Then the Lord said to Adam: where are you? And Adam said: I heard Your voice in the garden, I was afraid because I was naked - remember he was naked and unashamed, now he's naked and shamed? And he said: and I hid myself. He said: who told you you were naked? Where did you get that information from? Who have you been talking to? Who were you listening to? Oh, you weren't listening to that old shame-filled devil were you by any chance? He will fill you with shame. That's all he's got to give. I will fill you with goodness, that's all I've got to give. So we'll just have a look in here, I want to just pick up a couple of things about this. The first thing you'll see is that the moment that they sinned they became self-conscious, they became conscious of their condition because something left them: the glory. Now before there was no awareness at all.
Have you ever seen little kids growing up, they're young, you can bath them together, there's no awareness at all of anything different between a boy and a girl? Then there's comes an age and suddenly they know! Now you've got to separate them, can't bath them together. See - and you think what happened? There's an awareness or a knowing of something they didn't even know about. Now before they didn't even think about it, it was a nothing issue. Now it becomes an issue, they become aware of something. So when Adam and Eve fell they experienced guilt: I have done something wrong, and with that fear - what if I'm found out? What will happen to me? And with it shame - something is wrong with me. Now Adam and Eve really had a big dose of shame, because they lost all of that glory. Now I don't know whether Eve - I was wondering how this may have happened. Since it doesn't tell it clearly we can't speculate, but you imagine Eve takes the apple and eats it, or whatever the fruit was that she ate - probably wasn't an apple, a something. Anyway whatever it was she ate, imagine just eating of that fruit, and then gradually the glory vanishing off her - and the shock to Adam perhaps.
It doesn't actually tell whether the glory left them at the same time or not, but suppose it left off her. He's in a dilemma, do I walk with her or do I step away and lose her? It says he deliberately did it. She was deceived. He deliberately made a decision to do the same as his wife and ate. He rebelled, and therefore was held responsible for everything. He was silent when he should have spoken up, and he ended up losing everything for all of us - an incredible thing. It said immediately they got fig leaves and they covered - now notice this, what they covered. They covered what made them different and unique. That's what shame will do. It will cause you to conceal what makes you different from the person next to you, and unique in God's eyes. For you to be unashamed, you must be able to live with being different, and be able to embrace how unique you are. Now you start to see the depth of the problem? Can you see the problem now, because mostly in our culture we don't want to be different? If you're a teenager it's almost paranoiac to be different - I've got to go with the crowd, got to flow with them.
I love it when I see teenagers standing up and they are different. Remember out in the door there, and two girls who were talking to this guy there and the hair - I'd never seen hair like it in my life. Man, he had the - I don't know how they even do what they did with it. It was colours, it was all kinds of stuff, and the girls obviously had an attitude about it, and they said to me: what do you think of this hair? I said: awesome! [Laughter] And they obviously didn't expect a Pastor to pass that kind of opinion about it. I said: do you want me to tell you why it's awesome? They said: yeah, why? I said: it's because he's got security and confidence enough to be himself, and to present himself as he'd like, without fearing what you think. [Applause] Oh! See? It's one of the ways if people are different, they're different. It's not wrong, it's not bad, it's just different. Who says our way's right? Come on, it's just different. You go to another country, eat different food, good on you. Just eat the food, don't complain about it, don't compare it or anything like that.