As the account of Eve's temptation and fall truly represents the course of corruption and sin, so the behaviour of our first parents afterwards answers exactly to the feelings and conduct of those who have forfeited their innocence and permitted the devil to seduce them into actual sin. Shame makes the sinner shrink and draw back, and not endure to have his thoughts and doings watched by any eye whatever. As often as he sins wilfully, he must secretly wish there were no God to see him, and he will be tempted to do all he can to forget God, and so hide himself for a time from His presence.
I. Any one sin, wilfully indulged, leads to profaneness and unbelief, and tends to blot the very thought of God out of our hearts.
II. Much in the same way are backsliding Christians led to invent or accept notions of God and His judgment, as though He in His mercy permitted them to be hidden and covered, when in truth they cannot be so.
III. The same temper naturally leads us to be more or less false towards men also, trying to seem better than we are; delighting to be praised, though we know how little we deserve it. Among particular sins it would seem that two especially dispose the heart towards this kind of falsehood: (1) sensuality; (2) dishonesty.
IV. When any Christian person has fallen into sin and seeks to hide himself from the presence of the Lord, God is generally so merciful that He will not suffer that man to be at ease and forget Him. He calls him out of his hiding-place, as He called Adam from among the trees. No man is more busy in ruining himself, and hiding from the face of his Maker, than He, our gracious Saviour, is watchful to awaken and save him.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times,"vol. viii., p. 34.
References: Genesis 3:8; Genesis 3:9. J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year,vol. iii., p. 139; T. Birkett Dover, A Lent Manual,p. 1.