Pursued by His Presence
Pastor Joe Fuiten, February 20, 2005
We are thinking about
God’s presence. He is everywhere present
in one sense but is uniquely within us at salvation. In that sense, his presence is greater after
salvation. Then there is the presence of
God among us when we gather together.
Matthew 18:19-20 "I tell you
that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done
for you by my Father in heaven. For
where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them."
There
is another dimension to God’s presence.
His presence is greater is some regions than in others. The same holds true for demons. We know that demons prefer one place over
another. At Gadera, the demons wanted to
remain there presumably because of the friendliness of the people to them. The people preferred uncontrollable possessed
people living in graveyards more than the miraculous and healing Word of God
from Jesus so Jesus allowed the demons to remain in that location.
Jeremiah
identifies certain demons as being associated with places.[2] He identifies Amon as the “god of
Our
region has a particular dimension of God’s presence here that is either growing
or shrinking at any given time. Right
now I see a great contest not unlike what is happening in the whole country. We are a nation divided spiritually speaking.
I am not thinking of red and blue but black and white. In order to win the contest, we need to work
at several different spiritual levels.
When we think about politics and public life where we see this being
played out, we should not mistake how things change. The greatest thing we can do to change the
culture of Puget Sound and
When
his presence begins to dominate there are all sorts of blessings that
flow. We want to amplify his presence so
that all God has for us is accomplished.
In today’s message I want to concentrate on what God
calls us to in this relationship. My
text is a familiar one in Genesis 3 telling the story of the Garden of
Eden. “6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and
pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and
ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked;
so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. 8 Then the
man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking
in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the
trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are
you?" 10 He answered, "I heard
you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
I am interested in what this passage tells us about God,
particularly as he relates to people. First, it must have been quite a garden. If you remember that the garden stretched for
hundreds of miles.[3] Oil in produced by compressed vegetation. All
that
Second, I am
curious what sound God made on his evening walk. It says they heard the sound of him “as he was
walking.” I doubt if this was the heavy
tramp of boots on the ground or of someone rustling through the bushes. I think Zephaniah 3:17 suggests a good
possibility: “The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great
delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with
singing." I wonder if the sound
they heard was the singing of the Lord as he approached them, “rejoicing over
them with singing.”
Third, I note the
unique focus on Adam and Eve. God
had the universe for himself. In the
earth there was every sort of creature.
He could have amused himself by communicating with other creatures in
his creation. Instead he chose two
people. He was looking for them. There is a reason for that. Human beings are completely different from
the other animals. We are made in the
image of Elohiym, the Supreme God.[4] Two otters or lion cubs might be fun to watch
but they lack that reflection of original righteousness and creative character
inherent in mankind at that moment.
Nothing else in all God’s creation had what they had. The earth is unique in the universe and
mankind is unique on the earth.
Fourth, God calls
to us when we want to hide. Guilt is
what separates us from God. The guilt is
real because sin is real. Who is taking
the initiative here? It is not Adam or
Eve. They are not coming to God but he
is coming to them. This is how it
is. We may think of ourselves as coming
to God by coming to church but we make too much of our effort and too little of
God’s. He comes looking for us.
We
don’t feel like we are worthy. We don’t
feel like we fit in. And you know
what? We don’t! There is just something about a naked person
that kind of stands out in the crowd.
Ever had that dream where you show up somewhere and you forgot your
pants? I’m not much for archetypes, but
that comes pretty close to what Adam felt.
We are missing something and we know it.
So we do our best to fit in. We
sew ourselves a few fig leaves and hope nobody notices. That is the nature of sin. We know we have a problem but we don’t really
have a good solution. We try a lot of
covers but nothing fits just right.
The reluctance of Adam is all the more strange when he consider how he came to life. God breathed into Adam and he became a living soul. It is so intimate. What could be more personal that breathing life into Adam? The moment that life came into Adam he opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was the face of God pressed up against his face. He was face to face with God.
With God, the beginning of a thing means something. The closeness of God at the moment of life is the prototype for the future. He wants to be as close as breath. He wants us to be as aware of his closeness in the same way that you are aware of someone when you can smell their breath. In most parts of the world, smelling the breath of the person you are talking to is considered a sign of relationship. We are the strange culture that thinks relationship is best expressed from a great distance.
We
want to hide behind fig leaves but God wants to get close to us. This is how God works. He comes to us while we are up to something
else. Noah was raising a family in a tough place. Abraham was in
Fifth,
he makes us worthy because he has better clothes than fig leaves. He
gave them fur coats for winter and leather clothes for summer.[5] He did that because of relationship. He wanted the relationship so he provided the
means.
[1] Origen, “Origen Against Celsus, Book 7”, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Alexander Roberts, and James Donaldson, eds., (Peabody, Massachusetts, Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), Vol.4, In another place he wrote: “And thus it will be found that, of the various demons upon the earth, to whom different localities have been assigned, each one bears a name appropriate to the several dialects of place and country.” Alexander Roberts, and James Donaldson, eds., Origen, “Origen Against Celsus, Book 1”, Ante-Nicene Fathers, (Peabody, Massachusetts, Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), Vol.4, pg. 407
[2] Jeremiah 46:25, 50:2, 51:44.
[3] Gen
2:10-14 “A river watering the garden
flowed from
[4] 'elohiym (el-o-heem'); plural of OT:433; gods in the ordinary sense; but specifically used (in the plural thus, especially with the article) of the supreme God; (Biblesoft's New Exhaustive Strong's Numbers and Concordance with Expanded Greek-Hebrew Dictionary. Copyright © 1994, 2003 Biblesoft, Inc. and International Bible Translators, Inc.)
[5] Gen 3:21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.