Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it waspleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. 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 coverings. (Genesis 3:1–7)
Everyone claims to know what’s wrong with the world. Not enough money, not enough equality. Too much money, too much greed. The presence of religion is the problem. The absence of religion, say others. Not enough education. Too much carbon in the atmosphere. Too many people breathing in the atmosphere. When a British newspaper asked readers to write in and answer the question, “What’s wrong with the world?”, G. K. Chesterton got it right when he wrote in with a two word answer; “I am”. The problems in the world didn’t happen to us, they come from within us.
The Bible gives the first and most ultimate answer. The book of Genesis tells you what is wrong with the world by showing what it was, and what it became. In other words, fundamental to the Bible’s explanation of reality are two words: Creation and Fall. The world was created by perfect design and had no flaws or failings or evil. But then came a fall, a disastrous dive away from the original design. The Bible says that the big explanation of why the world is what it is is that mankind is a fallen creature. We are a mirror that is broken, a creature of light hiding from the light. Our deep problem is sin, and it came from within, not from without.
The world assumes that our problems comes out of need – that people sin out of hunger, or desperation, and if everyone had enough, then sin would depart. But the Bible is going to teach us that the Fall occurred in a Paradise of abundance. The origin of sin is not unmet needs; it is unbelief in the Creator’s Word, disbelief in His promises, disloyalty to His care.
Genesis 3 is the grand explanation of the very origin of evil in the human race. It explains why we live in a world with pain, suffering, death, disease, war, crime, abuse. It does this by showing us both the origin of the first sin, and also how temptation works. That shows us where it began, but it also shows us how it still works on us today.
When we are wondering why the world is so terrible, we are supposed to look back, to this event, and look within, to see the same thing played out inside us. People assume that humans are naturally good, and that if we had been in the Garden, we would not have done what Eve did. But when we think like that, it only shows that we are more vulnerable than ever to fall into the same trap, because it means we are blind to the same things. We do not get to merely blame our first parents, because we repeat the same thing in myriads of ways every day.
Most of us know this account very well. But perhaps we have not put it under the magnifying glass to really see the anatomy of temptation, the tactics of the tempter, as he deceived our first parents into evil.
We are going to enter the Garden and watch this well-known and ancient scene unfold in front of us. We can stand now by the tree, hear the Serpent, listen to Eve, and understand what should have been done. But with the whole story in our hands, we will also be able to see how the Lord Jesus defeated these strategies of Satan. As we study the text, we’ll see the three tactics of temptation.
I. The Tactic of Exaggerating God’s Word
Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’
Of course, our first question is with this talking snake. Is this more like a fable, with talking animals? Or must we imagine animals could talk before the Fall? I think the first readers of the Hebrew would have known that something more than just a snake was meant. That’s because the Hebrew word nachash doesn’t only mean snake. In the verb form nochesh, it means a diviner, a medium for a spiritual being to speak through. Not only that, but it also means shining one. The word points in three directions: an actual snake, a being of light, and a being through whom a spirit speaks.
Now the best candidate for all this is one particular spiritual, angelic being called a cherub. In Scripture, four cherubs are described, one with a face, or an appearance like a lion, with with appearance of an ox, one with the appearance of an eagle, and one with the appearance of a man. They are mentioned in Ezekiel, in Revelation. But one clue as to who this nachash is is that in Ezekiel 28, God describes another cherub, anointed cherub, who was shining in appearance, who had been in Eden the Garden of God, but who fell through pride. So it seems there were once five cherubs, whose appearance seemed to represent some part of creation. God divides the kingdoms of land dwellers up into five: mankind, beasts of the earth, cattle of the field, birds of the air, and creeping things (reptiles and insects). Those correspond to the faces: man for mankind, lion for the beast of the field, ox for the cattle of the field, eagle for the birds of the air. One is missing: creeping things. Now if you chose a creature to represent that kingdom, what would it be? In any ancient world it would be a dragon (tannin), or a nachash, a serpent. I think this fifth cherub had the appearance, which was undoubtedly beautiful in pre-Fall days, of something dragonlike, or serpentine. According to Ezekiel 28:12, he was “the seal of perfection, Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.”
That may explain the meaning of Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
The cherubim were in Eden already; they are left there to guard it with a flaming sword after the Fall, so Eve would not have been surprised to be conversing with one of them, in their animal-like appearance. It may be that this cherub channeled one of the serpents in the Garden, or that he took that form, or that it was his form. The New Testament confirms who this was:
So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. (Revelation 12:9)
He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; (Revelation 20:2)
Why he targeted the woman, and the woman by herself, is not said. Why he had access to the Garden, is not said. Perhaps he had been expelled from heaven, but not from the Garden.
He comes to Eve, and begins to tempt. His first approach is to exaggerate the difficulty or the severity of God’s command, God’s prohibition. God had said, they could eat from any tree, except one. The serpent flips that around. A little Hebrew preposition, af, means really, indeed, is it actually the case? Did God actually forbid you from eating anything in the Garden?
Here Satan is doing at least two things. He’s planting a seed of doubt in Eve’s mind as to whether God is good. Why would God put any restriction on you? Second, he’s baiting her into becoming defensive, and once she’s defensive, she’ll do some exaggerating of her own.
And that’s just what happens.
And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’
She exaggerates what God said about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He never said anything about touching it. He just told them not to eat from it. But now, as she adds her own fences around God’s Word, her own extensions and magnifications, she herself is getting further away from God’s exact words. She is falling into error herself, and now Satan has created a foggy haze over what God said.
Exaggerating God’s Word. Taking what was said, and making it look monstrously bigger than it was, or microscopically smaller. Exaggeration is a distortion of proportion.
How easy it is to exaggerate when we want to make the point that someone is wrong. Look at families and couples when they argue. They use phrases like, “You always do this! You never show me love Nothing ever changes.” Those are not true, but exaggeration has the power of taking a little bit of truth and stretching it, to make the problem, or the issue seem bigger, or as important as we want it to be.
When Jesus was tempted by Satan, Satan sought to exaggerate the difficulty of being Messiah, and having to fast, or go to the cross. Satan offered him quick-fixes: instant bread, instant acclaim as Messiah, instant kingship of the kingdoms of the world. Jesus responded not by adding his own exaggerations, like Eve, but by simply quoting what God did require. God required man to live on more than just bread; God required man to worship God alone; and God required man to not put God to the test. Christ did not exaggerate at all. He lived out what He taught: “37 But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one. (Matthew 5:37). Jesus defeated Satan with trust and truth.
A. W. Tozer: “Satan’s first attack upon the human race was his sly effort to destroy Eve’s confidence in the kindness of God. Unfortunately for her and for us, he succeeded too well. From that day, men have had a false conception of God, and it is exactly this that has cut out from under them the ground of righteousness and driven them to reckless and destructive living…The Christian life is thought to be a glum, unrelieved cross-carrying under the eye of a stern Father who expects much and excuses nothing. He is austere, peevish, highly temperamental, and extremely hard to please. The kind of life which springs out of such libellous notions must of necessity be but a parody on the true life in Christ.”
Now this exaggeration of God’s Word can come from others, or it can come from ourselves. From others, it is people saying that God’s Word is too severe, the Christian life too strict. It is hopeless to try, and will only produce an unhappy life of frustration. Too many demands, and impossible to be happy. Within yourself, there can be the heart that begins to murmur, “I always have to do the hard thing. God never makes it easy for me. A quiet resentment begins to stir.
But Scripture tells us very clearly in 1 John 5:3
For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.
Jesus Himself told us: Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29–30)
We can also exaggerate God’s Word, when, like Eve, we begin to multiply commands and demands that God never gave. We add to God’s Word with our own set of rules, and begin to believe that this is what God requires of us. Now it is fine to build routines and disciplines into your life that support your walk with God, as long as you don’t confuse those disciplines with God’s actual word. And if they become obstructive, you are free to change them, while you’re not free to change God’s Word. It is also fine to hold to a certain conscience conviction about a biblical principle, perhaps something that has to do with food or drink, or music, or entertainment. But you must still recognise that your conviction is your application of a broader principle. Don’t make your conviction an additional verse in Scripture. It is very easy for Satan, for false teachers, or for your own flesh to begin to exaggerate the burden of God’s Word, by pointing to some very strict conviction, that you came up, not God.
This means temptation is won or lost by whom we believe. Will we believe the exaggerations of Satan, the world, false teachers, your own heart? Or will you, like Jesus, simply quote what God’s Word requires?
The first tactic of temptation was exaggerating God’s Word. The second tactic goes further.
II. The Tactic of Contradicting God’s Word
Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.
After having exaggerated, and led Eve to exaggerate, the Serpent now comes out with a flat contradiction. You will not surely die. No, Eve, that is not what will happen. God has not told you the whole truth. There is something He has hidden from you, some good He is withholding, some better life He is keeping for Himself and keeping out of reach for you. God, I’m sorry to tell you Eve, has a secret agenda, and a selfish one.
It is a very daring moment to contradict God, and say, “what God says is not what will happen”. Because as the laws of logic tell us, something cannot be true and false at the same time. And if what God says is not true, then it is false. Which means God lies, or speaks in error. That means only some of what God says can be trusted, or none of it? In its place you must trust whoever is telling you not to trust God.
I don’t have to tell you what it is like to live with contradiction. You live in a world where whatever news story makes the headlines with one website is completely contradicted by another. And then both of their versions are contradicted by the truther website who always has the real, actual, inside scoop. But unless you were there, you cannot verify any of them, so it comes down to whom you will disbelieve and whom you will believe. Whom you will mistrust, and whom you will trust.
When the Lord Jesus was tempted, He also faced the choice: will I trust my Father’s promises, or Satan’s promises? My Father promises a Crown after a Cross, Satan promises a Crown Without a Cross. Satan even wowed Jesus with visions of the kingdoms of the world, whereas all Jesus had from His Father were words, words to remember, and words to trust.
There’s nothing scarier than to lose confidence that God has the truth, tells the truth, is the truth. To remove that confidence is to have the ground under you shift. It is to turn a solid granite foundation into muddy quicksand. Whether it is by discrediting preachers or churches, whether it is by the proliferation of false teachings and opinions, whether it is by attacks on the Bible, this is when Satan goes for the kidney shot to double you over. God didn’t say. And if He did, He’s wrong.
In the middle of temptation, you must decide, is God ever a liar? Is what He says always true? If there is one exception, where God is wrong, or false, or lying, He is not God. As you face a temptation to become angry, to be malicious, to spread gossip, to fudge the truth, to lie, to envy and despise, to break the law, to look at pornography, to take revenge, to be cruel, you are facing a simple moment of saying yes to one voice and no to another. At heart, you are facing, like Eve did, and like Jesus did, does God tell the truth about what I’m about to do, or does He lie? Like Jesus, you can choose trust and truth over distrust and contradictions. “Let God be true, and every man a liar”
Exaggeration lowered her defences. Contradiction has confused her and left her wobbly. Now comes Satan’s replacement.
III. The Tactic of Modifying God’s Word
For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Having exaggerated God’s Word, contradicted God’s Word, Satan now moves to modify God’s Word. If you eat of this fruit something will happen which God didn’t tell you. You will experience an eye-opening kind of knowledge, you will know good and evil in a whole new way. You will no longer have to rely on God to tell you what is evil second-hand; you can now know it yourself. You will grow up, and no longer be children, trusting in God to hand you the knowledge. You can be on the throne of knowing good and evil. You may even become God’s equal, which is really why God may be holding out on you. He doesn’t like rivals, you know.
Modifying the truth is one of the great strategies of a master-deceiver. Every mousetrap must have some real cheese. Satan includes what is true, and leaves out the rest. It was true that Adam and Eve would have their eyes opened. And indeed, verse 7 tells us that is what happened. It is true that they would know good and evil, in ways that had not known before. And it was partially true that they would then be like God. And it is true that God does not approve of those who pretend to be God themselves.
But Satan left out that their opened eyes would now be those of guilty people who have lost their innocence. They would now know good and evil, but not in the way he painted. Before, they had known good by experience, from within, but evil was only something they knew about. They knew about evil because God told them it existed. But now they would know evil from within, because now evil would lodge inside, and forever be in conflict with the good, as Paul illustrates in Rom 7, when he says “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.” (Romans 7:19)
They were already like God: made in God’s image. Now they had a knowledge of good and evil, that was definitely more comprehensive, and so more like God’s, but now they were also less like God because they had evil inside them.
And notice how they now felt with this knowledge:
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 coverings.
They were suddenly self-aware, and with that, they felt exposed, and they felt guilty, and shamed, and wanted to hide from each other, and from God. They now knew evil, but not as a master over it, but as a slave to it. Satan didn’t tell them that to know evil is to enter its service forever.
Sadly, Eve was deceived, but Adam ate knowingly. We read that Eve gave to her husband and he ate. Instead of leading, and protecting, Adam gave in to his wife’s decision, and as the representative of the race, plunged the race into death. Here is the origin of original sin. 12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned— (Romans 5:12)
Half-truths are no truths, because what they leave out would contradict what they assert with the other half. When Satan tempted Jesus to throw Himself off the Temple to be caught by angels and immediately acclaimed a Messiah by Israel, he quoted Psalm 91:11: 1For He shall give His angels charge over you, . But he left out the rest of the verse; “To keep you in all your ways.” He left out “Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge, Even the Most High, your dwelling place, No evil shall befall you” (v10)
Promises are what move our hearts: the promise of God holds out His Word as promises, but Satan modifies God’s Word with his own promises. Here Satan’s modifications combine with three things that tempt Eve. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.
Good for food – the pleasure of eating. Pleasant to the eyes – the allurement of beauty. Desirable to make one wise – the enticement to pride and power. In 1 John 2:16, John classifies these for us with three terms” For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.
God’s Word: first exaggerated, then contradicted, and finally modified brings about Satan’s promise. Do it my way, and it will be better. You can be gods. To Jesus, you can have the kingdoms, and the acclaim right now.
It’s the same today. We hear the words of popular psychology: love yourself first. You deserve it. Treat yourself. Be true to number one. The words of social media influences, and celebrities, and pop psychologists, and celebrity preachers with million-dollar smiles: in your case, we can modify God’s Word. You can cheat on this, you’re not hurting anyone. You can pay or accept a bribe, it’s just how business is done. Sex outside of marriage is justified in your case, and no one else needs to know. Rebellion and dishonour towards your parents will work out in your case. For you, laziness will work out. Always half-truths, with the rest of the truth left out. Modifying God’s Word.
The Bible warns you about adding or subtracting from God’s Words.
Every word of God is pure; He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him. Do not add to His words, Lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar. (Proverbs 30:5–6)
You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you. (Deuteronomy 4:2)
For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. (Revelation 22:18-19)
It’s a serious thing to tamper with what God said, whether you soften it, or dilute it, or stretch it, or so re-interpret it that it no longer resembles what it was.
Faced with a temptation, you and I must decide if God’s Word is enough. I must be satisfied with His goodness and His promise. Can I be content that God knows what is best for me, and I can dwell within the border and limits of His wisdom? Is God Himself enough for me? Can I refuse the modifications?
The Spirit enables trust and truth. Memorised Scripture alongside loyalty to God.
If we do not learn the lessons of Genesis 3, we will likely fall for the same trap every time. We will spend our lives exaggerating the burden of obedience. We will doubt that God is true. We will suspect God of evil. We will be ever looking for some other good outside of God. And this will be the engine room of sin in your life, unbelief and pride being the coal furnace of every sin that goes wrong.
Now there is One who faced these temptations and won. He also won in two places: in a desert, and a Garden. In the desert wilderness, Jesus faced what Adam and Eve faced, and believed God’s Word, trusted God’s Word. He won with truth and trust. And then in a Garden of Gethsemane, He faced the horror of enduring our just punishment, and there willingly submitted.
If you do not have a real, living, personal relationship with Jesus Christ, then you are still trying to face the Serpent on your own. And you will, like everyone else except Jesus, lose. It is only by accepting Him, placing your heart’s trust in Him, that you are forgiven of your sins, and given His life. His life is what defeats sin, now in this life, and in the next. Have you turned away from Adam and Eve’s approach, and accepted Jesus Christ?
Christian, have you learned to fight temptation with truth and trust? The truth of what God said: not more, exaggerated, not less or altered, and not contradicted. What He said, in the very words the Holy Spirit gave them. And then trust in the character of the One who said it. He is good. He is the source of good, not evil. He does not mean to deceive me, harm me, hold out on me. He is the source of the good. I can and I will trust.
What’s wrong with the world? I am. You are. We are. Because though Adam sinned for us all, we have all sinned after his pattern. Making it right comes through trusting in the Second Adam, and then living by truth and trust.