Well, this morning we return to our journey through the opening chapters of the Bible, Creation Week. Has come to a close. God has blessed man with His own image and with a companion, a wife. And now these newly created image-bearers have been given the task of exercising dominion over God's world. But then a serpent enters this idyllic paradise.
So let's see what happens next. Genesis 3. We'll look at verses 1 through 6 this morning.
Now, the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food. and that it was a delight to the eyes. and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise. She took of its fruit and ate And she also gave some to her husband, who was with her. And he ate.
Let's pray. Father, you are Holy And you have made us to be holy, for you are holy. But we have all transgressed your law and become unholy, sinful. guilty. Ashamed.
And because of our guilt, we cover ourselves, we hide from you. We die. Lord, what a miserable ruin we have made of your perfect creation. What a ruin we've made even of our very own souls. Wretches that we are.
Who will deliver us from these bodies? of death. Thanks be to you, O God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. For you offer us Clothing not of Fig leaves. Not even of animal skins, but of the perfect righteousness of your holy Son.
the Lord Jesus Christ.
So, most holy and gracious God, wash us. Whose sins are as scarlet, that we might be white as snow. That we might regain the paradise that we have so foolishly forfeited. I pray for Christ's sake and in his name. Amen.
Well, at this point in the story, creation is complete. God has made everything that exists by the power of his word. And he has declared everything that he's made to be good. Thus far, we have seen nothing but the power and goodness of the Word of God. His word has accomplished everything it has set out to do.
It has relentlessly proven itself to be effective, and good, and trustworthy. But in chapter 3, and for the first time, that word is called into question. What takes place In the third chapter of Genesis is momentous to say the least. These events will affect every aspect of every human being for the rest of human history. And it all started with the question: Hath God actually said?
That question from the serpent brought the very word of God under scrutiny, and by extension, the character and integrity of God was called into question. The effect of this questioning was an erosion of confidence in the authority and Trustworthiness of God, which led to a justification of disobedience to the law of God. Adam and Eve sinned. Adam and Eve died. And now you and I, and everyone else in the human race face life in a world that is at enmity with its Creator.
Every trouble you have, every grief you've suffered, every misery and fear you have to contend with is the result of our first parents' response to the question: did God actually say? We're going to take some time to carefully observe and understand what took place here in Genesis 3, because this story explains why we are the way we are. It explains our problem with God. But it also paves the path for the ending of the story, which is an incredible, incredibly happy ending, if you can believe it. This story is not a tragedy, at least for some.
It ends in joy unspeakable. It ends with the serpent's head being crushed. And Adam and Eve and their descendants restored to fellowship with God. But it begins here. With a fall from grace of the most incredible proportion.
In these opening six verses, we See that the erosion of confidence in the truth. And in the character of God, Leads to a rationalized disobedience that can only be remedied by God. The erosion of confidence in the truth and character of God. Leads to a rationalized disobedience that can only be remedied by God. The very first temptation begins with an erosion of Adam and Eve's confidence first in the Word of God as Satan obscures the content.
of God's word.
Now, I have no doubt that you all are familiar with this story, but even though we're familiar with the story, certain questions often arise that maybe distract us from the main thing. Let me deal very briefly with a couple of those questions so that they don't get in the way of the main point. First of all, who or what is the serpent that shows up in the Garden of Eden? Is it an actual serpent, a snake? Or is it some figurative reference to something else, a metaphor of evil or wickedness or something like that?
And then, secondly, how did he get there? How did an evil, crafty serpent end up in paradise? And we could get very bogged down with these questions, but it wouldn't really be all that helpful. You see, if Scripture omits a detail that intrigues us, We run the risk of missing the point if we insist on satisfying our curiosity with regard to things that are mysteries.
Now having said that, we We know that the serpent of Genesis 3:1 is Satan, the devil. We know it not because Genesis 3 makes it clear, but because other passages in the Bible make it clear. Revelation 20, for example, makes reference to an angel coming down from heaven to cast into a bottomless pit one who is described as that ancient serpent. Who is the devil and Satan? Jesus said to some unbelieving Jews in John 8:44, You are of your father the devil.
He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there's no truth in him. When he lies, He speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
So the devil was present from the beginning of human history and he was the inventor of lies, the father of lies. The first lie at the beginning of history was told by Satan himself.
So we can be sure that this serpent of Genesis 3.1 is Satan.
Now, the word serpent in Genesis 3 is the common word for serpent, and Genesis 3.1 categorizes this creature as a beast of the field. But I think it's best to understand this as a literal snake. It was somehow embodied by or possessed, as they say, by Satan. How this might have worked is not the concern of the text. That Satan in the form of a serpent was talking to Eve is what we need to know.
So, naturally, we want to know: well, where did Satan come from? And how did he become sinful? If everything God made was good and God made Satan, how did Satan become evil? And the most straightforward answer is. We don't know.
The Bible doesn't tell us how or when. the the fallen angels fell. It simply tells us that they fell.
Some theologians have asserted that certain passages in the prophetic books describe the fall of Satan, but those theories are speculative. And again, they're not pertinent to our understanding of the story of Genesis 3. We may want to know these things, they're intriguing to us.
Well, we don't need to know in order to gain an accurate understanding of what God through Moses would have us know. In fact, is this not the very tendency that the serpent was tempting Eve with when he approached her with the potential of special revelation, secret knowledge that was over and above what God had given? We need to be aware of our Tendency to want to know more than God has revealed. That's not a virtue. It's actually a dangerous demonic path to destructive places.
Well, Satan comes to Eve and questions the veracity of God's word. And there's a noticeable progression to Satan's tempting of Eve. First, he begins with a misleading question: Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
So, the question assumes a stricter rule than God imposed and assumes a place of authority over the word of God. The question you see tempts Eve to put herself in a position of sitting in judgment over the word of God, to see herself as an evaluator of what God has said. You've heard it said there's no such thing as a dumb question.
Well, there is such a thing as a dumb question. There is such a thing as a destructive question. And this satanic question in Genesis 3 is one of them. To even ask the question is to put oneself in a posture of authority over God's word. It's a misleading question.
But then the danger of this misleading question is compounded when Eve gives an inaccurate answer. She misquotes the word of God. We can observe Her inaccuracies by comparing Eve's answer to what God had actually said. First, Eve disparages God's privileges when she says, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. God had said back in Genesis 2:16, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.
You see the emphasis in God's invitation to Adam and Eve to eat freely from every tree except one. The emphasis is not on the prohibition, but on the permission to surely eat of every tree. When Hebrew wants to make a Point of emphasis, it repeats the verb. And so Genesis 2:16 says, literally, eat, eat of all the trees. With emphasis, with permissiveness, with abundance.
But Eve's reiteration of that generous invitation is severely understated. You may eat of the fruit of the trees. Maybe it was unintentional. Nevertheless, it was disparaging of God's magnanimous generosity.
Well, next, Eve put a fence around God's law, a buffer, an added level of strictness when she said of the forbidden tree: you shall not eat of its fruit, neither shall you touch it. God said nothing about not touching it. And so we find Eve. for some unknown reason, adding to the command of God. She disparages the privilege and she elevates the prohibition.
Finally, Eve minimizes the penalty for disobedience. Where God says, In the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Eve says lest you die. The word surely conveys definitive consequence. The word lest suggests a potential consequence.
It's an iffy word. We just might die if we eat. It's subtle, but it is nevertheless a reduction, a minimizing of God's clear declaration. Friends, when it comes to divine revelation, precision matters. Accuracy matters.
Eve should have represented the word of God better than she did, but she didn't. And Satan capitalizes on her imprecision. his misleading question. Which called into question the content of God's word led to an attack. On the integrity of God's character.
Satan attacks the integrity of God's character in verses 4 and 5. Verse 4. But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good. and evil. Satan craftily focuses Eve's concentration on her third error.
where she minimized the penalty of breaking God's law. Interestingly, Satan actually quotes God's penalty with greater accuracy than Eve quoted it, when he says, You will not surely die. But the serpent adds to this accurate quotation an outright denial of what God has said. And not only does Satan deny what God had said, he asserts what God's motive was in telling Adam and Eve what would happen if they disobeyed him. Verse 5.
God knows that when you eat of it, you will be like God. Satan is claiming that the reason God doesn't want Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit is because they would attain divine status for themselves. And God doesn't want the competition. He's saying that God is lying to Adam and Eve in order to maintain his superiority over them. The devil is Appealing to Adam and Eve's God-given attraction to the greatness and wonder of deity.
But he twists this desire by putting in their minds the possibility that they too might become godlike themselves. Derek Kidner, an insightful commentator and theologian, points out that being led by a subordinate animal is a curious way to achieve divinity. Adam and Eve had been given dominion over the beasts of the field, not made to be subordinate to them. Everything is backwards and upside down in this scene. Eve has dominion over the beasts of the field, and yet here she is listening to one of them as if she has something to learn from them.
And what this subordinate beast is communicating to Eve. Is that she has the potential to become God, the all-knowing one. Rather than being the worshiper, she could become the one who is worshipped.
Furthermore, Satan puts in Eve's mind that the only reason God would not have told her this is because he doesn't want her to have that kind of knowledge, that kind of clout. That kind of equality with him. God is selfish. He ought not to be trusted. It's an attack on the character of God.
And this highlights a very important principle. We trust the Word of God because we trust the God of the Word. We trust the Word of God because we trust the God of the Word. And when there is a gap between what we know God's Word says and the reason why God says it, as there often is, We should believe what God has said and obey what God has said simply because we trust him. The God of the Word.
We've all heard the answer when a disgruntled child questions why he has to obey some command that his parent has given is because I said so. I'm the mama, I'm the father. And the sentiment behind that terse answer is: As your parent, I love you more unselfishly than any other human being on the face of the earth.
So, on the grounds of my position as your parent, You ought to obey what I say simply because I'm the one who said it. The trustworthiness of the command is grounded in the integrity and the position of the person giving the command. To question God's command was to question God's motive. They question God's motive. Was to question the very integrity and character of God Himself.
What we're beginning to see in Eve's interaction with the serpent is that obedience to the Word of God requires first a proper knowledge of the Word of God. But secondly, a proper trust. in the integrity of the God of the Word. In other words, my posture towards God will inform my posture towards His Word. and even towards the care with which I get to know his word.
As goes my view of God, so goes my view of his word. and so goes my susceptibility to things contrary to his word. You know, this is true even of our relationships with others besides God. How I perceive the believability and trustworthiness of a person's words is influenced, unavoidably, by my perception of the person's character. Last week, several of us spent several days at the annual General Assembly of the PCA, where debates were held and decisions were made that will affect our entire denomination.
And as man after man stood up to the microphone to make the case for this decision or that decision, I found myself listening to the arguments, but I also noticed that my judgment of each man's argument was largely influenced. Not by some unbiased assessment of the mere words coming out of the man's mouth, but by his character and intentions. In other words, my perception of the person's integrity. I found myself listening differently based on what I already knew about the speaker. And I think that tendency is deeply embedded in human nature.
We are predisposed for or against a person and their opinions based on our perception of their character. It's really difficult, isn't it, to heed even true things that are spoken by a person whose character is questionable. That's one thing to operate this way with regard to fellow sinners. It's another thing entirely to operate this way with regard to our Creator. who is holy.
who cannot lie. Who is pure and cannot sin, who is supreme and will not share his glory with another. Friend, if our attitude towards God is anything less than absolute worship and trust. We will find ourselves first questioning and then doubting and eventually denying the very promises and commands of a God who shows us the path of life. What is your posture?
Towards God. It will determine your posture to his word. It will determine whether you experience eternal life. or eternal death. Satan was getting Eve to doubt the character of God so that he could get her to justify disobeying the word of God.
And so having called into question the truth of God and the character of God, the way was paved for disobedience to be justified in the mind of this deceived image-bearer. We see in verse 6 then that Satan at last. supplants the authority of God's law. Verse 6 is such a simple And yet, profound description of the way sin, once it finds its way into our minds, rationalizes disobedience against our Creator. Verse 6.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desired to be desired to make one wise, She took of its fruit. And eight. At first she saw that it was good. for food. Disobedience made practical sense.
It would feed her and. After all, you need food to stay alive, right? Secondly, it made aesthetic sense. It was a delight. to the eyes It was so beautiful.
How could it be wrong when it feels so right? Thirdly, it made spiritual sense. It would make one wise, and surely it's better to be wise than foolish, right? It would be wrong not to eat. of this wisdom-giving fruit.
So it all began to make perfect sense to Eve, but what she had failed to notice was that she was now relying on her own senses rather than on divine revelation. And once she began relying on her own senses rather than on divine revelation, she was quick to choose sin. One of the Protestant reformers said, sin is always accompanied either by ignorance or by careless reflection. Once Satan got Eve contemplating the doing of the sin he had won. Beloved, the moment we abandon God's standard as the measure of right and wrong, good and bad, wisdom and foolishness.
We lose all touch with reality in God's world, and at that point, there is no limit. To how far our deceived hearts can take us into evil and wickedness and rebellion against God.
Now to be fair. Eve was not the only human present on this day. The latter half of verse 6 says. Almost as an afterthought, interestingly, She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. I've heard pastors wax eloquent on the preposition with.
and infuse a whole lot of theology into that word. At the end of the day, the word with in Hebrew means With. Whether Adam was privy to the entire conversation between the serpent and Eve, or whether he came upon it mid-temptation. Scripture doesn't say. And so the question is often raised: who was responsible for the fall, Adam or Eve?
To which I would reply, yes. They both were responsible. In fact, scripture ascribes responsibility to them both. in 1 Timothy 2, 13 and 14. Paul prohibits women from teaching or exercising authority over man because.
Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. But lest we think Adam gets off the hook, Romans 5 says that sin came into the world through one man, and death reigned from Adam to Moses. even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam. Adam clearly was a transgressor. He sinned.
Eve sinned because she was deceived into it by the serpent. Adam's sin, on the other hand, needed no deception. He sinned simply because he willfully chose to follow his wife into sin, just because. One theologian said, the woman obeyed the serpent. and the man obeyed the woman.
Eve sinned because she made more of the serpent's voice and the rationalizations of her own mind than she did of God's command. Adam sinned because he made more of his wife's voice than he did of God's voice. And so, this tragic, tragic story of the fall of mankind from a perfect paradise to a place of sin and misery and death. begins with an attack on God's word. That led to an attack on God's character, that led to a justification.
Of disobedience that can only be remedied by God. What are some practical lessons then that we can take from this tragic story? I mentioned a few implications and then set our sights for the next part of the story. You know, we learn a lot about the nature of sin and temptation from this account of the first temptation. We Learned that yielding to temptation is not a simple and single act of external disobedience, such as eating a piece of fruit.
The external act of disobedience is often just the visible and final outcome of transgression, not its starting point. In the first sin of Adam and Eve, we see a number of flaws and missteps and transgressions. There is unbelief. There is pride. There is discontentment.
There is unthankfulness for the generous blessings of God. There is a foolish Curiosity with evil. There is contempt of God, there is blasphemy, there's even murder, as Adam and Eve thought only of themselves and not of the devastating death that would come upon all their race. This sin was no teeny tiny sin. Sin never is.
It was in fact a breach of the whole law of God. Sin is always bigger. than we realize it first. We also learned that sin begins in the mind and heart. Not in the actions.
If this is the case, then the best place to fight sin is in the mind and the heart. We don't need to wait until sin is oozing out of our actions. What does Peter say? He says we need to gird up the loins of our mind. Paul says, take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.
Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Another thing we learned from this account is that sin is not environmental. Adam and Eve had no environmental propensities towards sin. They were created perfect. moral, unfallen, righteous, and yet they fell.
That means that sin isn't caused by something outside of the soul. It may be facilitated and encouraged and prodded along by something outside of the soul, but its source is in here. Sin, when I sin, comes from me. We'll see next week how our first parents immediately began playing the blame game rather than admit to their own guilt. And we're no different.
We play that game with the best of them. We blame our sin on anything we can think of that's out there in order to avoid having to come to terms with the reality that sin in my heart is a problem with my heart. Immorality in my life is a problem with me. It's not ultimately a psychological or social problem, a genetic predisposition or a medical condition. It is a heart problem that finds its point of origin in my very nature.
And if that's the case. Then the solution is not primarily environmental or external. The solution to fixing my sin is going to necessarily entail fixing my heart. One last implication that I'll mention is this. If our first parents sinned, then there is no hereditary line or social class that is exempt.
from the shame and guilt and penalty of sin. Just as sin came into the world through one man, so death's bread. to all, because all sinned. Nobody can boast that they're just a little bit more righteous than the next person because we all come from the same line of sinners, sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, every last one of us. There is no basis then for pride.
About our birth, our family name, our education, our wealth. We are all vile sinners who stand naked before a holy God, trying to cover our guiltiness with pathetic fig leaves. We are by nature people who deserve God's wrath.
So what are we to do? We're going to get to God's remedy as we continue making our way through Genesis 3, but I don't want to leave you hopeless this morning.
So I'll close by pointing us to God's remedy for sin. Genesis 3.6 Might very well be the most devastating verse in the Bible. As Eve took And eight. and gave to her husband to also eat. And in that fatal act, we have all...
Inherited a nature that takes what God forbids and eats what God prohibits. to the destruction of our souls. But beloved, God who is rich. mercy. Has sent his only begotten son into the world.
And he says to us, Take and eat. We who have taken forbidden things. Are invited to take and eat of the very life of Christ. that in him we might be forgiven. Forgiven for listening to serpents.
Forgiven for elevating our judgments above God's word. forgiven for disparaging his generous gifts, And lusting after knowledge and status and gratification of our own making. Christ invites us to take and eat of Him that we might be restored to the paradise we have lost. Friends, all who take Christ in faith. receive more in Christ than they ever lost in Adam.
Sin and temptation are strong. But Christ is stronger still. And the rest of the Bible will demonstrate. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, that serpents and sinners Are no match for a God who is mighty to be. save.
Let's pray. Yeah. Father, forgive us for our rebellion against you. Forgive us for even the natural bent towards sin that characterizes each of us apart from your grace. Forgive us.
For the ways in which, even this past week, we have listened to the snake. and allowed ourselves to be swayed by our own arrogance. Lord, humble us. that we might cling all the more to you. the mighty one who saves to the uttermost.
I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Mm.
