Introduction
We were gathered around
the living room of our home. Our youngest grand child(at the time) was on the
floor and had learned to crawl. Or was it your grandchild? Or your child? Or
you? In any case, he or she had been told, “Don’t touch the buttons on the TV.
The child was surrounded by toys - big ones and small ones, all colorful and
intriguing and completely accessible. Yet, you know what happened? He or she
made a beeline for the buttons. And that is the story!
Let
us read it from Genesis 2:15-17 and 3:1-7.
Last week we talked
about the holiness of God and saw how He is King, is majestic and glorious, the
righteous judge, forgiving, welcoming and yet holding those who sin
accountable. We were encouraged to take the complete understanding of God’s
holiness seriously and give it complete and appropriate weight so that the fear
of the Lord is our proper response.
This Holy God has
invited us to be holy as He is holy, yet we know that we are not holy at all.
We are a mess. Paul puts it concisely in Romans 3:23, "…since all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God…" and in Romans 5:12,
"Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death
came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned…"
How did we get into
this mess? These verses in Genesis 2 & 3 help us answer this question.
I.
God’s Blessing
A.
You May Eat Freely
The story begins with a
room full of toys. Life began with great blessing. The man lived in a newly
created world and God put him into a beautiful garden and gave him meaningful
work in that garden. He gave him meaning by giving him responsibility. He was
to “keep” the garden. In order to keep the garden he had creative work to do. I
believe that this indicates that he was not just hoeing, but also planning and
transplanting and making it a beautiful place.
On top of that, he had
everything he needed. God gave him the blessing of access to an abundance of
food. God said, “Eat freely.” God said, “Eat of every tree in the garden.” It
was a promise of great blessing in a place of great abundance. One of the joys
of my life has been going out into my garden in the morning. When there is
hardly a breeze and the sun is shining on the trees in the cool of the morning that
is a beautiful time. I take my bowl out and pick mound of fresh raspberries, go
inside and add Corn Flakes and milk and enjoy a delicious breakfast of fresh fruit
right off the plant. That is what Adam had only he could pick blueberries and
apples and bananas and every kind of fruit. HE could pick any kind he wanted
any time of day all the time. What abundance! What blessing! What freedom to
enjoy!
B.
Except One Tree
It is strange, however,
how quickly we focus on the one exception that God put in place. God gave abundance
and freedom and one exception. There was one tree, the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil in the middle of the garden that was off limits. They could not
eat of it. There were, in fact, two special trees in the garden. Genesis 2:9
says, "…the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil." It seems that there was no prohibition
against eating from the tree of life. The only tree they could not eat from was
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Yet even this exception
was intended as a blessing. Human beings were, after all, created in the image
of God. A part of the image of God is the freedom to choose. The tree was
placed there not as an exception as much as an opportunity to allow them to
choose to enjoy the blessing of abundance which God had provided for them. It
had to be there, for it was only by giving them this choice that they could act
like God and choose to follow Him.
C.
God’s Warning
In order to encourage
them to obey this command, God warned them that there would be consequences if
they chose to disobey. I used to do the same thing to my children, telling them
that if they did not obey there would be consequences. The consequence was that
they would die. At this time, they had no idea what that would mean because they
had not yet seen death.
The phrase which is
used in this passage is actually quite interesting. There are two words for
death in Hebrew in this verse. A direct translation would be, “to die you will
die.” This has been translated to give a good sense in many translations like NLT
– “you are sure to die” or NIV – “you will surely die.” This is to affirm that
there is a certainty about the judgment.
This then is the
starting point and it must be seen as a starting point of blessing, freedom,
abundance and choice.
II.
Satan’s Temptation
So if everything
started out so good, how did we get into this mess? The source of the trouble
comes from two places. It comes from outside of the human and it comes from
within. The things that happened in Genesis 3 are how things happen even today.
The things that Satan did to tempt Eve to disobey God are the things that Satan
does to tempt us to disobey God today. These are the methods that Satan uses.
He used them when he tempted Jesus and he continues to use them when he tempts
us. In part, we got into this mess because of the temptation of Satan.
We could speculate
about why a serpent is mentioned and could a serpent really talk and why didn’t
Eve realize that this was not normal, but that would not really help us understand.
That the serpent is Satan is clear from what is said in other parts of the
Bible. For example, Revelation 12:9
speaks of, "The great dragon…that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil
and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world…”
A.
An Intriguing Question
The beginning point of
Satan’s deception is an intriguing question. He didn’t attack the woman nor did
he directly confront her at first. He simply raised a question. The question is
clearly designed to cause her to doubt and it introduces a different way of
thinking about the exception which was in the garden. He asked, “Did God say?”
He raised a question about God which would open the door for doubt about God. His
statement was really quite ridiculous. He asked, “Did God say you shall not eat
from any tree in the garden?” Well he knew and Eve knew that God had said the
exact opposite. God had said, “You may freely eat from every tree in the
garden.”
The question was not
intended to be serious. It was intended to raise questions about God. It raised
a question about the goodness of God. It invited her to exercise her freedom of
choice to wonder whether God really was good if he had made such a restriction.
It raised the possibility of judging God and questioning his motives and his
intentions.
All temptation comes to
us in the same way. We are enticed to wonder about the goodness of God and we
are enticed to put ourselves in the place of judgment over God and His Word. For
example, the question may come into our mind, would it really be that bad to:
hold a grudge or to fail to forgive or whatever we are tempted with.
B.
An Outright Lie
The second tactic of
Satan was an outright lie. The wording is interesting. We noted earlier that
God said that if they ate of the tree, “to die, you shall die” using the word “die”
twice in succession. Satan used the same words in the same order, but prefaced
it with the word, “not.” In other words, he was directly contradicting what God
had said. He was calling God a liar. Jesus recognized that this was the nature
of Satan when He said in John 8:44, "…When he lies, he speaks according to
his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies."
The lie functions to
raise questioning to doubt. He began his enticement with “Did God say?” and now
increased the deception by saying, “God did not say.” If she would believe
this, it would remove the fear of consequences for her action. If she believed
Satan, she would not need to fear that she would die, because, she would not
die because God had not told the truth.
If believed, the lies
of Satan are a powerful enticement because God’s truth is dismissed. Every sin
we ever sin must at some point entertain the thought that God is a liar. For
example, if we yield to the temptation to use retail therapy to overcome our
blues, we believe the lie that God is not helping us. If we yield to the
temptation to hate someone, we believe the lie that God will not make all
things right.
C.
An Enticing Possibility
Having removed the fear
of punishment, Satan raised an enticing possibility. In fact, he raised three
enticing possibilities – “your eyes will be opened, you will be like God and
you will know good and evil.”
The enticing
possibility of having one’s eyes opened also puts God into question, for it
suggests that God has placed limits to human knowledge. It focused on the
supposed limitations which God had put on Eve. It implies that if people are
really free and have a choice, they should know what God knows. The implication
is that God has limited us.
The enticing
possibility of being like God is an outright lie because she was already like
God. Adam and Eve were created in the image of God, so Satan promised something
that was already true. How often our temptations entice us to grasp for
something that we already have! How often our temptations entice us to seek for
assurance when God has already promised that he will never leave us or forsake
us. This temptation also twisted the truth to suggest that God was not trying
to prevent her from eating from the tree by warning of death, but rather that
God was trying to prevent her from eating from the tree because He was afraid
that she would become like Him.
The enticing
possibility of knowing good and evil is deeply twisted. They already knew what
was good, for as God created the world, He already declared all that He had
made as good. The suggestion of this enticement was that God is not good. We
know this enticement all too well when we feel that it would be OK to do
something God has told us not to do because it would be so much fun and we
believe that God is just spoiling our fun.
III.
Temptation’s Enticement
So we are in this mess
because of Satan’s deceptive temptations. But we are also in this mess because
of what happens within us and we see this in what happened to Eve.
A.
A Feeling of Restriction
Even in her first
response to the serpent, we can see that she was already yielding to the
enticement. Although she denied Satan’s statement that they could eat from any
tree by affirming what God said, she emphasized the limitation and indicated
that God said, “…nor shall you touch it.” God never said that and her
declaration of this limitation shows that she was open to further enticement and
that she had caught a hint of God’s limitation and was beginning to see it as a
restriction. Wenham says that Eve began to believe that God is “painted as a
little harsh and repressive.”
Temptation always
begins to turn us in such a small subtle way. It begins with a small
accommodation, with a small change in our attitude and a small step towards a negative
attitude.
B.
Good to Eat
From this tiny shift in
attitude, she tumbled quickly. John speaks of the descent into sin with the
same evil desires in 1 John 2:16, "for all that is in the world—the desire
of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the
Father but from the world." It was to these things that she succumbed. The
first enticement that worked within her heart was that she saw that “the tree
was good for food.” This is the “desire of the flesh” spoken of in I John 2.
She understood that there was something good about the fruit as food. Already
she was making judgments about what was good and what was not good and she
judged that the fruit was good.
How twisted we can be
when we make decisions about what is good that contradict what God has said. For
example, we are tempted to gamble because we ignore the Word of God which teaches
us to have a spirit of generosity, to depend on God’s provision and not to love
money. Instead we believe that it would be so good to win some money.
C.
Good to Look At
The second enticement
is stated by I John 2 to be “…the desire of the eyes.” Eve saw that “it was a
delight to the eyes.” Temptation is never seen as an ugly thing when we are
enticed by it. It always looks like exactly what we want or need. It is seen,
through our twisted eyes, as beautiful. MCC recently put out a booklet entitled,
“Pornography: Lies, Truth and Hope” In it they talk about how “Pornography has
long-term negative effects that will damage and even destroy intimate
relationships.” Yet that damage is not seen at the beginning of the enticement.
At the beginning it is seen as “A delight to the eyes.” And so it is with every
sin.
D.
Good to Make Wise
The third step is
identified in I John 2:16 as “the pride in riches” perhaps better translated as
“the boastful pride of life” in NASB. In a similar way Eve was tempted because
she saw that “it was desired to make one wise.” She believed the lies of Satan
that she would not die and now she believed that she would indeed find
fulfillment by eating of the tree.
And so temptation
always entices us. It promises that our life will be better and that we can get
what we really want if we yield to the temptation. For example, if we slander
someone we believe that it will make us look better and so we yield to this
temptation. In every case, the enticement from within is a quest for what is
good apart from God’s provision.
E.
The Sin
So when she believed
Satan’s lies and gave in to her own desires, we read that “She ate.” She did
what God had told her not to do. She also gave some to her husband and “he
ate.” He had not been absent in this whole conversation. The text says that he
“was with her.” Knowingly and deliberately they did what God had told them not
to do. That is the final step in all sin. It is a decision to act against what
God has said.
IV.
Was Satan Right?
The stunning thing we
encounter next is the realization that Satan appears to have been right.
A.
They Knew
As soon as they ate,
“their eyes were opened” just as Satan had said would happen. But was this a
good thing? They had always known what was good. They did not need to have
their eyes opened in order to know what was good. What they discovered instead
was that their eyes suddenly became aware of what was evil. They “knew that
they were naked” and that was not a good thing. Before they had been naked and
it had been a good thing. What changed that they suddenly realized that it was
not a good thing? Their innocence was taken away. They were filled with shame.
They projected evil on to innocence. They assumed that there was something
wrong with what had always been good.
So Satan was right. Their
eyes were opened. But what they saw was not fulfilling, in fact it was very
damaging.
B.
They Didn’t Die(Or Did They?)
We also discover that
they did not die “on the day you eat of it.” Was God lying? Or had they died?
Augustine points out
that there are three senses of death. Death occurs when the soul loses God,
when the soul leaves the body and when a person is eternally separated from God
and life. We think first of the second of these, “the soul leaving the body.”
In that sense, death did not happen immediately, yet it was now introduced into
the world as a possibility. So they did die because they would die, but not
necessarily that day. Yet in the first sense that Augustine mentions death did
happen that day. Immediately they died in the sense that their souls were
separated from God. The next part of the text tells that part of the story. The
third sense would now also happen and will happen in the end to all who are not
restored by God to life. All who are separated from God will die eternally.
So what God had said
did happen. They died that day and death in all its horror was introduced into
the good world and the world was no longer good. Now sin and death became a
part of the equation. Romans 5:12 shows that what happened there has also
happened to us because of our choices when it says, "Therefore, just as
sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so
death spread to all because all have sinned…"
Conclusion
So how did we get into
this mess? God had said enjoy and live. Eat freely!
We got into this mess
by rejecting blessing. We got into this mess by judging God. We got into this
mess by disobeying God. We got into this mess by not believing that God is good.
We got into this mess by doubting God’s Word. We got into this mess by
rejecting God. We still get into this mess today in all of these ways. As a result
we will die. That is the mess we have gotten into.
As a result, we are not
holy and that is also the mess we have gotten into. As a result we, who are not
holy, have no hope of ever being able to do what 1 Peter 1:16 has told us to
do, to "…be holy, for I am holy.”"
Yet all is not lost.
There is hope and that hope is found in Jesus and next week we will think about
what God does so that we who are unholy can be like God who is holy.
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