GOD’S FIRST WORDS TO THE FIRST SINNER
(Adapted from a sermon from the Rev. C.H.Spurgeon)
“The Lord God called to Adam and said unto him, Where are you?”
Genesis 3:9.
( CONTD )
This brings me to the third way in which we may regard the question of the text. The Lord God called to Adam
and said to him, “Where are you?” We may regard this text as the VOICE OF GOD BEMOANING MAN’S LOST ESTATE.
Some have even ventured to translate the Hebrew, “Alas for you, alas for you!” It is as if God uttered the words of
the Prophet, “How can I give you up? How can I utterly destroy you? How can I set you as Admah? How shall I make
you as Zeboim? My repentings are kindled, My heart is moved for you. Where are you, My poor Adam? You did talk
with Me, but you have now fled from Me. You were happy once, what are you now? Naked and poor, and miserable. You
were once in My Image glorious, immortal, blessed—where are you now, poor Adam? My Image is marred in you, your
own Father’s face is taken away, and you have made yourself earthy, sensual, devilish! Where are you now, poor Adam?”
Oh, it is amazing to think how the Lord felt for poor Adam! It is taken for granted by all theologians that God can neither
feel nor suffer. There is no such thing in the Word of God. If it could be said that God could not do anything, and
everything, we would say that He was not Omnipotent! But He can do all things, and we have not a God who cannot be
moved—we have One who feels, and who describes Himself in human language as having a father’s heart, and all the
tenderness of a mother’s heart. Just as a father cries over a rebellious son, so does the eternal Father say, “Poor Adam,
where are you?”
And now have I here this morning any soul on whom the former part of the text has had some effect? Do you feel
yourself to be lost, and do you discern that this lostness is the result of your own willful folly? Do you bemoan yourself?
Ah, then, God bemoans you! He is looking down upon you, and He is saying, “Ah, poor drunkard, why will you cling to
your cups? Into what misery have they brought you?” He is saying to you who are now weeping over sin, “Ah, poor
child, what pain you suffer from your own willful folly!” A father’s heart moves; He longs to clasp His Ephraim to His
breast. Do not think, Sinner, that God is stony-hearted. You have a heart of stone, God has not! Do not think that He is
slow to move—you are slow to move—He is not—the hardness is in yourself! If you are straitened anywhere, it is in
your own heart, not in Him! Soul, Soul convicted of sin! God loves you, and to prove how He loves you, in the Person of
His Son He creeps over you and He cries, “O that you had known, even you in this, your day, the things that make for
your peace; but now are they hid from your eyes.” I hear Him saying to you, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I
have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, but you would not!” I pray you, let
this mournful wailing voice of the Eternal God come to your ears and move you to repentance! “As I live, says the Lord, I
have no pleasure in the death of him who dies, but had rather that he would turn unto Me and live.”
Oh, does your heart feel ready to burst because of your sin and the misery into which it has brought you? Pray, poor
Sinner, “I will arise and go unto my Father, and will say to Him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven and in Your
sight, and am no more worthy to be called Your son.” He sees you, Sinner! When you are yet a great way off, He sees
you—here are eyes of mercy! He runs—here are feet of mercy! He clasps you—here are arms of mercy! He kisses you—
here are lips of mercy! He says, “Take off his rags”—here are words of mercy! He clothes you—here are deeds of mercy!
Wonders of mercy—all mercy! O did you know what a reception a God of mercy gives to sinners, you would not stay
away! As John Bunyan says, when the besieger hangs out the black flag, then those within the walls say they will fight it
out. But when he runs up the white flag, and tells them that if they will open the gates he will have mercy upon them, no,
he will give a charter to their city, then, says Bunyan, they say, “Fling open the gates,” and they come tumbling over the
walls to him in the readiness of their hearts! Soul, let not Satan deceive you by telling you that God is hard, unkind, unwilling
to forgive! Try Him, try Him! Just as you are—black with sin, filthy, self-condemned—and if you need anything
to make you come to Him, hear again the Lord’s plaintive cry, as it rings through the trees of Eden, “Adam, poor Adam,
My own creature, where, where are you?”
( to be contd )
God Bless.
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