Beginnings # 2
I invite you back to the Book of Beginnings this morning! I’ll be speaking to you from Genesis 3 today.
The Snake in the Grass - Speaking the Lies We Want to Believe
A friend picked up his 3 yr. old son from Christian Preschool. As they rode in the car, the Dad was talking about the fun things they could do in the Fall; walking in the colorful woods, getting pumpkins, going apple picking. When he mentioned apples, his little boy interrupted him with some urgency, "No, Dad, we can’t pick apples. That’s what the lady in the Bible did and God was really mad at her for doing it!" I hope that your understanding of Genesis 3 is a little more sophisticated than that’s child’s! This chapter lays a foundation for understanding sin, judgment, and human responsibility and, just for the record, it’s not about apple picking!
The question that I’m asked more than any other is - why does God allow all the suffering in this world?
It is a reasonable question! Let’s give it some context.
Why do friends become sworn enemies over a misunderstanding?
Why do kings resort to arms and kill young men and women in wars that devastate nations leave behind bitter seeds that grow into war in the next generation?
Why do pro athletes choose to sexually exploit naive teenage girls who are dazzled by their star power?
Why did you let your disappointment with someone migrate into a murderous rage?
Why do a man and woman who stood before God pledging fidelity and love to each other tear each other apart in divorce court?
Why do children suffer for the sins of their fathers?
Why did God allow Satan to exist?
The problem of evil’s origin is as old as humanity. Genesis 3 does not solve that problem! The Bible makes no attempt to explain it. Evil is presented as being real and present, as something we must deal with in our lives and as the enemy of God and good! What this text does talk about is CHOICE and CONSEQUENCE. Somehow the riddle of evil is partially explained by something called FREE WILL, but that is more implied than explained. As we read the text for today’s message, I’d like to steer you to ponder how it answers these two questions:
How does sin enter the world and our individual lives?
What can we do to overcome the power of sin and return to the purpose for which God created us- which are to know Him and to live to give glory to Him?
Take a look - Genesis 2:25 - 3:24 (Reading)
It is, at once, a simple and complex story. Told simply, it is about choice - to obey God or to reject Him in favor of our own autonomy; and the consequence of that choice.
There are four characters in God’s story about the entrance of evil into the world.
First we are introduced to Adam and Eve, the first parents, who are described with a phrase interesting for the symbolism in it. "They were naked and without shame." Think of a 2 year that delights in losing the restraint of his clothing before bath time. He does not care if there are guests in the house, whether he smells good, if his hair is a mess, or that he’s naked. He runs with abandon through the house. He has no self-consciousness and we often envy his innocence, don’t we?
Adam and Eve are child-like in their innocence. They live openly with each other and walk with God - needing no coverings - physical, spiritual, or emotional - because of their purity of heart, motive, and will. They have nothing to hide!
Incidentally, to misread this passage as somehow condemning human sexuality is a mistake. That is because we confuse nakedness with eroticism. It is almost impossible given our sensuality and highly sexualized culture to separate "naked" from "sex," but we must if we don’t want to read meaning into the text that is not there.
Next, we meet the snake. Imagine walking along, minding your own business, when a snake starts talking. Moses doesn’t tell how a snake talks! But that’s how the story is written and we accept it by faith. This account is built around a smart, talking snake. It is the result of much later interpretations of this story that we automatically read ’Satan’ for ’snake.’ It may will have been the Devil that manifested as the snake, but Moses doesn’t say that! He says that a snake talked to Eve! The only descriptive word for the snake is that it was "more crafty" than the other animals. Paul calls the serpent who deceived Eve ’cunning’ in 2 Cor. 11.3. The serpent became a universal symbol for the Devil later in Scripture and so we read that meaning back into the text as part of our understanding. However, if we do so, we obscure the meaning of the text which is about understanding the power of our choices even when we think we are pursuing something wonderful. IF we read the Devil into this story, we more easily fix responsibility on someone else, namely the Devil!
It is too easy, too convenient, to pass off responsibility for our moral choices onto the Devil and avoid dealing with our own sinfulness.
Does he tempt? To be sure.
Is he clever? Most certainly.
Does he make us disobey God? No! We choose to sin, just as did Adam and Eve!
And we meet the LORD God. Note that the word LORD appears in the text as all caps. Where you read that in your Bible it denotes something different in the Hebrew text. The Hebrew YHWH, God’s personal name, appears there. Not a title, not a descriptive word, but His Name; the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, appears without its own vowels, and its exact pronunciation is debated (Jehovah, Yehovah, Jahweh, Yahweh). The Hebrew text does insert the vowels for adonay, and Jewish students and scholars read adonay whenever they see the Tetragrammaton. The divine name YHWH appears only in the Bible. God chose it as His personal name by which He related specifically to His chosen or covenant people. (1)
Yahweh, Lord God, comes each evening to commune with Adam and Eve. He is not just their Creator, the Divine Boss or Stage Manager. He is Yahweh, their Friend. We are shown this so we can see the monstrousness of their betrayal of His loving care by their choice to become independent and disboedient. He makes relatively few demands of them, but promises that their lives will end if they disobey. When they do, the Creator, Yahweh, pronounces that the earth is cursed and close fellowship between Himself and the Creation is broken.
There are so many truths we can take from this passage, but I’d like to focus on the snake and the appeal he made.
Why? In 2 Cor 11:3 Paul warns we have to be wary of conversations with snakes!
He writes, " I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ."
In this world, those conversations abound. We don’t always see the snake for who it is, but we often taste the same kind of consequence in the end!
The teenage kid who is looking for acceptance among her peers starts attending the parties. She knows others get drunk and stoned there but she’s sure she can just ’enjoy the music.’ Which she does, at first. Then somebody notices she doesn’t have a beer and presses one on her. She really doesn’t like beer, but "all the other kids (well, that’s what the snake says) are having one, and it’s just one, and who gets drunk on one beer?" A few parties later, she finds herself so intoxicated she can’t who she did what with and she’s filled with shame. Of course the snake is right there to remind her that she feels less guilty with another beer or two... And another alcoholic is born!
The young husband is struggling with lots of pressure at work and at home, too. His wife is pre-occupied with the two kids. They haven’t been intimate for weeks because of babies, fatigue, and pressure. He knows pornography is a fantasy but somehow that flash of skin on the screen relieves the pressure, just a little. The snake’s voice says, "it’s not like you’re in a strip club. It’s just a picture on a monitor." Weeks later, after he’s spent a whole evening alone with his computer, he feels degraded and dirty, more alone than ever. And the snake’s voice reminds him he feels so much better when he’s chatting with some woman who really understands him at that porn site....
The man in business is looking at the checkbook. He’s not getting the contracts others get and he knows that part of the reason is that his prices are a little higher. They are higher, not because he’s greedy, but because he pays the right taxes on his employees, uses quality materials, and doesn’t pad the hours he bills to his clients. He could close the gap if he would just bend a little in his integrity. Somehow the snake shows up and very quietly points out the place where he could hide a few extra charges, cut corners, and get the deal. ’That’s just the game everybody plays with a wink and nod’ is what he hears. A couple of years later he can’t remember the day he wrote an honest contract. He hates himself, but feels better when he takes a look at the new house his new-found prosperity has enabled him to buy.
Let’s see how the snake operates to see what we can learn about choices that break our fellowship with God.
1. The snake raises questions about God’s command.
"Did God really say, ’You must eat from any tree in the garden?’"
The implication of the question is clear. God is unfair. God deprives you of things that are rightfully yours. God is unreasonable.
Eve’s first mistake is in her misquote in her reply to the snake!
Take a look at what God actually had told Adam and Eve. (Read 2:15-17)
Now look at how Eve reports God’s words... 3:2-3
She makes God seem a little overbearing and expands his words. God commanded, "Don’t eat it." She adds, "Don’t touch it."
What an effective tactic. If we start to misquote and question God, we are entering into a dangerous place.
2. The snake draws her along into questioning God’s integrity and promise.
He’s bolder now as she is engaged. "You won’t really die. That’s just an empty threat, God’s way of keeping you in line and holding out on you." That’s flat out saying, "God’s a liar."
The snake offers his own enticement now. "You can be your own god, choosing your own destiny."
What an alluring lie even for us today. Many is the person who has wrecked his or her life and relationship with God because he has believed the snake’s assertion that disobedience has no consequences! Eve made a choice and when she did, the snake disappeared, leaving her with the consequences. Note, the snake never told Eve to eat the fruit, nor did he even prompt her to do so. He just told lies. She made her own decision!
The most distressing part of the story comes next! (Re-read vv. 6)
What on earth was Adam thinking? We’ll never know this side of Heaven! Did Eve recount the snake’s conversation and convince Adam? The result, whatever the cause, was that he, too, made a choice to commandeer his own destiny in disboedience to God, His Friend and Father.
What a sad line follows - "then the eyes of both were opened and they realized they were naked."
Innocence was lost. They felt shame and guilt and the alienation of sin! They made clumsy attempts with fig leaves to hide their shame, but it wasn’t very effective. How do we know? When God came for His evening visit, they hid! Adam sad response to God’s voice is, "I heard you, God, in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid."
Alienation from God is always the result of the choice to become one’s own god for as Jesus said, "no one can serve two masters."
Beyond that, there disobedience had terrible consequences which we feel to this day!
A. The snake was debased and degraded! Let’s just leave that stand as it is stated.
B. The woman was told, (re-read v. 16)
God’s design was that man and woman would live as partners, enjoying the blessing of children. Now those very things would be a source of pain. As a woman bore her children, she would do in pain. Is this speaking only the physical pain of childbirth? No, though that is certainly in sight. A child who is a delight to a mother’s heart is also a source of greater ache as she sees that child distance himself from her as he grows into adulthood. No one feels the anguish of separation more keenly than a mother. Just as she had torn herself from God’s fathering, now her children would tear themselves away from her!
Moreover, she would now live serve a man who dominated her. The partnership was destroyed! Women have lived under the cruel domination of men for milliennia, in every culture. Sadly, even Christian men have misused their responsibility for leadership in the family as an excuse to dominate and exploit. It is only in Christ that women are restored to their place as partners. In Christ, the domination is replaced with mutual submission to the Lordship of Jesus and a place of shared spiritual gifts in His service.
C. The man’s consequence was most significant.
Because of Adam’s disobedience, God says that ALL of Creation was marred. Work would not be a creative act that always yeilded productive results. There would be frustrations of missed hopes and broken promises. Sweat would not bring about richness of harvest. And ultimately, death would result because the man chose to reject God and become his own god!
1 Cor. 15:22 tells us, "For as in Adam all die........" and I am so very glad the thought is not concluded there.... "so in Christ all will be made alive!"
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CHOICE - to live, to die; that is what God gave Adam and Eve. That choice is what He gives us. There was a cunning and crafty snake that suggested they could ignore God’s Word with no consequence. There is still a snake voice, but we can silence it! How?
Know God’s Word.
Jesus silenced the voices of temptation by speaking the Word of God. You and I can, too.
What has God said?
Do you know the Word?
Are you REGULARLY into the Word?
Are you a good student of the Word?
Are you seeking to conform yourself to the Word or do you study looking for loopholes?
Trust God’s goodness.
Eve began to doubt that God’s command was for her own good.
If you doubt that God is good, you will not serve Him faithfully. If you believe God is a tyrant, that He plays favorites, that He cares little for you, will you give Him your life? Not a chance. Circumstances will come to each one of us that tests our trust, when His goodness is obscured by the trials and tests. That is the moment of choice! If we surrender our demand about ’why’ and adopt Jesus’ prayer, "Father, not my will, your’s be done." the snake’s voice is silenced.
Take hold the covering of life provided for you by God.
At the end of the story, we read that "God made garments of skins for Adam and his wife and clothed them." This taking of life for a covering foreshadows the sacrifices that provide for the covering of sin. First in the Law of Moses, there was the system of sacrifices, sin offerings that brought temporary forgiveness for disobedience. Year after year, those offerings were presented to God. In Hebrews 9:12-15 there is this great promise and explanation:
Once for all time he took blood into that Most Holy Place, but not the blood of goats and calves. He took his own blood, and with it he secured our salvation forever. Under the old system, the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a young cow could cleanse people’s bodies from ritual defilement.
Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our hearts from deeds that lead to death so that we can worship the living God. For by the power of the eternal Spirit, Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins. That is why he is the one who mediates the new covenant between God and people, so that all who are invited can receive the eternal inheritance God has promised them. For Christ died to set them free from the penalty of the sins they had committed under that first covenant.
Evil is real. Sin is not just a mistake, it’s a choice that destroys.
Where do you stand today?
Are you building the Kingdom of God as you stand in faith, restored to the image of God? OR
are you listening to the snake’s voice, fooling yourself into believing that you can live as your own god and not taste the consequences of your sin?
Know the Word. Trust God’s goodness. Accept God’s covering.
and with faith, begin to live to please Him. The result will be life in fullness NOW and life eternal in the world to come.
AMEN.
1. 1 Vine, W. 1997, Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament words (Vol. 1, Page 140). Thomas Nelson: Nashville
Jerry D. Scott © 2003
