Dave’s Monday Blast – May 29, 2023

Recently, I read an article from the denisonforum.org entitled The God with Questions. The essence of the article was simply that our Heavenly Father reveals a great deal about his character, nature and how He displays compassion toward His children by asking specific questions of us. The author writes: “In Genesis 3, God, The king, was passing close by to Adam and Eve after they had disobeyed Him and eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They could hear Him coming close by. There was a time when Adam and Eve were overjoyed to hear God walking in the Garden, now, they were fearful. They had no idea how God would respond to their sin of disobedience. This had never happened before. Adam and Eve were trembling with fear.”

The author identifies two kinds of fear typical of humankind: 1. The kind that causes you to want nothing to do with the object of your fear. 2. The kind that is synonymous with reverential awe of its object. God expects the reverential fear/awe from us (Psalm 112:1). Sin creates the other.

From author: “The story of Adam and Eve’s fearful encounter with their God and King is recounted in Genesis 3:8 – 13. It is not how Adam and Eve responded to God after their sin, but how God responded. He could have been hard and yelled at them. He could have ignored them as well and punished them with silence, or He could have rained down fire and brimstone. Yet, He did none of those things.”

What God did do was to ask them three questions:

1. (v. 9) Where are you?  
2. (v. 11) Who told you? 
3. (v. 11) What have you done?

There are so many layers to these 3 simple questions. Over the next two weeks I want to spend a bit of time unpacking them.