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The Serpent in the Garden

God's Holy Book

Jun 11, 2017


by: Jack Lash Series: God's Holy Book | Category: Scripture | Scripture: Genesis 3:1–7
  1. Introduction
    A. Genesis 1-2
      1. In 6 days, out of the nothing, God creates everything.
      2. On the 6th day, God creates Adam, and places him in the garden of Eden.
      3. Forbidden tree → death
      4. Creation of Eve
    II. The story of Genesis 3:1-7
     A. There is an enemy. But he pretends to be a friend.
     B. Satan goes on the attack. And what is his target? The word of God. 
     C. First the crafty serpent questions God's word, trying to confuse and stir up doubts — 1b He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
     D. Then he flatly contradicts God’s word — 4 The serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 
      1. Here, Satan suggests that God's threat of death is simply a scare tactic that has no real punch.     
      2. Of course, there is some truth to both of the statements that the serpent makes, but they are deceptive nonetheless, because they are half-truths which give false impressions. 
     E. What was true and what was false?
      1. It was true in one sense that they weren’t going to die.
      2. And it was true that in eating the forbidden fruit, the eyes of their hearts would in a sense be opened and they would know good and evil (God Himself confirms this in Gen.3:22a).
      3. And it was true God hadn’t given Adam and Eve everything, but had withheld many good things:
       a. He withheld the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
       b. He also seems to have withheld the fruit of the tree of life. (Presumably, it had no fruit on it yet, but that itself was a form of withholding.)
       c. Also, though He graciously gave them many earthly blessings, He withheld the glories of heaven.
      4. He withheld these things because they needed to go through a process of learning and growing and proving themselves first. 
      5. So there was some truth in what Satan said, BUT it is also filled with lies:
       a. Satan implies that God was selfishly clinging to the really good stuff and thereby depriving man of substantial blessing, basically accusing God of not being good or loving.  
       b. Satan implies that this knowledge of good and evil was a good thing, but knowledge can be evil. ?(We must not want to know what we should not know [and we must not want our children to know what is not good for them to know]. Our minds are supposed to be His servants: we must fill them only with what God wants them to be filled with. There is a powerful attraction in man to secret knowledge, for knowledge implies power. Man's quest for knowledge has repeatedly led him astray. It is often a temptation to deification, as it is here.)
       c. Satan tells them they don’t have to wait for the things God has withheld. They could have it now! 
     F. Why half-truths instead of out and out falsehoods? To add believability, to make them sound true, to make them sound like the inside scoop instead of calling God the father of lies.  
      1. Notice that the serpent never commands or pressures the woman to eat: this could backfire by stirring up her conscience. Thus, the nature of seduction: it plays on the allure of forbidden fruit.
      2. Satan rarely tries to get us to serve him, but lures us away from God by means of some luscious-looking bait. But when we take the bait, there’s a hook in it and we become the devil’s slaves.
     G. Eve took the bait, and Adam with her. — 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 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.”  
      1. Sin is belief in one’s own perceptions instead of in God’s revealed will.  We are told that the woman took it upon herself to do what God is supposed to do: "she saw that the tree was good..." She trusted her own perception instead of trusting what God had said. 
      2. Appearances cannot be trusted. God has allowed appearances to contradict reality in order to test us. So, we must learn to walk by faith and not by sight. We must believe what we don’t see but what we know is there, what we know is true. 
      3. Take heaven and hell, for example. If we cannot believe what God says about those places without seeing them ourselves, we will be unable to resist the temptations of the evil one to indulge in forbidden fruit.
      4. Adam and Eve weren’t able to trust God’s words re: the promised, yet invisible, consequences. 
      5. Do you see how all of life has to do with our relationship with God’s word? 
      6. We want to live by our own word, our own ideas, our own perceptions, not by God’s.
      7. Today there is much talk about listening to your own heart. What Adam and Eve did is being heralded as what we should do to be fully human.
      8. But it’s not what God says. A voice out of heaven: Listen to Him! (Matt.17:5, Luke 9:35)
     H. And then came the consequences — 7 “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.”
      1. Once they had taken the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good/evil, they were no longer God's servants, distinguishing on the basis of his Father's instructions. Now, man has become like God.  They’ve made themselves their own boss.  Now they decide for themselves.
      2. And yet, instead of finding themselves in a high and lofty position as promised, they were ashamed and humiliated. What horrible knowledge it turned out to be! Sin is never as glorious as Satan makes it look beforehand.    
      3. And so then comes the big cover-up!
       a. The fig leaves (Gen.3:7)
       b. The fleeing from God’s holy gaze and hiding (Gen.3:8)
       c. The projecting the blame: this woman you gave me, this serpent did it (Gen.3:12-13)
       d. In all this we see the urgent desperation of mankind to hide their sin. 
       e. And it still continues, doesn’t it? Defensiveness, projection, dishonesty, and all kinds of other defense mechanisms: we are desperate to hide our guilt. We even try to hide it from ourselves. We even train our children to believe in themselves and believe that they are good inside. 
       f. Instead of believing what God says about us, we want to have a positive self-image.
     I. A lot’s happened in the story since then. Genesis 3 is episode 3 of season 1. Now we’re in season92.
      1. Later in Genesis 3 God actually promises to undo the damage Adam and Eve have done. In Genesis 3:15 He promises to send a child of the woman to crush Satan and rescue mankind, though He would be wounded in the process.
      2. Eventually He does just that. He sends His Son, Jesus, born of a woman. And He redeemed His people by walking in the footsteps of Adam, obeying instead of disobeying, resisting Satan’s temptation instead of giving in, and then suffering the consequences of their rebellion by dying on the cross in their place. He then overcame death for them by rising from the dead on the 3rd day. 
      3. Foolishly Adam and Eve went for the blessing in the now, instead of faithfully fulfilling God’s commands and waiting for the blessing till it was time for Him to give it. They grabbed for the reward, but the reward comes to those who humble themselves and wait in faith. 
      4. Not so with Jesus. He didn’t count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself. He became a man of sorrows & acquainted with grief – and ended with a name above every name.
      5. But Satan opposes even this redemption and uses every tactic he can to deceive man into rejecting it just as he had rejected God’s original command. 
    III. So how does this story relate to our lives? 
     A. It shows us that God’s holy book has an enemy: Satan the deceiver.
      1. Master of disinformation 
      2. Father of fake news
      3. Originator of alternative facts 
      4. He comes up with a lot of different ways to undermine God’s word.
       a. Too old to be relevant to modern man.
       b. Supposedly not old enough to be considered a reliable witness to the events it records. 
       c. It can’t be valid because of all these narrow rules it gives, like against adultery.
       d. It can’t be valid because of all these ridiculous claims about Jesus.
       e. It can’t be valid because of all these miracles, which we know can’t happen. How do we know? Because miracles don’t happen. 
       f. He is the One behind the Bible being attacked, undermined, and belittled.
       g. It is a battle which has been fought in every generation and will be fought until Christ returns.
       h. The issues change, but the battle continues. 
       i. You wouldn’t believe all the tactics Satan has come up with to try to discredit the Bible. 
      5. “He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar & the father of lies.” (John 8:44) 
     B. And guess what? He’s doing it in our lives too. The enemy of our souls wants to destroy our connection to the word of God.
      1. Satan will throw any roadblock he can into the way of you hearing God speak in His word.
      2. What is Satan using in your life to undermine God’s word? What ploy is Satan using in your life to keep you away from God’s word?
      3. There’s even a part of you and me as believers that doesn’t want to hear some of the things God has to say. 
     C. Why does the enemy so want to undermine it? 
      1. It is the key to our abiding in Christ. 
       a. Honestly we are no threat to the world and its system. But when Christ is living through us, that’s very powerful. That’s why Satan works so hard to keep us from Christ. 
       b. And there’s no better way to keep us from Christ than to keep us from Christ’s word.
       c. Jesus wants His words to abide in our hearts. (John 15:7)
       d. He wants “the word of Christ [to] dwell in you richly.” Col.3:16
       e. The Bible is the place where God meet us, the place where God speaks to us.
       f. It is the place where God revives us. 
        (1) “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.” Ps.19:7
        (2) “My soul clings to the dust, revive me according to your word.” Ps.119:25
       g. God’s word is our lifeline, our spiritual umbilical cord.
       h. Jesus said, “The words that I speak are spirit and they are life.” John 6:63
     D. We’re half way through this series on the Bible. We’ve been talking about this for a half of a year now. How’s it going in your life? How is your relationship with God’s word grown? How successful is Satan being in keeping you away from the reviving, life-giving power of God’s word?
     E. In a world which knows of no meaning and no hope, we need to hear things from God:
      1. You are my child/I am your Father
      2. You are My beloved/You are My friend.  I laid down My life for you to make you My own.
      3. My Holy Spirit lives in you as a seal & down payment!
      4. Your name is written in Book of Life!
      5. One day you will be with Me in paradise forever!
      6. I have chosen you & no one can snatch you out of My hand! 
      7. Nothing can separate you from My love.
      8. I arrange everything in your life for your best, and you’ve got to trust Me with it. 
     F. The Bible paints us a beautiful, magnificent masterpiece of who God is and what He’s like, the holiness of His being, the power of His grace.
      1. Every day our noses are rubbed in the reality of this world. And unless we are paying attention to what God tells us about that other world,
      2. Col.3:2 tells us to fix our minds on the things above, not on the things of the earth. How can we do that without giving attention to what God tells us about that reality above? 
      3. It tells us what is true. And in a world of lies we need to know what is true. 
      4. Our enemy’s primary tool is deception. And how are we ever going to be able to discern his lies unless we know the truth?
      5. If we don’t have God’s word, what else is there? What are we left with if this isn’t dependably the word of God. Our own impressions? Our own conclusions? Our own impulses? 
      6. Wisdom is from above, it is from outside of us. (James 3:17) That’s why “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (Prov.9:10)
      7. Knowing that I don’t have the knowledge, the understanding, the wisdom I need and that I must therefore get it from outside myself, means I must get it from the One who knows all things. 
      8. Unless He tells me, I don’t know who I am or where I’m going or what I’m here for or why things are the way they are.