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sermonette: Wise as a Serpent: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Deception

Trentan Cunningham
Given 29-Aug-26; Sermon #1891s; 18 minutes

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Uh, if some of you may know, um, I'm an attorney. Uh, I do employment defense, meaning I do represent the employer. Uh, they are not the bad guy though, do not worry. Um, in California, they are actually fending off the bad guys. Um, now, often when I tell people I'm an attorney, they say, do you watch Suits? And to much of their chagrin, I do not. I've seen some clips. Uh, it's enough to tell you that being an attorney is very little like what happens on Suits. Now, I'm not saying if you're some highfalutin lawyer in New York you may not try to be like someone on Suits wearing your very expensive suits and talking very fancifully. It doesn't work like that in San Diego. Uh, I wear flip flops to work sometimes. So it's definitely not like suits. Um, but I do think there is some aspects in which suits, um, at least plays on or leans into a characterization that I have heard about being an attorneys. It's not a nice one, and that's attorneys can be snakes. Uh, I've heard this before. I think mainly because lawyers can be known for a cunning level of deception. Their ability to cleverly argue, um, everyone hears it. Oh well, here we know the lawyer in the family, when you hear that particular argument, that's just a little too subtle, a little too clever they are snakes. Now, I do not wholly, um, disown the characterization purely because uh, Christ tells us to be wise as a serpent. So there are obviously some aspects of snakeness that we are supposed to embody or accept or to practice um in our day to day lives. And in particular, I think the art of avoiding deception and that's why my title today is Wise as a serpent, Avoiding the pitfalls of deception because when I think Christ tells us to be wise as a serpent. Very much part of that is avoiding being deceived, particularly the type of deception that separates us from God. And so today I would like to look at the first deception and the deception of Eve, um, both for the the lessons we can learn from the snake himself and also how we can not be or place ourselves in the position that Eve did in order to be deceived like the snake. And to begin, I think it's important that we just jump straight to Genesis 3. I'm going to be there the entire time. I'll be reading from the KJV. I'd like to just run through it. I know you've heard it many times before. Uh, but I'm just going to read through the whole section and then kind of break it apart piece by piece. Uh, so again, Genesis 3, I'll be reading 1 through 6. And this is from the KGB. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made, and he said unto the woman, Yeah, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden. And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and shall, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And then the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise. She took of the fruit thereof and did eat and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. Now, we get an important piece of information from God here in Genesis 3, and that's his characterization or description of the serpent as being more subtle than any beast of the field. The Hebrew word for subtle here is a room. It doesn't have a negative connotation. Uh, indeed, in Proverbs, it is applied and associated with prudence. So here it's not necessarily being settled, is not necessarily bad. And I think this is an aspect of the snakeness again that we are supposed to to care or to adopt ourselves and this is a room this subtleness. Now we also are admonished to be harmless as a dove. So of course we do not practice a room for the purposes of deception, but we should have a room so that we can avoid deception. Particularly in this case, it's crafty, shrewd, or cunning or clever in a way capable of achieving an end directly, and I think it's important to remember that when we think of deception is achieving an end indirectly. The serpent's deception was not crude or obvious. It was carefully constructed. He never had to tell Eve or ask Eve to eat the fruit. He led her there. He did not begin by openly denying God. He began by suddenly changing the way that Eve thought about what God had said. All right, so that's any good deception, you know, I as a lawyer, know you never go straight and just say what you're trying to get to particularly. In the profession, um, I am constantly talking to people and, and getting in information, and oftentimes people deceive without purposely trying to do it. Uh, but You have to constantly be on guard and understand that there are, it's, it's indirect, it's implicit. I mean, I think that everyone kind of knows this, it's obvious, but people can be meaning well. And, and what I mean by that is they think they are doing the right thing. And they, they fall into the trap of, you know, using deception or a room in a bad way. Um, so I just wanna, we will just go back to what the snake actually does here. So he says under the woman, he starts with, Yeah, hath God said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. So the snake begins with a question. And oftentimes, beginning with a question is a great way to get a person to participate in a conversation or a dialogue. Um, through which here the snake uses his invitation to Eve, Hey, come talk to me. I'm going to ask you a question to begin the deception. It kind of takes two to tango, so to speak with the deception. The snake can't just do it unless Eve is coming along with him. Uh, so that's why he asked her a question here. And then he goes on to, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. Uh, this is a subtle distortion, as we know, of God's actual admonition, which is not to eat of the tree in the midst of the garden. And he does this it's a form of what we might call a straw man in argumentation. You subtly distort what someone says in order to make it easier to attack here. And I also think he is, the snake here is. Appealing to Eve's pride. And what I mean by this is he is incorrect. And Eve, in her mind, she knows what God actually said. So she jumps in immediately and she says, and the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest ye die. She, she wants to correct the snake here. And if the snake's goal is to deceive and cause the fall of Eve, what better way than to appeal to her pride, because as we know from Proverbs 16, pride goeth before destruction in a haughty spirit before a fall. So the snake appeals to her pride in order to set her up for her fall, and you will see. The way that Eve responds, not just only engaging with the snake and not really being wary of what he's doing here, you know, she, I do not think she has in the back of the mind that he's trying to deceive her, which we should all have. If it doesn't come from God, you should be wary. Uh, that's always a good first step. Um. But in her effort to correct the snake, and, and, and maybe I'm wrong here, maybe it's not a prideful overstep, um, but I, I, I just think that particularly for, you know, the way I see it, that, that's what's going on here. Um, she does one additional thing. This problematic and that she, she adds on to God's word. So she's going to correct, she jumps in, she's like, no, snake, you're wrong. Maybe you're a stupid snake. And since you're stupid, um, you know, I gotta tell you, you shouldn't even touch it because I think if, you know, if I do not, if I'm not really strong about this then you're gonna, you know, you're going to go ahead and touch that thing and it's going to die. You just have to stay completely away with it. Um. No, just a quick aside here and my wife's going to roll her eyes. She said, no asides, but I think maybe this is why God got so mad at Adam is that you know, he told man not uh the admonition, not to eat of that tree, and I'm assuming Adam told Eve, and then maybe he did not really trust Eve, and so he added to God's word and said, do not even touch it, right? He's just like, he, like, we are not supposed to eat it, but you can't even touch it. Like, I do not trust you. So maybe God, you know, you, Adam was the one that led Eve astray and made her make this statement here. But again, that's an aside, the point being, is that she has added on to God's word on his admonition. And as we will see here later, that actually sets her up for her fall as well. So not only does she participate in the snake, and the snake is very clever here getting her to do that by both asking her a question and being a little wrong, um, and again, appealing to that pride, her, her desire to correct him. Um, and then she makes a mistake by adding on to God's word. And I think we are reproved from doing that many times throughout Scripture, in particular in Deuteronomy 4:2, we are told, you shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish aught from it. They may keep from the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you. Also Proverbs 3:5-6, every word of the God is pure. He is a shield unto them that put their trust in Him. Add thou not unto His words, lest he reprove thee and thou be found a liar. So again here Eve participates in her own deception and honestly, that's the best, the best types of deceptionif you're trying to deceive, you do not want to just do it all yourself. You want the person that you're trying to deceive to, um, play a part of it. Now, I know I'm kind of describing to say that you want to do this. Now I'm, I'm just saying this so that you know what happens when someone's trying to do it so you can avoid what's happening here. I'm not asking you to practice deception. Maybe it's just a weird way that I talk about it. Um, but again, Be wary when someone invites you with incorrectness, and then be wary of how you try to jump in and correct them. But we must move on. The serpent then says unto the woman, You shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as God's, knowing good and evil. So another little clever trick here of the snake is using truth to his own advantage. We see Satan do this and quote scripture to to Jesus during his temptation. Uh, it's an aspect of deception. Uh, it's a very useful tool, and that is to use the truth but suddenly distort it, um, and avoid important context that would make that statement more truthful, so to speak. So it is true that they will know good and evil, but what he omits is that. It's not good for Eve. All right, this is going to be a bad thing for you. He doesn't actually characterize it that way. Uh, what he wants to do, and, and this goes back, and I'm sorry, back to his original statement, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. Introducing this idea that God is restrictive subtly kind of distorting the character of God. So you think about what he says differently. Uh, and that's kind of what the snake doing. He's getting this idea and he said it's an implicit. And I said earlier, oftentimes the best deception is implicit. They do not ever come out and say it. But there are implicit things hidden in this statement that the snake makes, and that's that God is restrictive and he's hiding something from you. Now, he never has to say that, but it's, I think, a conclusion that we all know that Eve came to in her mind. And again, it comes back to participating in your own deception, using your own reasoning ability and logic based on false premise in order to come to a conclusion that is not correct. Uh, and then the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise. She took the tree, the fruit thereof, and did eat and gave also and her husband with her, and he did eat. Now here, again, we come back to the snake never told her to eat the fruit. Eve came to this conclusion herself. Partially, I think, back to that statement of You shall not touch the fruit. In order to eat the fruit, you have to touch it first. So let's say that, that Eve in her mind has accepted that, or her idea is that, you know, if you touch it, you know, that, that could lead to death. And then you hear from the snake and he, he gives you this kind of tempting thing. Well, God, it's, it's, it's not about dying. It's about, you know, something is hidden from you. And you go and you get close and you touch the fruit and you do not die. Might make you a little more bold, a little bit more willing to maybe take the next step and take a bite of that fruit. And again, it all comes back to Eve's own words. It was not, the snake did not tell her this. This is things that she had in her mind, and he just set it up and he kind of teed up that God, that Eve is going to now rethink what God has previously told her or maybe Adam, we do not know for sure. Um. But again, that's just all this very subtle and clever way of, of hiding implicit statements in your argument in order to deceive someone. Um So what, what can we learn from this? We know that, you know, OK, this is a terrible thing that happened. Uh, you know, there is people in the world that run around and deceive and try to say things that, you know, kind of cleverly and subtly and try to hide things from you. Uh, and, and fortunately you know, we are, we have a gold standard when, we have Christ, and we know what Christ does when he was confronted with deception. Uh, and that's, that he always goes back to God's word. Exactly what God said. Now, I know if you read the translations, if you, if you cite the, the, the scripture that cited of what Jesus said, it's not word for word exactly the same, but it's like, it's basically the same. He adds nothing on to what God had previously said. So, you know, whenever we are confronted with any ideas, anything that's going on in the world, some argument that we are getting from somebody, Uh, I think more importantly, maybe even some things that come up in our own mind, our own inner dialogue that we have we should be first weary and inherently skeptical because, you know, as we know, the snake was not God and capable of, of deception in a bad way, but we ourselves are, as we see from, from Eve's own participation in it. And I think we can do that ourselves in our own head. So, you know, if we have anything, especially a desire, something that we want. Uh, the first thing and always is to, is to go back to God. Now, unfortunately, we do not have God there directly in the garden, like maybe Eve could have possibly could have hearkened to God and, and asked him to come over and, you know, reprove the snake and, and tell him what the truth was. Um, I'm not sure if she could, but maybe she could have, and, and we know that we can't do that. But we have scripture we have the Bible. And so, whenever, you know, we are confronted with something in our life where we are, we are coming to a conclusion about something that we should do You know, always return to scripture and ask God and see if you can figure it out. You know, we are supposed to test all things, including our own conclusions. Um, and sometimes that process of removing yourself from this conclusion that you made, going back to scripture, creating that space might be what you need to figure out whether, what, you know, the conclusion that you've come to is correct because it might be even times where you're, you think you're defending God as Eve was. You know, she was like, no, no snake. You're wrong. We're only, it's only this one, right? And, you know, there, there is an aspect where that could be a prideful you know, statement where you're trying to defend God. You think you're doing the right thing, but in, in reality, you're actually deceiving and leading yourself astray. So, you know, always meditate, return to the word of God. Um, also, we must remember, um, If our hearts in the right place, which would mean that God is always being merciful and loving and doing what's best for us, when you hear a statement like Eve did, Uh, that when the snakes trying to trick her and it's like, oh, God's restrictive and hiding something from you. If your heart's in the right place, you'll say, well, I know that God loves me and He's merciful and he's trying to do the right thing for me. So yeah, maybe that is the truth. I will be like a God, and I will know good and evil, but That's bad for me. And I know it's bad for me because God told me not to do it, and he's always looking out for me. So, always filter anything, any, you have frame things and filter things through that perspective of, you know, God trying to do what's right and good for you. And And I always love Proverbs, and it, it's my favorite, and I think it kind of just encapsulate everything I'm trying to, trying to say today. And that's Proverbs 3:5 to 7, and that's what I'll, where I'll leave you. And that's trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy path. Be not wise in thine own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from evil.