Anatomy of a Temptation

It's great to see all of you here today. We do have some congratulations to deliver a recent marriage. Daniel and Rebecca Brown were married on January 31st. Why don't you guys stand.

Let's be, praying for them and definitely rejoicing with them over this and how appropriate, given what we learned last week, from the end of Genesis 2, looking at the first marriage in, in human history and that tradition continues and is appreciated especially in the church, because of how marriage points us to the relationship between Christ and His church. And may their marriage and may all of our marriages point to Christ and His grace and His eternal relationship with the church.

Let me invite you, this morning to turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 3. Genesis chapter 3 for our time of study in God's word.

this morning, we're doing a series to the book of Genesis, and as we continue in our study of this book, we come This morning, the Genesis chapter 3 and verse 1, and my goal today is to try to cover verses 1 through 5. And if you want to give a title to the message this morning, it would be The Anatomy of a Temptation. The anatomy of a temptation. when I was in the 7th grade, I think it was, in our science class, our biology class, we dissected frogs.

How many of you ever did that in school? OK. our teacher, I still remember the day, brought in, 25 gallon buckets, and opened them up, and each of us students were given a tray and we had to come up to the buckets and Pull a frog from the formaldehyde solution in those buckets and put it in our tray and then go back to our seat. I remember feeling horror.

mixed with feelings of revulsion at the sight of the frogs. I had no desire to cut into, the frog that was in front of me, but our teacher assured me and all of us that there was educational value in, doing so. And so I and my fellow students cut into those dead frogs. We dismembered, we located and we labeled.

Internal organs and muscles and skeletal features. There was nothing pleasant about the task from beginning to end, but we learned a lot and it turned out my teacher was right. Not a day has gone by since then that I have not drawn deeply from the reservoir of knowledge that I gained. From what I learned in dissecting that frog.

I'm kidding. This morning, I feel a little bit like my science teacher must have felt many years ago when he called upon us to dissect those frogs. Today, we're going to be dissecting a temptation. The first temptation in human history.

This will not be a pleasant task for us this morning. What we're going to see in our passage today is more repulsive than anything that one would see in a dead frog. It will make you sad and it might even make you cry, what we see today. But we do this today because this is in God's word, and we also do this today.

Because there is immense educational, practical, and spiritual value in us dissecting this temptation that is being put before us today. What we will learn by looking at this temptation is not just something that might come in handy at some point in the next 10 years. What we're gonna learn in dissecting this temptation will come in handy multiple times every single day of our life, including today. We all experience many temptations, multiple times every day.

tens of thousands of times over the course of our lifetime of walking with the Lord and the basic components of every temptation you face in your life, all of those components are found inside of the temptation that we will begin dissecting today. In this Genesis series so far, we've spent 9 Sunday mornings enjoying the growing perfections of a pre-fall world. At the end of chapter 1, God looks upon all of his creation and says, behold, it is very good. Near the end of Genesis chapter 2, Adam is looking at the last thing God created, the last being that God created.

And is essentially declaring her to be very good, reciting a poem in praise of her. And so we put the end of chapter 1 and the end of chapter 2 together and we find both the heart of God and the heart of man in agreement over the goodness of it all. God is thrilled, Adam is thrilled. Everything is off to a great start.

These first two chapters have been so amazingly good that if we didn't know any better, we would excitedly turn the page to chapter 3 expecting more wonders and surprises and more excited agreements between God and man over the goodness of it all. And so we turn to Genesis 3 and begin to read and we're stunned by what it records. One writer has called Genesis 3 the most tragic chapter in the Bible. Chapter 3 contains the account of the fall of man into sin and the curses that follow, and much that we find here provides ample explanation for the world in which we find ourselves today.

The honeymoon is barely started and tragedy strikes here in chapter 3. In the last verse of chapter 3, God is driving Adam from the garden. And seeking to block his access to the tree of life, how far they fell, how far we have fallen, and it started with this temptation that we will be dissecting today. As we have studied chapters one and two of Genesis, we've been treated to some amazing glimpses of, of God, and I think it's important for us to just take a little bit of time to review those glimpses of God, especially as it relates to man.

this is important because in our passage today, we observe what Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes as the first conversation about God in human history. And things are said about God in this conversation that are the last thing that we would have expected given the contents of chapters one and two. We really won't appreciate the full awfulness of the impugning of God's character that happens in this conversation unless we take a little bit of time to just review the goodness of God, as it has already been displayed.

We've learned already and we have seen that God is extravagantly generous.

He provides Adam with every tree that is pleasing to the eye and that is good for food. He provides a river that flows from Eden to provide ample water for man and for all of the life that is in the garden. This river branches out from the garden to places where gold and other precious metals await discovery. We have also seen that God is clearly not small-minded and jealous in the small-minded sense and petty.

At one point, we see that God has Adam all to himself. But God concludes that Adam needs someone other than himself for fellowship and companionship. God actually sees this need in man before man sees his own need. And so God has to help Adam to see his need and God then creates Eve.

And brings her to the man, and Adam is stunned and delighted by this gift that God has made for him and Adam is delighted and God himself pronounces it all to be very good. On top of this, we've seen the, probably the most amazing thing of all about God, and that is that he is willing to share his image and his likeness with, with man. He actually makes man in his own image and his own likeness so that man can resemble God in amazing and powerful and impressive ways. As a part of that, he gives to man the right to rule over the animal creation.

Man will be an impressive creature in his ability to rule over The sea monsters and all of the animals on planet Earth, God Himself will be a respecter of man's rule. We've already seen that when Adam names each animal that God brings to him, God never overrules Adam. Whatever name Adam gives to each animal, God begins to call that animal by that name. God respects Adam's decisions.

He doesn't put Adam's choices down. We've also seen that God is a God who lovingly directs Adam. He commands Adam and Eve to be fruitful and to multiply and to fill the earth, and God tells Adam what to do with regard to the trees that are in the garden. There's a positive command, and a prohibition and a warning, and it's all amazingly clear and an expression of his love.

In Genesis 2:16 and 17, look at what the text says. Then the Lord God commanded the man, saying, from any tree of the garden, you may freely eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it, you will surely die. God is causing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to grow in the garden. He puts it there to serve as a means by which Adam, by abstaining from it, can demonstrate his love for God and also his humility and his contentment and his trust in God.

God is essentially saying to Adam, Adam, there is one tree of all of these trees that represents something that is my exclusive possession. The knowledge of good and evil. Everything else is yours. Don't eat of this tree, but I am insisting that you eat sumptuously of every other tree.

In these chapters, we don't just see a God who is good, but amazingly good, a God who is full of surprises and who would have left man dazzled and pleased at every turn. If man had not chosen to rebel against him, this is the God that the serpent and Eve have a conversation about at the beginning of Genesis 3. In this, what we call the first temptation in human history. Let me read this passage to you today.

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, as God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden. And the woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, 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, or you will die. And the serpent said to the woman, you surely will not die, for God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be open, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

This is the word of God, and may God help us to understand His word.

Today. We're gonna observe as we look at these verses 7 developments that are entailed in this first temptation in human history and we're just gonna watch it unfold and observe what we can and see what God has to say to us through this. Notice the first development. And that is that evidently Satan, who is behind all of this, makes use of the most clever animal in the garden.

Satan makes use of the most clever animal, says in verse one, now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. I think it's good for us to point out that, as I just said, that the devil is the one who is behind all of this, even though he is not explicitly mentioned. This is confirmed in other passages of scripture, for example, in the book of Revelation chapter 20 verse 2, John speaks of the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan. So clearly, Satan, the devil is at work.

in tempting Eve here through the serpent. This is not merely an animal acting, but the devil acting through this, serpent. You'll also notice looking at the passage that the serpent is described as crafty. And not just crafty, but more crafty than any other beast of the field.

The new American Standard uses the word crafty to translate the Hebrew word that is used here, and it makes it sound. negative, but actually this is not the Hebrew word is not a negative word automatically. At worst, it is a morally neutral word. In the book of Proverbs, I think it's used 8 times and all 8 times it's positive.

It speaks of the prudent man. Write down Proverbs 13:16, where Solomon says, every prudent man acts with knowledge, and that word prudent is the same Hebrew word, and then he says, but a fool displays folly. So he's using prudent to describe someone who is the opposite of a fool. So in Proverbs, it's used positively.

What's interesting is in the book of Job, this word is used twice, and both of these times in Job, it is used negatively to speak of someone who is crafty. so just understand that this can go either way, but it's probably best to understand this in a morally neutral sense. The point is that of all of the animals, the serpent was the most astute, the smartest, and the most clever. The most admirable of all the animals for its intelligence.

Probably clever would be a good translation of this word. So it would figure, would it not, that Satan would use the serpent. Satan had no desire to use the dumbest animal in the garden. Yeah, I'll find the dumbest animal and use that to.

Seduce Eve. No. He uses the animal who had the reputation for being more prudent, more clever than any other beast of the field. The text also suggests that the serpent is a beast of the field, so a real animal, and being a beast of the field, it was among the animals that Adam would have named on day six of creation.

And the animal is described as a beast of the field which the Lord God had made. So this is a created beast of the field that Jehovah God had made. So we see that Satan in making use of this creature, is making use of something God had created. Satan is not original.

He creates nothing. He simply takes what God has created and uses it for his purposes against God and God's agenda. Now we know, and I'm still trying to think all of this through and figure it out. I don't have all the answers on this stuff, by any means, but While we know that this is Satan working through the serpent in our story today, we also know that the serpent is not helplessly being possessed.

Here because God judges the serpent after all is said and done, go figure. Yet the text won't let us completely separate the serpent from Satan, either. When God levels his judgments later in chapter three, he levels judgments at the serpent and stops there and doesn't then go beyond that and level judgments and curses upon Satan. Somehow in ways we don't understand, Satan's identity and the serpent's identity are bound up together, although they're not one and the same, and there's a sense in which God's judgments pronounced in chapter 3 are both judgments upon the serpent and upon Satan.

This raises a question that some of you have asked in preceding weeks and that you may be asking right now, and that is when did Satan fall? When did the fall of Satan and his angels occur? And here is the dogmatic answer that I can give to you after much research on this subject, and that is, you ready for it? The fall of Satan occurred at some point prior to Genesis 3:1.

And we know that because he shows up here tempting Eve into sin. So we have settled that huge theological issue and can now move on with all of our questions answered. so we see here guys, just in summary, Satan uses the serpent to launch his attack, and it's just like him to use the smartest and the most intelligent animal to launch his attack. Satan in his own craftiness is able to make rich use of the serpent's own cleverness in seducing Adam and Eve.

And as this temptation unfolds, there's a second development that we observe, and that is that Satan through the serpent attacks the woman first. He attacks Eve first, says in verse one, and he said, To the woman She is the one that the serpent is speaking to, and she is the one who answers what the serpent says. This is a conversation between Clearly, the two of them. The question that commentators ponder is, why would Satan through the serpent go after the woman and not the man?

Why doesn't the serpent go to Adam and tempt Adam and then through Adam get to Eve? Why instead does he go to Eve first, tempt her, and then through her get to Adam? Let me give you three reasons. There are more than these.

Let me just give you three reasons why I think Satan chooses Eve as the more ideal person to launch his assault against first. And let me tell you first of all, what it's not. let me just state up front that Satan through the serpent does not attack Eve first because she is a poor, weak woman. Because she is a female, as some writers actually suggest.

However, even though we can set that aside safely, there are some circumstantial vulnerabilities that Eve has at this point that Adam does not have, not by virtue of being a female necessarily, but just in The circumstances that they find themselves in. So let me just give you three things to think about as to why the serpent approaches Eve first. Number 1, Eve received God's revelation secondhand. Not firsthand.

Think about it. Back in chapter 2, Eve hadn't been created yet, and God speaks to Adam, and he tells Adam, prior to the creation of Eve to eat freely of the trees of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, not To eat. So any knowledge Eve would have had of these instructions and the warning would have come indirectly through Adam. This gives the serpent a little bit more leverage with her that he can possibly exploit and we see that he actually does that.

There's a 2nd reason I think that the serpent approaches Eve first, and that is that Eve is less experienced with God. Than Adam is. It's just, it is what it is. Eve has not existed as long as Adam has, and there are things that Adam has experienced with God that Eve did not experience.

Adam was created first, and he's had more experience with God than Eve has. Adam saw God make a garden for him and then put him and settle him into that garden. Adam personally heard God and he could, he could experience the heart of God as God spoke to him and said, feast sumptuously on all of the trees of the garden, but of this tree, of the knowledge of good and evil, don't eat, or on the day you do so, you will surely die. Adam had the experience of God bringing the animals one by one to him.

And asking Adam to name the animals and exercise his rule in doing so, and Adam would look at the animals and then name each one, and then God would respect the choice that Adam made and God Himself would begin to call the animal by that particular name that Adam chose. Adam also didn't even realize he needed a mate, a helper corresponding to him. God knew it, and God brought Adam to a place where Adam began to realize, I really want a helper corresponding to me, so God puts him into a deep sleep and from his side, he fashions.

He takes a rib and fashions it into a drop dead gorgeous woman and brings her to Adam, inspiring poetry from Adam as he receives this gift from God that God thought to give to him that Adam initially didn't even know that he needed.

Adam, even though this is all in sight of one day, he's had some deep experiences with God. Eve, on the other hand, missed out on everything. That I've just listed, she came after that. All she remembers is coming into consciousness and being given to Adam and hearing him recite a poem upon the site.

Of her. Eve would have heard God telling both Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and to rule over the animal creation and all of this is great. And Eve has great reason to trust God just based on her experience of God up to this point, but if you are Satan, and a part of your strategy is, first of all, to cast aspersions on God and impugn his character and to get someone that you're talking to, to believe you as you impugn God's character, You're gonna go after the one who is the least experienced with God, right?

And that's what he does with Eve.

There's a 3rd reason that I believe the serpent is approaching Eve first, and that is because he knew that she would be a powerful weapon in his hand. This is a nod to the power of Eve, not her weakness. Satan already knew. think about it.

He's already chosen the most intelligent animal. to do his work. And so he's being guided by that same shrewdness in believing that Eve would be a powerful weapon in his hand and getting to Adam and bringing him down. We know from the language of chapter 3, verse 1 and verse 4 that Satan Through the serpent is after Adam too, even though he's speaking to Eve, when you see the pronoun you used in verse 1 and 4 as the serpent is speaking, it's plural.

So he's not just trying to get Eve to, to partake. Ultimately, his agenda is to get both Adam and Eve to partake. That's his agenda. He's going after Adam, and this is his way of getting to Adam that he thinks has the potential of being most successful.

His strategy is to speak to Eve, when Eve to his side, and then through Eve because she is powerful. Get to Adam. All of us should be very challenged and instructed and sobered by this. In this case, Satan attacks Eve first as a part of his effort to get to Adam, and it just may be that when you are being assailed with temptation, you're not even the devil's primary target.

He's simply coming after you as a part of a larger strategy to ultimately bring someone else down. This can happen to men or to women. Dads, when Satan tempts you to look at pornography on the internet, it may be that he's not even primarily after you. It may be that he is after your wife and your children, and he wants you to succumb to temptation so that you can be a weapon in his hand against your wife and against your children, or at least by getting you into sin to sideline you so that he can have free run at your wife.

And at your kids, or free run at your brothers in Christ, who now are without your support and your fellowship. that they need in their battle. Women don't think that the devil is just after you. When he tempts you, he's often after your husband.

He's often after your children or the people in your life that you are called to be an example to or to minister to, and he tempts you to drag you down as a part of his effort. To get to others through you. This is why the devil attacks Eve first. This is the first prong of his strategy.

She has some circumstantial vulnerabilities, given the nature of the sequence of things, and she also is such a beautiful and powerful person in Adam's life that Satan knows that she would be the perfect means through which he can get to Adam, and he knows, I don't even need to talk to Adam. All I gotta do is win her over to my side. And my work is done. So notice what the serpent.

does next or what Satan through the serpent does next, and that is he twists God's words. He twists God's words, and he said to the woman, indeed, has God said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden? This is really interesting, the word that is, or the expression that is translated indeed. is actually difficult to translate.

Literally, the Hebrew is, it's the Hebrew word nose, OK, like the nose on my face, and then the word because. Literally, it's nose because, and in Hebrew, the word for nose is the same word for anger. Because people's nostrils would flare when they were angry. and so anger and nose were tied together.

In the Old Testament, God is long-nosed, literally, he has a long nose. In other words, it takes a lot for his nostrils to flare in, in anger. so literally, it's nose anger. Martin Luther confessed, he says, I, I have despaired of being able to translate.

This expression in this context, in a word for word sense, but he did convey this idea. Here's what he says is happening. The serpent is using the word a key, which is nose because as though to turn up his nose and jeer and scoff. In a context like this, this expression.

Has the idea of saying something with a huff or saying something with a sarcastic, angry sniff. That's what's happening here. This could be translated indeed as God said, you shall not eat from any and every tree of the garden. The Hebrew word has the idea of, of every tree, literally, but it speaks of any tree inside of that category of every.

And notice how the serpent is actually taking God's word and just twisting it. And he does this all the time. He takes God's word and then doesn't always just set it aside. He's gonna do that as the story unfolds, but initially, he just takes God's word and just twist it.

And says, Eve, is this what God said? Is this what he said? Indeed, has God said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden. What he's doing is grossly exaggerating God's prohibition, claiming that God did not allow them access to any.

Of the trees. This is a total distortion. God told Adam to feast sumptuously on every tree of the garden and to abstain from only one. The serpent is recasting God's word as you shall not eat.

Here's what God said, you shall not eat of any. Of any tree of the garden, eat of every tree of the garden, but don't eat this one. God says. The serpent sums up both commands, which was positive and negative.

He sums up both as simply one big prohibition. You shall not eat of any tree. Of the garden. Indeed, he says, did God really say you can't eat anything?

From these trees that are in the garden. Now, if Eve was fully on her game, She should have said, absolutely not, Mr. Serpent. Jehovah God actually commanded us to feast sumptuously from every tree of this garden, but of this one tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he told us not to eat from it.

That's what she should have done, but that's not what she does, and that leads us to the 4th development. Of this temptation as it unfolds, and that is Eve as she begins to state what God had revealed, she minimizes God's positive will as he had expressed it to Adam. On the surface, this seems like, oh yeah, she's close enough, but if we really put it under a microscope, there's actually 4 things that are going wrong here. The woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the trees of the garden, We may eat.

The narrator does not have to tell us what Eve says to the serpent, but he tells us because he wants us to listen to her carefully and to gain insight into the intricacies of how her slide into sin occurred. Eve doesn't realize it, but there's already a diminishing of God's great will as it is now being re-expressed from her own mouth. There are 4 things that go wrong here, just with her representation of God's positive will. first of all, Eve represents God's positive will merely as permission.

She says, from the fruit of the trees of the garden, we may eat, she says. But in chapter 2, verse 16, the text tells us that God commanded the man. And saying to man, eat of every tree of the garden. And so God's insistent command to eat is diminished now into merely allowance or permission to eat.

And there's a big difference. In this. If you're over at someone's house and you're eating and you're done with your first helpings and you want seconds and you ask your host, can I, can I grab some seconds if they look at you and say, yes, I will allow that. They're granting you permission, and that would feel very different than if they responded to you by saying to you, no, please, I insist, to take more food.

A command is very different than just mere allowance or permission. Also notice that the word every is missing from Eve's quotation from what God said. In Genesis 2:16, God insisted that Adam eat from every tree of the garden, but Eve is simply saying that they're permitted to eat of the trees. Not a big deal maybe, but it's a subtle thing.

It's just something that's fallen away from Eve's mindset here. God had told Adam, don't settle for eating from some of the trees. I'm commanding you to eat from all of them. But here Eve is simply saying from the trees, we may eat something of the expansiveness of God's heart, of generosity is at least just being left out of her quotation here.

Also noticed that Eve leaves out the word freely in her representation of God's will. In Genesis 2:16, God had said of every tree of the garden, you may freely eat, and the idea is you may eat sumptuously. Gorge yourself is the idea. This was an emphatic way of God saying, I really want you, you've got to eat from these trees, Adam, you're gonna love them, and when you do, I want you to feast sumptuously.

But Eve, as she is representing God's will and recommunicating it to the serpent, She simply says, from the fruit of the trees, we may eat. God's insistence on them feasting sumptuously is missing. There's one more thing that is missing here from Eve's expression of God's positive will. And that is God Himself.

The serpent said, Indeed, has God said you shall not eat from every tree? In reply, Eve does not provide a true counterpoint to what the serpent has just said to her, representing God's positive will. She should have said, no, serpent, God told us to freely eat. But instead, she just says, from the trees we may eat, and God is left out.

Of her statement. Interestingly enough, she leaves God out of her portrayal of what they're allowed to do, but she's quick to portray God, to portray the prohibition as coming from God. From the trees of the garden, we're allowed to eat. But God said, from the tree in the middle, you shall not eat.

So the prohibition in her quotation comes from God and she states that explicitly, but the allowance to eat, yeah, we're just allowed to eat. We're allowed to eat. This is all so subtle, isn't it? In a matter of seconds, 4 things have fallen away from Eve's consciousness as a result of the insinuation and cleverness of the serpent.

Each of these things by themselves is seemingly insignificant, but the 4 things add up to an awful sum. Leading Eve to make the worst decision. Of her life. We see that the insistent command is turned into merely permission.

Every tree has turned into merely trees, eat freely has turned into merely eat, and God is left out of her representation of God's positive will to feast the trees. Things don't get any better with the next development either as she begins to represent the negative side of the equation. And that leads to the 5th development, and that is that Eve misstates. God's prohibition.

She misstates God's prohibition. She says, 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 or you will die. At first blush, what Eve says here sounds close enough to what God had said, but there are 4 ways here too, where God's revealed will is diluted and diminished. First of all, notice that Eve adds to the prohibition.

She adds to the prohibition in Genesis 2:17, God said from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, but Eve quotes God as saying, you shall not eat from it or touch it. She's adding to God's word. Rebecca Manly Pippert in her book Hope Has Its Reasons. Listens to what Eve says here and says, and I quote, Eve thus becomes the first legalist in human history.

Adding to God's revelation. We've already seen how the serpent exaggerated God's prohibition. God said don't eat of one tree, but feast on the rest, and the serpent's like, did God say you can't eat of anything? Any tree?

So we've already seen how he exaggerated God's prohibition. Eve thinks she's correcting the serpent, and she is, but in the process of correcting him, she provides her own exaggeration. Satan does not care whether or not Eve fully agrees with him, so long as he moves her a little bit of the distance towards himself. And away from God's revealed will.

Also notice one other thing that Eve says that is indicative of where her heart is right now as things are, are crumbling in her mindset, and that is that she describes the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as the tree which is in the middle. of the garden. This is startling. If you're paying attention and you're reading, and she's talking about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and she says, but the tree, which is in the middle of the garden, God said we can't eat it.

The reason this is surprising to hear her say this is because back in chapter 2, we're told that the tree of life was in the middle of the garden. God had caused the tree of life to grow in the middle of the garden. We actually don't know from chapter 2 that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is also in the middle of the garden. Until we hear Eve say what she says here.

So if we take her word for it, fair enough, combining what Eve says here with what is said in Genesis 2:9, we realized there were apparently two trees in the middle of the garden, the tree of life, and also in the middle of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Fair enough, but what's interesting here and sad is here in Eve's words. She says, we may eat of every tree of the garden, but from the fruit of the tree. That is in the middle of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat from it.

Imagine how this sounded in the ears of God. God puts a tree of life in the middle of the garden, and he also puts the tree of the knowledge of good and evil there, and Eve refers to the off-limits tree as the tree that's in the middle. Not one of the trees that's in the middle, she could have said that, but it's the tree that's in the middle. Hey, Eve, what's in the middle?

Of the Garden of Eden, we ask. Tell us what you see when you look at the middle of the garden. What do you see, Eve? Her answer?

I see in the middle of the garden. The tree that we are not allowed to eat. If she would have said from one of the trees that's in the middle of the garden, God told us we couldn't eat at least, that would have shown some awareness of the existence of the tree of life right there in the middle of the garden and it might have jarred her from the spell that she is falling under, but clearly Eve's mindset is such right now that she sees only one tree in the middle of the garden.

And it's the tree she cannot eat from.

She's blinded to the other tree. The tree that gives eternal life. Which is one of the trees that God commanded them to feast sumptuously on. And this so often happens to us in the middle of temptation.

Guys, when you are tempted, and every temptation, there are two choices to make. And one of the lies of the evil one is there's really only one choice here to make. This can only go one way, and that is you got to do what it is that I'm tempting you to do. Now, there are two choices that are standing before you, but often what happens in the moment of temptation is we simply see one.

And Eve is clearly blinded to the tree of life. It's not even in her consciousness, to the serpent. Yeah, we, we're allowed to eat of the trees of the garden, but the one in the middle, We can't. Eat The blindness here of God's central provision, the tree of life is just so stark and so sad.

And so like us, and so like me. Also notice the change in wording regarding God's warning of death. Back in chapter 2 verse 17, God said, that you will surely die. There's emphasis there, but he merely represents God as having said, you shall die.

And leaving out the word, surely, Eve is making God's warning a little less emphatic than when it came from the mouth of God. And there's one other change in chapter 2 verse 17, God said, in the day you eat from it, you shall surely die, but here Eve merely represents God as saying, you shall not eat from it or touch it or you will die. God warned of the immediate consequences of death on the day they partook, but the immediacy of the language. Has fallen by the wayside.

This is so easy for us to fall prey to ourselves. Yes, we know if I choose wrong, there might be consequences, but those consequences are far off somewhere in the future, and did God really mean what he says? How emphatic was he? And when that becomes vague and fuzzy, we're more apt to sin, and suddenly sin seems a little less dangerous to us.

So looking at how Eve represents God's prohibition. We see a fourfold alteration. She exaggerates the prohibition, adding to it. She ignores the centerpiece of God's provision in the middle of the garden.

She removes the emphasis from the threat of death and she removes the immediacy from the threat of death. So all in all, there are 4 alterations as she communicates the positive side of God's revealed will. And there are 4 changes that are made in her expression of God's prohibition and warning. All of these are seemingly little changes, 8 of them in all, but they add up to an awful sum that leaves Eve making the worst decision of her life.

The devil has gained a lot of ground here and Eve is not even aware of all the ground that she has just given. Away. Look at the next sad development in this, the first temptation, and that is that Satan outright contradicts God's word. The serpent said to the woman, you surely will not die.

Now the serpent is casting aside all subtlety. And he's now outright contradicting God's word. He senses the ground that he's gained and he's now pressing the issue and he's not afraid to be emphatic here. You surely will not die.

The serpent is just as emphatic in his statement here as God was emphatic. And saying that they would die. What is striking to me here is that Eve caves in her representation of God's revealed will and she waters down God's warning of judgment along with other things, but the serpent doesn't match her compromise by compromising a little himself. Guys, get this, about the devil.

Her compromises only make The devil more emphatic and more bold. And the same is true for us. When we give ground to Satan, he does not reciprocate by giving ground to us. He doesn't meet us in the middle.

There's no give and take with Satan. It's us give and he takes. If we give up ground, he will take all of that ground and immediately push for more. And we see this happening so much today.

Christians in the church, professing Christians, watering down God's truth so as not to offend people thinking that they can win the world's favor by just letting a few things drop from God's revelation as we express it as Christians. And when we make those compromises and fudge a little bit, let certain things just go unstated, the world doesn't respond by saying, oh, look at them. Look at them, they're, they're giving up ground to us and so how about we give up a little bit of ground and maybe meet somewhere in the middle and maybe we can move a little bit towards these Christians and become a little bit more like them.

The world doesn't do that.

They do the opposite. They become emboldened by our compromise and they immediately press for more. Churches that are right now, even as I speak, compromising their doctrine regarding sexual ethics in order to gain the favor of the world will only succeed in being the world's darlings for a short period of time. What the world will do is just once they do that, move the goalposts further back and push for more.

What's the solution? I love what one writer said several months ago in the Christian Post. He said, we might as well be holy. We might as well be holy.

Compromising with the world, he says, is a loser's game. We might as well stick to God's word and say it as it is written without compromise. No compromise for whatever reason will ever be enough to satisfy Satan's appetite for compromise and sin in us. The serpent is emboldened by Eve's compromise.

You certainly will not die, he says. In the process, he's essentially calling God an outright liar, which would leave Eve with an important question, and that is, if God is lying to us, then why would he lie to us? Why would God deliver this threat that we would die if that is not true? Well, Satan through the serpent is so happy to provide an answer to that question, and that leads to the final development of this temptation, and that is Satan impugns God's motives.

He says, here's why God lied to you about this, 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. God is lying about you dying, Eve, because if he told you the truth, you would partake of this tree, and two amazing things would happen. Your eyes would be open and you would actually elevate yourself to becoming like God, knowing good and evil.

Eve, you think you're living with your eyes open, but you're not. There is so much of reality that you can't see. You are walking around and living with your eyes closed, and this tree is your ticket to getting your eyes open and seeing things that are all around you that right now you cannot see. You're also living down here on this plane, and there is life on a higher plane that is available to you, you can actually become like God.

Knowing good and evil in ways that he does. God is being petty and he's being jealous and he's giving you this threat because he does not want your eyes open. He wants you blind, and he also does not want you to be elevated to become like him. Never mind, guys, the fact that God created Adam and Eve in his image.

And has shared his likeness with them so that they would be like him in many ways. But all of that is a distant thought at this point. It's interesting. The serpent never tells Eve, Eat of the fruit.

He never has to. All he's doing at this point is saying enough and dismantling her view of God enough. To get Eve to stop what she's doing and start staring at the tree. And it's there that we'll pick up.

The next time we're in, in Genesis and see what happens next. Guys, just a few thoughts. As we wrap things up this morning, I love what AW Tozer said in his book, The Knowledge of the Holy. He says the most important thing about you is what comes into your mind when you think about God.

There's nothing more important about any of us in this room. Than that We see how true that is in this passage. Eve is now without the safety of a robust and healthy view of God. So much has been dismantled and now she's gonna go staring at the tree and she's gonna fall into sin because she's not looking at the tree in the context of a robust view of God.

It's interesting that when Satan wants to get Eve to sin, the first thing he goes after is her view of God. If he can degrade her view of God, he knows that she will not be able to resist temptation. And the same is true, and the same for you and also for me. At the core of every temptation that you and I encounter is an assault on our view of God.

Does God really love me? Is he really good? Has he really told me the truth? Is he really all that great?

Does he really have my best interest at heart? These are questions that whether consciously or not, are put before us in moments of temptation and we start answering them. And Answering them wrongly is the precursor to sin. Guys, know your God.

Know your God. In Daniel 11:32, I love this, the King James says the people who know their God shall be strong and do exploits. Know your God, bedazzled by Him. There's no greater armor to bring with you into temptation than a high view of God, and don't give away anything that the Bible asserts to be true about your God.

You say, well, where do I get a high view of God from? You get it primarily from the scriptures. Nothing so informs your view of God than this book right here. And so I challenge you to read your Bible, memorize scripture, meditate on scripture, memorize lots of scripture, and when you memorize scripture, guys, if you learn anything from this morning, memorize it word for word, and don't settle for just getting the general idea.

Eve had the general idea here in these verses, and it was no match for Satan's assaults. If Eve were involved in the Iana program here at Cornerstone, and she's, say your verse for today, what did God say, in Genesis 2 about what to do with the trees, she would have given this quotation. And every one of the listeners or hearers here in our Juana program would say, you got some work to do. You got some work to do, we're not gonna sign you off on this.

Young people, when you are memorizing scripture, Atijuana and in other venues, there's a reason that people insist that you get it right. When you memorize God's word, value every word enough to memorize it exactly as it is written in the text. Words make a difference. One word in a text, altered can make a difference.

In the beginning was the word, the Word was with God, and the Word was a God. There's so much right about that translation in the New World translation, but there's one word. That's been altered A god Rather than God. Capital G Memorize scripture, savor every word and be armed and ready to quote that and recite God's revelation in the midst of temptation.

I have felt so grieved in my heart this week, as I've studied this passage, when I see how Eve is just crumbling little by little before the serpent and giving ground to him, my thought is not, oh, Eve, how, how dare you do this? Man, I wish that temptation came to me. I would have handled this so differently. what I've realized this week?

I, I drove home from work weeping on Wednesday. And probably 5 times I said, I am Eve. I am Eve. This morning we're all Eve.

And we realize we're not just dissecting a temptation from long ago. That someone else was in, we're actually dissecting every temptation we've ever been in, and we thought this was about Eve, but actually, I see myself in this. Sin is sad. Sin is outrageous.

God has never looked so good to me as he has in chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis, and then to be encountering this, these things said about God at the beginning of chapter 3 is just, it's shattering. It's painful, it hurts to hear these things said. And to realize that every time we give in to temptation, we are buying into lies about an amazingly good God, and that should make our hearts grieve. At the core of every sin is an outrageous lie about God and every time we sin, we're embracing that outrageous lie.

All sin. is outrageous for this reason. Eve had enough truth already given to her. To have responded properly and been victorious over this temptation.

But she had so little revelation. You and I have so much revelation. Her Bible was like 2 verses long. and she didn't get her quotation of that right.

We have so much more revelation of God's amazing grace, specifically as it is unfolded for us in the gospel. And we can look to Christ and, and know that God loved us so much, he sent his son into the world to die for our sins, and God raised him from the dead and ascended them to his own right hand so that Christ from that position of lordship can give out salvation and redemption and freedom and power and love and relationship to everyone who sees their bankruptcy and believes in him.

Guys, the gospel is the power of God to everyone who believes. You had better go into temptation with the gospel, armed with gospel truth.

And answering your questions about who God is with gospel truth. How could someone who laid down his life for me not have my best interest at heart? How could someone who gave up his son in death for me not have my best interest at heart? And how could a God who had the power to raise his son from the death after dying, Not have the power to fully carry out his loving intentions towards me.

Take the gospel with you into every temptation. Actually, you and I armed with the grace and the truth of the gospel, are better armed to say no in temptation than Eve was. Even before the fall. If you're here today and you've never believed in Christ, I know one thing's going on right now, and I know you're under temptation right now as I speak.

You're being tempted as I speak. In the middle of the garden of your life stand two trees. One is the tree you've been eating from, which is the tree of your own way, and the other tree is the tree of life. Do you see it?

Do you see the tree of life? In the middle of your existence, look closely. Do you see it? Do you see Christ and Him crucified hanging on that tree?

Loving you and offering you eternal life if you would simply come and partake, or is all you see as you look at the center of your existence, you only see the tree of your own way. Do you see the other tree that God is offering to you, Christ and Him crucified and all the love that is entailed in that. I pray that God would open your eyes right now so that you see that, and that you would go running to that tree. And partaking of Christ.

Christ Himsel says, I am the life. I am the life. If anyone eats of me, he will live forever and never die. May God give us all the grace to partake of Him rather than sin in our own way this morning.

Let's pray together. Lord, this, We're, we're thankful for this part of your word that you put before us this morning. There's been very little pleasant that we've encountered this morning, but this is so valuable for us. You're good.

To give us this, I'm convinced that the devil wishes this passage was not in scripture because it exposes his technique. He would rather this story never be told, but you put it before us so that we see, hey, this is how Satan works. And that we can identify these earmarks of temptation and every temptation that we face. Help us, Lord, not just to say no to sin.

But help us to say yes to you. May we not go out of here simply resolving to say no to sin. May we go out of here, if anything, resolved to simply get to know you better, to realize maybe the reason I'm sinning the way that I am is because I don't know this good God as well as I should. I wanna, I wanna read and feast on his word and learn everything I can about him, especially as his greatness and glory is revealed in the gospel.

So that I can be better armed with a robust view of this God and thus be able. To laugh in the face of temptation. If there's any in this room this morning, Lord, who's never run to you, Jesus. I cannot bring them to you.

I can only point them to you. And I have done that, and I ask Lord that you would draw them to yourself, that you would open their eyes, that they would see the tree of life as they've never seen it before, that they would run to that tree. And believe in you and cry out to you for salvation, even right now where they're seated, cry out to you and partake of you. Confessing their sins and their brokenness and their need of you as their savior.

We thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to give our offerings to you, receive these funds, do much. With every penny that is given for the glory of Jesus and the spread of this amazing, good news about him and the salvation that he brings. We ask all of these things, Lord, in the name of Jesus, and all God's people said,