10/19/22

Last week in Wednesday's Bible Study, I said that if I were the caretaker of the Garden of Eden and there was a tree that I was told to avoid, the first thing I’d do is chop the dang thing down! But, someone pointed out, the first man and woman probably didn’t pay attention to it. There were plenty of other trees from which to eat, and their days were probably busy tending and keeping other parts of the garden. It’s possible they took no notice of the forbidden tree . . . until it was brought to their attention.

Which makes sense. We probably go through life bombarded with possibilities to sin that we would never notice . . . until the tempter comes along. “What about THIS,” the tempter says with a flourish, “have you ever thought about this?”

Well, no. Not until you brought it up.

Irish author Oscar Wilde famously said, “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give in to it.” That, by the way, did not work out very well for him! AND it’s certainly not the way those created in the image of God should deal with temptation.

At the beginning of chapter 3, we find the first couple busy doing whatever it is that the first couple did, when a talking serpent slides up to the woman (she’s not named until verse 20, but for the sake of simplicity, I’ll go ahead and call her Eve). James Weldon Johnson, in his wonderful collection of poems, God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, describes it like this:

Then pretty soon along came Satan.
Old Satan came like a snake in the grass
to try out his tricks on the woman.
I imagine I can see Old Satan now
a-sidling up to the woman.
I imagine the first word Satan said was:
Eve, you’re surely good looking. . .

Johnson’s taking a little license there, to be sure! But the serpent does manage to awaken vanity in Eve’s heart.

Look at the way the temptation works: First, the serpent begins by planting doubt in Eve’s mind, “Did God say…” Second, the character of God is questioned when the serpent ignores the generosity of God and focuses on the single prohibition: “Did God say you shall not eat from any tree in the garden?” In response, Eve quotes the word of God, but she muddles it up: “We may eat of the trees in the Garden (already she’s left off “freely eat” and “from every tree”), but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” God didn’t say anything about not touching it. It may be that part of tending and keeping the garden was tending and keeping that tree, so they would have had to touch it - just not eat from it.

Having engaged Eve in conversation, having planted doubt about who God is and what God has said, the serpent now goes in for the kill: “You will not die [a direct contradiction]; for God knows [the tempter is suddenly an expert on God!] that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God [the irony is they were already like God - the serpent isn’t offering them anything they don’t already have], knowing good and evil.” The tempter awakens Eve’s vanity by saying God is keeping her from being all that she can be!

The tempter succeeds in painting the prohibition of God as a limitation on human possibilities. I believe that’s one of the tempter’s most successful temptations: “I know the Bible says I shouldn’t, but I have to do this to be a fulfilled person. I gotta be me!” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some variation of that . . .

But to be truly and fully human is to listen to and obey the command of God. After all, God created us. It isn’t that God wants us to obey him out of some divine ego-trip; God created us and knows what makes us fully human. So, when God says “Thou shalt not,” it isn’t that God is being stingy or petty. God knows. God is the expert. Don’t eat the dang fruit!

But, even before she eats the fruit, the temptation has done its damage. The woman sees God in a different light. She sees the fruit in a different light. She sees the serpent in a different light (remember, she was supposed to rule over it, not listen to it!). She sees her life in a different light. And when she sees all this, her faith in God is shattered. She doubts God, and that is the first sin. Taking and eating the fruit . . . that’s just the confirmation of what’s already happened in her heart.

The tempter has been at work for thousands of years and is an expert in what he does. When he “sidles” alongside you, suggesting something you’ve never considered before, don’t even listen to him. Don’t entertain it. Actually, Eve responded to the temptation the same way Jesus responded to Satan in the wilderness: she quoted God’s word. However, unlike Jesus, she misquoted it, allowing the tempter a foothold in her heart. Had she quoted God accurately, shut the serpent up and gone about her business, we might still be in the Garden!

This is one reason why Bible Study is so important! We need to know the Word of God! We need to know what we believe, so when the tempter comes along, we can decisively deal with him. I hope you’ll join us this week as we read Genesis 3, and learn the consequences of not dealing decisively with temptation.

Blessings!
Pastor Terry