More Than Crafty

Hey, do you believe in evil? And I don't just mean good things and bad things, but actual evil.

Well, I do, because today we're going to read this account of where evil shows up in God's very good garden, presenting itself as something good. And the result will be? Yeah. The fall of humankind. Let's look at it today.

On more than ink.

Well, a wonderful good morning to you. I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And you have found More Than Ink where we sit here and we delight to walk our way through the Bible. Ask God, what does that mean?

We ask each other and we ask God. Yeah, that's right. Because, I mean, we're big advocates of the fact that, and this will sound strange to you, that when you're reading the Bible, you need to ask questions. You need to question the text. Absolutely.

What questions come up? Yeah, that's a very natural thing. And I think it's intentional on God's part that he doesn't make it so. Verbosely over the top clear that he wants us to dig a little bit. He wants us to kind of be intrigued and look into it.

Okay, that's true. Because the investigation is a worthwhile process. But he doesn't necessarily always answer every question we ask. And that's especially interesting with Genesis. We're in chapter three today because it raises a lot of questions.

And there are some questions that are kind of left open. Right. And that have caused people to be intrigued for millennia. Right. So, and that's okay.

Because everybody knows this story. Yeah. Yeah. So we have covered the first two chapters of Genesis.

So we got the universe created and we got people created. And we got the Garden of Eden. I mean, everything is just wonderful. We got man and woman and it was very good. Very good, yeah.

So you would think if you quit at the end of chapter two that and they all lived happily ever after. But today we find out that's not the case.

Well, we were set up for them to live happily ever after because God had just said, it's very good. I'm for you, you're for me, right? You are for each other. And that chapter ends, and they were naked and they weren't ashamed. Yeah.

Right? There was nothing to hide between them. Nothing they hid from each other. It was great. But today, things take a downturn.

Yeah. So we're starting into chapter three if you want to follow with us. And in doing so, we're going to find out about what we call the fall of mankind. Because you got winter, spring, summer, and no, different fall. Different fall.

So this is the fall of mankind. This actually, and then this is super, super important. Without this understanding, we're going to get in chapter three about the fall of man. You don't understand really the whole context of the entire Bible. That's right.

Because from this point out in the Bible, this is a very low point in the history of mankind. And from here on out, then the question that constantly is there is, how do we get back? How do we get back to where we were? How do we get to where God wants us to be? And how do we take care of this problem that caused the fall?

And that solution, of course. Comes in Christ, in the Messiah, and is fulfilled in that. But that's really what the whole narrative from here on out is about: how to deal with this problem we're going to look at today. And if you don't have a good grounding in this, you'll be a little vague about what really is going on in the whole length of the Bible.

Well, yeah, because we've had the beginnings of creation, the beginnings of people, all the good, the very good things. But what we have, what we're going to start reading is the beginnings of unbelief leading to disobedience and death. We're going to start reading the beginning of an evil influence that deceives. We are introduced to the beginning of shame and blame, the beginning of broken relationships, pain, and manipulation and hiding. Yeah, so you kind of think, well, how did mankind get into this position?

Well, The roots of it all are right here. Right here. Right here. So let's just look at it. Chapter three, you want to read for us.

Yeah. Starting right at the top first.

Okay, well, here's my first question. How come all of a sudden we have a talking snake?

Well, that's a good point. Like, that's just really, that's really interesting to me. Everybody knows the story of Adam and Eve, but it's really important that we just find out what the Bible actually says. See what it says. Read the story.

So there's no introduction to this talking snake. There's no reason why he was here. We don't know anything about except. Suddenly now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent, what is We may eat of the trees in the garden, and we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. You want to stop there? Yeah, let's stop there.

So you're right. I mean, all of a sudden, here's this serpent. I mean, it's. Yeah. The conversation just starts like.

Okay. We just have to accept that face value. But what do you make of this description? The serpent was more crafty than any other being.

Well, now we have a sneaky person coming on the scene. And when you talk about sneaky and crafty, you're talking about someone who is manipulative and capable. Yeah, and the word is, well, crafty, but you know what? In a couple of other places where it occurs, it's translated as prudent in Proverbs. And it really means somebody who knows more than he lets on.

Right, right.

Somebody who, and that's kind of a neutral statement, but that could be twisted for evil and twisted and revealed as good.

So he is subtle and he knows more than he's letting on. Right, right.

Yeah, and I might just do another little word parallel thought, is even the word serpent itself. Is used in kind of associated ways, and not to talk about a snake or a serpent, but to talk about someone who hisses. Because the word actually kind of sounds like hissing. And then when you think about hissing, you think about someone who whispers in your ear quietly and who's very persuasive and who's sneaky. And so the word play between the serpent here and that kind of sneaky.

Divination is what it's looked at sometimes as well, too, telling you things you don't know.

So there's a lot wrapped up just in the language that we see right here. But we do know without it saying really directly that there's something not only suspicious about this creature, but something to beware of. And Eve doesn't seem to be afraid of him. No. She doesn't back away.

We have no indication of fear or anything. We just suddenly have the conversation going, and this snake speaks to Eve, but he doesn't say, Uh he doesn't reference God as the Lord God, the personal, the I am God that they know. He uses this very generic term, which is interesting to me. This is the only time in the passage when he says that. Yeah, so he's like, Hmm, that should raise our Raise our concerns.

Wave some flags. Yeah. So, anyway, he comes on the scene. And immediately he talks to the woman, and he's actually challenging what God had actually said. It's really interesting.

He just asks her a question and even the question casts into doubt. What God has said, did he really say that? Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

So he's appealing to Eve, right? He's engaging her. We don't have any reference here to where Adam was, although we find out later he was. nearby. And you know, it's interesting in this whole account.

God we know is omnipresent. But God doesn't seem to be making himself Known as present in this conversation either. Right. And so you'll have to tuck this comment away for a little bit here.

So it seems as though God, who is like the landlord of the Garden of Eden, has allowed this creature to come in. And so let's see what this creature does. First he questions what God had said, asks her to clarify it.

Okay, and she does something interesting because she actually adds to what God had said, right? God did say, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that's in the midst of the garden, but he never forbade touching it or being near it or being around it.

So it's sort of like she's. Huh. She's safe, she's making herself safe, or maybe that's something that Adam introduced to her. Yeah, it could be. It could be that in their conversation, he says, Look, God made such a big deal out of this, don't even go near it.

Let's not even touch it, let's just stay away. We kind of do that with the law, don't we? Yeah, we want to, and historically, the Jews did this, right? God gave his law, and then because we want to make sure we don't break that law, we're going to back up one step and add something to that so that we're going to set up a safeguard for ourselves. Right, right, right.

We don't know what her motivation was, but we know that she had, she remembered that they weren't supposed to eat of it. Yeah, so she's got this part right. This is correct.

Okay, but the serpent has already engaged her, and she's already kind of sucked into the conversation, right? Right. Because she says the consequence of eating it is lest you die in the end of verse 3.

So that's where he picks it up with this conversation. Right. But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die. for God knows when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Ooh What has he just done?

He has flat out contradicted what God actually said. You won't die. It's like a baited switch. Yeah. And then he's cast doubt on God's motives.

His motives. Right? Because God just doesn't want you to be like him. He's withholding something from you.

So he has shifted her focus from all the wonderful things God has provided to the one thing he has said, you know, don't eat this. And he has cast, the serpent has cast some real doubt right here about God's veracity. Right, right.

And he even, I mean, even how he says it, you know, he knows that your eyes will be open. And of course, we'd look at that and say, oh, well, I want my eyes to be open. Right. You know, and you'll know good and evil.

Well, I want to know the difference between good and bad.

So what's wrong with that?

Well, they had no concept of evil. No, no. But I think what he's saying is that God is just unnaturally keeping you from your full potential of being like him. Right. Yeah, exactly.

God's holding you back. Yeah. However, this appeal that he's making right here about God holding you back actually comes back to in Isaiah 14 the thinking about what Satan himself was aspiring to. Because this passage, I'll read it for you really quick. Please do.

Isaiah 14 around verse 13. And this is talking about Satan. You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high. I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north, and I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.

And here's the end of verse 14: I will make myself like the Most High.

So, this is an aspiration that Satan himself has. And here he is, here he is tempting her with the same thing. An interesting thing to me is that he says you'll be like God.

Well, you know what? They already were like God. Right. They were created in his image. In his image.

But he adds this, and you'll be able to determine for yourself. You'll know what's good and evil. You can rely on your own judgment. Yeah, you don't need to have God tell you what's right and wrong anyway.

However, we made this point last time. You have to keep remembering that the only way you can discern between good and evil is to look at God. God himself is the only one who's good.

So he's the gold standard of what's good. And so what he's appealing to Eve here is to say, no, no, no, no, no. You don't have to look at God to understand what good is. Once you eat of the fruit of this knowledge of good and evil, you yourself will be able to know without having to reference God. Exactly.

See? Exactly. You don't need him. Yeah. And so that's really interesting because here it tells us in verse 6, so 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 to be desired to make one wise, she took up its fruit and ate.

Okay, so why did she see that? She saw that because the snake directed her attention to this little pinpoint thing and he reframed reality for her, and she just bought it. And she went into it. In fact, I was thinking this is exactly how advertising works. I mean, you appeal first to the desire, right?

And then the emotions kind of kick in, and then the emotions end up becoming actions, and then you pull through. But you've got to start by appealing to the desire.

So here's, that's what he's doing right here. He's setting the desire. She's going, well, it looks good to me. In fact, it doesn't look all that bad. It's good for food and it's delightful to the eyes.

I mean, how can those be bad things?

Well, and if it's good for food, then why would God tell us don't eat it? Right. But it looks so beautiful. Right. And it was to be desired to make one wise.

That's knowing the difference between good and evil. I mean, those are all kind of. Don't you want that? It's like a car salesman saying, Let's get in and sit down and drive this. Don't you like this?

Don't you like the smell of the rich Corinthian leather? Don't you like what this does? And so he's appealing, and she's running through this in her mind right here. She's saying, I don't see the downside. I don't know that she's even aware that she's being led around the bush.

Right. And the interesting thing is that she. He has aroused in her this desire to be wise, which sounds like this big spiritual goal. We know from the scriptures, especially from Proverbs, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

So she's after wisdom apart from God. Yep, yep. And Satan has made it look very attractive and very reachable. And she's like, oh, huh, maybe I can have that. You're right, right.

In fact, James in James 3, he talks about wisdom, and he characterizes it as wisdom from above is first pure, and then he goes on.

So wisdom really is a good description. You should read it, those who are listening.

Well, no, I'm just saying, people who are listening, go look that up. Yeah, James 3.

So, I mean, the appeal is very attractive. That's all I'm saying. And so, she, so once that appeal has happened, then it gives birth to action, and she takes the action, and she took the fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her. And he ate.

Which raises a gigantic question or two or three. Why didn't he intervene? Why didn't he stop her? Why didn't he say, What are you doing? Yeah.

Why didn't he say, don't talk to this snake? Listen to what God said. I. Uh, we don't know, we're not given any of that information. No, in fact, it's such a contrast.

We have, it looks like the thought process of Eve, what was desirous to her, and here he just gives him the fruit and he eats.

So, this is you know, Eve's thought process is how deception works, right? You believe the next lie and the next lie and the next lie.

Next thing you do, you're bought in, right? But Adam had watched it happen, right.

So he He made a conscious choice to eat it. Very conscious. Very conscious. And he failed to stop her from eating it.

So he's. He's failed on a lot of fronts.

Well, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, you could say that she was manipulated. She's not guiltless, but she was manipulated. Right. But it doesn't sound like he was.

He just said, okay, and went for it. I mean, it's really a blatant, it's a blatant step forward to disobey God. The question as to why he would have done that is one of those questions that's not answered in the text. And we can think about that and talk about that. for a long time.

But all we have here is the facts. We have Eve's thought process and Adam's failure to act. Yeah, yeah. And so that was the fall right there. And then, here comes the effect.

They disobeyed God. The eyes of them both were opened.

So they did wind up knowing something, but it's not what they expected. In fact, Satan said: once you eat it, your eyes will be open. Right. And sure enough, you see it. And here they are.

And they knew. that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. Oh So suddenly they are aware that they have something to hide. Yeah, something has clicked all of a sudden.

Because it said before at the end of chapter two that they were naked and unashamed. Right. But now they are, they realize they're naked, but now they're shamed. And they're totally exposed and they both know they've done wrong. Right.

Right. And so their first act is to hide from each other. They cover themselves up to separate each other, right? Prior to this, they had been naked, unashamed, one flesh, beautiful. And now, the first thing they do is say, Well, I'm not giving you access to me anymore.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. They cover up. Yeah.

It's almost as though at this point you see the emergence of self-consciousness. Like before, You know, they were really consumed with who God is, but not you know, not so much with each other. A little bit when Adam saw Eve for the first time. You're probably totally consumed with each other, but they were enjoying uninterrupted fellowship with God. But now they're suddenly aware of a Of a hidden flaw that has emerged inside of them.

You know, we wear clothes, if you just think about this in a practical sense, we wear clothes to cover up. The let's say the embarrassing bits that you don't want to wave around in public. I mean, it's really to cover, it's really to present yourself differently than you are on the inside, right? And so you wear clothes to do that. Even in the ancient times, the opposite would be true.

You would deliberately wear certain clothes to project and tell people who you are. And we still do that today. Yeah, but I was thinking the high priest in Israel deliberately in Exodus says you got to dress like this because that will tell people. Even though if you were naked, they wouldn't see it. But this is who you are on the inside.

You're the chief priest. You're the high priest.

So those kinds of things.

So the clothing is actually, in this particular case, it's an attempt not to communicate who you are, but to cover up. And it's interesting to me that they both cover up. Yeah. Right? They're like, oh, they're both acutely aware and ashamed of the fact that they have inflicted this on each other.

That neither one of them is unaffected by each one's action. Right. And suddenly, and this has not turned out the way they expected, and they are filled with the deep awareness of how. having been. Having done wrong.

Yeah. Yeah. Whether by deception or choice. They're aware. They're aware of what has just changed inside.

And I was talking about the emergence of self-consciousness. In the new covenant in Christ, we're actually admonished to not be self-conscious, but to be Christ-conscious.

So that all of our thinking, all of our thoughts during the day are about who He is, not who we are.

So that whole redemption process that we go through is a redirection away from our self-consciousness about our sin to our consciousness of who he is and what he's done on our behalf. It's an interesting shift in perspective. I'm no longer looking at me and concerned with anxiety about me. I'm looking at him, the one who's accomplished for me that salvation.

So there's a lot of symbology.

Okay, that connects back to Satan directing Eve's attention to what will satisfy her desires. Back to the desire. To appeal to her desire. Yep, yep, yep.

Okay, we need to move on. Let's move on.

Okay, verse 8. and after they've hidden from each other, or covered themselves up, and they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called out to the man, and said to him, Where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And he said, Who told you that you were naked?

Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, The woman whom you gave me to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, Why? What is this you have done? The woman said, The serpent deceived me.

And I ate. Oh my gosh, we see the beginning of all kinds of things right here. We're passing a lot of buck here. Oh my gosh, the beginning of blame. But it's interesting in this section in verse 8, it starts off with God still coming back to the garden.

Even though God knows what they've done, why would he return? Why would he come back? And then they see God come and they realize that they've disobeyed and they realize they probably offended him because they did something he said don't do.

So they hide themselves.

Well, yeah, they hear the sound of him approaching. It's like God makes them aware there's an encounter coming. Which puts them on the spot in the split second: do I fight or flee? Do I stay or do I run? It's interesting how fast they cave.

Yeah. Do I stay and say, God, I got to break the news today. I did something really poorly. He doesn't. He decides I'm just going to hide it.

And maybe God won't know. He just them out. He comes. Yeah. I love these three questions.

Where are you? Who told you you were naked? And have you done the thing I commanded you not to do? Right. Right?

That's boy, those are the things we have to own up to.

Well, and you're implying that it's for our benefit, not for God, because God already knows. Right, God already knows.

So, God, it's basically when someone does something crazy and you tell them don't do that crazy thing, and then after they do it and it comes out badly, you say, So, how did that work out? Right. It's not like you really need to know, it's like you're asking them, Have you really reassessed this? Right. So, that's what God's doing.

So, where are you? What are you doing? I, yeah. Yeah. So, this is for Adam and Eve's benefit, these questions.

It is, and they are pretty quick to own it because they know they're so profoundly aware of their guilt. Yeah. But isn't it interesting that God asks them in verse 11, Who told you you were naked? Whose voice have you been listening to? Other than mine.

We're going to find out later that he actually takes Adam to task for paying more attention to the voice of his wife than to the voice of the Lord. That's next week. We'll talk about that. But the fact that they realized they were naked, this is what I contend is really this is why this is sort of the beginning, the birth of self-consciousness. They're suddenly overly self-conscious about who they are.

And so it's not when you do something bad, you realize, I want to cover this up. I don't want anyone to think lesser of me.

So I'll cover this up.

So the nakedness came, I think, with sin comes this self-condemnation that you've actually disobeyed. And so your conscience itself, and we see about the conscience talks, Paul talks a lot about it later on.

Well, it makes you hide yourself, which separates you from other people and from God. In an attempt to present. Yourself as you ever each other. Yeah. Yeah, less perfect.

But then what's the next thing they do? They blame each other. They do. Adam actually leans up into blaming God. Yeah.

Right? Hey, the woman that you gave me, she gave me the fruit of the. You circle that word. You gave her to me, so it's not really my fault. It's kind of your fault, God.

That's what he's saying. If you hadn't given her to me, I wouldn't have eaten. Yeah, that's what he's saying. And then, of course, when God then goes, redirects to the woman, it's interesting. He doesn't redirect to the woman and say, what have you done?

He does say, what have you done? He asks Adam straight up, you know, exactly what he's done. What is it you've done? And she says, well, the serpent deceived me. The serpent.

Yeah. So she passes the buck to. To the serpent, who you allowed in the garden by the way, right?

So they're both kind of ducking. They're trying to say, it's not my fault. I'm not as tainted. I'm not as evil as my actions say they are. It's someone else who did this to me.

Isn't this, we do this when we all the time. Right. We immediately put up the fig leaf and say, it's not my fault. It's somebody else's fault. Exactly.

No, look here. Look over there. Right. Right, right.

It's not really me. This doesn't reflect on who I really am. Right. I'm really a nice guy. I say from behind my fig leaf.

Right. So, yeah.

So in our modern days, our fig leaf to protect our reputation.

So our reputation looks cleaner than it actually is. We'll use other kind of clothing to kind of. Of cover those things up. And that's where lying comes in a big amount as well. You know, we lie about who we are and what we're doing.

We try and present an image of who we are that is not who we are. And that's you are who you are when you're naked. But now, when you realize everyone can see your warts, everyone can see your flaws, everyone can see how nasty you can be, the first thought you have is: Am I lovable anymore? Does anyone consider me as worthy to know? And so you cover those things up to protect people being just abhorred by who you are, really.

Really? But to their credit, they do not lie to God. Nope.

Now they had tried to hide. But having been outed, God found them, they come clean because they know they have no defense. And they, frankly, we don't have any evidence that up until the time of the conversation with the serpent, they had ever spoken to another voice. We don't know. We don't know.

Now, maybe the garden was populated with talking animals. I don't know. But we don't have any indication either way. But, you know, God seems to say to them, you listened to another voice than mine. In Adam's case, it was Eve's voice, but in Eve's case, it was the serpent.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it's a condemnation of not leaning on your own understanding.

So let me quote Proverbs 3: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.

So be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord. Turn away from evil. Boy, that could have been written right out of the core of this passage right here. That was from Proverbs 3.

So next time we're going to come back and we're going to see what the consequences are for the fall. This is only half of the fall picture. The other shoe is going to drop next time when we finish chapter 3 of Genesis.

So I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we hope you come back with us and we'll see what happens next time as a consequence of the fall here on Morgan Inc. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org. And while you are there, take a moment to drop us a note.

Wow, that happened fast. Oh. Just everything was beautiful, they were with one another, naked and unashamed, and now it's all undone. And then boom.

So, say, look, if this has raised a lot of questions in your mind, that's natural.

So, we're going to come back next time and see if we can answer some of them.

So, come and join us. Oh, yeah. Come back. Bye. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.