For most of our married life Marilyn and I
have taken in boarders, sometimes just to help pay the rent or mortgage, but
also to help people adjust to a new situation or get grounded in ministry. Jon
and Gabriela lived with us for four months in
Jon is one of those highly active types. He can’t sit still for half an hour, never mind the one and half to two hours necessary for watching a movie. So, it never failed. We would all be in the living room watching a movie (“we” being everybody but Jon) when he would come in and start watching with us. It wouldn’t be more than a couple of minutes before he was asking, “Why is he doing that?” “Who is she?” or worse, starting a whole other conversation over the dialogue.
After about 20 minutes he would get up and leave, returning about 20 minutes from the end to ask, in various ways, “What happened?” and “What’s happening now?” He was infuriating, and he often had to endure being shelled with pillows as he retreated out the door.
Jon would walk into the middle of a story and try and make sense of it, asking questions, trying to make connections, driving us all up the wall. We’re no different. Except that we’ve all been born into the middle of a story and, like Jon, we are trying to understand it. Unlike Jon, however, we don’t have the luxury of walking out and doing something else. We’re all stuck in this story. We’ve been born into the ongoing story of humanity, and each of our lives (each of our stories) is part of that greater story that gives meaning to them. In the same way that a character in a play or film makes sense only in the context of the story, so each of our lives only really makes sense in the context of the wider story.
Of course when Jon came into the room when we were watching a film we could have just rewound the video and started again from the beginning. Then he would have understood why this guy did this or that character said that. But we weren’t that patient, and he would never have sat through the whole thing anyway.
Unlike Jon, we have an advantage. We can go back to the beginning of the story any time we want and remind ourselves of who the characters are and what the issues are that drive the narrative. That’s what we’re doing in these first few weeks of this series: “Who are we and what are we doing here?”
Last week we looked at Genesis chapter 2 and we were introduced to the main characters of the Bible (God and humanity) and to the opening scenes. We learned that we are God’s children in God’s world and we learned something of what that means for us today.
That was the warm, fuzzy beginning. Today we have to look at what went wrong. We have to look at the tragedy that drives the rest of the story.
Traditionally this passage of scripture (Genesis 3) has been referred to as “The Fall”. I’m not sure if that’s really a helpful term. When I hear “The Fall” I get the picture of humanity tumbling down from the heights of God’s favour to land with a thump in the real world. If you have a philosophical turn of mind you might think of a metaphysical fall, a change of the very nature of what it means to be human.
I’m not sure that either of those images
are helpful or Biblical. There is no mention of a “fall” in the text. In
Ezekiel 28 there is mention of Satan being thrown to the earth as
the result of his rebellion in
Just one step… Not a great crashing fall… Not even a stumble… Just one step too far in the wrong direction.
[When we were travelling in
The problem is that
If sin were obviously dangerous like the edge of a cliff or the roof of a high building (both images that come to mind when I think of “falling”) then it would be easier to avoid, but it isn’t. It’s simply one step too far in the wrong direction.
We’re going to look at what temptation looks like but we need to briefly look at where temptation comes from.
As we look at this passage I’ll be talking about “the enemy” because it is clear from the text, and the rest of scripture, that we’re dealing with Satan here, with real, personal evil. That’s one source of temptation. The other major source is our own desires. James says, “each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.” (1:14) At which point we become our own enemies.
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'?"
“Did God really say?” is how the NIV renders the serpent’s question. The New Revised Standard just has “Did God say?” It is a difficult passage to translate because it isn’t really a question in Hebrew but a statement. Martin Luther wrote, “I cannot translate the Hebrew either in German or Latin; the serpent…[seems] to turn up its nose and jeer and scoff.” One translator suggests, “Soooo… God has actually said…?”
Perhaps you’ve run into people like this at work. It’s your first day, or your first week, on the job. You’re doing fine. You’re starting to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing. You’re making friends and you’re getting along with the boss. Then you meet someone who’s been there a while and they present themselves as your protector. “I’m your friend. I’ve been round the block a few times. Let me tell you how things really are around here. Let me tell you what kind of a person the boss really is.” And they begin to sow seeds of mistrust where there were none before. They try to poison your mind.
That is what is happening to Eve here. Nobody has sinned yet, but the atmosphere is changing.
The next step is to misrepresent what God
has said. ‘Did that God guy really tell you, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden?”’
What would have been the right answer? … … No!
But Eve is already confused by the attitude of mistrust. She had no reason to mistrust God. He had provided everything she and Adam needed; but still the slippery words of the serpent had sown mistrust in her mind.
Eve had been taught to mistrust and so, instead of rejecting the thought, she responds by entering into dialogue with someone who is seeking to deceive her.
Let’s be clear here. There’s a difference between doubt and mistrust. If she wasn’t sure on what God had said she could have gone back to him (he walked in the garden in the evenings, remember) and asked him. Doubt has to do with not being certain on what something means, or if it means what you think it means. Doubt is dealt with by getting more information.
Mistrust is not about information; it’s about character. It’s much more serious because mistrust affects the relationship that would have been the source of more information and effectively blocks Eve off from getting her questions answered. But nobody has sinned yet.
Once it becomes a matter of character you’re on a slippery slope. Once you admit the possibility that your boss is out to get you, suddenly every innocent word has sinister overtones.
That’s what happens here. The serpent misrepresents who God is. He paints God as a killjoy. “He put you in this garden then told you to eat nothing?”
Eve’s response is interesting. She elaborates on God’s command. God had said not to eat the fruit of the tree. Eve says he said not to even touch it or they would die.
[This (by the way) is the spirit of religion. This is what destroyed the Pharisees. If God says don’t do A, then we won’t do B, C, D, or E either because they are close to A. The classic example in North American Christianity is drinking alcohol. The Bible says not to get drunk. So, in order to keep that command most North American Evangelicals are teetotal. That’s fine, but the next step is to make any drinking of alcohol a sin. Which is a problem because Jesu not only drinks wine, he makes it in John chapter 2. So the end result is that we twist scripture (“it was just grape juice”) to make Jesus conform to our ideas of right and wrong.]
So Eve manages a clumsy block to the serpent’s left jab but she leaves herself wide open for his right hook. “You won’t die!” In Hebrew it says, “Dying, you won’t die!” “You’ll kind of die, but not really. What God isn’t telling you is that if you do this one thing, you’ll be just like him. That’s what he’s scared of. He’s scared that you’ll be just like him and he doesn’t want to share the limelight.” (Pitiful isn’t it?)
He paints God as a killjoy, as a miser. The God who created all that they can see, who gave them life, who planted a garden for them so they could be safe and grow to be like him. The serpent paints this God as miserly and a killjoy! And what is more amazing is that Eve believes him!
[I was talking with a mother from the neighbourhood this week. She told me that almost all of the parents she knows have been threatened by their kids, “I’ll call the Children’s Aid on you if you don’t let me do what I want.” There are parents whose kids have done just that; accused them of abuse because they want to get out of the house and they know that this way they can get accommodation and an income at no cost to themselves. These may not be perfect parents but they have given life to these kids and supported them this far. They deserve the benefit of at least some doubt.]
Eve didn’t give God the benefit of the doubt. She knew the boundary, “Don’t eat from that tree” but she didn’t understand the reason. And in the atmosphere of mistrust sown by the serpent she took and ate.
We have to realise how absolutely unjustifiable that act was. She had no reason to distrust God. She had no reason to disobey him, but still she didn’t trust his word.
One thing we need to deal with here is the relationship between the man and the woman in this first sin. There have been all kinds of things written about what this teaches about women as the weaker sex, women as the cause of sin or women as the occasion of sin in the world. That isn’t what this is teaching.
I’ve said twice already “Nobody has sinned yet” and I think that if we stay true to the text we can still say that.
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. 7
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were
naked.
Where was Adam? He was standing right there.
Last week we saw that we are made for
community. I think you can argue from the text that even after Eve took the
fruit there was still the possibility to turn back. Adam could have been a true
friend, a true partner, a true helper, and challenged her to trust God and turn
away from this choice, but he didn’t. He joined her in what he also knew
was rebellion and then “the eyes of both of them were opened.” They
sinned together! Like Ananias and Saphira, like Bonnie and
Until we realise how totally unjustifiable it was, and is, for humanity to reject God. Until we realise how destructive sin is, not only to our relationship with God, but also to our relationships with each other. (Remember they hid themselves from each other by sewing together leaves before they hid themselves from God.) Until we realise the way in which sin and evil spread like cancer. (Before next Sunday try and read chapters 4 to 11 of Genesis, summed up in Gen. 6:5 “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.”)
Until we realise all that, we won’t understand the Bible. Because, from here on in, the Bible is the story of God’s solution to the problem of our sin and our rebellion.
And that part of the story starts next week.