Genesis 2011 - Lesson 3B

• We last saw Woman at a pivotal moment in human history

  • She encountered evil in the form of a snake

    • The snake was indwelled by Satan

    • And he brought Woman a challenge

    • Did God really say that they couldn’t eat from any tree in the Garden?

  • Last time we said we were going to study this interaction carefully to note the way sin works in our life

    • First, we noted that the enemy is the Father of Lies

      • Notice here that his opening statement is a lie

      • How appropriate that Satan’s first recorded words was a lie

    • Secondly, we noted that Satan’s attack is directed at God’s word

      • The enemy knows where the power of God resides in His creation

        • It’s with His word

      • So Satan attacks at that point

        • He causes us to question and doubt God’s word or become confused or distracted

        • In today’s world, Satan seems determined to undermine God’s word in all these ways

          • The Bible is attacked from all sides in the world

          • And in the church, it’s also under attack 

        • And that attack is neglect

  • Third, we noticed that Satan’s charge was that God is holding Woman back from joy and freedom

    • In v.1 he suggests that God has restricted every tree from Woman

      • Even if that had been true, it wouldn’t be cause to doubt or impugn God

    • But Satan is appealing to pride here

      • He wants Woman to imagine how much better things could be if she went her own way rather than remain within God’s law

• As we remember, Woman didn’t fall for the bait, at least not yet

  • She responds by correcting the snake and agreeing with God’s word, but she doesn’t get the story quite right

    • She added some things and forgot other things

    • The sum effect of her answer was to leave an opening for Satan to pry open

    • Furthermore, her own uncertainty concerning God’s word left her vulnerable to Satan’s guile

  • So now Satan goes in for the kill

Gen. 3:4  The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! 
Gen. 3:5 “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.” 

•   Satan directly challenges the truth of God’s word

  • In Step 1, Satan set forth a proposition that was a lie and used it to attack God’s word

  • In Step 2 the woman lacked the knowledge and confidence in God’s word to refute the enemy’s scheme

  • Now in Step 3, the enemy proposes an alternative path that he suggests will arrive at a greater benefit than God’s way

    • He says you surely will not die

    • This is a direct contradiction of God’s word and offers no compromise

    • Woman is presented with a clear alternative to accepting God’s word in faith

  • Satan goes on to explain that the effect of eating will be having eyes opened

    • And this new awareness will make Woman like God Himself

      • She will know good and evil

    • Satan is implying that there is more to her existence than God has provided

      • In other words, God and His word are not sufficient

      • If she goes outside God’s instructions, she can have an even greater existence

        • One that rivals God’s

  • Like most lies, it involves a partial truth

    • If she eats of the tree, her eyes will be opened

    • She will be more like God, in that she will now better understand what it means to be good

      • The lie is that she will also be less like God in that she will now know evil

      • Though God knows about evil, as He knows everything, He has no first-hand experience in evil

  • Satan is proposing that sin has no consequences

    • And even more, that disobeying God’s word will bring a great, better experience

    • That when we choose our own desires over God’s commands, we will not suffer loss, but rather experience gain

    • This is the first and greatest lie

• Let’s step back for a moment and consider sin’s pattern

  • Sin is a disregard of God’s will and His word and a reliance on our own ways and desires

    • Sin is facilitated by a weak knowledge of God’s word and can be easily twisted by the Enemy to ensure we arrive at a distorted understanding (i.e., a lie)

    • Examples are easy to find: 

      • Money is the root of all evil

      • God helps those who help themselves

      • Prosperity Gospel

      • All roads lead to Heaven

  • As unbelievers, we were completely captive to the enemy’s lies and knew nothing else

    • But even as Christians we can naively follow the enemy’s half truths when we allow this pattern to repeat

    • When we live in a state of ignorance concerning God’s word 

    • And when we come to believe that making our own rules will arrive at a better result than the ones God has given us

  • We come to believe that sin has no consequences and can be better than obedience

    • In time, the lie will be seen for what it is, but at what personal cost?

    • If we wait to cease sinning until we finally see the negative consequences of our sin it will be too late

      • We will have incurred even greater penalty

      • Like the person who ignores the warnings of smoking only to discover one day that they have lung cancer 

• Woman’s cost is about to be paid...

Gen. 3:6  When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. 

• With the Enemy pulling her strings, Woman’s prideful spirit begins to pull her toward sin

  • And the process begins with one simple word

    • Saw

  • Woman saw the tree was “good” for food

    • But God already had declared it to be bad…not food

    • And this fact doesn’t change anything

      • We know the tree was a fruit tree, so taking notice that the tree had good food didn’t add any new information for Woman

  • Looking at the language a little more closely

    • Woman saw that the food was a “delight” 

      • This is the Hebrew word taavah – intense longing

    • And desirable to make one wise (gain insight)

      • Chamad – covet

• Woman is giving us a powerful example of how sin works in all of us

  • Almost invariably, it begins with the eye, what we see

    • We see something that leads to a longing and coveting and desire

Luke 11:34 “The eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light; but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness.

Matt. 5:27  “You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY’;
Matt. 5:28 but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman  with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

• Not every sin is connected to the eye or what we see – but I challenge you to think of one

  • If we include the things we can see in our mind’s eye, then it gets very hard to think of a sin that doesn’t involve seeing and the desire it brings

• Woman is falling prey to this trap

  • She is letting her sight and her lusts direct her rather than God’s word

  • Seeing leads to temptation, and temptation leads to desire and lust which precedes and leads to sin

James 1:14 But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. 
James 1:15 Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. 

• Temptation is not sin (Jesus was tempted in all things)

• But giving into temptation is sin

• In Woman’s case, her lust is for the suggestion Satan planted into her mind

  • She notices that the tree was desirable to make one wise

    • How would she come to the conclusion that this fruit would make her wise?

      • Only that she accepted the enemy’s story

      • This tree would make her know what God knew, or so Satan said

  • The next step in the chain began

    • Once lust was conceived, it grew like a child in this womb

    • And that growing will almost inevitably lead to a birth

      • And the birthing process begins with touching

  • Woman grabs the fruit

    • I wonder if she paused before she ate?

      • Remember, she had remembered that God told her not to touch the fruit or she would die

      • That wasn’t an accurate quote, but now that she has touched and not died, I wonder if she began to doubt God’s word even more?

    • Woman’s poor memory of God’s word is actually an accomplice now in drawing her closer to sin

      • After all, if touching didn’t result in death, why would eating, she might have wondered?

  • I see this pattern very frequently today

    • I often encounter Christians who are troubled by contradictions in God’s word

      • They have misunderstood a verse or passage of Scripture, and as a result they have come to believe it contradicts another passage in Scripture

      • In reality, the two passages are not contradictory, but because their understanding is incomplete, they see the problem with God’s word rather than with themselves

      • As a result, they begin to lose confidence in the literal truth of all that God’s word says

    • The enemy is only too willing to oblige in this process, feeding the doubt and offering alternative “truths”

• Finally, Woman sins by eating from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil

  • God said she would die, but obviously Woman was still breathing

    • She didn’t die at this moment, at least not physically

      • Adam will physically live for 930 years after eating!

    • And yet we know she died at that very moment in the sense of dying spiritually

    • She ceased to be holy and innocent and pure

      • She lost the ability to fellowship with God

  • But from her limited perspective, nothing much has changed

    • Now she must truly feel that God’s word is untrustworthy

      • God said that eating of the tree would result in death, but she sensed no change

      • God was not present in the Garden at this moment, so Woman has not experienced the conviction that comes with God’s holiness

        • That will happen shortly

  • But for now, she senses no change in herself as a result of eating the fruit

    • Except for one…

    • She notices that after she ate from the fruit, she felt less connection with Adam

      • Suddenly, she feels oddly distanced from him

      • And instinctively, she feels the urge to share the fruit with him

      • In fact, it’s the very next thing she wants to do

  • When we live in sin, we will seek out others to share that sin with us

    • Misery loves company, and so does sin

    • When we live in sin, we are a bad influence, and not just because we set a bad example

      • The very nature of sin is that it spreads

Rom. 5:12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned — 

• It’s a disease that moves from host to host, and when we indulge in sin, we will often feel like sharing it with others

  • If someone close to us hasn’t made the same mistake, we will want them to join us to minimize our own conviction

  • And to validate our choices, to affirm we are right to do what we do

• In Woman’s case, she would have felt an immediate distancing from Adam who was not yet a sinner

  • And she would have needed to share her sin with Adam to draw him to her side

  • We need to recognize the danger in our sin isn’t limited to ourselves

• Finally, in one of the strangest and most disturbing lines in the entire Bible, we’re told that she gave it to her husband with her and he ate

  • Adam was with her, and when he was offered the fruit, he ate

    • No discussion, no debate

    • He just complied

      • There is some debate over whether Adam was present or not

      • I think the text makes that clear

        • He was “with her”

        • There seems little reason to include that detail unless it was intended to explain where Adam was at the time

  • In truth, it doesn’t matter

    • Whether he was there throughout the conversation or showed up only after Satan left, the Bible makes clear what role he played

    • Adam chose to eat without any deception 

1Tim. 2:14 And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. 

• Adam can’t use the serpent’s deception as an excuse, no matter where he was at the time

  • Scripture says his reason for eating had nothing to do with the serpent’s arguments

• What’s more, Adam didn’t protest like Woman did

  • He doesn’t try to quote God’s word

  • He seems completely willing to disobey

• But who’s credited with the fall?

  • We might assume it would be Woman, since she ate first

  • But Scripture doesn’t seem to place any importance on the order

    • Instead, it lays the sin of mankind at the feet of Adam

1Cor. 15:21 For since  by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. 
1Cor. 15:22 For as in Adam all die, so also in  Christ all will be made alive. 

• Or Romans 5:12 which we quoted above

• Adam (one man) brought about the fall

  • Look at the next verse

Gen. 3:7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they  knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. 

• Only after Adam ate were “both” their eyes opened

  • His eating produced the sin that brought down mankind

• Why wasn’t Woman credited with the fall?

  • According to the verse we read, deception was a legitimate defense

    • She was deceived by Satan into eating the fruit

    • Her own lust and sinful desire was the ultimate mechanism to bring her to sin, but the entire process was instigated by Satan

    • Had Satan not played his crucial role, we can fairly assume Woman wouldn’t have sinned

  • Why was deception a legitimate defense?  Woman was innocent

    • She didn’t know evil, she was an innocent

    • Woman COULD be deceived in the full sense of that word

      • She could be led to think she was acting in an appropriate way

  • Can we use Satan’s deception as a legitimate defense as well?

    • No

    • After the fall, we have no defense because we are born into sin

    • We are not innocent

    • We don’t live a single day without sin, so we stand condemned regardless of what we do

      • Only by faith can we be rescued

• So if the fall of mankind must happen through Adam, why did Satan begin with  Woman rather than going to Man from the beginning?

  • We might assume that Satan attacked the easy target?

    • But in reality, he attacked the harder target

    • Woman believed God’s word and tried to defend it

      • Satan had to use deception to get her to act against God’s word

  • But Adam was ready and willing to eat that fruit

    • It’s as if Satan knew that Adam was going to be the easy one, but he had to work on Woman 

• If this is Adam’s fault, why was Woman put outside the Garden too?

  • It sounds like her action was not a sin, but rather the result of deception

    • Doesn’t that mean she gets a free pass?

  • Perhaps, but since Adam ate too, it didn’t matter

    • Woman was guilty of sin because Adam ate

    • His sin brought sin to Woman as well (her eyes were opened after he ate)

  • How does Adam’s sin open Woman’s eyes?

    • Well, here we see God’s wisdom in creating Woman in such an unique way

    • Woman was created from Adam’s flesh rather than from the ground

      • So now as Adam sinned, he brought sin to his flesh

      • And Woman being of one flesh with Adam experienced that sin with him

        • His eating brought both of them down

  • We can now look back at God’s decision to create Woman in this unique way as a form of grace, knowing where events were leading

    • He knows that one day Adam will sin, and He doesn’t want one person inside the garden and another outside

      • So He creates in a way that will ensure that both go together

• There is one final outcome from the eating of the fruit

  • After, they knew they were naked and made effort to cloth themselves

    • First, what does it mean that they knew they were naked?

      • We talked about nakedness meaning vulnerability and shame 

      • Now we see more clearly that with sin comes a sense of exposure, or vulnerability

      • Of the need to cover up and conceal ourselves

    • The feeling is so strong, they feel the need to create clothing

      • Not for weather protection or because of civil standards

      • It’s inherently a reaction to our sinful nature – before God

  • It’s a visible evidence that God has implanted in us a conscious 

    • We instinctively recognize our unholiness before God

      • And their sin also meant they lost their transparency between one another

      • All the communication problems and difficulties talking in a marriage trace back to sin

  • Won’t it be wonderful to have relationships in our new bodies that don’t suffer from sin and the lack of transparency?