Found By God When Fear Is Due To Sin - Made to Tremble: Finding Awe in Your Anxiety

“By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:19, NLT)

“So the LORD God banished them from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made. After sending them out, the LORD God stationed mighty cherubim to the east of the Garden of Eden. And he placed a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.” (Genesis 3:23-24, NLT)

“And all the people who belong to this world worshiped the beast. They are the ones whose names were not written in the Book of Life that belongs to the Lamb who was slaughtered before the world was made.” (Revelation 13:8, NLT)

There are two kinds of death resulting from the Fall: physical and spiritual. The physical curse of death would not happen immediately—but it was only a matter of time before Adam and Eve would feel the fullness of its sting. One day, they’d be buried, going right back into the ground from which they were formed.^a

In a spiritual sense, though, from the moment the forbidden fruit was eaten, a sort of death happened immediately between mankind and God. The perfect and unfiltered relationship they had with Him was now torn. They had to be driven out of His presence, exiled from the Garden, for they were no longer fit for that place.^b Evil cannot coexist with holiness.

Where there was once a perfect bond, they were then cut off from God. They knew only daylight before, but now they were getting familiar with the terrors of the night. They were covered in guilt and shame, as the glory of God that had shone on them was now dull. Their light was replaced with darkness. Glory was replaced with nakedness, immortality with mortality. I suppose they got what they wanted, for now they knew what evil felt like, and had their eyes opened to its consequences. Just imagine how hard that was. The constant memory of Eden before the Fall. The constant reminder of hard work and toil after having had it easier and better. Better still, the memory of the holy joy they experienced in fellowship with God. Oh, how far they’d fallen.

The fear of missing out turned into even deeper fears: fear of exposure, fear of judgment, fear of new threats in a cruel and evil world, and ultimately, fear of death. These are the fears that caused them to hide from God and to cover themselves up with fig leaves. Yet God not only upholds His promise of death but also makes a way to extend mercy to them. He makes a way to cover them when their flimsy cover-up fails. Right in the middle of their sin and fears, they were met with God’s presence and mercy.

Right in the middle of the mess they got themselves in—and their anxious response of hiding—God moved toward them. God’s response to their hiding was to seek them out and directly address their fig leaves. And He does so in a certain way.

Here’s the good news that we’re about to see: God doesn’t berate them for responding in fear and He doesn’t strip them of clothing so that they stand naked and ashamed. No, God has a better plan to cover them with something far greater. More than that, He removes the entire reason they feel anxious to begin with. God is not caught off guard by this whole situation. This plan of redemption was God’s intent before He created anything.^c Their fall from glory was an opportunity for God to lavish them with His kindness, and so He did.