Matt Chandler - Called to Follow

Good morning! If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab them. We are six weeks into our study of John and have finished chapter 1. You don’t need to panic about that; there are only 21 chapters, so around 2022 or 2023, we should wrap this up. Actually, we will speed up as we’ve spent a lot of time laying this Christocentric base so that we can understand Christ more clearly. In Genesis chapter 3, go ahead and get to John 1; I just want to set up how we look at this passage of Scripture. In Genesis chapter 3, we see what theologians have long called the Fall. The Fall is when humankind decided to rebel against their Creator, thereby fracturing the universe as God designed it to operate. If you’ve been around as we’ve walked through the first chapter of John, you’ve seen all the collateral damage of that rebellion. If it is true that we have been made by Jesus for Jesus, then that move isolated us from the thing we most needed. On top of that, as we saw earlier in this passage, we only know who we are and who we are not by beholding the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. This isolating moment, this rebellion against God, has now taken us out of what we need most to be alive as humans and has also made it impossible to define who we are, which leads to all kinds of projection and shame. So, in that space, humankind has said, «Forget you, the Creator; I think I would be better at this myself.» God’s response is stunning, revealing how He will operate with us from the moment our relationship with Him is fractured right up to this very moment. The Bible says that when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, now outside of their designed purpose—unable to define themselves, with relationships horizontally and vertically fractured—they hear God in the garden walking toward them, and they hid. Then there’s this crazy question that God asks: «Where are you?» This question is significant because God doesn’t need to know things. In what universe does God not know where Adam and Eve are? Even if you think about the foolishness of hiding, you’ve got Adam and Eve, who know God, who have walked with God, who are amidst God’s creation, suddenly realizing that they are naked for the first time. That word «naked» isn’t just physical; it embodies the ideas of shame and guilt. They realize, «Oh my gosh, we are guilty. Oh no, what have we done?» Have you ever had that haunting question in the back of your mind—what have I done? Well, God shows up, and what do they do? They quickly grab some leaves and jump into the bushes. God says, «Where are you?» and He knows where they are. It’s not that God can’t see them. When you’re small, sometimes you mistakenly think in ways that aren’t true. If you’ve had children or been around them, you’ve seen this. There’s a period when a child playing hide-and-seek thinks that if they can’t see you, you can’t see them. So their hiding places are terrible. It’s like lying on the living room floor, hiding with their hands over their eyes, and you’re like, «Do I need to get help for you? This is not a hiding place! You’re just lying on the floor. I can see your body.» This is Adam and Eve trying to hide from God. But God shows up and asks, «Where are you?» I don’t know what kind of home you grew up in, but the most terrifying sentence my mother could ever say was, «Wait till your dad gets home.» Mom could give me a decent whupping, but she couldn’t hurt me like my dad could. I think that’s universal. Mom has her strengths, but when you hit that age, you think, «Pow!» The dreaded «Wait till your dad gets home,» because dad, regardless of your age, possesses that man strength and velocity that mom just doesn’t have. What we see happening in this text is the rebellion of God’s creation against the Creator, and our Heavenly Father steps into the garden. He doesn’t kick open the door and shout, «Where are you? You’re not gonna believe what the Holy Spirit just told me about you.» No, the Father shows up and gently asks, «Where are you?» They respond, «We felt guilt and shame, so we hid.» He asks, «Who told you that you were naked? Did you do what I told you not to do?» They admit, «Yeah, we did.» God then responds, «Okay, well let me make clothes for you because the leaves aren’t going to cut it,» and He clothed them. The rhythm established here, which I’ve tried to press into you for 16 years, is that God is an initiating God. He pursues us. He chases us, regardless of our rebellion. This is what’s happening in the book of Exodus as we walk through it: God among us is what we see as the prophets heralded God moving towards us, and in Christ, in the incarnation of…