Genesis 3:1-8

Genesis Chapter 3:1-8

Introduction

Usually on Wednesday nights, some in our community get together to share prayer requests, we pray together, and I bring a Bible lesson for them. Before the interruption, I had done a couple of weeks’ reflection on Genesis 1 and 2, and I was getting ready to do a deeper look at Genesis 3. So I’ll pick up there today.

Prayer Requests

First I’d like to talk about prayer requests. Online communication being what it is, I would rather not get into specific requests in this space, and will leave that for the more intimate communications that the church has with each other. But I do want to remember our government, those making decisions on our behalf, those in the medical community, those in food service, grocery stores, and other essential businesses, and those whose life and income has been displaced by the current crisis. I also want to remember all of those suffering from Covid-19 and the communities that it is affecting, including our own. Take a moment to pray for these folks now before we dig into Genesis.

Bible Study- Genesis 1-2 Background

I hope you’ll take an opportunity to open your Bible and read Genesis 3:1-8. (Or Google it and read it from one of the numerous Bible websites).

The first two chapters of Genesis tell stories of creation. In both chapters, God gives humanity a blessing and a charge. In chapter 1:28-29, God tells the people: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the

sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth . . . See, I

have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree

with seed in its fruit, you shall have them for food.”

Similarly in chapter 2:9, after God placed the man in the garden of Eden, the Lord “made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.” And in verse 16, the

Lord commands the man, “you may freely eat of any tree of the garden, but of the tree of

knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

We see in these chapters that God as Creator has given humans a blessing of nourishment and freedom, but that there are also limitations and boundaries that should not be crossed.

In chapter 1, the emphasis in humanity’s diet is on plants that have the ability to reproduce, and in chapter 2, attention is given to the beauty and nourishing qualities of creation. So we have a command to draw our nourishment and life from productive things, beautiful things, and things that satisfy our needs. But God tells Adam in Genesis chapter 2 that there is one plant that he is not to eat. Now most of us know the story of what happens next; it is one of the most famous stories ever told. Mark Twain famously said that God made only one mistake in creation: instead of telling the man not to eat from the tree of knowledge, he should have told him not to eat the serpent!

Genesis 3:1

And so Genesis 3 begins:

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made.”

This serpent has been interpreted throughout Christian history to be a representation of the devil, the great tempter, whom the book of Revelation calls “the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan” (20:2). Because the Bible doesn’t always paint the clearest picture of Satan, we tend to rely on cultural images that we have inherited from art and literature. But one of the things that we have forgotten along the way is that here, at the very beginning, and also in Revelation at the end, God has ultimate power over evil and the devil and all of creation. Christianity is not a religion that sees everything in terms of an equal balance of good and evil. Our faith rests on the fact that evil is a crafty corruption of God’s good work in creation and that evil will be overcome in the final judgement and the resurrection of the dead. Here in Genesis 3:1 we see that God made the serpent. The fact that this serpent is the craftiest animal in God’s creation does not negate the fact that he is part of the created world.

We don’t have the serpent’s reason for wanting to tempt Adam and Eve. He just does it. One of the frustrating things for modern interpreters in reading Scripture is that, unlike in our modern stories, Scripture often gives us little character development outside of dialogue. We have to come to our own conclusions about what the goals of a character are.

What the serpent says is a corruption of God’s command. “Did God say, you shall not eat from any tree in the garden?” This is the first trick the tempter plays on us in almost any situation. What God said in chapter 2, you will remember, is effectively “You may eat from every tree, except this one.” I am reminded of a scene in the television series The Office. In one episode the boss, Michael, has some of his supervisors come in from corporate to encourage him to be more careful about the jokes that he tells. Michael in frustration says, “I’m the boss and I can’t say anything!” And his boss Jan responds, “That’s true, you can’t say anything.” The temptation that we so often face is a temptation to focus on the things we are not supposed to do. This makes freedom seem like prison.

If you will, imagine children playing on a large field. Let’s say it’s over on the edge of a plateau, and so an adult tells the children, you can go anywhere you want on this 120 yard by 53 yard field, but that area over there by the cliff is off limits. Now we as observers know that this is a perfectly reasonable rule. In fact, the children shouldn’t want to go anywhere near that cliff. It’s dangerous, and they will have more fun if they just stay away. But those children are just going to see one more rule, one more limitation of their world.

Genesis 3:2-3

Much has been made of woman’s response to the serpent. Particularly, she adds to God’s command: “We can eat of the trees of the garden,” she says (so far so good), “but we are not supposed to

eat of the tree that is in the middle of the garden” (still good) “nor shall we touch it, or we’ll die.” Where did Eve come up with the prohibition on touching the tree of knowledge of good and evil? God doesn’t say it. Perhaps she’s engaging in the first act of religious interpretation, building a “hedge” around the command of God to protect herself from breaking it. It’s also been suggested that Adam told her that this was the command in order to encourage her obedience. Whatever the reason, this seemingly harmless addition to the law seems to be crucial to the decision to break the command in just a moment.

Genesis 3:4-5

Now the serpent makes a bold claim in his temptation, which ultimately turns out to be true in the short term: “You won’t die,” he says, “God just doesn’t want you to be like him, able to discern between

good and evil.”

On my reading, the tempter here makes a gamble on God’s grace. God has told Adam that the consequence of violating this command is death. And the serpent gambles with the lives of the people that God will not kill them, that they won’t die right away. He also makes God out to be petty and insecure, acting out of a concern to keep his privileged position for himself.

Genesis 3:6-8

The serpent’s temptation is effective. Encouraged to take a second look at the forbidden thing, the woman sees that this tree is not unlike other trees, the ones given to humans for food. It’s good for food. It’s pretty to look at. And it has this bonus of “making one wise” and she eats it, and gives some to her husband, who at long last we are told has been beside her all the time, just listening.

Now why was this strategy by the serpent effective? What was the temptation that led to the Fall? I think it was the desire to take a place that rightly belongs to God. Before Adam and Eve’s sin, the invitation of people was to accept life as a gift from God’s hand in trust. God would tell them what to do, and if they would do it, everything would be good. This is true freedom, to know the goodness of God by his revelation and to choose that good. There was an intimacy with God in this, that they could talk directly to their Maker. There also was an intimacy with one another (2:25 “the man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed”). But immediately upon learning to tell the difference between good and evil, the first thing the humans feel is a shame that breaks this intimacy. They make clothes for themselves to hide their nakedness from each other, and they hide from God who comes to walk with them.

Conclusion

Today, because we have the ability to discern right from wrong, it is our job to make moral and ethical decisions. We have to make these kinds of decisions every day. But we are often tempted to take control of things that we don’t have control over and we fail to accept gratefully the things that God does give us.

After the Fall, we live in a complicated world. We try to follow the commands of God, but as new situations and unforeseen circumstances arise, we are called to try to figure out how to apply scriptural principles to complex modern problems. With the guidance of the Spirit, I believe that we can practice an (imperfect) obedient discernment. We can take what we know from Scripture and, with the help of our faith community and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we can make hard decisions.

The wonderful blessing is the grace God gives Adam and Eve. Though they clearly break God’s command, they do not die on the spot. Martin Luther, when confronted with the complexity of life, famously became convinced that every human action, every response to any circumstance, would in some way be broken and tainted by sin. Luther solved this problem by telling people when anything you do seems like it might be sin, “Sin boldly. But,” he added, “trust the grace of God more boldly still.” As humans, we would be foolish to do anything with our own selfish and distorted minds. But as Christians, we can act because we know that our sins are dealt with by the grace of God in the glorious cross of Jesus Christ.