Genesis 3:1-21
The devil generally follows a certain well-rehearsed strategy in the spiritual warfare that he wages against the human race. He has not made any fundamental changes in his tactics since he started this war against humanity in the Garden of Eden millennia ago.
The reason why Satan’s basic strategy has stayed the same, is because that strategy continues to work; and because human beings in every generation continue to be vulnerable to it and to succumb to it – as they allow the devil to draw them away from God, and to keep them disconnected from God.
The descendants of Adam and Eve – as a whole – have not, in their fallen condition, become wise to Satan’s ways. In the state in which each of us comes into this world, we are still just as gullible, and just as foolish, as human beings have ever been.
So, if we want to get an idea about what kind of techniques the devil might be planning to use against us, in his attacks on our faith and our salvation, we can and should carefully consider the techniques he used against Adam and Eve.
And studying how Adam and Eve reacted to the devil’s machinations in the Garden of Eden, can perhaps give us some insight into how and why we react as we do, to the machinations that Satan brings into our lives.
We notice several important things when we read what today’s lesson from the Book of Genesis tells us. In dealing with Eve, the devil first sought to plant doubt in her mind regarding God’s Word, before he launched a full frontal assault on God’s Word. He asked, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
Satan knew, of course, that God had not said this, but had merely forbidden humans to eat from just one tree. In the way in which he phrased his insincere question, the devil tried to confuse Eve, and to make her uncertain as to what God’s commandment had really been.
And Satan does the same thing today. “Has God indeed said that you are not allowed to have sex?” No, he has not said this; but he has said that such intimacy is to be reserved for marriage.
“Has God indeed said that you are not allowed to succeed and prosper in life?” No, he has not said this; but he has said that in your efforts to succeed and prosper, you must never resort to dishonesty or stealing, or fall into an idolatrous love of money.
“Has God indeed said that you should never be happy?” No, he absolutely has not said this; but he has said that true happiness is to be found and defined in that which is noble, honorable, and godly, and not in satisfying the selfish and destructive desires of the sinful flesh.
Many times we are led astray from the truth by subtle deceptions like this. Such devilish exaggerations of God’s actual law make God look unreasonable and arbitrary. And they make us feel justified in disobeying him.
And second, in the account from Genesis, we see the devil creating within Eve a desire to be like God, and to be the mistress of her own destiny. And then we see the devil using that wrong desire against her.
He said: “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.”
He caused Eve to think that God was selfishly keeping something from her that would actually be beneficial to her. His sly words diminished Eve’s perception of the holiness and goodness of God.
But instead of raising Eve to God’s level, Satan’s lies, when Eve believed them, had the effect of lowering God to Eve’s level – at least in Eve’s mind. She lost her fear of God, and her willingness to submit to God.
Of course, it seemed right to Eve, at the time. Eve may have liked the feeling of independence and autonomy that the devil’s deceptions gave her – when he successfully plucked her away from God and his authority.
But this feeling of independence and autonomy was an illusion. What was really happening was the first stage of the devil’s enslavement of Eve, and of the whole human race, under the power of sin and death.
Don’t fall for this when the devil tries it with you. Satan wants you to think that you are “taking charge” of your own life, when you turn your back on God’s Word. But that’s not what’s really happening. What’s happening is that the devil is taking charge of your life, in order to destroy it.
Psalm 99 says: “The Lord reigns; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!”
Don’t misconstrue and misapply the love that God genuinely does bear toward the world. His love is an undeserved and condescending love, which comes down to us from the heights of his majestic glory.
But his love for us does not cause him to stop being God over us. God, as God, is not our peer, or our equal. Remember, we should fear and love God, and so obey all his commandments.
Any and all temptations we have to think of ourselves as “little gods,” who can make up our own rules about what is right and wrong, are temptations to idolatry. But God is God. We are not God.
“You will be like God” is a lie that Satan has repeated over and over again, to Eve and to all her descendants. It’s a lie that often does appeal to the worst aspects of sinful, human pride. Don’t let it appeal to you. We can also take note of a few things about the reaction of Adam and Eve to all this. Their reaction is pretty much like the reaction of all others in human history, who have ever succumbed to the devil’s temptations.
In her initial response to the devil’s probing, Eve said, “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.’”
That’s an interesting answer, because in the directions that God had given Adam, he did not, in fact, forbid the touching of the fruit of the tree, only the eating of the fruit. It may not seem all that important, but Eve is misquoting God’s Word, and is adding something that is not supposed to be there.
We must never do that. I wonder how many times we’ve heard that the “Good Book” says something that it does not, in fact, say.
Many people imagine that popular axioms such as “cleanliness is next to godliness,” or “God helps those who help themselves,” are from the Bible. But they are not. They are from “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” written and edited by Benjamin Franklin in the eighteenth century!
As we would want our faith to be guarded against unexpected temptations, and as we would want to be prepared for the challenges and trials of life in general, it is important for us to know what God’s Word says: not just to have a general idea, or a vague recollection, but really to know.
It’s easy for the devil to twist the meaning of the Scriptures, and to deceive you in that way, when he knows the Scriptures better than you do. And he knows them very well.
He knows how to misuse them, and how to make them seem to say things they don’t really say. Don’t help him in that process!
Instead, read and study God’s Word. Meditate on God’s Word. Listen attentively when your pastor preaches and teaches God’s Word.
Know God’s Word. And when you confess you faith, base that confession on God’s Word – without adding anything that is not supposed to be there; and without omitting anything that is.
We also read in today’s text:
“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. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.”
And when our first parents were confronted by God after this transgression, and were called to account for what they had done, look at how they responded.
God asked Adam, “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” He answered, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.”
Then the Lord asked Eve, “What is this you have done?” She answered, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
For each of them, their first instinct was to “pass the buck.” Adam did not forthrightly take the blame for his sin.
He passed the blame onto Eve, and even onto God himself. “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree.”
And Eve’s performance was no better. “The serpent deceived me,” she said.
She should have admitted, “I wilfully allowed myself to be deceived by the serpent, even though I knew better.” But there was no such humility and honesty.
And it’s no different today. When you’re caught in a sin, is your first reaction to admit your fault? Or is your first reaction to find someone else to blame? I think we all know the answer.
When you are to blame for what you have done, God knows it. When you lie to him, or try to trick him into thinking that someone else is really responsible, it just makes him angrier.
Don’t treat God as if he doesn’t know as much as you do about what’s going on. He does. And he also knows a whole lot more.
He knows that Satan is trying to hurt you and destroy you whenever he tempts you to sin. He knows what’s really at stake when you play with fire in this way.
And so, don’t lie to God, or try to evade his scrutiny. Repent, honestly and humbly. Admit your fault. If there are others who are also partially to blame, God will find them on his own, and deal with them himself.
Just take the blame for whatever it is you actually did. Even if others coaxed you to do something that was wrong, since you knew that it was wrong, you are to blame for your own actions, not them.
And, ask the Lord for his mercy and forgiveness. He will show it to you, and give it to you.
We’ve noted that the devil hasn’t changed his strategy for all these many generations, because that strategy does usually work. By continuing to use it, he continues to succeed in bringing pain and suffering into the lives of sinful men, and in further alienating the human race from its Lord and creator.
But Satan’s strategy doesn’t always work. Even in the case of Adam and Eve, it worked only for a time. Their sin was inexcusable, but God still brought a word of promise and hope to them, even after they had fallen into the devil’s trap.
God’s Word had been clear. Once they had turned their back on his Word and had believed the devil instead, Adam and Eve did not deserve God’s help. But they got God’s help anyway.
God spoke these words to the devil in such a way as to make sure that Adam and Eve could overhear them:
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”
The offspring of the woman – the virgin-born Savior of the human race – would someday redeem Adam and Eve, and all their descendants, from the power of Satan. In his death for all human sin – including the sins that had just transpired in Eden – this Savior would indeed be bruised by the devil.
His suffering would be real, just as the offense of human sin against a holy God is real. But in his resurrection, this Savior would bring deliverance and enlightenment to those whom the devil had deceived.
He would bruise the devil’s head – giving him an incapacitating blow, as it were – and thereby set humanity free from its enslavement to Satan’s lies. The coming Savior would win the victory over sin, death, and the devil. And he would bestow the fruits of that victory – forgiveness and eternal salvation – on all who repent and believe the gospel.
This is the promise God made to Adam and Eve. And this, in essence, is the same promise that God makes to you.
The Savior who prophetically brought God’s grace to our first parents in Eden, is the Savior who has now come among us as our brother according to the flesh, and who supernaturally lives among us as the head and Lord of his church.
His Spirit speaks to us in the gospel to assure us of his pardon and reconciliation. In his absolution we are cleansed of all guilt; and all dread of God’s wrath is taken from us.
Jesus battled Satan for us, and was victorious over him for us. Jesus was bruised for our iniquities. And for our deliverance, he bruised our enemy, and freed us from his clutches.
In their shame and embarrassment, Adam and Eve had fashioned for themselves inadequate coverings made of leaves. We, too, are not strangers to such foolish attempts to cover over sin, and to hide it from God’s judgment.
We may think that if we pretend that we have not actually sinned, God will be deceived and will not notice that we have. Or we may think that if we do a bunch of good works as a follow-up to our sin, God’s attention will be drawn to the good works, and he will forget about the sin. But such cover-ups never work.
Even so, God will also forgive these foolish attempts, when we repent of them, just as he forgave the foolishness of Adam and Eve in this respect. As a substitute for the aprons they had made of leaves, God gave them adequate coverings.
The text tells us: “for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.” Implicit in this brief sentence is a testimony to the first death that ever occurred on earth.
God himself slew an innocent animal, and maybe two such animals – animals that had not sinned against him – so that their skin could be used to cover the shame of Adam and Eve. What a moving illustration this is, and a foreshadowing of our justification before God, for the sake of Christ’s innocent death on our behalf.
When God forgives us, he places the righteousness of Jesus upon us like a garment. This righteousness covers the shame and guilt of our sin, so that we can stand before God without fear and trembling, but with confidence and hope.
As St. Paul writes to the Galatians: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” And as Paul writes to the Romans,
“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”
Our own self-made flimsy aprons of human righteousness would never suffice to make us acceptable to God. But Jesus’ righteousness – a righteousness that he graciously gives to us in our justification – does suffice. His righteousness, which flows from his perfect life and innocent death, is a perfect righteousness.
When God covered Adam and Eve with the skins that came from the shedding of a substitute’s blood – which was a type of Christ and his atoning death – they, too, were justified. They, too, were assured of God’s grace. They, too, were invited to approach God, once again, in faith.
The devil doesn’t change his strategy in his attacks upon us. But God likewise doesn’t change his strategy in saving us from the devil’s assaults, in making us to be new creatures in Christ, and in protecting us from future spiritual danger.
What God did for Adam and Eve, he still does for us. The grace that he showed to them, he shows to us.
The Savior in whom they were invited to believe, is the S