The Fall of Man, Pt. 2
Genesis 3:6-7
We return to Genesis chapter 3 in our series in origins. I didn't know when I started out how long we'd be in to this series, but I'm certainly enjoying every bit of it as we look at the origin of those things which are absolutely critical to any true world view. And we have dealt with creation, seen how God created the entire universe in six days, six solar days, an evening and a morning. And we are now studying the Fall of man. The third chapter of Genesis in many ways is the most defining chapter in the Bible because it explains why things are the way they are today. Why there is what there is in the world. Why there is decay. Why there is disease. Why there is dysfunction. Why there is disintegration. Why there is ultimately death and judgment. Those things plague our entire universe. And they all come out of the event recorded in Genesis chapter 3...the Fall of man and his universe.
And as it is true of Genesis 1 and 2 that you have God's own account of creation, here again you have God's own account of the Fall. This is God's history. Yes, it is true that Moses was the human instrument who wrote this history, but it was all inspired by the Spirit of God. As the New Testament tells us, all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. Holy men of God, including Moses, were moved by the Holy Spirit as they penned the Scripture. And this is God's inspired history on the Fall. It explains why things are the way they are in the world. It establishes the dilemma of sin, the presence of all those things I mentioned, decay, disease, dysfunction, disintegration, death and judgment. It also establishes for us the need for restoration, the need for recreation and the need for regeneration and salvation. All of this is built on Genesis chapter 3.
Now what happens in Genesis chapter 3 is that Adam and Eve who up to this point are sinless and living in a perfect environment in which death does not exist and disintegration doesn't exist and disease doesn't exist and dysfunction doesn't exist and decay doesn't exist, none of those things exist...it's a perfect world, perfect in every sense, it is complete in terms of its creation and it is flawless and without any decay or anything that disintegrates...it is the perfect Edenic creation of God and they live in it without sin, enjoying all the wonders of God's creation. But at some point, we don't know exactly how much time elapsed from the sixth day of creation on, we don't know how long from the time they were created till they sinned, it was certainly before they gave birth to children, somewhere in there this occurred and there is really no way to know precisely when it happened. But we can know how it happened.
What you have here in Genesis 3 is not legend, it is not myth, it's not a fairy tale, it's not a tradition passed down from generation to generation. It is the written and inspired Word of God. And it explains to us exactly why things are the way they are and how sin came into our world and how it began to effect our world.
Now again, the first seven verses give us the account. And as we flow through these verses, we identify certain features that become the hooks to hang our thoughts on. First is the solicitor...the solicitor, that is Satan introduced to us in verse 1, "The serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." And here we are introduced to the solicitor, the one who solicits sin, the one who is the tempter. And this is a real reptile, as we have already learned, because he's compared to other beasts of the field. This is not some supernatural creature, this isn't a figment of imagination in the mind of Eve, as Jewish scholars have always believed, that there never really was a serpent, it was just something going on in the mind of Eve. But it clearly indicates this was a serpent, this was a nachash, this was some kind of reptile...a synonym to that is the word tannin used as a synonym in some places and translated dragon and Revelation 12:9 and Revelation 20 verse 2 describes Satan as a serpent and a dragon. Some kind of reptile and in this case an upright reptile coming up and holding a conversation with Eve.
More intelligent, more crafty...the word crafty means intelligent or wise, than any other animal because this animal was merely an instrument for Satan. Satan was talking through the animal and therefore the animal had supernatural wisdom. Not in its own animal life but because it was an instrument of a supernatural creature, namely Satan.
Satan, as you remember, fell. He was Lucifer, son of the morning, probably the praise leader of heaven and he decided he wanted to be like God. He wanted to be like the Most High God. And so God threw him out of heaven, along with a third of the other holy angels and they constitute Satan and his demons. So when tossed out of heaven, he then goes down to earth and attempts to bring the rebellion in to the perfection of the earth. He comes as the primary solicitor of evil. He still is behind evil in our world. Obviously we are all sinful and so evil is in us, but he is still the main solicitor. He still, not that he comes individually to everybody and solicits like he did Eve, but he has developed a world system, he has developed a world cosmos, a world order that becomes the source by which he tempts. Through many avenues in the world temptation comes at people. He is still the primary solicitor of evil. Since the time his own rebellion was quashed in heaven by God and he was thrown out, he has become the number one adversary of God and the number one adversary of man. And so he continues even today and will always be until he is cast into the lake of fire the primary solicitor of evil.
So we saw the solicitor. Second...secondly, we began to see the strategy starting in verse 1. We followed the dialogue. He said to the woman, "Indeed has God said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden?" Now remember, his strategy is lies and deception, it's not any different now than it was then. So the main solicitor is working primarily through lies, disguising himself as an angel of light he is really the angel of hell. Disguising himself as a speaker of truth, he is a speaker of lies. He is a liar and the father of lies, it says in John 8:44. And what he wants to do is to get people to believe that God doesn't tell the truth, to get people to believe they have a right to question God and they have a right to doubt that God has told them the truth. He really solicits people to believe God lies and he tells the truth. And that's what he did.
He says in a very somewhat benign way, initially, to Eve, "You shall not eat from any tree of the garden, is that what God said? Let's talk about what God said." That is in fact similar to what God said. God said they could eat from any tree of the garden, every tree of the garden but there was one tree that they were not to eat of. Well Satan sort of introduces the issue. "Let's talk about God's prohibition. And this is where solicitation to temptation comes initially, it comes when you question God. The assumption here is that you have a right to render human judgment on what God commands, on what God provides. And that's where things begin to come apart.
At this point, Eve should have said...God has made it very clear and that's all there is to that. We will uphold the Word of God and we will honor God and we will trust God.
But she got lured into the idea that she could sit along with this being she was talking to in a position of judgment on what God had said. In fact, the implication was that God was not really good. If God was really good and really cared and really loving, He would never have put a restriction at all on them. The idea is that God is restrictive and God is narrow and God is cruel. And Satan is generous and Satan loves freedom while God really is in to bondage. That's the way the dialogue goes and Satan begins to try to lead Eve to think of God as restrictive.
So then you not only question God, you question God's goodness, God's nature. And Eve falls into this by responding and saying in verse 3, "God said you shall not eat from that tree in the midst of the garden, or touch it lest you die." And she adds this little phrase "touch it." It may have been that Adam had said that to her to keep her from the tree, but she says it as if God said it. It may be that she just invented it to make God...to make God harsh. Yeah...she's kind of saying...yeah, you know, you may be right because God says you shouldn't eat of that tree or even touch it. She's sort of narrowing God down and making Him appear more harsh with her own perception here. What she should have done is defend God. She had all the necessary truth about God, as we said last time. She could have defended His character. She could have defended His goodness. She could have defended His perfect wisdom. She certainly could have defended their perfect contentment and need of nothing. And she should, we said last time, questioned the tempter. She should have asked questions to unmask the tempter. Why is he...why are you saying this and where is this coming from...why do you care...and why do you want me to question God...and why do you want me to question God's goodness?
But Satan has got her on the slippery slope and subtlely suggesting that in truth he is more devoted to her joy, he is more devoted to her freedom, more devoted to her fulfillment and her satisfaction than God is. He is for freedom and God is for bondage. And that lie still dominates in Satan's world, doesn't it? It still does. You hear all the rhetoric that was going on in the last couple of weeks in the anti-proposition 22 group. They were talking about, you know, why do people want to restrict our freedom. Why do people want to restrict our freedom? We're free to love anybody we want to love. What's wrong with loving anybody that you want to love? Love is a wonderful thing. Why not love anybody you want to love? And that all sounds so good and so saccharine and it's all about freedom and being whoever you want to be. That's always Satan's approach. And when you step into that environment and you say...Well, I would like to say this, God says that is a sin and you're not to do it...and when you say that, that convinces them for sure that God is not about freedom. God is all about bondage. And that is essentially the lie that Satan led Eve to buy into. And it's the same lie that you buy into and I buy into whenever we sin. When you sin, you have in that sin believed that you will get greater enjoyment by sinning than by not sinning, right? So therefore you have believed that God's promise of blessing for righteousness really isn't true. That's the practical reality of it. Cause when you sin you believe that you will get greater joy out of your personal fulfillment by violating God's law then you would get if you obeyed it...which means you believe the lie.
Well by verse 3 this is all being internalized by Eve. And she's beginning to not trust God as fully...I mean, she trusted God 100 percent up to this point, now she's beginning to not trust God. She's beginning to see Him as restrictive and narrow. And I said this last time and I repeat it because I think it's sort of a nexus in the discussion here. As soon as one does not completely, unreservedly and wholeheartedly trust in the wisdom and absolute goodness of God, as soon as one does not believe that the purposes and the commands of God are for our best and highest joy, sin has entered the heart. Because anything less than loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength is sin. That's how you break the law. And so if you have any level of distrust, any level of questioning God's goodness, any level of questioning God's wisdom, that's sin...that's sin. So it's when she's internalizing this that sin comes into her heart. So she joins the cause of Satan and makes God appear harsh by adding the words "or touch it," as if God had said that when God's words in chapter 2 verse 16 and 17 don't say that at all. So her heart has set his course...set its course, God is harsh, I'm beginning to feel that. She's not defending God, nor is she offended that God's goodness is being attacked and that God's commands are being questioned.
The Fall took place then when she stopped loving the Lord her God with all her heart, soul, mind and strength and loving Him means believing Him and trusting Him. She believed Satan was telling her the truth and maybe God wasn't. And that Satan was offering her the true fulfillment, the true satisfaction that God was holding back from her.
Well, Satan knew he had her so he pushed in for the kill in verse 4, and he gets blatant. "The serpent said to the woman, 'You surely shall not die.'" God had said, "You surely shall die." By the way, she left out the word "surely" in her report on God's command, but God did say you surely shall die. And Satan picks up on God's word and says, "You surely shall not die." Now you know the truth about Satan. Whatever God says, he says the opposite. His subtleties end at this point. He's no longer subtle, he simply overtly says, "God told you a lie...God told you a lie."
Satan says the lie is that you have to pay for your sin. The lie is that there's judgment. That's the big lie of God, there's no judgment. Believe me, folks, that is the lie that Satan wants the whole world to believe, there's no judgment, right? All these people living in this homosexual life style, living it blatantly, overtly, living it almost flauntingly in front of our society are doing that because they have believed the lie, first of all, that there is no absolute authority. But they believe that second compelling lie that there is no judgment, there is no judgment.
Now they have to work...to live that kind of life style, you have to work through guilt. And you have to basically come to terms with your guilt and you have to believe that your guilt is illegitimate and wrong. But you do have to work through it. You have to work through the fear of judgment, the fear of God. You've got to work through that because the fear of judgment is built into the fabric of the law of God written in your heart and your conscience. So you have to work through that and effectively silence your conscience and you effectively do that in our society today by flaunting it in such a garish way with other people who flaunt it that collectively you sort of ride across the top of your guilt. And then you have to be convinced that there will be no judgment, that this is all about love and all about caring and all about freedom. And that's the lie.
Well there you have Satan's strategy. Question God, you have the right, question Him if His laws don't seem reasonable to you, if they seem restrictive, needlessly restrictive and narrow, if God seems like He's in to bondage rather than freedom, you need to assess that. And if that's the case, then you have every right to doubt God's goodness because God is holding back from you something very good. If you will sin you will find real pleasure in your sinning, not just, of course, homosexual sins but any kind. And then you want to...you want to follow the pattern that to be convinced that you defend God any more, Eve didn't defend God, that is to say Eve should have risen up and said, "Wait a minute, there is a divine law and God has given it. There is a divine lawgiver and it's God and I will not violate God because He is the divine lawgiver and because He's given His law." But she basically came to the practical attitude that she was not under any authority to obey God's law because she disobeyed it. And she also was convinced there was no judgment.
So that's how Satan works. First you question God, then you question God's goodness, then you believe that the real satisfaction is in the sin. And then you begin to hedge on the absolute character of Scripture as its authority, and then you begin to hedge on the fact that you're going to have to pay a consequence for your sin. And Eve made all those wrong choices. They're the same wrong choices that you make today when you sin.
Then the question came up last time, why would God be so narrow, why would God be so restrictive? And that's a fair question. And you can know that it was in the mind of Eve. Okay, if she's this far down the line, but why would God be like this? Then in verse 5 Satan says, "Because God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil." And Satan...what he's saying to her is the reason God doesn't want you to do this is not because...because...because He's a good God and He wants to protect you from dying, He wants to protect you from death. The reason God doesn't want you to do this is because He's a bad God and He's jealous and He doesn't like rivals and He doesn't want competition. See that would be Satan's personal testimony. After all, he tried to be the rival of God, tried to compete with God as we learn in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, he tried to compete with God and got thrown out of heaven for it. So it sticks in his craw that God will not tolerate a rival. And so there's a certain amount of truth in this. He's saying God just doesn't like anybody getting on His level. But from Satan's viewpoint, it's not because God is all glorious and holy, it's because God's character is flawed. And God is jealous and envious and selfish and motivated by self-interest, He hates rivals. Doesn't want you to eat that fruit because you know what? That fruit is not only not going to kill you, it is so good, not only will it not kill you, it will make you like God. Now that's a noble thing, that is a noble thing.
Well Satan says that a lot. He tells the Mormons that all the time. You know, you're going to become like God. You're going to be the God of your own planet and have celestial sex and populate your own planet. That's the Mormon view of heaven. He tells...he tells people in forms of mystical religions that they can ascend to the higher levels, gnostic theology is like this and mysticism and they can ascend higher and higher and higher into the eternal consciousness. And even within the realm of Christianity there are those who believe somehow that they can become higher and higher and higher, ascending toward God by some mystical experiences.
Well, it's not a totally ignoble thing to want to be like God. We have to realize that this is a pretty subtle thing. He's saying to Eve...You'll be like God. Well on the surface that's a good thing. After all, we're all trying to be like Christ. The Holy Spirit is trying to make us like Christ. That's a good thing. So there's a certain half truth and that's the way Satan usually operates. But for Eve to be like God in Satan's scheme, she has to disobey God. For us to be like God, in God's scheme we have to obey God. So he's got the thing completely reversed. But it is a noble thing to want to be like God. And he says you're going to be like God, you're going to know good and evil.
Now that's a half truth. They did know good and evil, Adam and Eve did, that's right. Over in chapter 3 verse 22, "Behold, the man has become like one of us knowing good and evil." But as I said last time, they didn't know good and evil the way God knows evil. They knew good before but they began to know evil not the way God knows it, God knows it like the physician who offers the cure to the cancer victim. They know evil like the cancer victim who is dying from it. They knew evil experientially. It wasn't that they knew evil...Oh, now I understand what evil is. It wasn't that, it wasn't some kind of cognitive thing, it wasn't some rational thing. They knew evil by doing it. And so, Eve wanting to be like God, thinking probably that's a good thing and doubting that God was all good and if God's not all good, and there are things outside of God's allowance for me that are good and satisfying and fulfilling, I can get those things and at the same time be like God, I think that sounds pretty good to me.
And so, the sin had already taken place in her heart. The Fall already came before she even ever took the fruit. And I remind you, there's nothing magic about the fruit. There wasn't some magic potion in the fruit. This isn't the Aesop Fables. There's nothing magic in the fruit. It was...it was not that that brought about some change in her nature. It was the moment that she first distrusted God that catapulted her into sin. Nothing in the fruit was evil because nothing in the world was evil, right? Even the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was part of God's good creation, very good creation. So they knew evil when they distrusted God's character. And the evidence that they distrusted God's character in the heart came when they disobeyed His Word by taking the fruit.
So, by now Eve's mind has changed. Now it has to work on her emotions. So let's go to tonight's point and see how far we get. From the solicitor to the strategy, from the solicitor to the strategy. We come, thirdly, to the seduction...to the seduction.
Now what happens is...this is in the mind of Eve, that she has sinned by not loving God with all her heart, soul, mind and strength. She's now sinned in the mind. She's distrusting God, distrusting His goodness, thinking He's narrow, thinking He's harsh. She's changing His Word, altering what God said to accommodate the way she's thinking. She's not defending God's character. She's not defending God's Word. She is even believing the lie that there is no absolute standard that she has to conform to or she will die. She now is convinced that it's not as absolute as God said it was and that she won't die.
But that's not all that has to happen. That's just the mind. That's just the cognition process. Got to move beyond that so now you come to the seduction. Look at verse 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 we'll stop at that point.
Now here's the process that's going on inside of her. It's in the mind now. She's got doubts about God. She's got doubts about God's character. Satan has caused all of that to happen in her mind because she made all the wrong choices down through the whole conversation. But what is in her mind has to work in her emotions in order to activate her will to actually take the fruit. And that's what's happening. This is defined for us in very clear terms in James 1. James tells us how this process works. James 1:14, "Each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust." Now we move from thinking to feeling...from the mind to the emotion. We...we have a thought and we let that thought begin to move and seduce us through our lust. In verse 15, "When lust finally conceives, it gives birth to sin and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death." So there's the sequence.
It goes from the mind to the emotion. It goes from thinking to feeling. Now in her mind, now follow this, her goal has changed. Now this is a monumental change. Up to this time the goal of Eve in life was to glorify God, right? And that's the perfect goal, to love God with all heart, soul, mind and strength, that's the fulfilling of the whole law, that's perfect righteousness. So she just loved God, consumed by loving God. There was nothing but the love of God in her and all she wanted to do was love and honor and praise and glorify God. That's all she wanted to do. There was never any thought about self-satisfaction. There was never any thought about self-fulfillment. There was never any thought about personal pleasure, personal gain. Those thoughts didn't exist. Now there is a new thought in her mind, it is this...self-fulfillment. That's the new thought. It never existed before. Never that thought.
Now, not only is that her thought, that has become her goal. Her goal has come to be, "I want to have the satisfaction that that tree will bring me and what that tree will bring me is to be like God and know good and evil. I want that because God wants to withhold that from me for the wrong reasons, because He's not good, He's restrictive and He's narrow and I want that and I'm surprised God doesn't want me to have it but I want it." And here is the first time on earthly soil you have somebody saying essentially what Lucifer said in heaven, "I will...I will...I will...I will...I will," five times, you remember that? Now Eve is saying I will. Self-fulfillment has taken over for consuming love for God.
For the first time ever what is driving her is her satisfaction and that's when sin moves from the mind into the feeling. She's already sinned in the mind, but now the sin is going to work on her emotionally. And it's going to conceive and it's going to bring forth evil, disobedient behavior and that will produce death in exactly the pattern of James 1:14 and 15. This is the self-seduction. This is where the feelings follow the mind.
Look how it unfolds in verse 6. "When the woman saw that the tree was good for food." That's not intellectual. Now you say, "What kind of...what kind of tree was it?" We don't know what kind of tree it was. Have no clue. You say, "I thought it was an apple tree." It wasn't an apple tree necessarily, I