Gen 3:7 - self focus

“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.”

The devil’s accusation against God also had a subtle barb in what it implied about Eve. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The implication was that Eve’s eyes weren’t open, she wasn’t like God, and she didn’t know the difference between good and evil. In other words the devil was claiming that Eve was ignorant and naive and that she should try to fix herself by disobeying God. The devil got Eve to focus on herself instead of God; we could call this mistake number 5.

After Adam and Eve tried to “fix” their “problem” via an unnecessary snack. They began to realize that something was suddenly wrong with them, “. . . that they were naked.” So they focused on themselves all the more. Then they tried to fix this problem all by themselves as well, with fig leaves.

When God shows up in the next verse the situation goes from comical to tragic. Instead of looking at His goodness toward them and realizing that He had the ability to actually fix their new problem, they focused on themselves (again) and hid from their only true hope of redemption.

So God pursues them and finds them. This begins a long history of God pursuing His rebellious creation. It culminates in Jesus who “came to save that which was lost.”

Once God finds them, He has a conversation with them. Now for the first time in several verses they are paying attention to Him again. In the conversation He promises to fix the problem for real with a promise of an eventual deliverer (vs 15). In the meantime He offers them some help by giving them much better clothing (vs 20) so that they could at least get on with their lives.

The moral here is simple: as much as we focus on ourselves and try to fix ourselves we will create progressively worse and worse problems for ourselves. As much as we focus on the Lord, He will bring real solutions in His own good time.