All About Eve
Her Temptations, her Tears and her Testimony
Eve is an appropriate woman to talk about this Mother's Day, especially since she is the mother of all mothers! Her story is not to dissimilar to most of yours. It is a story of love and pain, failure and God's rescue. A story of a fragmented family, and parents who struggle because of that.
Intro:
Ge 2:20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
Ge 2:21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
Ge 2:22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
Ge 2:23 And Adam said, This [is] now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
Ge 3:16 ¶ To the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you shall bring forth children; Yet your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you."
Ge 3:20 ¶ And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.
Ge 4:1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.
She is called woman originally, then she is renamed Eve "Because she was the mother of all living."
1. Her temptations
Ge 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, ’You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?"
Ge 3:2 And the woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;
Ge 3:3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ’You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die.’"
Ge 3:4 And the serpent said to the woman, "You surely shall not die!
Ge 3:5 "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
Ge 3:6 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 desirable to make [one] wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.
Though not 100% true men and women are tempted in different ways.
Eve was tricked into sin. Men don’t get tricked into sin, they charge headlong into it.
“She saw that it was good for food.”
How? There are a lot of things growing around here, we don’t be eating.
The devil ate some, and didn’t die from touching it. When that happened the woman had an "aha" moment, but it was a moment of deception.
Eve was tempted with a better life. Men are tempted with passing pleasures.
Men fall for instant gratification women fall for relationships.
Eve was tempted with life elevation, men get tempted with flesh elevation.
Eve was talked into trouble, men talk themselves into trouble. Ladies be careful who you let have your ear. Be careful what television you watch, what books you read.
2. Eve’s Tears
What horror and pain was hers to have a child murdered. What a double horror to know that it was one of her children that had killed another.
She lost one child to murder, another to banishment. God didn’t practice eye for an eye, He only instituted it to try and restrain the evil in men’s hearts. In fact He bent over backwards to be kind to Cain, first of all because He is merciful, and secondly, perhaps, in deference to what Adam and Eve were going through.
Php 2:27 For indeed he was sick nigh unto death: but God had mercy on him; and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.
Sometimes God spreads the rain of sorrow around in our lives, sometimes it is best to let a lot come at once. God knows what we can bear, and is sensitive to what we are going through, we see this in the opening chapter of the bible and all the way through it.
Some people have more troubling rain than others:
"I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish he didn't trust me so much."
— Mother Teresa
All mothers know experientially a season of weeping, that season is especially sad if it connected to personal failure.
In college one of my professors told of a woman who let her small child out in the back yard, but didn’t check to make sure the gate was closed on the swimming pool. The child went into the pool area, fell in, and drowned.
She struggled with grief and condemnation, until her pastor helped her realize she was only guilty of having a faulty memory. Eve could only wish that was all she was guilty of. There will be tears in life, better that they aren't the tears of regret. Those are the most bitter to take, and those are probably the kind Eve cried.
One son killed another, this would have never happened if I hadn’t....
Every mom/parent struggles with their failures as an example.
Often the mistakes of a parent show up in ripples in their children's lives. We can cause a cascading chain of events that can span generations. But here is some really good news:
Ex 20:5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God [am] a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth [generation] of them that hate me;
The curse is for 3 or four generations but the blessing is for a thousand:
De 7:9 "Know therefore that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments;
We can start ripples of pain, or ripples of blessings. A chain of cascading events that bring sorrow or a chain of cascading events that bring blessing. In all likelihood we do both. May God help us to keep the negative ones to a minimum.
I am convinced she and Adam were both under a horrible weight of condemnation when Cain killed Able.
I think it was worse for Eve. Mothers have a stronger connection to their children.
When a child is born the mother has already had 9 months of getting acquainted.
They were children she had spent months being physically sick and uncomfortable to be able to have. She paid to have those babies, but like most mothers she probably didn’t complain much about the cost.
Joh 16:21 "Whenever a woman is in travail she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she remembers the anguish no more, for joy that a child has been born into the world.
A child that made her stop breathing every time it stopped breathing.
A child that kept her up at night. Those tears never end for a mother.
Today we honor mother’s for all we have put them through, we thank them for the tears they have cried in our behalf.
3. Eve’s testimony
First of all it is a testimony of warning: Don't do what I have done.
There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one
Oh mother tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Sun
Well, I got one foot on the platform
The other foot on the train
I'm goin' back to New Orleans
To wear that ball and chain
Well, there is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one
Secondly it is a testimony of God’s goodness:
She didn’t go looking for God, God came looking for her.
When we were at out worst He was at His best.
Adam and Eve were hiding from God, but God sought them out.
“Adam where are you”
There is a song that goes:
He came down to my level
When I couldn't get up to His
With a strong arm He lifted me up
To show me what livin' is
He'll come down to your level if you'll open up the door
He wants to make your life worth livin'
That's what he came down for
Her testimony is that God will pick you up and love you His best, when you have been your worst.
He covered their nakedness. With the skins of animals He created. I don't think God liked killing things, and in no greater way could He communicate the cost sin brings with it.
Eve's testimony is that God covered her shame. That my friends is the message of gospel. Our Father hides our failures in His love, - if you will let Him.
