Can’t See the Forest for the Tree
I’m here to tell you, Adam and Eve had it made. They lived in a perfect world
created by the hand of God. They had unlimited access to God and full enjoyment
with only one stipulation. Adam and Eve could eat the fruit of any of the trees in the
garden, except one. Let’s look at God’s instructions to Adam in Genesis 2:15-17:
“The Lord God put the man in the garden of Eden to care for it and work it. The
Lord God commanded him, ‘You may eat the fruit from any tree in the garden, but
you must not eat the fruit from the tree which gives the knowledge of good and evil.
If you ever eat fruit from that tree, you will die!’”
Of course there had to be the proverbial fly in the ointment. There was also a sneaky
serpent in the garden, and he was up to no good, as usual. Look at what Genesis
3:1-5 tells us:
“The snake was craftier than any of the other animals that the Lord God had made.
One day it came to the woman and asked, ‘Did God tell you not to eat from any tree
in the garden?’
The woman answered, God said we could eat fruit from any tree in the garden,
except the one in the middle. He told us not to eat fruit from that tree or even to
touch it. If we do, we will die.
‘No, you won’t!’ the snake replied. ‘God understands what will happen on the day
you eat fruit from that tree. You will see what you have done, and you will know the
difference between right and wrong, and you will be like God.’”
Isn’t that just like Satan? Always making things sound good. Asking questions,
making you doubt. And of course Satan is always full of promises......"oh, it’s only
one drink"..."c’mon, everybody else is doing it"...."it will make you feel good." It’s
kind of amazing how not much has changed.
Let’s take a closer look at these words of scripture. They raise a good many
questions, questions I will try to answer here today.
Why did God put Adam to work in the Garden? (Gen. 2:15)
He put him there to dress the garden and keep it, making horticulture, or gardening,
the first kind of employment on record. Sure, God made all the plants in the garden,
but they would need attention later to continue to grow and thrive. Plus, even in this
state of perfection, Adam wouldn’t have been happy for long if he was doing
nothing. In fact, none of us were put into this world to be idle. God gave Adam
work to do which contributed to his happiness.
Why did God make a tree (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) just to
tempt Adam? (Gen. 2:17) Was this tree really necessary? Yes, I think it was,
because for Adam to have free will, there had to be a choice - an opportunity to not
choose what God desires for us. If there is never a command, never something
forbidden, then there can never be choice, and God wants our love and obedience to
Him to be the love and obedience of choice. Look at the advantages Adam had: he
only had one way that he could sin. We have countless ways; there are many trees
of temptation in our lives. But Adam had only one.
How could he know his relationship with God was of his own free will if he didn’t
have the choice to disobey? When God made everything He declared it good. Adam
was surrounded by only good. But he had a temptation to deal with. God gave
Adam a very simple, clear choice. “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden;
BUT of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day
that you eat of it you shall die.” I think we all know the choice that Adam made and
it wasn’t the correct one.
Why did Satan choose to launch his attack against Eve? (Gen 3:1)
Satan was watching Adam and Eve (just like he watches us today), and he saw that
Adam probably didn’t do a very good job of communicating to Eve what God had
told him. Strother Martin, as the warden in “Cool Hand Luke” said, “What we have
here is failure to communicate.” That failure by Adam made Eve vulnerable to
temptation.
Since she did not receive the command to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil directly from God, like Adam, the serpent decided that Eve was the
weakest link. That’s how Satan works. He attacks a chain at it’s weakest link.
That’s how he got to Adam.
Wasn’t the woman shocked by a talking serpent? (Gen. 3:2)
We don’t know. It doesn’t appear that way. When the serpent asks Eve, “Did God
say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?”, Eve simply answers. No sign
of disbelief or amazement. We don’t know if the other animals talked or if the
serpent had talked to Adam or Eve before, but Eve responds by misquoting God’s
command to Adam; you shall not eat it and you shall die are close but maybe she is
a little flustered because then she puts words in God’s mouth by adding nor shall
you touch it.
Then the serpent kicks it up a notch when he suggests that God is too restrictive &
unreasonable. Did God say you shouldn’t touch any tree? It seems he’s awfully big
on restrictions. You’ve got all these beautiful trees, but you’re not to touch any of
them. Some Jewish writers . . . state that as soon as the woman had asserted this,
the serpent pushed her against the tree and said, See, you have touched it, and are
still alive; you may therefore safely eat of the fruit, for surely you shall not die.
Isn’t Satan still using these tactics today?
Adam and Eve were surrounded by good. The trick of Satan was to get them to
desire more. Isn’t that what he does with us also? He attempts to get you to see
some value in something outside of the goodness of God. It may be a physical thing
that you seek satisfaction from, it may be position or self importance outside of who
we are in God. Satan tries to get us to claim independence from God, so that we can
be our own god, bowing to no one but ourselves.
Satan also tries to make us question God, to make us skeptical of Him. Here is the
father of lies calling God a liar, saying in verse 4, "You will not die." He is trying to
get us to doubt the word of God. He is saying we cannot really trust God. "Don’t
worry about it, God is just making an idle threat."
Don’t we hear that today? If God loves us He will forgive us. He won’t really
punish us for our sins. He’s like that loving grandfather who talks tough but is really
just a big ol’ teddy bear.
People need to know that God loves them. But they also need to know that God is
the originator of tough love. He loves us, but He is to be taken seriously. We cannot
ignore Him and His word. One day all will stand before Him to be judged.
If we look at verse 5, Satan did give a half truth. He said, “...your eyes will be
opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Their eyes would be
opened, but they would be different than God. Movie (Jack Nicholson) "You want
the truth, you can’t handle the truth." God can handle the truth about sin, we can’t.
Once we knew of sin we were overcome with it. And God knew that.
Why is it, when we are denied something, we want it more? (Gen 3:6)
Adam and Eve had this forest of trees from which they could have eaten, but Satan
got Eve focused on the tree that was off limits, and that was their downfall. God
told Adam, "...of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in
the day that you eat of it you shall die.” Adam passed along this information to Eve.
Now Eve may not have been given complete or accurate information and therefore
was tricked into eating the fruit from this tree, but Adam knew better.
Eve gives him some of the fruit and, in direct disobedience to God, knowing word
for word what God had told him, ate it. What could be the harm in just a little bite??
After all - who would ever know? It’s the little secret sins we think we can get away
with, isn’t it?
Why was “their eyes being opened” and knowing they were naked bad?
(Gen. 3:7)
Well, it’s not that their eyes were literally “opened”. Their eyes being opened meant
that they now had the “knowledge of good and evil” Satan had tempted Eve with.
They had lost their innocence, their sound judgment, and were now confused and
shamed by knowing they had disobeyed God. Herein lies Satan’s half-truth. Their
eyes were opened, BUT only to the shame and grief, and in their shame and grief,
Adam and Eve felt “naked”. No, not naked in the sense of no clothes but in the
realization that they had been stripped of all the honors and joys of paradise and
exposed to the miseries and ramifications of an angry and disrespected God.
Feeling naked, they then made garments of fig leaves for themselves.
What does this passage of Scripture say to us today?
People often say that the Bible is outdated and has no relevance in today’s modern
world. Of course, I disagree. I often say that you can find the answer to ANY
problem that life throws at you today in the Bible.
This scripture reminds us that Satan is still attacking us today, using the same old
tactics: lies, trickery, half-truths, attacking us at our weak points, trying to take us
out. And, of course, we still fall for them.
Fortunately, as it tell us in Romans 8:31, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
If you look just a few verses further on from our Scripture for today at Gen. 3:21,
you’ll see that God fixes Adam and Eve’s pitiful attempts to cover themselves and
makes garments for them. God then, as He still does today, looks out for us and
gives us 2nd, 3rd, 500th chances. He knew Adam and Eve couldn’t deal with Satan
correctly and we can’t take on Satan by ourselves, so He helped Adam and Eve and
looked beyond our naiveté and futile attempts to save ourselves and rescued us by
giving His only Son to die for our sins.
A man purchased a white mouse to use as food for his pet snake. He dropped the
unsuspecting mouse into the snake’s glass cage, where the snake was sleeping in a
bed of sawdust. The tiny mouse had a serious problem on his hands. At any moment
he could be swallowed alive. Obviously, the mouse needed to come up with a
brilliant plan.
What did the terrified creature do? He quickly set up work covering the snake with
sawdust chips until it was completely buried. With that, the mouse apparently
thought he had solved his problem.
The solution, however, came from outside. The man took pity on the naive little
mouse and removed him from the cage. No matter how hard we try to cover or deny
our sinful nature, it’s fool’s work. Sin will eventually awake from sleep and shake off
its cover. Were it not for the saving grace of the Master’s hand, sin would eat us
alive.
It was a tree that did in Adam and Eve back in the garden and allowed sin to gain
it’s hold on us. A tree that caused the death of mankind. But thanks to another tree,
the tree that Jesus was nailed to for our sins, we have been set free, sin and death
have been defeated.
Let us pray:
We listen for your voice, Holy God, amid the clamor of a world that scarcely
notices this season of self-examination. Too long we have heeded the serpents
among us whose craftiness beckons us away from faith and faithfulness. We delight
in forbidden fruits and complain when this food turns sour. Lead us through the
wilderness of our own creation, that we may once more find our way to you and
rediscover your steadfast love. Amen.
