Genesis 3:1-5

These things that they invade our mind with are designed to affect or alter our behavior. That is what Satan did in the Garden of Eden. The reasonings are the key to understanding. God created you and me with the ability to reason. But what line of reason do we follow? The key to following the right line of reasoning is this phrase, against the knowledge of God, because the thoughts that invade our mind coming from this evil, wicked, subtle, deceitful spiritual leader are going to lead us to exalt our reasoning against the knowledge of God.

Why would he want to do that? Because we have a relationship with a person - He is a being with personality, character, and a wonderful wholesome way of life that produces every good thing. Satan tries to destroy that relationship by getting us to doubt either the Person and His goodness or the rightness and goodness of His promises and way of life.

The idea is to catch him as he is beginning to use his device, twisting us mentally to the line of reasoning that he wants us to follow. If we can catch it as it begins, we will not be entrapped by it. We know that Adam and Eve did not catch it and as a result they were led astray.

It seems pretty clear that the teaching of these false prophets, false ministers, and false apostles, is right inside the church. That is kind of mind boggling, but these people are hearing them. Paul's fear is that they might be diverted from the simplicity. His fear is well-grounded, because Satan is always there and there is therefore the possibility of attack - an attack against our single-hearted devotion to Christ.

What has been pointed out to us from God's Word is that the most obvious characteristic of Satan is his subtlety. Does it not follow then that subtlety will also be the major characteristic of the ones that he is using - wolves in sheep's clothing? We see the parallel appear in different contexts.

Satan set the pattern and he did it in the Garden of Eden, but he will use a multitude of circumstances - like the Parable of the Sower and the Seed, it does not have to be the same thing that is used all the time. But if he can create the illusions, the distractions, the ploys - whatever we might call it - to get our reasoning, our minds focused on something that is of lesser or minor concern to God than the purpose God has called us for, he has us. He at least has us going in the wrong direction. It does not mean that we cannot turn from it, but at least he has caught our attention where he has then the possibility of destroying us. It will not happen all at once. In one sense of the word, he is very patient that way. But he will, nonetheless, work to lead us step-by-step in that direction.

Satan's lies produce death through sin and they are deliberate attempts to wipe us out. Satan is a cold-blooded life destroyer and I mean life in two ways: life in terms of ending in death and life in terms of the quality. What is so sad is that he seems to have such an easy time of getting people to swallow that somehow or another it is going to be better to disobey God than obey Him.

I would like to change the word cunning here just for the sake of this sermon, because I think that it is a little closer to our English word shrewd. It means sharp, clever in a selfish way. I do not mean to say that cunning is wrong, but somehow or another shrewd has a little bit clearer connotation to me.

If we were talking about a human being, we would say that he was cunning or shrewd. But in the case of Satan the serpent, we have to think of whom it is we are dealing with. To be cunning and shrewd like Satan indicates malevolent brilliance - with the emphasis on malevolent. He is seeking to kill. His cunning is like that of a cat - I do not mean a house cat. I am talking about a tiger or a lion that is silently padding through the forest with eyes malevolently staring out looking for something to eat, to kill, to feed on.

Look how clever his tactic - his device; … . . .

Genesis 3:1-7

With this in mind, let us head over to our second progression of pride in Genesis. 3 verse 1. This is the account of the temptation of Eve. I know we have read this many times, but as we go through this, remember that pride was also the sin that Satan committed.

This very discussion, the conversation documented here in the Garden of Eden, is easily echoed throughout the generations of man. I have no idea how many times I have seen or heard this argument tactic. All you are looking for is a tiny fracture in the person's logic or thinking to then provide enough information to make that person think that you are actually right when in fact you are not.

I appreciate that in the documentation of this interaction, Eve does recount what God had required of them basically to the letter. She knew what they were supposed to do and what they should not do. But Satan, knowing the effects of pride so well, gives her a half truth, "You will not surely die," when in fact he knew that they would. In that moment though, she started rationalizing. Well, did God lie to us? Was He telling us the truth?

Let us focus in on where pride welled up in this exchange. In verse 6, "So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food," here is where the lust of the flesh presented itself. The fruit to her carnal eyes looked good, and it appealed to her carnal nature that it would satisfy her desire. We see that she saw that it was "pleasant to the eyes," so the lust of the eyes entered into the thought process. And finally, believing that the "tree was desirable to make one wise," she succumbed to the pride of life, thinking that she could find wisdom outside of God Himself.

Genesis 3:4-5

Another well-known merism appears in the third chapter. This one is spoken by Satan, the serpent.

This comes from the chapter before about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And that tree represents all knowledge, from all the good to all the way down to all the bad. What this means is the serpent here was promising Eve that she could choose and then experience for herself anything she wanted along the whole spectrum of knowledge.

Now God was going to give her and Adam the knowledge that they needed from Him. He was the one that was going to choose what kind of knowledge that they had and that they could use. But she went around Him, took of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and she became the chooser. He would have guided them into learning the truth not mixed with anything else. But she wanted to make those decisions on her own, thinking that being in that position, she would become wise. So, God was going to limit the knowledge, but she went ahead and leapfrogged over that and took the knowledge to herself - all of it.

Genesis 3:1-6

So the tempter's subtlety lay in his approach, which emphasized God's prohibition of the forbidden tree by asking an incredulous question in verse 1, contradicting God's predicted punishment for disobeying the law in verse 4, and providing the woman a reason for desiring the forbidden fruit in verse 5.

In the process of Eve's gradual weakening, she amplified the original prohibition beyond what God said, when in verse 3 he said, nor shall you touch it. And she produced three impeccable reasons in verse 6 for eating the forbidden fruit as she contemplated the possibility of doing so. She knew it was wrong, but she reasoned her way out of it.

Even Adam's succumbing to the temptation is recorded with a matter-of-factness that makes us cringe. Verse 6 says, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. The simplistic way this is stated suggests their casualness toward temptation, desire, and sin. And this was the first Laodicean type of action. The Laodicean attitude is ho-hum toward temptation.

Genesis 3:1-7

It has been postulated over the years as opposed to the picture drawn from the minds of men of an apple from Eve to Adam, that the actual fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was a fig. So here in chapter 3, verse 7 we see another very significant hint as to what happened from taking of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Verse 7 tells us the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

The first thing that man did after the sin of taking of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, disobeying the truth of God's Word, was to see their physical differences not from God's perspective toward unity but in the perversion of disobedience and the mind of men towards division. Then taking the leaves from that very tree, they determined for themselves to protect their own different parts that God had made to perfectly unite them physically.

Genesis 3:2-5

In II Corinthians 11:14, the apostle Paul warns believers that Satan, masquerading as an angel of light, has little difficulty persuading gullible, vulnerable, or unwary people as he did with our original Mom in the Garden of Eden as he asked slyly, Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'? 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.''' The serpent said to the woman, You certainly will not die! For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3:2-5). The late Keith Thomas once described Satan as the first unscrupulous traveling salesman.

Genesis 3:4-5

What God had done here was to let them know that there was a penalty for sin; and one of those penalties was death - the cessation of all life. And, if you take it on far enough, this means total death - no eternal life, period. And after your judgment, you are burned; and that is the end. That was the threat that God held over mankind (and still holds over mankind) that, if we continue in sin, we will die. Now notice what the devil said.

So here was the lie - the lie that, Look Adam. Look Eve. You have an immortal soul. God can't make that threat work. And, in its various forms down through the centuries (in the different types of religions that have been created on this earth), that is one of the doctrines that comes through time and time again - that man has an immortal soul.

Genesis 3:4-5

My last thought I can fit in here today concerning confidence takes us back to where we started in Genesis. For the one great lie Satan spoke to Eve was designed to strip her belief in what God had spoken to her and Adam, and in so doing, he was taking her confidence in God that she would have had to get her to lean on her own understanding. He is tricky, that Satan. Verses 4 and 5 sets the stage for this.