I know, the title is weird and icky. I mean, delicious, cold, vanilla ice cream laid over a hot cow dung in a hot afternoon is not a pretty picture. Yet that’s often our knee-jerk reaction to sin. By knee-jerk, I mean our natural, instant, intuitive, instinctual reaction whenever we commit sin. My thesis is that our natural way of dealing with sin is like one who covers cow dung with vanilla ice cream and present it as a delicacy – yucky, pukey, and should not be mentioned or done. Yet we do it anyway, everyday, whenever we sin.
Many people, even Christians, would like to think that we deal with sin properly. After all, no one wants to think they are negligent of dealing their sin as the captain of the Titanic was to the many icebergs around it. Yet, it is good for our soul to be laid bare, especially on how we deal with our wrongdoings. Doing so will reveal our natural tendencies towards our transgressions, how they are hurtful rather than helpful, and will ultimately point us to the antidote to our natural tendencies.
This is what Genesis 3 will show us.
In Genesis 3, the Serpent tempts the woman (and thus also Adam) to eat the fruit forbidden by God. Despite God’s command, they disobeyed and ate the fruit.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. – Genesis 3:6
How do we vanilla ice-cream coat our sin?
What follows are four knee-jerk reactions, and these reactions are still the same reactions we emit when we ourselves sin.
We hide ourselves from one another.
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. – Genesis 3:7
Previously, they did not have anything to hide towards one another. No shame, no guilt, just pleasure and joy and comfortability in their nakedness. Yet, verse 7 says that, “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” When they sinned, suddenly they felt that they had something to hide. They were exposed – shame and guilt was suddenly felt. As a result, “they sewed fig leaves… and made themselves loincloths.” In short, they covered themselves, attempting to hide something.
That’s our first reaction when we sin, right? We hide. We just feel the need to hide. When we lie, we try to hide the fact that we lied by covering it up with more lies. When we lust, we try to hide that we lusted by flinging our head violently away from the girl we saw walking by. When we cheat in relationships, we don’t announce quickly that we did so, but cover our chat messages with passwords resembling the birthday of our present partner. When we struggle in our quiet time, we cover it with words like minsan, at times, while sharing the struggle in our prayer meeting. We do so because we feel our sin is not something we want to be laid bare. It is shameful, it makes us feel a great guilt.
We help each other to hide
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. – Genesis 3:7
Still in the same verse, it is observed that when they covered themselves, they did not do it alone. They did it together. This means they helped each other to cover themselves. It was not like Eve was covering herself and Adam was exhorting her to stop and vice versa. They encouraged one another and helped one another, to cover their sins.
We still do this by the way. We still help one another hide our sins. How? Well for some, they hide one another sins by not talking about them. When they gather for the weekly accountability coffee fellowship, the testimonies will be about God’s goodness, and none about the sinful things they did against God that week. If there are confessions about sin, each will try to minimize it’s ugliness by framing it as everyone’s struggle. It will usually be framed in the same accountability groups with statements like, “yeah, we all struggle in lust,” “we all struggle with gossip,” or “yes we are all weak, tao lang nagkakasala.” For some, they hide one another’s sins by talking about the sins of others. Think of a rebellious faction talking about the failures of their current pastor. By highlighting his failures, they are covering one another’s rebellion against God’s hierarchy in the church.
We hide from God
8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
The man and his wife did what children who broke the cookie jar do when their father arrives from work: they hide. The passage makes it clear as the light of day, when they head the LORD God walking, they hid. Think of how many covers they have – fig leaves, and now the trees of the garden. They really, really want to hide.
So how do people who sinned hide from God today? First, by simply not being in church. I believe that’s why it’s hard to get a person to go to church. The one who sinned knows that in the worship service, God is there. As such, they would rather not be in the worship service. Second, they hide from God by being distanced in church. See the arm-folding man looking sternly at the preacher at the 6th row? He is probably busy analyzing the preaching of the preacher for all the details. Why is he doing that? Probably so that he can point out the 57 “aaaahs”, 67 “noh?” and the monotonous boring tone of the preacher’s voice. By scrutinizing the preaching, he hides himself from God’s Word by amplifying the problems in what he heard rather than the problem in his heart.
We hide with excuses
But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” – Genesis 3:9-10
We hide by pointing out that our problem is the consequence of our sin, not our sin. God asked Adam where he was, and Adam responded by saying that he was afraid. Afraid that he had sinned against God? Nope. He was afraid because he was naked. His problem was the consequence of his sin, not the sin itself.
Even nowadays, those who have sinned will often excuse their absence from church by pointing to the consequence they are facing because of their sin. A young lady will say, “I can’t go to church, I feel people there are judging me.” Yet, why are they judging her? Did they wake up one day and decided to judge her indiscriminately? No, most often than not, she feels judge because she did something sinful, and the consequence was people becoming aware of her sin, plus her own shame of committing the sin. Her desire to be not judged in order to start returning to church demands that the church agrees to help her hide her sin.
What’s so bad about it?
As you can see, our knee-jerk reaction to our sins is to hide. It sounds nice, safe, and less head-achy. Yet is it? Aren’t there going to be problems with hiding? Yes there is.
If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. – 1 John 1:6
When we walk in darkness – we deceive ourselves. We think we are good and acceptable because we look like the fresh vanilla ice cream coming out of the McDonalds ice-cream maker. Except we really are not. God, and even others, can smell through the layers of vanilla ice cream the strong, painful, disgusting odor of our sinful cow dung. Our sin still smells.
And because our sin is still there, just hidden, it rots our attitude, it rots our outlook, it rots our spirit. It rots us and eventually destroys us. James warns us of this when he says, “…and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” (James 1:15).
Sin hidden is not sin removed. And sin unremoved is a destructive sin.
So how do we remove sin?
For starters don’t hide it. Let it be exposed. Confess it. Then, embrace the consequences that come as God’s discipline (Genesis 3:14-19) . Yet, most important, let God remove your sin His way.
And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. – Genesis 3:21
It was God who made for Adam and Eve the covering of sin they needed. He made garments of skin. He clothed them.
Does verse 21 insinuate that God’s covering is preferred because it is more durable than the fig leaves that we make? Probably. Yet, I think durability of the covering is not the goal here, rather the goal is the complete removal of the cow dung of sin. Why? Well, to make garments of sin, a living being must be sacrificed. We don’t know what kind of living creature was sacrificed to cover Adam and Eve. Yet, we know blood is involved, and a sacrifice of an innocent life to cover a sinner is involved.
That is exactly what God provided: the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Jesus Christ. He sacrificed Himself on the cross to cleanse the sin that clings so closely to you. He rose again from the dead to show that your cleansing is not some imaginary, care-bears jingle to make you feel good – it is real.
So when you sin today, trust in Christ today. He alone truly and ably cleanses your sin. Trust Him by confessing your sin instead of hiding it. Trust Him by confessing your lust, your lies, your pride, your cheating, your rebellion, and your hate. Trust Him by laying all of it on His feet.