Genesis | Week 2 | Full Service · Rewind

Pastor Daniel Goulding · Jan 16, 2023 · 76 min watch · 3 min read

Genesis | Week 2 | Full Service

Big Idea

Sin makes us hide from God, but God is not hunting us down to punish us — He is pursuing us to set us free.

Genesis 3 is not merely ancient history — it is the story of every human being. When Adam and Eve sinned, shame drove them into hiding, and that same impulse lives in every one of us. Yet God's first response to human failure was not condemnation but pursuit: He walked through the garden calling, 'Where are you?' — not because He didn't know, but because He wanted them to stop hiding. The rest of the biblical story, culminating in Jesus as the second Adam, is God's unfolding rescue mission to restore us to the original design: people who walk with Him openly, without shame or condemnation.

Key points

1
1Satan's strategy has never changed — he plants subtle doubt about God's word with the question 'Did God really say?' to convince us that God is withholding something good.
2
2Eve's misquoting of God's command — adding 'or even touch it' — shows that not knowing Scripture precisely leaves us vulnerable to the enemy's deception.
3
3The enemy's core lie is that God is keeping something from us; the truth is God restricts only what will harm us, wanting to protect us from shame, guilt, and condemnation.
4
4Adam's passive silence while Eve was tempted illustrates the ongoing failure of men to step into their God-given responsibility to lead their homes — and the consequences that follow.
5
5The moment Adam and Eve sinned, shame was their immediate response — they hid from God, which is the same instinct you and I have whenever we step outside of God's plan.
6
6God's question 'Where are you?' was not a search for information but an invitation for honesty — He pursues us not to punish us but to set us free.
7
7Jesus, the second Adam, did what the first Adam failed to do — He stood firm against Satan, took responsibility for a mess that was not His fault, and through His resurrection reversed the death that sin introduced.

Application

Pastor Daniel's challenge is searingly simple: stop hiding. He invites every person to answer the same question God asked in the garden — 'Where are you?' — not to get you in trouble, but because honest admission is where God does His best work. That means dropping whatever fig leaf you've been standing behind, whether a thriving career, a busy family life, or even a Sunday-morning church routine, and being real with God about the actual state of your heart. For men especially, it means stepping back into the leadership responsibility you were designed for rather than sitting on the sidelines. And for anyone who has been running from God, today is the day to stop running, confess where you are, and trust that the God who is already pursuing you has a plan that is better than anything you could settle for on your own.

Take it into your week

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“We are continuing today in a series we started last week walking through the book of Genesis. And today is what I would argue the most important chapter in the entire bible. We're looking at Genesis chapter three”
From the transcript
“And in Genesis chapter one, we see that God created the world. And we often read Genesis one trying to get into the minutiae of how God created the world, but that's not the point of Genesis one”
Paraphrase of the transcript
And in Genesis chapter one, we see that God created the world. And in Genesis two, he creates you and I. He creates Adam and Eve. And Genesis two ends and it looks like the 60s on steroids.
From the transcript
“God gave Adam and Eve one instruction in Genesis two. He says, you can eat from anything in this garden except for that one tree”
From the transcript
“Here's how the story begins in verse one. It says that a serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made”
From the transcript
“And Eve responds to him in verse two, she says, of course we may eat from the trees in the garden. The woman replied, it's only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we're not allowed to eat”
From the transcript
“In verse six, the saddest verse in the Bible, it says, the woman was convinced. She was convinced that the enemy was right. She was convinced that God was keeping something from her”
From the transcript
“Here's what happens after she gives it to her husband and he eats it. In verse seven, it says, at that moment, their eyes were open. And suddenly they felt the thing that God was trying to keep them from ever experiencing, shame at their nakedness”
From the transcript
“Here's how the story finishes. It says in verse eight, when the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden so they hid from him among the trees”
From the transcript
“And the Bible tells us in first Corinthians chapter 15 that just like through one person death entered the world, all of us sit here born into chaos, born into a mess, not because of our own doing, but because of the fall in the Garden of Eden”
From the transcript
“But look at what it says in first Corinthians 15 as we begin to wrap this up. It says, so you see, just as death came into the world through a man, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man”

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7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

Sign in to track your progress through this devotional.

There is a reason the serpent opened with a question rather than a command. 'Did God really say?' is not a frontal attack — it is a slow lean, a gentle nudge toward suspicion. Satan's oldest strategy is to make you wonder whether God is actually trustworthy, whether His words mean what they say, whether perhaps He is holding something back from you. Pastor Daniel pointed out that this strategy has never changed. The same whisper that reached Eve in the garden reaches us today — through a culture that tells us God's boundaries are arbitrary, through moments of personal disappointment when we quietly wonder if God really has our best interest at heart. What makes the question so dangerous is that it sounds reasonable. It doesn't demand that you reject God outright; it only asks you to hold His word a little more loosely. But loosely held truth is truth that can be slowly replaced. The invitation of this first day is simply to notice where that question shows up in your own life. Where do you find yourself subtly doubting that what God says is actually true or actually good? Naming it honestly is not a failure — it is the beginning of the kind of honesty God is after.

For reflection

Where in your life right now do you hear the quiet question, 'Did God really say?' — and what has that doubt been costing you?

Pray

Pray for eyes to recognize the specific places where subtle doubt about God's word has taken root in your thinking.

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Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

This message takes us back to the very first hiding place — the garden of Eden — and makes the case that what happened there isn't just ancient history, it's a story still playing out in every human heart.

Discussion questions

1
In Genesis 3:1, the serpent opens with 'Did God really say?' — a question, not an outright denial. What makes that kind of subtle doubt more dangerous than a direct attack on God's word?
2
When God walks through the garden asking 'Where are you?' in Genesis 3:9, the sermon points out He wasn't looking for information — He was extending an invitation. What does that tell us about how God responds to human failure?
3
The message describes shame as the immediate result of sin — Adam and Eve's first instinct was to hide, from each other and from God. Why do you think hiding feels so natural, even when it makes things worse?
4
Pastor Daniel pointed to Adam's silence in Genesis 3:6 as an example of stepping back from responsibility rather than stepping in. What does it look like, practically, when people step into the kind of leadership and responsibility they were designed for — in a home, a community, or a relationship?
5
In 1 Corinthians 15:21-26, Paul calls Jesus the second Adam — the one who did what the first Adam failed to do. How does framing Jesus that way change the way we understand what He came to accomplish?
6
Pastor Daniel challenged everyone to answer God's question — 'Where are you?' — honestly, describing that kind of openness as the place where God does His best work. As a group, what might it look like to cultivate that kind of honesty with God together, rather than only in private?

Pray together

Ask God to give each person the courage to stop hiding — to answer His 'Where are you?' honestly — and to rest in the truth that He pursues us not to condemn us but to restore us.

Made by Rewind AI from the sermon transcript. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Go deeper

Continue the series

Genesis

Week 2 · 8 messages

Where these passages are preached

Genesis 3 Genesis 1 Genesis 2 1 Corinthians 15

Explore related topics

God's Pursuit Honesty with God Jesus as Second Adam Shame and Hiding Sin and Restoration

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