“And he said, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

A week ago, I was invited to share a devotional thought with our local high school football team. For something a little different today, here’s some of what I had to say.

Character Counts 

Hey guys! Thanks for letting me have a few minutes with you this afternoon. I know there’s food to be enjoyed and football to be played, so I want to quickly do three things. I want to ask you a question, I want to tell you a couple of stories, and I want to talk with you for just a second about what they might mean for us. 

First, the question: How many of you guys have read some part of the Bible before? There’s not a right or wrong answer here, I’m just curious. Okay, so for those guys who have read parts of it, did you ever read anything that made you laugh out loud? Can I ask that? I mean, this is the Bible we’re talking about. Can you laugh at the Bible? Is that okay to do? New question: How many of you are starting to feel a little uncomfortable with the direction this conversation is going? You don’t have to answer that. 

No, the truth is that there are some parts of the Bible that are funny. It’s okay to admit that. God has a sense of humor, and that comes out in the Scriptures on occasion. Consider the time when He just straight up mocks people who worshiped handmade idols. Funny. 

Let me tell you about another one, but before I do, let me ask one more question: Did you hear about the “Kiss Cam” debacle a few weeks ago? Surely, you’ve seen one of the memes making fun of it. I think my favorite was when the Phillies’ boy and girl mascots replayed it at a ballgame one night. I about fell out of my chair laughing at that one. 

I suspect you at least know the story of what happened, right? A couple was enjoying a Coldplay concert when they suddenly found themselves in the crosshairs of the Kiss Cam. Normally that makes for a sweet, if awkward, moment for a couple. And this couple looked like a perfect fit for the fan-favorite activity. They were standing there in a luxury box, his arms around her, swaying gently together as they listened to Christ Martin serenade the crowd. 

As soon as they saw themselves on the jumbotron, however, their blissful enjoyment of each other and the moment turned to immediate horror and embarrassment. The dude looked especially bad because he dropped down behind the railing, leaving the woman to try to hide her face in her hands, finally turning her back to the camera. The funniest part of the whole moment to me was the fact that the woman standing next to the couple just stood there cracking up at their reaction. As Chris Martin quipped when he saw the drama play out on the screen, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re very shy.” 

Well, as it turned out, he was right the first time, and they both became the subject of mocking and scorn for a couple of weeks. The irony is that if they hadn’t reacted, no one—including their previously clueless families—would have been the wiser. But they knew they were involved in a relationship they should not have been involved in—namely, with each other rather than their spouses—and their sin—because that’s the right word for it—brought them shame and made them hide. You have to feel pretty badly for their families and all they have undoubtedly had to go through because of the whole thing, but the man and woman caught on the kiss cam fairly well deserved what they received. 

When God created the world and everything in it, Moses tells us in Genesis 2 that He made a garden of especially beauty and put the first man and woman He created in the garden to manage it and enjoy it. He pretty much gave them the run of the place with one exception. They weren’t supposed to eat the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden. Doing so would bring pretty severe consequences. He doesn’t tell them why this is, but instead expects them to trust Him and do what He asks. 

They don’t. 

With some prompting from a character who pops up in various places in the Scriptures called “the deceiver,” that most people just call the devil, the woman eventually succumbs to her desires for the tree and eats a bite from the tree’s fruit. Then, demonstrating that she was far from alone in her actions, she gave some to her husband who, Moses tells us, “was with her.” That is, he was standing there watching the whole scene unfold, and even though he was the one to whom God had actually given the command to not eat from this particular tree, he just let it all happen. 

And do you know what the first thing the couple does after they eat the fruit? They both realize they’re naked and hide. Later, God comes to take a walk with the couple as was His custom, but they aren’t standing there waiting for Him like they usually were. Now, being God, He knew what was going on, but He invited them to own up to it anyway. He calls out to the man, “Where are you?” And listen to the man’s response: “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.” 

Now, maybe you don’t see it right away, but that’s funny. It’s funny that the man felt like he needed to cover up before the God who literally made him from scratch. What’s more, he had been walking with God just as he was for who knows how long. Nothing had changed except the man. And on top of that, the man thought he could hide from the God who literally knows everything that can be known. That’s funny stuff. 

Then it gets even funnier. God asks the man if he had done the one thing (you had one job) He had commanded him not to do, and does the man say, “Yes, Lord, I disobeyed you. I’m sorry. Will you please forgive me?” No, he does not. Fingers start flying faster than at a thumb wrestling tournament. He points at the woman. It’s her fault. He points even at God. If you hadn’t given this woman to me in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now. He was doing everything he could think of to hide from the moment just like the Kiss Cam couple. 

Sin is ridiculous stuff. Do you know that? Maybe not yet. That’s okay. Here’s where I think this lands for us. You guys are in a season where you are going to have more and more opportunities to do more and more things that if you’re thinking clearly, you know you shouldn’t be doing. You are going to have more and more opportunities to compromise more and more of your character away in order to gain some short-term benefit. That could be the acceptance of some group of people you want to impress, a girl you think is cute, a better grade in a class you’re struggling with, physical pleasure of some sort. 

There are lots of options here. And the thing is, not all of them are necessarily bad things. Being thought of well by others is a blessing. You are probably going to be married someday, so learning how to impress a girl now is an important life skill to learn. Getting good grades is a worthy goal. God made our bodies to enjoy pleasures of various kinds and delights in our enjoying them. But going after those things at times and in ways He hasn’t designed for us to have them creates problems for us pretty quickly. And when those problems start to manifest, they can make our lives remarkably messy in a remarkably short order. 

With all of that in mind, here are three things I think are worth your knowing. The first is this: doing what’s right is always going to be right. Now, let me add a quick caveat to that. Sometimes, in the short-term, doing what’s right is going to be hard and possibly even costly. There may be a price to pay for doing it that in the moment you’re just not all that interested in paying. But in the long run, you will never regret doing the right thing instead of the wrong thing. You’ll never regret being kind to someone. You’ll never regret responding to someone with gentleness and compassion. You’ll never regret saying no to something that is going to lead you away from the right path. You’ll never regret waiting until the right time to enjoy certain activities. You’ll never regret turning down the opportunity to do something or see something that will hurt your body or your mind. Doing what’s right is always going to be right. 

A big part of the reason for this is wrapped up in the second thing. Our sin will always, eventually come out in public. And the odds are pretty good that we won’t have any control over that moment. If you are doing something you know is wrong—and if you’re not sure about it, ask a trusted friend or adult for their take—someone you don’t want to know about it is eventually going to find out about it. If you don’t want someone, anyone to know about it, your best bet is to just not do it. I guarantee you the Kiss Cam couple were thinking their affair was a lock-down secret that their respective spouses were never going to find out about. And then they found themselves staring at themselves on the jumbotron at a Coldplay concert. Nothing stays hidden forever, and some secrets have a whole lot more power to do a whole lot more damage to our lives and the lives of the people around us than others. Our sin will always come out. Rather than waiting for God to call us out into the light, it’s always better to just walk in it on our own. 

One last thing: Character counts. I know it doesn’t always seem like it. It’s often hard. It’s inconvenient. It may get you made fun of by people who don’t understand that principle. But it counts. Character acts like a kind of currency. The more of it you bank, the richer you will become in ways that will play out and pay off for the rest of your life. You will find yourself with opportunities that you won’t otherwise get access to in the future when you focus now on developing your character in positive, healthy, godly ways. And although there are some big moments that can develop your character quickly, it’s the little moments that matter most. Helping a teammate when he needs it. Being respectful to your coaches (and parents) when you don’t feel like it. Being a good friend. Being kind to the kid at school who nobody likes and is pretty hard to be kind to anyway. Serving someone else when nobody sees it. Regulating what you are looking at on your phone, especially when nobody is watching. If you put garbage in that doesn’t support the kind of character you aim to develop, you’ll have a much harder time developing it. 

And let me tell you what the payoff for this is and then we’re done. In forty years, you won’t end up with a Kiss Cam with somebody you are not married to at the time, feeling like you’ve got to hide, knowing you’ve been caught, and becoming the laughingstock of the entire nation for two weeks. And I know that scenario doesn’t seem very likely to be one you find yourself in, but it didn’t to those two a year ago either. It probably didn’t feel like a scenario they would find themselves in six months ago. But they did. Because they didn’t develop their character. And now not only are they paying for it, but their families are paying for it too. Can you imagine being that guy’s son at school this year? 

The Bible is sometimes funny—like when Adam tried to hide from God because he had finally figured out he was naked—but it’s funny to make a point. Walking the path of being right with God and right with people is a really big deal. If you’ll commit to it, you’ll soon learn just how big of a deal it is.