempt to clothe themselves with their own fig leaves is totally insufficient, and God sees right through it and exposes their sin. But God provides the clothing. God provides the covering to cover the shame of their sin. And to also restore them in their marriage relationship. There was that alienation for a moment where they felt this nakedness and this separation from one another, but now God brings them back together and makes garments of skins for both Adam and Eve. And He clothes them and restores their marriage relationship. As an expression, as now working of the fact that he is restoring them vertically with himself. In order to make garments of skins, that is animal skins, an animal has to be sacrificed. And so clearly we see right here in our text pointing ahead to the active and passive obedience of Christ. His passive obedience that he was sacrificed upon the cross for our sins. His active obedience is his righteousness which is given to us as a garment that covers our guilt and covers our sin. And this is totally provided by God. God is the one who did it. God clothed them. God made these garments. It is all of God’s mercy and grace. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot deal with our own sin by trying to hide from God or trying to cover up or make excuses. We must simply rest upon the provision that God has given through the sacrifice and obedience of Christ to clothe us and to restore us into a right relationship with himself.

The Final Day of Judgment

This scene in Eden is the first day of the Lord in the Bible. And there are many to come. The day of the Lord happens multiple times throughout scripture. For example, Noah and the ark. When God comes to judge the world. The amazing thing is that whenever you see these future days of the Lord, these pointers to the ultimate day of the Lord at the end, we see a two-fold outcome every time. God’s people, the elect, are delivered through the judgment, but those that are not God’s people, the offspring of the serpent, they undergo the judgment and perish. Noah and his family are saved through the waters, but the rest perished. Later on, the people of God are saved as they pass through the waters of the Red Sea, but Pharaoh and his army perish. On the day of the Lord.

And so it is also with the final, ultimate day of the Lord at the very, very end. Christ will come with his mighty angels in flaming fire. And those that have rejected Christ and those who have not bowed the knee to him will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord. Interesting, that is 2 Thessalonians 1 verse 9. From the presence of the Lord, from the face of the Lord,

But, for those of us who are in Christ, those who are in Him, those who have the skins of the garments of animals placed upon us, the skins of the righteousness of Christ placed upon us, we who are in Christ will be like Noah and his family, like the people of Israel, passing through the judgment, but passing through in salvation, passing through with confidence. We will not shrink in fear at the presence of Christ. He will come with his angels and mighty power and glory, with that same thunderous presence of God that we saw here in our text. But for us, we will not be afraid to see him, but we will embrace him because we know that we are in him. And that we are hidden in Christ, hidden in the rock of ages from the terrifying judgment that will befall the rest of mankind. We will not flee, but we will rejoice to see him because we know that he is the judge, but a very special kind of judge, a judge who has taken the judgment in our place already. Is that not amazing? He is a judge who has already taken the judgment. Whoever heard of a judge that got off the judgment seat and then endured the punishment in place of the offender? He has done that for us. And when he comes again, he will come for his people to take us to be with himself.

In all distress and persecution with uplifted head, as the catechism says, I confidently await the very judge who has already offered himself to the judgment of God in my place and removed the whole curse from me. In that very passage that I read from 1 Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians 1 talks about how he is going to come with his angels in mighty flaming fire and the wicked who have rejected the Lord, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction that comes from the presence, comes from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might.

It also mentions right in the very next verse, the second side of it, the first side of judgment for the unbelievers, but for us, it is different. So 2 Thessalonians 1 verse nine. Verse 10 then says, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all those who have believed.

To be glorified, that is to be praised. The wicked will be terrified, calling upon the rocks to cover them and to hide them from the face of the wrath of the Lamb. But for us, for His people who have believed in Him, who are hidden in Him, we have already gone through the judgment in union with Him on the cross.

We were there at Calvary. We were there when Christ experienced the wrath of God in our place, and we have passed through that judgment already. And so when he comes, we will rejoice to see him. He will be glorified among his saints. He will be praised. He will be welcomed with glad shouts of joy and thanksgiving and praise as we welcome this judge who has already borne the judgment in our place.