Page 38 - The Divine Unfolding of God's Plan of Redemption

“And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.” Such is human
religiousness. It runs the gamut from the writhing contortions of heathen devil-dancers,

the weird dronings of the devotees of a thousand and one idolatrous systems, the
asceticism and self-afflictions of innumerable worshipers of pagan deities, to the more
“enlightened” humanitarianism of self-glorifying plutocrats, who adorn the pews of
great temples of man-worship and “churchianity,” where the Son of God is trodden

under foot and the blood of the Covenant esteemed as an ordinary thing. The whole is
a fabric of man-made garments of fig-leaves of one vintage or another. All of this
religiousness, whether of the frantic or more sedate variety, is utterly futile and even
abominable to Him Who has graciously provided a garment for all who will receive it.

It is our observation that the busier they are sewing their own fig-leaf aprons the
less inclined men and woman are to stop and put on God‟s ready-to-wear toga. The
more feverishly occupied with their religiousness and the more passionately absorbed

in social service and human betterment the more offensive does the cross become to
them because if frowns condemnation upon all such pettiness as being not only
useless but impudent.

Religion? It used to be a good word connoting the relationship between man and
his Creator, but now it has been perverted by Modernist counterfeiters and false
prophets to become “the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and
hateful bird” and has become distasteful to those who are devoted to the person of the

one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus.

Before leaving this subject we are constrained to call attention to the fact that
man‟s little expedients are not only futile to meet his spiritual needs but fail even for

practical purposes of temporal welfare. Can anyone imagine more inadequate apparel
for either extreme of temperature than a suit of fig-leaves? It would not properly hide
nakedness nor would it produce warmth in cold weather. In warm weather the leaves
would dry and break off. It has ever been true that man‟s efforts to maintain himself

physically, apart from God and His wisdom, in the long run prove abortive, and his
wisdom is demonstrated to be foolishness.

The abiding mercy of the Creator is apparent in the eighth verse as He comes in
the cool of the evening to seek his erring children. Herein lies the essential difference
in our divine revelation as compared with the empty vaporings of the ethnic religions.
It is necessary for God to seek man, because man cannot possibly find God after he
has once lost Him. “Canst thou by searching find out God?” (Job 1:7) is a question

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