"Temptation, Transgression, The Thorns And The Tree" (Audio) - Oct 10, 2004 Text: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-9 & 17-19
Title: “Temptation, Transgression, the Thorns and the Tree” Text: Genesis 3
October 10, 2004 Larry Kirk
TEMPTATION, TRANSGRESSION, THE THORNS, AND THE TREE
I read a story recently about a man named William whose mother died when he was a boy. He was part of a large family, and all the children missed the love and tenderness of their mother. They often felt that their father was stern and rigid and that he had a lot of rules they had to live by.
One rule was that the children should never climb trees. When the neighbor boys found that out, they started telling them that climbing trees was just about the best thing a boy could do. They told them about the incredible things they could see from the tops of trees. William and his brother asked their father over and over again for permission to climb trees, but their father always said no.
One day while his father was reading the newspaper, William and his brother decided to climb a tree anyway. William got on top of a stone fence and kept watch while his brother climbed. When his brother got to the first branch, William asked, “What do you see?” His brother said, “I don't see anything.” William said, “You've got to go higher. You're not high enough.”
So his brother climbed up higher and higher until he was as high as he could go, and then he fell. When he hit the ground, he broke his leg. William tried to help the boy back to the house, but he couldn't do it. He realized that not only was his brother injured, but both of them were going to have to face their father, who had so clearly told them not to climb a tree.
The details are different, but it is a familiar story, isn't it? A clear command, an appealing temptation, and in the end a painful fall. Of course, in a story like that we can say that boys will be boys and broken bones are not too hard to set and they are pretty sure to mend. But sometimes the temptations we face are more serious, and the consequences are more severe. What about broken promises, broken relationships, broken homes, and broken dreams?
Why is temptation so tempting? What is it about temptation that even when we're not just little kids climbing trees but teenagers and adults facing significant issues with serious consequences, we find that we are so vulnerable to it? It's a question we all face. Temptation shadows us throughout our lives. What do we most need to understand about it, and how should we face it?
You don't get very far into the Bible before the issues of temptation, transgression, and the consequences of sin come up. They are introduced right here toward the beginning in Genesis 3.
The experience of Adam and Eve is an important part of the story of humanity, and it's important for you and for me personally because what the Bible is saying is, “Look at the first man and the first woman losing the beauty of their relationship with God, each other, and creation itself, and understand that the way they did it is the way people still do it.”
What they did not only affects us historically but is repeated in our lives constantly. So let us look at how they messed up their lives and learn from it. We can learn from it. The point of the story is to teach us that, when we face temptation, we need to reject it and trust in the goodness of God.
We Need to Reject Temptation Because Temptation Blinds Us to the Goodness of God
What happened in the first temptation was that the first man and woman allowed temptation to blind them to God's goodness.
God's Goodness Is Real
The Garden of Eden was a place of goodness. Genesis 2:15 tells us that the setting for the temptation was the Garden of Eden. The word Eden means “a delightful place.”
The story of the creation of mankind reveals God's goodness. It tells us that, having formed the world with majestic beauty and filled it with multitudes of living creatures, God made mankind in His own image. He made the man, Adam, first and then had him name the animals. In the process, He allowed Adam to feel his aloneness so that he would appreciate the beauty of the gift of the woman. Then God brought the woman to him and placed them together in Eden, and everything was incredibly good.
The covenant of creation demonstrates God's goodness. What God had with Adam and Eve in the Garden is what the Bible will later call a covenant relationship. It's a binding relationship of deep commitment. Later in the Bible the prophet Hosea talked about people in his day who were turning away from God. In Hosea 6:7 he says, “Like Adam, they have broken the covenant--they were unfaithful to me there.” So Hosea tells us that Adam was originally in a covenant relationship with God.
This covenant relationship revealed the goodness of God. As part of the covenant of creation, God gave mankind three things, which are sometimes called creation ordinances. Just as the church has certain ordinances that you participate in as a member of the church, so God gave three ordinances to all of mankind as part of creation itself.
The creation ordinances are marriage, work, and the Sabbath. All of this is present in Genesis 2. Marriage is introduced for the first time. The Sabbath is identified even though there are no specific details on how it is to be honored. And meaningful work is assigned in that the man and woman are to take care of creation, take care of the garden, and be fruitful.
So God is taking care of mankind. He gives us, in the covenant of creation:
Work Marriage Sabbath
Meaningful Meaningful Meaningful
Responsibility Relationship Rest
Labor Love Leisure
In the beginning, the creation ordinances were God's precepts for His kingdom on earth. Against this background and in this setting God gave one specific command as a focal point for man's trust and obedience. One tree stood as a test of faith in His goodness.
Genesis 2:16-17: “And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.’"
The only thing that separated this tree from all of the others was the word of God. If God's people would trust in God's goodness and submit to His lordship, they would live as God's people, in God's place, enjoying God's presence, under the guidance of God's precepts.
The goodness of God is real -- but . . .
The Nature of Temptation Is to Deceive Us into Doubting God's Goodness
So the serpent enters. Genesis 3:1 says: Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden”?’"
When Satan Tempts Us, He First of All Deceives Us by Disguising Himself
The serpent is Satan. Revelation 12:9 speaks of “that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.”
Satan is called the serpent because the serpent is symbolic of the subtlety with which he moves and operates and seduces. It's no accident that, in the first temptation, Satan appeared as or embodied himself in a serpent to effect the temptation. Apparently, since this was before the curse that would come on the serpent later, the snake was not an unattractive creature at this point. There were no ugly rattles to warn Eve of the lurking danger.
When Satan Tempts Us He Deceives Us by Creating an Atmosphere of Doubt
In Genesis 3:1, the serpent says, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" This verse is interesting because it's hard for translators to get across what the serpent is really doing. In the Hebrew, verse 1 is not even a question. It is a statement that raises doubt because of the way it is said.
It's possible to say one thing and mean the opposite of what you actually say. That is called irony or sarcasm. If you ask me how I'm doing, and I say, “Great, just great,” are things really great or not? If you share a plan with someone, and he says, “Oh, that is a very clever plan,” what is he really saying? That's the way it was with the serpent here, except that he was very subtle. It's as if he said, “So, Eve, God actually said you should not eat from any tree in the garden.” Satan did not deny what God said but overstated it and did so with an emphasis that cast doubt into Eve’s heart. The first thing Satan brought to the temptation was not a blatant lie but a smirk, a sneer. Before he tried to win the argument, he created an atmosphere.
It’s the same today. We are immersed in a society that has been poisoned by the sneer of the serpent, the big “whatever.” For many people, any kind of heartfelt, passionate belief, devotion, hope, trust, earnestness, or obedience is scoffed at as childlike, uninformed, and naive. All you have to do to appear incredibly intelligent is to just doubt everything, question everything, and make fun of everything. Now, irony and sarcasm are not illegitimate forms of speech to make a point. You find them in the Bible. But irony, sarcasm, and cynicism as a way of life, an atmosphere in which you operate, that's evil.
The serpent used irony to release a cloud of doubt, and then into this atmosphere of doubt the serpent planted a lie.
When Satan Tempts Us, He Deceives Us with a Lie About God's Goodness
Look at how it happens in verses 2-5. “The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, “You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.”’”
It seems Eve exaggerated the strictness of the command. God did not say they could not touch the tree. But she was right about the consequences of eating the fruit. That's where Satan introduced the lie. Verses 4-5 say, "’You will not surely die,’ the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’”
What exactly was at the heart of the lie? Well, it was not a denial of God's existence. Hell's primary strategy is not to create atheists but to create believers in God's existence who do not trust in God's goodness. It's as if Satan comes and says, “I really feel sorry for you, and I want to help you out. You need to know that you cannot just trust God and live your life by doing what He says. You've got to take care of yourself. God's got His own purposes and His own motives. Doing what He says is not always what's best for you. You could actually be like God and decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong for you.” The serpent’s lie is to tell you that what you cannot do is trust in God's word and rely on His goodness.
When Satan Tempts Us, He Deceives Us into Letting Go of Our Trust and Disobeying God
Verses 6 and 7: “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.”
A lot of people will read this and ask, “What was it about this tree that was so evil?” The question is understandable, but it misses the point. It's not that there was a tree that bore fruit with magically evil juice in it that made one sinful. It's just that God placed one tree in the middle of the Garden as a sign of the covenant relationship he had established with man. What God said in effect was: "I do not want you to know evil but only goodness. This tree will be a symbol of our covenant relationship and of your trust in My goodness and obedience to My will."
Think about it this way if you will: Why didn't God give a list of commandments that would make sense to us? Why didn't He say, “Don't hit each other, don't lie to each other, and don't be selfish. (We know why He didn't say, “Don't commit adultery.”There wasn't anyone else around.) Why didn't He say any of the things that would be universally recognized as good moral guidelines? Here's the answer: If God had said, “Don't lie to each other, don't hurt each other,” the suggestion would be that the essence of our problem, the essence of sin itself, is breaking certain rules and doing certain things that are bad. But that is not the heart of our problem or the essence of sin according to the Bible.
The tree was all about trust. God made the tree, so there was nothing that was by nature evil about the tree or its fruit. It was a good tree. But God said, “Trust me and do not eat from this one tree.” It was not that God did not want Adam and Eve to grow and progress. He did, and they would, but only under His guidance and direction in a life of trust in Him. The tree was all about trust.
This story is relevant for all of history and for each of us personally. The essence of sin in the Bible is not just doing bad things but failure to trust and obey God. You can be chasing after things that are not in themselves bad, but if when you are going after those good things you are not trusting in and obeying God, then sin comes from that and suffering follows.
We do it all the time. Why does the heart-broken romantic want to throw himself off the bridge, the obsessive worrier worry himself sick, the driven workaholic work herself into the ground, the overwhelmed alcoholic drink himself into oblivion? It's not always only because people are chasing things that are bad. It's often because people are wanting good things without trusting in a good God. When we stop trusting in God's goodness, we start thinking we have to look out for ourselves and secure our own happiness. From that root of distrust come all kinds of disobedience to God and damage to our lives.
In human relationships, we have the expression “to poison the well.” What's that mean? It means to cast doubt on a person's character in such a way that nothing that person says or does will be trusted. If Susan can convince Linda that everything Katherine does is self-serving and insincere, the well is poisoned. If Katherine says something nice, then Linda thinks she’s trying to manipulate. If Katherine does something good, Linda is suspicious of her motives. If you poison the well, everything is contaminated, and there is little hope for the relationship. Satan's goal in temptation is to poison the well so that we doubt God's goodness and feel that His word cannot be trusted.
Don't let the serpent slip into your life and poison the well of your trust in God. Look for those places where you are tempted to doubt the goodness of God and the truth of His Word. Don't let there be in your heart a cloud of cynicism that scoffs at the wisdom of childlike trust in Him. Every sneer, every lie that raises its head and tells you that God's goodness cannot be trusted needs to be overcome through deliberate choices to continually trust in God's goodness.
We Need to Reject Temptation Because Temptation Robs Us of the Goodness of God
Look at Genesis 3:7-8. “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” Their eyes were opened but not in a good way, and the consequences of sin showed up immediately. First they failed to see the goodness of God; now they had actually lost it.
When We Yield to Temptation, What We Get Is Not Good
God had said that on the day they ate from the tree, they would surely die, and they did. The Bible speaks about death in three ways: physical death, spiritual death, and eternal death. Physical death is the separation of the spirit from the body, spiritual death is the separation of the spirit from God, and eternal death is the separation of body and soul from God forever. On the day that Adam and Eve disobeyed God, physical death became inevitable, eternal death was eventual, and spiritual death was immediate.
You can see the consequences of their spiritual death in a succession of things that happened almost right away. The serpent had promised that with this new knowledge they would be as gods. What really happened? Instead of the freedom and innocence they had enjoyed, now they were self-conscious and ashamed. They frantically tried to cover themselves. When they sensed the nearness of God, instead of running to Him in friendship, they hid from Him in fear and shame. As you read on, it isn't long before they are blaming each other. In the end even the ground that had been a garden was cursed with thorns because of them. Evil had entered the human race, and it was not good.
A big part of the deception that Satan tries to pull when he tempts us is the lie that we can somehow sin and not have to suffer serious consequences. To get you to believe that is a large part of the serpent's most ancient strategy.
I like what Hadden Robinson writes about this:
God is serious about sin because he is serious about you. God is serious about sin because he knows you and knows the devastation that sin can bring in your life, in your relationships, in your character, in your ministry. God is serious about sin as a loving parent is serious about fire and warns a child about it, knowing that it can maim that child for life, destroy the home he lives in, and do untold damage. But how do you feel about it? Do you take God seriously when he utters these warnings? (Hadden Robinson, Biblical Sermons, p. 20)
When we yield to temptation, what we get is not good. We need to know that. But we also need to know something else.
When We Yield to Temptation God Offers Us His Grace
Verse 9 is powerful: “But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’" God knew where the man and the woman were. God knew what has happened. So there was more to this question than just the fact that God asked it. The sound of God's voice calling for the man in the Garden after the Fall is like the rainbow after the Flood or the empty tomb after the Easter sunrise. It's a powerful symbol of the grace of God.
We are going to see that even more clearly next Sunday, but notice this morning that God comes hard on the heels of our sin and distrust to offer us relationship and redemption by His grace.
God knew exactly where this offer of relationship and redemption was going to take Him and what it was going to cost Him. We saw in our first sermon in this series that before the creation of the world there was a plan for the world’s redemption. When Jesus Christ came into our world, He said that He came for this purpose: “to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10). God knew that our redemption would ultimately cost Him the sacrifice of His Son on the cross to pay for our sins. Christ came and willingly gave Himself for us for that purpose.
Jesus went to a garden. It was the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus spoke to God in the Garden of Gethsemane about obedience with respect to a tree. Did you know that the Bible sometimes calls the cross where Jesus was crucified "the tree"? In 1 Peter 2:24, Peter writes: “He himself [Jesus Christ ] bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. “
God spoke in the first garden to the first Adam saying, “Obey Me about the tree and you will live.” God came to the second garden and spoke to Christ (the new Adam, the representative of a new humanity, a redeemed people), and God said, “Obey Me about the tree, and You will surely die. But Your death will be a redeeming sacrifice for the sins of all who trust in You.”
George Herbert was a somewhat mystical Christian poet of the seventeenth century. In one of his poems he pictures the Lord Jesus Christ looking down from the cross and speaking, and this is what He says:
O all ye who pass by behold and see,
Man stole the fruit but I must climb the tree.
The voice of God that sought man in the Garden finds its fullest expression on the cross of Christ. Don't say, “I'll know God loves me if He does this for me or that for me. Look at what He's already done for you and know that He loves you now! Trust in His goodness, and do what He says.
Remember William and his brother? Their mother had died, and they felt their father was rigid and stern. As they climbed a tree he told them not to climb, the brother fell and broke his leg. William couldn't get his brother home. He was afraid of his father's anger, but he realized he had to go him. What else could he do? He said later he was scared out of his wits, but he went in and told his father, and what happened surprised him. His father threw down his newspaper and started out for the vacant lot. He picked up the injured brother in his arms and brought him home. He sent for a doctor, and William said, “It seemed like my father was my mother.” William got a whole new impression of his father. He realized that all of his father's rules were there for his guidance and his good and that his father was good and full of grace.
God wants us to clearly see His heart and His goodness. He wants us to know that no matter how angry He is at our rebellion, He is never angry at our return. He is good and full of grace.
Don't doubt the goodness of the God who so graciously loves you. When you face the temptation to distrust or disobey Him, reject that temptation and trust in His goodness.