Read Genesis 3:7-217And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. 8And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. 9And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? 10And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. 11And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? 12And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. 13And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. 14And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: 15And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. 16Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. 17And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; 18Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; 19In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. 20And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. 21Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them. (Genesis 3:7‑21)
There is a very wide difference between man’s conscience and God’s revelation—a difference well worthy of my reader’s careful consideration. The scripture given above unfolds this difference in the fullest manner. Man got his conscience in, and by, the fall. This one fact is sufficient to show the real nature of conscience. By the one act of disobedience, man became possessed of that thing called conscience, which is, simply, “the knowledge of good and evil.” Previous to that act, man knew only good. He moved in the midst of a scene in which God had said, all was “very good.” Evil had no place in that fair creation. The traces of “eternal power and godhead,” were visible on all hands. Every leaf, every flower, every tree, every shrub, every blade of grass, stood in its place, and gave evidence of the goodness of God. Every bird warbled its Maker’s praise. There was not so much as a single element of evil throughout the entire sphere over which man was appointed to rule, and, therefore, man knew nothing of the difference between “good and evil,” until he hearkened to the tempter’s voice. In a word, he got his conscience in, and by the fall.
And what was the first effect of conscience? It told man that he was “naked.” He had not known aught of this before. Conscience told him this. It could do nothing more. It could not point him to a covering. It told the one dismal tale of nakedness. It had naught else to tell to Adam; and it never has had aught else to tell to one of Adam’s guilty race. “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” This was all that was gained by hearkening to the voice of the serpent. They had never thought of nakedness before. Conscience was at work. Innocence had fled, never to return, and conscience had come in, with all its startling powers, to make them sensible of their condition, and fill them with guilty fear.
And let my reader remark, here, that conscience had to do with their actual state. It did not tell them aught about God. It spoke from within. It brought them no glad tidings from without—no cheering accents from a source above and beyond themselves, in which their poor terrified hearts could find comfort. They had gotten their conscience by listening to Satan’s lie about God; and it was, therefore, impossible that it could convey a single ray of light to their troubled souls. It is only needful to see how man got a conscience, to know its effect upon him. Some there are who think that conscience, if left to itself, will assuredly lead a man to God. How could it? Did it do so in Adam’s case? Surely if ever the true effect of conscience could be seen, we should look for it in the 3rd of Genesis. Did it lead Adam to God? The very reverse. How was it possible that what had its origin in the belief of a lie about God, could ever lead a soul into His presence? It told them of their own state, but could not tell them of God’s character. The consciousness of my own state is one thing. The revelation of God’s character is quite another.
“They knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day; and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God, amongst the trees of the garden.” Conscience made them cowards, and drove them away from God. Satan had told them, in effect, that God was not kind in withholding the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In short, he made it appear that God would not give them an apple. He belied God; and man believed his lie. Here is the root of fallen humanity. Here is the old stem from which have shot forth the branches of a corrupted nature. The unregenerate man is formed and fashioned by the serpent’s lie. It is not merely in his ways and words that man proves himself a fallen creature. His secret thoughts concerning God, and his inmost feelings toward Him, are the lamentable proofs of his lost estate.
Reader, allow me to ask you one or two plain questions. What are your secret thoughts about God? Do you think he is a God of wrath? Would you be afraid to find yourself in His presence? Do you regard Him as an angry Judge, who is seeking occasions against you, holding above your head the sword of judgment, and only waiting to cast you into the lake of fire? If such are your thoughts concerning God, let me tell you they were the thoughts which caused Adam and Eve to hide themselves behind the trees of the garden. The serpent had falsified the divine character in their eyes; and the result was, they were afraid of God, and fled to hide, at the very sound of His voice. “I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” Such was the source of all those dark, gloomy, suspicious thoughts which fill the human mind, in reference to the blessed God, the eternal fountain of all goodness, the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort, the Planner, Revealer, and Perfecter, of redemption’s wondrous scheme.
Let us now look, for a few moments, at God’s revelation of Himself. No sooner had Satan’s lie fallen upon man’s heart, than down came “the Lord God” to contradict it. It is well to look closely at this. Let us draw near and hearken diligently to all that passed in the garden. Let us ponder it deeply. Some would tell us that the Lord God came down to drag man forth from his lurking place, in order that he might receive his sentence. Where do we find this in the inspired record? Let my reader examine attentively, Gen. 3, and say if he can find any foundation for such an idea. Alas! it is to be feared that this thought springs from the same source as Adam’s fear. The human mind is sure to interpret everything in such a way as to make against God. Set the unrenewed mind to expound a text, or to interpret a providence, and it will be sure to do both the one and the other, in such a way as to make against the divine character. Whence came the tendency so to do? From the enemy of God and man. Let there be no mistake about this in my reader’s mind. The natural heart hates God. It is governed by Satan’s lie. Go where you will; take up whatever form of human religion you please; contemplate man in whatever condition you can find him, and you will observe a general rule, and that, too, without a single exception, the human heart has hard thoughts about God. “I knew thee, that thou wast an austere man.” Such is man’s language, with respect to God.
Now, when we come to examine closely the scene in the garden, we find that the Lord God really came down to contradict and confound the enemy, and to take up man as an injured being. True, man was a guilty being also, and God had, in the exercise of His moral government, to allow man to reap as he had sown; but then we must distinguish between God’s government of the world, and His grace to the sinner. It is very manifest that the same God who first appears as man’s Creator, appears again as man’s Friend. He appears to interpose on the sinner’s behalf, and to pass an eternal sentence upon the serpent. It was the serpent who had done the mischief, and he must have his head bruised. He had injured man, and man must crush him beneath his feet. He had dared to meddle with God’s creation, and of that creation he must lick the dust. He had said that God would not give man an apple, and God declares he will give His Son. In a word, “the Lord God,” when He “walked in the garden in the cool of the day,” appeared only as the sinner’s Friend. He came to give a full and an immediate contradiction to Satan’s falsehood. He came to take up the controversy—to make it a question between Himself and the serpent; and, from that, as we look down along the stream of time—as we run the eye over the page of inspiration, we find an unbroken series of acts, on God’s part, calculated to throw hack in the enemy’s face, his foul and blasphemous lie against the divine character—acts on which faith sees inscribed, “in radiant letters, ‘GOD IS LOVE.’” Thus it has been in the past; and when we look forward into the future, and see an eternity of glory, all resting on the one foundation, namely, “the blood of the cross” we can understand something of the difference between Satan’s lie, man’s conscience, and God’s revelation.
All this leaves entirely untouched the great question of God’s government of the world. The woman, as we know, had to hearken to the solemn declaration, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception: in sorrow, thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” Adam, too, had to hear that which applied immediately to himself; “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life: thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Thus much, as to the old creation, and man’s condition therein. Labor and sorrow, death and the curse are the accompaniments of the old creation and of man, as a fallen creature.
But, there was more than this. There was God’s revelation of Himself. It is one thing to gaze, with solemn awe, upon the “dreadful” wheels of God’s moral government, and it is quite another thing to read the deep secrets of his bosom of love. The government of God may, ofttimes, be wrapped up in a dark cloud of mystery which the finite mind can never penetrate; but His love shines, in living luster, all around. Now, faith bows the head to the former, while it basks in the light of the latter. We are not called to unravel the mysteries of God’s government; but we are privileged to enjoy his love. We are the subjects of the former; but we are the objects of the latter. My reader should seek a clear understanding of the difference between God in government, and God in the gospel. The distinctness is not sufficiently attended to, and hence it is that many minds are confused, many passages of scripture not understood, and many of the actings of providence entirely misconstrued. If we only look at God in His government, we shall never know Him. It is when we see Him in the cross, that we understand His love, and know Him as “a just God and a Saviour.” Precious, saving, life-giving knowledge! If we could only look forth upon a world of sin and misery, sickness and death, poverty and wretchedness—a world in which we see, at times, the upright suffering, and the wicked successful, how should we ever know God? Impossible. It is “in the face of Jesus Christ” that God has revealed Himself to the sinner’s heart. And oh! who can utter the blessedness of finding oneself in the full blaze of divine revelation, after having groaned beneath the crushing burden of self-consciousness? For one who has endured the terrors and agonies of conscience, to find himself in the embrace of redeeming love, is surely heaven begun upon earth. To find God actually taking my part against Satan—yea, against myself, and opening His bosom of love to my guilty soul, and all this in such a way as to glorify Himself, imparts peace and joy unutterable.
Thus, in Adam’s case, we see that conscience terrified him, and drove him to hide. Revelation gave him confidence, and attracted him forth from his covert. It is so in every case. Conscience could never tell a man what God is. It is the sole province of revelation to do this. Conscience has to do with self: revelation has to do with God. The former turns the eye inward upon self; the latter turns it outward upon God; that terrifies me by telling me I am not what I ought to be; this tranquillizes me by assuring me of what God is. I am a sinner, and he is a Saviour. We meet in Jesus, and all is eternally settled. When Adam and Eve listened to the precious accents of divine revelation, they came forth from their hiding place and rushed, as it were, into the arms of divine love, there to receive divine life, and be clothed in divine righteousness. They were not dragged forth by the hand of justice, but drawn forth by a heart of love. The Lord God was the first preacher of the gospel. Adam and Eve were the first hearers, and they were both converted. What a preacher! What an audience! What a result!
And let me here observe, that the true attitude for a sinner to take, in the presence of divine revelation, is that of a listener. “I will hear what God the Lord will speak.” (Psalm 85:88I will hear what God the Lord will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly. (Psalm 85:8).) To enter the place of a doer, before you have occupied that of a listener, is to reverse God’s order, and throw everything into confusion. Adam tried this plan, and found it a failure. He tried “works.” He “sewed fig leaves together,” but it was no use. He could not even satisfy his own conscience, or remove his guilty fear. He had to listen to the voice of God—to hearken to divine revelation. And what did that revelation teach him? That after all, God was his friend-that the very One whom the serpent had represented as unkind, was going to provide a Saviour for him—a bruiser for the serpent’s head. No marvel, then, that he was attracted forth from his hiding place. The love of God gave him confidence, so that he could speak of Eve as “the mother of all living.” Nor was this all. “Unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.” Adam got both life and righteousness by simply hearing and believing God’s revelation. Could he have gotten these by the dictates of his own conscience? How could he? Where were they to come from? How was it possible for one dead in trespasses and sins, to procure for himself divine life and divine righteousness? It was wholly out of the question. They could only come from God. Man could not find them; hut God revealed them, and faith received the revelation.
May the Lord enable my reader to understand, with distinctness, the difference between human conscience and divine revelation. May He know the deep blessedness of resting, in child-like simplicity, upon God’s eternal word.